Everyone started waking up when he was gone. They found Alexander sitting in study of what Ezekiel had left behind. The first note had directions in Continental that led to a land outside of discovery, past the endless ocean’s mythical third meridian, and ended in a place labeled, “Antioch.”
So, this is where he takes the books. How many times has he crossed this impossible distance? How does he do it? He flipped through the journal. It appeared to be yet another tedious volume of Ezekiel’s psychotic babble.
Alexander had secrets too. He’d deciphered the script on his own, long ago. He put the journal aside and read the second note to himself. “Armageddon is arrived, that’s the truth, no matter what you believe. Break your silence… hmm. Open the library.” He rubbed his face in contemplation.
Corporal Lyons wobbled over to him, still recovering. “Sir! What happened, sir?”
Alexander made up his mind right then. “Send out my command to ready the fleet, corporal. It’s time to evacuate all non-essential personnel.” He handed her the journal. “Add this to my private collection and have all of it loaded onto the Vesper. She’ll serve as a flagship.” He handed her the directions. “Give this to her captain and have him report to me immediately for briefing. I know it’s slower but use the tunnels from now on.”
He’d meant what he said. He wouldn’t abandon his responsibilities. But, if there was a safe place in the world, he knew of a few thousand refugees who deserved a shot at it.
Lyons gave him a bleary salute and then looked at the directions. Her face opened with surprise. “This leads across the third meridian! No one knows what’s out that far!”
Alexander frowned at her. “Do you need me to repeat your orders, corporal?”
Lyons recovered herself at attention. “Sir! No, sir!”
“Carry them out.”
“Sir! Yes, sir!”
***
The Grace was anchored off the coast. Captain, the only one aboard, lay back in a folding lounge chair on the front deck with his long, auburn waves in a greasy draggle. He’d a beautiful green macaw perched on the headrest behind him and a brown bottle of rum in hand. He would spend weeks at a time out there in solitude, except for the company of his bird, drifting in and out of a drunken stupor.
He offered her a soda cracker over his shoulder. “What do you say there, Beatrice, if you drink and smoke yourself to death, that doesn’t count as a suicide, now does it?” He’d been asking her that all day.
Beatrice held the treat in one foot, nibbled it and whistled. Then she blasted out, “Rrrawk! Smoke yourself to DEATH!”
The shocking volume of it made Captain duck. Then he laughed, delighted with her. “Oh Aye? That’s a new one for you! There’s a good girl.” Beatrice didn’t have a very large vocabulary. Captain thought that made what she said all the more important, so he took her advice and lit his pipe.
He smoked for a good long while and fed crackers to his bird. She liked the salt in them. Near dusk, Ezekiel climbed over the railing, soaking wet, like a devil out of the depths, and spluttered, “Noah! Thank everything you’re alive!”
Screech - “Smoke yourself to DEATH” - whistle.
Ezekiel gasped at the bird.
Captain didn’t bother to look up. He’d gone by a lot of different names but there was only one person left in the world who knew him as Noah. “Kafferway’s Llama! What? Do you need money again already?”
Ezekiel said, “No…” thought, not this one too, and missed Elizabeth. “Have you even moved from that spot? Don’t you know what’s happening?”
Captain glanced at him and then recoiled. “Gaaah! You’re an ill sight every time, to be true! What do you want?”
Ezekiel went to him and told of the devastation on land. It had taken him a week to reach the Grace from Alexander’s bunker. The plague was wiping out towns and cities as fast as he could travel.
Captain had to believe it, considering the source. He took it all in with a depressed horror and then resignation and a drink. “The end of the world. Maybe it’s time for that.”
“No! We have to find the others! All of you can gather around me to survive this!”
“Oh, aye? No, I don’t think I’ll be going in for that. I’ll just stay here and let what happens happen.” Noticing Ezekiel’s frustration, he said, “Do what you’re going to, of course. I can’t stop you. But, you’ll have to carry me every step of the way.”
Ezekiel conceded once again. “Do you have paper and a marker?”
Captain made a lazy motion at the deckhouse door and returned to his chair. Ezekiel came out later with two notes similar to the ones he’d written for Alexander and gave the same instructions. Then he said, “Good luck to you, Noah,” and headed for the side.
Having given everything a little more thought, Captain said, “Oh, ah, before you go… I might have some trouble getting to this place of yours. You see, I’ve no crew aboard.”
“How many do you need?”
The Grace sailed well with twenty. She could comfortably house sixty-five. Captain said, “I’ll need a hundred and thirty or so, without a doubt.” He figured they could double up in the bunks.
“A hundred and thirty! I don’t have time for that! I have to find the others!”
“Aye, indeed you do. You, you go on ahead with that. I’ll just go ashore and try to find a crew by myself.”
Ezekiel hated his choices. “Fine! I’ll need your lifeboat.” It sat twenty.
Captain almost grinned. “Here, let me help you with it.” When they had it in the water and Ezekiel had the oars in place, Captain shouted down, “Don’t bring me only men, now! That makes for a dull voyage!”
Ezekiel didn’t respond to that foolishness. There wouldn’t be much to choose from anyway. He rowed the dark water into glistening ripples on his way toward a blacked out city under the moon. There, in its deserted alleys, his eyes flashed as they rejected random trails of infection. His perception stretched out through the walls like a search light. He saw any life within a hundred yards.
When bauran came upon him, they didn’t cast the shining reflections of living people. They had dull, smoldering glows, like dead bodies. They were alive enough to unravel, though, and weren’t much of a threat. Curiously, when he pulled their riin through for the death stroke, it felt as though it came through a sieve. He didn’t know what to make of it and still couldn’t spare the time to investigate. His immortals’ lives were too important.
Ezekiel filled the lifeboat with survivors and rowed them out in slow trips. The delay tortured him. Many of the people he found were so old and feeble that he simply kept them unconscious and carried them, because it saved time. Their bodies were soft bags around delicate frames, just a flinch from being crushed in his grip.
Captain stood waiting for them on the Grace with lanterns in place to light the way. When Ezekiel headed back out to the city, the survivors woke up and wandered around, wondering where they were and how they’d gotten there. One old man came up and said, “Scuse me there, scout. Where’d that Zeke get to?” Captain held up his hands as if he didn’t know anything and went around trying to convince them all to lie down. The front of the ship started to look like a field hospital.
Every time Ezekiel returned, everyone but Captain fell unconscious, some with the brutal thud of their flesh hitting the deck. It kept them out of the way. Captain wondered if it was possible for them to be injured like that, despite being within Ezekiel’s power when it happened. It was unpleasant, no matter, and played havoc with their memories.
Ezekiel’s arduous trips continued until a few hours after dawn, when he returned with the last ten, making one hundred and thirty exactly. He could have fit ten more in that boat. Captain didn’t want to think about that.
Ezekiel glared. “That’s all of them you asked for.”
“Without a doubt, every one, but… I still can’t make it all that way without provisions, now can I?” Captain had a cargo list prepared that would
stock the ship for an impossible journey, for a hundred and thirty. “Here, I’ve written down the things I’ll need.”
Ezekiel’s mouth fell open when looked at the list. He was still gaping when he looked back at Captain.
“Oh, now, you can improvise on some of the items I’ve marked, of course. Like this one here, see? Aye, indeed, it’s quite a lot. We could go ashore and get it ourselves, but, well…”
Ezekiel questioned whether it would have been easier to carry the man around after all, or just let him die. No, too much trouble for one and too valuable for the other. He’d already contemplated whether any of his rare friends would be appropriate for attempts at resurrection, since their loss would be so dear, and had come to the conclusion that thirty years of common love was one thing to sacrifice, centuries of reliable genius was another. No, he’d no way of knowing if any of the others were still alive. He had to do as much as he could to provide for each one he managed to find.
He held up the cargo list with an empty threat. “There’d better not be anything else after this!” Then he went back down in the lifeboat. It took him two days of constant work to return with everything.
Captain didn’t drink or smoke in the time between trips. He pretended to be one of the survivors, using their stories to add essential items to the cargo list, things like goggles, respirators and bleach. A fifty-one year old Andalynn was a valuable source of information. When she asked about guns and ammunition, Captain assured her the Grace was already a floating arsenal. “She’s spent some time as a… munitions vessel, you see.”
All the while, Beatrice shouted at them to smoke themselves to death. Smoke yourself to death, smoke yourself to death, screech, whistle. It was disconcerting to everyone but her master.
Ezekiel came in from his last run, bringing two hundred pound barrels aboard with ease. Though physically tireless, he was emotionally exhausted. “This is everything you wanted.”
“Well, almost.”
Ezekiel reared back with a fearful scowl. “More essential items?!”
Captain said, “No, no, I’ve everything I need, not to worry. But, this crew, they’re old as the hills and there isn’t a seaman among them. I’ll need them young and strong if I’m to make it out past the third meridian.” He tapped himself on the nose.
“Fine!” Ezekiel pitched into a violent trance, eyes rolling back. The sleeping bodies around him began to pop, squelch and transform, wriggling from the inside like larvae. Captain cringed. It was the sound of a classroom cracking its knuckles and squashing grapes by the bucket. It went on for grisly minutes.
When Ezekiel was almost done, Beatrice blasted out from her perch on the chair. “Rrrawk! Smoke yourself to DEATH!” The volume of it shocked him out of his trance and the simmering pops and squelches stopped.
Captain turned to smile at her, just in time to witness a burst of Ezekiel’s temper. The bird’s eyes sucked back into her skull as every living cell in her body split open and separated. She fell in a wet mass of once beautiful feathers.
Captain winced and looked away. He’d had Beatrice for years. He couldn’t say anything that would make a difference. It occurred to him that every moment near Ezekiel was a moment away from death, for almost anyone but him. For him, Ezekiel made life a prison.
Out of vague self-criticism, Ezekiel said, “You could never love me, could you, Noah?”
Captain didn’t waste any time trying to understand what that meant. He just said, “No, indeed,” and lit his pipe. After a moment he offered some flat praise. “But, you can still be proud of all the good you’ve done.”
Ezekiel was on the edge of a personal crisis. “All the good I’ve done?”
Captain motioned at his new crew. “Look at all the lives you’ve saved from the plague.”
“The lives I’ve… these? You don’t understand anything about life!”
Captain blew smoke. “I could say the same to you.”
Ezekiel screamed. He couldn’t take anymore. He dove overboard without another word and without completing the crew’s rejuvenation.
29 Mission
Thomas wore a traditional sleeve, the gauntlets and boots buckled in. His white tabard had the same high, clerical collar, but instead of a golden circle, two broad, cerulean blue chevrons pointed up like cresting waves across his back and chest. It was the habit of Gabriel’s new order of paladins in Calvary, The Walls of God. A bag of ashes hung from his belt and, secretly, Thomas endured a chafing, horse-hair shirt under his longhandles.
He arrived in Antioch with the coldest wind of autumn that year, three weeks after Daniel. Like Daniel, he’d come looking for a book from the bestiary, but he found more than that. Michael offered him stacks of sacred script to take back. Michael valued his translations more than the originals, believing it better to start a library anyone could read than to bother teaching a dead language. So, any volume with a sister in Meroan was Thomas’ for the asking.
Thomas knew the script by then, he had a gift for linguistics, so it made no difference to him. He sat at the round table with an ancient text of Ezekiel’s, wearing a delicate pair of spectacles to read. He was astonished.
Harold sat across from him, fairly astonished as well, not because Calvary had survived or because of the ease with which Thomas had mastered the script, but because of the way Thomas spoke. After barely more than introductions, Harold was convinced he’d never heard a more impressive barrage of gargling diction and ejaculatory I-saying than what issued from that man.
Thomas closed the book. “I say, I’m quite a bit jealous of you, Michael. I am. This has become a place of profound learning, discovery and advancement in our absence, hasn’t it?”
Michael nodded. “It has.”
“Quite so. Underground reliquaries, fire-in-a-stick and what-have-you. However, I must say that in Calvary we’ve a great deal of heathen people to our credit. Such an opportunity as that is a righteous wealth in and of itself. To have so many souls in desperate need of saving, I am observably content with my station there, you can be assured, and am proud to think of myself as Gabriel’s Wall, in honor of his institution.”
Harold’s mouth fell open.
Thomas leaned in mischievously. “I’ve a confession to make, though. Do you know that I’ve decided to stay another three days, in order to attend one of your father’s services?”
Michael smiled. “I’m glad, Thomas.” He was.
Harold thought three more days of Thomas might be something of a challenge. It was a small church.
Thomas went on with humble pride. “Our mission, in Calvary, is fashioned after the spirit of the fellowship you understand. Only, my sermons aren’t quite so rousing as your father’s, of course, and I should like very much to hear one of his again before I leave, and take from that good example something to improve my own.”
Michael said, “I’ve been escorting Faith to service on Sundays lately. We’ll save a seat for you inside.”
Thomas thought that was rather scandalous. “Escorting a woman? I say, it’s good that you’ve taken an interest in the service, but that’s a bit of a bold statement to make, isn’t it? One might get the impression that you’re, dare I say, out and about? I should think the implication quite inappropriate for men of our station and most desirously to be avoided! Such an impression might lead to disquiet or… irreverent rumors within the community, only serving to lessen the impressiveness of our advice, and thereby its influence. Wouldn’t you say?”
Harold’s hands were on his head.
Michael guessed The Walls of God had held on to a few of the Circle’s vows. Instead of explaining that he no longer intended to remain chaste, or that he was more interested in Faith than religion, Michael politely repeated his offer. “Would you like to sit with us?”
“Oh, quite right, I should like that very much. Very much, indeed.”
Harold couldn’t restrain himself any longer. “I say, I should think, and quite rightly so, that I too find it most inordi
nately trying to tolerate Michael’s indiscretions!”
Michael coughed out a laugh.
Thomas looked sideways at Harold. “Indeed? That sounds like cheek to me, sir.”
Harold recoiled. “Surely you don’t say!”
Thomas turned to Michael. “That’s your man’s cheek, is it?”
Michael put a hand on Thomas’ shoulder. “Let’s go have something to eat. You’ve been on a long road.”
Harold gasped with pleasure. “Oh, I say! I rather should think a cider at the Cauldron would be most agreeable at the moment, and quite, actually, considering such wealthy conversation!”
Thomas frowned at Harold. “You, sir, shall soon find me to be thoroughly unobliging in that regard.”
Michael laughed, but mostly because he was so happy to see Thomas. He ushered them out the door and they crossed the churchyard. He didn’t leave a note behind. It didn’t seem necessary anymore. Antioch hadn’t seen an infection since the previous winter.
Thomas said, “I say…” and then paused self-consciously. Harold grinned. “I’ve been meaning to mention… Blast! About that bell! Do you know Gabriel used a horn to do the same thing in Calvary?”
Michael said, “Is that right?” and linked his hands behind his back. Thomas did as well and they walked side by side, a Wall-of-God and a brown-and-white. Harold followed, listening with interest to both Thomas’ tale and the way it was told.
“Quite so. Gabriel trumpeted a stalwart vigil on it day and night for months, constant as the sunrise. The villagers started referring to him as the rooster near the end of it there - and not to flatter him either. But, the bauran’s attacks finally did cease. That was a nasty business altogether with them. I should think we’re quite content to exchange those troubles for the ones we have at present. And, that we’ve much cause for rejoicing to know that this good place still stands, along with Golgotha, as you’ve said. Yes, there’s cause for much rejoicing indeed. And… won’t Gabriel be surprised when, upon my return, I inform him that you’ve chosen for your Wall - a woman? I say!”