Arkadium Rising

by Glen Krisch

  Kylie gathered a handful of soapy lather and threw it at Dawn. It landed on her cheek and elicited the kind of reaction she was hoping for.

  Dawn let out a choked squeal and her eyes went as wide as saucers. She filled a saucepan to the rim with soap bubbles. "That's it! I've had it with you!" she said, but her widening grin gave her away.

  Kylie could feel the other five women staring at them. They all tended to keep quiet so they would blend into their surroundings. No one knew when or if their relatively protected status on the island would ever get taken away. For now, the other women were happy to be an audience.

  "Don't you dare!"

  "Kylie Dwyer, how dare you!" Dawn flung the soap suds at her.

  Kylie burst into laughter as the suds coated her arm and clung in a thick gob on the side of her head.

  "Hey, you're going to get it!" Kylie hurled a handful of soap at Dawn and it landed on her chin, clinging like a beard.

  "You started it." Dawn couldn't say anything more because of her laughter.

  "Girls, that's enough!" said Juana, a matronly Hispanic woman. "What's gotten into you?"

  "Nothing!" both girls said at once.

  Dawn wiped her soap beard away and flung it into the wash tub. She snickered and picked up her scrubbing brush.

  "You're in trouble," Kylie whispered, coaxing another round of giggles from Dawn, and then once her friend was laughing, she started up again as well. Kylie had absolutely no reason to find humor in their situation, but once she started laughing, it was hard to pull it back in check.

  "Keep it up, you two," Juana said. "You won't be laughing when they kick you out of the kitchen."

  "They'll turn you into an Eve, and then you won't be walking straight after that," another woman chimed in.

  That was enough to kill their temporary respite. They reluctantly went back to their drudgery. After a couple of minutes, Kylie looked over at her friend and she was still grinning.

  Definitely worth it, she thought.

  A few minutes later, a girl with long red hair came running into the kitchen. "They're here!" she yelled. The girl was no older than either of them, but she didn't labor alongside them. She wore a gaudy pink silk robe that was hard to keep tied, and her face was covered in freshly-applied makeup. Kylie didn't care how many pots and pans she had to scrub as long as she didn't have to live the life that was forced upon the girl in the pink robe.

  "What is it, Eve?" Juana asked.

  At first the girl didn't respond, not yet familiar with her new name, and sobbed uncontrollably. Juana approached her with open arms, but the girl cried even harder. This turned Juana's mood on a dime and she slapped her so hard she nearly knocked the poor girl over.

  "Ah…" The girl covered her face and shied away. "Please… don't."

  "Start talking or I'll slap your teeth from your head." Juana pushed her sleeves back to reveal doughy but muscular arms.

  "The An-Anaki…" the girl said before her chest hitched in fear. "They're here!"

  The kitchen buzzed with conversation at the news.

  "How did you hear this?"

  "Joseph, he was called away when we were busy… you know… and I tried to follow him. That's when I heard everyone talking as they were running toward the wall, and—"

  The sound of gunfire cut her off. She screamed, and the voices of the women only became more feverish.

  "But they're outside the walls, right?" Juana asked.

  "Ye-ye-yes." A crimson palm print bloomed on the girl's cheek from Juana's slap.

  Juana exhaled and the tension eased from her meaty shoulders. "So we have nothing to worry about."

  This calmed the girl, as well as the others. She began to nod as if she were replaying Juana's words in her head.

  "Okay, everyone. Everything's fine. The walls will hold, just like they always have. We're safe."

  "Are you sure?" one of the women asked.

  "Yes, and we need to get back to work. If we don't do our job, then everything falls apart. The foundation of the Arkadium is in the kitchen," Juana said, as she had so often since Kylie met her.

  "Ain't that the truth!" one woman said.

  "I said it, didn't I?" Juana replied. Everyone had a good chuckle and got back to their work.

  Kylie unplugged her sink, and then did the same for Dawn.

  "What are you doing?" Dawn whispered.

  "Not waiting around, that's for sure."

  Kylie grabbed Dawn's hand and pulled her along to the door.

  "And where are you two going?" Juana asked.

  "We're out of suds so we're going to the storeroom. We can't be the foundation of the Arkadium without soap! Anyone need anything?"

  The others bought their excuse. Kylie and Dawn pretended to memorize everyone's supply order, and then as everyone went back to their work, and with the sound of gunfire only intensifying, they hurried out into the daylight of the courtyard.

  2.

  The courtyard was a beehive of crazed activity. Kylie and Dawn ran hand in hand, not just so they wouldn't lose sight of one another, but also for the comfort it provided. They were nearly plowed over by a group of ten or more armed men who were charging toward the front of the fort.

  "Hey, watch it!" Dawn shouted, and luckily no one stopped long enough to see who had spoken. Women didn't speak up on Sanctuary Island. The Arkadium was really no different than many religions or cults run by men, for men.

  "Dawn, let's not draw any attention."

  "Okay, you got us out of the kitchens… now what?"

  "I… I don't know. I didn't think that far ahead. I just felt trapped down there, like I couldn't breathe."

  More gunfire erupted. The breeze tended to swirl through the courtyard, so Kylie couldn't pinpoint the direction of the faint smoke billowing over them. It was wood smoke, and her mind started to retrace her path through the site where the plane had crashed, which ultimately led to Dawn's discovery of Kylie's father… but Kylie forcefully blocked it out, not allowing her mind to leave right here, right now.

  "We better find RJ," Kylie said. "He's probably still at the keep."

  "With all the commotion we might be able to sneak up past the Tree."

  "Well, then, let's go!"

  They ran against the tide of people. Everyone looked scared. No one knew what was going on. It was like a microcosm of current life outside the island. Kylie hoped they would be able to get past the keep's ground level. They weren't training, so they weren't permitted above the keep's temple where everyone prayed under the Tree of Life.

  For some reason an armed man stood guard outside the keep's door. Kylie had never seen a guard stationed outside the keep. At the spiral stairwell leading to the upper floors, sure, but not outside. She was trying to figure out something to say to the guard as they approached.

  "What now?" Dawn whispered.

  "I… I don't know." Kylie hooked her arm through the crook of Dawn's elbow. "This was a bad idea. Let's just go back to the storeroom."

  "Kylie Ann?" a familiar voice called out, stopping her in her tracks.

  She turned at the sound and felt momentarily disoriented. Her mom was walking toward her, and she was accompanied by Jason, a young woman, and one of the guardsmen.

  "Mother?" Kylie said, subconsciously drifting toward the sight of familiar people.

  "Mrs. Dwyer?" Dawn said, stunned just as much as Kylie was.

  "What are you guys doing here?" Kylie asked. "And who are you?"

  "I'm Leah."

  "Marcus and his people… they're part of this, the Arkadium," Linda Dwyer said as if that were a positive statement instead of an uttered damnation. Her eyes were clear. Alive. Her anger was gone and she looked healthy. She looked like a different person.

  "Mom…" Kylie paused, not wanting to finish her sentence.

  "What is it? What were you going to say?"

  "You look so… happy."

  "I am. I truly am. I finally know my path. God has spoken to me and opened my eye
s to so many things these last several days. The Arkadium—"

  "Don't tell me you've fallen under their spell?"

  "It's not a spell. It's the truth. The plain, honest truth of our Lord Jesus expressed through the will of Nature."

  "Mom… they kidnapped us. Took us prisoner. If it wasn't for RJ… if he didn't…"

  When Kylie's voice failed her, Dawn said, "They kidnapped us to turn us into sex slaves."

  "Then it must be God's will."

  "That's so much bullshit, Mother. You can't just excuse every evil fucking thing in the world as God's will. Or the whim of Mother Nature. So God and Mother Nature wanted us to get raped?"

  "So were you…?" Linda said, trailing off. "It wouldn't surprise me if you were based on your immoral path before Election Day."

  "No…" Kylie said, and took a deep breath. "Like I said, RJ saved us."

  "No, little girl, that's where you're wrong. God had other plans for you, and that's why you're…" She examined her daughter with a critical eye. "That's why you're a dishwasher."

  "I suppose it's also God's will that Dad's dead?"

  Her mother's expression shifted from the height of religious fervor to utter sadness in the time it took for her brain to process the information.

  "Dad died trying to save a little girl. A stranger. A little girl who never hurt anyone in her entire life. They both died. She was cute. Like five years old. And he died, blistered and burned in the middle of a forest turned to ash. That was God's will? Really, Mother?"

  The world around Kylie had disappeared. Nothing remained but the narrowing tunnel leading to her mother's fractured face, now slick with tears.

  A number of people were running toward them from around the curve of the keep. From their looks of terror, they were more so running away from something than running toward Kylie or the fort's front wall in the distance.

  "What the…?" Dawn said, but never finished.

  Among the stampede of people, Kylie counted three women from the kitchens, Juana among them. There was a mix of other people—masons, laborers, gardeners, Eves—at least twenty by her rough count.

  Juana's shapeless shift was covered in blood, and an open laceration on her upper arms streamed ribbons of blood down her front.

  The armed man guarding the keep's door came trotting over. "What is it?"

  Kylie said, "We don't know."

  The man lifted his weapon, aiming in the direction from which the people had come.

  Dawn shouted, cupping her hands around her mouth. "Juana! Juana, what's going on!"

  Juana, panting for breath, bleeding uncontrollably, slowed her pace, but only long enough to say through wheezing breath, "They were already… here… hiding…"

  Kylie didn't understand what she meant, and she took off as fast as she could, rejoining the others. The straggler of the group, a man in his early sixties, a man Kylie had never met, but was pretty certain worked in the greenhouse, rounded the bend, took a few choppy strides, and then looked back over his shoulder. He panted, clutching his heart, his skin a sickly gray pallor.

  "No, please… no…" The man held up his hands defensively and backed away.

  Kylie saw the bloodied edge of the axe head and the descending pike staff, before seeing the black armored upper torso of one of the Anaki. The axe head came down on the maybe-gardener, splitting his forehead near the part in his gray hair. The falling of his body pulled the axe free. The Anaki swung his weapon around in a clean arc as he brought his elbow up high, as if he were readying to fire an arrow from a bow. He pointed the tip of the pike staff at the armed man who had been guarding the door to the keep, swirled the staff through a figure-eight, and then started forward again.

  The armed man let loose a spray of bullets that ricocheted off the Anaki's chest and arms. He advanced, unaffected.

  "The keep!" Kylie said, and grabbed Dawn's hand. When she reached the door, she was relieved to find it unlocked. She pulled open the heavy door and hurried inside. Dawn was a step behind, and then Jason, Leah, and Kylie's mom followed.

  "What do we do?" Leah asked. Jason leaned against the wall, looking even weaker than the straggler cut down before their eyes. His beard was growing long and had turned gray at the point of his chin.

  "What does God want us to do now, Mother? He guided us to the keep, right? What does that mean?"

  "It's not up to me to divine the Divine's intentions," her mother said softly. "But I can pray for His forgiveness and the touch of His ever-gracious heart."

  Linda stepped away from her daughter and toward the doors to the temple, and the Tree beyond. Jason and Leah followed, unsure of what else to do.

  "Screw His ever-gracious heart." Kylie felt a small amount of satisfaction seeing her mother flinch, but she said nothing in response as she opened the doors to the temple.

  Kylie marched over toward the spiral stairwell that was half as wide as the ring-shaped hallway.

  Dawn hurried to catch up to her. "Kye, that was a bit harsh, don't you think?"

  "Not really."

  Kylie didn't look back. She climbed the curving steps. At the first level above the temple, a catwalk bridge extended from the stairwell to the central pillar. She knew little about what went on in these rooms. Just that members of the Arkadium came here to train. Whatever that meant.

  "What now?" Dawn asked.

  "RJ!" Kylie shouted in reply and kept climbing.

  Chapter 31

  1.

  "It's beautiful." Jason's voice was a respectful whisper as he slowly walked through the interlocking tree roots pushing randomly through the packed dirt floor. The roots weren't real, none of it was real. But it was breathtaking nonetheless. "Remarkable."

  "Oh… wow…" Leah drifted away from his side, her eyes wide as she approached the Tree of Life. She walked carefully over the rooted ground until she reached the base of the Tree, and under its enormity, she simply stood and stared.

  Torches hung from iron rings along the curving outer wall of the temple. The Tree stood at the center of the room, a massive gnarled tapestry that spoke of great age and an almost palpable spirituality. Low-burning red candles lit up a canopy that covered the vastness of the ceiling, some thirty feet or more above them. The individual leaves were hand-carved works of beauty all by themselves, but there were thousands of them sprouting from equally beautiful branches. The trunk was made up of one layer after another of ornately carved whorls and waves.

  "Eldon told me about this place, and if anything, he failed in his description," Linda said with a sad laugh.

  Jason took his eyes away from the Tree long enough to look at Linda. The stress lines had left her forehead and at the corners of her mouth. Her glassy eyes reflected the candlelight. She looked so full of joy and wonderment.

  "It looks so real, yet so… I don't know—super-real."

  "After they finished building the outer walls, they built the Tree before anything else. It's carved from the finest woods. Eldon called this the most sacred place in the world."

  "How can you have so much faith in something you just learned about? You had your own faith before Marcus destroyed Concord, a strong, Christian faith."

  "Election Day changed everything. It opened my eyes, and it's like I'm seeing the world for the first time."

  "But this religious cult destroyed your town and the entire country for all we know, and just like that," he paused to snap his fingers, "you fall under the spell of who…? Eldon? Who was he, exactly?"

  "Eldon was a wise, pious man. His faith was unwavering; he was the perfect Brother Abel."

  "Who convinced you that the Arkadium are following the true path? That they worship according to the One True Word, as the Arkadium so often like to put it?"

  "Eldon didn't cast a spell over me. God spoke to me. He showed me my path and how important I am to future events. God convinced me; no one else had a voice in the matter."

  Linda's head tilted back and she took in the vast canopy and the candles that cast s
hadows through the countless leaves.

  "I thought the Arkadium don't believe in civilization. Civilization is about sharing a common structure, a rule of law. It's about believing in a common good. This just shows that the Arkadium wants civilization, but only under their terms."

  When Leah reached out to touch the Tree's trunk, Jason nearly called out to her to stop. But he didn't, not wanting to unsettle the room's stillness.

  "You're wrong, Jason. My time with Eldon was short, too short… but in those few days he taught me so much."

  "How so?"

  "The Tree for instance. Many of the religions that followed the Arkadium have at their core the holy cross. That symbol is about religion governed by a human hierarchy."

  "And that's different from the Arkadium? What about this island? This building? This place of worship?"

  "All impermanent. Just like you. Just like me." She smiled at him as if he were a willful child. "You heard Adam. The shelter provided by this island is short. You come in from the wild, you witness the Tree, and then you return to nature. The Arkadium don't need a place of worship. Not when nature is now set free and all around them. Not when God and nature can once again merge into a single entity. That's what God told me. He is everywhere. Every breath I take, He nourishes my lungs with oxygen. He is my blood, my spirit, my pain and happiness. God is nature, and nature is God."

  He realized he could no longer hear the fighting outside. It was as if by stepping into the temple they had been transported to a distant forest, perhaps the very first forest—Eden. He knew it was just a matter of a well-soundproofed room, but the effect only added to the Tree's mystique.

  "Pray with me, Jason." Linda patted the ground next to her. "We could all use His strength."

  Jason hesitated.

  Linda bowed her head and closed her eyes. "Oh Lord in heaven, we call to You in our hour of need, for we have faced many losses. Please look after Mitch, my love. My life. Now that You have called him to Your wing, I am here to serve at Your Will, unalloyed and unafraid…"