BURR HAS A good view from the Flavel house. Way up high on a hill, he can see so much of his city and the bay beyond. He stands at an open window in the library. Lewis has escaped him but not for long. He can feel him out there, not far away. He will find him. He will seduce him and humble him and teach him. Once taught, he will be made into something wonderful, a great tool. He, like everyone else, will become an extension of Burr, a million-limbed monster.
This will of course take time. Burr must be gentler—must not present everything in such a forceful rush. He was just so excited, and when Lewis resisted him, Burr could not help but reduce him to a mewling ball. He has dreamed a thousand times what they might accomplish together, so that the future feels like the present, their relationship already under way. It is difficult, courting a person you believe belongs to you. Burr must be patient, must keep in mind his need for Lewis. He has, after all, no sons or daughters. He has tried to cultivate some unnaturally, exposing pregnant slaves to high doses of radiation, hoping for something radiant, not flippered or cleft lipped or turned inside out, but gifted, special, someone who can carry on, inherit what he has built so far. That is immortality. And though he has his students—Gawea among them—none have the same potential as Lewis. He is the next.
Everything will be all right. He is certain of this, even with the smoke rising from the bombed sections of his city. They will rebuild, as they have rebuilt before, and they will exterminate those who threaten them, and they will continue to manufacture, to claim, to grow.
There was a time, when he was out on a jetty, the seals and sea lions sunbathing on the rocks or bobbing in the water all around him, when a shark surfaced. Its fin cut the waves. Its eyes rolled over white. It showed its fleshy gums, a smile of a thousand teeth, and then bit down, tearing into a seal, biting again, drawing it deeper inside its mouth. Bubbles frothed white and red when the shark descended. For minutes afterward, Burr shook with fright and awe. There were certain things in the world that could do that to you. You crossed paths with them, even if only for a moment, and they infected you, made your body shake with dark energy.
Objects could have that same power. A nail from the cross. The throne of Charlemagne. The diary of a young Jewish girl. The looped video of the Twin Towers collapsing, replaced by ashen pillars. That is the purpose of a museum—a power plant full of receptacles that can enhance people even glancingly. Lewis has that same power, and Burr has felt it out there for a long time, floating in the dark sea of the world, and it has been borne to him by current, and he would have it, and when he did, others would tremble as he once did, mesmerized by the red wake of the shark. He commands the Northwest now, the country soon. But he is not merely interested in power; he is interested in the larger permanence of humanity. Sometimes a single person comes along and changes history. It is a position that requires more than grand intelligence, but detachment and ruthlessness, the utilitarian ability to hurt others as a way of helping others. He is that person. Lewis will be that person. And their names will become so important that they will never expire so long as humans retain their foothold on the world.
Burr smiles, but his attention is distracted by a bird. He sees it circling above the house and then dropping to his open window, a flash in the air before him. A tiny owl. Its wings creak and its beak twitters. On instinct he holds out his hands to accept it and it lands heavily in the cup of them. Its feathers are cold to the touch, made of metal.
It is then he smells the smoke. It is then he sees the spitting fuse trailing it like a kite’s string. Before he can drop it or hurl it aside, the black powder encased in its hollow breast ignites and transforms the library into a white oblivion.
Chapter 61
SLADE UNBELTS his machete and swings his way through the throng of rioters, severing a hand, splitting a face, opening up a throat to a geyser of blood, and though he is outnumbered many times over, everyone flinches away from him. In that way, he still owns them, so long as he does not reveal the fear taking wing inside him.
He crashes out of the Dome and through its fallen gates into sunlight so bright he throws up an arm to shade his eyes. For a full minute he runs at a dead sprint, not going anywhere, aiming himself away from the crowds. He trips twice and skins his knees badly but refuses to cry out. Then, in alley empty of anything but shadows, he chokes for breath and orients himself.
The wall cuts into the too-blue sky. Smoke ribbons from burned buildings. A dog pants in the shade of an alley. A jingle cart rolls by. Otherwise the city seems empty. But he can hear a distant roar, the noise many angry voices take on when in chorus.
The man pulling the jingle cart wears a floppy brown hat that looks like it has been torn in half and sewn back together again. He pauses and calls to Slade, “Candies, medicines!” and then he sees the blood-painted machete and lets go of the cart and it rolls a yard before going still.
Slade tracks his way through a city that no longer belongs to him. A low-hanging awning tears his hat from his head. His knees feel wasp stung. He tries not to think about what will happen next, tries to focus only on returning to the place he feels safest.
He finds the police station empty, even the cells beneath. A desk overturned. A door ripped from its hinges. The occasional body slumped in a corner or sprawled on the floor with a knee bent strangely. When he calls out, his voice swirls down the hallways like water down a drain. The noise continues to rage outside, and he hurries to the dark nook in the basement he calls home.