by Mandy Hager
Blood of the Lamb Book One: The Crossing
If you haven't already read Book One of the trilogy, here is a plot summary:
On a tiny atoll off the coast of the small Pacific island, Onewēre, Maryam is raised to believe that she and the other Blessed Sisters are special: that when they cross to the Holy City (the rotting cruise ship Star of the Sea) at the onset of puberty they will serve the Lord and His Apostles with willingness and joy. But Maryam is wracked with doubts; alone, it seems, among her peers in questioning the Apostles’ power and control. She finds herself cast in the role of human sacrifice—her blood siphoned from her body to save the lives of the Apostles from the deadly plague, Te Matee Iai. Her realisation that she and her fellow native servers are nothing more than expendable slaves to the white elite forces her to question everything she once held true—her faith, her allegiances, and her desire to serve.
Weakened by blood loss, she tries to escape back to the village where she was born, aided by the very person who received her blood: Joseph, who is as shocked as Maryam by the Apostles’ bloodthirsty deeds. But her father, faithful servant of the Apostles, rejects Maryam, and it is only Joseph's quick thinking that saves her from his violent response. Now gravely ill with Te Matee Iai, Joseph, along with his mother Deborah, convinces Maryam to flee the island, revealing their most precious secret: a boat built by Joseph's late father to aid his family's escape. Maryam, although terrified by the prospect of sailing into the “void” created by the Tribulation that consumed the Earth, reluctantly agrees—but only if Joseph and his mother will accompany her, and only if she can take her best friend Ruth.
She hatches a plan, allowing herself to be recaptured by Joseph's cousin Lazarus, the cruel and unpredictable son of Father Joshua, and is taken back to the Holy City where she is publicly humiliated then bled again, locked up, and left to die. But through her great determination, and the help of her good friends Joseph, Ruth, and blind old Hushai, she and Ruth flee the Holy City in the night and rendezvous with Joseph at the boat. Just as they are about to leave, Lazarus takes Ruth hostage, insisting that they take him, too. With the pursuing villagers nearly upon them, Joseph and Maryam reluctantly agree, and the four set off together—sailing forth into the void…
Blood of the Lamb Book Two: Into the Wilderness
If you haven't already read Book Two of the trilogy, here is a plot summary:
Maryam, Ruth, and Joseph have fled Onewēre, accompanied by Joseph's troublesome cousin, Lazarus. After two hope-filled days at sea they arrive at Marawa Island.
However, all that remains on the island are birds and crumbling buildings. They are horrified to discover a huge mound of human bones inside a ruined temple. Perhaps the Apostle's warnings about the fall-out of the Tribulation were true after all?
Meanwhile, Maryam and Joseph are in the topsy-turvy grips of first love. When Maryam flees a passionate encounter with Joseph he is left confused and stung. He scales the island's volcanic peak, exhausting his few physical reserves, and triggering a recurrence of the deadly plague Te Matee Iai.
With this additional strain the ill will between Maryam and Lazarus reaches explosive proportions. Joseph's health deteriorates at such an alarming rate that the other three decide to sail onward to seek help. But they are struck by a vicious storm and the boat is virtually destroyed. Maryam's arm is broken and Joseph's health declines. They drift for days, starving and in a state of shock. Then the unimaginable happens: Joseph dies.
Soon their boat starts sinking. A foreign naval patrol arrives and begins to tow the stricken craft from their waters. Desperate, the travellers set their own boat alight to force the navy to pluck them from the sea. They are imprisoned in the ship, and taken to be detained.
It looks as though they will never be able to leave the crude detention camp. Lazarus is thrown into a cell and beaten for his association with “natives” but Maryam's fighting spirit is reignited by the unjust conditions. Lazarus, too, seems to alter: confessing past sins and announcing a desire to change.
Then Maryam and Ruth spy the first signs of Te Matee Iai on Lazarus and the nightmare begins again. Maryam discovers that there is a cure for the plague, but detainees have no access to the drugs. Taking desperate measures, Maryam fakes her way into a hospital. She finds the drugs and eventually manages to break back into the camp and administer the pills. Although it looks as if Lazarus is beyond rescue, Maryam's sheer determination and strength pull him through.
Maryam vows that Joseph's life will not have been in vain: that she will return to Onewēre with the drug to denounce the Apostles’ lies and free the people from their deadly hold.
Now read Resurrection, the third book in the trilogy, to find out what happens next in this gripping and powerful series.
Published 2014 by Pyr®, an imprint of Prometheus Books
Resurrection. Copyright © 2014 Mandy Hager. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a website without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Cover design by Jacqueline Nasso Cooke
Grunge Paper: © Nic Taylor/Media Bakery
Hands: © Media Bakery
Inquiries should be addressed to
Pyr
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The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Hager, Mandy.
Resurrection / by Mandy Hager.
pages cm. — (Blood of the lamb ; book 3)
Originally published by Random House New Zealand, 2011.
ISBN 978-1-61614-909-3 (hardback) • ISBN 978-1-61614-910-9 (ebook)
[1. Fundamentalism—Fiction. 2. Islands of the Pacific—Fiction. 3. Science fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.H1229Re 2014
[Fic]—dc23
2014007259
Printed in the United States of America
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Satan's successes are the greatest when he appears with the name of God on his lips.
Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
For modes of faith, let graceless zealots fight;
His can't be wrong whose life is in the right.
Alexander Pope, Essay on Man, Epistle III, 1733
The first time Maryam broke through the darkness that trapped her, she was besieged by pain. The second time, she retched and vomited into a metal bowl. Now, as she dozed away the last of the drug's numbing effects, she dreamed of her victorious return, and of the smile that lit her father's face as he welcomed her home. He had reached his arms out to her, calling her into his embrace, and they stood together beneath a halo of golden light, as if Onewēre's
sun shone down for them alone. Its warmth ebbed deep into her bones, so calming and relaxing that, as she awoke, it took her several minutes to register where she was. Grubby beige curtains separated her from the next-door beds, while overhead the one bare light-bulb—coated with white phosphate dust—circled in a languid breeze that rippled the curtains at the foot of her bed. Of course…the hospital. The other place—the lush green island—was no more than a wishful dream.
Fear knotted her stomach as she reached over and tentatively ran her fingers along the bandage encasing her arm. She could feel the joint of her shoulder, then the padded clump around the point of pain, and finally—praise be!—the long thin line of her lower arm. Still there!
She'd been so scared when Charlie had insisted she return to the hospital for treatment of the infection that was eating into the flesh around the site of her broken bone. Had choked back tears as Charlie's kind wife Veramina explained how the doctors would reset the break with metal pins—but only if the arm was still fit to save. Maryam had gone into the operating theatre so on edge she'd felt the bed shake as she struggled to contain the urge to cry out when they injected a burning potion deep into her vein. Her last rogue thought before the drug took hold was a premonition of her severed arm, abandoned to the scavengers that roamed the rocky tide line in the bay below.
Beyond the curtain another patient shifted and groaned, and someone responded in a soft, soothing voice. Although Maryam didn't understand the words, she recognised the native language of this prison island—this forsaken outpost of the Confederated Territories where she and Ruth and Lazarus were now detained—and she recognised the tone. How she longed for someone by her side who cared like that. Joseph. Memories of his gentle face, of his blue eyes beaming out his love, flooded her thoughts. But Joseph is dead. Four simple words that formed the endless bleak loop inside her head now he was gone.
The curtain at the foot of her bed swept aside and Veramina's plump smiling face came into view. “Ah good.” She bustled over to the bed and placed a cool palm on Maryam's forehead. “It's about time you were awake, my dear. You gave us quite a scare.”
“Scare?”
“You didn't take well to the anaesthetic. We nearly lost you twice. Once in theatre and once while you were coming round.” She dropped her hand down to Maryam's wrist and checked her pulse. “Never mind. All seems well now.”
“What about my arm?”
Veramina handed Maryam a cup of tepid water and two pain-killing tablets. “You're lucky there as well. At first they were all set to amputate, but as they cleaned the wound they changed their minds.” She winked at Maryam and began checking for movement and responses in each of the affected fingers. “For such a little thing you're pretty tough.”
A wave of relief washed over Maryam. She had escaped death yet again, it seemed. How many times could she elude it before her luck ran out? Already she had stared it in the eye more often than she cared to count. Even this most recent escapade—Charlie and Veramina's kind scheme to save her arm—was rife with difficulties that could still dangerously backfire.
Maryam beckoned Veramina in close. “You're sure the doctors don't suspect I'm from the camp?”
The older woman chuckled. “Believe me, honey, they have enough trouble working in these awful conditions without speculating about things like that.” But now she lowered her voice as well. “We'll have to take you back smartly, though. Tonight.”
Maryam felt her eyes grow wide. “So soon?”
“It's not the best, I know, but they've gone and changed my shifts on me and I'm off for the next two days. It's just not safe to leave you here alone. But I'll give you antibiotics to take and try to pop in now and then to check. The rest is up to you. Promise me you'll give yourself at least six weeks to really heal.”
Six whole weeks? Maryam nodded, but impatience nipped at her. Six more weeks trapped within the confines of that stinking camp felt like a life sentence.
Veramina laughed, the sound bursting forth like water from a tidal vent. “Lord love you, girl! You're as grumpy-faced as my old man!” She patted Maryam's cheek, then slipped through the curtain to the next-door bed. “Now Essie,” she boomed, “I told you once already not to bring this raja makan in more sweets…”
As Veramina berated the poor woman, Maryam closed her eyes and concentrated on her breath until the world beyond her curtains faded to a background drone. She had to think, to clear her head completely of the drug. She'd already made the decision to return to Onewēre, but now it looked as if she had six weeks in which to plan her escape. Somehow in that time she must source the tree that cured the plague Te Matee Iai, learn how to extract its life-saving essence, then find a way to flee the camp and cross the huge expanse of sea to get back home. It bordered on impossible, yet she had to try. If she could get the cure back to her people and prove to them it would work, she could expose the lies that allowed Father Joshua and his Apostles of the Lamb to maintain their strict controls.
But, despite her best intentions, she couldn't concentrate. Her arm pulsed in the sticky heat and she felt as drowsy and disconnected as when she'd been overcome by sea-sickness on the boat before it sank. She tried to count the blooms of mould on the curtain hanging at her side, too scared to close her eyes in case images of that awful journey came back to haunt her, as they did most nights. One small anemone-shaped splash of green…two…three…a fourth with spindly trails that bled into the fifth…now six…now eight…Eventually her eyelids drooped.
It was evening before she finally shook off the anaesthetic's pall and woke to find the threadbare nightgown bunched around her waist and clammy with sweat. She sat up gingerly and edged her legs over the side of the bed, swaying as the movement dizzied her brain. She knew this light-headedness, had experienced it when Mother Lilith drained her of her blood. Now she took a few deep breaths before she dropped her feet to the floor. Her arm hung leaden beneath the wad of bandages, and she supported it against her chest with her other hand to ease the throbbing drag.
She shuffled past the other curtained cubicles to the toilets, then stopped to rinse the sweat from her face and run her fingers through her tangled hair. If even this short expedition tired her, how on earth would she find the energy to get back to the camp? Hadn't Veramina said she'd have to go tonight?
As if in answer to her questions, Charlie appeared, pushing a strange chair on wheels. His face lit up when he spotted her.
“G’day, kid! How are you feeling?”
“Fine,” Maryam replied. “I just woke up.” She looked down at the wheeled chair. “Is this for me?”
Charlie motioned for her to sit. “Climb aboard!”
As soon as Maryam was seated, he spun the chair around and wheeled her out into the corridor that linked the jumble of decrepit wooden buildings. The place was virtually deserted, with the few staff on the evening shift run off their feet and barely glancing up as Charlie pushed Maryam past.
“Vera's stashed the pills you need in here,” he murmured as he swung the chair into the treatment room where Maryam had first been assessed two weeks before—the very room from which she'd stolen the pills that saved Lazarus's life. Charlie produced a sling to support her arm, then tucked two boxes of pills right in near her elbow so they'd not be seen. “Take the paracetamol every four hours to help with pain, and you need to take one of the other ones—the antibiotics—three times a day, after each meal, until they're gone.” He caught her gaze. “It's vital that you take them all.”
“I will,” Maryam reassured him, only too aware that the sole reason this kind white man had stuck his neck out to help her was that she reminded him of the daughter he had lost to an infection such as this. She owed Charlie and Veramina's dead daughter much.
Now he crouched down beside her and met her eye to eye. “Okay, kiddo. Here comes the prob: while it was relatively easy sneaking you in here via the hot-water truck, it's too late in the day for that. Besides, everyone up at Cee One knows I've finishe
d for the day, so if I turn up now they'll think something's up. If we didn't have to do this tonight it'd be easier, but with the buggers screwing Vera's shifts we have stuff-all choice.”
Charlie's words were hard to follow, but she understood his meaning well enough. “Is there a way?”
Charlie's forehead wrinkled like a rippled sea. “I thought of sneaking you home to my place, but we live so close to all the other guards I figure it's not worth the risk. The trouble with this god-forsaken island is that everyone knows everything that's going on. The only way I can think to get you back inside the camp undetected is to hide you right in the belly of the beast, so to speak.”
Beast? “What do you mean?”
“There's an unused storeroom tucked right at the back of the administration building. If we can get you into the building tonight, you can hide in there until some time tomorrow when it's safe to bring you out.”
Maryam shook her head. “That's crazy, Charlie. You shouldn't put yourself at any further risk for me. Why don't I just stay here, and if I'm caught I'll take whatever punishment comes?”
“You're a plucky little thing, I'll give you that. But it's not just you who'd be punished. There'd be a witch-hunt and we can't afford my Vera's job being put at risk. Besides, Vera's already signed the papers to discharge you, so there's no going back.” He rubbed his calloused hand over the bristles on his chin, the sound as harsh as grit on stone. “But you have to understand, I can't guarantee what time tomorrow I can get you out. You'll have to hide in there as quiet as a mouse until the time is right.”
Maryam's pulse started throbbing in her arm and she felt sick. “And if they catch me there?”
Charlie reached out and squeezed her good hand. “I dunno, little lady. That's the truth. But I'm guessing the most you'd likely get is a little solitary, where I can keep an eye on you. Worst case, I guess, is Littlejohn could try to deport you—but, trust me, if that looked likely I'd be on the blower to Jo back on the mainland and get her to raise hell. Littlejohn may've black-listed her for now, but that sheila has contacts in all sorts of places and knows how to rock the boat if there's good cause.”