After the Fire

by Will Hill

  I grimace. “Right,” I say. “Then the next part is mostly about Luke.”

  “That’s fine,” says Doctor Hernandez quickly. “You don’t have to—”

  “It’s okay,” I say. “It’s the last story I have to tell about him. I guess it’s sort of fitting.”

  Well, second to last. But I still haven’t decided whether I’m going to tell you the other one.

  “If you’re sure?” he asks. “We can stop at any point, like always.”

  “I’m not sure,” I say. “But I’ll try.”

  It’s been two days since Nate disappeared, and Father John’s Sunday sermon is really, really angry.

  They’re always about the End Times and the Final Battle, and the sacrifices and hardships we will have to endure to be victorious over the Servants Of The Serpent, but this one positively drips with blood. He tells us how the Governments maintain their Satanic power by pulling unborn babies from the bellies of Faithful women and eating them; how they use alcohol and drugs to tear people away from the True Path, then lock them in underground rooms and pump gasoline into their stomachs until they burst. He tells us that these things – and others that are much, much worse – are what will happen to every single one of us if we don’t fear the righteous wrath of The Lord and devote ourselves entirely to His Glory.

  When he is finally finished, by which time most of my Brothers and Sisters are staring at him with ashen faces and most of the children are quietly crying, he tells us that The Lord has given him the joyful news that Nate Childress – the Heretic, the Outsider spy, the lowest Servant Of The Serpent – is dead. There are gasps inside the Chapel, along with a smattering of applause and a few exclamations of gratitude, as Father John smiles benevolently down at us all from the pulpit.

  He smiles.

  And I swear he looks right at me as he does.

  I don’t move a muscle. I stare straight back into eyes I used to be afraid to meet, that I used to believe saw the True Path so clearly.

  I don’t believe that any more.

  And I don’t believe that Nate is dead, not for a single second. I believe – I know – that he got away, that he escaped The Base and disappeared into the world Outside. Which is the one thing Father John can never, ever admit.

  “Now that the ranks of our Legion have been purged and set firmly back on the True Path,” he continues, “I can announce that The Lord has seen fit to reveal the real identity of His new Centurion, a man of undoubted Faith and devotion whose service will be loyal and True. It gives me no small pleasure to name Jacob Reynolds the Fourth Centurion of the Holy Church of The Lord’s Legion. The Lord is Good.”

  “The Lord is Good,” bellow my Brothers and Sisters, as they leap to their feet, clapping and cheering and hollering. Jacob stands up, tears spilling down his permanently flushed cheeks, and bows his head towards the pulpit, where Father John dips his own in reply.

  “Thank you, Father,” he says, his voice cracking. “I will serve the Legion until my last breath.”

  “Do not thank me,” says The Prophet. “Thank The Almighty Lord, for it is Him who has Called you to His service. He does not make mistakes.”

  Jacob clasps his hands together and squeezes his eyes shut as his Brothers and Sisters surge down the aisle and along the pews to hug him and congratulate him and clap him on the back.

  I watch, and feel nothing.

  Not a thing.

  I work in the gardens in the afternoon, hacking shallow trenches in the bone-dry ground that Joe Nelson will fill with seed. Sunday afternoons are usually a time for rest, but the entire Legion is still on punishment for not having seen through Nate before it was too late.

  Across from me, Alice is watering the rows that were planted yesterday. She glances over at me every few minutes with an expression on her face that I like to think is concern, but might just as easily be reproach. Either way, I don’t meet her eye.

  The sun beats down and the hours pass, like they always do. I drink a bottle of water, refill it from the tap behind the Big House, and drink that as well, trying to stay cool but also trying to fill my stomach, which is growling with hunger. I ate one of my slices of bread for breakfast and I’m keeping the other back for dinner, which is so many hours from now that it might as well be next week.

  I lose myself in the monotony of the task, in the steady drumbeat of the hoe’s metal head on the hard ground. At some point my brain shifts into neutral, and for the first time in days, I don’t think about Nate, or my mom, or Luke, or Father John.

  I don’t think about anything at all.

  When the Chapel bell rings to signal the end of the working day, I carry the hoe over to the tap and scrub its metal head until it gleams. Putting tools away dirty is a punishable offence at the best of times; in the poisonous atmosphere that is currently suffocating The Base, it would probably be enough to get me a night or two in a box.

  I head across the yard and towards the supply shed at the end of the row, where the hoe needs to be hung back on exactly the right hook. Alice is following behind me with a half-full sack of seed in her arms, but she makes no effort to close the distance and walk alongside me. It would be nice to believe that she’s too tired to speed up, or just too deep in her own thoughts, but I can’t make myself do so; I know she’s avoiding me. Pretty much everyone is avoiding me, because I was close to Nate and he turned out to be a Heretic, just like my mom.

  Part of me wants to turn around and scream at Alice until she understands that it’s not fair to blame me for what other people did, that it’s not fair for anyone to blame me, including Father John himself. But I don’t.

  Of course I don’t.

  A thud echoes out from somewhere up ahead, loud and heavy enough to rattle the walls and roofs of the ramshackle outbuildings. It’s followed by a strangled scream that cuts off as suddenly as if whoever made that high-pitched noise has had the tongue cut from their mouth – and then me and Alice and everyone else who was trudging towards the sheds are running, our feet kicking up clouds of dust until we reach the big building in the middle of the row, the one where the tractor is kept, and every one of us stops dead.

  On his knees in the middle of the shed is Jacob Reynolds, his eyes wide with terror, his crotch soaking wet. Standing behind him, pressing a hacksaw against the flabby flesh of his throat, is Luke. I barely recognize him: his face is dark crimson, his mouth is working silently – as though he’s talking to himself, or praying, or both – and his eyes are wild and gleaming with fire. He sees us arrive in front of him and pushes the hacksaw deeper even as he takes half a step back. Jacob lets out a gasping sob that sounds like the last breath of a drowning man.

  “Stay back!” bellows Luke, his eyes darting left and right like a cornered animal’s. “I’ll cut his throat, I swear it!”

  “Luke,” says Alice, her voice soft and soothing. “It’s okay, Luke. Everything’s okay. Just put the saw down.”

  I almost laugh out loud, because one look at Luke’s face tells me that rational appeals to his better judgement are not going to work; it tells me that, for the time being, at least, he has completely lost his mind.

  “Shut up,” he growls. “Shut up shut up shut up SHUT UP! It’s not fair, you hear me! IT’S NOT FAIR!”

  “All right, Luke,” says Alice, holding her empty hands up towards him. “Just talk to me. What isn’t fair? You can tell me.”

  Luke’s face crumples as tears spill from his eyes. “I should be the Fourth Centurion,” he says, his voice suddenly little more than a hoarse whisper. “It should be me. Nobody is more Faithful to the Legion than me, nobody more devoted to The Lord. But does The Prophet see it? No. He looks at me and sees nothing, and he picks this fat sack of trash instead.”

  Jacob whimpers, and I silently plead with him to stay quiet. Because I’m staring at Luke and I’m looking for something to make me believe that this is all for show, a bluff of violence that he wouldn’t really carry out. But all I see is conviction, bright and sh
ining.

  All I see is Faith.

  “Father John didn’t appoint Jacob,” says Alice. “The Lord Called him to serve. Or don’t you believe that?”

  “Don’t you question me!” snarls Luke. “Don’t you dare! You know what I’m talking about!”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Luke.” Father John’s voice rumbles like an earthquake as he walks into the shed, shaking the flimsy walls and silencing the small crowd that has gathered. “So why don’t you tell me. Do you doubt the will of The Lord, or do you doubt that I am His messenger? Which is it?”

  Luke’s face pales, but the hacksaw doesn’t move an inch. “Father,” he says, his voice thick with misery. “How could you do this? How could you forsake me?”

  Father John steps slowly through the crowd, his long hair fluttering in the breeze, his gaze steady.

  “The fault here is yours, Luke,” he says. “You have placed your own ambition above the will of The Lord, which proves His wisdom in not choosing you for a Centurion of His Legion. Disappointment is a human weakness, my Brother, as is jealousy. And we are all human, you and I and everyone here, nothing more and nothing less. Your feelings can be understood, and they can even be forgiven, but this is not the way. This is not The Lord’s justice, and this is not the True Path. If you search your heart, search it honestly, you will see that I speak the truth.”

  Luke stares at Father John with eyes full of tears, then lets out a huge, awful sob that shakes his entire body. He removes the hacksaw from Jacob’s throat, takes an uncertain, staggering step backwards, and sinks to his knees with his head lowered.

  Jacob scrambles across the ground on his hands and knees until he reaches The Prophet’s feet. “Thank you, Father,” he gasps. “Oh, thank you. The Lord is Good.”

  Father John looks down at him, and I see disgust flicker across his face. “It is all right, Brother,” he says. “Everything is going to be all right.”

  “I want him put in a box,” splutters Jacob, his face reddening. “I want him locked away until he forgets what daylight looks like.”

  Father John goes very still. “You want?” he hisses. “You are a Centurion of The Lord’s Legion who just pissed himself on his knees and you would tell me of the things you want? Get out of my sight, and pray to The Lord for His mercy. Pray harder than you have ever prayed, that He might forgive this terrible failure.”

  Jacob stares up at The Prophet, his eyes wide with shock. “Father, I—”

  “GO!” roars Father John. “NOW, WHILE YOU CAN STILL WALK!”

  Jacob stumbles to his feet, pushes through the crowd, and staggers out of the shed. Some of my Brothers and Sisters turn to watch him go, but I keep my eyes locked on Father John. His face is like thunder, dark and hard and full of danger.

  “Luke,” he says. “Stand and face me.”

  Luke gets up, his face a mess of tear tracks and bubbling snot. He lets the hacksaw drop from his fingers and stares at the ground.

  “The Lord is Good,” says Father John. “Get yourself cleaned up and wait in the Chapel. You and I will speak on this tonight.”

  Luke raises his head and the grateful adoration on his face makes me want to puke.

  “Thank you, Father,” he whispers. “The Lord is Good.”

  Agent Carlyle and Doctor Hernandez stare silently at me.

  “Luke stayed in the Chapel for two days,” I say. “Father John spent most of the time in there with him. When he finally came out, things sort of went back to normal. But not really. And not for long.”

  “That poor boy,” says Doctor Hernandez quietly.

  I nod.

  “What did Jacob Reynolds do?” asks Agent Carlyle.

  “He tried to pretend like nothing had happened,” I say. “He got on with being a Centurion, marching around The Base and issuing orders and giving out punishments. But everyone knew what Luke had done to him, and nobody forgot.”

  “Do you think that’s why he tried to make an example of you in the last training session?” asks Doctor Hernandez. “To try and regain some of the respect he had lost?”

  I shrug. “Maybe. He was like that before Luke attacked him though.”

  “Like what?”

  “A bully,” I say. “A piece of shit.”

  Doctor Hernandez frowns as Agent Carlyle grins. My face flushes, because I don’t usually call people things like that. Not out loud, at least.

  “Call them like you see them,” says Agent Carlyle.

  I smile at him, and nod.

  “So Father John sided with Luke,” says Doctor Hernandez, casting a quick glance at the man sat beside him. “And he humiliated Jacob, but let him carry on as a Centurion. Why do you think that was?”

  I shrug. “He appointed Nate, and everyone saw that go wrong. He couldn’t afford to have that happen again, so he had to stick with Jacob, even though I’m sure he already regretted choosing him.”

  “You’re saying Father John chose him?” he asks. “As opposed to The Lord?”

  “Father John chose him.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  I nod. “I am.”

  He smiles at me, and makes a quick note in one of his books.

  “You said everything went back to normal after that?” says Agent Carlyle.

  “I said sort of went back to normal,” I reply. “But I guess it didn’t, not really. Things weren’t the same.”

  “In what way?”

  “It was tense,” I say. “People were uneasy. Nobody said anything out loud, because nobody ever did, but you could tell, just by walking around The Base. It seemed like people were looking over their shoulders the whole time. Like they were scared.”

  “Of what?”

  I shrug. “Everything,” I say. “We stayed on double time and punishment rations got extended for another month, even though the Legion was supposedly back on the True Path. The Centurions were on the warpath, hauling people up for stuff that would barely have been noticed before Nate escaped and Luke did what he did to Jacob. And the punishments got worse. A lot worse. People were being beaten and whipped in the yard most days, for barely any reason.”

  “Where was John Parson while all this was happening?” Agent Carlyle asks.

  “Sat on the porch of the Big House,” I say. “Watching. Nobody dared meet his eye, not even Amos.”

  “What about Luke?” asks Doctor Hernandez.

  “He spent almost all his time in the Chapel.”

  “Was that unusual?”

  “People weren’t sure what to make of it,” I say. “He wouldn’t talk to anyone apart from Father John. If you tried, he would just look through you like you weren’t there. He stopped working, despite the double time and the punishments, but nobody said anything and the Centurions just seemed to ignore it.”

  “Do you think they were scared of him?” he asks. “After what happened to Jacob?”

  “Maybe,” I say. “Or maybe they weren’t sure what Father John would do if they tried to put Luke on punishment. Either way, he shut himself away in the Chapel, praying for hours on end, and after a day or two everyone just left him alone.”

  “Do you think this was what caused the behaviours we witnessed in SSI?” asks Doctor Hernandez. “That Luke saw himself as the heir to Father John?”

  “Not being appointed Centurion hurt him,” I say. “It really did. His loyalty to the Legion was real, as was his love for Father John. But I don’t know what would have happened without the fire. I don’t know how he saw his future.”

  “Do you think—”

  “We need to stop,” says Agent Carlyle, and taps his watch. “If you’re going to reinstate SSI and you want Moonbeam to have time to get something to eat before it starts.”

  I look at the clock above the door. It’s showing 12.56.

  “Absolutely,” says Doctor Hernandez. “Moonbeam, are you—”

  “I’m fine,” I say, anticipating his question. “It’ll be fine.”

  There’s a dul
l ache in my stomach because I ate my lunch too quickly but that’s not why I’m last to arrive at SSI.

  When we reached the door, I asked Nurse Harrow if we could stop in the corridor just for a moment. She frowned and asked if I was okay, and I told her I wasn’t, not really, because I didn’t want to lie to her, but when she asked if she could get me anything I shook my head. I just needed a few seconds to gather my thoughts, to try to get my head around this changed situation, and my place in it.

  I know what’s going to be waiting for me inside the Group Therapy room, what Jeremiah and Rainbow and the others are going to want to talk about. Before I go in there, and before I say whatever it is I have to say to do what Agent Carlyle and Doctor Hernandez asked me to do, I take a second to think about Luke. I can’t let myself grieve for him, not now; I need to keep what strength I have left for what I’m about to do. But what happened to him wasn’t fair, and he didn’t deserve it.

  He was seventeen years old, and now he’s dead.

  Like Alice, whispers the voice in the back of my head. And Agavé, and Joe Nelson, and all the others. Everyone is dead.

  Nurse Harrow frowns at me as I shake my head.

  I’m still alive, I tell the voice. And so are Honey and Lucy and Rainbow and the others. I have to help make sure they stay that way.

  I know that asking for my help was a huge display of trust by Agent Carlyle and Doctor Hernandez, and I know they wouldn’t have made the decision lightly. I’m grateful for it, because I have to believe it means they think I’m making decent progress through Doctor Hernandez’s process. He often says nice things to me, and he tells me I’m doing well when he wants me to keep talking, but I never really know whether to believe him.

  This feels more tangible. This feels real.

  But it scares me too.

  What I’ve been given is a chance at penance. It’s my fault that my Brothers and Sisters are waiting for me inside the Group Therapy room instead of at The Base with their families, and I’ll do anything I can to help them. Anything. That’s not what scares me. What scares me is the prospect of finding out there’s nothing I can do, nothing anyone can do. That they’re beyond help, all thanks to me.