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 ensemble 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.