The Revival (20 page)

HE GOES FOR IT, LIKE I FIGURED
he would, and steps up onto the gargoyle. Time for the big showdown.

Except not. I get the club out from the waistband at the small of my back and bring it down nicely across his temple, and he crumples on the metal neck of the gargoyle, barely holding on. I shrug off the football to let it sit behind me and slip out the boot knife. I hold the point to his neck.

Now what? Well, I've marginally improved my bargaining position, and I'm definitely enjoying the prospect of beheading Jefferson.

Sure, I've sacrificed a lot of credibility. But I wasn't lying about the football. The nukes are all revved up! Billions of people don't know that they're toast. And nobody can stop it without the codes.

The roundness of it! The closure. I remember the moment we met, a bulletproof Plexiglas bus window between us, me with a pig on a leash, him speaking for his tribe in place of his older and smarter brother.

Now here he is, held in my arms, just where I wanted him all this time, with my knife at his throat.

I look down to figure out how best to start cutting—by the jawline? across the Adam's apple?—when some other guy hits me.

Head buzzing, I register somebody I haven't seen before, another one of Jefferson's brown people, almost as good-looking as me. He knocks me back again and away from Jefferson before I have time to react.

I hear someone scream, “Rob!” or something.

The guy has both hands on my wrist, trying to keep me from using my knife, which frees me to bash him in the face with the other hand. Meanwhile, he's shouting to Jefferson to get the football. Funny accent.

We start rolling off the edge of the gargoyle, and he has to let go of my arm so that he can stop himself. So I stab him in the chest and use his body to push myself up, which drives the blade deeper into him.

He's not dead, though, and it looks like he has a knife of his own—a little letter-opener-looking thing. He jabs me in the leg, and I fall to one knee. He kicks me in the stomach, and I feel myself lose purchase. I realize with a sick feeling that I'm about to go over the edge.

It can't be. It can't be. This is my story.

I can't die. God! I can't get canceled!

I'm slipping farther. I grab at the bronze of the gargoyle, but my hand is slick with blood, and then I'm falling…

But there's some consolation. I grab ahold of my attacker's leg as gravity sucks at me.

He falls down with a bump on the metal plating of the eagle and then, finally, painfully, we go over.

We are both flying now, floating down toward the city. For an insane moment, he looks me in the eye and we see each other, two souls in free fall, and I almost feel, although we've never met except to kill each other, as though we might be friends, in another life, if I were a different person.

And I think maybe it could have all been different, but of course it's too late.

DAMNED IF I'M NOT GOING TO
be famous after all. I don't mean, like, as “Saint Peter.” That's just fame by association. That's just famous for being famous.

I run to where Donna's got the football. She's crying about the missing launch codes. Apparently once Evan realized we'd win, he wasn't going to let the world live past him.

Now my big fear is that if the biscuit—the little satphone thing with the link to the arsenal—is gone, there's nothing we can do.

I find it intact, tucked into a pocket in the briefcase. Win!

I let them all wallow in despair for just the tiniest moment, I admit. Check out the lost and forlorn looks on their faces as they ponder the end of everything. So I can make my entrance.

Then I pull the paper from my pocket. The codes Brainbox dictated to me, out of his supernatural memory.

His last message to the world.

I hand them to Chapel, who seems to know exactly what they are. He parses through the list, looking for a particular sequence.

He takes the biscuit from my hand and starts punching in numbers with great care.

I realize that if I didn't manage to write down the codes correctly, this isn't going to work.

Same if Brainbox got it wrong. Or if he told me the wrong codes on purpose. Why would he do that? Maybe for a moment like this, to show his contempt and disillusionment.

Maybe his last message is a big raised middle finger. Maybe he was trolling all of us.

At last, with a surprisingly everyday sound, like a laundry machine announcing its cycle is done, the biscuit signals that the launch has been aborted.

Chapel closes the leather flap on the biscuit and sinks back down to the ground, his energy seemingly spent. And Donna and I get to work on his leg.

I'm gonna be famous for saving the world.

“Good work,” I say to Chapel.

He smiles.

“Now put your hands behind your back,” I say. “You're under arrest.”

WE PUT OUT THE FIRES on the sixty-seventh floor. It seems like a good way to begin things.

Then we make our way back down to the world again, with Old Man Chapel as prisoner. The young world isn't going to start with Brainbox's murderer free. If Chapel can prove his good intentions, we'll let him go.

The Ghosts and the freed girls are waiting at the bottom of the stairwell, even though I told them they should go once they'd finished sending us up. I ask them all their names—their
real
names.

Imani's Slayer Queens have secured the Bazaar. She seems a little surprised to see us, but I think she's pleased. I ask her if she'll help figure out how we're going to run things from now on. There's an awful lot to organize. Negotiations with the Reconstruction Committee. Distribution of the Cure. Policing. Civil services. Food supplies. Contact with other survivors in distant cities.

Meanwhile, we look for someplace to rest. Me and Donna.

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Many thanks to Alvina Ling, Jill Yeomans, Nikki Garcia, Farrin Jacobs, Bethany Strout, Kristina Aven, Nellie Kurtzman, Andrew Smith, Jennifer Corcoran, Victoria Stapleton, Melanie Chang, and everyone at LBYR who have made this such a happy experience for me. Also to Suzanne Gluck, David Lubliner, and David Wirtschafter of WME, as well as my redoubtable cousin and lawyer, Alex Kohner.