Emergency Transmission

by Sean McLachlan

  “What’s so wrong about him leaving a mark on the world?” she challenged.

  “Because it’s a lie, a dangerous lie. Don’t we have enough of those already? These people actually want to die, and when you get to that point you’ll do anything. If you don’t value your own life, why would you value others? Why bother trying to improve anything at all?”

  “But they’re saving us!”

  “No, that’s not why they’re doing it. Not really. They want to cap the well so that they’ll live on in our memories. They’ll be remembered a thousand years from now while I’ll … I’ll …”

  A knock came at the door.

  “Go away!” Reginald barked.

  Clyde’s voice came from the other side of the door. “It’s me and Marcus.”

  “So?”

  “The natives are getting restless, Doc. You gotta give them an answer.”

  “I already did.”

  “Not the one they’re going to accept.”

  “Too bad.”

  “We cap the well and get rid of the Righteous Horde, what’s so bad about that?” Marcus said.

  “The Righteous Horde will be far more powerful than ever, and we’ll never be able to wipe it out.”

  “Doc, can we have this debate on the same side of this door?” Clyde asked.

  “No.”

  Yu-jin got up and opened the door.

  “Thank you,” Clyde said, giving her a nod. Marcus came in right after him, looking as uncomfortable as Yu-jin felt. She closed and locked the door behind them.

  Clyde stood before Reginald, who barely glanced at him. “Now listen here, Doc. We got a rabblerousing preacher who’s already caused a hell of a lot of trouble. If we don’t put a lid on this thing, there’s no telling how big the explosion is going to be. We have to say yes. I don’t see any other solution.”

  Reginald had not risen and did not invite his old comrades to sit down. He stared at his hands as they lay in his lap, pale and shaking. “The solution is to kill him and then prepare for when his cult shows up. They’ll be starving, and way down on numbers. We’ll defeat them easily.”

  “Don’t you remember that Gau-18/E they got?” Clyde asked. “It cut through the wall like a hole punch. Made the wall look like that cheese they had in the Old Times. Sure, we can defeat them again, but how many people will we lose?”

  “We could get the ship to help,” Marcus suggested, “but a show of power would only stoke more fear of the Chinese.”

  Reginald bit his lip, and Yu-jin realized they had scored a point. Despite his arrogance and selfishness and moodiness, there was nothing Reginald cared about more than the people in his settlement. It was what he lived for. That and weed and booze and solitude.

  “We can’t,” he said at last. “It will put our whole future in jeopardy.”

  “We won’t have a future if these rains keep up,” Yu-jin said.

  “If only we could find that bunker ourselves. Then we could figure out the manpower problem somehow,” Marcus said, almost to himself. “No way he’ll tell us, though.”

  Torture him, Yu-jin thought. Torture him until he breaks.

  She did not think of this as a worthy solution and would never suggest it, but it was the obvious course of action.

  And none of the three most powerful men in New City had suggested it.

  They’d kill him, because that was self defense, but they would not sully New City by resorting to torture. Despite their flaws, and there were so many, they were men of principle.

  “Damn it!” Reginald shouted. “I’ll try and talk to this lunatic again.”

  He leaped to his feet, only to pitch forward and crash into the coffee table.

  Yu-jin and Clyde lifted him up. A glass had broken when he fell on it and cut his shoulder. He had also knocked into an ash tray and the remains of his last joint covered his face.

  “Let’s get him to bed,” Yu-jin said.

  They carried him down the hall to his room. Marcus came after.

  “Will he be all right?” the assistant mayor kept asking.

  Reginald mumbled something.

  “What is it, Doc?” Clyde asked as they eased him into bed and took off his shoes.

  “In my lab. The jar with the brown pills. Bring me one,” he got out at last.

  “Your stimulants?” Yu-jin said. “No, that’s the last thing you need. You’ve overextended yourself again. Just rest.”

  Reginald struggled to rise, but only managed to get up on one elbow. “The city needs me! That preacher threatens everything. We’ll slide back into barbarism if he gets his way. All we built …”

  His last few words trailed off to barely a whisper. He fell back on the bed, his breathing ragged.

  “Get Ahmed!” Marcus said.

  Clyde headed for the door, then hesitated.

  “So what are you going to do?” he asked Marcus.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re in charge until he recovers. We need a decision now.”

  Marcus looked like he had just been shot in the gut.

  “I … I …”

  “I’ll go get Ahmed. Decide. We don’t have much time before that mob starts tearing things apart.”

  Clyde rushed out. Marcus stood at the foot of the bed, his mouth working but no words coming out.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  The Lord’s work was done. God had struck down that unbeliever and let the good people of New City and the Burbs choose the right path.

  Marcus Callahan, a Godly man who seemed far more sympathetic to the Lord’s word, had come to the wall and said that he was in charge while The Doctor was laid up with an illness. At that moment David knew a miracle was in the works.

  Of course Marcus had a number of suspicions. That was to be expected in this fallen world.

  So they had sailed out, David marveling at the mass of Old Times machinery that carried him south. In less than a day they had sailed a week’s march, and spotted the Righteous Horde on the shore gathering fish. His people had stopped and marveled at the sight before them.

  The ship’s captain had pulled as close as he could to the shoreline so they could get a good look. Then David, under heavy guard, had taken a launch to just outside gunshot range and used an Old Times device called a megaphone to speak with his people.

  “I have returned just as God predicted, and I have brought the freighter with me. Stay here. Stay here and pray. Do not march north any further.” Marcus had been quite specific on this. “I must go south to the bunker to gather its contents. God has given us the tool for a great work. I will return in a few days to gather you.”

  After that, they had gone to the bunker, gathered the concrete and machinery, and returned to the Righteous Horde.

  When he landed with Yu-jin, Clyde, and a host of New City and Chinese guards, they found Aaron waiting for them on the beach with an armed escort. To get here before them, Aaron must have kidnapped another fisherman and committed another murder. That thought filled him with sadness. His friend was truly lost.

  The Righteous Horde was camped out of sight inland. As David stepped onto the shore, they began to swarm over the dunes. None of them carried weapons.

  Aaron turned and waved his hand. “I told you to stay back!”

  They did not listen to him, and soon the beach was full of people. Most fell to their knees and prayed. Some, including Aaron and his guards, did not.

  David raised his hands. “My people! The Lord has sent us on a great task. That bunker we came to was filled not with the food and medicine I had hoped for, but concrete and the machinery to make it. Concrete was that workable stone with which they built cities and roads in the Old Times. At first I was shocked, confused. We needed food so badly, and the Lord gave us stones. It was only later that I saw His true purpose. The toxic rains we have been suffering come from a broken well far out to sea. These rains have made many of us sick, and are ruining the land, as you all know. The well continues to cough up poison from t
he bottom of the sea and will do so for many years. If we do not do something, the land will wither and die. It will be the end of humanity.

  “But we have been given the tools to fix the well, and we have been given the great honor to be chosen to do this task.” David’s heart pounded in his chest at what he now had to say. He reminded himself it had all been written, that it would all come to pass. “The toxins from the well will kill anyone who goes near it within a few days. The people of New City and the people of this ship do not have the faith to dare such a thing, but we do. We know we have been chosen by God for this great work. The Pure One did not see clearly. Yes, it is the duty of the Righteous Horde to cleanse the Earth. His error was thinking that to kill was the way forward. He ordered us to sin, and we all willingly committed that sin.”

  The crowd looked solemn. So many murders, so many cruelties, and every one of them etched into the face of every single one of his people. Even Aaron bowed his head.

  “We have killed, looted, raped, and burned our way across this land, and God punished us with defeat and starvation. He now offers us salvation. If we do His work, if we go to this well and fix it, if we save this land like we all swore to do when we joined, we shall see Paradise. No more guilt, no more wandering through barren deserts. We will be taken into the arms of the Lord. Just a few days more of trials and tribulations, and we will be taken home. Finally, all of this will have meaning. All of this will have worth. Come with me. Come with me and do God’s work. Those of you who wish to see Paradise, step forward.”

  There followed the longest moment of David’s life. Everyone stared at him. All remained silent, the only sounds the gentle surf and David’s own pounding heart.

  Then one man got to his feet, a scrawny man, half starved. One of the machete men.

  “I’ve done terrible things,” he said. “I wish to be pure again.”

  He stepped forward.

  Hundreds more followed his lead.

  They gathered around him reaching out to touch him and embrace him. They lifted him onto their shoulders and cheered.

  He looked beyond them and saw Aaron and about a hundred others standing on the dunes. Most of the men with him were from the Elect, the hard core who had followed The Pure One for so long and had committed the worst of the crimes.

  “New City.” Aaron spat. “The last bastion of civilization? You’re all hypocrites, getting these idiots to do your dirty work for you because you lack the courage to do it yourself. You deserve to wither and die. I hope that well never gets fixed. And as for all of you, hasn’t what we’ve been through taught you all of this is bullshit? It’s all to control you! You’re so enslaved in your minds you’re walking to your deaths.”

  “We walk to Paradise!” one of the crowd shouted back.

  This brought a cheer from the Righteous Horde.

  One of the guards standing near Aaron dropped his gun and ran for the beach. The people around David cheered. Another of the Elect raised his rifle, but Aaron batted it away.

  “Let him go. Let him die if he wants to,” Aaron said. He pointed a finger at them. “You people from New City, you haven’t heard the last of me. I won’t rest until every church, synagogue, and mosque is burned to the ground and every holy book is burned with it. David showed me the way, showed me through his suicidal stupidity. You and I are enemies now and forever. Go fix that well. You’re all idiots to think that will save the world, though. I’ll save the world, by getting rid of every superstitious freak who has dragged us down from civilization into the slime and the muck.”

  Aaron turned, and he and his followers crested the dune and descended out of sight.

  Now David sailed far out to sea, further than he had ever been when he had been a fisherman in his youth. The deck was packed with the Righteous Horde. He led them in constant prayer. In the front row knelt the tweakers who had come aboard with him back in New City, the first of his followers. Together they prayed for the strength to carry out God’s work. They prayed for the future of New City and the Burbs and the Chinese. They prayed that the Lord would touch the hearts of Aaron and his followers, and turn them onto the right path.

  At times of weakness he longed to be back to the Burbs, to sit in Jaylen’s chair and talk with the kind brothers of the Sunday morning club. He wanted to laugh and talk with the good people of the marketplace, and see the wonder of the electric lights shining at night.

  He did not have these thoughts for very long, for he knew that the freighter was taking him to a far better place. In a few days all his sufferings would be over, all his doubts gone, and all his sins would be wiped clean.

  The waves crashed against the prow and the freighter steadily rose and fell in the water. The shore had vanished out of sight behind them and in the distance up ahead, the acrid yellow plume of the leaking well billowed up to the sky.

  ***

  Roy had spent the week since the freighter left watching and listening. The Burbs were the calmest he had ever seen them. There had been no more attacks on the Chinese. The haters had lapsed into a stunned silence, and even the usual drunken fights and thefts were at a low ebb.

  Everyone was still trying to process what had happened. Regular radio messages from the freighter, which Pablo proudly wrote down and read while standing in the marketplace surrounded by a silently attentive crowd, had told them about the ship’s journey down the coast, visiting the Righteous Horde on the shore, the discovery of the bunker, and the ship’s return to meet with the cult. One message included a summary of David’s speech and how most of the cult had followed their leader.

  Now the freighter was at the well, disembarking the workers and their concrete and tools. The latest message told how a few Chinese engineers had volunteered to go ashore to oversee the operation. Everyone had been given protective clothing, although the message did not go into detail about what it was. It didn’t matter. Everyone in the Burbs knew it would only delay the inevitable. Those engineers and the members of the Righteous Horde would die.

  And that left everyone humbled. Roy couldn’t quite get his head around what had happened.

  The place was nearly full, rare for a midafternoon. The crowd was subdued. Almost all the conversation he overheard was about the freighter. People were still talking through it all. He heard a lot of admiring comments about those Chinese engineers.

  Good, that would help.

  While Tammy served some lunch to one of the tables, he ducked out to check his backyard, where he had a still cooking up some rice mash to make sake. If it came out all right, he’d have it ready for next week. Should make a good addition to the menu.

  Everything was all right with the still, so he came back inside, stood at the bar, and looked over his customers.

  They looked happy, relaxed.

  Except for one.

  Randy, Yu-jin’s boyfriend, sat slumped at one end of the bar. He’d traded for so many drinks that Roy was surprised the guy was still vertical. Randy wasn’t one of his usual customers, and he never came in alone. He wasn’t the moody drunk sort of guy.

  Roy strolled on over and gave him a winning grin.

  “How’s my favorite artist doing today?”

  He got a grunt for a reply.

  “Missing Yu-jin?” Roy asked. He knew enough about those two to know that was the wrong question. Sometimes the wrong question was the perfect one to get people to open up.

  Randy slammed his fist on the bar. “Left behind again! She’s always running around doing New City’s work for them, and I’m stuck cleaning up the mess.”

  “What do you mean, my man? Here, have one on the house.”

  “Thanks,” Randy mumbled as Roy poured another beer and handed it to him. “My art business is ruined. All I have is the kiln now. The haters don’t want to hire me, and so many other people are afraid of the haters, they won’t buy from me.”

  “You getting harassed?”

  “Not in any direct way. They know I’m under protection. But I sure do
n’t go out alone at night.”

  “Damn, that’s tough. You think maybe people aren’t buying portraits because times are so bad? It might not be because they’re afraid at all. Sales of beer sure are down.”

  Randy made a face. “That’s what Yu-jin says. She says the haters have lost. Maybe that’s true, but it’s too late. I’m ruined. All my savings are gone. At least I got the kiln. People need plates and bowls. Most of the Old Times stuff you see in the market these days is in terrible condition. Even so, I need to trade wholesale to market traders since customers don’t want to deal directly with me. I’m a marked man, Roy, all because I fell in love with the wrong person.”

  “Oh, now don’t say that. Yu-jin’s a wonderful girl!”

  “A wonderful girl who doesn’t have time for me,” Randy’s bloodshot eyes fixed on Roy’s for a moment, but he couldn’t keep focused. He looked back down at the counter and continued softly. “I’m going to let her go. It’s what she wants anyway. Our relationship was doomed the minute I found out I couldn’t have kids.”

  Roy kept silent. There was nothing he could say to that to cheer him up. It was best to let the guy talk it out.

  “It’s for the best. I’ll let her go. I don’t know what I’ll do with myself, though.”

  Roy cut him off before he started to get weepy.

  “I could use a portrait.”

  Randy looked up. “Didn’t I do one of you? Yeah, a couple of years ago. You showed me a photo of your wife and had me draw the two of you together.”

  Roy felt a flush of sadness. Candace had been a hell of a woman. Gone twenty years now because of the cancer. That portrait Randy had drawn was one of his most prized possessions.

  “No, Randy, I don’t want a portrait of me. You go to any of David’s sermons?”

  Randy brightened. “Yeah. A bunch of them. He was amazing.”

  “You remember how he looked?”

  “Of course.”

  “I want you to draw a portrait of him preaching in the marketplace.”

  Randy cocked his head. “Really?”

  Roy nodded. “Yep. I’m going to hang it right here behind the bar. And I want you to do another portrait of him sleeping in Jaylen’s barber chair right over there. Can you do that?”