She’d been right. This was a third, alternate timeline—it hadn’t reverted back to Ironwood’s timeline like he must have intended with the assassination. He’d grasped burning, dangerous threads of history and knotted them into something far more sinister. Something unrecognizable.
There’s nothing left.
She lowered herself to her knees, suddenly unable to support her own weight.
“What could cause this?” Julian asked. “Shelling? Aerial bombings?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know—we need to—we need to go—”
If it was something worse, like a nuclear weapon, then they’d already exposed themselves to harmful radiation. The thought pushed Etta back off the ground, dried the tears that were beginning to form in her eyes.
But when she turned to tell Julian, something else caught her eye—the sweep of headlights cutting through the thick smoke, brushing over them.
“Survivors, call out,” a voice crackled over a speaker, broken up by either emotion or the technology. “Help is on the way. Survivors… call out if you can….”
“Come on,” Etta said, turning back to the passage. “We need to go!”
Julian shook his head. “No—Nan—I’m going to find her—”
Etta’s words caught in her throat. If she’d been in the city, there was very likely nothing left to find. But before they could protest, the headlights found them again, and an engine revved as it raced toward them. Before the vehicle had fully stopped, a man in a full black jumpsuit and gas mask—something that closely resembled what Etta knew as a hazmat suit—leaped out of the back of a Jeep and rushed toward them.
“My God! My God, what are you doing here?” The man’s voice was muffled by his oxygen mask. “How did you survive?”
“That, chap,” Julian managed to get out, “is an excellent question.”
ETTA KNEW THAT SHE SHOULD have steered them back through the passage, but some part of her wanted to know—wanted to see for herself—what had become of her city.
She should have considered what that would do to her heart. After a while, she stopped looking out at the devastation as the military-issue Jeep bounced through the smoldering wreckage, and cupped her hands over her eyes.
This isn’t right, his isn’t right….None of this was right. This timeline…
A medic riding with them had given them both oxygen masks, which cleared her head somewhat. Etta winced as he swiped antiseptic over the cut on her arm again, and then turned to the slash across her forehead.
“Say…” Julian said, his voice trembling slightly as he leaned forward to speak to the driver. “They figure out who to pin this on yet? We’ve been a bit, uh, out of it. Trapped in that basement, you know?”
Julian Ironwood: worthless at paddling a boat, but quick with a lie.
“I’ll say,” the driver called back. “The Central Powers proudly took credit for their handiwork. Made sure to hit Los Angeles and Washington, too, just to drive the message home.”
Etta had to close her eyes and breathe deeply, just to keep from vomiting.
“Never seen anything like the flash when this hit. Millions, just—” The man trailed off.
Gone, Etta’s mind finished.
It was light enough outside that once they approached the Hudson, heading toward what the men had described as a medical camp and survivor meeting point in New Jersey, Etta could see the dark outline of a bicycle and a man against one of the last standing walls. Almost as if they had disappeared and left their shadows behind.
“Paris and London are still standing, but it’s only a matter of time,” the medic said bitterly. “This was to warn us off joining them in their fight, I bet. They knew Roosevelt was thinking about sending aid or troops over to the Brits—that they’ve been gearing up for a fight. So the Central Powers declared war on us.”
“This isn’t war,” the driver said. “This is hell. They knew we’d jump in first chance we got, and so they crippled us. They showed us who’s boss.”
Etta didn’t ask about the government, about the other cities. And she didn’t ask Julian about how they would get back to that passage, or what other ones they could reach in this year. Exhaustion swept over her. It stole whatever spark of fight she had left. She closed her eyes on her ruined city.
“Almost done, honey,” the medic said. Under any other circumstances she would have hated the endearment, but she was feeling battered, and the man had a grandfatherly quality that reminded her of Oskar, Alice’s husband. “You’ll need to find a doctor to stitch up your arm when we get there, you hear me?”
Etta couldn’t muster the strength to nod.
Where would she even start? How could anyone fix this?
Anywhere, she thought, and with everything I have.
THE MEDICAL CAMP WAS SET UP IN ELIZABETH, NEW JERSEY. Far enough from the blast site in the center of Manhattan to be out of immediate danger, but still close enough to be shrouded in toxic clouds of fumes and dust. To get there, they’d had to drive by cleared fields where the bodies of victims had been brought, some covered with tarps, others not. Etta’s breath was harsh in her ears, and she couldn’t seem to let go of the image of their twisted shapes, the way the charring had left them looking almost hollow. As much as she felt like she had to be a witness to these atrocities, that she owed it to them to form a memory of their wasted lives, Etta didn’t protest when the medic leaned over and covered her eyes.
“You don’t have to see this,” he said. “It’s all right.”
But she did.
I did this, she thought. By letting the astrolabe slip away, she was responsible; the thought left her trembling so hard that the same medic had her lie down across the seat to administer an IV.
By listening to the radio in the Jeep, Etta learned the following: the attacks had happened five days ago; the secretary of labor was now the president of the United States, as he’d had the good fortune to be on vacation outside of the District when the bombs struck; and there’d been no decision on whether or not to make peace or declare war.
“Is there a registry?” Julian asked. “A list of survivors from the city?”
“Not yet,” was all they were told. “You’ll see.”
And they did see. The old warehouse that had been converted into an emergency medical facility was wrapped around twice with a line of people waiting to get inside. Many of them—in fact, most—were African American. They, too, made up the bulk of those coming in and out of the tents that had been set up along the nearby streets. Their rudimentary bandages looked like basic first aid, not actual treatment.
“Why are there two lines?” Julian asked, sounding as dazed as Etta felt. She turned to see what he was staring at. Two separate booths, both with the Red Cross’s symbol, both handing out the same parcels of food. But there were two very distinct lines: one for white people, the other for blacks.
Etta fought the scream that tore up through her. The whole city was in ruins, millions of people were likely dead, and they still followed this hollow, cruel tradition, as if it accomplished anything other than humiliation.
“You know why,” she told him. Julian was an Ironwood; he traveled extensively; he had been educated about the history his father had created; and he was acting like none of that was true. Somehow, it only infuriated her more.
“But why?” he repeated, his voice hollow.
“Come on, you two,” one of the soldiers said.
“What about the rest of them?” Julian asked as they were walked right past the line waiting to get into the warehouse.
“Waiting for blood from one of the black blood banks in Philadelphia,” the soldier said, as if it weren’t a completely insane statement. Blood is blood is blood is blood. The only thing that mattered was type. This was an emergency, an utter disaster, and still—this.
Calm down, she told herself. Calm down…. She crossed her arms over her chest to keep from tearing the world apart around them in a rage of dev
astation. My city. These people…Etta choked on the bile that rose, and it was only by pressing the back of her hand against her mouth that she kept from throwing up until she was truly as hollow and empty as she felt.
“What are we doing here?” Etta whispered as the men led her and Julian toward the warehouse. “We can’t stay, you know that.”
He shook his head, turning back to look at the faces of the people at the door, waiting to get in. “There are open beds. Why are they outside if there are open beds?”
“They’ll be treated when the rest of the staff from Kenney Hospital arrive,” the medic said, speaking slowly, as if Julian were a child. “This way.”
The medic relinquished them to a bleary-eyed doctor, who ushered them over to sit on a cot. The man began to examine the cuts and burns on Etta’s arms and hands without so much as a word. A nurse with strawberry-blond hair eventually wandered over with a pail of water and a rag.
Julian stared at a man two cots over, quietly weeping into his hat.
“Let me help you there, sugar,” the nurse said, and cleaned away the grime and blood Etta had been carrying with her since St. Petersburg. “It’s all right to cry. It’s better if you do.”
I can’t. Something cold had locked around her core, so that she didn’t even register the doctor stitching a particularly bad cut without anesthesia. She didn’t register Julian scooting to the edge of the cot so that the nurse could lift Etta’s legs up, laying her out on the cot.
Etta watched, in some strange state between sleeping and wakefulness, as the doctors, nurses, servicemen, and families of the injured moved between the cots and curtains that divided the enormous space into makeshift rooms.
“Will you stop with this—” A nearby voice was rising, flustered. “I don’t need to be examined.”
“Madam, you do—if you’ll let me continue, I won’t be but a moment—”
“Can you not understand me?” the woman said, her voice dripping with a venomous mix of fear and tension. “I don’t want you to touch me.”
Etta opened her eyes, craning her neck to see what was happening. The doctor who had stitched her up went right to the other, badgered doctor’s side. A black doctor.
“I’ll finish here, Stevens,” the other man said. “The next shift will start soon. I’m sure they need your assistance more outside.”
“Why—” Julian had been so quiet, she’d assumed he’d gone and wandered off. “Why are there empty beds, when there are people outside?”
He wasn’t speaking to the doctors; he wasn’t speaking to the nurses, or the patients, or any one person in particular. There was a manic edge to his tone that drew eyes, nervous glances.
“I want you to tell me why—”
“The same reason,” Etta murmured, “you never truly trained your half brother. The same reason he had to sign a contract just to travel. The same reason,” she continued, “no one ever acknowledged him as being a member of your family.”
Julian turned on her. “That’s not true! That’s not! You have no idea—”
She wondered if his privilege had made him blind to others’ suffering in his travels, or if maybe it took something of this magnitude to shatter that shield of self-righteousness that being white and male and wealthy had always provided him with. Etta didn’t doubt for a second that, as the heir, he might have been protected from harsher years so as to keep him alive, but she also didn’t doubt that Julian had never been able to see further than a foot in front of him when it came to other people.
Or maybe he’d treated traveling as all of the other Ironwoods seemed to; they disconnected themselves from decency time and time again to play the parts each era demanded of them. They had seen so much, they must have become desensitized to it—the way she could watch a film, see characters suffer, but never fully invest in their lives because of the emotional distance. Because it never truly felt real; not in a visceral way.
This kind of destruction was what traveling did to people—not the travelers themselves, but their victims, the common people who could not feel the sands of history shifting around them before they were smothered.
Julian’s hands were limp at his side, turned slightly toward the room, as if he could weigh the odds of life or death for each person stretched out on a cot. He had closed his eyes; his breathing was shallow, his face screwed up. Powerless.
“Remember this,” she told him. “How you feel right now.”
What it felt like to move through the world without power, at the mercy of things bigger than you. Unable, even if just for an hour, to control one’s life. How Nicholas had felt for years, before he’d taken all of that strength she loved so much about him and pulled himself up, out, back to the sea.
Etta turned her face against the rough fabric of the cot and focused on nothing beyond her own breathing, fighting back the sweep of shame and anger.
I have to finish this. A single man, on Ironwood’s orders, had set this disaster in motion. The blast from the explosion hadn’t just killed the tsar; its effects had rippled out, exactly as Henry had said, cutting through millions upon millions of innocent lives. For the first time in her life, Etta felt lethal.
“We need to leave,” she told Julian. “We have to find your grandfather. He has the astrolabe. We can still fix this.”
Julian shook his head, rubbing his hands over his face. “I can’t go back—I can’t.”
“The survivor rosters have gone up,” she heard a soft voice say. “I’ll take you to them, if you’d like. They only account for this field hospital. We should have others by the evening.”
Out of the corner of her eye she saw a nurse leading Julian toward the entrance, where a man was hammering up handwritten lists on large sheets of butcher paper. Those who could rise from their cots did so, swarming that small space. The line outside began to push forward as well, surging toward the sheets in a tangle of arms and legs, until everyone was nearly climbing over each other to get a better look.
By the time she saw Julian again, almost twenty minutes later, the same nurse was by his side again, leading him toward an area in the far back of the warehouse that had been sectioned off by sterile white curtains.
Etta pushed herself up and followed, bracing herself for this next hit. Either his old nanny was alive, or he was being drawn back to identify a body. She caught the tail end of the nurse’s instructions as she came up behind Julian.
“…need to wear a mask and try not to touch her—the burns are exceedingly painful.”
“I understand,” Julian said, accepting both gloves and a face mask from the young woman. Her tidy uniform seemed at odds with the barely managed chaos of the place; she cast them both a sympathetic look before falling back.
Etta accepted her own set and pulled them on. She survived. What a small, precious miracle.
“They say she doesn’t have long,” Julian told her, with an odd, forced lightness. Etta knew this feeling, too, of overcompensating to rise above the pain in order to function. “The air way out in Brooklyn was so hot it damaged her lungs.”
Etta put a hand on his arm. “I’m so sorry.”
He lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “I’d like to ask her a few things, if she can answer. But mostly…I think I…”
Julian never finished his thought. He took a deep breath, smoothed his hair back, and stepped through the curtain.
Inside, about a dozen or so beds were arranged in a U shape around a central station, where two nurses were cutting bandages and measuring out medicine. The lights from the lanterns were kept dim, but the shadows didn’t hide the heavily bandaged figures on each of the beds, the blistered patches of exposed, unnaturally gleaming skin.
Julian paced toward the far right end, counting under his breath. Finally, he found the one he was looking for, and Etta saw him straighten to his full height as he moved to the small wooden stool beside the cot. He moved the basin of water onto the floor and reached for the hand of the woman on the bed.
Ett
a hung back, unsure whether or not she was meant to be listening or watching. The woman seemed less bandaged than the others, but wore a bulky oxygen mask. Her face was as pink as the inside of a seashell, and her eyebrows were entirely gone, as were patches of her gray hair.
With utmost care, Julian stroked the back of her hand, careful to avoid the IV line. Within a moment, the woman turned her head toward him, her eyelids inching open. Etta knew the precise moment she saw him and made the connection, because her free hand floated up to pull down her oxygen mask, and those same blue eyes went wide.
“You’re…”
“Hullo, Nan,” Julian said, his voice painfully light. “Gave me a bit of hell trying to track you down in this mess.”
Her mouth moved, but it was a long while before words emerged.
“I thought I might be…I thought I might have passed. But…you’re not you, not from before—?”
Etta wasn’t sure what she was asking, exactly. Julian just responded with one of his infuriating shrugs.
“Before I supposedly plummeted to my untimely death? It’s all right. It was only a bit of play. I never did go splat. You know how I love my games.”
Even in her condition, the woman, a guardian, knew to be wary of revealing his fate to a traveler—however false a fate it might have been. She blinked almost owlishly at him.
“I thought…I thought so. You’ve the look of a man now. You’ve grown so well.” As if the whole scene wasn’t awful enough, the woman began to cry. Etta began the slow process of backing away without being noticed. “I’d always hoped to see you…one last time…that you’d come to visit me when I was older, so I could see you…smile again.”
Etta’s heart stretched to the point of ripping at the unbridled emotion in the old woman’s voice.
“A fair bet, that. You’ve always known, Nan, there’s no getting rid of me,” Julian told her. “What did you say? Luck of the devil, lives of a cat? I’m only sorry I didn’t come sooner.”
The eyebrows had been singed from her face, but Etta imagined them lifting at that, just by the way her eyes took on a sudden glint. “Thank the good Lord you didn’t. Or else you’d…be…”
Wayfarer Page 29