Stephen Blackmoore: All Bad Things

“What was this place?”

“They call it the Observatory. Lookout post, I guess,” Cyrus says. “You saw those big domes on the roof? They had spotters there, or something. I’m not sure. Saw some signs for telescopes. Not much left in the domes, of course. Some scaffolding, something that looks like it might’ve been a cannon mount. I figure it was used to watch over the city before everything fell to shit.”

“It’s a good position,” Samson says. “Easy to defend. Good sight lines.” The building, an immense structure on the edge of Griffith Park, looks down at Los Feliz from a hilltop. Odd that he’d never known it was here, but from the street it’s hidden behind the layers of overgrowth, mutated trees and shrubs making it almost invisible. And nobody in their right mind goes into Griffith Park. The things Cyrus encountered were only one reason. There are rumors of other things in the woods—cannibals, monster bears, worse. He’s heard that some of the Leather Jerks moved up into the higher hills a while ago, and that there’s some group calls themselves the Mannerites wandering around the Glendale edge of the park, but no one from the Church has ever seen them.

He wonders if this area had been like that before the bombs dropped. If it was a no–man’s land like it is today. Probably not. They would have wanted to keep the sight lines clear so they could see the city below, and whoever built a place this impressive would want others to see it.

“How big did you say it was?” Samson asks.

“Not as big as the Temple, but it’ll hold the army well enough and then some. I was thinking we could call the building ‘The Bastion of Faith.’ How does that grab ya?”

Samson nods approval. In the last two years since their rout on Western, they’ve been slowly rebuilding the army, but it’s still nothing like it was. And Hollywood hasn’t given them a moment’s peace—not that Samson’s giving them any, either.

He follows Cyrus down a short hallway and past a pyramid–shaped device wrapped in metal coils with a ball at the top shoved into an alcove.

“What’s this?”

“No idea. Electric, I think. We’ll know once we get some power up in here.”

“I don’t think we have enough people to clean this place up,” Samson says. “But I can ask some of the militia to help defend.”

Cyrus grits his teeth, but a blink of the eye later and he’s all smiles. “Thanks,” he says. “We’re gonna need ’em. Besides the monsters from the zoo, there are mutants out there, maybe some of those Hollywood fucks, too. Wouldn’t put it past them to try to set something up in the park. Not to mention the fuckin’ mutants trying to run us out.”

“How many people have you lost?” Samson says.

“No idea. Too many, I suppose.”

Samson snorts. Even now, when every person is vital to keeping him alive, Cyrus can’t be bothered to pay attention to the dead. He wonders if he even knows any of their names.

“I was thinking we could move most of our operations up here and keep the Temple for services.”

“Closer to Hollywood?” Samson asks. “Is that a good thing?”

“There are only so many ways up into the park. And to get all the way up here, it’s the tunnel or nothin’.”

From what Samson could see coming up here, the only route clear of debris is through a dubious–looking tunnel that they’ll need to reinforce. The other roads heading toward the building are bombed–out craters so choked with fallen trees and overgrowth it would take a team with explosives at least a day to cut through.

“And it’s a good staging ground for when we hit those bastards again,” Cyrus says. Not if, Samson notes, but when. He wants to see Hollywood fall as much as Cyrus does, maybe more. Those fucks took his eye, after all, but as time goes on, he’s less convinced that it’s ever going to happen.

“Won’t we have to clear the plants? Won’t that make it easier for them to hit us?” Samson is thinking of the mortars that made his life a hell on Western.

“We got our own artillery now,” Cyrus says.

That was one thing that had gone well in the last two years. On a raid, Samson had gotten hold of some of Hollywood’s mortars. Maybe not enough to turn the tide, but enough to make Samson feel a lot more secure. And even better, they got hold of some of their engineers. Once they were given a choice to make mortars for the Church or die, they converted quickly enough. Most of them, at least.

“How’s the game up here?”

“If you like mutant elephant, you can eat like a king.”

“All right, then. Let’s do it, I guess.”

“Samson, I’m getting the feeling you don’t trust me,” Cyrus says.

“It’s not that, Cyrus,” Samson says. “It’s—”

“No, it is that. I can tell. You don’t have much of a poker face, Samson. What is it? What’s eatin’ you? Is it the sermons? It is, isn’t it?”

Samson stammers, not sure what to say. It is the sermons, actually. Part of the reason he wanted to come up here himself. He was angry when he heard them on the radio, but he didn’t know what to do about them.

“They’re… not right,” he says, though he isn’t really sure how they’re not right. They say all the right words, but there’s something about them, something missing. No—something extra. Cyrus’s sermons have all been about how people need to follow God’s Militia, that the Church was the path to righteousness, not the Word of God, not the teachings of King.

Cyrus nods. “I hear ya,” he says. “You’re worried that we’re losing the message. That the Church is getting bigger than the Word.”

Was that what was bothering Samson? He wasn’t sure. It felt right, but he didn’t know for sure. He nods because he can’t think of what else to do.

“Samson, God’s Militia is the voice of God.” He pokes Samson in his chest. “ You are the voice of God. You’re the one who talks to James King, not me. I just put his words out onto the airwaves. And yes, sometimes I make a change, but it’s necessary. If people are going to come to us, they need to know who to come to, right?”

“I… guess so?”

“So if I change some of his words to point people toward the Church, to bring people to us, it’s not only a good thing, but a necessary one.”

Samson is having a hard time with this, but he tries to give voice to what he thinks Cyrus is saying. “To teach the teachings, you have to change the teachings?”

“Exactly,” Cyrus says. “You totally get it.”

Except that he doesn’t. It doesn’t make any sense to him at all. But then so little has, lately. Ever since the battle at Western, he hasn’t seen or heard from James King, and he’s felt lost, untethered. All he has left are the teachings, and if even those aren’t sacred anymore, then where is he? What is he?

“So will I have those guys up here next week?”

“Uh, yeah, I’ll have a squad sent up as soon as I get back to the Temple.” Samson walks out of the Observatory and starts back down the hill, confused and lost.

Samson pulls his sledgehammer from the pulped remains of an Unbeliever’s head and slings it over his shoulder, bits of bloody brain and skull still clinging to it. The rest of them, six men and women spreading printed tracts about the dangers of the Church, lie dead in the street. Each one of them carried a backpack filled with almost a hundred of the little books.