Last Mayor (Book 9): The Light

by Grist, Michael John

  They came to Lara, and silently folded themselves against her body.

  From another vehicle, Lin followed.

  Alan tried to stop him, clutching for him from the doorway, but he didn't dare stretch his hands far beyond the RV, as if a fell wind might blow them away. Instead he watched helplessly as Lin closed the distance.

  The boy looked at Lara. He didn't say anything for a moment. Then he hugged her, and after that the flood began.

  Cynthia came, and with her scampered a horde of Drake's empty-headed children. Lydia followed, and various husbands and wives of Drake, all of whom Lara knew to their cores, all their sins and virtues, until at last Alan came as well.

  "What now?" he said, as he stood by her in the darkness.

  Lara smiled at him. "You know the drill. Popcorn. Movies. Welcome home."

  He nodded absently, remembering a memory from very long ago. "Right," he said, then, "Crow…"

  "Crow," Lara repeated, and smiled again. "I know."

  His eyes glimmered. He turned, and with Lin's hand in his own went back to the RV, where they quietly began unpacking tables from the side storage.

  George came. He dropped to his knees before her.

  "Please," he said.

  Tears sped down his cheeks. He was holding a Colt in one shaking hand. In his mind raced the memory of Crow burning, with him the first to throw a torch. "Lara, I'm sorry."

  "I'm sorry," she said, her eyes welling up too. "I forgive you, George, if that means anything. Do you forgive me?"

  Fresh tears welled in his eyes. He looked at the gun, confused and unsure. "I can't… I don't know how to live with this."

  "Please try," she said. "You're a good man. I saw that in you. We'll need good men."

  He broke into sobs. Lara saw the movement before it could happen; the gun lifting to his temple, the shot ringing out. She took the gun barrel before he could lift it, and guided it to herself.

  "So start with me," she said. "I'm guilty."

  Like a drop of blood in water, her request blurred into his shame. He stared at her, then at her children, so close and unafraid, then at the gun, and trembled harder.

  "I can't. I don't know…."

  "I'm sorry for what you had to do, George. It wasn't you, but it was. Just like I killed Witzgenstein. Please try to live with it. It's the only way we learn."

  He cried out. Lara caught his shoulder as he sagged, and pulled him close. He was broken inside, and thought he would never recover. But that decency was still there; Lara could feel it flickering beneath the weight of shame.

  It could come back. That was hope.

  "Come here," she said to Margery, who stood nearby with tear-stained cheeks. She came in and they embraced together.

  It wasn't easy. It couldn't be easy.

  After a time the two of them wandered off together, and began setting up a grill with canned hot dogs.

  Alyssa came. She stood before Lara, still holding her shotgun.

  "You won't forgive me," she said. "You shouldn't. I'll never forgive you."

  Lara looked at her. She remembered the fire, and forcing Frances' face into the mud. That was cruel. Alyssa had been standing next to her. The hate there was real, and could well break their group again, but that was part of life too.

  "Will you try to kill me?" Lara asked.

  "Perhaps," said Alyssa, wrestling with conflicting emotions. Lara could see that she wanted to believe in something, but didn't know what. "I might kill you tonight."

  "So kill me."

  Alyssa sneered. "You'll stop me. You have the power. The same power she had."

  Lara nodded slowly. It was true, but what did power matter, now? What good was power when you had to deal with real people, whose memories would last as long as they lived? It had to be win-win. "If you try to kill me, we'll all lose, Alyssa. This fragile truce?" Lara clicked her fingers. "It's gone. People cast on the winds, broken and alone. Likewise if I have to stop you, if I die, if I have to kill you, we all lose. Do you see that?"

  Alyssa stared. "Bullshit. You killed Frances."

  "I killed Frances. You killed Crow and tried to kill me. Still."

  "Still," said Alyssa, and raised the shotgun. The barrel holes were inches from Lara's face. She didn't flinch.

  "Cheetos," Lara said. "Did you bring them?"

  Alyssa's finger quivered on the trigger. Sweat beaded on her brows.

  "I forgive you," Lara said. "I saw what Drake did. I know who you were before. Do you remember that?"

  Alyssa gritted her teeth, remembering. She'd been a vet. She'd cared for sick animals. That was so long ago, and such a different time, but was it any less real?

  "Do you forgive me?" Lara asked.

  Alyssa pulled the shotgun back. She didn't answer. She walked away.

  The party began slowly after that, and shyly, and quietly. It never grew loud. There was no dancing, but there was a coming together, with tinny music playing from the Airstream's speakers. People who hadn't known each other finally met, exchanging names and origins. People who'd hurt each other talked for the first time. Everyone was tired, but relieved to put down their burdens for a time.

  They ate. They drank. Late in the night, they slept. It was a beginning.

  9. FOREST

  In a forest, in a clearing surrounded by gnarled old trees straight out of a Grimm's fairy tale, Lara saw Drake.

  He sat on a tree stump in the middle of the open space, whittling at his nails with a slender-bladed knife. She stood at the tree line, studying his intent expression. It was a sunny day. He wore jeans and a red check shirt, like a lumberjack.

  "Your boy's in trouble," he said, without looking up.

  He was talking to her. Lara strode out into the clearing. She wasn't afraid anymore. There was some kind of armor shielding her, and nothing he said or did could hurt her now.

  "That's because you're real, sweetheart," he said, as if she'd spoken, "and I'm just a spirit on the line."

  He laughed. He was looking right at her now. She walked up to him. The knife wasn't a problem. It all felt like a front; like behind the façade of this forest there lay a simple program running a version of Amo's Deepcraft warehouse. This was the line. Even in a dream she could recognize its telltale vibration.

  "You're a poltergeist," she said. "Not a spirit. A nasty little gremlin in the works."

  He laughed, and waved the knife in the air between them. She didn't flinch, didn't even watch it.

  "I like what you've become. You're going to need that stuff when you get there."

  Lara just watched him some more. Somewhere in back a squirrel raced around, collecting nuts for the coming frost.

  "Not going to ask me?" he asked.

  "I'm waiting for you to tell me. You're a messenger boy at best. You don't deserve any respect. You're the lowest shit I know."

  He grinned. For a second there was pain there, and she glimpsed one of the realities underlying this one; she was on the stage again and he was lying on the ground before it, his skull pulverized.

  The grin won out.

  "You'd prefer to talk to Crow, I get it, but there's not a lot of him left. That jump from the fire used most of him up."

  Lara was getting bored. "My boy," she said, bringing him back on topic. "That's what you said. Deliver your message."

  He raised one eyebrow. "All right. It's Amo. He's in the shit."

  It wasn't anything she didn't already know. She'd felt his cry of desperation from the Lincoln Bedroom days earlier.

  "And you care, because?"

  He spun the knife round his thumb; a neat trick. "I like that boy. I like you, sweetheart. Not just the figure. Not just the face. The balls. You've got a real pair on you."

  Lara reached out and took the knife off him. For a moment he looked surprised. She'd done it so easily. But then she knew him now. She'd seen him from eighty-seven different perspectives, while she'd run through her trial, and there wasn't a single secret left.

 
"Did you say that to the Portuguese girl too? To Myra?"

  He winced a little.

  Lara waved the knife before him. His eyes followed it, entranced. "You raped her, didn't you? Raped her in the woods. Raped her again in the hotel, kidding yourself that it was for her own good, then you kept going until she killed herself. After that you just let loose raping your way across the continent. Men. Women. If it was good for you, it was good for humanity, right? I'm sure you had plans for the children. You had plans for us. You raped Witzgenstein. You broke her mind. I was next on the docket."

  He leaned back a little. His eyes danced along with the swaying knife, uneasily. "Steady, girl. I'm here to help."

  Lara laughed. She leaned in.

  "You call me girl. Sweetheart. But is that what I look like to you? Since when are you so familiar with the one who stamped your goddamn lights out?"

  He tried a grin. He was leaning back so far he was almost falling off the stump. "You don't get it. I'm different now, up here. We're all clean."

  Lara chuckled softly. "Different? People like you always think they've been punished enough." She threw her arms out. "Behold Matthew Drake, father of 'the Laws'!" she let them drop slack. "You should have died on your cruise ship. You should have died a dozen times since, but you didn't, and it fell to us to punish you, to me and Amo. But dying's not enough for you. You need more. Wash your mouth out, if you think I'm your girl."

  Without waiting for any reply she stabbed him in the mouth; a straight and simple thrust. The thin blade slit into his tongue and pinned it to the roof of his mouth. He shrieked and rolled backward, but Lara didn't relent. She rolled after him, bearing him down to the ground. The knife pressed deeper, into the back of his throat and through the other side to spike into the earth.

  He tried to throw her off but he was weak. Blood welled out of his mouth and down his throat, and he began to choke.

  "It's not enough," Lara said, holding him down easily with one knee across his chest. "Not until I say it's enough."

  He tried to speak, his brawny arms wrestled at her grip, but she was stronger and all he produced was slurping, bloody spits.

  "Is this what it felt like for Myra?" she asked. "A blade between her legs while you reveled in her pain, you swallowed her humiliation down? Is that what it was like every time you raped them all, from Lydia to Janine? Spit it all up, Drake. Spit it up for me."

  He vomited blood; it washed out and over his face, over his throat and down his chest, marking him like a demon.

  Lara pulled out the knife, then just as he was closing his wounded mouth she shoved it in again, this time spearing his upper lip and digging into his gum. He shrieked and coughed red.

  "Rape," Lara said. "It isn't nice. We don't laugh that shit off. I don't care where you are, or how clean you think you've become. This is how real punishment works."

  Bubbles rose up in the red pond of his mouth. She drew the knife out and stabbed it in again, cutting through his cheek and burying into the ham of his jaw. His chin sagged as the tendons tethering it cut loose.

  "You don't get to say when it's enough."

  * * *

  She woke with a start, sweat-soaked and heart racing.

  "Hello, Lara," said a voice, and she spun toward it.

  Cynthia stood there, holding a tray. On the tray was a glass of water and a steaming meal ready-to-eat in its plastic and foil packaging.

  Shivers of the dream washed off her, vivid like dirt rinsed away in the shower. A moment ago she'd been right there, in that forest and doing that to Drake, and now…

  Cynthia eyed her strangely.

  "Drake?" she asked.

  Lara sat up, then jerked as the soles of her feet touched the floor and fresh pain flooded in. Shit! That was an easy one to forget. She'd been walking in the dream.

  "You saw it?" she asked, trying to cover the pain as best she could.

  Cynthia grinned, showing a few cracked yellow teeth embedded like dirty gravestones in ridges of empty gum. "I ain't a witch, child, but I feel you fuming with night terrors. Now that was some kind of man."

  Lara frowned, and carefully extended her legs, settling them into the ice bath set on the chair. There was fresh ice in it, and the relief was instantaneous. She couldn't help but let slip a sigh.

  "Good, huh? You bitches are all the same."

  Lara snorted and gave her some side-eye. "You bitches?"

  Cynthia sucked at her gums. "Bitches! Got two in RV three, Drake's whores, complaining of fire rash, when I ain't see them anywhere near that blaze. Two bitches in RV five, men, mind, but bitches what the hey, moaning and pissing about crotch rot from you keeping 'em sat still so long."

  Lara had to think hard to decipher all that. It was ridiculous, and she laughed.

  "Cynthia, you are a sight."

  "I ain't all that changed, woman. Now eat up. There's a council in the making."

  Lara laughed again, but took the tray. Another council, of course, after another trial. How these things went.

  The food looked unappetizing, but it was hot and tasted fine. Cynthia muttered something in particular about mad black bitches while she chewed.

  "All right," said Lara. "Settle down."

  "What's to settle?" Cynthia countered. "You've been inside my head, haven't you, rooting around where you weren't welcome? What's a little 'casual racism' amongst friends? You gonna bury my face in the mud until I choke?"

  Her eyes shone dangerously. Lara only wanted to laugh more.

  "Maybe in this dish," she said. "It looks like slop."

  Cynthia looked scandalized. "Be grateful, child. We came on you in the desert, you were all starving, the baby in your belly half-emaciated. We stuffed you full of food, if nothing else."

  Lara almost pointed out that Witzgenstein had tried to stuff in more, but thought better of it. Witzgenstein was gone now.

  "Yeah," she said lamely. "You're real kind souls, Cynthia."

  Cynthia cursed under her breath. Lara of course knew what she said, but chose to ignore it. It wasn't really racist, just more dumb hick bullshit, and despite the surface anger it hid a kind of possessive affection. Cynthia had hated Drake as much as the rest at the end, even as she'd loved him outright. To see him brought low was as much a blast as it was a disappointment. It was about the same with Witzgenstein too, burnt on the pyre.

  Lara looked out of the side window, where bright blue skies glared beneath a snowy cover of gray cirrus clouds.

  "Where are the kids?" she asked.

  There wasn't any concern there. Vie and Talia weren't by her side anymore, but she felt them nearby. It was more just something to say.

  "Playing," said Cynthia, surly now at being mocked. "Drake's little boys and girls got a fierce appetite for play. Some rough, but your kids don't hardly get touched. Couple of bruises, maybe. They throw a few rocks, sand in the eye, but folks mostly watching."

  Lara stretched tentatively. The pain in her belly and across her shoulders was right there, hot and bright like the sense of demons in the distance, but tolerable compared to the pain in her feet.

  "How long have I been asleep?"

  "I make it thirty-four hours, straight through. Folks been in and out, some paying homage, some tempting theyselves on further action. All waiting."

  Tempting theyselves. That was a nice euphemism. But she could feel the sense of waiting, humming on the line like a kind of miasma. After all these people had been through, they were hungry for it to be over, or at least moving on. The weight of anticipation was palpable.

  The next step forward was clear.

  The line was an open book to her now, and she could feel the ripples on it swelling from very far away. Amo and his black eye were stark screams popping off halfway around the world. Anna was a series of focused explosions halfway around the other way. Those weren't things she could ignore.

  She swigged down the water, then put the half-finished food to one side. "You've got me a chair, right?"

  C
ynthia grinned. "Your carriage awaits, my dark Cinderella."

  Lara laughed again. How long had she been planning on saying that? She rolled off the seat and crawled on her hands and knees out of the Airstream. The wheelchair was waiting. The people were waiting beyond that. The air felt charged as if a storm was on its way.

  10. ESCORT

  The council was bullshit but necessary, and done within half a day.

  "We go west," Lara told them, all eighty-seven assembled, "because that's where the action is."

  Some argued, some were silent, some agreed. There was debate about going back to Sacramento or making a fresh start somewhere in the Mid-West away from the cairn trail. Most just sat and listened, waiting for their fate to be determined.

  There were a lot of glassy eyes. Even the arguments raised against her were weary. These people were shattered. They had nothing left in the tank, and the stark, forthright way she stated her case was all it took to get most of them moving in her direction. So they tilted. Alyssa held out, as she'd expected. Oddly, Alan was one of the first to support Lara.

  Was he afraid of her? She didn't feel that on the line, other than a kind of caution. Maybe the other night's 'forgiveness party' had struck home, and he'd finally accepted that she meant him no harm. Probably though it was down to Lin, who now hated to be apart from Vie and Talia. He was their best friend, clinging on like a crawdad, and Alan was as much a follower as ever; now he followed his son. After so long alone in Witzgenstein's camp, it made sense that Lin wanted to have friends near his own age.

  So, this.

  The vote came and went, near unanimous in Lara's favor. "Amo's out there," she said, by way of acceptance speech and closing argument. "Anna's out there with our people, fighting for us. It's where we need to be too."

  She offered no further explanations. She didn't have any.

  They held a mass for Crow before lighting out. Lara added Witzgenstein and Frances to the requiem list. She didn't speak in the brief service, didn't even sit in the front row, but let Georgiana, who'd taken lay orders once in Methodism, speak words from the heart.