by Alia Hess
Corvin grinned. “Keep flattering me, and I’ll be whatever you want.”
“Okay, time to go.” Anise dragged Laurel by the arm and pulled her into the hall.
Corvin put a pillow over his mouth to muffle his laughter. He looked at Sasha, red-faced. “Your cult is full of nutjobs.”
Anise walked back into the room, looking vexed. She shut the door behind her, then picked up the drone from the floor. “I’m sorry. Some of the followers are like that. I didn’t think Laurel was, but I didn’t realize she believed you healed her infection. How embarrassing.”
I’ve seen you embarrassed, Anise. Right now, you just look jealous.
Anise set the drone on the table next to the other one, then eyed Sasha. “Do you, um, need anything from me right now?”
Sasha smiled and almost asked her if she wanted to give him a haircut, then thought better of it. “No, thank you. I am fine.”
She nodded and handed Corvin a ratty paperback.
“Oh, thank you, dear.” He squinted at the faded, illegible cover, then flipped it open.
“I put some grooming supplies in the bathroom, and also found a crutch for you to use.”
Corvin brightened. “Wonderful!” He pulled away the bedsheets and turned his splinted leg, grimacing, until he was sitting on the edge of the bed. Anise brought him the crutch and helped him stand.
“Your leg hurt pretty bad?” Sasha asked.
“Yeah. Anise told me I had a bone coming out of my shin. I don’t remember.”
“Ugh.”
She smiled at Corvin as he leaned on her. “You’ll be better in no time, I’m sure. Let me help you to the bathroom.”
This definitely needs to be the Cult of Anise.
Sasha pushed the drones into the sunlight, then shut his eyes and leaned back in the pillows. Hopefully everything would charge quickly.
A man’s voice from outside drifted up through the window. “Sasha killed those slavers before they could destroy Temperance, you know.”
“Well, where was he when my brother got robbed and beat up?” someone else said. “He prayed to Sasha, but he didn’t get any help. Now he walks with a limp. This church is bullshit. The only reason I’m still here is for the medical training. So I can do good and help people, even if Sasha doesn’t.”
Sasha opened his eyes and cringed.
“That’s blasphemy, Jeremy. What if Sasha hears you?” a woman asked.
“I wish he would! He needs to answer for his indifference.”
“You can’t question a god. Sasha has a reason for everything,” the woman replied.
Should I tell those guys I’m not a god? Would they even believe me? I don’t want to dissuade them and have the church fall apart. They’re doing good work, and Anise would be devastated, but lying to them doesn’t seem right.
Sasha groaned as he pushed himself out of bed and walked to the window. He glanced at his portrait leaning against the wall and combed his fingers through his hair, hoping he looked presentable enough despite his starved and bruised face.
After moving the tablets away and opening the pane, he leaned out.
A group of around ten people stood below in the trampled grass. Brick houses sat on the opposite side of the street, tall trees punctuating the spaces in between, their emerald green leaves fluttering in the breeze. A goat stood outside a house, chewing grass in the shade. The ocean—calm, docile, and a pale, innocent blue—stretched along the horizon in the distance.
He looked down at the people. “Hey.”
“It’s him!” a woman squealed. “It’s Sasha!”
The voices rose into a jumbled chorus, calling his name—crying, yelling, demanding.
Sasha put up his hands. “Calm down, guys. I got something to say. You want to hear?”
The sound died to a murmur, heads turned expectantly in his direction.
“What do I look like to you?”
“A hero!”
“A god!”
“A man!”
“A liar!” The man, probably Jeremy—the disbeliever—folded his arms and scowled.
“Listen, I stopped Winter, okay? I did that. I killed him with drone. And I shot some other slavers too. Saved Anise’s aunt. And I tell you something else”—thoughts of Dusty and Corvin entered his mind—“I have helped other people when they were at some bad time in their life. I did not give up on them.”
More people gathered, craning their necks toward the window.
“But you gave up on us, Sasha,” a man shouted. “You weren’t here when we needed you!”
“That’s not true,” someone exclaimed, pushing the man. Voices rose into a clamor, people gesticulating angrily.
“Look at me!” Sasha opened his arms. “Do I really look like god? You see my body? I got man’s body, okay? I bleed. I get sick. I can drown in ocean. Somebody stab me or shoot me, I will die. And you see my ears? I got man’s ears. If you tell me prayer when you are in this town and I am far away on Islands, you think I can hear you? No. I cannot.”
Several people shook their heads and walked away.
Dammit. Sorry, Anise.
“I got man’s mind too. I make mistakes. I think bad thoughts. I do stuff sometimes maybe I should not do.” He thudded his chest. “But I also got man’s heart. I care about people. I don’t want to see nobody hurt or upset. I got friends and wife that I love more than anything. I would die for them. And if I see way I can help some person, I will do it. Life is too short to be selfish asshole.”
Sasha caught movement in his peripheral vision and glanced toward the doorway. Anise and Corvin stood in the room. Corvin’s hair was gathered into a ponytail, his jaw clean-shaven. The red button-up shirt he wore looked awfully strange without pants to go with it.
Anise stared at Sasha, wide-eyed, her hands clutched to her chest.
“You see this guy?” Sasha beckoned to Corvin, who hobbled to the window. Corvin’s jaw dropped at the sight of the crowd. Sasha said, “This is my best friend. I would die for him.”
Corvin turned to him, brows furrowed. “You mean that?”
“Of course.”
Corvin stared, his jaw clenched. He squeezed Sasha hard around his shoulders. “I’d die for you too.”
Sasha smiled. Murmurs came from below, and he jabbed a finger out the window. “Would you die for somebody? Do you care about people and get upset when some bad thing happen to them?”
The crowd muttered agreement, nodding.
“Then you got same heart as me. Same heart as Sasha. Use it.”
Several people broke from the crowd, throwing a last look at the church window before heading down the street. The others held Sasha’s gaze, their faces slack with awe. Indistinct whispers drifted up to the sill, along with one, “I love you, Sasha!”
Corvin’s arm was clamped tightly around Sasha’s shoulders, a grin on his face.
Anise approached, twisting her hands together. “That was really lovely, Sasha. An impromptu sermon.” She put a fist to her mouth. “Really lovely. Though I wouldn’t have expected any less of you.”
“Thanks. You think church going to fall apart now?”
“Not judging by the followers still standing around down there. You did great.”
He glanced out the window. But I’m tired. I’m not a god. I just want to go home.
It took Sasha most of the day to set up all three tablets and one of the drones. He had customized a tablet for himself, and one for Corvin. The third was for Anise, though she didn’t know that yet.
Trying to reprogram the drone had been more frustrating than he expected, and it didn’t help that Corvin kept sending him winky face emojis from across the room. He’d done it on accident the first time, but it made Sasha blush so much that now he was doing it on purpose.
I suppose I deserve it for all the teasing I give everyone else.
Sasha sat at the table, with a soldering iron, flux, snippets of copper wire, and a drone before him. The drone sync with the tablet
was almost complete, then he could try out the controls and see if it still flew. The flight control module in the back looked intact, but after a year of sitting in storage there was no telling if it worked. He would hate for it to fail mid-flight to Nis.
I wonder if other countries in the world are using their advanced technology to help them through The Collapse?
It still seemed strange to him that after Dr. Krupin released the virus and killed off ninety-nine percent of the world, America was now the most civilized and populated country. He tried not to think too much about how that one percent might be dealing. Unable to look it up, since there were no longer world news reports, he just hoped for the best. Russian technology had been prehistoric compared to the rest of the world. Russia had refused to adopt any innovations that could possibly be used against the government or improved people’s lives in ways the leaders didn’t want. While other countries were using nanodrones, neural implants, thought transmission, and realistic AI, Russia—and by relation—their American facility, was stuck with fifty-year-old technology.
A new set of emojis popped up on his tablet.
“Oh, come on, Corvin! I am proud of you for figure out so fast this emojis that look like sex suggestion, but don’t send that shit to me!”
Corvin grinned from his bed. “It just amuses me that the pervert is embarrassed by it.”
“When guy sends to me, yes!”
“I’m just messing around. Trying to distract myself, y’know?” Corvin set the tablet on an end table and leaned back in the bed. “I can’t wait to see Dewbell and let her know we’re okay.”
“Me too.”
Sasha looked back at his tablet and deleted Corvin’s message, a smirk on his face. After the sync was complete, he brought up the drone controls and plunged his thumbs into the mini holographic joysticks projecting from the screen. He tilted one down and the drone rose off the table, ripples of air around it distorting the beds and Corvin’s face.
“Hey, you got it!” Corvin exclaimed.
Sasha grinned and leaned back in the chair, navigating the drone through the room. He spun it around and twirled the joysticks. It swooped under the table, rolled through the air, then veered out the window.
“Now you’re just showing off.”
“Damn right. And now I am sending it to Nis.”
Sasha stood, wincing, and hobbled to Corvin’s bed. His jeans chafed against the poultice on his thigh, but he thought Anise might be more comfortable if she no longer had to look at the popsicle graphic on his underwear.
He slid onto the bed next to Corvin and tilted the tablet screen for him to see.
Corvin’s eyes widened. “Wow. That’s amazing.”
“Yeah, drone works good, but I can’t get stealth mode to work. Don’t really need it, though.”
The drone coasted past the church; surprisingly, there were still clusters of people standing around, their necks craned up at the windows.
He spun the drone around to face the tall stone chapel, orange light of evening limning the stained glass windows and metal steeple spire. Several people below pointed to the drone. One fainted.
“I don’t think it matters what you tell these people,” Corvin said. “They’ll still believe. I never bought into that drone superstition shit, not even when I was a kid. We’d see those silver ones sometimes—”
“Oh, yeah. Probably from China. They been sending drones here lot longer than Russia.”
“Everyone I knew—the neighbors, my parents, school kids—all thought if you did something bad, the drones could see it and would bring The Collapse again. The drones never even caused it in the first place. At least I was able to convince Owl it was all made up.”
Sasha grinned. “I thought it was pretty funny when I first started flying drones and people would fall on ground and pray to it. But I never thought of talking through drone until I yelled at some slavers and scared crap out of them. It was great.”
He sent the drone closer to the crowd of people. They backed into each other, whispering his name.
Corvin snorted and put a hand over his mouth. “I’m sorry, but I find this whole situation hilarious. Command them to dance for you or something.”
“Corvin! You are right—you’d make bad god. Keep your mouth shut.” He turned on the microphone. “Hey. It’s Sasha.”
The whispers of his name grew louder, eyes filled with wonder and fright.
“Listen, you guys should go home to your families. I got some stuff to do, and I am not going to give other speech tonight. But I am feeling bit better, so maybe tomorrow if you want to talk to me and ask question, I can do. But I cannot make miracle. I can’t heal sick people or make you rich or something. I can only do things a man can do. Okay?”
He tilted the joysticks and the drone zoomed away, speeding past the brick houses across the street, corn fields, clusters of trees, and sheep pens. Hunks of rusty metal, crumbled building foundations, computer monitors, rubber tires, and other Old World garbage occupied the land beyond. Tall grasses and wildflowers pushed through the ruins. Sasha increased speed, the landscape becoming a blur. Eventually, the junk gave way to sandy beaches dotted with gnarled rocks, water lapping at the edge.
The view of the ocean twisted Sasha’s insides. He’d almost died. Chilled to the bone… trembling uncontrollably… salt water in his nose and mouth… Corvin moaning and bloody… He’d never been afraid of water, but taking a boat back to Nis now seemed less than pleasant.
Thank God Dusty didn’t have to deal with that storm. I would rather it be me swept out to sea than her. She’s dry and safe in the forest, and on her way back home—I hope. I’ll find her, no matter how long it takes. Not like Corvin can go anywhere right now, anyway.
The Pearlollan Islands came into view, their silhouettes rising out of the glassy sea like craggy leviathans. Sasha sent the drone down toward Nis, thankful all of the familiar houses and landmarks were still there. The storm had done damage, though. Ragged palm trees drooped or lay across pathways. Large pools of water sat in depressed areas, and chunks of wood and cobb siding littered the ground.
Sasha stopped over Trav and Owl’s house. Some of the plants in their garden were flattened, but the house looked intact.
“I’m going to tell Trav we’re here, and then let’s get Dewbell, okay?” Sasha said.
Corvin nodded.
Sasha bonked the drone against the heavy wooden front door. It swung open and Trav stared out, face frozen and eyes fixed on the screen. He shifted Son of Owl in his arms and blinked several times.
“Sasha?”
“Yeah”—he tilted the tablet—“Corvin too.”
“I don’t—how are you… You’re alive.” Trav’s face contorted, and he sucked in his bottom lip. “Everyone thinks you guys are dead. The whole detainment center was destroyed and you two weren’t accounted for. I can’t believe it.” He thumbed behind him. “Come inside. Dewbell and I just finished dinner. Then you can—”
“Dewbell’s there?” Corvin asked.
“Yes. The storm was really bad and your house got a little waterlogged. One of your paintings got ruined and your front window is broken, but other than that, everything is fine. Dewbell’s been staying the night here—in Son of Owl’s room. Even after people around town helped clean the water and mess out of your house, it didn’t seem like a good idea to leave her alone.”
Corvin tensed and nudged Sasha. “Get that drone in there so I can see her, please.”
Sasha floated the drone past Trav, his fingers trembling anxiously. He turned for the dining table. Dewbell held a basket of rolls in her hands. When she looked up, Sasha smiled and Corvin gave a small wave. She dropped the basket.
“Uh-oh,” Son of Owl said.
Dewbell’s brows pushed up and she took a step toward the drone. Corvin put his hand to his temple and motioned outward, then made a clawing gesture from his chin: [HELLO PRECIOUS]
Her lip trembled and she sobbed loudly, sinking to the floo
r.
Sasha frowned. If only he could reach through the screen and give her a big hug.
“Da-ba make a mess.” Son of Owl toddled into sight behind Dewbell and plucked a roll from the rug.
Trav helped Dewbell up and she clung to him, bawling into his chest. She turned to the drone as though she still didn’t believe it was real, then put her face in her hands and wept.
“Don’t cry, dear,” Corvin whispered.
She looked up, wiping her eyes, then signed to Corvin.
“We’re okay. I mean, pretty much. I have a broken leg, but it’s alright.”
“Where are you guys?” Trav asked.
Sasha set the drone on the dining table next to several dirty dishes, and Trav and Dewbell took a seat. “Some little town by Conch called Broken Metro. We got pulled into ocean during storm. It was real scary. We… almost died. But then this fishing boat come and pick us up, and it took us here. We are in Cult of Sasha church.”
“Wow. Well, that’s appropriate, I guess.” Trav pulled Son of Owl into his lap.
Son of Owl took a bite of the roll in his chubby hand and grinned. “Sa-sa.”
“Hey, little guy.”
“Cowvin!” He mashed his half-eaten roll against the drone screen. “Bwead, Cowvin?”
Corvin’s eyes crinkled. “No thanks, Son of Owl. You eat it. I’ll have one later.”
Trav wiped crumbs from the screen with the hem of his blue shirt, then held a paper before him. “Dewbell says this is a miracle and she’s overjoyed. She can’t wait to be back with you both in person.”
Dewbell’s eyes were red and several pieces of blonde hair had escaped her updo, but she smiled sweetly into the screen. Sasha’s heart ached. He wanted to ask her how she’d held up—if her coping skills were working or if she’d resorted to hurting herself—but it didn’t seem appropriate to ask.
“I want to be with you too, dear. I want nothing more than to be home with you in my arms.” Corvin stared at the screen, breath quickening, then he looked at his lap and cleared his throat. “But what’s going to happen to us now? If we come back, Palesun will lock us up again. Maybe in a real prison this time, since the detainment center is destroyed.”