The Revival (7 page)

TITCH MAKES SHORT WORK OF
digging the grave, heaving the cold-hardened soil out of the ground in massive clumps. The guy is a beast.

He never met Brainbox, of course, but he knows about him, on account of he must have read my interrogation transcripts. Titch might look like Shrek, all bulk and muscle, but he's smart and he's thorough. I reckon (as my Cambridge buddies would say) he's helping me because he knows Brainbox was one of my tribe, and he still feels guilty toward me for knowing about the whole honeypot scam with Rab. Besides, he understands that BB cured the Sickness, pretty much. We're burying a hero. But he won't get a monument. He'll get a bald patch in Sheep Meadow.

Me: “Titch.” He looks up at me from the hole.

Titch: “Miss.”

Me: “Can you tell me something?” He just looks back at me. “The guy who got the biscuit, Chapel. He said the Reconstruction Committee doesn't care about us. I mean us ‘kids,' or whatever you want to call us. He said that you just wanted what was left after you let us all die.”

Titch opens his mouth to say something, but then he thinks better of it. He leans the spade against the side of the grave.

Titch: “I think I dug deep enough, miss,” he says finally. Then he levers himself out of the ground and shuffles off, leaving us “to say words.”

Jefferson and I finish cleaning Brainbox off with surgical wipes. Jeff jumps into the hole, and I help lower in the body. It's so easy that it's hard—I mean, like, emotionally speaking. Brainbox is touchingly light. The guy forgot to eat at the best of times. When he was working on a problem, he might go days without a meal.

I stretch my hand down to Jefferson to help him out of the ground. I have to lean back, practically fall, to keep from getting pulled in, and as he steps over the lip of the grave, we crumple into a ball together. It should be intimate; after everything I've gone through to get back to him, it should feel like home. But instead, it's awkward. There's a distance that we can't seem to span—not yet at least. Maybe he smells another guy on me. I don't know.

We stand there looking at Brainbox below the ground as flies land and start to test the waters of his flesh. I want to figure out something to say, something that would make a difference if Brainbox were listening. He would've insisted it was pointless, though; he said that consciousness ended at death, so there's nobody left to care about how you treat them or what you say.

Jefferson doesn't seem to be coming up with anything, either. We've said it all before, over other bodies of other friends. Jefferson's brother, Wash. Half our tribe.

So we just stand there for a while.

I want to think about Brainbox, give him his due. But my mind keeps returning to Titch's non-answer.

It'd be nice if what Rab said was true. He says his job is to make contact with the Relevant Authorities—which is optimistic, both the idea that there
are
authorities and that, if there were, we could make contact with them—and begin the process of “reintegration.” The lost boys and girls of New York and the rest of the plague-ridden continent will be taken under the wing of the Reconstruction Committee.

But I don't buy it. Rab, I suspect, is here as my handler, The Powers That Be figuring that I still have feelings for him, which is
so
not true.

And if this were a diplomatic mission, I'd say we're a little heavy on firepower. It's pretty obvious to me that the point of this little jaunt is to find the biscuit so that the fate of the world doesn't end up in the hands of a bunch of juvenile delinquents. Maybe if it weren't for that, they'd have preferred, as Chapel nicely put it, to wait until everybody was dead and then scrape up the goo.

From the way Wakefield is giving clipped orders to the squaddies and the Gurkhas, I can tell he's burning up because we were so close to getting ahold of the biscuit. And I can't say that I'm 100 percent stoked that Chapel and Evan have it, either. A revolutionary and a sadist don't add up to a great decision-making process, I figure.

Wakefield looks over at us, calculating how long he can let this sad little excuse for a funeral go before he can get on the move. I figure this gesture at propriety may be the last chance Jefferson and I have to speak privately for a while.

Me: “They came for the biscuit, Jefferson.”

Jefferson: “I know.” He looks away from me, over the bone-white expanse of the meadow. He says, “What did you come for?”

Me: “Do you have to ask?”

Jefferson: “I thought… I didn't want to assume anything.”

Is this the same Jefferson? The boy who made a little home with me in a metal corner of the carrier? Who declared his undying love for me in the Reading Room, with the coffered paintings of heaven above us?

No. He's older. He's defeated. I can tell that much from his face, and from what Peter said. Jefferson's dream of Utopia is done. He's a hunted man. So it bears saying.

Me: “Jeff. I came for you.”

I want that to be enough to change the look in his eyes; it isn't. What's happened?

I ask him something I've neglected to until now.

Me: “The tribe. What happened to the rest of us?”

He takes a while to answer, a strange look on his face.

Jefferson: “Washington Square is gone, Donna. I don't know where most of the tribe went. Holly, Elena, and Ayesha were still alive when the Gathering started, at least.”

Me:
“Gathering?”

Jefferson: “I tried to get all the tribes together. I—we—wanted to make a united front, before the grown-ups arrived.”

This is Jefferson, all right. Always trying to fix the world.

Jefferson: “We almost did it. Then Theo and Kath showed up and told everybody that there were places where the Sickness hadn't hit.”

Me: “Wait—what?
You
didn't tell them?”

Jefferson: “I was going to. We just needed a little time. We needed to get the new constitution
first
.”

I'm trying to weigh that in my mind, but I still want to know about the others.

Me: “And everybody else from the Square?”

Jefferson: “A lot of the boys are dead. And the Uptowners have the girls, the ones they didn't kill…”

Jefferson looks off, and I realize what the strange expression on his face is. It's shame. Our breath billows out like steam in the freezing air. Wakefield hovers nearby, clearly waiting for a moment to break up the funeral.

Me: “What do you mean, the Uptowners
have
them?”

Jefferson: “They took them away, before we even got back to the Square. They'd taken the place over. Brainbox made a bomb… We brought down one of the buildings on the north side. Killed some of the Uptowners. But the girls were gone.” He scrapes away at the snow with his foot, uncovering the dark, wet grime below. I can hear the twins screaming and laughing as they toss snowballs at each other, and Kath, amusingly enough, tells them no aiming for the head.

Me: “Took them
where
?”

Jefferson turns, looks around, as if he might see our missing girls somewhere by chance. Nothing but the squaddies gearing up.

Jefferson: “I don't know. The Bazaar, maybe. I don't know.”

Me: “This ‘Gathering' of yours—were the Uptowners there?”

Jefferson won't meet my eyes. I'm dreading the answer. If he actually
worked
with them,
compromised
with them…

Then he looks me in the eye.

Jefferson: “Yes.”

My heart sinks. It goes down about a thousand feet underwater, where you have to wear a special suit to keep from imploding.

Me: “And you… you
knew
that they had our people?” No answer. Which means yes. “Jefferson… you didn't try to get them back?”

Jefferson: “I was going to.”

Me:
“When?”

Jefferson: “Once the doc was signed. The constitution. That needed to come first. We needed to have the Uptowners be part of it, Donna. Or the whole thing wouldn't work.”

Me: “So you just—what—hung around with those…
monsters
, while our people were somewhere getting… with God knows what happening to them?”

Jefferson: “I
had
to. I had to deal with them. For everyone's sake.”

I think of what the Uptowners stand for and what they do to girls. The pimps and prostitutes at the Bazaar. The things that happened to Kath that she won't even talk about. I think of the Mole People, literally forced underground because they wouldn't submit to them. And
now
I know what I
really
came here for.

I take his hands. Our breath mingles in the cold air.

Me: “Okay. Jefferson. I guess I did come for you. For your sake. You want to get out from under this? Redeem yourself? Then you listen to me. You can forget about the big picture for a little while.” I speak to him gently, but I don't leave any room for doubt or questions. “Stop dreaming. Think about our
friends
. You and me, we are going to find them. If we do one thing, if we die doing it, we are going to get those girls back from Uptown. You understand?”

Jefferson: “The nukes—”

Me: “Will have to wait. First we save our family.
Then
we save the world.”

Rab: “It's the same thing, isn't it?”

It's now that I realize Rab is standing nearby, peering down curiously into Brainbox's grave, close enough to have heard everything. He doesn't appear to have snuck up or anything. He's just standing there with his usual air of Cool Guy confidence, like he can talk his way into any party or any conversation.

Rab: “Why choose between nuclear blackmail and white slavery?” He's bright and upbeat. “Our quarry is Chapel and his pet psychotic, right? Find them and we find your girls, don't we?”

Kath: “No. We don't.” She's sauntered over from the snowball fight.

Great. Now everybody is joining in. The sacred mood broken, Titch circles around us and starts filling in Brainbox's grave, clearly hurrying things along.

Kath continues, “If your girls have been taken, they'll be at the museum.”

Me: “What museum?”

Kath: “The one with the dinosaurs. That's where the slave market is.”

Jefferson: “The Museum of Natural History. On Central Park West. That's, like, half a mile from here.”

Kath: “They take them there to make them into Fun Girls.” Off my look, she explains, “Slaves. There's these creepy West Side religious nuts who do it. They keep them there for a while, break them down. Then they sell them.”

Me: “Then that's where I'm going.”

Wakefield comes over, seeing that the memorial service is busting up.

Wakefield: “It's time to get going. We should hit Grand Central in an hour.”

Titch looks back at Wakefield but leaves me to explain.

Me: “Change in plans, Colonel. We've got to rescue some of our friends first.”

Wakefield: “Those aren't my orders.”

Me: “
I
don't have any orders.”

Wakefield: “You are under my protection.”

Me: “I don't need your protection.”

Wakefield: “You are under my
supervision
.”

Me: “We could use more hands if we're going to fight the Uptowners.”

Wakefield: “I don't think you're qualified to speak on military issues.”

Which I guess
technically
is correct? But practically? We sort of
do
know what we're talking about. Which is to say, we've slugged our way through two years of chaos here, against everything the place could throw at us—cannibals, fascists, even tweens.

Me: “I'm sorry, but my decision stands. You can help, or wait here for me, or go do your thing.”

Titch: “That wasn't the plan, miss.”

Me: “So? You've been here, what, half a day? You think any kind of plan
lasts
here? This place has its own rules. So I'm making my own plans from now on. I know that you've got to do what you've got to do. That's okay. You don't have to watch my back anymore, Titch.” I turn to Kath and Peter and Jefferson. “You want to come along, that's up to you.”

I stand there hoping, as people decide. It's kinda like in the Lord of the Rings? When one group goes to Mordor and the other goes to that big castle place. It's like everybody has to decide: Will it be A plot or B plot? And which one is the A plot? Well, maybe I can be excused for thinking it's
me
, even if it doesn't involve saving the world from destruction. So who else is coming?

Maybe, just maybe I care more about what Jefferson is going to do than anybody else. And maybe his decision is really about whether we'll have a future together. And maybe, even though I know he is all about the Big Picture, I want him to be about the small picture, which is actually, in fact, the big picture as far as everyone we might actually help is concerned.