After the Fire

by Will Hill

  “A man has been delivered into our midst,” says Father John. His voice soars and rolls on the gentle breeze, full of thundering bass and effortless conviction. “It remains to be seen whether he has the potential to be a True Brother of The Lord’s Legion or should be cast out as a Servant Of The Serpent. It remains to be seen, and the truth shall not be revealed by anyone gathered here. Therefore, this man may stay the night inside our walls, while each and every one of us prays on this matter. Come the morning, I have no doubt The Lord will have made His wishes known. The Lord is Good.”

  “The Lord is Good,” repeats every single person in the yard, myself included.

  Father John nods at Nate, then turns to Horizon. “There’s an empty bed in Building Twelve. Give him a blanket and make sure he gets something to eat.”

  “Yes, Father,” says Horizon.

  The Prophet nods, then strides back towards the Big House without another word. Nate surveys the crowd with a smile on his face, one that – to me, at least – looks more than a little uneasy.

  “You heard Father John,” says Horizon. “Who will show this man—”

  “I will,” I say. “I’ll take him to Building Twelve.”

  Horizon smiles at me, and nods. Nate raises an eyebrow in my direction as I feel Alice’s glare scorch the back of my neck.

  “All right then,” says Horizon. “Nate, Moonbeam will show you where to put your belongings. The long building east of the Chapel is Legionnaire’s Hall. Join us there in thirty minutes for lunch.”

  The crowd begins to disperse, muttering excitedly to each other. I’m not surprised; it’s been more than two years since someone joined the Legion by any means other than being born. Nate swings his bag over his shoulder and walks across to me, a wide smile on his face.

  “Moonbeam,” he says. “That’s a pretty name.”

  Oh Lord, let me die. Just let me Ascend now, because nothing is ever going to be better than this moment.

  “Thanks,” I manage, and all of a sudden I’m incredibly aware that my voice is ridiculous, high and wavering and screechy like a cat’s, and I can’t understand why nobody has told me before now and I’m genuinely considering never speaking ever again when the voice in the back of my head – which sounds like it’s grinning – tells me to calm down. I take a deep breath, and point north. “It’s this way.”

  “Lead on,” he says. “It’s got a hot tub, right?”

  I frown at him. “It’s a wooden box,” I say. “It’s got a bed. Maybe some shelves.”

  He laughs, and my insides turn to lava. “You and me are going to be friends,” he says. “I can already tell.”

  “When did Nate Childress arrive at the Legion compound?” asks Doctor Hernandez.

  I grimace. “I don’t like that word.”

  “Compound?”

  I nod.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “I won’t use it any more.”

  “Thank you,” I say.

  He writes something in one of his notebooks. “So when did Nate arrive?”

  “Two summers ago.”

  He makes another note, then sits back in his chair and smiles at me. “Why did you tell me that, Moonbeam?”

  “I thought it didn’t matter what I told you?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he says. “I just wondered if it’s a happy memory?”

  I consider his question. Everything is tainted by what happened later, my memories blackened and twisted and spoiled, but I try to remember how I felt the day Nate arrived, how I really felt, and how pleased I was when Father John announced that he would be allowed to stay.

  “Yes,” I say eventually. “It’s a happy memory.”

  “Why?” he asks.

  “Because Nate was my friend.”

  We sit in silence for a long while. He looks at me, a half-smile on his face, and I have no idea whether I told him a story he wanted to hear, whether that’s going to be good enough – for now at least. Father John is ranting and raving in my head, cursing me for saying anything at all to an Outsider, to a psychiatrist of all people, and Doctor Hernandez’s gaze is steady and his smile looks genuine and I’m finding it really hard to get a read on him, which I guess is deliberate on his part but is really frustrating. Eventually, after what feels like hours of a silence that is not comfortable but not completely uncomfortable either, he looks at his watch.

  “It’s a little early, but I think I’d like to end this session here,” he says. “As long as that’s all right with you?”

  I try not to let the relief that surges through me show on my face. “It’s all right with me,” I say.

  “Before we finish, there’s something I need to ask you,” he says. “Can you tell me where you lived inside the com…inside the Legion property?”

  “Why?”

  “We recovered a number of personal possessions from the buildings after the fire was extinguished,” he says. “We want to return as many of them as possible.”

  My heart thumps in my chest. “What did you find?”

  “Are you thinking about something specific?”

  “No,” I lie.

  “So can you tell me where you lived?”

  “Building Nine,” I say. “It was the square building in the south-west corner. My room was the one at the western end, nearest the fence.”

  Doctor Hernandez nods, and makes a note. When he looks back up his smile has returned. “I’m pleased with our progress,” he says. “I think it’s been a great start, and I think you should be very proud of how you engaged this morning, and that you were able to ask questions and answer them. That’s going to be a very important part of this process as we move forward. How do you feel about that?”

  “I don’t feel anything,” I say, which is the truth.

  “I understand,” he says, and I’m sure he thinks he does, even though there’s no way he really can. “Where possible, I’d like these sessions to last the full hour, but I don’t think we need to worry about that today. I am going to ask you to join me every morning, however. How does that sound?”

  “Do I have a choice?” I ask.

  He smiles. “Of course you do,” he says. “But I think routine is going to be very important, and…what?”

  I’m smiling. I can’t help it.

  “Nothing,” I say.

  He tilts his head slightly to one side. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Okay,” he says, although it’s obvious he doesn’t believe me. “Like I said, I think routine is going to be very important in terms of making progress, and I know we both want to get you out of here as soon as possible.”

  Amen to that.

  I nod.

  “Great,” he says. “Is there anything else you want to ask me before we finish up?”

  I think for a second or two, and realize there is. “Are you talking to my Brothers and Sisters as well?”

  “I’m personally working with you and two other survivors,” he says. “My colleagues are working with the other sixteen.”

  “Who?” I ask.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Who are you talking to apart from me?”

  “I’m afraid that’s confidential,” he says. “Although the other session I’m going to ask you to take part in should make it pretty easy for you to find out.”

  I frown. “What other session?”

  “You and I will meet at ten each morning, after you’ve had breakfast,” says Doctor Hernandez. “Your lunch is set for twelve thirty. Afterwards, I’m going to ask you to participate in something called supervised social interaction, or SSI.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a type of group therapy,” he says. “It allows me and my colleagues to monitor the interactions of people who have survived traumatic experiences, and it creates a space for those interactions to develop organically in a controlled environment.”

  I stare at him. There were a lot of words I didn’t understand in what he just said. “So it
’ll be me and you and the rest of your colleagues?”

  He smiles, and shakes his head. “Not exactly.”

  At precisely twelve thirty, Nurse Harrow appears with my lunch. Today it’s meatloaf and mashed potatoes smothered in a bright red sauce so sweet it tastes like caramel, but I’m really hungry so I sit at the desk and eat it while I think about Doctor Hernandez.

  I don’t trust him. Even though some eager, desperate part of me wants to, I can’t trust him. I guess that almost goes without saying, although not because he’s an Outsider – even though that’s still the first thought that enters my mind when I think about him. The reason I can’t trust him is because – right now – I don’t really know what he wants.

  I want to believe that he has no agenda apart from helping me get better so I can leave this place, but I can’t quite let myself. So many people are dead – sixty-seven people, if the list of survivors the man read to me in hospital was accurate – and I know things – I did things – that either Doctor Hernandez or the other people he mentioned are going to want me to talk about. And those are things I can never tell anyone.

  Sixty-seven people, whispers the voice in the back of my head. All dead.

  A lump leaps into my throat.

  But eighteen are still alive, continues the voice. Nineteen, including you. That has to count for something.

  I squeeze my eyes shut because I can’t think about this right now. About any of this. Doctor Hernandez’s face appears, floating in the darkness beside me, and I’m surprised but I force myself to focus on it, on him, until the lump in my throat recedes and my head clears and I eventually feel something close to okay again.

  Two things surprised me as the session in Interview Room 1 progressed. Firstly, that I found myself wanting to tell Doctor Hernandez things; and secondly, that it felt like it actually might be okay if I did. I’m aware of the idea of psychiatry, even though Father John made it very clear after The Purge that all methods of healing other than prayer are instruments of The Serpent. My mom talked about it every now and then, even though she wasn’t supposed to, during some of the rare moments when she actually spoke to me about my dad. Apparently he talked to someone every week until they moved to The Base, and although my mom called the person he talked to a therapist, I’m pretty sure it’s the same thing. Mom told me that a therapist’s job is to put people at ease, to get them to open up and talk about things that are hard, or painful, or both.

  INTERROGATING THEM! screams Father John. CLAWING INTO THEIR SOULS, RIPPING AND TEARING! VIOLATING! DAMNING THEM TO HELL!

  His voice, booming and echoing through my skull, sends a shiver up my spine, even though I know it isn’t real. I silently scream at him to shut up, because I want to believe that Doctor Hernandez was telling the truth when he told me that he isn’t my enemy, that he genuinely means me no harm. I really want to believe him. I just can’t.

  Not yet.

  I finish eating and lie down on my bed. Through the small window, deliberately set too high up the wall for anyone to reach it, I can see a narrow rectangle of sky. I think back to the skies at The Base, the vast empty blue of the days, so bright you could barely look at it, and the infinite darkness of the nights, when the stars reached all the way to the ground and the Heavens were illuminated by a trillion points of glowing light.

  Tears rise in the corners of my eyes and spill down my cheeks and the quieter voice in the back of my head whispers that I have to be strong. And I know it’s right but knowing doesn’t make the tears stop, because being strong doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to miss my Brothers and Sisters and the sky and the sun and the desert. I can do both, because nothing is ever only good and nothing is ever only bad. Everything is somewhere in the middle.

  When I hear the already familiar sound of a lock turning, I sit up and look at the clock. The glowing numbers tell me that it’s 1.55. My door swings open and Nurse Harrow asks me if Doctor Hernandez told me about SSI. I nod my head, and she tells me it’s time.

  I get up and follow her down a long corridor, past door after identical door, until we reach one with a sign that says Group Therapy on the wall next to it. Nurse Harrow unlocks it and stands aside and, for seconds that stretch on and on, I don’t move. I just stand in the grey corridor, listening.

  I can hear voices inside the room, but they don’t sound like they belong to adults; they sound like the high, hectic voices of children.

  Then I recognize one, and another, and another, and my heart surges in my chest and I run past the smiling Nurse Harrow and through the door and I have just long enough to see the faces of my younger Brothers and Sisters before Luke appears in front of me, demanding to know what I’ve been telling the Outsiders.

  The lie comes automatically. “Nothing,” I say. “I haven’t told them a thing.”

  “You better not have,” says Luke. “You better be keeping your mouth shut.”

  I look at him. He looks as angry as I’ve ever seen him, which is saying something – his skin flushed, his eyes blazing, his hands balled at his sides. Behind him I can see Honey and Lucy and Rainbow and Jeremiah and all the others standing near the back wall of the room, which is much bigger than the interview room where I talk to Doctor Hernandez and full of chairs and tables and boxes of toys and games. They’re staring at me and they have glorious smiles on their faces and my heart is swollen with joy and relief, but the voice in the back of my head is warning me to be careful.

  Very careful.

  “I said I haven’t told them anything,” I say. “Back off, Luke.”

  He grabs my upper arm and squeezes. His knuckles turn white with effort and it really hurts, but I refuse to let the pain show on my face and I keep my eyes locked on his.

  “Let her go, Luke,” says Honey. “You’ve got no right to question anyone. Nobody put you in charge.”

  Luke spins towards her. “You shut up!” he shouts. “You ought to be in Hell right now for what you did, so just shut your damn mouth! Nobody wants to hear your Heresy!”

  “You might well be right,” says Honey. “But I’m not in Hell. I’m right here. So why don’t you just let her go, Luke? You’re not impressing anybody.”

  “They should never have let you out of that box, you little whore,” spits Luke. “They should have let you die in there.”

  My stomach lurches but Honey just stares at Luke, her eyes clear, her skin pale. She’s only fourteen, but she’s the bravest person I know. Much braver than me.

  “That’s enough, Luke,” I say, forcing calm I don’t feel into my voice. “I haven’t said anything. Just calm down.”

  He turns back to face me, and I see – so horribly clear now – the churning madness in his eyes that I didn’t recognize until it was far too late. “The Lord is testing us,” he says, his voice rising and trembling. “He’s listening to every word we say. He’s in this room with us now.”

  “I believe you,” I tell him. “Can you let go of my arm, please? I’d like to hug our Brothers and Sisters.”

  He digs his fingers into my flesh, hard, then finally releases his grip. I step back away from him, then turn and stride across the room and sweep Honey into my arms. As the others come running, I whisper into her ear, so quietly that nobody else can hear me.

  “I know you must have questions,” I say. “About the fire. Just remember what the first ‘S’ stands for.”

  I let her go. She meets my eyes and nods as the rest of our Brothers and Sisters crash into us, almost piling on top of each other as they hug me with their little arms and tell me they’re pleased to see me because they thought I had Ascended with the others and they’re really glad I didn’t. I see the thick purple and black ridges on Lucy’s face and I feel tears spill from my eyes for the second time today. Not because I gave her the bruises, although I might as well have done, but because this – a group of frightened children locked inside a building full of strangers – is not anything good, is not anything True, is not anything that should have been allowed
to happen.

  It should never, ever have come to this.

  “What have they been asking you?” asks Aurora, one of Alice’s daughters. My head fills with an image of blood soaking into the desert dirt and I’m suddenly aware – truly aware, although I guess I already knew – that she and her sister Winter are orphans now.

  Jesus.

  They’re six years old and five years old and they’re orphans.

  Jesus.

  “Nothing,” I say. I prise myself out of dozens of small grips and stand up. “Honestly. I was in hospital until two days ago.”

  Aurora points at the bandages wrapped around my hand. “Did you get burned?”

  I nod.

  “Does it hurt?” she asks.

  I give her my bravest smile. “It’s not too bad,” I lie. “But being in hospital meant I didn’t talk to anybody here until yesterday morning. What have they been asking you?”

  “About my life,” says Aurora. “What we used to do every day, what we ate. That kind of thing.”

  “Is it Doctor Hernandez you’re talking to?” I ask.

  She shakes her head. “Doctor Kelly. She’s nice, for an Outsider. She keeps telling me to draw things.”

  “What things?” asks Luke. I glance round, and see a frown creasing his forehead.

  “She said it didn’t matter,” says Aurora. “Whatever came into my mind.”

  “So what did you draw?” I ask.

  “A unicorn.”

  I smile. “Anything else?”

  “I drew Father John,” she says. “I drew him on a golden horse, trampling the Servants Of The Serpent.”

  Luke breaks into a wide smile as mine fades. “What did the Outsider say to that?” he asks.

  “She didn’t say anything,” says Aurora. “She just put it in a folder and asked me about schooling.”

  “Good girl,” says Luke. “You tell them nothing. You stay on the True Path, no matter what she says. The Lord is Good.”

  “The Lord is Good,” says Aurora, her eyes shining. Most of the others – although not all of them – echo her, and Luke stares at me until I mutter the words too.