The Great Forgetting (36 page)

Spotlights clicked on around a corner, and as the sound of the running feet grew louder, Tony marked the person's progress by the approaching lights. Then the lights and the noise and the runner turned the corner onto rue Nibi and Tony saw what it was.

Cole had described them, but still Tony was frightened by its appearance. The hair, all that hair, made the Hound look like a werewolf. Cole had warned him that they would come for him. This one wore two belts crisscrossed around its waist like some cowboy.

Tony ran for the church, but even before he got to the door, he knew it would be locked. And it was. He reached out for the brass aspen leaf knockers, but by then the Hound was at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at him.

“Come here,” the Hound whispered.

“What do you want?” Tony asked.

“Shhh!” the Hound said, looking around nervously. He waved at Tony to come down.

What else was there to do? Readying himself for a fight, Tony walked to the Hound.

“You blew up the tunnel,” Tony whispered.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because you're trying to get to Mu,” said the Hound. “I want to know why.”

Tony didn't say anything.

“You can tell me or I can read your mind. Save me the trouble.”

“I have to stop the forgettings. Stop whoever is resetting the code.”

The Hound grunted.

“Why are we whispering?” asked Tony.

“Because things still live in the heart of this city.”

“What is this place?”

“Na'Duli,” said the Hound. “It was once the capital city of the Seven Nations. It's irradiated now.”

“Irradiated?”

“Don't worry. You can survive down here for quite a while.” The Hound motioned for him and turned back down rue Nibi. “Come.”

Tony didn't move. He looked back down into the darkness where downtown must be. He thought about running.

“Bad idea,” the Hound whispered.

“I can't let you erase my mind,” he said.

The Hound reached for him and that did it. Tony ran. He ran so fast down the dark street that he was at the edge of the spotlight's cone before the next one clicked on. He ran for a quarter of a mile before he realized the Hound was not chasing him. The Hound remained by the cathedral, under a spotlight of its own, separated from Tony by the void between.

“What do you want?” Tony shouted, loud enough for his voice to cross the distance.

Suddenly the Hound was jumping and waving, signaling him back.

And that's when he first heard it. A low rumble. The sound a rubber ball makes rolling down a flight of carpeted stairs. Except it sounded like a thousand rubber balls. A million. Tony looked behind him, into the dark heart of Na'Duli. A spotlight clicked on a half mile away, silhouetting a skyscraper that appeared to be something between an office building and a castle.

“Run!” yelled the Hound.

Tony obeyed. He ran back toward the Hound, who was already jogging back the way it had come.

That awful sound, that sound of some single-minded horde, grew louder and louder until Tony could feel the vibration in his jaws. Something hit his right leg and he almost fell onto the cobblestone street. “Don't stop!” shouted the Hound.

He couldn't flick it off. It was heavy. It clung to his jeans. Still running, he reached down. His fingers found thick, coarse hair and then something bit into his palm. A bright pain, full of needles. He screamed and stopped and yanked his hand away.

It was a rat. A fat rat the size of a cat, with blind, milky eyes. It hissed at him and dug its claws into the meat of his calf. Tony screamed again, and then the Hound pulled the monster off. It drop-kicked the rat down rue Nibi, back toward the rapidly approaching spotlights and the noise, toward the stampede.

“Faster!” said the Hound.

Tony followed, past more brownstones and then into a district of tall warehouses. Then he was hit again, this time in the square of his back, and he tumbled to the ground. The creature scampered over his exposed face, sensing where the vital bits were. Before he could grab it, the rat raked a talon up his left cheek and snagged its claws deep into his eyeball. It felt like someone had fired a gun into his brain. It was a pain he'd never experienced before. The pain enveloped him.

Distantly, he was aware of the Hound again. It punted this rat, too. Then the Hound picked Tony up. It draped Tony's body over its wide shoulders and, quite unexpectedly, bounded into the air and onto the fire escape of a warehouse. It flew up the stairs as the rumble of the million rubber balls became a din of claws against brick. He listened to their squeaking as the creatures began to climb after them.

Five stories and they were on the roof. The Hound rolled Tony off its shoulders and onto the white gravel there. He took off one of the belts and wrapped it around Tony's waist.

“What are you doing?”

“I'm saving your life,” the Hound said in a way that told Tony it was a little unsure of its own motives. “In a moment you're going to appear in the back room of a bar, near Seattle. You tell the woman there … Listen! You tell her, ‘Scopes said to get me to a hospital.' You got that? Tell her it's a direct command from Scopes.”

“Why?”

“Because,” said Scopes. “You're right. Something needs to change. But the people of Mu can't help you. They're the worst sort of humans. They're pragmatists.”

The Hound pushed something into Tony's hand. It was hard to concentrate, because his head screamed with such agony, but it felt like a belt buckle.

“You go to Mu. Go and see for yourself. When you've had enough of their talk, you can bring me over with this. And then we'll fix it together.”

Scopes pushed a button on the belt wrapped around Tony's body, and suddenly Tony was weightless.

*   *   *

“I woke up in the back of a bar in Ariel, Washington,” he said. “The woman who ran the place knew the Hounds. Husband was a Collector back in the day. She got me to the hospital. I gave them a fake name. Spent a month recovering. Lived out of a homeless shelter in Seattle until I got my mind right again. Then I made my way to Dutch Harbor, in the Aleutians. Hijacked a crab boat to get me here. This guy named Phil was the boat captain. He stayed here, too, once he saw what it was all about. You'd like him,” he said to the Captain. “Grumpy just like you.”

“What about the belt buckle?” asked Jack.

“Hmm?”

“The buckle the Hound gave you? What did you do with it?”

“Oh. I dunno. There's a whole cache of those belts in Peshtigo. Nazis left behind all kinds of dangerous shit.”

“Okay,” said the Captain, “so what the fuck have you been doing for three years?”

“Well, first of all it's been more like five years, not three. That's how much the new forgettings have fucked with the calendar. You know they can reset only so many times until the seasons start to get all out of whack and then they have to leap forward like nine months to make it right again. But what have I been doing? I work. Yada yada yada … from each, according to their ability, you know? I talk to people about their problems. Listen to their stories.”

Cole was looking at Tony as if he were an alien.

“People here, they've got everything solved. Everything except boredom. The vitamins everyone takes allow them to live for hundreds of years, but, man, they're so afraid of getting hurt outside the city, nobody ever leaves.”

“Did you even try to fix anything?” asked Jack.

Tony looked to his old friend. “Fuck you, okay? I tried. I did. But nobody wanted to help. And, you know, why leave? We're safe here, Jack. We can stay right here forever and everything will be okay.”

“For you,” said the Captain. “But what about the six billion people who don't live on Mu?”

Tony threw up his hands. “What do you want me to say? They're fucked. They're totally fucked. But they brought it on themselves, didn't they?”

The Captain glared at him. “You've been given more chances than you deserve, you little snot. You're indebted. To the world that took care of you after your dad went crazy. To the people who cleaned up your mess after you left. Understand? You pay it back because that's the way it works. Sit back and watch the world go to shit? Nuts!”

“Dad,” said Jack, his voice calm, calming. “Easy.”

The Captain grunted and walked away.

7
    A Native American fellow with a long ponytail arrived later that night in a big school bus filled with fruits and vegetables and dried fish. Jack and Zaharie organized a buffet, and while they served the passengers, Sam slipped away and walked the mile to the beach along the southern shore of Mu. She walked a narrow footpath to the sand, still warm from the sun even though it had set an hour ago. The grains smushed between her toes like moon dust.

She walked a bit, the white lights of Peshtigo a shimmer on the horizon. The Milky Way was a river of stars above the sea. Maybe she shouldn't be exploring this island in the dark, she thought. She didn't really believe Tony's stories about dinosaurs. But still.

A shadow moved beside her feet and she jumped, startled.

“Heya, Sam,” said Tony.

He was sitting on the sand, smoking a short pipe. He looked up at her with his good eye and patted the ground beside him. She sat and he offered her the pipe. It was marijuana, or like marijuana in the way a freshly picked berry from the forest is like store-bought fruit. This was uncultivated, wild pot. It smelled of damp earth and time. If history had a smell, thought Sam, it would smell just like this. She held in the smoke and then let it out slowly like he'd showed her to do when they were kids.

“You're an asshole,” she said.

“I know.”

“No. I mean it. You're an asshole.”

“Yes.”

“You could have left a note.”

“I couldn't tell you where I was going,” he said. “Not without putting you in danger. But I left you the insurance money.”

“I never got it. I couldn't declare you dead because it was so obvious you'd run away. You had me stealing money from Haven.”

“We were only borrowing the money. I meant to pay it back,” he said.

“What was it for?”

“I spent what was in our checking on stuff for the trip here. Ion-filtration system for bottled water, night-vision goggles I thought might help me see the island … I thought the police would go looking in the lake after a while. I was sure you'd think I'd committed suicide and tell them to send a diver down. I tried to make it look like…”

“You really thought putting your watch on my brother's wrist was enough to fool anyone?” she said.

“I thought the lake was too deep for them to bother with the body. I figured they'd send a diver down for my personal effects.” He shook his head. “I don't know. It was the best I could do.”

The light of the stars was enough for her to see the outline of his body and she watched him lean forward, tilting his head. She drew back.

“No,” she said. “Are you crazy?”

“Are you my wife or what? Where are we with that?”

Sam laughed. “I
mourned
you. I got over you years ago.” And then she leaned into him, pushed her lips against his, opened his mouth and found his tongue. He tasted like ash from the pipe. Gritty. Warm. His hands found her, drew her closer. He put a hand on the back of her head and held her tight while he kissed her.

She twisted away from his grip and wiped her bottom lip. “I should have been with Jack from the beginning.”

Tony scooted closer. “You hated the way Jack always walked on eggshells around you because of what your brother did to you. He didn't want to break you and you hated how careful he was with you.”

He leaned in for another kiss, but she caught him, held his face with one hand and looked into his eye. “If you ever try to kiss me again or even look at me like you want to, I will leave and I will take everyone who ever loved you with me.”

8
    Jack leaned on the bus and picked apart a pomegranate. Hundreds of rinds littered the ground around him. The Chinese had eaten their fill. He looked up at the sound of feet on the macadam. Tony was walking back to the hangar, head down, leaning forward.

“Hey,” called Jack.

Tony looked up, then walked over, straightening himself as he came nearer. He stopped when he was still a foot away.

“You want to punch me or something?” Tony asked.

“Come here,” said Jack. He reached out and grabbed his shirt and pulled his friend to him. He hugged him tightly. “I'm glad you're alive.”

When he let him go, Tony slipped a finger under his eyepatch and wiped away the moisture that had collected there.

“This is yours,” Jack said at last. He unclasped the watch and handed it to Tony.

Tony turned it over in his hand, reading the new inscription by the light of the stars.

“Cool,” he said. He put it on his left wrist and then looked at Jack a while longer, not saying anything. Jack remembered a time when they were children, a night during the heat wave when they had stayed up until 4:00 a.m. to watch the Perseid meteor shower. He had never felt so close to another human being.

9
    In the morning, they awoke to a brilliant sunrise. The sun was a ball of red fire above a sapphire sea. Another bus arrived after breakfast. The driver was a young Cherokee in a black tunic. He spoke to Tony in broken English.