by Sam Clark
“Who’s there?” She heard a hoarse voice call.
Marissa sighed to herself, pulled her hand out, and used it to flick on the switch for the common area lights—they were hardly likely to disturb her comatose mother. She then pulled the divider all the way open. “It’s me,” she said.
Her lips quirked into a smile as soon as her brother’s mottled black and blue face came into focus. Doc Jones had diagnosed him with several facial fractures and a severe concussion. How much credit could she claim for those injuries? Certainly some. She’d been the one to set things in motion, and she had certainly hoped her actions would lead to some pain for her brother. However, not even in her wildest fantasies had she imagined her brother being so humiliated. Surely Czarina wouldn’t mind if Marissa claimed some of Steve’s pain for her own—maybe his broken orbital bone. After all, there was so much of it. And how could Czarina deny her such a small thing, after all they’d shared together? Why would she want to? Marisa did feel a little bad about what had happened. Maybe she could make it up to her somehow. Truthfully, making out with her had been more fun than she’d thought it would be. Czarina was a pretty good kisser—better than the guys down here, most of whom jammed their tongues so far into her mouth you’d have thought they were getting bonus points for licking her tonsils.
As she watched her brother’s chest rise and fall, she wondered if he would finally learn his lesson and keep his damn hands off her next time. Still, now that he’d paid for it, she could forgive him. Her eyes flicked to the tray and widened as she noticed for the first time that there were two bottles instead of one. So long as he lets me have some of those.
“Come to rob me again?” Steve croaked.
Ah, not so asleep the last time. “No,” she said in an easy manner, eyeing the glass of water sitting next to the pills. “I came to see if you had water.” She picked up the glass and passed it to him, not giving him a chance to say anything else for the moment.
Steve winced as he pushed himself up to a sitting position, and then leaned heavily against the wall. He took the glass and downed it in a single gulp. He handed it back and said, “Take them. I don’t want them.”
She eyed her brother suspiciously. The swelling made his face harder to read. Was it a trap? Would he report her to the colonel the first chance he got? “What’s the catch?”
“Tell me why.”
“Why what?”
Steve shifted slightly then grimaced in obvious pain. “You know damn well what,” he said through gritted teeth.
“It’s like I told Dad, I’m a big, giant lesbian. I love the ladies. What else can I say?”
“I know you’ve slept with men, Marisa. So tell me the real reason.”
“I was confused. How could I know I didn’t like cock until I tried it?” She watched with pleasure as her brother squirmed uncomfortably.
Steve’s discomfort didn’t last long, as he locked his eyes on her own. She’d never liked the way he looked at her, like she wasn’t human. Like she was some sort of animal whose behavior he couldn’t understand. And now that his irises were stained red with blood, she liked it even less. After another moment, he said, “You slept with half the guys in my cohort.”
“I was really confused,” she shot back.
“Leave the pills and get out.”
“Fine,” Marisa said, throwing up her hands, “I did it because fucking half of the guys in your cohort didn’t hurt him enough, and the other half wouldn’t go near me. Not after that little training ‘mishap’ between you and Eric. So I decided to fuck the only girl in your cohort and see if that would do it.”
“Why do you hate him so much?”
“Because I don’t think he ever loved mom,” she said bitterly. “Or us. I think when he looks at us all he sees are regrets, so one day I decided to give him a reason to regret me.” She was tired of talking about her shitty little family. She wanted to talk about anything else. Why wouldn’t he just give her the pills already?
“But why’d you set me up?”
Marissa laughed. Because it would hurt Dad more. Because you don’t really love me, either. “You’re insane. I didn’t set you up.”
“Bullshit. You knew I’d show up. You knew I wouldn’t be alone. You knew what I would do.”
“Yeah, I guess I forgot the part where I made you act like a Neanderthal and attack her. And how’d that go? Oh, that’s right—she put you on your ass, and your buddies had to bail you out, hold her back while you beat on her. You must have really shown her what a big, strong man you were. I mean, you scared her so much it took her almost a whole week to work up the courage to come back for seconds and break your face.” She could see the hurt grow on her brother’s face with every spiteful word, and she decided that she didn’t need to take credit for any of the pain Czarina had inflicted. She could inflict plenty of her own.
But before she could continue, Steve cut her off by slamming the side of his fist into the wall. “Enough!”
“Or what, you’ll turn your impotent masculine rage on me?”
“Or nothing. Just stop. Take the fucking pills and go.”
She knew she was being petty, piling on after she’d already decided he had suffered enough to earn her forgiveness. It wasn’t his fault he was the way he was. Everybody down here was a little off, had their kink to get them through, whether it was pills, sugar wine, sex, hurting people, or God. A lot of people had more than one. She certainly wasn’t in much of a position to judge.
She wanted to apologize but couldn’t make herself. Instead, she asked, “Steve, why don’t you take the pills?”
He answered without hesitation. “I deserve to hurt for letting some little bitch get the drop on me… twice.” He gingerly slid back down into a lying position. “Don’t worry, I won’t say anything about the pills.” He let out a slight groan when his head touched his thin pillow.
“You’re not the one who deserves to hurt,” she said. “I’m going to leave one of the bottles, and you’re going to take some pills, please.”
“All right, I’ll take some later.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise.”
“Good.” Marisa set one of the bottles back down on the tray, and then went to stash the other in her footlocker. She’d pop a few tonight to help her erase the memory of another day.
TWENTY-NINE
Location: Hot Springs
Date: 9-12-61
Not surprisingly, people immediately developed side effects from the radiation exposure. Most of these were decidedly negative and quickly led to death. Even those few who developed beneficial side effects, such as enhanced strength or speed, did not live long in the beginning, and their powers were often quite unstable, disappearing at inopportune times. However, over time, humanity has evolved and negative side effects, while by no means disappearing, have begun taking longer to manifest; people often live with them for several years or even decades before succumbing. At the same time, beneficial side effects have become more common and stable.
***
While quicker healing, heightened senses, and enhanced physical attributes are by far the most commonly developed abilities—indeed, enhanced healing is so prevalent in the Church it is generally considered insufficient to join the Order of the Thrivers—these are by no means the only ones. There are, for instance, dozens of documented cases of people taking on wolf-like attributes, such as fangs, enhanced sense of smell, fur, etc. There is also, of course, the singular ability of those in the Order of the Nullifiers to take away the abilities of others. Perhaps the rarest abilities are those which allow one to touch the minds of others. These can take on distinct forms, such as the ability to access another’s memories, or to alter their emotions. Some scholars argue invisibility should be placed in this category. However, there is great debate over how this ability works. Do those who have it actually become invisible, or do they trick the minds of those around them into not seeing them?
For a more thorough typology of beneficial abilities, I highly recommend Brother Thaddeus’s Thrivers: Their Classes and Subclasses.
***
The Church calls those who develop positive traits owing to radiation exposure Thrivers. The Prophetess and her Church consider such people to be blessed by God with a tremendous gift. In fact, it is such a tremendous gift that any morally just person would want to repay it by serving the Lord here on earth, by taking the cloth. Anyone who receives such a generous gift and seeks to use it for their own purposes reveals themselves to be weak of conscience and unworthy of such a blessing. It is the Church’s holy duty to rectify such an affront to God, by bringing these heretics to the Lord, in this life or the next.
—Excerpts from Brother Helix’s A Contemporary History of the Dakotas During the Great Tribulation.
He leaned with his back against the wall, arms crossed under his chest, just taking in the scene. It was a nice-looking room, occupied by a nice-looking family. You could tell they took pride in their home and each other.
The walls were covered by tapestries depicting scenes of winter. Big-horned sheep on snow-covered mountain ledges, buffalo roaming in open fields of white, frozen lakes—that sort of thing. The windows were adorned with thin, lacy curtains, designed for form, not function. Despite the setting sun, the room was bright, thanks to several recently lit lanterns hanging from decorative hooks mounted to the wall. They would come in handy when it was time for him to get to work. A large blue and gold rug with a geometric pattern covered most of the room. In the center of the rug was a large table. He didn’t know much about craftsmanship, but it looked well made, a nice dark color, almost black, with simple precise carving on the legs. It was surrounded by six large chairs, upholstered with a creamy white fabric. He wondered for a moment how they kept them so clean.
Four of those chairs were occupied. Handsome father—big smile and shiny teeth, slicked-back black hair. Doting mother—silky blond hair, warm brown eyes. Laughing son. Looked like the father, with dark hair and a big smile. Happy daughter. Looked like the mother, with the kind eyes. All wearing fine woolen clothes. Not fancy, but quality. All in all, a happy family.
On the well-made table was a bounty of food. A salad to start, no doubt made with fresh greens from the family gardens. A main course of roasted chicken that smelled of rosemary; on the side, mashed potatoes—with a hint of garlic, if his nose wasn’t mistaken. And, if he had heard correctly, when that was all done, a chocolate cake.
As far as he could tell, it wasn’t a special occasion, but rather just because a beautiful family deserved a beautiful spread. It meant he would have to wait a while longer, but he didn’t mind.
When he was a kid there had been no nice family meals for him and his sisters. Their father had been ugly inside and out, not like the nice man sitting before him. Their mother had been inattentive, always in an opium-induced haze. Though, now that he was older, he didn’t blame her for that. Not too much, anyway. If he’d been married to Father, he probably would have been an addict too.
Some people who had been through what he had been through would have been bitter. Would have hated seeing others enjoy what they hadn’t had. But he wasn’t a spiteful man. And besides, he was glad for all he had gone through. He had passed through the crucible and come out the stronger for it. That was why every night in his prayers, he thanked the Lord God for his ugly father and inattentive mother. By enduring them, he had become strong. By killing them, he had been brought into the fold of the Lord’s Vanguard.
When his ability had started to manifest, he didn’t know what was happening to him. One hot summer night he had been sitting shirtless at the kitchen table when, out of nowhere, his torso had turned translucent. His mother was in the grip of her addiction, and her mind couldn’t take it. She picked up a knife. Came at him, screaming he was an abomination. He was big and strong; his mother wasn’t. It was an easy thing to take a knife from a drug addict, and just as easy to bury it in her chest. That’s when Father had come home from wherever he’d been. He was harder to kill, but not by much.
What had scared him most wasn’t that he had killed his parents, but how much he’d enjoyed it. He was afraid he would kill again, that he might hurt his sisters. He didn’t even bother to clean himself up or put on a shirt. He just wrapped himself in a blanket and ran out his front door and through the streets of Maize City, soaked in his parents’ blood, straight to the Plutonium Handlers’ compound.
He needed to be punished. He’d heard stories as a child that they killed people like him in the compound. That’s what he deserved. He’d become a worse monster than his parents ever were. They had never killed anyone. When he got to the compound it was late, after midnight, but the doors to the Cathedral of the Prophetess were always open.
Inside, the cathedral was empty, except for a small woman with severe features wearing a black and gold robe. He threw himself down in front of her and confessed what he’d done, what he was, and pleaded with her to punish him.
The woman wept at the tale he told. At first he’d thought it was because what he’d done was so horrible, but then she explained it to him. She explained it all.
She wasn’t crying because of what he’d done; she was crying because he’d been ashamed of what he was. She told him how God had given him a great gift, a gift that made him better than people like his parents who hadn’t been so blessed by the Lord. She had a word for it: insuper. He couldn’t remember what language it was, but he would never forget what it meant: ‘over and above.’ He liked that, one word meaning two things.
She also explained that the gift wasn’t free. It came with responsibility, an obligation. God had given him his gift so he could use it to help remake the world. To make it into a place where people like him were given their proper place, over and above. God had created order, and wanted things to be in their proper place. Somewhere along the line things got all mixed up. That had made God angry, and He’d punished humanity by sending fire from the sky. But God is forgiving, and He decided to give humanity one more chance. That’s where the Church came in. The Plutonium Handlers accepted the Lord’s sacred mission to help humanity atone for its past transgressions and create an order more pleasing to the Lord. And he had to do his part to make it so. Otherwise, that would be a great affront to the Lord, one that couldn’t be forgiven.
It took until the sun rose the next morning for her to explain it all, but when she was finished, he understood, and a great burden had been lifted from his shoulders. He begged to join the Church so he might serve the Glory of the Lord. She said no—he was needed elsewhere.
Some people would say being a Thriver outside the Church made him an abomination, the very word his mother had used on that fateful night. Those people didn’t know. It hadn’t been explained to them properly. She said God needed him to be outside the Church… for now. That he was more valuable to God that way. He could do things those in the Church couldn’t. He could be the tip of the Lord’s spear.
He had accepted this, and in return, she gave him another gift: She gave him a name. After all, a tool of the Lord deserved a fitting name. She baptized him Cobalt. And with that new name came a new burden—one that was so much heavier than the guilt he’d carried that night.
He had enjoyed killing his parents. More than was appropriate. But he would take no pleasure in killing this family. It was simply his duty to God, and he would bear the weight, and gladly.
When the handsome father, doting mother, smiling son, and happy daughter had all shoved their plates away—stuffed to the gills, no doubt—Cobalt pushed himself off the wall where he’d been waiting, invisible. He said a silent prayer to the Lord, and when he was finished he touched a hand to the V branded on his forehead. He then reached up to the lantern hanging to his right, lifted it from its hook, and tossed it on the floor. The rug caught fire instantly, and was quickly followed by one of the wall tapestries. The fathe
r noticed first and leapt from his chair as his family began to scream in panic. The father grabbed a pitcher of water from the table and ran toward the spreading fire’s origin, where Cobalt was waiting.
When the handsome father got close enough, Cobalt reached out both hands and wrapped them behind the father’s neck. He interlocked his fingers and pulled forward with his arms. When the father’s face met Cobalt’s chest, Cobalt expanded his chest and pressed it forward, moving the father’s head back, all while he continued to pull the father’s neck toward his chest. He did this until he heard a slight popping noise and felt the father go slack in his arms. There would be no miraculous recovery this time. Cobalt let the father drop to the floor.
The doting mother, seeing what had happened to the handsome father, rushed to his aid, screaming for help the whole while. Cobalt punched her as hard as he could in the face. She fell beside her husband’s body. Cobalt took a moment to bend down and place their bodies side by side, and then placed the doting mother’s hand in the hand of the handsome father.
The daughter had gone screaming from the room, which was good. Maybe she’d live. He didn’t have to kill her, and would be happy to avoid it. The son was another matter.
The boy stood in the middle of the room, which was rapidly filling with smoke, torn between fleeing like his sister or going to his parents’ aid. Three giant strides, and Cobalt had closed the distance. As if sensing his presence, the boy turned to run, but Cobalt was quicker. He grabbed the back of the smiling boy’s shirt with one hand while wrapping the other under the boy’s jaw. Cobalt then wrenched the boy’s chin violently to the side. Pop. He hoisted the boy’s lifeless body over his shoulder like a sack of flour and quickly went back to the father to make sure he was dead.
He couldn’t afford another mistake like last time. He wouldn’t fail the Lord twice. He didn’t know what had gone wrong. He’d broken a candlestick over the grouchy old man’s head, and watched the blood pool grow. When the younger man with the big bushy beard came to investigate the commotion, Cobalt had used the other candlestick in the set to bludgeon him. He had then set the place on fire, but somehow the old man had lived.