On the ground, nearly a mile below, tiny cars and buses and hoards of tiny yellow cabs and countless tiny people bustled about. The gold domes of mosques stood out among the other buildings. The sun glinted off the pointed spires of cathedrals. Parker counted five synagogues. A handful of buildings supported tall crosses on their rooftops, the marks of nondenominational houses of worship.
Nearly all of the holy buildings were still blackened and charred by the fires set there. Some were being rebuilt. Most were not. The church Regina Black attended had been rebuilt twice. Bubba said Pastor Larry was lobbying for federal funds to begin the reconstruction process yet again. In the meantime he and his mom and the other parishioners were meeting in small groups to worship in each other’s homes. Everyone brought a dish of some kind, a tuna casserole with ruffled potato chips on top, salad with tomatoes and croutons Bubba devoured with black plastic tongs, a cherry pie, a spicy carrot cake. With the constant rash of arson, the Kingdom City Fire Department certainly had its hands full. Who was setting the fires, burning the holy places, remained a mystery.
Across the city loomed Sky City West. Like Sky City North and Sky City South, the third and newest tower stood far taller than the scores of buildings around it, nearly complete but still covered by a network of silver scaffolding and wrapped in black safety nets. The black netting wrapped nearly every building in the city. It gave the city a dark feel, the buildings like mourners standing together at a funeral.
Gradually, however, construction was being completed and the nets and scaffolding were being removed. The new buildings glowed in the sun. The netting would be removed from the west tower in the coming days, just in time for its dedication prior to the opening of The Games. Transcendental Tal had probably bought a place in Sky City West. Colby Max, too. They could afford it.
Parker’s gaze drifted toward Sky City South.
He noticed something strange.
Graffiti adorned the blue glass, white letters three stories high: Wake Up! Who had put the words there and what had they intended them to mean? The message was painted next to the monorail tunnel. Whoever had painted it must have come through the tunnel and scaled the side of the building. Who would be so intent on conveying their message that they would scale the smooth glass of the building five thousand feet above the ground?
Wake Up!
Parker hoped he was awake.
The south tower gleamed as the train approached, and Parker snuck a look at the security guard. The man stood holding the silver pole, his eyes fixed on Parker.
The Redline entered the dark tunnel. It glided into the Sky City South station. Red lights flashed. An automated female voice announced its arrival. Parker checked the security guard again, found him still watching.
The doors whooshed open. Parker shoved the woman in the white coat aside and leaped out the door.
He made his way through the throngs of people to the express elevators, never looking back.
He boarded an elevator and waited for the doors to close, waited for the security guard to appear.
The doors closed.
He stood in the corner, willing himself to stay awake. Exhaustion was once again invading his body like a virus. The benefits of his momentary nap in the park were wearing off. Only felony-induced adrenaline propelled him now.
He rode down to his floor, waiting, until the car came to a complete stop and the doors opened.
The poster was cold against his thigh while he walked down the long gray hallway, until he was, at last, safe in his empty apartment.
Parker went into the kitchen. He pulled the poster out of his pants and set it on the glass tabletop. He opened the pantry and grabbed the big green box of Astr-O’s cereal. The hologram of Colby Max came to life. In one hand, Colby cradled a white bowl of cereal teeming with black and green O’s. With his other hand he drove his silver spoon into the air. “Take it to the max!” the holographic Colby declared.
“Shut up,” said Parker.
“Take it to the max!” the holographic Colby repeated. He again raised his spoon aloft.
Parker forced himself not to reply. Colby Max always had to have the last word. For the hundredth time, Parker considered removing the power cell, but it was buried somewhere at the bottom of the box.
Dinner consisted of a few handfuls of the dry cereal and an old banana Bubba had somehow left in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator. The spotted fruit was mushy and it collapsed onto the back of Parker’s hand as he unzipped the thin brown peel. He licked the banana off the back of his hand and drank from the kitchen faucet, ignoring the clean glasses in the cupboard, glasses purchased by his mom a little more than three years ago. He sat at the kitchen table and stared out the giant windows. The sun disappeared behind the column of the south tower. The city slowly turned orange and then brown beneath a fading indigo sky.
The stolen poster rested at the far end of the glass table top, taunting him.
Evening passed into night. The heat returned to Parker’s face and eyes. The jittery queasiness of exhaustion returned to his chest and stomach. His eyes stung. How much longer could he stay awake?
A vibration shook the floor. The glasses rattled against each other inside their cupboard. A monorail rushed by, humming along the track mounted to the outside of the building, one floor below. It was a Redline, a fast-mover. Its pulsating red beacon glowed in the night, punctuated by steady flashes from its white anticollision lights. The Redline was on its way to Sky City North, probably carrying people on their way to a nice dinner or the cinema, perhaps to a sushi restaurant where they would eat with fine acrylic chopsticks and feel cosmopolitan before they went to one of the dozen discotheques where they would gyrate until dawn, and forget about the war.
Parker rose from the table, picked up the poster, and walked to his bedroom. He unwrapped it, stood on his bed, pushed a dozen red tacks into the ceiling around the perimeter of the poster, and mounted Tal firmly in place over his bed.
He kicked off his shoes, pulled off his jeans, swapped his t-shirt for a nightshirt, and stood in the corner, his back against the wall.
Outside, in the darkness, the lights of the Kingdom City skyline twinkled 147 stories below.
Parker studied his bed. Blankets turned back. Pillow cool and inviting. The bed appeared safe.
But it wasn’t.
Nor was his parents’ wide, empty bed in the other room. Nor the floor. Nor the bathtub. Not even the kitchen table.
No matter where he slept, the nightmares came.
He looked up, at the ceiling. At her. Tal. She’d helped in the park, maybe she could help here at home.
Parker walked over to his bed.
He lay down.
Pulled the blankets up to his chest.
He was afraid to move. His eyes twitched. His face was hot. His hands were cold. He wondered if he had a fever. He could call Bubba and borrow a thermometer. Bubba was probably still awake. But if Mrs. Black found out, she would either insist he sleep over or insist Bubba go up to the market to buy some disgusting medicine.
Parker decided he didn’t have a fever. He gazed at the ceiling above him. He decided to concentrate on Tal. He’d unfurled the poster to find her standing in the cockpit of a black fighter jet. He wondered if it were a real, prototype aircraft or if it were merely a plywood and epoxy mockup, disguised by an expensive paint job. The Grim Reaper adorned the tall tail of the jet, black robe fluttering. Tal was wriggling out of a tight green flight suit. Strands of her coffee-colored hair fell against the shiny silk straps of her lacy white brassiere. Parker had no idea what the poster had to do with music, but he liked it.
“Help me, Tal.”
Why don’t you ask God to help you?
That voice again, speaking to him from somewhere between his ears and his mind, what most people no doubt referred to as a conscience. But sometimes, like now, Parker suspected it was more than just his conscience. A conscience came from within, provided instructions for day to day living, helped different
iate right from wrong. This was different. This . . . voice, for lack of a better word, issued commands: Thou shalt not steal, although he had. The voice also knew things. Lately, he’d begun arguing with it.
If there were a God, He wouldn’t let me endure this. Parker stared into Tal’s eyes. “Help me, Tal.”
He let his eyelids drop. He took a deep breath and let it out.
He opened one eye.
She was still there.
Behind her, the Grim Reaper’s skeletal hands clutched the stick of his scythe. Death lurked in the background, waiting. Parker closed his eye.
A pit of blackness opened beneath him where the bed had been, pillow and blankets gone. He was falling. He heard a cavernous roar.
He was falling.
He reached out. Hot syrup, black like old oil, poured on his hands and feet in searing cold-hot agony.
Falling.
Falling.
Deeper and deeper.
Into blackness.
Chapter 6
Lucky Thirteen