After the Fire

by Will Hill

  The cough rattles out of the Centurion barracks, thick and wet and heavy. Then it stops, and the whole Base falls quiet.

  “Is that it?” asks Honey. “Is he gone?”

  I don’t answer. The Base is never completely silent, not even in the middle of the night, but for long seconds, all I can hear is the droning buzz of cicadas and the wind rustling through the trees. Then, like a stubborn engine finally turning over, the awful, spluttering coughing begins again.

  Honey takes hold of my hand. “Come on,” she says. “Let’s go.”

  “Where?”

  She shrugs. “Somewhere that isn’t here.”

  I give her the most convincing smile I can manage, and let her lead me towards the gardens. The sun is beating down and my skin is tingling and my mind is full of the question Father John asked me in his study: when Horizon Ascends, who will take his place as Centurion?

  From what I’ve overheard, most people seem to think there are three likely candidates. I guess Father John asking me about Nate makes him a potential fourth option, but I don’t know whether The Prophet was genuinely considering the possibility, or just interested in seeing what my reaction to the idea would be.

  Joe Nelson, the first of the three names I keep hearing, was a Mormon before he joined The Lord’s Legion, but we have never judged anybody on how they lived their life before they found the True Path and were Called. He used to own a small farm in northern Utah, and has been in charge of growing food and tending the grounds of The Base for as long as anyone can remember. He took the responsibility on soon after he arrived, and within a year he had expanded a vegetable patch that was mostly stones and weeds into a neat grid of six gardens, revived the almost-extinct orchard, built and stocked four henhouses, and grown the Legion’s small herd of scrawny cows into fine producers of fresh milk.

  Joe works incredibly hard, without a single word of complaint, and has built a reputation for being resourceful and driven, a man who genuinely does everything with the good of his Brothers and Sisters in mind. For much of the year he is excused the ten o’clock lockdown and is usually the first person awake in the entire Legion, leaving his cabin out near the maintenance sheds well before dawn and often not returning until the sun is long set. As a result, he has always been extremely popular.

  The same can’t really be said for Jacob Reynolds, who most people – those willing to discuss the subject out loud, that is – seem to believe is the most likely replacement for Horizon. His arrival on the day before The Purge began has always been viewed as suspiciously convenient, even by those men and women who were overjoyed to see Father John take control of The Lord’s Legion; there has always been a feeling that he was a latecomer who never deserved the closeness to The Prophet that he now enjoys, although that very closeness means that nobody would ever actually dare say so.

  He is hugely fat, almost as wide as he is tall, with thinning hair and a bright red face and a short temper and a profound intolerance of those members of the Legion he considers to be Frivolous. That’s how he says it, like it has a capital letter. He lives alone in a tumbledown shack on the western edge of the compound, as far away from everyone else as it’s possible to be, and you would struggle to find a single one of my Brothers or Sisters who consider him a close friend. What he is, however, is a True believer, a man who is deeply, fanatically Faithful to The Prophet.

  It was Jacob who transcribed Father John’s Proclamations, spending long days and nights at his side as The Lord spoke to and through him, and it’s Jacob who gets the Chapel ready on Sunday mornings for the weekly sermon. Father John has even been known, on a handful of occasions when he has been particularly busy, to send someone who has come to him with a spiritual matter to Jacob for advice – and that alone makes him a serious candidate for the responsibility of being Centurion, a role that is primarily about upholding the standards that are expected of every member of The Lord’s Legion.

  So.

  Joe Nelson. Jacob Reynolds.

  That just leaves one other candidate, the same one I suggested to Father John when he asked me.

  “Had Luke made it clear that he wanted to be a Centurion?” asks Agent Carlyle.

  I nod.

  “How?”

  I shrug, and scratch at the fresh bandages covering my left hand. Nurse Harrow changed the dressing when she came to collect my breakfast tray; she smiled and nodded and told me it was all looking much better, but I had to take her word for it. I didn’t want to see for myself.

  “It was obvious,” I say. “He couldn’t come right out and say it, because…well, you know why he couldn’t.”

  “Because the Centurions were chosen by God,” says Doctor Hernandez. “So it would have been heresy to put himself forward.”

  “Right,” I say. “And Luke isn’t stupid, so he never did. Instead, he talked about responsibility, about how it was time for the next generation of The Lord’s Legion to step up, and how he was the vanguard of that generation. Everyone knew what he really meant.”

  Agent Carlyle smiles. “Is that his description, or yours?”

  “His,” I say. “I heard him say it more than once.”

  “The vanguard of a generation,” says Agent Carlyle. “Pretty flowery for a boy who pushes girls up against walls and calls them whores. Why did he want to be a Centurion?”

  I grimace. “That’s not fair.”

  He frowns. “What isn’t?”

  “Using things that happen in SSI,” I say. “I know you’re watching and listening, and so does Honey, but most of the others don’t. The illusion of being on our own matters to them.”

  Doctor Hernandez glances at the man sat beside him.

  “You’re right,” says Agent Carlyle. “That wasn’t fair, and I apologize. But I do need you to answer the question.”

  “I’ve forgotten what it was.”

  “Why did Luke want to be a Centurion?” says Agent Carlyle.

  So he could tell people what to do. So he could punish them if they disobeyed. So he could hurt them.

  “He was ambitious,” I say.

  “The Lord’s Legion existed to serve The Lord,” says Doctor Hernandez. “Not for personal glory. Isn’t that right?”

  “It is,” I say. “But people are still just people. They want to be at the centre of things.”

  “Was Luke one of those people?”

  “You’ve seen him in SSI,” I say. “What do you think?”

  “I think he’s an extremely troubled young man,” says Doctor Hernandez. “I think he wishes he hadn’t survived the fire.”

  A heavy silence falls over the room. Agent Carlyle gives Doctor Hernandez a sideways look, like he wasn’t expecting him to actually answer my question. I wasn’t expecting him to either, and part of me wonders if he actually meant to, because patches of pale pink have appeared high on his cheeks.

  “Are you helping him?” I ask.

  Doctor Hernandez nods. “We’re doing everything we can.”

  “Why hasn’t he been at SSI the last few days?”

  He hesitates for a long moment, clearly trying to decide whether to tell me or not. “He was extremely agitated after you and he discussed ascension,” he says. “We were forced to sedate him, and that, as I’m sure you can easily imagine, fit very neatly with Father John’s warnings about the outside world. Getting through to him afterwards was…challenging.”

  “Is he going to be all right?” I ask.

  “We’re hopeful of a positive outcome.”

  I frown. “You’ve said that before.”

  “I know,” he says. “I’m still hopeful. The intention is for him to rejoin SSI this afternoon.”

  “But you can’t say for certain that he’s going to be okay?”

  Doctor Hernandez shakes his head. “No,” he says. “I can’t say that.”

  An image of Luke, kicking and screaming as the Governments carried him out of The Base while it burned down around him, fills my mind. I shudder.

  “
Thank you for telling me,” I say.

  “I probably shouldn’t have,” he says. “And it’s very important that you don’t discuss this with the others, or let Luke know. I’m sorry to put you in this position, but it’s for the good of everyone.”

  So I have to keep your secrets now, along with my own? Great. Thanks a lot.

  “I won’t say anything,” I say.

  He nods, and attempts a tiny smile. “Thank you.”

  “Why do you lie to Luke when he asks you about talking to us?” asks Agent Carlyle. “Why don’t you tell him the truth?”

  “Because it’s none of his business.”

  “Does he scare you?” he asks.

  Yes.

  “Not any more,” I say. “I feel sorry for him, if anything. But he used to. I was scared of him for a long time.”

  “Why?” asks Agent Carlyle.

  “I was worried he would hurt someone.”

  “Was he violent?”

  Yes.

  “Sometimes.”

  “To you?”

  I nod.

  “What about your Brothers and Sisters?” asks Doctor Hernandez. “Was he violent to them?”

  “Yes.”

  “But he wasn’t a Centurion,” says Agent Carlyle.

  “No.”

  “So he had no authority.”

  “No.”

  “Did John Parson punish him for being violent?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “But not always?”

  “No.”

  Doctor Hernandez has filled half a page of one of his notebooks while Agent Carlyle and I were going back and forth. He puts his pen down and looks at me. “How was he viewed by the younger members of the Legion?”

  “Luke?” I ask.

  “Yes. Luke.”

  “What do you mean, how was he viewed?” I say.

  “Was he popular?” he asks. “Did they like him? Were they scared of him?”

  “Different things at different times,” I say. “Some days some people liked him, other days the same people hated him, the same as anyone else. People are just people.”

  “People are just people,” says Agent Carlyle.

  “That’s right.”

  “What about you?” asks Doctor Hernandez.

  “What about me?”

  “Did you like Luke?”

  “Now? I feel sorry for him, like I said.”

  “Not now,” he says. “Inside the Legion. Before the fire.”

  I shrug. “He was my Brother,” I say. “I loved him.”

  Doctor Hernandez smiles. “But you didn’t like him?”

  I hated him. I was scared of him, and I hated him so much.

  “No,” I say. “I didn’t like him.”

  TRAITOR! bellows Father John, his voice rattling into my head without warning. HERETIC! YOU NEVER LOVED YOUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS! YOU WERE ALWAYS FALSE! YOUR FAITH WAS JUST FOR SHOW!

  I recoil, because it’s been a little while since I heard The Prophet’s awful, booming voice. A tiny, desperately hopeful part of me had been starting to wonder if it was gone for good.

  “You didn’t like him?”

  “No. And the feeling was mutual, believe me.” I pause. “To be totally honest, saying he didn’t like me isn’t really enough. There were lots of times when I’m absolutely certain he hated me.”

  “Did you hate him back?”

  “No,” I lie.

  “Why do you think he hated you?” asks Doctor Hernandez.

  I shrug. “Why do people usually hate other people?”

  “There can be any number of reasons,” he says. “It can be the result of something real, like if somebody has hurt them or someone they care about. Or it can be based on something irrational, like the colour of someone’s skin or their sexual orientation. And sometimes it can be for no clear reason at all.”

  “I think it was a little of all three.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  I hesitate, because getting into this is going to lead to some places I’m not sure I want to go. But the voice in the back of my head is there in an instant, reminding me what I told myself last night as I was staring up at the ceiling in my room.

  Maybe it will do me good to tell as much truth as I can bear.

  Doctor Hernandez frowns. “Moonbeam? Are you okay?”

  “Luke was the Legion’s first baby,” I say, ignoring his question. “He was born in The Base, barely a year after Father Patrick started the Legion and before even the first foundation of the Chapel had been sunk into the ground. What you have to understand is that before the Third Proclamation, things were very different. People were…”

  I trail off. I don’t have the slightest idea how to talk about this with them.

  “Sexual activity was less restricted?” suggests Doctor Hernandez.

  I give him a profoundly grateful nod. “Thank you,” I say. “That’s exactly right. It was less restricted, so as a result, I don’t know whether anybody ever knew who Luke’s dad was, even at the time. Plenty of people must have known who his mom was, because she gave birth to him inside The Base, but nobody ever said anything, including her.”

  “So she just abandoned him after he was born?” asks Agent Carlyle.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “She never acknowledged him, I can say that much. I know Luke asked about her, asked about them both, even after talking about the time before The Purge had been forbidden, but he never got any answers.”

  “What did people say when he asked?”

  “They told him he was a child of The Lord,” I say. “That he was raised by his Brothers and Sisters, and that they were his Family. But I heard rumours over the years, like I guess everyone did. Names. Some women who were Gone, but some who were still there, who Luke talked to most days.”

  “Why do you think nobody told him the truth?” asks Doctor Hernandez. “There must have been people who could have identified his mother, as you said.”

  I shrug. “I guess she asked them not to.”

  “Imagine seeing your son in pain every day,” says Agent Carlyle. “Seeing him and knowing you could help him but doing nothing, not even acknowledging him. What kind of person does that?”

  “Don’t judge her, whoever she was,” says Doctor Hernandez. “We don’t know what her experiences were. How hard her choices might have been.”

  Agent Carlyle pulls a face, but doesn’t say anything.

  “Why do you think Luke’s upbringing negatively affected how he thought about you?” asks Doctor Hernandez.

  “I don’t know for certain that it did,” I say. “I’m just thinking out loud. But you already know I wasn’t born inside the Legion, and that made us different, right from the start.”

  “Don’t feel like you have to talk about your mother.”

  I shrug. “It’s okay,” I say, and I’m slightly surprised to find that – for right now, at least – it actually is. “My mom told me about their life before we moved to The Base. She was a schoolteacher until she had me, and my dad worked for a children’s charity. You probably would have liked him.”

  Doctor Hernandez smiles.

  “They were married eight years before I came along,” I continue. “Mom used to call me her little miracle, because her doctors had started to think she couldn’t have children.”

  His smile fades. I remember what he told me about his wife, and my heart aches with sympathy for him. For both of them.

  “Do you think that’s what made your father open to what Horizon told him in Santa Cruz?” asks Agent Carlyle. “That he and your mother believed you were a gift from God?”

  “I don’t know. I never got the chance to ask him.”

  Agent Carlyle grimaces, and nods.

  “I guess you can’t remember that far back?” asks Doctor Hernandez. “To when you first moved to the base?”

  I shake my head, even though I have a picture in my mind of the day we arrived that’s so clear it could be yesterday. I can see the skeletal
frame of the Chapel rising into a bright blue sky; the smiling faces of strangers as they welcomed my mom and dad and hovered over me, cooing and clucking and gently holding my tiny hands; the heat and the dryness of a world that felt totally, utterly alien. It feels like a memory, even though I know it can’t be real because I was only eighteen months old. But it’s happy, and it has my dad in it, so I’m keeping it.

  “So Luke was first,” says Agent Carlyle. “And you were second.”

  “There were children in the Legion when it was formed,” I say. “The kids of the original members. But we were the first two to arrive once it existed. Once it was real.”

  “The first of many?”

  “So many,” I say. “In the early years, I remember people arriving every month. Not all of them stayed, but it seemed like there were new faces every time you turned around. You remember me telling you about Lizzie, my friend whose mom worked in Layfield?”

  “They left after the purge,” says Doctor Hernandez.

  I nod. “That’s right,” I say. “She was probably five or six when they arrived. Honey was three, Alice was seven, Isaac was almost fourteen. Some of the others were older, some were younger. But, yeah. Luke and I were first and second.”

  “And you had your parents and he didn’t,” says Doctor Hernandez.

  I nod.

  “Were the two of you treated differently?” he asks. “By the rest of the Legion, I mean.”

  I think back to the days when Luke and I were little, when Father Patrick was still in charge and The Lord’s Legion was different. Lighter. Kinder. Better.

  Was it though? whispers the voice in the back of my head. Just because you want to believe something doesn’t make it the truth. You’re smarter than that.

  “I guess so,” I say, ignoring the voice as best I can. “But not the way you mean, like I was treated well and he was treated badly. Pretty much the entire Legion raised Luke, and cared for him, and looked out for him. They did the same for me, but I always knew I could go to my mom. It must have been confusing for Luke, especially once he was old enough to understand and ask questions. It must have been really hard wondering if his parents were right there every day, not even acknowledging him, just—”