A sizable crowd had clustered around, although the waist-high fence surrounding us kept them at bay. Their excited murmurings, outbursts of laughter and occasional applause were unnerving. How could an entire town, which I estimated a population of around three hundred, get behind the capture and branding of innocent people? Yet as I looked upon the scarred faces of the congregation, I realized I had my answer. In Hollywood’s words, these people had been “saved” too.
After every recruit had been branded, we were categorized like inventory and organized into separate groups. The women were either labeled as breeders or servants, but there seemed to be a broader range for the men that included plasticmines, labor and army. Only five of us were given the designation Father Ryder’s Household: me, Naoki, Talon and two young girls, one of whom looked to be about fourteen years old and the other around seven. Once we had all been labeled and grouped, we were led out of the fenced area. The villagers parted and maintained their distance while they applauded and shouted welcome to all of us.
Our small group was taken around the back of the big house, shown to a small shed without windows, and ordered in. Some light filtered through the cracks between the logs, illuminating the empty little room. The two girls ran into the far corner as if it were some kind of safe zone. They huddled together, their eyes wide with fear as they looked back and forth between us and the recruiters standing in the doorway. The recruiters were just about to close the door on us when someone shouted, prompting one of the men to reach in and grab me by the arm. He yanked me out, slammed the shed door, and locked it, sealing me off from Naoki and Talon.
I was escorted to the back door of the big house and taken inside. As soon as I stepped into the kitchen, a mix of aromas hit my nose: wood smoke, roasting meat, and spices. A shiver went down my spine as the heat from the wood stove enveloped me. How long had it been since I was warm?
Three women—two of them pregnant—and a young girl were preparing food at a heavy wooden table. Out of habit, I gave them a polite nod, which they didn’t return. Without looking at us, the one woman who wasn’t pregnant pointed to a doorway, and my escort pulled me there. A large plastic basin full of water stood in the middle of the room. Unsheathing a knife from his belt, my guard cut my plastic binds. Blood rushed into my numb hands, quickly turning the tingling into a painful ache.
“Any trouble, and I’ll kill you,” my escort said. He motioned toward the tub. “Strip and get in.”
The same woman came into the room carrying a wooden tray bearing linens and green sprigs. The thought of escape flashed through my mind, but I ruled it out. Naoki and Talon were still locked in the shed, and it was doubtful I could get out of there and spring them before someone got me. Then there were the pregnant women and the little girl. I didn’t want them to get hurt. Without much choice, I began to strip.
I wasn’t timid about being naked in front of people. The moment Leisel and I were engaged, the day I became the heir to the presidency, I was given my own valet. It was weird at first, but I got used to it after a while. As the heir, I was expected to be impeccably groomed and camera-ready at all times. I told myself that this was no different.
Naked, I stepped into the tub. The water was warm, not hot, which I appreciated after having had a low body temperature for the past several days. How many days had it been since my capture? Ten? Eleven? I’d lost count. The woman dropped the green sprigs into the water, and the fragrance of herbs rose up with the steam. Next, she gave me a square of loosely-woven linen and a piece of soap. At least I think it was soap. It kind of smelled like ashes. I rubbed it vigorously on the cloth, and a little lather came up.
Okay, so it was kind of weird that they stayed and watched me take a bath. My valet had always left.
As I washed, the young girl I had seen earlier came in with an armful of clothes, put them on a chair, and picked up my dirty discarded ones from the floor. It wasn’t surprising that they wanted my clothes after all of Hollywood’s bragging. What they hoped to gain by having them I wasn’t sure though. Maybe Ryder wanted them for himself. The boots in particular would make a useful addition to his wardrobe.
When I finished scrubbing myself clean, the woman beside the tub picked up the green sprigs and began to rub my bare shoulders with them. Before I even knew that I had done it, my hand wrapped around her wrist to stop her.
My guard unsheathed his knife again. “Hey!”
I broke contact with her and held both my hands up in a show of surrender. “I don’t like being touched. I can take care of myself,” I said.
The woman looked at my guard for approval before she dropped the sprigs back into the water. She handed me a towel, pointed to the clothes on the chair, and left the room.
As much as I didn’t enjoy bathing in front of an audience, it felt good to be clean. I dressed in the ill-fitting, handmade beige clothes left for me. The pants were baggy and too short and the shirt too tight across the chest. There were no shoes. I missed my boots already. As soon as I was dressed, my guard led me back through the kitchen and into a small room with two chairs on either side of a thick wooden door. He knocked, and a voice bid us to enter. The door opened to reveal Ryder sitting at a table.
He stood, looking straight at me. “Please. Come in.” He waved my guard away with a, “Thank you, Fadi. That will be all right now.” But Fadi looked a little hesitant to leave. Ryder ignored him and extended his hand to me. “We haven’t been properly introduced. I’m Father Joseph Ryder, but most folks call me Father.”
Fadi left, closing the door behind him. I was guessing he wouldn’t stray too far.
My wrists were stiff and sore from being tied up for so long, and I had to force my hand to straighten in order to accept his handshake. He didn’t miss a thing. He squeezed tight when we shook, and I ignored the pain, keeping my face expressionless. “Jack Kenner,” I said.
There was a hint of surprise on his face as I said my name, which he quickly covered with a smile as he motioned for me to take a seat. My eyes strayed to a pile of folded clothes on his desk. They were mine. I sat in the offered chair, and a moment of silence stretched between us. He was scrutinizing me, watching my every move, and I realized I had been staring at my clothes. I shifted my gaze slightly to the left, my eyes falling on an unusual-looking potted plant adorning one corner of his table. Broad green leaves draped over the side of the pot, and a single stem shot up from the center to support several scarlet blooms. Each flower had two petals that fanned out like wings and a labellum that resembled a miniature human. The effect was that each flower looked like a man with broad scarlet wings.
“Pretty,” I said with dry sarcasm.
“And deadly,” he said. “This plant is the source of devil’s blood.”
“I figured.”
Ryder turned and walked back to his chair behind the table, sending up a swirl of dust motes in the stream of light coming through the windows. The windows didn’t provide a clear view to the outside; the panes were made of such thick plastic that I could only make out blurred shadows. Handwoven draperies hung on either side of the windows, and artwork adorned the walls, giving the room a homey feel. Two wooden bookcases lined one wall of the office. One case was stacked with plastic boxes bearing handwritten labels; the other case was jam-packed with books. Thick spines, some with their titles and authors still legible, most torn and faded. A few titles on perfectly preserved spines caught my attention: Thermal Depolymerization, Guide to Plastic Recycling, and Plastic Smithing for Dummies.
My eyes shifted to Ryder, who was leaning back in his chair, watching me intently. “See something you like?” he asked.
Was there a hidden meaning in his question? “Just admiring your books.”
“Any book in particular?”
I shook my head, not really trusting this man but not knowing what he was up to either. “Plastic Smithing for Dummies looks pretty riveting.”
A forced grin joined his intent gaze. “You can read.” It was a sta
tement, and not a friendly one.
“Is that a bad thing?” I asked, wondering what punishment I could expect. It was obvious this guy was testing me, analyzing me, and I was at a disadvantage because I didn’t know the parameters of the test.
“It’s a rare thing.” He sat forward in his chair, motioning to the pile of my clothes. “I’ll make sure these are washed.” He ran his hand across my folded t-shirt. “They are finely made. And you said you found them?”
“Yeah.”
He pulled the pants out from under the folded t-shirt, and as he did he waved a hand in front of his nose. “They do need a good wash after your time on the road.” He smiled conspiratorially, unfolded the pants and held up the label inside the waistband for me to see. “It says ‘Issued to Captain Jack Kenner, United States Army’ with the numbers 32W and 34L. I’m wondering, though, how you happened to find a pair of pants with your name on them.”
I almost did a head slap. Of course the clothes were labeled. With so many uniforms sent to the Pit for washing, it was the best way to ensure a uniform made it back to the person it had been replicated for. But I wasn’t sure I wanted to disclose our existence just yet. Were these people a threat to us? Probably not. There looked to be only a few hundred people living in the compound, more if I included the ones I’d seen in the old city on the way here, and none had demonstrated any remarkable skills in intelligence or military training. Except for Ryder. He might be someone to watch out for.
“I changed my name to Jack Kenner after I found the clothes. I mean, c’mon, there’s no United States Army anymore.”
He raised his eyebrows as if that thought hadn’t occurred to him. “It’s a good name,” he said. “Where’d you learn to read?”
“My parents taught me.” Then I turned the questions back on him, wanting to get off the topic of me. “How about you? Where did you learn to read?”
“My dad,” he said with pride. He stood up and walked the few steps to the bookcase, running his fingers across the spines. “He always told me that it would be an educated man who would rise up to lead what was left of humanity, just like his father had always told him.” With the toe of his worn leather boot, he touched an old beat-up plastic bin in the corner next to the bookcase. “Believe it or not, this container has been in my family since the War. It’s where they kept their most prized possessions—books.”
“So your family kept books on how to make plastic?”
He turned around to look at me. “No. They kept these books,” he said, running his hand along some well-worn paperbacks. The only titles I could make out were Jane Eyre and the Holy Bible. He returned to his chair. “Today, it’s extremely rare to find a book still intact. In fact, it’s extremely rare to find written pages that are still legible. So when I discovered the first of the scriptures, I knew it meant something.”
“Scriptures?”
He smiled charismatically, leaned forward in his chair, and pushed a book on the table toward me. I looked at him for a moment, trying to figure out if he was playing me somehow. A book was harmless though, and the historian in me was intrigued. I picked it up and examined it. It wasn’t really a “book”—more like a collection of different pieces of books, all in varying sizes and hand stitched together. I thumbed through it. The pages bore either footers or headers identifying their origin: the Qur’an, the Holy Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Old Testament... on and on it went, a collection of various religious works.
He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. “The Bible was always important to our family, and my father raised me to believe in one God. That we needed to praise Him and look to Him for guidance to our salvation.” He shook his head with a sad smile. “But then I watched my mother die in childbirth and a few years later witnessed my youngest sister raped by a group of men.” He paused and shifted his gaze to his clasped hands. “Those same men roasted my father over a fire for their dinner and all I could think was, ‘Where is your God now?’”
My eyes widened as he told his story. I was speechless. Could something that horrible be true?
“I’m sorry,” I said. “No one should have to live through that.” I refrained from asking the one piece of information he didn’t give: what had happened to him while the men raped his sister and ate his father?
He waved a hand as if to brush away my condolences. “Everyone has a story, right? My childhood isn’t so different from others.” He shrugged. “But it was a turning point in my life. My father was gone, they took my sister, and they left me for dead. When I was finally able, I set out into the world, leaving behind the only home I’d ever known. A few weeks later I found the first scripture. A month after that, I found the next one. And soon I put it all together, Jack. The gods had chosen me to lead the people to their salvation. My father had been right.”
I was probably going to regret asking, but my curiosity was piqued. “Gods?” I asked, emphasizing the s.
Ryder looked at the book I was holding. “It’s right there in your hands, printed in black and white. Before the War, people worshipped many gods. Jehovah, Allah, Jesus Christ, God, Buddha.” He paused, his molten-brown eyes boring into mine. “Do you want to know why there was a global war, Jack? Because people back then decided which god they wanted to worship and ignored the others. It created jealousy and discord among the gods, and they used their worshippers to destroy the worshippers of their fellow deities.” He held his hand out for the book, and I passed it back to him. “The only way people can live in harmony is if the gods are living in peace. It’s up to us to make that happen.”
As an avid historian, I was well aware of the practice of making up theories to fill in information gaps. And as a former citizen of the Holt regime, I was also very well aware of how history could be revised to suit the goals of a crazed dictator. I was willing to bet Father Ryder was the only person in this entire city who could read and that he was the only one making up the rules on behalf of the gods.
“So you’re the chosen one? The one the gods have picked to spread their... um... harmony?” I asked, genuinely interested. It was like getting a glimpse inside the mind of a madman.
He appeared pleased with my question and relaxed into his chair. “Think about it, Jack. How else could the gods talk to us but through the written word?” His brow creased into a challenging expression as he looked at me, but I didn’t respond. I knew it was a rhetorical question. “Reading is a skill that is all but extinct, so what are the odds that someone able to read would be the one to find the Scriptures? Slim, Jack. The odds are slim. And do you know what the first message in the Scriptures was?” This time he paused, his brows raised expectantly, waiting for my answer.
“I can’t even imagine,” I said.
“That men were not created to live as individuals.” He leaned forward again, his eyes bright with excitement. “The message was so simple I almost overlooked it. Alone we’re vulnerable to the forces of evil.” He gestured toward the window. “But together, as a community, we’re strong. When fear doesn’t rule our lives, when our energies can be used to create instead of simply to survive, our lives are meaningful and rich. Here, we no longer live in fear of men whose hearts are still black with poison; we live in peaceful unity. That’s why I send out missionaries to gather the lost and the downtrodden and bring them back here.”
This man was dangerous. “And by missionaries, do you mean recruiters? Men like Hollywood—excuse me, I mean Ralph—who travel the countryside shooting people and raping women and little boys? Who capture and starve people, then chop them up for bear meat or throw them to the tigers when they die? Who eat their captives themselves when there’s no rodent around? You mean those missionaries? Those representatives of the gods?”
As I spoke, his smile slowly fell until he was frowning. He fixed his gaze on me yet didn’t answer my question. I realized I might have pushed him beyond his limits of sanity; but I was beginning to wonder if I hadn’t been pushed beyond mine as well. A week and a
half of being starved, denied water, and forced to witness the atrocities of these so-called missionaries was too much.
He put his hands on the Scriptures sitting in front of him. “I wasn’t aware of this kind of behavior among my missionaries. Raping young boys, you say? And cannibalism? I assure you, these are not things that we tolerate. I promise you, Jack, I’ll check into it.” He drummed two fingers on the book. “In the meantime, I’d like to learn more about where you come from. Ralph tells me there were two others with you who both got away.”
I kept my face expressionless. “Two women,” I said, knowing women weren’t much valued here.
“Your wives? Or did they belong to the other men you were with?”
“What are you getting at, Ryder?” I asked, tiring of this little game.
“Please. Everyone calls me Father.”
“I already have one of those. I don’t need another one.”
“Is he alive? Does he live with you?”
“None of your business.”
“I’m just trying to be your friend, Jack. Learn more about you and your people.”
“Who says I have people?”
“You don’t? Then where did you get the clothes? The gun? The wives that ran away?”
This was going to go on all night if I didn’t give him something. So why not tell him? “You’re too smart for me, Ryder. I’ll tell you the truth.” I sighed heavily and pointed to the pile of my clothes. “I really am Captain Jack Kenner, and those clothes were custom replicated for me. The rifle Hollywood confiscated was also replicated, although we have other more sophisticated weapons at our disposal, including nuclear warheads. Only one of the two people that ran away was my wife because I only have one wife, and not just because she’d kill me if I went near another woman. You see, I come from a society that survived the War living inside a secret government biodome, and we still live by the old customs.”
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