Emergency Transmission

by Sean McLachlan

  They caught him at the edge of the Burbs just as he was returning to town. As soon as he saw the horde of angry men and women he knew that Aaron had betrayed him.

  David flung out his hands as if to embrace them.

  “I have sinned and I wish to repent!”

  The man in front slammed his fist into David’s face.

  “I found a bunker with—” a fist struck him in the side of his head, “—enough concrete to fill the well!”

  Another blow. He dodged the fourth, screaming out his discovery at the top of his lungs.

  Then they were all over him. His arms were pinioned. Someone stomped on his foot. Fingers tried to gouge out his eyes. Yanking his head to one side, he shouted, “Check the camera! I took photos of an entire bunker full of concrete. I will tell you where it is. You can kill me, but let me tell you first!”

  Someone hit him hard at the base of the skull and the world went black. He awoke to fingers clutching his throat, but they were pulled away. Vaguely he felt himself being lifted up. More blows fell, but not as many as before. Or perhaps there were and he could no longer feel them all. He was a mass of pain.

  David prayed.

  For a time, he knew nothing. He blinked his eyes, opening them and bringing his hand to his face to wipe them clean of blood.

  They were carrying him. Blearily he looked around and saw a mass of people moving along like a tide. Beyond the crowd stood a ragged line of tweakers pounding their heads and wailing.

  “The concrete,” he gasped. “Don’t kill me before I tell you about the concrete.”

  Ahead he could see the New City wall. A line of figures atop it watched them approach.

  “Let’s hear the preacher give a final sermon!” someone said.

  Everyone laughed.

  “Yeah, preach to us, holy man.”

  They were passing through the marketplace. The rough hands carrying him along set him atop a table. Somehow he managed to stand.

  “Listen to me.”

  Someone punched him hard in the groin. He doubled over, their laughter ringing in his ears.

  He forced himself to stand. A clod of mud hit him in the face.

  “I found a bunker full of concrete!” he shouted at the top of his lungs. “It’s yours. Just let me tell you where it is.”

  “Bullshit!” someone shouted.

  “He’s just trying to save himself.”

  “Yeah, no miracle is going to save you, preacher man!”

  “Wait, it’s true!”

  Everyone turned. That had been Roy’s voice.

  Roy struggled through the market, leaning heavily on two men.

  “It’s true. I looked through the pictures. There’s a bunker somewhere with bags of concrete mix. Thousands of them! And mixing machines and trucks and everything.”

  “Let’s go see!”

  “Someone stay here and guard him.”

  The bulk of the crowd moved off towards the bar, sweeping Roy and his helpers along like twigs on the tide, while a few dozen remained around David.

  One came up close, brandishing an axe.

  “Try to run and I’ll cut off both your feet.”

  David sat down on the table, trying to regain his breath. The gate remained closed, the figures atop the walls distant, uncaring.

  “Letimgooo!”

  The hoarse scream came from beyond the small circle of vigilantes. A tweaker rushed at the crowd, trying to push his way through. David recognized the man he had calmed down after the last toxic rain.

  “Letimgooo!” the tweaker screamed again. One of David’s captors booted him in the rear. The others laughed. Another pushed him so hard he fell to the ground.

  “Leave him be!” David shouted.

  The tweaker sprang up and rushed for David, arms outstretched.

  The man with the axe rammed the end of the handle into the tweaker’s stomach, making him double over.

  He didn’t stay down for long. He struggled to his feet, his face twisted with rage. A low growl rose from his throat. The crowd backed away.

  “Stop!” David shouted. “Not for me! Calm down, brother. Everything’s all right. It’s the Lord’s will.”

  The tweaker stopped, his rage gone as quickly as it had appeared. He stared at David, his toothless mouth spreading in a grin …

  … and gouted blood as the axe cleaved the back of his skull.

  “No!” David shouted. He tried to leap off the table, but got pushed him back.

  The tweaker lay on the ground, staring up at David.

  “Die for you,” he croaked, and his eyes went glassy.

  David sobbed as one of his most faithful followers breathed his last.

  And then he understood what the Lord had planned for him. He knew how to fix the other half of the problem.

  The crowd that had moved to Roy’s bar began to return. David stood, squared his shoulders, and looked down at the people as they looked back at him with hope in their eyes.

  No less hatred than before, but at least there was hope now too.

  “Where is it? Where is it?” they all shouted as they gathered around.

  David held up his hands, and the crowd went as silent as if he was about to give a sermon. For a brief moment, he was once again in control.

  “I will tell you. But first take me to in front of the wall so the people in New City can hear too. Not only will I tell you, but I will tell you how we can lay the concrete without any of you getting hurt.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Roy couldn’t believe his eyes and then he couldn’t believe his ears. The image of the bunker had been like a dream come true. A huge domed interior, crammed with everything they needed. A couple of cement mixing trucks stood to one side near a row of smaller mixers. The bulk of the bunker was taken up with rows and rows of bags of cement mix, some close enough to the camera that he could read their labels.

  Roy didn’t speak to the man upstairs very often, but he couldn’t help but give up a short word of thanks for the only miracle he had seen in ages.

  And then David had told that lynch mob what he wanted to do with it.

  The idea had been so sickening, and yet so logical, that Roy had risked another attack of palpitations to hurry as fast as he could for the gate. The Doctor needed to hear about this.

  The crowd didn’t notice him leave. They were too busy debating David’s offer.

  When he got to the gate, Clyde called down to his guards to open up. The giant metal bar they used to close to two tall doors slid open. Roy glanced over his shoulder, worried the crowd might have heard and be rushing for him, but they were still arguing among themselves.

  “Get your ass in here!” Clyde said.

  He slipped through. The gate slammed shut behind him and three of the guards hauled the beam back into place.

  Wiping his brow, Roy huffed up the steps to the parapet.

  Clyde and Yu-jin were waiting for him.

  “What’s going on?” Clyde demanded. “Why haven’t they lynched him?”

  “Don’t get so eager for a lynching,” Roy snapped, losing his usual cool. “There’s more going on than you know.”

  “Damn right there is,” The Doctor said as he climbed the steps. “I looked through the other pictures on that camera Aaron gave us.”

  “And he’s got access to a mother lode of concrete,” Roy said. “Yeah, I saw. Aaron came to my place after he left you and gave me a memory card. Guess he had the same pics on there. Now David’s trying to make a deal.”

  The Doctor frowned. “A deal? That psycho wants a deal? What does he want?”

  Roy gestured towards the Burbs. “Ask the man yourself. You won’t believe your ears.”

  The crowd was approaching. Like so many times before when the residents of the Burbs approached the wall with their demands, they stopped halfway across the killing zone. Roy looked down and picked out David in the crowd. He stood near the front, bloody but unbowed.

  “Where’s Annette and her
deputies?” The Doctor called down.

  “We got the jump on them and disarmed them,” someone called back. “They’re safe. We got a little present for you, Doc.”

  A woman came forward. Roy recognized the thin, aged form of Susanna, once a slave of the Righteous Horde and now something of a leader among the many refugees who had fled here after the cult’s defeat.

  A group of men shoved David forward. One held the bloody blade of an axe to his throat.

  Susanna pointed an accusing finger at David.

  “This scum was one of the Elect, a bodyguard for The Pure One. It took me a long time to recognize him. He shaved his head and changed his clothes, and we never looked too closely at the Elect. We didn’t want to attract attention. We all knew what they did, though. They’d shoot anyone who didn’t work hard enough. They’d drag women into their tents. And when they came on a settlement, they’d kill anyone who didn’t convert. They even burned shelter! And he comes here acting like some holier-than-thou preacher?”

  The crowd laughed. The Doctor joined in. Roy felt sick.

  The woman glared up at the parapet. “We demand justice. And this trash is actually offering it to us.” She turned to David. “Tell them.”

  They pushed David forward so that he fell hard on his knees. He knelt there panting for a moment before struggling to his feet. He took three steps forward.

  “I have sinned, and I am willing to atone for those sins,” he told the citizens on the wall.

  “Cut the bullshit and get to the point,” The Doctor called back.

  “Let the man speak, Doc,” Roy said.

  “Quiet, Roy.”

  David went on. “The bunker is a short way down the coast. The freighter can get us to it quickly. It’s close to shore, but hidden so cleverly that you will never find it on your own.”

  The Doctor nodded. “Yeah. They hid them pretty good back then.”

  “The Righteous Horde is between us and the bunker, marching north.” This caused a stir among the people in the crowd and on the wall. “They are marching on the beach collecting fish. They are almost out of food. The Pure One had a radio. When I killed him I heard a transmission between the freighter and New City. I told them God had promised them a ship to take them to the Promised Land, and that I would return with that ship. My second-in-command came to me yesterday. He told me that they spotted the ship from shore. They all believe in the prophecy. More importantly they all believe in me.”

  “We need to kill him,” Clyde said. “Now.”

  The Doctor nodded.

  David continued. “So we will sail past my people again. We will go to the bunker and you will see that there is no trick. Then we will return to them. When they see me standing aboard that great ship they will know that the Lord has sent me on a special mission.”

  “You got no mission except to give us that concrete, bud,” Clyde said.

  David shook his head. “The concrete is useless without men and women to mix it and lay it. Who here would volunteer? Anyone who goes to that well will die in a few days. But the Righteous Horde does not fear death. They only want salvation. I offer them that salvation. I offer them the chance to finally do the will of God.”

  The Doctor went pale. “Wait. You mean—”

  “I will tell my people that God came to me in a vision and told me that I should lead them to the well. We will fill it. We will save civilization.”

  This statement was met with profound silence.

  Clyde broke it.

  “That would never work.” His voice came out quiet, uncertain.

  The Doctor nodded. “Yeah it would. People are just that stupid. This guy knows how to work a crowd, and he’s giving them what looks like a miracle. He’ll could pull it off.”

  “Maybe it’s a trick?” Clyde asked.

  “How could it be?” Roy asked. “We sail past the Righteous Horde and see they’re far enough away from the bunker that they’re no threat, then we land with a big shore party, covered by that cannon the Chinese have.”

  “They could storm the ship when we let them on,” Clyde said.

  “We make them to leave their weapons,” Roy replied. “Have them come aboard in small groups we can manage easily. The Chinese only have a couple of launches. We’d have to do that anyway.”

  The Doctor sucked breath between his teeth and screwed up his face. Yu-jin put a concerned hand on his arm.

  “We can’t,” he said.

  “Why not? What’s the trick?” Clyde asked.

  The Doctor shuddered. “There’s no trick. This guy will deliver.”

  “So what’s the problem?” Clyde asked.

  “Don’t you see? It will make him a martyr. It will make the whole fucking Righteous Horde martyrs!”

  “No it wouldn’t,” Clyde said. “It’s not like everyone is going to forget—”

  “Am I the only person with a brain here?” The Doctor screamed, looking around at everyone. “This nutcase is trying to start a new fucking religion, with him as the messiah!”

  “What difference does it make if it stops the well leaking?” Clyde asked.

  The Doctor struck his forehead. “Oh, for fuck’s sake. Is everyone really that stupid? You want some fundamentalist psycho cult becoming the new religion of the Burbs? That’s what landed us in this whole mess in the first place.”

  Roy glared at his old friend. “What, religion caused civilization to fall?”

  The Doctor paused, realizing his mistake. “No, ignorant people caused it to fall. Not just the religious types, but the political radicals who thought their way was the only way. There’s no difference between them.”

  “Hey, what’s going on up there?” Susanna called from outside the wall.

  The Doctor strode to the parapet. Everyone followed.

  “David, show us where the concrete is. We want to see proof of that before we decide what to do.”

  David shook his head. “You already have proof. You know it’s real. And this deal is all or nothing. The Lord does not work in half measures.”

  “You cut a guy’s head off and you think you’re the next messiah? You’re just a two-bit barbarian with delusions of grandeur. You never built anything in your whole damn life.”

  “Then give me a chance to.”

  The Doctor pointed. “You with the axe. Kill him and I’ll give you citizenship.”

  “Nothing would give me greater pleasure, Doc, but we got to save our land. No point being a citizen if the whole settlement goes bust. Why not do it his way? Send them all off to burn in that toxic hellhole like they deserve.”

  The Doctor raised his voice. “Any one of you who kills David will get citizenship, a house, and twenty acres of my personal farmland.”

  “Send them to the well!” Susanna shouted.

  “Send them to the well!” several more people repeated.

  And then it became a chant.

  “Send them to the well! Send them to the well!”

  “Madness!” the Doctor shouted, turning away. “Madness!”

  He went down the stairs, headed for the warehouse.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  “Go away,” Reginald snapped when he saw Yu-jin following her.

  Yu-jin followed anyway.

  She followed him through New City, into the warehouse, up the stairs, and into his private quarters. She closed the door.

  “You don’t know when to take a hint, do you?” Reginald grumbled.

  “Never have, never will,” she replied, locking the door.

  When she turned around she gasped.

  Reginald sat trembling on the couch. A cold sweat had broken out all over and his face was ashen.

  “What’s wrong?”

  He put his face in his hands and sobbed. “Everything. It’s all falling apart.”

  Yu-jin sat down next to him and put an arm around his shoulders. “No it isn’t. What are you talking about?”

  “Everything we built … it was all supposed to start a ne
w rational era. No conquest, only self defense. The rule of law. Fair trading. Free medicine for all. Tolerance for every race and sexual orientation. Back in the city state days you had the luck of the draw when it came to where you lived. Some suppressed Muslims. Others killed gays or blacks. Southaven was pretty good until one of the coups, then they decided to make the gays scapegoats. Then I had to flee to North Cape.”

  Reginald shuddered. Yu-jin squeezed his shoulder. He had lost his lover in Southaven, clubbed to death by people who didn’t even know him but still wanted him dead. Reginald went on.

  “So I made sure New City allowed all races, all orientations, even every religion. Yeah, I had to bite the bullet and accept the last one, against my better judgment. Rosie put her foot down, as did some of the others. Had to let the old superstition in. I fooled myself into thinking that it would wither away as we built a better society, but nothing cures it. Like my disease. You can keep it down but it’s still there, hiding. Waiting to kill you.”

  “Come on. Reverend Wallace had a change of heart.”

  “It’s not just him. If only. There will always be more Reverend Wallaces, and more Pure Ones. We just created another. A guy from the Righteous Horde cuts the head off his leader, proclaims himself a prophet, and then saves us? You know the kind of message that’s going to send?”

  “That people can change for the better?”

  Reginald looked at her like she had said something stupid.

  “No, that anybody who cuts their way to the top can somehow end up righteous. Don’t get all starry-eyed about that piece of wildlands trash. What do you think he would have done to you if he had caught you out there?”

  Yu-jin looked away.

  “He’s … different now.”

  “No he isn’t. Not really. He’s just trying to wriggle out of his guilt. He isn’t man enough to admit he’s a bad person, and he doesn’t have the guts to off himself, so he’s going to go out in a blaze of glory and create a whole fucking mythology. He’s already doing it. People believe he can actually pull it off. Hell, even I believe it.”

  Yu-jin thought about that. On one level Reginald was probably right. David did want to leave a legacy. But what the mayor of New City didn’t understand, could never understand, was the power of faith.