People Park (43 page)

That was a train. So was the last one. And the one before that!

So what are we supposed to do? Wait here to drown?

No one’s going to let us drown.

What the fug is going on?

Pearl hugged the
Grammar
. The old man leaned on his cane. And somewhere nearby two angry voices clashed like blades.

What about the riots? What if they come here?

There’s no riots! Our houses are underwater!

There’s riots, people are looting, there’s —

There’s no riots! Understand me?

The crowd surged, Pearl was pressed against the wall.

Get your hands off of me, said the first voice.

Hey now, break it up — a new voice, booming and paternal.

There’s riots, there’s riots! Everyone knows! Admit it!

You touch me again the only riot’ll be my fist through the back of your fuggin head.

Silence. Expectation. A general, tingling excitement at possible violence.

Tell me this, said the second voice, why riot when the whole city is drowning?

Or sinking, the old man whispered to Pearl, winked, and twirled his cane.

THIS WAS NOT
an illustration, said the Mayor, not a trick, not even a spell. It was a curse.

A curse?

You put a curse on this city.

Ah. Oh.

You must put it right.

Put it right. If only, Mrs. Mayor.

What. Why not.

Oh, you know. I have only certain powers and only those at certain times. So, this is to say, that even if I wanted to —

You don’t want to.

I’m not saying that. What I’m trying to express is the fear — yes,
my
fear — that I’ve brought things to a point beyond my control. I can’t fix anything now. They must just go, they must just happen. Whatever happens, happens.

For a reason.

For a reason? No! For what reason? What reason could there possibly be?

You don’t believe in anything.

Not true. I believe that nothing is what it seems. It’s always something else. Or at least we must understand it in terms of something else. The thing itself, Mrs. Mayor, is never quite enough. We must always examine it sideways. We must —

Please, just stop it.

Oh, Mrs. Mayor, are you the duck who cannot imagine herself a hunter?

What.

At any rate, I won’t be around here for a while.

And I —

And you, Mrs. Mayor, you should join me. Let me be your gateway.

Gateway? To what?

To your own past, if you wish.

The Mayor’s throat hitched. She bit her lip.

Well, said Raven, I do believe it’s time for me to go. Will you join me?

Will I? Go with you? No. No, I can’t.

Ah. No?

No.

As you wish, said Raven.

Whispering, rustling. A sucking sound of water sucked down the drain.

Then silence.

A breeze gusted over her.

And the Mayor was released.

The cart began rolling down the slope, that sudden urgent tug of gravity. She picked up speed, was soon hurtling down, the wind whipped her face and whistled in her ears. As she plummeted the blackness filled with shrieking. This grew: louder, hysterical, she felt it inside her bones, her teeth, her arteries and veins — and then it stopped, she was lifted, or dropped, the cart tumbled as if into a void. The Mayor felt disembodied, light. She was floating, drifting, like a rogue planet through a galaxy without stars.

And then a voice spoke and broke the spell: Goodbye, sweet queen. I’ll see you in your dreams.

VII

DINE STOOD UP.
Ignoring the crowd’s scolding — Sit down! — What the fug! — You’d make a better flat than a window! — she was hypnotized by the image onscreen: the naked woman at the edge of the trestle, black hair dancing around that gaunt, haunted face. A hand grabbed Adine’s arm, tried to tug her back down into her seat, but those huge and tragic eyes onscreen were too much: they released something from Adine. She felt released.

But then with a great upward sweep of black hair the face was gone. For a moment empty space consumed the screen, then the film cut promptly to Gregory Eternity and Isabella and the remaining unkilled members of their entourage being driven back from Topside Drive into People Park, where the treetops are ablaze with flaming fires like tall, skinny, brown and bark-skinned people with their hair on fire, except not running around but just standing there stupidly, because they’re trees, and amid a crackle of gunfire the invaders advance, dozens of shadowy figures like the somehow cloned shadows of something evil’s melena-black shadow —

Enough. Adine squeezed out along the aisle between knees and chairbacks. Heads craned, voices hissed: Hey! — Get out of the way! — We’re missing
our
fuggin movie here!

In the lobby sunshine came streaming in, garish and disorienting, the first daylight she’d seen in months. Through it Adine stumbled to the bathroom, splashed water on her face, her vision adjusted, shapes defined, the pain faded. She observed herself in the mirror, hair a limp greasy mophead, colour had deserted her face as light from a waning day.

The only sound in the bathroom was the dripping tap. Adine tightened it. The dripping continued. And the sink to her left started dripping, and so did the one to her right, and all the faucets were leaking thin streams, then torrents, cranked open by unseen hands.

She stepped back, her feet encountered more water: the toilets were overflowing, a slimy puddle crept from the stalls. Adine tracked sneaker-prints to the bathroom’s exit and out into the foyer. From the men’s room water was oozing too, the same dark water, the sickly whiff of sewage beneath it.

The box office was empty, no ushers were about, no one worked the candyapple counter. Adine stuck her head back into the theatre: It’s flooding, she warned them, is there someone who works here, the bathrooms are flooding. A few scattered shhhs replied, no one turned from the drama onscreen: bombs explode like detonating broken hearts and Gregory Eternity rages alongside Isabella, the love of his life
. . .

Back in the lobby Adine tried the payphone: dead. She left the receiver dangling and headed for the exit, the rug squelched underfoot in a buttery frogspawn, a bubble lifted, and as she pushed out into the crowds on Parkside West it burst and released a little waft of yellow gas as if hatching a ghost.

AS IT CAREENED
around the bluffs the train’s doors bulged, the
NFLM
had packed in too many passengers. Kellogg could feel that odd alien hum of a stranger’s flesh upon his own, he offered the woman beside him a tired smile, she returned it reluctantly and looked away. The air was warm jelly, skin stuck and peeled off skin with a tacky, ripping sound.

Kellogg’s shirt was drenched, Elsie-Anne’s hair sopping, the sweatshirt slathered to her as wet leaves over a rock. The speaker system announced the next stop, Budai Beach Station, but the Helper assigned to this car, a rasping character behind Kellogg (nametag:
Bean
) corrected it: No stops, folks, just straight around the Yellowline to Whitehall, a ferry’ll take all you mainlanders home.

This failed to raise morale. The human cargo rocked silently in a steady, sloshing rhythm as the train travelled alongside the lake. Kellogg hooked his daughter into a gentle headlock. This is it, he said. They’re taking us home, Annie. Home.

OVERTOP OF WHAT
had once been Lakeside Drive Sam paddled the door, naked. The pain in his face had dispersed into a dull throb through his body. He’d wedged the remote in the dry spot between his chest and raft. He saw only light, the microwave’s blazing, the last thing he’d seen was all he’d ever see. Yet within this were shades: the view to his left darkened where the bluffs blocked the sun, to his right was the greyish wash of the lake.

The light to his left brightened, what he saw now looked bleached. Bay Junction, Sam figured, the bluffs flattening. Were he to cut north he’d be heading into downtown. He was close. Sam felt tired — tired of this work, which was over. He’d not known how it would end. But so this was it, time’s machine sucking everything under.

Soon he’d be home. He could smell the earthy potatoey rot of the dug-up ground, the sour gasoline odour of the diggers and bulldozers, the dust of crushed and ruined buildings scratched his throat. Up he’d go, enter the A-Blocks and swim north along the Throughline, and at home in H-Block, Unit 53, he’d find Adine, watching
TV
, and together they’d wait for time to wheel all the way back to the beginning, to the end.

THE CROWDS COLLECTING
on Parkside West had begun to tip into People Park. Debbie considered joining the convoy down the Slipway, but Helpers were among them, randomly checking papers. Instead she fled to the Galleria, where an anxious-seeming woman in a postalcarrier’s uniform held the door open and asked, You looking for someone? Debbie nodded. Friend or family? She stared. Well whoever you’re looking for, said the postwoman, they aren’t here. No one you’d know is in here. And she joined the procession descending into the park.

The Galleria offered a reprieve from the crowds and heat, yet suggested the choked stillness of an aftermath. The storefronts had been smashed, goods rooted through and taken. Debbie hoped pillaging had at least remained practical — food, water, emergency supplies. Though as she was thinking this a young man trotted past shouldering a
TV
.

In Bargain Zoom a woman was dumping tins of corn-in-a-can into a shopping cart also shared by two children. Debbie called, Is it upstairs they’re holding people? The woman spun, eyes narrowed, and screamed, You can’t stop me, what’s to stop me, her kids kneeling wide-eyed amid a clutter of tins. It’s everyone for themself, she hollered, and wheeled down the aisle.

Each store bore evidence of looting, shelves upended, racks overturned, cash registers hung open like skulls with their tongues lolling out. For some reason a small fire smouldered on the reception desk of Horizon Systems, and the lottery booth had been relieved of all its tickets — to which lottery now? As Debbie reached the foodcourt a group of four middle-aged people went racing past, arms full of boxes of cider powder, followed by a friend wearing eight pairs of sunglasses and lugging a bulging knapsack.

Debbie walked the out-of-service escalator, climbed over spilled clothing racks up top. The first store was Baldini & Vogl’s Music. She peered through the lock-down grate into the gloom. At first all she could make out were the coffinlike shapes of pianos. But something stirred: the murky lumps lining the aisles were
people. They sat on the floor in rows, dozens of them, faces indistinguishable.
No one spoke. The only sound was the whisper of a ventilation duct.

I’ll get you out, she said. Don’t worry, she said, I’ll get you out.

No response. Not a word, not a flinch. Did they even see her? And then one of them stood and came lurching out of the dim. Shirtless, wearing a welding mask, he stood unspeaking on the other side of the grating
. . .
staring at her? In the visor Debbie saw only herself. A chill slithered through her body, as a ghost through a wall.

I’ll get you out, she said weakly, backing away, and ran down the escalator and into the northern quadrant, where water was flowing in from Topside Drive, deepening as she went. From Citysports emerged the four-legged beetle of a portaged canoe. The canoe was lowered, flipped with a splash onto the shallow water, its liberators stood over it wielding paddles. And Debbie was relieved to see familiar faces: the most recent additions to the Restribution Movement, the student couple whose names she’d yet to learn.

Guys!

They looked at her blankly. And, with recognition, impatience.

There’s people upstairs, Debbie said. We need to save them.

The only person to save is yourself, said the girl. No one else will.

Not the
NFLM
, not Raven, said the boy. They were trying to deport us!

This boat’s only big enough for us though, said the girl. Sorry.

I mean, we’re sorry, said the boy, steadying the canoe as his girlfriend climbed aboard.

It’s okay, said Debbie.

Water gushed into the Galleria from the north. From their seats, bow and stern, the students looked up at her. Give us a push? said the boy. Please, said the girl.

Debbie swivelled them north. Straight across the Narrows, she said. Good luck.

We’ll see you on the other side, said the girl.

For sure, said the boy.

They went paddling out the doors and out of sight. Water rippled up Debbie’s shins. She thought for a moment to just lie down, let it wash over and take her wherever it might run. But there were people to help. She procured boltcutters and a flashlight from Citysports, went back upstairs — and discovered Baldini & Vogl’s empty.

Empty, yet without any indication of forced entry or escape. The flashlight danced up and down the vacant aisles. The store’s austere duskiness suggested a widow’s parlour. Debbie squinted, maybe they’d made their getaway through an air vent. But the ducts were bolted closed from inside the store. Had she imagined
the captives? Had the gloom played tricks on her eyes? But what of
the shirtless guy who’d come to the grate? He’d been real. Debbie
had seen her own reflection in his mask.

She sensed someone behind her, tensed, turned. Only the woman from Bargain Zoom, the one with the shopping cart, though she’d ditched it, and seemingly also her children. She pointed at the boltcutters. You using those?

They were eased from Debbie’s hands. The woman grinned wildly into B&V’s, at all that stock for the free-and-easy taking. I’m not a musician, she explained, as she set to shearing the lock, but this shet’s worth its weight in schnapps.