The Conformity

by John Hornor Jacobs

Brought some armament, unlike Jack and Tap. Can feel the M14’s strap cutting into my shoulder as I arc through the wintry sky. We might have got comfy-cozy sexy-wexy back at the lodge there for a while, but I never misplaced my rifle. It is my rifle. There are many like it but this one is mine. Or so Gramps used to say when he wasn’t quoting the Bible at me.

  From this great height there are a few fires visible in the overwhelming darkness below, and I’m tempted to fly down to them, just long enough to warm up, but more than likely that would end in gunfire or a witch hunt. The world’s likely to get medieval pretty quick. Girls who can fly are going to be the first bitches the local yokels throw on the fire.

  Maybe.

  Boys with twelve fingers are probably fucked too.

  Even in the darkness, I can see the wide expanse of the frozen lake—just like the map back at the lodge indicated—and I follow it south to McCall, where Jack and Tap said they were going. If they’re anywhere, they’ll be there.

  Jack! Yelling with your mind is like whispering as loud as you can.

  Jack, are you there?

  Yes. It’s faint. So very faint. Shit, Ember. We’re in trouble. Come quick.

  On my way. Pause only long enough to unsling the M14, shuck a round into the chamber. Locked and loaded.

  Airspeed is brutal. Feel like my nipples are going to freeze and shatter, along with my toes and fingers and nose and ears. All my pointy, sensitive parts. Never flown faster than I do now. The lake whips by below me. In the dim distance I see a shoreline growing in my sight. Some buildings.

  They’re holding us captive, Jack sends, his voice stronger now.

  Who is? I ask.

  Religious fanatics.

  Oh, shit. Exactly what I was afraid of. Whenever things go south, the religious nuts go into overdrive. It’s like they’re taking notes from the Conformity. As it swells its numbers, gathering people into itself, so do the nutjobs. Maybe they’ve always been that way. Grandma could cook a mean apple pie, but when she got wind of my abilities, she was goddamned quick to call it the devil’s work.

  The town of McCall is below me now, trees whipping past, not very far below my feet. The squat, rectangular dark houses passing silently by.

  They’re holding us in a church. So look for a steeple or something like that.

  I’ve found you,I send.

  What? How can you know? There’s probably two or three churches in this town.

  When I smile, my skin creaks and it actually hurts a little. The moisture of my breath has frozen on my skin. I raise the M14 and sight the ground below. I’m pretty sure the church they’ve got you in is the one I’m looking at. The one surrounded by a mob holding torches.

  twenty-six

  TAP

  The Gulch woman’s on top of Jack doing a twenty-dollar lap-dance when Jack suddenly sends, Ember’s here! The relief is palpable.

  That’s right, bitches, Ember says in my mind. I’m here to pull your asses out of the fire. Should I take these crazies out?

  No! Jack sends, powerfully. Don’t kill her followers. When I give the signal, shoot the windows.

  All of them?

  Unless you know which room we’re in,Jack responds.

  There’s only a couple of choices, really, she says. In position.

  Gulch says, “Massey. Come here and cut this boy’s ropes.” She tenses, and Jack moans a little. It looks like the knife she has is a good quarter inch in the meat of his neck. If it’s not in the carotid already, it’s a single push away from it. “Don’t be stupid, Madelyn. I’m absolutely prepared to sacrifice the boy.” Another moan from Jack. “Hear that? He agrees with me.”

  Madelyn doesn’t say anything, and I don’t either because I’m not quite up to the level of banter around here. Shreve would jump right in.

  “We never really knew each other, did we, Ruth?”

  The crazy woman says nothing in response.

  “While you were inspecting the sanctity of your hymen or whatever you were doing in those prayer meetings at your grandmother’s house, you know what I was doing?”

  Gulch says, “They’re almost here. My Saved. And then this will be over. Because I know how to call the Godhead of the Panopticon now.”

  Massey quickly cuts Jack’s feet and hands free. Gulch pulls him up into a half-standing position and wrenches his arm up behind his back, removing the knife from its place at Jack’s neck only long enough for her to twist his body around to face Madelyn and the rifle.

  “Move over toward the desk or I’ll kill the boy. Massey!” She barks the name, and her voice is like the cracking of thunder. I don’t know if that’s her bugfuckery in action or she’s just a natural commander, but even I feel like jumping to attention.

  Madelyn, who I gotta say is growing on me, says, “Remember your manners, Ruth. You interrupted me.” Her voice is casual. Tinged with disappointment. “While you were praying, I was down at the target range.”

  The sound of the rifle in the small room is eardrum-shattering. There’s a flash and a fleeting afterimage of a bright point of fire and then Massey falls. His eye is vacant and bloody and the back of his head, even in the low light of the room, is a mess, slowly pumping blood onto the rug.

  The bore of the rifle is unwavering. “Call off your people and let the boys come with me, and I’ll let you go.”

  “Too late,” Gulch says, and her eyes roll back in her head. Her feet leave the floor. Rising. Jack’s rising with her, in her arms, and now I see that his eyes have rolled back too, showing only whites. “The All-Seeing comes …”

  twenty-seven

  EMBER

  Hanging in the air near the boughs of a taller fir. When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall …

  Even in darkness the training kicks in. Biggest weakness of being a flyer: there’s no cover once you’re in the air. Any of the pitchforks down there sees me and has a gun, well, it’s aerial acrobatics and pure speed until I’m out of range. Or out of sight. Best to stay near the cover of the trees.

  Jack, what’s going on? I send. They’re almost all in the church.

  Track the torchbearers in my sights. It would be so easy just to slip my finger onto the cold metal of the trigger and … squeeze.

  And I’ll do it. I will. And not give one damn.

  Tap sends, Something’s happening! Oh shit! Catch a panicked image from his mind of a woman, arms wrapped around Jack, her head turned upward toward the ceiling. Eyes rolled back in her skull. And Jack, his mouth open in a painful O of surprise or alarm. His eyes white.

  Can feel an invisible wind tugging at me, pulling me down toward the church. The air, so cold, has become electric, full of energy, and when I blink I get tracers and afterimages of lightning in the darkness of my eyelid cinema. It’s as if there’s an electrical storm emanating from the center of the church.

  Tap, what’s going on? Screaming now, silently, and I can feel that I’ve bitten the inside of my mouth. I realize my nose streams with blood—again?—and I feel a strong pull on my body, tugging on my pelvis, my gut. My center of gravity.

  Like the earth has gained mass, becoming denser. Shrinking. A collapsing star. More gravity. Pulling me.

  A massive CRACK and something’s happening with the structure of the church. The roof hitches with a great groaning of timbers and avalanches of snow falling away, revealing the roofing tiles that now flutter and rip as if the building itself was pregnant with a tornado.

  There’s another crack and a boom. Knocked back by the percussive wave, losing my grip on the M14 and wheeling head over heels away, away from the tree and the church and the howling and screams I now hear from the pitchfork- and torch-bearing villagers below.

  Right myself in the air. The roof opens wide like the maw of some creature, jagged wood splinters for teeth, and bodies rise up, into my line of vision, and I can see that it’s Jack and the woman, locked in a painful embrace. But then there’s Tap and a larger man floating up to join them. The specks of people let the
pitchforks and torches fall, and they’re rising as well.

  The Conformity. It’s here and calling us to join it.

  I can’t resist the pull.

  twenty-eight

  JACK

  I am one with it. The darkness and the light.

  When I was little and my foster parents would take me swimming at the community pool, I’d dive to the bottom of the deep end, my breath expanding within me, and sit there as long as I could, beneath the water, until I had to rise or die. And I’d feel an expansion, then. I feel it now.

  I begin to see with many eyes, breathe through many mouths. I am nothing. We are all.

  And behind the tectonic movements of our joined bodies, beyond the stressing of our minds, the entity comes like ink in water. It infests my mind. It controls my body.

  More. Gather more, it whispers, and our mouths move in time with the words.

  We search, eyes roving. Our separate flesh joining as one. Moving.

  Such a puny thing below us. There. On the earth, looking up. It doesn’t have the spark. It doesn’t have the flame burning within and means nothing to us. It offers no power. But it moves. It may try to thwart us.

  More. Gather more to our flesh, the darkness whispers.

  There’s a little of the boy that is me left. The part of me that hides at the bottom of pools and never wants to rise. That part of me sees Madelyn below, looking up, holding her rifle. Sighting, peering into the scope. And the other part of me, the part joined with Gulch and the others and the horrible thing, recognizes the danger. She’s sighting down Gulch. Our tether. Our leash to whatever lies in Maryland. All of our mouths bellow “NO!” in a chorus, as if we were still in the church.

  And then there’s a small sound, so very small, like the cracking of a twig, and the small flash of light and a puff of gun smoke and we’re tumbling—I am tumbling.

  When I come to, the woman named Madelyn stands in front of me in the snow, holding her rifle, the wreckage of the church behind her. She’s bleeding from her scalp, and the blood makes long, weeping tracks on her weathered face. Something has caught on fire, and it’s spreading quickly through the ruins of the building. The light hurts my eyes. But there’s warmth.

  She lifts her weapon, gesturing in the deep drift of snow. “That was a tricky shot, boy, but I managed it. Good thing you didn’t hit the church on your way down.”

  I’m sore but well enough to stand. When I do, I can see the moaning tracks of the fallen, some still prone, some sitting upright, some standing, stunned, and toddling about like refugees from some war-torn country. Which they are.

  We are.

  The woman smiles, a sad smile but warm enough, slings her rifle over her shoulder by the strap, and tugs off her gloves. She brushes my hair from my face and pulls back my eyelid and peers at me. Turns my head back and forth like I’m some dog she’s inspecting. Then she pats my cheek. “I’m just a veterinarian, but you’ll be fine. Help me with the others. And after …” she says slowly, “you can take me to your friend.”

  We’re lucky only two people died. The Gulch woman and Massey, both with perfect head shots. Massey’s body burned up with the fire, but Gulch’s fell with all of ours. Some of the locals drag it away in the snow. For burial maybe. Looks like their fervor has died with Gulch. They have a hard time meeting my gaze. Or Madelyn’s.

  Ember is here. She twisted her ankle pretty good in the fall but can walk well enough. Tap looks unharmed other than some scratches and contusions. “Hit every goddamn branch in that tree on the way down,” he says, but his grin spans most of his face as he says it. He looks at Madelyn, who’s kneeling by one of Gulch’s Saved, and says, “You’re a regular Annie Oakley, ma’am. Thanks.”

  “Annie Oakley?” she says, and looks at me. “Tell this one to keep his mouth shut. I don’t like the looks of him.”

  Tap’s jaw unhinges and drops. Maybe he’s met his match.

  Ember tugs me away when we get a chance. The church roars with flames and the sky in the east lightens, but the clouds are thick and snow fills the air, lashing down, hissing as it comes close to the church fire.

  She grabs my coat and tugs me into her body.

  “The cavalry requires a kiss,” she says, eyes bright with mirth. Happiness is a relief. A pressure valve.

  Her lips are warm, and I lose myself in her for a while.

  This is a joining I can get into.

  The townspeople of McCall come out of their houses and help with the injured and stand around to watch the church burn. We stand with them for a while, mute, enjoying the warmth and watching the building collapse in on itself with great discharges of sparks and cinders curling and twisting in the frigid air. Then Madelyn sets us to work with the injured. After rigging stretchers from bedsheets and hastily gathered lawn implements—rakes, hoes, brooms—we move those who have no one else to take care of them into one of the nearby houses, and again Tap and I are set to gathering firewood. I’m guessing that before the world had electricity, most of humanity’s time was spent looking for firewood, chopping firewood, or wishing they had firewood.

  Madelyn shows us how to clean and bandage the wounded while she takes care of the larger injuries, setting bones, removing glass and splinters, doing what she can for burns. It begins to snow again, and the candlelight grows inside the still air of the stranger’s home we’ve invaded. A mousy man in lumberjack clothes, he tries to make everyone comfortable, wringing hands, gathering blankets and extra clothes. His name is Herman, I think, and this is the most people he’s ever had in his house. He actually seems pretty stoked about it. Like it’s a dinner party. He keeps offering us his homemade limoncello, which is sweet but leaves a burning in my stomach.

  It’s long after dark before we’re through, and Ember, looking exhausted, tugs me away to find a soft place to lie down and share the warmth of our bodies.

  In the morning, one man has a high fever so Madelyn, being the only medical person on hand, tends him, forcing him to drink water and pumping him full of ibuprofen until the fever drops. He’s one of the ones who fell and didn’t quite miss the shattered corpse of the church building. He lost a sizable amount of blood—more than I thought the human body could hold—and now he doesn’t look so good. I’ve seen people die—more than I ever need to again—and it freaks me out. The duality of the human body. On the one hand, it’s so damned tough, it can take so much abuse and pain heaped upon it, falling from a height, extremes of heat and cold, being pushed to its limits. But on the other hand, the human body is weak. Every sharp thing wants to poke holes in it.

  But soon the man is sleeping soundly. Looks like Madelyn knows how to deal with a broken body, whether it’s an animal’s or a human’s.

  No one notices when Madelyn pulls on my arm and says, “Come on. I need to get some more supplies before I can help your friend.”

  We follow her through the snow. It only takes a few minutes to reach the clinic. Madelyn takes a large key ring from her bulky jacket and unlocks one of the doors and leads us inside. It’s a pediatrician’s office. We stand in the cold room, somewhat dazed. Ember presses against me, soft and hard all at once, and Tap notices and his face gives a little bitter twist, but then it goes numb and expressionless. Maybe he’s dealing with his jealousy now. Maybe he’s growing up.

  Maybe we all are.

  Soon Madelyn returns with an overstuffed backpack. “It’s no hospital, but most clinics keep things on hand in case of emergency. I grabbed what I think I’ll need. And I don’t think Dr. Willamette will mind.” She looks at us all huddled together, our breath frosting in the air. “And he’s a pediatrician, right? You’re kids.”

  Silence.

  “Well, you’re young, then.”

  “Let me ask you something,” Tap says, and strangely, his voice isn’t challenging or bitter or mocking. Just curious. “Why did you help us?”

  She looks at him, emotions churning under the calm exterior of her face. Then she says, “Because you can fly. By
yourself.” She swallows. “Not a big ball of you in that thing—”

  “The Conformity.”

  “That’s what you’re calling it, and I guess that sounds about right.” She shakes her head. “But you flew. I thought I was losing my mind. But then I saw Gulch’s followers escorting her to the library. And I knew she’d do something terrible if she found out what I knew.” She’s quiet for a little while, thinking. “And she did, didn’t she? I had to kill her. And her man.”

  “She called the Conformity,” I say. “If you hadn’t—”

  Madelyn laughs. “Don’t try to comfort me. I don’t feel one bit of guilt about plugging her in the eye. Hell, I wanted to shoot that self-righteous bitch before the shit hit the fan. The world was kind enough to provide me a reason to do it.”

  It feels good to laugh. But eventually, it sinks in that we’re laughing about death and our laughter fades. Madelyn shrugs, trudges to the door, and opens it, and we all file out into the snow-wreathed parking lot in the gray half-light of an overcast, snowy day. Our earlier tracks have already become soft and indistinguishable from everything else.

  “So, how’s this gonna work? I don’t know how to fly.”

  “It’s not something you learn, really. It’s something you are,” Ember says.

  “Well, I ain’t it. So?”

  “I guess I’ll have to carry you. Piggyback,” I say.

  Madelyn looks dubious. “You can’t weigh but a buck fifty. The chubby one can carry me,” she says, and chucks her head at Tap.

  “My name’s Tap, lady. Tee, ay, pee. Got it? And I’m not chubby.”

  “Who gives their kid a verb for a name?”

  Tap points. “His name’s Jack!”

  “Touché, kid. Touché. I think we’ll get along just fine. But someone better strap me to the boy. I’m not gonna just hold on to him for dear life. We’ve got some leashes and ropes in my clinic.”

  After we’ve literally tied her to Tap’s back, he says, “I’m gonna have to get used to this. There’s a big weight differential here.”