Chapter One-Hundred: German Chocolate Cake
"Six years?" Cass stared at Elunes in disbelief. "That can't be."
"It is the truth."
"Not the full truth." Cass glanced over at Gwen, who was still fielding questions about death and dying from people in the crowd of protestors. "It wasn't six years for me. It felt like a few hours at most."
"It does not matter." Elunes gestured to the sealed doors of the Royal House. "You gave power to Atrex, a very hasty decision on your part, and since then he has thwarted my every effort to revitalize Project Harvest."
"I didn't give him power," corrected Cass. "I only suggested that you work together."
"Don't be naive," rebuked Elunes. "You publicly endorsed him. You are popular and well-known, and you can bring a Conclave to silence in a matter of seconds. That is power, whether you realize or not, and here you can see the consequences of power granted in haste. Atrex has convinced a majority of the Conclave to bar me from attending. As you can see, I have returned with five thousand voices, and now he cowers behind a locked door."
"What do you mean, bar you from attending?" Cass frowned, feeling the subtle birth of a new headache. "Since when has the Public Conclave ever had the authority to stop people from attending? It is a public forum, not a legislature."
It was Elunes's turn to frown. "How else may conclave decisions be enforced if not by use of law?"
"Laws only have power if we give them power, and if we get locked into relying solely on laws to shape collective direction-"
"Hey, Cass?" interrupted Gwen, pointing towards Royal House Square's northern entrance. "What's going on over there?"
Cass looked north, and she saw hundreds more Dersites flooding into Royal House Square, armed with clubs and blades. Many of the newly arriving Dersites wore red armbands, and a few even wielded energy rifles.
Thousands of people in Elunes's crowd drew knives from their pockets and waistbands, hurling insults at the new arrivals.
"Atrex," seethed Elunes. "Now do you see, Sylph? His supporters have brought rifles. I always knew he possessed hidden caches of weapons. I knew it."
"Your supporters brought knives," remarked Cass. "Can you blame Atrex for locking the doors?"
From above, a familiar voice shouted, "Elunes!"
Cass and Elunes turned around and looked up, spotting a visibly agitated Atrex poking his head out of a fourth-story window overlooking the Royal House's entrance doors.
"Elunes, order your mob to disperse!" Atrex hollered down from his window. "Otherwise, I cannot guarantee your safety!"
"You threaten us with rifles, and you have the gall to call us a mob?!" Elunes yelled back. "Tell your sleepwalkers to drop their weapons and leave!"
"Over my rotting corpse!" Atrex exclaimed.
Elunes's glare grew icy. "That could be arranged."
"Seriously," interjected Gwen, "what the fuck is going on?"
Cass closed her eyes for a moment, massaging her temporalis muscles in an unsuccessful attempt to alleviate her escalating headache, yearning for the opportunity to take a long nap.
"You have already done enough damage, Elunes!" Atrex shouted. "This is your last chance! Go home, or Royal House Square will bleed today, and I will not be responsible!"
"Okay, Gwen?" Cass opened her eyes, levitating weightlessly into the air. "We need to defuse this situation."
"Someone has to be an adult." Gwen followed Cass's lead and floated gently into the air, rising to a height of nearly twenty feet off the ground, high enough to be seen by the approaching Atrex supporters. "They better not shoot us."
"What does it matter?" asked Cass. "Both of us have died twice, and I don't think-"
Several bolts of lights whizzed suddenly through the air, fired by an overeager Atrex supporter with an energy rifle.
Cass fell from the sky, bleeding profusely from where an energy bolt had torn through her throat.
"FUCK!" Reacting without thinking, Gwen flew immediately sideways, reaching out in an effort to catch Cass as she plummeted towards the cobblestones below.
Anna Carrero stared into her cup of tea, ignoring her headache.
From the surface of the tea, a reflection of Anna stared back, until Anna added some milk and the reflection was stirred away.
Anna checked the time on her phone, which told her it was 3:58pm. Nearly time.
Bringing the tea to her lips, Anna felt that it was too hot, and decided not to drink it yet.
A man wearing a suit sat at the next booth over, speaking animatedly into a Bluetooth about a recently negotiated contract, and Anna was amused by the enthusiasm with which the man described how he'd saved his company thousands of dollars.
None of it would matter in two days.
"Can I get you anything else, honey?"
Anna nearly jumped, looking up from the tea to see her waitress approaching. "Sure, do you sell love and a feeling of safety?"
The waitress, quite used to receiving dull and predictable responses to her questions, regarded Anna with a newfound curiosity. "What makes you think you don't already have those things, or the ability to create them?"
After a silence, Anna asked, "How about desserts? Do you have any good desserts?"
"We have German chocolate cake that will make you melt."
"Some of that, then." Anna sipped her water. "Book that German chocolate cake a one-way flight to my gastro-intestinal tract."
"The cake, or a slice?"
To the credit of Anna's sweet tooth, she thought about it for a moment. "Just a slice. And the check."
"Okay, sure-"
"Two slices."
"Sure thing." The waitress walked away, heading over to the cash register.
Anna picked up her tea and took a deep breath, cooling the tea by blowing gently across its surface.
Outside the diner booth's window, traffic accumulated gradually on Pottstown Pike, waiting for a red light to turn green.
After risking a tiny taste, Anna determined the tea's temperature tolerable for drinking. She added more milk before committing to a larger gulp, murmuring, "Oh, sweet, shitty Exton Diner tea, where would I be without you?"
Anna looked out the window as the Marchwood Road traffic light changed, releasing the accumulated highway traffic.
Fluffy white cumulus clouds drifted silently across the azure sky.
Soon it would be time for Anna to leave Earth behind for good, and when she did, would she ever again see a sky like this?
Anna's reverie ended abruptly with the sudden sound of water and ice cubes being poured into her water glass.
"Enjoy," said the waitress as she refilled Anna's water glass, placing in front of Anna two slices of German chocolate cake on a plate. She then offered Anna a small white receipt. "And here's your check."
Anna accepted the receipt, frowning at the price. "You missed one of the cake slices, you only charged me for one."
"Don't worry about it," said the waitress, walking away. "Let me know if you need anything else."
"God damn it, why do I have to like you?" muttered Anna, taking another gulp of tea as she watched the waitress duck back into the kitchen. "We're going to lose some good people in two days."
Picking up her fork, Anna cut into one of the German chocolate cake slices. "Oh, fuck, that's good," she moaned as she tasted the rich chocolate, dropping the fork. With her fingers, Anna picked up the cake slice and demolished it within the span of several massive bites. "Fuck." After licking her fingers, Anna wiped the frosting off her face and licked her fingers again. "So fucking good."
Anna stared forlornly at her remaining slice of cake.
Two more days, and then no more Humanity. No more chocolate cake for anyone.
Unless carapacians knew how to bake cake? They probably did, but Anna highly doubted anyone in the incipisphere could replicate the Exton Diner's German chocolate cake. "Fucking delicious," she murmured, forking a piece of the second slice of cake into her mouth. "I'm gonna miss you."
"I'll miss you too, Anna," said Anna in a lower-pitched voice, speaking for the dwindling slice of cake. "I love you."
"Aww." Anna ate another bite of cake. "You're making me melt."
Across the street outside, a car turned into the parking lot of Marchwood Apartments, attracting Anna's attention. "Here we go." The front door of Anna's apartment swung open, and out stepped another Anna Carrero. "Right on time."
Past Anna locked the front door and hurried across the apartment complex's front parking lot, clambering into the waiting car. Once Past Anna was inside, the car promptly sped away, on its way to a bonfire party at a former classmate's house, the memories of which Anna could only hazily remember.
She'd gotten very drunk around the bonfire, of that much Anna could be certain. She could not even remember exactly when she had finally returned home. Sometime tomorrow afternoon?
Anna could now crash in her bedroom until at least tomorrow morning, and she needed the sleep.
Yawning, Anna pulled out the cash she'd taken from Gino's wallet, putting down a ten-dollar bill next to the receipt, which covered the waitress's tip.
After devouring the final few bites of German chocolate cake, Anna shimmied out of the booth and stood up, leaving her table. She walked past the cash register and the dessert counter, exiting the Exton Diner through the front doors.
The sun warmed the top of Anna's head as she traversed the diner's small parking lot. When the traffic offered an opening, Anna crossed Marchwood Road and walked the short distance to her apartment's front door, retrieving the house key from her sylladex.
Anna unlocked the door and pushed it open, welcomed home by the faint underlying smell of cigarette smoke, and the sound of Great Uncle Andrés snoring from upstairs.
Ignoring her déjà-vu, Anna headed upstairs, yawning as she entered her bedroom. "Dear bed, sweet, loyal bed," she crooned, shedding her shoes and crawling back into bed. "How I've missed you."
"Oh, fucking shit." Gwen gently laid Cass's convulsing body onto the cobblestones of Royal House Square, grimacing at the blood pouring from Cass's throat wound. "Fuck." Even as she ripped off a piece of the bottom of her shirt and pressed it to Cass's neck, Gwen knew that it was over. Cass's carotid artery was ruptured. "Fucking, motherfucking shit."
Cass's convulsions ceased.
Using two fingers, Gwen felt Cass's neck for a pulse.
Cass was dead.
"God fucking damn it, what the fuck?!" She stood up, glaring at the armed crowd of newly arriving Atrex supporters. "Do you see this?! Do you see what you've done?! You vacuous triggerhappy motherfuckers, you fucking shot her!"
"Murderers!" shouted a nearby knife-wielding Elunes supporter, and within seconds the cry spread throughout the entire crowd of five thousand protestors. The originator of the cry sprinted forward, throwing his knife at the nearest rifle-wielding Atrex supporter. "Justice for the Sylph! MURDERERS!"
Energy rifle clattering to the cobblestones, the afflicted Atrex supporter screamed as the thrown knife struck her in the head. The knife must have landed handle-first, because instead of burying itself into the Atrex supporter's skull, it merely bounced off, and yet the force of the impact was severe enough to render the Atrex supporter unconscious.
Several fellow Atrex supporters flocked to their unconscious comrade, helping her to the cobblestones, while dozens more of Atrex's supporters rallied to meet the advancing Elunes supporters.
Running to intercept forerunners of the two converging armed mobs, Gwen accessed her sylladex and retrieved her lacrosse stick, hurling it with all her strength.
The lacrosse stick smacked a club-wielding Atrex supporter in the face, allowing Gwen an opening to tackle the charging Elunes supporter who'd just thrown his knife.
"C'mon, people, stop it, this is just getting stupid!" Gwen stood back up, planting herself between the clashing groups of Dersites. "Okay, THAT'S ENOUGH!" she thundered at a volume which surprised even herself.
The crowd of Atrex supporters came to an uneasy halt, unwilling, so it seemed, to engage in bloodshed with Gwen caught in the crossfire.
"That goes for ALL of you!" shouted Gwen, spinning around to face the sprinting Elunes supporters, only to find herself staring, wide-eyed and slackjawed, at the shimmering violet light shining from Cass's dead body. No wonder the crowds had suddenly stopped in their tracks. "What the shit? Cass?"
Cass's corpse began to levitate, rising slowly into the air, and the bright violet light intensified, forcing Gwen to look away.
"Good morning, Anna."
Anna opened her eyes to the sight of her great uncle's light blue eyes and laughter lines. She bolted upright, exclaiming, "What are you doing out of bed?"
Sitting in his wheelchair at Anna's bedside, Great Uncle Andrés chuckled softly. "Do you think me incapable of leaving my own bedroom?"
Anna blinked in surprise, registering Great Uncle Andrés speaking English.
Whenever Andrés Carrero spoke English, it meant he was having a better day. Otherwise, he never spoke English, because on his worse days, the language of his birth seemed to be the only language he could remember.
"Of course not." Anna climbed out of bed, trying to remember the last time Andrés Carrero had a good day.
"Con cada día que pasa, mi maravillita, you grow more magnificent." Great Uncle Andrés wheeled himself out of Anna's bedroom and into the hallway. "You remind me of someone dear to my heart."
"Yeah, Chela Arevalo, I know," said Anna, following her great uncle to the stairs and helping him transfer from the wheelchair to the stair lift. "You've told me. Many times. Why don't we get you some breakfast? What time is it?"
"No sé." Great Uncle Andrés shrugged as the whirring stair lift carried him smoothly down the staircase to the first floor. "What does it matter? It's Sunday morning. No school."
Anna folded the wheelchair and walked downstairs, passing her great uncle on the slow-moving stair lift, redeploying the wheelchair at the bottom. As she waited for the stair lift to bring her great uncle to the bottom of the stairs, Anna pulled out her phone and checked the time.
The phone display read 11:26am, 12 April 2009.
"I almost slept 'til noon?" exclaimed Anna, louder than intended. "I need to get to CVS, like, now."
"No school today," repeated Great Uncle Andrés, arriving finally at the bottom of the stairs. "What does it matter?"
"I'm worried my past self will walk in through the front door while I'm still here." Anna pocketed her phone, helping Great Uncle Andrés into his wheelchair. "But I can't remember when she's coming home. It'll be soon, though, and if you see both of us at once, you'll go crazy, and then I'll go crazy too."
"Por qué estás diciendo tonterías?" asked Great Uncle Andrés as he was wheeled up to the kitchen table. "You've always had a vivid imagination."
"Yep, vivid imagination, that's me." Anna opened the fridge, surveying its contents. She picked up a carton of eggs, only to wrinkle her nose when she saw the expiration date, throwing the eggs into the garbage. "Yuck." Next, she grabbed the orange juice, frowning at the expiration, but instead of throwing it away, Anna opened the orange juice and sniffed it, giving a small shrug and setting the juice down on the counter. "Not too bad."
Anna closed the fridge and opened the freezer. Much to her relief, she found a box of toaster strudels leaning against the ice trays. Snatching the box, Anna closed the freezer and brought the strudels over to the toaster oven, turning on the oven and setting it to an appropriate heat.
"What do you have there?" asked Great Uncle Andrés.
"Breakfast," replied Anna, opening the box and removing two toaster strudels, unwrapping and placing the strudels into the heating toaster oven. "A breakfast for champions."
"Huevos revueltos y beicon?"
"Nope, even better. Toaster strudels." Anna made an adjustment to the toaster oven's heat setting. "Champions only."
"If you say so." Great Uncle Andrés did not sound convinced. "Come, sit with me."
Anna took a seat at the kitchen table, opposite her great uncle.
"Como estás, mi maravillita?"
"Why do you keep calling me your little marigold?" asked Anna. "You've never called me that before."
"I…" Great Uncle Andrés's voice trailed away, and his gaze grew distant. Then he made eye contact with Anna, and a measure of clarity returned. "You are right. It is what I called Chela, many years ago. Before we soured. Before she left me alone." Great Uncle Andrés took a deep breath, his gaze once again growing distant.
"Good talk." Anna stood up from the table, peeking into the toaster oven. The strudels were not done. "If you loved Chela, how could you have messed that up?"
Great Uncle Andrés was silent.
Anna watched the toaster strudels slowly approach the end of their cook time.
"It breaks my heart to see you drink," said Great Uncle Andrés.
Anna looked at Andrés. "What?"
"I drank too, when I was younger," admitted Great Uncle Andrés. "I loved Chela more than drinking, but it was not enough. My actions did not always reflect my affections. You are making my mistakes, and you will choose a lonely path through life if you don't make a change."
"Why did you drink?"
"You've never gone to war," said Great Uncle Andrés. "You wouldn't understand."
Anna thought about the thousands of corpses littering the Bloody Road. "Maybe not, but I would understand some of it."
"Nonsense," grunted Great Uncle Andrés. "You would not understand."
"I've stopped drinking, actually."
"More nonsense. Mientes."
Anna retrieved two plates from a cabinet, placing them on the counter. From a drawer underneath the counter, she grabbed an oven mitt, slipping it onto her right hand. She opened the toaster oven and extracted the metal tray, sliding the toaster strudels onto their respective plates.
"Happy Breakfast," wished Anna halfheartedly, drizzling the white frosting over her toaster strudel. "Do you want your frosting?"
"Qué?"
"Your strudel frosting, do you want it?"
"More sugar," scoffed Great Uncle Andrés. "Suitable for the garbage."
"Suit yourself." Anna opened the second packet of frosting and added it to her own breakfast, creating the ultimate double-charged layer of sugary glaze atop her toaster strudel. Picking up the strudel, Anna nibbled off a corner, recoiling immediately from the piping hot raspberry filling.
Anna put down her strudel and stood up from the table. "Be right back." Exiting the kitchen, Anna passed through the laundry room and stepped into the bathroom, closing the door and exhaling gently. She opened the mirror cabinet and took a bottle of ibuprofen, shaking three tablets into her hand and swallowing them.
After peeing, Anna washed her hands and left the bathroom, returning to the kitchen.
Great Uncle Andrés seemed to have wilted in Anna's absence. His head lolled forward, and he appeared to be falling asleep.
"Not such a good day after all," Anna muttered, wheeling Great Uncle Andrés over to the stairs, transferring him to the stair lift and sending him up. She brought the wheelchair upstairs, and when the stair lift caught up to her, Anna moved Great Uncle Andrés back into his wheelchair.
Great Uncle Andrés murmured something as he was wheeled down the upstairs hallway, but Anna could not quite hear, nor was she eager to reengage her great uncle in conversation.
Anna brought Great Uncle Andrés to his bedroom and moved him back into bed, ensuring his bedpan was within reach. She used a tissue to wipe the thin line of drool seeping from Andrés's mouth, draped a blanket over him, and promptly left the bedroom, closing the door.
Returning downstairs to the kitchen, Anna grabbed Great Uncle Andrés's plain untouched toaster strudel, placing it onto the heavily frosted surface of her own, forming a strudel sandwich.
Satisfied with her creation, Anna took a bite of her toaster strudel sandwich, opening the front door and stepping outside.
"Okay, let's go kill a potential zygote before it starts absorbing my German chocolate cake." From her sylladex, Anna deployed her newly acquired bike, taking a deep breath. The closest drug store was the CVS on Route-113, across the street from the high school. She could bike there in less than twenty minutes. "It's my German chocolate cake."
When the searing violet light in the sky finally abated, Gwen opened her eyes.
Cass, very much alive, descended swiftly from the sky, landing next to Gwen in the small space separating the two opposing crowds. No trace of the wound in Cass's throat could now be found.
Hundreds of people, in both crowds, dropped their weapons and fell to their knees in awe and reverence, murmuring their respects to Gwen and Cass.
"What the hell do you think you're doing? Stand up!" Gwen said to those who knelt, picking up her lacrosse stick and stowing it in her sylladex. "Don't kneel for us, don't shoot us, and don't attack each other! C'mon, people, this should be common sense."
Most of the kneelers returned to their feet, although some continued to kneel, and their murmuring reminded Cass and Gwen uncomfortably of prayers. Something would have to be done about that later.
"Who here is hungry?" Cass asked the entire crowd. "Raise your hand if you have not eaten in a while and are hungry."
A few hands went up, followed by few more. Within seconds, the interplay of exchanged threats and insults died down as hundreds of Dersites, in both crowds, raised their hands.
"Can we all agree the lights need to be fixed?" asked Cass. "Can we all agree the fields and gardens need to be rejuvenated?"
Many in the gathered crowds nodded, voicing their agreement.
"Since we agree, follow us to Greenflame Plaza!" charged Cass, walking with Gwen through the narrow path between the two opposing crowds, heading for Tenebrae Avenue. "Knock on doors along the way, invite everyone within earshot, and encourage them to pass the message along. Come to Greenflame Plaza, and let's figure out how we are going to survive together."
Cass and Gwen led the way to Tenebrae Avenue, followed by the two crowds, whose members mixed and intermingled as they left Royal House Square.
A dumbfounded Atrex withdrew from his window and hurried for the nearest stairwell, calling for the Royal House's doors to be unlocked and opened, but it was too late.
Within the span of ten or fifteen minutes, the Royal House had ceased to be the center of power.
Atrex watched the dissolving crowds through the Royal House's opened doors. He spotted Elunes, towards the back of the crowd, and with a scowl he stepped through the doors, exiting the Royal House and following the departing mass of people. "This is not over," he assured himself, glowering at Elunes.