Manifest (The Darkening Trilogy) (33 page)

“Hello?” I say into the phone.

“Delano!  It’s Ezra.  Are you okay?”

“Not a good time Ez.”  The millitus gazer pounds down on the windshield and puts a large spider-web crack in the reinforced glass.

Behind me, Roger is struggling to hold up the tiny stone, and finally lets it fall.  It hits the pavement and cracks the concrete with its weight.  At the same time, Roger’s outstretched hand grips the air tightly.  Simultaneously, the gazer, as if tied by the neck to Roger’s stone, disappears out of view making a thunderous crack as the enormous spine snaps with the sudden stop.  The lifeless body falls limp to the ground.

“Listen, we’ve identified the source.”

“Yes, it’s a boy.”

“What?” I yell.  “How did you know?”

“I think he’s here now.  We’ll talk when you arrive.”

“Here
where
?  With you?  At Alexandria?  Ezra?  Ezra?  Damnit!”

†
Ezr
a
†

            
 
S
itting on my rocking chair, with Boo-boo in my lap, I hang up the phone. She squints up at me, contented and just barely awake.  There are tough conversations ahead. Struggles.  Greif.  A battle.  Equations with a remainder.  I think I know how this will end.

“Well Boo,” – the front door opens with a jingle and four people enter – “Let’s go greet him.”

{…A few years ago, somewhere beyond Gothica}

A
ll was still.  There was not a cloud in the sky, nor a living thing in sight.  Only dirt, a cracked, clay remoteness which gradually swelled and dipped across the miles.  This was a land beyond Teleopolis, the nine providence city.  This was a place beyond civilization.

It was no wonder that Teleopolans considered themselves a uniquely precious presence upon the earth.  Just a few hundred feet from that very spot was a warm and bucolic suburb with lush, prickly, crabgrass lawns, and brick and wooden homes with bay windows and two car garages.  Being such an oasis of prosperity and beauty within a stark, daunting expanse of nothing was an integral part of the civilization’s creation story.  What else but providence could explain the contrast in nature?  It was a short leap to utilize this natural delineation to moral ends, because, if what was within Teleopolis had to be good, then corrupt entities had to be expelled.  Those who disobeyed
the will
had no place in society, and a common sentence culminated in offending parties staring into this empty wasteland.

Returning wasn’t supposed to be an option because if the contrast between the manicured interior of Teleopolis and the harsh solitude of the beyond wasn’t a stark enough demarcation, mother earth had created a physical barrier to separate the two.  A great ravine of unknown depth split the lands, meandering in from the coast and back again to the waters.  When combined with the thunderous bluffs, this crevasse, in the shape of a
backwards ‘C,’ made Teleopolis a veritable fortress and kept out the banished with great efficacy.  Only one bridge spanned the chasm, heading due east from the eastern most tip of the city.  It was a featureless concrete path without railings or markings, going from the heavily guarded gates to the far edge of the ravine.

This particular case of banishment was different however, in a very important way.  For the first time in Teleopolis’ history, the condemned had been given ample food, water, and most notably of all, a vehicle.  It was not an extravagant one, merely a normal hover car like those used by any working Teleopolan.  But for two people facing the infinite depth of the horizon, transportation that could run for years without refueling, and which could traverse the desert without tires becoming stuck in a rut – the hover car, hovered about two feet off the ground – this was a godsend, or as they said in Teleopolis
the will
.

Why they had been given such a gift was a mystery to most.  In fact, most – that is anyone who had followed the trial leading up to the banishment – were unaware of the last minute addendum to the sentence which provided these supplies.  If they had known, they would probably whisper that Mayor Veresdale was in love with the woman criminal.  But if they had been privy to something juicy like that, they would probably have said far worse about everyone involved.   

Understandably, the petty gossip that once surrounded these two criminals’ quiet suburban life wasn’t even a distant thought for the criminal’s themselves.  Rumors were the least of their worries and whatever good fortune they had, regarding the hover car and supplies, was completely eclipsed by the horrific turn of events which had brought them to the wasteland.

A few minutes ago the hover car had rolled to a stop on the far side of the
crevasse at the mouth of the bridge and became a part of the stillness.  Inside the vehicle sat the criminals Alexavier and his mother Olesianna, enveloped in the vertigo that comes from sudden, life-changing ordeals.  Alex had been here several times before, something few other living Teleopolans could say.  And though he remembered the first time all those years ago, Alex could not recall this most recent trip.  It was as if he had suddenly awakened from a dream to find himself on the far side and anything before yesterday was absent from his memory. 

The gates were closed.  They could never go back, and try as Alex did to bring himself into the present, to make the enormity of the situation into something his mind could grasp, it kept slipping away into the surreal.  Over and over again, Alex went through the events which led him to this moment, to prove to himself that this moment really existed.  Because, until it did, the moment could not pass and he was stuck. 

For nearly an hour, he and his mother sat in the hover car, just beyond the end of the bridge, where the concrete disappeared into dirt, staring at the sunset on the clay horizon, trying to make the moment real.  Alex knew that his sister was dead and that he too would die.  Unlike his sister however, his death would be an arduous and prolonged ordeal.  But it was still only a thought now, and far from being real.

Suddenly Olesianna found time again and they were no longer lost in life.

A sound ignited the air with emotions.  Alex had heard it only a one time before.  It was the day before last - but it had been different then.  The sound had been soft and agonized then.  Now it was frantic and hysterical.

Olesianna, Alex’s mother, was crying.

It was a laborious effort.  Doubling over and clutching her heart with both hands, Olesianna slouched against the window of the passenger’s side.  Her hoarse groan continued until she had expelled every last bit of breath, then after a huge, shuddering gasp of air, it resumed.

Somewhere deep inside of Alex, he knew that if they were going to live – at least for a while – he had to be strong at that moment, and so when he felt his own tears begin to well up inside of him, an involuntary instinct clotted the emotion, stifling it before it could reach the surface.  An odd reversal then took place as a paternal instinct filled the fifteen-year-old, giving him the strength to do for his mother what she could not do for him. 

Taking off his seat belt, Alex leaned across the arm rest dividing the two seats and slowly rolled his mother into him, wrapping his arms around her and cradling her as she wept.  And he stroked her hair as he imagined she would do for him, and he told her that everything would be okay.  And uncaring of other criminals possibly watching them, eyeing them hungrily from a distance, they passed the evening.

A
t some point, after darkness overtook the car, and after Olesianna had fallen asleep, Alex lay half awake, looking out into the distant blackness. 
Moonlight Sonata
played on his headphones, though only through one ear, the other side was broken.  Still visible behind him was the faint glow of Teleopolis’ lights and with a hint of comfort taken from their presence, Alex fell asleep.  In the hours that followed, Alex did not fight with demons, or armies, or monsters as he usually did in his dreams, but instead confronted a much simpler fear. 

Alex’s sister, though older, had never experienced the school system of Teleopolis.  She was sickly and chronically plagued by illness as well as the side effects of her medicines.  Deemed too sick to go to school by Olesianna, she had remained bedridden from a young age.  For this reason, she could offer no advice to her younger brother about what school would be like.  On the contrary, she was eager to live vicariously through his experiences.  And so, what seemed to Alex like a lifetime ago, he left the house for his first day of firstschool, filled with trembling trepidation. 

Although his mother had assured him that everyone would be feeling just as nervous as he was, his bus ride seemed to particularly disprove her notion.  Everyone else seemed to be alive in shouts, laughter and excitement and when they arrived at the new school, they all knew where to go.  In this confusion, with all his peers surging around him, Alex simply stood still, choking back tears. 

A
lex sat up in the hover car and looked around.  It was dawn.  He had second guessed himself, expecting to have woken up in his room at home.  With a sickening sensation in his stomach, he felt cold isolation close in around him all over again.  Alex looked to his right, across the hover car’s cabin.  His mother was sleeping, her head resting awkwardly on the window ledge.  Her cheeks were puffy and spotted with little red freckles that come after hours and hours of crying. 

After a moment’s pause, Alex opened the door and walked a short distance away from the car to a small ditch in the ground.  He knew exactly where it was and exactly how to open the container buried beneath a thin layer of clay.  He had been here, what, three days ago?  It had been the beginning of it all, the fire, the trial.  What he pulled from the chest, his backpack from school had been the cause of it all.  He pushed it out of his mind and lugged the bag back to the car where he got in, and pushed the ignition button on the dashboard.  With a soft electrical hum, the car slowly rose into the air and began to inch forward.

Yet, before the car had moved more than a few feet in this way, Olesianna bolted upright and, with wild eyes, latched onto the steering wheel with both hands like she was about to be pulled out of the car.  Alex recoiled, stepping a little too hard on the break and jostling them both in their seats.  Olesianna’s eyes were focused intently on the horizon and her white knuckles squeezed and twisted the rubber grip of the wheel, ringing it in her grip.

“Mom,” Alex said, trying to snap her out of her trance.

Her brown eyes locked onto Alex’s face but she did not let go of the wheel.  At the sides of her head, near her temples, Alex could see veins ticking in rhythm with her heart.  He grew frightened as she continued to stare at him, or, as he began to realize after shifting in his seat, beyond him.

Olesianna knew what was going on.  Someone was trying to steal the car, or break into it.  The police?  Coming to take her infant daughter and her unborn son away.  She had to get out of there, to drive to another providence, and avoid the homes at all costs.  But how would she get through the checkpoints again?

“Xavieric,” she whispered.  It was Alex’s father’s name.

“Mom.”  Alex was surer in his tone this time, softly trying to bring her back.  Her eyes fluttered and focused on him, this time, her expression was surprised and confused.  It took her nearly half a minute to reconcile Alex’s presence in the car.  What was he doing there?  He hadn’t even been born yet.

“Mom, do you know where we are?” Alex asked her.  He understood what it was like to wake from a dream without realizing, and he saw it on her face.

Olesianna sat back in the passenger seat and sheltered her eyes with the edge of her hand.  “I thought I was back in Teleopolis… before you were born.”  Alex briefly recalled the stories of his mother’s stubborn survival after the death of his father.  She had spent nearly three months living around the streets of Teleopolis in a car not too dissimilar from the one they currently inhabited.

“Alex, we can’t leave,” Olesianna finally said.

“Can’t leave what?” Alex asked, looking around at the clay flats.  “We’ve been banished.  They’re not letting us back in.”  Why did he have to tell her this?  Didn’t she understand that they had gotten off
easy
?  Didn’t she understand what lay ahead of them?  She had always been so strong and composed. 

“I’m sorry Alex.  I’m so sorry,” she said tearing, her mouth trembling.

Alex didn’t know how to respond and so he simply eased down on the accelerator pedal and let them slowly drift away from the crevasse.

“No!” Olesianna shrieked, reaching out into the air, trying to hold back the horizon as it crept towards her.  Alex once again slammed on the breaks.  “What?” he yelled impatiently at her.  He was frustrated at his inability to feel or think and staying a spitting-distance outside of the city was just making it worse.  He wanted it to be gone, to be out of sight.

“I can’t stay here,” he yelled when she gave no response.