The Acolyte

by Nick Cutter

  I looked up from my glass sharply—too sharply—and saw Hollis considering me over the rim of his own glass.

  He set it down and knitted his fingers on the desktop. His hands were huge, scarred, knuckles grown together like crushed roots. A staunch Irish Catholic before conversion, Hollis had been tabbed as one of the first Acolytes. His reputation rested on a legendary story that took place at the start of his service career.

  He’d been patrolling when dispatch had radioed a 533: Failure to Conform. In the early days, heathens shacked up in their domiciles to practise outlawed faiths or scientific disciplines. In this case, a family of Mormons were bivouacked in a farmhouse off RR #7.

  Hollis’s knock was met with gunfire. He flanked the house and kicked in the back door. Father, mother, eight children: Hollis killed them all. For his actions he received the Star of Gilead, awarded for “Conspicuous Gallantry at the Risk of Life, Above and Beyond the Call of Duty, in Upholding the Ideals of the Republic.”

  There had been some conflict regarding Hollis’s official account. Two of his fellow Acolytes claimed to have found no weapons in the farmhouse save a single-shot rifle and a pitchfork; this conflicted with Hollis’s report of being met with “a fusillade of gunfire.” Friction marks on the victims’ wrists indicated they had been bound, perhaps upon their surrender, before being shot. The youngest heathen, a girl, was found draped over the barbed wire fence at the property’s edge. Her throat had been slit.

  But anyone who disputed Hollis’s account was by now either dead or rendered low on charges of Moral Turpitude—charges levied by Hollis himself. The official incident report had since disappeared: Hollis had burned it, or it had been purged by an emissary of the state.

  All that remained was the Star of Gilead resting in its frame above Hollis’s desk. That medal shaped the collective memory of an event nobody properly remembered anymore. That medal said Hollis was a hero of the Republic.

  “Everything went alright last night?” Hollis watched my face for a betraying tic. “By the book?”

  “You’ve got my incident report.”

  He tapped the carbons I’d left on his desk. “Tight as a vise, as always. But reports don’t tell the whole tale.”

  Reports never did. Fire Teams erased all physical evidence, leaving the reporting Acolyte free to massage facts: no report should admit wrongdoing on the part of the Acolytes and, by inference, the Republic.

  Hollis’s face took on a paternal aspect. “I worry about my unit, you understand. Especially Doe. Call me old fashioned.”

  I tried not to grimace. Hollis worried about us the way a farmer worried about his prize Guernseys—only so much as it affected his own ambitions.

  “They’ll all be rotting in Reconditioning Centres,” he said of the rounded-up criminals. “Except Timothy McSweeney—the leader of the poofter brigade.”

  McSweeney. The name was familiar. “Son of Alex McSween-ey . . . ?”

  “Minister of Cultural Codes McSweeney,” Hollis confirmed. “His son’ll toddle off to bugger again, but at least we’ve got ourselves a favour owed.”

  He smiled. The points on the Star of Gilead above his head twinkled.

  “I need you to cover a spot of off-hours security tonight,” he said. “The Prophet’s eldest daughter, Eve—”

  “Babysitting duty, you mean.”

  Hollis fixed me with a look. “It’s a touch more serious than that, lad. The Prophet has enemies—deluded wrecks whose only worth is sacrificial. If they can’t strike The Prophet directly, they’ll strike at those close to him.”

  “Where at?”

  “One of the downtown establishments. The Manger.”

  “Fun,” I said.

  “The Prophet appreciates your sacrifice,” Hollis said dryly.

  The Manger

  Babysitting duty.

  The car: special issue, picked up at Central Dispatch. A stretch Buick: bomb-proof floor plates, reinforced chassis, self-sealing tires, bulletproof glass.

  I pulled up at a quarter past seven: with midnight curfew, a night on the town gets started early. I nodded to the pair of off-duty officers at the gate and rolled down the crushed gravel drive to the estate. The healthy oaks stunned me: we’d been on water ration for years. Last summer’s drought turned every tree in the city into husks.

  The mansion: 120 rooms, banquet hall, gold-trimmed toilet fixtures—or so I’ve heard. The courtyard was dominated by a fountain: a statue of The Prophet, twenty feet high and carved from alabaster marble, water welling from his cupped palms. The plaque at its base read BESTOWER OF ALL THINGS.

  A trio waited at the top of the terrace stairway. The Prophet’s eldest daughter and a pair of famished sycophants.

  Eve, the daughter: tall and lithe and gorgeous in a white evening dress. A gold crucifix drew attention to her cleavage. Her constant companion, a teacup Chihuahua named Erasmus, sat in a handbag at the end of her arm. A crucifix had been bleached into the fur between the little dog’s eyes.

  “You’re late,” she said as I opened the car door for her.

  I tipped an invisible chauffeur’s cap. “Forgive me.”

  She disappeared into the backseat, flanked by her human lapdogs: two girls as skinny as tent poles, arms jutting from the puffy sleeves of taffeta gowns. They looked identical: when people reach a critical point of malnutrition, they all look the same. Their heads were just skulls wrapped in crepe paper.

  I piloted the Buick into the city. The sun sank over the downtown core, reflecting off the skyscrapers. I cut down Gilead to Iscariot, skirting Kiketown. A thirty-foot-tall razor wire fence ran round the ghetto’s perimeter: Jews were permitted to work in the city proper but otherwise confined from ten o’clock at night until five the following morning within their ghetto.

  “Jimmy Saint Kincaid is playing tonight,” I heard Eve say. “I simply adore him.”

  “Oh, yes,” said one of the taffeta-clad hand puppets. “He is sooo pious.”

  “Have you heard his newest song,” said Eve, “‘Nailz Thru My Palms’?”

  “Love it, just love it,” the other hand puppet said. “I can feel the Lord’s love shining through his music.”

  “Eehhh.” Eve sounded bored. “He’s got a great ass, give him that.”

  The two hand puppets covered their mouths, shocked. They sat on either side of Eve: a pair of spindle-thin bookends. The Prophet’s wife, Effie—The Immaculate Mother, Virgin Mother of The One Child—was their idol. The Immaculate Mother looked like a driftwood skeleton; she was so wan you could see her facial veins magnified on the three-storey SuperChurch JumboTron TV every week.

  The Immaculate Mother said the Lord had come to her in a dream and told her that the devout must prove their piety through deprivation. Her profile graced bottles of the city’s best-selling beverage, Purity Purge. Ingredients: water, lemon juice, a mild laxative agent.

  I cut down Jericho and into the club district. A Daily Benediction Booth on the corner did brisk business. At a cost of two gerahs, the faithful could duck into the city’s many DBBs to receive a videotaped blessing from The Prophet. For an extra cost, the booths dispensed a thumbnail-sized wafer and a wine lozenge.

  We reached The Manger.

  I parked down a side street to avoid the front-door crush. My rap on a corrugated steel delivery door was answered by a huge black bouncer in a crisp white suit.

  “Bring her in,” he said.

  I guided my charges through the prep area and out a swinging service door into the club. High-ceilinged and well-lit—darkness breeds vice, you see—and packed with bodies.

  Music pulsed from the speaker system. Musicians in the Republic were not permitted to compose music with a tempo in excess of sixty beats per minute, as accelerated tempos encouraged “licentious bodily motions.” The current song, heavy on church organ, inspired a general malaise: pat
rons plodded the dance floor like woolly mammoths struggling in a tar pit . . . not that woolly mammoths ever existed.

  The bouncers had roped off a booth. I checked the sightlines: decent. Scoped the crowd: young/Caucasian.

  I took an inconspicuous position. An awestruck waitress took their order: Purity Purges for the hand puppets, RC for Eve. Every club in town sold one kind of alcohol—Republic Claret—and had a sign prominently displayed above their bars: 2 DRINK MAX. Those rules flexed for Eve. I’d seen her down twelve glasses in a night. And I’d hosed her vomit out of the car’s back seat afterwards.

  Someone touched my elbow. I turned to see Doe. She was in uniform, her dark hair cut regulation-short and slicked back like a man’s. Her oilskin duster was parted; I saw the butt of her Volver 927 in its shoulder holster.

  “I’m filling in for Garvey.”

  “You’re alright?” I slid my hand down her arm, then self-consciously pulled away. “I rang your place—”

  “I’m fine.” Her gaze flicked off across the dance floor, settling on Eve. “How’s Queen Bee tonight?”

  Eve was working on her second RC. She fed some to the dog, Erasmus: wine dribbled down its muzzle, staining its fur.

  I said, “Her usual charming self.”

  Stagehands tested sound levels for the upcoming concert. An MC strode onstage.

  “All you true Followers,” he intoned, “put your hands together for the one, the only, the incomparable—Jimmy Saint Kincaid!”

  Thunderous applause. Breathless squeals. Jimmy Saint Kincaid strode on stage barefoot in a purple velvet robe. He flashed a smile: diamond crucifixes graced his upper front incisors. He launched into “You Take Control.”

  You are my guide

  You take control,

  You are the one

  I embrace you

  See me let it go

  You are in control

  Suffer as we grow

  Holding nothing

  A pair of hooded figures banged matching brass gongs. The crowd raised their arms, swaying.

  “I’m going up there,” Eve told me. “Get me up there.”

  “My instructions are to—”

  “I don’t give a damn.”

  “Difficult to ensure your safety—”

  “Don’t give a . . . D-A-M-M,” she said forcefully.

  “But your father—”

  “I really don’t give a damn.”

  I relented. We made an Acolyte sandwich: Doe, myself, Eve in the middle. Erasmus cradled in the crook of Eve’s arm. We guided Eve to the edge of the stage. I shoulder-blocked a weedy guy in a vanilla suit. Doe kidney-punched a goon wearing a glittery Jimmy Saint Kincaid concert tee. Kincaid whined:

  You define me

  With your identity

  Lose my life in You

  I can take—I’ll take what it costs me . . .

  We reached the stage. The footlights dazzled.

  “Step back,” Eve said to me. “I want to dance. Alone.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  She slapped me—open hand to the face. Erasmus yipped.

  I leaned in close to her and spoke over the music. “Absolutely not.”

  She slapped me again.

  “As much as you need,” I told her squarely. “You just let it out, now.”

  “If you don’t step back, Acolyte Murtag”—I was shocked Eve knew my name—“I’ll tell my father you attempted inappropriate liberties with me.”

  Her hand moved down her stomach between her legs, a move so lascivious it stunned the blood in my veins.

  Should she follow through on her threat, I’d be exiled by tomorrow. Cowed, I stepped back. Doe did the same.

  Kincaid’s voice reverberated into silence. The audience applauded reverently; adoring fans tossed pocket Bibles and rosaries.

  Kincaid invited Eve up for his signature ballad, “Spear in My Side.” Eve squealed in delight.

  Doe and I stood back-to-back against the stage. Doe covered the crowd; I kept an eye on Eve. Kincaid knelt to serenade her—she was the spear in his side.

  One of the robed gong-bangers on the stage spread his arms, Christ-like, a few yards behind Eve and Kincaid. I assumed it was part of the act until the lead guitarist hit a sour note and I keyed on his expression, which was one of startled confusion.

  Only then did I see it, down to the tiniest detail: the twist of DET cord snaking from the robe’s sleeve. The slender detonation plunger. The bulging stomach layered with explosives.

  The mania in those hooded eyes: the eyes of a martyr.

  I grabbed Doe and yanked her beneath the stage overhang, shielding her, issuing a schoolboy’s prayer—Please, Lord; pleasepleasepleasePLEASE—as I struggled with one inconceivable fact:

  The bomber was the wrong colour.

  The bomber was white.

  Boom

  The explosion lifts me up like a plastic bag in an updraft. I feel no pain. I feel nothing at all. Everything unfolds slowly, gracefully.

  The bomber is vaporized: nothing but a fine mist of blood that boils away in the heat of the blast. The only part of him to remain is the charred steel plate he’d strapped to his back to direct the explosion toward the crowd; I can’t help but think, What a clever idea.

  Eve and Kincaid are incinerated: the explosion sizzles the skin off their bones, melts them like wax effigies before a secondary blast reduces them to ash.

  I peer down at myself suspended in the air. Floating. Weightless. My arms look pretty awful: red and shrivelled like smokehouse pork. I realize, without much surprise, that the stark rods glowing through the shrivelled mess are, in very point of fact, my bones.

  Shrapnel fans out over the crowd. A young woman with a delicate china face gets ripped apart like a paper doll. Is Doe safe? Is she alright? Please, God.

  A white-hot ball bearing rockets at my face. It punches through my head above the ridge of my eye socket. The bone buckles, splinters, fragments, turns to powder. I feel it moving through my head, coring out my skull, out the back with a dim pop! My head feels so much lighter. I’m not thinking straight. I’m not thinking much of anything. Still searching for Doe as the world turns black, a dark shade pulled against the light and then I’m falling or flying, can’t tell which, at phenomenal speeds.

  “—nah. Come, Jonah. Come on back to me.”

  My eyes snapped open. A face swam out of the smoke: Doe’s face, brown with soot. The glow of a streetlamp ringed her head in a golden halo: she resembled a Saint in a stained-glass cathedral window.

  “You’re okay.” I smiled—dopey, grateful. This sound in my ears like bacon sizzling.

  “We’re both okay. Me a little more than you.”

  I was propped against the wall of a shop across the road from The Manger. My duster and vest were shredded. A ball bearing was buried in the Kevlar weave an inch from my heart. Otherwise I felt okay . . . okayish.

  I was coated in a fine layer of grey ash. A fine layer of Eve.

  “How—?”

  “I dragged you out.” Doe said. “Couldn’t tell if you were alive.”

  “And Eve?”

  “Dead.”

  “Then we’re dead.”

  Doe acknowledged the possibility with a nod. Black, meaty-smelling smoke poured out of the club’s casement windows.

  “Your hair’s gone,” Sweat tracked down Doe’s face, leaving clean rails through the soot. “And your right arm’s bad.”

  A thin trench slashed a quarter-inch into the flesh of my biceps. It burned fiercely.

  “Looks like a guitar string or something in there,” said Doe.

  Truth: we were alive, Eve dead. What could I say? That I didn’t have the time to react? I was caught off-guard? That Eve wasn’t worth saving? I’d made a choice. Angela over Eve. Probability: we’d be booted off the Faith C
rimes unit. Ritually mutilated. Exiled. Even executed.

  I said: “How many dead?”

  “Dozens,” Doe said. “Packed like sardines in there. The stage overhang saved us.”

  I kept the bomber’s skin colour to myself. I doubt anyone else had noticed. Two prowl cars peeled into the lot, followed by an ambulance.

  Doe said: “We need to get out of here.”

  “Flee the site?”

  “You’re injured. Eve’s dead. Nothing more we can do. CSI will handle it.”

  “Where?”

  “My apartment, for now.”

  Doe’s place.

  A small clean efficiency. The window overlooked the south side of the city. Ten blocks distant, cones of flame continued to rise from The Manger.

  Doe led me into the kitchen. She grabbed some shears and cut the straps of my bulletproof vest. The seams had melted in the blast, bonding it to my chest.

  “Like a Band-Aid?”

  When I nodded, she gave a hard yank. I sucked air through tight-clenched teeth. Doe wet a cloth and blotted up the blood.

  She disappeared into the bathroom and returned with iodine, tweezers, and a bottle of pills.

  “For the pain.”

  The bottle’s label read: VICODIN. Originally prescribed to a Mrs. Penny Thacker for severe pancreatic distress. The expiry date was years ago.

  “Where did you get—?”

  “Evidence lockup.”

  The manufacture, sale, and/or use of prescription medication was illegal in the Republic, so ordained by the Divine Council at New Kingdom.

  I popped a pill into my mouth. “Make it two,” she said. “They’re way out of date.”

  She swabbed my arm with iodine before tweezing out the coiled metal. Pills or not, I screamed. Down amidst the city grid: sirens. Sirens didn’t bother me. When the hunters came for you, they didn’t come with sirens. They came silent as death. We both knew that. We’d been hunters.

  She led me into the bathroom to dress the wound. My reflection in the mirror: every hair burned away save a few crispy threads that fringed the nape of my neck.