The Ask and the Answer (31 page)

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I feel a weird smile in my stomach at the thought of it. (is this what she did?)

"Now we're gonna have to bloody fight them,
too,"
Davy whines.

But I'm hopping off Angharrad, my stomach all funny and light.
Free,
I think.
They're free.
(is this why she joined them?) I feel so-So
relieved.

I pick up the pace as I near the opening, my hands gripping my rifle but I have a feeling I ain't gonna need it. (ah, Viola, I knew I could count-) Then I reach the opening and stop. Everything stops.

My stomach falls right thru my feet.

"They all gone?" Davy says, coming up beside me.

Then he sees what I see.

"What the-?" Davy says.

The Spackle ain't all gone.

They're still here.

Every single one.

All 1,150 of them.

Dead.

"I don't unnerstand this at all," Davy says, looking round. "Shut up," I whisper.

The guide walls have all been knocked down till it's just a field again and bodies are piled everywhere, thrown on top of each other and tumbled across the grass, too, like

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someone tossed 'em away, males and females and children and babies, tossed away like they were trash.

Something's burning somewhere and white smoke twists thru the field, circling the piles, pushing at them with smoky fingers, finding nothing alive.

And the quiet.

No clicking, no shuffling, no
breathing.
"I gotta tell Pa," Davy says, already turning back. "I gotta tell Pa."

And he's off back out the front, hopping on Deadfall and riding back up the road. I don't follow.

My feet will only go forward, thru them all, my rifle dragging behind me.

The piles of bodies are higher than my head. I have to look up to see the dead faces flung back, the eyes still open, grassflies already picking at the bullet wounds in their heads. Looks like all of 'em were shot, most of 'em in the middle of their high foreheads, but some of the bodies look slashed, too, cut across the throat or the chest and I start to see ripped-off limbs and heads twisted all the way round and-

I drop my rifle to the grass. I barely even notice.

I keep walking, not blinking, mouth open, not believing what I'm seeing, not taking in the scale of it-

Cuz I have to step over bodies with arms flung out, arms with bands round 'em that
I
put there, twisted mouths that I fed, broken backs that I--

That I-

Oh, God.

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Oh, God, no, I hated 'em--

I tried not to but I couldn't help it--

(no, I could--)

I think of all the times I cursed 'em-

All the times I imagined 'em as sheep-

(a knife in my hand, plunging down-)

But I didn't want
this-

Never, I-

And I come round the biggest pile of bodies, stacked near the east wall-

And I see it.

And I fall to my knees in the frozen grass.

Written on the wall, tall as a man-

The
A.

The
A
of the Answer.

Written in blue.

I lean my head forward slowly till it's touching the ground, the cold sinking into my skull.

(no)

(no, it can't be her) (it
can't
be)

My breath comes up around me as steam, melting a little spot of mud. I don't move, (have they done this to you?) (have they changed you?) (Viola?)

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(Viola?)

The blackness starts to overwhelm me, starts to fall over me like a blanket, like water rising above my head, no Viola no, it can't be you, it can't be you (can it?) no no no it can't-

No-

And I sit up--

And I lean back--

And I strike myself in the face.

I punch myself hard.

Again.

And again.

Not feeling nothing as I hit.

As my lips crack open.

As my eyes swell.

No-

God no-

Please--

And I reach back to punch myself again--

But I switch off-

I feel it go cold inside me-

Deep down inside--

(where are you to save me?)

I switch off.

I go numb.

I look at the Spackle, dead, everywhere dead.

And Viola gone-

Gone in ways that I can't even say-

(you did
this?)

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(you did
this
instead of finding me?)

And inside I just
die.

And a body tumbles from the pile, knocking right into me.

I scoot back fast, rolling over other bodies, scrambling to my feet, wiping my hands on my trousers, wiping the dead away.

And then another body falls.

I look up at the pile.

1017 is working his way out.

He sees me and freezes, his head and arms sticking out from the rest of the bodies, bones showing thru his skin, thin as the dead.

Course he survived.
Course
he did. If any of 'em is spiteful enough to find a way to live, it's him.

I run to the pile and I start pulling on his shoulders to get him out, to get him out from under the dead, all the dead.

We fall back as he pops free, tumbling to the ground, rolling apart and then staring at each other across the ground.

Our breaths are heavy, clouds of steam huffing into the air.

He don't look injured, tho the sling's gone from his arm. He's just staring, eyes probably open as wide as mine. "Yer alive," I say stupidly. "Yer alive."

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He just stares back, no Noise this time, no clicking, nothing. Just the silence of us in the morning, the smoke sneaking thru the air like a vine.

"How?" I say. "How did--?"

But there ain't no answer from him, just staring and staring.

"Did you--?" I say, then I have to clear my throat. "Did you see a girl?"

And then I hear,
Thump budda-thump--

Hoofbeats down the road. Davy musta caught his pa coming the other way.

I look hard at 1017.

"Run," I say. "You gotta get outta here."

Thump budda-thump--

"Please," I whisper. "Please, I'm so sorry, I'm
so
sorry, but please, just run, just run, just get outta here--"

I stop cuz he's getting to his feet. He's still eyeing me, not blinking, his face almost dead of expresshun.

Thump budda-THUMP-

He takes one step away, then two, then faster, heading for the blown open gate.

And then he stops and looks back. Looks back at me.

A clear flash of Noise coming right at me.

Of me, alone.

Of 1017 with a gun.

Of him pulling the trigger.

Of me dying at his feet.

Then he turns and runs out the gate and into the woods beyond.

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***

"I know how hard this must be for you, Todd," says the Mayor, looking at the blown-out gate. We've come outside. No one wanted to see the bodies anymore.

"But
why?"
I say, trying to keep the tightness outta my voice. "Why would they do it?"

The Mayor looks at the blood on my face from where I hit myself but he don't say nothing about it. "They thought we would have used them as soldiers, I expect."

"But to kill them
all?"
I look up at him on his horse. "The Answer never killed no one before except by accident."

"Fifty-six soldiers," Davy says.

"Seventy-five," the Mayor corrects. "And three hundred escaped prisoners."

"They tried to bomb us here before, remember?" Davy adds. "The bitches."

"The Answer have stepped up their campaign," the Mayor says, looking mainly at me. "And we will respond in kind."

"Damn right, we will," Davy says, cocking his rifle for no reason.

"I'm sorry about Viola," the Mayor says to me. "I 'm as disappointed as you are that she's a part of this."

"We don't know that," I whisper, (is she?) (are you?)

"Regardless," the Mayor says. "The time for your boyhood is well and truly past. I need leaders now. I need
you
to be a leader. Are you ready to lead, Todd Hewitt?"

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"I'm
ready," Davy says, his Noise feeling like it's being left out.

"I already know I can count on you, son." And there's the pink Noise again.

"It's Todd I need to hear from." He comes a bit closer to me. "You're no longer my prisoner, Todd Hewitt. We're beyond that now. But I need to know if you'll join
me"-he
nods his head toward the opening in the wall-"or them. There is no other choice."

I look into the monastery, at all those bodies, all those shocked and dead faces, all that pointless end.

"Will you help me, Todd?"

"Help you how?" I say to the ground.

But he just asks it again. "Will you help me?"

I think of 1017, alone now, alone in the entire world.

His friends, his family for all I know, piled like rubbish, left for the flies.

I can't stop seeing it, even when I close my eyes.

I can't stop seeing that bright blue a.

Oh don't deceive me,
I think.

Oh never leave me.

(but she's gone)

(she's gone)

And I'm dead.

Inside, I'm dead dead dead.

There ain't nothing left.

"I will," I say. "I'll help."

"Excellent," the Mayor says, with feeling. "I knew you'd be special, Todd. I've known it all along."

Davy's Noise squeaks at this but the Mayor ignores it.

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He turns Morpeth to face the killing grounds of the monastery.

"As to how you'll help me," he says. "Well, we have met the Answer, have we not?" He turns back to look at us, his eyes glinting. "It is time for them to meet the Ask."

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PART V THE OFFICE OF THE ASK

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27 THE WAY WE LIVE NOW

***

[TODD]

"DON'T LET THIS period of quiet fool you," says the Mayor, standing atop the platform, voice booming thru the square from speakers set at every corner, extra loud to be heard above the
ROAR
The people of New Prentisstown stare up at him in the cold morning, the men gathered in front of the platform, surrounded by the army, with the women back on the side streets. Here we all are again.

Davy and I are behind the platform on our horses, directly behind the Mayor.

Kinda like an honor guard.

Wearing our new uniforms.

I think, I
am the Circle and the Circle is me.

Cuz when I think it, I don't gotta think about nothing else at all.

"Even now our enemies move against us. Even now they plot our destruction. Even now we have reason to believe an attack is imminent."

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The Mayor takes a long sweeping look across the crowd. It's easy to forget how many people are still here, still working, still trying to eat, still getting on with their daily lives. They're tired looking, hungry, many of em dirty, but still staring, still listening.

"The Answer could strike in any place, at any time, against
anyone,"
he says, tho the Answer ain't done no such thing, not for almost a month now. The prison break was the last we heard from 'em before they disappeared into the wild, the soldiers who woulda chased 'em killed while sleeping in their bunkers.

But that just means they're out there, gloating on their victory and planning the next.

"Three hundred escaped prisoners," the Mayor says. "Almost two hundred soldiers and civilians dead."

"Up they go again," Davy mutters under his breath, talking about the numbers. "Next time he gives this speech, the whole
city'll
be dead." He looks to me to see if I'll laugh. I don't. I don't even look at him. "Yeah, whatever," he says, turning back.

"And not to mention the genocide," says the Mayor.

The crowd murmurs at this and the
ROAR
gets a bit louder and redder.

"The very same Spackle who served in your homes so peacefully for the past decade, the ones we had all grown to admire for their pluck under duress, the ones we had come to regard as our partners on New World."

He pauses again. "All dead, all gone."

The crowd
ROAR
s some more. The deaths of the Spackle