Chapter Thirteen
“I killed a man today, Evelyn. Met him downtown. Made some small talk. I thought it was all good, but then he drew a gun, and I just… reacted.
“There ain’t nobody out there to save us. We got to do it ourselves.”
–Marquise Jones, “Unnamed”. 3 Months After.
* * *
“How the hell did you let this happen!?” Evelyn snapped.
“Pardon me,” Leah said, blasé as ever, “but it’s hard to run an investigation when all I have is the color of a cloak. You should’ve given me more to work with.”
Easy for you to say, Evelyn thought. Leah could march worldwide without so much as an N95 to keep her safe. It hadn’t been on Evelyn or Liam to stand around and ask questions to the monsters who’d attacked them.
“So what’s the deal then?” Evelyn asked, her mind calculating the possibilities. “How many have they got? What are their weapons? Are we dealing with long barrels? Tanks? Spears and swords? Did they nestle in just the one spot, or have they started patrols in the area?”
“Let her speak, love,” Liam said with a placating wave. “Are you absolutely sure that they want us, Leah?”
“Those were their exact words,” she said. “Not just you either. They’re after your entire family… Especially your kid.”
“Why her?”
“Beats me. Ezekiel wouldn’t say, only that this ‘Father Abraham’ guy wanted to talk about her.”
Evelyn’s cheeks reddened. “Well, it sounds like you found our enemy, and they’re well within range of the Styx. Just have Charon set up some mortars and be done with it.”
She sighed. “Oh, how I really, really wish that it was that fucking simple. After making contact with the Beholders, you can bet your ass that I put out contracts like nobody’s business to collect as much intel as possible before coming over to you. This isn’t anywhere near as straightforward as the eighty guys we thought.
“Their leader is with the main Beholder force. They have roughly twenty-five hundred bodies in their ranks. The vast majority wear white cloaks, which we have determined as their version of workers. However, many keep weapons on hand, so it would be no surprise if their entire congregation would spring into an attack if threatened. That they’ve made it this way, both on foot and this quickly, shows how well-equipped and coordinated they are.
“The black cloaks are the Inquisitors you faced directly, and there aren’t many in their ranks. From what we’ve uncovered, they seem to work like Hunters, rushing out to kill hollows… Or ‘sinners,’ as they call them. I caught part of their training bouts myself, and there’s no denying the skill.
“Then you have the Friars. They behave like bosses, officers, or middling leaders for their little group. While their orders tend to be minimal, everyone flocks to them like they’re gods. We think it’s because they’re in charge of reading the Beholder’s main book to their friends, if not outright giving them away. They can be identified with brown cloaks.”
Evelyn’s heart skipped a beat with that last bit. She glanced to the couch, where her Bible still sat, gifted to her by Nathaniel. Had she seriously been chatting with one of them this whole time!?
Leah crossed her arms. “It’s this last group that’s made this shit so delicate. Some of the Friars apparently entered Pandemonium a couple months back. I never paid them any mind because they had no power whatsoever. They’ve just been walking around and handing out this book to anyone who will listen. In a city like this, you can imagine our monumentally stupid this is.”
“You could no doubt make many friends that way, though,” Liam deduced, staring at Evelyn as he made the point.
She bit her tongue. There was no denying that she’d walked right into this grift. But she couldn’t just announce that to Leah. Not after defying her explicit orders to stay locked up.
“Exactly,” Leah continued, not catching the looks either exchanged. “Those Friars have become so popular that a few workers here and there have surrendered their worldly possessions to become Beholders like them, and they aren’t alone. As we speak, there’s a guy standing a block away from here, preaching endlessly to a crowd that’s been growing larger by the day.”
“And you can’t just go down there and lock him up without cause,” Liam said.
“I might do it anyway. Their group has even come up with a fun little name for me. ‘The Whore of Babylon.’” She scoffed. “But I have to think about how exactly I’ll shut this shit down. Hell, I’m not even sure who to trust right now. It’s more than a few workers who are listening to his crap. Some of our guards have come down, and even a Hunter or two have been spotted there. Add in the fucking Beholder army that’s set up shop next to the cliffs not far from here, along with the fact that they somehow know you made it to the city and our military capabilities, and I can’t expect it to be as easy as launching a missile and calling it a day. We need to be strategic about handling this, or we’re only putting out one fire by lighting another bigger, more uncontrollable one.”
“What’s the plan then?” Evelyn asked. “Leaving is still not an option. Not when they know about Cheyenne.”
Leah stared deep. “First order of business is dealing with Father Abraham. He wants to speak to me directly, so I’ll listen to whatever he says to buy more time. Then it’s off to get some allies and handle this the old-fashioned way.”
“What do you mean?”
She stroked her scarf. “Way I figure it, if the hammer won’t work, it’s time for a scalpel. I gather a good group of mercs that haven’t dealt with these Beholders yet, give them the best armament this city has to offer and roll through their camp before they see us coming. Once Abraham and his Friars are out of the way, the rest of the external threat becomes minimal. At the end of the day, they’re still mostly workers with sticks and bows.”
Liam frowned. “But if some of your Hunters have become sympathetic to this Enclave, then trusting them might be a problem.”
“Yeah, but that’s Pandemonium’s Hunters,” Leah pointed out. “They’re not the only ones in the world.”
Evelyn weighed the thought. “You’re going to El Dorado, aren’t you?”
She nodded.
Liam raised an eyebrow. “Where?”
“This city’s got outposts all over,” Evelyn explained. “Some of them are more developed than others. Think of El Dorado as if it’s ‘Pandemonium Junior.’ It’s near Mexico City, several thousand miles away, but if you’ve got trucks and guns, you could be there and back in less than a week, with a hundred more soldiers to boot.”
Leah’s cheeks contorted into a grin below her scarf. “I see you’re not completely hopeless, Evelyn. Mother sure did a good job of teaching you our ways.”
She smirked back. “Trust me, I know everything about your kind.”
“So, what do you need from us?” Liam interjected.
“Same as before,” Leah said. “Lay low, keep quiet, and call Chantelle if you need anything else. I’ll be busy while dealing with this, and the last thing I need is more people to ask questions about you. Easy enough?”
Evelyn swallowed the lump in her throat and nodded. It wouldn’t be as straightforward as sitting here, not after engaging a Beholder directly. But if she voiced that thought out loud, their situation would get more sticky.
“Good,” Leah said after the pause lingered. She made her leave.
Evelyn and Liam turned their attention to the Bible on the couch. Right there, as if it had eyes of its own, watching their every move.
“Are you going to be the one to tell her, or should I?” Liam asked.
She grunted. “Leah doesn’t need to know about this.”
“She doesn’t need to know that one of the people chasing us gave you their Bible?”
“Yes. That. What do you think she’ll do if she knows I’ve been snooping around without her permission?”
“I think that she will be perfectly accepting of your concerns.”
Evelyn shook her head. As much as Liam liked to pretend they were all in this together, she knew Leah better than him. While they’d only ever had one brief encounter before her exodus to Cheyenne, Evelyn had witnessed her cruelty through the looking glass of Mother’s daily updates as humanity got exterminated.
Leah was what her people thought of her: the ultimate Hunter. In a world where the dead slaughtered the living to keep themselves going, she had risen to become the very epitome of what Evelyn had learned to fear long ago. Whatever “growth” Liam thought she might have experienced, Leah was only ever a couple weeks away from forgetting it completely, once again destined to become the brutal monster who cared for nothing other than butchering her enemies for sustenance.
Coming to Pandemonium had only happened out of necessity, and leaning on Leah’s resources was an extension to this end. But could Evelyn actually put faith in her to see the day through? Could she become beholden to anyone now that Mother was gone?
The answer was obvious. A clear, flat no. Their salvation could not be left to chance.
“I’m going for another run,” Evelyn decided.
“Did you not hear what she said?” Liam asked. “If these Beholders are in the city, why would you want to go out there?”
“Isn’t it obvious? Because they are in the city. Let’s face it, honey. Leah’s dropped the ball in letting things escalate to this point.”
“So you’re going to fight twenty-five hundred rezzers on your own?”
“No, I’m only going to get information. Same as before. Now that we know there’s a connection between Nathaniel and the rest of the Beholders, I can tug on that rope to find out more.”
For a moment, Liam said nothing, no doubt considering the options at play. Then he walked over to the couch and picked up the Bible.
“Are you sure that is all you want to learn?”
She scoffed. “Don’t start. This has nothing to do with that.”
“All I’m saying is that you’ve been fixating on this book ever since you got this damned thing.”
Her cheeks reddened. “I know what I’m doing.”
Of course, Liam wouldn’t understand. His life had been devoid of spirituality, and he cared for nothing more than the birds and the trees. To him, life was no more than a stroll around the Earth, day in and out, until it eventually killed him.
Not for Evelyn, though. She’d always known that something more lay beyond this fragile, short existence. Mother might’ve insisted otherwise, and Liam couldn’t give a shit, but now that Evelyn had been connecting with God again, she could see how wrong they’d both been. The fact that He’d seen the Hollowing coming proved His words were real beyond a doubt.
She mattered. Her husband mattered. Their child mattered. In God’s eyes, their lives all bore meaning.
That’s what made this so vile. The Beholders were using His words to find Evelyn and her family. The very wisdom that had gotten her through a difficult childhood with her single father was now being utilized to snuff her out. As the last surviving mother in this world too. No, she couldn’t allow these monsters to continue.
Evelyn would fix this, even if alone.
* * *
Nathaniel’s crowd had only grown more prominent with time.
What had once been a barren, dark street now exploded with activity. Workers and guards alike floated around themselves, each struggling to catch a glimpse of Nathaniel as he continued to speak. Evelyn kept to the rear, once again hidden under her rezzer costume. Close enough to not stand out but still far enough away to keep her scent from being picked up. There was only so much artificial Hollowing spray to spare, and if Leah had half a Rez, she would’ve installed other plants into this crowd by now.
The sermon went on, with Nathaniel reciting verses on greed. Evelyn kept her ears on nearby onlookers, however. Without formal support, only gossip could be gained out here. But gossip was to intelligence as pieces were to puzzles. The more available, the more complete the picture became.
Two workers caught her eye, whispering among themselves. One stood tall and lanky, with an eyepatch neighboring a diluted, magenta eye, and a Mark across his cheeks. The other was shorter, with dark hair falling over a ragged coat and red eyes more filled. Drool clung to his blackened lips where they weren’t parched.
Evelyn shifted to them, facing away to not rouse suspicion.
“I still think th-this is b-b-bullshit,” the lanky one stuttered. “No way this g-guy’s been standing here so l-long, Garth.”
Garth wiped some drool away. “It’s true, Skiff. I seens h-him myself.”
“You haven’t b-b-been here f-for two months straight.”
“No, but Jessie and Beetle h-h-have on and offs, and theys said he n-never left. Same w-with the other one. Brother Uriel.”
Skiff spat. “Two m-months without meat, yet n-no hollowing? Just r-reading a book? No w-w-way.”
Evelyn silently agreed. That was impossible.
Garth grinned, with more drool forming. “I’m t-telling you’s. It’s the truth! Not j-just thems two. There’s a whole b-b-bunch past the Styx. Thousands! Alls they d-do is read and drink s-some milk. We’ve b-b-been lied to about hollowing.”
“Keep your v-v-voice down!” he hissed.
The two glanced side to side. Evelyn took another few paces closer, staying in their blind spot.
Garth wiped saliva away, though more was quick behind. “The Council is l-l-lyin’. That’s how it w-works, man. Get us eatin’ m-m-meat. Fill our Rez with sinf-ful thoughts. Next thing w-we know, we depend on them.
“But the Beh-h-holders are different. Theys n-need the Holy Word and n-nothing else! The Lord protects th-their Rez. Theys said s-s-so!”
Skiff shook his head. “No brains, just milk… I d-don’t believe it.”
“Why do they b-ban the Holy Word then? And how else would h-he be able to stay h-h-here so long?”
How, indeed? Evelyn considered. The more she thought about it, the more she realized that Nathaniel had practically become a staple of this block. Ever since they’d first arrived, he’d been standing on this corner outside the Lodge, and she hadn’t seen him anywhere else. Was he getting deliveries? Sneaking off when no one was watching? Keeping some brains hidden in that box? Even a couple pounds of lard could help sustain a Rez.
And yet, Evelyn started to consider the possibility further. Could Nathaniel keep a Rez intact off of pure faith alone? Did God still protect His children, even in undeath? It seemed fantastic on its face, but there Nathaniel stood, talking away to a crowd of workers struggling against the Hollowing, with his eyes as full and bright as the day he’d been left…
She averted her gaze. Don’t forget why you’re here, Evelyn. Whatever sleight of hand he used could be uncovered later. Important business came first.
Nathaniel’s lesson winded down as the sun reached its crest. Somewhere along the way, a distant alarm sounded. Distro time. Workers shuffled away, intent on grabbing the free cattle meat that got distributed throughout each district, with a splice of brain mixed in to help keep their reservoirs stable. Only a handful stayed behind, mouths salivated like dogs as they stood torn between the Beholder’s presence and the routine that they’d come to expect.
Evelyn maintained her distance while the others slowly filed out. It wasn’t like she needed distro meat herself. Her brain had all the time in the world to sit and wait.
Eventually, everyone else left. Nathaniel fed some commands to his new Beholder friends. The white cloaks took more copies of Bibles and scurried off separately.
Only then did Evelyn make her move.
He grinned. “Ah! Hello, Evelyn. I hope that you’re enjoying the Holy Word.”
“It’s Eva,” she corrected.
“What are you talking about?” Nathaniel asked. “We’ve spoken several times this past week.”
“I think you’re starting to hollow again, Nathaniel. I told you that my name is ‘Eva’ at least five times. Not anything else. No one has ever called me what you just said in all the years I’ve been in this city.”
He looked away. “Oh.”
That’s one problem on track to being solved. This wasn’t the first time Evelyn had slipped up and exposed herself. Back in the good old days, Mother used more efficient methods to expunge a memory from society, but those tactics weren’t exclusive to her. So long as Evelyn kept this charade going, the thought would eventually leak out of Nathaniel’s reservoir on its own.
A little gaslighting went a long way around these parts.
“I have enjoyed the Word though,” Evelyn admitted.
He beamed. “It is truly a blessing for our kind, Eva.”
“Yes. To think how much knowledge was lost when the Hollowing began.”
“The Beholding, you mean.” He smiled as she watched him. “Do not let words of folly pollute that which you see in front of your eyes. These days are not some prolonged doomsday, as many believe, but one of future salvation. As the hours of revelation draw ever closer, our souls have been saved so that we may witness the Lord’s return. To behold His greatness!”
“And how will that happen?” Evelyn asked.
“How do you think? The Lord will return to us in an uncorrupted vessel, as He did before. Then He will pour the seven bowls of judgment, and those who have sinned will be slain, while those of us with faith shall be saved.”
Revelations 16, she realized. “You’re telling me that God will return to this world as a living human to reign judgment. Not as an angel or rezzer?”
He leaned in. “Who is to say that He hasn’t come to us already? The world is vast, and we all experience so little of it.”
Keep going. You’re almost there. Evelyn swallowed the lump in her throat. The chance of Nathaniel outing her should still be nil, but there was no denying that Evelyn was walking on thin ice. She couldn’t reveal more than the bare minimum.
“Do you think I’d have some part in this?” she asked.
“You know the answer, Eva.” His gaze narrowed onto hers, and for a moment, she swore that they pierced through the non-reflective sunglasses and into her living eyes beneath. “You can feel the truth in your heart. God has chosen you for some purpose to be performed. All that remains is seeing it through.”
She trembled at his words. Something about the way Nathaniel looked at her… The frenetic certainty in his reddened eyes. It made the moment all the more unreal. As if he could read her mind.
A convoy rolled by, with Elysium guards manning the guns. Leah watched them from within. Evelyn twisted her head away before she could be identified.
Don’t forget why you’re here. “Is there anywhere else we can talk about this?” she asked. “Perhaps more private?”
“I cannot leave this spot. I am but a humble servant, sent here to show this city the power of the Lord.” His eyes twinkled. “But there are others whom I am certain would wish to see you, especially after what I’ve told them about your spirit.”
She studied him closely. “You’ve been talking about me? Why? We’ve only spoken a few times.”
“Your heart is open to the Lord’s wisdom, and your mind is so much stronger than the rest of your kindred. You mustn’t underestimate that strength, Evelyn.” He paused. “I apologize. I suppose I should have said, Eva.”
Great. They did want her, and she’d been playing along without realizing it. Surely, they wouldn’t have come all this way on a whim, but even if they did, this reveal also gave her an opening to put that rumor back under wraps. So long as she played this right and slagged more people into stupidity, they’d forget that there’d ever been an “Evelyn” in this city. Same as now.
“Where do I need to go to meet them?” she asked.
“Brother Uriel currently speaks outside Elysium, but it is the main congregation you should join. It has arrived not far beyond these walls, and our Father will soon plead with the Head Huntress to ensure that we are treated with the peace we bring. When this happens, I would request that you go and see him for yourself. We welcome all who believe in the power of the Lord, and Father Abraham would love to speak with you for himself. Of this, I am certain.”
“I’ll come back next time I’m free from work. Thank you for talking to me, Nathaniel.”
She started to make her leave.
“There is no one to thank but the Lord for choosing you, Eva,” he said, though his tone bordered somewhere between earnest and insincere when calling out her name. Evelyn kept walking, doing her best to avoid looking back.
She knew how this had to be handled. Evelyn would have to clear up this “misunderstanding” about her name, hike back home, swap clothes, and disappear into the Lodge for no one to ever find again. That was the rational choice that had been drilled into her mind over the years. There was no way out of it. Even the tiniest threat could claim her life if left unchecked, and the best path forward was neutering it completely.
And yet, another sense stirred within. Ever since she’d first been rescued by Mother, Evelyn had always wondered…
Why her? Why not anyone else? Where the rest of her race had succumbed to genocide, it was as if divinity selected her for some future purpose. Mother insisted that she’d repopulate this world again, but after a decade of waiting and a thousand unsuccessful attempts at artificial insemination, Liam showed up, as if by magic. Where Mother had failed on her own, fate intervened to give them one final chance. As if they’d been selected as a second Adam and Eve.
But even after their relationship came together, the best that Evelyn managed to produce was a single child. Her beautiful baby Leah. Oh, how she prayed that her daughter would change this world, not just for her own sake.
Four children, Evelyn remembered. Two boys and two girls. That was the plan, and not only for the benefit of humanity. By making two couples, Leah and her future sister would be able to have grandchildren with a mitigated risk of genetic defects. Were Evelyn to provide less, Leah would forever be forced to incinerate some of her children, or her children’s children, simply because the bunker failed to have enough options to spread the gene pool wide. Could she really be forced to live under those circumstances?
And yet… Leah was their only daughter. It had taken them years to have her. Evelyn was now closing in on thirty. Not much time remained in her biological clock before she’d be at risk of dying through childbirth. Would she be able to clear this threshold? Would she be able to have even one more, or was Leah all she’d produce? Not the future matriarch of the human race but the last gasp of a dying breed. Was fate truly so uncaring?
You know the answer, Nathaniel had said. You can feel it in your heart.
Obviously, she could not be naive. The Beholders didn’t come to them to hold hands and sing kumbaya. They were an existential threat, like everything else in this world. There was only one to solve them, with neither qualms nor mercy.
But still, Evelyn could shake the feeling.
Had all of this happened for a reason?
