After the Fire

by Will Hill

  “I’m going to assume you got enough barbecue, Luke,” says Father Patrick, a broad smile on his freckled face. “Any chance I can strike Horizon out without any further distractions?”

  “Sure thing, Father,” says Luke, his grin widening even further.

  “Why thank you,” says Father Patrick. “That’s most kind of you.”

  The last of the laughter fades away as he starts his wind-up again. This time nobody burps and nobody makes any other noise and he takes a big step forward and pitches the ball towards Horizon, who moves almost too fast for my eyes to follow.

  Crack.

  The ball launches off the bat like a rocket and soars high into the cloudless sky. About a dozen of my younger Brothers and Sisters leap to their feet and give chase, churning up dust and screaming with excitement as the ball thuds to the ground near the maintenance sheds and skids towards the fence. Horizon holds his pose for a long moment, a huge grin on his face, then tosses the bat nonchalantly to Bear as we cheer and clap and shout his name.

  Father Patrick shakes his head, but the smile on his face is wider than ever. “That’s a monster,” he says. “I thought you’d cleared the fence for a second there.”

  Horizon smiles. “The Lord is Good, Father.”

  There’s a commotion out by the sheds as the ball is located and a wrestling match begins for it. Aja manages to wrap his stubby fingers around it and takes off running, holding the ball above his head as a dozen small, dusty figures give chase. He sprints back towards the yard, laughing uncontrollably, then throws the ball with all his strength. It barely reaches the tarmac, but it takes a kind bounce and rolls right to Horizon’s feet. It thuds against the heel of his boot, but he doesn’t seem to notice. I look up, and see him staring towards the Front Gate.

  “Car,” he says.

  Most of the crowd, me included, get to their feet and look south.

  The Front Gate sounds grand but is really just three planks of wood in a wide Z-shape, with a fence that runs away from it on both sides made up of lengths of chicken wire strung between wooden posts. It’s supposed to keep coyotes and other critters out, but I’ve seen enough of them wandering The Base after dark to know it doesn’t do its job very well.

  Parked on the dirt road beyond the gate, surrounded by low clouds of settling dust, is a white car. As if hearing some unspoken order, everyone starts to walk towards it, Horizon and Bear and Father Patrick at the front.

  Well. Almost everyone starts to walk.

  I glance round as the crowd moves and see John Parson and Amos Andrews standing on their own in front of the Chapel. They’re talking in low voices, and I’m suddenly weirdly sure that I’ll be in trouble if they catch me looking at them, so I turn away. I manage a handful of steps before curiosity gets the better of me and I turn my head towards the Chapel a second time.

  John and Amos are gone. I can’t see them anywhere.

  I frown. It isn’t really any of my business what John and Amos are doing but I don’t know why they aren’t coming with the rest of us and there was something about the looks on their faces as they talked to each other that seemed weird, and I’m about to say something to my mom when the door of the white car opens and a man gets out.

  I instantly don’t like him.

  He’s fat and his face is red and covered in sweat and his nose looks like a rat’s, all pointed and twitchy. He smiles at Father Patrick and the Centurions as they reach the Front Gate.

  “Evening,” he says, then digs into the back pocket of his jeans and pulls out one of the leaflets that me and my Brothers and Sisters hand out every morning in Town, the one that has HAVE YOU HEARD THE GOOD NEWS? printed on the front of it. “I came across this a couple of weeks back, and haven’t been able to get it out of my head since. Decided I ought to talk to the man that wrote it.”

  “I wrote it,” says Father Patrick, “and I’ll be more than happy to discuss its contents with you. What’s your name, friend?”

  “Jacob Reynolds,” says the man. “It’s a pleasure to meet you all.”

  Doctor Hernandez sits back in his chair. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m a little confused.”

  “Me too,” says Agent Carlyle.

  “Okay,” I say. “What’s confusing?”

  “Is that really a happy memory?” asks Doctor Hernandez. “The arrival of Jacob Reynolds?”

  “That day is,” I say. “Everything after Father John took over the Legion is tainted. So that Fourth of July is the last really happy day I could think of.”

  The two men glance at each other.

  “I’m still struggling over here,” says Agent Carlyle. “I kind of feel like we’re missing some context.”

  I suddenly understand what their problem is, and excitement flutters through me as I realize they really don’t know everything about everything.

  “Father John made his move the day after Jacob arrived,” I say.

  “You’re talking about the purge?” asks Doctor Hernandez.

  I nod. “They already knew Jacob,” I say. “Father John and Amos, I mean. I don’t know how, or from where, but it was all planned. It was a set-up. Nobody realized it at the time, but looking back now it’s obvious.”

  “Was Jacob Reynolds welcomed in?” asks Agent Carlyle.

  “Of course,” I say. “Father Patrick welcomed everyone.”

  “What did Father John actually do?” he asks. “The day after, I mean. How did he take control of The Lord’s Legion?”

  “It wasn’t as dramatic as you’re probably thinking,” I say. “There was no fighting, or shooting, or anything like that. Father John got up on the steps of the Chapel and announced that The Lord had spoken to him in the night, had come to him in the darkness and given him a message.”

  “I’m going to go out on a limb and guess it didn’t contain good news for Father Patrick,” says Agent Carlyle.

  I smile. “Right,” I say. “The Lord’s message said that the Legion needed Father John to lead it. He stood up in front of everyone and said that Father Patrick was a Faithful servant of The Lord, a kind and gentle man, but that kind and gentle men didn’t win wars, especially not the Final Battle with The Serpent that we all knew was coming. He asked everyone to search their hearts and stand with him if they believed he was speaking the truth. Guess who were the first two to step forward.”

  “Amos and Jacob,” says Doctor Hernandez.

  I nod. “They walked straight up and stood either side of Father John. They didn’t say anything, not a single word, but—”

  “They were both armed,” says Agent Carlyle softly. “Weren’t they?”

  I nod.

  “Didn’t you say that guns were permitted in Father Patrick’s time?” asks Doctor Hernandez.

  I nod again. “They were,” I say. “But people didn’t carry them on their belts like cowboys. They were in the bedrooms and barracks.”

  “What did the Centurions do?” asks Agent Carlyle.

  “Bear and Angel and Lonestar were the next to stand with Father John,” I say. “Horizon stayed where he was for a few seconds, then he went too.”

  “And where was Father Patrick while all this was happening?”

  “Right there,” I say. I can see the look on his face as the Centurions turned their backs on him and stood with Father John, can see it so clearly. It wasn’t anger, or even disappointment; it looked like grief, like his heart was breaking in his chest.

  “He didn’t do anything?” asks Agent Carlyle.

  I shake my head.

  “Say anything?”

  “Not a word,” I say. “It was already too late for that. A lot of people saw which way the wind was blowing and just went with it, but a good number went to stand beside Father John with smiles on their faces. They truly believed he was what he said he was.”

  “Which was what?” asks Doctor Hernandez.

  “A conduit to The Lord,” I say. “His Holy messenger on Earth.”

  There’s a long silence as th
e two men take this in.

  “How did Father John get people to go along with that?” asks Agent Carlyle after a moment. “How did he convince them to believe him?”

  I CONVINCED THEM OF NOTHING! Father John’s voice thunders through my head. THEY SAW THE TRUTH WITH THEIR OWN EYES! THE LORD DOES NOT MAKE MISTAKES!

  I shrug, as casually as I can. “It’s hard to explain unless you saw it for yourself,” I say. “Everyone loved Father Patrick, including me. I always believed he was a good man, and looking back I believe it more than ever. He was kind, and decent, and he cared more about other people than about himself. He devoted his life to serving The Lord.”

  “And Father John?” asks Doctor Hernandez.

  I think about this for a while before I answer.

  “There were times when he barely seemed like a man at all,” I say. “When he seemed more like a force of nature, wild and unpredictable. What you have to understand is that he had been a devoted member of the Legion for three years before he made his move, and my Brothers and Sisters loved him. He was charming, and clever, and he knew the Bible even better than Father Patrick. Anyone who wanted to speak in the Chapel was allowed to do so, and Father John spoke most often, and that was absolutely fine with everyone, because he was never not worth listening to. He would walk up to the pulpit in his dusty denim shirt with his long hair and green eyes and a gentle smile on his face, and then he would scream and spit and howl and pound the lectern until his knuckles bled. He spoke about The Lord like most people talk about their oldest friends, like the two of them had literally just finished a conversation before he stood up to speak. He screamed about battles, and war, and time growing short, and he talked about the Outsiders, over and over again. He told us that we were all that stood between The Serpent and victory.”

  “Was that in line with Father Patrick’s teachings?” asks Doctor Hernandez.

  “More or less,” I say. “Father Patrick believed in The Book of Revelations, and in Armageddon. It was what led him to found the Legion. He taught us that an end was coming, and that the Faithful needed to be ready for it. But Father John’s vision was more…” I search for the right word. “Extreme.”

  “Didn’t Father Patrick realize what was happening?” asks Agent Carlyle. “If Father John was such a good speaker, and so well loved, and was preaching a more aggressive version of the Legion’s teachings, didn’t he see the potential threat to his authority?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I think maybe some of the others did, because a few people left in the months before The Purge. But by the time Father John made his move it was already him that most people went to if they had questions or doubts, and it was his answers they listened to. He always publicly deferred to Father Patrick, always made himself out to be a loyal Legionnaire.”

  “Was there violence when he took over?” asks Agent Carlyle.

  I shake my head.

  “Nobody went and got their gun and said they weren’t going to let this happen?”

  I shake my head again.

  “What happened to the people who stayed loyal to Father Patrick?” asks Doctor Hernandez. “After Father John replaced him?”

  “Nothing,” I say. “It all happened really fast. There was a lot of shouting, and some pushing and shoving when people were loading up their cars to leave, but nothing more serious than that.”

  “Why was there shouting?”

  I shrug. “Father Patrick begged everyone to stay calm, but some of the people who went were leaving family members behind, so it all got pretty tense. People were crying, and calling each other Heretics and Infidels, and praying, and begging the ones who were going to change their minds.”

  “Father Patrick left then too?” asks Agent Carlyle.

  I nod. “He led the others out.”

  “Did you ever wonder what happened to him?” asks Doctor Hernandez. “And the others?”

  “No,” I say. “It was forbidden to think about them.”

  “What about now?”

  I picture Father Patrick’s earnest, freckled face as people loaded cars and wept and shouted and argued, as everything he had built collapsed around him.

  “I guess I feel sorry for him, if anything,” I say. “He lost the thing that he believed was his life’s work. I don’t think I understood how hard that must have been at the time.”

  “I know he’s been interviewed as part of our investigation,” says Agent Carlyle. “I can probably get an update on what happened after he left The Lord’s Legion, if you want?”

  I shake my head. “It doesn’t matter.”

  He nods. “If you change your mind, let me know.”

  “I will. Thanks.”

  He nods again. “Okay,” he says. “So what about John Parson? What did he do while people were leaving?”

  “He just sat on the porch of the Big House and watched them drive away. He didn’t say a word.”

  “Why do you think that was?” asks Agent Carlyle.

  “Because he knew he’d won.”

  He gives me a tight smile. “Did you figure that out then?”

  “I’m not sure,” I say. “Probably later on.”

  “Pretty sharp.”

  I shrug. “I just pay attention. Most people don’t.”

  “They don’t,” says Agent Carlyle. “They really don’t. Did people talk about the purge after it happened?”

  “Everyone did,” I say. “Father John insisted. The whole Legion gathered in the Chapel the morning after Father Patrick and the others left and talked it through. Everyone was told to say whatever was on their mind, no matter what it was.”

  “And after that?”

  I shake my head. “It was forbidden.”

  “So you never talked to your mother about it?” he asks. “Or to Nate Childress, after he arrived?”

  I stare at him. “What did I say?”

  “Agent Carlyle,” says Doctor Hernandez, his voice low. “Moonbeam was perfectly clear about the things she doesn’t want to talk about today. Please respect her choices.”

  Agent Carlyle doesn’t take his eyes off me, but he nods. “You’re right,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

  Go to Hell.

  “It’s okay,” I say.

  “I’d like to talk a little more about the period before the purge,” says Doctor Hernandez. “If that’s okay with you?”

  “That’s fine,” I say.

  “Under Father Patrick’s leadership, members of The Lord’s Legion were allowed to watch TV,” says Doctor Hernandez, “and listen to the radio and play games and read books and eat whatever they wanted. Is that right?”

  I nod.

  “And after the purge, all that stopped?”

  I nod again.

  “And that didn’t make people reconsider their loyalty to Father John?”

  “It didn’t seem to,” I say. “I can’t say for certain what anyone else was thinking, but Father John told us all that we had become too comfortable, too lazy and indulgent. He told us we needed to be stronger, and most people agreed with him.”

  “Stronger for the final battle?” asks Agent Carlyle.

  “Obviously.”

  “So your mom must have agreed then? Since the two of you were still there?”

  “All right,” says Doctor Hernandez. “That’s enough. It’s not appropriate for you to try and dictate this session, Agent Carlyle. I won’t allow it.”

  He gives me a smile that I’m sure he thinks is supportive, an I’m on your side smile, but I don’t acknowledge it. Anger is bubbling up inside me, because I don’t like people trying to manipulate me, especially when they think I don’t know they’re doing it. I don’t like people thinking I’m stupid.

  “I guess she must have,” I say, my eyes fixed on Agent Carlyle. “Although maybe not, since she left in the end.”

  He narrows his eyes. “Left?” he asks. “Or was banished?”

  The word cuts into me like a knife and I feel myself go very still. “What did you
say?”

  “Three years ago,” says Agent Carlyle, as though he didn’t even hear my question. “On the twenty-second of this month. Does that sound about right?”

  “Agent Carlyle,” says Doctor Hernandez, his voice rising slightly. “I’m not going to tell you again.”

  “You don’t know anything about my mom,” I say. I’m wondering who they’ve talked to, who could have told them about the worst thing – before the fire – that ever happened to me, and I can hear the anger trembling in my voice. “Not a single thing.”

  Agent Carlyle doesn’t respond; he just gives the man sat beside him an extremely pointed look.

  “I’m sorry,” says Doctor Hernandez. “You made it clear that you don’t want to talk about your mother today, and I think that’s an absolutely valid choice.”

  Heat is surging through me. “What if I’ve changed my mind?”

  “This isn’t an appropriate environment for that conversation,” he says.

  “Why?” I ask, and nod in Agent Carlyle’s direction. “Because he’s here?”

  Doctor Hernandez nods. “That’s one reason,” he says. “There are others. The thing you need to remember is that this is a—”

  “Please don’t say process,” I say. “I’ll be happy if I never hear that word again. I’ve been here almost a week now and the only thing I know for sure is that I’m not allowed to leave. So what’s the deal here? Am I a prisoner? Are you going to charge me with a crime?”

  “Hey now,” says Agent Carlyle. “Nobody’s accusing you of anything. Calm down.”

  But I can’t calm down.

  I won’t.

  “Just be straight with me,” I say. “Tell me what I’m doing here, and what’s going to happen. Can’t you do that for me? Please?”