The Acolyte (4 page)

“The alien-worshipers were rat-holed near the wharfs. I shotgun the lock, Murtag boots the door, we barrel on in. This one freak show gets in my face”—his voice rose to a fey contralto—“‘Our faith benefits mankind!’ So I drilled him. They better serve banana-mush where he’s headed because he won’t be taking solids for a while.”

The others laughed appreciatively. Most of them were ex-Brethrens, Lutherans, Southern Baptists. The hardcore faithful. Garvey himself had been a snake handler.

I sat at my desk. A portrait of Jesus Christ cradling the Lamb of God hung on the north wall. A portrait of The Prophet cradling the same Lamb adorned the south wall. Our squad room stood separate from the main station. Nine Acolytes total, divided into three-man teams presided over by Deacon Hollis. Subtle differences distinguished us from the rank and file: their badges were silver, ours gold. They wore traditional dress blues; ours were fashioned in the style of Christian missionaries: ankle-length dusters, black vests with whalebone buttons.

Eight Acolytes made roll call. No Doe.

Chief Exeter’s voice came over the intercom: “Gentlemen, everyone to the muster room. Pronto.”

Deacon Hollis exited his office. Early fifties with a hard flat face. His features didn’t quite mesh, like an apple cut in half and put back together off-kilter.

“You heard our fearless leader,” he said, fingering the beads of his wooden rosary. “Fall in line.”

I grabbed my casebook. Chief Exeter stepped through a pebbled-glass door and cut a path into the bullpen. He was lean and muscular with carved-out cheekbones and teeth like elephant toes.

We Acolytes settled into the muster room, flapping the hems of our oilskin dusters. Exeter stepped up to the dais; Hollis sat to his left.

“This is a general debriefing on the department’s ongoing investigations, prioritized according to threat,” Exeter began. “Top priority: a 254—homicide/suicide bombing—last week in Matthew’s Square, during the Up with God minstrel show. Death toll stands at seventeen. Our sketch artist has produced an updated rendering of the jihadist, provided by a survivor who recently regained consciousness.”

The bomber was the classic Islamic fanatic: cheeks sharp as busted saucers, vulpine nose, eyes dark and unfeeling as rocks. Approx. 5’10”, 145 lbs. I was amazed his frame could handle the 100-plus pounds of explosives he must have been packing.

Rage rippled through the bullpen as the composite circulated. Garvey spat on his copy and ground it under his heel.

“The CSI division has been working to determine the makeup of the bomb. Preliminary data based on blast radius indicate a fertilizer-based explosive with a manual incendiary igniter, possibly a road flare. This is based on CSI’s on-the-scene eyeball data.”

Before the Republic, CSI was an acronym for Crime Scene Investigation; it presently stood for Christian Sciences Investigation. Forensics was now outlawed as a heretical discipline: it proved the existence of dinosaurs and the like. The Christian Scientists hunted around with magnifying glasses, making deductions.

“You cannot purchase ammonium-nitrate based fertilizer without providing a Republic ID,” Exeter reminded us. “Any transaction should be recorded at the store. Every home and garden store in the city will need to be canvassed.”

A collective groan from the rank and file.

Exeter acknowledged the obvious. “Needle in a haystack, gentlemen. Lieutenants Toppenger and Paulsen are in charge of canvassing; officers are to work in two-man teams and report their findings to the stationhouse. Every man shall make this his primary focus until such time that a significant lead develops—”

Hollis cleared his throat and trained his slightly amused gaze upon Exeter. The Chief returned Hollis’s stare, adjusted the bridge of his black-framed glasses, and turned back to the men.

“—at which point it will be remanded to the Faith Crimes unit, who, as protocol dictates, will head up the investigation. But they’re going to need our assistance. Shake every tree at your disposal: every rat, every heathen lowlife. Interrogation rooms will be available all hours. Pakitown, Little Baghdad, and Kiketown scum. Rule nothing out.”

Exeter asked Hollis if he had anything to add.

“No, you’ve summed things up very well . . . chief.”

Everyone could hear the lower-case
c
in Hollis’s
chief
.

Exeter said: “Dismissed, then, gentlemen. And Prophet’s blessings.”

Plainclothesmen filed out. Exeter leaned across the dais, regarding Hollis coolly; Hollis was tipped back in his chair, just about rubbing the shine off his rosary beads. Body language told the tale. Exeter: never upstage me in front of the men again. Hollis: your tin-badge sheriff’s act doesn’t scare me.

Hollis held up his hand. “Acolyte Murtag—a word with you.”

“Exeter is a damned fool,” Hollis said once we were settled back in his office. “Canvassing the city with a charcoal sketch of a fanatic—a fanatic who’s already blown himself to bits, I don’t need to remind you—asking, ‘Did this swarthy bastard purchase bomb-making material at your shop?’”

He pulled a bottle of wine from his desk drawer and poured measures into water-spotted glasses.

“Did you know Exeter used to be an Episcopalian? I’d as soon blow my brains out as follow an Episcopalian into battle. And
slippery
: Exeter’s the only man I know who could enter a revolving door behind you and step out ahead of you. Mind him, lad. You mind him, hear?”

I sipped Hollis’s wine, so acidic it stung my gums.

“Dispatch sent word. Acolyte Doe won’t be in today.”

I looked up from my glass sharply—too sharply—and saw Hollis considering me over the rim of his own glass.

He set it down and knitted his fingers on the desktop. His hands were huge, scarred, knuckles grown together like crushed roots. A staunch Irish Catholic before conversion, Hollis had been tabbed as one of the first Acolytes. His reputation rested on a legendary story that took place at the start of his service career.

He’d been patrolling when dispatch had radioed a 533:
Failure to Conform
. In the early days, heathens shacked up in their domiciles to practise outlawed faiths or scientific disciplines. In this case, a family of Mormons were bivouacked in a farmhouse off RR #7.

Hollis’s knock was met with gunfire. He flanked the house and kicked in the back door. Father, mother, eight children: Hollis killed them all. For his actions he received the Star of Gilead, awarded for “Conspicuous Gallantry at the Risk of Life, Above and Beyond the Call of Duty, in Upholding the Ideals of the Republic.”

There had been some conflict regarding Hollis’s official account. Two of his fellow Acolytes claimed to have found no weapons in the farmhouse save a single-shot rifle and a pitchfork; this conflicted with Hollis’s report of being met with “a fusillade of gunfire.” Friction marks on the victims’ wrists indicated they had been bound, perhaps upon their surrender, before being shot. The youngest heathen, a girl, was found draped over the barbed wire fence at the property’s edge. Her throat had been slit.

But anyone who disputed Hollis’s account was by now either dead or rendered low on charges of Moral Turpitude—charges levied by Hollis himself. The official incident report had since disappeared: Hollis had burned it, or it had been purged by an emissary of the state.

All that remained was the Star of Gilead resting in its frame above Hollis’s desk. That medal shaped the collective memory of an event nobody properly remembered anymore. That medal said Hollis was a hero of the Republic.

“Everything went alright last night?” Hollis watched my face for a betraying tic. “By the book?”

“You’ve got my incident report.”

He tapped the carbons I’d left on his desk. “Tight as a vise, as always. But reports don’t tell the whole tale.”

Reports never did. Fire Teams erased all physical evidence, leaving the reporting Acolyte free to massage facts: no report should admit wrongdoing on the part of the Acolytes and, by inference, the Republic.

Hollis’s face took on a paternal aspect. “I worry about my unit, you understand. Especially Doe. Call me old fashioned.”

I tried not to grimace. Hollis worried about us the way a farmer worried about his prize Guernseys—only so much as it affected his own ambitions.

“They’ll all be rotting in Reconditioning Centres,” he said of the rounded-up criminals. “Except Timothy McSweeney—the leader of the poofter brigade.”

McSweeney. The name was familiar. “Son of Alex McSween-ey . . . ?”

“Minister of Cultural Codes McSweeney,” Hollis confirmed. “His son’ll toddle off to bugger again, but at least we’ve got ourselves a favour owed.”

He smiled. The points on the Star of Gilead above his head twinkled.

“I need you to cover a spot of off-hours security tonight,” he said. “The Prophet’s eldest daughter, Eve—”

“Babysitting duty, you mean.”

Hollis fixed me with a look. “It’s a touch more serious than that, lad. The Prophet has enemies—deluded wrecks whose only worth is sacrificial. If they can’t strike The Prophet directly, they’ll strike at those close to him.”

“Where at?”

“One of the downtown establishments. The Manger.”

“Fun,” I said.

“The Prophet appreciates your sacrifice,” Hollis said dryly.

The Manger

Babysitting duty.

The car: special issue, picked up at Central Dispatch. A stretch Buick: bomb-proof floor plates, reinforced chassis, self-sealing tires, bulletproof glass.

I pulled up at a quarter past seven: with midnight curfew, a night on the town gets started early. I nodded to the pair of off-duty officers at the gate and rolled down the crushed gravel drive to the estate. The healthy oaks stunned me: we’d been on water ration for years. Last summer’s drought turned every tree in the city into husks.

The mansion: 120 rooms, banquet hall, gold-trimmed toilet fixtures—or so I’ve heard. The courtyard was dominated by a fountain: a statue of The Prophet, twenty feet high and carved from alabaster marble, water welling from his cupped palms. The plaque at its base read
BESTOWER OF ALL THINGS
.

A trio waited at the top of the terrace stairway. The Prophet’s eldest daughter and a pair of famished sycophants.

Eve, the daughter: tall and lithe and gorgeous in a white evening dress. A gold crucifix drew attention to her cleavage. Her constant companion, a teacup Chihuahua named Erasmus, sat in a handbag at the end of her arm. A crucifix had been bleached into the fur between the little dog’s eyes.

“You’re late,” she said as I opened the car door for her.

I tipped an invisible chauffeur’s cap. “Forgive me.”

She disappeared into the backseat, flanked by her human lapdogs: two girls as skinny as tent poles, arms jutting from the puffy sleeves of taffeta gowns. They looked identical: when people reach a critical point of malnutrition, they all look the same. Their heads were just skulls wrapped in crepe paper.

I piloted the Buick into the city. The sun sank over the downtown core, reflecting off the skyscrapers. I cut down Gilead to Iscariot, skirting Kiketown. A thirty-foot-tall razor wire fence ran round the ghetto’s perimeter: Jews were permitted to work in the city proper but otherwise confined from ten o’clock at night until five the following morning within their ghetto.

“Jimmy Saint Kincaid is playing tonight,” I heard Eve say. “I simply
adore
him.”

“Oh, yes,” said one of the taffeta-clad hand puppets. “He is
sooo
pious.”

“Have you heard his newest song,” said Eve, “‘Nailz Thru My Palms’?”

“Love it, just love it,” the other hand puppet said. “I can feel the Lord’s love shining through his music.”

“Eehhh.” Eve sounded bored. “He’s got a great ass, give him that.”

The two hand puppets covered their mouths, shocked. They sat on either side of Eve: a pair of spindle-thin bookends. The Prophet’s wife, Effie—The Immaculate Mother, Virgin Mother of The One Child—was their idol. The Immaculate Mother looked like a driftwood skeleton; she was so wan you could see her facial veins magnified on the three-storey SuperChurch JumboTron TV every week.