And here, following arrow to arrow, the path Atrius left behind. His mark on the competition. Mack pauses at the discarded sensible pumps, tries to remember the woman they belonged to, can conjure only an image of a pantsuit and an aura of stress.
Isabella, lost first, lost forever.
Mack doesn’t fail to notice the child’s shoe, cracked and peeling leather, hooked onto a branch now grown to the level of her face. Mack nods, as though making a secret agreement with the shoe, and takes it off, tucking it into her pocket.
She pushes on, knowing this is far enough, but needing to see for herself the center of it all. What a generation long before her summoned and paid for, and what subsequent generations decided to make others pay for. Trickle-down economics. They got the economy, and the blood trickled down the decades.
Mack comes around a bend, almost trips on an old iron loop fixed into the cement decades ago. She stops, awed in the oldest sense of the word, where awe is soul-quaking fear and mind-bending wonder wrapped into one.
Here is the temple.
And here is the beast.
* * *
—
Elsewhere, ringing the park, surly but with shockingly little mourning for one of their own lost, men sit in their towers with their guns leaning against the walls, drinking coffee, glad that at least Linda is the one who has to clean up the mess. The least charitable among them resent Ray for dying and leaving one less guard in rotation so they all have to do more. The most charitable among them no longer live in the town or have anything to do with these families, so they have no presence in the towers.
Even Ray’s son Chuck cannot muster stronger feelings than general displeasure over his father’s death and the “whoopsie” inside the park, as Linda so annoyingly summed it up. They’re really going to dump this all on him next time. He’s a forty-five-year-old man, for fuck’s sake, and he’s still working for his father. Or he was, until a few hours ago. But where are his blessings from the great sacrifice? Why should he be tasked with making it run smoothly so other people can benefit? It’s a good town, but sometimes it feels like a prison sentence.
His radio statics with life at the same time several pops echo through the air from somewhere in the park. He lurches upright, scanning his limited view. He’s manning the guard tower nearest the gate, named Tommy for his great-grandfather, but he doesn’t see anything.
The static eats several of the words, but one of the guys—Ted, maybe? Sounds like Ted—is saying something about being shot at.
* * *
—
Linda has settled in bed at last, a compress on her aching head, when her nightstand phone rings.
“What?” she snaps. It’s got to be one of the men, probably wondering about the arrangements for Ray’s replacement, as if she couldn’t manage this all by herself, as if she hasn’t been managing it all by herself for decades! Maybe if she had some damn competent help, last night’s fiasco never would have happened.
“You aren’t on your walkie. Is there any way they could have a gun in the park?” Gary demands.
“No, we checked their bags on the bus, how could—” Linda drops the phone on her bed and rushes down the hallway, banging her elbow against the wall. Her purse is exactly where Mack left it on the table after thoughtfully replacing the spilled contents. Linda dumps it out, desperate. But of course she doesn’t find what she’s looking for.
She goes to the phone on the wall and picks it up, the line still connected. “Sorry, I dropped the phone. Chuck must not have checked well enough. It’s probably the military one. Treat her as extremely dangerous.”
Those filthy little cunts. Linda throws on her house robe, grabs her keys, and gets in the car.
* * *
—
“Which tower?” Chuck demands.
“Ferris wheel! They’re all here! Hurry!” The man is cut off. Chuck has a moment of confusion—the towers are named—but he knows which one Ted meant. Rose. Which is also weird, because Ted is usually on Ethel, but he must have swapped with someone. Bad luck for him. And for them all. Ted’s the worst shot of anyone, so they’ll have to get to him fast. And the Ferris wheel is on the opposite end of the park, a good two miles away since he has to go all the way around.
“Everyone! Get to Rose!” Chuck broadcasts, then climbs down and gets on his four-wheeler, gunning it away from his tower and its view of the gate.
LeGrand puts the walkie-talkie on transmit and holds it that way, jamming the line so no one can communicate. Then he fires one more shot for good measure at absolutely nothing and starts running.