The Only Ones (17 page)

T
he smoke weaseled in through a window of Sigrid’s house and attacked her nostrils as she ran on her treadmill. When she pulled back the curtains and saw the flames, she grabbed her cymbals and took to the streets, running up and down, sounding the alarm. Before long, all of Xibalba was gathered around Felix.

There was nothing they could do. He was quite clearly dead.

The fire spread, marauding from building to building. When it reached Gina’s candy-colored home, the fireworks inside kicked things to another level, unleashing whistles and deafening thumps of rainbow explosions. It quickly came to a point where fighting the fire was impossible. Since everyone wanted his or her own house to be saved, no one’s could be saved. They could agree on only one thing: they would save the machine.

They surrounded it with walls of snow at least two feet thick. Then they gathered behind the walls with an arsenal of snowballs to pelt back the flames. When morning came, a fresh warm rain accompanied it. The fire had started to peter out on its own, but the rain finished the job. And it provided them with a chance to see the destruction. They went to Nigel’s house first.

In the pile of ash and blackened wood, there were too many animal bones to count. Whether Nigel’s bones were among them was impossible to say. All they knew was he was gone.

Most of the homes were destroyed or damaged beyond repair. The kids split up in an attempt to recover what they could while Martin stayed back. He said it was to clean his injured foot. It was really to think.

The realization entered him like a piping hot drink, scalded him at first and then overtook his core. Things had changed. Chet’s death, while tragic, had been accidental. Felix’s murder was something else entirely. In Nigel’s cold eyes, Martin had seen pain and rage and desperation. He had seen a human, doing a profoundly human and thoroughly awful thing, all because of events Martin had set in motion.

It was like Lane’s contraption, only instead of orbs racing along tracks, these were kids, pushed along by fear and emotion. Martin had started it, so it was his responsibility to end it. He fought the urge to cry. He needed to be decisive and convincing, win over the doubters. And those who couldn’t be won over—they would need to be dealt with in other ways. It was a tough stance, but he had to take control, or else they would all career into their doom.

A steel-handled broom played the role of a crutch, and he lifted himself up. He limped through the smoldering town until he reached his former house, where sizzling snow greeted him. Lane happened to be there too. She was walking circles around the foundation, poking at embers with a bent wire coat hanger.

“You already go to your house?” Martin asked.

“It’s a smoking pile,” Lane said. “Brown plastic icicles and rebar. But, you know, kind of pretty in its way. Like a black-sand beach. Ever seen one of those? The horns from the record players looked like silver seashells.”

“I’m sorry,” Martin said.

“What for? You didn’t do anything. You didn’t start the fire. You didn’t shoot Felix.”

It was true. He was as passive an observer as he could have been. He didn’t do a thing. Like so much of his past life, he had let it happen all around him.

“At your house, when you did your show for me, the …”

“
The Rube
?”

Martin nodded. “There was a record you were playing. I’ve been thinking about that. About what the words might have been.”

“I was playing it backwards,” Lane explained. “Heavy metal. Backwards messages. It’s a thing … people do.”

“And?”

“And yes, it was supposed to sound like a bunch of words.” Lane tapped the tip of her shoe against a rippled and broken beam.

“What words?”

Leaning in and pushing with a sole, Lane sent the beam toppling. A flurry of sparks danced through the damp air. She looked down and saw something.

“ ‘You are not our savior,’ ” she said breathlessly.

“Excuse me?”

“You. Are. Not. Our. Savior. Those were the words, or those were supposed to be the words. The atheist in me isn’t exactly a perfectionist.” She lowered herself to her knees and poked the hanger through the rubble. Then she grabbed a handful of snow and plunged it into the smoldering mess.

“I … could be … our savior,” Martin offered hesitantly.

“Oh boy,” Lane said. “Don’t even start with that.” With a sneer and a grunt, she pulled her hand back.

Why not? Martin thought. After all, there were far too many coincidences. He’d heard enough Arrival Stories to know that his eleventh birthday had happened at the same time as the Day. Exactly two years later, he arrived in Xibalba. Nigel had predicted someone would come and save them all. Martin had to be that person. There was no con here. This was fate. And the machine? It was more than a hunk of metal. It was, quite simply, all that was left of Martin’s father—his headaches, his sleepless nights, his pulsing green eyes staring out at the sea. It was an essential part in all this, and it had to be protected. Nothing could stand in the way of its completion.

“Think what you want about me,” Martin said, “but I’m going to make things right. It’s what I was destined to do.”

“Okay.” Lane shrugged, still grasping what she had rescued from the rubble. “Then tell me exactly how you’re gonna pull that off.”

Henry was out there somewhere, hiding. By breaking into the Internet, by stealing Martin’s book, by letting it burn, Henry had done something wrong and he knew it. But it was far worse than he might have imagined. Martin didn’t care
what Henry’s motives were. He only knew that he was a danger and a liability, that he couldn’t be trusted. He only knew that this angry kid had destroyed one of Martin’s last links to his former life.

“I’ll start by finding Henry,” Martin said. “It’s because of him that this happened. He needs to be punished. And with him out of the way, and with everyone pitching in, we’ll finish the machine. Now more than ever we need the machine.”

As she brushed snow from her hand onto the ground, Lane revealed what she had found. It was one of the bottles from the dollhouse. “You know, Felix told me about the marble,” she said. “Does everyone else know Darla was hiding a marble? That a
marble
is supposed to complete the machine?”

“I don’t think so,” Martin admitted. “They don’t have to.”

“Why a marble? Why not anything? Why not a bottle, like this?”

“It was Kelvin Rice’s marble,” Martin said. “Without Kelvin, I would never have found Xibalba. The machine never would have been built.”

“You ever play spin the bottle?”

“No.”

“Neither have I,” Lane said. “It was Kelvin’s idea of romance. Messages in a bottle too. He loved those. Sometimes he’d place a tiny bottle on my doorstep with a note in it, inviting me to hang out with him in his basement. I never told him, but I thought it was the cheesiest thing in the world.”

“Are you upset that I was living in his house?”

Lane shook her head and tossed the bottle back into the blackened remains, and it knocked pollen-thin ash into the air. “It doesn’t matter now,” she sighed. “It was just a place and
Kelvin was just a kid. He had marbles and bottles and model airplanes and stuff that kids have. Stuff, that’s all it is. It burns, or you lose it, or you forget about it. If you want to tie it in to some grand plan of fate and destiny, be my guest. But believing in that sort of thing means you have to believe in the good and the bad, the victories and the disasters. It’s all equally profound. It’s all equally meaningless.”

“I know that,” Martin said.

“Fair enough. So first we find Henry. Then punish him. How?” she asked.

There would be a trial. Outside, during the day, by the machine, where everyone could watch. Chairs and couches were to be planted in what remained of the snow, and a large oak table was to be positioned center stage. The search for Henry didn’t take long. He was found sleeping in the police station, of all places. He was given two days to prepare his defense.

A precedent had been set. Kelvin had been given a trial too.

“He called it a kangaroo court,” Darla told Martin.

“What’s that?” Martin asked.

“Beats me. Never been to Australia.”

Apparently, since the kids knew legal proceedings only from television, there never had been much actual law. Their courtroom had simply been a collection of odd clichés. A croquet mallet served as a gavel, and even though no one was officially appointed judge, Ryan took it upon himself to bang it every once in a while and holler, “Objection! Overruled!” Riley fashioned a series of mops into ridiculous British court wigs, which a few kids donned to class up proceedings. Felix, of course, was the stenographer, jotting down
notes on pieces of wood. There was almost nothing to write, however. Kelvin had been found guilty in a matter of minutes, and his defense had amounted to “Yes, I did it, but I thought it was the right thing to do.”

“What did he do?” Martin asked.

“He betrayed us” was Darla’s answer.

“Like Henry did?” Martin said.

“What’s Henry’s crime, really?” Darla asked. “He was caught up in the craziness with us. I hardly think he deserves a trial.”

“He was sabotaging our mission,” Martin explained. Then Martin did something he had never done in his life. He told a flat-out lie. “Those papers he had, the ones he burned. He stole them from my personal page. They contained important coordinates we need to enter into the machine.”

“Really?” Darla asked. “They looked a bit more like a novel or something, from a distance, at least.”

“Why would Henry break in to steal a novel?” Martin asked.

Darla shrugged. “The guy is loopy. You should go easy on him.”

Henry’s trial would be a more restrained affair than Kelvin’s. Light on pomp and circumstance, heavy on accusations. On the day of the trial, Henry arrived, escorted by Tiberia. Stern and muscular and proud of it, Tiberia was a girl, but she was the closest thing Xibalba had to a man. She was six foot one, and she shaved her scalp every day, to show off her head’s perfect roundness. Her contribution to their community was simple. Tiberia was the muscle. Need to move a rock, tighten a bolt, swing an ax? Call Tiberia. Her
passion wasn’t manual labor, however. It was, in some ways, quite the opposite.

She spent most of her free time in the kitchen, mixing vitamins and powders she found at drugstores. She was trying to devise the perfect protein shake, one that, in her words, would make “gettin’ buff as easy as having breakfast.” In the process, she had acquired all the town’s narcotics and antibiotics, which she locked in a massive fireproof safe. “No one here has a PhD, so I’m the closest thing to a person who knows a thing or two about a thing or two. If you need some, you’ll get some, but only if you need some,” she told kids.

Two days before, when Martin had asked Tiberia to guard Henry until the trial, she wasn’t surprised. “Send a brat to his room, you’re gonna want the biggest, baddest babysitter,” she said.

When Tiberia showed Henry to his seat at the oak table, she stood behind him, her massive hands on the back of the chair, ready for any move. The eyes of the crowd practically spat at him. Details about the night of the fire were hard to come by. Darla and Martin had agreed to remain tight-lipped until the trial. Everyone just assumed it was all Henry’s fault.

Darla spoke first. She was dressed in a business suit for the occasion, and her hair was held together in an elaborate bun by a pair of glass chopsticks. Taking a seat next to Martin at the table, she launched into her version of events.

“First of all, I’d like to thank everyone for helping me organize an evening to remember. A truly magical time, until, well, you know.…”

She went on to describe everything in lavish detail. The bowling. The meal. The movie. When she came to Felix and Henry and Nigel, she didn’t slow down one bit. She talked
about the oily smell of Kid Godzilla, the phlegmy hack of the dying Komodo dragon, the warmth of tiger blood on her stockinged legs. And she didn’t lie or exaggerate. The only things she neglected to relate were Felix’s accusations regarding Nigel. She said the two of them were having an argument, and she left it at that. It was a curious omission, but Martin assumed she was simply trying to help Henry by not implicating him in some larger conspiracy.

Everything else she said was accurate, or at least seemed to be to Martin. Yet with all the facts laid bare, it was hard for the kids to take her seriously. As she left the table and took a seat in the crowd, there were more than a few snickers and whispers along the lines of “The day I believe that girl …”

Martin came next. His strategy was simple. Rather than confirm or deny what Darla had said, he would focus on Henry, and Henry alone.

“What exactly were you doing in the Internet, by yourself, without Felix’s permission?” Martin asked.

Henry leaned forward, and as if he had been rehearsing his response, he said, “I’d rather not answer that question.”

“Were you only sneaking into my personal page, or were you sneaking into everyone’s personal pages?”

“I’d rather not answer that question.”

“When you burned the book that contained the coordinates for the machine, were you trying to doom us all?”

“I’d rather not—”

“And when you should have been protecting us, when you should have been doing your job, the one that provides you with your food, and your health, and your entertainment, when you should have been doing that, why were you letting this town burn and two boys die?”

“I wasn’t lettin’ no one do nothin’. They did it all by
themselves,” Henry said in a voice only a bit louder than a whisper.

“Right. With your gun. On your watch,” Martin said. It was a nice touch. He had read enough courtroom novels to know that simple and understated worked best. No reason to linger too long on theatrics.

A yell came from the crowd: “What do you have to say for yourself?”

“Nothin’,” Henry said. “ ’Cept for sorry, I guess. For whatever it is ya think I did.”