Witch & Wizard
The James Patterson Pageturners
Witch & Wizard
(with Gabrielle Charbonnet)
The Maximum Ride Novels
The Angel Experiment
School’s Out—Forever
Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports
The Final Warning
MAX
The Daniel X Novels
The Dangerous Days of Daniel X
(with Michael Ledwidge)
Daniel X: Watch the Skies
(with Ned Rust)
Daniel X: Alien Hunter
(a graphic novel)
Also by James Patterson
When the Wind Blows
The Lake House
For previews of upcoming books by James Patterson
and more information about the author,
visit
www.jamespatterson.com
.
For Andrea Spooner, our hero
—J.P.
Oh, yes—what he said
—G.C.
Copyright © 2009 by James Patterson
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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First eBook Edition: December 2009
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Excerpt from “What I Believe” in
Two Cheers for Democracy
, copyright 1939 and renewed 1967 by E. M. Forster, reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
ISBN: 978-0-316-07220-5
Contents
PROLOGUE: YOU'RE NOT IN KANSAS ANYMORE
BOOK ONE: NO CRIME, JUST PUNISHMENT
EPILOGUE: THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HOME
I believe in aristocracy…. Not an aristocracy of power, based upon rank and influence, but an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky. Its members are to be found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between them when they meet. They represent the true human tradition, the one permanent victory of our queer race over cruelty and chaos.
—
E. M. Forster, from
Two Cheers for Democracy
YOU'RE NOT IN KANSAS ANYMORE
IT’S OVERWHELMING. A city’s worth of angry faces staring at me like I’m a wicked criminal—which, I promise you,
I’m not.
The stadium is filled to capacity—past capacity. People are standing in the aisles, the stairwells, on the concrete ramparts, and a few extra thousand are camped out on the playing field. There are no football teams here today. They wouldn’t be able to get out of the locker-room tunnels if they tried.
This total abomination is being broadcast on TV and the Internet too. All the useless magazines are here, and the useless newspapers. Yep, I see cameramen in elevated roosts at intervals around the stadium.
There’s even one of those remote-controlled cameras that runs around on wires above the field. There it is—hovering just in front of the stage, bobbing slightly in the breeze.
So there are undoubtedly millions more eyes watching than I can see. But it’s the ones here in the stadium that are breaking my heart. To be confronted with tens, maybe even hundreds of thousands, of curious, uncaring, or at least indifferent, faces… talk about
frightening
.
And there are no moist eyes, never mind tears.
No words of protest.
No stomping feet.
No fists raised in solidarity.
No inkling that anybody’s even thinking of surging forward, breaking through the security cordon, and carrying my family to safety.
Clearly, this is not a good day for us Allgoods.
In fact, as the countdown ticker flashes on the giant video screens at either end of the stadium, it’s looking like this will be our
last
day.
It’s a point driven home by the very tall, bald man up in the tower they’ve erected midfield—he looks like a cross between a Supreme Court chief justice and Ming the Merciless. I know who he is. I’ve actually met him. He’s The One Who Is The One.
Directly behind his Oneness is a huge N.O. banner—
THE NEW ORDER
.
And then the crowd begins to chant, almost sing, “The One Who Is The One! The One Who Is The One!”
Imperiously, The One raises his hand, and his hooded lackeys on the stage push us forward, at least as far as the ropes around our necks will allow.
I see my brother, Whit, handsome and brave, looking down at the platform mechanism. Calculating if there’s any way to jam it, some means of keeping it from unlatching and dropping us to our neck-snapping deaths. Wondering if there’s a last-minute way out of this.
I see my mother crying quietly. Not for herself, of course, but for Whit and me.
I see my father, his tall frame stooped with resignation, smiling at me and my brother—trying to keep our spirits up, reminding us that there’s no point in being miserable in our last moments on this planet.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. I’m supposed to be providing an
introduction
here, not the details of our public
execution.
So let’s go back a bit….
NO CRIME, JUST PUNISHMENT
BY ORDER OF THE NEW ORDER,
and the Great Wind—The One Who Is
THE ONE—
let it be known that as of
NOW, THIS MOMENT,
or
TWELVE O’CLOCK MIDNIGHT.
whichever shall arrive first, following the
SWIFT TRIUMPH
of the
ORDER
of the
ONES WHO PROTECT
, who have obliterated the
BLIND AND DUMB FORCES
of passivity and
complacency
PLAGUING
this world,
ALL CITIZENS
must, shall,
and
will
abide by
THESE THREE ORDERS FOR ORDER:
- All behaviors NOT in keeping with N.O. law, logic, order, and science (including but not limited to theology, philosophy, and IN PARTICULAR the creative and dark arts, et cetera) are hereby ABOLISHED.
- ALL persons under eighteen years of age will be evaluated for ORDERLINESS and MUST COMPLY with the prescribed corrective actions.
- The One Who Is THE ONE grants, appoints, decides, seizes, and executes at will. All NOT complying shall be SEIZED and/or EXECUTED.
—As declared to The One Who Writes Decrees
by
THE ONE WHO IS THE ONE
Whit
SOMETIMES YOU WAKE UP and the world is just plain different.
The noise of a circling helicopter is what made me open my eyes. A cold, blue-white light forced its way through the blinds and flooded the living room. Almost like it was day.
But it wasn’t.
I peered at the clock on the DVD player through blurry eyes: 2:10 a.m.
I became aware of a steady
drub, drub, drub
—like the sound of a heavy heartbeat. Throbbing. Pressing in. Getting closer.
What’s going on?
I staggered to the window, forcing my body back to life after two hours of being passed out on the sofa, and peeked through the slats.
And then I stepped back and rubbed my eyes. Hard.
Because there’s no way I had seen what I’d seen. And there was no way I had heard what I’d heard.
Was it really the steady, relentless footfall of hundreds of soldiers? Marching on my street in perfect unison?
The road wasn’t close enough to the center of town to be on any holiday parade routes, much less to have armed men in combat fatigues coursing down it in the dead of night.