Dangerous Creatures(87)

“Who said that? Why?”

“I’m not sure. I discovered the book with a note on the altar, not long after I brought you here. Just read it. It’s time. And nobody knows as much about the subject as this particular author. It’s written by a doctor, it seems, in his own hand.”

“I know enough not to read more.” I look around for Ro. I wish, desperately, he would walk through the chapel door. But the Padre is the Padre, so I open the book to a page he’s marked, and begin to read about myself.

Icon doloris.

Dolorus. Doloria. Me.

My purpose is pain and my name is sorrow.

One gray dot says so.

No.

“Not yet.” I look up at the Padre and shake my head, shoving the book into my belt. The conversation is over. The story of me can wait until I’m ready. My heart hurts again, stronger this time.

I hear strange noises, feel a change in the air. I look to Ramona Jamona, hoping for some moral support, but she is lying at my feet, fast asleep.

No, not asleep.

Dark liquid pools beneath her.

The cold animal in my chest startles awake, fluttering once again.

An old feeling returns. Something really is wrong. Soft pops fill the air.

“Padre,” I say.

Only I look at him and he is not my Padre at all. Not anymore.

“Padre!” I scream. He’s not moving. He’s nothing. Still sitting next to me, still smiling, but not breathing.

He’s gone.

My mind moves slowly. I can’t make sense of it. His eyes are empty and his mouth has fallen open. Gone.

It’s all gone. His jokes. His secret recipes—the butter he made from shaking cream together with smooth, round rocks—the rows of sun tea in jars—gone. Other secrets, too. My secrets.

But I can’t think about it now, because behind the Padre—what was the Padre—stands a line of masked soldiers. Sympas.

Occupation Sympathizers, traitors to humanity. Embassy soldiers, taking orders from the Lords, hiding behind plexi-masks and black armor, standing in pig mess and casting long shadows over the deathly peace of the chapel. One wears golden wings on his jacket. It’s the only detail I see, aside from the weapons. The guns make no noise, but the animals panic all the same. They are screaming—which is something I did not know, that animals could scream.

I open my mouth, but I do not scream. I vomit.

I spit green juices and gray dust and memories of Ramona and the Padre.

All I can see are the guns. All I can feel is hate and fear. The black-gloved hands close around my wrist, overwhelming me, and I know that soon I will no longer have to worry about my nightmares.

I will be dead.

As my knees buckle, all I can think about is Ro and how angry he will be at me for leaving him.





Tracks


I am alive.

When I open my eyes I’m on a train—alone in a prison transport car, gunmetal gray, pushed by an old coal-fueled steam engine. Nothing but four walls lined with metal benches, bolted to the floor. A door to my left, a window to my right. A pile of old rags in the corner. That’s it. I must be on the Tracks, hurtling toward the Hole. The dim blue waters of Porthole Bay flip in and out of sight, rhythmically punctuated by shuffling old comlink poles. They stick up from the land like so many useless skeleton fingers.

I watch my reflection in the window. My brown hair is dark and loose and matted with dirt and bile. My skin is pale and barely covers the handful of small bones that are me. Then I see my reflection twist, and in the plexi-window I look as sad as the Lady in her painting. Because the Padre is dead.

I try to hold on to his face in my mind, the grooves by his eyes, the mole on his cheek. The cocky spike of his thinning hair. I’m afraid I’ll lose it, him—even the memory. Tomorrow, if not today.

Like everything else, there’s no holding on to the Padre.

Not anymore.

I look back out at the bay, and I can feel the bile churn inside me, strong as the tides. Usually the water calms me. Not today. Today, as I clutch the blue glass bead at my throat, the ocean is almost unrecognizable. I wonder where the Tracks are taking me. To my death? Or worse?

I see a glimpse of the rusting, abandoned cars on the highway along the rails, junked as if all life stopped and the planet froze in place, which is pretty much what happened on The Day. After the House of Lords came, with their Carrier ships, and the thirteen Icons fell from the sky, one landing in each of the largest cities in the world.

The Padre says—said—that people used to live all over Earth, spread out. There were small towns, small cities, big cities. Not anymore. Almost the entire population of the planet lives within a hundred miles of a mega-city. The Padre said this happened because so much of the world has been ruined by people, by the rising waters, rising temperatures, drought, flooding. Some parts of Earth are toxic with radiation from massive wars. People stay in the cities because we are running out of places to live.

Now everything people need to live is produced in or near the cities. Energy, food, technology—it’s all centralized in the cities. Which makes the Lords’ work that much easier.

The Icons regulate everything with an electronic pulse. The Padre said the Icons can control electricity, the power that flows between generators and machines, even the electrical impulses that connect brains and bodies. They can halt all electrical and chemical activity at any time. Which is what happened to Goldengate, on The Day. And S?o Paulo, K?ln-Bonn, Greater Beijing, Cairo, Mumbai. The Silent Cities. Which is why we gave in to the Lords and let them take our planet.