The Apocalyse Outcasts

by Peter Meredith

  Chapter 32

  Sarah

  New Eden

  The bedroom was a windowless ten-by-ten cell, furnished after the fashion of a soviet gulag. It contained only two bunk beds and a four-drawer dresser. The walls were stark white and the floors cold linoleum. The only decorations were a picture of the prophet that hung oddly high on the wall above the dresser and a list of rules that was tacked to the back of the door.

  It was a very long list.

  Believers will attend regular daily services which are held at 12PM and 6PM. Believers will also attend special services and exorcisms.

  Believers will pray in the prophet’s name a minimum of seven times a day.

  Believers will attend mind-cleansing on a weekly basis. Do not deviate from the posted cleansing schedule.

  Believers will not allow blasphemy in their presence and will report it as soon as possible.

  Believers will not tolerate the questioning of the rules.

  Believers will donate one third of their day in labor to the Lord.

  Believers will donate one third of their day in labor to the Lord’s prophet…

  There were thirty-two rules in all. After Sarah read them she felt ill, not sick to her stomach, the feeling went far deeper. The rules were designed to destroy who she was, her humanity, her sense of self, her essence, perhaps even her soul. They were in place to cage the mind and crush the concept of personal freedom.

  After half a day among them Sarah realized that the Believers had their rules so that thinking wouldn’t be necessary.

  Every minute in the stilting, cloying, suffocating dungeons of New Eden only served to reinforced what Sarah had suspected: that the Believers were being brainwashed on a tremendous scale. The mind control began with body control; each Believer was worked to exhaustion. Below the earth they excavated new tunnels like insects, bringing out earth wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow. They hollowed out chambers from rock and clay using nothing but shovel and pick. Above ground, they plowed and tilled and threshed all by hand.

  The work was so strenuous that they were happy for prayer breaks and looked forward to the two daily services. Chanting was supposedly soothing and most of the Believers rocked in their chairs as they droned out the long prayers. To Sarah, the sound wasn’t so much soothing as it was mind-numbing, and that too was by design.

  All-in-all Sarah saw New Eden as a giant, humanoid beehive. At the top was the queen bee—the prophet who was catered to in every way imaginable. His one job, aside from interpreting God’s word to mean anything he wanted it to, was to create new Believers out of old humans. The next strata in the “hive” were the Brothers and Sisters. These were generally the Believers who had been with Abraham the longest or they were those lucky few who were hand-picked because of their potential. For the most part they did little in the way of actual work.

  The Sisters were the high priestesses to Abraham. Supposedly, they served him in some sort of religious capacity, however, judging by the jealous looks many of them had given Sarah, they served him in other, more salacious, ways as well. In addition to their “religious” duties, the Sisters had other official roles. Since only they could carry weapons in the lower portion of New Eden, they acted as body guards to the prophet. They also regulated the workers. With their ever-present clipboards and their judgmental looks, the Sisters kept the Believers scurrying around in an endless sweat.

  The Brothers were thuggish and lazy. Unlike the Sisters, who had a hand in everything, their only job was to provide external security. They lounged around in the five silos that overlooked the valley from which New Eden had been carved, playing cards or swapping stories. It was rumored that each was a marksman of some ability and that with their scoped rifles they could see anything that moved in the valley. Whatever their ability, the silos were perfectly situated to repel attacks from any direction.

  Beneath them in rank were the drones, the lowest of the low, the real Believers. Of these, Sarah had classified two distinct types: the robots who had ceased to be human and had fully accepted their new role as mindless automatons, and the soon-to-be-robots who clung to the last speckle of their personalities.

  Sarah’s roommates consisted of two of the former and one of the latter. The one soon-to-be-robot, a wretched woman of about Sarah’s age, named Dinah, was dreadfully sad. The moment they met, Sarah could tell by the fullness of her eyes and the way her mouth parted that Dinah wanted to talk as any normal woman would.

  She wanted to know where Sarah was from. She wanted to know if there was hope outside New Eden. She wanted to tell of her own adventures in the apocalypse. She wanted to share experiences because that’s what people did. Sarah could even tell Dinah wanted to gossip about the prophet and, desperately, she wanted to make snide comments about the two robot roommates who slept on command, ran to mind-cleansing because they were so excited to rid themselves of impure thoughts, and who timed their shits to maximize how much of their day they could spend praying for Abraham.

  However, Dinah held back.

  Her lips quivered in want, her fingers would flare as a thought struck her and her mouth would come open, but she was simply too afraid to commit to more. Sarah didn’t want her to. She wasn’t there to make friends or commiserate about how bad things were. In her mind, Dinah was getting everything she deserved. She had traded a dangerous freedom for the surety of slavery.

  Not only that, Sarah didn’t trust her. She didn’t trust anyone in New Eden. For all she knew Dinah was some sort of spy, whose job it was to ferret out those who were weak in their faith or who could be trouble in the future.

  Sarah’s other two roommates were less likely to be spies. Just after the lights were turned down—an automatic event since there weren’t any switches in the room—one of the robot women suddenly said in a very loud voice: “Lord above please bless your beautiful prophet here on earth.”

  Not to be outdone, the other robot cried out louder, “Lord bless his perfect soul and grant him more of your wisdom for he is the wisest of everyone.”

  On the lower bunk across from Sarah, Dinah started making little noises as she tried to add something, “Uh…uh…Lord? Please, uh, bless his soul and his heart. The prophet is great.”

  Now it was Sarah’s turn. She could sense expectancy from the other three women; the only problem was that she could only think of hateful things. She wanted God to strike Abraham down with a bolt of lightning. She wanted it to come down right onto his ridiculously perfect hair and split his head in two. She wanted to claw his eyes out and stomp his testicles.

  As much as she wanted to, she couldn’t pray out loud for any of that, but at the same time she was still a Christian. It didn’t sit right with her to lie in a direct prayer to God.

  Crossing her fingers, she prayed, “Lord, please bless the prophet’s soul…judge it according to its deeds and reward it accordingly.” Reward it with hell, she thought.

  “That was a good one, Janice,” the robot in the bunk above Sarah said.

  “Amen,” the second robot said pointedly.

  “Yes, of course, amen,” the first robot added quickly.

  Dinah sounded glum, “Amen.”

  Within a minute the two robots had dropped off into sleep. Dinah, clearly wanting to talk, tossed and turned. Sarah lay there, trying her best to remember the floor plan of the tunnels. After the baptism, Tina had given Sarah a partial tour of New Eden, leaving off such restricted areas as the prophet’s apartments, the Sisters’ quarters and the armory.

  Everything else was open. They visited cafeterias, kitchens, industrial-sized laundry facilities, machine shops, everything a community would need and a few things they wouldn’t, like an exorcism chamber.

  “You are number 894,” Tina said. The room was circular in shape and tremendous in size. It had hardwood floors, much like one would find on a basketball court, except that instead of having free-throw lines and three-point arcs marked on the floor, it had numbers radiating outwards in growing
circles.

  Tina brought her to 894 and pointed at it. “This is where you kneel.” She then lifted her chin to indicate an odd stair stepping alter, like a pyramid. It stood in the middle of the room thirty feet high.

  Sarah felt her pulse quicken. “Are there that many exorcisms?”

  “It is also used for soul cleansing. The fire of the Lord burns away sins.” Tina looked up at the altar in awe, which was good because she didn’t see how Sarah had gone pale.

  Tina spoke no more on the subject and they left the exorcism chamber by the middle of its three exits. She brought Sarah to the next area that had no business in this, or any community: the mind-cleansing rooms. “Remember your times and your number: 894. You cannot switch either.”

  “894,” Sarah repeated.

  “Right. It’s really easy. Just come in and sit in the chair. When the light goes green state your name and your number. Then just listen to your prompter, she’ll guide you.”

  “A prompter? What kind of prompts are there?”

  “The prompts will be like; how do you feel about the prophet? Or how much do you love the prophet on a scale from one-to-ten? It’s nothing to worry about. Mind-cleansing is a way to rid yourself of impure thoughts.”

  “Oh, that’s good,” Sarah said with a little laugh, as though this wasn’t the second craziest thing she had ever heard of—soul-cleaning by fire was going to be hard to beat.

  Now, hours later lying in the dark, Sarah went cold at the thought of it. She tried to blink away the image of the pyramid. She had to force her mind back to the floor plan, but it was hard to picture.

  The original size of New Eden, back before the apocalypse, had been relatively small, but, since the zombie plague, it had grown with every passing day. It obviously hadn’t been designed by an architect or built by an experienced engineer.

  Hallways went this way and that, crossing each other, changing direction or looping oddly. The chaos appeared baseless, however it was generally granite deposits, which the Believers found hell to cut through with their primitive tools, that was to blame. Sarah puzzled over the layout until she fell asleep, still thinking about the strange maze of halls. At five in the morning the lights flicked on and immediately one of the robots cried in a shrill voice, “Lord please bless our prophet’s glorious soul!”

  Sarah blinked in confusion.

  The other robot wasn’t about to be outshone. “Bless his great heart!”

  Sarah smacked her lips and said, “Huh?”

  “Bless his health and his soul,” Dinah said as quick as she could.

  Just as the night before, everyone looked at Sarah in expectation, but her mind felt like mud. It was a slog just to sit up. “Uh…and, uh, God bless his…” Her mind suddenly seemed almost completely empty. She could picture Abraham and the only thing that stood out was his stupid hair. “His, uh hair. God bless his hair.”

  She expected disapproving looks, but instead, the first robot nodded and said, “He does have great hair.”

  The other agreed and Dinah made it unanimous.

  Sarah sighed under her breath and went to change out of her pajamas. Her one dresser drawer had come complete with a set of white robes for services, a pair of pajamas, and a one piece work suit that zippered in front. It also had a black case that held all the basic toiletries she would need.

  “Shower first,” one of the robots said, hurrying out the door still in her pajamas and toting her black bag. Sarah followed at a run. Everything seemed to happen at a run. In the bathroom were thirty stalls, thirty sinks, thirty showerheads, and one Sister in an azure-blue robe with her one clipboard. Her eyes were flat and hard as she watched the women. Sarah tried to blend in with the rest.

  The bathroom held a hundred women all trying to get through their morning routine at once. It was remarkably quiet; eerily so. Sarah finished at the same time as one of the robots, mostly because her short hair didn’t need anything more than for her to rake her fingers through it. They sped back to their room, dressed in less than a minute and left again. Sarah thought they were heading to breakfast instead they went to the temple to pray.

  Despite her hunger, there was no turning back. She found her numbered seat and began to pray, but not to the evil prophet. She prayed to God that she would be able to find Eve and she prayed that they would be able to get out of there somehow. She also prayed for Neil and Sadie and even Jillybean. Sarah felt so horribly afraid and lonely that it hurt to think of her family. It was easier on her heart to keep it oriented on revenge.

  Finally, she saw her roommate stand and head for the door. Sarah jumped up and ran after. “Stop,” Sarah said, the second the temple door was closed behind them. Obediently the woman did. She had shoulder length dirty-blonde hair that she wore parted in the middle. She was plain to the point of being ugly.

  “What is it? I don’t want to be late.”

  “What am I supposed to be doing?” After Sarah’s tour, Tina had dropped her off at her room and had left without a word. Now Sarah was somewhat stuck. She figured she could make it back to her room, but didn’t know if that was the right thing.

  “I don’t know,” the woman said. “I have to go.”

  Sarah was about to follow her and beg her for a glimmer of information, when she realized that this was actually a golden opportunity to explore. It would not be out of place for a newbie to be wandering around lost. The first thing she did was to jog back to her room so that she had a good starting point. From there she went out in an arc always coming back to a place she knew and gradually learning her way around.

  Eventually, one of the blue-robed Sisters found her. “Are you 894?”

  Fiction had caught up with reality. She had been reduced to a number! “My name is Janice and they assigned me that number.”

  “Where have you been?” The sister was small, almost all of them were, and thus she had to lift her chin slightly to look into Sarah’s pretty eyes. “Were you wandering around lost?”

  Sarah’s nod was slight, displaying her embarrassment.

  “That’s what I thought. I am Sister Chastity, your Lead. I am the Sister for the eight-hundreds. You come to me with any questions and you will come to me with any reports of blasphemy. I set your assignments and I make sure you have everything you need. Do you?”

  “I think so.”

  “No you don’t because you don’t know the first thing about New Eden.” Beneath her clipboard was a folder, she handed it to Sarah. It read: A Time of Becoming. “This is your handbook. Memorize it. In three days I will quiz you on its contents and you will pass.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Yes, Sister, but that’s in there as well.” Chastity took a step back and looked Sarah up and down. “You are lucky I’m your lead. There are some who would be threatened by your looks, however I was clearly chosen for my competence and for my ability to note nuance. Our Lord’s prophet has his eye on you.”

  “Really?” Sarah asked, feeling her guts begin to churn. Although it would get her closer to Eve, the idea of being anywhere near Abraham without a gun in her hand had her insides shaking. That thought triggered another: Was Chastity armed? Sarah tried to look for a hidden weapon without being obvious.

  “Yes really,” Chastity replied, frowning at Sarah, who hadn’t been as discreet about inspecting the woman as she had hoped. If she was packing a gun it was a small one.

  “I like your robe,” Sarah said, feeling heat in her cheeks. “It’s a nice color on you.”

  “Page sixteen: Believers will wear white robes when not working. Get used to the pure white. I doubt you have what it takes to become a Sister,” Chastity said icily.

  “Sorry.”

  Chastity grunted something that could’ve been an acceptance of her apology. She then began walking down the hall, her small feet tapping out a quick patter. “As I was saying, the prophet saw something in you. I noticed it at your baptism. He is not usually so forceful.”

  Sarah nearly choked, remember
ing how she had been held under the water for so long. For a few seconds, she thought Abraham had discovered her identity and was trying to kill her right there. And now this lady was trying to tell Sarah that the aggression had been a sign of affection?

  “So what does it mean?” Sarah asked after a deep breath.

  “It means the Lord has blessed you with beauty and me with brains. Together we can go far. Tell me, Janice, do you have any special skills? In a work related capacity?” she added quickly when Sarah blanched. “Something that would be useful, say near at hand.”

  “I was a stay at home mom,” Sarah said, jumping at the chance. “There was a baby, yesterday in the hall. I’m great with kids…” She stopped when Chastity began shaking her head.

  “No, that won’t do. The Lord’s prophet has many, many people already lined up for that position. I’m talking about something more professional.”

  “I was also a…pharmacist.” Sarah had been a pharmacy representative, a pill-pusher, but she figured that wouldn’t mean so much to Chastity. “I don’t know if that’s what you mean by near at hand.”

  “Every moment nearer to the prophet is a moment nearer to God,” Chastity said. “That closeness is how any sane person registers their worth in New Eden. Let me set you an example: would you rather pull a plow in the fields or would you rather be on the hospital staff? Would I rather be the Lead for the eight-hundreds or would I rather be the prophet’s personal advisor. We all have dreams. That one is mine.”

  “It is a worthy dream,” Sarah said dipping her chin. “I would not like to pull a plow.”

  “Then let’s see what we can do to get you on that team,” Chastity said. “All we have to do is get the prophet to agree that a pharmacist is needed in New Eden, which won’t be easy.”

  “You don’t have one?”

  “No. He has said the Lord either heals a soul or he does not and that man should not interfere.”

  “Then how am I going to change his mind? I cannot make a case that is greater than that.” Sarah knew that she couldn’t make any case to sway Abraham. She just didn’t have enough knowledge in the field. Her sales ability had more to do with her looks that anything else.