Positive (42 page)

 

CHAPTER 121

T
he summer came. It seemed to fly by. There was never enough time to do everything I wanted to do, everything we needed to do. I was determined not to be caught short again when winter returned. To have enough food put away that we wouldn't suffer like that, ever again. So I pushed ­people. They started to grumble that maybe it was time to just relax, to enjoy the fruits of their labors.

So I announced that we would have an election. That anyone who wanted to could run against me and be the one who said when we worked and when we rested. A ­couple of ­people did throw their hats in the ring, as the saying goes. None of them got more than a handful of votes. I'd freed my ­people and brought them here. I'd kept them alive. A lot of ­people thought I'd made the right decisions. Suddenly I was officially the mayor of Hearth.

“Mayor,” I said to Kylie that night.

“They love you. You saved them. You saved us,” she said, putting her hands on my shoulders.

“Real towns have mayors,” I said. “This is a real town now.”

“You've earned this,” she said, and then she started to undress me. We found plenty of time for each other that night.

I had announced that the next day would be a day of rest, a celebration of our first election. Just about everybody slept in that morning, including me. When I did wake up, I lay in my blankets for a long time, stretching, staring at the ceiling with a big smile on my face. Kylie was up and about—­I could hear water boiling in a pot nearby—­but I let myself be lazy, just for a little while.

Eventually I figured I should get up and see what Kylie was doing. I dressed and stepped out of the office and found her making soup. “I've been reading about canning,” she said.

“What's that?”

“It's how you get canned goods, obviously,” she said, with a mocking look. “You put food in the cans, seal them up, and boil the cans. That kills any germs inside, and there's no way for new germs to get in. So the food never goes bad.”

“Really?” For all the cans I'd opened in my life, it had never occurred to me to wonder why the food inside wasn't rotten after twenty years. I'd always assumed it was just some precrisis miracle technology. This sounded too simple.

“I'm going to need cans, of course,” she told me. “We can reuse old ones, if they're clean. But we'll need to find a way to make new lids.” She shook her head. “I'm still figuring some of this out.”

I nodded though. It sounded like a worthwhile project. If we could can our own food, winter would never be a time of starvation again. “Make a list of all the things you need.”

“There might be some useful stuff in the hardware store,” she suggested.

I smiled. This was supposed to be our day of rest. But of course, the two of us could barely sit still these days, not when so much work needed to be done. I kissed her, then headed out of the municipal building and into the center of town. A big group of ­people were there, kicking a ball around a patch of grass. Having fun. I stopped to watch for a minute. It was just so good to watch my ­people enjoying themselves.

I was there when I heard an old, familiar, totally unwelcome sound. A mechanical roar, the noise that engines make. Motorcycle engines.

Everyone fell quiet. Everyone heard it. Everyone looked over toward our gates, toward where the road entered Hearth. We saw dust moving there, a pale cloud gathering as something disturbed the road surface.

Then one by one the motorcycles emerged from that cloud. Twenty of them. The riders wore leather jackets and pants painted with white bones, as if to show where their skeletons were. Their helmets had dark visors so we couldn't see their faces.

The stalkers had come.

 

CHAPTER 122

T
hey stopped immediately outside our gates, turned off their machines, and lowered their kickstands. For a while they just sat there astride their bikes, not moving. I headed over to the gates, putting myself between the stalkers and my ­people. A crowd followed behind me, pressing up close but never stepping in front of me.

Eventually one of the riders climbed off his bike. He removed his helmet, making a big show of it as he unstrapped it and lifted it away from his long blond hair, which he shook out with a flip of his chin. He looked me right in the eye and smiled.

“Hello,” he said.

I nodded back.

“I'm Costa,” he said. “Is this Hearth?”

“It is.”

Costa's smile grew broader. “Oh, good. You're not on the maps, you know. It took us forever to find this place. Do you think we could come in?”

“No,” I said. “You're not welcome here. I know who you are.”

“That's funny, since we've never met. Can I ask your name?”

“Finnegan.”

“Finnegan,” Costa said, as if he was tasting my name. Licking at it to see how it felt in his mouth. “Listen, Finnegan, you say you know who I am. I think what you meant to say was that you know
what
I am. And you're right—­I'm a stalker. A herald of the church. In this case, it was Michigan Mike who sent me. You know
that
name, I imagine.”

“I've heard it,” I admitted.

“Good! Good.” Costa looked like he'd just seen a trained seal balance a fish on the end of its nose. I half expected him to clap in approval. “Well, he asked me to come here specifically. Most of the time we stalkers just ride around where the road takes us, looking to see what we can find. But this time Michigan Mike gave us specific orders. The kind you don't disobey. So I'm going to have to come in, one way or another.” He shrugged apologetically. “Are we really at an impasse?”

I racked my brain, trying to think of what to do. The stalkers were all armed—­in fact, they were carrying the same kind of assault rifles as Colonel Parkhurst's men, as the soldiers in the medical camp in Ohio. Government issue. I knew what those rifles could do to a crowd of ­people. The stalkers could just shoot through the fence and kill half of Hearth before they ran out of bullets.

If I let them in, though . . .

I knew what they'd come for. I knew that they would try to make a deal with us. Bring us into their cult—­their church—­and thereby earn their protection. And I knew what that protection would cost.

As long as Costa kept talking, though, he wasn't shooting.

“Open the gates,” I called out. Behind me I could feel my ­people holding their collective breath. I was their mayor. This was my responsibility.

I had to do what it took to keep Hearth alive. Whatever it took.

 

CHAPTER 123

T
he stalkers wheeled their bikes inside the fence and took up strategic positions in the main square. One of them kicked the ball out of the way. There was no opportunity for me to signal Macky or call for everyone to grab their weapons—­if I did so, Costa could order his men to start firing long before any of us had our guns. “Everybody go home,” I shouted, but the ­people of Hearth were slow to respond, only a few moving toward the houses. Up on top of the gate, in the sniper nests, the sharpshooters on watch hunkered down, keeping themselves out of sight as best as possible. That was something.

Costa took my arm and steered me toward the municipal building. As we neared the doors he spoke to me in a low, soft voice that maybe he thought was soothing.

It wasn't.

“I've done this before,” Costa said. “I know what you're feeling right now.”

“You do?” I asked him.

“You need to assert your authority. You got where you are by keeping these ­people in line, and now that I'm here, your position is threatened. I'm making you look weak. Sadly, that's unavoidable. Especially when I'm really here to strengthen you.”

“By forcing my ­people to worship your god.”

Costa made a face like he'd just bit into an onion. “Ooh, we're off to such a bad start already. I don't like to argue theology on these initial visits. But let's make one thing clear: Death is not a god. It's an impersonal force of the universe. An abstraction for a philosophy, more than anything. Shall we go inside?”

We'd reached the door of the municipal building. Inside was the home I shared with Kylie. “No,” I said. “No, we'll talk out here.”

“Why not? It's a pleasant day,” Costa told me, with a thin smile. He sat down on the steps in front of the door and patted the concrete next to him. I sat down.

“My job is never easy,” he said. “I didn't take to this line of work because I wanted a cushy position. I did it because I believe it's important. I make ­people's lives better. That's my reward.”

“You make ­people sacrifice one another. Or you kill them.”

“In the name of the greater good, yes.” He leaned back on his elbows. For a long while he said nothing—­he just looked out at the crowd that still milled around the square, watching them, smiling at them. “Michigan Mike,” he said finally, “wanted me to let you know something. He's proud of you. You've achieved a great deal, all on your own. This place—­Hearth—­it's impressive. Considering what you had to work with.”

“We're proud of what we've made. What's ours.”

“The Chris­tians say that pride is a sin,” Costa told me.

“You're no Chris­tian.”

“No.” Costa laughed at the thought. “Which is why I think pride is a good thing. A man should take pride in his work. It spurs him on to do more. You could do more, Finnegan. You could do so much more. Michigan Mike wants to help you with that. You think I've come here to convert you. You're wrong.”

“Oh?” I raised an eyebrow. I was certain I knew how this was supposed to work. Like the ­people at the farmhouse, like the ­people in all the little towns we'd seen along the highway, like the ­people of Chicago—­and Indianapolis—­we were supposed to be given a choice. Convert to the skeleton cult's dark religion or become sacrifices in its name. If the cult had something else in mind for us, though—­

“No one expects you to actually become a devout little member of the church. The church doesn't ask anyone to be
faithful
. Just obedient. I think, if you spend a little time thinking about things, you'll come around to my point of view. But if you spend the rest of your life thinking we're a bunch of lunatics worshipping a false idol, well, that's your loss, not ours.”

“I'm glad to hear it,” I said.

Costa slapped me on the shoulder. “You're not going to give me an inch, are you? You're going to play this tough guy act for all it's worth. All right. Then let's talk business, not religion. Michigan Mike is now the grand master of four states. Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin. He's the most important man in the church short of Anubis himself. A man like that has a lot of problems. I'm sure you can understand that, Finnegan—­I'm sure
you
have problems of your own. When he heard about Hearth, his first thought, of course, was to crush you. Get rid of a potential threat. But he's a wise man, Mike. He thinks everything through twice. That's how he got to such an exalted state. He started to think, maybe a live ally is better than a dead enemy. Isn't that wise?”

I didn't answer. Costa didn't seem to mind.

“One of those
problems
he has is all the positives he has under his control. Now, the church is a very inclusive institution. We take anyone who comes before us with humility and an honest heart. But there are some prejudices in this world that even the church can't overcome. The ­people under our protection—­the ­people of Chicago and Milwaukee especially—­don't want positives living among them. They're too scared of what could happen. Now, Mike can't just send his positives to the camps in Ohio or California—­those are run by the government, and Washington doesn't have much use for religious folk these days. So Mike needs someplace to send his positives, someplace where he knows they'll be taken care of. Out of sight, out of mind. You, of course, offer the perfect solution to this little
problem
.”

“You want me to take all your positives.” I considered it. That was what Hearth was for, after all. To take all those unwanted ­people and give them a home. More ­people meant more hands to share the work, too. Normally, I would be happy to have our community grow.

Of course, this meant accepting hundreds—­maybe thousands—­of positives who were already devotees of the skeleton cult. ­People who worshipped death. They would outnumber us, those of us who had escaped the medical camp. In the next election, they could just take over the town.

Still. I'd built Hearth on a principle, that positives should be allowed to live decent lives.

“Saying I take them,” I asked, “what's in it for me?”

“We leave you alone. You can continue your little social experiment here in total peace.”

I turned to actually look at him for once. “Wait. You're saying that if we accept your positives, you won't bother us at all? You won't come around demanding sacrifices or tribute or anything?”

“That's what being obedient gets you, Finnegan. That's why we're the fastest-­growing church in America. You get your reward in the here and now, not in some fanciful afterlife.”

Freedom from persecution hardly seemed like a reward—­to me it felt more like a basic right. But the offer was surprisingly tempting. Admittedly, it meant making friends with butchers, with ­people capable of slaughtering entire cities. But it meant Hearth wouldn't end up like Indianapolis.

I closed my eyes. I tried to think about what he was offering. I thought about what it would cost me if I said no. I thought of whether I'd be able to sleep at night if I said yes.

The thing is, when you lead ­people—­when they count on you—­it's not your own values you have to worry about. It's not what you can live with. It's what your ­people need, what they can put up with.

“Well,” I said. “That sounds pretty good.”

Costa jumped up and lifted his hands in the air. “This is what I love! Dealing with rational ­people! You don't know what a good decision you've made.”

“All right. All right. I imagine you'll want to get going, then. No point sticking around here.”

“Sure, sure,” Costa said. “I'll get my ­people moving. Just as soon as we're finished with one last thing.”

My blood went cold.

“We're going to need a show of obedience, of course. There are rules about these things. You don't have to worship Death. You don't even have to respect the church. But you do have to play by our rules if you're going to live in our state.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked, though I was pretty sure I knew.

“Normally, when I come to a town like this, I ask for a decimation. Do you know what that word means? A lot of ­people don't. It means a sacrifice of one in ten. A tithe of your population. But that seems excessive, since we've gotten along so well. What do you say we just take ten?”

I could only stare at him. Ten of my ­people? As a sacrifice?

“There
is
a point to all this, you know. Michigan Mike needs a reason to trust you. He needs to know you're one of us. So I'm going to let you pick the ten. And I'm going to have you do the culling.”