The Forsaken - The Apocalypse Trilogy: Book Two (6 page)

“They go on easier if you untie them.” Mr.
Jay took the sugar and sprinkled some on her oatmeal before handing
it to her. “It’s cold but I soaked it overnight. You’ll have to use
your imagination to enjoy it.”

But Dawn was too hungry to care about a thing
like that, and soon dug into the porridge, enjoying the sugary
sweetness on top. As she ate, Mr. Jay crossed the room, found his
top hat and put it on.

“Aren’t you going to eat?” She asked looking
at his hat. It was worn and patched, and had a frayed edge along
the back that Mr. Jay hid by wetting his fingers and twirling the
fringe around the wire frame.

“What?” Mr. Jay glanced over, pulling his
coat on. It was a ragged shambles of a thing, but matched the hat
just fine. “Oh, food.” He shook his head and pulled the coat tails
out behind him. “I’m not much of a breakfast eater, dear. You know
that!
Wakey wakey
!”

Dawn giggled as Mr. Jay waggled his head, and
mimicked what he had told her were fine and gentlemanly ways, with
his shoulders and legs stiff, and his elbows bent. He walked across
the room and twirled, then twisted the end of his moustache.

“You look the fine figure of a man, Mr. Jay!”
Dawn said with a giggle.

“It’s only fitting…” he said. “That I wear
this to conjure up notions of the things that
were
. It’s all
in the subconscious.” He slipped his gloves on and bowed with great
flourish. “They may not even know it, but it’s there. Teaching them
to see it is the hard part. And, as entertainers my dear, we’re
obligated to employ all the trappings of our profession to
accomplish that. A few loose threads will never overpower the
imagination.”

“Conjurer” was what he sometimes called
himself, but Dawn had seen people in books dressed like him who
were called “Magicians.”

“I answer to either,” he once said with a
laugh, “but I don’t pull rabbits out of hats.”

For now, they were “Entertainers.” Dawn had
heard it referred to as busking, but what they did was go to street
corners where Mr. Jay would do magic and entertain. People would
gather around to watch and give them money. Mr. Jay often said it
was a hard way to make a buck but that it beat working for a
living.

Mr. Jay turned to her from where he was
putting some food in a smaller pack. “I could do with some coffee
though. When you are through, little princess. So
chop chop
!
You still have to get into your costume!” He held up the fake
beard.

As a forever child and being a rare and
wonderful thing, as Mr. Jay called her, Dawn was forever in peril
of capture. It wasn’t that people hated forever children, but the
government still caught any they found and kept them in orphanages
for their own protection. Dawn heard rumors of it from other
forever children at the Nurserywood. Some said they had escaped
from the government, and if they spoke about it at all, it was in
hushed tones, with fear on their faces.

So to go out in public, Dawn had to go
disguised as a midget. She held the collection basket for Mr. Jay
and took great pride in her part of the ruse, because she had
learned to disguise her voice and otherwise carry off the charade
without discovery.

“Avoid real midgets.” Mr. Jay had warned her.
“Most people are afraid to look at a little person for more than a
glance, but a midget or a dwarf, he’ll see you eye to eye and
know.”

Her costume was a multicolored patchwork of
bright materials that covered her body completely. Mr. Jay called
it “motley.” It came with its own broad padded shoulders and
potbelly sewn into place. The boots she wore rose to her knees and
curled up at the toe. Each toe was graced with a small bell—just as
her cap bore on each of its five points. To complete the illusion,
Mr. Jay would painstakingly affix the dark brown beard to her
cheeks and chin. She hated the glue he used to stick it on with,
mostly because it stank and partly because he called it “spirit
gum.” Dawn could never bring herself to ask what that meant.

She finished her porridge and then turned in
her chair for Mr. Jay to apply the beard and make up her face. He
continued to hum as he did so, smiling occasionally at the faces
she made.

Though they were meager earnings she gathered
in her collection basket, they were able to afford the essentials.
And Dawn really loved being an entertainer, costume or not. It
allowed her to go out in the streets with people and dance and
carry on like she was normal. Otherwise, she spent her days in the
shadows. Years ago, she had started coming up with her own tricks.
Her body though a child’s was as nimble as a cat’s and decades of
living in it had made her dexterous beyond compare.

While Dawn handled the acrobatic part of
their act—mainly to keep the crowd’s interest and guard the
collection basket—Mr. Jay would prepare for his next bit of magic.
He always did that with great flourish, his whole body taking on a
rigid, sticklike stance, and his face going flat, eyes looking
inward. Dawn was never sure how Mr. Jay actually did his tricks but
he had told her that it was a fine art that relied on misdirection
as much as it did magic. Regardless, he would come out of his
“Gypsy trance” as he called it, and go about the crowd mystifying
them with tricks like guessing a person’s name, and their parents’
or friend’s, or he would do other more exotic things. It depended
on the crowd; some were easier to please than others.

The pair had traveled a long way with their
entertaining, and had performed now so many times that Dawn found
herself improvising effortlessly—Mr. Jay had said that this was
simply her subconscious having fun with it.

“You don’t want to get bored with
entertaining, Dawn. What would be left?”

And she rarely ever felt butterflies in her
stomach anymore. As long as Mr. Jay was nearby, she felt that she
could do anything.

Today was a little different. This was their
first full day in the City of Light. He wouldn’t tell her why they
had come to the City, but he assured her that the money would be
good if they could get the prime locations. Mr. Jay had already
scouted out locations to work.

“And I might even find some old friends,” he
said cheerfully.

Dawn didn’t care about any old friends as she
struggled into her costume. She had already seen enough of the
City. True, the size of it was awesome as you approached it, but
when you were
in
it, the levels above weighed heavily and
the only breezes blew off cars and buses or came up from sewers.
There was a constant feeling of crowding.

She could not shake the nagging sense that
her run in with Yellow-skin and the thin men was just a shadow of
worse things to come. And the streets in the City were so big and
numerous, and there were so many people, there were just too many
places a forever child could get lost. She knew she’d be worried
about losing Mr. Jay the whole time.

“Come along, Dawn. You wrinkle that forehead
of yours any more and you’ll look like a road map.” Mr. Jay
chuckled and twisted her nose. He looked her over. “And how are you
today Mojo?” That was the name of the midget she played.

She patted her forehead with the back of her
hand nonplussed.

The action made Mr. Jay laugh out loud.
“Forever child or not, Dawn. There’s a woman in there
somewhere.”

“Stop it!” she scolded, hoping to end the
teasing right away.

“Yes, of course.” He smiled and regarded her
with such a loving gaze that she immediately cheered up. “Now, will
you be warm enough? These February winds can chill you through and
through. A Winter rain’s expected…”

“Of course I’ll be warm enough.” She almost
stamped a foot but remembered that Mr. Jay only said those things
out of habit. “But thank you anyway.”

Mr. Jay picked up his walking stick, and
shouldered his bag of props. He always carried extra things with
him—packs of cards, bottles and string and cups—anything he might
use in one of his tricks. And he always had some packets of mixed
nuts and a stick of bread that never seemed to run out. “We’ll have
to hurry. I found an excellent corner last night but it’s quite a
distance uptown.”

They made their way out of the hideout and
then along a rickety stair that took them to the exit of the
abandoned building. A dirty mist hung in the air over the street.
“I hope you don’t mind, but we may have to ride a bus to get there
while the pickings are still good.” She looked up at his face as he
talked, but its expression was hidden by the gloom. “We want to
catch the workers at their first coffee break—and there’s a good
collection of hotels and office buildings nearby that we can work
until they’re back on the streets at lunch.” The fog blew into
Dawn’s face and left droplets in her beard. She shrugged at her
friend’s face.

A mixture of excitement and apprehension ran
through her as they made their way to the bus stop. Other shadowy
shapes joined them on the dark sidewalks: heads down, collars
pulled up, with shock on their faces when Dawn stepped out of the
gloom. The idea of performing in front of a whole new bunch of
people was as exciting as it was frightening. She gripped the first
two fingers of Mr. Jay’s right hand. As long as she kept her hold
on him, she would be all right.

9 – Nun

Able Stoneworthy’s footsteps receded. Sister
Karen Cawood waited on her knees, sliding each rosary bead over the
plump flesh of her lower lip—her mouth unconsciously forming words
that were not uttered.
Jesus, whom thou didst joyfully
conceive
. Her shoulder still bore the warm impress of Able’s
hand where he had gripped her reassuringly as she dropped to her
knees in prayer. His voice had grown thick before he hurried from
the room. The minister, her friend of many decades, respected her
privacy more than she did.
Jesus, whom thou didst joyfully carry
to Elizabeth
. At the sound of the outer office door latching,
she climbed slowly to her feet, knees aching.

She muttered, “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray
for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.” She pinched
her thumb where the crucifix in her grip had bitten into it. Moving
to her desk she dropped into her seat with a fragile sigh then
pushed her coif back to rub her temples. Sometimes she wished they
still wore the elaborate, heavily starched head covering that was
once synonymous with nuns. It would have been better for hiding her
bleary bloodshot eyes and pale skin than the modern headband and
small veil that was now in use.

It was too early in the morning for Able’s
earnest nature, too early for a woman who had consumed as many
shooters as she had the night before. She couldn’t even remember
leaving the bar she’d staggered out of, Casey’s or Carson’s on
Level Four or Five, her wounded memory let the information go.
Dragging herself in to work had required Olympian effort, and when
she had looked up over her hot black coffee to see Able Stoneworthy
standing there, fear disintegrated the last veils of her
morning-after numbness.

Mortal
.
Venial
. The difference
in sins was a few thousand years in purgatory give or take. That
was nothing. True purgatory was having a job that wouldn’t let her
recognize her own G-spot. A guilty grin appeared on her face but
was wiped away by a painful throb in her temples.

Then Able started in about an Angel visiting
him. Smiling idiotically about it had come easily to her. That was
the worst part of loving him; the lies were coming so easily to
her. The irony was his trust hurt her more than his discovering the
truth ever would. She set her rosary and crucifix aside, then
leaned back in her chair pressing the backs of her hands to her
aching eyes. “Oh, Able.”
O kind and good Mother, whose own soul
was pierced by the sword of sorrow, look upon us while, in our
sickness...

The deceit had not been so easy when Able
first brought her into his mission. Then, she had been deep in the
cups of her own penance, and his religious fervor had been an easy
crutch to grab onto.

She had traveled from South Africa to the New
York on her 23rd birthday for a United Nations New Millennium
conference on feeding the poor in developing countries. All so long
ago now, but she had special interest in the topic since her
country had been in dire need of such assistance. The new regimes
that followed Apartheid were behaving no better than the worst of
Africa’s despots. That on top of years of inequity had left her
country grossly out of balance. Most of her black countrymen
remained poor and were now being joined by thousands of whites.
Competition for oil company revenues fueled the pirate governments
and the distance between rich and poor had grown to almost
insurmountable proportions.

How young she had been then, how idealistic.
Then she said aloud: “How naïve.” Everyone involved was naïve. When
the news hit about the pedophiles in the church and Rome’s
complicity in their crimes there had been a mass exodus among
parishioners. And Cawood’s faith had started to die.

An unnerving thunderstorm en route to New
York City had filled her with dread. The pilot announced over the
intercom that their landing might be delayed. Rainwater flew from
the wings in spraying torrents as they landed at JFK International.
She waited an hour for the ride she had been promised, and finally
hired a taxi to take her into the city.

She could still remember the vehemence with
which the rain fell, how it tore at the pavement around the car.
Its froth formed a violent film on the windows reducing the entire
world to a flat gray wall. Pedestrians moved past like shadows,
flitting from blurred doorway to blurred doorway.

The Change came while she was wrestling her
bags through the door of the Venture Inn. The television in the
lobby asked people to standby for a report from the U.S. Department
of Defense. A crowd of guests and New Yorkers sheltering from the
rain gathered on the snowy blue rug in front of it. Cawood joined
them, watching. The screen flickered from gray, to snow, to black
and then projected the image of a news anchorman. He fixed his
steady gaze on the viewers.