All That Lives Must Die - Eric Nylund [44]
She remembered him then: Their last birthday at Oakwood Apartments, this man had dropped by, just as they had been opening their presents.
“Mr. Welmann?” she whispered.
“Miss Post? It’s Fiona, right? And Eliot?” He smiled, but it faded fast. “You’re not dead, are you?”
“No,” Fiona told him, at first thinking this a stupid question, and then remembering where they where.
Mr. Welmann exhaled.
“We just got here,” Eliot said. Her brother had recovered from whatever happened to him back there, because he pushed her arm away and set Lady Dawn back in its violin case.
“I saw that damned Cadillac race past,” Mr. Welmann said, “and figured there’d be trouble. Come on. The way out of these Borderlands is back here.”
As they started walking, Fiona remembered one thing about Mr. Welmann.
He was dead.
Uncle Henry had told them Audrey killed him to keep the League from finding them. She’d done it with the knife they’d used to cut their birthday cake. It was so creepy.
Eliot asked him, “You called this place the ‘Borderlands’?”13
“Kind of a demilitarized zone,” Mr. Welmann said. He broke through the woods and onto a footpath. He looked around as if he expected someone to come along.
“I don’t mean to be rude, sir,” Fiona said, “but you are dead, aren’t you?”
“Sure, kid.” He shrugged. “It’s not a big deal. We all go sooner or later.”
“Our mother—?” she started to ask . . . but couldn’t quite articulate the entire question: Did our mother really kill you?
Mr. Welmann started up the path and answered, “Yep.”
They followed his long strides until patches of sunlight broke through the branches and they heard birdsong.
“I’m so sorry,” Fiona said, knowing this could never make up for what had happened. “That’s horrible.”
“I’m not holding a grudge,” Mr. Welmann replied. “I got the impression I’d stumbled into a mother-bear-protecting-her-cubs situation. If I had kids, I might have done the same thing. I hope it turned out all right for you two.”
“We’re in the League now,” Eliot told him.
“And Paxington,” Fiona added, pointing to the symbol on her uniform.
Mr. Welmann looked them over, nodding. “Yeah . . . I see it in you now. A spark.”
Fiona sensed Mr. Welmann’s friendly nature cool toward them.
He led them across a grassy field. Dew soaked Fiona’s loafers, but she didn’t mind. It was clean, and washed away the volcanic ash.
Mr. Welmann waved at a group tossing Frisbees. He caught one of the flying disks and flung it back. “You must have had some adventures accomplishing all that,” he said.
She and Eliot told him everything that had happened that summer: the three heroic trials, the box of chocolates, the return of their estranged father, and the final confrontation with Beelzebub.
Mr. Welmann took it all in without question.
He halted at the top of the hill. Fiona saw the fields stretch out, fading into a distant purple horizon. A river wider than the Mississippi meandered across the plain, seeming from this angle part doodle and part quicksilver reflecting the sky.
“So this is what happens when you die?” Eliot asked. “You come here? And some people go to Hell?”
“I couldn’t tell you, kid. I see a few hundred people show up from time to time. The people who go to Hell? I’m happy to say I haven’t a clue.”
“But that doesn’t make sense.” Eliot’s brows bunched together. “There should be billions of people here, then.”
“That is the question,” Welmann said. “Where do they all go?” He knelt, picked a long blade of wheatgrass, and stuck into his mouth. “No one knows. Not me. Not the Infernals.” He chuckled. “And certainly not the ‘gods.’ ”
“Someone has to know something,” Fiona protested.
“Do they?” Mr. Welmann asked. “Well, the closest thing I have to an answer is that from time to time, the dead move on. Some make rafts and float down the river. Others just start walking.” He pointed to the distant horizon. “No one sees them again.