The Crooked God Machine

by Autumn Christian

  “Try to breathe,” Nina said, “steady yourself and squeeze.”

  I squeezed the trigger. The gun shot off and blew a hole in the corner of the cloth fabric, splintering one side of the wooden frame. I took several steps back.

  “Again,” Nina said.

  “I don’t think I can do this anymore.”

  “What other choice do you have?” Nina asked, “and point the barrels down when you’re facing me. That’s a great way to blow someone’s ear off.”

  I pointed the gun downward and turned away, back to the cliff side. Dashed on the rocks below was the corpse of a deadhead with a split head and fingers licked away to the bone.

  “This is the edge of existence?” I asked Nina, “some rocks and an ocean?”

  “I told you, we never like what we find,” Nina said.

  I walked back toward Nina and faced the target once more. I raised the gun up, steadied my shoulders and fired. The bullet tore through the center of the bull’s-eye.

  I looked back at Nina to find her unmoved.

  “I see now,” Nina said, “you’re one of those kinds of people who have to get angry before they can act. Well, not to worry, there are plenty of things to get angry about where we’re going.”

  Nina walked back to where the others waited. I shot at the target a few more times, unloading the clip, before I went back to join them.

  “We’re meeting the others in the desert later,” Camp was saying to Leda when I approached.

  “How many do we have now?” Leda asked.

  “About eighty. We’ve been working on recruiting the freed prisoners from the slave camps. You know, the kind of people who already have good reason to be angry at god. The bitter and the hopeless,” Camp said.

  “That’s not nearly enough,” Leda said.

  “It’ll have to be enough,” Camp said.

  “And what about ammunition and rations?”

  “We raided a guard stockpile a few weeks back. We should have enough to last us until the end.”

  Shooter held out the bottle of vodka toward me and smiled to show me his stained teeth. The mechanical eye in his head clicked as it honed on my face and my stomach turned. I declined the bottle.

  “I thought we would have more people by now,” Leda said.

  “We’re not going to get more. Not just after Slim Sarah’s celebration festival, the increasing raids. People are more scared than ever.”

  “I need to show you something,” Leda said, “let’s go talk to Jolene.”

  Nina and Camp headed toward the house where Jolene waited. Shooter drained the rest of the vodka and then tossed the bottle over the side of the cliff, before following after Nina and Camp. My skin turned the color of swamp grass. I felt as if I was shrinking back into the skin of a small boy at the bottom of Jolene’s pool.

  “This must be the end,” I said, “when you’re at the end you think of everything that went wrong to get you to that moment.”

  When I looked at her she smiled.

  When we went back into the house, Jolene still sat in the corner of the room in her rocking chair. Her nails scratched grooves into the chair’s limbs. The air bristled around her. Camp, Nina and Shooter sat on the opposite side of the table, facing Jolene.

  I stood next to the door as Leda approached Jolene.

  “You need to hear this,” Leda said to us, “Jolene, how do we kill God?”

  “I’ve told you already. You’re not a very good listener. You need to activate the defenses if you wish to succeed,” Jolene said.

  “And how do we do that?” Camp asked.

  “In the beginning of time the protective agents were put into place should the creator ever become dangerous to humanity's survival. The protective agents were activated long ago, when God turned destructive, but they were defeated, and now they lay dormant.”

  This was not the same Jolene from the swamp lands that spoke to me in subterranean threats, the Jolene once that pulled me into the sick, wet folds of her rotting dress. This Jolene spoke in a blank monotone, as if reciting a speech left for years to fester in the back of her head, to be repeated in nighttime, dream time.

  “They all talk like this,” Shooter said, “like badly written history books.”

  “In order to activate the protective agents, you must get into God’s castle. There you will find the guardian spirits of wind and fire, which hold the secrets to His power. They reside in a black room, asleep and waiting for someone to activate them. When you step into the room, it will activate and the guardians will speak to you through the fire. You must know the right words to speak to the guardians. When they say 'stand on your feet and I will speak to you,' you will respond 'I stand on my feet and I listen.’ This will then allow you to access their secrets and awaken the defenses.”

  “You see why eighty isn’t enough?” Leda asked Camp, “We could have five hundred, a thousand, and it still wouldn’t be enough.”

  Jolene looked at me and smiled. My skin felt greasy, crab-clawed, a trap softly digging into me. I turned my face away.

  “Is that the only way to activate the protective agents?” Camp asked, “getting inside of God’s castle?”

  “There were once ancient temples that housed guardians, but I know of none that still exist,” Jolene said.

  I took a step back and my heels touched the door. I thought of the pagan temple in the desert, and the room that when I walked into it had lit up like a storm. I thought of the voices that issued forth from the electric cloud, but I said nothing.

  “Then we need more time,” Leda said, “if we go into God’s castle now we’ll get slaughtered by the monsters and the plague machines.”

  “Time isn’t going to wait for us,” Shooter said.

  “So we’re just going to go get killed, then?” Nina asked, “I didn’t crawl out of hell to turn around and offer my head to God on a fucking platter.”

  “If we don’t try, then nobody will,” Camp said.

  “You’ve heard the rumors, you’ve watched the television,” Shooter said, “We’ve been threatened for as long as we can remember, but the prophets aren’t just blowing smoke anymore. Slim Sarah’s celebration festival, whole populations sent into the hell shuttles. Whole cities destroyed, dissolved into dust. It isn’t just to make people afraid. We’re not talking about your standard plagues. This is the beginning of the obliteration of the human race.”

  “Do you know what the chronic problem facing our society is, folks?” Teddy asked, “it isn't the rising death rates or the chronic unemployment. It isn't the fact that one out of every six of our citizens has disappeared in the last few years, or that more and more sinners are being sent to the hell shuttles every month.”

  At this point the camera pulled back. Delilah wasn't lying on the bed next to Teddy anymore, but was slumped at his feet, clinging to his knees in a soporific stupor that made her look more like soft jelly than a human being. Her skin paled white, but the hot wire spider in her head throbbed a sharp-mouthed red.

  “It's apathy, ladies and gentlemen,” Teddy said, “pure, unadulterated, reckless apathy. Apathy to the wonderful force of God working in our lives, apathy to the desires of the creator. You are destroyed by your addiction to inertia, by the gravitational pull toward frozen matter. God can instill you with purpose. Bring you away from the brink of your useless nihilism.”

  Teddy opened his hands and they were full of bloodied slip implants. No longer glittering and pristine, but dirtied and rusted red, as if they'd been used before, torn out of people's heads and spilled into Teddy's waiting arms so they could be used again.

  “What’s wrong with you, Nina? Turn the damn television off,” Shooter said.

  Nina, staring at the television, didn’t move. Leda turned off the television and the screen snapped black. For a long moment nobody moved or breathed in the silence that followed.

  I stepped toward the table.

  “I know what to do,” I said.

  “I’m sure
you do, Charles,” Jolene said, and laughed.

  I clenched my fists and my eyes rocked in my head.

  “I’ve found a room like you’ve described,” I said, “out in the desert, there’s a pagan temple. I’ve seen the room, the guardians of wind and fire. And I know how to get there.”

  “Are you sure?” Led asked, “Charles, if you’re sure-”

  “-I’m sure,” I said, “they said just what Jolene described, only at the time I didn’t know what it meant.”

  “Why the hell didn’t you speak up earlier?” Nina asked.

  “I didn’t know if I wanted to,” I said.

  I didn’t know how to explain that I hadn’t really known how bad things had gotten until I’d seen Delilah quivering on the floor at Teddy’s feet. I hadn’t known if I should help them, not really, until I’d seen Teddy on the television, holding up those bloody slip implants.

  “Where did you find this man?” Nina asked Leda, “He must’ve been a pretty good fuck, because he obviously isn’t that bright.”

  “That’s enough out of you,” Camp said.

  “You’ll take us there?” Leda asked me.

  “Yes,” I said, “as soon as you want.”

  Nina busted past me, nearly knocking me into the wall, and went out the door. I gripped the striped wallpaper to steady myself but it tore away in one great sheet to reveal the ribbed plaster beneath. When I looked at Jolene her smile ate at me like acid.

  ***

  That night Camp and Leda built a campfire on the beach.

  “Won’t someone see us?” I asked.

  “Everyone for a hundred miles around here is dead,” Camp said, “nothing to worry about.”

  “Isn’t it sick?” Camp continued, speaking about the deadheads lying washed up on the beach all around us, “every time I see a deadhead I always think it’s my sister. But I think everyone does that. We’ve gotten so used to looking for people we love among the dead, it doesn’t even feel wrong anymore.”

  After that Camp took a beaten up, silver harmonica out of his coat and played while Shooter kept time by tapping on his mechanical eye. Nina sat a ways off, drinking another bottle of vodka. Leda sat cross-legged next to the fire and I lay my head in her lap. When she bent down her hair enshrined me. I fell asleep with her breath expanding into my chest.

  I awoke a few hours later to Leda gently shaking me. The fire was nearly dead, the burning driftwood melting into a grimace, and everyone else lay in the sand, asleep. Leda put a finger to her lips for silence. I looked at Leda with a question and she pointed toward the ocean. A figure moved toward the tide line. Leda and I got up and walked away from the fire.

  We found Jolene facing the ocean with her arms outstretched. The wind whipped backs her hair and dress.

  “Jolene?” Leda called out. Jolene didn't turn around. It was as if the nighttime intensified the roar of the ocean. The roar swallowed Leda's voice and withdrew back into the water.

  “What's going on?” Leda asked Jolene as we got closer. I pressed my fingers down into Leda’s shoulders. Jolene lowered her hands and looked back. Jolene's hair, snarled and alive, reached out for Leda in the wind.

  “I wanted to see the ocean,” Jolene said, “I see you've brought Charles with you. How's Sissy? How have you been treating your mother?”

  “They're dead,” I said, “If they're not, they should be.”

  “A more confident man would dream about being a hero,” Jolene said, “someone who could save everyone you ever loved. Mount up on a white horse and ride into battle. But the most you could ever do was try to hold on while the world fell apart around you.”

  As Jolene looked down at me and Leda, she appeared to grow impossibly tall.

  “You ate my baby brother,” I said, “you were the one who taught me how to be afraid. Why are you here now?”

  “Because that time is over,” Jolene said, “we were created by God to fill specific roles. A plan for each and every one of us. For an eternity I guarded the swamp, watched Edgewater fall and be rebuilt a thousand times over, watched that dark house become home to family after family and then become empty again. I was the one who was supposed to eat the dead children. To teach each new generation that hope did not exist.”

  As I often had over the last few days, I felt myself become weak, my limbs distended.

  “The longer we're trapped in our systems the easier it becomes for us to see their intrinsic flaws,” Jolene continued, “we reach dangerous conclusions about ourselves and our world that others may try to kill us for. Even monsters like me.”

  She turned back to the ocean. She cocked her head and outstretched her arms. The wind and the spray tore against her.

  “I've always wondered. If I was meant to stay forever in the swamp, then why have I always wanted to go to the ocean?”

  “I don't understand any of this.”

  “Charles, those are going to be your dying words,” Jolene said.

  She closed her eyes and smiled.

  “if you truly want to know why I'm helping you, you won't get any easy answers. It's not because I believe in the goodness of humankind. It's not because I believe God and the rest of the monsters are evil. I only wish to have the capacity to change. To know that we have the ability to take a different direction than the one presented to us. That is more important than good and evil. Than life or death.”

  Jolene fell silent, and stood transposed against the ocean, her back bent, arms open, as if she could take the waves inside herself. I looked back at Leda. She said nothing.

  “I think I know what you are,” I said.

  “Finally some conviction,” Jolene said.

  “It had something to do with a mechanical horse. And a monster I saw, that might also have been a mechanical horse. I don't remember much of that night, but I do remember that. I think you're something like the plague machines. Something like the slip implants.”

  “It is possible,” Jolene said.

  Then is God something like you as well?” I asked, “a machine that can be broken?”

  “What does it matter if he is or not?” Jolene asked, “you know what to do next.”

  “And you?” I asked, “what are you going to do next?”

  Jolene looked back at me, her eyes placid, mouth dripping with wings, and said nothing. Then she turned back toward the water.

  Jolene lowered her arms and walked into the ocean waves. The dark water washed over her, swallowed her up in a mirror of clouds and stars. She continued walking until the ocean completely submerged her. Leda and I stood together in the silence for a long time after that, embracing each other in the cold. The black moon rippled on the surface of the water in the place where she disappeared, like a locked gate that kept us from following her down.

  Chapter Twelve

  When we arrived at the pagan temple in the desert, the plague machines were waiting for us with a black cloud brewing.

  A few days before, Leda, myself and the others met up with more heretics in the desert. We found them sitting on the top of an overturned bus, eating paste rations from tin cans while taking bets on how long it’d take for one slaver’s corpse to stop kicking. They’d just finished raiding another underground slave trader base, and the kicking corpse lay on the top of sandstone steps descending down into the earth, hamstrung and torn open with black bullet holes. When I saw him I reached for the gun on my hip to make sure it was still there.

  One man sitting on top of the bus, a thin man with spider-web hands and a face the color of terracotta, saw us and waved. He jumped down from the bus and embraced Leda in a bear hug.

  “They call me Wires,” the man said, “I forget my real name long time ago. I don't remember why they call me Wires. Is that you Leda?”

  Leda smiled. “You remember me?”

  Wires took Leda's hand and kissed her on the cheek. “Of course I remember you. You're a good girl. Polite to old men. A real good girl.”

  “This is Charles,” Leda said.

/>   “Yes, I heard about him, you said he could find us the room,” Wires said, “we're finishing up here. Been recruiting wherever we can, getting prepared to go to the capital. We're really doing this. Winning this would almost make it worth it that I forgot my name.”

  I heard the plague machines coming from miles away. The clouds above churned heavy.

  “You think they know what we're doing?” I asked.

  “Oh, they do, champ,” Wires said to me, “When the original fourteen broke through from hell, you can bet the people in charge took note of it. And we've been recruiting people for months now, destroying slaving operations. For sure they know.”

  “We should break into two groups,” Nina said, “one goes toward the temple, the other heads to the capital. More of our people are waiting there. We'll have a better chance of reaching them if we all don't rush headfirst into the plague machines.”

  “That's the best idea you've ever had,” said Shooter.

  “We better go fast then,” Camp said, “They're probably cooking this storm special for us.”

  “Charles, you'll take half of us to the temple,” Leda said, “And we'll meet you in the capital city, Wires?”

  Leda and Wires continued speaking, but I could no longer hear them over the blistering noise of the machines. I pressed my hands over my ears. I thought I saw Wires mouth, “you're a good girl.” to Leda before patting her on the shoulder and heading off toward the city.

  Several people joined Leda and me before we headed off for the temple, including a hard mouthed man named TJ, or Tommy Jones, depending on what he felt like being called that day, and Sunray, a woman with arms a latticework of rope burns and black bird tattoos. Her blond hair, catch the sun hair, seemed to swallow her face whole.

  The first time I walked through the desert, it took me weeks to reach the ocean. The desert stretched through my mind, vast, rolling, endless. But this time we were chased by the pounding noise of the machines.