Hummingbird Salamander(99)
I just stared at it, dumbfounded. Could it be that simple? Had it been that simple the whole time?
I became frantic, manic. Then frustrated as it took almost half an hour to find a sturdy stepladder amid the wreckage of that warren. Clung awkward to it, finding it difficult to breathe, as I pulled delicately at the light casing.
Nothing out of the ordinary. Just the usual. The world fucking with me again. In frustration, I gave it a swat. Still nothing, but now I saw a tiny button up against the frame on the right side. Cursed trying to get my sausage finger in position to push it.
But finally I succeeded—and the casing swung open on a hinge, knocking me on the head. I almost fell off the stepladder, cursing, looked up.
Behind the casing: a blue glow cocooning a sophisticated pass code keypad.
Always here. Never on top of the mountain. Always here.
I didn’t want to exhale. Didn’t want to make a single sound, as if it might all disappear in an unwary instant. Crept back up on the stepladder, examined the keypad more closely.
An eight-digit code.
Could the ghosts of a hummingbird, a salamander solve this puzzle? Game-playing Silvina, but most games had a reason. A way to win. An endpoint.
It felt almost as if it was a matter of faith as much as numbers. What if nothing happened? What if I was wrong about what those numbers were and the system locked me out? Panic then, as I couldn’t remember the address of Silvina’s apartment. Before it came back to me.
I entered the numbers, in their random original order, from behind the eyes.
Nothing, for a horrifying moment. That stretched and stretched.
The blue light turned green. A rumble and crack from the left corner of the far wall. The left panel of stone—waterstained, moldy—pulled inward and slid to the side. Revealing a rough-hewn, square tunnel lit by soft blue emergency lights that lined old-fashioned stone stairs.
A slow ascent into an unknowable darkness. A secret world under the mountain.
No time to absorb this miracle, this ultimate message from Silvina. No time at all.
Because a body was sprawled on the stairs at the edge of the light above me.
[106]
Ronnie Simpson, Unitopia’s last guardian, lay across the steps as if she’d had a heart attack. One arm pinned beneath her. Legs entangled, the left at a right angle at the knee. The laces of the boot had come loose. The back of her head was soaked in blackness. Her face, half turned toward me, had a pinched, mummified quality. She had no eyes, no soft tissue, all the flesh pulled tight. Even under generic gray army fatigues. The way the fabric drew in because there was so little underneath.
I was struck by the way Ronnie’s mouth gaped open. The way the lines of that sunken face radiated out from a soundless and surprising ecstasy. A pale green powder on the dry lips contained evidence of vomit, in how it continued down the chin. Yet she had died in the throes of an overwhelming joy. That unnerved me more than agony.
Poison? Taken internally or carried by the air? If in the air, I was already compromised. Contaminated. Dead.
I felt fine. No different than when I had entered the tunnel. But I distrusted her condition. Something about the way salamanders received damage, through their skin. Rates of decay. I tried to do the math. Dead yesterday or dead five years ago while Hellmouth Jack and I wasted time on top of the mountain? Some date uncertain in-between. But nothing about the contrast in mummification and freshness made sense no matter the timing.
Didn’t much like the idea of walking around the body and ignoring it. Put on latex gloves from Shovel Pig, did a search as fast as I could without missing something. Nothing much in her pockets besides ID. No weapons.
So light. Her body was so light, like a canvas frame. Tiny veins had ruptured all over her hands and arms. The smell I couldn’t place. As if dust motes had sparked and burned while afloat. So the air around her had a char of pinpricks. A whispering, charred scent. Couldn’t describe it any other way.
A shadow of my original fears swallowed me. Biological weapons. Ronnie following Silvina into something she didn’t understand, any more than I understood it.
Well, I would know soon enough if I was sick.
I found the hummingbird pinned under her. As if it’d come loose from a pocket or Ronnie had been holding it when she succumbed and fell. Twisted wire. One tiny wing bent. But still glossy black. Stirring a fatal sense of beauty. Old friend. Comrade come back to me.
I saw now that the darkness of the steps beneath Ronnie meant she’d bled out, though I could find no wound. I knelt in her dried blood and took the hummingbird away from her. I could not leave it behind.
That Ronnie had gotten the hummingbird from her brother seemed certain. Whether Ronnie had come here because she remained part of Silvina’s inner circle seemed less certain. Thought of “Hillman” and his bible of numbers. Of how it didn’t matter which Vilcapampa they’d served. Both had wound up dead.
I stood there on the steps, stooped, overcome by so many emotions. It was hard not to cry over something.
But then I took a step forward, and another. Heavy steps, as if the hummingbird weighed me down. Or something did. My boots thick, awkward, made of solid metal.
Each step upward was easier than the last.
* * *
At the top of the stairs, an hour of climbing later, I came to new concrete steps and a portal of a door. Framed in a circle of stainless steel, the oval of the door shuttered like a closed storefront. A button next to it. No pass code here. But the button was thumb shaped, interactive.