The Shelter

by Peter Foley

  The void is quiet again. The monster may have been vanquished, but her escape from darkness is not yet won.

  45

  Happiness is a warm gun

  The shadow universe unfolds its pupil black horizon into a new kingdom of fear. King black, the color all others have deserted, is a vicious moray eel, ninety-three billion light years long and quicker than light. It pumps through Hazel’s blood.

  “DREW!” she yells.

  She hears Drew’s faint muzzled breathing. Sightless in the inky-black, she feels her way across the floor, tracking the sound of Drew’s breath. Finally, she rests her hands on his crumpled figure. Reaching for his face, she removes his muzzle. Drew’s breath is quick and short.

  “I can’t see anything!” he gasps.

  “I know but try to hear me, it’s Hazel. Are you okay?” Holding his face in her hands, she can feel the drying blood on his cheek.

  “Hazel? Is that you, Hazel?” The Carillon bell that rings in Drew’s ears has been struck by lightning, the noise is oscillating pain buck-boosting amygdala fear. All Drew can hear is the unregulated commutating whine. “It’s no good, it’s too dark for me to see your lips and I can’t hear you very–” As the words leave his mouth, Hazel’s lips touch his own in a reassuring kiss.

  “It’s you, Hazel,” he says, pushing his forehead against hers. “I just need a second… and I need light.”

  Fumbling at Drew’s back, Hazel unties his hands. After a moment, he staggers to his feet.

  “There has to be a light switch on one of these walls,” he says, feeling his way across the room in a panic. “Okay, wall, found,” he says bumping into one. His hands slide along the smooth concrete until he finds a door frame. With a little more probing, he finds a square plastic rectangle with a switch in its middle. With a click the light presents the room and stings their eyes. Drew’s face is scuffed and bruised, blood has started to dry around his left eye.

  Drew and Hazel embrace in the new light.

  “This must be the Pastor’s room,” Hazel says.

  The room is like all the other sleeping quarters, but it’s unique in two aspects – one: the door holds a key in its lock, and two: a desk sits at one side of the room instead of another bed. The Pastor’s body is doubled over on the floor in front of the desk. His gown is a mess of shiny black cloth.

  “He dead?” asks Drew.

  “Think so.”

  “Good.”

  The desk is neat and clean. Its medium oak in color and furnished with a green writing mat, an old notepad, some stationery and a plastic microphone.

  “Drew,” Hazel says, still shading her eyes from the new light, “there’s something you need to know; Courtney and Tom, I found them both.”

  “And…?”

  “They’re dead. Both of them. They were in the kitchen, in the freezer! Tom was… he was… He’s been cut up, his body. I think we’ve all been eating him! I think they served him for lunch. He was the meat we, well, I was eating.”

  Drew closes his eyes, lifts his hands to his face and takes a long deep breath. Finally, lowering his hands, he says, “We need to tell everybody, we need to tell them what you saw.”

  “I know. We do. And we can show them what this place really is, then everyone will know, and everyone will want out of here. They’ll have to open the door!”

  “Okay. I have a plan, bear with me.” Drew moves towards the Pastor’s desk and sits in the chair. He looks through the drawers.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “A weapon, anything we can use, just in case. He must have something around here.”

  Hazel stares at the spent cattle prod on the floor. In the light, it’s clearly a cheap farm tool. She picks it up to try its trigger again and confirms it’s run out of power. She scans the contents of the old notepad on the Pastor’s desk. Inside it, she finds a handwritten series of notes. As she reads, terror rises.

  “Father, I’ve wrestled with the views you have presented today. I keep coming back to the same view that revolutionary suicide is the only solution we have in the event of an invasion.

  The United States government has unlimited supplies. We will not survive continuous skirmishes. I see bravado behind some of the comments in favor of fighting against an invasion. These voices say that if we fight hard enough we could protect you and the integrity of the group. I disagree – both the leader and the group would not survive – our enemy’s power and resources are astronomical; our powers are limited.

  The thing that disturbs me most about fighting is our lack of control over the consequences. After losing to an invading force, many of us would be taken and tortured – I worry that even I would break down. We are not familiar with the life of physical suffering like the brave peasants of China, Vietnam, and Russia are. Revolutionary suicide is our only option, especially in this regard.

  Ultimately, I trust only you. The enemy is clever and that which would be fetched from our mouths would be calculated to harm the worldwide struggle of our movement. We, in a fight, would not have control of which of us, and how many of us, would be taken in as captives. Though the strongest might kill themselves before being taken. The weakest – no matter what they might say in public meetings – would not kill themselves and they would be the first to talk. The problem of leaving paralyzed and maimed survivors after a conflict is not solved to my satisfaction. We don’t have a solution, we cannot be sure that we won’t leave half-alive children behind when the enemy is breathing down our back.

  My proposal is the following – If at any point it appears that we will have to take the ultimate step, we prepare the people via the PA system, by reading the words of strong assertive revolutionaries of the past. Our idea will face resistance due to its unfamiliarity. Awareness of this tactic should be taught in school classes, and it should be taught in sermons. When the time comes, and when all of our alternatives have been used up, we will meet as a group in the Sermon Hall surrounded by highly trusted security members.

  Names will be called off a list. People will be escorted to a place of dying (Common Room) by a strong personality who is loving, supportive, but not sympathetic. They (victim/escort) are accompanied by two Blue Gowns. (I don’t trust people to arrange their own death, but it can be arranged by outside pressure with no alternatives left.) At the place of dying, they are shot in the head, and if I do not believe they are definitely dead I will slit their throat with a scalpel. The bodies would be thrown outside. It might be advisable to blindfold the people before going to the death place, in that the blood and bodies remaining on the ground might increase agitation.

  Any people who resist revolutionary suicide will do so because they want to save their own asses – they would make excellent captives for the enemy – saying anything they want under the illusion that they would be protected. These people must be the first to die.

  The idea sickens me. At first, when we discussed fighting an invasion, I felt exhilarated by the idea of fighting. Though I’m nothing great with a gun, I knew I could do something to divert the enemy or give medical help to a fellow fighter – I can be active, hitting the enemy one way or another. There is nothing exhilarating about this new plan. It’s horrible, but it’s safe and I know you will see its virtue.

  -Nurse Chamberlin”

  “Drew!” shouts Hazel, pulling at his shoulder. “They’re planning to kill everyone!”

  “What!”

  “Something about an invasion?”

  “Yeah, the Pastor’s mad on that at the moment, he’s paranoid.”

  “They’re going to tell everyone to commit revolutionary suicide, and then they’re going to shoot them in the Common Room!”

  Drew, fumbling under a pile of books deep in the desk’s bottom drawer, shakes his head. After tossing out a few books, he finds what he’s looking for. “Gotcha…” He holds up a sleek black handgun. “Insurance against the Blue Gowns. I’ve never used one, but I’m glad we have it.”

  “What�
�s your plan?” Hazel asks.

  “hurricane or no hurricane, we’re leaving, now. You’re right. I have to take responsibility for my life. The lying to myself, the hiding every day, it stops. I have a mind, I have ambitions, I have hopes and dreams and that stands for something. It’s time to get back to reality, if it still exists out there. I want another shot at life. First thing, we get everyone in the Sermon Hall and we hit them with the truth about Tom and Courtney.”

  “But what about the Planning Committee?”

  “Fuck them. I have a plan. It starts with that microphone, it must broadcast to the loudspeaker system.” Drew nods at the plastic announcer mic on the desk. “Bear with me.” He leans over the microphone, his throat is dry, his breathing is heavy, he feels nauseous. He swallows hard and lifts the plastic microphone to his mouth. He pushes the button on its base and speaks:

  “Sid and all Blue Gowns report to Father’s room. Everyone else report to the Sermon Hall immediately. Repeat, everyone else report to the Sermon Hall.”

  After the announcement, Drew puts the plastic body of the microphone against the edge of the desk and pushes hard against it, snapping it in two.

  “Come on.” He grabs Hazel by the hand and they run towards the corridor. As they pass the door, Drew removes the key from the lock. Once outside the room, Drew pulls Hazel around a corner, they hide just out of view of the door. They stop and wait, trying to reduce the volume of their breath. The sound of footsteps scatter up the corridor, grow louder, then disappear into the Pastor’s room. The door slams closed behind them and there’s a cry of “Oh my God!”. Drew races to the door and quickly slips the key into the lock. With a quick turn of metal, he traps the Planning Committee inside.

  “Okay. That’ll buy us some time. We have one shot at this.”

  Taking each other by the hand, they rush to the Sermon Hall.

  46

  The master key

  A confused chattering crowd chokes the Sermon Hall corridor and pour through its doorway. Hazel and Drew push and excuse their way through the disordered people and rush to the lectern. The congregation watch with surprise as the couple approach the microphone, but Hazel and Drew leave no time for questions. While many are still searching for seats, Drew starts his address.

  “Look,” he shouts, “I’ve gathered you for an emergency meeting. Please listen carefully to what I am about to say, we don’t have a lot of time, I’ll be brief.” He takes a breath and, without apology, hits them with the news.

  “Your Pastor is dead.”

  The crowd startles, some recoil and cry with the instant sting of grief, some stand and yell “No!”, others look about with full-faced astonishment.

  “Your Pastor has been lying to you,” Hazel adds in a conciliatory tone. “He imprisoned you all here. Don’t you see what this place is? It’s a prison. And while he teaches your children despicable things he manipulates and beats you!” She gestures to Charlie, who, limping into the room, is the last to enter.

  Drew adds his voice to Hazel’s petition. “And people have gone missing: Tom and Courtney. I know you remember them, I know you know them. Well, Hazel found them. She found them both dead in the kitchen freezer! You can go and see for yourselves. All that meat you have all eaten? The meat that your Pastor has fed to you in here? That was all human, it was Tom! You all ate meat from Tom’s body. Your Pastor killed Tom because he stood up for himself, then he fed him to you. Do you understand what I’m saying? We all need to get out of here. We all need to leave now!”

  Each with their own expression of horror, the people are stunned. Some shake their heads, some cry into their hands, but not a word is spoken until Barbara lifts a lonely hand above the sea of three hundred desperate red-gowned people.

  “May I say something?” Barbara says.

  “Yes, please,” Hazel says.

  Barbara rises to her feet and speaks with a slow difficult comprehension of the situation.

  “So, what you are saying is Father killed your Tom? And your friend Courtney too? And what we have all been eating was meat from Tom’s body?”

  “Yes! Yes! That’s exactly it!” Drew says.

  “Well, um, it seems to me that, if Father killed Tom and your friend, all I can figure is that they must have been bad people, and they must’ve been trying to hurt us. I don’t agree with the bad things you said about Father. Father would only kill if it was right. And I didn’t know that what I ate was a human, but I tell you all what, it sure was good eatin’…”

  A single laugh breaks the silence. One by one, the crowd laughs, slowly at first, then with aggression.

  “Oh, yeah, sister!” encourages the voice of an old man.

  “Tell them, honey! Say it,” shouts another.

  A second woman rises to her feet.

  “Um, you know, if Father wanted us to eat people, and now he’s dead, I think he would want us to do the only fair and right thing and follow his example. With that said, I think the only thing to do is to eat Father’s body, his sacred body. I think that’s the way he would have wanted it.”

  An applause is triggered by one cry of “Truth!”. Drew recoils in disbelief. Hazel stands pale and speechless at the feet of the crowd’s enthusiasm.

  Another voice yells out, “I bet he would taste so damn good. Imagine, y’all!”

  “Wait, wait!” comes another shout. “How did Father die?”

  “You don’t need to know that,” Hazel says, shaking her head.

  “You!” cries a voice. “You did this! Didn’t you? You did this to us! Tell us!”

  Chaos breaks out as this idea spreads among the people. They stand, shout, stomp, point and flash in angry animation, making the air thick with noise.

  Charlie, sitting alone at the back of the hall, stands up. With his mouth and eyes still pronounced in colors of swollen blue and puffy red, he waves both hands in the air and declares, “Look, everybody! Shut up! Shut up, for the love of Father, shut up!”

  The rabble stops and turns to him with a collective disaffection.

  “Since day one,” Charlie says, wincing and touching his swollen lip as he speaks, as if to aid his lips movement, “I felt like my place was here with you all and with Father, but for some reason Father never accepted me. I never knew why that was. I tried and tried, but now I understand. All that happened before was just a test to get me ready, ready for this moment, ’coz now I know what I gotta do. I know that I need to prove myself and right now I’m going to do just that. I don’t need no blue gown to take care o’ this shit. I’m gonna take control right here, right now and avenge our Father.”

  Charlie emerges from the back of the crowd, first limping, then striding. He grows taller and stronger with every step as the pain of his injuries gives way to the discovery of his new singular purpose, as evidenced by his two clenched fists and tensed brow.

  The crowd part to let him pass. In anticipation they break out into the sound of their wild war call. The noise is a piercing unmelodious roar. The discordant throng gathers behind Charlie and marches on towards Hazel and Drew, trapping them at the lectern. A cluster of five men join Charlie at the head of the crowd and move in for the kill, encouraged by high-pitched, screeching laughter and yells of “Avenge our Father!” and “Kill those motherfuckers!” and “I bet that bitch Hazel tastes real nice!”

  “Look! He’s not what he says he is! He’s no God! Or Prophet! He claimed to see all and know all. He claims to see pain and cure all problems – but he never realized that Drew is almost deaf! How can you explain that?” implores Hazel, but the crowd marches on.

  Charlie spits blood on the floor. “Fuck you, bitch.”

  Drew reaches into his pocket, for the Pastor’s gun. He holds it high into the air. The threat does nothing to halt the advance and it does nothing to diminish their appetite for murder and vengeance, the lethal power of his firearm has been dwarfed by the intensity and delirium of the horde. Drew fires a single bullet high into the ceiling as a warning shot, th
e bullet releases a puff of concrete dust that scatters small fragments onto the crowd. As the gunshot echoes, the crowd hesitates. Hazel pounces on the microphone.

  “Look!” she implores. “Your Pastor was going to kill you all! I have proof. Tom and Courtney are dead because of him! And I have this letter right here, explaining how he was going to murder all of you!”

  The crowd mutter but are undeterred. They press closer in a tide of red. Hazel and Drew back away from the crowd step after step and steal one last glance at each other. Both Drew and Hazel are stricken, both passively slip under the wake of fear as their backs press against the cold concrete wall. The dull lights of the Sermon Hall light the gallery of approaching crimson like a warring tribe under a setting sun.

  “Stay back!” shouts Drew, with his last pluck of courage. “I have enough bullets to take down at least a dozen of you fuckers!”

  “More bodies, more meat! You can’t take us all down, fucker!” Charlie shouts.

  Drew shields Hazel and aims his gun at kill height. With the mob close and clustered he can’t miss. “Once the crowd tastes lead they’ll change their mind,” he shouts to Hazel. His finger settles on the trigger. He has never shot a man before. He squeezes the cold metal.

  CLICK. CLICK. CLICK. CLICK.

  The chamber’s empty. The gun’s only bullet, a bullet the Pastor had reserved for himself for when the need became dire is lodged harmlessly in the ceiling of his Sermon Hall.

  Drew, trembling, reaches for the last scrap of energy he can muster and prepares to fight. He can’t save Hazel, he can’t save himself, but he can, for Hazel’s sake, try. The first punch thrown at him is easily dodged, countering the blow he catches a glance at the doorway. In the corridor outside he sees a thin column of light on the wall. The vertical slither of gold grows and stretches across the entire walkway and fills Salvation’s entrance with brilliant light. A loud metallic boom penetrates the Sermon Hall and distracts every man and woman in the battalion of red.