“That would be nice,” she said, shoveling down her porridge. She wanted to finish eating before the stench got too bad.
Maybe the Catholic meeting wouldn’t be so different. She missed the community at the church. She’d lost a lot of friends when she came out as Chinese, and while she really shouldn’t miss those people now that they’d shown their true colors, it still hurt. She knew she wouldn’t make it, though. Reginald would send the motorboat out to meet the ship first thing, rain or no rain. When that man saw a problem that needed solving, he shot forward like a bullet and nothing could stop him.
By the time she finished her meal the entire shack stank. Rain drummed on the tin roof, pouring off the sides to create fetid puddles. There were no leaks—Randy was a good builder—but nothing could keep out that smell.
Yu-jin’s stomach churned, threatening to reject the porridge. She lay down on the bed and covered her face with a cloth.
“Wake me up when the world’s better again.”
“That’s going to be a mighty long sleep.”
He lay down next to her, cuddling up close. Yu-jin smiled.
“Sorry I’ve been away so much,” she said.
“I just don’t want you to get hurt. I know you can handle yourself in the wildlands, but people are getting awful trigger happy out there.”
Randy snuggled closer.
“Mmm. If it wasn’t so stinky, I’d be in the mood,” Yu-jin said.
“Well maybe we can take our minds off the smell with a little distraction.”
His hand ran down her side, found the hem of her shirt, and worked its way inside.
A pounding on the door made him pull away.
“Who the hell could that be out in this crap?” he muttered, and then shouted, “Who is it?”
“Message from The Doctor. Yu-jin needs to come to a meeting right away!”
“In this rain?” Yu-jin objected.
“Sorry, those are the orders. It looks like it’s clearing.”
Yu-jin groaned and got out of bed. She put on a plastic poncho, wrapped a cloth around her nose and mouth, and went out into the rain.
She didn’t even see the face of the man who had fetched her, bent as he was against the rain with a large hood covering his features. He led her through the gentle shower that gave off such a stench that it made her dizzy. Once she almost fell in a puddle, only catching herself at the last instant. She shook her head and tried to focus on the road. If she fell into a puddle she’d lose her lunch and be bedridden for the rest of the day. It seemed the rains got more and more vile with each storm.
What the hell did people in the Old Times do with all that chemical stuff, anyway?
The guards, huddled under a shelter by the side of the gate, waved them through and soon they entered the warehouse. Yu-jin and the messenger shook out their ponchos and breathed a little easier. They went up a long flight of steps to the upper floor, reserved almost exclusively for The Doctor’s offices and living quarters. Reginald had more space than anyone she knew, but she didn’t think it was good for him. Having so much room filled with all the things he needed meant he didn’t feel the need to venture out. Sometimes he’d spend days at a time cooped up in this series of windowless concrete boxes, only coming out to deal with the scavenger trade or to see to some emergency. If work didn’t pull him out of the warehouse, Yu-jin suspected he’d never leave at all.
They passed through a front office, where a teenager listened to Radio Hope, writing down the broadcast in a large notebook.
“… one way to filter toxins out of water is the let the water sit for a time. Many of the oils and other substances will rise to the top and can be skimmed off. The next step is to …”
This was one of Reginald’s projects. He wanted a complete record of what Radio Hope taught so he could assemble a book. He wanted to figure out how to make a printing press and print out free copies for anyone who needed it. It was one of his many dreams.
Letting herself in, she found him slumped on his couch, obviously drunk. Not stoned like he usually got at night, but drunk in the middle of the day. A bad sign.
“How are you?” she asked as she sat down next to him.
“Backstabbers everywhere.”
“Don’t let Clyde get to you.”
“I wasn’t talking about him but yeah, him too.”
Yu-jin decided not to ask. She had enough troubles already. Instead she gave a quick rundown of what happened over at Weissberg.
Reginald rubbed his chin. Yu-jin noticed he needed a shave.
“I wonder what his game is,” he murmured.
“Maybe it’s just what he said. Maybe he wants peace. He’s already gotten what he wants. Opening up trade between the two—”
“Unacceptable!”
Yu-jin fell silent for a moment. She saw no point in arguing. The Doctor took Weissberg’s secession as a personal betrayal, and that was one thing he could never forgive. This was one of the problems with atheists, they always thought they were the center of the universe. It didn’t help that so many people acted like he was.
“Has he always wanted to be in charge?” Yu-jin asked.
“Not so much in the early days. He was too busy building up his farms and the Merchants Association. Oh, he was always a big player, but he left the real work to people like me. While we were rebuilding civilization, he was making a fortune, or what passes for a fortune these days.”
“So how did Weissman get where he is? Who was he back in North Cape?”
“He was still a teenager when it fell. Don’t think I ever met him before we headed south. Came with us along with his family. His father ran the port back in North Cape and had a bunch of buildings in town he rented to tenants. Farmland too, if I’m remembering right.”
“Did he lend money?”
“Probably. A lot of the richer families did.”
Yu-jin touched her chin. “I wonder if that’s who Roy owed his money to.”
The Doctor chuckled. “That would great. All those debts disappeared with the last money system.”
“I never understood how money worked. So if I had one of those old bills, or a coin, could I go somewhere and trade it for anything?”
“If you had enough and could find what you wanted. That was hard even back then.”
“But why would people take it?”
The Doctor shrugged. “Everyone just agreed.”
“So was there some big storehouse somewhere with salt and chicken and grain that guaranteed it? Like if someone was starving they could go to the storehouse and trade in their bills for food?”
“You mean was the money backed by anything? No, it was just a religion. Everyone took it on faith. That’s why I never reinstituted it. New City isn’t rich enough to back real currency, and people like Weissman are trouble enough as it is.”
Yu-jin decided to change the subject.
“So how are the plans for Chinese New Year going?” she asked.
“You’ll get your party. I’ll make sure there’s plenty of security. The whole thing is a pain in the ass but you’re right, people need to understand that the Chinese are here and will live their own way. Don’t expect things to change much, though. We had a big fight in the Citizens Council thirty years ago when a band of Muslims showed up and wanted to settle. I won that one, but as we saw in the riots, you can’t legislate tolerance.”
“I’m not expecting any miracles,” Yu-jin said, shaking her head sadly.
“Good, because you won’t get any.”
“You should come. It might calm things down.”
“Clyde would freak.”
“Clyde’s already freaking.”
“Good point.”
“So will you?”
“I’ll think about it.”
“It’s good for you to get out. We’ve had fun at Joe’s Chicken Shack, haven’t we?”
Reginald smiled. “It’s damn good stuff. Not tonight, though. All that stink from the rains is bad for me.
You know weak my immune system is. Anything that hurts my body only makes my sickness worse.”
Then maybe you shouldn’t be drinking and smoking.
Yu-jin knew better than to say that out loud. Getting him off the substances was going to be a long, hard fight. She’d made progress, but only through constant gentle pressure, and he had a tendency to fall apart when she wasn’t around.
Like today.
“I shouldn’t have too much contact with people anyway. I am almost certainly the last person in the world who has my disease. I’m a walking bioweapon.”
“You might not want to spread that around,” Yu-jin said.
“All the inner circle knows, and probably a bunch of other people too.”
“I thought you told me you could only get it through sex and blood.”
“Yeah, but it’s a dangerous world. When I got shot during the siege I bled all over a bunch of people. After I got better I had to test every one of them. Thank God none of them came up positive.”
Yu-jin smiled. “Oh, you’re thanking God now, are you?”
He smiled and elbowed her in the ribs. “It’s just an expression. I say ‘bless you’ when someone sneezes too.” Reginald turned serious. “I shudder to calculate how much valuable medicine I’ve used up just to keep myself alive. But if I’m gone, who will cure everyone else?”
“You have every right to treat yourself, and the world is a better place with you in it.”
“Wish everyone knew that,” he said glumly.
Yu-jin felt a rising impatience. She hated his self-pitying moods. Sometimes he acted like he was the only person in the world with problems.
“Why haven’t you trained more doctors?” she asked. “They could lighten the load a bit.”
He shrugged, a helpless gesture that made him look old. “Most people aren’t suited for it. You can make any intelligent and organized person into a good nurse. Being a doctor takes a hell of a lot more, and not just in knowledge. You have to want it more than anything else in the world. I’ve had a few nurses who could have made doctor. One died, another decided to try her luck farming down south. A few turned on me.”
“Turned on you?”
“People are deceitful. You can’t trust most people. It’s not their fault, really. It’s a hard world and people want quick answers. People are scared.”
Yu-jin looked at her friend with a mixture of sympathy and exasperation.
No one’s more scared than you.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
David sailed north through the day, his mind a blank. He adjusted the sail and moved the tiller automatically, like he was a machine from the Old Times. The clear sky, the glitter of the sun on the water, the foul smell rising from the waves, nothing could capture his attention. His mind remained wrapped up in his encounter with the tweakers.
What had happened? Why hadn’t he shot those creatures down? He, who had killed so many who had deserved to live far more?
And what of their reaction? They had cast aside their chemicals and crowded around him like he was someone special. They had all wanted to touch him, asking him to heal them. Had he heard correctly? Heal them from what? Their addiction? Their despair?
Weren’t they too far gone to have any sort of reason?
He had no answers. Perhaps he should have prayed for guidance, but David didn’t feel like praying. There was some strange silence in him he didn’t want to disturb. He felt like he was at the center of everything, like the sea, sun, and shore were all focused on him.
At last, as the sun sloped to the west and turned the sea the color of burnished brass, he turned the ship towards shore. There were no clouds on the horizon. He would have a night free of toxic rain.
David found a little inlet where he could beach his boat. He hauled it up onto the rocky strand, took his food and both AK-47s, and walked inland, trying to get away from the stench of the water. As he left the inlet and walked onto an open plain almost devoid of vegetation, he wondered at why he had brought his Kalashnikovs and 9mm. It had been a habit.
He stopped, his boots making a soft crunch on the gritty soil. Perhaps he should throw his guns away.
“Yes!” he shouted out loud, startled at the sound of his own voice after not speaking for an entire day. “The Pure One will be the last.”
He laid his AKs down on the ground, along with his spare magazines. Then he took his 9mm out of its holster along with the spare clip and set them beside the automatic rifles. He started to pull his Bowie knife out of it sheath before sliding it back. It was too useful as a tool.
As David took a step away from the guns, he hesitated. Shouldn’t he keep the guns for hunting?
“No, the Lord will provide. Have faith. Why is your faith always lacking? Hasn’t He taken you this far? As long as you are doing His will, you have nothing to fear.”
He turned his back on his weapons and walked away, looking for a place to camp. A line of low, barren hills paralleled the shore. David crossed over them, hoping they’d shield him from the smell of the sea, and saw a broad plain stretching out before him for a couple of kilometers before the rough foothills of the mountains broke the horizon. He supposed there should be streams nearby, but with that rain they’d all be foul for at least a day or two. He hefted his two canteens—one had been Robert’s—and found that one was almost empty while the other was nearly full. Good. He could wait a day before having to find water.
In the lee of the hills the scent from the sea became more tolerable, but there remained a miasma of toxins rising from the soil itself.
How could people let the world get like this? The people of the Old Times could fly into outer space but they couldn’t even keep their own land clean. The Pure One had been right about one thing—the world did need to be cleaned up, and the only way to clean it up was to clean up people’s minds.
But how? Certainly not the way the Righteous Horde had tried. It had been so easy to fall into it at first. The Pure One had called for unity among all peoples, saying everyone was equal in the Lord’s eyes as long as they were pure. The message had spread like wildfire.
In those early days it hadn’t been about killing. They only killed tweakers then, and where was the harm in that? Lots of people hunted down tweakers. They could be dangerous and they were half-dead anyway. But then everything changed when they stumbled across that first bunker. The Pure One had taken it as a sign that the Lord wanted a proper crusade. Why else would the Lord give them all those weapons?
They had slipped into killing so easily. Right after finding the bunker they had come across a bunch of garbage miners working an old landfill. They were all diseased and The Pure One ordered them wiped out. Shortly after that they came to the second bunker. Another miracle, and another command. Now they swept down the coast wiping out any fishermen who looked unclean, meaning pretty much all fishermen. David had almost rebelled at that, but didn’t because he was eating better than he ever had before. He was wearing better clothes than he ever had before. He had a gun in his hand. He felt like someone important instead of just some lowly fish eater.
As David set up his old army tent on the barren plain, he thought about those times. The Pure One had been crafty. He knew David had been a fisherman and suspected he might be struggling with his faith. And David wasn’t the only former fisherman or garbage miner among the Righteous Horde. The Pure One gave a sermon on how God picked the chosen ones. Just as he himself had survived the toxic waste that had killed his entire family, just as he himself had escaped without a blemish, there were those in the Righteous Horde who had wallowed in toxins all their lives and never suffered. That was a sign of God’s favor. Anyone who had come through that unscathed was truly godly.
That same day David was promoted to the Elect.
David opened his pack and pulled out some corn cakes and nuts. He decided to leave the Blue Cans for now and eat the fresh food first. Blue Cans never went bad. Another miracle from the Old Times. They had accomplished so much
and foresaw so little.
Yes, David thought as he ate his simple dinner, The Pure One had been crafty. He always knew when to reward and when to punish. He knew how to lead people into sin little by little until they were too involved to walk away. As a bodyguard David had been given respect, given clothes and women. He wasn’t some fisherman to be kicked around and robbed anymore. He had gone from being one of the lowest to one of the highest, and it swelled him with pride. The Pure One promoted his followers based on their faith and ability, ignoring the color of their skin and their past vocation.
But all the rewards the cult leader had given him hadn’t shut David’s eyes to the evil they committed, hadn’t shut his eyes to the fact that they had become just another problem in a world filled with problems.
No, David had shut his eyes himself. He’d sold out for the chance to feel big.
And what of the assassination, had that been just another way to feel big? David shook his head as he bit into another corn cake. No, that had been self-preservation, and revenge. The Pure One had corrupted him, had shown David that deep down, he was weak and greedy.
David lifted his eyes heavenward.
“With your guidance, oh Lord, I can be more than what I am. I’ve been a terrible sinner. I was tempted so easily by that false prophet. You guided my hand and kept me safe. Now I’ll do Your will. No more killing. Now I’ll get my people something better, something they deserve.”
A strange, low sound intruded on his thoughts. David perked up, looked around. The sound grew, coming from the north.
It sounded like a machine.
A machine in this barren place? He stood. The light of the setting sun flashed on some distant object, glinting redly off metal. David squinted. The object was out on the plain and moving.
Moving towards him.
The sound grew and finally David recognized what it was—an engine. As the object drew closer he saw that it was a vehicle.
David’s breath caught. He’d only seen a functioning vehicle once before in his life. It had been after that sniper tried to kill The Pure One. He and a thousand other warriors had chased the little group from New City all the way into the mountains. It had been a day and a night of grueling pursuit, and when on the next morning they had finally caught up to the assassins and cornered them on a mountain road, a vehicle had rammed through their lines and plucked away the New City warriors from right under their noses.
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