Soma (The Fearlanders)

by Joseph Duncan

  Soma had rarely gone to church as a child. Her parents were agnostics at the best of times, half-hearted atheists when the evening news was particularly grim. She had never stepped foot inside a so-called mega church, though Indiana had a high proportion of large churches compared to the rest of the US, but she was still shocked at the size of the compound.

  It was a fortress, the modern day equivalent of a medieval castle. There was a dry moat equipped with large, outward projecting wooden stakes, a prison-like chain-link fence with watchtowers at regular intervals and even a drawbridge, which lowered slowly at their arrival to allow them across the trench and into the installation.

  “I know it looks imposing, but we’re really not a military organization,” Sarge said as they waited for the bridge to lower across the moat.

  It took several minutes for the bridge to descend into place, as it had to be operated manually. Thick ropes attached to handmade wooden windlasses lowered the bridge. The two men who operated the capstans waved to them as they passed.

  “This is simply for our own security, to protect our people from raiders and passing herds,” Sarge continued. “The herds are becoming less of a threat as they move out of the cities and disperse into the countryside, but raiding parties from neighboring tribes have begun to increase in frequency. It’s becoming more and more of a problem as food resources dwindle and the Resurrect population increases. It’s why we have to travel so heavily armed.”

  There were no electric lights in the compound, just a few flickering torches near some of the watchtowers. The buildings were like slumbering beasts in the dark, revealed one by one in the headlights of their convoy. Ignoring the fences and moat, Soma thought New Life Church looked like a large college campus. There was a fitness center and restaurants, administrative buildings and shops. There was a mall-sized parking lot, a big park with a pond and several outlying equipment sheds. She spotted a sports field and an enormous cross, even a helicopter pad.

  “Before the Phage, this place had over 15,000 members,” Sarge said. “They pulled in something like 40 million dollars a year in tithes and donations.”

  “There’s always been a lot of money in saving souls,” Perry said. “My old man used to call it afterlife insurance.”

  Sarge nodded with a snort.

  “It seems very nice,” Soma said, craning her head to take in all the sights.

  “It is,” Sarge agreed. “Just wait until daylight, when you can actually see it all.”

  At the epicenter of the vast complex stood the church, a modern cathedral the size of an airport terminal. It was all sharp angles and peaked roofs, a great jumble of geometric structures with massive stained glass windows and a terraced entrance half the length of a football field. It was also the only building on the grounds that had electric lights.

  “So where are you taking us?” Perry asked. “You got a jailhouse here, too?”

  Sarge laughed. “No! I told you you’re not prisoners. I’m taking you to the welcome center. They’ll assign your housing there. I’ll hang around while they do the paperwork, give you a ride wherever they decide to put you up, but after that, you’re free to come and go as you please. We’d like you to stay until the herd has passed and it’s safe for you to travel again, but you can do whatever you want.”

  “We’re free to go anytime we like?” Perry asked.

  “You can leave as soon as I drop you off. I think it would be unwise, but we’re not going to hold you here against your will.”

  “And your boss? This Baphomet character?”

  “Baphomet wants to meet you. I have a feeling he wants you to join our community. You really ought to think about it if he does. We got a good thing going here.”

  “So long as we follow the rules,” Perry said.

  Sarge looked at them soberly. “Of course,” he said. “Law is the lifeblood of a successful society.”

  37

  They were assigned to one of the suites in the compound’s executive housing unit, which looked like a small-scale replica of a big city five star hotel. The lady in charge of housing informed them they could expect more modest accommodations should they decide to join the community, but for now they were getting the VIP treatment. Baphomet’s request. She was a shriveled Resurrect with bright blonde bouffant hair and a broad mouth lined with very bright pearly white teeth. To Soma, she looked like an over-the-hill game show hostess. She shuffled blearily through the drifts of paperwork on her desk before finding the forms she was looking for and scribbling her name upon them. She handed the forms to Sarge, then smiled at Perry and Soma and said, “Welcome to Siloam. I hope you enjoy your stay.”

  “We appreciate it,” Perry said unconvincingly, and then they left the welcome center and Sarge drove them to their lodgings.

  It was a lavish and sprawling apartment on the fifth floor of the Oral P. Freely Building, with beige walls, cream-colored deep pile carpet and large, very expensive looking furniture. There were two bedrooms, each appointed a four-poster king size bed, a seventy-five inch television in the sitting room (non-functioning, of course) and all brass fixtures throughout, polished to a glistening sheen. Sarge helped them carry their possessions up the stairs. He allowed them to keep everything apart from their weapons. Those would be returned upon their departure, he assured them, handing Perry a receipt for the items.

  “No electricity yet,” he said apologetically, “but it’s roomy and comfortable -- and safe. That’s the most important thing.”

  “Thank you,” Soma said over her shoulder, drawn to the balcony. “It’s very nice.”

  Sarge looked around the room, then shuffled his feet and said, “Well, you two get some rest. Feel free to explore the campus if you want. You’re not under any restrictions, although you really shouldn’t try to leave until the herd has passed.”

  “Would they let us leave?” Soma asked, thinking of the guard towers.

  “Of course they would,” Sarge said. “They have orders to detain anyone trying to get in. We like to screen newcomers before admitting them into the facility. But anyone inside is free to leave at any time, so long as it doesn’t threaten the security of the community. They might question you, but if it’s safe outside they’ll let you leave.”

  Soma nodded, peeking through the curtains at the dark campus.

  “We hold services at the church at 10:00 AM and 6:00 PM, if you’d like to attend,” Sarge said. “You really ought to, at least once. I think you’ll be happy you did.”

  “Thank you,” Soma said again, and the big man turned and let himself from the room.

  Soma returned her attention to the balcony doors, peering through the dewy panes. Dawn had broken through the blue eggshell sky, the sun an oozing yolk on the horizon. From her vantage five stories up, she had a panoramic view of the surrounding compound. She tried the door handle and found it unlocked. “Care to join me?” she called back to Perry. He followed as she stepped out onto the landing.

  It was cool out this morning, with a light southerly breeze. Soma leaned on the balustrade and cast her gaze up and down the facility. “It is nice here,” she said. There was a bit of activity on the streets below, a few vehicles tooling around, a couple pedestrians shuffling to their duties. In the park across the street, ducks paddled around a pond so still it might have been a mirror embedded cleverly in the lawn.

  Perry lit a cigarette. The matron at the welcome center had informed them there was “absolutely no smoking outside the designated smoking areas”, but he lit up anyway. Soma spared him with a scolding eye. He shrugged.

  “So crucify me,” he said.

  “Not funny,” Soma replied.

  He apologized with a puff of gray smoke and Soma turned back to the duck pond. “Don’t worry, I know we can’t stay,” she said wistfully.

  “Historically, theocracies have always been the most oppressive cultures, and the most violent,” Perry said, leaning against the rail. He crossed his arms. “And make no mistake. This is a th
eocratic society, practicing its own version of Sharia law. Doesn’t matter how polite everyone is. Doesn’t matter how small it is now. This place is going to grow, because nothing is as seductive to human beings as being told what to think, and it’s going to get more and more oppressive and more and more violent. We need to get as far away as we can as fast as we can. If they let us leave.”

  “You don’t think they will?” Soma asked.

  He shrugged again. “Who knows? I guess we’ll find out.”

  “What about this Baphomet character? Think he really has supernatural powers?”

  “Nah,” Perry said. “I think he’s your run-of-the-mill flimflam man, just like every other faith healer and miracle worker there’s ever been. I’ve lived thirty-some-odd years and I’ve never seen anything I thought was even the tiniest bit supernatural. This dude’s miracles… they’re just smoke and mirrors and wishful thinking. Desperate people want to believe in something, need to believe in it, and there is always a nutcase ready to lead them to the Promised Land. It’s a symbiotic relationship. They get a savior to pin their hopes on, and he gets to bask in all that glory and adulation.”

  “What about the dream sharing?” Soma said, rounding on him. “That’s… well, maybe not supernatural, but it’s weird. It has to be some kind of psychic phenomena. There’s no other explanation really, except that we coincidentally dreamed the exact same thing at the exact same time. And it didn’t just happen to us. Jake and Tracy have experienced it to.”

  Perry looked surprised, then narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. “I hadn’t considered that.” He puffed on his cigarette for a moment or two, weighing all the evidence. Finally, he said, “I concede that we might have shared some kind of psychic experience. But there’s a really big difference between low grade telepathy and magical, God-granted powers.”

  “I believe there is a God,” Soma said quietly. “Some kind of Creator… out there. Somewhere.”

  Perry looked at her pityingly. “If there is and he did this to his creations, for whatever reason, then he’s some kind of asshole.”

  They did not speak for a while after that. Soma looked out across the campus, watching the ducks paddle around the pond, the treetops shifting in the breeze, an electric cart go humming toward an outbuilding. Perry finished his cigarette. He smashed it out on the bannister, stuffed the butt into his pack and walked inside without comment. After a few minutes, a group of men exited a nearby building and began to sweep the street. They formed a scrimmage line, pushing their broad brooms ahead of them, their motions neatly synchronized.

  I bet they do that every morning, she thought.

  38

  Perry apologized when she returned inside. He was sitting on the sofa, a big beige sectional. He was slouched down, legs spread, arms draped across the backrest. He peered up at her as she approached. He looked dead tired.

  “Sorry,” he said. “If I offended you.”

  “You don’t need to apologize to me,” Soma said. “What you believe is your own prerogative. I can certainly understand your point of view, even if I don’t share it.”

  Still, it felt as if they had had a little tiff. She didn’t know why, but she didn’t like the tension between them and tried to make it better. Her mothering instincts kicking in, she supposed. He looked miserable.

  “Everything you said was true,” she said. “I know that. It’s just… it’s a shame, really. It seems nice here. Peaceful. Safe.”

  Perry smiled. “Sure, safe -- so long as you’re one of the cuckoos. Buck the rules, though, and you’re gonna find out how the Scarecrow felt in The Wizard of Oz.”

  It took her a moment to understand the reference, and then she got it: the Scarecrow hanging on his post, bedeviled by crows and unable to free himself. She sighed, nodded, sat down beside him. She put her head on his shoulder and sat quietly with him for a little while.

  “This place is like a prison. Big fences. Guard towers,” Perry said. “They can say whatever they like, but I have a feeling we’re not leaving unless they say we can leave.”

  “So what do we do?” Soma asked.

  “Play along,” he said. “Maybe we can convince them we want to join their cult. That we’ll come back as soon as we check on your family.”

  “That might work.”

  “Way I see it, that may be our only option.”

  “This is entirely my fault,” Soma said. “I got us into this mess. If you hadn’t met me, hadn’t offered to help me find my family, you’d be safe and sound right now, back home in Illinois. Raising your rabbits. Hanging out with Jake and Tracy.”

  Perry grinned, sitting up. “What? And miss out on all this excitement? Listen, Soma, I was tired of loafing around the house every day. I was planning on leaving anyway. I was gonna hit the road, see what kind of trouble I could get myself into. What’s the point of living if you don’t live a little? I was going stir crazy. You just gave me an excuse to indulge my wanderlust.”

  She smiled teasingly. “Having fun yet?”

  He laughed. “I’m not as miserable as you think. Just worried how we’re gonna get out of this jam.”

  “Veeery carefully,” she intoned, eyes wide, and he laughed even harder, nodding his head.

  Later, they went down to the street and explored the campus. By then it was 8:00 AM, and the denizens of Siloam were busily bustling. There were cars rolling up and down the avenues, men and women moving purposefully along the sidewalks, shopkeepers manning their shops, maintenance men maintaining. It was just like before the Phage, only every single person they met was dead. A walking skeleton in a bright ankle-length sundress waved a cheerful hello. She looked like an Egyptian mummy in modern dress, the flesh on her face a glossy walnut color, but she had large bright blue eyes and a sunny disposition, and they paused in their explorations to chat with her a while. They went into a shop and perused the wares, mostly survivalist type supplies, lanterns and candles and batteries and camping gear. The proprietor was a tall obese man who looked a little like John Goodman after a run-in with a hungry bear. His nose and lip had been ripped from his face at some point, which made his speech snorty and hard to understand. His P’s and B’s all sounded like V’s. They got a few curious looks from the other browsers (all three of them) but no one questioned their right to be there or tried to restrict their movements in any way.

  “No one acts like they’re being held here against their will,” Soma whispered to Perry.

  “Of course not,” Perry said. “The ones who don’t like it are hanging on utility poles.”

  Not a pleasant thought.

  About 9:00 AM, Sarge went marching down the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street. He was headed for the church, dressed in what looked to be some sort of liturgical outfit -- a black cassock with a long red scarf. He spotted them and saluted, and both of them waved back.

  “Getting ready for the ten o’clock service, I guess,” Perry said, watching the man continue up the street.

  “Think we should go?” Soma asked.

  “It would probably be wise,” Perry said. “I’d love to have a look at this Baphomet fellow. See if he’s all he’s cracked up to be.”

  At 9:30 AM, a bell rang out three times, its brassy peal echoing across the campus, and there was a general migration toward the massive church at the center of the community. Shop owners flipped their open signs to closed. Maintenance men put away their tools. The ant-like activities of Siloam’s diverse populace paused all at once, and then converged on the church like iron shavings drawn by a powerful magnetic field.

  “Lemmings,” Perry remarked.

  There was scorn in his voice, but an undercurrent of fear as well. His crazy uncle, and that church in the woods, had left their scars. Deep scars, Soma thought. Yet they joined the leisurely exodus to the church, nodding and saying hello to the people who greeted them along the way. There were a few odd faces that did not share the moony happiness of the majority -- the shopkeeper they’d talked to earlier, a
lanky black man, a heavyset woman with librarian glasses -- but most of the community’s citizens seemed eager to attend the morning ritual.

  They passed beneath the building’s broad portico, pushed through the tinted glass doors and found themselves in a cavernous vestibule. It was already growing crowded inside, the conversations a dull roar. The lobby was tastefully decorated in tans and glossy wood. The floor was an abstract pebble mosaic-- more tans and browns and seaweed greens. There was an information desk, unmanned, and a lot of very wide, very tall doors. A few people were drifting toward a corridor off to the left. The sign hanging over the entrance of the corridor said AUDITORIUM C. There were three auditoriums immediately visible: A, B and C.

  “Shall we go C?” Perry said, and Soma groaned at the pun.

  There were two more men in religious vestments standing at the entrance of the corridor. They were dressed in the same shin-length black cassock and red sash that Sarge had been wearing. They nodded as Perry and Soma approached, seemed genuinely happy to see some new faces.

  “Welcome, Brother and Sister,” one of the men said, reaching for Perry’s hand with both of his. “Is this your first time attending service with us?”

  Perry let his hand be claimed. It was shaken vigorously.

  “Uh, yeah,” he said, glancing at Soma uncomfortably. “Just got here last night. Or this morning, rather. Only been here a couple hours, but we thought we’d come see the show.” He extricated his hand from the other man’s grip and shoved it in his pocket.

  “I thought so,” the man said. “I have a pretty good memory for faces.”