by Ginger Booth
I nodded slowly. “But we will get out of here, Brandy. You’ll see. Emmett knows we were taken captive. Canber is baiting him. He’ll find us.”
“Dee, if Canber’s baiting Emmett,” Brandy said reluctantly, “that means it’s a trap.”
Well, true, and that sucked. That meant we shouldn’t struggle to get word of where we were to Emmett or the local authorities. Because that would play right into Canber’s hands. And so we become prisoners of our own devising, I thought.
“Screw that,” I said decisively. “I refuse to help Canber jail us. Or Uriel. Or whoever’s in charge of this madhouse. Emmett’s smart, and careful, and has a bazillion allies. If I find a way to contact him without losing my hands, I’ll take it.”
“Losing your hands?” Brandy asked.
“Never mind.” I wouldn’t be their accomplice at terrorizing people, either. Let them deliver their own threats. “Teach me the rosary.”
“No. Why?”
We argued back and forth, Brandy still convinced that I was tone-deaf to anything religious. But I was adamant that it was high time I learned this stuff. There are no atheists in fox-holes, they say. Millions – billions – agreed, over the centuries. When the chips were down, turn to God, and He’d help. Brandy finally gave in and directed me on how to tie my knots.
I finished the first twenty knots, and told her I’d get to the rest later. “So how does this prayer go?”
She didn’t bother trying to teach me me first prayer, The Apostle’s Creed. She just recited it for me and crossed herself. The Lord’s Prayer I knew, or at least, only needed a reminder of the words. I could certainly relate to the deliver us from evil part today.
Next came a few Hail Mary’s. Brandy recited it for me whole first, and paused. “Dee, do you earnestly and sincerely believe what I just said?”
“No,” I admitted softly. In my experience, a hail mary was a pass in football, a hopeless attempt to score, when you didn’t ‘stand a prayer’ of succeeding. Hail Mary, full of grace. “What is grace, anyway?”
Brandy nodded. “Good. Grace… The idea is that we yearn for salvation, for God’s complete forgiveness and acceptance and divine love. We know we don’t deserve it, and couldn’t possibly earn it. But by the grace of God, we receive it anyway.”
Brandy considered the puzzled frown on my face. “Tell you what, Dee. It won’t do you any good to recite prayers that don’t mean anything to you. How’s this: every tenth knot, the double-knot, either recite the Lord’s Prayer, or something else you know is true. Absolutely know, it is absolutely true, and it comforts you. Something you can hold onto like a lifeline.” I could relate to that. I’d just done that, thinking over the rape. “Then for each of the next ten knots, contemplate some aspect of that truth, and feel yourself strengthen in it. And just keep going. You don’t need any more knots.”
She restarted her rosary from the top again, silently.
I tried coaxing apart the Our Father again to follow her lead and start from the top, but my mind just nit-picked at it. Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. What did God demand of us, anyway? Wasn’t that Dane Beaufort’s red herring, that launched me toward my doom?
Why are you asking someone else?
The thought came clear as a bell. Oh. That’s what Brandy meant. I needed to pray what I believed, not anyone else. Christianity left me lukewarm at best. OK. The game of understanding Christians was a task for Pittsburgh. I’d only tried to debug them, after all, like a computer program gone wonky. Not join them. I was done with debugging Christians for now.
I hold these truths to be self-evident. I felt God in beauty, natural beauty. The glowing colors of a flower, or the autumn leaves outside. Gentle waves lapping an orange-sand beach, in a sheltered bay of Long Island Sound. The power of gravity below me, the sun above. Brandy was a pain in the ass in our real world. But here, her courage and dogged determination to say her rosary and cleanse herself of the evil done to her body, were so beautiful I had to blink away tears at the thought. I salute God’s grace in Brandy O’Keefe. Bless you, Brandy.
This isn’t new to me. I’ve been here all along. I was just reminding myself of things I always knew. Oh!
And thus my catechism began.
I was blessed with a cold.
I might have caught cold anyway. I slept on cold damp concrete, in a chilly and thoroughly damp climate, in damp cotton clothes, drugged senseless. But to cinch the deal, that night we had a thunderstorm. We enjoyed no tornado sirens in Nowhere, West Virginia, but the storm was just as ferocious as the lashing supercells that propelled us into the hotel basement back in Pittsburgh.
Judgment didn’t celebrate tornado weather quite the same way. Instead, Brandy and I were dragged out into the storm and tied spread-eagled onto the chain link fence around the slave pen. They had one of those here, too. By the looks of it, originally the fence enclosed the exercise yard of an animal shelter. But none of the slaves skulked by the kennel for protection.
Instead, the slaves stood with faces to the sky, sometimes raising their arms to the sky. And they danced, and yelled, cackled and laughed. Rain and gale-force winds slashed at us, heavy wet hair whipping our faces. Hail pelted us with sharp ice. By the one-alligator-two-alligator test, the lightning bolts were right on top of us, part of the time. My bare feet sank an inch into cold liquid mud, oozing between my toes.
The non-slaves were outside enjoying the storm as well, guards dancing around like fools. Occasionally, someone fired a weapon into the sky, hooting. Brandy pointed out Uriel to me, the sect’s religious leader, a strongly built, gray-bearded workman dancing past in glee. I didn’t see Canber anywhere. Blake, inside the pen, dared to visit us. He squeezed our hands, so the three of us were linked briefly. Then he stole back away, to blend in with the idiocy to our backs.
I had to admire the Judgment group’s approach to dealing with the out-of-control devastating storms of climate change. These people didn’t cower, or whine, or try to revert to some 1950’s sitcom ideal. They ran straight out into the storm, tempting fate. Wanna kill me, God? Here I am! Truth to tell, I was more sympathetic to their viewpoint than the cowering. Except that it was damned uncomfortable. Perhaps if I’d been allowed to dance and stay warm.
As the storm died back, guards dragged women out of the slave pit to couple in the mud in wild abandon. Some came to pull us off the fence, but were playfully batted away with gun stocks by other guards. “Canber’s!” they laughed. Brandy closed her eyes against the pornographic frenzy. I watched everything, drinking up the sights, the sounds. Not because the rutting mud-pit was erotic. I’d never felt so un-sexy in my life. Through my chattering teeth, the slippery bodies on the ground didn’t make much impression. But this was my first chance to really take in our surroundings, not hemmed in by trees.
What I saw during distant lightning flashes was as bad as Blake had described. The tiny town was ringed by tall forested hills, or the shoulders of mountains. The road by the slave pen was a rutted gravel mess. The few little houses and mobile homes looked like they’d been perched haphazardly. Aside from the military vehicles that arrived with us, the native pickup trucks looked old and rusted. I spotted a single satellite dish, mounted on a steel tower, maybe thirty feet up. No one would ever find this place on satellite images. No line of sight to the satellites.
Gradually, the clouds shredded into fast-moving tatters, to unleash moonlight and brilliant stars, by the time the Saturnalia ran its course. The relatively professional uniformed men who watched over Brandy and me finally untied us from the fence. I fell to the ground and curled into a ball, my teeth chattering out of control. My guard finally gave up trying to coax me back onto my feet. He took me back to the garage in a fireman’s carry.
In an action movie, Navy SEALs could no doubt get up the next morning and run 10 miles into a rain-drenched forest to accomplish a daring rescue mission. But like ordinary mortals, I just got sick.
I was blessed with a farewell.
The next afternoon I was presented to Canber again, my grubby cotton dress still wet. It was colder today, not freezing, but down around 40 degrees, with a stiff breeze rattling the colorful fresh-fallen leaves along the road. Arriving at Canber’s house, the guards debated giving me oxycontin again, but decided I didn’t look so good. I couldn’t hug myself to keep warm with my hands still taped. I tended to curl down into a ball, shuddering, if they didn’t hold me upright.
Canber sat at his desk working. His work accessories, pens and paper, tablet and calculator and folders and computer monitors, were arrayed much the way Emmett would have them. Tidy, methodical, organized. Aside from having similar builds, they didn’t look much alike. I didn’t like to consider that they might think and work alike.
I didn’t wait for an invitation. I just zombie-shuffled straight to his daybed. Once there, I curled my feet up under one pillow, face-dove into another, and huddled shaking. His room was the most warmth I’d experienced all day. It wasn’t nearly warm enough.
Canber laid a cool hand on my forehead briefly, then went away to yell at the guards in the hallway. I was sublimely indifferent to what all the yelling was about, but I caught the gist. His soldiers shouldn’t have been stupid enough to let Uriel and the Judgment nut-jobs take me out into the storm. “We use the lunatics, we don’t join them!” was the way Canber put it.
Eventually, he came back. He lay a down blanket around me and levered me up to a seated position. He held out two thick white pills and a glass of orange juice.
I blinked at them blankly. I hadn’t seen orange juice in a couple years. Oranges don’t grow in New England or Hudson. “Whussat?”
“Extra-strength Tylenol,” he replied. “You have a fever.”
Damned straight I had a fever. From past experience, I suspected it was well north of 103 degrees. With great solemnity, I took one of the two pills he held out, and washed it down with a gulp of orange juice. “Thank you.” I tried to turtle back into the blanket.
“No, take the other one, too,” he insisted. “And drink your juice. You need the vitamin C.”
“I don’t like orange juice,” I objected. I was overcome by a huge splattering sneeze, and a coughing fit. I tried to cover my nose and mouth, but the bindings and blanket fought me. In distaste, he moved away and handed me a handkerchief. I mopped up, and he tried to hand me the orange juice again. I shook my head violently, then regretted it because it felt like my brains were sloshing inside my skull. “Starve a fever,” I whispered hoarsely. “If I drink that, I’ll throw up.”
The orange juice was hastily retracted. Canber returned to his desk. “Hell,” he said. “I need to go to – I need to leave. I can’t take you with us like this.”
I slumped into my down cocoon, and let my eyes close. I jolted back awake as my head jerked down. I tried to focus. “You’re not the head of Judgment, are you?” I croaked.
“No,” he agreed. “Uriel leads them.” He shook his head in tired disapproval. “There are a thousand Uriels and Judgments. But they’re useful. Until they’re not. Just tools.” He waved at his desk, so neatly ordered like Emmett’s. “I’m just another Resco, Dee. Using what comes to hand.”
“Why do you do it?” I asked. “Not just another Resco. They save. You kill.”
He scowled at me. “I’m saving the planet. You think you could have your nice little moral life without me? If 22 million survived the Apple Zone, instead of 5? With 8 million people around Philadelphia instead of only 2 million? With all the people who suicided on the drugs I supplied? Or died like lemmings following some religious Pied Piper? I don’t think so. Your life wouldn’t have been worth living. Your ecosystems would have been destroyed beyond hope of repair. Emmett knows that as well as I do.”
I considered that muzzily. Emmett never pretended to have told me everything about his classmates, the men who vetted the Calm Act with him. Of their identities, their assignments and locations, he refused to tell me anything at all.
“Yeah. No,” I said in simple fairness. “I hate it. But we needed the culling. But we don’t anymore. We’re done with that. Can’t you stop now?”
“They didn’t even meet the target of 200 million,” Canber said bitterly. “And there are scenarios. A year out. Five years out. Milestones have to be met. If they’re not, more need to die.”
“That must really suck for you,” I said sympathetically.
Canber’s face twisted in rage. “I don’t need your pity!”
“No,” I agreed. His rage didn’t bother me. High fever brought out great objectivity and deep indifference. “But you deserve a thank you for your service.” I frowned. “Did the SAMS draw lots and you lost or something?”
“‘Thank you for your service,’” Canber hissed. “Do you know how many times we heard that? Coming back from I-crap and Crud-istan?”
“What else is there to say?” I croaked back. “Pathetic politicians should never have sent you there. Idiot public with their knee-jerk reactions. Military-industrial complex and their profit margins. Burning oil until there wasn’t a drop of profit left, and the planet was doomed. I didn’t want you to go. But you were soldiers for my country. And you went. I know I owe you, for what you did. Whether I approved or not. I still owe you thanks.”
Canber pursed his lips and glared at me. “We didn’t draw lots. I love this planet. People suck.”
I nodded sadly. “People suck,” I agreed. “Nature is so beautiful. I hope we haven’t killed the planet. Emmett seems to think we’re fiddling while Rome burns or something, that it’s a lost cause. I’d like to see this beautiful world saved. Thank you for your service.”
Grudgingly, he acknowledged this with, “Thank you.” I could see that he finally believed that I meant it, for whatever that was worth.
I sneezed and mopped my face again. My head really hurt when I moved that violently. “Are you going to rape me again today?”
He looked repulsed. “No. Just fall over and go to sleep.”
“OK.” I keeled over, back into the pillows.
Canber said softly, “That was about Emmett, not you.”
I froze, listening. But he didn’t say any more. And I couldn’t stay awake.
25
Philippians 4:8 King James Version (KJV): Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.
I was blessed with shelter.
When I woke, Blake and Brandy and I had been moved to a small toasty mobile home all to ourselves. We had two bedrooms, with real beds and sheets and pillows and warm comforters, a whole bed apiece. We had a working bathroom with clean musty towels. A kitchen, complete with propane stove, and a refrigerator stocked with orange juice and fresh milk and eggs. The lights even worked.
We still didn’t have shoes. But the previous owners had left clothes behind, including two pairs of slippers. One pair even had enough rubber on the sole to walk to the mailbox if the mud wasn’t too deep. Not that we were allowed to walk to the mailbox. None of the clothes were the right size for Brandy or me – Blake got lucky – but they were heavenly compared to the rags we wore before. So we all dressed from the wardrobe that fit Blake.
Dressed for bed, anyway. The first couple days we weren’t interested in much besides the Tylenol and vitamins and orange juice left in the kitchen. For clothes, we were grateful for Blake-sized pajamas and sweats and layers of socks. I’m not sure if this Tylenol was the same as the stuff Canber had given me, but its ‘extra strength’ was codeine. We slept comfortably.
One fairly sane soldier and several of Uriel’s freaky devotees visited a couple times a day while we were sick, to make sure we were still alive and bring us more food. We carefully stashed the food to eat when we could keep it down, and to keep it coming in the meantime. I got the impression Canber had left
firm instructions that there would be dire consequences for the Judgment sect if any of us died without permission.
My fever broke after a couple days. Brandy and Blake had been more badly mistreated, so they would take longer to mend. Alright, then, we didn’t want to be rescued just yet. I selected a personal project in the meantime. I would develop the world’s fastest case of Stockholm Syndrome to earn my captors’ trust.
I would identify with Canber’s crusade, not Uriel’s, thank you very much. Canber was safer. He wasn’t there.
Besides, I did understand what Canber was doing. Mind-game aficionado or not, it was just too big a stretch to pretend to believe I was Satan’s minion and aspired to roll around copulating in the mud. Loving nature, wanting to defend the Earth from an infestation of humans, I could relate to, more than I felt comfortable admitting.
I found a pen and an old composition book in our lovely manufactured home, and tore out the used pages. Someone had built a big deck onto the side of our tiny house, with resin deck furniture of the thrift store variety. I sat out there, wrapped in a blanket, to make myself ostentatious in my contemplation. Yes, I remember that thing where Jesus taught we should pray in the closet. But I wanted rewards on earth, not in heaven. I sought a physical salvation.
The deck was a good place for prayer, for me. Our little scrap of level lot was barely wide enough for the mobile home and a pickup truck. The broken mountainside resumed its forested climb not thirty feet away to the right, brilliant in its autumn colors. Squirrels and chipmunks cavorted there. A heavenly chorus of unseen frogs and toads, insects and bats and birds, and a hidden burbling brook all sang to me. To the left, downslope, perhaps the soil was too shallow for trees. Wildflowers still bloomed among the ripe grasses and herbs, tiny and pale, in white and lavender and yellow.
I wrote about my prayer progress with Brandy, that I was one with God in natural beauty. Within minutes, I’d forgotten that I was ever pretending. I felt the Earth’s reassuring pull, the sun on my face, breathed the deep air. I smelled the woods, listened to the wildlife. I felt my way back across the Earth to Long Island Sound and its gentle waves, to Burlington Vermont and its cold lake, to the tides of New York Harbor lapping Brooklyn, the broad Monongahela River flowing through Pittsburgh. As my fever climbed back a little in mid-afternoon, I could soar with the little wisps of cloud in the deep blue sky. I could hold out my hand and feel the waves of WiFi stroking me. Tenuous here, but my body was still connected to my native cyber world, too.