After the Revolution, page 25
“Then why is there a bag on her head? Why is she fighting?”
“Because it was a rather abrupt marriage,” Alexander frowned. “And her mind is still polluted with ungodly ideas about how a marriage should look. Tomas chose her. The Spirit of the Lord spoke to him when he saw her from afar. It is right and good that they should be wed. And he moves up to the front tomorrow. Tonight will be his first and maybe last chance to help the Kingdom remain and expand.”
He held out a seal, a golden badge in the shape of shield with a heavy cross emblazoned across the front.
“This comes from the pastor. I have the authority to grant marriages to any worthy men who wish them.”
He smiled again. Sasha’s heart fluttered. She felt nausea rise up inside her.
“So back away. Let us pass. And I’d suggest you dedicate some more time to thinking about why God brought you here. When your time comes, I think you’d prefer doing this without the bag. But I’m fine either way, really.”
It was past dinner and past bedtime when she entered the House of Miriam. Helen was seated at her desk. She looked up as Sasha entered and, in an instant, Sasha knew there was no use in reporting what had happened to Anne. Helen’s eyes were bloodshot and puffy with tears. She knew.
“Sasha,” the older woman said, “I have some bad news–”
“I saw them,” Sasha said. “Is that what’s going to happen to all of us? Is this place just a holding area until we get married off?”
“This place is your home,” Helen said in a voice that was almost pleading. “It’s here, and I’m here, to shepherd you to the next phase in your life. Don’t you believe I want the best for you?”
“I do,” Sasha said. Her voice softened. “But Anne didn’t want this. She told me so. Didn’t she deserve time to grieve?”
“She did,” Helen said, “but the Lord demands sacrifices from all of us. Sometimes more sacrifices than seem fair. Anne is in a dark place now but the Lord will send his light to guide her.”
Helen seemed to straighten up as she spoke. Sasha saw resolve settle into the older woman’s flint-gray eyes.
“So may it be,” she said. “May the peace of the Lord be with you.”
Sasha started to walk off. She didn’t trust herself to stay and talk. She was sure more of her anger would bleed out into the conversation. And she wasn’t sure what Helen would do if she got the impression that Sasha’s loyalty had started to waver.
“Sasha, dear,” she said, and Sasha looked back. “You forgot your dinner. It’s in a bag on the table.”
Sasha took it and ate in silence, as fast as decorum would allow. Then she cleaned up for bed and headed back into the dormitories. As soon as she saw the light glinting off of Susannah’s open eyes, she knew the other girl was awake. Sasha knelt down at her bed and the two shared a long look. Susannah held out her hand and Sasha took it.
“What happened?” she asked.
“They let us out early and dropped us off downtown,” Susannah’s eyes were wet with tears. “Anne and I had a coffee and we visited the market. It was…nice, normal almost. We headed for the House of Miriam once it started to get dark and,” she gulped, “they were just there. Waiting with Miss Helen.”
Susannah swallowed loudly and her eyes grew watery, but she didn’t cry. Sasha was proud of her friend.
“That was them, wasn’t it?” Susannah asked. “Those men were the Sons of Jacob.”
Sasha just nodded.
“How long until they take me too?”
Chapter 16
Manny.
The barracks had been a high school once, built to serve several thousand of the Plano area’s wealthiest students. The dozen huge, gray buildings were centered around an enormous courtyard that included a practice football field, several tennis courts, and a running track. The compound was boxed in by a high concrete wall, topped in razor wire. What had been built to defend the scions of wealth and privilege from their jealous peers also made the former school an ideal training ground for the Kingdom’s soldiers.
Manny could see hundreds of young men just within the courtyard. They ran laps or charged through a makeshift obstacle course that had been assembled over the old football field. Manny’s head throbbed just watching them. I hope we don’t have to do too much of that shit, he thought as he scratched the bandage over his severed deck, at least not today.
Dozens of men sat in small groups around the courtyard, reading together from books or cooling down from work-outs in sweat-drenched underclothes. Manny could hear the sharp crack of rifle fire from a shooting range nearby. The whole place buzzed with a sort of busy, nervous energy that might’ve been contagious if not for the ugly stares Manny attracted.
“You picked the wrong skin to wear,” Roland muttered at him as a troop of pale young infantrymen clomped past them. Manny couldn’t help but notice that he seemed to be the only person on the training field who wasn’t lily white.
“This might be a problem,” he said.
Roland nodded in response. He spat at the ground and muttered, “We should’a asked Skullfucker Mike to sew you into some new skin before we left.”
Manny frowned. “I’m almost certain that’s not how–”
“Martyrs!” A rough voice cried out from behind them. “Turn ’round, boys. Let me see your eyes.”
Manny stopped on instinct. He stiffened his back and turned around. Roland did the same thing, but with a heavy sigh and a roll of his eyes. The shout had come from a tall, square-jawed man with hair that had gone a majestic shade of silver-gray. He wore a black uniform shirt with brass cross pins in the epaulettes, black cargo pants, and a big black handgun slung low on his left hip. His nametag identified him as “Ditmar.” Manny didn’t know enough about the Martyr’s Brigades to tell the man’s rank.
Roland turned as Ditmar closed the distance between them. He stopped about a foot in front of them, looked Roland up and down, and then turned to Manny. The fixer forced himself to meet the grizzled Martyr’s gaze.
Manny wasn’t sure how to look like a fanatical Christian soldier. There was no way to fake the manic glint of true commitment. So he chose a different tack. He thought about Major Clark, the defiant set of his jaw and the promise of violence frozen into the ice of his blue eyes. DeShawn Clark was not a fanatic, but he was a warrior. Manny knew he might be able to fake that. So he screwed up his face into his best imitation and hoped it would pass muster.
“Well,” the silver-haired old soldier growled and narrowed his eyes. But then his face broke out into a grin. His tone lifted up an octave. “By God,” he said, “it’s good to have you boys here.” He clapped a hand on both Manny and Roland’s shoulders and pulled them into an embrace.
“Your souls are safe now, my boys. Thank God for your warrior hearts. Now,” he pulled back and straightened up, “I’m Martyr Ditmar. Where are you bound for?”
“Intake,” Manny said with more confidence than he felt. “We just arrived today.” He glanced down at his papers for a moment and then said, “This says we’re infantry. Reserve division.”
Martyr Ditmar seemed surprised. “Really?” he asked. “I’d have expected them to put you, at least,” he nodded to Manny, “in the Storming Battalion.”
“The Storming Battalion?”
“Yes,” the elder Martyr nodded. “You’ve got the right…complexion for it.”
Thaaaaat’s got to be a bad sign, Manny thought. Don’t press the question too much now. You may not want the answer. Instead he put a hand on Roland’s shoulder.
“Wherever we go, I gotta stay with Aaron. He’s strong, but he took a few hits to the head too many. I help him get around.”
The Martyr gave a smile that seemed genuine.
“Well, then,” he said, “you’ll want to get your butts down to cadet processing. It’s a hundred meters down that-a-way.” He clapped them both on the shoulders. “It’s good to see you here. Smile, boys! You’re heroes now. Warriors in Christ. Go forth!”
“God bless you, Martyr,” Manny said. Roland followed up with his best attempt at honest enthusiasm.
“Yay God!” he said with a too-wide smile.
“We should go,” Manny said quickly. “I don’t want to tarry on the Lord’s time.”
“That’s the spirit,” Martyr Ditmar replied. “I’ll see you both on the training field.”
They stomped off toward the cadet processing building which, until recently, had been the high school’s administrative building. There were posters for school dances and after-school clubs on the walls. It looked like a student body election had been underway when the Heavenly Kingdom captured this place. Manny and Roland queued up behind a half-dozen other confused-looking young men and waited for their turn at the processing desk.
The intake process lasted around an hour. They took his name, his date of birth, and his measurements, and then Manny “helped” Aaron answer those same questions.
It would’ve been triflingly easy for anyone with a deck and a good connection to find evidence of Manny’s career as a warzone fixer. But the Martyr handling their information wrote things down on actual paper. Manny got the distinct impression that many of the Martyrs had disabled their decks. He also knew from experience that data speeds tended to be pretty shit this close to the fighting.
Someone will check eventually, he warned himself. You’d better be fast about this whole business.
Roland stayed on his best behavior through the whole process, although he grew twitchier and twitchier as the minutes wore on. Manny wasn’t sure if the chromed man was allergic to bureaucracy or just frustrated at having sobered up. Once they were done with the first stage of the intake process, they were ushered over to a room filled with folded stacks of clothing and dense with the scent of mothballs. They were issued uniforms and then bundled off to a locker room to change.
Manny was somewhat nervous about stripping down and changing in front of Roland, a dude he barely knew. If the post-human felt the same nervousness, he didn’t show it. Roland pulled off his clothes in a couple of seconds, revealing a body that was tight with wiry muscle and covered in thick surgical scars. Roland started to pull on his BDU pants and noticed Manny hadn’t yet started to strip.
“What’s up?” Roland asked. “You smell nervous.”
Manny shrugged. “I guess I’m a little prude still. Must be the Catholic in me.”
“Don’t let them hear that,” Roland laughed, “these fuckers’ll hang you with your rosary beads.”
He pulled the pants up and buttoned them. Then he paused again and looked back to Manny.
“Are you still Catholic?” he asked.
Manny shook his head. “No, I don’t believe. But my family does.”
“Ah,” Roland nodded. “You fake belief well. That’s a talent.”
“It’s not a talent,” Manny said, “it’s a survival skill. Grow up in Texas, and you either learn to fake what you need to fake, or you learn to fight.”
Someone knocked on the door.
“Are you ready yet?” a voice called out to them.
“Almost!” Manny responded, and he started to strip his clothing off.
A few minutes and a change of clothes later they arrived on the field where their training unit, twenty-four sweat-drenched young men, were doing push-ups. Manny was surprised to see that these Martyrs, at least, weren’t all white: there was one Black man right in the middle of the group. It took Manny a second to recognize the instructor drilling them was Ditmar, the man they’d met on their way into the base. He broke into a broad smile when he saw them.
“God’s will is truly magnificent, is it not?” And then he nodded down to the ground. “Fall in and join us, lads. Let’s see what you’ve got.”
Manny and Roland dropped down and joined the unit in another set of push-ups. If Roland had any trouble at all with the work-out regimen he didn’t show it. The chromed man barely sweated. And Manny had a feeling that his sweat was more for show than the result of an actual biological process. Even with the show it was obvious to everyone that Roland wasn’t having any trouble with the exercises.
“God’s blessed us with a new Samson,” Ditmar said, a hundred or so push-ups in. The rest of the men, Manny included, had collapsed from the exertion. But Roland just kept going. For a while they all sat there, huffing and exhausted and watching him go. Ditmar smiled and shook his head, a little awed at the sight. Finally he waved for Roland to stop.
“You’ve made your point, son. And we’re all blessed to have you here with us. Now, get up—all of you, and sit around me.”
Manny stood, shook the soreness from his arms and moved to take a seat in the semi-circle of young Martyrs. Once they were all properly positioned, Ditmar squatted down and cast his eyes around the group, settling on each of them in turn.
“I don’t know how you all got here,” he said in a quiet, somber voice, “but I know what brought each of you here: the spirit of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.” He cleared his throat. “Now,” he said, “very soon, you’ll all be going into battle. Sooner than I’d prefer. We don’t have time for the kind of training you boys deserve. You’ll be fighting against men with more experience, better weaponry. It’s a scary thought. But I’ll tell you all right now, if you go into that battle with the same blind faith that brought you here, you’ll do just fine. God won’t let any other end come to pass.”
It was dark by the time Ditmar led them all into the dining facility. The sight of the high school cafeteria set off a surprising pang of nostalgia in Manny’s heart. He hadn’t enjoyed school. But something about the gray fabric-covered walls, the colorful posters, and the dozens of identical faux-wood tables made him long for a simpler time. For a second he was almost able to forget where he was, what he was doing, and pretend this was just another day in school.
That illusion was broken when he looked at his “fellow” Martyrs. Hundreds of them had filed into the cafeteria, dressed in a motley assortment of battle-dress uniforms from the old U.S. Army, the Republic of Texas, and even the Mexican Army. Most of them were young, not even into their twenties. Around a quarter of them, though, were old for soldiers, in their forties or fifties. There was no military discipline to their appearance. Many of the men had beards or long, unruly hair.
“These fucks aren’t soldiers,” Roland whispered to him as they took their seats at one of the fake wood tables on the left side of the room. “This is what cannon-fodder looks like, kid. The Heavenly Kingdom just expects these people to die.”
Manny felt a surge of anxiety. He was sure someone else must have heard Roland. But when he glanced around, he saw their table-mates were all deep in conversation with each other. Most of them, at least. Jonathan, the only other non-white person in their training unit, seemed to have been excluded. The other soldiers leaned away from him. The focus of the table seemed to be a tall, square-jawed young man with a Georgian twang to his accent.
“Martyrs!” A loud voice cried from a podium at the center of the cafeteria. The sound of hundreds of bodies on hundreds of chairs turning to face the noise filled the room. The speaker was a tall, painfully thin man clad in a long black robe. An enormous wooden cross hung from his neck. His hair was greasy, unruly, and shock white. He had a patchy beard and the overall look of an unkempt madman. But then he spoke.
“My brothers, it is a blessed thing to have you all here today,” he began in a voice that was little more than a whisper. There was a raw rasp to his voice, he sounded almost hoarse. Something about that quality drew Manny’s attention.
“In the coming days, your instructors will prepare you for the great battles that lie ahead. You will be given the best arms and armor our Kingdom can provide. But just by being here, each of you has shown you already have a weapon more powerful than any tool in our armory: faith in God Almighty.”
His voice raised in pitch now. It was still raspy and hoarse, but it picked up a sharp, booming quality. He spoke faster. His cheeks grew red.
“Put on the armor of God,” he cried, “and you will stand firm against the schemes of the devil. Be strong and courageous! Do not panic before the enemy. For in every battle, the Lord your God will go ahead of you. He will never fail you nor abandon you.”
At this, several men around the room pounded their fists on the tables. One man in the back let out a “whoop.” These outbursts inspired other men to cry out “Praise God!” Manny glanced around, trying to gauge if more or less than half of the room was joining in. He didn’t want to stay quiet if that was going to look weird. But then the pastor went quiet. A sense of anticipation filled the room.
There were about four-hundred cadets all dining together in this shift. And, of course, the officer in charge, a tall, gangly red-head with no chin but a strangely beautiful baritone voice, led them in prayer before the meal. Manny repeated the words after him, but he didn’t hear them. He did have to elbow Roland once, when he saw the big post-human wasn’t chanting along with the other soldiers.
Just then, a pair of big doors to the left of the stage slung open. Ditmar walked out, with a hefty brown canvas bag over his shoulder. He was followed by an armed guard, and then two men in shackles.
The captives wore striped white prison pajamas, and they both looked the worse for wear. One of them, a middle-aged Black man, looked familiar. Manny thought he must be a captured SDF fighter. His lip looked as if it had been recently split, and there was a nasty gash on his forehead. He kept his head down and his shoulders slumped. His posture was one of complete resignation. The other man was—Manny’s heart skipped a beat—
