by Matt Moore
But he didn’t want to comment, call it off or settle things.
Let it burn, he kept thinking. All of it. The afternoon when the army had rolled into the city, the police had arrived at his house and brought him to a staging area at city hall. That smug army captain had taken him, the mayor and city council members on a tour of the city in an army transport. With pride, he’d shown them the corpses piled haphazardly on lawns and side streets, milky eyes in bruise-coloured faces staring out. The stink of burning fuel had burned his nose, oily black smoke curling into the sky.
“Let them deal with the fire now,” Alejandro said as some Fox anchor reported an increase in the body count.
Knocking roused him from a sleep he hadn’t intended to fall into. He ignored it and rolled over on the couch. His cell phone buzzed and the knocking resumed. The process repeated a minute later. Checking his phone, he found it was just after midnight with several texts from Cedric: “It’s me. Open up.” After debating for a moment, Alejandro got to his feet and opened the front door, letting in the cool night air and revealing Cedric. A Hawaiian shirt and cargo pants had replaced his usual suit.
“You in disguise?”
“You should come with me,” Cedric replied.
Alejandro rubbed grit from his eyes. “Where?” Past Cedric, the TV trucks had left.
“Get your ass in the car.”
At least Cedric was being straight with him. Alejandro grabbed his keys and phone and followed Cedric around the corner to his car.
“Take the battery out of your phone,” Cedric said.
“Why?”
“They can track it.”
Unsure whether to be amused or worried, Alejandro complied. Cedric started the car and took a twisting route toward the south side of downtown. Finally, Cedric pulled around the back of a small strip mall only a few blocks from Alejandro’s house. Alejandro wondered why they didn’t just walk. Then fear, cold and slow, crept up his spine at the fear they’d been followed.
Once parked, Cedric led Alejandro through the weed-choked lot behind the buildings and into a thick copse of trees that blocked out the building’s floodlights. Arriving at a chain-link fence, Cedric pushed open a flap and led Alejandro into the gloom of a parking lot in back of a small, one-storey building. It took a moment to realize they’d come out behind the church on Fuller Avenue that had been shut down since the Ascension. No lights inside or out illuminated the lot. The building itself blocked light from the Fuller Avenue.
Cedric led him to the building and knocked on a metal door. It opened a crack, then swung wide. Cedric led Alejandro into the darkness. A third person moved in the small space that smelled of dust and crumbling wallpaper. The door slammed. An overhead bulb popped on, illuminating a narrow hall with a staircase to his left descending to a doorway. Ten feet away, the hall ended in a door where a middle-aged woman wearing a clerical collar stood, hand on a light switch. She smiled at Alejandro and said, “Welcome to our sanctuary.”
Alejandro nodded, wondering what she meant but saying nothing. He wanted to get on with this. Cedric and the minister exchanged a nod, then Cedric led Alejandro down the stairs, the minister following.
The space had been a storage area, but shelves and boxes had been pushed to the walls to make room for an assortment of mismatched cots, chairs, and tables. About twenty Chancers and half as many living sat or lay on the furniture, talking in low tones, reading or just waiting. A woman Chancer knelt by a cot, stroking the hair of a living little girl and urging her to go to sleep.
Cedric walked through the room to a small cluster of Chancers, saying: “Martin.”
A portly Chancer dressed in slacks, blazer and collared shirt turned. It took a moment to recognize the missing Senator Martin Burnaby, his curly copper hair now dull pink, a ragged gouge taken out of his left cheek.
“What is this?” Alejandro asked.
After excusing himself from the group, Burnaby said, “Follow me so we can talk in private.”
Alejandro followed Cedric and Burnaby into a janitor’s closet. Burnaby said, “We’ve brought you here to ask that you use your new-found notoriety to diffuse the situation.”
“Diffuse it? People are finally doing something to help you. To free you.”
“At what price? For all your advocacy, you do not understand Second Chancers.” Burnaby paused. “Have you considered that Chancers do not eat, eliminate and only breathe in order to speak?”
“Yeah, perpetual motion machines,” Alejandro replied.
“In a sense. You see, in space bursts of energy appear and disappear at random, seemingly coming from nowhere. There are many theories to explain it, but what if this energy comes from the fabric of existence itself? A living, conscious energy which permeates all matter that some might interpret as a light.” Burnaby paused again.
Alejandro waited, impatient with Burnaby’s theatrics.
“That energy is what propels Second Chancers,” Burnaby finally said. “We are the living universe made manifest. One month ago, humankind reached some critical mass that triggered the Ascension. A transformation of living tissue into something else while our minds ascended to where we learned that all humankind is near a new plateau of being. Very soon, everyone’s minds will no longer be dependent on a corporeal form but be integrated into the fabric of existence. Become eternal.”
Alejandro clenched his jaw against tears. Lydia had said something similar on their last day together. Under control for the moment, he asked: “Why am I here?”
“To stop the violence. We are all connected and violence done to another is no different than violence done to oneself. Using violence to free us is no different than using it for our extermination. It provokes fear and panic, which are base, animal reactions. It must be through rational thought that our message is understood and our true nature revealed. All humankind can reach the plateau that we Chancers have and become beings of mind, but only if you love and accept one another. That is what the Ascension is meant to bring. It is a trial. A crucible. Yet if both sides are governed by their fear then the promise of the Ascension will have been for nothing.”
Alejandro refused to let the obviously rehearsed words sink in. They wanted him to back down, to compromise. “Even if we stop, the people who want to kill you won’t.”
“We have to take the first step,” Cedric said. “Take the long-term view. People won’t get over their prejudices easily but—”
“Why are you here, Cedric?” Alejandro asked. “You said you didn’t know what Chancers were. That you needed time.”
“I could not take the risk of revealing my knowledge of this place to anyone,” Cedric replied. “Martin contacted me two weeks ago. We’ve been strategizing about whether he should go public and take his seat in the Senate. I knew some of these Chancers are from Lydia’s group, but I was afraid—”
Alejandro’s hands balled up. “You knew? You knew and you sat there—”
“I know what they told me!” Cedric interrupted. “That Lydia kept them safe, like you said. She went to find you and disappeared. I couldn’t tell you that because you’ve been pushing too hard and I didn’t know what you’d do. But now I do and I was right not to tell you. And if Lydia is in that camp, she’s in danger—”
“She’s dead!” Alejandro exploded. “She found me and went out to bring back others and they killed her!”
Her face, motionless. Lips slightly parted. A blackened hole the size of a quarter above her right eye. One of dozens in a pile. The flames hadn’t reached her yet.
It had taken two soldiers to pull him off that smug captain.
Alejandro doubled over, sobbing. Cedric put a consoling hand on his shoulder, but he swatted it away. Straightening, he said, “I don’t care if we’re all connected or there’s some higher power because we are stupid, fearful animals.”
“Alejandro,” Cedric said, face soft in understanding. “I’m so sorry. This whole time, I thought . . . I didn’t know she’d reach you.”
“You claim to care for us, but you are motivated solely to work against those who killed your wife,” Burnaby said. “You are simply a contrarian. But know this: your wife exists. She is all around you, watching, and you can join her—”
“To hell with you,” Alejandro said. “And this place. You want to wait to be killed, that’s on you.” Alejandro passed between Burnaby and Cedric, opened the door and headed for the stairs. The minister’s shocked expression told Alejandro this hadn’t gone as planned.
“Bye!” the little girl said, waving. Her mother shushed her.
Alejandro stormed up the steps, plugging the battery back into his phone to find if any more camps had been stormed.
Gunfire ripped Alejandro from sleep. He rolled off the couch and flattened on the floor. After a few moments of silence, he grabbed his phone and searched for what was happening but found lots of questions and no answers. After a few more moments of silence, he pulled on pants, a shirt and some shoes, shoving his phone and legislative ID into pockets. Running out the front door, a few more shots echoed, coming from the direction of downtown.
Rounding a corner, strobing blue and red light painted houses and buildings. A fear gripped him that bloomed as he turned onto Fuller Avenue. A Middletown PD cruiser, lights flashing, blocked the intersection, holding back a small crowd of onlookers. Past the cruiser, a mix of state and local cruisers crowded the street out in front of the church. Bodies lay from the street, up the steps and to the Church’s double doors. Cops, guns drawn, stalked among them. The crowd flinched as an officer, a dark shape in the red-blue lights, fired a round into a Chancer’s head.
Alejandro sprinted a block east, lungs burning, and ran behind the strip mall and through the flap in the fence. Emerging, he found two patrol cars’ lights illuminating about a dozen bodies sprawled, unmoving, across the parking lot. His vision wavered, things swaying.
A girl shouting “Mama!” focused him. Two officers conversed while a third sat on the ground, helmet next to him, head hanging between his knees. A fourth, his or her face obscured by lights reflecting of the helmet’s face shield, tried to lead a little girl from the carnage. “Mama!” she shrieked again, one arm extended back while the officer tried to pull her by the other.
Alejandro recognized the girl from the basement, the one a Chancer had been trying to get to sleep. He yanked his ID from his pants and approached. “What the hell is happening here!”
One of the cops wheeled and headed for Alejandro, hand out in a Stop-Right-There gesture. The other hand rested on his gun. “This is a crime scene!”
“I’m a state senator.”
Closer, Alejandro could see the sitting cop’s shoulders spasm. He was sobbing.
“I don’t care!” the approaching cop bellowed.
Alejandro scanned the bodies—shirts peppered with holes, parts of their heads shot away. “How many did you kill?”
The officer managed to bundle the girl into the back of a patrol car.
“‘Kill’?” the closer cop replied. “They’re already dead.”
Cold horror twisted through Alejandro as he spotted the minister who had greeted him lying motionless near the rear door. Farther on, Cedric lay in a pool of blood turned black in the cruisers’ lights.
Alejandro fought to keep from buckling. But in the pause, the cop stepped forward, inches from Alejandro’s face. “You don’t get it, do you? Probably holed up in some bunker while guys like me fought these things.” The cop’s right eye began to twitch, his body trembling. “Do you know how many of my friends they got? My wife?” Tears leaked down his cheeks and spittle flew from his lips. “My kids? They’re animals! Just ’cause they’re talking animals doesn’t mean I’m not gonna put ’em down like animals!”
Alejandro bit back the response bubbling up his throat when he spotted a news van parking in the alley that ran alongside the church. He held up his hands in surrender and moved for the alley.
He’d get his message out, laying these deaths at Trumbell’s feet. Everyone would know about this senseless brutality. And not just the dead, but that little girl was a victim, too.
And that sobbing cop. Who knew what he’d been through. He shouldn’t be out there. Same with the one who’d confronted him. They needed help.
Everyone did. So lost, so broken.
Pulling out his phone to check what else might be happening, panic shot through him. He hadn’t taken Cedric seriously when he’d said “they can track it.” He’d put the battery back in while leaving the church. He tried to reject such paranoia, but how else to explain the attack? Reaching the end of the alley, guilt pressed in on him. For the carnage here. The people in Ohio and Montana. Who knew how many more?
And Lydia. If he’d let her go that first night before the military had reached Middletown it would have been different. But he’d had to fight her, to resist.
He just wanted to go home. To wrap his arms around Lydia. Tell her he loved her. Tell her how sorry he was. Ask for second chance. He’d change. Put her—put them—ahead of his work.
“Senator Gutiérrez!” A reporter he recognized moved from working the crowd and headed for him. Behind her, a cameraman set up.
Less than a minute later, they were live. Alejandro barely heard her describing the scene, wondering if Lydia was somewhere, watching him. The reporter touched his arm. “. . . and I am here with State Senator Alejandro Gutiérrez, who witnessed the event. Can you tell us what happened here?”
Alejandro opened his mouth and waited for the words to flow from their perfect place.
And waited.
The Leaving
The tinkle of the bell above the door drawing her eyes, Georgina blew out a relieved breath—Paul. At his feet, just before he closed the door, a scattering of leaves—black and curled like burnt scraps of paper—blew across the old, faded linoleum.
Aside from Mrs. D’Angelo wiping down some tables, they had Georgina’s small diner to themselves.
Good. Just how she wanted it.
Late afternoon sun through the big front window illuminated his grin, the stubble on his chin. The undone buttons at the neck of his flannel shirt revealed dark curls.
Smoothing down her apron and hoping she looked better than hideous after a day’s work, Georgina moved to the counter and said, “Hi, Paul.”
“Good afternoon,” he replied, grin growing.
Then the barnyard stink struck Georgina, overpowering the diner’s salty, deep-fried smells. That decade-old memory of Colin pounding on the back door.
But Paul was here. Now. Safe. Four days ago, when the Leaving had started, she’d looked up every time the bell rang, wanting it to be Paul. So far, there had only been word of that one boy being killed. But no matter how many times she assured herself that someone must’ve told Paul by now, she worried over whether anyone would know if something had happened to him.
He sat on the stool opposite her.
“We’re closing in about fifteen,” Georgina said. “Kitchen’s shut down, but I could get you a beer.”
“Yes, please. I’m just here to say hi.”
Halfway down the narrow aisle, Mrs. D’Angelo looked up and cocked an eyebrow.
Georgina grabbed a mug and poured his favourite draft. “Haven’t seen you around. Began to worry something had happened.” He had to know, she told herself, setting the mug on the counter. Word would’ve gotten around—new man in town, all alone, cleaning out his newly inherited grandmom’s farmhouse.
“I’ve been working on the barn,” he replied. “There are so many things to sort through.” He took a quick sip. “So what is with the notice from the police on the door? A coyote attack and curfew? Is it related to the smell and leaves turning black?”
Georgina’s stomach dropped. He didn’t know. But if he was in the barn last night . . . ?
Georgina realized she’d be the one to tell him. That was okay. She’d prepared for it, rehearsed what she’d say. Been prepared since Jefferson Hollow had awo
ke to find the leaves on all the trees fading from brilliant green to matte black, a month earlier than their usual transformation to fiery brilliance. She’d explain the smell, the leaves, and the rules everyone in Jefferson Hollow knew—you stayed inside once the sun had set.
Georgina waited for Mrs. D’Angelo to come round behind the counter. The older woman had lived all her sixty-two years in the Hollow and explained the Leaving to others, including her late husband. Between the two of them, Paul would have to believe.
Georgina opened with: “A boy was killed last night. Out in Sunrise Village. That new housing development?”
Paul leaned forward. “Oh my God. What happened?”
She’d expected he’d want details. Paul worked as a medical examiner in the city. Taking a deep breath, she began: “We don’t know—”
Mrs. D’Angelo laid a hand on Georgina’s shoulder.
In the parking lot, two pickups turned into spaces. Brawny men wearing reflective orange vests over sweat-stained T-shirts climbed out of the beds and cabs.
Mrs. D’Angelo gave a squeeze. Hurry.
Paul looked at Georgina, waiting.
She’d wanted to take her time, explain it, answer his questions. She sputtered: “At night—”
Loud, deep voices on the steps.
“Should I tell them we’re closed?” Mrs. D’Angelo asked.
Paul turned toward the door.
“No,” Georgina said, head bowed. She needed the customers. “But one round.”
The bell clanged as the men came in, heavy boots thumping, black leaves blowing in on a breeze carrying the animal smell.
Mrs. D’Angelo let out a frustrated snort, readjusted the clasp holding a bun of silver hair in place, then set her shoulders in her I work for tips posture before approaching the booths where the men settled in.
Paul touched her hand and said, “You were saying about that boy?”