Chapter Thirty-Four

 

 

DEMI-JOHN LED THEM through the shooting gallery and into the large, domed building that housed Creation. Inside, a circular canal ran for over 300 metres, ferrying a large boat through painted panorama of the biblical history of the world.

‘Six thousand years!’ God shouted. ‘They’re saying the world’s been here for six thousand years?’

He kicked at a grotesque painted display. ‘Read a book you ignoramuses, it’s people like you that give me a bad name.’

‘Can we keep moving?’ asked Lucy, ‘I don’t care if the world’s six thousand years old or sixty…’

‘Sixty?’ God was beside himself, ‘try four and a half billion years! And that’s just this planet. The universe is much older, just shy of fourteen billion.’

‘Well,’ Lucy sighed, ‘whatever. I’ll think about that long and hard in all the time I have left to me once the Colonel’s shot me.’

‘Hmm…’ God looked abashed. ‘Yes, well, maybe I need to think about my priorities, fair enough. I just get so…’ He kicked the display again. ‘Creationists make my holy balls itch.’

‘Thus spake the Lord,’ said Fabrizzi with a laugh.

Demi-John was at the far side of the dome now. he waved Grace over.

‘Help me with the door would you?’ he asked. ‘Handle’s just too high for me.’

‘Course,’ she tried it. It was locked.

‘Leave it to me, said Peeper, ‘I’m good with locks.’

She reached into the front pouch of her bib pants and pulled out the thin strips of metal she had used earlier on the racetrack gate.

‘What’s it like out there?’ she asked Grace. ‘You know, in the real world.’

‘Weird,’ Grace replied, ‘there’s really no other word for it.’

‘Got to be better than in here though,’ Peeper replied, ‘me and Demi-John spend most of our days looking after the others and getting nothing but grief for it. You think that maybe, when you go, we could come with you?’

She turned to Demi-John who shrugged. ‘Hey, who knows if we even exist beyond this place? Maybe we can’t leave?’

‘I’m willing to give it a try if you are,’ Peeper replied.

‘I need to find my brother,’ Grace explained, ‘he’s probably in Rikers prison, or maybe he’s not anymore but that’s the only place I know where to look so…’ she shrugged, ‘if you want to come with me then that’s fine by me.’

It was weird she thought, how she had spent so much of her life being alone and yet now, when it had all gone to Hell, she was gathering friends faster than ever before.

The lock clicked and Peeper pushed the door open.

‘Find your brother, yeah, we can do that. I’m great at looking for stuff!’

‘Come on you guys!’ Demi-John shouted. ‘We’re in.’

They stepped through into the rear of Bostock’s Arena and were immediately hit by the animal smell. Old straw, meat and dung, all bundled together into something both sweet and nauseous.

‘How safe you think this is?’ Fabrizzi asked, peering into the shadows.

‘This is Dreamland,’ Lucy replied, ‘nothing is safe these days.’

It was dark and Grace found herself staring at the bars of a small cage containing nothing she could see but shadows.

It hit her suddenly. The cabin. Her home for so long. The place that had nearly been the ruin of her at the same time as saving her from The Change.

The breath caught in her throat and she was back there, back in the cage.