Martha forgot the ebbing pain in the back of her head where the man’s bottle had connected with her skull and leapt up, along with the other Unadoptables in the room, and dove for the elevator. Elsie managed the leap first; she was stabbing her finger repeatedly against the call button.
They would’ve been joined by Desdemona, had she not heard her name called to her, loudly, from inside Wigman’s office. She turned around to see Joffrey Unthank standing in the cavity between the massive brass doors at the front of the room.
“Joffrey,” she said.
“Dessie,” said Unthank.
Elsie glanced over her shoulder, witnessing the scene briefly before hearing the elevator arrive and the doors whisper open. She ushered the four other Unadoptables into the waiting car. The doors closed in front of her as she climbed in, leaving Desdemona and Joffrey to their private reunion.
“What is happened to you?” asked Desdemona, walking slowly toward Joffrey.
“I had to take some time, Dessie,” said Joffrey. “I had to clear my mind. Tra la tra lee.”
They arrived at the center of the room together, and Desdemona reached out her hands. “Oh, Joffrey, I’m so sorry for what it is I’ve done,” she said softly. “I did not mean to hurt.”
“I know, darling,” said Joffrey. “I know. In a way, you taught me. I emptied out, baby. I lost it all. But I found me.” He seemed to then shake himself from his surprise in seeing his girlfriend. He seemed to apprise himself of something much more serious. “But you shouldn’t be here now. You weren’t supposed to be. It’s not safe.”
A quick succession of explosions happened just then; a trio of soft, blossoming glows erupted outside the tall windows of the office, one after another, like fireflies. They backlit the two of them, Desdemona and Joffrey, as they gripped each other’s hands tightly, the line of their arms an obtuse angle.
“What’s happening?” asked Desdemona, searching Joffrey’s eyes.
“The Chapeaux Noirs, they’re attacking. This is it, Dessie. This is the big one.”
“The Chapeaux Noirs? But how do you know?”
“I’m with them now,” said Unthank, tears welling in his eyes. “Like I said. I found me. I’m changed. I’ve found my true self. And I want you to come with. I forgive you, Dessie. It was you who led me out of my darkness, tra la, my internal darkness. The fog of my mind. You set me on the right course, tra lee. You were my beacon, my guiding light.”
“Oh, Joffrey,” smiled Desdemona as another explosion pummed and lit up the windows. Suddenly, there, in that moment, she felt something soft and warm encompassing her, a sparkle of déjà vu that seemed to descend on the two of them like a summer shower. She realized what it was: She was suddenly and acutely recalling her first onscreen kiss. The one she’d shared with Sergei Goncharenko on the set of A Night in Havana, there in a dusty back lot in Kiev, when they’d had only one shot left and the crew was getting tired and the budget had been strained and they had to nail this one final shot, a bare minute of film, and they’d fired the pyrotechnics and the rain was pouring down from hoses suspended above them and Sergei had said his one line (“Let’s make this one count, then.”) and Desdemona had felt such an upswell of emotion that she’d completely transported herself to that place, to that café in Havana, amid the chaos of a popular uprising, and had kissed Sergei so deep and long that when he’d gasped and fallen back, per the screenplay, and feigned the first spasms of his character’s death, she’d gone there, hadn’t she, she’d believed it. And now: Desdemona, as if reenacting the screen directions of that seminal film, leaned in to kiss Joffrey and their lips met.
A very loud bang sounded. It seemed to shake the white paper chandeliers that hung over the wide room. Then a look of intense surprise awoke in Joffrey’s eyes as he pulled away from the kiss and his eyebrows jutted upward and his face slackened and his mouth fell open. Then, a little trickle of blood, the bloom of a rose, appeared on his argyle sweater-vest and as it was absorbed by the fabric, it flowered out like an opening poppy, red and full, across the breadth of his chest.
Desdemona looked over his shoulder, shocked, and saw the figure of Bradley Wigman standing in the gap between the brass doors, holding a pistol, straight out away from him. A thin tongue of smoke licked away from the barrel. A cough escaped Joffrey’s lips and he tumbled, a rag doll, into Desdemona’s arms.
“My beacon,” repeated Joffrey weakly. “My guiding light.”
“Bradley!” Desdemona shouted in disbelief. “What have you done?”
Wigman drew closer, the gun still outstretched. As he came into the light, she got a better look at him—he looked as if he’d just escaped some horrible car accident. He was covered in a fine black spray, head to toe, like a coal miner in some old photo, and his bespoke shirtsleeves were torn into little shreds along his dirtied arms. His hair, typically so immaculate in its pomaded wave, literally could not have been more mussed up—if you had tried to muss it any more you would have only succeeded in making it more groomed.
“He’s the enemy,” said Wigman, a kind of traumatized gravel to his voice. “He’s a turncoat. A rat.”
“You shot him,” she replied, barely able to speak.
“Damn right I did,” said Bradley, approaching them. “For the good of the Wastes. For the good of the Quartet.”
Joffrey coughed and his knees buckled and Desdemona fell to the floor under his weight, kneeling and cradling him in her arms. “Oh, Joffrey,” she cried. “Dear Joffrey.” His head jerked a little in her palms, and he turned to look up at her face. He became still. He smiled warmly, lovingly at Desdemona. His hand moved imperceptibly toward his left coat pocket.
When Titan Tower exploded, erupting in a shower of glass and concrete and bathing the entire Industrial Wastes in unearthly light, the five Unadoptables had only just made it out of the emergency elevator and were running across the grounds of the tower, racing after a pair of figures they’d spotted who were, in turn, struggling away down a gravel road toward a distant line of trees.
All of them, the five Unadoptables, the two figures struggling away (revealed in the light of the detonation to be Roger and Carol), the little groups of warring stevedores and Chapeaux Noirs on the outskirts of the containing walls—all of them stopped to watch the magnificent immolation of Titan Tower. It was as if day had arrived in the middle of the darkest night. The world was flooded with illumination. The stevedores, some frozen in position with their red pipe wrenches held high above their heads, blinked and stared at the sight. The Chapeaux Noirs saboteurs, in midthrow, tossed their lit bombs to a safe distance and watched the glass cascading from the top floors like a shower of crystalline rain, ignoring the detonation when their own bombs had landed, some feet away, and exploded impotently.
The stevedores all but shriveled at the sight; the heart of their entire operation, the center of the hive mind, was crashing down before them in a cataract of silver light and heat. They dropped their wrenches, each one, and fell to their knees. The Chapeaux Noirs gaped and stumbled; some pulled their black berets from their heads and held them, crushed, to their chests, so great was their reverence for this single gorgeous explosion. The tremendous light made long shadows across the blasted ground of the Industrial Wastes from all the combatants; the light touched the farthest reaches of the Wastes, the boom and rattle soon after. In Portland, even, among the quiet, dormant houses filled with Outsiders at their evening leisure, the light could be seen, a beacon of flame in some far-off field. Somewhere in the north part of the city, a child ran to his window and called out to his parents to see the strange light; he was loudly shushed and sent back to his bed so his parents could finish watching their television show.
Rachel Mehlberg, standing by a group of similarly shocked and frozen saboteurs, spied the group of five Unadoptables, shadows cast by the burning building, racing across the tower’s grounds toward some unknown goal; she’d been waiting for them at the East Gate of Wigman Plaza, having long deploy
ed her allotted four bombs, worried sick about the welfare of her sister and cursing herself for ever letting Elsie out of her sight. The sound of the battle had been deafening; a high-pitched whistle was singing in her ear. She’d just checked her watch, the chain watch that Nico had given her, and was chagrined to see that ten o’clock, the time of the rendezvous, had long passed. That was when she saw them running, charging across the budget-bin landscaping that served as greenery in the tower’s interior square, now covered in a squall of glass and ash.
“There they are!” shouted Rachel. She’d counted five children; she made the quick guess: “They’ve got Martha!”
Nico was standing with her. “Let’s go,” he yelled over the sound of the tower’s residual collapse. The two of them arced out, away from the falling debris, in line to bisect the Unadoptables’ course.
“Elsie!” screamed Rachel, as she charged after them. The noise of the settling wreckage of the tower blotted out all sound. A cloud of smoke and dust was barreling out from the base of the demolished building, obscuring everything in a deep, dark haze.
Just as this fog consumed them, Rachel and Nico managed to fall in line behind the running Unadoptables. “Elsie!” Rachel tried again.
Her sister quickly looked over her shoulder, seeing Rachel in pursuit. “He’s got Carol!” she shouted between heaving breaths.
“Who?”
“Just . . . follow them!” shouted Elsie, exasperated.
Rachel looked ahead; they were now funneling into one of the narrow corridors that etched the face of the Industrial Wastes. The buildings in the smoke and fog were just shapes in the dark. Ahead of them, the way was lit by the occasional yellow streetlamp, glowing dimly in the haze; about fifty yards away, she could see two figures emerge into the light and disappear again.
The air around them was hot and close. Enveloped by the cloud of dust, they each pulled their black turtlenecks to their mouths to filter the grime and charged ahead. No sooner would the two figures, stumbling through the fog, disappear from sight, than they would appear again as the swirl of cloud parted and eddied away.
“STOP!” yelled Rachel, pulling her mouth away from the fabric of her shirt long enough to shout that one, sharp directive. She was immediately thrown into a fit of coughing, and she stumbled as she ran. Elsie saw her sister falter and fell back to help.
The dust cloud grew all-consuming. The horizon was blotted out. Only the closest streetlamps could be seen on the road. The looming chemical silos along the gravel roadside became deeply shrouded in the gray dust, transforming into still, white ghosts in the dark. The pursuers continued forward, arriving after a short time at a chain-link fence.
“Look!” shouted Nico, pointing to a ripple in the fence where the bottom had been lifted from the ground. A piece of rough gray fabric was caught in the wire mesh; Nico grabbed the wire and pulled, holding it open as the six children scrambled through. On the other side of the fence was a wide, fallow stretch of scrub brush and scotch broom. Just at that moment, a gust of wind picked up and peeled away the curtain of clouds like a hand on a fogged windscreen, revealing the way ahead: a looming line of trees, a dense weave of bracken and greenery, a whining creak from ancient boughs.
Ahead, not far off, a robed figure could be seen, ankle deep in fern fronds, dragging his reluctant companion past the threshold of trees and into the Impassable Wilderness.
CHAPTER 21
A Revival Is Born
It was like a wave of gray had crashed over the village, lapping up every citizen in its tide. That was the only way to describe it. Where one day there had been only a few of them, the next it was one out of every five; and suddenly they were everywhere you looked: hooded robes and swinging censers, silvery masks and silent stares. The South Wood Guard, an honored institution since the first brick of the Mansion had been pulled from the kiln, was immediately dissolved, its ranks subsumed into the Synod’s new security force, the Watch, whose members walked through the village distributing pamphlets describing the laws of the new regime.
It seemed as if it happened overnight, this sudden takeover, and yet its seeds had been planted months before.
No one quite knew what happened to the leaders of the post-revolution regime, whether they had been absorbed into this new vision of leadership or had simply been disappeared like the Svikists of old, but it was a hardy Spoke indeed who would pine for the revolution’s endless social and political protocols that had been stripped away—the sashes and the sprocket brooches, the forced honorifics, and the always-looming fear of the guillotine—with the rise of the Synod. The revolutionary leaders, those who had survived the months of purges within their own ranks, had made such a hash of governance that when the wave of gray robes crested and fell upon the people of South Wood, they were, from most quarters, welcomed as long-awaited saviors, and their edicts, though strict, were adopted almost immediately.
“One has to give up some liberty,” a village elder was heard to say, “in the service of the greater good. At least initially.”
A strict curfew was imposed; no one outside the Synod’s inner ranks and those employed by the Watch were to be on the streets, outside their homes, after ten p.m. The uniform of the Spokes—the bicycle pants, the caps, and the sashes, not to mention the ever-present brooches—was absolutely verboten. Anyone found wearing such a costume would be detained by the Watch and put on trial in front of the Blighted Tree for the crime of inciting unrest. Any literature or paraphernalia connected to the former revolutionary movement—deemed a fascist junta by the Synod—was to be collected and destroyed. No questions asked, the wording of the pamphlets emphasized. The good folk of South Wood were to be received with open arms by the Synod and forgiven their past missteps, according to the teachings of the Blighted Tree—provided no unfortunate backsliding was exhibited. And despite their prior allegiances, all were expected to show their devotion to the Blighted Tree by congregating in the Glade every Wednesday morning at nine and again at noon for those who couldn’t make the earlier service.
Those so moved would be welcome to petition the Elder Caliph (or, in case of his absence, his second in command) for a role within the clergy—perhaps even an acolyte-ship, provided they received the tree’s communion and were prepared to take the vow of silence required of the inner circle of Caliphs. Those who had felt lost within the revolutionary fervor of the prior regime, those who had felt threatened by the all-as-one mentality the prior regime sold, those who had longed for more security and control, gladly gave themselves to the edicts of the Synod, and peace, of a sort, reigned over South Wood for the first time in quite a while.
And so, Zita could not blame her father for his newfound religiosity. There’d been a pretty sizable void in his life since the passing of her mother, and, once the Synod’s influence had found its way into their home, a new life sprang into his eyes. He’d been given a position in the civilian ranks of the Synod, a job that entailed organizing events within the community and occasionally assisting in the services that were held at the Blighted Tree. It gave him a renewed perspective, and a fresh intention.
That morning, he’d been pulled in by a group of other low-level Caliphs who’d been tasked to whitewash the many pro-revolution murals that had been painted on the village walls over the last several months, and he’d arrived home, sometime after nightfall, achingly tired. He’d been surprised to see his daughter, quite awake, sitting in the living room, reading a book.
“Hey, Dad,” said Zita, seeing him come in. She recognized him, despite the mirrored green mask and the floor-length gray robe he’d been asked to wear when he was doing the work of the Synod.
He hung his robe on the rack by the door and slumped in the chair opposite Zita; he pulled the mask from his face, dropping the loop of his cowl to the back of his chair. “Hiya,” he said. He looked exhausted. “What are you doing up?”
“Can’t sleep,” she said. “Plus, we just got all new textbooks at school. Everything’s chang
ed to meet the Synod’s new rules.”
Her father frowned. “Ah,” he said. “Well, it’s really for the best. We have a lot of lost time to make up for.”
“Yeah,” said Zita. “Oh—did you hear? Kendra’s eating the Spongiform tomorrow.”
“Really? She’s so young!” Zita could hear a little disappointment in her father’s tired voice; she knew that it was his goal to receive this communion. He only needed to prove himself within the organization.
“Well, her dad’s been involved in the Synod for a while now,” said Zita. “She got a little help on the way.”
“Good for Kendra,” said her father, heaving a sigh. “Well, I’m bushed, dear. Gonna head in for the night.”
“Okay, Dad. Sleep well.”
“Don’t be up too late.”
“I’ll try.”
“Good night.”
“Good night.” She waited until he had closed his door behind him, listened for the shuffling of his bare feet. Before long, the seesaw of his snoring was emanating through his bedroom door, and Zita snuck a glance over her book at the cascade of gray sackcloth he’d hung on the coatrack. A shiny green mask, its chin exposed beneath the cloth, glinted in the candlelight.
She had to fold and pin the hem of the robe up a few inches above her ankles to keep it from dragging along the ground as she walked; the mask’s eerily cold inner surface clung to her skin and seemed to amplify her labored, excited breathing. The night lay on thick, thick with fog, and she hurried through the glow of the gaslights. The clock tower, sitting vigil over the empty town square, chimed the hour as she passed through the shadow it cast by the gas lamp’s light.