Vivian Apple Needs a Miracle (33 page)

“Dear Lord—”

“No!” Horrified, I grab Winnie's wrist and tug her hand free from his grasp. I may have only known her a few short months, I may have known about her for not much longer, but I'm positive the last thing Winnie would want in her final moments is a false prophet muttering empty words over her body.

My mother reaches over to touch my face. “Please, Viv. Just let him finish.” Her eyes are red and wild with grief. I think then of my father. Maybe Mom is thinking of him too.

And then it no longer seems like the time to make a stand. Frick's prayer is not for Winnie. It's for my mother, who despite everything must cling to some small hope that Frick or someone like him will be able to tell her a story that brings her some peace.

I bow my head, and Frick, after a pause, continues.

“Dear Lord, please watch over your daughter in these moments. If it's your intention to call her home tonight, guide her with wisdom and peace. Thank you for sending her to protect us this day. Amen.”

“Amen,” my mother says, and Harp and I say it too.

The roar from downstairs swells then, frenzied and alarming. Soon they'll breach the upper floors and the bedlam will be upon us. We have to face it now—it's what Winnie would want, what she
does
want—but the thought of leaving her terrifies me. So long as she takes these shallow breaths, I don't see how I can go.

“I'll stay,” my mother tells me. “Do what you came to do. I'll watch over Winnie.”

“Are you sure?” I have a quick, surprising pang of jealousy—it isn't the old fear I had in San Francisco, that my mother secretly prefers my sister. It's the fact that Winnie belongs to
me
too now—that we chose each other and she is mine.

“She'd never forgive herself if she was the one who kept you from bringing down the Angels.” Mom smiles sadly. “She'd be absolutely furious.”

I nod. Harp stands and tugs at Frick's arm; he gets up dutifully. My mother lowers Winnie's head to the floor; she moves to where I kneel. Her hands replace mine on the hoodie.

“We'll send help,” I tell her.

My mother just nods, her gaze fixed on Winnie's face. I stand, picking up my sledgehammer, which I dropped on my way to Winnie's side. I look at Harp.

“Viv, old bean.”

Her voice sounds strangled and uncertain, but my best friend puts out her hand and I take it. She squeezes once, and then again, as if to say,
I won't let it wreck you.
I squeeze back, remembering that she knows exactly how I feel, remembering that before anyone else, I chose Harp for my sister. Her eyes ask a question I don't know how to answer, so I just say, “Stay close.”

I take Frick's other arm, and together we rush down the hall. My thoughts are a blur, but I know that despite the pandemonium, we need to make our way downstairs, as close to the lobby as we can get. We need to find three things: help for Winnie; Peter; and the Angels. I hum it like a chorus as we race down the stairwell.
Help for Winnie; Peter; the Angels.
The crowd gets louder with each flight we descend, but we don't see physical signs of the melee until we reach the fourth floor. There, we fight our way through a thrashing mass of bodies. I hazard a glance down the hall, anxiously seeking Peter's face, but all I see is violence: Non-Believers busting down the doors of the hotel rooms, dragging Church employees out by their hair; Peacemakers wielding black batons, bringing them down hard on the heads of the rioters; desperate Believers clinging to one another, screaming for answers. I watch this last group take in the sight of Frick with shocked expressions and then call out his name, pushing toward us with their arms outstretched.

“We need to move!” I shout to Harp, and we maneuver Frick forward.

Halfway down the steps to the third floor, we meet Diego. Behind him are the people I most want to see: Estefan, the New Orphans' nurse; and Frankie, with her first-aid kit strapped to her back.

“Diego! The sixth floor—Winnie—”

“Peter told us.” He's already moving past me, his face pale, deftly shouldering his way through the throng on the stairs. Estefan and Frankie chase after him. “Viv, do you know what you need to do?”

“No!” I shout after him, but he's gone.

The crowd gets thicker the closer we get to the lobby. I am finding it harder and harder to breathe. I try to keep an eye out for anyone familiar—for Peter especially—but all I can see in my head is the stain of Winnie's blood on my sweatshirt. Before I realize it, we've reached the lobby, where all is chaos. Frick stays steady, a buoy in a wild ocean for us to cling to, but his face is clouded over with panic, and I worry he'll melt down in the face of this sheer anarchy. There are too many people, all of them screaming and fighting and pushing their way forward—we will never find any of our friends in this mob, let alone the Angels. The only way Masterson would enter this mess is at the side of the Messiah. Across the room is an empty platform. The crowd in front of it is an unrelenting knot, but if we could get past them, if we could get Frick up there, where the whole room could see him—that would be the end of it. We would win.

From the other side of Frick, I hear a sound that makes my blood go cold: Harp screaming. I wheel around. Two scrabbling men have crashed into her, their hands around each other's throats. Harp goes tumbling to the floor and I move to help her, but something slams hard against my injured right shoulder and the pain makes my vision go black—I wobble on my feet, holding on to Frick's arm to keep from falling. When I pull my head up, disoriented, my best friend is nowhere in sight.

“Harp!”

I drop Frick's arm and knock people aside using the sledgehammer, not caring whether or not I hurt them. My eyes are on the floor. If Harp has fallen, she'll be trampled. I push a woman out of my way, but she only bobs in place, eerily still. Her outstretched arm points at something. I don't give it thought until I notice the man beside her has frozen as well. I realize then that they're looking at Frick. He stares back at them, bewildered. I thrust myself forward to get to his side.

“Frick!” cries out a Believer in a hoarse voice. “Beaton Frick!”

A ripple of awareness rushes through the crowd in our immediate vicinity—the melee continues on all sides except this one pocket of shocked silence. A woman collapses against me, sobbing, “Oh, hallelujah, sweet Jesus, we are saved!”

“That's not Frick,” snarls a voice in my ear, and I see one of the young Non-Believers who started the knife fight outside. He assesses Frick with skepticism. “It's a fucking hologram.”

As if to prove his point, he reaches over and shoves Frick hard, sending him stumbling backwards. The nearby Believers gasp. I push myself closer and block Frick's body with my own, my eyes still scanning the room for Harp. An elderly woman presses in to grab Frick's hand.

“Your Holiness.” She trembles with excitement. “Don't let me die among these animals. I've tried so hard to be good. Won't you please save me?”

“Our baby!” calls another voice, a man. He pushes his wife forward, and I see a screaming baby wrapped in a sling around her chest. They're pressed so close against me I can smell the milky sweetness of the baby's skin. “We've failed you, but please, he's just a newborn. God will save him, if you tell Him to! God will listen to you!”

Behind me, I hear Frick stutter; he's confused. “I'm sorry—I—it's too late!”

“Not a hologram,” the Non-Believer kid is now saying, “but definitely an impersonator—”

“Why did you forsake us, Frick?”

“We did everything you asked. We bought everything you told us to buy. Everything!”

More and more Believers push toward us now, reaching to touch Frick's clothes, his skin, begging for answers. The baby screams piteously, squashed against my shoulder; his mother yelps in panic as the crowd closes in. Non-Believers also attempt to force their way forward; I see furious eyes and weapons brandished overhead.

“Why are you protecting him?” A Non-Believer woman tugs hard on my arm, trying to get to Frick. “He deserves everything he's gonna get—stand
aside!
”

But I can't move; I can't let him die before he speaks, before they understand. It's not enough for the Believers to feel abandoned—they need to know they've been lied to. Otherwise someone down the line will try again.

I clasp Frick's hand tightly, but the circle squeezes tighter around us. I'm shouting now—“Please! Please back up!”—aware of the woman with the baby panicking at my shoulder. From behind me a heavy hand comes down hard on my head; it pushes me down. I'm so surprised I stumble. Someone kicks me hard in the small of my back and I go sprawling forward, knocking over another person, a Non-Believer boy who instinctively elbows me in my mouth as we go tumbling down. My sledgehammer flies from my hands and I lose sight of it in the sea of legs ahead. I taste the blood on my teeth and the crowd surges forward again, trampling me; someone steps on my ankle, twisting it; someone else uses my shoulder to give them height. I scream, trying to grab on to someone, but each time, I'm pushed back down. It's like drowning: the limbs and screams of the people closing above my head like waves, the frantic desperate scrabbling to pull myself up to the surface, and finally, awfully, my body slipping into weakness, going slack, losing the will or ability to fight back, knowing that once I do, it's all over, that this will be the end for me.

“My children, why do you fight one another?”

The voice booms through the Chateau, amplified so loud it shivers in my teeth. Everyone stills—the teeming mass above me, the mob closing in on all sides. In the curious silence, the slow search for the source of the sound, I feel a hand clasp around my arm and pull. I look up to see who's helping me and find a middle-aged Believer in a bonnet. “Are you all right?” she whispers, when I'm on my feet.

I nod, dizzy, and wipe my mouth with the back of my hand; it comes away slick with blood. When I follow the crowd's gaze I see the Messiah on the platform where I'd hoped to bring Frick, bathed in golden light. He looks surprisingly convincing. An uncomprehending murmur travels across the crowd, and then individual Believers begin to lose it: they fall to their knees, gasping, screaming, swaying. Most of the crowd seems too stunned to fight this wave of instantaneous faith. I see a Non-Believer woman cross herself, then gaze down at her hand with an expression of immense puzzlement.

“Come closer, my children,” booms the Messiah.

The crowd moves tentatively, as if approaching something wild. They can only get so far—a barrier of Peacemakers has formed in front of the actor, keeping everyone at a safe distance. Behind it, I see Masterson, Blackmore, and Mulvey. They make exaggerated faces of surprise and gratitude, grasping one another's hands. I can hear Masterson's incredulous exclamation: “We're saved! We're saved!” Here and there, I see men positioned with news cameras; they turn to capture the sight.

“You have been so faithful,” the Messiah continues, “so good and true in your belief, in so uncertain a time. Your strength appears superhuman to my Father in heaven. He wishes to reward you for your unwavering belief.”

“Praise Him!” a voice in the crowd exclaims, and others echo in a chorus. “Praise Him! Praise Him!” Under that, there's an unintelligible, hopeful murmuring. I watch the arms of the faithful rise in a staggered wave, phones in hands to record the scene. Up ahead, I catch sight of Julian. He stoops down, and when he straightens—my heart swells—I see Harp sitting on his shoulders, a camera in her hand.

It's time. I push my way to Frick. He stands in the middle of the mob that pressed in on him—some of their hands still grasp the sleeves of his jacket. He watches the Messiah with a look of stunned outrage on his face.

“My children,” the Messiah continues over the grateful voices of the faithful, “you shall not die tonight.”

The Believers in the mob cheer and surge, hands outstretched, wanting to touch him. I take Frick's arm and drag him forward.

“Bless the Church,” says the Messiah, “for opening your eyes to the error of your ways. Bless the Prophet Frick in heaven, for leading you into the kingdom of glory. Bless him”—the Messiah raises a shiny copy of the New Apocalypse Edition of the Book of Frick—“for leaving us this miraculous book, this new edition of his Holy Word, available for only nineteen ninety-nine at Church of America megastores worldwide.”

“Look!” a voice at my shoulder calls. “Praise God! The Prophet Frick has returned to us! Amen!”

We elbow our way through the crowd. When they see us, Believers gasp and cheer. I see the Messiah falter at the uproar Frick's presence has inspired. He hasn't noticed the prophet yet, but I watch Masterson focus on the circle of joyous frenzy surrounding Frick and me. His brow furrows and my heart leaps, because I know we have him now: he was only going to bring Frick to the fore if they could control him, keep him quiet. They had no idea how furious Frick would be with this display. The Messiah spots Frick and—apparently improvising—beckons him forward. I give Frick a push, and the Peacemakers break apart, their faces dumb with amazement, to let him pass through.

“Ah,” the Messiah says, his grin uneasy, “let us together rejoice in this miracle! Your prophet is risen, and stands before you to lead you again in faith!”

Masterson helps Frick onto the stage, and I see him whisper furiously into the old man's ear. But Frick gives no indication he's listening. He glares at the cheering crowd, raising a hand to silence them, and though Masterson pulls at him, trying to get him out of the range of the Messiah's microphone, Frick won't move.

“You,” says Frick, gazing murderously upon his faithful followers. “You accept this false idol without hesitation, without question?”