by Dan Davis
In his ear, Ram heard Flores curse. “Tell that backward son of a bitch this woman right here is going to organize her fist right up his—”
Ram cut off her audio and screwed up his face. “Women can fight just as well as men. I have two women on my team that have been fighting and killing for thirty years or more and they’re as good as they come.”
“Yeah?” The mayor seemed unimpressed. “I assume they have genetic alterations and bioaugmentations that enhance their combat ability?”
“Well, so do the men in my team.”
“Most of us civilians don’t have anything like that. And anyway, I never said there were no women leaders. Just that our lives became focused on violence and in the real world men understand violence better than women, wouldn’t you agree?
“The real world? I don’t know much about the real world.”
Fraser nodded. “Don’t sweat it. I didn’t either.” He smiled and looked up at the falling snow. “You know what else? I found myself believing in God. My parents were atheists, my grandparents. Almost everyone I knew. And I also know that religiousness is a trait that gets amplified in high-stress environments and yet I found myself being drawn to people praying and I started listening to sermons. All the while I was thinking, I’m just listening because religiousness is a trait amplified by stress. Belief in God correlates with unstable environments. And yet, here I am, standing before you a believer in the Almighty. We have a church here and a priest and we pack it out every Sunday. In fact, more than seventy percent of the people here are Catholic now, like me, and I don’t believe many of them were believers before the invasion.”
“Well, that’s great.” Ram didn’t want to offend the man. “I just don’t understand how you can know the biological cause of something and believe in the divine at the same time.”
Fraser nodded. “God works in mysterious ways.” He grinned. “I’m just teasing you but I can just feel this feeling now, inside me and all around me, and even if it is purely an emergent property of some areas of my brain, I feel it all the same. The words and the rituals and the prayer give me strength and guidance. Without my faith, I wouldn’t have made it this far and I wouldn’t be looking to the future with anything like the hope and joy I now feel. And I thank God for that.”
Ram thought the guy sounded like a lunatic but he wasn’t about to say anything that might insult him. “That’s great, really great. So, you made it work here, that’s obvious. But these gangs still attack you?”
“We’ve been here a while now but they’ve had a go every year. You see, the best time to raid a neighboring settlement is after harvest and before winter, okay? All your stores are in. Animals slaughtered and preserved, all the year’s work ready to be carried off. Some people don’t think they’re coming this year. A lot of my friends and neighbors think our enemies have become frightened of our walls and our firepower and they know enough to stay away from now on.”
“And what do you think?”
“One of the reasons people follow me is that I hope for the best and I plan for the worst. You want to know what I think? What I dread? They’re taking so long because they’re bringing up some heavy ordinance.”
“Like artillery?”
He nodded. “We all heard stories about towns getting taken out by army tanks and stuff like that. A lot of guys think it’s just rumor but I spoke to three different people over the years who were in towns that were attacked by armored vehicles.”
“How is that possible?”
“Lots of military hardware around the States and even in Canada. You know how many people fantasize about finding and raiding old military bases? I can understand the people that say the Hex wouldn’t allow tanks to go driving around but we’ve moved big tracked vehicles around for hundreds of miles, which must look like battle tanks from the air or from orbit and they’ve never shown an interest in our excavators and backhoes. Sometimes I wonder if they’re even watching any more. I mean, you guys made it to the surface and all they send is one hopper and a Wayfinder. It’s like they lost all interest.”
“The Wayfinders, that’s what you call the guy in the robes? He’s a human collaborator, right? What’s the deal with those guys? It seems like you were familiar with him in some way, is that correct?”
Fraser sighed and stopped walking. They were at the corner of the town where one road turned and led along the rear wall and another pointed toward the center of town. “You want to see our church, Lieutenant? It’s going to be another hour maybe before they clear that rubble out.”
In Ram’s ear, Stirling muttered a warning. “Is this guy hiding something about those Wayfarers, those collaborators? Get him to tell you about them, sir, don’t let him fob you off.”
“I’d love to see your church, Mayor Fraser.”
“Then follow me.”
They walked past a wide, single floored building with a series of large doors right along the front. Two of the doors were open, revealing two men working on a tracked vehicle with a long flatbed trailer to one side.
“You operate trucks up here? Why?”
“We sought peace in remoteness but we can’t afford to be isolated and our people travel to other towns to trade for stuff we can’t make here. Medicines, especially. And we have to bring in huge amounts of timber for fuel from the forest, hence the cat and the trailer there and the other trucks and vehicles we operate.” He pointed to another open door where a man was covering an ATV with a heavy tarp. More small vehicles were already covered.
“I have to say, Mayor Fraser, this place is amazing to me. If it wasn’t for the solar panels, the vehicles, and some of the gear, I’d swear it was three or four hundred years ago. Or more.”
Fraser nodded, his eyes glinting. “Well, that’s exactly what I was talking about before, Lieutenant. We’ve slipped into living this way because this is a reaction to our environment. It’s a natural way of life that our ancestors lived for thousands of years before we invented our way out of it. And we never intended to build a medieval town or anything like that. Not at all. Physical defense, functionality, and building materials dictate the layout and the forms in just the same way that it did for the people who used to build this way. And yet we have changed. My buddy Albert likes to say that all the antisocial people were killed and only the agreeable folks like us survived because we were stronger together in these groups. Maybe he’s right. But I know that I am not the man I was. I’d never built anything larger than a circuit board and I’d never even held a gun much less fired one. But the biggest change has been in my character. This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to the world and it’s very possible that everything I helped to build here gets destroyed and that my children will not make it either and yet I know that this is precisely how humans are supposed to live. It’s good for our souls. Do you understand that?”
“No,” Ram said. “I’m sorry, not at all.”
Fraser shrugged with the easy confidence of a man who knows he’s right, no matter what anyone else thinks. “Here’s our church.”
It was a plain building clad with white weatherboard, much like many of the houses. “It’s very nice.”
“Do you have any experience with faith, Lieutenant?”
Ram cleared his throat. “I’m Indian, so Christianity wasn’t really a big part of my upbringing.”
“God is for all of humanity, Lieutenant but I didn’t mean Christianity specifically. Just any form of faith.”
Ram cleared his throat again. “It was never a part of my life. And I never needed it.”
“Ah,” Fraser said, nodding. “I know exactly what you mean. Come on inside.”
The ceiling was high above and light poured in from windows running around below the roof as well as from a huge window at the far end. It was white and bright and there were a couple of statues carved from wood and painted here and there. Two rows of pews led his eyes to the front where there was a table covered in a white cloth on a raised area. Ram realized
it was the first church he had ever been in.
“It’s very… peaceful.”
“You seem uncomfortable.” Fraser grinned. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to try to convert you. Do you know why I’m so proud of this church? It represents civilization. For years, all we did was utilitarian. We needed weapons, food and water, shelter. Fuel, power, warmth. Every time we moved to a new place, found a new home, one of the first things we did was to set up solar panels, charge batteries. There was always so much to do and in the snatched moments in between fulfilling our physical needs, we prayed or listened to sermons in the open air or in shelters. So few priests made it but the ones that did were like the priests of old. Strong men, strong as iron, and tempered by their faith. When we built this town, one of the first things we did after the walls was to build this church so that we might tend to our spiritual requirements, deepen our moral character, develop our civility. Strengthen each of us and also our community.”
“Right,” Ram said. “That’s great. What can you tell me about the collaborators who—”
A deep voice echoed from the other end of the building. “You’re unconvinced, Lieutenant.”
Ram turned to see a tall man with a big head over his priest’s clothes coming toward him, smiling. He had a white collar and everything.
“I’m convinced,” Ram said as the priest came close. “Religion gives people strength, I don’t doubt it.”
“People,” the priest said looking up. “But not you?” He smiled and held out his hand. “I’m Robert Yellowhair, nice to meet you, Rama Seti. Hey, I remember when I saw you beat that alien, man, that was really something. Really something.”
“Thanks, yeah it was something, alright. Nice to meet you, er, Robert. The Mayor was just showing off your church.”
“We’re all very proud of it. I know I am. Before this, I hadn’t even seen a church for almost six years. Not a proper one. It’s remarkable what we’ve achieved here and even if it ends one day, I’ll give thanks for every single day that we had here and for every service I’ve conducted under this roof.”
“You really expect to be attacked again?”
The mayor and the priest exchanged a glance. “It’s inevitable, I’m afraid,” Fraser said. “We’re as prepared as we can be. We’ve got a thousand firearms inside these walls, hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition, a small number of heavier weapons and explosives of various kinds. But could we fend off a single battle tank? What if ten thousand men came screaming out of those woods one night, with ropes and ladders?”
“Is that likely? Ten thousand attackers?”
“It’s happened in the lower forty-eight.”
Robert Yellowhair nodded. “That’s right.”
“We’ll fight with everything we have and we’ll make whoever attacks us as sorry as they’ve ever been. But we have to be realistic.”
The priest folded his hands. “We spent years seeing camps and towns fall, from attack or from divisions within spilling over into violence. We’ve done everything in our power to make this community strong and stable. Our people are making babies and we’re in this for the long haul but we must not delude ourselves. The world is a dangerous place still. It will always be dangerous while the evil Hex are on our planet.”
“Father Robert’s right.”
“I thought they left you alone?” Ram said. “And that it’s other humans who are the danger?”
“That’s true,” Fraser said. “But the Hex don’t allow us to establish order on a large scale and that’s why we’re fated to live in such a violent world.”
“They don’t allow you to establish order?”
“A few times, we’ve seen or heard of large areas coming under someone’s control. There was the New State of Washington about eight years ago and they apparently had control of all the area that used to be the old state and even beyond, into Oregon. They had a legislature and a governor and they started clearing out the cities like Olympia and they were making headway into Seattle. They had a police force although they were more like a military force than they were in the old days, just rounding up the gangs and killing them rather than passing them on to somewhere else.”
“Sounds brutal.”
“If you give people a choice between brutal and chaos or brutal and order, what do you reckon they’ll choose?” Fraser said. “Everyone loved hearing what was happening. I was thinking of going down there.”
“We all were,” Father Robert said.
“What happened to the New State of Washington?” Ram asked.
“The Hex came with aircraft and ground troops and just started killing. They flattened the whole of Olympia, destroyed every building, killed everybody. With other cities, other towns, they were less thorough. Killed as many of the police as possible, though, and then they left.”
“They just wiped out the state government?” Ram asked.
“The Hex want us in chaos. They want us disorganized because we’re no threat to them like this.”
“It wasn’t just Washington,” Father Robert said. “I heard other states were getting back on their feet before the Hex kicked them down again. Even L.A. got hit, if you can believe that.”
“Why wouldn’t I believe that?”
“After the invasion, Los Angeles was basically the worst place in North America. All that city, all those people, just turning on each other. Gangs claiming territory in endless warfare. Every now and then we’d meet someone who’d gotten out of it and we heard how the gangs were getting fewer but bigger until there was just one group in control of basically all the inhabited parts of the city. I’m sure their order was brutally enforced but it was order of a sort, over hundreds of thousands of survivors. For a while.”
“The Hex attacked L.A.?”
“Small towns are okay, seems like, even a few thousand inhabitants strong but we’re scared to form into any sort of confederations or anything, in case they come for us, too.”
“But how do they know?” Ram asked. “I thought you said you weren’t monitored all that closely?”
“They have satellites, we know that, and they have aerial reconnaissance I’m sure, but they wouldn’t understand what we were up to at all without the God damned Wayfinders. Sorry, Father.”
“It’s alright, Ewan, they are damned by God. They are traitors to God and to their people and they will know no salvation while they serve those unholy monsters.”
“Why do they do it?”
Fraser rubbed his brow before answering. “For a very long time, we were entirely ignorant of their existence. We’d heard that the Hex abducted a lot of people rather than kill them and there were all kinds of rumors about what they wanted with us.”
Father Robert nodded and checked off his fingers. “Science experiments, sexual slavery, fights to the death for entertainment, and for meat, were the main ones I heard.”
“Maybe all that’s true, we have no idea but we do know that some were being indoctrinated,” Fraser said. “And eventually released. Sneaking back into the population. Some reporting back on what we were doing, what we were thinking. Others were like agitators, you know? Stirring up trouble, sowing seeds of doubt and misinformation.”
Father Robert’s face was grim. “And others were proselytizing.”
“They were what?”
“Attempting to convert humans to the Hex religion.”
“And what is the Hex religion? In my briefing it said they worship the Orbs? How does that work?”
“In my professional opinion?” Father Robert said. “It’s purely satanic.”
“Right,” Ram replied. “Okay.”
“We don’t know all that much,” Fraser said. “We think that they consider the Orbs to be sentient. The race that we call the Orb Builders reached a higher plane of existence through technological development and were enlightened, I guess. They became the Orbs, somehow.”
“You can see how the Hex might believe this and you can see it might be an attractive thou
ght to the weak-minded,” Father Robert said. “After all, isn’t it what we’ve been doing for hundreds of years?”
“What’s that?”
“Worshiping technology.”
Ram scratched his nose. “Is it worship? Or is it deep appreciation for the things that technology has done for us?”
“Anything that takes us further from our salvation is bad for us as individuals and for our communities. And that is what all our high technology does for us, deep appreciation or not. The Hex and their converts worship technology as if it was God. They believe the Orbs created all life in the galaxy, not God.”
“Right,” Ram said. “And that’s what these guys in the robes are selling to people?”
“There’s more to it than that but most people are wise to it now and when someone starts down that road, generally they get rounded up and put a stop to. Last few years, we don’t see Wayfinders at all unless they’re surrounded by Hex guards.”
“Wayfinders? That’s what you call them? Why?”
“That’s what they call themselves,” Fraser said.
“In English, at least,” Father Robert said. “In Spanish they call themselves Los Pioneros, which means pioneers, you know? Like pathfinders. I heard from one of my cousins, come up from Arizona, they were calling themselves nah-e-thlai which means something like a guide. Probably they’re doing the same all over the world, telling the Chinese and the Indians and the Japanese the same nonsense. But whatever they call themselves and whatever they call their religion and their false gods, what they’re preaching is evil. It’s to betray the human race and go over to the Hex.”
“But no one does that, do they?”
“Some people fall to temptation.”
“What are they tempted by? What happens?”
“They get somewhere safe to live, with plenty of food and all the rest.”
“What, there are Hex-run cities?”
Fraser shrugged. “We don’t know for sure that these people get what is promised but yes, we’ve seen people convert and then the Hex take them away.”
