by Isaac Marion
“Okay guys, can we get a little privacy?”
They turn toward us. One of them looks down at the bra in his hand, then at Julie, then back at the bra.
“Out!” she barks.
They shuffle out. The boy keeps the bra.
Julie locks the door behind them and leans against it. “Okay. So you’re sure this will work?”
I answer without hesitation. “No.”
She sighs. “Let me rephrase it—you’re sure there’s some chance it will work?”
I think for a moment. “Yes. Some chance.”
“Good enough.” She looks me up and down and smiles. “Well, handsome, this should be a lot easier than your last makeover. All you need this time is a shower.”
I look down at the metal briefcase in my hand. I have this weapon today because of the man I once was. That wretch carried it across the country and left it for me in the woods. A corner of my mouth quirks at the thought: he was searching for BABL too.
Very carefully, I set the briefcase on the floor. Does age make a bomb less likely to go off, or more? Will anything even happen when I press its trigger? A question for Huntress Tomsen, if we can find her in the city. If she’s even there. If any of our friends are even still alive. We are entering a world of ifs, but I prefer it to a world of dismal certainty.
I enter the bathroom. I peel the clothes off my body. This shirt, these jeans—they were new when we left this house a few weeks ago. Now there’s little left of them, but each rip and stain is a story. Holes from a bombing, burns from torture, blood from carrying a wounded friend, mud from digging a grave…enough stories for a very long book.
I look in the mirror. My stubble is almost a beard now. It doesn’t quite fit the character I’ll be playing, but it’s the most visible sign that I’m no longer lifeless, and I can’t bring myself to shave it.
I step into the shower and pull the chain. Up on the roof, a valve opens in a tank, and collected rainwater sprays from the shower head, steaming with the sun’s heat. It’s my one real contribution to the building of this home, and a comforting reminder that sometimes my plans do work.
I close my eyes and let the rain strike my face. I don’t notice that I’m not alone until I feel Julie’s hands on my chest, her naked body soft against my back. I watch her hands rub away the stubborn grime that covers me like a second skin. Will this be our only moment? Our one chance to enjoy such simple sweetness? Will we ever return to this house and the life we hoped to build?
Ungrateful questions. Insults to a generous universe. I won’t reject a gift because it isn’t two gifts.
I turn around and pull her against me. Her skin is smooth, despite all her scars. I kiss her lips, her neck, her breasts, sucking rainwater off her skin. We let friction do its wondrous work. Our bodies scrub each other clean.
• • •
“Don’t think of it as an Axiom uniform,” Julie tells me as I stare at my old clothes laid out on the bed—my graveclothes, as I once called them. The gray shirt, the red tie, their high-tech fibers as eerily well-preserved as the body they once clothed. “Think of it as that fashion statement you always wanted to make.”
“That you always wanted me to make.”
“R,” she says, picking up the shirt and slipping it over my shoulders, “these were your clothes. You said you designed them, didn’t you?”
With difficulty, I nod, straining to connect the lines between my disparate lives.
“So reclaim them. Make them mean what you want them to. And when we’re done…we can fucking burn them.”
I see the wretch standing in the shadows at the top of the basement stairs. He thrusts out his filthy, blood-smeared hand.
I grit my teeth and shake it.
I put on the shirt. The pants. That garish red tie, the color of power, fire, hunger—everything I thought a strong leader needed—but also love, passion, the will to act. A color with many shades.
Julie straightens the knot and brushes my shoulders. She steps back and glances me over. “Okay. So we’re doing this?”
My mind floods with images of failure, all the many ways my plan could get her killed, and I fight the doglike reflex to bury the things I love. Since the day I met Julie, I’ve been trying to keep her safe. But what I’ve come to realize is that Julie will never be safe, because she doesn’t want to be. She wants to fight hard and love hard and eat life raw and bleeding. So I won’t try to keep her out of danger. If it’s time for war, I won’t hold her back. I’ll charge in beside her and make sure we win.
“R?” she says. “Are you ready?”
I nod.
She opens her mouth for her favorite correction but I beat her to it.
“I’m ready,” I say loudly. “I am so fucking ready.”
She grins. She hands me my briefcase. We go to work.
WE
Nora remembers when this room was not a prison cell. It’s emptied out now, a bare plywood cube, but under the Grigio administration it was a Security barracks, and after Grigio, during those two short months of thrilling uncertainty, it was a rehab room for the Nearly Living. A place where they could share fears and ask questions, where they could get counseling from someone reasonably well-versed in the very new field of undead psychology. Nora wonders what happened to those aspiring humans, those “uncategorized Dead.” Were they incorporated into Axiom’s glorious new society of smiling corpses? Or were they promptly liquidated? Nora isn’t sure which answer she hopes for.
It’s strange to think that this man sitting next to her—or rather, an awkward distance away from her—used to be one of them. He sat in this very room, listening intently to the counselor while Nora watched from the doorway. She told herself her interest was clinical—he was her patient, after all—but there was something about him that lingered in her thoughts after their surgery sessions. Was it the traces of the nightmare lurking in her past? No. If that were it, his presence would have repulsed her, not drawn her in. There’s something else.
He is not a handsome man. When they first met, he was downright ugly, and the Gleam’s restoration of his face only took him so far. But maybe it’s not quite done with him, because his features look a little finer every day, though Nora can’t pinpoint what’s actually changed.
“Marcus,” she says, and he jolts to attention. He hasn’t ventured a word to her since their capture. “Do you remember it? Do you remember what happened?”
Addis looks up. Marcus glances at both of them, then the floor. “Some of it.”
“Which parts?”
He sighs. “I remember dying. I remember you…trying to save me.”
“Do you remember hunting us?”
He shakes his head. “She was hunting you. I wasn’t.”
“Then why did you follow us?”
“I was…curious.”
“About what?”
He glances up. “You.”
“What about me?”
He holds her gaze. “You were different. Tough and kind. I wanted to understand.”
Nora squints at him for a moment. She notices Addis doing the same. “And you remember what happened next, right?” She touches the dried black wound on her brother’s shoulder. “You remember this?”
She expects him to avert his eyes in shame, but he stares at the wound, then at Nora, then surprises her with a glint of anger. “You know the plague,” he says. “You know I didn’t choose what I did. And you know I’m sorry anyway. So forgive me or don’t. Beat the shit out of me if you need to. But come on, Nora…don’t just fuck with me.”
Nora wants to smile. She is beginning to understand what she feels. But she keeps her face stony. “I’m not the one whose life you stole.” She ruffles Addis’s dusty hair. “I’ll forgive you when he does.”
Marcus looks at Addis. So do Tomsen and Joan and Alex, this unlikely en
semble of Living and Dead, all so exhausted that the distinction is barely there. They’ve been in this room for days, waiting for whatever fate their captors will assign them, but right now they’re waiting for Addis. For this quiet boy’s answer to the heartbroken man who killed him. They have little hope left for their futures—even the kids seem to understand this—but to witness one last moment of warmth before they’re herded into the machine…that would be nice.
Addis looks into Marcus’s eyes. Marcus winces, his eyes glisten, but he doesn’t look away.
Then the door unbolts and squeals open, and three pitchmen file in, beaming like they’re here to announce the winner of some grotesque gameshow.
“Thank you for waiting,” the woman in the yellow tie says. “We have cleared spaces for you in the facility and are ready to begin.” She smiles while the burly man in the black tie grabs Marcus by his cuffed wrists and lifts him to his feet. “Please wait while we transfer you.”
“Another prison?” Tomsen says, blinking furiously. “Two prisons in two months?”
“It’s three for me,” Nora mutters. “Third time’s the charm, right?”
“Incarceration is a waste of valuable resources,” Blue Tie says. “The Axiom Group can’t afford waste in these difficult times.”
“Over the next few months,” Yellow Tie says, her voice moist with pride and pleasure, “through the process of Orientation, we will be converting all of Axiom’s detainees into employees. Felons, dissidents, even enemy combatants—all of them can become useful assets!”
“There is a part of everyone that craves simplicity,” Blue Tie says. “Security, certainty, clarity of purpose. But these goals are prevented by all our contradictions. We want too many different things. We are confused.”
“Orientation narrows the path,” Yellow Tie declares. “Orientation draws a single line that anyone can follow.”
Yellow Tie grabs Nora’s wrist and lifts her to her feet with a strength that her spindly arms don’t suggest.
“At this time, please come with us to the facility,” Yellow Tie says, her voice overflowing with enthusiasm. “We can’t wait to get started!”
WE
In the center of the human brain, there are two structures shaped like coiled snakes. They are called the basal ganglia, and they are the stone tablets on which we carve our sacred laws. They store our habits, our instinctive reactions, the learned patterns of our lives.
In Paul Bark’s brain, these structures are throbbing. A surge of unexpected input has bruised them, hammered their neural pathways and attempted to redraw them. He resisted. He maintained the integrity of the grid. But it hurt.
He soothes himself now with the comfort of familiarity. The straight lines and right angles of this empty white room. The hardness of the laminate floor pressing into his tail bone as he sits cross-legged in the corner. He has lived in this house before, one of many scattered throughout the region in obscure towns far from freeways. Towns that embrace him and his teachings. Towns that are not soggy with sentiment and self-love and attachments to this life. Towns that are ready for the Fire.
The rest of the world will always hate him, and he welcomes their hate. He clings to it. What would be left of Paul Bark if he sank into the world’s acceptance? If he let his borders soften in that warm ocean, his power and purpose dissolving into a blissfully impotent slurry? No. He inhabits the world’s hate like a shell, and it gives him his shape.
And yet…his head pounds. He is trying to read scripture but his thoughts scrape and clatter against each other and the ancient verses lose their meaning. He closes his eyes and focuses on the voices outside instead, the reassuring presence of his followers. They shout instructions up and down the streets, loading supplies and fueling vehicles, preparing for their final test of faith. These people are with him. These people are like him: set apart—in the world but not of it—so he can allow himself the comfort of their love.
He is not quite alone with his burden. He is not quite alone with the truth.
Someone knocks on the front door. Paul closes the black book in his lap but doesn’t get up. “Yes?”
A young man enters, a girl close behind. Paul doesn’t remember their names, but he knows they were part of the outreach teams. Of the hundreds he sent out to reap souls and skeletons, barely half came back. Whether killed by their quarry or seduced by the world, Paul will never know, but it matters to no one but God. They’re gone.
Not these two. They are survivors twice over: the mission abroad and the massacre at home. God must have big plans for them. Perhaps they’ll be Elders someday. Well, one of them anyway.
“You don’t have to knock,” Paul says. “This isn’t my home.” He gestures to the bare floor around him. “Have a seat.”
They sit, folding their legs on the oak-patterned laminate. They look nervous. Perhaps they’re here to make a confession. They’ve probably been fucking.
“I don’t know if you remember us, Pastor Bark,” the young man says. “I’m Peter, and this is Miriam.”
Paul smiles and nods. “How’s it going out there?”
“It’s um…it’s going well. They’ll be ready soon. That’s actually what we came to talk to you about.”
Paul cocks his head. Have they not been fucking? It seems impossible. The girl is obscenely attractive, a masterfully crafted temptation, and few possess the self-mastery Paul has achieved.
“There’s something we need to confess,” Miriam says, glancing nervously at the young man, and Paul smiles inwardly; there it is.
Peter clears his throat. “We need to confess the sin of doubt.”
Paul’s smile cools. “Doubt?”
“About what we’re doing. About God’s Jury.”
Paul stiffens his jaw. “Fine,” he says. “You’ve confessed. Now swallow those doubts, repent, and get back out there. Go and sin no more.”
Peter and Miriam glance at each other, surprised.
“Is that not what you wanted to hear?” Paul says. “Were you expecting a pep talk? Did you want me to tell you doubt is only natural and you shouldn’t beat yourself up over it? Well doubt is natural, just like all sin, and if you won’t beat yourself up over it, I fucking will.”
Peter swallows hard and avoids Paul’s gaze. “We just…we were hoping you could help us through this. Help us focus, like you do.”
“It’s just so many people,” Miriam says. Her voice quavers. “And most of them are probably unbelievers, so…won’t we be sending them to Hell?”
“We won’t be sending them anywhere,” Paul snaps. “We don’t control the Dead. Whatever happens to that city will be God’s will.”
“But how do we know for sure?”
“Because everything that happens is God’s will.”
“Then…why even do this?” Miriam’s eyes are moist. “Why do any of what we’re doing? Why not just live our lives as righteously as we can and let God handle his own business?”
Paul blinks. His patient smile contorts into a grimace. Oh, they are definitely fucking. How could they not be? Just look at this girl, her back arched with the intensity of her emotion, her tits thrusting into Paul’s eyes, violating his brain, her pussy opening like a trap to drag him down to Hell just like all the other whores all these long years; of course they’re fucking, everyone but Paul is fucking and eating and drinking and sleeping because everyone but him is weak, enslaved to their humanity, and he will walk the empty streets of Heaven alone with his righteousness.
“Miriam,” he says stiffly. “You’re passionate. You’ll make someone a very good wife, and if the Lord keeps us here longer than I hope, you’ll be a good mother too. But it’s not your role to speak out on issues of doctrine.”
Miriam’s spine sags. Her eyes drop to the floor.
“Peter,” Paul says, dismissing the girl and turning his attention to the young man. �
��I have to say I’m disappointed. God has made it clear to me that you’ve been living in sin with Miriam, and it’s this sin that planted the doubt in your heads.”
Peter drops his eyes too, and Paul smiles grimly. He’s right again. He’s always right.
“You’ve allowed lust to cloud your vision, but remember, it’s not just lust you have to guard against. Even love can tie you to this world and make you forget what you’re here to do: to work and struggle and fight for the world to come.”
The two youths are silent, ashamed, as they should be.
“But you asked me to help you through your doubt.” Paul Bark stands up and looks down at his audience, his squat frame towering over these statuesque youths. “So I’ll say this to you. There is nothing more dangerous than doubt.”
He begins to pace slowly around the room, his boots clicking on the hard floor.
“And that’s because there’s nothing more wonderful than truth!” He feels his bitter rage subsiding in the glow of these words. “When you follow truth, you know exactly who you are, what you are, and what’s expected of you. We talk about the straight and narrow path like it’s some terrible challenge, but it’s actually the easiest way!”
The youths look up, replacing their shame with attentiveness, which is just as good.
“Because you can get lost on a wide path!” He gestures expansively with his palms. “You can bump into people and get turned around and end up somewhere you never meant to go. The narrow path keeps you focused on the goal, no matter what distractions the enemy throws at you. The narrow path is perfect, and doubt is the rain that erodes it.”
Paul Bark doesn’t write his sermons. He doesn’t even think them; the words flow effortlessly from somewhere deep inside, and he speaks them before they can be tainted by the tangled nest of his brain. It’s a rapturous feeling, this freedom from doubt. It’s what he hopes to impart to these confused youths at his feet.