Gabriel left the room immediately, took a wrong turn, and ended up in another suite of deserted offices. By the time he reached the marble staircase, he could hear Pickering’s breathless voice coming from the ground floor.
“This way, everyone. This way.”
Gabriel continued up the staircase to the third floor. Looking down the stairwell, he saw a flash of orange fire. One of the wolves had just lit a torch crudely made from a table leg wrapped with tar-covered rags.
“I didn’t lie to you,” Pickering said. “He was here. Look, he’s gone upstairs. Can’t you see?”
Gabriel realized that he had left footprints in the fine white dust that covered the staircase. The hallway behind him was also covered with dust. No matter where he stepped, the wolves would be able to track him down.
Can’t stay here, he thought, and continued up the staircase. The stairs ended on the fifth floor. He passed through a steel fire door hanging from one hinge and found himself on the roof. The yellowish-gray clouds that covered the sky had turned dark and billowy, as if a malignant rain were about to fall. Gazing over the skyline, he could see the shattered bridge and the black line of the river.
Gabriel walked to the low safety wall that ran around the edge of the roof. There was a fifteen-foot gap between where he was standing and the adjacent building. If the jump failed, he would never return to his own world. Would Maya ever see his dead body? Would she press her ear to his chest and realize that his heart had finally stopped beating? He circled the roof once, twice, and returned to his original position. Because of the safety wall, he couldn’t run and throw himself forward.
The steel fire door was ripped away and tossed down the stairwell. Pickering and the patrol stepped onto the roof. “See? I told you so!” Pickering said.
Gabriel stepped onto the top of the concrete wall and looked over at the next building. It’s too far, he thought. Much too far.
The wolves raised their weapons and started toward him.
** CHAPTER 27
Two of the Tabula mercenaries hiked up the slope to the helicopters and returned with a portable electric generator. The generator was placed near the storage hut and attached to a sodium light. Michael glanced upward. The thousands of stars visible in the night sky resembled little chips of ice. It was very cold now, and the moisture from everyone’s lungs left a faint haze in the air.
Michael was disappointed that neither Gabriel nor his father was on the island, but the operation wasn’t a complete failure. Perhaps the team would find documents or information on a computer that would lead them to a more promising target. Word would get back to Mrs. Brewster that he had brought in the splicers and demanded an aggressive approach to searching the huts. The Brethren liked people who took charge.
He sat down on a slab of limestone and watched Boone give orders to his men. When the backscatter device told them that the person inside the hut was neutralized, a man with an ax attacked the heavy oak door. Boone told the mercenary to stop working when he had chopped a jagged hole about two feet square. A moment later, one of the baboons peered out of the hole like a curious dog. Boone shot the animal in the head.
The two remaining splicers inside the hut began calling to each other. They were clever enough to sense danger and stay away from the hole. The man with the ax resumed his work. Fifteen minutes later he had completely destroyed the door. Boone’s men moved cautiously, pushing away storage containers and raising their shotguns before edging inside. Michael heard more shrieks and then gunshots.
One of Boone’s men had started a fire in the cooking hut and served mugs of tea to the others. Michael used the cup to warm his cold hands while he waited for more information. Ten minutes later, Boone walked out through the wrecked door. Boone was smiling and moving his body in a confident way, as if he had somehow regained his power. He accepted a cup of tea and strolled over to Michael.
“Is the Harlequin dead?” Michael asked.
“Maya wasn’t in the building. It was a young woman from Los Angeles named Victory From Sin Fraser.” Boone chuckled. “That name always amused me.”
“And she was the only person in the building?”
“Oh, someone else was there. Down in the cellar.” Boone hesitated for a few seconds, enjoying the tension in Michael’s face. “We just found your father. That is…your father’s body.”
Michael took a flashlight from one of the mercenaries and followed Boone into the storage hut. The floor and walls were splattered with blood, still bright red and glistening. A plastic cloth covered the four dead splicers. A second cloth covered Victory Fraser, but Michael could see the scuffed soles of her shoes.
They climbed down a staircase to a cellar with a gravel floor and passed through a door into a side room. Matthew Corrigan lay on a stone slab with a white muslin cloth over his legs. As Michael looked down at the body, images from the past overwhelmed him with an unexpected force. He remembered his father weeding the garden behind the farmhouse, driving the family’s battered pickup truck, and sharpening a carving knife for a Christmas turkey. He remembered his father chopping wood on a winter’s day, the snow clinging to his long brown hair as the blade of his ax rose up against the sky. Those childhood days were gone now. Gone forever. But the memories still had the power to move Michael— and that made him angry.
“He’s not dead,” Boone explained. “I got the medical kit stethoscope and heard a heartbeat. This is how you look when you cross over to another world.”
Michael resented Boone’s cocky smile and his insinuating tone of voice. “All right, you found him,” he said. “Now get out of here.”
“For what reason?”
“I don’t need a reason. If you want to keep your job, I would recommend you show some respect to a representative of the executive board. Go upstairs and leave me alone.”
Boone’s mouth became a tight line, but he nodded and left the cellar. Michael could hear the other men walking around the storage hut and pushing boxes against the wall. Holding the flashlight in his left hand, he gazed down at Matthew Corrigan. When Michael was growing up in South Dakota, adults always said that Gabriel looked like their father. Although Matthew’s hair was gray and his face was deeply lined, Michael could now see the resemblance. He wondered if there was any truth to the rumor picked up by Tabula computers. Had Gabriel been on this island and had he discovered the body?
“Can you hear me?” Michael asked his father. “Can…you…hear…me?”
No response. He touched his father’s throat and pushed hard. For a second, he thought he felt the flutter of a pulse. If he got rid of the flashlight he could squeeze the throat with both hands. Even if your Light was traveling through another realm, your body could die in this world. No one would stop him from killing Matthew. No one would criticize his judgment. Mrs. Brewster would see his action as another demonstration of his loyalty to the cause.
Michael placed the flashlight on the ledge in the wall and stepped closer to his father’s body. His breath appeared and then vanished in the cold air. In his entire life, he had never felt so completely focused on the moment. Do it, Michael thought. He ran away fifteen years ago. Now he can disappear forever.
He reached out again and peeled back his father’s eyelid. A blue eye stared back at him with no spark of life in its dark pupil. Michael felt as if he were looking at a dead man— and that was the problem. In one world or another, he wanted to confront his father and force him to admit that he had abandoned his family. Destroying this empty shell meant nothing; it would never provide him with satisfaction.
A memory flashed through his mind of a schoolyard fight back in South Dakota when he was a teenager. After Michael had punched and kicked his opponent, the other boy had fallen to the ground and covered his face with his hands. But that wasn’t enough. That wasn’t what he was looking for. He wanted complete surrender. Fear.
He retrieved the flashlight and walked upstairs to the blood-covered room where Boone and two mercenaries were waiting. “Load the body into one of the helicopters,” Michael told them. “We’re taking him off this island.”
** CHAPTER 28
The wolves waited until Gabriel stepped back onto the roof and then they grabbed him. His arms were forced behind his back, his wrists tied with a length of wire, and his eyes blindfolded with a torn shirt. When the Traveler could no longer defend himself, one of the wolves punched him in the throat. Gabriel fell onto the tar-paper roof and tried to roll up into a ball as the wolves began kicking him in the chest and stomach. He was blind and desperate, gasping for air.
Someone swung a club at the base of his spine, and a wave of pain surged through every part of his body. Gabriel heard voices talking about the school. Take him to the school. Hands pulled him to his feet and dragged him down the marble staircase. Out on the street, he kept stumbling and tripping over chunks of rubble. He tried to remember where they were going. Left turn. Right turn. Stop. But the pain made it difficult to think. Finally, he was guided up another staircase and taken into a room with a smooth tile floor. The electric cord was untied and replaced with handcuffs. A shackle was fastened around his neck, and he was chained to a steel ring bolted into the floor.
The Traveler’s body was sore, and he could feel dry blood on his face and hands. Images of the river, the shattered bridge, the gas flares burning among the ruined buildings overwhelmed his thoughts. After a while he fell into an uneasy sleep, waking up with a start when he heard the clang of the door swinging open. Hands pulled off his blindfold and he found himself looking at the black man wearing the white lab coat and the man with the braided blond hair. “You can’t get out of this building,” the blond man told him. “You got no life— unless we give it back to you.”
As the wolves took off his shackles, Gabriel glanced around the room. He saw a teacher’s desk and an old-fashioned blackboard. A cardboard alphabet had been fastened to the wall, but some of the faded green letters dangled upside down, held by one last remaining pin.
“You’re coming with us,” the black man said. “The commissioner wants to meet you.”
Holding Gabriel’s arms, the two wolves pulled him into the hallway. The three-story building had brick walls and small windows covered with shutters. During some stage of the endless fighting, the wolves had converted the school into a fort, dormitory, storage house, and prison. Who was the commissioner? Gabriel wondered. He had to be bigger and stronger and even more vicious than the men who swaggered down the hallway with clubs and knives hanging from their belts.
They turned a corner, passed through some swinging doors, and stepped into a large room that had once been the school’s auditorium. Curving rows of wooden seats faced a stage. A steel pipe ran across the stage and fed gas into an L-shaped fixture that burned with a bright flame. Two benches were placed near the back wall; the wolves sat there like petitioners outside the door of a king.
At the center of the stage was a large table stacked with manila folders and black ledger books. The man sitting behind the table wore a dark blue business suit, a white shirt, and a red bow tie. He was thin and bald and his face radiated self-righteousness. Even from a distance, Gabriel felt like this man knew all the regulations and he was prepared to enforce them in every possible way. There would be no negotiations or concessions. Everyone was guilty— and they would be punished.
Gabriel’s two guards stopped halfway down the aisle and waited for the commissioner to conclude his interview with a large man who was holding a gunnysack wet with blood. One of the commissioner’s assistants counted the objects inside the sack and then whispered a number.
“Very good.” The commissioner’s voice was strong and purposeful. “You may receive your food allocation.”
The man with the sack left the stage as the commissioner entered a number in a black ledger. Ignoring the other petitioners, the two wolves led Gabriel up a ramp to the stage and forced him to sit on a wooden stool in front of the desk. The commissioner closed his ledger and looked up at this new problem.
“Well, it’s our visitor from somewhere else. I’ve been told that your name is Gabriel. Is that accurate information?”
Gabriel stayed silent until the blond man jabbed him in the back with a club.
“That’s correct. And who are you?”
“My predecessors were fond of grandiose and meaningless titles like major general or chief of staff. Indeed, one man called himself president for life. Of course, he lasted only five days. After much thought, I’ve chosen a more modest title. I’m the commissioner for patrols in this sector of the city.”
Gabriel nodded, but stayed silent. The gas flare burning behind him made a hushing sound.
“Visitors from the outside have appeared in the city, but you’re the first one I’ve encountered. So who are you and how did you get here?”
“I’m just like everyone else,” Gabriel said. “I opened my eyes and found myself beside the river.”
“I don’t believe that.” The commissioner of patrols got up from the desk. Gabriel saw that he had a revolver in his belt. He snapped his fingers and one of his assistants hurried over with a second stool. The commissioner sat down close to Gabriel, leaned forward, and whispered.
“Some say that a divine power will rescue the final group of survivors. Of course, it’s in my interest to encourage such hopeful fantasies. But it’s my belief that we’ve been condemned to slaughter one another over and over again until the end of time. That means I’m here forever, unless I find a way out.”
“Is this the only city in this world?”
“Of course not. Before the sky darkened, you could see other islands farther down the river. But my assumption is that they were only other hells, perhaps with inhabitants from different cultures or different historical eras. But all the islands are the same— a place where souls are condemned to repeat this cycle forever.”
“If you let me explore the Island, I could look for a passageway out.”
“Yes, you’d like that. Wouldn’t you?” The commissioner stood up and snapped his fingers again. “Please bring the special chair.”