The Cartographers(128)
Felix and Wally struggled—Felix was strong, but Wally was too, and filled with desperate rage—until the gun suddenly went flying. It discharged as it hit the ground and clattered away, a bullet ricocheting off a shelf and then embedding in a bookcase as Nell screamed and ducked.
“Get out of here, now!” Felix yelled to her. A rush of blistering air washed over them as the fire engulfed the roof. “This place is going to burn down!”
“No,” Wally gasped as he struggled to his feet, his expression full of terror. He was in the grip of his memories now, replaying that horrible day as they fought over the same map again, in almost the same way, Nell knew. He lunged for her and the scanner. “No, not again. This can’t happen again, I will not let it happen . . .”
Felix tackled him. “Run!”
“Hold him, Felix! And get back!”
“You can’t destroy the map—you’ll destroy us all! You’ll destroy your mother!” Wally was shrieking, calling to Nell with everything he had as Felix dragged him backward.
“Farther!” Nell shouted over Wally, watching Felix manhandle him away before she turned back to the machine. It took all her strength to stop the arm of the scanner, but she leaned her shoulder into it and braced against its juddering attempts to continue copying her map.
“Nell, what are you doing!” Felix was frantic.
“Don’t!” Wally yelled.
“Do it!” her mother shouted over him. She appeared from the inferno and rushed forward to grab Wally and help Felix drag him back. Wally howled, trying to hold on to Tamara so she couldn’t escape him and also run toward Nell.
Nell gripped her mother’s fountain pen harder in her free hand as she pushed, but she couldn’t let go with her other to uncap it or the scanner would throw her back. She tilted the pen toward her and bit down on the end.
She understood now, what her mother and Wally had long ago figured out. It was why Tamara had stayed behind for decades to produce her masterpiece, and why he was obsessed with uploading it into his Haberson monstrosity and then destroying the physical version, so only his remained.
If a place existed only within a map, then it existed in every copy of that map. And so, if there was only one copy of a map left, if something changed on that sole copy, it would become true in the physical world, because it would also be true on every copy of the map—since there was only one copy.
Nell didn’t have to destroy her mother’s map. There was another way to save them all, and the town, from Wally’s clutches.
She didn’t need to remove Agloe from the map, or the world.
“Farther!” she yelled at Felix and her mother through bared teeth.
She just had to move it somewhere else.
“Don’t!” Wally screamed. “Don’t you dare—”
Nell pulled the tip free and spit out the cap.
XXVII
Everything was quiet.
Slowly, millimeter by millimeter, Felix opened one eye.
The town was gone.
“What?” He lurched to his feet, slipping on the wet grass. Grass, not factory floor—he was in the middle of the empty field again, one foot in a tangle of weeds, the other in a puddle. Above, the sky was overcast and heavy, the thunderstorm abating. In the distance, he could see County Road 206 slithering past, a dark gray ribbon through the green. He spun around, nearly tripping on himself, but it was true.
He was back in the real world. There was no dirt path, no shops, no houses, no factory around him.
No Agloe.
“Felix?” a voice called. “Felix!”
Felix turned to see two figures rushing toward him across the field.
“Naomi! Priya!” he said, startled.
“Thank goodness you’re all right!” Naomi exclaimed as they reached him, and both she and Priya wrapped him in a hug.
“How—”
“We followed you!” Priya said. “You weren’t answering us, and then we saw you and William start to move away from the house address, so we kept tracking your phone signal. Then all of a sudden, it just vanished!” She grabbed his arm as if to check that he was truly there. “We got in Naomi’s car and took off. We’ve been searching everywhere—I thought we’d lost you. And then all of a sudden you just . . . appeared! Right in front of us!” she cried.
Felix rocked sideways as they let him go at last, trying to find his feet.
“What happened?” Naomi asked him.
He shook his head, overcome. He didn’t have the words to explain.
“Felix!” another voice called. The others Nell had come with were running toward him from the far side of the field, where they’d been huddled beneath the trees.
“You’re all right!” Humphrey cried, scooping him into an even fiercer embrace than his friends had. “Where are Wally and Nell?”
“Oh my God,” he heard Ramona say.
They were all facing Felix, Humphrey still holding on to him after the hug, but looking past him now, staring over his shoulder in shock.
“Is . . . that . . . ,” Naomi stammered.
“Is he . . . ,” Priya asked.
“He’s alive,” Felix said. “But it’s over.”
On the ground just behind Felix, William Haberson—Wally—lay crumpled in the mud, hopeless at what he’d lost. He would never find the town again. Not without the map it had taken him nearly his entire lifetime to find. His eyes were glossy and distant, barely blinking, and all the fight had gone out of his body.