~8~

Day 479

The dream plagued me again, in the earliest hours of the dawn. The Garden, the black-eyed Snake, then the Abyss. Only this time, Faith was absent. Instead, John was waiting for me, lying on his side, staring at a knife he was holding point down on the unseen floor. He looked...sad. Lost. When I approached, he raised his eyes, but there was no change to his expression.

"Where am I, brother?" he asked softly.

I wanted to tell him he was with God, not trapped in a void in my head. But my tongue was stone. His eyes left mine, falling back to the knife. I saw in the reflection on the blade a figure standing behind me and turned. There again was the deputy, holding my daughter.

Give her to me, I wanted to say. Give me my little girl. But Isaac kept her well away, staring at me with the Snake's black eyes, condemning, accusing.

She's mine! Give her to me! I lunged but he remained the same distance away. The Snake was yet taking from me. Taking, always taking, to hurt me if nothing else...

I woke up again without achieving my goal. Of holding my child one last time. Isaac was snoring lightly, deep in untroubled sleep, as if he deserved it. I rose to write my experience down, for I still feel it must be of some importance. God must be trying to tell me something. Or my heart is.

Isaac is the Snake in the Garden, I've always known that. Then why does the serpent come across as evil in my dream? Isaac is not evil. Hot-blooded, violent, misguided and delusional, for certain, but no one is pure evil. People are slaves to their natures, and the deputy is no exception. He's never struck me as someone who would keep a parent from their flesh and blood, however. Is it my fault? Do I have such a bleak outlook of the man who murdered my family that I see him as nothing but a pitiless monster who deserves no mercy? I did things to hurt him, I know this. I am the scourge, the salt in the wound. In trying to save him I caused him pain and he reacted as many are prone to. He, and so many others took to the guidance of the animal within rather than the rational soul God placed in all of us. Only through pain is there salvation and, ultimately, paradise. But they cowered from the suffering, choosing to remain in the dark. We pulled many from it, but not all came to see the light.

Was that what I saw in my dream? Was the Abyss the darkness the sinners take refuge in? Where Isaac dwells in defiance to God's love? If ever I try to talk to him of such things, he would ignore me, annoyed, but not arrogant as one might think of an atheist. I want to know how it is he lives without God. What it's like. I've been with Him for as long as I can remember and the thought His absence is so alien an idea...

We will talk one day. He will open up to me and I will find that missing piece in him and fix it. People lose their way for reasons of all natures – loss, science, false deities and misguided reasoning – but that is why I am here. To help the lost, the blind. The wretched. And one day, every and all will come to see who is right.

Didn't know how long I slept, only that I felt refreshed for the first time in eons when I opened my eyes. I was in my usual spot, on the floor at the foot of the bed, cuffed by one hand. Joseph was sitting cross-legged against the far wall, pen scribbling frantically across paper. He was gaunt in the lamp light. No doubt I looked the same.

I had to piss, but didn't want to disturb him, for some damn reason. He looked like he was on a roll. Besides I was comfortable, and so remained still and silent, watching him lazily.

After several minutes, his eyes flicked up, perhaps unconsciously, for he had to double-take. He set the pen down.

"Better?"

I nodded.

"Don't get used to it. You must learn to find peace on your own."

I said nothing, sitting up. Whatever he gave me didn't seem to have any lasting effects, but he didn't need to know that...

Out came the handgun, and then the key. He tossed the latter to me and I unlocked the cuff before tossing it back. I got up, slowly, stiff but over-exaggerating it, taking much longer than normal.

It was time to engage Operation Wounded Bird.

Hands on the cool bars of the footboard, I kept my back to him. I feigned dizziness as I turned around, my head ducked as though to conceal it.

"Are you alright?"

I waved the question aside and released the bed, making for the door. Joseph did not offer support, clearly wary, circling around behind me as I exited the room.

Now. Think drunk.

I walked straight at first, but then I staggered into the shelves, stunned with fake vertigo. I pushed away impatiently. I was a soldier, and I would fight through discomfort.

"Isaac?"

I grunted and kept walking. At the threshold to the kitchen area, I paused and leaned against the doorway, breathing heavier than necessary. Pressing my thumb and index finger to my eyes I stumbled on.

"You are not well," said Joseph. "Sit down—"

Another grunt, and I used the deep freeze and fridge to help me reach the back room. I pushed the bathroom door open and fell against the sink, letting the door ease closed behind me. The weariness wasn't all for show – I felt like a baby bird all the time now, weakened by hunger.

I did my business, flushed, then washed my hands. They were cold, so I let them thaw under the warm water for a minute. There was a tap on the door.

Ocupado, I thought. And then I accidentally on purpose fell into the shower.

It hurt, but it also worked. Joseph burst in, and I watched through my eyelashes as he stepped over my legs, crouching between me and the toilet, reaching for my neck.

I let him feel my pulse, fast and strong, for a second. And then I set my hand against the side of his head and slammed it into the crapper. I was weak, but so was Joseph, and he slumped on top of me with a grunt, stunned. I seized the 1911 and squirmed out from under him. Yanking the door open, I stepped into the back room, wondering how I could trap him long enough to escape.

Killing him never even crossed my mind. In the kitchen, I ripped everything out of the fridge, including the shelves, and pried, pushed, and pulled it away from the wall. It took everything I had and more to move it into the doorway to the back room. The fridge wouldn't fit through, so I turned my attention to the deep freezer. It had wheels but I gutted it too, and then pulled it away from its spot against the wall. With the last of my strength I lifted the front so that it rolled and crashed down on its back, right up against the fridge. No way Joseph was pushing through all that in a hurry.

I fell to my knees, muscles screaming, head light. I could feel my heartbeat in my throat. I hadn't felt this horrible since my first day at recruitment camp.

But the drill master had always managed to dig up some stash of energy in the fresh-bloods. According to him, until your heart exploded you always had the energy to get shit done.

Come on, you lazy buttfucker. Get moving!

I got to my feet. Then, it was déjà vu. There was the dufflebag on the couch. I seized it and began filling it with the discarded contents of the fridge – opened cans, thawing fruit, packets of cheese – but left the rest of the space for freeze-dried meals, bottled water and vitamins. I grabbed knives, soap, matches, a flashlight and batteries, and was just trying to zip the bag closed when I heard the bang of the bathroom door hitting the wall.

"Isaac!"

Taut as a bow, I fled the kitchen. In my dream I'd gone to the infirmary. Wouldn't make that mistake twice. I turned to the lockers in the hall and tore them open, pulling on extra pants, shirts, a jacket and gloves, covering my head and face with scarves and yanking on boots slightly too big. In the kitchen, I heard the fridge and freezer screech an inch across the floor.

"Isaac! Don't do this!"

I heard a grunt of effort, but nothing else. He wasn't strong enough to push free!

"God will not let you leave. Isaac! Isaac!"

I was gone. Bag in one hand, gun in the other, I ran past the generator, furnace, and chemical showers, leaping up the stairs with the ease of a buck. The hatch was locked but then it wasn't and I was out.

And I saw the ruin the world had become.

Black pillars stabbed up from the dunes of ash and snow. The fires had gone out because there was no green left to burn, no life left to consume. The sky curdled with dark, angry clouds, growling at the desolate land below. The lake was lustreless, heaving in a wind that bit through my clothes. Even with the scarf across my face I could taste not death, but the absence of life.

Numb, I stumbled north until my boots were an inch from the crystallized shore. The horizon was iron grey, the mountains like black, rotten molars. I was standing on another planet. How the fuck was I going to find another bunker when I couldn't even recognize these surroundings? I turned my back on the shore. South. Just start heading south, get away from him...

I had not gone twenty feet when the screech of metal and a soft whump pulled my gaze around. A gust of wind blew up a dust devil. And there was Joseph, rising like a fucking phoenix from the ashes, eyes as dark as coal.

Well, shit.

I was shaking, and so did the 1911 as I aimed it at his head.

'You got this, rook,' said Whitehorse.

'Be strong,' said Pratt.

My grip steadied. Joseph raised his hands, stepping forward, but his face did not reflect the calm, compassionate temperament he always portrayed. He was pissed. Ash puffed around his feet as he advanced, unafraid.

"Come back to me, Deputy," he said over the howling wind. "You go, you die."

I thought about taking a warning shot, but what if there was only one bullet? If I shoot, it would be to kill.

Where the fuck did he even come from?

"Our fates are intertwined, my son. God has willed it. Look at what happened when you disobeyed Him before!" Joseph spread his arms, gesturing at the desolation around us. "We were not meant to see this. Come to me. I can keep you safe."

"Get away from me!" The first words I'd spoken in weeks. They were razors in my throat.

He'd managed to close the distance between us by half. I stepped back and stumbled over a branch buried in ash.

Gone was the anger in Joseph's face. "Isaac. We can do this, together. There is no future out here, not yet. But there will be, I promise you. Return with me to the bunker."

"N-no." I shook my head, chin trembling, jabbing the gun towards him. "I'm not—I'm not going back. I'm not going back there!"

"You're scared. I'm scared too, Deputy. I feel lost, and lonely, because...because I'm failing with you." Joseph was almost at arm's length. Ash stuck to the blood on the side of his head. "I see the hatred, the disgust in your eyes when you look at me."

"Then ask your God for help," I mocked, sneer hidden behind the scarves but audible in my voice.

"I have," said Joseph. "But He has already given me the path. He has given me you."

I pressed the gun barrel to his forehead. "S-stay back."

"Isaac." He put his hand on it, and without force, began to lower it, so it pointed at his chin, his chest, his stomach...

I couldn't fire. Something had paralyzed my fingers.

"Not every problem can be solved with a bullet," he whispered, looking me in the eye. I was a mouse, transfixed by the adder's stare, and he took the gun from my limp grasp.

"Come, Isaac. Let us return. We will eat, we will rest, and we will talk." He put a hand on my shoulder, pulling me forward and turning until we were side by side. The eye contact broke as I stumbled over what I thought was another branch and I looked down. It was a bone. A human bone.

A rushing in my ears, and I turned on Joseph. Fucking turned on him. He threw me off but I went at him again, one hand going for the gun, the other grasping his neck—

Bang!

I stopped cold. Joseph's shock mirrored my own. I had not meant to shoot him. I had not meant to...to...

I looked down. Pulled open the jacket. On the grey hoodie beneath, a red rose bloomed, spreading wider and wider, sapping the strength from my legs. I swayed. Looked back up at Joseph. As my vision darkened, he reached for me, but I was already falling...

Day 487

The strength of this man astounds me. I should be writing this in blood, for it drenches my hands – I had nearly destroyed the only path God left before me, nearly took a man's life with a crude weapon. But the deputy keeps the way open, keeps it lit, every time he opens his eyes.

The shock would have killed a lesser man moments after receiving the wound. But he held on to life long enough for me to bring him back into the bunker, leaving a trail of blood in our wake. I had staunched the bleeding the best I could but he was going to need the help of the divine to pull through. It tortured me to have to first strip us of our contaminated clothes and dispose of them before moving further into the bunker. He had been bundled up, so the radiation would not have affected him the short time we were out there. After I cared for him, I showered vigorously, but admit I succumbed to the nausea some hours later and was forced to look after myself for a while. I also managed to get some kind of iodine compound pill down the deputy's throat, then take one myself, although I am unsure if it helped either of us.

The radiation exposure dealt with, I then had a more pressing matter to attend to. The bullet had gone straight through Isaac. It had missed his spine and stomach, and I was able to suture both entrance and exit wounds while he was unconscious. But he was so pale, shivering violently. He was in shock. I knew I had to resort to drastic measures to ensure the success of God's task for me.

I loathed to do it. I only had one vial of Bliss oil left, enough to keep the deputy's heart beating while his body repaired itself, God willing. But after this, he will have to purge the Bliss from his system again, and the first time had nearly killed him.

But I did it. I injected a compound of Bliss, dried lupine pedals and prickly lettuce stems directly into the wound and allowed the miracle flower's essence to do its work. Its effects had been instantaneous. Isaac's breathing eased and strengthened. Death throes calmed and he even opened his eyes.

That had been a week ago. Since then he became conscious a few times, but the pain in his face was always too much to bear and I would give him a dose of pure Bliss. Just a few drops, and he would dip below awareness again, back to a pliant stupor.

God is giving me a second chance. Or, perhaps, this had been His plan the whole time – He knew Isaac would make an escape, and so the deputy imprisoned me in the one area of the bunker I could escape from, given I had the strength – the emergency escape hatch, in the back room between the kitchen and bathroom. Isaac must have forgotten it was there. Had not thought to look up before making a cage with the fridge as the door. I was able to pull the hatch open and climb the ladder to the surface, just in time to stop the deputy from making his escape through the ashes.

And then the lamb soothed the lion: I'd approached Isaac as he readied to kill me, and he allowed me to take the gun from him. It was beautiful. Exhilarating. Last year he would have shot me on sight, but the fight had finally gone out of him...for a few moments.

I don't know what set him off. I was guiding him back to our sanctuary when he suddenly snapped, going for the gun. I don't know how it happened, it just fired, and then he was looking at me, and I saw what he must have seen when he took the lives of my kin. Pain. Fear. And worst of all, resignation. I tried to catch him but he fell. Didn't even try to stop himself. It was God, putting me before the deputy again.

So delicate, was life. It took astronomical amounts of energy for a mother to bring it into the world, but the world need only to snap its fingers to take that life away. I had stared down at the deputy, the man who brought the Collapse, who butchered my flock and family, watching his cursed life leech away into the ashes. And I enjoyed it.

God forgive me, I enjoyed it.

I cannot avoid it anymore. I've known since the moment I chose to pull Isaac out of the fiery wreck, leaving his friends to burn with the old world. I could have left him there. It would have been painless, and his soul would have been judged a final time by God. But I wanted him. I wanted him. I didn't allow myself to think this, but the truth has always been there – I want the man who murdered my kin to suffer, not by the hand of the devil, but mine.

I've told myself, over and over, that I'm cleansing his soul. Saving him. I keep him chained to my bed like a dog for I am now his master. And his is a spirit of violence; I can't trust him not to kill me at the first opportunity. He has to learn, to earn my trust. He didn't. He hasn't. He keeps resisting, and I relish it. Even now I want the excuse to torment him. I savour watching him squirm and seeing his defiance gradually morph into apprehension when I enter the room. When he'd begun to shy away from me, I'd thought of my little brother. Isaac would have been cowed a lot sooner if subjected to John's ministrations. But I want the deputy's body whole. I want a challenge – I want his mind.

The body needs the mind to function and the mind needs the body to act. It is the deputy's mind, his spirit and will, that brought down my family. It is the monster I must slay. Torturing his body would have only deepened the divide between us, not to mention put his life at risk. I do not underfeed him to hurt him – his suffering is a fortunate byproduct – and the one time I struck him, he needed to be put in his place. No. I know how to break a spirit without breaking the body. Isaac is just a particularly difficult specimen.

I see the monster in myself, now. I hesitate to even write it, for I know I will be sharing my works when the time comes. But I must be honest, with myself, with you, faithful reader. I am not perfect. I know sin, quite deeply. I'd thought I had it under control, but having the deputy at my mercy woke the primeval beast that resides in all of us, although mine is cut from a different cloth. I show him kindness when a normal man would have beaten him. When he breathes fire I soothe his burns. It confuses him. He expects hell but I grant him forgiveness, a chance to redeem himself. But I do this not to help him. I do this because I think it damages him more than anything else could. And when he finally believes me, when he finally accepts what he did, he will punish himself far more than I or anyone else can.

I am observing him as I write this. He lies in the infirmary, staring sightlessly at the ceiling. I spent the last hour talking to him. I don't know if he heard me, but I thought I saw his hands twitch at certain points, like when I mentioned his friends and how he had been the ruin of them all. I told him, as I told him before, that I was the only one who could have saved them from the Fire.

And I would have. They were my children, as all are my children. But now I have only one, and I nearly lost him two different ways.

The thought of him almost escaping angers me. Wrath rode strong within me that day, when I rose from the emergency escape hatch and stopped Isaac. But I culled the fiery sin and, with God's help, brought him back.

Why had Wrath affected me so? Even as my pen glides across the paper my thoughts are changing. It wasn't the fact that he was escaping what angered me. It was that, if he had succeeded, I would have been alone.

Isaac knows my game. When he figured it out, I do not know. But after he stopped talking to me again all those weeks ago, the emptiness that had spawned in my heart began to grow. And he knows it. He recognized the longing in my eyes and shut himself off, and there is nothing I can do. I hate him for it. Not even God's love can fill the yawning gap in my soul, torn when Isaac killed my family, festered when the simple comfort of other human presences was taken away. My control over him was slipping.

And then he gave it back to me.

This must be what God had intended. Isaac is dependant on me again. The unpleasantness of helping him with bodily functions aside, he is back under my hand, and he is a much smaller man than he used to be. It's only a matter of time, now.

I think I will talk to him a while longer. He is a much better listener now that he is in the Bliss.

"Maybe redemption has stories to tell. Maybe forgiveness is right where you fell. Where can you run to escape from yourself? Where you gonna go? Where you gonna go? Salvation is here."

Dare You To Move, Switchfoot