Page 115 of A Better World

“You’re right,” Linda agreed. “I want to leave. Let me out.”

Pratt leaned down into Linda’s window, made gratitude hands at her. “Hi! Sorry, but this is the site of an ongoing investigation. Until we clear things up, no one comes or goes.”

The Plymouth Valley Winter Festival

Fleeing through themountains would never work. It was at least a three-day hike through winter cold to the next town and they had no supplies. The wall was impossible to climb. They drove back to 9 Sunset Heights. For Josie’s sake, Linda pretended none of this was serious. “We’ll be fine,” she reassured. “We’ll try again in the morning.”

“But the Winter Festival’s in the morning,” Josie answered.

“We’ll be fine,” Linda repeated.

They went to their separate bedrooms. Linda sat upright in her day clothing, heart beating hard as the hours ticked by. Russell came just before dawn. “My back hurts,” he said.

“So come here,” she told him.

He lay down, his side touching her thigh as she stayed upright.

“You didn’t leave,” he said.

“They barricaded the exit,” she told him. “And Hip wouldn’t come. It’s a clusterfuck.”

“You really think they were going to hurt those kids?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I only know they were lying.”

“Where are they now?”

“On their way to somewhere safe.”

“You’re not going to tell me?”

“No. You’ll tell Lloyd to cut us a deal and you’ll tell yourself it was the right thing.”

Lovingly and without denial, he squeezed her leg. What he said next frightened her deeply. “I talked to that guy, Percy Khoury, tonightwhile you were out. The nuclear engineer you told me about from the first soccer game.”

“Yeah? Why?”

“He lives across the street. Who knew? These houses are so big it’s hard to see the neighbors. Anyway, I saw him, so I came out. He had this huge tool belt… or I don’t know. He’s weird. I get the feeling the guy could go berserk any second.”

“He vibes that way, doesn’t he? Like a shooter? What happened? Did you talk?”

“He’s obviously crazy. I didn’t want to poke a tiger and ask him about his son. I just asked if something bad happens at this festival.”

Her body went stiff. She’d been asking that very question for a long time now, but was still afraid of the answer. “And?”

“He heard me. But he looked right through me. ‘Get out,’ he said, and then he shoved me and got into his car, which by the way, was loaded with power tools.”

“Huh. Did he mean ‘get out of the way,’ or ‘get out of town’?”

“It’s a coin flip. The guy’s a maniac. What’s the difference? The thing is, once I asked the question out loud, I had this bad feeling. I’ve heard you and the things you’ve been saying, Linda. But I haven’t been thinking them through. I haven’t compared the logic of the two arguments—yours and PV’s—because their foundations are rooted in such different premises.

“On the one hand, we have civic pride and a lot of unnecessary secrecy. The residents want to believe that they’re better than outsiders, otherwise they’d have to admit that they have an unfair allotment of wealth. It’s classic snobbery. On the other hand, we have a group of people so corrupted by their own complicity in polluting the earth while simultaneously hoarding its resources that they’ve invented a religion to exonerate themselves from guilt, from the literal thousands, maybe millions of people they’ve murdered indirectly. We have festivals that you might consider masses led by the founder and his board of directors, who are essentially henchmen with dimples. We even have gestures of prayer to clandestine gods. Who are these gods? We don’t know. But they’re represented by the very birds the town hasengineered. It’s incredibly self-centered. They’re the creators, worshipping what they’ve created while also gorging themselves on it.

“Every historical precedent informs us that religious fanatics can be violent, particularly in the presence of a demagogue. Is Parson Junior that demagogue? Maybe. Frankly, I’ve spoken to him personally and he’s not very bright. I think, if anyone, his father was the demagogue and he’s just carrying on tradition. Lloyd and Rachel are reasonable people. They’re likely to shift this thing in a better direction. But Jack… he’s bad. I’ve heard things, Linda, that I’d rather not tell you about. He’s got notorious appetites.”

Goose pimples rolled all down Linda’s body from scalp to legs.

“Religious fanatics tend to believe that their violence is self-protective—they’re fighting an existential threat. In this case, the threat is nuclear disaster, or the end of Plymouth Valley, or possibly even the end of their own hegemony, once BetterWorld is finally indicted for its environmental crimes. They commit human sacrifice as a ritual, a superstitious admission of their own guilt, in the hopes that a higher being will cleanse and protect them from their own demise, only theyarethis higher being. It’s a screwed-up circle jerk that eats its own future.

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