The Acolyte

by Nick Cutter

  “You gotta consider the people inside as forest animals—more afraid of you than you of them,” he said, his last words to us before we left. “But there is this one fella. I’ve heard he’s blind as a bat now, but still. Chances of you bumping into him are near zero, but if there’s only one shark in the whole ocean . . . well, there’s still that one.”

  I knew who he must’ve been talking about.

  We trudged toward the city limits in silence. Jeremy laid out a path until the spotlight beam turned coarse, particles of darkness overtaking those of light.

  When full dark fell again neither of us made a move: simply stood in that vast emptiness, me tight to Doe’s side—no moon, no stars, both of us perched on the verge of an ineffable blackness that began the very next step and possessed no limits or end.

  “You don’t have to,” I told her. “But I need to know.”

  She snorted. “You knock me out and handcuff me and drag me all this way and now you tell me I don’t have to go? Little late, don’t you think?” She stared over the black city and said, “Besides, you think you’re the only human being born curious?”

  The Lost Quint

  “What do you know already?”

  We weren’t far from the Ministers’ estates. Their dilapidated flame-scorched contours stood out against puffy night clouds.

  Doe checked up. “What do you mean?”

  I said, “I’m asking if you were aware of this state of affairs before we arrived. If a swift little birdie told you.”

  She turned to me, her face white as a harlequin mask in the flashlight beam.

  “If you dragged me all the way out here to force some kind of apology, you won’t get it. I didn’t know about any state of affairs. That was never discussed between him and me.”

  “What was discussed? How did you find him?”

  “Swift found me, Jonah. He has that way of finding people. Reclamation projects. He . . . he knew things. I didn’t credit him at first but in time I did.”

  “Aren’t you afraid of him?”

  “Are you?”

  “I am.”

  Doe said, “Is that because he stands to ruin the way of life you’ve known?”

  “Partly, yes.”

  “Well, the Romans were scared of Jesus Christ.”

  We walked down the block to a four-way crossing. The street sign read LUCIAN COURT.

  “There,” said Doe. “See them?”

  She pointed to the corner lot. All around it were bombed-out houses falling in upon themselves. Twinkle of smashed glass. Burnt-out husks of luxury SUVs. All of it blackened except the tiny spark she gestured at.

  “What are they?”

  “Flowers,” she said. “Roses, it looks like.”

  The house was unremarkable in every detail except that it was largely unmarked; the homes on each side had been reduced to soot-grimed skeletons. A three-storey redbrick with attached three-car garage. A modest balcony projected off the second floor over the garage, its rail still strung with Christmas lights.

  The flowers—healthy white roses in bloom—were planted in a patch of well-tended earth the size of a manhole cover. A hand-trowel and a box of plant food nearby. The flowers looked to have been well-cared for, even though nothing else in sight was so lucky.

  Doe said: “Creepy.”

  The front door was unlocked. We entered wordlessly. A narrow hallway. Mud-spattered galoshes on a doormat embroidered with cherubs and BLESS THIS MESS.

  The front room was wide and starkly furnished. A dusty glass-topped coffee table spread with copies of God’s Word Today and Ignite Your Faith. A ceramic rabbit in the shape of a chocolate Easter bunny sat in the centre of the table; its ears had been snapped off and the hollow cavity stuffed with the same roses we’d seen outside, wilted now. I shone the flashlight over the walls. A display case filled with trophies—for figure skating, mainly. Two plaques mounted on embossed wooden backings. One featured a pair of crossed scimitars: The Kingdom of Heaven Award. An ornate cut-glass cross occupied a second case: The Crystal Cross of Spirituality, awarded several years ago to Follower Lucas Hogan.

  It was the photograph that I lingered on, mainly as it seemed so out of place. A young girl leaning against a concrete pillar in a wash of sunlight. Blonde hair tucked up under a hat that looked like a Confederate soldier’s, only white. She wore a dress, also white, of some diaphanous material that picked up the sun and sparkled like insect wings.

  Somewhere in the house a voice rung out, “Hello? Hello?”

  “Acolytes,” Doe called back.

  The voice: reedy and fearful and male. “Take whatever you can use and go away.”

  “We’re not thieves,” I assured him. “We’ve come from New Bethlehem.”

  “I see . . . I’ve never heard of a female Acolyte. Little more encompassing in New Bethlehem, are they? Come, come in. I’m in the kitchen.”

  The kitchen was tricked out nouveau style: stainless steel fridge, stove with gas burners, one of those whisper-quiet dishwashers. There was a smell here: sweet and awful, like the syrup at the bottom of a bus terminal garbage can.

  The room was dominated by a chopping block table. A man sat in the light of a guttering candle.

  “Enter of your own free will,” he said, “and leave some of the joy you bring with you.”

  “Lucas Hogan?”

  “The Lord his grace and mercy upon us, yes, that’s me.”

  Hogan wore an official Minister’s robe. Frayed at the sleeves and torn down the front; the swath of sparsely haired chest led me to believe he was naked underneath.

  “You’ve come to collect me?” he said eagerly. “Take me back to New Bethlehem?”

  Doe said: “We saw the roses.”

  “A beacon, aren’t they? Someone civilized, god-fearing, still lives here.”

  Hogan may once have been handsome but hunger and sleeplessness had done a number on him—it was as though a sinkhole in the centre of his face, localized to his nose, was drawing his features ever-inwards. He wore massive Blueblocker sunglasses.

  “We have a few questions,” I said. “Do you know of a man named Tom Swift?”

  “Is that the name he’s going by now? I’m not surprised. He has many names.”

  “What did you know him by?”

  “Here he was Victor Appleton,” Hogan said.

  “How did you meet him?”

  “At a Candles for Christ fundraiser. I was with my wife and daughter. We were all quite taken with him. If you’ve met him, you’ll understand that Victor is a man with a captivating quality.”

  A mild thumping arose behind the pantry door. The wind?

  I said: “The photo in the front room . . .”

  “Celeste, my daughter,” Hogan said quickly. “A figure skater. A ballerina on blades.”

  “She looks graceful,” Doe offered. “And obviously very accomplished, judging by the display case.”

  “She was graceful, yes, thank you for saying so. My daughter’s skating instructor said she had the strongest, the most agile legs she’d ever seen. I never thought much of it until . . .”

  “Tell me, Mr. Hogan.” I said. “What happened here?”

  “Victor Appleton,” said Hogan simply. “Victor happened.”

  “Where did he come from?” I pressed. “How did he ingratiate himself?”

  “Oh, he was very smooth. Charismatic—oh so charismatic. He was . . . even back then, with the world so ordered and everyone known, sometimes—very rarely in life, but sometimes—a person can appear in your midst and nobody has a clue where he comes from. We were all so pleased he was there. He was special. Even now, hate him though I do, I cannot deny that he is a special man. And so you see, officer, he didn’t have to ingratiate himself. We prostrated ourselves before him.”

  “What did he do?” as
ked Doe.

  “It happened during SuperChurch services,” said Hogan. “Seventy thousand Followers packed like sardines. The explosions—seven, eight, nine, I don’t know; they went off all around the same time—blew right through the congregation. Our Prophet was vapourized in the middle of an acoustic guitar singalong. I would’ve been killed myself had I not been using the facilities. My wife wasn’t so lucky.”

  Doe and I exchanged a quick look. “Our condolences on your lo—”

  More scuttling from behind the pantry door.

  “Drafts,” Hogan said, waving the sounds off. “House falling apart.”

  I noticed a screwdriver wedged in the pantry door jamb to keep it shut.

  “It was mayhem,” he went on, “There simply wasn’t the infrastructure to deal with the death and injury toll. The hospitals were packed. And even as we tried to cope with that, the bombings continued. Firehouses, parliament, police headquarters. At first we thought it was heathen suicide squads doing it . . . but word began to filter out that it was us. Followers doing it to each other. And the Divine Council didn’t send any aid. We were damned—this was the word coming back. A damned people. A damned city.”

  “And then?” I prompted.

  “And then the Quints were sent in. Just craziness. Looting. Rioting. Dead bodies in the streets. Block upon block of bombed-out husks.” Logan paused, lost in recollection. “We got together—some Ministers, district officials, whoever was still around. We wanted to hammer out an exit strategy. I was with my daughter Celeste. Victor attended with an associate, some mountain of a man. Nobody had any idea he was behind all the destruction at that point. He’d brought a case of Republic Claret. . . . I don’t know what he dosed it with, or how. We all went out like lights. And then he must’ve dosed us with something more potent; no other way we would’ve slept through what was done.”

  The walls . . . I could hear something inside them, scrabbling noises not unlike the clawing of trapped animals. Did Doe hear that?

  Doe said: “What happened, Follower Hogan?”

  Hogan removed his sunglasses. His eyes. In the mutable light of the candle they were blobs of pewter. No cornea, no iris.

  “I don’t know how it was done. Maybe they dipped Q-Tips in acid and smeared it over. Maybe they injected it behind my eyeballs, burned them out at the root. Hardly felt a thing when I came to—just an icy-hot burning in back of my eyes. Then I heard the screaming. He’d done the same to all of us. Thirty pieces of silver; we’d all taken it, Appleton said, and this was our comeuppance. He left us where we lay and took our children. He took my daughter. My Celeste.”

  “So Victor kidnapped her,” I said.

  Hogan laughed. “You said you knew him. You think he had to kidnap her? She didn’t even say goodbye. Just gone, gone away.”

  I thought back to Jack Olen Hanratty’s description of the Matthew’s Square bomber. A beautiful blonde-haired girl in a funny white hat.

  The pantry door went thunka-thunk-thunk.

  Hogan said: “After being blinded I dragged myself back here. Took three days.”

  “How do you fend for yourself?” I asked.

  “Why don’t we get going?” he said. “I can answer all this later.”

  Doe said: “We don’t know our way around. We’ll wait until morning.”

  “It’s better to move at night. Safer, believe me.”

  “We’ll wait.”

  After a moment: “I eat what I can,” Hogan said, his teeth clenching. “Scavenge the houses around here. Most have well-stocked cupboards. I get by. My wife didn’t get the idea of conservation. I didn’t know how long we’d have to scrape by until God’s grace intervened; quit eating so much, I kept telling her. But she’d never had to suffer a day in her charmed life—”

  Doe said: “Minister, you told us your wife died in an explosion.”

  I glanced at the pantry, then at a skillet on the stove: something had been burned to the density of charcoal. The knives fastidiously, anally, arranged on the counter.

  “Very clean kitchen you’ve got here,” I said as Doe moved to the pantry door.

  “Cleanliness is next to Godliness,” Hogan said in a trilling singsong.

  Doe gripped the screwdriver in the doorjamb. The wood squealed when she pulled it out. Hogan swivelled, his face exhibiting some feral species of alarm. I shoved his chair into the table, pinning him there.

  When Doe wrenched the door open and I saw what I saw—how long did I gaze? A second? Half that? That was all it took to burn it in—my body, every cell of it, inside and out.

  “We were both blinded,” Hogan sobbed. “I pleaded with her to conserve rations. She didn’t get it. She was born a Minister’s daughter, raised a Minister’s daughter, married a future Minister—she never knew true want.”

  The pantry shelves had been stripped. The walls were taped with black Hefty bags. The thing was spread across a glossy tarp of trash bags. The thing thrashed and shook. The thing had bloody duct tape lashed over its stumps.

  “You’re wondering why I couldn’t just kill her,” Hogan went on. “The power was out; I couldn’t freeze the bits,” Hogan said. “It’s the only way to keep it . . . fresh. I gave her a good life. She owed somebody something, didn’t she? Surely you’ll understand.”

  I felt Doe’s hand on my waist. Trembling as it climbed my ribcage but steady as it unsnapped the holster and like stone as it pulled out my revolver.

  She said: “Wait for me in the yard.”

  Outside I heard the shots. Two, with a short lag between.

  Doe met me in the yard. Dry-eyed, blood speckled on her cheeks. She gave the gun back to me.

  She said: “I don’t want this happening to us.”

  “To us?”

  “New Bethlehem. Our city.”

  My eyes snagged on movement over her shoulder, down the end of the street. My jaw fell open in shock.

  It couldn’t be. This city was too vast, the chances next to nil. I squinted down the dew-wetted tarmac into the clearness of the floodplains beyond. I whispered, “Shhhhh.”

  She turned, looked. We waited.

  There. A glint of white. An albino-white duster—but torn now, grimed with blood.

  If there’s only one shark in the whole sea . . . well, there’s still that one.

  It was the Quint. Number Three. The lost one.

  She grabbed my arm. “Run.”

  We dashed through Hogan’s backyard at a dead sprint, Doe matching me stride for stride. I cut through Hogan’s gazebo, crashed awkwardly through the warped wooden latticework, sprinting a few steps to vault the chain link fence into Hogan’s neighbours’ backyard. We pelted across the lawn, blood hammering in my eardrums, so wired I swore I saw fine blue electricity snapping off the tips of my fingers. I trailed Doe across the lawn over the fence into the next yard, bear-walking behind a hedgerow, wondering why, the Quint was blind according to the lookout—but it wasn’t a matter of being seen but rather sensed, smelled. As if we were being hunted by a giant mole rat or an albino earthworm.

  We broke past the hedgerow into the yard, running through a child’s sandbox with high-kneed, churning steps; I trod on a rusted Tonka truck half-buried in sand, twisted my ankle and hissed in pain. I limped past a dog run housing a canine skeleton with its teeth clamped to the chain link and its sleek skull shining with dew. Doe cut sharply through a darkened breech between houses and we were on another street running in what I felt to be the right direction but not entirely sure.

  Mailboxes in the shape of cathedrals. Burnt houses leaned predatorily, hungrily over the road. I hazarded a glance over my shoulder and caught the knife-flash no more than a block off, skirting the flank of a fire-gutted garden shed. How many shots were left in my revolver? Four, Doe having used two; I spun awkwardly, pistol out, trying to draw a bead but there was nothing to orient on—on
ly block upon block of nerve-chafing dark. We followed the blind curve of the road into the barrens, fleeing across sand overlaid with a layer of fog so thick we couldn’t see our feet.

  I barely heard the shot; the only way I knew we’d been fired at was the puff that bloomed in the fog two feet ahead to our left. I grabbed Doe’s shoulder, cutting hard right and in doing so nearly ran into the watchtower we’d have otherwise fled right past.

  The car was just where we’d left it—for a panicky instant it looked to have sunk into the earth but this was only the effect created by sand drifting round the tires. I moved toward the driver’s side but Doe darted in front and I was forced to do an end-around, flanking the trunk and sliding into the passenger’s seat. Doe keyed the ignition, set the tranny in reverse and goosed the gas; the tires spun, yowled, spat sand.

  I said: “Ease it, ease up; you’re gonna mire us!”

  “I got it, shut up I got it.”

  She dropped into drive and gave it gas. The chassis groaned, rocking forward. The hood squatted so low I feared the crankcase would eat sand. She flicked the headlamps, flooding the barrens and the ice-cold sky beyond . . .

  . . . and there he stood, no more than fifty paces away. Colourless duster flapping in a desert wind to make his body look huger, more menacing. The number ‘3’ tattooed on his neck and his cheeks cratered with acidic scars, eyes blazing red in the glow of the headlights.

  The Quint’s pistol-arm went up. The sideview mirror exploded in a spray of plastic and glass, remnants hanging off the doorframe by coloured wires; Doe wrenched the wheel full left, tires gritting in their sandy grooves; the windshield spidered as a hole punched through six inches wide of her skull to burrow into the backseat upholstery; she stood on the gas as if weighing herself, tires spinning, smoking; I scrabbled for my revolver as another slug whanged off the moulding somewhere above my head.

  Doe hauled the wheel right, slammed the gearshift into reverse and stamped the gas; my gun was ready when the car caught traction, sluing assways in a drunken arc, wind lashing through the shattered windshield as the undercarriage scraped a half-buried rock to send blue sparks fanning up before the grille. My finger jarred the trigger and a bullet punched into the roof. The interior reeked of cordite as Doe reversed in a long sweeping bend then dropped the transmission without taking her foot off the gas; the engine screamed like a scalded cat and before the gearbox bit, she cut side-to-side and sent up a rooster tail made red by the brake lights.