“Well, if it isn’t Mabel Rose. And what do we have here? A bomb. Looks like you delivered after all, gutter rat.”
“Mabel has nothing to do with this!” Arthur said.
“It isn’t what you think. He was just about to destroy it,” Mabel explained.
Brown Hat smirked. “Sure he was.”
“Please. If you could just listen for a minute…” Mabel took a step forward.
“Mabel, don’t!” Arthur shouted.
It happened very fast. The first bullet grazed Mabel’s right arm; the second found its home in her belly, exiting through her back, severing her spinal column. Mabel felt a searing heat, followed by cold, and then she felt nothing as she fell to the ground.
In the Grand Pavilion, the radio men made sure the wires were secured and tested the microphones.
“Just get right up on it, Miss Snow,” one of them said.
But Sarah Snow knew exactly what to do. She’d waited a lifetime for this moment. As she took the stage, she smiled at the vast sea of tiny, waving American flags and wished that her parents could see her standing here. A lump rose in her throat. She couldn’t afford to tear up now. After all, Jake Marlowe needed her. He’d asked her to take charge, and take charge she would.
Sarah raised her arms. “Brothers and sisters, citizens, welcome. What a glorious day the Lord has made!”
The tiny flags agitated like electric current.
“Here, in this great city in this great nation of opportunity, the American dream is alive and well. Jake Marlowe is bringing us the future. And, oh, what a glorious future it is, indeed! Do you feel that? Do you feel that future inside you? Do you feel it in your hearts, brothers and sisters?”
The flags answered affirmative.
Sarah Snow. Chosen. Anointed for greatness by the Almighty.
“Let us raise a hymn of praise to America.”
The Christian Crusaders took up their instruments once more.
Sarah stepped up to the microphone and let her voice rise: “My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.…”
“Mabel!” Arthur called, desperate. “Mabel!”
“Arthur?” Mabel croaked out. She couldn’t move her legs.
“Help her!” Arthur growled.
“Stay where you are, Mr. Brown!” Brown Hat commanded as he moved closer. “Where are the others?”
Arthur said nothing.
“I’ll let her die,” Brown Hat said.
“They’ll be leaving the fair right about now,” Arthur said.
“Weston, Cooper!” Brown Hat called to two of the other agents. “Go find them. Make the arrest. Agent Lynch, stay with me.”
It was just Brown Hat and the other agent left now. From where she lay, Mabel could hear Sarah’s pretty soprano coming through the microphone, filling the Grand Pavilion above them.
“They’re st-starting,” Mabel murmured, and coughed.
“Please. She’s hurt,” Arthur pleaded.
Brown Hat’s expression didn’t change. “I don’t care.”
Arthur fell on the other agent with furious blows. Brown Hat answered with a bullet to Arthur’s thigh. Arthur cried out. The wound bled profusely. It had managed to hit in a very bad place, he knew. Above him, the band played on. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen. He had a knack for screwing up. Perhaps there was still a chance to correct that, to make one lasting contribution. Arthur Brown left a slug trail of blood behind him as he crawled toward the bomb.
Brown Hat kicked him in the face. Arthur fell back, and the agent brought his shoe down on Arthur’s outstretched hand, pinning him there.
“You idiot,” Arthur said through teeth clenched against pain. “I was trying to disarm it!”
Brown Hat nodded. “I know.”
Without another word, Brown Hat turned and shot the younger agent, who jerked like a marionette and dropped to the ground, dead. The man in the brown hat stepped calmly around Arthur and the dead agent and placed the still-ticking bomb high into an alcove underneath the stage, out of Arthur’s reach.
“So long, gutter rat,” he said, shutting and locking the door on his way out.
“Memphis!” Theta shouted. “Help!”
“Isaiah? Isaiah!” Memphis gathered his shaking brother in his arms, and they carried him to the grass. People were staring. “Isaiah?”
Isaiah’s eyes had rolled back in their sockets. “Fire,” he cried. “Fire!”
“Hey, now, boy, you can’t be yelling fire in a public place,” a man scolded, and Memphis wanted to hit him.
“My brother’s sick!” Memphis growled.
“Then get him outta here,” the man shot back.
“What’s the matter?” a policeman asked.
“That little boy’s calling fire.”
“Memphis, we better go,” Theta said.
“I said, my brother’s sick!” Memphis yelled. He wanted to punch somebody and he wanted to cry, and he didn’t know which he wanted more.
“All right,” the policeman said kindly. “Let me help you get him outside.”
Isaiah’s eyes snapped open. He sat up. “Bomb. Bomb. There. They’re here. Warning us.” Isaiah pointed to the charred field. The tents and bodies were gone, but the ground still bore witness to the massacre. “Do you see them?”
Dead children lined up across the field.
“Do you see them? They’re telling us to go,” Isaiah said. “Now.”
“Say, now, what’s all this about a bomb?” the policeman asked.
“My brother, he’s special. A Diviner,” Memphis explained.
“Bomb! Bomb!” Isaiah screamed.
“Say, now, what’s he going on about?” The officer blew his whistle. “You stay right there!”
Across the grass, two men in dark suits were making their way from the Fitter Families tent toward Memphis, Theta, and Isaiah. Theta saw them approaching.
“Grab Isaiah and run,” Theta said.
“What? Why—”
“Just do it, Poet.”
Memphis scooped Isaiah up in his arms and staggered as quickly as he could toward the gates and out into the flat Queens field streaming with curious people making their way toward Jake Marlowe’s utopia. Several policemen had their nightsticks out, but it was the Shadow Men Theta feared.
Theta let the heat come. And then she blasted a strip of grass at her feet. A small fire blazed across the entrance to the exhibition. Already, the policemen ran for buckets of water. They’d have it out in no time. But it would be enough to get away, she hoped.
“It was that girl—that Diviner,” someone shouted behind her as she ran. “She did it!”
The song soared to the rafters inside the Grand Pavilion.
“Sweet land of liberty.”
It bubbled forth from the lips of the people and echoed through the radio playing on a table inside the Fitter Families tent under a poster touting the qualities of the perfect citizen.
“Of thee I sing.”
Its muffled but familiar strains drifted down into the depths of the small room below the stage, where, with his last bit of strength, Arthur Brown dragged himself on his elbows toward Mabel, leaving behind a trail of blood.
“Arthur?” Mabel called softly.
“I’m here,” Arthur managed through teeth gritted in pain.
“It got so cold.”
“Yeah.” The bullet in Arthur’s thigh burned. His trousers leg was soaked red.