by Penn Gates
“We’re not that uncivilized - yet,” he says, trying to ignore another of her oblique criticisms. “Just blocking the hall running off the lobby. Enough heat escapes up that big ass chimney without losing more.”
“How long are you planning to be gone?” Lisa asks. The thought of Holden’s prolonged absence is unsettling.
“After we drop off God’s representative on earth, we’ll be looking for supplies - mainly fuel. So - I don’t know - two, three days should do it.”
“Then you’ve changed your mind about Pittsburgh?” Lisa crosses her fingers behind her back.
“Nope - but it never hurts to do more than one thing at a time,” he tells her, tapping the protein bar against the railing. “One more thing. I’m leavin’ Chiznik in charge. He’s kind of a grouch - so I wouldn’t poke the bear.” He laughs. “He’s not as sweet-tempered as I am.”
“Speaking of sweet - what about my energy bar?”
Holden tosses it to her as he heads downstairs. “Knock yourself out.”
After she polishes off the energy bar, Lisa decides she can forego K-rations for supper. More than anything, she wants to sleep - and hope tomorrow is better. She looks down at the lobby. Still full of men moving stuff around. It will be hours before things grow quiet. On the other hand, it seems warm enough up here. Maybe she’ll just lie down on the colorful carpet and close her eyes for a few minutes.
“Frau Doktor—”
For a second, Lisa doesn’t know where she is, but she knows without looking who’s calling her. There’s only one other woman in the place. She pushes herself to a sitting position and winces. It’s gotten chilly up here on the balcony and every muscle aches.
“What time is it?” she asks through a yawn. “You shouldn’t be climbing stairs, by the way. It’s too soon.”
The girl sits down on the top step. “I am wanting you to know there is a room close to the lobby where you and I will sleep. And also, there is one for George.”
“How does George rate a private room?” Lisa asks, rubbing her eyes.
“The soldiers do not want him around,” Janet says. “He is commenting on their bad language all the time - and the things they talk about.”
She looks like she’s about to cry - because Janet cares what the guys think of her fiancé? Or because of what her fiancé thinks of her? Lisa sighs. There’s no logic to love. Maybe that’s why she’s not quite sure she’s ever found it, in spite of Roger.
She clears her throat, wishing she could ignore Janet’s unhappiness. “Have you and George - talked yet?”
Janet’s face crumples. “When I come near him, he walks away. He wants nothing to do with me.” She buries her face in her hands to muffle her sobs.
Lisa crawls across the few feet between them and wraps her arms around the girl. Janet clings to the woman who saved her life and sobs against her shoulder. Lisa hates feeling helpless, and her frustration turns to anger. She decides it’s about time she has a talk with George Shirk.
WHEN LISA FINALLY GETS Janet tucked into one of the twin beds in their new room, she goes in search of George. The butane lanterns have been extinguished and the men are arranging their sleeping bags in front of the fire. They remind her of a bunch of boy scouts on a camping trip.
“Does anyone know where George Shirk is at the moment?” she asks, and they all look at her like she’s crashed their frat party.
“Shirk the Jerk?” Brady snickers. “I think he’s hiding under his bed.”
“What a shit head!” Jones adds. “Ain’ no way to treat that poor girl.”
“I couldn’t agree with you more,” Lisa says. “And I’m about to tell him so.”
There’s a rumble of encouragement among the men. This is the first time Lisa can remember positive feelings coming from any of them except Marcelli. But she doesn’t want that tiny bit of warmth to take the edge off her cold anger.
“Somebody got a flashlight handy?” she asks.
Predictably, it’s Tony Marcelli who jumps up. “Give him hell, doc,” he says under his breath.
As she stalks out of the lobby, she hears someone say, “Maybe she’ll go all psycho on his ass and beat his brains out.”
“Ah, shut up, McAllister, you freak!” a chorus of voices shout.
Lisa hesitates before the closed door. Should she knock? What if he’s jerking off? She stifles a giggle. George? That would be on his top ten list of sins, wouldn’t it? And so what if he is? He deserves no consideration for his feelings when he gives none to the girl he’s supposed to love.
She throws open the door. The beam of light falls on him, kneeling in the dark by the side of his bed. St. George - what a joke. Is he really so devout he doesn’t hear her, or is he just hoping whoever it is will give up and go away?
“Prayers are good, George,” Lisa says acidly, “But do you know what’s even better?”
He stiffens at the sound of her voice, but refuses to turn and face her.
“Actually doing good, instead of begging God to make you good.” She stamps her foot. “Hey! Look at me when I’m talking to you!”
That seems to hit home. Perhaps it’s an echo of something his parents used to say. It’s certainly something she’d heard herself more than once as a teen-ager.
“The girl you claimed to love enough to marry was given to Ezra by her own brothers - who had to know what was going to happen to her. Why in God’s name are you blaming her? Why aren’t you blaming them?”
When he doesn’t respond, Lisa points the flashlight at him. “She had no one to turn to for help until you showed up and gave her a glimmer of hope that you could take her to a safe place.”
The angle of the flashlight beam creates jagged shadows across George’s face that remind Lisa of a Picasso painting. She can’t tell if his sunken eyes and the dark circles beneath them are evidence of emotion or just a trick of the light.
“I do not blame her,” he says. “But you do not understand our ways.” He struggles to find the words to explain. “She is not - pure. She was with child - his child.”
Lisa wants to lash out - to hurt him as much as he’s hurting Janet, but how would that change anything? “So - if a young married woman, who has a child, is widowed,” she says with deceptive calm, “You’re telling me that she’ll never be able to marry again. That no man will have her.”
“What?” George asks in confusion. “That is not true! Of course a widow may marry again.”
“But what man would want her?” Lisa asks mockingly. “She’s no longer ‘pure’ and she’s had another man’s child!”
“T-that is different,” he stutters.
“How is it different?”
“Well - because - because the man was her husband, and the child—” He stops talking. The look of bewilderment on George’s face might be laughable, if the pain he’s feeling wasn’t so obvious.
But at the moment, Lisa can’t summon a modicum of sympathy. “Janet was raped, you sniveling coward, and you’re still blaming the victim!”
“I am not—” George protests weakly.
“You disgust me!” Lisa says, turning on her heel. “I can’t bear to look at you for another second.”
She’s already in the hall before she has another thought. Sticking her head back in the room, she adds, “Why don’t you go down to the machine shed and join the bishop and his men? It sounds like you have the same ideas about women - females are all just property. Undamaged has value. Damaged is worthless.”
It’s not until she heads for the room next door, that she remembers Janet’s been there the whole time. She stands with her hand on the door knob, dreading what she might find. Maybe Janet slept through the whole thing. But chances are, she’s heard every word.
CHAPTER 8: Night Terrors
Lisa is having trouble sleeping. The corporal and his men left two days ago now, with the prisoners thrown in the back of the truck. She pulls the blanket over her head, desperate for sleep, but she can’t relax. Janet’s nightma
res kept her up half of last night, and there’s no guarantee tonight won’t be more of the same. She punches up the pillow and tries to make her mind a blank. That doesn’t work, either, and she’s reduced to the oldest cliche in the world - counting sheep. She’s definitely past 1,000 before she drifts off.
Something wakes her. She holds her breath and listens into the darkness. There’s a sudden gasp as someone fills their lungs to scream - then nothing. Another nightmare? Muffled sounds of a struggle tell her this is not just a nightmare. She opens her eyes, straining to see. Two figures struggling, one smaller than the other. A stifled whimper from a mouth clamped shut by a hand. Jimmy Diggs? He’s a slime ball, but he wouldn’t - would he?
Lisa’s gropes for her Maglite, intending to use it as a weapon, but she can’t find it on the nightstand. Must have knocked it on the floor. She reaches too far and falls out of bed, tangled in her blanket. The figures are now at the foot of her bed, and Janet is putting up a valiant fight, but her assailant is larger and stronger. Ignoring the eye-watering pain in her elbows, Lisa scuttles across the few feet that separate her from her target and throws her arms around the legs of the taller shadow. He doesn’t let go of Janet, but he does stagger for just an instant. Going on primal instinct now, Lisa sinks her teeth into the calf of his leg through the rough cloth of his robe - and that’s when she knows it’s the bishop, come back for his handmaiden.
Ezra howls in surprise and loosens his grip - time enough for Janet to break and run. He kicks viciously at Lisa, striking her cheekbone with his heel. She holds on like a pit bull even though her face is throbbing. Somewhere out in the lobby, Janet is screaming.
It seems like an eternity before there’s the sound of heavy boots on the floor and a man growls, “Put your hands up, you crazy bastard!”
What happens next is too fast to follow. Does the prophet raise his hands? Lisa will never know. She still has her teeth clamped on his leg when there’s the deafening explosion of a gun. She can feel the shock run through his body at almost the same instant he’s thrown back by the impact and falls on top of her. She can barely breathe under his dead weight. She starts to hyperventilate as his hot blood soaks through her sweatshirt.
“Help - me,” she wheezes with the last bit of air in her lungs. Her face is pressed against the carpet, the room is still dark, and the gunshot has temporarily deafened her. If anyone is there, she can’t hear them.
Suddenly the crushing pressure is removed, and Lisa rolls over, gasping for air. A rough hand grabs her arm and pulls her to her feet. The echo of more gunfire reverberates in the cavernous lobby, followed by shouts that bounce off the walls of the large space.
“You all right?” Chiznik asks - or at least that’s what Lisa thinks he says.
“I can manage,” she gasps. “Go - make sure everyone’s okay.”
Lisa struggles with the compulsion to check that Ezra is really dead before giving in to it. She locates her Maglite under the bed and sweeps the flashlight beam around the floor until she finds his corpse. She’s seen plenty of dead bodies, but never one that has been shot at point blank range by an assault rifle. The damage is unbelievable. The floor begins to undulate, and she’s no longer standing on firm ground. She moves toward her bed as if she’s walking on rough water.
She crumples onto the mattress for only a few seconds before she forces herself to sit up and place her feet on the floor - which slowly becomes solid again. She shuts her eyes, willing herself to calm down and think rationally. She must get herself together in order to check for other injuries and make sure Janet is all right. But she can’t seem to stop the violent shivering that racks her body.
“Are you all right, Frau Doktor?” Janet calls from just outside the room.
Lisa leaps to her feet. She can’t let the girl see her like this, covered in blood. “Don’t come in here!”
“Thank the Lord - I thought you had been killed,” Janet says fervently.
Her voice sounds like she’s taken a few steps closer, and Lisa turns off her flashlight to hide the carnage. “Just stay where you are,” she cautions again.
Peeling her sweatshirt off, Lisa stumbles to the bathroom and grabs a towel. There’s no running water, but at least she can remove most of the gore. She gropes for a clean T-shirt in her backpack.
Lisa gives a wide berth to the mess on the floor. When she reaches Janet she puts her arm around the girl’s shoulders and half pulls her back over the threshold. It’s only then she realizes that Janet is rigid with shock.
“It’s over now,” Lisa chokes. “Try to put it out of your mind.”
Janet begins to cry, quietly at first, then in spasms that rack her body. Lisa begins to cry, too, for this child whose life will never be the same. Nor will hers. Together, the two of them stand sobbing and gasping, holding on to each other like abandoned children in the dark. The magnitude of what has happened to them rips away the last vestiges of the illusion that the horror which has befallen the world is only temporary. They both know that life after Geezer will always be full of danger and empty of any guarantees of civilized behavior.
Finally, they let go of each other. “Let’s go see what’s going on,” Lisa says, turning Janet toward the light and sound of the lobby.
“Nein, I will not go out there,” Janet says in a voice devoid of emotion.
The girl has exhausted her capacity to feel anything - or at least Lisa hopes that’s the explanation. Then she remembers Janet’s screams in the distance and the sound of gunfire.
“We can’t stay here,” Lisa says. “There’s nowhere else to go.”
“My brothers came back with Ezra. They are - they have been—”
Oh, God, Lisa thinks. Is there no end to this night?
Janet makes a move toward the dark bedroom and the unspeakable mess within it. “I will not truly believe he is gone until I see with my own eyes that he is really dead,” she says in the same flat voice.
Lisa has no idea whether this is a bad idea or Janet’s salvation, but she’s too exhausted herself to restrain her. She sets the Maglite on the floor, telling herself that without it, Janet will be unable to make out details. The room is dark as a tomb - but it also smells like a slaughterhouse. She swallows hard to keep from vomiting.
Without warning, truck headlights from outside the windows flood the room with light. Is Holden back? Or have they gotten a truck to dispose of the dead? Lisa pulls her attention back to Janet, who is staring at what looks like a pile of rags in a pool of black. She doesn’t move for so long that Lisa worries the girl has retreated somewhere deep inside and won’t be able to find her way back.
Suddenly, Janet leans forward and spits on what remains of her abuser’s corpse. “You were a pig - and I hope you burn in hell forever!”
Janet’s moment of blazing hatred burns itself into Lisa’s retinas before the girl covers her mouth in shock at the sound of her own words.
An outraged voice issues forth from the darkness of the hall. “Janet Martin! Shame on you! We must never hate anyone. We must forgive even the trespasses of our enemies.”
Janet’s anger reignites. “George Shirk - you have no right to tell me how to feel until you have been used in the way Ezra used me.”
“Forgiveness is the way to find absolution,” George tells her from the doorway, trying to avoid
looking at what lays on the floor. “You have been taught this.”
“I am not in need of absolution,” Janet answers. “I have done nothing wrong.”
“That is not true. W-we are all sinners.”
Lisa can see the girl’s hands are clenched into fists. It’s clear she’s struggling to keep from lashing out at him.
“I have known you since we were children, George Shirk - and you have always been spouting scripture at everyone because your father believed you would be chosen as a preacher by God. Your sin is pride - and I am wanting nothing more to do with you until you find some humility!”
“Janet!” George res
ponds in shocked tones. “You have lost your senses.”
“All right! That’s it!” Lisa shouts. “Get out of here before I lose my senses and slap you silly!”
“What the fuck is goin’ on in here?” Chiznik roars. “All of you - out! We need to clean up this God-awful mess!”
Lisa pauses in the doorway. “Are the dead bodies in the lobby gone?” she whispers.
Chiznik just nods, but as Lisa hurries after Jane, she hears him mumble to himself, “Jesus, if the God damn room wasn’t attached to the building, I’d burn it down with that pile of blubber in it.”
FOUR FULL DAYS HAVE passed since the corporal and his men left, and Lisa begins to feel a constant buzz of nerves, which she recognizes as low level panic. She tells herself what she’s feeling is just emotional fallout from the horror of the night the bishop and his men returned - but that little voice she tries always to ignore whispers she’ll feel a whole lot better when Holden returns.
The day before yesterday, the guys had gotten out the heavy equipment and gouged a hole in the frozen ground just big enough for three bodies. Janet had been adamant about being there when her brothers were buried so she could say a prayer for their souls. She’d been stone-faced all the way back to the lodge, but as soon as she and Lisa were alone, she’d cried her heart out.
Lisa has spent the majority of her time since then with Janet Martin. It’s Lisa’s belief that her brothers’ betrayal wounded Janet’s spirit far more than anything the self-appointed bishop had done to her. Ezra had been a stranger until he staggered onto the Martin farm - but her own flesh and blood had traded her for - for what? Had they been true believers? Or was it being at the side of the man who had gained such power over their whole community? Small men basking in reflected glory?
Finally, the girl falls into an exhausted sleep just before sunset. Lisa bundles up and heads outside. Somehow the smell of bleach has managed to seep from the closed off room - or maybe it’s her imagination. She knows she needs to take a walk alone in the cold, clear air where she can let her mask of calm detachment slip a little.