Late afternoon stretches infinite before them, the day loath to leave, lingering on their skin in the muggy heaviness and droning of insects, lingering on Mack’s soul and mind with the sheer enormity and impossibility of everything this day had contained.
All they can do is walk. LeGrand leads as Mack supports Ava to ease the burden on her leg. He keeps them parallel to the road, the asphalt in sight through the obscuring trees and undergrowth. It’s harder going than the road—which is not good for Ava—but it means they can see anyone coming and going. And no one has come or gone, which means their escape has still gone unnoticed.
“Smug bastards,” Ava mutters, slapping at the back of her neck in response to a biting insect. The aggressive movement shifts her balance, and Mack grunts under the increase of weight until Ava adjusts. “One electric fence and a few old men with guns. That’s it. That’s all they thought they needed.”
Mack doesn’t share the sentiment. It was more than enough to keep the rest of them inside. Just not Ava. The lure of the money and the fear of being embarrassed for being afraid kept them in to begin with. Then, after seeing the monster, what could they do but run and hide? The terror was too loud, too immediate, to leave room for anything resembling a plan.
Maybe that’s why Ava was able to function, to take charge. Why hadn’t she seen it? Mack feels almost lonely, knowing that Ava didn’t share that dread knowledge with her. Hadn’t been changed by it the way she had, LeGrand had, Brandon had.
Mack’s surprised to find that thinking of sweet Brandon, neck snapped, eyes opened to the heavens, doesn’t make her mind recoil. She wishes he had waited, that things had gone differently, but really, he chose. And he made his choice to save other people. Brandon was better than Mack, too. Everyone here is. Brandon, dying to give them a shot at living. LeGrand, banished for trying to save his sister. And Ava, with the chance to be free and clear, willingly climbing back into hell to get them out.
Mack imagines another scenario, where she’s more like them. A past in which she gives Maddie the good hiding spot. Or, better, pulls Maddie up with her, somehow finding room for both their bodies above the door. Or, best of all, realizes what her father is going to do and warns everyone, saves them all. Because hadn’t she known, really? Hadn’t the tone of his voice convinced her to hide, sent her scurrying into the dark?
But the others in the park had known something was wrong—of course they had, how could they not?—and they had denied it, had kept moving forward as though the world were not laced with violence, as though they were not all walking corpses already. They were told everything was fine, and so they clung to that promise until they died.
Ava stumbles, and Mack catches her automatically.
* * *
—
“Almost there,” LeGrand says, although he knows no such thing. It feels like they’ll walk through these woods forever and, after an eternity, find themselves once again at the gate of the park. The maze, at their backs, somehow growing to ensnare them once more, following them for the rest of their lives. The idea that they’re being punished is one he can’t shake, though it occasionally retreats in the face of his anger.
He keeps almost praying, then stopping himself. He had been taught what the Holy Ghost felt like. That if he prayed, God would tell him that his father was right about everything. That’s what prayer was for. So that those wicked parts of your heart, those doubts, those questions, could be burned out by God and replaced with faith. With knowledge.
LeGrand had prayed so much in his life, but he still always felt scared, and that didn’t seem like something God would give him, something the Holy Spirit would do. It was terrifying, having a prophet for your own father. Knowing who and what you came from, who and what you could never live up to, who and what would judge you for failure.
LeGrand’s father hadn’t even shown up to excommunicate him, though. He’d let a lesser elder do it. LeGrand’s failure, the end of his life as he knew it, was not important enough for the Prophet Rulon Pulsipher.
Maybe LeGrand is already dead, and this is outer darkness. Another reason to find Almera. If he’s reunited with Almera, he’ll know he isn’t dead, because if he were dead, he wouldn’t be with her. She gets the highest heaven, and he gets—well, he doesn’t care. He wants this life. He wants it for himself, and for Almera. He’s damned or he isn’t, he’s dead or he isn’t, none of it matters as long as he can help her.
Besides, if the elders are right, Almera is saved no matter what. So if LeGrand spends his life easing her pain and is cast into outer darkness for it, well, Almera will still be exalted. And he’ll be happy for those lonely eternities, because he’ll have saved her a lifetime of pain and suffering she didn’t need to endure on behalf of other people’s fervor to prove their commitment to God.
The presence of an actual monster behind them doesn’t factor into his internal wrestling. He was raised in a world of angels and devils, of gods and prophets and miracles. Why shouldn’t there also be monsters?
* * *
—
Ava’s leg rises to a crescendo of agony, bone on bone and metal on bone providing the instruments, her own swearing the percussion. The box in her head has disintegrated, burst at the seams with everything she tried to shove in it today.
The town, a car, escape. She repeats it in her mind, going over and over the elements like they’re beads on her mother’s rosary.
The town.
A car.
Escape.
They almost don’t notice when the forest begins to thin. LeGrand barely stops them before it abruptly ends, spitting them out into a carefully manicured lawn leading to a white Greek Revival house, ostentatiously blocking their view of the surrounding neighborhood. They’re on the side of the house, but they can make out the pillars serving no apparent function at the front.
After their time in the wild chaos of the park, the rock-lined flower beds with orderly rosebushes, punctuated by miniature versions of ancient statues, seem as unreal as anything they left behind. LeGrand doesn’t understand ornamental gardening. In Zion Mountain, all the gardens were actual gardens, tended by the women and providing food. What’s the point of this?
Ava picks up a smooth rock from a pile of them filling a garish birdbath with a round cherub pouring water out. Theoretically, anyway. It’s dry.
“Live, love, laugh,” Ava reads. The words have been carved into the manufactured rock. The impulse to throw it through one of the house’s windows is almost impossible to resist.
“No lights on,” Mack says. Houses like this always feel vaguely accusatory. Every perfect line, every well-chosen accessory says You don’t belong here, like the spa. The windows watch her, making sure she knows they see her.
But it’s twilight now, and no lights are on. The window eyes are blank.