The Last Mayor Box Set 3

by Michael John Grist

  He liked darkness in others. He liked the splintering, and the sharpening, and the trials.

  She cracked open George, who'd been there the day Drake had arrived as they prepared to leave for Sacramento. He'd always been quiet, decent and respectable in a classic middle-America way, calling Amo 'Sir', and her 'Ma'am' for his first year in New LA. Deep in his heart she found an honest desire for rules and order, for the same laws to apply to all equally, though that desire had been inflated to the exclusion of all else. Now he was sore and leaking from a cancerous mass inside.

  Lara found the core of the cancer, and watched it replay in brittle, brutal vignettes. George broke Crow's legs, and shoved him into his hutch beneath the pyre. George tightened the gag around Crow's mouth, and cinched his bonds, and finally threw the first burning torch onto the pyre's gasoline-soaked baseboards, believing what he was doing was right.

  It made her sick; only more so for the rest of him that screamed for relief. He had been the first to help when Lara was refurbishing her coffee shop in New LA. He'd baked a coffee cake at her side, and they'd laughed about the difference between a 'cortado cake' and a 'latte cake'. "Size," was the answer, Lara had said, waving her pinkie, this just after Amo had ordered a one-shot cortado. George had cracked up, and looked guiltily at Amo, then cracked up some more.

  Yet he'd tortured and killed Crow. What punishment did that require?

  She found traces of Crow lingering in all of them, a knowledge of what they'd done, and it reduced them all. None were proud of it. The ones who might have vaunted it as a great deed were dead or gone. Amo had taken Arnst. Drake was dead, as were Witzgenstein and Frances. Even Alyssa felt shame, and what did that leave but these poor, misguided, rage-filled sheep…

  Eighty-seven souls remained. Lara interrogated them all, and wept until it hurt, until the pain and rage in her own heart bubbled to the surface and finally spewed out.

  She brought in the last two as the convoy tore through Colorado; her children. Vie and Talia sat side by side on the judgment chairs before her, so pale and sallow and alone, unable to take each others' hands because of the bridle cinched tight around them, so small and forlorn. They had seen their father beat a man's head in. They had seen their mother launch from a burning pyre and cast another back in her place. The things they had seen…

  Lara wept.

  'There but for the grace of God go I,' came the words of her father, Ezekiel, lecturing her as a little girl on their porch. She'd had a bad dream about the men who'd killed the black boy in their neighborhood. 'The Lord walks with us, don't you know that, child? Look back on the beach of your life, and see in the hardest times there's only one set of footsteps. Where was the Lord at those times, Lara?'

  Through her tears she'd always known the answer.

  'Carrying me,' she'd answer, and her father would nod, and kiss her head, and didn't she miss her father now, and wish her mother was still alive, and Amo was here too, and why couldn't they all be together?

  Why couldn't they all be together again?

  Looking into her children's eyes, with the pain too powerful for her to take anymore, and the anguish of their sad little eyes bearing her down, she finally let the bridle drop.

  Somewhere east of Denver, Colorado, five days after the pyre on the White House lawn, the convoy came to a grinding halt. Her children snapped awake and began to sob at once, flinging themselves at her. They tucked their shuddering little bodies under her arms like baby birds, pressed hard and hot against her chest where they trembled and wept, and Lara clutched them desperately tight in return. Savage emotions burst out of her like a geyser, and together they shook while the torrent raged.

  So it went across the convoy, with every vehicle stopped, and every heart broken. George embraced Alan, Lin embraced Margery, Cynthia became the hot little center of five of Drake's weeping children, Alyssa sobbed while Lydia sobbed beside her, and the two took hands and wept together.

  The survivors of New LA and the survivors of Drake sobbed as one. Their pain rose up in a burning, cleansing gush, mingling and ascending into the line together, resolving into a deep wail of human redemption.

  Lara held her children tighter than she ever had before.

  Hope.

  There had to be hope above all, she could see that now. There had to be forgiveness no matter the crime, because the cost of carrying old rage was too high. They had to do better, and they had to do it together. With no God come down to carry them across the beach, they would have to carry each other.

  8. PARTY

  A calm descended.

  Outside, it grew dark. Hours must have passed. Lara's head ached with crying, and her burns throbbed, but still she held the hot heads of her children close.

  They were asleep. Perhaps the first true sleep they'd had since Drake had come, with their mother by their side. She felt their weary minds on the line, now dreaming of simple games on the beach back in New LA.

  New LA was gone forever; not only the place, but also the idea. Now they needed a new idea. Amo was out there still, fighting the people who had to be fought. Anna was there with him. Lara was here, with her own people. She felt them on the line dotting back through the convoy, settling into their little pockets, finding the strength in each other, and wanted more.

  She laid Vie and Talia's heads gently down on the chaise beside her. She couldn't walk; the soles of her feet were ravaged and it was hard even to bend her legs, but she could shuffle forward on her knees.

  She slipped off the couch and crawled along the empty Airstream, looking out through the windshield onto a silent, purple nightscape of dunes and desert scrub. Against the starry horizon, rocky buttes shouted upward. That was beautiful, because there was room for beauty still.

  The blacktop was warm and scratchy with sand beneath her knees.

  'On your knees,' Witzgenstein had said. It had been the hardest thing for her to do, prevented by fear, by pride, by rage. Now it was easy. The words to one of her favorite hymns came back to her, 'At the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow,' and a fresh blush of tears ran down her cheeks. These cleared the headache and strengthened her.

  Jesus was not here with them. Maybe once he had been, but she didn't feel him now. Yet she was here, and these people were here, so she would bow down to them.

  At the first RV she knocked. Hushed whispers beyond fell silent. There was fear there still. They didn't know what was coming. The sound of footsteps followed, and the door opened, and a shotgun barrel pointed in her face.

  Lara met the barrel with spread arms. "It's just me," she said.

  Alyssa stared down at her. Her arms trembled. They'd never spoken, but they knew each other now with a deep certainty, better than Lara had known anyone.

  "You," she said, hate and terror mingling.

  "I'm throwing a party," Lara said. Her voice felt very small in the dark of the desert, on her knees, looking up into the twin dark holes in the shotgun's barrel. "I think you've got some Cheetos on board. In one of the supply boxes. Do you want to bring them out?"

  Alyssa's rage was spiked by a frown. It took her long moments to work the question through her dense, intense mind. "Cheetos?"

  "And you've got chairs," Lara pressed. "I want you all out here, Alyssa. William and Andreas, Mary and Joseph, Eldrid and Lenore, all of you. It wouldn't be a party without you."

  Alyssa stared. It was too much to process. "You're mad. We're leaving. None of us know you anymore."

  Lara nodded, tried a smile. "You do know me. You know everything about me. Now I want you to trust me. I want to trust you." A pause. "Maybe you have some good tunes on an iPod also? The more the merrier."

  Alyssa looked sickened. An iPod? Her thoughts rang out clear. They had to run. They had to get away from this crazy, all-powerful woman as quickly as possible.

  Lara caught herself thinking how easy it would be to nudge her just a little, to massage her thinking on the line and help her take that first step toward reconciliation.
But that would undo the point of all this. It had to be real.

  "It'll be good for the children," Lara said, aiming for the sweet spot, the reason Drake's wives and husbands had endured so much for so long. "I know you're all mothers and fathers. They need this more than us. We've got a long journey ahead. I hope we can make it together."

  Alyssa said nothing. Questions jumbled in her head. What long journey? Why together? Her arms shook violently now. "You can't just come here and ask for a party. You can't do this."

  Lara shrugged gently. "I know that. But we have to do something, don't we? Why not this? Whatever you decide, I'll be out here." Then she shuffled away on her knees, leaving Alyssa staring, gun pointed at nothing.

  At the next RV she did the same, this time requesting Big Red and grape soda, battened somewhere away in boxes snatched from one of the supply depots, before Witzgenstein burned it. They were equally confused. She did it again at the next, and the next, until she'd visited them all, and scraped her knees bloody on the sand-strewn road. Then she shuffled out to sit on a rock off the verge, plain as a siren in the moonlight, and waited.

  She could feel them watching her from the safe little glow of their capsule RVs. She could feel them thinking. Now there was trust within each pod, but the spine linking them to each other could break at any moment. They were seconds away from fragmenting and lighting out each on their own.

  Yet the confusion forestalled that. Lara was sitting out there now, quiet, unarmed, smiling. She'd invited them to a party? She'd asked them to bring instant coffee and canned corn? What did that mean? Hadn't she just been controlling them? Hadn't she forced them all to their knees? Hadn't she been the one to kill Witzgenstein in the vilest way possible?

  And yet…

  Alyssa's RV revved its engine and started away, circling the Airstream and plunging into the night. Lara let it go. The warm air hummed with potential. Its lights receded over a rise and the sound of its engine faded, then abruptly cut out.

  Lara felt the people in that vehicle deciding. She felt the pull of what she was offering, just like she'd offered the same so long ago, in an icy field beside the Maine bunker. Back then their people had been blasted apart by Witzgenstein's first trial, and it took a gamble with all her remaining respect to bring them together, at a table in the midst of the snow.

  Now there was this.

  'She hasn't stopped us,' she heard them saying, in Alyssa's RV. 'She came on her knees. She's just waiting. What if there really is a party? She's got most of the kids. We can't just leave them. We have to try.'

  The engine noise resumed.

  The RV puttered back, parking where it had started. No people emerged. They only watched through the porthole windows.

  Lara felt Vie wake up, in the back of the Airstream, and she soothed him with a touch on the line; his mother was outside, and waiting. He took Talia's hand without needing to be told, and pulled her awake, so they walked out together.

  They came to Lara, and silently folded themselves against her body.

  From another vehicle, Lin followed.

  Alan tried to stop him, clutching for him from the doorway, but he didn't dare stretch his hands far beyond the RV, as if a fell wind might blow them away. Instead he watched helplessly as Lin closed the distance.

  The boy looked at Lara. He didn't say anything for a moment. Then he hugged her, and after that the flood began.

  Cynthia came, and with her scampered a horde of Drake's empty-headed children. Lydia followed, and various husbands and wives of Drake, all of whom Lara knew to their cores, all their sins and virtues, until at last Alan came as well.

  "What now?" he said, as he stood by her in the darkness.

  Lara smiled at him. "You know the drill. Popcorn. Movies. Welcome home."

  He nodded absently, remembering a memory from very long ago. "Right," he said, then, "Crow…"

  "Crow," Lara repeated, and smiled again. "I know."

  His eyes glimmered. He turned, and with Lin's hand in his own went back to the RV, where they quietly began unpacking tables from the side storage.

  George came. He dropped to his knees before her.

  "Please," he said.

  Tears sped down his cheeks. He was holding a Colt in one shaking hand. In his mind raced the memory of Crow burning, with him the first to throw a torch. "Lara, I'm sorry."

  "I'm sorry," she said, her eyes welling up too. "I forgive you, George, if that means anything. Do you forgive me?"

  Fresh tears welled in his eyes. He looked at the gun, confused and unsure. "I can't… I don't know how to live with this."

  "Please try," she said. "You're a good man. I saw that in you. We'll need good men."

  He broke into sobs. Lara saw the movement before it could happen; the gun lifting to his temple, the shot ringing out. She took the gun barrel before he could lift it, and guided it to herself.

  "So start with me," she said. "I'm guilty."

  Like a drop of blood in water, her request blurred into his shame. He stared at her, then at her children, so close and unafraid, then at the gun, and trembled harder.

  "I can't. I don't know…."

  "I'm sorry for what you had to do, George. It wasn't you, but it was. Just like I killed Witzgenstein. Please try to live with it. It's the only way we learn."

  He cried out. Lara caught his shoulder as he sagged, and pulled him close. He was broken inside, and thought he would never recover. But that decency was still there; Lara could feel it flickering beneath the weight of shame.

  It could come back. That was hope.

  "Come here," she said to Margery, who stood nearby with tear-stained cheeks. She came in and they embraced together.

  It wasn't easy. It couldn't be easy.

  After a time the two of them wandered off together, and began setting up a grill with canned hot dogs.

  Alyssa came. She stood before Lara, still holding her shotgun.

  "You won't forgive me," she said. "You shouldn't. I'll never forgive you."

  Lara looked at her. She remembered the fire, and forcing Frances' face into the mud. That was cruel. Alyssa had been standing next to her. The hate there was real, and could well break their group again, but that was part of life too.

  "Will you try to kill me?" Lara asked.

  "Perhaps," said Alyssa, wrestling with conflicting emotions. Lara could see that she wanted to believe in something, but didn't know what. "I might kill you tonight."

  "So kill me."

  Alyssa sneered. "You'll stop me. You have the power. The same power she had."

  Lara nodded slowly. It was true, but what did power matter, now? What good was power when you had to deal with real people, whose memories would last as long as they lived? It had to be win-win. "If you try to kill me, we'll all lose, Alyssa. This fragile truce?" Lara clicked her fingers. "It's gone. People cast on the winds, broken and alone. Likewise if I have to stop you, if I die, if I have to kill you, we all lose. Do you see that?"

  Alyssa stared. "Bullshit. You killed Frances."

  "I killed Frances. You killed Crow and tried to kill me. Still."

  "Still," said Alyssa, and raised the shotgun. The barrel holes were inches from Lara's face. She didn't flinch.

  "Cheetos," Lara said. "Did you bring them?"

  Alyssa's finger quivered on the trigger. Sweat beaded on her brows.

  "I forgive you," Lara said. "I saw what Drake did. I know who you were before. Do you remember that?"

  Alyssa gritted her teeth, remembering. She'd been a vet. She'd cared for sick animals. That was so long ago, and such a different time, but was it any less real?

  "Do you forgive me?" Lara asked.

  Alyssa pulled the shotgun back. She didn't answer. She walked away.

  The party began slowly after that, and shyly, and quietly. It never grew loud. There was no dancing, but there was a coming together, with tinny music playing from the Airstream's speakers. People who hadn't known each other finally met, exchanging names and o
rigins. People who'd hurt each other talked for the first time. Everyone was tired, but relieved to put down their burdens for a time.

  They ate. They drank. Late in the night, they slept. It was a beginning.

  9. FOREST

  In a forest, in a clearing surrounded by gnarled old trees straight out of a Grimm's fairy tale, Lara saw Drake.

  He sat on a tree stump in the middle of the open space, whittling at his nails with a slender-bladed knife. She stood at the tree line, studying his intent expression. It was a sunny day. He wore jeans and a red check shirt, like a lumberjack.

  "Your boy's in trouble," he said, without looking up.

  He was talking to her. Lara strode out into the clearing. She wasn't afraid anymore. There was some kind of armor shielding her, and nothing he said or did could hurt her now.

  "That's because you're real, sweetheart," he said, as if she'd spoken, "and I'm just a spirit on the line."

  He laughed. He was looking right at her now. She walked up to him. The knife wasn't a problem. It all felt like a front; like behind the façade of this forest there lay a simple program running a version of Amo's Deepcraft warehouse. This was the line. Even in a dream she could recognize its telltale vibration.

  "You're a poltergeist," she said. "Not a spirit. A nasty little gremlin in the works."

  He laughed, and waved the knife in the air between them. She didn't flinch, didn't even watch it.

  "I like what you've become. You're going to need that stuff when you get there."

  Lara just watched him some more. Somewhere in back a squirrel raced around, collecting nuts for the coming frost.

  "Not going to ask me?" he asked.

  "I'm waiting for you to tell me. You're a messenger boy at best. You don't deserve any respect. You're the lowest shit I know."