by Frank Rich
We stood quietly on the edge for a moment and tried to understand what had been gained, what was lost.
"Monique left," Marlene said. "She didn't say anything. I guess she's just going to run."
I imagined her out on the road somewhere, with a satchel full of money. "Yes, I imagine she will. Thanks for patching me up."
"I wonder why she didn't kill you."
I shrugged. The truth was I didn't know why Monique hadn't finished me. Maybe she believed in something more than I did. Maybe she was right. Maybe love was the strongest after all.
"Are you going to stay?" I asked.
She laughed. "I have to. I helped tear it down, so I have a responsibility to build it back up." She half turned to me. "I guess you're leaving."
"Yeah. I've always been better at tearing things down than building them up."
"We still owe you a lot of money."
"I've taken all I can from Rob." I looked back at the skimmer. "I'm going now."
She moved into my arms. "You're not very good at goodbyes, are you?"
I smelled the wind in her hair, heard the gentle rhythm of her sobs, touched the tears on her cheek. I looked inside, and there was something, a tiny stirring. "Maybe I haven't lost everything after all."
"Huh?" she said, pulling away.
"Nothing."
Her eyes peered into mine. "You think we could have ever made it, Jake?"
"Only as much as we wanted to believe." I kissed her once and left her on the edge, staring into the heart of the storm.
25
I piloted Remi's skimmer off the roof and pointed it west. The skimmer slipped through the thin layer of safety between the storm of man below and the storm of God above, steering around thick columns of smoke stretching up to meet the low black sky. Lightning crackled angrily to my left and right, mimicking the fires raging below. Swarms of fat SPF transports cut through the dark clouds and descended on the city, beetles eager to retake the dung heap.
I looked into the face of Denver and saw a funeral pyre. Here's your rescue of the people, here's your revolution, here's your purification by fire. A laugh rose from the black of my heart. Let it burn.
"You can come out now," I said.
There was a small sound in the darkness behind me. "How did you know?"
"Simple logic. You wouldn't have gone downstairs, and none of the skimmers were missing, so I figured there was a fifty-fifty chance of you being in this one."
"I don't know how to fly these things," Monique said, sitting on the seat next to me. "Are you angry, Jake?"
"About you shooting me?"
"Yes."
I thought for a moment. "I guess I had it coming."
"I had to do it." She laughed. "I, who claimed that love would conquer all. When it all balanced out, all I could feel was hate for the loss of my father."
"I understand." I slid her a look. "Do you still want to shoot me?"
She locked eyes with me, startled. "Oh, no. It was just something I had to get out of my system."
"I see."
She looked out the window. "You never planned on staying, did you?"
"I never thought about it. I didn't expect to live this long."
She nodded. "Where are you going now?"
"Back to the City."
"What about the desert?"
I shook my head. "It took Denver to show me I can't escape the inescapable prison of reality. I wasn't running from the horror of humanity, I was running from the horror inside myself. And that would follow me anywhere, even the desert."
"You've finally realized you can't go on killing."
"No, I've finally realized I can't stop killing."
She looked out the window. "The beast isn't inside you, Jake. You've become the beast."
"I always was. I just didn't want to believe it until now."
We rode in silence and the burning city passed beneath us.
"You think they'll make it?" she asked.
"They have a chance. The Party won't like losing a city. They'll try and take it back, but they won't have any easy time against Remi's machine. The Party knows the times, so they won't fight an expensive battle too long. They'll accept their fate and compromise. The Party will probably appoint them directors just to smooth it over. I think the Party is a lot more afraid of the Remis of the world than revolutionary councils."
"So nothing will change."
"Not really. The revolution won't spread beyond Denver, and sooner or later the council will have to get down to the business of running the city. To do that they'll have to negotiate with the Party for food and other necessities."
"I hope things work out."
I glanced at her. "You're on the rebel side now?"
She shot me a sharp look. "I've always kept the band's interests at heart. I'm the one who talked Remi into keeping them around. He wanted to have them liquidated."
"You're also the one who called in the spifs at the band house. Tell me, did you do it to avenge your father or to get in good with the winners?"
She acted surprised. "I didn't call them."
"What?"
"I didn't call them, Jake, I swear it."
I stared at her. "Don't he to me about this, Monique."
"Jake, I am not lying."
"My God," I said, trying hard to reshape the jumble in my head.
"What is it?" Monique asked.
"No wonder she shot Mack — he must have known. Hold on." I spun the wheel and turned the skimmer around with a lurch. I hit the throttle, and the skimmer jumped through the smoky air.
"What's wrong?"
"Maybe nothing, maybe everything."
* * *
I dropped the skimmer on the pad and popped the hatch. "Stay here!" I shouted, and leapt to the roof, drawing my pistol.
I descended the stairs slowly, my belly a twisting snake of black dread. Dead silence filled the space between my steps, and the fresh odor of cordite drifted in the still air of the stairwell.
I came out into the lobby. Cliff lay facedown on the carpet, his torso splattered with wounds. Kerry lay not far from him, half of his head gone. A coldness settled on my back and spread through my limbs. I'm numb. I told myself, holding back the sickness. I'm completely, utterly numb.
I crept through the lobby, not letting my eyes linger on the bodies. Tiny whispers carried from Remi's office, like the rustle of leaves. As I approached the open door, more bodies came into view beneath the wispy snakes of cordite smoke. Stevo lay in a fetal position just inside the doorway, a hole in the back of his neck. Tomas sprawled deeper in the room, his shattered body contorted in the agony of death. Like a werewolf came through and tore them apart, I thought. An invisible werewolf.
I crept closer to the door, seeing deeper into the room. John and Pieter lay near the bar, touching at the shoulders. A bottle of liquor sat on the bar, and two glasses were spilled near their bodies. Killed while making a toast, I figured. There was still a ghost of a smile on Pieter's face.
The whispering came from the left, out of view, near Remi's desk. I approached the threshold of the office, tightening my grip on the gyra, fighting back an overwhelming sense of surreality. I passed through the threshold and faced the desk.
George sat in the camera chair, his right eye a bloody hole, the headrest of the chair splattered with blood. His left eye was wide open, and his jaw was still moving. Marlene stood in front of the desk, her back to me, speaking into the phone. A machine pistol lay on the desk, a bulbous silencer attached to its stubby barrel. She cradled the phone between her head and shoulder, freeing her hands to wipe at the front of her blouse.
My jaw began working, grinding, trying to speak the language of the beast. "You," I said.
She turned around quickly, the phone dropping to the floor. Her hands froze to her heart, partially hiding the blood splattered on the white of her blouse. She backed against the desk like a trapped animal, her eyes wild with fear.
"I know this looks bad, J
ake, but I can explain," she said, her eyes flashing to the machine pistol on the desk.
I wanted to express hatred and anger and horror but found I couldn't; I'd gone completely cold. Tears clouded my eyes, and I thought it strange because they weren't mine. I was far, far away. Too far away to care or hate or cry.
"I… I don't know what to say," Marlene stuttered. "You… you know as well as anyone, that there are no rules, after all, there's nothing wrong with what I did. As many as you've killed, you must understand that."
"I know," my mouth said. "Go."
"What?"
"Go."
"You mean I can just leave?" Marlene said with a crazy laugh. "You're not kidding me, are you, Jake?"
"Go," I said again. Each word was a huge labor, taking an enormous toll on my remaining strength.
"Okay," she said. "I'm going to leave now." She moved away from the desk and crept across the room, giving me a wide berth, then backing away as if I were a rabid dog. As she neared the exit she began shooting glances between me and the door, then lunged the last two yards, thinking I would kill her only when escape seemed imminent. I heard her high heels scraping frantically across the lobby floor.
I moved over to George. His jaw was still working, his eye still staring at the camera. "Lazarus, off camera," I said, and the red eye on the camera blinked out. As if he knew the show was over, George's jaw stopped moving. I closed his remaining eye with a thumb.
Monique came into the room shaken and horrified by the bodies around her. "How can you let her go?" she sobbed.
"She's just a player in the game," I said. She'd have cleared the stairs by now, I thought. She'd be rushing toward Rob's skimmer, anxious to get inside, away.
"She's a murderer," Monique said. "She used you, she used all of us from the beginning."
I shrugged, staring at George. "We all used each other. It's a very, very sick game."
She'd be inside the skimmer now, the hatch slammed against the howling fury of the storm. Behind the wheel, she'd push the ignition button and the turbines would roar to life. She wouldn't let it warm up, she was in too much of a hurry to leave it all behind.
Monique shook her head, the tears staining her cheeks red. "It isn't right for her to get away."
"Fate will catch up with her, you'll see."
The skimmer would be rising into the night sky now, leaving the horror below.
"Lazarus, roof defenses on," I said.
A dull boom echoed through the skeleton of the tower, like the thunder of a passing storm. I smiled at Monique. "See?"
Epilogue
The rain and wind rattled the windows, and the old building creaked. The storm had reached the City.
I lay in the darkness, smoking a vitacig, staring at the ceiling. She lay next to me, her head pillowed on my chest. The rhythmic whisper of her breath was like the wash of waves on a distant beach.
"Are you happy, Jake?" she murmured.
I looked out the window at the frail moonlight made dim and gray by the clouds and rain. I lay with a child whom I'd made an orphan, in a city in which I was hunted, in a world in which my soul was forfeit.
"Yes," I said. "I'm very happy."