by Andrew Post
“What do you think of it?” she asked, handing the page back.
Peter, with care, slipped it between the panels of steel—almost too narrow for even the thin paper. “Good title, at least.”
* * *
Finally, the cornfield gave way to an expansive lawn. Otis said he was fine to walk from here, and Peter squatted to let him down. The man hobbled past a well and a rudimentary home with a hail-pocked tin roof. Teetee kept to the limit of the yard, inside the wall of corn, a watchful shadow.
Limping on, Otis led them around the house to a barn. At its summit, in place of the traditional weather vane were the iron concentric circles of the double-sun icon, Aurorin and Teanna.
The barn doors were open a crack. Upon Otis waving his hand and saying he was okay, the congregation emerged. Men in filthy overalls, women in long simple dresses dotted with patches. They openly gawked at the newcomers, but none approached to introduce themselves or offer any greeting whatsoever. The women swarmed Otis, had him sit on a stump, and began patching him up. The men stuffed hands into pockets or packed their cheeks with chaw.
“You all right?” one man asked of their friend.
“Yeah. These here are con-tractors, working for the Ma’am.”
The yokels didn’t stop sizing Anoushka and Peter up. None said hello.
Anoushka peeked behind her. Sure enough, on the far hill, she could see the outcropping under which they’d set up camp. The fire had gotten restarted, its glow a golden pinprick. If she was in the Aurorineans’ place, she couldn’t deny the sight would’ve stirred fear in her too.
Bandaged, Otis stood from the stump. “Brother George, fetch some bread made from yer plentiful wheat grown tall by the Lord and Lady’s generous, bounty-ful rays. Sister Margaret, mead from yer bees’ honey, who, without the suns’ guiding light, could never see their way back to the hive. Brother Donald, some ale. Sister Sarah, roses from yer garden. Please, please, make ’em feel welcome.”
It became a genuine hubbub with everyone scattering about to fetch this and that. Otis waved Anoushka and Peter along and limped his way toward the church’s broad doors. Teetee followed only to the precipice; the wolfhound refused to set one paw within.
“Thank you, sincerely,” Anoushka said, following Otis, “and we apologize for the misunderstanding, but we really must return to our group. Please hold on to your food; keep it for yourselves.”
“Bah, what’s a harvest without friends to share it with? Just one cup of mead, and I’ll let y’all get back—a little somethin’ to sig-ner-fy water’s under the bridge.”
“All right, one cup.”
Inside, the floor was hay-strewn. It still stank potently of animals. No traditional pews but a smattering of mismatched chairs. Another double-sun icon had been hung high on the back wall. And directly beneath it, lying atop a bed of apple crates, was a shape covered by a white sheet.
“You’ve recently had a loss,” Anoushka said with faltering sympathy—her hand shifting to her holster. With Otis still struggling to get to the altar, he did not notice.
Peter slowed beside Anoushka, his armor squeaking as he glanced back toward the door. A steel elbow bumped Anoushka’s shoulder.
The congregation had done as told. They’d gathered bread loaves swaddled in cheesecloth, clay jorums of mead, crocheted blankets and scarves, packets of dried smoking moss, bundles of wheat, a bucket brimming with sweet corn, snap peas, and green beans, but the gift presenters, in the church’s torchlight, were a wall of suspicion blocking the one way out.
Where had the cheers gone during their mission to fetch goodies for their guests? Why the sudden turn?
Oh, right. Because they’d gotten Anoushka and Peter into the church.
Pretty elaborate for bumpkins, but still a bait and switch.
Anoushka whispered to Peter beside her, “Be ready.”
Around his ax, Peter’s steel fingers wound tight.
Behind the Wall of Sleep
“We recently had many a tragedy here,” Otis Kelly said, struggling with his mauled leg to kneel before the covered body. “Highest, our pastor of twenny-nine years, passed on to the next world.”
Anoushka peeked over her shoulder. They were still all there in the wide barn doorway, glowering over the gifts piled in their hands.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said.
“He was a fine man,” Otis said. “Gave freely of both his material goods and his wisdom. Led us in this church all those years, tellin’ us the stories of Aurorin and Teanna, our shinin’ everlastin’, ever-burnin’ gods in the sky—praise their beams. Their ups, downs, struggles, bright moments, and dark. Lessons. The good learnin’.”
Otis stood before the covered pastor, his palms pressed together, murmuring something. Brown lakes and rivers had formed amid the snow-white hills and valleys of the repurposed tablecloth. Flies busily worked in and out through the cotton barrier. It hadn’t been a recent loss.
“We had a storm few weeks back,” Otis went on, “came blowin’ out the Error fellin’ trees, cavin’ in my lean-to—a split beam brained one of my steer. Felt we’d done hit the beginning of the end. All this here comin’ juss days after hearin’ the greenies were diggin’ their black claws under Burned Mountain. But the next morning,” he said, standing to face Anoushka and Peter, voice rising, “the suns came back out. Aurorin and Teanna had not abandoned us. They burned away the thunderheads, and thar once again was hope!
“And that’s when our miracle came: juss when we needed it most. From his grave, we heard Pastor Keene a-callin’ and a-beggin’ for us to dig him up, said he’d been returned to us, his spirit done rode back on Aurorin’s sunbeams.”
Anoushka drew her mammoth-killer. Behind her, a muffled thud—a bread loaf was cast to the floor. A jorum smashed. The congregation stepped on their gifts, through them, as they approached. From pockets came paring knives, branch shears, small skinning blades. A man at the back weighed an ax in his hands, unwavering dedication to his holy appointment burning in his dull gaze.
Peter turned—a long grating shrrrik as he drew his own. It daunted some, but most continued to approach, makeshift weapons ready.
“Otis, if your pastor told you anything from the grave,” Anoushka said, “it’s a lie. It wasn’t him. Tell your people to cool it. Now.”
“Oh, but it is him—and he did tell me, us, many good things that came to pass—juss like a group of ne’er-do-wells on their approach, soon passin’ right by this here church. I volunteered for watch tonight, and lo and behold, here y’all are.” He thrust a finger toward the covered corpse behind him. “Pastor Keene’s soul entered the burning house. And it returned drippin’ divinity. We did everythang else he told us to do, and everything’s worked out. Took our young ones’ lives; though it was a challenge of the heart, we did it. We had to prove our dedication, lest he take back what he done given us—and then even more, he said. We were granted a guest, a holy guest, and we had to take up the responsibility to see it through. Otherwise, we were worse than bad—to squander a chance to host such a visitor. And, as the deal went, he kept his promises, maintained the miracles, because we did what he said. And now we have another. He said some travelers in a tank were coming, followed by a cart with the harlot painted on the side. And here you are—like he said you would be! Now, enemies of the lord, enemies of ours, we wait for the sentencing. His request, our order, your fate.” Otis pitched himself onto his knees. “Pastor Keene! Give us your command!”
The covering over the body quavered—a small ripple around the hidden face, a breath rising from the thin fabric.
Otis leapt as if struck, stumbling on his shredded leg from the platform. Dropping flat, the congregation did likewise, a great racket as fifty people gasped and lay on bellies, screaming, “Praise! Praise! Praise!” It didn’t sound joyous but as if it were being wrung from them.
“Tell us what to do, Pastor Keene! Tell us, tell us, and we’ll do it,” Otis cried.
Th
e corpse sat upright in shivering stutters.
The rot-damp sheet fell away.
Sunken sockets ringed collapsed eyes. Shriveled, receding lips moved, revealing white-white teeth—its voice was sand slithering down a tin chute. “They train well.”
Anoushka squeezed the trigger—the corpse’s head scattered to pieces, splashing over the metal suns and Otis.
Following the gunshot, all was quiet.
Otis goggled as the headless pastor slipped off the makeshift dais with hollow, bony thuds, limbs sprawling.
An ax had its edge blunted on Peter’s armored back. Turning, Peter split the attacker’s face from jaw to brow. But before he’d fallen, the man caught himself, rose again, hijacked, bifurcated face leering. Peter swung again, this time cleaving his body in half, the man’s upper half turning cartwheels away, free of its legs.
Another congregation member rushed in, open-armed, empty-handed. “Please, let me feel the renewing light of—” He was given his wish: the man’s head funt-funt-funted across the uneven wooden floor.
Peter whirled the blade, spun with it for added speed, and literally unarmed a woman who came at him with a screwdriver. She screamed, looking at her bleeding stumps with the ultimate shock. A brief howl. Stepping over her corpse, Peter dashed another man’s head off, then another in the backswing. Teetee leaped in through the church doors. Taking a man by the neck before he could attack his master, Teetee clamped long yellow teeth into the man’s spine and dropped him.
Otis Kelly’s hands remained clasped. “No. No. What did we do wrong? It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”
As Peter swung on and on, Anoushka stepped up onto the slapdash dais. “What did your pastor tell you?” she said, thumbing back the mammoth-killer’s hammer.
Otis didn’t answer. On his knees, he paled.
Peter lifted the ax in two hands and brought it down with his full strength. He sent a man crashing through floorboards. One life emptied, another snapped in to take its place. The man clawed from the pit of broken floor. Peter ended him a second time with a stomp. Another corpse rushed in from behind—Lyle taking over more than one at a time—and the berserker spun, tearing the man’s jaw off with a gauntleted backhand.
“This ain’t whut was promised. We done exactly like he said. We gave them the drink he told us to make from plants, so they’d sleep, and put them on the wood pile and . . . and . . .” Otis’s face twisted. He beat a fist against his forehead. “Gods, we killed them, we killed our children—”
Otis gasped and flinched when Peter fired his scattergun, reducing a woman’s head, at point-blank range, to a spray mass of pink and red.
“Do you want me to bring the Committee out here so you can have a trial?” Anoushka asked Otis, ears ringing. She could smell their blood from here.
“No. I’d . . . I’d get Breakshale for this.”
“Yes. You would.”
“Then I want to die.” Otis watched Peter drop the ax on the next who came running in through the church doors with a scythe, screaming. One of Otis’s friends, neighbors, maybe a relative. Snatching the tool away, Peter cast it clattering aside. Some sense must’ve struck the man in that instant, and he turned to bolt.
Otis called out, “Brother, stop, we were wrong!”
Before he got far, Teetee clamped onto the man’s leg. Peter approached, flattening the fleeing Aurorinean’s pelvis, back, neck, and head in a series of slams with his ax’s broad head. Rendered useless to Lyle, this corpse stayed put.
Peter took his time pouring powder down his scattergun’s throat as a man bent a knife against his flank. He tilted the readied gun, casual, took the man’s head off, and with a faint sigh of annoyance, started the process again. Steam leaked from every joint and louver and slat in his armor, as if that was the only thing inside . . . angry mist in black steel.
“I won’t bring the Committee here,” Anoushka told Otis, “but you need to tell me what your pastor told you. Did he say where he was? Otis. Look at me.”
“He was here, with us. And he told us teachings. About how when Aurorin and Teanna were regular people, man and wife, and that they were chosen by—”
“Not that shit. You had to’ve suspected he wasn’t the pastor you’d known. Would your pastor have asked you to do that to your children?”
“No.”
“Don’t they teach even rudimentary instruction on magick out here, at least enough to identify it? Haven’t you heard of necromancy?”
Otis shook his head. “We don’t cotton to magick. No man should have power over another man.”
“Yet look what happened here.”
“I know.” Otis nodded, whimpered. “I see now.”
She lowered her gun; he wasn’t going anywhere. “Anything at all. Any hints that the man using your pastor was speaking to you from somewhere else. Help us get the man who ruined your lives.” Don’t say New Kambleburg, don’t say New Kambleburg.
“Just kill me.”
Anoushka sighed. She’d seen this before. Once someone retreated within themselves, barring torture, it became pointless to continue to try. “Stay right there,” she ordered, though it seemed unnecessary, and approached Peter.
The berserker, splashed in blood from head to toe, stood amid the broken corpses, loose limbs, purple ropes of spilled entrails. He swung about one way, then the other, frantically making sure each was staying put.
Anoushka, ready to dodge, gently said his name, hoping he wouldn’t immediately swing about and cut her down as he had the rest.
He spun. Seeing who it was, he lowered his ax. He tore off his helm, his face obscured a moment by the wall of steam erupting out of the cuirass’s high steel collar.
He twitched as he looked around, blinking rapidly. Brain swelling subsiding, he observed what he’d done—not particularly bothered, merely surprised, it seemed. Anoushka wondered if, when Peter had found his wife reduced to pieces, he’d reacted similarly—or if there had been any whiff of regret in that berserker steam at all. Maybe his condition couldn’t be fully blamed. Maybe his line out in the cornfield about being framed was bullshit. Hard to say.
“We need Lodi,” she said. “Can you fire one off, signal the others?”
Nodding, Peter picked up his scattergun from the floor. After dumping powder down its upended barrel, he stepped outside, clicked back, and rent the night with a man-made thunderclap.
* * *
The screams drove Anoushka out of the barn. Russell, Zuther, and Kylie-Nae followed soon after. Screams of the truly guilty have a different cadence. Easier to tune out. These weren’t like those; they had the screech of a tricked, sorrowful man. Twice agonized.
Anoushka followed the edge of the cornfield where it met the perimeter of the manicured yard, making mindless lefts. She came to the country church’s gravel driveway, her boots skidding on the loose pebbles, stopped suddenly by what she’d nearly tripped into: the congregation’s children.
None looked like they’d awoken during the fire; each was curled against the next, blackened faces subtracted of hair and ears and lips. Serene, teeth together, none silently screaming. Anoushka had seen burnt bodies before, had lit plenty of corpse piles herself, but never had any contained children. She stared, forgetting to breathe. A falling sensation came, her stomach hollowing.
She knew when a sight changed her. A part of her was winking out—a flashbulb bursting bright and dying dark in the same instant, leaving only a ruined spot. Like the Scorch but on her soul.
She turned away. The air was cold when it touched her tears. She felt skinned.
Before she returned within sight of the others, she regathered her tough outer layer. The sight had blasted it off completely, easily. There was no competition, none; it was the worst thing she’d ever seen. And as much as she wished she hadn’t seen it, she had. And would again and again, for as long as she lived. She knew that. Knew it’d follow.
Feeling weightless, she stepped back into earshot of Otis’s screams. S
he felt grounded to herself again, despite it being such an unpleasant sound. She rubbed her hands together to remember their feel, to hear her calluses scratch over each other. “Gods,” she heard herself murmur. “Gods.”
Anoushka noticed Ruprecht had Peter pulled aside at the other side of the church lawn. He was leaning in to talk to the side of Peter’s face. Ruprecht seemed concerned, whispering to his protagonist, until he noticed Anoushka watching them—and his expression hardened. Peter pushed past him to stare idly at another portion of the lawn, alone.
Kylie-Nae came to Anoushka’s side, bringing Zuther and Russell. “What was that all about, you suppose?”
“Nothing,” Anoushka said but made deliberate, long eye contact with her friends, adding the truth with her gaze. Entering the church, she didn’t ask them to join her. Nor did they offer.
The stink of blood hung heavily.
The flies had left Pastor Keene’s leathery husk for these new, fresher meals. Finding a clear path through the slaughter was impossible—and she already had plenty on her anyway—so Anoushka splashed through to approach Lodi ahead at the pulpit.
The wizardess eased back, creaking her chair away from Otis sprawled on the floor before her. His eyes had rolled back as if he were trying to look up at the magick-dug divot in his forehead. Lodi hadn’t pushed him as far as Sharona.
“Anything?” Anoushka said.