After the Fire

by Will Hill

  The subject. You’re talking about my mother, you asshole.

  I blush at the bad word, even though I’m the only one who heard it. Doctor Hernandez frowns.

  “Are you okay?”

  “When?” I ask.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “When would these other people like to talk to me?”

  “When it’s appropriate,” he says.

  “When will that be?”

  “When you’re ready.”

  “Who decides that?”

  “I do,” he says, “in consultation with my colleagues. I can’t give you an exact schedule, not at this early stage, but for now I’ll make you a promise. After we conclude this session, I’ll ask the other agencies involved in this case for any information they have on your mother and bring you their reply. Does that sound fair?”

  I shrug. I know he wants me to say yes, but I’m not going to.

  Doctor Hernandez looks at me for a long moment, then writes a note in one of his books. There are four of them, all different sizes, as well as three loose pads of paper. I don’t understand how he can possibly need them all.

  “All right,” he says, putting down his pen and smiling at me. “My turn to ask a question. If that’s still okay?”

  Fair’s fair, whispers the voice in the back of my head.

  I shrug again.

  “Okay,” he says. “Great. What’s your name?”

  “Moonbeam,” I say.

  His smile widens. “That’s a beautiful name.”

  I say nothing.

  “Do you have any others?” he asks.

  “Other what?”

  “Names.”

  “Am I supposed to have more than one name?”

  “Most people have at least two.”

  “Some of my Brothers and Sisters had six or seven. I just have one.”

  “Fine,” he says. “That’s fine.”

  I stare at him. He clearly wants me to say something, but I don’t have the slightest idea what.

  “If you’re telling me you only have one name, I believe you,” he says.

  You don’t. Clearly you don’t. Although I don’t know why you think I would lie about my name.

  “Okay,” I say.

  “What about John Parson?” he asks. “What did he call you?”

  “Father John called me Moonbeam.”

  “Did he—”

  I shake my head. “I don’t want to talk about him.”

  “No problem,” he says. He raises his open hands in a stay calm gesture that makes me want to slam his head against the desk. “No problem at all. We don’t need to talk about him, or about anything else that makes you uncomfortable, until you’re ready. Okay?”

  I give him the tiniest of nods.

  He looks relieved. “Great,” he says. “Your turn.”

  “What have you done with my letter?” I ask.

  He frowns. “I’m sorry?”

  “I had a letter in my pocket,” I say. “During the fire. Where is it?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know,” he says. “Was it important?”

  The most important thing in the world.

  I study his face, hoping to see something that suggests he’s lying. I’ve always been pretty good at reading people, especially after what happened to my mom, but all I see on Doctor Hernandez’s face is concern, so I shake my head. “It doesn’t matter.”

  He nods, although he doesn’t seem at all convinced. “Okay,” he says. “Why don’t you ask me something else? That one didn’t really count.”

  “I don’t have any more questions.”

  “None at all?”

  You didn’t answer the ones I had.

  “No.”

  “Why don’t I give you a little information about what’s happening then? You might want to ask me about some of it, and it might make you feel a little more comfortable with your new surroundings.”

  I doubt that very much, but I shrug. “Okay.”

  “Great,” he says. I’m starting to notice he says that a lot. “So this place, this building we’re sitting in, is called the George W. Bush Municipal Center. It’s in Odessa, about fifty miles from where you used to live. Do you know who George W. Bush is?”

  I shake my head.

  “He was President of the United States,” says Doctor Hernandez. “Do you know what that means?”

  “He was the head of the Government.”

  “That’s exactly right,” he says. “George W. Bush was President for eight years, until 2009, and this building was named for him when he left office. This section of the centre, where we are now, is part of something called a Secure Unit. It’s a place where people can be looked after, where they can be safe. Do you know where you were before you were brought here?”

  “Hospital.”

  “Right again,” he says. “You were in Mercy Memorial Hospital, six miles west of here. You were there for four days.”

  My head swims. It feels like I lay on that bed for months.

  Four days? Is that really all it was? Can that be right?

  “I know someone talked to you while you were there,” continues Doctor Hernandez. “I know they asked you questions when you were in no fit state to answer them, and I’m very sorry they did. That shouldn’t have happened. From now on, nobody will ask you anything unless I’m here to make sure you’re okay with it. I promise.”

  I nod, for about the hundredth time. It feels like it isn’t enough, like he must be expecting more of a response, but I don’t know what else to do. I guess I could try to smile, but I don’t think it would be very convincing.

  “You’re not a prisoner here,” he says, “and it’s important that you don’t see yourself as one. I understand there are locks on the doors and that you’re being told what to do and where to go, and it’s perfectly natural for you to find your situation frustrating. But you have to believe me when I tell you that everything is being done with your safety and well-being as the first priority. You’re not in any trouble.”

  I very nearly laugh out loud.

  You have no idea, I think. Absolutely no idea at all.

  “So I can leave?” I ask.

  “There you go,” he says, his smile returning. “You did have another question.”

  I stare at him.

  “The answer is yes,” he says, when he realizes I’m not going to respond to what I’m pretty sure was a joke. “The entire purpose of my being here is to help you get on with your life as quickly as possible.”

  “But I can’t leave now?”

  He frowns. “Well, no,” he says. “Not right this minute.”

  “So how am I not a prisoner?”

  He appears to consider this for a second or two. “It’s more about how you perceive your situation,” he says eventually. “You need to look at this as a process that you and I are going to work through together, and accept that we need certain boundaries in place for that to happen. We need to work in a space where you feel safe, where we can explore some of the things you’ve been through and take positive action to address them. When that process is complete, and I’m satisfied that you’re safe and well and ready, you’ll be free to go.”

  I don’t believe that, not for a second. But I see no point in saying so out loud.

  “When will that be?” I ask.

  “The sooner we get started, the sooner we’ll be done.”

  “Okay.”

  “Great,” says Doctor Hernandez, and opens one of his notebooks. “How old are you, Moonbeam?”

  Fair’s fair.

  “Seventeen,” I say.

  “When’s your birthday?”

  “I’ll be eighteen in November. On the twenty-first.”

  “I’ll send you a card,” he says.

  Another joke. I stare at him again.

  He looks down and scribbles something. I wait. Eventually his eyes return to mine. “Is there anything you would like to talk about in this session?” he asks. “It can be anything, absolutel
y anything at all.”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m not a liar,” I lie.

  “Of course you aren’t,” he says, and makes the stay calm gesture with his hands again. This time I want to snap his wrists, because I think I’m being incredibly calm, given the circumstances. “In which case, why don’t you tell me something? It doesn’t matter what, it doesn’t have to be important, just something about your life.”

  “Like what?” I ask.

  “Completely up to you,” he says. “Whatever comes into your head.”

  I consider this. I know what he wants me to talk about – the same thing the woman in the uniform in the hospital asked me about – but I’m not going to, not with him or anybody else, not ever, because I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in a cell if I can possibly help it.

  But I’m not stupid. Maybe he thinks I am, but I’m not.

  I know he’ll never let me out of here unless I tell him something.

  You need to look at this as a process, whispers the voice in the back of my head.

  I take a deep breath, and start to talk.

  The cloud of dust rising from the dirt road outside the Front Gate of The Base is too small to be an approaching car, but all four Centurions still head towards it, rifles in hand. We don’t get a lot of visitors, and most of the ones we do get are unwelcome.

  There are PRIVATE PROPERTY signs hung along the length of the fence, but that isn’t always enough to put people off. For several years we had trouble every fall, when college freshmen from Midland and Odessa were ordered to steal something from inside The Base and take it back home to their fraternity brothers. I don’t think any of them were ever actually successful in their mission – the Centurions usually ran them off before they reached the fence and sent them stumbling back into the desert, laughing and hollering. But on at least two occasions a drunken, half-naked teenager had to be physically cut down from the coils of barbed wire along the top of the fence. We wrapped blankets around the boys – who were crying and bleeding and white with shock – and Amos drove them into Layfield in the back of the red pickup so they could get help. Eventually, it stopped happening. I guess people got bored of doing the same thing every year. I don’t know.

  I doubt this visitor is anything to be concerned about though, because it’s the middle of the day and whoever is kicking up the cloud of dust is walking right down the middle of the road. The college boys usually came through the desert to the west, from the bend in the highway where Horizon reckoned they parked their cars, and – unsurprisingly – they only ever made the journey at night.

  I walk towards the fence with a gathering crowd of my Brothers and Sisters: Iris, Alice, Luke, Martin, Agavé, and half a dozen others. I get a little flutter of excitement in my stomach as we approach the gate, where the Centurions have stopped and lined up, Horizon slightly in front of the others. Not because I think there’s going to be any trouble, but because this has the potential to be something unusual in a day that has so far been totally unremarkable.

  The Centurions unlocked my bedroom door just after dawn and I ate the same breakfast in Legionnaire’s Hall that I always eat: two grapefruit halves, two hard-boiled eggs – eggs aren’t a vegetable, so I’m not breaking any rules – and a bowl of muesli with raisins. I worked in the vegetable gardens for a few hours, up behind the Big House, and was about to take my tools back to the sheds when Iris noticed the cloud of dust and called for the nearest Centurion.

  I squeeze in between the broad shoulders of Bear and Horizon and peer through the metal bars of the Front Gate and all of a sudden my skin feels really hot, like I’ve been out in the sun for too long.

  Walking down the dirt road is a man. The desert breeze is blowing his long blond hair across his face and his T-shirt looks like it has been sprayed over muscles so pronounced I’m pretty sure I could count them, even from a distance. He’s wearing faded jeans and dusty boots and there’s a duffel bag slung over his shoulder and a smile on his face that makes my knees feel like they’re going to give way beneath me.

  “My word,” breathes Alice. “Lead me not into temptation, Lord.”

  This makes me so suddenly angry that it takes me aback. Alice is twenty, five years older than me, with two daughters of her own, and some childish part of myself that I didn’t know existed until five seconds ago wants to shout “I SAW HIM FIRST!” But of course I don’t, because that would be ridiculous. Instead I just stare, my heart thudding in my chest, as the man stops a decent distance away from the Centurions and their guns and raises his hands in a gesture of peace.

  “Take it easy,” he says. “Easy now. I come in peace.”

  The deep drawl of his voice fills me with the urgent desire to wrench the gate open and sprint down the road and hurl myself against him, even though he’s an Outsider and might well be dangerous and looks a lot older than me and the Third Proclamation makes it really clear that I’m not supposed to think that kind of thing.

  “I reckon we’ll be the judge of that,” says Horizon. His voice is firm, but not completely unfriendly. “What’s your business here?”

  “I’ve got some questions I’ve been asking myself,” says the man. “I heard this might be the place to find the answers.”

  “It might,” says Horizon. “And then again, it might not. What’s your name, friend?”

  “Nate,” says the man. “Nate Childress.”

  “Where you from, Nate Childress?”

  “Lubbock,” replies the man – Nate, he said his name was Nate – and jerks his head back towards the road he just walked down. “Originally, that is. Abilene most recently.”

  “Who told you there might be answers for you here?” asks Horizon.

  “A waitress in the diner down in Layfield,” says Nate. “Bethany, her name was. We talked a little, and she told me this was somewhere I ought to check out.”

  Thank you, Bethany. Thank you so much.

  “That don’t seem likely,” says Horizon. “We don’t have many dealings with the townsfolk.”

  “So she said,” says Nate. “She told me she used to talk to kids from here, back when she was one herself. Said it was a shame when they stopped coming.”

  Horizon nods. The other three Centurions stand silently, having clearly decided to let him do all the talking.

  “All right,” he says. “If you’re looking for answers, there’s a man here you ought to talk to. But I’ll warn you now, while we’re speaking as friends, that if your heart is False, he will see so. There’s no lying to him, and definitely ain’t no deceiving him, so if that’s what you have in mind, you might as well just turn around now and head back the way you came.”

  “Thanks for the warning,” says Nate. “I reckon I’ll take my chances.”

  “So be it then,” says Horizon, and twists open the padlock attached to the Front Gate. “Welcome to the Holy Church of The Lord’s Legion. If you have found the True Path, I hope your stay is long and fruitful. Although that won’t be for me to decide.”

  The rest of us back up as he swings the gate open. Nate walks slowly through it, nodding at my Brothers and Sisters in turn. When he reaches me he smiles and I feel the skin on my face turn as red and hot as the surface of the sun, and I want to say something, something clever and funny and amazing, but my mind is a total blank so I just stare at him as he passes by.

  “I’ll escort you to the Chapel,” says Horizon, handing the padlock to Bear to reattach. “You can wait in there for Father John.”

  Nate nods. “Lead the way.”

  Horizon slings his rifle over his shoulder and he and Nate walk towards the building that stands tall at the centre of The Base. The rest of us fall in behind them until we reach the tarmac of the yard, when Amos peels off and heads for the Big House, glancing back over his shoulder as he goes. Horizon leads Nate up the steps and into the Chapel and shuts the door, leaving the rest of us outside.

  “Oh my,” says Alice, with
a look so full of lust I almost take a step back from it. “Be still my beating heart. If The Prophet doesn’t let him stay, I’m going with him when he leaves.”

  “Watch your tongue, Alice,” says Jacob.

  “Why wouldn’t Father John let him stay?” I ask, ignoring him.

  “Why should he?” asks Luke. “People don’t just wander in here out of the blue. He’s likely a troublemaker.”

  “Hush, Luke,” says Alice. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Luke shrugs. “We’ll see.”

  “You’re right,” says Alice. “We will.”

  At the north end of the yard, Father John emerges onto the porch of the Big House and starts heading our way, Amos close behind him. A hush falls across the gathered crowd as he makes his way down the stairs, his long dark hair fluttering above his shoulders. He wears a grey shirt and dusty blue jeans and his face is stern and serious but he still takes a moment to nod in our direction as he strides towards the Chapel and disappears inside. Amos joins the rest of us, a frown on his weathered face.

  “What did The Prophet say?” asks Luke.

  “Father John don’t explain himself to the likes of me,” says Amos. “He’ll talk to the new fella, then him and The Lord will speak on the matter, and he’ll tell us what’s been decided.”

  “I think we should let him stay,” says Alice.

  “Uh-huh,” says Amos. “I reckon I know what part of you came up with that opinion.”

  Alice narrows her eyes. “Don’t speak to me like that, Amos. There’s no need for it.”

  Amos shrugs, and turns his back on her. The rest of us stand, unmoving and silent, waiting for Father John to deliver The Lord’s judgment on Nate Childress. Minutes tick past as the sun beats down overhead and my Brothers and Sisters and I strain our ears for any hint of what’s happening inside the Chapel.

  Eventually, what seems like hours later, the tall wooden door opens and Father John steps through it, his face impassive and unreadable. Horizon and Nate follow him down the steps and onto the yard and when The Prophet stops and faces the crowd, they do likewise.