After the Fire

by Will Hill

  THOSE WHO ARE TRUE, WHO STAND IN THE FACE OF EVIL AND RAISE UP THEIR ARMS FOR THE LORD, SHALL ASCEND TO SIT AT HIS RIGHT HAND FOR ALL ETERNITY, to journey the Heavens in the blazing trails of comets, to bask for ever in the glorious Benevolence of The Lord.

  THOSE WHO ARE FALSE, WHOSE FAITH IS A LIE, SHALL BE CAST INTO THE PITS OF HELL AND CRAWL THROUGH FIRE FOR ALL TIME, for they have proven themselves Heretics, unworthy of the favour of The Lord. We shall never speak of them again, nor allow them to enter our minds. They will be Gone, and they will not be mourned.

  ON THE GLORIOUS FINAL DAY, ALL TRUTH WILL BE REVEALED, AND ALL MEN AND WOMEN WILL PROVE THE MEASURE OF THEIR FAITH. On that Glorious Final Day, those who are True will leave this dark realm and Ascend into the light. On that Glorious Final Day, those who walk the True Path will rejoice.

  The Lord is Good.

  Nurse Harrow arrives with my breakfast at exactly nine o’clock – it’s oatmeal this morning, with maple syrup and bananas and a plastic cup of bright pink grapefruit juice – and tells me that my session with Doctor Hernandez has been delayed. I ask her why, and she tells me she doesn’t know. I ask her for how long, and she tells me she doesn’t know but that she’ll come and get me when it’s time.

  She doesn’t smile as she leaves. She always smiles.

  I eat my breakfast more slowly than usual, then walk back and forth across my room for a little while because I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do. Doctor Hernandez made such a big deal about routine that I guess it must take something serious to make him change all the schedules.

  Maybe the other sessions are carrying on as normal, whispers the voice in the back of my head. Maybe it’s only yours that has been postponed.

  Anxiety creeps into my chest, and I try my best to push it away. Whatever is going on might have absolutely nothing to do with me.

  Then again, it might. It just might.

  I grimace, and keep pacing. From the door, around the desk towards the curtain hanging next to the toilet, along the short wall beneath the window, past my bed and back to the door, counting in my head as I go. It takes twelve seconds to walk around my room.

  I look at the clock above the door.

  9.48.

  I sit down at my desk and try to draw but nothing happens. Even my usual picture, the one I can literally draw without thinking, won’t come. I cover two sheets of paper with jumbles of thick multicoloured lines, the kind of scribbles a baby would do, then get up and start walking again. I try to lose myself in the laps, forcing myself not to count them, and after what feels like hours, I look at the clock again.

  10.03.

  A few days ago – I’ve no idea how many – I asked Nurse Harrow if I could have a TV in my room, to help fill the hours that stretch out in the afternoons after SSI. She said she would ask but hasn’t mentioned it since, so I guess that isn’t going to be happening. Usually, if I tell her that I want to go outside, she comes and gets me at a particular time and stands guard while I walk around a small tarmac courtyard. There’s no wire on the tops of the walls, because I guess they don’t want the place to look like a prison, but the walls are really high and smooth and there’s nothing in the courtyard except a small bench on one side. Sometimes I go out, but most days I don’t – I draw, and write things down, and think, and walk.

  This is different. This is time that is allocated, that I should be spending doing something, but I’m not. It feels all wrong, like everything has shifted to one side.

  I lie down on my bed and try to go back to sleep. I’m always tired, my bones heavy, my mind thick and sluggish, but I find no peace when I close my eyes; instead, my brain summons up images it knows I don’t want to see.

  Jacob Reynolds on his knees, his jeans soaked through.

  Luke, with the hacksaw in his hand and terrible devotion in his eyes.

  Nate, and my mom, and Father John.

  I open my eyes and check the clock.

  10.11.

  I check it again.

  10.11.

  Again.

  10.12.

  I’ve been staring at the clock for eighty-seven minutes when I hear the lock turn and I sit up as Nurse Harrow pushes my door open.

  She still isn’t smiling.

  “They’re ready for you, Moonbeam,” she says. “If that’s okay?”

  I jump up off the bed. “I’m fine,” I say. “Let’s go.”

  We walk the familiar route down the corridors that leads to Interview Room 1. She knocks on the door before she opens it, and I frown, because she normally just lets me in to wait for Doctor Hernandez and Agent Carlyle. As she steps out of the way, I see the two men are already in their usual chairs behind the desk.

  They both turn their heads as I step into the room, and I instantly know that something is wrong. Agent Carlyle has a smile on his face that is mostly convincing, but Doctor Hernandez’s eyes are red and sunken, as though he hasn’t been to bed, and his face is pale grey.

  I freeze. “What’s going on?” I ask. “What’s happened?”

  “Come on in, Moonbeam,” says Agent Carlyle. “Thank you, nurse.”

  The door thuds shut behind me. I don’t shift my gaze from the two faces in front of me.

  “Take a seat, Moonbeam,” says Doctor Hernandez.

  I don’t move.

  “Take a seat,” he repeats, and a sliver of fear lodges in my heart because it sounds like he’s on the verge of tears.

  I walk very slowly across the room and curl myself into my usual position at the end of the red sofa. “What’s going on?” I ask.

  The two men glance at each other. My stomach twists into a tight knot.

  “Tell me,” I say, the tremor in my voice clearly audible. “Please?”

  Not her. Please don’t let something have happened to her.

  Doctor Hernandez nods. “There’s something you need to know, Moonbeam,” he says. “It’s going to be upsetting for you to hear it, and I’m—”

  “Is it my mom?” I ask.

  “It’s not your mother,” says Doctor Hernandez. “We have no new information on her. I promise.”

  My stomach unclenches, just slightly. I stare at them. “Then what is it?”

  “As I said, it’s something that’s going to be upsetting for you to hear,” says Doctor Hernandez. “My colleagues and I have discussed it, and my – our – belief is that you’re strong enough to handle it. What do you think?”

  I don’t say anything. How am I possibly supposed to answer that?

  “I’m going to take that as a yes,” says Doctor Hernandez. “Okay, Moonbeam. I need you to take a deep breath, and I need you to listen carefully to—”

  “Luke’s dead,” says Agent Carlyle, his eyes fixed on mine. “He died last night. I’m sorry.”

  Doctor Hernandez gives him a furious glance, but Agent Carlyle doesn’t even flinch; he just stares at me, his expression steady. I focus on him as my mind temporarily struggles to form rational thought.

  “I don’t…” I manage. “I just…what happened?”

  “He committed suicide,” says Doctor Hernandez softly. “In his room.”

  “How?” My voice is shaking.

  “The details are—”

  “Tell me what he did,” I say.

  “He bit his wrists open,” says Agent Carlyle. He speaks very slowly. Deliberately. “He was taken to the infirmary, but he’d lost a lot of blood. They weren’t able to revive him.”

  I stare at him. My head swims and my stomach lurches and my skin feels hot and prickly.

  Jesus.

  What I told them yesterday rises into my mind, how I didn’t think anything could be done to help Luke. I’d wanted to be wrong, I really had.

  But I’d known I wasn’t.

  Broken, whispers the voice. That’s what you said he was. Broken.

  A lump appears in my throat. I was scared of Luke, and I hated him for such a long time, but I would never, ever have wished this on him, not this or anything close to it.
My mind races into overdrive, conjuring a picture of Luke in the darkness of his room, tears streaming down his blood-smeared face as he digs his teeth into his own flesh.

  “Can I have a glass of water?” I ask.

  Agent Carlyle sits forward and fills a plastic cup from the jug that sits on the desk. I take it with trembling hands and drink it in one go.

  “I understand this must be extremely difficult,” says Doctor Hernandez. “But you have to… Moonbeam? What is it?”

  I’m not looking at him any more. I’m looking at Agent Carlyle, because his face has changed. The corners of his mouth have turned downwards, and there’s a dark shimmer in his eyes.

  “There’s something you’re not telling me,” I say. “Isn’t there?”

  Doctor Hernandez shakes his head. “I don’t think—”

  “Tell me,” I say. “I need to know.”

  “I don’t think it’s a suitable—”

  “Luke wrote something on the floor before he lost consciousness,” says Agent Carlyle. “Wrote it with his own blood.”

  My head swims. “What did he write?”

  Agent Carlyle grimaces. “I Ascend,” he says. “He wrote I Ascend.”

  Silence fills the room. The two men stare at me, concern shining brightly on their faces, but I’m not really looking at them any more because I’m somewhere else.

  I can smell salt, and fresh paint, and cut grass. I can feel a warm breeze on my face. I can hear her calling my name.

  Stay with me, whispers the voice in the back of my head. Stay right here. You can do this.

  I force myself to meet Doctor Hernandez’s gaze. “Have you told my Brothers and Sisters?”

  “Yes,” he answers. “We had to move a lot of sessions around, but they all know what’s happened. I’m sorry if you—”

  “How did they react?”

  He pauses. “We saw a range of responses.”

  “Like what?”

  “Shock,” he says. “Distress. Grief. Resignation.”

  “Happiness?” I ask.

  He frowns. “In one or two cases,” he says. “That doesn’t surprise you?”

  I shake my head.

  “Why not?”

  “Because lots of them hated him,” I say. “Or were scared of him. Or both. And…”

  Doctor Hernandez narrows his eyes. “And?”

  “Because he’s free.”

  “He’s dead,” says Agent Carlyle.

  I shake my head again. “He Ascended,” I say. “Try and see it from their perspective. Everything that Father John predicted has happened – the End Times, the Final Battle with the Government, the fire and blood and death. All of it. And now they’re being held prisoner by the exact enemy he warned them about, time and time again. So was Luke, but he got away. Some of them will think he’s a hero.”

  Agent Carlyle shakes his head. “That’s bullshit.”

  I wish it was.

  I shrug. “Believe what you want.”

  “They don’t know the details of Luke’s death,” says Doctor Hernandez. “We feel it would be too distressing for them. In all honesty, I had the same concern about telling you.”

  “I didn’t,” says Agent Carlyle. “I knew you could handle it.”

  Doctor Hernandez shoots him a sharp look. “With that in mind, I’d ask you to be very aware of what you say in front of the others. There’s no such thing as too careful in a situation like this.”

  Amen to that.

  “Are you cancelling SSI again this afternoon?” I ask.

  “That’s the current plan.”

  “Don’t.”

  “You don’t think we should?”

  “No,” I say. “If you lock them in their rooms and stop them talking to each other about what happened to Luke, you’re only going to reinforce their belief that they shouldn’t trust anyone from Outside. You’ll be doing Father John’s work for him.”

  “We’ve considered that outcome,” says Doctor Hernandez. “It’s something I’d like to talk to you about, as a matter of fact. It’s partly why we decided to let you know about Luke last.”

  I frown. “Okay.”

  “You’re now the oldest surviving member of The Lord’s Legion,” he says. “And I don’t know whether you are aware of this or not, but your brothers and sisters look up to you. They trust you.”

  “They said that?” I ask.

  “You’re surprised?”

  “I am,” I say. “By the end, a lot of people were keeping their distance. I wouldn’t have thought the children heard many nice things being said about me.”

  “Because of your friendship with Nate?” asks Agent Carlyle.

  I nod. “And because of what happened with my mom. I wasn’t exactly the most popular member of the Legion.”

  “I’m sure that was hard,” says Doctor Hernandez. “Although I would argue it relates directly to what we’re talking about. I would suggest that the isolation you felt in the last months before the fire, the sense of removal that came from being mistrusted and having nobody to talk to, allowed you to look at what was happening inside the Legion with an objectivity that your brothers and sisters, especially the younger ones, have never had.”

  “You’re saying that I understood more than the others?”

  “In a way, yes.”

  “I didn’t know the fire was going to happen though.”

  “Not specifically,” says Doctor Hernandez. “But you had started to consider the possibility of an existence outside the base, outside the Legion itself. You had progressed to the point where you were willing to question everything you had been told by Father John, to question the man himself, even though you were clever enough to do so silently. And I’ll do you one better. I think he knew it.”

  “What?”

  “I think Father John saw you as a threat,” he says. “You said yourself that your mother being banished and your friendship with Nate put a target on your back, and you suspected that pairing you up for combat training with Lucy was a test, a way to see where your loyalties really were. Like asking Nate to be a Centurion.”

  “He never did anything to me,” I say. “If I was such a danger to him, why didn’t he do anything about it?”

  “Maybe he was planning to,” he says. “Maybe he never got the chance.”

  “Because of the fire.”

  Doctor Hernandez nods.

  “I was nobody,” I say. “I was just an average member of the Legion. I’m nothing special.”

  He smiles. “I disagree,” he says. “In the strongest possible terms. You have been through an ordeal that many people would never have been able to recover from, and I know it’s been a struggle. That it’s still a struggle. But you have displayed incredible resilience, and courage, and you will just have to trust me when I tell you that your brothers and sisters believe they can rely on you, and that you will look after them. Rainbow told one of my colleagues that she knows you won’t let anything bad happen to her.”

  My heart swells with pride, and I blink back sudden tears.

  “She said that?” I ask.

  “She did,” says Agent Carlyle. “I saw the tape.”

  I attempt a smile but my insides are churning because I’m trying to hold it together, to not start crying on the red sofa, and it emerges as some kind of grimace that I’m glad I can’t see. “That’s good,” I say, my voice low and choked. “I never knew if…that’s really good.”

  “They knew,” says Doctor Hernandez.

  “I always tried to—”

  “Believe me,” he says. “They knew.”

  I don’t know what to say. I always did my best to look after my younger Brothers and Sisters, to try and show them a little kindness and a little love that didn’t come with Father John’s conditions attached to it, but I honestly never knew if they even noticed.

  I’m really glad they did.

  “I want to ask for your help, Moonbeam,” says Doctor Hernandez. “But I want to be entirely clear about what I m
ean, because we don’t want to manipulate you or your fellow survivors in any way, and we have no intention of telling anybody how they should think or feel.”

  “They’ve all had more than enough of that,” says Agent Carlyle.

  I nod. “So what are you asking me to do?”

  “Look after them,” says Doctor Hernandez. “Your brothers and sisters. Be the person you are, the person they know and trust, and help them get through this. Help them survive. Can you do that?”

  Yes, whispers the voice in the back of my head. You can. And you must. It’s too late for Luke, but you owe the rest of them that much.

  “I’ll try,” I say.

  “Thank you,” he says. “I wouldn’t usually ask someone at this stage of their process to take on such a responsibility, but Luke’s death has made it very clear that this remains an extremely volatile situation. I don’t believe any of your brothers and sisters are at the same level of risk as he was, but—”

  “There’s no such thing as too careful,” I say.

  He nods.

  “So what happens now?” I ask. “Do I go back to my room and wait for SSI?”

  “That’s up to you,” says Doctor Hernandez. “Do you feel like talking this morning? I totally understand if you don’t, but if you do, we’re more than ready to listen.”

  I consider this. When I first arrived in this place, I would have jumped at the chance to go back to my room without having to talk about myself, or the Legion, or anything else. But I’m not sure that’s still how I feel.

  There has been no great epiphany, or at least, not one that I noticed. It’s not like there was a moment when all my fears and doubts were hanging around my neck, dragging me down and filling my dreams with terror, and then another moment when all of that stuff was suddenly gone and everything was light and clear. That stuff isn’t gone, none of it. But if someone asked me and I was somehow compelled to tell the truth, I would have to admit that talking to Doctor Hernandez and Agent Carlyle about my life before the fire has made me feel better. Maybe only a little, and some days even less than that, but better nonetheless. And that isn’t nothing.

  It really isn’t.

  “What were we talking about yesterday?” I ask. “I honestly can’t remember.”

  “About Nate,” says Agent Carlyle. “About when he left.”