Niko now spoke. “But Father, where can we go? Escaping Infinius is one step. Where can we escape to?”
“We’ll escape to Zamora,” El said.
“If it exists,” Niko murmured.
“I’m sure of it,” El said.
Niko paused as if searching for other options, but then relented. “All right. I’ll trust you. Maybe it does exist. And if it does, and you can trust me, we’ll find Zamora somehow.”
Gruen had never actually seen gold coins.
Where and how the priests had acquired and stockpiled the stacks of coins El and Niko handed to Father Ignatius from the depths of the converted mechanic pit would forever remain unknown. There were bags and bags of them. Sturdy canvas bags stored in a metal trunk with a heavily padlocked latch. Niko had to struggle to break that lock using a crowbar Father Ignatius found in a closet.
“Did you know about this?” He looked at El with wide eyes.
She shook her head. “Not that it was gold. The sisters told me there were valuables, but not down here. I only knew about the things about the past that I told you about and other things that were stored here, but I had no idea . . .”
She looked up to the top of the steep set of steps where Father Ignatius was waiting. “How much should we take now? You might need some later. After we’re gone.”
It sounded so permanent, suddenly, and El felt a wave of fear about the future. She faltered at the thought of depending on Niko, of being alone with him. She looked around to reassure herself, but he was counting the bags and had opened one.
“I don’t know the value of even one of these coins,” he said. “But they must be worth plenty, so I think if I give twenty of them to Gruen, he’ll keep what he wants and pay off his guy with the rest.”
“And leave the others here?” asked El.
“Yes,” Father Ignatius called down to them. “Leave them.”
“What about these?” El picked up the roll of papers she’d taken from Niko. “You asked me to keep them safe. Before . . .”
Niko stood up and took the papers from her. As she handed him the roll, he saw in her eyes fear and something else. A cold loathing.
“I promise you, El. You will never have to fear me in any way again. Never. I want you to know that.”
Whether this reassured El or not, she was curious about the trunk’s contents. Looking down in the faint light, she saw an old photo album and an oversized envelope. She stooped down and opened the album. Inside were pictures from a wedding. Old pictures, but not ancient. The bride was beautiful in a simple white dress and held a bouquet of white roses. The groom was . . . El couldn’t believe it. She had seen him on the InComs before. Villinkash. Making frightening, angry, threatening speeches. She squinted at the picture and was about to lift the album out of the trunk to see it in a better light.
“Hurry up, you two.” It was Father Ignatius standing at the top of the steps, peering down at them.
El closed the album and stood up. Niko closed the trunk with a thud. There was no time to say anything else or investigate further. They climbed the steps and closed off the pit once again. Father Ignatius pulled the rug over the trapdoor, and they moved the heavy table over it.
El said to Niko, “I’ll pack for you,” and walked away to begin gathering what they might need. She had no idea how long they’d be running or where they would hide, but her fear had vanished and been replaced by caution.
The image of the girl in white holding roses stayed in her mind. Later, much later, she would wonder about that picture and what other secrets were hidden in the old trunk.
The cart trundled along with Old Merrie singing her songs as if this was lunch hour on any other day. People ran from street to street, not knowing when the next explosion would rock the city or where it would happen. Siren wails filled the air. Dust clouds fell intermittently here and there, like isolated spring showers.
One man dressed in a business suit yelled out to her from the other side of the street as he hurried by, “Old Merrie! Get out of the street. Go home.”
She just smiled and wobbled along, calling back to him, “Old Merrie need to make a living out here. I got fresh pineapples and some yams today. Make you a nice supper.” She chuckled and bounced her cart over a flat stone that had landed on the street.
Finally, a woman stopped her. “You got potatoes, you say?”
“No, yams today. Special price. All this . . .”—she waved her hand around at the buildings—“not much business out here.”
“Well, I still gotta make supper for my kids. Give me four yams and take this money.”
“Now ain’t that right?” Old Merrie leaned down and pulled opened the tin door of one compartment. She lifted out four fat yams and placed them in the woman’s sack. “We still got to eat, no matter what they doing. How ’bout a fresh pineapple go with them yams? Mighty tasty.”
The woman hesitated, looked around and up as if expecting a bomb to fall on them, then said, “Yes. Give me one of them too. My kiddies love pineapple.” She handed Old Merrie some bills.
“Mmmhmmm, you gonna have some nice supper tonight.” She counted the money, nodded a thank you to the woman, and stuffed the bills into a pocket of her voluminous skirt.
The woman hurried off. Old Merrie knocked once on the side of the cart with the flat of her hand as the cart bounced on. She skirted The Hovels on a narrow street that seemed to lead nowhere. But Old Merrie had been plying these streets so long she knew exactly how each one connected to another, which were dead ends and which ones wound around until they reached where smugglers hid to make it through The Perimeters.
Along with the sirens, the sound of motorcycle engines could be heard. Every now and then the screeching of brakes added to an overall sense of a blanket of turmoil over the city. The bumping and clattering of Old Merrie’s fruit and vegetable cart drew no unwanted attention no matter where she pushed it.
Old Merrie’s cart rumbled along down a street near the convent. She pushed it forward with more caution than usual. Now she didn’t sing or tout the fresh vegetables or fruits hidden in the large confines of her food cart. The tattered beach umbrella that shaded the cart and partly protected her from the scorching sun weaved from side to side like an intoxicated tightrope walker.
Old Merrie squinted at the buildings, their doorways, the vacant lots she passed. She kept her left hand hidden in a pocket that held, among other things, a half-used ball of twine, a dried-up rubber bottle stopper, a screwdriver, a hand towel, a pair of broken sunglasses, two plastic drinking cups permanently stuck together, three playing cards—an ace, a queen, and a three of clubs—five keys on a brass ring, a roll of toilet paper with few sheets left, and a small unopened bag of peanuts. With her hand thrust deep into this pocket, she fingered a solitary gold coin Father Ignatius had given her not one hour ago.
Stopping her to buy an orange, which she’d just offered to a passerby as one of the fresh fruits she had to sell that day, Father Ignatius had leaned in close to her and whispered something that surprised her more than anything she’d ever heard. He bought the orange, and she mused on his request as she left him and headed in a circuitous route toward the convent, which was now coming into view. She saw its old familiar door, its backyard garden hosting a variety of weeds that, in previous days, never would have been allowed to compete for survival. She wanted to be sure no one had followed her, so she took her time, stopping now and then to rest or to sell something. She also had a few fresh pears, hard-boiled eggs, and freshly baked flatbreads that stacked neatly inside the cart’s front compartment. She had tried to barter for lettuce but, finding none, had settled for parsley. If no one else bought it, she would make use of it in a soup.
Once the lunch hour had begun, she usually sold out of the fresh produce quickly by singing of her wares. Today it was even more important that she clear her cart’s compartments. The large block of ice she had placed inside the insulated top every day maintained a cool enough environment
below to keep her produce fresh. Other vendors cooked food for the office lunchers, but Old Merrie was a specialist in things most of them thought it too much trouble or too dangerous to obtain. She specialized in things that required dealing with Scroungers and smugglers, and often paying off guards at The Protections.
So Old Merrie was well known out at the western edges of the city. Well known and certainly no threat. Now she came closer to the convent. Would her cart fit through the fence, allowing her access to the back door the Father had told her about? Would she be able to complete her mission?
Arriving at the fence, she saw that her cart would never make it through. She even doubted if she alone could squeeze through that narrow opening. Her only other option was the front door. Well, she shrugged, it was worth trying. If they did not answer, she would have to get through that fence somehow, which, she determined, would arouse even more suspicion if anyone happened by.
She drew her cart across the sidewalk and tapped on the door softly. Since there were no offices in this neighborhood, no one was on the street looking for a place to eat. She glanced around, still fingering the gold coin deep inside her pocket. Again she rapped on the door, this time daring to sing out a tune she made up on the spot.
“Old Merrie’s come to call,” she sang. “Old Merrie with her fresh things to eat and her song to sing.”
She knocked again, insistently, and then saw El peering through a crack from behind the boards.
Old Merrie leaned forward. She recognized El and held a finger to her lips.
“The Father sent me,” she said. “You got to be quick and get in my cart. You in the front storage, the boy in the back one because it’s bigger. Then we got a long way to go, and you two got to be real quiet the whole way.”
El turned to Niko. “This is it,” she told him. “It’s time to leave.”
They left from the small door the way they’d entered.
Old Merrie pulled the cart right up to the fence and opened both storage bins. She had already moved all the food to the smallest top one to make room for her passengers.
Niko climbed in headfirst. He folded his knees up as far as he could, held his knapsack against his chest, and crammed his feet against the sidewall. He knocked once on the door to let Old Merrie know he was in, and she shut and locked the front panel. El climbed into the small side bin the same way. She also held her knapsack against her chest and placed another small bag on top of it. On this she rested her head by turning sideways because the bin was too low for her to sit up straight. Old Merrie locked her in the same way, patted the top of the cart once, and, with a great effort, pushed it from the sidewalk onto the street.
With her mouth set uncharacteristically hard, she began the long push to The Protections toward the opening of a tunnel where Father Ignatius had told her they would make their escape that night. Where were they going, Old Merrie had asked him, for risking everything as she was, she felt she had a right to know. The gold coin was a bonus, but it meant less to her than being alive after all this was over.
“Zamora,” he’d told her.
“Ah,” she’d said. “Toward the Glimmer.”
In his cushioned, vaulted office in The Compound, Villinkash hadn’t stayed calm for long. He barked orders and paced like a convict waiting to be strapped into his death chair. As morning faded and the sun rose higher in the noon sky, his rants turned to threats. He ordered more and more uniformed squads into the streets and peppered the InComs with dire warnings of what was to come. He screamed about collaborators and traitors, about filling the camps and meting out harsher treatment than had ever been administered, about ordering the camp guards to squeeze their existing populations into tighter quarters in preparation for an enormous influx of new “workers.”
Since there was no controlling him, Huston said he was going to personally supervise The Perimeters. He left the Overseers to mill around and carry out the flood of orders the Premier would continue to unleash all day.
When Huston left they were taping a series of personal messages to be broadcast over the InCom. Messages vilifying Niko as a traitor and accusing El of bewitching the winning racer into betraying his duty to the people and The Race, messages designed not only to distract people but to work them into a frenzy. Indeed, there was always a certain segment that would reply to hate with deeper hate, to violence with more violence, to irrational threats with their own irrational threats. Some people, when whipped into a frenzy, lose all humanity and act as a mob with one dysfunctional brain.
Huston had other priorities. He foresaw the chaos in the city’s immediate future and tried to figure out where Niko would go to get help.
Huston ordered his car and instructed the driver to take him to a house high on a hill at the northernmost quadrant of The Compound. It was a rambling house in a hacienda style, with arches and an inner courtyard with a fountain. A high wall surrounded it with bougainvillea so thick the wall was completely obscured. On the iron gate that stood closed to intruders, a heart surrounded by roses had been welded into the middle. When the gate opened, the heart separated into two halves.
Huston got out of the car and pressed the intercom buzzer. A voice asked who it was, and he leaned into the microphone and quietly said his name. The gate slowly opened. Huston got back in the car and drove forward. The gate closed with a clank.
“Wait here,” he told his driver. This loyal man had been with Huston since the beginning. “Don’t get out of the car.”
The driver nodded. “Yes, sir,” was all he said. His face, as always, was impassive. If Huston spoke more than a few words to him, he prefaced them with the man’s name, Zeke. He was a big man with rocklike hands who always wore a navy-blue suit and red tie. His hair was cropped close, and there was a visible scar at the back of his head down to his neck. He never turned on the car radio or spoke to Huston unless spoken to first.
Only once had he ignored a directive from his employer and left the car to protect Huston. It was on one of those nights when Huston had some business to conduct on a dark street beyond The Hovels. It had only taken one well-placed blow. Huston never mentioned it afterwards, but a month later, a box filled with cash appeared in Zeke’s apartment. More money than he had ever seen. There was no note. Now he watched Huston walk to the front door, which opened before he could pull the chain of an old-fashioned bell hanging from a hand-hammered brass hook.
A small woman in a white domestic’s uniform swung the door aside to let Huston enter. Then the door shut with a soft thunk. Without speaking, she led him down a hall to a room with one glass wall overlooking a courtyard. To one side was a garden full of blooming plants and butterflies darting from flower to flower. Hummingbirds fed at hanging tubes of sugar water. They chased each other away or hovered, awaiting a turn. The garden was, in reality, a screened enclosure designed to imprison these delicate creatures who spent their entire lives without ever reaching the world beyond.
Huston stood at the entry to this room as the uniformed woman hung back to let him enter. Seated in a wingback chair covered in flowered chintz, a woman sat with her hands folded in her lap. A small matching couch and another wingback chair were placed with a marble coffee table in the middle, forming an intimate seating area. There was an antique rug on the marble-tiled floor and a European-style crystal chandelier hanging from the middle of an ornately inlaid ceiling. Old oil paintings on two walls had a vaguely familiar look, as if one might have seen them in a museum. The remaining wall housed books floor to ceiling, many in heavy leather bindings.
The woman wore a soft gray dress and an off-white silk blouse with a diamond pin at the collar. It sparkled in the afternoon light, as did the rather large diamond ring on her left ring finger. Her hair was carefully braided and coiled into a circle around her head. It had two elegant gray streaks at her temples but was mostly a dark reddish brown. She wore little makeup, but what she did wear enhanced her eyes and mouth in a way that made Huston remember another time and place. The s
cene seemed to him like a set in a 1930s movie he had once seen. The woman could have been the actress playing that part of a genteel woman who had become embroiled in an unsavory situation and was now trying desperately to hold onto her aristocratic status and remain above the dishonor that had been thrust upon her.
When Huston appeared in the open double French doorway, she looked up from a book in her lap. She did not smile but nodded slightly to the servant, who slipped away. Huston closed the French doors behind him and walked down the few shallow steps into the pleasant, sunny room.
Standing in front of her, he leaned down and took her right hand in his, lifted it, put it to his lips, and kissed it lightly.
“You never change,” he said slowly, quietly, as if in a church.
“Won’t you sit down?” She motioned to the couch, but he took the other wingback chair closer to her.
She knew he would tell her the reason for his visit. But he wasn’t ready yet because this was a place where he might allow himself to ponder “what if.” And to remember what used to be, when he had been much younger. Before he had turned himself into what he was determined to become. So he let his mind wander back in time to that beautiful night, hours filled with a thoughtless freedom when each moment seemed an hour. How her body had answered every one of his commands and her murmuring voice had led him further and further still. He could still see her long hair spread out behind her in a soft, loose cascade.
“I’m surprised you still remember,” she said. And snapped the book closed.
A Place Called Zamora Page 18