The Crash of Hennington (50 page)

Luther opened his mouth again. This time a word issued forth, cracking, unpracticed, but clear.

—Peter?

—Yes. It’s me. It’s Peter.

Luther squinted a bit, then slowly raised a hand to Peter’s face.

—It’s good to see you, Peter.

—Yes. Yes, Luther.

—I’ve been to the strangest place.

The car jolted as Jarvis narrowly missed hitting a sign.

—Where are we?

—It’s a long story, Luther. I’ll tell you when we’re there.

—Where are we going?

—Somewhere safe.

Peter looked up and caught Jarvis’ eye in the rearview mirror. Jarvis nodded and repeated what Peter said.

—Somewhere safe.

—Who’s that?

—A friend.

—I’m having trouble seeing. Are my glasses around?

—I’m sorry, Luther, no. I don’t have them.

—Doesn’t matter. He looked down.

—I’m naked.

—Yes.

—I don’t suppose that matters either.

—No.

—I can’t believe it’s you, Peter.

—Who else would it be?

—Yes. That makes sense, doesn’t it?

He reached up to touch Peter’s face again.

—So many things to say.

—In time, Luther. Rest now.

—I love you. I wish I’d told you before.

Luther wiped away Peter’s tears. They kissed again, and once more. Jarvis averted his eyes as the lovers embraced and caressed and reintroduced themselves, one to the other.

109. Outside City Hall.

Getting downtown proved to be more of a chore than Jon had planned, and he could feel precious time dripping away. He had sent Eugene off in the Bisector before quite realizing that this left him stranded. He didn’t regret his decision, it was important that Eugene get away, but it did throw an extra wrench into the morning, one that he finally solved with a surprisingly exhilarating show of brute force. He flagged down a car that was careening away down the street, fleeing the fires coming from the north end of town. The driver, a lone middle-aged man, had almost not stopped, nearly knocking Jon over. Jon opened the driver’s side door before the man had a chance to lock it, reached in, grabbed him by the lapels, and threw him briskly to the pavement.

—Sorry. Emergency.

He stepped on the gas before even closing the driver’s side door. He felt a thrill through his body. He hadn’t shown such physicality in years and was pleased to find himself still capable of it. For a fleeting second, he allowed himself a smile. Then he remembered what lay ahead.

The streets were filling up with streams of people either walking purposefully or running from those walking purposefully.
Cars, too, skidded through intersections showing little regard for pedestrians and less, if any, for traffic signals or rules of the road. It was anarchy. Hot, loud anarchy. Horns honking, tires squealing, glass breaking, an unnerving low whoosh from the fires that burned in the middle distance. Still very few sirens, though. Theophilus’ people must have somehow taken care of that. Jon found himself amazed at the scale of what Theophilus had accomplished,
was
accomplishing. Was the vein of discontent that vast and easy to tap?

—Speak of the devil.

Jon awkwardly stopped the stolen car up on a curb outside of City Hall and who should be standing in the place of glory, framed dramatically by the proscenium of the grand front doors, but Theophilus Velingtham, looking thin, tan, and smug. Crowds flitted about him, intent-looking crowds, carrying implements and what looked to be cans of fuel. They swarmed in and out of the building, surrounding it in undulating waves on all sides. A lumpen bile of anger swelled in Jon’s chest. If I’m too late, he thought. If I’m too late –

—Theophilus!

He leapt from the car and up the steps.

—Theophilus! What the hell are you doing?

Theophilus turned to him with a smile, not moving, hardly seeming aware, except in the most tangential sense, of the chaos around him.

—Lagging a little bit behind the proceedings, are we, Brother Noth? Shouldn’t be too much of a surprise, I suppose. You were always slow.

—Is the Mayor still inside?

—Presumably, but not, one would imagine, for very much longer.

Jon grabbed him by the shirt front.

—You son of a bitch! If you hurt her—

—You’ll what?

Theophilus took hold of Jon’s hands and peeled them away with surprising ease.

—I really think I’ve finally lost my patience with you, Jon. Forty-six years I’ve waited for you to fulfill the promise you displayed as the young teenager who came to me for guidance. Forty-six years. That’s a long time to deprive yourself, a long time to be celibate, a long time to live only with your own thoughts. I waited through your pointless trek to university. I waited through your even more pointless love affair with that mercurial woman who stunned us all by becoming Mayor. And then I waited through nearly four decades of silence. Of no contact. Of
nothing.

At the last word, there was finally a hint of anger.

—Theophilus—

—Oh, no, Jon, you’ve participated more than enough. I was overjoyed at your return. I was overjoyed to hear of your plans for Thomas Banyon. How clever of you, I thought, to bring in the dark wind yourself, so that we might then sweep through with the light wind. What a creative use of the Sacraments, I thought. Very
pragmatic.

—I believed none of those things, you ridiculous—

—It doesn’t matter whether you believe or not, you simpleton! Your faith is not required for the Sacraments to be true! All these years of carefully cultivating the germs of a movement, all these years of waiting for the catalyst that would cause those germs to bloom and expand and take this city by the storm you see before you today.

—You’re mad.

Jon moved to push past him into the building. Theophilus reached out, and Jon felt a cold pain in his side. He looked down. A blade was buried to the hilt just to the right of his stomach. A slow trickle of blood quickly and quietly turned
into a gush that streaked down his black shirt, spilling onto his black pants. Theophilus spoke.

—A disappointingly predictable thing to say from someone who has proven to be consistently disappointingly predictable. Those who wear faith for their own purposes have a long and sordid history, my dear friend, and they almost always come to bad ends.

He flicked his wrist, pulling the blade up several inches through what felt like two of Jon’s ribs. The pain was extraordinary, tempered only by an utter lack of belief that there was a knife wedged in his side.

—Theophilus—

—You see, one more thrust, and I’ll reach your heart. You’d likely not survive this wound anyway, but when I reach your heart, there’s no hope. So before you die, I’d like to thank you.

Jon looked into Theophilus’ face.

—What?

—I said I’d like to thank you. For all this.

He motioned with his free hand to the conflagration going on around him.

—Without you, regardless of your dismal ability to follow through, none of this would have been possible. You’ve served your catalytic purpose quite well, and now that purpose has come to an end. Goodbye, dear friend. Maybe we’ll meet again in eternity. Maybe we’ll come to a better understanding there.

Jon’s face contorted, uncomprehending. Theophilus flicked his wrist once more. The blade rose, reaching Jon’s heart, interrupting its beat, bringing it to a final stop. Theophilus let go. Jon slumped heavily to the concrete steps, the knife still in place. His reflexes struggled for a brief moment, but they, too, soon ceased. Theophilus looked at the body
for a long moment, a slight frown crossing his face. He breathed deeply, with purpose, and turned on his heels. He looked up once at City Hall towering above him. More work to do.

110. An Albert and Cora.

Cora flung a chair at the third-floor window. It struck the pane and bounced right back, not so much as chipping it.

—Goddamn safety glass!

She threw the chair again, followed by another attempt by Albert. Nothing.

—I can’t believe we’re going to be trapped by a fucking safety precaution!

—Is there another way out?

—I don’t think so. It’s all these goddamn windows as far as I can remember.

They looked through the impenetrable glass, a decades-old bar against the possibility of assassination, assassination expected to come from outside the building through either a bullet that wouldn’t break the glass or from invaders who wouldn’t be able to fit through the small opening that the windows allowed. The roof of the lower story lay tantalizingly close below them. A short run across it and they would reach the car park and their best chance to escape, a chance currently being thwarted by the prudence of long-dead city officials. Cora shook her head.

—Unbelievable. And the fire escape would lead us right down into that crowd of nice people.

—Is there a maintenance door or something? Surely there has to be
some
access to the roof.

—There is, from the parking garage on the other side.

—Then why did we come up here?

—It was our only choice, Albert! Now is not the time to argue.

—Damn! You’re right, I just don’t—

—Wait, listen.

—What?

—Listen.

The sounds that had been coming up the stairs behind them had ceased.

—Have they stopped?

—Maybe they don’t know we’re here.

—That’s what Kevin was trying to do. Could we be that lucky?

—If we’re unlucky enough to be stopped by safety glass, you’d think there’d have to be some justice somewhere to tip the scales back.

She took Albert’s hand.

—Any ideas?

—There’s no way to get out onto the lower roof?

—No. I thought we might be able to get through the windows. They’d never once been tested.

—A lousy time to pass inspection. What about the roof of this wing?

—We’d end up with a twenty-five foot jump.

—Well, if the option is that or waiting to see what the mob’s got planned—

—Maybe they’ve stopped. It sounds like they’ve stopped.

—I think that’d be too much—

—What’s that smell?

—Oh, no.

—It’s smoke.

The air changed for a split second, almost as if it had come to life with a low and invisible crackling. There was a whoosh
and an impossibly large fireball engulfed the stairwell they had used, blocking them from moving further up or down.

—No!

—Get to the fire escape!

They ran to the windows on the opposite side of the wing. Albert struggled with the latch before the two of them finally got it open. They looked out onto—

—Nothing.

—They’ve torn the fire escape down.

—How could they do that?
Why?

The crowd frenzied itself four stories below them like a school of beached fish fighting to breathe. A tangled pile of metal bars and piping lay in a heap on the ground just below where the fire escape should have been scaling its way up the building.

—Should we scream for help?

—Do you honestly think we’d get it?

—Possible death is always a better choice than certain death.

She turned. The room behind them was filling with smoke. The fire from the stairwell was beginning to finger its way in over the doorframe.

—We don’t have much time, Albert.

—Help! Up here! Help!

—Help us! We’re trapped!

They continued shouting for a moment or two, before Cora began coughing from the smoke.

—I don’t think they can hear us.

—Or they’re ignoring us. No one has so much as looked up.

—Let’s try the safety windows again.

But the room behind them was now black with smoke, fire pouring from the stairwell with blistering intensity. They were
forced to lean far out of the window to gasp at any sort of breathable air. Albert took Cora’s hand and held it tightly. Each pulled the other into a close embrace. Cora spoke.

—This is it, isn’t it?

—Unexpectedly, yes, it seems so.

—How strange.

—Quite.

—I’m so sorry for Kevin.

—He did what he could.

—I’m sorry that you’re here with me, Albert.

—You’d rather be here alone? You think I’d let you face this without me?

—The thought of your death is so much more horrible to me than my own.

—The same is true of me, my darling, so how much better that we face it together.

—Oh, Albert. We’ve had a miracle, you know? You and me.

—Yes. I don’t regret a moment. Don’t cry, my love.

They remained wrapped in their embrace, even when the smoke caused first Albert and then Cora to lose consciousness, even when they slumped together beneath the one open window. When the fire erupted through the floor below them and turned their flesh to ash, they were still entwined. Later, after the mêlée had ended – because all mêlées, regardless of size, eventually end – and their charred remains were found, identification was not a problem, because who else could it have been, who else would remain so inextricably bound even at the very passageway to death, who else would be brave enough to face it together?

Who else but Albert and Cora?

111. The Field of Battle.

Purpose, now. Purpose was all.

To the task at hand, to the attack of the thin creatures and their metal rods, to the assistance of those members of the herd who needed it, to the protection of the young even amid the explosions and cries of battle. The herd would not divide. The herd would defend itself to the end. As an individual, she was gone. There was only the herd, one muscle with many fingers, fending off its attackers with single-minded intent.

She hooked the rear leg of a thin creature as it tried to run from her, tossing it up into the air and treading over its upper flanks when it fell back to the ground. Another one pointed a long metal rod directly towards her face. She shoved it to the side as the explosion tore from it, and drove her horn through the neck of the thin creature who held it. Another thin creature tumbled out of the smoke and dust stirred up by the fracas. She tossed it to the side with her horn.