San Francisco, they’d danced naked in the park as the sun rose. He was so young, so full of energy and he felt so close to God. Perhaps that was the closest he had been to a prophet, to righteousness. Then came failed marriage, disillusionment, worship of money and technology and the power of man and mind. He had thought it was all a path, an honest consistency running from Golden Gate Park to Silicon Valley. Layers were being revealed to him now. He was learning more of his own life in these last few moments of it than he had in sixty-five years of living it. He knew there was something beautiful in it. He knew he had been special and blessed and it had guided him, off the path and back, to be here. Abraham had been asked to sacrifice his son. He felt hungry now to sacrifice himself to fill some place in God’s plan. He’d been born for this, run away from it, been led to it.

When he opened his eyes he had to squint from the sun. It felt so warm on his face, the first warmth in so many weeks.

“We didn’t have to wait to go to God. God came to us. God came a long way. Now he’s shut all our doors, and waits just out the window. We just have to take one step to meet him.”

Matthew 27:5.

And Judas cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself.

He stepped off his chairs, knocking one of them over. There was a symphony of clanging chairs going over on the tile floor, and muted grunts. A chorus of fifty righteous, 1illful deaths.

58

 

The ship was aflame.

Brenda White returned before Travis could, and warned Hesse.

After the pirate attack, fires had been contained in fire-resistant sealed sections. That time there had been an organized response led by the Festival’s trained fire crew. They had now to organize something similar, with a half dead army. The indefatigable John Hesse had quickly put together a fire brigade, but they had been directed by Brenda’s understanding of the fire as emanating from her electrical sabotage a level below the Theater.

When Travis came back to the Atrium he felt like a bear returning from a winter in a cave. The sun had just come up, and the light in the Atrium made him squint. Travis noticed his clothes were splashed with new vomit and blood and he wondered from whom they came. He was a killer. He felt like he should tell someone.

He saw his son and ran to him. The boy watched his father across the great floor, fixed to his spot. Finally, when his father’s arms came to him and lifted him to his chest, the boy smiled. The mother watched and smiled too. She had been wasting away, draining out physically and emotionally. Her smile now was real and solid, on the face of a ghost. Her smile had been Travis’s favorite thing at one time. Seeing it now seemed a final gift.

Travis stayed in that embrace with Darren, shutting his eyes. He wished they could die this way. Finally he put his boy down to find Hesse.

Real sunlight made the Atrium beautiful again. The pillars and statues shone, the long drapes seemed bright and bold. Only the people, sick, coughing, lying down in filthy clothing, were still gray.

Travis found Hesse.

“They’re all dead,” Travis told him in the office.

Hesse took it in dumbly.

“That Golding, his wife set fire to the Theater. Locked them all in. They’re all dead, except Golding and his wife.”

How long they sat there, while the sun shone into the Atrium.

Finally Hesse said, “You couldn’t kill him?”

As if the story would change and there would be a better ending.

Hesse told Travis about the firefight. Travis shook his head. The firefighters were sent to the wrong level. Even if the fire from below had been contained in the stairwell, the Theater fire would have spread. He knew at least that backstage door of the Theater had been left open. The fire would have spread from the Theater.

They were quiet a while. Then it was Travis who brought them back to the ship, and what had to be done.

“He’ll be in the galley,” Travis said. “It’s the only place he can be, unless he wants to take whatever won’t rot and move off the grid. He thinks I was in the Theater. In the fire. He thinks he has the only gun on the ship again. But he’ll still be waiting. He’ll be in the galley and if he’s not he’ll have destroyed whatever food he couldn’t carry.”

“Do you have any bullets?”

“Three.”

“Give me the gun, I’m going to end this,” Hesse said.

“No,” Travis said. “Don’t ask again.”

They were in no rush to talk. The sun on their faces was an irresistible distraction. There were spaces between each communication.

“If he’s gone from the galley,” Travis said, “how will we find him? And what good will it do us?”

“If he’s gone from the galley, he’ll have food stashed. The perishables are irrelevant, there wasn’t much left. But he’ll have bread, flour, and clean water, and he’ll have it hidden somewhere. It doesn’t matter, it just doesn’t matter what it means, what it helps, if it gains us anything. We have to kill him.”

Travis agreed. Killing Golding was a need now. It gave meaning to their lives.

“I need some time with my family,” Travis said. “Let’s talk later.”

“Wait,” Hesse said. “Travis. How did we get here? What did we do wrong?”

“I don’t know. There’s only so much difference your choices can make when you don’t control anyone else’s. Maybe some games are built to lose.”

Travis left Hesse; Hesse went back into his office.

Back near the grand staircase, Travis rejoined Gerry, Corrina, Darren and Claude. Claude had said nothing on Travis’s return. Travis felt no animosity towards Claude. He was glad he was still around; still felt that it was more shelter for his son to have Claude there.

Gerry took Travis aside. They walked towards a closed off staircase. In privacy, Gerry said simply, “Any bullets?”

“Three.”

He handed Gerry the gun.

“Get it back fast, and with a bullet left,” Travis said. “I aim to put it in Golding.”

Gerry took the gun. This time he wouldn’t come back without firing it. He went up the stairs; Travis went back to his group.

It was a long walk to the solarium. Gerry was in no hurry. He stopped at the first of the exterior decks, and took in the sun. Was he a violent man? Claude had asked. Yes, he was. He had lied to Professor Claude. He had always been violent. He’d hated it, shamed for it, bellowed it, rode it and used it as a threat at various points in his life, but it had always been there. There could be no greater testimony to that beast inside him than the lengths he had gone through in his life to get beyond it. Poetry. Yet in poetry was passion and violence too. It was a false cover. His life had been shaped by violence.

“If I kill, let it be for love. But let me kill.”

He went back into the dark, ascending.

Professor Claude sat with Darren by his side, but felt a chasm between them.

“Flood myths are just about universal,” he told Darren. “Every culture, every religion has a story of a great flood that wiped away all the earth, all humanity. No one knows if these stories are based on facts, or whether there is some deep human urge or fear of this kind of idea: wiping out everybody, even all history, and starting fresh.”

“That’s what God should do,” Darren said.

He had no more power than the boy, the professor thought. Helpless, but to watch as whatever life had in store came right at them. He was a history professor and had at times imagined himself as a fly on the wall in some dramatic era; he’d wondered what it felt like to watch great events unfold, powerless over the direction of your own existence in the face of such forces. He was the same as the boy, now, tossed about in the sea of history, at the mercy of fate or the actions of some small handful of men.