After the Revolution, page 17
“Yes. Is something the matter?”
“No,” Anne said, “I just couldn’t sleep. I thought maybe you were awake, too.”
“I guess we’re both in the same boat then.” Sasha kept her voice low, more to avoid waking any of the others than out of fear of breaking the rules.
“In more ways than one,” Anne said. “I’m waiting for a man I love too.”
Sasha’s heart beat a little faster. It was like that with everything that made her think of Alexander. Her mind didn’t need a great deal of prodding to turn toward him.
“Your love is at the front too?” Sasha asked.
“I think so,” Anne said. “I was lucky enough to get to see him, twice. I arrived in Coppell first, back before the Kingdom took Plano. We met once then, and once more after the city fell and they moved us into the House of Miriam.”
Jealousy seized Sasha’s heart. She tried to replace it with gratitude in the Lord. He’d sent her someone who could understand her pain and frustration. Wasn’t that a blessing?
“That must be hard for you,” she said, “getting to see him and then being separated.” The words came out a bit stilted and cold. She hoped Anne hadn’t noticed.
“It is,” Anne said, “but it isn’t half so rough a place as you’re in. I can’t imagine how anxious you must be, arriving here and not seeing him.”
“He’s not the only reason I came,” Sasha said, a bit defensively, “but yes. It’s hard. I’m…scared. I don’t know why I feel so silly admitting that.”
“It’s certainly not silly,” Anne assured her. “But I get it. Everyone here is so focused on gratitude and God’s wisdom, it almost makes you feel like a traitor for feeling afraid. Or unhappy.” Anne’s voice dropped a few decibels, as if she was ashamed of her next words: “I almost feel like a liar when I smile.”
“I don’t think the Lord wants us to be liars,” Sasha said. “But I think being happy, or trying to seem happy, is a sacrifice we make for the Kingdom. It helps keep everyone else around us strong.”
“Hmm,” Anne said, and then yawned. Her voice sounded heavy with sleep. There must have been something contagious in the sound, because Sasha felt her own eyelids start to droop. “That’s a nice way to look at it,” Anne said. “I like the way you think, Sasha.”
Helen woke all of them up the next morning. She was gentle with it—a hand on each girl’s shoulder and a word in each of their ears, but there was no mistaking that she meant Now. So Sasha got up. Her feet hit the floor just as Anne took her first steps forward, toward the dining room. They all filed in, silent and groggy.
The girls took their breakfasts in the form of a thick, tasteless protein shake and then they were loaded onto a heavy military-looking bus and driven off to a large red-brick office building. According to the bullet-pocked signs, it had once been an administrative building for the corporation that had run most of the Republic’s schools.
Sasha swept up bullet casings and shattered glass. She scrubbed toilets and wiped the blood off the walls and tried not to think too hard about how it had gotten there. Conversation wasn’t forbidden, but there was a lot of ground to cover and Mae was quick to scold anyone who dawdled. Sasha and Anne both kept moving, but they passed each other in the halls often. Each time, the other girl would favor Sasha with a supportive smile and Sasha would return it.
They broke for lunch a little after noon (stale cheese sandwiches and orange juice), but instead of getting back to work after their meal they were met again by the bus that had taken them there. They were told to file inside. Sasha wound up in between Anne and Susannah in the middle row of the bus. It was hot, the air circulation was bad, and the smell of sweat was thick on the bus. But the windows were down and, once the bus got going, the air that blew in felt like heaven.
“Lord God, I’ve been waiting for this all day,” said Susannah. “I’d stay on this thing all night if they’d let me.”
“Yeah,” Anne said, “this is actually a lot more comfortable than the bunkroom, even when the power’s working and the fans are on.”
“Does the power go out a lot?” Sasha asked. She felt dumb for even giving voice to the question. But her seatmates didn’t treat it like a stupid question.
“Not a lot,” Anne said, “but we’ll lose an hour or two most days. And it can be out for quite a while when Austin gets a drone through.”
“That doesn’t happen often,” Susannah assured her. “I’ve been in the Kingdom ten days, and we’ve only had to take shelter once.”
“Twice for me,” Anne said, “but I’ve been here almost three weeks.”
“I’m not scared,” Sasha assured them, “I’m just curious.”
“You should be scared,” Susannah said. “It sucks.”
It wasn’t a long ride, and Sasha was embarrassed at how long it took her to realize the destination: this was the same route they’d taken from the House of Miriam, just in reverse. She and the other girls were being taken downtown. Once she got a good look at the gallows she understood why. There were six people lined up in front of the little stairway that led to the platform. They looked like prisoners.
Susannah looked just as confused as Sasha. But Anne seemed to understand what was going on. She scrunched her face in disgust.
“Oh no,” she said, “I hate it when they make us watch this.”
The two Martyrs who’d guarded them all day opened the doors and told them to form up outside of the bus. Sasha did as she was told while grabbing as many long looks at the gallows as she could manage. None of the people who stood out in front of the platform looked like soldiers or robber barons or much of anything at all. They just seemed young and scared.
“Fags,” the Martyr standing next to the driver at the bus door grunted as Sasha stepped past him. He waited until the other girls had all filed off the bus before he stepped around to stand in front of them. Sasha hadn’t paid the man too much attention during the day because, in truth, he scared her. He looked old, over forty at least, and his face was heavy with scars and tattoos. There were faded blue crosses inked on each of his forearms. There wasn’t much skin visible under his armor and helmet, but the skin she could see was tanned red like leather. His eyes were cold and seemed fixed into a permanent squint. When he addressed the group, it was with a voice that sounded like it came to them through a filter of gravel and glass.
“These people,” he said—and spat after the word “people”—“are gender traitors.” There were a few gasps from among the crowd. He continued, “It took us a while to crack into the Republic’s old files. But we finally got a list of all the fags who refused to accept their God-given gender. They thought surgery could hide ’em, but there’s no hiding the truth from the eyes of God or his true servants. And there’s only one fair punishment for someone who turns their back on natural law.”
Sasha’s heart started to pound. She’d known, of course, that Pastor Mike didn’t approve of transgenderism, of gender-change surgery, of homosexuality, or of anything else that didn’t fit into the Biblical lines of what a man and a woman ought to be. But he’d always phrased his objections with such compassion. Queer and trans people weren’t monsters, deserving of death. They were victims of the fallen secular world, same as anyone else. Sasha agreed they needed re-education, but this…
The crowd, perhaps three hundred strong, cheered as the prisoners were led up to the gallows. Sasha’s heart beat like a bass drum. She couldn’t hear anything else. The voices of the crowd, of her sisters, faded behind the beating sound of the blood that coursed through her head. But her eyes continued to work, and she watched in horror as they fit nooses around each victim’s neck.
The young people cried and screamed and begged, but the Martyrs paid them no mind. Some of them chanted in tongues while they prepared the killing machine. Sasha saw the joy in their eyes. She found it revolting. Before long, they’d finished their preparations and six people were strung up on the gallows before the brays and cries of the crowd.
Sasha didn’t think it was possible for her heart to beat any faster. But it kept speeding up. She felt light headed and nauseous and a little like she needed to go to the bathroom. Her knees grew weak and she found herself leaning on Anne. The other woman looked almost as scared as Sasha did, but she weathered it better. She put an arm around Sasha, supporting her, and the two of them looked on as the executioner called out and pulled the lever that sent six human beings dropping down to dangle until they were dead.
The snap of their necks was the only thing Sasha heard above the sound of her own pounding heart. She watched them twitch and jerk for a second, two, and then her body grew too light and her legs collapsed beneath her. The world went black.
She awoke back in the House of Miriam. Her sisters knelt or stood around her. Sasha was gratified to see she wasn’t the only one who’d passed out. Anne lay next to her, clearly disoriented, along with two other young women whose names Sasha hadn’t quite memorized. Helen sat in between them, wet washcloth in her hand, and stroked their faces.
“There, there, dears. You’ve had a terrible shock. And there’s no shame in your reactions.”
“No shame?” Mae spat the words. There was a glow to her face and a manic glint in her eyes. “Ma’am, with all due respect, I don’t know how these girls can call themselves committed to the Heavenly Kingdom if the sight of divine justice hurts them so much.”
Sasha saw anger in Helen’s eyes, but the older woman didn’t let it carry over into her voice. Instead she fixed Mae with a cool gaze and said in an even tone, “Miss Mae, one can believe in our Lord’s justice and still regret the pain that comes with it. That does not signal a lack of devotion. It signals compassion, a trait Jesus Christ had in abundance.”
Mae frowned and pursed her lips, but she kept them shut for now. Helen turned back to Sasha and the other girls who had fallen.
“Death is never easy to witness, girls. It should be a horrible thing to witness,” she glanced back to Mae, “…and we should all be worried if a day ever comes when we can see such violence without pain in our hearts. But these are dire times. The world has fallen too much for pacifism to bring back the rule of God. And so we must use violence. Do you understand?”
Sasha nodded. She heard the other girls give stuttering, hollow replies. Even the girls who’d managed to stay standing looked shaken. Mae was the only one who wore a smile. They gave her a wide berth the rest of the day.
Whoever was in charge of their schedule paid some deference to the fact that they’d been forced to watch an execution. There was no more cleaning that day. They spent the rest of the daylight hours seated around the common area in the House of Miriam, sewing uniforms. Sasha had never sewn before, but Anne sat next to her and taught her the basics.
Her hands were still shaking when they got to work, but Anne helped her and, eventually, focusing on the meticulous task allowed her blot out the horror. Once she got a good grip on the basics of what was required of her, she was able to lose herself in quiet productive flow. She was almost disappointed when Helen called them to dinner.
They ate the same food as the day before. They prayed. And then they had an hour of relatively free time. They couldn’t leave the House of Miriam since it was after eight. But they could talk. Sasha gravitated naturally to Susannah and Anne. The topic of conversation turned at once to the execution.
“Is that what it’s always like?” Susannah asked.
Anne nodded. Her voice shook a little when she said, “I passed out last time too. I thought it’d be easier the second time around. But it really wasn’t…”
“It feels wrong,” Sasha whispered. She glanced over to Mae, who was holding court with a few of the other girls at the other end of the common area. “I’m not saying it’s OK, what those people were doing. But surely they deserved a chance to repent.”
Susannah nodded. “I don’t think Jesus would want us to murder people just for being wrong. It’s one thing to kill an atheist or an apostate who’s attacking you. It’s another thing to just,” her voice caught a bit, “hang people.”
Anne shook her head in an absent sort of way. “Kyle told me it was necessary.”
“Kyle?” Susannah asked.
“My intended,” Anne said. “I watched the first execution with him. When I passed out, he was so sweet. I came to and he was holding me, petting my head.” Anne’s eyes shone with love, and Sasha had to fight hard to keep the jealousy from her own face.
“He explained that the Heavenly Kingdom couldn’t afford to re-educate the fallen. They are too many, and we are too surrounded. If someone is capable of changing, God will know. And He will ensure they get their just reward in Heaven.”
Sasha was not entirely convinced, but she also wasn’t willing to argue with Anne. It felt a little dicey just admitting her continued discomfort with the executions. So she stayed quiet and the talk turned to more comfortable matters; what they expected from the next day’s work, and what sort of lives they’d lead when the fighting was over and they were settled down with the gallant warriors they knew they’d marry. Soon the girls all filed off to their small, snug beds.
After a long day of work and stress, the bed felt so good that it made Sasha feel guilty. Alexander was fighting right now. He’d surely seen more death than she had and he didn’t have the option of fainting or crying about it. As she drifted off to sleep again Sasha promised herself that she would never faint or cry out in the face of death again. If this was the way God had ordained his Kingdom must come, she owed it to herself and to her Lord to stand and see it.
The next day they went back to the same battered administrative building as the day before. Sasha scrubbed and swept, ate her lunch, and got right back to work. She forced herself into enthusiasm for the menial labor with the same discipline she’d used when it had been time to study for an exam in a class she hated. The same tactic worked in both high school and the Heavenly Kingdom.
About two hours before the end of their workday, Sasha’s rhythm was interrupted by the sound of a crash and a scream from one of the girls in the bathroom next door to the room she was in. Sasha dropped her scrub brush and darted over. She was the first one into the room.
It took her a moment to piece together what must have happened. Susannah had been scrubbing a sink that had been badly damaged by shellfire. The sink had collapsed while she scrubbed it and a jagged edge of porcelain had torn open the girl’s hand. There was already an enormous amount of blood by the time Sasha arrived. Susannah looked pale. She’d backed up against the wall and was just screaming, wordlessly.
Sasha had taken three semesters of pre-med classes in the last two years. She had a good basic instruction in first aid. She pulled her shirt off over her head and wrapped it around the gash on the other girl’s hand. It was the spare shirt she’d brought from home, and it had an antimicrobial weave that should make it relatively safe as a wound dressing. She pulled it tight, wadded the extra fabric up over the wound and applied as much pressure as she could. Susannah kept screaming but the flow of blood from her wound slowed.
“Breath with me,” Sasha told Susannah as she stared into the other girl’s eyes. “In,” she inhaled, “and out,” she exhaled. She repeated this several times, until Susannah stopped screaming and started breathing in time with her. Several of the girls had crowded around the entrance to the bathroom at this point. When Sasha glanced up she could see Mae’s face in the back of the crowd. She looked disgusted, probably at the fact that Sasha had torn off her shirt.
“Please call for the Martyrs,” Sasha asked no one in particular. “Tell them Susannah needs medical attention. I don’t think she has any clotting agents in her blood.”
No one moved. So Sasha locked eyes with Anne and told her, “Please go now. We shouldn’t take any chances with a wound like this.”
Anne nodded, broke away from the gawking group and stumbled off to find help. Sasha looked back to Susannah. She coaxed the other girl to sit down against the wall and sat down next to her, applying pressure to her hand the entire time. Sasha’s shirt was now soaked through with hot, sticky blood. Her hands were wet too. But she didn’t feel squeamish about this. She’d expected to after her reaction to the hangings, but somehow the sight of all this blood actually calmed her. She knew what to do here. It felt good to take effective action.
The Martyrs arrived a minute or so later, with a medic close behind. By that point Susannah’s bleeding had stopped entirely. The medic was impressed, and he said so.
“Do you have some kind of training, ma’am? You handled this very well.”
“Three semesters of pre-med,” she’d answered. “It was only high school pre-med but they made us do a lot of first-aid drills.”
The medic gave her a significant look and then asked, “What’s your name, miss?”
“Sasha Mar–”, she started before correcting herself. “Sasha.”
Susannah was taken off to whatever served as a hospital for the Heavenly Kingdom while Sasha and the rest of the girls finished their work day. It was uneventful after that, but the other girl’s attitudes toward her seemed to have shifted. Anne had given her a big hug, of course. But everyone was more respectful. Several of them came to her to ask minor things, advice on how best to clean a room or clear a pile of rubble. At one point Sasha had divided four girls up into two teams to remove a huge amount of shattered glass. While she’d directed the effort Mae had walked by the room and butted her head in.
“Just because she knows a little first aid doesn’t make her a foreman,” she sneered.
The other girls didn’t pay Mae any mind. They left for the day at the usual time and arrived back at the House of Miriam in the early evening. Helen was waiting for them at the door. Behind her stood an older man in a white lab coat. He had a cross pinned to his lapel and a larger red cross on his armband. As the girls all filed into the building Sasha saw Helen point to her and whisper something to the man. He nodded.
