The Dead Lands by Benjamin Percy Read Free Book Online Page A

way, give off a charge. These are the only treasures he keeps here—the rest stashed on rooftops throughout the Sanctuary—his lean-to merely a place to sleep.
    He feels nauseous—his stomach an acidic coil—but cannot stop himself from filching a rat kabob from a market booth. He takes a few rubbery bites before tossing it aside. He makes his way to the morgue, in the basement of the hospital, a pillared marble building that shares a block with the museum. Here he worms his way through the ventilation pipes—navigating his way left, left, right, shimmying down one level, then right, right, right again, trying not to sneeze at the dust he stirs up, trying not to clank his knees and elbows against the metal—to see his father one last time before he is processed. Another hour and his body will be rendered into fat for candles, bile for ink, ligaments for stitching, bones for tools, meat for the pigs, every part of him translated into something useful.
    The morgue is one of the few cool places in the city. He has been here before, to steal medicines and instruments—and to view his mother’s body after the cancer ate its way through her. He stares through the ventilation grate, not expecting to get any closer than this, watching the morgue attendants deconstruct the dozen or so bodies cooling on their slabs.
    Then a white-jacketed nurse pushes through the door and says the sentry fires have been lit, that something is happening outside the wall. Everyone departs the room in a hurry. Simon slides aside the grate. Dust spills out and he drops to the floor. He approaches the slab upon which his father has been laid.
    Lamps glow and pulse and their shifting yellow light makes the bodies appear to tremble in their sleep. A bucket and a tray of instruments sit next to his father. Simon breathes through his mouth to try to fight the smell, the nausea that makes the floor feel unsteady. His father’s skin is gray-green where it isn’t red. He is slashed and chewed in so many places, his stomach torn open completely, a tangled pile of yarn Simon tries not to look at, studying instead his father’s face, the remaining half of which appears serene, transfixed by a pleasant dream, as if death were the only way to find peace in this place.
    His father prized above all else a guitar strung with rusty baling wire. He kept the fingernails long on his right hand for plucking. Simon takes that hand now—the hand that made music, the good hand, the best part of his father—and kisses it and makes a silent vow to one day revenge him.
    *  *  *
    Lewis has known the mayor, Thomas Lancer, longer and better than anyone else in his life, though they can’t be called friends. Not anymore. There was a time, so long ago, when they were children, when they would thumb marbles beneath the table while their parents dined or ride bucking sheep for sport or play prey/predator in the gardens, one sneaking up on the other with his hands made into claws.
    Lewis remembers especially loving the drum game. One of them would race off with a handheld drum while the other tied a blindfold around his eyes and waited for the thumping to sound. Thomas always preferred that Lewis pursue him—beating the drum sometimes softly, sometimes loudly—leading him through the Sanctuary, down alleys, through stables, over bridges, into and out of buildings, until finally Lewis crabbed out a hand and caught him.
    The game has not changed so much. Thomas beckons him now with a deputy instead of a drum.
    The Dome is gold leaf and during the day shines like a second sun. Its halls are made of marble interrupted by grooved pillars and oil paintings and frescoes and sculptures and staircases that spiral into many dark-wooded chambers where the lights sizzle on and off depending on how hard the wind blows.
    Lewis needs no escort. When the deputy guides him by the shoulder, around a corner or down a hall, Lewis shrugs her off and says, “I know.” He grew up here, after