by Will Hill
Out of the corner of my eye I see Luke frown. He’s seventeen, a month or so older than me – at least, as far as anyone knows for sure – and has spent every day of his life inside The Base. Father John tells us every single Sunday morning that only good people, the very best people who are loyal and Faithful and True are allowed to serve in the Legion, because The Lord does not make mistakes and it is blatant Heresy to suggest otherwise. But I’m not sure Luke qualifies.
Not remotely sure.
When we were both twelve, I caught him hurting an opossum with a knife behind the maintenance sheds, hurting it so badly that Amos had to put the poor thing out of its misery with his rifle. Luke got in trouble for what he’d done – Father John reminds us over and over that even the least of The Lord’s creatures deserves our respect, with the obvious exception of Outsiders – and I don’t think he has ever forgiven me for telling on him. I sometimes catch him looking at me in a way I really don’t like.
“Servants Of The Serpent attacked one of our Brothers!” he shouts. “Jumped him and bloodied him and ran him halfway across the county! We should go down to Layfield first thing in the morning and show them just what The Lord’s vengeance looks like!”
A low murmur travels through the crowd. Most of the voices I can make out disagree with Luke’s suggestion, but not all of them.
Nowhere close to all of them.
“That is what you would do, Luke?” asks Father John. His voice has dropped to a low rumble but its tone is almost friendly, and I shiver as the crowd falls instantly silent once more.
“Yes, Father,” says Luke, his eyes shining brightly. “I would. I will, if you give the order.”
“You would obey my order?”
“Of course, Father,” says Luke.
“Without question?”
“Yes, Father.”
“Yet when I commend Brother Amos for turning the other cheek, you call instead for vengeance?” asks Father John, his voice steadily rising. “In front of your Brothers and Sisters, in this place that we have built together, you presume to know the mind of The Lord better than I? You would be so arrogant?”
Luke winces, but he doesn’t look away from the face of The Prophet.
“Do you doubt me, Luke?”
Luke doesn’t respond. The Prophet steps forward to the edge of the porch, his face pale, his eyes clear.
“I asked you a question, Luke,” he says, his voice like crashing boulders, the volume rising and rising. “I asked you a question and IN THE LORD’S MOST HOLY NAME YOU WILL ANSWER ME OR YOU WILL STARE AT THE INSIDE OF A BOX UNTIL THE FINAL BATTLE BEGINS!”
Father John’s voice is so loud it’s almost other-worldly; it booms and rolls and slams into your ears like thunder. Luke recoils, fear rising in his eyes, as several of my Brothers and Sisters take a step back from the ferocity of The Prophet’s sudden fury.
“ANSWER!” roars Father John.
Luke swallows hard. “No, Father,” he says, his voice barely more than a whisper. “I do not doubt you. I’m sorry.”
“Do you admit your arrogance?” asks Father John. His voice has returned to its normal volume, just as quickly and suddenly as it exploded into a bellowing roar.
Luke drops his eyes to the tarmac of the yard. “Yes, Father.”
“Do you understand that questioning the will of The Lord is Heresy?”
“Yes, Father.”
Father John nods. “Do not let this happen again, Luke,” he says. “The Lord is far less forgiving than I am.”
Luke doesn’t say a word. He just stares at the ground, his face ashen.
“Men and women of The Lord’s Legion,” says Father John, turning his gaze to the rest of us. “My Family, who I love most on this cursed, sinful planet. You are Faithful and you are True, and your resilience in the face of Heresy humbles me each and every day. I thank The Lord for having brought us together, for His wisdom and His benevolence and His shining perfect example. Brothers and Sisters, we have known for many years that the final days are upon us, and The Lord has seen fit to remind us that time is growing short. Those of us who are blessed to walk the True Path will soon find ourselves in battle against those who serve The Serpent, and when that time comes, the vengeance of The Lord will indeed be a sight to behold. It will be a sight to behold, Brothers and Sisters, a wonderful and terrible sight. But the moment of that glorious final reckoning will not be chosen by mortal man, not by me and not by anybody here. The moment will be chosen by The Lord Himself. Do you doubt me?”
A deafening chorus of “NO!” rings out, but Luke’s lips don’t move a millimetre. I know because I’m watching him.
Father John smiles. “The Lord is Good,” he says. “Julia, attend to Amos’s wounds and have Becky draw him a bath. Centurions, please gather in the Big House and wait for me there. Nate, make sure the supplies are unloaded and my personal items are brought to my study. The rest of you may carry on.”
A low murmur of chatter begins to fill the yard as the crowd begins to disperse. I see Julia head for the house behind the Chapel that she shares with Becky, where they keep the medical supplies, and I see Bear and Horizon and the others make for the Big House. On the porch, Father John stays absolutely still, and the voice in the back of my head whispers to me.
This isn’t finished.
I grimace, because I’m looking at Father John and he’s staring at Luke with narrowed eyes and I know the voice is right.
“Luke?” says The Prophet.
Everyone stops dead. Luke, who had been making his way towards the pickup truck, turns back towards the Big House.
“Yes, Father?” he says.
“Join me in the Chapel,” says Father John. “I would pray with you.”
Luke lowers his head again and trudges away in the direction of the Chapel. He knows exactly what awaits him inside, and everyone else knows it too. My Brothers and Sisters quickly scatter in every direction, as though all suddenly gripped by the urgent need to be somewhere else.
Amos lets Becky take him by the hand and lead him away as Nate drops the pickup’s tailgate and starts sorting through bags and boxes. I walk over as he lifts down a case of tinned tomatoes, the muscles in his arms gleaming in the rapidly fading light.
“Need a hand?” I ask.
He gives me a wide smile and I welcome the familiar simultaneous sensations of my stomach turning to water and my skin bursting into flames. “I’m good,” he says. “You carry on.”
I nod, but I don’t do as he suggests. Instead, I stand beside him as he sets the tomatoes aside and reaches into the truck’s bed for the next box.
“Luke didn’t look very happy,” I say.
Nate shrugs. “He’s a man of strong Faith,” he says. “Or a boy, maybe. Could be that a little instruction on how to channel it might do him good, but spiritual matters aren’t my department.”
“Everything is a spiritual matter,” I say, quoting one of Father John’s favourite phrases. “Every single thing we do is of concern to The Lord.”
“You’ll get no argument from me,” says Nate. “You really want to help?”
More than anything.
“Sure.”
“Here then,” he says, and he pulls down two boxes wrapped in blue-and-red tape. “Take these on up to the Big House.”
I take them from him. They’re really heavy – almost too heavy for me to carry, but there’s not even the tiniest chance I’m going to admit that to Nate.
“You got them?” he asks, as though he can read my mind.
“No problem.”
“You’re sure?”
“Didn’t I just say no problem?”
He smiles at me again and my insides fizz and the heat in my face intensifies to something very close to the temperature of the sun.
“All right then,” he says. “I appreciate the assist.”
“You’re welcome,” I say, and turn towards the Big House, holding the heavy boxes as tightly as I can. As I stagger across the yard, eac
h step more tiring than the last, I glance down at the shipping labels and see the name that all of Father John’s personal items arrive addressed to.
James Carmel.
“Did that seem strange to you?” asks Doctor Hernandez. He’s sat forward in his chair and he’s filled four pages of one of his notebooks while I’ve been talking. “The name on the labels?”
I nod.
“At the time?” he asks. “Or now, after everything that happened later?”
I consider his question for a moment. “At the time, I guess. Everyone understood the reason for it, but…yeah. It seemed strange. It’s not like The Base was hidden away.”
“Do you know what was in those boxes?”
“No.”
He scribbles new lines into his notebook. I wait patiently, and I don’t say anything, but I really don’t like him writing about me while I’m sitting six feet away. It feels like he’s talking behind my back. When he’s finished, he puts his pen down and gives me an encouraging smile.
“We’ve still got twenty minutes left in this session,” he says. “Are you—”
“I’m fine.”
Luke has belt marks across his shoulders for about a week.
Nobody is surprised by their presence, or by the fact that he makes absolutely no attempt to hide them. He wears them like badges of honour as they gradually turn blue then purple then black, striding around The Base in vests or nothing at all from the waist up, making completely sure that everyone sees the evidence of his penance.
When Friday comes around, Amos is all fired up to do the supply run into Layfield.
“Ain’t nobody gets the jump on me twice,” he tells anybody willing to listen. “I’ll be ready for ’em this time. See if I ain’t ready.”
But, as it turns out, his readiness – or lack of it – isn’t put to the test, because Father John announces that there are to be no exceptions to the ban on going Outside until further notice. Amos’s disappointment is clearly visible, but he doesn’t say a word – he would no more speak against Father John than he would criticize The Lord Himself. This stoical acceptance earns him credit with the majority of our Brothers and Sisters, who sympathize with his disappointment at not being able to carry out a task that benefits his whole Family. They take it as evidence – as if any more were needed – of the depth of Amos’s Faith and devotion to his Brothers and Sisters.
I don’t agree.
I suspect – I’m sure – that a significant amount of Amos’s disappointment comes from the simple truth that – despite endless claims to the contrary – he likes going Outside, and actively looks forward to driving the pickup through the Front Gate on Friday mornings. I’ve never spoken my suspicions out loud, not even to Nate or Honey, because they are technically Heresy. The First Proclamation makes it clear that the Earthbound Realm is divided into the Holy domain of The Lord’s Legion and the Outside; those who walk the True Path and the Servants Of The Serpent. There are no grey areas, no in-betweens. But if I’m right about Amos, and I’m pretty sure I am, then I don’t really blame him. Because – and this is definitely Heresy – I miss Outside too.
When I was little, before The Purge, we used to go Outside all the time. Only we didn’t call it Outside then; we called it Town, or we called it Layfield, which was – and still is – its actual name.
Layfield, Texas. Established 1895. Population 2,147.
Father Patrick, whose name I’m not supposed to think, let alone ever dream of saying out loud, used to lead three cars full of my Brothers and Sisters into Town every morning apart from Sundays. I always rode in the back of the second car with Lizzie and Benjamin, who were my two best friends in the whole world until they were Gone. Lizzie’s mom would park outside the law office where she worked as a receptionist and before she went inside she would give each of us a kiss on the forehead and tell us to be good. We always promised her that we would.
For the next three hours or so we would walk back and forth along Layfield’s main street, handing out fliers that invited people to Hear The Word Of The Lord and gratefully accepting any donations people were kind enough to make. Sometimes we sold the things we made during the long, hot afternoons at The Base, after Lizzie’s mom used her lunch break to drive the three of us home: dreamcatchers twisted together from twigs and ribbon, dried flowers pressed into silver photo frames, handwritten Psalms illustrated with every imaginable colour of felt-tip pen.
Plenty of people ignored us, especially the men and women who worked and lived in Town and saw us every day, and occasionally someone would say something mean, but most of the time people were nice. The residents of Layfield were – and still are, I have no doubt – God-fearing folk, in their own way, and were generally respectful of our Faith, even though it differed from theirs. After The Purge, when Father John announced that it wasn’t safe to go Outside any more, I cried myself to sleep, and I know for certain that I wasn’t the only one. The staff at the law firm made Lizzie’s mom a cake and told her they were going to miss her after she handed in her notice.
It wasn’t much of a surprise to anyone who was paying attention that she and Lizzie were Gone two weeks later.
The Prophet told us that even though the townspeople might seem nice and kind and friendly, it was a favourite strategy of The Serpent to send wolves in sheep’s clothing amongst the True servants of The Lord, to better exploit their good nature.
I wonder if any of the men who attacked Amos last Friday were the same ones who used to press dollar bills into my hand or tell me how pretty my dress was.
I’m sure Father John would tell me they were.
With the supply run cancelled, Friday is a lot less exciting than usual.
One of the most important rules of The Lord’s Legion is that the storerooms must always – always – contain enough food to last us all three months, in case the Servants Of The Serpent ever lay siege to The Base and try to starve us out. Nobody is going to go hungry if Amos doesn’t go into Town for a few weeks, but under normal circumstances, Friday is about more than the practicalities of survival.
Alongside the essentials like fuel and flour and tinned fruit, Amos almost always brings a few bags of treats – loaves of bread, or cookies, or doughnuts, or brightly-wrapped candy – and every month or so he fills a couple of sacks with clothes from the thrift store on the outskirts of Layfield. They tend to be full of oil-stained boots and jeans and shirts, all of which have seen much better days, but anything new is always exciting.
It’s safe to assume that Father John doesn’t officially approve of this practice – even though supplying your Brothers and Sisters with a chocolate bar or an apple Danish doesn’t feature in any of the Proclamations and isn’t the subject of any specific rule – but also that he is perfectly well aware that allowing his Family occasional treats only makes them love him even more.
And the men and women of The Lord’s Legion do love Father John. They really, really love him.
Nobody knows very much about his life before The Lord told him to come to the desert. Most of the men and women who were part of the Legion when he first arrived left during The Purge, and although they said a great many things – vicious, Heretical things – about him and his life in those last, frantic days before they packed their things and left The Base for ever, they had already been shown to be liars whose hearts were False, and nobody listened to them.
Those who stayed, who resisted the seductions of the Servants Of The Serpent and remained True, have known Father John for the best part of eight years now, and are generally more devoted to him than to themselves. The most Faithful of my Brothers and Sisters consider The Prophet’s life before he was Called irrelevant, and would no more publically speculate about it than they would douse themselves in petrol and light a match.
Nevertheless, there is gossip, although always infrequent and always whispered. I’ve heard it said that Father John was a musician before he came to The Base, in Los Angeles or maybe San Francisco; that he was a
travelling preacher who dedicated his life to the search for the True Path and was finally rewarded for his endless Faith; that he was a drunk – or possibly even a criminal – who was brought low by The Serpent before being Saved. Once I was old enough to understand that adults will say things in the presence of children that they won’t say around other adults and started keeping my ears open, I heard all these stories and dozens of others, and reached a simple, undeniable conclusion.
Nobody knows who Father John was before he became Father John.
He just is, and that’s all that matters.
After we find out that Amos isn’t going into town I wander back across the yard. I’m supposed to be working in the gardens again today, but I’m not in any hurry to get started, so I slow my pace as I walk through the centre of the only home I’ve ever known.
The Base – as it has always been called, since long before The Purge – is made up of more than two dozen buildings, including the Chapel, which is a slightly understated name for a church capable of seating two hundred people; the Big House, where Father John lives with his wives and their children; two neat squares of L-shaped houses; two long rows of wooden barracks; Legionnaire’s Hall; the kitchen and the storerooms; and a low cluster of outbuildings that range from little more than sheds to towering structures the size of barns.
Over on the far side of the yard, I see Nate strolling towards the gardens and break into a jog to catch him up. The voice in the back of my head tells me I’m pathetic for literally chasing him across the yard, but I tell it to shut up, because I’m not doing anything wrong and I don’t care what it thinks.
The truth is this: nothing has ever happened between me and Nate, and I know it never will.
I’ve always known that, ever since he arrived, not least because it’s less than a year now until I marry Father John. I’m not stupid. But at the same time, how I feel about Nate is always jumbled up, like a jigsaw puzzle with no edge pieces. He only ever looks at me like I’m a little sister – not like some of my other older Brothers – and I’m sad about that but glad too, most of the time at least. He’s never snuck in to see me after lights out and I know he never would, even though I sometimes lie awake until the dawn starts to creep into the eastern sky, tingling with guilt and hoping I’m wrong.