Chaos Walking: The Complete Trilogy (66 page)

And that’s when it happens.

BOOM!

A sound so big it makes the air as solid as a fist, as a wave of bricks, as if the world’s dropped out beneath you and you’re falling sideways and up and down all at once, like the weightlessness of the black beyond.

There’s a blankness where I can’t remember anything and then I open my eyes to find myself lying on the ground with smoke twirling around me in spinning, floating ribbons and bits of fire drifting down from the sky here and there and for a minute it seems almost peaceful, almost beautiful, and then I realize I can’t hear anything except a high-pitched whine that’s drowning out all the sounds the people around me are making as they stagger to their feet or open their mouths in what must be shouting and I sit up slowly, the world still gone in whining silence and there’s the soldier with the spot on his neck, there he is on the ground next to me, covered in wooden splinters, and he must have shielded me from the blast because I’m mostly okay but he’s not moving.

He’s not moving.

And sound begins to return and I start to hear the screaming.

“This is exactly the kind of history I did
not
want to repeat,” the Mayor says, staring up thoughtfully into the shaft of light coming down from the coloured-glass window.

“I didn’t know anything about a bomb,” I say for a second time, my hands still shaking and my ears ringing so loud it’s hard to hear what he’s saying. “Neither one.”

“I believe you,” he says. “You were very nearly killed yourself.”

“A soldier blocked most of it for me,” I stutter out, remembering his body, remembering the blood from it, the splinters that were stuck in nearly every part of him–

“She drugged you again, didn’t she?” he asks, staring back up into the coloured window, as if the answers might be there. “She drugged you and abandoned you.”

This hits me like a punch.

She did abandon me.

And set off a bomb that killed a young soldier.

“Yes,” I finally say. “She left. They all did.”

“Not all.” He walks behind me, becoming just a voice in the room, talking loud and clear enough so I can hear. “There are five houses of healing in this city. One remains fully staffed, three others are partially depleted of their healers and apprentices. It’s only yours where there’s been complete desertion.”

“Corinne stayed,” I whisper and then I’m suddenly pleading. “She tended the soldiers who were hurt in the second bomb. She didn’t hesitate. She went right to the worst injured and tied tourniquets and cleared airways and–”

“Duly noted,” he interrupts, even though it’s true, even though she called me over to help her and we did the best we could until other stupid soldiers who couldn’t or
wouldn’t
see what we were doing grabbed us and dragged us away. Corinne struggled against them but they hit her in the face and she stopped.

“Please don’t hurt her,” I say again. “She has nothing to do with this. She stayed behind out of choice. She tried to help those–”

“I’m not going to
hurt
her!” he shouts suddenly. “Enough of this
cowering
! There will be no harm to women as long as I am President! Why is that so difficult for you to understand?”

I think of the soldiers hitting Corinne. I think of Maddy falling to the ground.

“Please don’t hurt her,” I whisper again.

He sighs and lowers his voice. “We just need answers from her, that’s all. The same answers I’ll be needing from you.”

“I don’t know where they went,” I say. “She didn’t tell me. She didn’t mention anything.”

And I stop myself and he notices. Because she did mention something, didn’t she?

She told me a story about–

“Something you’d like to share, Viola?” the Mayor asks, coming around to face me, looking suddenly interested.

“Nothing,” I say quickly. “Nothing, just . . .”

“Just what?” His eyes are keen on me, flitting over my face, trying to read me, even though I have no Noise, and I realize briefly how much he must
hate
that.

“Just that she spent her first years on New World in the hills,” I lie, swallowing. “Out west of town past the waterfall. I thought it was just idle talk.”

He’s still staring deep into me and there’s a long silence while he looks and looks before starting his walk again.

“The most important issue,” he says, “is whether the second bomb was a mistake, part of the first bomb that went off later by accident?” He comes round again to read my face. “Or was it on purpose? Was it set to go off later deliberately so that my men would be surrounding a crime scene, so that there would be maximum loss of life?”

“No,” I say, shaking my head. “She wouldn’t. She’s a healer. She wouldn’t kill–”

“A general would do anything to win a war,” he says. “That’s why it’s war.”

“No,” I keep saying. “No, I don’t believe–”

“I know you don’t believe it.” He steps away from me again, turning his back. “That’s why you were left behind.”

He goes to the small table next to his chair and picks up a piece of paper. He holds it up so I can see it.

There’s a blue
A
written across it.

“Does this mean anything to you, Viola?”

I try to keep any look off my face.

“I’ve never seen that before.” I swallow again, cursing myself as I do. “What is it?”

He looks at me long and hard again, then he puts the paper back down on the table. “She will contact you.” He watches my face. I try to give him nothing. “Yes,” he says, as if to himself. “She will, and when she does, pass along one message in particular, please.”

“I don’t–”

“Tell her that we can stop this bloodshed at once, that we can end all this before it even begins, before more people die and peace is for ever put aside. Tell her that, Viola.”

He’s staring so hard at me, I say, “Okay.”

He’s not blinking, his eyes black holes I can’t turn away from. “But also tell her that if she wants war, she can have her war.”

“Please–” I start to say.

“That’ll be all,” he says, gesturing me to my feet and towards the door. “Go back to your house of healing. Treat what patients you can.”

“But–”

He opens the door for me. “There’ll be no hanging this afternoon,” he says. “Some civic functions will have to be curtailed in light of recent terrorist activities.”

“Terrorist–?”

“And I’m afraid I’ll be far too busy sweeping up the mess your mistress has made to host the dinner I promised you tonight.”

I open my mouth but nothing comes out.

He closes the door on me.

My head spins as I stagger back down the main road. Todd is out here somewhere and all I can think of is how I can’t see him and won’t be able to tell him anything about what’s happened or explain myself or anything.

And it’s her fault.

It is. I hate to say it but it’s her fault. All of this. Even if it was for reasons she thought were right, it’s all her fault. Her fault that I won’t see Todd tonight. Her fault that war is coming. Her fault–

I come upon the wreckage again.

There are four bodies lying in the road, covered in white sheets that don’t quite conceal the pools of blood beneath them. Nearest to me but behind a cordon of soldiers guarding the site is the sheet covering the soldier who accidentally saved me.

I didn’t even know his name.

And then all of a sudden he was dead.

If she’d just waited, if she’d just seen what the Mayor wanted her to do–

But then I think,
Appeasement, my girl, it’s a slippery slope
–

But the bodies here in the road–

But Maddy dying–

But the boy soldier who saved me–

But Corinne being hit to stop her from helping–

(oh, Todd, where are you?)

(what do I do? what’s the right thing?)

“Move along there,” a soldier barks at me, making me jump.

I hurry along the road and before I even realize it, I’m running.

I return to the nearly empty house of healing out of breath and slam the front door behind me. There were yet more soldiers on the road, more patrols, men on rooftops with rifles who watched me run very closely, one of them even whistling rudely as I went by.

There’ll be no getting to the communications tower now, not any more.

Another thing she screwed up.

As I catch my breath, it sinks in that I’m the only thing even resembling a healer here now. Many of the patients were well enough to follow Mistress Coyle out to wherever she’s gone and, who knows, might have even been the ones to plant the bombs, but there’s still at least two dozen in beds here, with more coming in every day.

And I’m just about the worst healer New Prentisstown has ever seen.

“Oh, help,” I whisper to myself.

“Where’d everybody go?” Mrs Fox asks as soon as I open the door to her room. “There’s been no food, no medicine–”

“I’m sorry,” I say, bustling up her bedpan. “I’ll get you food as soon as I can.”

“Good heavens, dear!” she says as I turn, her eyes widening. I look at the back of my white coat where her eyes have gone. There’s a dirty smear of the young soldier’s blood all the way down to the hem.

“Are you all right?” Mrs Fox asks.

I look at the blood, and all I can say is, “I’ll get your food.”

The next hours pass in a blur. The help staff are all gone, too, and I do my best to cook for the remaining patients, serving them and asking at the same time which medicines they take and when and how much and though they’re all wondering what’s going on, they see how I must look and try to be as helpful as they can.

It’s well past nightfall when I come round a corner with a tray full of dirty dinner dishes and there’s Corinne, just inside the entrance, pressing on the wall with one hand to hold herself up.

I throw the tray on the floor and run to her. She holds up her other hand to stop me before I reach her. She winces as I get close.

And I see the swelling around her eyes.

And the swelling in her lower lip.

And the way she’s holding her body up too straight, like it hurts, like it really hurts.

“Oh, Corinne,” I say.

“Just,” she says, taking a breath. “Just help me to my room.”

I take her hand to help her along and feel something hidden in her palm, pressed into mine. She holds up a finger to her lips to shush the wonderings about to come from my open mouth.

“A girl,” she whispers. “Hidden in the bushes by the road.” She shakes her head angrily. “No more than a girl.”

I don’t look at it until I’ve got Corinne to her room and left again to get bandages for her face and compresses for her ribs. I wait until I’m alone in the supply room and open my palm.

It’s a note, folded, with
V
written on the outside. Inside, it’s only a few lines, saying almost nothing at all.

My girl,
it says.
Now is the time you must choose.

And then there’s a single asking.

Can we count on you?

I look up.

I swallow.

Can we count on you?

I fold the note into my pocket and I take up the bandages and compresses and I go to help Corinne.

Who was beaten by the Mayor’s men.

But who wouldn’t have been beaten if she hadn’t had to speak for Mistress Coyle.

But who was beaten even though the Mayor said she wouldn’t be hurt.

Can we count on you?

And it wasn’t signed with a name.

It just said, The Answer.

And Answer was spelled with a bright blue
A
.

[T
ODD
]

BOOM!

– and the sky tears open behind us and a rush of wind comes up the road and Angharrad rears back in terror and I tumble off her to the ground and there’s dust and screaming and a throbbing in my ears as I lay there and wait to see if I’m dead or not.

Another bomb. The third this week since the first two. Not two hundred metres away from us this time.

“Bitches,” I hear Davy spit, getting to his own feet and looking back down the road.

My ears are ringing and my body’s shaking as I get to my feet. The bombs’ve come at different times of day and night, at different spots in the city. Once it was an aqueduct that fed water to the western part of town, once it was the two main bridges to the farmlands north of the river. Today, it’s–

“That’s that caff,” Davy says, trying to stop Deadfall/Acorn from bolting. “Where the soldiers eat.”

He gets Deadfall to heel and climbs back up on the saddle. “Come on!” he barks. “We’ll go see if they need help.”

I put my hands on Angharrad who’s still frightened, still saying
boy colt boy colt
over and over again. I say her name a buncha times and finally get back up on her.

“Don’t you go getting no funny ideas,” Davy says. He takes out his pistol and points it at me. “You ain’t sposed to leave my sight.”

Cuz that’s also how life’s gone since the bombs started.

Davy with a gun on me, every waking minute of every waking day.