Soma (The Fearlanders)

by Joseph Duncan

  He seemed to lose the trail of his thoughts then, lost in the thicket of his darkest memories. His eyes twitched as he cast for the way out, then nodded almost imperceptibly and continued.

  “My father used to say that God has a wicked sense of humor. Of course, my father was an alcoholic and a womanizer, so I’m sure he wasn’t the most trustworthy authority on the Lord. I prefer to think that God is like a poet. His sense of humor does seem to have an ironic bent, and his judgment is nothing if not poetic. In the time of Noah, when mankind succumbed to his animal nature, God washed the world clean with an all-encompassing flood. In our modern age, when we succumbed to our love of human flesh, our carnality and vanity, he unleashed upon us a plague of cannibalism and fleshly corruption. I do not profess to know the mind of God, I am just a Resurrected monster, but there is a terrible symmetry to His wrath. He is not simply punishing us; like any good father, He is trying to instruct us.”

  He thumped his chest angrily with his free hand, making the mike squeal.

  “THIS is the way of all flesh!” he shouted over the feedback. “This rotting carcass, dying from the moment it is born! This sack of bones and tainted meat! The spirit is immortal, yet we allow ourselves to become obsessed with this sagging bag of shit and corruption, and now God is sorry that He made us again, and He has destroyed the world in the hope that we will see the error of our ways, and return once more to the path of righteousness!”

  There were cries of agreement behind them. Perry turned to look, a scowl on his face, as members of the audience shouted, “Preach it, brother!” and “Praise the Lord!” and “Amen! Hallelujah!”

  Baphomet, once a man called Ozymandias, a carnie and a murderer, stalked across the stage, the muscles beneath his illustrated flesh coiling and flexing like agitated serpents.

  “Yet even in His wrath, God is merciful,” he croaked into the microphone. “For the Phage returned its victims to a state of grace, like Adam and Eve in the Garden, ignorant of good and evil, and thus innocent of the sins they were committing. It is no sin for the lion to devour its prey, and we did not sin when we killed and devoured our neighbors. We were blameless, the instruments of God’s will, the rod He could not spare.”

  He stopped, faced his audience full on. His tattoos were predominately red in color, and his flesh seemed to glow a dim scarlet in the bright stage lights. His eyes passed across the front row again, and he spoke as if addressing the newcomers directly.

  “God has a plan for you,” he said gently, almost pityingly. “He has called you back from innocence for a reason. It says in the bible that death is the wages of sin. By your deaths, you have put paid to all your past transgressions. Now He is calling you to service. Will you join us? Will you help us to spread the news of His new covenant with man? I have seen it. He revealed Himself to me when He called me back, right there, where you are sitting this very moment. I was an Innocent, undead, but He called me to service, called me from the darkness, and He revealed His plan to me, His glorious path, His blueprint for mankind’s redemption. As with Noah, He has promised never to destroy the world by plague again, but only if we heed His call and return to the path of righteousness. But we need you, brothers and sisters. We need you to join our community, to help us spread the word. We must increase our numbers, grow stronger in the Lord so that we might bring the rest of our brethren into God’s good graces again, and regain the love we lost to our conceit. Will you come up here on this stage -- right now, this very instant -- and pledge your death to the Lord? He is calling you. He wants to embrace you. Please, brothers and sisters, come back to God. Help us save the world!”

  One of the newcomers leapt to his feet, his eyes alight with religious zeal. “I’ll join you!” he exclaimed, and the audience cheered wildly.

  “AMEN!” they shouted.

  “PRAISE THE LORD!” they shrieked.

  The man scrambled onto the stage, climbing clumsily up the side of it. As the big man pedaled an invisible bike, trying to join Baphomet at the altar, another man further down the row leapt to his feet. “Save me, Lord!” he shrieked at the top of his lungs, and he began to tear at his clothing. Soma shrank toward Perry as the second man flung away his shirt, revealing a gray and withered trunk, then unbuckled his belt and shucked his jeans down his legs.

  Baphomet pointed a long and knuckled finger toward the trio sitting in the middle of the row. Eyes bulging, he exclaimed, “The Lord is working on your heart! I can feel it! Get up out of that seat and join me on this stage! Do it now, woman, while you still have a chance at redemption!” One of the women lunged to her feet and raced for the stairs on the right side of the stage. She stumbled over the first step, went down hard and crawled the rest of the way up, hair hanging in her face. The man who had ripped off his clothes was right behind her. Stripped down to tube socks and a baggy pair of white briefs, he nearly fell over her climbing to the rostrum.

  Soma’s heart gave a frightened quiver as the preacher turned his head and fixed her with his bright, frog-like eyes. She was afraid he would point at her, command her to join him at the altar, but he didn’t. He merely smiled -- a strange, knowing smile -- then turned to greet the new converts racing to bow at his feet.

  39

  Sarge found them in the crowd as the mob jostled toward the exits.

  Like every church congregation, the living dead stampeded for the doors as soon as the service concluded. Soma was content to let the horde clear out before making her way from the auditorium but Perry was up and headed for the doors almost immediately. The stairs, clogged with excitedly conversing Resurrects, was a gauntlet of jabby elbows and trippy ankles. Thankfully, Perry plowed through the crush ahead like an icebreaker, clearing a little space for her to follow.

  Sarge was standing near the exit.

  He was nodding, smiling, pushing people past him as he scanned the faces of the departing assembly. He patted a fellow on the shoulder, nodded and spoke briefly to an elderly zombie with curly blue hair. He finally spotted Perry and rose up on his tiptoes. “Perry!” he shouted, and he made an “over here” gesture with his arm. “Soma!” The elderly woman turned to look, her eyes filmy and gray.

  Perry sighed, and Soma stroked his back in encouragement. He angled toward the tall man and she followed closely behind, apologizing to the men and women they cut off.

  Sarge met them halfway. “Baphomet wants to see you in his private chambers,” the former drill sergeant said. He had to yell at the top of his voice to be heard above the buzzing congregation, but there was nothing threatening in his tone. He smiled at them as he spoke, encircling them with his arms to keep the crowd from jostling them.

  “About what?” Perry challenged, eyes narrowed in suspicion.

  “He just wants to speak with you,” Sarge said. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”

  Perry looked down at Soma and she shrugged.

  “Lead the way,” Perry said. He didn’t bother to hide his reluctance.

  “He’s not planning to strong-arm you into staying if that’s what you’re worried about,” Sarge said, laughing as if it were the most preposterous thing he’d ever heard. As he spoke, he herded them toward the exit. “Siloam is a free society.”

  Considering the fact that Sarge and his crew had abducted them at gunpoint just hours previously, Soma wasn’t too certain she believed that. Despite the assertions of scripture and despots, free will was a sham when the alternative was violence.

  Sarge escorted them from the auditorium, then through a labyrinth of dimly lit and winding corridors. As they walked, he conversed with them casually, his shin-length black cassock swishing quietly around his legs.

  “So, how do you like our little community so far? I saw you out on the street today. Normally we give all our new arrivals a tour of the facility, but we’ve been busy preparing for the herd.”

  “It’s nice,” Soma said. “Very clean.”

  “How exactly do you prepare for a herd?” Perry asked. “
Seems like a herd of any real size would just roll over those fences like a steamroller. I’ve never seen a really big one myself, but I’ve heard stories.”

  “Oh, they would if it wasn’t for Baphomet,” Sarge said. “He can control them. Don’t ask me how he does it because I don’t know.”

  “God, I suppose,” Perry said in a neutral tone.

  Sarge paused and looked back at them solemnly. “I’ve seen Baphomet do some very strange things. I don’t know how else to explain it.”

  He pushed open a set of plain metal doors, led them through another nondescript corridor. The noise of the congregation faded to a nebulous hum as they penetrated deeper into the guts of the mega church. The dominant sounds now were the building’s air conditioning system, a sonorous respiration, and the swish of their feet on the gray industrial carpeting.

  “I know he wants you to stay here with us,” Sarge said. “There’s strength in numbers, and still so very few of us. Every new citizen is a victory for our community.”

  “You sound like an army recruiter,” Perry said.

  Sarge laughed. “I suppose I do. Don’t be put off by that. We have a militia, but military service is far from mandatory here. There’s no draft in Siloam. I mean, let’s be honest, most people have about as much business carrying a gun as a monkey has driving a car. Every citizen contributes to the community according to their abilities. I’m an old drill instructor, so I head up the militia. I also oversee the training of the men and women who join the SS.”

  “SS?” Soma asked.

  “Siloam Security,” Sarge said, winking back at her.

  “If you’re a mechanic, you can volunteer at the garage,” he went on. “If you’re a teacher, you can best serve at the education center. We’d like to see everyone gainfully employed, but it’s not a condition of joining the community. We won’t kick you out if you can’t or won’t contribute. Some of our citizens are too disabled to work.”

  “Sounds like you got a little utopia going here,” Perry said.

  “There’s no such thing as a utopia,” Sarge replied, a note of irritation entering his voice. “Not in this world anyway. But we’re trying to make the world a better place to live in. Our little corner of it, anyway.”

  It was certainly tempting to stay, Soma thought. She might have said so aloud but for Perry’s barely suppressed contempt for the theocratic bent of this fledgling society. She thought about telling Sarge that she was a registered nurse. The citizens of Siloam might all be dead, but her area of expertise must be a highly valued one, and probably quite rare. She couldn’t, as the saying went, nurse anyone back to health, but she could repair injuries and patch up old wounds. More importantly, she could study the physiology of the talking dead, perhaps gain some understanding of how the Phage worked. She was no doctor, but she had a good working knowledge of human biology. She knew it was unlikely she’d ever find a cure for the Phage, but she might be able to alleviate some of the suffering it inflicted on its victims, perhaps even discover some treatment that would reactivate the body’s healing capabilities. Apart from massive trauma to the brain, zombies did not die, but their injuries never healed. So many were forced to live with debilitating injuries, and endure the pain that accompanied those wounds. Her own discomfort was constant, often maddening. The gashes and bullet wounds inflicted on her body while she was a drone ached without ceasing, day and night. How wonderful would it be if she could relieve some of that suffering?

  But she could only do that if she were protected, and had the resources to carry out her investigations. As Jake had said, modern society depended primarily on population and specialization. Without a large enough population to support the artists and thinkers among the community, there could be no cultural or technological advancement. Human society stalled, like a complex machine with too many of the pieces missing. It could not even maintain the advancements of previous generations. In small enough numbers, man, with all his brainpower, was only a little more sophisticated than his Neolithic ancestors. Modern man had no hope of survival without Siloam and societies like it.

  Thinking those things, Soma was ushered into Baphomet’s sanctum.

  Sarge showed them into a small but finely appointed waiting room. The furniture was expensive looking and sturdy. One entire wall was devoted to an expanse of mahogany bookshelves, the shelves crammed with weighty tomes, mostly religious texts, but she saw collections of classic American literature as well: Twain, Steinbeck, Hemingway, Fitzgerald. More books were stacked somewhat haphazardly on a large central coffee table, and the walls were covered in a creamy tan print wallpaper with dark wainscoting and ornate molding. Despite the dark treatments and daunting library, the space was welcoming, like an old English pub.

  They could hear voices, male, muffled, coming from the room beyond.

  “Make yourselves comfortable,” Sarge said, nodding to the leather sofa, and then he crossed the room and let himself through a pair of large, dark wood doors.

  The voices in the next room rang out clearly when the door opened. Someone was speaking passionately about the defenses of the community -- “And what if you’re not here the next time a herd comes along? What if you can’t turn them aside? We must be prepared to defend ourselves!” -- and then the door shut, cutting off the rest of his speech from their hearing.

  Soma sat, placing her hands on her knees.

  Perry paced. He marched to the bookshelves, ran a finger across the spines and checked for dust, then returned. He stopped in front of her.

  “You like it here, don’t you?” he said.

  She looked up at him. “It seems very nice on the surface.”

  He grunted, tucking his chin. “That’s what bothers me. That ‘on the surface’ part. It always looks nice on the surface with places like this, but I know what it’s like underneath. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Flowers on top, worms down below.”

  “The whole religion thing makes me nervous, too,” Soma admitted, “but the alternative, wandering around out there, alone, or even in small groups…” She gestured vaguely to “out there” and then put her hands back on her knees.

  “You’re thinking about what Jake said.”

  “We could do some good here,” she said.

  “Or some place like it,” Perry countered, “without all the religious mumbo jumbo.”

  She conceded with a shrug.

  The door jerked open and they both jumped guiltily. Sarge leaned through with a smile, gestured for them to come inside. Blinking at Perry, Soma rose. Perry took her hand and they walked side-by-side into Baphomet’s inner sanctum.

  Siloam’s spiritual leader slouched behind an immense mahogany desk, fingers steepled beneath his chin. He had retired the red robe and was dressed in a pair of denim jeans and a long-sleeved black turtleneck shirt. With his gaunt features and wickedly arched eyebrows, the Resurrect reminded her of someone— a celebrity, maybe, from before the Phage. It took her a moment to tease it out of her memories (Before The Phage was quickly becoming “a long time ago” and “in a galaxy far, far away”) and then it came to her. He looked like Steve Jobs, Apple Computer’s charismatic founder. Well, if Steve Jobs had been bald, with prosthetic horns and tattoos covering his entire body…!

  Baphomet was sitting in a high-back leather chair, framed by a large window that showed the back lawn of the mega church. A garden and gazebo sat in the middle of that featureless green expanse like an oasis. There were a few outbuildings at the far end of the lawn, some trees, and, small with distance, the outer fences and guard towers. A young man they hadn’t encountered yet stood to the right of Baphomet. He had gray skin, a wing of blond hair hanging over one eye, and a large chunk of flesh missing from his chin and the side of his neck. He was dressed much like their spiritual leader: denim pants and a black polo shirt. He clutched a manila folder thick with papers in front of his crotch. He looked anxious and unhappy. Sarge walked to the sofa and collapsed onto it with a tired groan.

  Baphomet g
lanced from Perry to Soma. He looked like a king in that big leather chair, slumped down, fingers poised sagely beneath his chin. Then he smiled and leaned forward, addressing Soma.

  “I dreamed of you,” he said.

  “I dreamed of you, too,” Soma said, returning his smile hesitantly. She looked to Perry for courage, then went on: “I dreamed I was running through a scary old house, and there were eyes in the wallpaper, and they moved to follow me as I ran, as I tried to... to…”

  “As you tried to hide from me,” Baphomet said. He looked amused.

  “I was scared.”

  “I was trying to find you. Save you from the herd you and your companion were about to drive into.”

  “I didn’t know,” Soma said. “Thank you.”

  Baphomet made a dismissive gesture, sitting back in his chair. His hands were like huge, albino spiders. In fact, there were spiders tattooed on the backs of both hands. Black widows, with stylized webbing radiating from their glossy bodies. “You’re quite welcome,” he said casually.

  For a moment, they all just stood (or sat) there looking at one another uncomfortably, then Perry opened his mouth to speak. Baphomet held up a finger, cutting him off.

  “I know you’re not going to stay,” the tattooed man interrupted. “I’ve foreseen it, or rather I should say, God has revealed it to me. You’ve no need to tell me. But I have foreseen this as well: one of you will return to me.”

  “Just one of us?” Perry said, and a scoffing little chuckle escaped him before he could stifle it. His eyes cut toward Soma, who blinked back at him nervously.

  “Sadly, yes,” Baphomet said. His eyes were heavy-lidded, almost dreamy. “I cannot tell you who that person will be, but that is what I have seen. One of you will return, and that one will be a great boon to our community.”

  “And the other?” Soma asked. “What happens to the other one?”