Fiction River: How to Save the World

by Fiction River

  “That’s far enough!” Brother Enoch shouted, rifle cradled like an infant in his arms as he stared at the three, strange men through the wire fence. He slipped a mint leaf in his mouth and chewed it slowly. “State your business.”

  Brother Keith’s right hand, Enoch, was a tall, gangly man in his early sixties, his face as pocked and lined as the red clay crusting his work boots. Stone-grey eyes glared at the outsiders over a grey, scraggly beard that clung to his face and chin like Spanish moss. He pursed thin, purpled lips and with two fingers, he motioned the men behind him to hold position as he stepped forward.

  Thirty or so men stood motionless, weapons on their shoulders, fingers twitching against triggers, ready to shoot at Enoch’s command. Soldiers for the Word, Brother Enoch called them. Protectors of the compound and its almost six hundred residents.

  One of the outsiders stepped forward, two others at his back. One squat and chunky, the other tall and thin with very smooth skin.

  Was that a man? Raela gasped, frowning. It couldn’t be a woman, could it? Women weren’t allowed such opportunities. Were they?

  Two wore dark blue uniforms with their array of metal things, strange hats, and glasses that reflected the sun from their eyes. The young man’s clothes were plain and unadorned, like field clothes. He flashed something shiny at Brother Enoch.

  “Good afternoon. I’m Lieutenant Peter Briggs, one of your neighbors from−”

  “I know who you are.” Enoch lifted his rifle. “Just speak your piece and be gone!”

  Lieutenant Briggs, a dark-haired young man with big brown eyes, had a kind face and a pleasant tone. Raela wondered where he’d come from, how far he’d traveled. These outsiders didn’t have horses or powered vehicles that growled and smoked and belched acrid fumes when they moved. Like the ones Brother Keith and Brother Enoch kept covered in the barn. These outsiders were on foot. For apostates, they looked well-fed and healthy. How had they gotten here when Brother Keith said everything was dead and trampled?

  “How did they get here?” Raela whispered to Jorah, her oldest sister.

  Jorah shushed her, wide-set green eyes narrowed, warm brown hair flying free from her veil. Jorah liked to brag that she’d be raptured away any day now.

  “But if our world is dead and only His Chosen are here—”

  “Hush, Raela!” Jorah glared at her. “They’ll beat you for saying such things! It’s sacrilege!”

  “How’d they get here?” Raela insisted. “Brother Keith says the closest apostate city is more than five days walk away. Those who set out for cities marked by The Beast never return.”

  “Taken by demons!” Tabbi giggled, grabbing Raela around the neck. Strands of long black hair peeked out of the dusty blue veil they all had to wear. Tabbi’s pregnant belly swelled, her cotton dress straining to contain it.

  “Hush!” Jorah repeated. “And mind your talk!”

  Sometimes, when the brown smoke lifted, Raela could see glimpses of the husks of old cities across the Mississippi. But only in daylight. At night, the West’s blackness was unbroken, and had been all of Raela’s life.

  If these men came so far to reach Nevaeh, then maybe they were seeking the Word? Or maybe they were sent by Him? If none shall know the appointed hour of His return, how could Brother Enoch just send these outsiders away?

  Maybe the world beyond the gate wasn’t as dangerous as Brother Keith told them? Maybe her missing son was in less danger than she’d imagined?

  “Come on, Enoch, we’re unarmed.” Briggs took another step toward the gate, hands in the air. “We’re not trying to take anything from you. We just want your cooperation, that’s all.” He gestured at the dusty landscape. “Your help to bring our planet back to life. But to do that, we need everyone’s cooperation. This violence has to stop. Brother Keith agreed to listen to our proposal.”

  Brother Enoch’s expression didn’t change. “Sins of the apostates destroyed this planet, not us. Brother Keith doesn’t deal with apostates. You’re trespassing. Leave.”

  Several of Raela’s sisters pressed against her to get a better look, their tangle of blue cotton dresses and white aprons smelling of sweat and dust and heat as they whispered to one another, hands over veil-covered mouths, children in tow. They peered around Raela as if she were the pillar holding them up.

  “Who are they?” Carmi asked, the youngest of her sisters, barely sixteen now. A wisp of a girl, she stood on her tiptoes, long brown hair trailing out her veil as she struggled to see above the cluster of women gathered around the dorm steps. Her once-smooth belly was already taut and round with her first child. Brother Keith’s, she’d bragged, but the sight of it made Raela sick. Carmi asked her why it upset her, but Raela could only shake her head and wipe away the hot tears on her cheeks, apologizing, saying it was just time for her cycle.

  “They want our supplies! Our water!” Ruth cried, a newborn in her arms.

  “Our children!” Sebat whispered shrilly. “So many have already disappeared!” She gripped her own protruding belly. She’d give birth any day now.

  Malikye. Raela cringed.

  He’d gone out with the brothers to forage just after sunset last night. He should’ve been home before sunrise. He was hours overdue. Over the months, several female children had gone missing along with her sisters. Now Malikye. But every time she asked the Elders about it, they told her to mind her place.

  Was that why these outsiders had come?

  Eyes narrowed, Briggs shook his head. “Yesterday, Brother Keith was willing to listen.”

  “He’s changed his mind,” said Brother Enoch, smirking. “Now, leave.”

  “Wait! You can’t just dismiss us like this!” Briggs shouted. He lunged toward the gate, but the other two grabbed hold of his arms and pulled him back.

  “Peter, don’t,” one said in a soft voice. “We’ll find another way.”

  “But Sam,” Briggs snapped through gritted teeth, “this won’t work without everyone involved! Everyone!” He glared at Enoch, who hadn’t moved. “Even them.”

  “Come on, Peter,” said the one called Sam, tugging on his arm. “We’ll find another way.”

  Briggs smashed his face against the fence. “Don’t you give a damn about them?” he shouted at Enoch. “Your children? Your wives? What about their future?”

  Raela stared at Briggs. Such courage and passion! Without fear. He had over thirty rifles trained on him, yet he still stood up to them.

  Enoch smirked at him again, lowering his rifle. “The only future is the Word, heathen. Spreading the Word.”

  “This is hopeless,” Briggs muttered, shaking his head as he glanced around the compound.

  For a moment, his gaze caught Raela’s. And held it.

  She stood tall, meeting his searching gaze with a smile. She didn’t understand his turmoil or what he was fighting for, but there was something so honest and free about him, so pure—and hopeful. Like Mother’s butterfly drawing. Every bone in her body leaned toward his resonance. It was a feeling she’d never felt before, a feeling she never knew existed. And she craved it like bread in her hungry belly.

  The hint of a smile, of some deep recognition, tugged at the corners of his mouth, and then fled before a crushing wave of defeat. His whole body seemed to wilt as he turned away from the gate, toward the other two outsiders. With one last glance at the compound, Lieutenant Briggs and the others headed east, toward the smog-laden horizon.

  Then, like a frayed rope unraveling, the tension in the compound dissipated.

  Brother Enoch’s soldiers broke their line, rifles dropping to their sides as they cheered and pounded each other on the backs.

  This was her chance to slip out and find Malikye.

  Her sisters hurried to look busy. Sebat’s distended belly bumped Carmi as she bent to pick up a broom off the steps. Carmi laid her hand on Sebat’s belly. “I hope it’s a boy,” she whispered.

  Sebat nodded. “Me, too,” she said, smiling. “Maybe a future E
lder?”

  Raela felt a stab of anger. Why not joy over a baby girl? What hope did females in this camp have if even their own gender turned against them?

  “I wish they were all girls,” said Raela, which made most of her sisters frown at her.

  “Why would you wish that?” Jorah cried, shaking her head.

  Raela grinned fiercely. “So we’d outnumber and outlive the men.”

  The women gasped, but fell silent, several sharing a secret smile of agreement with her before returning to their chores.

  Raela lingered on the steps, watching the outsiders disappear into the horizon’s endless, churning heat broken only by handfuls of jagged, grey scrub grass and dead trees.

  The pervasive smell of dust and death was enough to drive anyone mad, only a rare breeze interrupting the constant haze of heat and wasteland once known as the Bible Belt. Raela shaded her eyes with one hand, searching for a glimpse of Malikye’s shaggy, dark hair and lanky, seventeen-year-old body plodding through the dust toward the compound. She’d never known temperatures to fall below eighty (even at night) in all of her thirty-one years. The thermometer’s bright crimson never disappeared.

  Had he succumbed to the heat?

  Brother Enoch walked away from the gate, whistling as he ambled down the stone path in the shadow of the Elders Hall, which set all of Raela’s sisters aflutter as he approached. They smoothed their veils, brushed dust off their dresses, and giggled nervous laughs, hoping to catch his eye. Even old Jorah stood straighter and held her chin high.

  But Raela shuffled back from him, shuddering at a memory of mint leaves and sour breath.

  The women were a sea of nearly identical blue dresses and veils as they flitted around Brother Enoch and the other men who smiled at them, scrutinizing each in a way that unsettled Raela. She moved to the top step as Brother Enoch paused, studying them as if selecting the finest cattle for market. All their dresses were shades of blue, colors chosen by the Elders after another dismal cotton harvest. There were no couples, no husbands in Nevaeh. There was just the Word. And the command to procreate. It was considered a great honor to bear an Elder’s offspring. Fertility and honor were the only currency women had in the compound.

  And that only lasted until a woman turned forty.

  Brother Enoch took Jorah’s hand. She cast a gloating smile at her sisters as she followed him inside the Elder’s Hall that overlooked the entire camp.

  With her sisters distracting the men, Raela knew this was her best chance to slip out of the compound and look for her son. She headed around the dorm, following a path toward the crop fields.

  Running down a row of spindly corn stalks, she slipped through a loose tangle of wired fence just before the soybeans. She’d watched Malikye do this many times. She ducked through the opening and dashed toward the riverbed to the west.

  Her feet pounded the hard ground, puffs of dust rising. Her heart hammered her chest, and she feared hearing a shot ring out or Brother Enoch’s sharp, nasal voice ordering her back. To be beaten.

  She ran hard, not looking back until she reached the raised riverbank and dropped down into softer silt that had once been underwater.

  Breath came in hissing gasps as she crouched there, waiting, red-faced, sweat drenching her veil. Worry and hunger burned in her stomach as she waited for nightfall so she could use the dark as cover as she followed the men’s foraging trails.

  She huddled against a rock, wrapping her arms around her thin frame, remembering the night she’d held Malikye in her arms for the very first time. He’d been such a big baby, and she’d hurt for weeks after having him. Such a head full of thick, brown hair, squished little face making such strange and sweet little grunts, tiny fingers bunched into fists, skin soft as rain and smelling of butter.

  But she’d tried to block out his conception and the horrible rite of bearing the Work into the world, the sweaty stink of grey-haired men grunting and grinding against her thirteen-year-old body at the first sign of Eve’s sin. Of her sisters holding her head, restraining her hands as she wept at the pain and the violation.

  Be a good soldier, Dear Raela, Jorah had sing-songed in her ear while Sebat held her against the bed for Nevaeh’s Elders. We’re saving the world, Sebat had whispered. Giving birth to a new kingdom here on earth.

  Raela winced at the memory.

  At the resonant brush of their rough, calloused hands across her breasts, rubbing her flesh as they rutted their seed over and over into her thirteen-year-old body.

  Even now, she shuddered, feeling it on her skin, like the creep of locusts along her flesh.

  The smell of her own blood, the musty stench of their lust covering her, making her gag as she ached with a hot, burning pain she’d never felt before. Holding herself and rocking under a thin, wet sheet in the darkness when she was finally alone again.

  To bear the Chosen’s offspring. Like a mule dragging a cart to market.

  She and five other young women had soldiered for the Word that night, deemed the ripest of His fruit that season. They expected her to find joy in repopulating this new land of milk and honey. Nevaeh. Heaven backwards. To fool the apostates. It was her purpose, she’d been told. It was her job. The only reason women were allowed breath in their bodies, according to Brother Keith.

  Hundreds of times she’d been brought to the Elder’s Hall to perform her duty. She’d birthed seven children, six of them boys. Malikye the first. Saphir her only daughter. At thirty-one, Raela’s trips to the Hall were dwindling. Even so, she and her sisters had no rights except what the men elected to toss them. No voice unless the men spoke for them.

  It wasn’t until she’d held beautiful, bird-like Saphir in her arms that she’d felt the first pangs of her silence. It was no longer her voice that was silenced; it was now her daughter’s.

  As they grew older, their few rights eroded—along with their looks—and their usefulness to men. After forty, her sisters began to disappear from the compound. Like the children—the girls, always the girls. Raptured away.

  Only the population of old men remained constant in Nevaeh.

  Hours passed. The sun fell out of the sky, turning the world into a muggy bug trap. Raela hadn’t moved from her place beside the river. Only when the night hid her did she scramble out of the riverbed and follow the trail she’d watched Malikye and the others head down for months.

  The moon was merciful tonight, hiding its face as she walked the winding path that angled past the compound, twisting farther away than she’d ever been before, turning east. The world was so quiet and dark in every direction—for miles.

  Was Malikye okay? Was he hurt or frightened? Would he even call for her?

  When he was ten, they took him from her and placed him in the men’s dorms. At first, he came back to Raela’s room at every opportunity, a bright-eyed boy with supple, tanned skin, a mop of sun-bleached hair that curled at his nape, long dark lashes framing intense blue eyes. Like his father’s, Brother Keith. As a boy, he’d been so full of life, grinning and questioning the world, but lately, he’d been quiet and absent.

  She remembered the day she learned about joy when she watched him laugh and clap as they’d sailed paper boats down the Mississippi.

  One more time! Please, Mama, he’d cried.

  And they’d foraged again for sticks and paper, folding and shaping the scraps into a boat with a paper sail that carried it aloft on the currents, filled with Raela’s hopes and Malikye’s dreams as it sailed deep into his imagination.

  She’d give her life to sail paper boats one more time with Malikye.

  Raela walked until her legs ached and her chest burned from inhaling the world’s brown haze. Just as she was ready to turn back, a blue-white light fluttered ahead.

  Her steps quickened over a rise and she struggled over it with tired feet and straining muscles until lights appeared below.

  She gasped when she saw the lights pulsing and flashing in the valley below. Twinkling, blinking, thrumming,
steady and scoping. So many colors and patterns! It made her dizzy.

  A city! Filled with families and stores and hobbies and faiths, according to Mother.

  Brother Keith was either wrong or—she couldn’t give voice to the horrible thought tumbling through her brain, spurred by the twisting in her gut that told her Brother Keith hadn’t been wrong at all. He’d been lying. Like the Elders before him. Lying to keep the compound alive and thriving. At their command.

  An explosion rocked her off her feet. For a moment, she couldn’t hear anything but a string of popping sounds. Voices. And a struggle as smoke drifted like fog around her.

  Shadows moved nearby, casting thin beams of light. A young man was on the ground, two people hunched over him. In the brief flicker of light, Raela caught a glimpse of sun-bleached hair and long, dark lashes hooding intense blue eyes.

  Malikye!

  People walked toward her. She froze, a hand on her veil, her head bowed as she’d been taught.

  “Mama?” Her son’s voice tore through her and her eyes burned with tears.

  “Malikye?” she called, reaching toward him. “That’s my son!”

  “Who’s there?” said the man, flicking on another—brighter—light.

  Raela could only stare. It was Lieutenant Briggs. The outsider at the gate.

  He was only a foot away from her now and she stared into his deep brown eyes. They were much deeper than she’d realized, filled with kindness, something she’d never seen in a man’s eyes before. But it was more than that. It was compassion, empathy—a burning need to help.

  He squinted at her. “You’re from Nevaeh,” he said. “I remember you.”

  She nodded, watching the tall woman with blonde hair. She wore the blue uniform Raela had seen earlier, but no hat, letting her long hair fall free. She stood so tall and proud that it made Raela’s breath catch in her throat.

  Raela nodded. “Enoch wouldn’t let you talk to Brother Keith. It’s not you. No one ever gets inside.” Or out, she thought grimly.