The Last Survivors (Book 5): The Last Refuge

by Bobby Adair

  "You're spinning a web of lies to take my eye off the truth," Franklin muttered, not wanting to look away from the passive embers and risk getting burned by Fitz's fiery rage.

  "And what truth is that?" Fitz's tears were flowing in full. "What truth has you in such a childish mood that you have to pout in the Temple and then come in here and treat me like a worthless whore?"

  Franklin mustered his courage and looked up at Fitz. "The truth is that you bedded Tenbrook to win his favor because you think I'm losing, and he's going to win."

  Fitz raised her arm and slapped Franklin across the face with every bit of strength she possessed.

  Chapter 75: Franklin

  As Fitz reached back to slap Franklin again, she shouted, "If men didn't think with their cocks they'd do no thinking at all!"

  Franklin took the slap across his face and looked at Fitz with no change in his expression. He was more disgusted by her touch than the sting of her hand hitting his face.

  Fitz swung her arm to slap again, but Franklin surprised her by catching her wrist. He spat, "Don't hit me again."

  "Or what?" Fitz snapped back.

  "Or I'll kill you." Franklin didn't know where those words came from. They'd materialized out of his jealousy, out of her betrayal, he supposed.

  "Then go ahead." Fitz reached back with her other arm and slapped Franklin across the cheek. "Kill me." She pulled away, but Franklin wouldn't let go. She went anyway and dragged Franklin toward the door. "Take me into the square and put me on the pyre."

  Still, Franklin held onto her wrist.

  Fitz was crying out loud as she fumbled to get the door open, elbowing back at Franklin, who wouldn't let her go.

  Finally, she loosed the latch and swung the door open, putting all her rage into slamming it against the wall. The bang resounded through the Temple as she stormed into the hall, pulling Franklin behind her. "Burn me! Burn me tonight if that's what you want!"

  When they entered the Temple's main room, Franklin let go of Fitz's wrist. Dozens of heads were sitting up between the dark pews and staring at him and Fitz. They were aghast.

  Fitz stopped at the front of the Sanctuary, just in front of the lectern, where one end of the center aisle led to the giant pair of doors at the other end. She spun on Franklin and shouted in a voice that filled the giant dark space, "Do you want to know what happened? Do you want to know how Tenbrook makes love to a woman?"

  Franklin didn't answer because he didn't want to know, not one bit of it. It was bad enough knowing it had happened.

  Fitz grabbed the front of her nightgown. "Did you ever think for one moment to ask how my new dress got ripped when you saw me stitching it?"

  Again, Franklin didn't know what to say.

  "No?" she taunted. "Of course you didn't. All you cared about was what was underneath." Fitz grabbed the cloth of her gown and ripped it apart, sending buttons bouncing across the floor. "He tore my dress just like that." She dropped the gown off her shoulders, exposing her nakedness underneath. The dress slipped down to her hips, and she pushed it past, letting it fall to the floor. She leaned her head back, exposing her throat. She pointed at a yellowish mark below her jawline. "Do you see it?"

  Franklin stepped back.

  "Look at it!" she demanded. "Is it a smudge? Is it the remains of a bruise? Or is it right where a man's strangling hand would squeeze a woman's neck? It is, isn't it?" Fitz glared at Franklin, whose mouth was hanging open, completely unprepared for everything Fitz was doing.

  "Did you ever ask how that got there, or were you too busy kissing and stroking to satisfy yourself to care about the marks on my skin?" Fitz showed Franklin fading bruises on her arms and scabs on her knuckles. "I fought him. I punched him, but it did no good."

  She turned around and showed him her back. "What about those scabs in the shape of a man's bite, you selfish imbecile? Did you not care where they came from? No, you didn't. Or the other bruises and cuts." Fitz collapsed to the floor, crying aloud. "You didn't care. Tenbrook attacked me and beat me. Yes, I went there to seduce him for your sake, to get him to force Father Winthrop to go on the expedition. I was trading that for you, even though it disgusted me to do it. And he beat me anyway. He hurt me. He tortured me because he's a twisted man that only gets pleasure through pain. It was General Blackthorn who protected me from him, who nursed me for a week in his house until I was well enough to come back here."

  "Do you know why, Franklin?" Fitz's voice lost its steam. "Do you know why I endured that in silence? I did it so you'd never know, because I knew you were such a lovesick puppy you'd have to do something to get your revenge on Tenbrook. And the sickest part is that your revenge would have been for you and your pride, not for what Tenbrook did to me."

  Fitz jumped back to her feet. Her sobbing had come to a stop, though her face was thoroughly soaked with tears and her eyes were red and puffy. She glared at Franklin, and then at each of the clergymen in the room. "Look," she ordered them. "Look at me. See my bruises. See my humiliation. This is what your sick-minded rules do to me and every woman in these walls. Your twisted thoughts and unclean souls make this world. It is all of you who are guilty. So don't look on me and judge." Fitz knelt down, picked up her gown and looked at Franklin. "Are you going to burn me?"

  Franklin said nothing. He was too ashamed to speak.

  She shouldered past him and marched down the hall. "If you're not going to burn me," she called over her shoulder, "find another room to sleep in. You'll not be coming to mine."

  Chapter 76: Beck

  It had been a long day of walking followed by a futile attempt to sleep. Finally, Beck sat up and looked around at what he could see in the dim glow of the fire's embers. At the end of the day, they'd found the remnants of another ancient building in a patch of woods near the coastline, a simple, two-story structure with walls and stairs going up the side, and a roof solid enough to trust in case it rained. Oliver, Melora, and Ivory were sleeping. Jingo, however, was not in the room. Had Beck not been getting used to Jingo, he might've been alarmed. But not now. Jingo was an enigma. He looked like a demon, but he was the smartest, most peaceful man Beck had ever met. Just as Ivory had promised that first day they'd met.

  Beck stood and carefully placed his feet, wanting to minimize noise as he made his way across the room. He pushed aside a clump of branches, crossed a doorway, and stepped out into the night.

  Beck looked east to see the moon rising into a cloudless black sky over a calm ocean. The moon was a magical sight, a white and gray sphere that was round just like the earth, as Jingo had said, but smaller, and so desolate it didn't have air a man could breathe.

  Wanting very much to look at the stars, Beck walked to the end of the patio and stepped onto the half crumbled stairs that ran up the side of the ancient house. He climbed, careful not to step where the ancient stone had crumbled away. He'd pay for that mistake with a twenty-five foot fall and a broken bone. Without a healer around, that error might be a death sentence.

  Once at the roof, he spied Jingo sitting with legs crossed, looking out at the moon coming up over the distant water. Jingo said, "Beautiful, don't you think."

  "Yes," Beck agreed as he crossed the roof to sit beside Jingo.

  "Can't sleep?"

  "No. Too many thoughts in my head. My imagination is running wild trying to picture how the world used to be, how it might be again."

  Jingo laughed, but it was an empty sound.

  "You don't think it can be?" asked Beck.

  "I don't know," said Jingo. "I often wonder if we reached such heights of technological achievement before we were ready, or by accident. We got lucky once and followed the technological and cultural path from simple hunters and gatherers to the complex global civilization that we had. I wonder if that path is scattered with so many pitfalls, that an attempt to follow it a second time would inevitably fail."

  "Surely that can't be true," said Beck.

  "I don't know," said Jingo, "I truly don't. As a
dvanced as we were, as much as we'd learned, the world still held many secrets. We had no idea if we were the first people to know what we knew."

  Beck turned away from the silver moon and looked at Jingo. "What do you mean?"

  "Time slowly erodes the evidence of our existence."

  Nodding, Beck said, "I understand rot and I understand rust. I see how the ancient stone buildings slowly crumble. Are you suggesting that one day, they'll disappear altogether?"

  "Exactly," said Jingo. "You don't believe that's completely true. I can see it in your face. But I assure you it is. There is so much in science you simply don't understand. I have lived over three hundred years." Jingo stood up and waved a hand down the coast. "I was here when humanity numbered in the billions." He looked at Beck. "The billions. Can you even comprehend that number?"

  Beck looked at his hands. "Theoretically."

  Jingo laughed, "I supposed we all comprehend it that way. It's a number so far beyond a man's intuitive sense that we can only understand it as a concept."

  Beck nodded because he didn't know what else to do. Jingo's words were loaded with so much meaning that Beck often felt lost when listening.

  "All up and down this coast, little towns thrived," said Jingo. "Where we are now, five or six thousand people lived in wooden houses on the hills with views of the ocean. Outside of town, within ten miles, lived another five or six thousand. My wife and I used to come here before our daughter was born. We'd stay for the weekend and walk by the ocean and eat at the restaurants and dance in the bars."

  "It's hard to imagine," said Beck.

  "Of course it is." Jingo sat back down. "So much of our life would be alien to you today. Now, I can't even show you the places I used to take my wife because most of them have rotted away. The concrete sidewalks are still there, but they're overgrown by plants, and the roads are replaced by game trails. The point I was making, Beck, is that there is little evidence that this town was ever here, and I knew it was here. I used to come here. What will a person think when he comes here in a hundred years time, a thousand?" Jingo stomped his foot on the concrete roof. "This place won't even be here. It's only been three hundred years, and you can see the cracks in the concrete walls. The steps are falling apart. In three or four thousand years, one would have to dig deep and look very carefully to find any evidence that people ever lived here."

  Beck shook his head, "It's difficult to accept, but it is also sad."

  "It's sad but it is life. People come into this world from their mother's womb, they live and they smile. Hopefully, they love. And then one day they die. Their bodies are buried or burned and nothing is left but dust. Even the people who knew them pass away and no records exist that they ever lived. That is the story of humanity."

  "Jingo, I came up here hoping for a better view of the sky and feeling content. Are you trying to make me sad?" Beck frowned at Jingo in the darkness.

  Jingo shrugged. "No, I'm just trying to answer your question."

  Chapter 77: Franklin

  The Temple sanctuary became Franklin's new home. He could have taken any of the dorm rooms in the back of the Temple. He could have taken Winthrop's reeking, windowless room. He could have moved into the one he'd shared with Oliver. None of those rooms provided anything he needed.

  The only thing he needed was Fitz's forgiveness, and the only thing he yearned for was to hold her in his arms again and know that she loved him.

  The first few times Franklin knocked, Fitz told him to go away. After that, she ignored him. She wouldn't speak to him when she walked past the pews on her way coming and going, which she did at all hours of the day and into the evening. She always had places to go. And visitors, women, came to see her in her room, sometimes one or two, sometimes a half dozen or more. They flowed in and out whenever she was there. When she wasn't, they marched through the Temple, ignoring Franklin and the fasting clergy, and then marched back out again, no interest in anything at all but Fitz.

  As Franklin sat on his pew, staring and ruminating, he couldn't stop wondering what Fitz was doing. At first, he thought Fitz's friends were coming to comfort her over her broken heart. That was just the sort of thing women did, right? He imagined them in there talking about what an unsupportive, self-centered ass he'd been. He wanted to hate those women, because the more he imagined them in that room talking to Fitz, reinforcing her anger, the harder it would be for Fitz to forgive him.

  But then Franklin cursed himself silently, because he was doing exactly what had gotten him into trouble with Fitz in the first place. He was letting his jealously and insecurity convince him of a whole litany of fictions that put both Fitz and the other women in Brighton in a bad light. And then Franklin spent an hour or so telling himself what a worthless, unclean man he was. No wonder he'd ruined his relationship with Fitz. He didn't deserve to have such a beautiful woman in his life.

  And so it went.

  Periodically, Novice Joseph would come in and take a place beside Franklin on the pew and beg him to eat. Franklin didn't. He saw no point in eating. In fact, he'd lost all desire to eat ever again. The idea of food never crossed his mind except when Novice Joseph came to speak of it. Even the smells from the kitchen were no longer tempting. In fact, they ran counter to Franklin's goal. He was thinking that maybe if he sat in the pew long enough, and refused food long enough, he might shrivel up and turn to dust. Then he'd no longer have to suffer through the memories of his long list of mistakes.

  That's what Franklin wanted, for his suffering to end.

  Chapter 78: Franklin

  Franklin listened to the sound of rain pounding on the Temple roof. The rain was coming down in torrents, probably flooding the streets and turning the fields into swamps, surely pouring into people's houses. If it got bad enough, the river might come out of its banks and wash away sections of the circle wall. Stories told of it happening long ago.

  Franklin tried to recall the last time it had rained so frequently. He couldn't. This had to be the dreariest weather of his life. And it was fitting. The thunderous clouds smashed each other in the sky and blazed lightning down on everything below, drowning the whole flat earth with their tears and matching Franklin's mood exactly.

  It was as if the world felt his pain and were crying with him.

  Franklin liked that idea.

  No man, no matter how alone he tried to make himself, wanted his misery to be a personal thing. As much as Franklin pretended he didn't like the clergy spread among the pews and fasting along with him, he preferred it. And now the heavens were joining them.

  Franklin leaned back on his bench and stared up at the Temple roof, lost in the blackness of the night shadows far above him. He felt the rumble of the thunder and the pounding of the rain. He felt the saturating humidity in his clothes, and he smelled the rain in the air.

  As he took in the sensations of the storm, allowing himself a respite from his wallowing self-pity, he sparked a sliver of a thought, a thought so different, so out of place, shining so brightly distinct, that it felt like a renewing ray of sunshine.

  No.

  He didn't want renewal and sunshine.

  He wanted black storms until his bones were dust and his name was forgotten.

  But even as he pegged his identity to the idea of roiling clouds and the violent thunder, he couldn't help but think of the natural course of things, the morning after. Storms always passed. They washed the world clean, and the sun always returned.

  What if sulking wasn't the only path? What if there was a way to win Fitz back?

  Maybe there was.

  Fitz wanted to change Brighton. She had big ideas, and she saw the roads to her goals. She'd pushed Franklin along one of those roads. It also happened to be the road Franklin wanted to travel—to Winthrop's seat on the Council. But where both Franklin and Fitz wanted a less brutal Brighton, Tenbrook had a different goal. He wanted all the power in his hands to do what he wished. And he was winning.

  Franklin had spent days f
eeling, among other things, that Tenbrook had already won.

  But Tenbrook was nothing more than a cavalry officer who only knew how to bully his men, whip his horses, and kill stupid beasts. He was no mental match for Franklin, especially with Fitz at his side.

  As brilliant as the lightning in the sky, Franklin had an idea to put all the pieces of the mess back together again.

  Chapter 79: Franklin

  Franklin hurried down the hall, knowing that he had the answer to everything. He stopped at the room he'd shared with Fitz, put a hand on the knob, and paused. Inside, he heard the voices of a dozen women talking all at once. It was late for Fitz to have so many guests. Still, Franklin would not be put off. He knocked.

  Immediately, the sound inside the room stopped.

  No one invited him in.

  Franklin knocked again.

  "I won't need you until the morning," Fitz called, as if talking to Novice Joseph, or one of the serving girls.

  "It's me," Franklin said.

  A long pause.

  An older woman's voice said, "Go away. Come back another time."

  That made Franklin angry. He thought of flinging the door open and throwing the bunch of hens out of his Temple. How dare they tell him to go away?

  Franklin grasped the doorknob as he weighed what to do, and it occurred to him that throwing these women out would win him no favor with Fitz.

  Patience.

  "Please talk to me, Fitz." He wanted to pound his skull on the thick wood over his choice of words and tone. He didn't want his request to sound like begging.

  Indecipherable whispers passed back and forth inside for long moments until they suddenly ceased.

  Footsteps sounded, coming toward the door. Fitz said sternly, "I'm busy. Return in the morning if there's something you wish to say."