Stephen Blackmoore: All Bad Things

A yawning pit opens in Samson’s stomach. It’s a trap. He knows it. But from where?

And then it hits him. There’s nothing in the buildings, there’s no one in the area. But there is one place it never occurred to him to look.

“Fall back. Get everyone out of here. There’s—” Samson stops as he feels a rumble deep under the street, a series of small pops like ammunition cooking off. The shaking travels up his legs. An earthquake? No. Something else.

And then the street explodes beneath his feet.

Discarded napkins, torn notepads, sun–bleached posters, chunks of drywall. They pile up along the walls of Cyrus’s office, stacks upon stacks of landfill with nothing in common except that they’ll take a mark.

In the early days, paper was hard to come by. So Cyrus wrote the sermons on whatever he could get his hands on. He wrote with discarded pencils, scratched marks into soft clay with sticks, scrawled the passages of God with his own blood and feces. He took down every word, every verse, every hem and haw from King’s recordings, memorized them, showed them to the believers.

Now with the radio, the Word spreads across the airwaves, but he keeps these records with him anyway. The physical is important. It acts as a reminder of what it was like in those early days. And what needs to be done to never go back.

James King’s words might have been fine for a doomsayer from the 1990s, but he was dead, and in a world gone to shit they needed upkeep. So what if Cyrus changed “God” to “the Church” in the scriptures? What was the Church if not God’s will made real? What was it if not God’s blessed voice, His fiery retribution? His guarantee that His plan for the world would live on, even if His greatest preacher happened to die an untimely death?

Cyrus knew Samson would have a problem with the changes—knew he’d want him to change them back. But Samson had always been so easy to manipulate. A few big words, a little twisted logic, and Cyrus had him wrapped around his finger. It was always so easy.

Just like convincing him to take a small team to get the bomb.

When Cyrus had heard about Hollywood’s plan to set off a bomb in Church territory, he knew it was the perfect opportunity. He hadn’t thought Samson would go for it so easily. Figured he’d put up more of a fight.

The whole thing was tailor made and fit into Cyrus’s plans perfectly. Get Samson out there with a few of his most trusted lieutenants for witnesses—and then have Volkov kill him.

Oh, she’d make it look like a Hollywood sniper, of course. That was the whole point. Kill Samson in front of the troops and then have her and the others come back with the tragic tale of his death to light a blazing fire in the hearts of the Faithful. Make them pledge their lives to the church forever. Nothing like a martyr to bring the people together.

When Volkov had first come into his bed six months ago, he hadn’t trusted her. He thought she was just another whore trying to fuck her way through the ranks. But she was smart. Told him how she thought Samson was destroying the Church, how he’d gotten soft ever since the disaster on Western.

It helped that she was really good in the sack.

And once they had each other’s trust, he asked her to kill Samson. At first she was hesitant, but then he promised to put her in charge of the Church’s armies, take the place of the martyred Samson and lead them in victory against the forces of Hollywood.

He’d never seen anyone jump at an opportunity so fast.

Running footsteps in the hall pull him out of his thoughts. This is it, he thinks. He hopes he can look sufficiently aggrieved, appropriately stricken at his friend’s death. He practiced all night in the mirror, rehearsed what he would say. He goes over it one more time, mouthing the words silently to make sure he remembers them right. He tried crying on cue, but it just made him look congested.

“This tragedy will not stand before God. Our leader will be avenged, his death a symbol that we cannot be broken.”

Yes, that will do it. He stands as the footsteps get closer, straightens his robes and picks at a loose thread. This is an important moment. He wants it to be perfect.

A crying acolyte bursts into his room, tears streaming down his cheeks. “They’re all dead,” he says.

“This tragedy will not—” Cyrus says and stops as he registers what he’s just been told. “What?” All dead? That wasn’t right. Samson should be the only one dead. Dumb bastard must have put up a fight.

“The army. The earth exploded beneath them and swallowed them whole. And then there was shelling and then troops came running down the street and shot into the pits and—”

“Hang on. What do you mean, ‘the army’?” Cyrus says. That sonofabitch. Cyrus offers up a quick prayer, hoping against hope that Samson hasn’t done what he thinks he’s done.

“All but a few soldiers went down to Wilshire, sir. But it was a trap.”

Cyrus grabs the acolyte by the collar, shakes him like a dog with a rat. “Don’t tell me that, boy,” he says. “That’s not true. It was a small team. Ten people tops.”

“No, sir. They’re saying five hundred easy.”

“This is a prank. Ha–fucking–ha. Big laughs all around. Now you fucking tell me the truth, you little shit, or so help me I will gut you right here and now.”

“Sir, if you don’t believe me, there are some survivors coming in from the fighting now. They’re hurt bad. Real bad.”

Cyrus lets the boy go. “Show me,” he says. There is no way that it can be that bad.

After three hours of interrogating the handful of survivors straggling in, Cyrus comes to one inescapable conclusion.

It is that bad.

They all tell him the same thing. Lots of explosions, street caved in, everyone swallowed up. Then the shelling started and soldiers came down the street to shoot into the pit. It doesn’t take long for Cyrus to realize what happened.

The subway.

The subway tunnels under Los Angeles got the worst of the flooding when the tsunami hit. Whole stretches of them were obliterated. Over the years they’d drain and fill up again and sometimes people would go down there, scavengers and people trying to find a place to live, but few ever came back up. He’d still hear rumors every once in a while about them, but for the most part nobody thought about them. What was the point? There wasn’t anything in them besides mutant rats and rancid swamp water.

Until now.

The bomb story had been a ruse, that was obvious now. Whatever bombs Hollywood had, they must have used them to seed the tunnels. Waited until the whole army was on top of them, then set off the explosives.

But how had they known the army would be there?

The answer comes to him in a flash and though he denies it, it won’t go away. It sits there and gnaws at him like a starving rat, sends him into a rage. He stalks the office screaming, beating the walls. He rails against the betrayal, his own hubris that led him to this point. It’s his fault there’s no army left and—

There’s no army left.

Fuck.

Cyrus runs into the halls, panic jumping through him like lightning. He grabs an Initiate, shakes him, yelling, “We’re leaving. We’re leaving right the fuck now.”

Samson smells burning and stale water. A thick, cloying mélange of gasoline, hair, flesh, and mildew. He dimly remembers screaming and gunfire, but that’s all faded to an occasional pop, a low whimper as someone else is put down like a feral dog. He opens his good eye, but night has fallen across the city and the only thing he can see are the dim flickers of fires reflecting off scummy water.