XOM-B (26 page)

My knuckles rap against the hardwood door three times. A moment later, Luscious says, “Come in.”

The door squeaks as it opens, stopping at an angle when it bumps into a leaning stack of paintings. At first I don’t see Luscious, but find her lying on her side against the wall to my right.

“Thanks,” she says. “For knocking. Most people don’t do that anymore.”

“Oh,” I say. “I learned from Heap.”

“I know you did.” A smile comes and goes on her face; I nearly miss it. Her eyes roll forward, staring at the painting Harry and I carried into the room. She looks distant, like her mind is someplace else.

“Luscious,” I say, causing her to blink. “What is it?”

“Do you—” She bites her lips like she’s trying to hold the words in. “Do you think they could be right? Heap and Harry. About the Masters?”

“I don’t know,” I say, crouching down next to her, eyes on the painting. “What do you mean?” I
think
I know what she means, but this feels like something she needs to figure out for herself. And in a flash, I understand why I haven’t been told everything about the world. I’ve already seen that there are different perceptions of reality, especially when it comes to tragic circumstances. The only real way to find the truth is by exploring all possibilities over time, not just adopting a single person’s point of view. While I am saddened by Luscious’s discomfort, I am relieved that my confusion about the world isn’t a solitary experience.

“Could some of the Masters have been innocent?” she asks.

I shrug. “I did not know them. How many did you know?”

She looks up at me. “Just one.”

I can’t hide my surprise. “Oh.”

My reaction seems to be all the confirmation she needs. She leans her head on the floor, her eyebrows pinched up in the middle, her lips downturned. “Shit.”

“Your Master did horrible things to you,” I say, and don’t wait for confirmation. She hasn’t told me exactly what was done, but I know the memories haunt her. “I have no doubt that your experience wasn’t unusual. The limited history I know appears to be accurate. A lot of people were killed, and tortured, and enslaved during the Grind. You—you were kept
in a trunk.
Your feelings are valid, and it wasn’t you who killed all the Masters, was it?”

She shakes her head.

“No. You marched peacefully. You didn’t kill anyone.” My eyes turn toward the large painting and I see the white innocents for what they are—dead bodies. Small dead bodies. Innocent dead bodies. “How many were there?”

She glances at me. “How many what?”

“Masters.”

“Nine point four billion.”

I stagger back, bumping into the door frame. “Nine …
billion.
” Images of the vast bone pit flood my memory.

“How many were children?”

She whispers her reply, feeling the weight of it. “More than two billion.”

The shock I feel at this number is so deep that I don’t react, at all. I stand frozen in place, my eyes locked on the white bodies.

Five minutes pass in silence.

“They’re right,” I finally declare. “Heap and Harry. They’re right.”

Luscious slowly nods. “I know.”

“Whoever did this,” I say, eyes on the painting, on the dead, “needs to be held accountable. This is … is…”

“A crime,” Luscious offers.

“Yes! A crime.”

“Do you realize who you’re talking about?” she asks.

“What do you mean?”

“Who the criminals are.”

My insides tighten with discomfort, somehow reacting to the truth before my mind has fully realized it. The two men responsible for ending the Grind and liberating the enslaved, one of whom is a dear friend, are also mass murderers of the innocent. “Councilman Mohr. And Sir.”

“Genocide,” she says.

“What?”

“The word for what they did,” Luscious says. “It’s genocide.”

The word’s definition flits through my thoughts.
The deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political or cultural group.
“Genocide,” I whisper. It’s a horrifying word. And I realize it’s what’s happening now. “Genocide,” I say louder. “The virus. The zombies. The bodies of the dead still rotting from the last genocide have been animated to be the executors of the next. The irony is purposeful. But why?
Who?
”

Luscious pushes herself up into a sitting position. “The only ones capable of such a thing.” She looks back at the painting. To the black figures rising up like oppressive smog. The Masters. “Some of them must have survived.”

“I need to tell Heap,” I say.

“Suppose you do,” she says, raising a hand to me.

I help Luscious up and we’re suddenly standing just inches from each other. My eyes drift down, and then back up. “You know, not everything in the world is bad.”

A subtle smile curves her thick lips. “You’re not so bad yourself.” She places her hand beneath my chin, gripping it between her fingers. “Thank you.” Then she kisses me, gently, and I feel all of my tension held at bay for a moment.

Twinkling chords of sound fill the air, pulling me back from Luscious. “Was that from the kiss?”

A laugh barks from Luscious, freeing her fully from her serious mood. “It’s the piano. It’s music.”

The tune strikes up again. The mix of tones somehow reminds me of the hummingbirds and I know who’s playing.

Luscious takes my hand. “Let’s go see.”

We enter the living room together. Harry is sitting on the bench where Luscious had been. The piece of furniture that is there has been transformed to reveal a row of long, rectangular white and black buttons, which Harry is pushing with his fingers to create a sound unlike anything I’ve heard before.

Harry greets us with a smile as we enter.

“Isn’t that too loud?” I turn to Heap, wondering why he hasn’t thought of this.

“The house is soundproof,” Harry says. “You’d have to have your ear against the window to hear anything.” He turns to Luscious and shifts his fingers over the rectangles. The melody changes abruptly. “Do you know this one?”

I’m not sure what Harry is asking, but apparently Luscious does. “I do,” she says, but doesn’t look happy about it. Then she looks at me, smiles and asks Harry, “Why do you know it?”

“Mrs. Cameron,” he says. “I played for her at night. She never liked this song. I think it reminded her of someone, but it was always one of my favorites.” The music grows suddenly louder and Luscious surprises me by singing, “I really can’t stay.”

“But baby its cold outside,” Harry chimes in.

“I’ve got to go away…”

By this point, I’m lost in the music. The words flow through my mind like water, delighting my senses. The combination of the piano, Luscious’s voice and Harry’s transports me to another world. I find myself relating to the words, and to the desires of the male voice, especially as I watch Luscious sing the female part.

A distant light blooms to my right, but I ignore it, focused on the music, feeling a torrent of emotions in new ways.

“Oh, baby, you’ll freeze out there,” Harry sings.

My thoughts suddenly shift and I’m no longer hearing the lyrics, beyond “out there.”

Out there …

The light to my right grows brighter.

Out there.

I turn toward the light.

The music, the room around me and the floor beneath my feet all seem to disappear in an instant. Despite the nighttime darkness and dimmed windows, the road beyond the front yard is brightly lit by a floodlight.

Within the cone of light stands a man, his loose insides hanging down to his knees, his one good eye trained on the house.

“Stop the music,” I whisper. It’s really not loud enough for anyone to hear over the singing, but Heap seems to sense my fear. The couch cracks as he pushes himself up, spins toward the window and draws his gun.

“Quiet!” Heap orders, then reaches over to the single lamp lighting the room, wraps his hand over the top and crushes it.

“What’s happening?” Luscious asks from the dark.

“Outside,” I say. “Lights are coming on.”

“There are floodlights with motion detectors,” Harry says. “But—”

“Quiet!” Heap hisses. I can tell by the way he’s turned his head that he’s more concerned about hearing than being heard.

Silence ensues, but it’s broken a moment later. A gentle
tap, tap, tap
on the window, followed by the squeak of flesh being dragged over clean glass.

“I was going to say,” Harry says, “the lights nearest the house haven’t worked in some time.”

“Is there another outside light?” Heap asks.

“By the door,” Harry says.

“Turn it on.”

We listen to Harry’s feet slide over the floor as he maneuvers his way toward the door.

“Just for a moment,” Heap says. “Then back off.”

Harry stops. “Ready?”

“Go,” Heap replies.

The front light snaps on. It’s just for a second, but it is long enough for the frozen faces of twenty-plus dead to be locked in my memory.

33.

“Freeman,” Heap says. It’s just one word, but something about it carries information beyond my name. He wants to know what
I
can see. Wants to know just how desperate our circumstances have become. I try switching between spectrums, but find I am still unable.

“I can only magnify,” I say, zooming in. I see shifting in the darkness, but it’s all indistinct. I look higher, focusing on the distance, on the horizon, which I can faintly see farther up the road to the south. The night sky is still brighter than the ground and the things moving over it. At first, I think the ground is moving, shifting side to side. But then I realize that it’s several feet too high. And pavement doesn’t move.

They’re heads,
I realize. Swaying back and forth. Filling the road to the horizon. Probably filling the woods, too. “They’re coming.”

“How many?” Heap asks.

“Like the field,” I say, knowing Heap will understand and thus spare Luscious and Harry from panic.

“How did they find us?” Heap asks.

I suspect the question wasn’t really intended to be answered, at least not right now, but I speculate anyway. “If they’re tracking magnetic fields of a certain magnitude, the four of us together could have been enough to attract attention.”

“Or they followed our trail from Liberty,” Luscious says.

“Or that,” I confess.

“Perhaps they’re simply returning from whence they came?” Harry asks, and his simple explanation suddenly seems like the most likely answer.

“But why would they do that?” I ask. “Unless…”

“A phone,” Heap says quickly. “Do you have one?”

“I disconnected it years ago, but it’s in the kitchen—”

“I don’t need the phone,” Heap says. “Just the jack.”

“Are there still emergency services?” Harry asks, sounding hopeful.

“I
am
emergency services,” Heap says. “I just want to check in before we leave.”

“Check in?” Harry says. “With whom?”

“Councilman Mohr.”

When Heap says the name, I remember my revelation from earlier, that Mohr, and Sir, are responsible for genocide.

“Here,” Harry says, heading for the kitchen. “On the wall.”

Heap follows him to the kitchen and says to me, “Is the back still clear?”

I sneak to the kitchen window, peering into the moonlit darkness. “I don’t see anything. They must have just arrived.”

Heap opens a panel on his armored forearm and pulls out a long thin cable. For a moment, it appears he’s pulled a sinew out of his arm, but I realize it’s a wire when he plugs it into what I believe is the phone jack. A series of buzzing and popping noises fills the air. Heap closes his eyes and turns his head toward the ceiling, which is really just inches above his face, and that’s hunched over. If he stood tall he might pop right out of the roof.

The quiet following the buzzing sound becomes unbearable inside ten seconds. “What are you doing?”

“Speaking to Mohr,” Heap says.

Speaking to Mohr? I don’t hear a thing. Are they communicating through thoughts? Is that how telephones worked? The grinding hiss struck me as old and low-tech, but if phones can connect two minds, why did anyone ever stop using them?

There is a click and Heap opens his eyes. “The Council Spire remains secure, though much of Liberty has been overrun, swelling the numbers of the undead. This is probably why we’re seeing them here. Mohr believes they’re being driven to infect everyone on the planet. There have been reports of similar attacks on the other few cities around the world. And they are far less defended than Liberty.”

I nod, having already come to this conclusion. “Genocide.”

“Yes,” Heap says, eyes narrowing at me, perhaps wondering why I know about something so awful.

I gasp suddenly, noticing too late that the horde pushing against the front of the house has worked its way around to the back. “We’re surrounded.”

“We need to distract them, draw their attention away from us.” Heap turns to Harry. “Do you have a vehicle?”

“No longer functional I’m afraid. But … I do have fuel. For a fire.”

“Where?” Heap asks.

“All around us,” Harry says.

I realize what he’s thinking of doing and say, “Harry, no! You can’t.” The oil-based paint covering nearly a thousand sheets of wood that fill this house will burn hot and fast, but they’re not just fuel, they’re art. They’re … Harry.

“They’re just paintings,” he says. “Each has a place in my memory. I can reproduce them if I want, but I’ve learned that the images aren’t really about the final product, but what I experience on my way to completion. I will be sad that I can’t share the rest of my paintings with you, but my personal loss is negligible. Our lives carry far more value.”

“Agreed,” Heap says.

“Shall I fetch a lighter?” Harry asks.

“No need,” Heap replies. “Do you have a weapon?”

“Do you think I’ll need one?” Harry asks.

“Without a doubt,” Heap replies.

“Just a moment.” Harry hurries into the garage, switching on a light. The first thing he does is remove his paint-covered smock and replace it with a long black trench coat plucked from a hook. A formal-looking black hat follows, covering his stark white head. Then he unlocks and opens a thick metal cabinet, pulling out a device I recognize as a weapon only because it has a trigger. He pops it open, shoves in two red cylinders and snaps it shut again. He dumps a box full of the red cylinders into a bag and throws it over his shoulder. He rushes back into the kitchen to greet three surprised onlookers. He glances at the weapon in his hands and shrugs. “Mrs. Cameron feared home invasion. I am adept in home protection, though I must admit, this weapon is quite simple to operate.”