“Libitina.”
“Liberty…?”
The woman’s smile grew broader and she shook her head. “Not quite, though we are blessed with an enviable level of freedom here. All are equal under God’s eye. No, Libitina. We’re about fifty miles south of Green River.”
Misha tried to quickly navigate the mental geography, but got all turned around. Hawkins’ wild-goose chase following the Justice Department signal had led them further into the northwest than she was familiar with, and she had no idea how far they’d been taken in the buggies that had come to their aid. In short, they could well be in the ass-end of anywhere.
“You rescued us… There were cars that came and picked us up…”
“Brother Peterson saw the flames, by all accounts, and went to investigate. It was opportune that he did—if he’d arrived any later, there wouldn’t have been much left of you or your friend. You were right in the middle of a locust swarm.”
Misha remembered pulling the trigger on Hawkins’ gun and the wreck going up like a firework display. As it turned out, it had been a highly effective flare.
“He brought us here?”
“Mm-hmm. You were both in a bad shape—malnourished, exhausted, physically injured. We did our best to repair some of the damage, as you’ve no doubt seen, but you’ll need significant recuperation.” Seeing a plain wooden chair positioned near the door, she brought it over to Misha’s bed before seating herself. “Can I ask something? That was bad territory you were in. That stretch of farm belt is notorious for the wildlife—most avoid it. How did you end up there?”
Misha laughed sardonically. “Chasing ghosts.” When she saw the woman’s quizzical expression, she clarified: “Hawkins,” she said, nodding at the figure of the Judge on the other bed, “was following a signal she thought originated from a Justice Department cell. Turned out to be a bust.”
“Ah.”
“She’s… obsessed with reuniting with those she thinks are still left alive from the Grand Hall coup. She’s convinced that there’s a resistance that she just needs to rendezvous with. But so far I’ve seen no evidence it exists.”
“How long have you two been out there?”
“A few months, I think. I’ve lost track of the time. At least a couple of seasons have passed, I’m sure.” Misha looked down at her hands. “Before she… saved me, I’m under the impression she’d been surviving this thing on her own since the Fall.”
The woman glanced at Hawkins, then turned back to the girl, lowering her voice slightly. “You think she’s afflicted?”
It struck Misha as a strange term, kind of antiquated. “Psychologically damaged, you mean?”
The woman nodded.
“Yes,” she replied, feeling terrible for voicing what had been for so long unspoken, but at the same time relieved that it was no longer solely hers to bear. “I think a lot of what she’s listening to are voices in her head. This squad of Judge rebels or whatever she thinks are out there… it’s delusional. There’s no underground, there’s no one fighting back. Any jays still alive are fleeing to some imagined safe haven like everyone else.” Misha raised her eyes to the rest of the room. “Somewhere like this, I guess. What is this—some kind of gated community?”
“Indeed. It started as a barricade… I’m sorry, I haven’t introduced myself. Ashia.” She extended a hand, which Misha shook. The woman’s palm was dry and a little rough; it felt calloused by a lot of manual labour.
“Misha. Misha Cafferly.”
“Pleasure to meet you, Misha. Yes, so, the founder, Father Arnold, and a few others, they put up the barrier as a means to defend themselves against the ghouls, right at the beginning. That, and others seeking to take what wasn’t theirs. Once they’d successfully repelled them, it started to develop as a town, as a way of life.”
‘Ghouls,’ the teenager noted. Another odd expression, reducing the greys to creatures from some fairy story. It was almost as if Ashia was unaware of where they’d come from, what they were beyond mere agents of destruction. Perhaps she wasn’t—maybe too little info had filtered this far from the capital. Someone like Sidney De’Ath, if she’d heard of him at all, was going to be nothing more than a devil figure, conducting his apocalypse from a throne of bones.
“You get no attacks?”
“Very rarely. Usually, it’s more raiders trying their luck to storm the walls. But we have a rigorous defence system that disposes of them very efficiently.”
“Nothing from the air?” Misha asked, thinking of the H-Wagons that she and her fellow survivors used to hide from regularly as they swooped across the land, searchlights scanning for signs of life.
“No,” she answered as if she’d never considered it before. “Must be outside their flight pattern. I have to say,” she added, “that we’ve never encountered any Judges either, so you would appear to be right about your friend’s”—she nodded at Hawkins—“quest.”
Misha nodded slowly. No shit, she thought. Just try to convince Hawkins of that. “So you get to live in peace here? The whole end-of-the-world thing seems to be passing you by.”
“We’re aware of our limited time on the mortal sphere. But we’re trying to do it on our own terms. We’re generally a pretty insular, self-regulating community. We don’t accept new arrivals very often.”
“I never said thank you,” Misha remarked meekly. “For taking us in.”
“Well,” Ashia said, standing. “You have some healing to do first. I’ll let you get some rest—I’ll bring along food in a little while.”
“Thank you,” Misha said again. “Oh,” she added, flipping with one hand through the clothes beside her, “what’s with the get-up?”
“Arnold’s idea,” she replied, making her way to the door. “You’ll meet him soon enough. I suggest putting them on before you catch cold. I took the trouble of measuring you while you were unconscious, so it should all fit.” She twisted the handle and disappeared over the threshold without another word, locking it behind her.
Misha sat quietly on the bed, running her fingers over the coarse material of the shirt and trousers, when she heard a cough and a groan. She glanced over at Hawkins and saw her eyelids fluttering, so she jumped down and padded across the floor to her. The Judge’s eyes rolled a little, then settled when she saw the younger girl’s face.
“Misha…”
“I’m here.”
“So you think I’m delusional, huh?”
THE BLOUSE AND pants combo were as itchy as all hell, although the irritation the straw boater brought to her scalp distracted her slightly. Maybe it was some kind of hair-shirt type deal, Misha wondered, a penance for sins committed during the congregation’s lifetime. She’d mentioned her discomfort to Ashia and a few others that she’d managed to get on speaking terms with in the few days that they’d been here, but received only benign smiles and tepid platitudes in response. Clearly, she would have to get used to it, as there didn’t seem to be much in the way of compromise on the fashion front—she guessed it was either this or exit through the front gate. You wanted a seat at the table, you had to become one of them. She presumed the prickliness would subside at some point as she became inured to it, like those monks, centuries ago, that used to kneel on bare flagstones for at least twelve hours a fucking day. The flesh was weak and fleeting, but the soul was eternal—wasn’t that the deal? She remembered reading about these kind of penitent religious orders at school and the basic comforts they’d deny themselves to better serve whatever deity they happened to choose; she never thought she’d end up joining one just as the human race was staring into the mouth of annihilation.
She felt like a fraud, there was no question of that: an imposter donning fancy dress so as to better blend in with a group whose beliefs she couldn’t in all sincerity adopt. They called themselves the Church of the Immortal Spirit, and from the little that Misha had gleaned from the services she’d reluctantly had to attend—she was never very good at concentrating whenever she’d
had to listen to this kind of hocus-pocus word salad—it was a denomination big on the survival of the essence beyond mere earthly pursuits. No matter what your fate in the physical realm, that spark of life force that dwelt within would endure under His almighty eye. She could see it had a certain reassuring appeal, but nevertheless she couldn’t count herself amongst the faithful; there didn’t seem to be any room for doubt or questioning outside the doctrine. Despite that, she wanted to stay.
Hawkins, however, was even more cynical towards the group. Although still convalescing, she’d graduated from her sickbed to a wheelchair, which invariably Misha was tasked with pushing most of the time, and she could ease herself in and out of it with minimal support. The compound leaders had given them a small two-bedroom bungalow for accommodation while they recovered and pondered their next move, and the two women had spent several awkward evenings sitting in silence in the living space, sometimes listening to the singing from the hall the people of Libitina used as their church.
Hawkins would shake her head and sign:
Hawkins paused for a moment, lost in thought. Then she signed:
There was a knock at the door. The two women exchanged curious looks before Misha jumped up and padded through to the hallway to answer it. Ashia was standing there, smiling broadly, clearly having just come from the service, the darkness behind her now quiet and still.
“Blessed evening,” she said, laying a hand on Misha’s arm. “Are the both of you getting your strength back?”
“Yeah. We’re… doing okay.”
“Good, because I bring exciting news. Our great founder Father Arnold wishes to speak with you. You and your friend.”
“What, now?”
“Right now.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
WHEN CAFFERLY STARTED making the high keening noise, it took even Phobia by surprise. Neither of the Sisters had heard much emerge from between the former Psi-Judge’s lips since her severed head had been plugged into their black-arts surveillance system, and if they were honest, they were starting to lose faith in her effectiveness. It was true that a suspended state of post-dismemberment could very much blunt your psychic edge, and they’d been starting to wonder if they’d pushed Cafferly too far—she had originally been divested of her limbs and body as punishment for her disloyalty, and her head had been retained to help find the sibling she was psi-connected to, but so far she’d been a bust. Now, though, she was veritably singing for her supper, and no one was more taken off guard than the witches themselves.
“Lisssten to her,” Phobia called to Nausea, who hurried to join her sister from an antechamber. “Ssshe mussst’ve made contact.”
“Indeed. Let ussss sseee what ssshe’sss telling usss…”
There was nothing identifiable as words emerging from Cafferly’s throat—it was a kind of shrill ululation—so Nausea slid inside the rancid mush of what remained of the psi’s mind and tried to gain an understanding of what the head was remote-viewing. At first it was a shifting blur of colours, and the witch struggled to secure a foothold on what she was perceiving, but the more she established dominance over Cafferly’s limited consciousness—effectively taking up residence inside her darkened brain and grabbing hold of the controls—the more something resembling a picture began to coalesce.
“Yessss…” Nausea whispered, fingers held to her temples, straining as she pushed her way to the front of Cafferly’s cerebellum. “Sssshe’sss found her…”
“Misssha?” Phobia asked, watching her sister intently.
“The girl’sss let her guard down, enough for our tracker to essstablisssh a location.”
“Where isss ssshe, then? What are you ssseeing?”
“Ssshe’sss to the north. Quite a dissstance from here… ssshe’ssss found a refuge in sssome kind of retreat. It’sss a walled town, well fortified…”
“A nessst of warmssss?”
“A real hotssspot. How we missssed thissss one is a myssstery. Neverthelessss, there they are, and Misssha issss among them. Sssshe’sss in pain, limping… the injury hassss dulled her mental defencessss.”
“Can you sssecure the co-ordinatessss?”
“Getting them now…” A smile creased Nausea’s face. “Oh, Missssha, my dear, you have no idea how exssscited I am to get the chance to bring you back here,” she murmured to herself. “The fun we will have with you, essspecially when we reunite you with your long-lossst ssssibling…”
Cafferly’s head seemed to shriek louder, rocking impossibly on the stanchions that held it in place above the witches’ formidable cauldron.
“Their combined psssychic energy would be mossst beneficial,” Phobia said. “Of coursssse, I can’t sssee her sssubmitting wilfully...”
“Oh, no,” Nausea replied. “There will undoubtedly be a level of dissssection. At the very leassst, limb removal. It’sss taken sssso long to find her, we can’t have her essscaping usss again.”
The screams rose an octave. Nausea glanced up, grimacing as she placed the flat of her hands now against the sides of her head.
“What issss it?” Phobia enquired anxiously, stepping forward to lay a supporting palm on her sister’s arm.
“Cafferly… ssshe’s ressssissssting…”
“Ssshe knowsss what we intend to do to the girl…?”
“Sssshe’sss fighting againssst me… I’m losssing the connection…”
There was a final screech and one of the rods holding the Psi’s head in place gave way. Cafferly tumbled into the dank depths of the cauldron with a scarcely audible plop, the witches peering over the edge and at the ripples the psi left in her wake.
“How did ssshe…?” Phobia started.
“Never mind that,” Nausea replied blithely. “We’ll fisssh her out later. For now, we have her sssissster’s location. Inform Ssssidney—we’ll need reinforcementsssss.”
“We’re going to get h
er?”
“We’re going in persssson. One way or another, Misssha is coming back with usss.”
DE’ATH SAT ALONE in his Grand Hall eyrie, silently contemplating the dust and darkness that surrounded him. Was this what he ultimately sought in the end—total isolation, accompanied by nothing more than the murdered remains of the planet? Did he actively rush towards his own company, forsaking the proximity and voices of others? He suspected so—despite the fine work of his lieutenants, despite him personally selecting them to aid him in his grand scheme of eliminating crime once and for all from every corner of the globe—he took a certain amount of pleasure when it was just him and the boneyard of his making. He enjoyed the serenity it brought; the lack of clamour and chaos, the knowledge that justice and order had truly been delivered. The quiet calmed him. He had no emotional attachment to Mortis, Fear and Fire—he’d transcended that nonsense long ago—but considered them useful comrades in the pursuit of his goal. Nevertheless, he felt increasingly like he had to pull rank; that they were forgetting to whose tune they were dancing, and wished to share his place on the world stage. It was a tiresome distraction. All in all, it came as something of a relief to just be left on his own with the pindrop silence of the judged, reflecting on everything he’d achieved.
He’d never been one for friends, even as a child. He’d come out of the womb that way, pretty much, no doubt warped from birth by his father’s psychopathy. Familial relations meant nothing to him; his mother and sister were pitiful, future victims in all but name, and the less said about the dog, the better. The only one he kind of respected for his sheer pathological hatred for mankind was Papa. A dentist by trade, who believed his patients’ heads were full of worms, the old man delighted in causing pain to others, and Sidney would remember with some degree of affection the times when he aided his father in his mobile surgery or helped dispose of the corpses. Equally, he hadn’t shirked from his duty when he finally reported De’Ath Senior to the Judges and had opted to pull the switch on his dad’s execution himself. There’d been unmistakable pride in his father’s eyes just before the volts went coursing through his body.
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