by J O'Keith
It took us close to a week to land on Samosir. Even though we were dropped nearby to the island, our inability to control our raft or lack of GPS technology meant we kept crashing our raft onto the wrong island. Luckily, the A.P.D. had given Thomas training for such a scenario, and with merely a paper map and a compass he got us to our final location.
Telling you about my time on the island is the most difficult part of my story. This is because how I experienced my time there is so different to how I look back on things now.
We knew we had reached the islands because, well, lets just say we had a system whereby the first people to get there made it clear that it was Samosir. Just in case we find ourselves in that situation again, as unlikely as that may be, I don’t want to give away our most important secrets.
Unlike Faial Island, Samosir had been untouched by volcanic destruction and was beautiful as far as the eye can see. The moment we stepped foot on that island I knew that the long journey that had begun when I was a young girl down in those tunnels had finally come to an end, this would be my new home, our new home.
To have lost so many loved ones along the way was never part of the plan, and although I knew they were looking over me from a far happier place, what I would have given to have even one of them alongside me on that island. There is something to be said for having someone around you who has known you your entire life, they can advise and guide you, help you avoid traps and pitfalls that you yourself cannot see.
Thomas and I spent the majority of that week on the raft in silence. It gave me a lot of time to think about my past, which I had always done. But now, for the first time, I was thinking long and hard about my long term future. We were about to begin a new life, and at that point I was certain that Thomas was going to be my life partner, my husband, the father of my children. He was a great man, a resourceful man, without whom I’d have died a long time ago.
But.
And when a woman goes down the pathway of ‘but x or y or z’, it almost becomes irrelevant what her line of reasoning is or how rational her argument is, her heart has already relented.
At that point though, I didn’t know that, not at all.
There was a good chance that I was in the ‘even if you were the last Christian on Earth’ scenario and I could see myself growing to care deeply for this man.
What was wrong with him? The scar that cut across his forehead was a real problem for me. And not in a superficial way that made me less attracted to him, my strange upbringing that saw me wield a gun from a young age meant that in some weird way I actually found it attractive. But that scar came to represent everything I had lost, my increasing bitterness at being unwittingly forced into choosing between his life and Jude’s.
I just went back and re-read what I wrote about Thomas right at the start, and I make him sound like a ruffian, perhaps even a pervert. Yet since he saved me from boarding that ship, you can see that he has been nothing but chivalrous. Well, read on to learn how my foolishness skewered my reasoning into thinking that despite all he’d done for me he was dangerous and had unruly intentions towards me.
We followed the many signs that led to our meeting point on Samosir. There was no-one there of course, just in case the A.P.D. found the island and followed us there. But after camping there for a night a man named Jack came to interview us and check us for any tracking devices or cameras.
Jack was different to any other Christian I had met, either in the tunnels or on Samosir. Despite our relentless Christian positivity, we all gave off a battle-weariness, a justified sense of paranoia that came from our lack of a shared past and the troubles we had endured. Yes, our faith united us on that island, but there is only so much you can connect with a community that has been brought together in such extreme circumstances and has no communal history.
Thomas could immediately tell that I was drawn to this stranger, it was from that moment I felt him withdraw from me. Again, I can only see this with hindsight and it almost breaks my heart when I think of how different things could have been if I my emotional intelligence was superior back then. Why couldn’t I have considered that Thomas too must have thought along the lines I did on the raft, that he was forced into his position as much as I was? Or more importantly, that it was Thomas who had risked his life to ensure that I escaped alongside side him and Jude, despite the fact I was a complete stranger.
And as I look back on my time on the island, on the hours and hours Jack would spend asking about my history, bringing me exotic flowers, saving the best fruit for me and all those other gestures of kindness, I think I can finally see why I fell for him so quickly.
The people I had known, including my parents, always had a priority that was greater than myself. I don’t mean God of course, but ensuring the survival of our religion and people. With Thomas it was the same too. From the moment we landed on Samosir, he made it his job to map out the entire island and make sure there were no traps or A.P.D. agents waiting for us. He also correctly guessed that the A.P.D. would eventually send drones to the island and found the best spots on the island for us to hide from them as well as setting up a network which allowed us to quickly spread news of their arrival without alerting any of the drones.
Jack was a lot more laid back, he’d argued that the drones would never appear, yet when they did, he still managed to convince us all that surviving was no longer enough and that we had to start building a new Christian world for ourselves. When Thomas was alone with me he sounded like the leader I knew he was, but when he spoke to the group he always lost his nerve and sense of directness.
Despite being proven right by the drones’ arrival, his suggestion that we begin searching the nearby islands for weapons was met with scepticism, particularly after Jack said that such an idea would play into the A.P.D’s hands. Thomas stormed off, I tried to follow him but Jack stopped me:
“Let him be, all he’ll do is convince that you two need to save the world, he could get you killed and that’d just break my little heart.”
“But he was right about the drones, just like he’s been right about everything since I met him. If it wasn’t for him, we’d all be dead.”
“He got lucky Mary, you see, I know Thomas’ type. The guy is a soldier, in times of war he’s the first person I would turn to. He’s smart, resourceful and fiercely loyal. But we didn’t come to this island to fight, we came here to set up a Christian community.”
“And if we’d built that Church that Thomas stopped us from making, the drones could’ve found it and that’d be that.”
“Tell me something Mary, if the drones keep coming to this island and find nothing, what’ll happen next?”
“Nothing, I guess.”
“Exactly! I’m happy to admit when I’m wrong, and Thomas was right about the drones and not building the Church. But if we stick to the cover positions he mentioned and use his signal system, then they’ll never find us, and if they never find us they’ll eventually disappear as the A.P.D. turn on themselves and allocate their resources elsewhere.
“But if we go off looking for weapons all we’re gonna find is trouble.
“And let me tell you another thing, the fact we didn’t bring a single gun to this island is a blessing in disguise. I guarantee you that if there was even one gun on this island, someone would have killed somebody. Heck, I still think someone will use one of the hunting spears we made to attack one of our fellow Christians.
“I understand why you’re looking shocked, but the fact is every human society, whether Christian, Muslim or Atheist eventually descends into violence and turns on each other. We’ve gotta chance here to build something pure, the likes of which the world has never seen before. Nothing good can come from looking for or finding guns.”
“You might be right, but I can’t let him leave like that. He...”
“Needs you? I need you too.”
I can’t share anymore of that conversation, or any of the other times I spoke to Jack, because even writing
about it makes me cringe with embarrassment. So rather than telling you about how he courted me and worse still, how I fell for it, let me skip to our last day on Samosir.
Thomas immediately suspected that Jack was a double agent working for the A.P.D. And you know what, he was right. On that final day, he had asked me to meet him on the beach that lay on the Western side of the island at the break of dawn.
“I’m only here cos of what you did for me in America.”
“You need to trust me, please, if you really mean that, if you can remember all we went through together on that long, long journey. Please, just trust me.” He said, sporting a beard that hadn’t been cut or trimmed since we landed on the island.
“I can already guess what it is, he told me what you would say.”
“You told him you were coming here? Are you insane?” Thomas looked at me with such intense anger that I took a step backwards.
“Of course, I didn’t know if I was safe here, alone with you.”
“Why?”
“I’ve seen the way you look at me, those lust filled eyes!”
“Oh Mary, you’ve got this all twisted. I could never, and I mean never, look at you like that after you fell under that shaman’s trance.”
“You would say that now, wouldn’t you?”
“Long before I met you Mary, I learned there was one thing that mattered, and that’s our survival. I’ve never had time for all that love crap and never will.
“You see that, it’s a boat I built with Job and Isaac. It took us a while, but we made it to the nearest island. And guess what, from miles away we could see that the A.P.D. have got all sorts of equipment there. But most importantly, just far away enough from here that we cannot see it from the volcano’s peak, they’ve got a humongous aircraft carrier with enough weaponry to sink this island.”
“That’s impossible. If that was the case, surely they’d have taken us out by now?”
“Exactly, unless...”
“They had someone working the inside.”
I turned round and there was Jack, holding a rifle and wearing his A.P.D. uniform. He immediately shot Thomas, with the bullet flying into his temple. There are no words to describe the level of anger and sadness I felt at that precise moment.
But now I want to pray to the Almighty, beg him for his forgiveness because it is crystal clear that if I had not trusted Jack and had listened to Thomas, there is a very good chance that we would still be on that island and we’d be alive. What a horrible mistake I made, and it looks highly unlikely that I will get a chance to make up for my sins, at least in this life anyway.
My father once told me that God created sin so that we might know his mercy, but the truth is if I’d been a little stronger things would be a lot different than they are now.
After shooting Thomas, he told me that he’d killed all the others on the island and that I was now the last one left. I ran with all my might to attack him, but he hit me in the head with the back of his rifle and I passed out.
A few months earlier, he’d asked me to marry him, and I’d said yes. There had been a string of marriages in the lead up to the proposal, partly because as community we had strict rules about kissing before marriage, let alone sex. Jack had been the perfect gentleman in all the time I’d known him, said all the right things. The thing I had liked most about him was his kindness. When Sylvia became the first woman to become pregnant on the island, he spent two days building her a wooden crib. But then he eventually killed her while she was with child.
I didn’t know it was possible to fake kind-heartedness. How can someone pretend to be so good for so long? I guess when you’re Godless and you have a void in your heart where God should be, it is easy to pretend to be anything.
I took his care and love to be a sign from God that it was time to move on from the struggling and fighting and start anew, rebuild Christianity from the ground up. But what God was really showing me was that the Devil can take many forms and guises, and that you have to be constantly vigilant against his wicked and vile ways. Thomas had always understood that, but I found out far too late.
There were some wonderful people on that island, and if I ever escape here I will write some more and tell you about them. But right now, when I think back to my time on Samosir, all that comes to mind is Jack’s betrayal and my own doubting of Thomas. Thank goodness I never kissed or did anything more with Jack, the most I had done was hold his hand.
When I woke up I found myself in this prison. I could not understand why they had let me live, but it would soon become clear. I was to stand trial, as the last Christian on Earth. And wouldn’t you know it, Jack would interrogate me on the stand. I was charged with believing in a false God, a crime punishable by death.
One of the guards would later inform me that the trial was being broadcast around the world, that the A.P.D. had let me live because they wanted to be seen as merciful as well as demonstrating the futility and stupidity of religious beliefs. And what better way to demonstrate my stupidity than having me tried by the man I had agreed to marry and had shared some of my most intimate thoughts with.
After the first few days of interrogation, it became clear their main goal was to make me denounce Christianity. I had assumed that they would mention all those A.P.D. agents I had killed in the tunnels, or the ones Thomas and Jude had taken out before they stole those two planes. But the only thing Jack was interested in talking about was my belief in Christianity and his perceived lack of evidence for the Almighty’s existence. We went in circles for those first two days; a deliberate tactic, to try and make me look ridiculous in front of a global audience.
It was on the third day though, that Jack got personal:
“We spent a lot of time together on Samosir Mary. Now, be completely honest with me, did you trust me? Before I revealed my true identity?”
“Yes.”
“But why, why did you trust a complete stranger?”
“We were under the impression that only our people would be converging on Samosir?”
“What do you mean by ‘our people?’’”
“Religious people; but the vast majority of us were Christians.”
“And once you were on Samosir, did you not split into your various religions, did your ‘utopian’ community not become segregated, did not religion prove to be the barrier it always has been?”
“That’s a lie Jack and you know it, we split into small groups to hide from the drones, the only reason we split initially for religious reasons was so each creed could practice their prayers with someone who shared their beliefs.”
“But you’re admitting that the group was segregated.”
“Tell me Jack, if a large group of atheists went on holiday. Lets say a third of them like swimming, another third want to sit by the beach and the final third want to go mountain climbing, doesn’t it make sense to split them into groups accordingly?”
“It saddens me Mary, it saddens the world watching this trial to here the madness of your logic.
“You see, I’ve lived with your kind, to a greater extent than any member of the A.P.D. before me. And in doing so, I learnt the most disturbing aspect of your religion: everything about Christianity makes sense, if you accept the central premise of your belief in God and the existence of Jesus Christ.
“And as a Christian, your belief functions like a virus; it modifies all the data and knowledge that the natural world and science has provided us until the data begins to reinforce your beliefs.
“So when we’ve spoken about evolution, the big bang theory, the problem of evil and all the other aspects of our world that make it clear that God cannot exist, your beliefs have absorbed all this information and skewered them so that they fit into your Christian state of mind.”
“Can’t the exact same thing be said about atheism? When I talked about miracles, acts of altruism and the beauty of the natural world, you spin all these things to suit your own ideology.
“But the differenc
e is, I’d be happy to live alongside an atheist, build a community that supports...”
“That’s enough, stop trying to be smart and deceive our audience. Two can play that game, you see, audience and judge, not only was I living with their kind, I convinced young Mary here that I loved and asked her to marry me. Guess what? She said yes.”
A mixture of nasty laughter and shocked guffaws filled the packed courtroom.
“That’s because on the island you were so kind and caring, giving to others, you...”
“But it was all an act, a facade, a big joke that you didn’t get until it was too late!”
“It’s a shame that wasn’t your real personality, the world could use more people like the one you pretended me, as good a Christian as I had known.”
“Perhaps that is true, but the fact remains that it was an act. And just as you fell for my act, my deception, you have also fallen under the spell of the cult that is Christianity! Can’t you see? There’s no difference! It’s the same sort of lie, the same sort of falsified heart that has corrupted your mind.
“And you’ve been naive and foolish enough to believe!”
“I still believe in Jesus Christ and the Almighty.”
“Someone get her a doctor, she’s clinically insane!”
“I will always believe in the Almighty, no matter what you say and do to me. I have felt his warmth, his kindness and his forgiveness. There is no love like that of the Almighty and I pity you and every member of society who chooses to shield themselves from the pure.
“I’ve walked through your cities and seen how lonely and empty so many of you are, lacking purpose and direction. That is because you have yet to let God into your heart.”
“This isn’t an infomercial Mary, for you to sell the horse manure your kind have blindly followed for centuries. The fact you trusted me and were willing to marry me is all the evidence the world needs to know that your judgment is severely lacking at best.”