Threadbare- The Traveling Show

by Alexandra DeMers

  Amandine felt her stomach churn. It was him. Carver was the inquestor at my house that night. This whole time he’s been toying with me, hoping I would lead him to more rebels. Instead, I led him to Marmi. I led him to René. How could I have been so stupid?

  Her reaction angered him. “You can’t honestly expect me to believe that you didn’t know your mother was Cleo.” Carver spun his pistol in annoyance, and it flashed white with each rapid rotation. “I thought your naivety was just a front. Cleo was so smart, so dangerous, and so cunning. But this?” He heaved a sigh, deflating like a tire. “The proverbial apple fell from the tree and rolled down the hill. Well, it’s not the exciting grand finale I was hoping for, but let’s be optimistic. At least we won’t come away from this empty-handed. You and I will both get what we wanted.”

  “What do you mean?” Amandine asked fearfully.

  “I mean,” Carver snarled. “I get a raise for capturing Cleo’s daughter and a circus-tent full of your rebel friends while you get to see your mother again.”

  “You can’t imprison me,” she cried. “I’ve done nothing wrong!”

  “Imprison you?” He laughed, and the deep, heartless sound chilled her to her core. “No, it’s far too late for that. You’re going to be executed tonight in the city square right beside her. I’m sure you want to catch up first and tell her all about your pretty costumes and your new boyfriend, so I’ll let you ride in the same truck together.”

  He beckoned with his gun and the officers at her arms began moving her towards the prison. “What?” she gasped, voiceless with terror. “Execute us?”

  “Rolled away down the hill and landed in a cow pie,” Carver muttered. “Somebody tell the warden that I’ve arrived and that he needs to change the lineup for the festivities tonight. Let’s get a move on! The trucks are loading soon!”

  Coronado and René burst into the building. All heads whipped in their direction and Amandine cried out in fear for her life.

  “It’s them!” shouted one of Carver’s officers. He pistol-whipped Amandine to stop her screaming and her eyebrow split in a burst of blood.

  “A trick! I knew it! I knew it, I knew it, I knew it!” Carver punched the air ecstatically. “Rebel raid! Kill them!”

  A guard pulled the alarm. The room flashed red, and a siren wailed outside, rising and falling in pitch like a tidal wave across the entire prison. René and Coronado barely dove behind a bench in time to avoid a hail of bullets as chaos broke out once more.

  “¡Mierda!” Coronado covered his head. “¡Esta era una idea estúpida! ¡Maldita sea!”

  One of Carver’s men wrapped an arm around Amandine’s neck to get her under control. She kicked wildly and hit Carver's hand with a crack that sent his gun sailing across the room where it clattered to the floor at René's feet. The two cowering behind the benches stared at it.

  “What are you waiting for?” Coronado yelled over the thunderous gunshots. “Save us! Shoot them!”

  René slowly reached for the nickel-plated 1911 as their concrete cover crumbled around them. It was heavy and warm in his hand, shining like the sun. Gripping the handle, he used the windows to count the guards reflected in the glass, all lined up behind the desks.

  Side by side, like soupcans on a fence, he thought. I can do this. I can stop them. They’re not men. They’re villains.

  Just beyond the guards, almost out of sight in the glass, Amandine was being dragged by her neck from the room. She would have been nearly invisible, faint as a ghost, if it wasn’t for the blood running in a bright, red stripe down the front of her dress. René paled. Fortune had offered him one last chance, and he was running out of time.

  They aren’t men. They’re not. Just targets. Soupcans in uniforms.

  To Coronado’s horror, René stuffed the gun in his belt. He waited until the officers paused to reload before he held up both hands and rose to his feet.

  “Damned pacifist,” Coronado muttered miserably. “You’ve killed us. We're going to die!”

  “He's surrendering,” one officer declared.

  René glared at his surroundings and swallowed hard. He looked from guard to guard until his eyes finally fell on Amandine. The girl was weakening and blinded by blood. She slowed her struggling and tried to figure out why nobody was shooting anymore. Fearing the worst, she meekly called his name.

  “René?”

  “He’s alive.” Carver shook out his injured hand and flexed his fingers. His tone was almost helpful. “He’s given up.”

  René took a deep breath and suddenly both fists ignited at his sides. “Given up?” he cried. “Never! I’ll see you all burn in Hell first!”

  Fear, anger, and desperation drove him into a frenzy. His body lurched forward. He threw two giant fireballs at the covering officers, setting their desks ablaze. He leaped over the benches, yelling like a madman as fire poured from his outstretched hands. He felt another fireball go roaring past his head; Coronado had materialized beside him. The illusionist cackled and pitched fireballs with dramatic flair.

  Raw, animal instinct kicked in when Amandine realized that the building was on fire. She thrashed violently against the Inquestor. He nearly had her to the prison gate when René jumped over the burning desks. Carver swung wide, but René was faster. He ducked and slammed his palm directly into his chest. The Inquestor’s jacket exploded into flames. Carver shrieked and bolted deeper into the prison, beating and clawing at his burning clothes.

  Amandine tried to stand up, but her shoes slipped on the bloody floor. René tossed her over his shoulder like a canvas tent as he dashed for the door.

  Coronado was brawling with an agent when he saw the pair retreat. “Bastardo!” He ended the fight with a punch to his opponent’s throat. He was about to head after them when he spotted a singed officer reaching for Amandine’s suitcase by the front desk. Coronado whirled around, stomped on the lobster-red hand that was latched to the handle, and burst out the door with the suitcase over his head.

  René threw Amandine into the truck and pushed her down onto the floor of the backseat. Coronado tossed her suitcase in on top of her and sunk down low behind the steering wheel.

  “What are you waiting for?” René cried. “Drive!”

  Coronado shook his head and reached over the seat to press René's head down as well. “If we start tearing out of here, they will see us for miles. Here, we are a black truck sitting amongst other black trucks. I think we stand a better chance at hiding.”

  “And the writing on the side?” Amandine peeked between her fingers covering her wounded eye. “This truck’s got your name on it.”

  “They won’t see any writing,” Coronado said with a touch of pride. “And if they check, they won't see anything in the back, either. Nothing, except for Sangria.” He glanced at the tiny window that separated the cab from the cargo area. “I hope.”

  “I don't like this, Antonio.” René pulled out his handkerchief and held it tightly to Amandine's brow. “We're sitting in plain sight.”

  “Shut up and see to the girl, will you?” Coronado snapped. “I promise you, we are completely invisible. Just... don't move.”

  René sighed and rubbed his blackened hand across his face, leaving a smear of soot like war-paint over his eyes. “This might be a foolish question, but... are you alright?”

  The moment he asked this, Amandine sobbed uncontrollably. She snorted back her tears and hiccuped, “I am now. Thank you.”

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t really know. I went in, gave my mother's name, then all of a sudden they pulled guns on me.” She lifted the handkerchief and decided that her bleeding had slowed enough that she could try to clean herself up. “It was a nightmare. I was telling them, 'Caroline, I want Caroline,' and they kept saying, 'Cleo, she's after Cleo!'”

  “Your mother is Cleo?” Coronado piped up again. “If that’s true, she’s not only a rebel fighter, but the one in charge. She's second only to Tall-Me.” He laughed dryly, pass
ing them a canteen of water he always kept in the cab. He also passed a flask, but not before he took a swig of it first. “If I had known— if I had any idea your mother was Cleo, I never would have let you leave the camp. Quite frankly, I never would have let you join us in the first place.”

  René soaked the handkerchief in water and wiped her face clean. Once he had done that, he took the flask and dribbled some of its contents onto her split brow. She flinched.

  “Sorry,” René said sympathetically. “I know it hurts.”

  “It's alright.” She touched his arm to reassure him. “It won't get infected now.”

  “You're going to want me to stitch that up,” Coronado said. “It's split pretty wide. If I could get into the back, I could get my medical bag.”

  Amandine shook her head. “That's not happening.”

  “It must, otherwise—”

  “No, I mean, you aren't stitching my face. I've seen the repairs you’ve made to your own clothes, and your stitches are about as straight as a question mark.” She pulled her suitcase up beside her on the seat and rummaged for her sewing kit. “I'll do it myself.”

  René felt a little queasy at the thought of Amandine stitching herself. She sensed this, so she gave him her hand mirror to hold; he could help without having to look.

  “You're welcome for that suitcase, by the way,” Coronado said sarcastically, peering up over the dash. “You nearly left a load of information for the inquestors to track us down with.”

  “I figured it would burn to the ground with the rest of the building,” René replied. “What's going on over there, anyway?”

  “It seems the fire might have been put out. There's a lot less smoke coming from the windows, and nobody's running as fast as they were a few minutes ago. There is some business with men and trucks at the gate, however.” He furrowed his brow and scanned the small crowd milling frantically at the gate. “I'll let you know as soon as I see something.”

  Amandine whimpered, winced, and stamped her feet, but she managed to get three perfectly straight, decorative stitches in.

  “Blue?” René asked with amusement once he finally allowed himself to look.

  “It was the first spool I picked up,” she admitted. The adrenaline had finally begun to subside, and she tenderly took his hand, blood and soot intermingling between their fingers. “Thank you for coming back for me.”

  “I had to,” he said. “Every second that passed, I felt like I had made the worst mistake of my life.”

  “René was crying,” Coronado put in with a giggle.

  “We stayed to see if maybe you were turned away,” René went on, ignoring him. “I didn't imagine... I didn't want to believe that you'd be hurt.”

  “I did,” the Illusionist interjected again. “Never mind being Cleo’s only living relative, if you so much as use the same aftershave as Tall-Me, they'll throw you in this hole until the next public execution.”

  René let Amandine lay on the seat where she’d be a little more comfortable while he took the floor. “So Cleo is your mother,” he mused. “You had no idea?”

  “I had an idea that she dealt with some rebels, but not that she was their leader,” came her baffled reply. “Honestly, I thought her biggest secret was that she had a new beau. She’d moon around the house sometimes, and she’d come home from her travels with stuff I don’t think she’d buy for herself. I tried to talk to maman about it. I wanted to tell her that I thought it was alright to move on, but she acted very guilty and completely clammed up.”

  “Marc Antony is practically in love with her,” Coronado said from the front. “Maybe he’s the boyfriend. Maybe he’s actually your father.”

  Amandine laughed at the absurdity. “There's no way. My father is dead. Marc Antony can't— there's no way DJMA is my father.”

  Coronado’s eyes appeared over the seat, and he raised a dubious eyebrow.

  “Okay, I know I was way off about my mother,” she said. “But my father was a proud man. He was kind, but extremely serious when it came to sewing and sailing. He was a true blue American patriot to the core, and he died at sea six months after he left us. Marc Antony is the exact opposite of my father in every way. They don’t even sound alike.”

  All of DJMA’s broadcasts obsessing over Cleo fell into a new light now that she knew he was referring to her mother. Perhaps he really was the mysterious boyfriend.

  “But now that you mention it, who is Marc Antony? Who is Tall-Me?” she said. “Do I know either one of them? Did they ever come by the house?”

  “A popular theory is that Tall-Me doesn’t actually exist,” Coronado said. “He’s a fictional character made up by Marc Antony and Cleo so that they can give credit to independent uprisings without implicating anybody. Nobody knows anything for certain about Tall-Me; not his real name, what he looks like, or where he's from. The things people claim he’s done vary from the unlikely to the downright impossible. All we know for certain is that a man wired the police after robbing the storehouses in Nieuwestad and said, 'My name is Tall-Me, and I am the people's will,’ before vanishing without a trace.”

  Tall-Me's first public attack happened long before Amandine ever suspected Caroline of any rebellious activities. She remembered it well because that day she was so hungry, she licked her finger and tried to pick up any crumbs that might have been hiding in the breadbox. She remembered envisioning the storehouse on the harbor, stocked stories high with flour, beans, and canned goods. DJMA made Tall-Me sound like a modern-day Robin Hood, robbing the rich to feed the poor of Nieuwestad.

  Something occurred to her. “Do you suppose he meant 'Ptolemy?'”

  “What?”

  She lifted her head up. “Ptolemy. You know, since we have Antony and Cleopatra? Ptolemy Soter cleaned up Egypt after Alexander the Great conquered it. I suppose that’d be President Fairchild, in this case.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Our library was loaded with history books. Dad caught the Egyptian fever back in the twenties, and he never really let it go.” She used her fingernail to scratch dried blood off of the face of her locket and added, “That’s also why my middle name is Helen.”

  “Well, ‘Ptolemy’ would make more sense than a weird code name like ‘Tall-Me,’” Coronado said with another sardonic chuckle. He stopped short, suddenly alert. “They're starting to take people out.”

  Amandine and René sat up just high enough so that they could see too.

  Guards surrounded chained men in red jumpsuits, running them single-file outside. Carver stood out from the crowd since he was missing his coat and hat. His clothes were singed, his black hair hung loose in his face, and he paced like a caged animal in front of the prisoners. He was soon joined by another important-looking officer in black.

  “Another inquestor?” Amandine asked softly.

  “I don’t think so,” Coronado replied. “Look at the red dog patch on his shoulder. He must be the warden.”

  The warden spoke seriously with Carver until two more guards appeared, pulling a prisoner by the arms. The prisoner was chained, hooded, and thrown to his knees before the high officers.

  Carver yanked the hood away, and Caroline’s wild hair spilled out.

  “Maman!” Amandine squeaked.

  Caroline was furious. She was shouting something, but they couldn't hear it in the truck over the sirens. Whatever she said, it clearly upset the NAR agents and amused the other inmates. She spat at her captors in defiance, earning a kick to the stomach from the warden that buckled her in two. The warden stepped on the back of her neck and leaned forward, crushing her face into the pavement.

  He called for something, and a rifle appeared. It was Cleo's signature weapon, a 50-90 Sharps, and Carver eagerly grabbed it up. The Inquestor admired the etched walnut stock for a moment before he aimed the heavy gun at Caroline's head.

  “Amandine, por el amor de Dios, don't look,” Coronado rasped. “Please, mi cariña, look away.”

  No one mov
ed; everyone stared, completely frozen in horror.

  But Carver didn’t shoot her. Instead he stood back with his arms crossed smugly around his new prize and the warden called for something else. A knife was brought to him. He wrapped Caroline’s hair in his fist, forcibly lifted her to her knees, and sawed all of her dark hair off at the scalp. Amandine wept for her mother. The NAR agents cackled at her humiliating, shorn head. They wolf-whistled and pinched her while she tried to shuffle to her feet.

  Suddenly, with a ferocity that Amandine had never seen before, Caroline pounced like a lion and bit the warden’s nose. He screamed. He slashed at her with the knife and she fell back, her face split open from hairline to cheek.

  Amandine wailed and threw herself at René.

  “Shh! Shh!” He clutched her head against his chest. “Amandine, be calm! We will think of something!” He stared at Coronado. “Antonio, what do we do? We can’t possibly take them all out!”

  “No.” He drummed his fingers anxiously on the steering wheel. “There are dozens of them, maybe a hundred, not including those who might already be in the trucks. I might be able to release the prisoners and perhaps they—”

  He didn't have time to finish the thought. Caroline and all of the other prisoners were loaded up into the surrounding trucks, and several officers came jogging in their direction.

  “Uh-oh.” Coronado scooted down out of sight. He held up his fire-throwing hand at the ready, but the officers completely ignored them and climbed into the surrounding trucks. Coronado started his engine at the same time as the others, and he fell into the back of the line leaving the prison.

  “Where are we going?” Amandine asked timidly.

  “Freedom Festival, I'd guess.” He swiped at his hairstyle so that it better matched the other guards. “I had forgotten until I saw them bring everyone out. They need her alive for the public execution tonight.”

  René’s mouth fell open. “And... we're just going to attend?”

  “No, we aren't just going to— look, at the very least, we are still hiding in plain sight. If the opportunity arises to escape or to help... somehow...” Coronado let the unlikely notion hang as he checked his mirrors. “Will somebody make sure Sangria is in the back?”