The Burning World

  The roof is slippery with mildew and rot everywhere except my path. I have worn it in over the years like animal trails in the forest, a channel of sagging shingles from my bedroom window to the chimney. I’m leaning against the chimney now, knees to my chest, watching the funeral from above like a cathedral gargoyle. I should be down there. I should be sitting in one of those folding chairs in my Sunday best, watching them lower her into the ground next to my grandmother, but I don’t know how to grieve correctly. If she’s in a better place, my grief is selfish. If this was God’s plan, my grief is mutinous. And what about my rage? To whom do I direct that? To the troubled man who killed her or to the God who wrote his trouble? To the performer or the playwright? Or to myself for asking such questions?

  It’s good that I’m up here. The mourners below weep openly, following convention without a thought for the contradictions, and they would expect me to do the same. But I am too angry to cry. I am a wrung-out rag, twisted and dry. So I sit on the roof and let the rain do my grieving, falling from my eyelashes like surrogate tears.

  • • •

  “What did she die for?”

  “She was trying to help.”

  “By feeding them? Keeping them alive? How was that helping them?”

  “We feed them so we can teach them. Hungry people are the best listeners.”

  “Teach them how to get into Heaven? How to stay good long enough to get into Heaven?”

  My father glares at me with bleary red eyes. He is slumped in his recliner, a gray mountain of ash growing in his ashtray, staring at a television that plays bad news on every channel. Drone strike footage on MTV. Terrorist manifestos on Comedy Central. Mass graves on Lifetime. I would never have said these things to him a week ago, but grief has weakened him and strengthened me. He is drowning; I am burning.

  “Isn’t that why we’re here?” I insist. “To just hang on until the end? To keep playing the scene until God yells ‘cut’?”

  “You and your damn metaphors,” he grumbles, and takes a drag on his cigarette.

  “Why are we here, Dad?”

  “We’re here to share the News,” he recites. “We’re here to spread the Fire.”

  “But the News is about Heaven, right? It’s not about Earth.”

  “Of course it’s not about Earth,” he growls, shaking his head. “Earth’s a ball of shit. It’s been scheduled for demolition since the day it was made.”

  I hear my voice rising to a shout. “Then why do we keep trying to fix it? Why do we keep building homes here? Why don’t we let it burn?”

  He sucks in more smoke and stares at the TV, his jaw flexing.

  “Maybe that man was just trying to help.” My voice is low now. “Maybe he just wanted to send her to Heaven.”

  This gets the expected result. I stumble back against the wall, running my tongue along the holes in my lip. Oh, I’ve missed this. The blood, vibrant on my white T-shirt. The pain, confirming my place in this world, telling me I’m right about everything. The only thing missing is the fear. When I was young he was terrifying, but now that I’m sixteen and nearly a foot taller, he’s pitiful. I exult in watching him lose control and make a sham of his principles, pissing his pants before God and man.

  I will have to get my fear somewhere else.

  I grin at him with red-smeared teeth. “I have to go,” I say as he stands there, fists at his sides, breathing hard. “I’m late for church.”

  • • •

  I sit once again in the hotel conference room, staring at the vinyl banner while the pastor harangues the youth of Missoula, but something is different tonight. I’m not the only one gripping the sides of his seat. A week ago a refugee obeyed a chorus of voices telling him to stab my mother with her potato peeler while she was preparing his dinner, but there is nothing special about my tragedy. Twenty murders in a month in a town with one gas station. Three arsons on public buildings followed by fatal police shootouts. And of course, the rumors about what happened to some of the bodies. Even with communications jammed, everyone feels the wave rising.

  “Make no mistake,” the pastor says, “it’s ending. It’s been a long day, but the sun is setting. So when you see all this chaos in the world, don’t be concerned. This isn’t our home that’s burning down, it’s our prison. And the Fire is God’s.”

  I stare at him with red, watery eyes, my brain buzzing with cognitive dissonance. Paul Bark glances down at my notepad as I scribble blindly onto it.

  “Everything is God’s,” the pastor continues. “The Devil is God’s. Sin is God’s. God made everything, therefore everything is his, no exceptions. So although God hates evil, it belongs to him, and he can use it as he pleases to accomplish his plan.”

  The scratching of my pen becomes so loud that the kids behind me lean in to look over my shoulder.

  “Does that mean that God is evil, because he uses evil?” He shakes his head and smiles. “No. God is good, both the adjective and the noun. He is our definition of good, our atomic clock, the standard of measure by which we draw all comparisons. If God does it, it’s not evil.”

  Paul looks up from my notepad and catches my eye. His gaze is hard, his scruffy chin jutting. He gives me a stoic nod.

  “So when you see the world burning around you . . . rejoice!” Spread palms. Beatific smile. “When you see civilization crumbling into darkness, praise God, because you are watching his work. He’s scouring the earth, blasting it clean in preparation for his Kingdom, and believe me”—his smile takes on a sly gleam—“you are not going to miss the house we’ve built with our clumsy little hands when he drops his mansion on top of it.”

  I feel the eyes of a dozen young men and women on me, some staring at my notepad, some at my face as it reddens and trembles. Rage and grief are colliding inside me like lava and seawater, forming gnarled black stone. A clump of my peers remains around me as the rest of the congregation flows to the exits, and though no one says a word, I know the same thought is in all of us, hovering over our heads like tongues of fire.

  I tuck my notepad away as the pastor walks past us, hiding my doodles from his curious gaze. He may have inspired them but he wouldn’t understand them. They are a new revelation for younger, stronger saints: houses, schools, refugee camps, all engulfed in flames, and a flock of spirits fleeing the earth, which is just a ball of black ink, without form and void, like it was in the beginning and like it should have stayed.

  “What are you kids up to?” the pastor inquires cheerfully.

  “Your sermon moved me,” I tell him. “I’d like to stay and pray about it.”

  “We’re all going to stay with him,” Paul says.

  “That’s good of you,” the pastor says, then downturns his smile into consolation. “I’m very sorry for your losses, all of you. I know it’s been a hard season.”

  “What do you mean?” I say with a strange, trembling euphoria. “Everything we lose brings the Kingdom closer.”

  He looks uncomfortable. “Right. Well. I hope God speaks to you tonight.”

  He walks away, leaving us alone in the conference room. I glance from face to face, all of them pale and tired, eyes red from grieving and fighting and seeking answers that never come, and I see my own epiphany reflected in all of them.

  I pull out my notepad and begin to sketch plans, and they crowd in around me like members of one body. It’s the closest I’ve ever felt to the Spirit of God moving.

  THERE IS NO WARMTH in this basement. No pleasant nostalgia in these old boxes. They lie in heaps as if tossed in a panic. Sharp objects poke through them and some are soggy with dark fluid. What was I supposed to find here? Why should I want these old horrors? There are plenty of new ones waiting outside.

  I open my eyes.

  The interior of the plane is calm. The soft drone of the engines. The pink morning glow creeping through the windows. Will this day look different? Are the eyes I just opened the same ones I closed last night, or did I bring new ones back with me? What d
oes the world look like to someone who has sought to destroy it?

  M and Nora are asleep in the row behind me. Sprout is curled up near the back, arms wrapped around her knees in a heartbreaking posture of fear. Abram snores in the cockpit with the autopilot engaged, his wounds neatly bandaged, looking rather comfortable.

  Only Julie is awake. She slumps in the copilot chair, her pistol on the armrest. She notices me looking at her and her puffy eyes glint with defiance, daring me to judge her. After what I’ve just relived, the thought of me judging anyone almost makes me smile.

  I step into the cockpit and lean against the instrument panel behind her. She swivels her chair to face me, giving me a blunt stare. “What.”

  It’s the voice of someone addressing a stranger. Perhaps an enemy. Whatever I had to say evaporates.

  She swivels back to the windshield. The sun is a small coal rising up from an endless gray expanse.

  “Julie.” I step forward and put my hands on her shoulders. “I understand.”

  “Do you?” she says to the windshield, and there’s a dangerous tremble under her level tone. “Because I thought you were a blank canvas.” Her shoulders are so tight they seem to be extruding spikes. “I thought you get to choose where your past begins and you chose the day you met me. Which is sweet and all, but it means you never had a family, never lost a family, never lost anything. It means you don’t understand.”

  I withdraw my hands. I look down at the top of her head, that little golden ball that contains every moment of my third life. I wish she were right. I wish I were nothing but that brief vignette, but my present is becoming a small raft adrift on a dark ocean.

  Could I tell her? Could I introduce her to the broken wretch taking shape in my head? Is she broken enough to accept him?

  A harsh beep pierces the cockpit and a red light blinks on in front of Abram. He sits up and takes the controls without so much as a yawn, either a light sleeper or a good pretender. Julie also snaps to attention, steadying the pistol and blinking alertness into her bloodshot eyes.

  Abram glances at the gun. “That’s really not necessary, you know. You’ve made your point.”

  Julie watches him silently.

  “What am I going to do, jump out the window? Why don’t you save the hostage stuff for when we’re on the ground?”

  “The hostage thinks I should put my gun away,” Julie says flatly. “The hostage thinks that would be the logical thing to do.”

  Abram sighs. “I’m just asking you to ease up.”

  “Why?” She wiggles the barrel. “Do guns make you nervous?”

  He looks at her with what appears to be genuine emotion, a genuine plea. “They make my daughter nervous.”

  Julie’s mask slips. The hard angles of her face melt. She glances back into the cabin and sees Sprout watching her anxiously, crouched on her seat as if ready to run away. Julie’s chin trembles just once, a spasm of sadness. She puts the gun in her lap.

  “Thank you,” Abram says.

  The red light blinks and beeps again.

  “What is that?” Julie says.

  “It’s my morning alarm. Can’t be late for work when the boss is armed and insane.”

  “What is it.”

  “It’s a route notice. Means we’re close to Pittsburgh.”

  “Why do you have a route notice for Pittsburgh?”

  “Because I think we should stop there.”

  She stares at him. “What?”

  “I think we should stop in Pittsburgh.”

  She leans in, peering at him curiously and gripping the gun against her thigh. “Have I been vague about our itinerary?”

  “Look, I’ll fly you to Iceland. It’s going to be a lifeless rock, but I’ll fly you there. But before we launch ourselves across the Atlantic with limited fuel and 1970s nav gear, I think we should make a stop in Pittsburgh.”

  “What the hell’s in Pittsburgh?”

  Abram watches the first rays of the sun creep toward him along the dash. “What was it you said when you first talked me into flying this plane? Something about utopian enclaves and rebel armies? Well I definitely can’t promise the first thing, but maybe the second.”

  There’s a subtle fluctuation in Julie’s skeptical stare. “There’s a rebel army in Pittsburgh?”

  “I know there was a year ago.”

  Julie puts the gun back in her lap. “I’m listening.”

  “Pittsburgh was my first placement after they found me in the woods. It’s where I was trained, it’s basically my hometown. I hopped around a lot in my twenties but when Mura was born I decided—” He shakes his head. “Point being, Branch 2 is where I first heard that Axiom was losing its mind. There were some Management guys who’d had some contact with Executive—indirect contact, of course; I’ve never known anyone who’s actually talked to Atvist . . .”

  Nausea jolts through my guts and I suddenly want to be somewhere else. Maybe a bathroom. I close my eyes and take slow breaths.

  “. . . but they got close enough to see that something was very wrong at the top, if there even was a top anymore.”

  “Rosy—” Julie starts, then stops herself. “General Rosso, the stadium’s leader, said Axiom was wiped out years ago.”

  Abram opens his mouth to respond but someone else talks over him, an unexpected third voice blurting, “Seven years ago. Leadership killed, headquarters destroyed, everything buried in the quake. But he said not to stop.”

  Abram and Julie are both staring at me.

  “What is wrong with him, exactly?” Abram asks her. “Was he a radiation baby?”

  “Rosy said all that to you?” Julie asks, bewildered.

  I blink a few times.

  “Anyway,” Abram sighs, “yes, we took a big hit in New York. The branches lost contact with Executive and for a while no one knew what was going on or if we were even still a company. But after a couple years, orders started trickling in again, reports that Executive had survived, Branch 1 was rebuilding, and everything was fine. And for a while, we believed it.”

  Julie glances behind her and startles. Nora is leaning in the cockpit entryway, arms folded, listening. A wrinkled yellow pamphlet dangles between her fingers. “Don’t mind me,” she says.

  Abram returns his attention to Julie. “But by the time I left to work on the west coast campaign, there were rumblings. Secret meetings. I’d say at least half of the branch was ready to do something.”

  “Like what?” Julie says.

  “Take down Executive. Maybe break up the whole company into local governments. They hadn’t worked out the details.”

  “Half of one branch against a nation-scale militia network? How was that supposed to work?”

  “Other branches were in on it. Call it a revolution if that tickles your teenage drama bone.”

  Julie’s eyes narrow. “First of all, I’m not a teenager . . .”

  “Oh that’s right, you had a birthday. Everything’s different now.”

  “. . . second of all, since when are you a rebel, Abram Kelvin?” Her eyes narrow. “Since when do you fight for anything but your own little homestead?”

  Abram keeps his face neutral.

  “We’ve been flying all over the country looking for a way forward, and you’ve done nothing but run backward every chance you get. Now you’re suddenly ‘viva revolution’? You’ve suddenly got a big insurgency lined up for us that you never bothered to mention?”

  The faint, weary smirk never leaves Abram’s face, but it looks a little forced now. “Walking into an Axiom branch when we’re all on their wanted list wasn’t my first choice. If the coup hasn’t happened yet, it’s going to be tough to reach my contacts. And yeah, I’d rather be fishing in the mountains with my daughter than trying to save the world with a bunch of delusional children. But if it’s this or a one-way trip to a frozen rock in the ocean, I’ll take the revolution.”

  Julie shakes her head. “You’re full of shit.”

  “I’m really no
t.”

  “There’s nothing in Pittsburgh. You’re just trying to get us on the ground so you can make your break.”

  Abram nods. “Fair call, but it’s wrong. Lying’s not my thing.”

  Julie chuckles. “Oh really!”

  “One of my father’s lessons that stuck: lying to someone gives them power. Makes them the judge and you the defendant. Tell the truth and deal with the results. Lying’s for pussies.”

  Julie laughs. “You’re so full of shit.”

  “Actually,” Nora says, “he might not be.” She straightens the yellow pamphlet and hands it to Julie.

  Julie scans the page of chicken-scratch handwriting and doodled marginalia, like a medieval manuscript illuminated by drunk monks. She looks up at Nora in amazement. “Where’d you find this?”

  “In the airport, of course, a thousand miles from anyone. I think DBC might be a little OCD.”

  “Why didn’t you show me earlier?”

  Nora gives her a dry stare. “You’d just shot a guy in front of his daughter. It seemed like a bad time.”

  Julie flinches. I suspect it’s been a while since Nora has failed to be on her side. Julie turns her attention to the yellow paper, almost hiding behind it, and I read over her shoulder.

  Julie lowers the page. “This was two years ago. You’d think we’d have heard something.”

  “Come on,” Nora says. “Two years ago we didn’t even know Axiom still existed. Pittsburgh could be a full-blown rogue state by now.”

  A moan drifts from the rear of the plane and Julie’s head snaps toward the sound. Near the restrooms, chained to a chair, the remains of her mother are waiting. For what, exactly, I don’t know, and I doubt Julie does either, but I can see the emotion flooding her face, cold and wet and overwhelming.

  “We can’t,” she murmurs, her eyes glazing. “We have to get her help.”

  “We will, Jules,” Nora says. “But what do you really think she’d want you to do right now?”