Right?
I woke to news and heartbreak.
Montana Parker and Brian Botley had died in the battle at the Pier. They were gone. And it was touch and go for Sam Imura and Toys. The surgeons earned their pay keeping them both on this side of the dirt. Sam lost ten inches of intestine. Toys had some kidney and lung damage. Bunny was going to be in therapy for a long time. Maybe Top, too, but he’s tougher than the rest of us.
Violin came to visit me. She brought flowers and food. Harry Bolt came to visit; he brought flowers and food. Every-damn-body else at the DMS came to visit. They brought flowers and they ate most of the food. The president did not come to visit. He sent the vice president. He brought flowers but no food.
Junie spent half of each day in my room and half in with Toys. She was going to need a lot of help getting over it. Sure, it wasn’t her doing those things, but tell that to her, or Top or Bunny. Tell any of the dozens of people around the country who woke up to find themselves standing on rooftops surrounded by drones filled with smallpox. Cops, lawyers, doctors, and shrinks may never sort it out. Maybe historians will.
I tried watching it all on the news. There was one international story about a vicious fight that erupted among disparate factions who had recently set aside their political and religious differences to follow what they thought was a new prophet. When a holy plague failed to sweep across America there was a bit of a backlash. Right now we’re all watching as the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and a dozen other groups gouge chunks out of the ISIL leadership. I’d like to think that they’ll gang up so hard that they’ll crush ISIL flat. I’d like to believe in Santa Claus, too.
But it’s fun to watch.
The retaliation by our own government was severe. Some say it’s too harsh, but I’ll see their outrage and raise a weaponized plagued aimed at our kids.
Church came to visit me. He brought cookies.
I said, “Please tell me that the Gateway technology’s not going to wind up going to another black budget group.”
“Aunt Sallie has assembled a team,” Church told me. “It’s being taken care of.”
“I don’t even want to hear about any of this going to FreeTech. None of it.”
Church nodded. “We’re on the same page.”
“Good.”
“Good,” he agreed. We sat for a long time in silence. He’d brought a box of Nilla wafers and a package of Oreos. We each had some.
“So,” I said, “are there still warrants out for us?”
“I’m happy to report that they’ve been withdrawn,” he said. He removed a letter from his jacket pocket. “And you might find this interesting.”
The stationery was remarkably crisp and was embossed with the presidential seal. The letter was a newly drafted and signed executive order for a revised charter for the DMS. I read it and whistled.
“What in the wide blue hell did you have to do to get POTUS to give you this?” I demanded. “It makes our old charter look like obfuscatory gibberish.”
“I didn’t even have to ask,” he said. “This was hand-delivered within twenty-four hours of the raid in Rancho Santa Fe. I had Bug share your radio and body-camera feed with the White House. They saw and heard everything.”
I almost smiled, but the stitches in my mouth turned it into a wince. “You took Bolton alive, right? What have you done with him?”
Church tucked the charter away, patted my leg, and left without answering.
Junie came in and crawled onto my bed and we held each other.
Dr. William Hu was in intensive care for two weeks. We all came to visit him. Once I got out of the hospital, Junie and I were there every day. Aunt Sallie flew out from Brooklyn. So did Bug. So did a lot of people. The bullet had done a lot of damage. They operated on him three times and he survived each procedure. He woke up on the fifteenth day and saw that I was sitting beside his bed. He looked at me. I looked at him. He licked his lips and I gave him some water out of a bendy straw.
“The… children…?” he asked, his voice as thin as a whisper. “The lights?”
“The lights stayed on,” I said. “We kept the monster in the box.”
Hu smiled and closed his eyes.
The machines around him started screaming.
The doctors and nurses came running; they pushed me out of the way. There was a lot of yelling. I stood in the hallway watching them fight to keep him alive. They fought every bit as hard as I’d fought Santoro. As Toys and Junie had fought. As Church and Violin had fought. As Harry had fought.
They fought and fought.
But you can’t win every battle.
No, you can’t.
Goddamn it, you can’t. I stood there, numb and empty, and for a moment I thought I heard Hu’s voice. I turned and caught a fleeting glimpse of him going through the fire door. He cut a look over his shoulder and gave me a sarcastic smirk. When I blinked the fire door was shut.
I leaned slowly against the wall.
Slid down.
Sat there while they switched off the machines one by one.
Everyone came to the funeral.
Even the president.
Church met him at the entrance to the chapel and would not move. I joined him. So did Top and Bunny, Toys, Junie, Aunt Sallie. All of us. Even Harry Bolt and Violin joined the blockade.
The president stood on the steps, surrounded by his Secret Service entourage and all of his people. Mr. Church did not say a single word. He didn’t have to.
After five long minutes the president shook his head and turned away. His motorcade drove away with all of the usual lights and sirens.
Deconstructing it all will take time.
If I thought it would be the trial of the century, I was wrong. None of the true facts ever got out. Harcourt Bolton, Senior, went away somewhere. Not sure where. The public thinks he’s dead. The Closers are all dead. The dream team from the Playroom are in a secure psychiatric facility. Harry Bolt had gone around the room smashing the sleeping capsules, and apparently that caused a short resulting in traumatic brain damage to each of the dreamwalkers. They’re still alive but they’re vegetables. God only knows what we can or should do to them. The guards at that facility and everyone on the staff have to wear those damn aluminum foil hats just in case. Maybe it will ultimately prove too costly to keep them. Too costly in too many ways. Personally? I’m sorry I wasn’t awake enough down in Bolton’s basement to put a bullet in each one of them. Would have simplified things. Might even have made me feel better, or achieve a sense of justice. Or something.
Those are not thoughts I share with Junie. Or even Rudy, who’s recovering from knee replacement and nose reconstruction. He says that he forgives me, but I haven’t managed yet to forgive myself. Nor has Circe forgiven me yet. Fair enough.
And as far as Prospero Bell? The official story is still that he died after he and his friend, Leviticus King, set fire to their school. No need to amend that story with troublesome facts. We know what happened. That’s enough.
For me, I can’t ever look at the world the same way. Sure, I know that the monsters I saw weren’t part of my world. But on the way to that world I saw things about this world that hurt me. Things that eat at me. I saw the end of the world. I saw what I would become as things fell apart. Or maybe might become. Which means what, exactly? Am I doomed to live out that future? Will some old Cold War bioweapon turn everything into a wasteland picked over by the hungry dead? Is that my reward for all these years of fighting? Is the future a fixed point that we travel to with the certainty of a bullet drilling a hot hole through the air toward a stationary target?