Out of Exodia (12 page)

“
I know. I feel it,
too.”

“
Does this mean …?” She
couldn’t finish her question. Bram covered her mouth with his. Then
he kissed her nose, her lifted chin, her raised eyebrows as if he
were trying to answer the question there.

“
Oh, Bram …”

Bram drew in a stuttering breath and
paused a beat before speaking. “Lydia, my marriage to Kassandra was
a mistake. The stars may be right some of the time, but I don’t
believe it was God’s plan for me to be with her. I should’ve saved
myself for you.”

“
We’re together now. That’s
what matters.”

* * *

I have no idea if this is what she
expects or even if she’s heard of this old custom, but I pull her
to her feet, keeping hold of her hands. The erratic knocking of my
heart escalates. I drop back down to one knee and though my mouth
goes dry I ask her if she’ll marry me.

She will. I draw a steadying breath and
embrace the sudden draught of scented breeze, the frenzied rush of
birdsong, the weight and pressure of night descending—all my senses
working again.

I rise to my feet, kiss her again. We
make a new promise to have a wedding celebration as soon as we
reach the special land we’re headed to. We seal the promise with
several more kisses. I help her with her shoes, carry her bag, and
guide her back as the gray twilight darkens the trail.

And I forgive, forget, what my sister
has said.

Chapter 9 The Siege

From the tenth page of the
second Ledger:

Where the land had been
farmed it was infertile. And under the emptiness there was a
city.

THE BEAM FROM Malcolm’s electronic
device fashions a gash in the sky, a ribbon that tickles the earth
ahead of the early risers. Children, eager to leave the barren
hangars, grab fresh loaves of bread as they run across the
airport’s western runways, letting dawn tag them on their
shoulders.

The cloud leads us west. We share the
horses, using them to carry our packs or pull our sleds, though a
few people take turns riding. Three families who’d faced me down
when they sided with the Mourners now walk beside Lydia and me,
more like escorts or bodyguards than hostile
conspirators.

We slow as a few hundred of our people
veer over to pass the graves. Most double back and catch up without
going by the altar I made. I tighten my hold on Lydia’s hand, smile
and nod toward the secret retreat. She squeezes back then drops my
hand to dig in her belt sack for something. She retrieves a comb
and works on her hair until it’s smooth. I spot a yet uncrushed
purple flower hiding behind some weeds, snap off the bloom, and
tuck it in her ear.

“
You’re
beautiful.”

She reaches for my hand again and
ignores my compliment. “Why are we going west instead of
north?”

I shrug my shoulders. “I’ve no idea
unless it’s Ronel’s, or God’s, plan to have us camp in that vast
expanse we went through the night we rescued you. I don’t know.
Maybe we’ll stay in the cave-dwellers’ caves.”

“
I assure you, they weren’t
caves. The little bit I saw was pretty well
constructed.”

I mull that over and remember the room
I’d broken into, where they’d kept her.

“
I had this feeling,” she
hesitates and a stream of ugliness runs from her fingers to mine,
“that they were civilized yet barbarians.”

“
Why do you say that?” I
glance around at all the people with us who look pretty uncivilized
right now.

“
They had advanced stuff,
like lighting and electrified door locks, but most of them were
dressed pretty rattily. And not everything they said was in
English. Some of their words sounded like grunts.”

She tries to mimic some of what she’d
heard. We laugh at her attempts. I’d traveled a bit when I was
growing up—believing I was the grandson of Battista—and I’d been to
places where people’s speech differed in distinctive patterns.
Longer vowels, dropped consonants, slow lilts, missing syllables.
But I still understood every word.

“
Twenty
forty-nine.”

I frown at her.

“
It’s a date. It was on a
plaque I saw.” She lets go of my hand again to finger the blossom
at her ear.

I’m pretty good at history so I say,
“Twenty forty-nine was the peak of the climate change
period.”

“
I know. People moved
underground. That’s when the cave-dwellers’ city was built. I know
because when they shoved me down against the entrance there was a
plaque and I stared at it as if it were a clue: Two oh four
nine.”

Two oh four
nine
. Funny that she’d say it like that.
The letters start to form new words and I see
honor
before she speaks
again.

“
Bram. Are you sure we
should be heading this way? I mean, I believe we did a lot of
damage to their numbers, but what if they’ve been regrouping,
rearming themselves, and what if they attack us out in the
open?”

* * *

The twelve men who Bram had named as
judges kept a close eye on the families they held authority over.
They laced themselves through the lines of people and horses,
encouraging stragglers, carrying tired children, warning of
dangerous terrain, but mostly they acted like platoon commanders
and checked that weapons were loaded, swords and spears were
visible, and people were mindful of their surroundings.

The same march Lydia’s rescuers had
made at night over a week before took a few hours longer in the
daylight as they struggled to haul all their belongings or stopped
often to accommodate the older and younger Reds. They slowed even
more as they passed mutant trees, stunted in height, but with
telescoping branches of gray leaves. The strange trees had been
unobserved in the dark, but now they were hard to ignore, bearing
witness as they did of the nuclear consequences the old nation had
suffered. The shallow-rooted poplars clustered in stooped groves
like shriveled grandparents to the healthier pines and oaks that
twisted new limbs around them.

Scattered signs that others had passed
this way concerned the leaders. Josh pointed out the deep prints of
galloping hooves, the broken branches in places the trails
narrowed, the streaks of blackened dirt where bodies had been
dragged perhaps to shallow graves or to some concealed refuge where
they might heal. They all felt the barbed hook of premonition ice
its way up their spines.

Teague and Korzon exchanged tense
glances as their senses alerted them to some faint smell, food
perhaps, something they were eager to investigate.

The moment the gray grasses ceased to
crunch beneath sore feet was the moment Bram heard the hum of
Malcolm’s box hitch up a notch. Though he heard no unearthly words
and no heavenly guidance was given he raised the rod and signaled
for a halt. It took several minutes for the mass to stop and even
longer for the murmured grousing to finish. The way before them had
opened to rocky fields of intermittent bushes, humanly planted,
Bram knew, to hide the underground city’s lighting
shafts.

“
Over there,” Lydia yelped,
dropping Bram’s hand and pointing to a far off stand of
vine-tangled trees. Teague moved closer and cocked his head to
listen to her. He’d sent Lydia and Barrett on resistance missions
when he was the acknowledged leader of the Red slum. He listened
closely as she explained, “See those two giant boulders? They’re
really concrete barriers. They flank the entrance to the
underground city.”

Bram nodded his head and Teague stepped
forward, pointing a bony finger at Bram. He had a simple statement,
“If we march across this land they’ll undoubtedly hear us
below.”

Bram looked at the old man and asked,
“Do you have a suggestion?”

Teague was pleased. “I do.”

* * *

I listen to Teague explain how we
should send our strongest men, warriors he calls them, to burst
through all the shafts at once and invade the buried city. It’s a
terrible plan; it spreads our attack too thin and we have no idea
how many remain in this subterranean fort, but I respectfully ask
pointed questions and just as he begins to shake his head Onita
screams.

We drop our burdens, all except the
rod, and rush to her side. She’s holding a shaky hand over her
mouth, and backing away from the edge of a thorny patch of
sumac.

Marilyn and Mira grab her arms and lead
her away from the grisly sight. It takes a moment for it to
register as I focus first on a sprig of pine needles wedged between
two bits of flesh. It’s a face. It’s the face of the man I attacked
to save Lydia. Just his head and face. Where a body should have
been there’s a thick oak branch, the bottom end of which is snapped
off. Its other end protrudes among the thorns, waist
high.

“
Punishment,” Lydia
breathes. “It’s Amal. They impaled him for letting me escape.” I
fold her into my arms so she no longer stares at the hideous
butchery. Her body chills with an intensity that seems to blister.
“If they’d do this to one of their own—”

She doesn’t need to finish that
thought. Such pagan impulses scare me too.

“
Everybody back,” Harmon
shouts. He covers Amal’s face with several pine branches and turns
to me with a mixed expression in his eyes.

I don’t know what to do. The gentle
breeze that moments ago freshened our foreheads stiffens into a
slapping wind. I look up at Malcolm’s cloud. It’s still moving on,
out across the desert-like plain that roofs the hidden
city.

“
Move on!” I say. “Step
hard! Weapons ready!” The pounding of our parading band will either
keep our enemies hidden as we pass or draw them out to be numbered
and killed. Raul had told me these enemies are vanquished, not that
they were vanquished. “Children to the center!”

* * *

As soon as the horses stepped from the
parched grass to the rocky plain they began to nicker. The burdened
horses that were led with ropes pulled against their lead lines
trying to head for the hidden stables. The Reds who rode in crude
saddles or bareback strained to keep their mounts advancing west
and not let them head toward what looked like a vine-covered
forest. The mass of humans and animals proceeded in a nervous
prance across the land, horses with eyes wide and white, men with
eyes narrowed and darting.

Beneath the ground those thousands of
footfalls set off alarms throughout the city. The Director summoned
his aides and his new general. In richly descriptive words he
commanded that every single citizen, including mothers with
children, go topside with the remaining troops, surround the
invaders, and take captive only those who might prove useful in
their neo-pagan rituals. The general repeated the directive through
an intercommunication system and within moments the entire city was
armed and stationed at perimeter exits. They believed they would
easily girdle the invaders, take the advantage, and squeeze the
Reds into deadly submission.

The Director covered his silvery head
with an old motorcycle helmet and followed the tall general to the
western exit, the one that was best hidden and most easily
defended.