“Jesus,” Julie gasps, gripping the dash. “Was that a pothole?”
I am looking in the rear view mirror. The jolt suggested a hole deep enough to bury a body. But there’s nothing there. The road is smooth.
WE
ADDIS HORACE GREENE.
We know his name now, and so does he. A strange name, a chimera of cultures, made from people and places now gone, changed, merged, erased. This is how he feels. Like he is made of jagged fragments.
One thing he knows comfortably: the tall girl is his sister. His memories remain murky, but even in the absence of proof, she has made a convincing case. She has not left his side since they boarded the train. When the crew tried to put him in the freight cars with the Dead, she objected so violently they avoid even looking at him now.
And then there was the big man, and what she did to him.
They have the rear car to themselves now. The teal vinyl seats, the moldy carpet, the dirty windows offering hazy views of the landscape. The car is facing backward, so they watch the scenery scroll by in reverse, unable to see what’s coming until it’s already past. But Nora rarely looks out the window. She watches Addis like he’ll disappear if she blinks. She talks to him, tells him stories about himself, and asks him questions he doesn’t answer. She clings to his hand like he’s a kite in strong wind, like she’s one slip away from losing him. She cries sometimes.
“How are you two doing back here?” the boy who called himself Peter asks as he and “Miriam” stroll in from the front car. The other boy, “Lindh,” is following alongside the train in the armored truck, and he waves at Addis every time Addis glances out the window.
There is so much dissonance radiating off these people, even their names sound like lies. Addis glares at “Miriam” as she bends down to his level and says something in the sing-song voice of idiots talking to animals. He does not bother to register the words.
“We’re fine,” Nora replies to whatever Miriam said, watching the two warily.
“Not a bad way to travel, right?” Peter says. “Anyway, just wanted to let you know we’re over halfway there. Might even roll in tonight if we don’t have any more pick-ups.”
“We’re so excited to show you our community,” Miriam says, sitting cross-legged on the floor next to Nora’s seat. “I think you’ll really appreciate our message once you hear it from Pastor Bark.”
“I wouldn’t count on it,” Nora says, but her voice comes out a little too soft to support the words.
“He’s an incredible speaker,” Miriam gushes. “He can take ideas that sound crazy and almost, like, wrong?”—she laughs—“and make you see the truth in them.”
Nora raises her eyebrows. “How crazy and wrong are we talking about?”
“We’ll let Pastor Bark tell it,” Peter says, crouching down next to Miriam. “I always mess it up.”
“Our mom was Catholic,” Nora says. “She taught us we were eating chunks of Christ’s risen flesh every time we took the Eucharist. Is your stuff crazier than humans eating a zombie?”
Peter and Miriam both laugh. Addis grits his teeth.
“Well, it’s not ‘crazy,’” Peter says, “it’s just…challenging. Human reason always rejects God’s truth because his ways aren’t our ways, you know? He created us with a sense of right and wrong, but he made ours different from his so we’d have to rely on faith.”
“Otherwise it’d be too easy,” Miriam says.
“Right. If it just intuitively ‘made sense,’ then everyone would believe it, and what would be the point? There’d be no conflict to overcome and our faith would be weak.”
“You have to be strong to accept truth,” Miriam says.
“But that’s how you know it’s truth. The harder you have to struggle to believe it, the truer it must be.”
“Truth hurts.”
“Okay, okay,” Nora says, holding out her hands to stop them. “I’m getting exhausted just listening to how fucking difficult everything is.” They start to laugh again but she cuts them off. “Quit stalling and just spit it out. What’s this glorious truth of yours?”
Peter and Miriam look at each other, both a little nervous.
“Well,” Peter says. “Basically, we believe humanity’s trial on Earth is over.”
“We believe God’s ready to take us away from this place,” Miriam says, “and the only reason we’re still here is because we refuse to let go.”
“Because we keep trying to repair and rebuild our rotten world when we should be letting it burn.”
Addis watches his sister’s face turn cold. He watches her eyes narrow.
“Stop the train,” she says.
Peter laughs. “What?”
“Please stop the train as soon as possible. I’d like to get off.”
“Nora, why?” Miriam says, sounding genuinely heartbroken.
“Because you’re fucking Burners,” Nora says without raising her voice.
Peter sighs and shakes his head. “I knew I’d mess it up. I’m so bad at explaining it.”
“Nora,” Miriam says, reaching toward but not quite touching her leg, “you’re misunderstanding it. That’s not who we are.”
“You’re not with the Fire Church?”
“We are members of the Church of the Holy Fire, but it’s not what you think it is.”
“You probably think we’re all a bunch of pyromaniac nut-jobs, right?” Peter says. “That we’re just here to blow shit up and kill everyone who disagrees with us?”
“But that’s really not who we are, Nora. We’re just regular folks looking for something to believe in.”
Nora’s face remains stony. “So you don’t burn cities?”
Peter shakes his head. “That’s not what we’re about. We’re about helping people see the truth so they can make the most of the short time God gave them.”
“I’m just gonna ask this again,” Nora says. “Do you burn cities?”
“I’m just trying to explain that that’s not what we’re—”
“Yeah I heard you, it’s not what you’re about. But do you fucking do it?”
Peter and Miriam glance at each other, frustrated.
“Well,” Peter says slowly, “we do have a few liturgies that involve fire. It’s a symbolic thing, like an offering to God. But normally we don’t get into that stuff until later, after you’ve gotten to know us a little.”
“It’s always harder when someone has preconceived ideas about what kind of people we are,” Miriam says with a note of insinuation. “I’m sure you’ve experienced that before, as an African-American.”
Now it’s Nora’s turn to laugh. Hers doesn’t irritate Addis at all, though it’s loud and long. “You people torched DC!” she says with wide-eyed incredulity. “We had to run out in our pajamas while you burned down our fucking neighborhood!”
Peter and Miriam’s faces go very pale. “Oh,” Miriam says, putting a hand to her forehead. “Oh, that’s challenging.”
“Very fucking challenging!”
“Nora,” Peter says, in the most deeply sympathetic tone Addis has ever heard, “whatever happened in DC back then, it must have been so hard. And I’m so sorry your family had to go through it. But you have to understand…that was ten years ago. Me and Miriam were kids. Most of the people involved in that aren’t even alive anymore.”
“They were all just teenagers at the beginning,” Miriam says. “They were trying to do something way beyond them, and they made mistakes.”
Nora snorts. “Mistakes.”