Nobody Gets The Girl (18 page)

Rail Blade turned her head.

A white flash cast the boy's shadow in a long
arrow back to Nobody.

A red spray painted the white cloth of the
Thrill's costume.

The boy slumped to the ground.

In the air where the boy had stood, a black
cloud of grenade fragments hung motionless, spread out like a dense
swarm of flies.

Rail Blade's lips were pressed tight, her
face white, her eyes narrow, as the swarm condensed and coalesced
back into a grenade. The grenade dropped to the ground, landing in
the red pool that grew around the boy.

"Get away," said Rail Blade.

"My God," said Nobody. "He couldn't have been
ten years old."

"Get away," said Rail Blade, through clenched
teeth. She dug her fingers into the dust. The air began to smell of
ozone. Lightning crackled overhead. Nobody's watch began to spark.
He fumbled to unclasp it, then threw it to the ground. But it
didn't hit the ground. It hung motionless in the air, glowing with
static.

"Amelia," said the Thrill. "Calm down."

Rail Blade grabbed the Thrill by the
shoulders and stared into her eyes.

"Leave this place!" she shouted. "Get far
from this place as fast as you can. Don't. Look. Back."

Nobody put his hand on Rail Blade's shoulder.
"Amelia," he said.

His hand went numb. He pulled it away. Thin
lines of blood bubbled across his palm and fingers. Rail Blade's
uniform shredded as razor sharp spikes grew from her back and
shoulders.

"Go," said Rail Blade, releasing the Thrill
with a backward shove.

The men who had been fighting nearby began to
shriek in agony. Nobody looked at them. One by one, they were
rising from the Earth, levitating like his wristwatch. The looks of
agony that twisted their faces were nightmarish.

"Amelia," said the Thrill. "Stop this
now!"

"What's she doing?" said Nobody. "What's
going on?"

"She's lifting them by their blood," said the
Thrill. "It can kill people, cause strokes, rupture arteries. Stop
it Amelia!"

The screaming men were lifted higher now,
moving faster, being carried away from Rail Blade. Rail Blade's
sweat had turned to liquid steel, running down her face like beads
of mercury.

"Amelia, please," said Nobody, kneeling
before her.

Then he couldn't breathe. His heart was
stopped mid-beat as he was lifted into the air. The pain was
indescribable, like being lifted on the points of a billion sharp
needles resting against his heart, his lungs, his liver. The pain
stopped suddenly as Sarah placed her hands on him.

"I'm touching Earth's core," said Rail Blade,
her voice calm and cold. "My power is limitless. Leave... this...
place."

"We're going," said the Thrill.

They rose into the air, giving Nobody a
better view. All over the city countless thousands of people were
flying, in a vast dark circle, as Rail Blade evicted every last
citizen of Jerusalem.

"Father," the Thrill said into her radio.
"Amelia's losing it. Talk to her."

Dr. Know didn't answer.

Nobody looked down. Rail Blade had risen now.
She stood in the eye of an expanding circle of spinning blades, a
cloud of dust fleeing their approach. Lightning spiked from the
ground around her, passing through her, and the blades whirled
faster. The blades reached the wall of the nearest building, and
rasped it to gravel in seconds. Rail Blade tilted her face upward,
spreading her arms. Her face was angelic and peaceful. The storm of
blades continued to build. Within a dozen yards of her, the ground
was now flat and featureless, carved smooth by flashing steel.

The Thrill pulled them higher into the air,
still vainly shouting for her father to answer.

"She's losing it! She's losing control!" said
the Thrill.

Nobody didn't think so. Below him, the blades
whirled in perfect symmetry, multiplying and pushing outward like
bright shards of a kaleidoscope. There was nothing out of control
about it. It was perfect grace, perfect geometry, as wheels of
razors rolled within wheels, grinding outward, leaving polished
land for a hundred yards in all directions. Where ancient walls
once stood, there was now a gleaming white floor of packed dust.
Mountains vanished before the dance of the blades.

"Take us back down," said Nobody.

"No," said the Thrill.

"We have to talk to her. We have to—"

"She'll kill us. She's snapped. Only Father
can stop her now. Why won't he answer?"

Nobody knew. Nobody knew why Dr. Know wasn't
going to answer. Rail Blade was fulfilling his wish. She was
solving the problem. She was wiping Jerusalem from the face of the
Earth.

He could still see her, though they had now
risen half a mile. Rail Blade was a tiny shape, a dark dot in the
center of a circle of white. Nobody realized what he was
witnessing. Baby Gun had been seen as an angel of prophecy, the
spirit of war given shape and substance, a harbinger of the coming
Apocalypse.

Rail Blade was the fulfillment of
prophecy.

Rail Blade was the Angel of Death.

And she danced, with the pool of the boy's
blood as her pinhead. Her body flowed in fluid arcs, forming the
letters of a new language, spelling out her message with every
graceful motion of her arms and legs.

Jerusalem vanished from the face of the Earth
as Nobody watched in awe. All of the impossible, horrible,
wonderful things he'd witnessed in recent months paled before what
he was now seeing. This was like watching the fall of a comet, like
witnessing a volcano's eruption. He'd never seen such power. He'd
never seen anything so chilling, so perfectly terrible, and so
perfectly beautiful.

THEY RODE A
jet back to the island.
They watched what television channels they could tune into in
silence. This wasn't something that could be covered up, like the
Texas prisoner incident. Every channel they could find kept showing
satellite photos of the area. Jerusalem was gone. In its place was
a ten-mile circle, polished and gleaming like a mirror.

Most of the residents had been safely
deposited beyond the range of the destruction. But when the news
anchors spoke of casualties, the numbers they used were grim ones.
Hundreds of people had died of heart failure. Hundreds of thousands
homeless. The religious shrines of three major religions had
vanished. Nobody had been to the homes of the people who lived in
the city. He'd seen the children's rooms painted with flowers and
smiling clowns. All of those rooms were gone now. All of the
restaurants he'd enjoyed, gone. He knew what it felt like to have
your world stripped away. He felt he should weep for all that was
lost. But he didn't have any tears left.

World leaders issued condolences and called
for calm. The Pope openly wept as he offered a prayer for the lost
souls. Rail Blade was mentioned only in passing, for her role in
stopping the tanks. At least in these early reports, no one was
pointing fingers at Amelia.

"Dad could have stopped this," said Sarah,
quietly.

"No one could have stopped her," said Nobody.
"Your sister was like some force of nature. Stopping her would have
been like stopping a hurricane."

"My father has worked out the science to stop
hurricanes," said Sarah. "He keeps it secret because he fears
environmental damage if nations start shutting down every storm
that heads their way."

"You're joking," said Nobody.

"I'm in no mood to joke right now. My sister
has just killed uncounted innocent people. My father allowed it.
It's possible he put the idea into her head."

"Christ," said Nobody. "Your sister has
always seemed so cold. I knew she could kill without blinking an
eye. But this..."

"There's something you've never been told
about her," said Sarah. "It's a family secret. It's something that
drove her crazy."

"Yes?"

"We used to have a brother."

"That is a well-kept secret. There are no
photographs or anything around the mansion."

"He was the middle child, a year younger than
Amelia, a year older than I. His name was Alexander. He also had
strange powers. He could breathe water. He would spend hours in the
ocean. He loved to swim like I love to fly."

"Did something happen to him?"

Sarah shifted uncomfortably in her seat.
"Amelia killed him."

"Oh," said Nobody.

"She was thirteen. Her powers were starting
to grow strong. She'd been able to move steel with her mind from
birth, but it wasn't until puberty that she was able to create it
from thin air, and make it flow like water. Alex was jealous of
her, I think. Dad had always devoted a tremendous amount of
attention to him, but as Amelia's powers started to develop, Dad
focused on her. Alex began to torment Amelia, teasing her and
stuff. Normal sibling rivalry, I guess, but he really seemed to
want to make her look bad in front of Dad. And one day, he just
pushed the wrong button. She lashed out, forming a blade with her
mind, and cut him very badly. She wasn't trying to kill him, just
scare him by shooting a blade near him, but he moved. He died in
her arms."

"Holy cow," said Nobody. "No wonder she's
crazy. That's quite a burden of guilt for a thirteen year old."

"You would think so, yeah. But then Dad used
that incident to twist Amelia into his own personal weapon. Amelia
didn't want to use her powers ever again after she killed Alex. Dad
insisted that she learn martial arts for discipline, that she hone
her powers to insure that the next time she aimed a blade at
someone, she would have complete control. Since Alex's memory
seemed to make Amelia afraid of her powers, he was erased from our
family history. Father destroyed photos of him. The walls of his
bedroom were knocked down and the library was expanded into the
space. Alex has a gravestone in the rose garden, but it's
featureless. His name was never carved into it."

"That's awful," said Nobody.

"It hurt Mother worst of all. She's like a
shadow of the woman I remember from my childhood. I haven't seen
her smile in over ten years."

"How about you? How did his death make you
feel? Weren't you afraid of Amelia?"

"No. Not really. We fight, but not the way
she and Alex did. Our relationship is strange. In some ways, she's
the person I'm closest to in the whole world. In other ways, she's
a complete stranger."

"She's very protective of you," said
Nobody.

"I think that's likely to change very soon,"
said Sarah.

"Why?”

"She's completely loyal to father. And once
she hears what I have to say to him, she's going to hate me
forever."

DR. KNOW LOOKED
pale and weary. The
lights in the nerve center were off, save for the illumination from
the wall of televisions. The volume was barely audible, forming a
background murmur from which words like "destruction" and "death"
and "Apocalypse" bubbled forth.

If he’d heard Sarah's words, he did not
acknowledge them.

Nobody positioned himself between Dr. Know
and the televisions.

"Well?" asked Nobody.

Dr. Know looked at Nobody, then glanced at
Sarah. He opened his mouth, but no words came out. He lowered his
head, shaking it.

When he finally spoke, his words were quiet
and calm. "I have dedicated all of my life to the elimination of
such senseless tragedy. It hurts me that you would believe I
condoned this, let alone provoked it, Sarah."

"Then why didn't you say anything?"

"It happened very quickly," Dr. Know said.
"Even now, I cannot imagine what I could have said to her to calm
her."

"Has she contacted you?" asked Nobody.

"No. I don't know where she is. No one whose
mind I can touch has seen her. But no one has undertaken a thorough
inspection of the zone of destruction. Perhaps the strain of her
actions killed her. Perhaps she took her own life. We will learn
when we learn."

Dr. Know straightened his shoulders and
looked at Sarah. "What matters now is our reaction to this. The
world is still in shock, but soon the accusations will start. This
is a tremendously important moment in the history of mankind. The
next twenty-four hours may well decide if the world unites in
common cause, or splinters into chaos and war. I will need your
help to manage this, Sarah."

Sarah turned her back to him. "You won't have
it."

"Please don't allow your grief over what
you've witnessed to cloud your judgment. You have a responsibility
to the world to—"

"Fuck responsibility," she said, throwing up
her hands. "It's over. It's time for you to quit. Every scheme
you've ever hatched leads to greater and greater grief. The more
you try to control the world, the more damage you do. I'm quitting.
You should do the same."

"Quitting?"

"I'm leaving. I'm going away, someplace you
won't be able to find me. I'm through being a pawn in your
game."

"Please consider the ramifications of what
you are saying," said Dr. Know.

"Goodbye, Father," she said, floating
away.

Nobody followed her, outside the mansion into
the bright sunlight. She hovered a foot in the air, looking back at
the mansion, then looking at him.

"You want to come with me?" she asked.

"Yes," said Nobody. "But..."

"But what?"

"I'm staying for now. I feel as though I
should, I don't know, keep a watch on your father. Stick around and
make sure he doesn't do anything stupid."

"You don't have to worry about that. He never
does anything
stupid
. He screws things up with every ounce
of genius he can muster."

"I can meet you later," said Nobody.

"I don't know if you'll be able to find me. I
don't know where I'm going." She pulled the small radio from her
ear and threw it to the ground. "I envy you, being invisible. All I
want right now is to vanish from the planet. I don't want to be the
Thrill anymore. And I don't want to be Sarah Knowbokov."