Vivian Apple Needs a Miracle (6 page)

Finally, we park and step into the frigid air. It takes time, but eventually Julian finds a clearing in the trees. Suzy leads us through it. She holds her phone in front of her and every few minutes raises a hand in the air, then changes direction. We walk in a tight huddle. I'm amazed by how silent everyone is, how gracefully they move through the solid dark. I try to mimic them, but I'm distracted by hope.
Let Peter be here, alive, okay. Let Peter be here, alive, okay.
I try to imagine him hiding in the trees: sore, bruised, exhausted, but alive. I try to imagine the smile he'll give me when he sees me. I hold on to the thought of it because the alternative makes my knees buckle.

Last night it took hours to find Frick's compound in the clearing. Tonight we trudge through the forest no longer than forty-five minutes before the trees in our path give way to open space. Suzy consults her phone, stops walking.

“Well,” she says uncertainly. “It's within the coordinates.”

I can't see over Colby's head, so I push to the front of the huddle. Diego hands me his flashlight, but I don't need it—the moon is high and bright; it illuminates the clearing like a spotlight. I feel Harp work her way to my side.

“No.” She shakes her head. “This isn't right.”

The huge structure we saw last night, Frick's compound, the gray-stone statues that stood before it—all gone. In their place is a huge pile of broken timber, insulation, brick, and stone. I see tire tracks crisscrossing the soil leading to it.

“How could they have done it that fast?” My voice sounds small in the dark. “What happened to everything inside?”

Diego steps forward, starts giving orders. “Julian, Birdie, Elliott, Kimberly—take the perimeter. Do not go farther than the edges. If you see something in the trees, shoot once and we'll come for you. The rest of you: Search the wreckage. Look for anything that would indicate the Church and the corporation have been here. Vivian, Harp—with me.”

We're so close to where we found the truth last night that it's like being shot through with electricity—I feel the nerves at the nape of my neck tingle. We follow Diego to the edges of the rubble and answer the questions he asks—Where was the entrance? How many stories?—as best we can. His eyes are fixed on the debris, so he doesn't notice that I flinch every time I see a new, unfamiliar shape in the dark. Everything looks like a body—certain piles of crumbled brick, shards of wood and metal. Everything looks like Peter's body. Sweet Peter Ivey, who looked me in the eye and told me to run. What if he didn't get out before they tore the building down? Harp grabs my hand and squeezes. Her dark eyes are filled with worry. She's thinking it too.

“I don't know what I hoped we'd find,” Diego mutters. “A piece of paper that says, ‘We faked the Rapture; suck it, America'? They wouldn't leave anything important behind if they anticipated you coming back. And the fact that they tore it down means they did.” He frowns. “I can't believe you made it in as easily as you did. It was across the country and in the middle of the woods, but you walked right in. Doesn't it almost feel like someone
wanted
you to find it?”

After a while, the soldiers begin to drag identifiable bits out of the larger pile: empty, misshapen drawers from file cabinets; insulation and bits of wire; shards of broken glass; a few dusty pillows; a bathroom sink. Diego has Harp and me inspect each item, but everything is exactly what it appears to be.

I can just about sense Diego getting ready to turn back when Harp yelps and dives into the refuse. She pulls something out—a large, gray, V-shaped stone.

“This was part of one of the statues!” she exclaims. “Adam Taggart's arm.” She turns the shape to its side and I remember the way Peter's dad was memorialized in the statue garden: arms akimbo, proud expression.
She shall be burnt with fire.

“Did you find anything else like this?” I ask the group.

Everyone shakes their heads except for Suzy, who notes a weird slab I think may be part of one of the Three Angels' wings. The sight of it is surreal, like a prop left over from a dream, the link between it and reality. But the militia still seems skeptical. Diego kicks carelessly at the stone wing, and I realize he's disappointed. These little bits of statue don't prove anything. The only thing they prove is that Harp and I have been here before.

“It isn't much,” I say. “Nothing to topple an institution with, anyway.”

Nobody answers. I hear approaching footsteps and turn to see Julian emerge from the dark, carrying something long and slim in his hands. I can't make it out. He hands the object to Diego. “Don't know if this is anything that means anything, but I found it propped up behind a tree outside the clearing.”

Diego turns, holding the object up to the light of the moon, and the clouds shift, and I feel something soar inside me as I recognize it.

The sledgehammer from my parents' basement.

“That's mine,” I say in a shaking voice, holding out my hand.

Diego gives it to me. We used the sledgehammer to break into the compound. I hadn't realized I did not have it until now. In my head I see Peter leaning against the car as I cross a Pittsburgh street with it propped on my shoulder, the slight sexy rise of his eyebrow.

That's a good look for you.

“We left it outside after we broke the window,” Harp remembers out loud. She turns to Julian. “You found it leaning against a tree?”

Julian nods. “Yep. Sitting there, propped up casual, waiting to be found.”

I run my hands along the heavy iron head, trace my fingers over the slim handle. Maybe there's a missive etched into the wood:
I'm okay. I'm on your side.
But the sledgehammer feels like it always has. The fact that it's here is the only message.

We trudge through the forest, leaving the clearing at our backs, while the predawn sky brightens to a deep, soft pink. When we see the break in the trees through which we came up ahead, Harp falls slightly behind, ducking to tie her shoe. I wait with her.

“Do you think Diego's right?” Her voice is soft—the militia is only a few yards away, and whatever she's saying she doesn't want them to hear.

“About what?”

“That it was too easy for us to get to the compound. That someone wanted us there.”

She rests on one knee below me, looking up, her face drawn and troubled in the early morning light. I'm exhausted, drained of all my angry momentum; all I can do is shake my head. I begin to walk away. “No, Harp.”

“Peter was the one who told us about the compound in the first place.” She gets up and joins me down the trail. “He was behind the wheel as we drove into Point Reyes. He got us ‘lost' near the start of the path. What if he knew where we were going all along?”

I wheel around to face her. “Why? Why would he have done that?”

“He's Taggart's son!” Harp insists. “Isn't it possible he could have had reasons?”

I don't understand why Harp is pushing at this impossibility, why she would want it to be true, but for her sake I try to look at it objectively. I think about Peter like he's not the first boy I ever kissed, like he never made me look at the stars when I was scared, like he never made me feel like I was invincible. It's true we made it to the compound with some amount of ease. It's true also—I feel a pang to admit it to myself—that he didn't tell us Adam Taggart was his father until he absolutely had to, that he might have otherwise never told us. But he is so much more than his father's son. And last night, he told me to run. Doesn't that count for anything?

“Please, Harp.”

“Vivian—”

“Drop it, okay?” My voice rings sharply against the trees; a nearby bird squawks in response. “If you really believe this, believe it quietly. I don't want to hear it anymore.”

Harp bites down on the inside of her cheek; after a moment, she nods. We follow the militia to the cars waiting for us. I'm sure Harp means well, but I can't look at her as we climb into the back seat and start the drive back to San Francisco. She's only looking out for me, I know, but she's distracting me from the most important mission I have right now: To find Peter. To save Peter. She's making me doubt myself.

I close my eyes so no one will talk to me, and soon the rumble of the engine has lulled me into a nightmare: pitch-black forest, the thin branches of trees whipping at my face. Something chasing me, I don't know what. A path that twists and turns but always leads to a body on the ground: my father, curled lifeless on his side. But I have to keep running. I go as long as I can without looking back, until I feel like I can't run anymore, and then at last I turn and the thing that's chasing me is there waiting, it has always been there, and I know at once what it is.

I recognize the blue of his eyes.

If I thought we'd be a natural fit with Amanda's militia because of how hard we fought to make it here, how hard we're willing to fight to take the Church of America down, I was wrong. As days go by, Harp and I are shut out of all knowledge of their ongoing plans. Diego treats us politely, but distantly, like we're guests overstaying our welcome. He's disappointed that the trip to the compound yielded nothing, and he's distracted by whatever Amanda is planning. He gives us no sense of what they're up to, though it's clearly something big. Yesterday we watched Colby unload a small truck's worth of guns and ammunition. And every time we try to enter Cliff House while Diego runs a strategy meeting, he falls silent until Winnie escorts us right back out again.

I hate being shut out. I almost regret telling Diego the truth about the Rapture so quickly—it's as though the information is his now, his to act upon as he and Amanda desire. I feel powerless, restless. Peter is still out there; if I had any idea where he might be, I'd go find him. But I can't talk to Harp about it—his name goes unmentioned between us, a source of a friction we both try hard to bury.

At least we feel safe. These are not the sleepy hippies that were the New Orphans: all day the soldiers train, run, research, and sharpen their individual skills. They're too busy to befriend us. Harp has flirted with them all—Julian, I notice, especially—but they won't let themselves be distracted from their mission. Suzy spends afternoons hacking into Church news feeds to look for evidence of the missing Raptured; she finds nothing she can use, but thoroughly dismantles the sites themselves, severing the corporation from its audience. Robbie and Kimberly are both accomplished sharpshooters—they take Harp and me out early one morning and let us watch as they snipe birds off the trees along the cliff side.

“Birds are quick,” Kimberly notes in appreciation, raising the rifle she always carries strapped across one shoulder. “But they're no match for Dragoslav.”

“Dragoslav?” Harp echoes, after the blast has exploded the stillness of the morning. We watch a flash of gray-white fall from a branch. “Did you . . . name your rifle?”

Kimberly smiles proudly, nods. “I have Serbian roots.”

Elliott makes explosives. Frankie throws knives. Tiny Birdie gives daily lessons in hand-to-hand combat. Even kind, maternal Karen delights in showing us the ropy muscles of her calves—two days ago, she lifted a chair over her head with Harp sitting in it. When we're with them, I feel like I'm part of something big, something effective.

But more often, Harp and I are left to entertain ourselves while the militia discusses plans we're not at liberty to hear. Over a week into our stay in San Francisco, we waste time down by the wreckage of the old bathhouse, tightrope-walking along the stone edge of what used to be a swimming pool, while Diego and the others huddle inside Cliff House.

“This is
bullshit
,” I seethe. “I could throw knives, if I wanted. I could be really good at it.”

“You'd be amazing, Viv. You'd be an Olympic-level knife thrower.”

Harp balances a laptop on one arm, unconcerned by the waves crashing precariously near. Ever since our faces appeared on the Church's feed, she refreshes it constantly. The battery on the stolen laptop has long since died, but Suzy gave us one of the militia's computers to track the progress of the Church's hunt for us. So far, we remain safely hidden.

“It's
sexist
, is what it is,” I continue. “Because we're teenage girls, we can't be soldiers? We can't know what the big plan is?”

“It's not like there aren't women up there, Viv,” Harp notes. “But I take your point. Diego's a little slimy. I haven't forgiven him for that ‘trip to the mall' thing. Like, fuck
you,
dude. I don't even
like
malls. What does Winnie see in him, anyway?”

“Don't ask me.” Yet another topic I'm not interested in discussing. Winnie's been so busy helping Diego that we've barely spoken since she rescued us.

Harp turns her attention back to the feed. I stare out at the ocean crashing white against the rocks ahead. It's beautiful here in California, and I am relatively safe, but I feel as if all my parts are held together by a single small knot at the center of me, and I'm slowly watching it unravel. My father is dead; my mother is not at all who I thought she was. Winnie and Peter are both their own mysteries. Even the thing that has given me purpose for so long now—fighting the Church of America—feels frustratingly beyond my grasp. Standing here staring out at the Pacific, I realize that everything I've been is literally behind me. I am standing at the edge of the United States and I am somebody new entirely.

Beside me Harp gasps at the screen. My heart lurches—
Peter!
—and I race to her side, nearly stumbling into the still waters of the pool. Silent in her shock, Harp holds the laptop out to me, and I gaze eagerly down at what she sees.

A picture of two men shaking hands in front of a large group, standing in a sun-drenched place I recognize as the Keystone base of the New Orphans. Goliath, their handsome leader, turns halfway to the camera with a megawatt smile. But it's the man whose hand he holds who makes me feel unsteady: ruddy-cheeked, broad-shouldered, pudgy, and bald, he's unmistakably one of the Three Angels. The caption reads: