“You want some gravy with that?”
I looked up halfway through my fourth biscuit to see Chris nudge a round cast-iron pot filled with creamy pork gravy my way.
Any other time, I might have been terrified to gorge myself in front of a guy, much less an entire crowd of people who sat elbow-to-elbow in the firelit yard of the church, but my stomach became a bottomless pit the instant food was set before me. I hadn’t been this hungry in years, and the only dish I had yet to touch was a bowl heaped with orangish-brown apricot jelly, the substance too close to spider mucous for my imagination to handle.
“Yes please.” Gulping down another glass of water, I made an apologetic half-smile. “Also . . . are there any more of those links?”
Jamie passed a plate my way, wearing the same wry grin as everyone else, the platter filled with finger-length brown sausages. “You can have a whole pig if you want. After downing four Echo Spiders, I’d say you more than earned it. Pretty sure that’s a record.”
A record for sheer dumb luck.
My face heated up like an iron, the praise still so foreign to me, and I shrugged as I speared several more sausages. “I almost blew myself up in the process. Besides, I didn’t stick around to see if they all died or not. If it hadn’t been for that guy in the chemical suit, I never would have made it out.”
Adam put down his fork and eyed me curiously from across the long rug. “You said he was all alone? And unarmed?”
I bit down on another peppery sausage and thought about those kind silver-colored eyes behind the gas mask. “Uh huh. It’s like nothing scared him, or even knew he was there. He just walked in out of nowhere and scooped me up.”
Eve’s golden eyes glittered with wonder, and she picked at her rather sparse plate of toast and apple slices with an absent-minded swirl of her spoon. “Did he ever tell you his name?”
“No.” I scraped more butter over another fluffy white biscuit, the man’s silver eyes flashing through my mind once more. “All he had on his suit was a number. Thirty-Six. I figured he was with ELSAR, but honestly . . . I have no idea who he was.”
From somewhere down the line to my right, Aleph handed Jamie a bowl of oatmeal and the conversation drifted into other things, which suited me just fine.
I’d been delighted to find that the strange citizens of Ark River loved to eat breakfast food at dinner, a custom that was not lost on me. Pancakes and eggs, sausage and gravy, biscuits by the pound, all were laid out in rich quantity, thanks to the countless fields and herds that surrounded the remarkable village. Everything New Wilderness lacked, Ark River had in triplicate, cows, sheep, pigs, and entire hillsides covered in late-harvest grain. Creamy milk from their dairy cows filled one pitcher, cold spring water another, and a third held some kind of tart purple juice squeezed from a mutated fruit they called a Rudgar Apple. We sat on cushions and furs, the coverlet from the bed still draped around my shoulders, and with several campfires alight nearby, I felt warm enough that I no longer shivered. I’d been given another vial of Lantern Rose nectar for my various wounds and had watched in awe as the bruises faded away like magic. It was the best I’d felt in days, and the only thing that could have made it better was a hot shower, and a phone call home.
“You’re sure I can have more?” I blinked at Adam’s offer of baked apple slices with caramel sauce on the side, my stomach already near bursting.
“God has been good to us.” He set the trencher beside me, not nearly as threatening without his armor and sword. “With Eve’s companion planting, the mutants don’t bother our crops, and the livestock we caught from abandoned farms in the valley. Go on, take as much as you want.”
I bit into a crisp piece of apple and relished the burst of sweetness it gave, and noted Eve’s bland plate with a furrowed brow. “Aren’t you hungry?”
Her golden eyes lit up, and Eve’s pale cheekbones tinged a rosy pink. “I have to be careful what I eat. Rich food tends to come back up.”
Eve’s hand brushed the contour of her stomach, the fabric pressing tight to reveal a slight bump, barely noticeable on her slender frame. Adam tucked an extra blanket around her shoulders and nudged a few more bits of toast her way, the two of them beaming at each other like kids at a fireworks show. Being an only child, with Carla as my closest influence, I’d always thought pregnancy to be something I wanted to avoid, a hindrance to all the amazing things I wanted to do in life. But sitting there, watching the way Eve positively glowed with happiness, showered with adoration by Adam in every passing glance, tugged something loose in my subconscious.
They’re both so happy. Even when talking about vomit. To be loved like that . . . wow.
“Congratulations.” Doing my best not to be inwardly envious, I wiped my mouth with a napkin and set my apple slice down. “How far along are you?”
“A month.” Eve bit her lower lip in excitement, as if she could barely contain herself from giggling. “It’s the first one for our kind, so naturally I’m—Lazarus, leave her be!”
Her sudden shift in tone sent ice through my blood, and I whirled to look at what drew Eve’s ire.
A cry of alarm choked me, and I froze in place.
Right at my elbow, a huge brown head munched not inches away, a black nose snuffling at my unguarded apple slices. Long curved antlers glowed green in the night, and a pink tongue swathed at the last of the caramel. Without its metal armor, the deer almost appeared stuffed for how fuzzy its coat was, chestnut brown in thick tufts along its back and flanks.
At Eve’s command, its head jerked up to blink back at her in feigned innocence, and titters of amusement rippled through the rest of the onlookers.
Eve jumped to her feet and marched around out section of rug to wag a finger in the animal’s face, hands on her hips in scolding. “You jumped the corral again, didn’t you? What did I say about getting out? What did I say?”
The deer lowered its head with a bashful huff, and tried to lick a smear of the caramel sauce from its coal-black nose.
“Don’t think I didn’t see that.” Eve crossed her arms with indignance and tapped her foot on the lush grass of the yard. “You should be ashamed of yourself, stealing from our guests. Poor Hannah was having a lovely time, and now she has no apples left.”
Adam chuckled, hazel eyes shining at his wife. “He only started doing that when you began feeding him your scraps. I’m afraid this is learned behavior, amica mea.”
Non-plussed by Adam’s loving quip, Eve jabbed a finger at the deer with a stern look. “You apologize, right now.”
Apologize?
I glanced at Jamie in bewilderment, but she jerked her head back to the scene with a knowing grin. “Put your hand out.”
With a slight tremble to my fingers, I stretched out my hand, and swallowed a nervous lump in my throat.
Our eyes locked again, and the deer watched me with deep, soft brown eyes that were disarming for how innocent they looked. He sniffed at my skin, cautious, and despite his impressive size, this creature appeared to be just as wary of me as I was of him.
The deer stuck out his tongue, and gave my hand a gritty, inquisitive lick. It tickled like slimy combination of sandpaper, and I slid my hand over his long snout to pat his silky fur. I’d never been this close to a wild animal before, certainly not one this big, and I felt the corners of my mouth turn upward in childish glee.
Cool.
“Silly creature.” Eve gave in to her own pleased smile, and rewarded Lazurus with a few scratches behind his large mousy ears. “Bone-Faced Whitetail love sugar. This guy ate five pounds of it the first few days after he woke up. Then again, I can’t blame them. I ate like a fool after my redemption as well.”
Her words brought my thoughts to a screeching halt, and I stared at her.
Redemption? I that some kind of religion thing? Since when did Bible-thumpers worship deer?
“Miss Brun, a word?” Adam’s eyes were on me, and he got to his feet, my black backpack in one hand.
Unsure what he wanted, but certain that it was a request I shouldn’t refuse, I got up, and left the fur coverlet behind. Chris and Jamie threw each other brief glances, but neither followed, and Eve remained beside Lazurus, her petite face a mask of contemplation.
I caught up with Adam, and we walked toward the double wooden doors at the front of the church, the path lined with stones in decorative intervals. At first, we didn’t speak, the low murmur of dinner faded into the background, crickets chirping in the cool night air.
He slung one of the cut straps of my backpack over his shoulder, and Adam hooked the opposite thumb into his sword belt. “I’d rather we have this conversation in private. My wife is a gentle soul, stronger than she lets on, but explaining her condition to outsiders has always made her feel awkward. You understand, I hope.”
Did I upset her?
Cringing at my social clumsiness, I kicked at a stray blade of grass in our path. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to pry. You guys just seemed so happy about the baby, I figured it was okay.”
We reached the church steps, and I climbed the sandstone blocks alongside Adam, my ears perking up at the faint chorus of singing from inside the church doors.
“Please, Hannah, you’ve done nothing wrong. Besides, I didn’t mean Eve’s pregnancy.” Adam stopped by the light-stained wooden doors and faced me. “Tell me, how long have you been in Barron County?”
“Around a week.” I tried to count the days in my head, and a horrible realization struck me.
My birthday. It was in two days. I’d promised Dad I’d be home, he’d been looking forward to this for weeks on end. Just the thought of them, waiting by the phone for me to call sent shards of pain through my soul. I’d left my phone in Matt’s car the night we’d come here and hadn’t heard from the outside world since. Service at New Wilderness dropped off in sporadic bursts, and Dr. O’Brian hadn’t been able to reach anyone with her few preserved electronics.
I should have called Mom and Dad when I had the chance, instead of Matt and Carla.
“Jamie tells me that you came with two friends?” Adam’s face formed into a sympathetic grimace, and it seemed he’d already been told my unfortunate story.
“Yeah. But they’re not my friends anymore.” I dug the toe of my shoe into a dimple in the stone porch and tried not to let my internal agony show. “Not like Jamie and Chris.”
Silence reigned between us for a moment, wind swished in the nearby distant trees, and a few of the Bone-Faced Whitetail bugled from their corral several houses away.
“I came all the way from Iowa, alone.” Adam gazed out over the happy party in the church yard, both eyes on his wife as she led Lazarus back to his pen. “My first wife, Stacy, died last year, and I had no other place that needed me. When I first arrived, there was nothing here save for this church, and a little wooden garden shed in the backyard. To make matters worse, no one even came to my first Sunday service.”
Puzzled, I looked out at the houses that ringed the chapel, the expanse of fields beyond the wall. “So, what happened?”
“The Lost Ones, the creatures you call ‘Puppets’, showed up.” He rubbed the pommel of his sword with one thumb, and Adam’s face bore a wistful expression. “You know, at first I thought they were demons from Hell. They were everywhere, screaming like banshees, and they tore up my car so I couldn’t leave.”
A snippet of anxiety tightened in my chest at the thought of being cornered out here all by myself, with hordes of Puppets outside my window, and I looked up from my shoes. “What did you do?”
Adam let slide a pained, sad smile, and shook his head at himself, like an old man reliving his rash youth. “I was frightened and didn’t know any better, so I shot at whatever ones came close. Thankfully, I didn’t have much ammunition, or I would have continued in that way. But if we Stirling men are good at anything, it’s being stubborn, and so one day I decided to trap one of the creatures in my shed to study it.”
His eyes gleamed, and Adam gestured to the willowy form of Eve, who had returned to the feast and sat chatting with Jamie over the scraps of dinner. “And just like that, God brought Eve into my life.”
Wait . . . what?
My jaw dropped, and I shuddered at a sudden chill, a jumble of thoughts falling into place in my head. The painted faces on their armor. The uniform, unnatural hair and eye color. The lack of old people, or little ones. Eve’s words about being the first of ‘her kind’ to get pregnant. Suddenly, it all made sense in a bizarre upending of everything I’d come to accept as normal for this place.
“She’s . . .” I stuttered, my skin clammy, goosebumps over my arms. “She’s a Puppet?”
That same tender affection flooded Adam’s features once more, and he drank in the sight of his wife like water in a desert. “She was, yes. By the grace of God, now she’s flesh and blood, just like you and I. There’s a reason the Lost Ones only come out at night. Sunlight changes them, resets their memories, and makes them human. It’s a painful, dangerous process, and one out of every four won’t survive it, but those that do are welcomed into our family, to do the work of our Lord.”
“Which is?” I hugged my arms around myself again, not so cold as unnerved, this blissful sanctuary not at all what I’d first thought it to be.
“Redemption.” He pushed through the double doors, and I slipped through after him, into an overpowering aura of light and sound.
My parents had never been particularly religious, and so I’d only ever been inside a church once or twice in my life, mostly for weddings. They’d always struck me as one of three extremes; huge, elegant cathedrals filled with people who were only there for familial ties, little bland chapels with a huddle of elderly people who turned their nose up at my blue jeans in disapproval, or blocky modern mega-churches that attempted to turn every service into a concert, with throngs of people who barely knew each other. This had somewhat soured my view on organized religion, as I’d never felt like I belonged in any of those places, and my friendship with the rabidly atheistic Carla cemented those feelings.
But somehow, as the double doors of the church in Ark River glided shut behind me, I found myself mesmerized with a sensation of awe that I couldn’t place.
Candles lit up the room with a pulsating glow that filled every corner, shadows a foreign concept among the exposed wooden ceiling beams and stained-glass windows. Gorgeous scenes adorned each window, of a man and woman in a garden, of animals and sea creatures frolicking in the sunshine, and even a few that looked like dragons soaring in the sky. Similar carvings were scrawled over the long oaken benches that lined the walls, and the center of the floor thronged with row after row of people, interspersed among the bolt holes in the floor where the pews had originally been. They sat on ornate rugs, two to a section, one man and one woman each on their knees side by side. Their weapons lay sheathed in neat rows by their sides, and the worshipers sang with their eyes closed, each couple holding hands. I couldn’t understand a word of their chorus, but it floated in a lofty chant that reminded me of the old medieval movies I’d watched in history class, an almost otherworldly rhythm that needed no guitar band or subwoofers to make its presence felt. No one seemed reluctant to be here, and every face beamed with a calm that I couldn’t help but admire, a peaceful contentedness that rivaled any family reunion I’d ever been to. At the front of the room, a single, plain wooden cross hung from the wall, all lights focused on a name etched into the grain, outlined in gold paint.
Adonai.
I remembered to breathe and couldn’t help but let my eyes be drawn to the name in gold. God had been something of a mythical figure for me, someone I referred to in jest, or thought about only when I was afraid. Discussing religion with Matt and Carla had been a sure-fire way to end up in a heated argument, and I’d never bothered to think about it otherwise. But now, standing here in this bizarre hall with the Gregorian-style mantra dancing in my ears, a small part of me dared to wonder, to think, to reach out from behind the barricade of my comfortable disbelief into a terrifying unknown.
Are you really out there?
“Faith is an interesting thing.” Adam spoke quietly in between the bars of the singers and motioned for me to sit beside him in an empty spot along the wall. “In our modern times, it seems most believe they don’t have it, which is an ironic form of faith in and of itself. We humans think we’re masters of the whole world, with our lights, planes, and skyscrapers. Yet it takes only the smallest microbe, the flick of a switch, the push of a button, and we’re right back to what we once were . . . blind, hateful creatures that kill anything we don’t understand. In that way, we’re not so different from the monsters outside our walls. Only light, God’s light, can redeem us, and save us from ourselves.”
I sat beside him on the old bench and chewed my lip in a blizzard of thoughts. The face of the wounded soldier floated up into my mind’s eye, and guilt wormed its way through my heart in a nasty twist.
“I’m not sure I believe in God, to be honest.” Avoiding his gaze, I picked at a chunk of dried mud on my pantleg.
“Did you believe in monsters before you came here?” Adam reclined against the backrest of the pew with a patient expression, his hands folded in his lap.
“Well . . . no.” My face seethed with heat. “But even if he is real, I don’t think he’d want to talk to someone like me. I’m not a good person.”
“No one is.” Adam pointed at the cross. “That’s kind of the point.”
Tears rose in my eyes, and I fought them with hard blinks. I’d learned not to share things with people over the years, and I’d only ever been this vulnerable with Jamie once. But something about these people, with their heartfelt smiles and easy mannerisms chipped away at my internal walls. They all seemed so . . . genuine, and try as I might, I realized that I wanted to tell the truth.
“I killed someone.” I whispered, my throat closing in a sob. “I didn’t mean to, but it just happened so fast. Now I can’t stop thinking about it, and I feel like . . . like a murderer.”
Adam leaned forward, his elbows on both knees, and observed me without a sign of judgment in his expression. “This new world we find ourselves in is just as harsh and cruel as the one we left behind, Hannah. Often that means we have to do things to survive that tear at our soul. The fact that you feel so guilty is testament that there’s still hope for you.”
“How?” I wiped at my eyes and shook my head in shame. “Every time I try to help, I end up in more trouble. I went in after that stupid box, and it turns out Chris and Jamie didn’t even need me. The only reason I survived was because of that guy in the chemical suit, and what good did it do? My birthday is supposed to be in a few days, and my parents don’t even know where I am. If God exists, then he must hate me.”
I expected a rebuke, for him to shame me, or demand my repentance. More than one of the ‘religious’ people I’d met in school had been that way, pushy, easily offended when I questioned their beliefs, and vindictive when I refused to see things their way. In this place, with its magical ambience, it wouldn’t have surprised me if my lack of faith had been met with condemnation.
Instead, Adam pulled out a red pocket handkerchief, and handed it to me with a sigh. “My ways are not your ways, my thoughts are not your thoughts.”
Blowing my nose into the soft crimson cloth, I rested my face in both hands, misery overtaking my previous joyful emotions. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Tears of his own brimmed at his eyes, and Adam stared ahead at the cross, with a sincerity in his tone that even I couldn’t doubt. “It means that God does things we don’t understand to bring us to the places we never knew we needed to go. Sometimes that means losing people we love, enduring pain, suffering through horrible, unjust things. But if we listen, if we follow his guidance, God rewards us with a life truly worth living. If God hadn’t taken Stacy from me, Eve would still be walking on all fours and eating raw flesh in the woods. He gave her a new life, incredible intelligence, and instincts beyond my own. She was the one who learned Latin from my old seminary books and taught it to everyone else. She was the one who learned how to use the native plants to protect our crops from the mutants. She was the one who tamed the deer so we could ride them.”
He turned and placed the backpack in my lap and gave me a comforting pat on my shoulder. “God brought you here for a reason, Hannah Brun. He led you to this box, sent that man in the chemical suit to rescue you, and let us find you before the pirates did. He doesn’t hate you. He’s giving you a chance to start over.”
I wanted to argue, to snap at him, to tell him I didn’t believe in any of it, but the truth was, I didn’t know what to think. My mind was a wreck, my heart a shredded mass of unknown fear, and more than anything, I just wanted someone to help me make sense of it all.
A week. My world was normal, sane, and reasonable a week ago.
Clutching the backpack to my stomach, I sniffled, and offered him his handkerchief back. “I . . . I need to get some air. But thank you. This means a lot to me.”
Adam smiled and leaned back in his seat. “Of course. Take all the time you need, and when you’re ready, I’m sure Eve would love to draw that bath for you. I’ll be here, if you need anything.”
I strode back to the double doors of the church and looked over my shoulder one last time at the beautiful interior, with its fantastical scenes, devout congregants, and that plain wooden cross hanging at the forefront of it all. How many times had I cheated death since I’d come here? How many times had I escaped a terrible fate by sheer luck? Could it all have been a coincidence?
My eyes locked onto that name, written in the dried crossbeam of the crucifix in the same color as the eyes of the people who had once been monsters.
Adonai.
Like a clap of thunder, the silver eyes of the strange man from Collingswood slipped into my mind, and my heart flip-flopped inside my chest.
I pushed through the doors back into the night, no longer hungry, and gripped the pack with shaking hands. It had to be exhaustion, fatigue from my delusional trek out of that cursed town. One good night’s sleep, and I’d be alright again.
At least, I hoped so.