The Zero Patient Trilogy (Book Two): (A Dystopian Science Fiction Series)

by Harmon Cooper

  Stop… now. Reach your hand out.

  I reach it out, feeling as if it’s being guided like a puppet’s arm. Something cold and shaped like a sickle tickles the callus on my palms. I grip it and turn, thankful for the Off Limits and their continued patronage of the church in the form of new doors.

  ‘They really aren’t that bad,’ I say, even though I’m still sore from the metalzips they launched at me.

  The Off Limits plays its role.

  ‘We all do.’

  Very good, Hunter.

  ‘But they attacked me, they… kidnapped me and brought me back here.’

  I am sorry for that.

  ‘You didn’t know,’ I tell her as I take my first step out.

  The night is dead body quiet, the temperature nearly the same as it was in the Hole. Mog above a heaven of filth, ground below the trampled soil of the Canyon. All that is abandoned is one day redeemed in places unseen.

  Turn to your right. More. More. Good, now straight ahead.

  ‘I like it when you are in my head,’ I say.

  I am glad. I will treat it kindly.

  ‘Do whatever you’d like, Goddess.’

  --RETURN HOME, HUNTER!

  A twitch below my stomach; I suddenly feel ashamed. I’d cut it off if I knew I wouldn’t bleed to death and that Father Miscavige would be angry.

  --It is mine. Remember, Hunter. The others shall be unsowed but yours is mine, he has said to me many times.

  ‘It is a nuisance.’

  Don’t worry about it. I am not offended.

  I stop dead in my tracks and drop my head. ‘I am sorry, Goddess, it can’t be controlled.’

  Some say they have a mind of their own. Having seen the plight of the male on both sides of the Canyon, I’m more inclined to believe it than I’d care to admit. Ignore it, Hunter. Ignore the voices, especially that of Father Miscavige.

  (Blasph! Can’t you see it, Hunter? Are you deaf? Blind? Stupid?)

  ‘I will try.’

  Good. Continue in this direction until you reach the back gate. The guard will open it for you. Do not open your eyes. If you keep your eyes closed, he will not see you.

  ‘I understand, Goddess.’

  Do not open your eyes for anything.

  .3.

  Eyes closed, zephyr steps. The South is asleep, the prayers are said, the guards don’t notice anything as I, with eyes closed, tip my toes. What we know is a result of what has been taught, what we learn is a result of what has been wrought. No hot sun beating down, burning my feet just walking around. Fashioned in fists, humans live on cusps and cliffs overlooking deep recesses of unknown curses and blessings.

  The Book says to disregard those who have fallen from the path of the Devout. The blasph must be snuffed out; the faceless must be despoiled to release their iniquity. Wilted wicked things milking sympathy from the masses for their past actions are the nightmares of future classes.

  (Open your eyes.)

  Over my dead body will I disobey the Goddess. Over my dead body will I ignore Halo’s request!

  (It’s a test.)

  ‘We’ve been over this.’

  Keep moving, you’ve reached the gate of the church; you’re close to freedom…

  (Darkness isn’t freedom.)

  Smash rock fist let that thought dissipate. The return rate for the pious is fuel for the righteous. Mitigate the sense of confinement by simply defining it. Pray or be preyed upon.

  Keep moving, Hunter, I believe in you.

  ‘Thank you, Goddess.’

  Move I do, quicker than lizards on fire. Free from the church, from the Hole – I’m practically skipping in the streets in congratulations of me and my first victory in a very long time.

  ‘You’ve done it!’ I tell myself.

  (You’ll be dead soon.)

  --RETURN HOME, HUNTER!

  I’m on the road crawling then standing again, crouching, running, enjoying the all-encompassing darkness. The air isn’t fresh, my body is still sore from the metalzips that bruised my flesh, but my belly is full and the excitement of my release keeps my eyes wide shut and a smile lifting my cheeks.

  Keep moving, Hunter, in the same direction you are going. Relax a little; it’s hard to keep the path aligned with all your sudden movement.

  (Don’t do it.)

  ‘Sorry, Goddess!’ I whisper. The impulse to raise my arms wide and zoom zoom fly like a metalzip takes a lot of concentration to quell well. Who’s excited? I’M EXCITED!

  (Open your eyes.)

  ‘Ignore the voice, ignore the voice, ignore the voice.’

  (OPEN YOUR EYES!)

  Mumble, mumble, mumble while my feet tumble stumble over one another. Trip, land on my knees, right myself just to notice a faint red light on the inside of my eyelids.

  Follow the light; it will make this easier.

  ‘Anything, Goddess!’

  .4.

  Thoughts come as I feet strum. The loss of life defining mine is hard to swallow, hard to grasp. I say the dawn prayer, hours early, just to clear my thought palate:

  ‘Goddess I wake in the body of the Stayed to begin anew a day anew. Grant me the clarity to choose right from wrong in the name of the Stayed, the Book and you. Place your hands on my shoulders and aim me away from the path of the deathborn. For the devout I shout, for the lost I weep, for the born I mourn.’

  Saying the words reminds me of my roots, the things I hold dear to my heart. My childhood is a collection of images twisted together in the pits of the Church of the South. My mouth permanently crooked from the place my jaw was broken to silence me during my growing years. My face wrapped for days on end, my body made his for the sins of a previous life.

  ‘Father Miscavige.’

  Whispering the name of the man who has guided my life excites me further. Without his leadership, his willpower, his knowhow, his force, I would have never been cleansed of my sins from a previous life.

  This is all a lie.

  --RETURN HOME, HUNTER!

  (Ignore that voice.)

  I sit on the gravel, eyes still shaded by lids.

  ‘He helped me,’ I say, shaking. Convulse to revolt, reverse the curse until your vessels burst. Lately the thoughts have been blades no matter which images they reveal of my life. Torture is as torture did. ‘Father Miscavige helped me.’

  He did no such thing. He violated you, Hunter.

  ‘My past life was… wicked… BLASPH!’

  (YOU DESERVE IT!)

  Death traps, word tricks and false goddesses exist to twist. Halo can’t be saying these things; it’s the voice, IT MUST BE THE VOICE.

  (It isn’t me.)

  It is me.

  (SCREAM INSIDE MY…!)

  ‘Halo, please!’

  Hunter, you must accept your past to perform the role of your future, the role you were placed in the Canyon to perform. Focus! Don’t go where you want to go right now. Stay with me, keep your eyelids shut.

  ‘I am your tool, you are my light; I am your slave, you are my fate.’

  Yes, and you must listen to me.

  (Don’t listen to her!)

  --There will be other voices, Father Miscavige once said, be sure to know the lips from which these voices come.

  ‘I know what you did to me,’ I say through gritted teeth. The images, the pain, the cries for help, the bit in my mouth, the problems after – I KNOW WHAT YOU DID TO ME, FATHER!

  ‘Blasph! Blasph!’

  The thoughts must leave and I must be the one who forces them out. Head on the ground, eyes still closed, I bring my head up and slam my skull against the Canyon floor. The pain numbs me, my life confuses me, the voices overpower my senses, I am filth, useless. Brain bubble double trouble, the Stayed utter brother mother curses that worsen spiritual purses.

  Focus, Hunter, focus. Keep your eyes close and follow the red light. My dear Hunter, please stop. Focus.

  Carve to remember, carve to forget. No shiv, but I do have a clubbing stick. />
  ‘Blasph!’ I say as I drive the stick against my thigh. The agony staggering, I try to stand but rumble tumble back to the soil.

  (Open your eyes.)

  ‘She said not to!’

  Hunter, please, the red light, do you see it?

  ‘I see it, I see it, I see it, I see it.’

  Follow that light and do not open your eyes. Do not give in to the voices. The grief of your life will be avenged, dear Hunter, brother. There is a moto waiting for you not far from here. Get there and you can open your eyes. You must get away from the church.

  ‘I can’t, Halo, I can’t.’

  I blink blink and adjust to the dark. Hark the madness, mark the gladness, spark birthmark, question mark embark.

  (Do you see?)

  Close your eyes, Hunter! Please!

  ‘I can see! I can see!’

  A flash of movement in a home not far from the street catches my tearstung eyes. Someone is watching me and if I’m not mistaken, they are faceless.

  .5.

  ‘You can’t get away FROM ME!’

  The chase is on, the functionality of the beast and its prey at play in a square-shaped home of a family of three with papa on one side and the other side me! I club and club before he can escape. Fear a great demobilizer, sandstuck out of luck stuff that cuts the blood to the heart and makes killing an art for the predator blood-painter splatter master in tune to the disaster.

  Hunter, stop!

  ‘Faceless filth, faceless filth, faceless filth.’

  (Beat to death until the very last breath. BEAT TO DEATH!)

  ‘And what of the rest?’

  Family of two in a nearby room their whimpers and sobs globs of sound against my eardrums.

  ‘Please… please… ’ the man says his voice hoarse his heart thumping.

  (FIND THEM! FIND THEM!)

  Close your eyes, Hunter! Get out of there. Leave the family alone. Hunter, they are not faceless! Listen to me!

  ‘Goddess? Halo?’

  ‘Halo!’ the man pleads, ‘Open heart and open mouth, soul take the path of the Devout. Deathborn, not I, vultured soon… ’

  ‘That prayer isn’t for you,’ I hiss at the man.

  Crack skull life rub.

  ‘Rebirth… ’ the man wheezes, blood oozing from a wound on his skull, ‘comes at the next full moon… Deathborn, not I, Goddess forgive, grievances from the times I lived… Deathborn, not I, sins escape, give me the guidance of the Devout, the Stayed.’

  One more crack attack and the man’s words disperse into the air. Everyone should be allowed to finish a prayer, including those who are soon to be deathborn, stripped of their faces in this life as indications of their soul’s waste.

  Hunter! Close your eyes and get out of there! Leave them alone!

  (SCREAM INSIDE MY HEAD!)

  The siren sound between my ears causes potent sadness, confusion and delusion. To my knees I go, only to feel something pop against the back of my head.

  (THAT STINGS!)

  ‘Must… not… give in… to… blasph!’

  Head rings as I roll to the side and try to stand try to move away from another loud pop.

  (Someone is hitting you! Someone is hitting you!)

  ‘You stinking piece of filth shit!’ A woman shouts from behind me.

  My mind recalls the woman I attacked days earlier who subsequently defeated me. Something metal about that one, something different than this one.

  I use the counter to right myself, my mind says KITCHEN and I know exactly where we are. Bearings gathered – I am in the kitchen of the family home that was near the street I was veering through when I decided to open my eyes. I’ve killed the faceless husband. The wife is attacking me.

  ‘Get into the other room, Azul!’ the woman’s voice tears from her throat, it is one of panic, terror-ridden pain-stricken, the voice of someone protecting a loved one. I place my hand on the back of my head to check for blood – none.

  Hunter! Leave now, close your eyes and all this will go away!

  I sweep my hands across the counter, rake plates and bowls and dishes to the floor. I register the scream of a young girl, but I’m too focused on the silhouette before me to pay heed. I drop to my knees, spring up just as the woman swipes. Something meets my face and rearranges my taste, but not before I can grab her shoulders and pull her flat.

  (IS SHE FACELESS!?)

  ‘Checking,’ I tell the voice in my head. ‘I’m checking, I’m checking!’ The woman slaps me, but I’ve felt much worse. I pin her arms and peer in close.

  ‘Please,’ she sobs, ‘please! In the name of the Goddess… !’

  (Smell her? Smell that?)

  Let her go, Hunter!

  Something south stirs and I drop my head onto her breasts, kneading them with my nose. My hand falls from her wrist to her sex. The response is instant – a frightened fist bangs against my back.

  (WHAT ARE YOU DOING?)

  ‘Mom!’

  I feel her fists on my back as I pry at her sleeping pants with my sweaty claw paws. I AM FILTH. Hand inside her pants something not wet different than my sex.

  I am an animal deprived of urges, no better than lurid curses, no better than voidless voids, choiceless choices, voiceless voices screaming from the top of the Canyon as every man, woman and child dies, their hearts exploding as my impulse supplants them and at that moment I see I feel I touch I fight I cry I scream I wallow in my own shit until I can have no more of it and leap, I leap, Canyon fodder filth of man’s desires ousted son pale moon sun come and come and…

  Stop, look at her face! Her face!

  (Come! Come!)

  I curve my back and give her my eyes.

  (The Goddess! THE WOMAN HAS HALO’S FACE!)

  I scream, cry out blood-curling lung-tearing!

  This time I’m the one gasping for breath, abhorred at the horror I’ve caused, created, stained, sustained, bereft son of man has proven his filth again and the animal within (the animal within!) is the sin of him!

  Halo’s staring at me, directly at me, her face the woman’s and my arms melting away from her. Scramble crawl to the opposite side of the room and prostrate!

  (YOU VIOLATED THE GODDESS!)

  ‘It’s not, I’m not… I didn’t mean! Blasph!’ I grab my unspeakables and tug. ‘Dirty! Blasph!’

  Fist hit the prefab wall to process the anger and the shock of what I see before me. Halo has become the woman! The woman has become Halo!

  ‘Halo!’ I gulp, scream, swallow, scream, swallow. I can’t breathe!

  (You will be deathborn for this.)

  ‘No! I… I… ’

  Hunter, focus.

  Halo lifts herself up, sways, and reaches her hand out for the woman’s daughter. The daughter comes and as soon as her hand meets her forehead, the girl is on the floor facedown like the man I’ve clubbed to oblivion.

  Hunter, you weren’t supposed to do that. You weren’t supposed to do that to her, to anyone.

  ‘I didn’t… I didn’t mean… I didn’t finish! No finish! Goddess, please!’

  Halo raises her hand and I continue to prostrate. Beat myself I would, but the clubbing stick is across the way and the waves of shame coursing through me are worse than shame.

  (Halo has taken the woman’s body! Halo has become the woman!)

  Follow me.

  ‘What?’ I ask, peering up at her from my position on the floor.

  Follow me. I will take you where you need to go.

  ‘You aren’t mad at me? I’m not… faceless? Tell me, Goddess. Please!’ I cry, clawing at my face.

  One should never be too angry at a caged animal released. You did well to escape the church, but you slipped on the outside.

  ‘Filth!’

  (FILTH!)

  Smash rock fist I give myself a set of knuckles.

  Stop.

  ‘But… I… I almost… ’ I can’t help but sob at my stupidity, my inherent violence a biological inheritance worthy of hu
miliation and scorn.

  (You will be deathborn!)

  Ignore that voice, Hunter. Follow me and listen closely to what I tell you next: I will save you from being deathborn if you serve as my righteous instrument, but only if you keep a level head. For now you need to rest. I will lead you to a place that is safe, away from other people.

  .6.

  ‘You can drive?’ I ask as Halo approaches a moto that’s plugged into a charging point. Her body wavers, becomes the woman I just attacked and shrinks back to her original Goddess form. Little-boned Goddess of the Stayed, life’s answer to future life, the only deathborn to have done so by choice just to save others, to purify the filth of the Canyon, to care for everyone from the Vultured Few to Learners, beard-tailed bit collectors to flesh givers and filth dealers.

  No, you are going to drive.

  ‘You’re not coming with me?’

  I am always with you, Hunter.

  ‘What I did back there… ’

  (YOU DID IT TO THE GODDESS!)

  ‘I know, I know!’ I whisper.

  You stopped just in time; rather, I stopped you just in time. Sometimes we need help to understand and grow towards our true identities. The voices – you must silence these, from your own to Father Miscavige’s. All will quiet within time, as long as you stay focused, as long as you rest up and make it to the North.

  ‘Please don’t leave.’ I tell the ghastly ghostly form in front of me.

  Halo reaches her hand to her face and pulls at her blinders. They loosen and fall to the ground, melting into the red clay of the Canyon. She opens her eyes – one blue, one green – and smiles at me.

  I drop to my knees. Only a few have ever seen the Goddess unblindered; to count my blessings now would be futile.

  Hunter, you must make it to the War Zone and to the other side. Fight if you must, but only if you must to make your way through the barrier. Move away from the center as quickly as you can and I’ll be able to communicate with you once again.

  ‘But how?’

  An opportunity will soon present itself, either by Stayed Day or before.

  ‘I will fight for you, Halo.’

  Good. Now, take the moto, head east.