And it was just the beginning.
While Stern slept, Sam had gathered up all the other pads, armfuls of them, some of the browned pages older than many of his neighbors, and burnt them in the fireplace. He had crouched before the flames, heat singeing his eyes, as the paper blackened and curled and fell to ash. Watching silently as the journal of his life was consumed, Sam had felt his own life was burning, being devoured to nothing.
But it had to be done; Ely mustn’t read any more of it.
All the uncounted, solitary days and nights Sam had read and reread every scribble, reliving the old trespasses, weighted down with the familiar sense of impotent rage.
Impotent. He’d had no idea. .
Glancing back, he saw Stern contemplating one of the dolls near him, a 1910 Jumeau, her hair an eruption of blond curls, her dress a fantasia of lace. Stern ran his rough hand along her pale, perfect cheek. “All innocence when they’re young,” he murmured.
“I have some muffins I could get us,” Sam offered.
“Later,” Stern said, not looking at him, and Sam realized that Ely was holding the fugitive notepad in his other hand, beginning to flip through it.
He must have had it with him, Sam thought, perhaps in the pockets of the old robe he had outgrown in the night, which lay burst and discarded like a ruptured cocoon on the bedroom floor. “I feel like stretching my legs,” Stern yawned, “making a new friend or two.”
Sam forced himself to look directly at Stern, said almost inaudibly, “I think you’ve made your point.”
“Point?” Stern’s molten eyes glided over to him. “There’s no point here.” He stretched, and the muscles in his back made a sound like creaking leather. “And anyway, last time I checked this was your writing, babe.”
He’s right, he’s absolutely right, oh sweet God. . How many names were in that pad? Dozens, hundreds maybe. Sam felt light-headed, and in his imaginings the slick wetness that covered his body was not sweat but blood.
Stern was still watching him with keen interest. “You got anything else you’d care to say?” There was a deliberate menace in his tone that made Sam’s guts twist.
“Me?” Sam ducked his head, looked away.
Stern chuckled, then dropped his gaze to the pad. He skimmed several pages, then stopped, incredulity dawning on his face. He looked up at Sam, and his lips curled in a smile of sheer, delicious joy.
“This one,” Stern said, “will be a pleasure.”
OUTSIDE D.C.
Shango and Czernas reached the first plane before they even left Arlington County, just a few miles beyond Scott Key bridge. It was a JAL nonstop to Tokyo, a jumbo jet whose pilot had tried to put it down on a high school football field, Washington Parkway being jammed with cars heading into the city. The fat silvery monster had, not surprisingly, rammed into the auditorium and plowed through into the rank of summer-empty classrooms beyond. Charred patches on walls and grass showed where fuel from the ruptured tanks had sprayed, but there was surprisingly little evidence of fire.
“He said she’d be on a United flight,” said Shango, as Czernas skidded to a halt among the dead cars on the parkway and swung his bike up onto the median, to cross to the driveway into the school.
People were milling around the walls. Shango could hear moaning, the low steady clamor of those exhausted by pain that would not cease. No meds, he thought.
There was no sign of the National Guard or any kind of transport, though he could see bodies lined up under the shelter of the back of the bleachers. Movement there in the shadows, big birds-ravens or crows-and probably rats. At a guess they’d put the wounded in the gym.
The still hot air brought them the smell of smoke and shit.
A small white woman in green sweatpants and a white tank-top was striding toward them, waving her arms. “Let’s go,” said Shango, making a move to turn his bike, but Czernas didn’t follow. The aide’s face was twisted with shock and pity. Shango added, “There’s nothing we can do here.”
Still Czernas waited for the woman, who had broken into a run.
Having mentally reviewed McKay’s other friends, Shango guessed why the President had picked Czernas for the job. Press Secretary Ron Guthrie had to top out at two-eighty, and Nina Diaz, though slim and fit, would have been viewed as booty by the roving gangs of looters Shango and Czernas had encountered in the pillaged streets on their way to the bridge. But Steve Czernas, with his youth and fitness, had the idealism that in McKay had been chipped and filed by Nam and politics and years of responsibility.
Maybe in his youth McKay would have turned aside from a mission to help people in need. Or would at least have waited to see what the woman had to say.
In war, reflected Shango, that kind of behavior would probably get you and your men very dead, very fast.
The woman in the green sweats stumbled up to them, panting. “Thank God,” she gasped, and caught Czernas’ arm, as if fearing he’d flee. “You’ve got to get help. Find the National Guard, wherever the hell they are. They sent out two guys-two guys! — last night and said they’d get water and food and some meds, and since then there’s been nothing.”
She didn’t look bruised or smoke blackened, though her face was grimy with dust and sweat. Shango guessed she was from one of the houses in the upscale development down the road. She had the slim body and cut muscle of a woman who worked out hard and often, but her face was lined, her hair white: she was sixty-five at least. She took a breath, and when she spoke again, her voice was shaky but forcibly calm.
“We’ve got a hundred and thirty-five people in the gym, trauma, shock-there’s a girl there who broke nearly every bone in her body when the plane hit. My neighbors and I have been trying to help, but there’s no water, no electricity. Does anybody know what’s happening? What’s being done?”
She looked from Shango’s face to Czernas’ and back again, and behind her thick bifocals Shango saw other things: desperation, terror, husband and children and grandchildren who hadn’t been heard from since yesterday morning. Her world in pieces around her. Compassion stabbed him like an assassin through the heart, and like an assassin he thrust it aside, crushed it.
It was a luxury they couldn’t afford.
Bilmer was somewhere out there, maybe lying injured in some makeshift dressing station somewhere, maybe trying to hike in from Dulles by herself.
“Please,” the woman was saying to Czernas. “Whatever you’re doing, please turn around and go back to town and find the National Guard or whoever’s in charge and tell them-ask them-to at least get us some water, a doctor. Doctor Vanderheide’s been on her feet for twenty-four hours, and she was hurt in the crash, too. . ”
“We can’t,” said Shango, seeing the struggle on Czernas’ face. Seeing that he could not say no.
The woman stared at him with eyes that blazed in sudden hate.
“If we run into the National Guard at Dulles, we’ll tell them to get out here, but we can’t turn back.”
“What are you, deaf?” The woman’s voice cracked with sudden passion, her hard-held calm dissolving. “Or stupid? You want to come down here for a second and see what a man looks like who’s still alive after having his legs and pelvis mashed to jelly?” Her voice rose to almost a scream. “You want to tell a ten-year-old girl whose back was roasted that she’s going to have to go on hurting for a while longer? You want to. .” She gasped, clutching at self-control, fingers digging harder into Czernas’ wrist as he tried to draw away. Tears were running down her face, tracking the grime.
“Please,” she said. “Please.”
There were tears also on Czernas’ face, mingling with the sweat in the hot morning sun.
Quietly, Shango said again, “We can’t.” And to Czernas, who seemed incapable of movement or speech, “Let’s go.”