The Conformity (24 page)

There's another
crack
and a
boom
. Knocked back by the percussive wave, losing my grip on the M14 and wheeling head over heels away, away from the tree and the church and the howling and screams I now hear from the pitchfork- and torch-bearing villagers below.

Right myself in the air. The roof opens wide like the maw of some creature, jagged wood splinters for teeth, and bodies rise up, into my line of vision, and I can see that it's Jack and the woman, locked in a painful embrace. But then there's Tap and a larger man floating up to join them. The specks of people let the pitchforks and torches fall, and they're rising as well.

The Conformity. It's here and calling us to join it.

I can't resist the pull.

twenty-eight

JACK

I am one with it. The darkness and the light.

When I was little and my foster parents would take me swimming at the community pool, I'd dive to the bottom of the deep end, my breath expanding within me, and sit there as long as I could, beneath the water, until I had to rise or die. And I'd feel an expansion, then. I feel it now.

I begin to see with many eyes, breathe through many mouths. I am nothing. We are all.

And behind the tectonic movements of our joined bodies, beyond the stressing of our minds, the entity comes like ink in water. It infests my mind. It controls my body.

More. Gather more,
it whispers, and our mouths move in time with the words.

We search, eyes roving. Our separate flesh joining as one. Moving.

Such a puny thing below us. There. On the earth, looking up. It doesn't have the spark. It doesn't have the flame burning within and means nothing to us. It offers no power. But it moves. It may try to thwart us.

More. Gather more to our flesh,
the darkness whispers.

There's a little of the boy that is me left. The part of me that hides at the bottom of pools and never wants to rise. That part of me sees Madelyn below, looking up, holding her rifle. Sighting, peering into the scope. And the other part of me, the part joined with Gulch and the others and the horrible
thing,
recognizes the danger. She's sighting down Gulch. Our tether. Our leash to whatever lies in Maryland. All of our mouths bellow “
NO!”
in a chorus, as if we were still in the church.

And then there's a small sound, so very small, like the cracking of a twig, and the small flash of light and a puff of gun smoke and we're tumbling—
I am tumbling.

When I come to, the woman named Madelyn stands in front of me in the snow, holding her rifle, the wreckage of the church behind her. She's bleeding from her scalp, and the blood makes long, weeping tracks on her weathered face. Something has caught on fire, and it's spreading quickly through the ruins of the building. The light hurts my eyes. But there's warmth.

She lifts her weapon, gesturing in the deep drift of snow. “That was a tricky shot, boy, but I managed it. Good thing you didn't hit the church on your way down.”

I'm sore but well enough to stand. When I do, I can see the moaning tracks of the fallen, some still prone, some sitting upright, some standing, stunned, and toddling about like refugees from some war-torn country. Which they are.

We are.

The woman smiles, a sad smile but warm enough, slings her rifle over her shoulder by the strap, and tugs off her gloves. She brushes my hair from my face and pulls back my eyelid and peers at me. Turns my head back and forth like I'm some dog she's inspecting. Then she pats my cheek. “I'm just a veterinarian, but you'll be fine. Help me with the others. And after …” she says slowly, “you can take me to your friend.”

We're lucky only two people died. The Gulch woman and Massey, both with perfect head shots. Massey's body burned up with the fire, but Gulch's fell with all of ours. Some of the locals drag it away in the snow. For burial maybe. Looks like their fervor has died with Gulch. They have a hard time meeting my gaze. Or Madelyn's.

Ember is here. She twisted her ankle pretty good in the fall but can walk well enough. Tap looks unharmed other than some scratches and contusions. “Hit every goddamn branch in that tree on the way down,” he says, but his grin spans most of his face as he says it. He looks at Madelyn, who's kneeling by one of Gulch's Saved, and says, “You're a regular Annie Oakley, ma'am. Thanks.”

“Annie Oakley?” she says, and looks at me. “Tell this one to keep his mouth shut. I don't like the looks of him.”

Tap's jaw unhinges and drops. Maybe he's met his match.

Ember tugs me away when we get a chance. The church roars with flames and the sky in the east lightens, but the clouds are thick and snow fills the air, lashing down, hissing as it comes close to the church fire.

She grabs my coat and tugs me into her body.

“The cavalry requires a kiss,” she says, eyes bright with mirth. Happiness is a relief. A pressure valve.

Her lips are warm, and I lose myself in her for a while.

This is a joining I can get into.

The townspeople of McCall come out of their houses and help with the injured and stand around to watch the church burn. We stand with them for a while, mute, enjoying the warmth and watching the building collapse in on itself with great discharges of sparks and cinders curling and twisting in the frigid air. Then Madelyn sets us to work with the injured. After rigging stretchers from bedsheets and hastily gathered lawn implements—rakes, hoes, brooms—we move those who have no one else to take care of them into one of the nearby houses, and again Tap and I are set to gathering firewood. I'm guessing that before the world had electricity, most of humanity's time was spent looking for firewood, chopping firewood, or wishing they had firewood.

Madelyn shows us how to clean and bandage the wounded while she takes care of the larger injuries, setting bones, removing glass and splinters, doing what she can for burns. It begins to snow again, and the candlelight grows inside the still air of the stranger's home we've invaded. A mousy man in lumberjack clothes, he tries to make everyone comfortable, wringing hands, gathering blankets and extra clothes. His name is Herman, I think, and this is the most people he's ever had in his house. He actually seems pretty stoked about it. Like it's a dinner party. He keeps offering us his homemade limoncello, which is sweet but leaves a burning in my stomach.

It's long after dark before we're through, and Ember, looking exhausted, tugs me away to find a soft place to lie down and share the warmth of our bodies.

In the morning, one man has a high fever so Madelyn, being the only medical person on hand, tends him, forcing him to drink water and pumping him full of ibuprofen until the fever drops. He's one of the ones who fell and didn't quite miss the shattered corpse of the church building. He lost a sizable amount of blood—more than I thought the human body could hold—and now he doesn't look so good. I've seen people die—more than I ever need to again—and it freaks me out. The duality of the human body. On the one hand, it's so damned tough, it can take so much abuse and pain heaped upon it, falling from a height, extremes of heat and cold, being pushed to its limits. But on the other hand, the human body is weak. Every sharp thing wants to poke holes in it.

But soon the man is sleeping soundly. Looks like Madelyn knows how to deal with a broken body, whether it's an animal's or a human's.

No one notices when Madelyn pulls on my arm and says, “Come on. I need to get some more supplies before I can help your friend.”

We follow her through the snow. It only takes a few minutes to reach the clinic. Madelyn takes a large key ring from her bulky jacket and unlocks one of the doors and leads us inside. It's a pediatrician's office. We stand in the cold room, somewhat dazed. Ember presses against me, soft and hard all at once, and Tap notices and his face gives a little bitter twist, but then it goes numb and expressionless. Maybe he's dealing with his jealousy now. Maybe he's growing up.

Maybe we all are.

Soon Madelyn returns with an overstuffed backpack. “It's no hospital, but most clinics keep things on hand in case of emergency. I grabbed what I think I'll need. And I don't think Dr. Willamette will mind.” She looks at us all huddled together, our breath frosting in the air. “And he's a pediatrician, right? You're kids.”

Silence.

“Well, you're young, then.”

“Let me ask you something,” Tap says, and strangely, his voice isn't challenging or bitter or mocking. Just curious. “Why did you help us?”

She looks at him, emotions churning under the calm exterior of her face. Then she says, “Because you can fly. By yourself.” She swallows. “Not a big ball of you in that thing—”

“The Conformity.”

“That's what you're calling it, and I guess that sounds about right.” She shakes her head. “But you flew. I thought I was losing my mind. But then I saw Gulch's followers escorting her to the library. And I knew she'd do something terrible if she found out what I knew.” She's quiet for a little while, thinking. “And she did, didn't she? I
had
to kill her. And her man.”