Benjamin Percy - The Dead Lands

He departs his chambers and follows the staircase to the main level, his hand hissing along the railing. Many servants hurry down the marble-floored hallway framed by dark wood and festooned with oil portraits. They bunch flowers into vases. They fill lanterns with linseed oil. They climb ladders to pin streamers from the ceiling. They are getting ready for the ball, the costume party he will throw this evening, the first he has hosted since his inauguration. It will serve as an inoculation, just the dose of goodness they need, with enough liquor and water to drown in. And dressed as they will be — as swans and wolves and dragonflies and devils — they can happily pretend themselves away from their troubles and come together as a community.

The servants do not greet him. Their eyes fall and they stiffen when he moves past.

Vincent approaches and rattles off a series of questions about where he would like to set up the stage for the band, about hors d’oeuvres and drinks and any number of other things that Thomas waves away.

“I can’t be bothered with that now.” He has other business to attend to.

He finds Slade waiting for him outside. A hot wind stings his eyes and the sun instantly reddens his skin. A single wispy cloud dashes across the face of the sun and for a moment filters the light, making the Sanctuary go from sandy yellow to wintry gray. And then the cloud is gone and all the metal and glass seem to blaze even brighter than before.

Slade holds out the whip, coiled around his hand like something alive. Thomas takes it and his hand drops with the weight. “You’re sure this is a good idea?”

“As a show of force, yes.”

A pod of deputies escorts him through the Dome’s gates and into the streets he has not visited for weeks. People stop to stare. No one says anything, not yet, but he can hear them muttering and can feel their eyes flaying him to the bone.

It is only a short walk to the whipping post. He is relieved to find it shadowed by the museum, some reprieve from the heat. Only a few dozen huddle around it. The news was announced this morning: a terrorist would be punished. No mention was made of Thomas’s appearance — they didn’t want to tempt a mob — so the crowd buzzes when he takes the platform.

A boy is chained to the whipping post. He kneels before it, his arms and body held upright by restraints, because his legs are swollen, blackened, broken from his fall. Thomas feels a twinge of pity.

Slade addresses them all. He points to the boy chained to the whipping post. The boy caught trespassing in the prison. A terrorist, Slade calls him. A terrorist who intended to release those jailed there. “He will be justly punished — by none other than our mayor.”

Thomas feels their eyes on him now. They despise him, he knows. They want him dead, he knows. They want his brains dashed out, his bones broken, his eyes gouged. They would sever his head and tar it to slow the rot and parade it through the streets and cheer when the birds roosted and shat upon it. He is serving himself, of course — there is no other way to justify his baths, his clothes, his meals — but so is he serving them. He is doing the best he can. He does not punish unless someone gets in the way of his vision, the vision for which they elected him into office. Until the rains come, this is the only way they can survive, strictly. Why can’t they understand that?

He hears someone call out the name Meriwether and he can’t help but think, and not for the first time, this is Meriwether’s Dome, this is Meriwether’s city, this is Meriwether’s place, not mine. He stares up at the museum — Lewis’s museum — and thinks he sees a face in the window. As if his old friend has returned to mock him too. He tries to look closer but is quickly blinded by the sun cresting its roof. It spills its light like a splash of magma across the platform where he stands. The temperature spikes.

His discomfort hurries him along, reminds him of his task. With a shake of his wrist, he uncurls the whip. He will do his duty. By whipping the boy, he will whip them all. The sooner he is done with this, the sooner he can escape the heat, the sooner he can return to the Dome, the sooner he can bathe the dust and the blood from his skin, the sooner he can forget about this moment and focus on the next, the party.

The whip is heavy in his hand. Its tip looks like a frayed nerve ending. The boy twists his face to look at him, his face pinched with pain, and Thomas says, “Turn around please.”

A fly lands on the boy’s face, tasting the corner of his mouth, and he blows it off.

“I said turn around, boy.”

“My name’s Simon.”

“I don’t care what your name is. Turn around.”

But he won’t. The boy won’t break eye contact. Neither will the crowd. Nor will Slade. Everyone is watching. Everyone is waiting to see what he is capable of.

* * *

Ella watches until she can’t anymore. When the whip lashes Simon a first, a second, a third time, his body convulsing with every strike, she sinks below the window so she can’t see. But she can still hear, the whip cracking, the audience gasping, Simon crying, so she covers her ears and hears then only the blood roaring inside her.

She thought she knew what anger was. She thought she was angry when Lewis left her. She thought she was angry when Slade tore out her tooth. But that wasn’t anger. Anger is not yelling. True anger — the deadliest kind of anger — is the white-hot silence that defines her now.

She had someone — Simon was hers, and she his — and they took him away from her and now they will pay their debt in blood. Lewis charged her to maintain the museum. That made her an educator. She is going to exact her revenge through education.

The museum is empty but won’t be for long. A crowd gathers outside. They form a line at first, but the bodies soon mash together at the door. The day is heating up. Tower tops seem to glow. The blades of turbines spin with a cutting light. People fan their faces with hats. They suck on stones to water their mouths and they spit on their fingers and dampen their wrists, their necks, anything to cool them down.

It has been a long time since the museum rotated its displays. For the past few days, the sign draped above the entry advertised a new exhibit. Simon helped her hang it there. No one knows the subject. Maybe it’s war, the people say. Or maybe anatomy. Maybe electricity. They speculate, but really, they don’t care. They’re hungry for something new, a diversion they desperately need.

Simon remains chained to the nearby whipping post. On Slade’s orders. He will be a reminder to any who think to disobey. His body is crumpled, one cheek crushed against the post. The birds and the flies feast on his body, a seething black drapery. The crowd tries not to look, but the first sweet stirrings of rot offer a constant reminder. It makes them feel as angry as it does depressed, more eager than ever to escape into the museum that will deliver them to a more prosperous, hopeful time.

A man rattles the latch and finds it unlocked. Maybe it has been all along. He creaks open the door and calls out, “Hello?” but Ella is no longer there to hear him, already deep beneath the city and roaming its tunnels with a lantern held before her. His voice echoes back at him like a greeting and he shrugs and steps inside and the rest follow.

In the exhibit hall they find a banner that reads THE RISE AND FALL OF THOMAS LANCER. The room is otherwise empty except for two stages arranged at its center. The barrenness of the space — and the echo chamber of the rotunda — makes their whispers and their footsteps carry into a sound like an army on the march.

On the first stage, which previously housed the bones of a Tyrannosaurus, there is a twenty-gallon plastic barrel set upright. The top has been peeled off to reveal the cool, clear water inside. A ladle hangs beside it. Everyone who walks by dips the ladle and takes a sip and closes their eyes, as if taking communion.