“You give them shit, too?” The boy looked ashamed, and Trix smiled to put him at ease. “Take it easy, kid,” she said.
“Name’s Marcus.”
“It’s a good name.” She passed them by and hurried along the street, and as she approached the queue she made out the people standing there in more detail. Black, white, Hispanic, men, women, and several children, they stood in silence, shuffling forward slowly as a huge woman exited the building and hurried down the steps.
The number of people here surprised her. Had they all gone through some ritual to find Sally, as she and Jim had done at the traffic island and then the restaurant back in their Boston? She doubted that, given the short time since the quake. And she wondered what that said about Veronica-that she had a greater distance between her and the people and city she was there to protect.
So many missing people, Trix thought. She stopped in the middle of the road, and several people glanced at her. One pointed farther along the sidewalk. “There’s a line, ” the man said.
“Yeah.” Trix looked back the way she had come. Ant Man and his hangers-on were walking briskly along the street, and none of them seemed to notice the pale figure crouched atop a two-story house at the far corner. Another hid in shadows across the street. Just waiting , she thought. Watching. At least Jim took one of them with him. She pressed her hand to her jeans pocket, pretending to touch the letter she did not have, and then stormed up the steps and into the run-down building.
A few voices of protest followed her in, and she heard shock at her lack of respect. But she’d apologize later. If they knew why she was here, they’d say nothing. If they were aware of what had happened, and that their Oracle’s life was in danger, they’d have piled in behind her and protected her all the way. Inside the building she smelled cooking vegetables and heard loud, pulsing music, and the line of people led behind the staircase and into a low doorway beneath. She’s in the basement as if she’s hiding away. Hands clasped at Trix as she pushed by, and a few more voices rose in anger, but she forced herself down the darkened staircase. She stumbled, missed a step, and was helped on her way by a shove in the back. She twisted as she fell and saw the angry man glaring down at her. “Wait your turn!” he whispered as she slid down the wooden stairs on her back.
She grunted as she hit the cellar floor, pulling herself to her feet and quickly sensing the different atmosphere down here. She looked sidelong at the walls, expecting to see a thin place, but this was something else.
This was humanity in need, in the presence of a power that might give aid.
“Impatient for bad news?” a voice said. Trix turned slowly and looked to the far end of the basement room.
The girl sitting on a ratty wicker chair couldn’t have been much more than eleven years old. She was black, wearing jeans and a grubby Miley Cyrus T-shirt, and holding the hand of a woman kneeling by her side. Trix had never seen a child so haunted and devoid of hope.
“Sally?” she asked. The girl nodded. “Sally, I have something terrible to tell you. I think Veronica wants you dead.”
The girl sighed. “I thought as much. C’mere, lady. You better tell me everything.”
“First…” Trix started shaking. “There are men without faces.”
Sally’s eyes opened wide. And then, in the building above, people began to scream.
Where four streets met at odd angles, and the traffic island was home to a statue that Jim did not recognize, Jenny’s parents’ restaurant sat at one prominent corner. Back in Boston it was called Junction 58, and he was thrilled-and a little chilled-to see that it had the same name here. Its ornate glass frontage had shattered to the street, spilling the outdoor tables and chairs that were stacked overnight beneath the awning, but he was still looking at a sight familiar and well loved, and he felt something right itself in his mind. It’s not all madness, he thought, and then his brief fantasy was blown away.
Jenny’s mother stepped out from the restaurant. They lived in the three-story apartment upstairs, and their first reaction after the earthquake must have been to come down to the street, checking the damage on the way. She was waving a menu before her face as if hot, and she was almost the woman Jim had known for so long. Almost, but not quite. Slighter than he remembered, hair longer and darker, face a little more weathered-looking, this was Jenny’s mother as she might be five or ten years down the road.
I wonder if Jenny is married, he thought, because he was Unique, and long dead here. A burst of jealousy-of anger -swelled through him, and he started across the street. Jenny’s other mother saw him and frowned slightly, then looked away.
“Excuse me,” Jim said, and then he froze in the middle of the street. What could he possibly say?
“You okay, hon?” the woman asked, and Jim’s blood ran cold. She calls me hon, he thought, and he searched for any signs of recognition. But there were none. “Hey, mister, anything wrong?”
“Wrong?” Jim asked.
“Aside from the whole world shaking itself apart,” she said, looking past him at the glowing horizon and smoke clouds starting to obscure the moonlight.
“I was just wondering…,” he started again. But there was no easy way for him to ask about Jenny, and suddenly he hoped that she had not come this way at all. He remembered the two blond women staring at each other back at the traffic pileup- one blond woman, really, facets of her existent in two different worlds-and he tried to imagine the terror Jenny and Holly might have felt arriving here and seeing someone who was not quite their mother, not quite their grandmother.
“Wondering what?” she asked, on her guard at last.
“Nothing,” Jim said, shaking his head and backing away. I should have gone with Trix… the Oracle, Sally, she’ll be able to help, she’ll know what to-
And then someone else emerged from the restaurant’s smashed facade.
“Jenny,” Jim said. “Jenny!”
And the woman frowned and took one step back, because she did not know him.
Don’t Let Me Die Still Wondering
Caged lightbulbs flickered, throwing zoetrope shadows into the basement corners. Trix stared at the young Oracle-her wide eyes, her well-worn sneakers, her faded concert T-shirt, and her skittish body language so reminiscent of an animal used to being beaten. Sally had frozen, half crouched, listening to the screams and running feet from above, as those who had come to her for help were attacked or driven in terror out of the building.
Going tharn, Trix thought. In Watership Down, that was what the rabbits called the paralysis they experienced when pinned by the lights of an oncoming car. Sally Bennet had gone tharn.
“Do something!” Trix shouted at the girl.
Sally glanced at her. The power flickered on and off again, and in the moments of darkness, somehow the girl’s face was the only thing that Trix could see, despite the dark coffee hue of her skin.
The middle-aged woman who’d been asking for Sally’s help when Trix had entered the basement staggered backward toward a corner farther from the stairs, looking around as though for another way out. When Trix glanced at Sally again, she found the girl staring at her.
“Shadow Men,” the girl said, voice broken with grief. “You brought them.”
Trix felt her heart flutter. The girl was right, but what choice had she had? “I didn’t know where else to go. You’re the Oracle! I didn’t know you were a little girl.”
Sally laughed softly but without any trace of humor. Trix noticed that one of her sneakers was untied. The girl shook her braided hair back and knelt on the floor. “It isn’t just little girls who get frightened,” Sally said.
Trix heard glass shatter upstairs, but the screaming had nearly ceased. The door to the basement shook in its frame. They didn’t even need to open the door to pass through it, at least she didn’t think so. The wraiths-the things Sally had named Shadow Men-might be mindless things, programmed for this task, but if so, part of their job must be to make themselves terrible. To not merely kill the Oracles, but to destroy everything around them.
“I know! I’m a grown-up, and I’m terrified,” Trix said.
The woman who’d backed into the corner of the basement sobbed loudly.
Sally put her palms down on the stone floor of the basement. Her eyes were closed and she breathed deeply and evenly, as though trying to meditate with chaos erupting above her. “The No-Face Men,” Sally said.
