Patrick shakes his head. “Don’t bother, Semper. They expect to die soon anyway. Don’t you?” He kicks at one of the men, who grunts but otherwise does not respond.
The Bomb. A void fills the dais where it used to stand, towering over the congregation and the podium where Semper would read from Truths on Sunday mornings. Its absence feels like waking up one morning to find the mountains have disappeared overnight.
“Where is it!” Dane barks the command at the kneeling men.
From behind me, Tom calls, “Dane, I think I know what they’ve done.” Tom steps up beside me. “They’ve taken it down to the lake.”
Questions fill Dane’s face, but one quick glance at the wide, muddy swath of packed snow outside tells me Tom is right. The groove points away from the chapel in the direction of the lake like the trail of a giant snake. They’ve dragged the Bomb to the lake.
Dane puts voice to his questions. “Why would he do that?”
Tom says, “I’m not sure. Darius is insane. That’s about all that’s clear to me.”
But it makes sense after all. I answer all their questions. “He’s going to put it on a boat. Mad as he is, he still thinks his actions are righteous. And that means he’ll get the Bomb as close to Tawtrukk as he can before... what is the word?”
“Detonating,” Tom answers.
“Yes, before detonating it.”
Finally one of the kneeling men speaks. “You’re too late. Ya can’t stop him. But if you hurry, you might witness the final moments yourself, meet God alongside Darius.”
“Darius won’t be meeting God,” Dane says through clenched teeth.
The kneeling man smiles a hateful, smug sneer. He nods once and then shuts his mouth and remains silent.
I step slowly into the room to stand beside Dane. “Please,” I say to the kneeling man who spoke, “we may be too late to stop Darius, but I would like to spend my final moments in the company of my parents. Surely you’ll grant me that mercy.”
This surprises the kneeling man, and I watch him chew his lip as he thinks through my request.
“Please,” I repeat. “Tell me where I can find my parents.”
His moment of doubt tells me my parents are still alive. If they were dead, he’d have gleefully told me without hesitation. They must be imprisoned, then. And that means there is still hope.
He confirms my hope a second later. “Won’t do you no good. But they’s with the others in the big barn down by old Jingham’s place.”
“How many?” Dane asks before I can stop him.
“Hunnert or so. Her parents and all the others what didn’t want to, or couldn’t, go see the end of all creation.” He sounds reverent as he says these final words. The end of all creation. He’s wrong about that, but telling him won’t change anything. He wouldn’t believe me, so strong is his faith in Darius’ misinterpretation of Truth and Prophecies.
“Won’t be long, now,” he mumbles, closing his eyes.
Dane looks at me, worry hardening his face. We both want to ask how long, but we’re both afraid the answer will be not long enough.
One of the men that came with us, an older, black-haired man named Brian from the hills of eastern Southshaw, asks Dane, “What do we do with them?”
The captive who spoke before pipes up again. “No need to do anything,” he says. “We won’t foller ya. You’ll go and let everyone out’n that barn, and you’ll go and try to stop Darius from lighting the world on fire. But it won’t do no good. God’s got a plan. Darius is his instrument. You cain’t stop ‘em.”
“Just the same,” Dane says with a grunt as he grabs the man’s arm and lifts him until he stands, “I’d prefer if you live out your last minutes in the stables.” He pushes the man at the gaping doorway, and I step aside as he stumbles into the frozen afternoon. Dane follows close behind. “Wait here,” he says to me as he passes. “We’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Patrick grabs one of the others, and Brian hauls out the third. The fourth lies on the chapel floor, gasping uneven breaths as he holds his bloody arm tight against his chest. I’m about to ask Tom to bring the injured man away, but with sudden revulsion I realize he’s already rasping his final breaths. The arm he holds against his chest is no longer attached, and blood seeps black into the shadows behind him.
When the others have gone, Tom says, “I’ll watch for trouble outside,” and exits.
I understand why he doesn’t want to stay in here. He prefers fresh air, having spent his whole life underground. But the chapel holds me. Even with the pews discarded in the corners, even with the dais demolished and the sacred books gone, even with the entryway ripped from existence, this is still where my mother cleansed me in my very first Decon, where Judith taught me the lessons of Truth, where Dane committed himself to me. No amount of desecration will change those things.
“Please.” Barely audible, the rasp of the injured man rises from the floor. “Please,” he repeats.
His face is ashen like the cloudy sky, and he lies on his back with his chest rising in tiny fits with each gasp. He can’t hurt me, with death already tightening its grip on him. I approach and stand directly over him, but I can’t hear any sound from his moving lips. I kneel beside him and lean close.
“Have they gone?”
His words are like the barest breeze on distant trees, his breath rotten like spoiled meat.
“Yes. It’s only you and I here, now.” I whisper back to him. My gentle voice seems to ease his discomfort.
“Can you forgive me?” The words are only a wheeze now, but they are clear.
“I... forgive you?” I do not know what he means.
“First Wife,” he breathes, his face now snow-white, “I beg for absolution.”
His eyes flutter closed and then open again, and for a moment their milkiness clears and he stares at me with sincere urgency.
Absolution. He asks me to grant him God’s forgiveness. If only I could.
“It is not the office of First Wife to grant absolution,” I reply. “I am sorry, but your fate now lies with God. May He grant mercy on your soul.”
A terror fills his eyes as he struggles for another breath, then one more. I clasp his good hand in mine, but it’s too late. The light of life fades from his eyes, and his body slumps, ending its weak convulsions.
I try to pity him. I try to find forgiveness in my heart for the things I imagine he’s done, for his part in Darius’ madness.
“Freda, come on.” Dane’s voice calls to me from outside. “We have to hurry.”
I release the man’s dead hand, slick with his own blood, and rise. Maybe in those last moments he understood all that he had done. Perhaps he finally saw truth and could not find it in his own heart to forgive himself. If only Dane had been here. Dane could have administered absolution.
“Let’s go,” Dane calls from the doorway. “Leave him.”
Dane would have refused.
“He’s dead, the poor idiot. But he can rest now.”
Wouldn’t he?
I walk faster to catch up to Dane as he hurries down the ramp to the giant track left behind by Darius’ sled. He gives one glance back at the chapel, his face empty of emotion but full of urgency.
“Let’s help the others while they’re still alive, huh?”
Moments later, as we run along the hard-packed, frozen mud road, the dead man’s urgent pleas fill my thoughts. Only Semper can grant absolution. But if I’d had that power, would I have used it?
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo courtesy of: Tiffany Talbott
Peter rarely uses his Electrical Engineering degree from Berkeley these days. Instead, he writes adventure fiction, short stories, and light verse when he's not coaching or playing soccer, camping with his boys, or brewing beer. He has a day job as a corpo
rate social responsibility executive, running the nation's largest workplace charitable giving campaign which raised over $60 million for charity in 2012. In his career, he's worked on the B-2 bomber, the first PDA (Casio “Zoomer”), and the first smart phone (Nokia 9000). A Connecticut native, he lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, two sons, and two cats. He can be found on Twitter at @dudleypj and on the web at www.peterdudley.com.
Visit his author page with other books he’s appeared in, including Extinct Doesn’t Mean Forever, and the SFWC Anthology.
The “New Eden” series begins with Semper, and culminates with Freda available online and in print. Details can be found at www.peterdudley.com.
Forsada: Volume II in the New Eden series Page 30