Orleans (25 page)

Then I think of Daniel down there with whatever it be bit off the end of this woman’s rope. These braids gonna have to come out sometime. Might as well be now.

I sigh. “Follow me.”

The old lady nod and the boys come scampering around me like a pack of street dogs, bounding in front and behind, stepping in places I be too afraid to go. Like they got bubbles on they feet, for sure. When they see where I be heading, though, they slow down.

“You afraid?” I ask.

The boys look at each other, then at the old lady. I know they be missing friends what fell down these holes before, so I try to act casual. “Daniel?” I call into the hole.

I can see a pale light way down inside, but not much else.

“Fen?” he call back. He don’t sound so good. “Thank God,” he say.

“You find that rope?”

“No. For God’s sake, hurry.”

“I will.” I turn to the old woman and pull my knife out of my boot. “How much?”

She shrug and hold her hands out a length. I stretch out my braids and lop them off at the string holding them in a tail. The string come undone and little bits of black curls fall around my shoulders. My hair be sticking up all over the place. I still smell the palm oil Lydia use to keep the braids soft. I hand them to the woman. She grin without all her teeth.

“Good. Good. Now.” She drop to the ground, cross-legged, like Daniel, only she don’t seem to mind the mud bubbling up around her. She be quick with them old fingers, undoing the braids and weaving them back around her rope ’til she got what she came for and then some. It don’t take long at all. I watch, trying hard not to touch my head and feel the missing hair. I blow a bit of broken stubble off Baby Girl’s face. She wave a fist at me. The woman hand me the rope and I tie it around my waist. The boys come up to the edge of the hole.

“There be monsters down there,” one of the boys say, and I see he just a little kid, younger than I thought.

“And the old dead,” the other boy say with a nod. “That be a hole to Hell.”

“True,” I tell them. “So we best get him out while we can.”

That make some kind of sense, so they hold on to the rope behind me and I call for Daniel to be ready to climb. I drop the rest of the rope down into the hole and the old lady watch us pull in the slack as Daniel haul himself up. Then the pale little light be rising, and finally Daniel come up out of that hole.

When I finally drag him over the edge, he fall to the ground, coughing through his suit filter.

“You okay?” I ask. I can’t say more with the scavengers listening, but I hope he brought up everything he went down with, including that damned black case.

“Where the treasure at?” the old lady ask. Daniel look up at me, confused.

“What it be to you now?” I ask her. “You been paid.”

The little boys back up, but the old lady look at me, suspicious. Daniel sit up. “There’s something down there,” he say.

It dark as pitch down there now, without Daniel’s glow stick.

The lady shake her head. “That’s what took my rope, and my other boy,” she say.

Then it move, whatever it be, a dry rasp below the earth. The boys scream, high and loud, “The Devil!” They run away. Baby Girl start to cry. The old lady give me the evil eye, but she don’t come any closer. She spit at me, then scurry away.

“What was that?” Daniel ask. I shake my head, bouncing Baby Girl to calm her down. She gonna need a bottle soon, and a new diaper, and I wonder how I be managing any of this, let alone the two of them at once.

“Nothing. You all in one piece?” He hesitate, then nod. I help him to his feet easy enough.

“Come on, then,” I say, soothing Baby Girl’s tears into hiccups and sighs. When she quiet down again, we pick our way out of Rooftops toward the lake where the Ursulines live.

31

ORLEANS AIN’T EXACTLY GOT A RELIABLE MAIL
system these days. Best way to get a message to anybody be to cover your bases. Lydia call it the rule of three—send it three different ways, and if you lucky, one of them might get there. Looking up at the sun, I see the time be about right, so the Ursuline convent be my first stop. If I get a chance, I’ma leave a note for the old smuggler, McCallan. He got a couple drop points near here and might do a final round before leaving town.

Daniel be following me all quiet now, and he don’t say nothing when I pause to make another bottle for Baby Girl. She just sleep and eat and mess her diaper, nothing more. If I keep her from crying, we maybe do okay. But she a baby and the only cure for that be growing up, so I hold her bottle, burp her when she done, and keep on walking, trying not to think of Lydia every time I look at her face. Soon enough we make it to the edge of the Academy grounds. I take a look around, but we alone now, so we climb up top the concrete wall around what used to be the parking lot.

“What is this?” Daniel ask, looking around from the top of the wall. We be sitting a short three feet above a concrete pebble shore, broken pieces of asphalt and sidewalk still jagged ’cause there ain’t no waves to grind them smooth.

“Convent Lake,” I say, and point across the water. It big as two parking lots maybe, and still and calm, reflecting back the bright blue sky. Daniel follow my hand and see what I be pointing at—the Ursulines’ convent, half underwater, across this big old pond. “When Katrina came, they say it flooded parts of the buildings here.” I sweep my arm to show the whole campus, what used to be a girls’ school, with a chapel and everything. “That the last time it drained all the way. Next storm came and the pavement broke up some, but not enough to drain completely. Now it be like this all the time.”

“What’s that in the middle?” Daniel ask, squinting at the white shape halfway between the shore and the mossy walls of the nun’s home.

“That be Jesus Christ. This the parking lot, then there a courtyard under there somewhere. When the nuns saw the water weren’t gonna drain, they raised the statue. In the right light, it look like he walking on water.”

• • • 

DANIEL KICKED HIS BOOTS AGAINST THE
concrete wall, letting his heels rebound lightly until the blood moved into the tips of his toes.

INQUIRY:
Why did the Ursuline nuns stay in Orleans?

RESPONSE:
The Ursuline Sisters have devoted their lives to the education of young girls. The convent is the site of a holy relic believed to have turned back danger from the city time and again. They believe they are protected.

INQUIRY:
Who protects the Ursulines?

RESPONSE:
Data not available at this time.

The datalink was working again. That was something, at least. They had been on the wall for a quarter of an hour. He felt like vomiting. He had lied to Fen, back in Rooftops, about being in one piece. The vial case was back in his pocket, the seal broken, the light blinking red, but the vials of the DF virus were lost somewhere beneath Rooftops.

For the first time, Daniel was glad of his disguise, of the rags and hat, the thick mucus layer of the encounter suit. He couldn’t have hidden the guilt on his face otherwise. If the ABs hunting them had followed them here, Daniel didn’t notice and didn’t care. He just wanted to keep moving in the daylight and not think of what had happened underground. The vials remained unbroken; the scanners on his datalink would have alerted him otherwise. Daniel wasn’t a mass murderer, just a clumsy, unlucky fool. It was the best news he could hope for, given the circumstances.

He should tell her, he knew. But then what? He couldn’t go back underground again. The thought made him break into a sweat, his suit whirring to life to compensate. And if not go back, then what? Fen didn’t need him. She’d left the men and women of the Institute to die in that school back there, abandoned in their beds. She would leave him, too. He imagined her knife at his throat, the suit slit open, his blood running out as Delta Fever raced in to claim him.

No. Better to hold his tongue and keep pace. She would help him get to the Wall and never be the wiser.

“You being awful quiet,” Fen said, startling him. He jumped and had to force himself to steady his breathing.

“What are we waiting for?” he asked.

Fen shook her head and smiled at the bouncing baby in her arms. “For a miracle, Daniel. We just a bit early.”

Just then, bells rang out from the towers of the convent. “Angelus,” Fen explained. “Noontime prayers.”

Daniel looked around expecting the bells to draw people, but no one came. They rang eight times and the pond in front of them, the woods behind them, fell silent.

“’Round here, folks ignore the bells,” Fen said. “They be ringing all the time. Nuns be the only fools willing to draw attention to theyselves with that kind of noise.” Daniel might have imagined the hint of respect in her voice. “They think God’ll protect them.”

“Does he?” Daniel asked. It was a comforting thought. But Fen snorted, a short, harsh laugh.

“No way, man. This
moat
protect them; and they sheer numbers, sometimes that protect them. Ursulines take in girls from all over the Delta. They separate them in dorms to keep the Fever down. But that be all they got, that and the walls of that church. But not God. Some tribes ’round here ain’t against rape. Blood hunters, neither. A nun just as like to find herself in a brothel as a convent. If she make it out alive, she stuck raising her rapist’s bastard. Where be God then?”

Daniel shook his head, his heart sinking. He had tried to save this unsalvageable place, and he had failed. He swung his feet in their short arc from knee to wall and back again. “I wonder how they keep their faith.”

Fen shrugged and jumped off the wall, one arm wrapped beneath the baby on her chest. “Who’s to say?”

And then she stepped out onto the water and walked away, barely disturbing the surface as she strode toward the open arms of the statue in the middle of the lake.

• • • 

IT TAKE HIM A FULL HALF MINUTE TO PICK HIS
jaw up again. That boy be so blind sometimes, I don’t know how he make it on his own. “Stay there,” I call back to him. “You too heavy to be following me.”

Beneath my feet, the hard top of a car shift enough to make me glad he be listening and stay on the wall. I clutch Baby Girl to me and catch my balance.

Noon be the time when the pond go down just enough to make the cars left behind come to the surface. Some days, when the sun ain’t so bright, you can see them under the lake. Today it just look like blue sky under my feet, except where my shadow fall. The nuns lined up sunken trucks and buses, all of a height, to make a path to the statue.

The cars come to a stop right in front of Jesus, and so do I. He be standing like he waiting for us. Baby Girl reach out her little hand to touch the statue’s marble one. She grab his finger while I take my note to the Coopers and tie it to his right wrist, the one facing the convent. If they see it, they paddle a boat out. The nuns be good about things like that—delivering notes, teaching little ones, and looking after the dead. No kind of life for me, but I appreciate they work just the same.