The Dead Town

Chapter 49

At the end of Erika’s driveway, Deucalion turned right, not onto the county road but instead directly into the driveway at the Samples house, under the spreading limbs of the towering evergreens. Through the broken-out passenger window, he heard the nearest sentry call quietly to a second who was farther removed, and the second to a third, passing the news like members of a fire line passing a pail of water. The name with which they announced his return wasn’t his own—“Christopher …” “Christopher …” “Christopher …”—and he wondered why they had adopted a code name for him.

As Deucalion stepped down from the truck, Michael appeared in response to the sentries’ announcement. “The Riders don’t waste time. The effort to make a garrison of the neighborhood is moving fast. And expanding from one square block to two as they get people to join them. Those cell-phone videos make an impression on the skeptical. And now your work at KBOW. Some local talk-show guy is getting out the word with such passion he mostly sounds convincing. And even when he sounds like a raving nut, he sounds like a nut who’s telling the truth.”

“More children?” Deucalion asked.

“Carson’s assembling the next group in the living room.”

“How many?”

“I think fifteen. They’re coming over fences from neighboring houses, yard to yard to yard.”

Opening the cargo doors, Deucalion said, “Jocko found a few things worth knowing. The most helpful might be the name of the organization Victor is using for cover. Progress for Perfect Peace.”

“Interesting sense of irony. When all of us are dead, the peace will be perfect, I guess.”

“It’s not irony,” Deucalion said. “It’s confidence.”

“I hate that guy.”

“Progress for Perfect Peace. Spread the name around. Maybe someone has heard it before. Maybe someone knows about a location other than the warehouse where they were liquidating those brain-damaged people.”

Carson appeared on the front porch of the house. She led a group of well-bundled youngsters down the steps and across the yard to the truck.

The children must have been briefed about Deucalion, because they showed no fear of him. Their thin, pluming breath seemed to be a testament to their fragility, to how easily they could be snuffed out, but the plumes didn’t betray any terror of him. As they boarded the truck, some looked at him shyly, and other sweet, cold-pinked faces regarded him with an awe that seemed to have in it an element of delight.

He was not accustomed to delighting children. He liked it.

After Deucalion assured the kids that they would not have to endure the dark in the back of the truck for more than a few minutes, he closed the doors and said to Carson, “Why do the sentries call me Christopher?”

“Among other things, he’s the patron saint of travelers, especially of children. They say he was a Canaanite of gigantic stature. Seems to me, Christopher fits you better than your current handle.”

In a time when he was bitter about having been brought to life, when he was full of rage and had not yet realized what his mission must be, he named himself Deucalion as an expression of his self-loathing. Mary Shelley titled her book Frankenstein; or the Modern Prometheus. In classical mythology, Prometheus was a Titan, brother of Atlas. He shaped human beings from clay and endowed them with the spark of life. Made by Victor, the modern Prometheus, Deucalion was in effect his son, and he felt, back then, that he should carry the name to remind himself that he shared the shame of Victor’s rebellion against all of nature.

Now he knew that the lightning of his birth pulsed in his eyes as he said to Carson, “I haven’t earned a better name than the one I have now.”

“Earned? Back in Louisiana, you presided over Victor’s death in the landfill.”

“But now he’s back. Version 2.0.” He started forward toward the driver’s door, then stopped and turned to them. “Where did his clone get the money for this? He left New Orleans with only a fraction of my maker’s fortune.”

“He’s like a Broadway producer,” Michael said. “He found some backers.”

“Backers with deep pockets,” Carson said. “So deep they might as well be bottomless.”

Deucalion said, “Even if these new creations can be defeated, and even if he can be killed, perhaps we ought to be worried about the reaction of his backers when they get no return for their investment.”

He got behind the wheel of the truck. As he pulled out of the driveway and turned left, he tapped the horn — and it sounded as he braked to a stop at Erika’s place. By the time he opened the back door and the children began to disembark, Erika and Addison appeared on the front porch to greet them.