The Living

by Isaac Marion

  “We believe God’s ready to take us away from this place,” Miriam says, “and the only reason we’re still here is because we refuse to let go.”

  “Because we keep trying to repair and rebuild our rotten world when we should be letting it burn.”

  Addis watches his sister’s face turn cold. He watches her eyes narrow.

  “Stop the train,” she says.

  Peter laughs. “What?”

  “Please stop the train as soon as possible. I’d like to get off.”

  “Nora, why?” Miriam says, sounding genuinely heartbroken.

  “Because you’re fucking Burners,” Nora says without raising her voice.

  Peter sighs and shakes his head. “I knew I’d mess it up. I’m so bad at explaining it.”

  “Nora,” Miriam says, reaching toward but not quite touching her leg, “you’re misunderstanding it. That’s not who we are.”

  “You’re not with the Fire Church?”

  “We are members of the Church of the Holy Fire, but it’s not what you think it is.”

  “You probably think we’re all a bunch of pyromaniac nut-jobs, right?” Peter says. “That we’re just here to blow shit up and kill everyone who disagrees with us?”

  “But that’s really not who we are, Nora. We’re just regular folks looking for something to believe in.”

  Nora’s face remains stony. “So you don’t burn cities?”

  Peter shakes his head. “That’s not what we’re about. We’re about helping people see the truth so they can make the most of the short time God gave them.”

  “I’m just gonna ask this again,” Nora says. “Do you burn cities?”

  “I’m just trying to explain that that’s not what we’re—”

  “Yeah I heard you, it’s not what you’re about. But do you fucking do it?”

  Peter and Miriam glance at each other, frustrated.

  “Well,” Peter says slowly, “we do have a few liturgies that involve fire. It’s a symbolic thing, like an offering to God. But normally we don’t get into that stuff until later, after you’ve gotten to know us a little.”

  “It’s always harder when someone has preconceived ideas about what kind of people we are,” Miriam says with a note of insinuation. “I’m sure you’ve experienced that before, as an African-American.”

  Now it’s Nora’s turn to laugh. Hers doesn’t irritate Addis at all, though it’s loud and long. “You people torched DC!” she says with wide-eyed incredulity. “We had to run out in our pajamas while you burned down our fucking neighborhood!”

  Peter and Miriam’s faces go very pale. “Oh,” Miriam says, putting a hand to her forehead. “Oh, that’s challenging.”

  “Very fucking challenging!”

  “Nora,” Peter says, in the most deeply sympathetic tone Addis has ever heard, “whatever happened in DC back then, it must have been so hard. And I’m so sorry your family had to go through it. But you have to understand…that was ten years ago. Me and Miriam were kids. Most of the people involved in that aren’t even alive anymore.”

  “They were all just teenagers at the beginning,” Miriam says. “They were trying to do something way beyond them, and they made mistakes.”

  Nora snorts. “Mistakes.”

  “Big mistakes. Some terrible stuff happened.” Miriam’s face is all desperate remorse. “But we’re not the same church anymore. We’ve grown up.”

  Nora cocks her head, her anger curdling into confusion. “What’s that supposed to mean? You don’t burn cities anymore?”

  “We burn symbols,” Peter says. “Dead idols that people can’t stop clinging to. But life belongs to God and we do not take it.”

  “What the hell does that—”

  “Nora,” Miriam cuts her off gently, leaning in close, “can I ask how old you were? When you had to leave DC?”

  Nora stares at her for a moment. “I was sixteen.”

  “So you must remember what came before the fire, right? The broadcast? The three days of warnings and guidance?”

  Nora’s eyes narrow. “I remember some lunatic ranting into a loudspeaker, yeah. What the fuck about him?”

  “Do you remember what he said?”

  “Some shit about how we’re all doomed and the world is over. Give up a pointless fight, cut yourself loose and fall back into God’s arms…” Her eyes drift to the side for just a moment, then snap back. “You know, ‘let go and let God.’ All that bullshit.”

  Miriam looks faintly hurt. “Did it really sound like bullshit to you?”

  Nora opens her mouth for an angry retort, but then shuts it. Her scowl flickers with uncertainty as the memories rush back to her. And they come to Addis too.

  He remembers following Mom around town as she searched for the man behind the sermon, that supremely assured voice thundering from the loudspeakers. He remembers her shouting “Amen!” at every tagline. He remembers her fighting with Dad as the sermon poured through the apartment’s windows, begging him to leave with her and join this new movement while he shouted that she was crazy and they weren’t going anywhere. And he remembers his sister sitting silently between them, ear cocked to the window, listening to that booming voice.

  “Wasn’t there anything in it that rang true?” Miriam pushes.

  Nora folds her arms. Her stare is steady and hard, but some heat has gone out of it. “I wasn’t listening. Got a little distracted by the ‘we’re about to destroy your city’ part.”

  Peter takes a subtle step toward her. “Did you lose anyone in that fire, Nora? Did you hear of anyone getting hurt?”

  Nora hesitates. “No.”

  “No one was ever supposed to. And no one has for many years. When we surrender a city, it’s a controlled demolition. We’re just clearing away the debris so God can build something better.”

  “DC wasn’t debris. It was our home.” The words are defiant but they come out oddly limp. Unsupported. Her gaze wanders to the window.

  “I used to think Reno was my home,” Miriam says with a wistful smile. “I grew up there. Went to school there. Thought I’d raise a family there someday.” She sighs. “And then ‘the Fire Church’ showed up.”

  Nora’s eyes dart back to her.

  “I was angry too,” Miriam says with a shrug. “It’s only natural to feel that way when someone takes something from you. What gives them the right, I thought. What makes them so sure.” Her eyes drop to the floor and her tone drifts a little. “Why can’t I find my own path to God.”

  “But what about drug rehab?” Peter says, shooting a quick glance at Miriam as if partially addressing her. “What about mental hospitals? Sometimes you can’t see your own problems, and you need someone with a clearer vision to pull you out.”

  “Right,” Miriam says, snapping back to herself. “And once I was out, I realized that city was never really my home. It was just the box my parents put me in. I’d been pouring my love into it all those years but it had never really loved me back.”

  Nora says nothing. She has become a statue, her eyes fixed on Miriam but looking right past her. Addis is surprised by the erosion he sees in her. She seemed so strong, so solid, but perhaps her walls have hollow spots.

  “Nora…” Miriam takes a gamble and touches her knee. Nora looks sharply at the girl’s fingers but doesn’t recoil. “I know all this is tough to swallow. And I’m sorry if it’s bringing up painful memories. Some of our doctrines are really challenging, even to us, and we wouldn’t normally get into this stuff so early. It all makes so much more sense when Pastor Bark explains it.”

  “Pastor Bark, Pastor Bark,” Nora mutters darkly, her voice a low croak. “This guy’s so smooth he’s gonna convince me to burn the world?”

  The two youths allow faint, wry smiles. “He might,” Peter says. “But no pressure.”

  Nora takes a deep
breath and closes her eyes. “I need you to leave me alone for a minute.”

  Nodding effusively, Peter and Miriam get up and flee to the front car.

  Nora holds the breath for as long as she can, then slowly releases it, eyes still closed. “Can you believe this shit, Addy? Of all the rescuers in the world, we get them.”

  Addis can believe it. He is not surprised at all.

  Nora folds her hands in her lap and continues to breathe for a few minutes, each respiration a little slower than the last. She tries to hold the serene expression of a Buddha statue, detached and aloof, but her face crumples under the weight. “What am I doing?” she mumbles. “How did I get here?”

  She opens moist eyes and watches the dusty landscape for a while. “Are they as crazy as they sound, Addy? Are they bad people?”

  Addis grimaces. This is not the right question. If he nods, it’s a lie, unfair and misleading. If he shakes his head, she will think he trusts them. But the right question is too complex to be answered with oscillations of the skull. He stares at her, trying to remember the words he needs to express himself, but there are too many.

  “Nora?” Miriam whispers from the doorway while Peter peeks over her shoulder.

  “Yeah,” Nora sighs, waving them in.

  They enter with quiet steps like they’re afraid of waking someone.

  “Listen, Nora,” Peter says. “If you really want to get off, we’ll stop the train. I don’t know where the next inhabited town is—this is the Midwaste, after all—but we’ll drop you off wherever you want. Okay? Just want to make that clear.”

  Nora looks out the window at the endless plains of dust and dead crops.

  “But before you decide, I just want to ask you one more time…will you give us a chance?”

  “We’re not some crazy militia trying to take over the world,” Miriam says. “We’re not the fucking Axiom Group. We’re just a community of people who share a philosophy.”

  “What philosophy is that?” Nora mumbles. “That we should all just kill ourselves?”

  “That we should change our priorities. That we should look beyond ourselves and focus on the things that really matter.”

  “We’re not a doomsday cult.” Peter’s earnestness warms into another wry smile. “We’re a doomsday family.”

  Nora stares down into a dry riverbed as the train rattles over a bridge. Coyote skulls and snake skins. “Yeah, well,” she sighs into the dirty glass, “I’m not trying to walk across the Midwaste. So…I guess we’ll see what’s what when we get to your little compound.”

  Peter’s walkie beeps. He glances at it, then back at Nora. “Thank you, Nora. We’ll check back with you later.” He presses his palms together in a little bow and disappears into the front car.

  “Thank you, Nora,” Miriam echoes, and tip-toes a retreat to the other end of the car.

  Addis doesn’t want to leave his sister alone in her misery, but he feels an instinctive impulse. He gets up and follows Peter to the front. He stands in the jostling junction between cars and he listens.

  “How many?” Peter is murmuring into his walkie, watching through the window as the truck and its trailer veer off into the ruins of another small town.

  “I’m seeing three so far,” Lindh crackles.

  “Condition?”

  “Pretty dry. Lots of fractures. Okay, they see me…they’re coming…really slowly. Maybe just starved, but…”

  “Leave them,” Peter says. “Not worth it.”

  “You sure?”

  “God’s Jury isn’t seeker-friendly. I don’t want to scare Nora away just when we’re starting to reach her.”

  “But isn’t this why we’re out here?”

  “We’ve already got a car-full with us, over a thousand at the community, and plenty more between all the affiliates. It’s enough.”

  “But Pastor Bark said ‘anything with teeth.’ He said, ‘until our storehouses overflow.’”

  “I know what he said, but…” Peter pauses, grimaces. “Pastor Bark’s a focused man, okay? He finds a purpose and he pursues it, relentlessly. That’s why he’s a great leader, but sometimes it’s up to us to be his periphery vision, you know?”

  “Periphery vision?”

  “We watch out for the stuff he can’t see while he’s charging into war. And right now I see a scared girl whose soul is on the table, and that’s worth a lot more than what’s out there.”

  A long pause. “All right. Guess I’m all done, then.”

  “Drive safe. See you at the station.”

  Peter pockets his walkie and turns around.

  “Oh—hey, Addis!” He erases his surprise with a big grin. “Do you, um…do you like trains? I loved trains when I was your age. Want to see the engine room?”

  Addis’s stare is unreadable but never quite blank. He finds that this ambiguity unnerves people, and he lets it do its work for a moment. Then he says, “I want to see the cargo cars.”

  Peter’s eyes widen. “Oh wow! I didn’t know you talked.”

  “Cargo cars.”

  “Well…I’d love to take you back there, buddy, but I don’t think your sister wants that.”

  Addis turns and starts back.

  “When we get to our community,” Peter calls after him, “we’ll set you up with a nice spot in the Redemption Hall and you’ll get to meet all the other people like you. Okay?”

  The door squeals shut behind Addis. He walks past the rows of backward-facing chairs, struggling to stay upright as the floor sways beneath him. He walks past his sister, who is staring out the window at the endless miles of desert. He comes to the end of the car and pushes the door latch, but this one is locked. He stares through the door’s tiny window at the faded red freight car behind it, trying to penetrate its walls, but all he gets is fine detail on a patch of rust. So he listens instead. He hears the wheezing and groaning and squishy movements of a car full of rotten corpses. And behind that, more of the same.

  But behind that, in the car at the rear: something else. A sound he’s been hearing since the train arrived, what he assumed was just an undertone in the train’s chorus of squeals and roars. But now that he’s listening, it rises out of the noise. It clarifies and introduces itself.

  A low, dissonant hum.

  I

  A steady rattle fills the RV. It began when I hit the invisible pothole and it’s slowly growing louder. Tomsen didn’t yell at me when it happened, just stared silently until I pulled over and surrendered the driver seat. Now I can’t tell if she’s upset with me. She’s silent, but so are the rest of us, watching the road pass with wide-eyed vigilance. We have more to worry about than auto repairs.

  I catch glimpses of skeletons sprawled in the sand or leering through the windows of rusty cars and I tense. But so far, nothing moves. Some of the skulls are shot through—responsibly neutralized by their former occupants. Others lie in pieces, pried open and cast aside like oyster shells. They don’t buzz or roar with rage at our disruption of their desert diorama. They are empty.

  “No guns?” M asks, digging through the RV’s cabinets. “Really?”

  Tomsen grips the wheel, frowning into the horizon. I can feel the axle’s rattle in my feet.

  “You lasted ten years…alone in America…with no guns?”

  “You can’t shoot the plague,” Tomsen says. “You only hit its victims.”

  “Well, yeah…” He tests the weight of a cast-iron skillet. “But still.”

  I agree with Tomsen. But M has a point. And I have a big wrench in my white-knuckled grip. Julie hunches in the passenger seat with a tire iron. All three of us glisten with sweat.

  We pass scene after scene of dried-up carnage, constant reminders of the danger with still no sign of its source. As hours pass without incident, the anticipation ferments into an itchy, maddening anxiety. Julie
gets up and paces the RV’s short hallway, tapping her tire iron against the walls and countertops. The kids have sequestered themselves in the bedroom. If they were ordinary children, the ambient tension would be overloading their nerves, sparking fights and teary meltdowns. Instead, they have built a fort of cushions and blankets, and they peer through the opening as if awaiting a siege.

  Finally, it’s too much. Julie drops the iron on the floor and throws up her hands. “Okay, where are they? Where the hell are they? Were you pranking us, Tomsen? I’m freaking out.”

  Tomsen looks her over with an evaluative squint, like a doctor considering a prescription. “Do you want some cannabis? Some people find it relaxing.”

  Julie stops pacing and cocks her head. “Seriously?”

  “Left of the sink, bottom drawer.”

  Julie opens the drawer. Her eyes go wide. “Holy shit, Tomsen! I think you have a problem.”

  The drawer is almost completely full of baggies and bales. It’s enough to give Tomsen a strong claim to the title of drug lord.

  “I don’t smoke it,” she says. “It’s universal currency. That drawer was going to fund the Almanac for another five years.”

  “Um…” Julie pulls out a pack of rolling papers and a lighter. “You don’t smoke it?”

  “Sometimes I offer it to Almanac guests. For interviews. Loosens tongues. Especially for the odd topics, the terror tales and sailor stories. But help yourself. I don’t smoke cannabis. Makes me jittery.”

  Julie looks at me. I shrug.

  “Well,” she says, “we need to stay alert…but a few puffs might steady our nerves.”

  She rolls a joint. She takes a drag and offers it to me. I consider it for a moment, then I remember the last time I tested a new drug on my newly Living brain. That first shot of vodka in the Orchard bar, and the stumbling mayhem that followed. I already know I’m a sloppy drunk…this isn’t a good time to find out what I’m like when I’m high.

  I smile and shake my head, and M snatches the joint.

  “Don’t mind if I do.”

  They exchange a few puffs, then Julie stubs it out and returns to the passenger seat. She stares ahead at the passing yellow lines.