41. George – Leap off Faith

Holden sent Rhea and George away, firstly to find out if the subway tunnels could provide a shortcut through the park, and secondly, the real firstly: to get them out of the sight and minds of what was rapidly devolving into a crazed mob. Their departure was recorded by the drone, whose reappearance without offering aid or directions to its control center wasn’t well received. It spent the next half hour dodging everything launched its way by the irate migrants.

With the group split and another of their number dead, tempers did their best to flair despite the chronic dehydration and malnourished exhaustion. Holden tasked Alfredo and Bobert to guard the bridge in case the crew decided to draw it back to strand the two pariahs. He put the rest of them to work clearing a path to drag it through the block if their investigation proved fruitless. The work progressed fast without the nagging opposition of their naysayers and by the time their route was usable, moods had begun to stabilize.

With their work already done, most took time off to rest and drink the remains of the lobster tank water. Holden took off to the courthouse, hopping the crumbling balconies of the courtyard to see where Cheppard and his flock had left for, now they’d officially separated. As he settled into a damp alcove above their congregation, Wendy sidled up beside him and offered a snack.

“What is this?” Holden said.

“It’s a rat.” Wendy said, holding it up on an rent hanger. “My dad roasted it.”

Holden’s face creased up at the thought of eating it, but there was no denying the effect the scent of cooked meat had on his stomach. He pinched off a chunk and after a moment’s hesitation, threw it in his mouth.

“Okay, this didn’t taste as bad as I thought it would.”

“You like?”

“It’s like eating that last chicken in the shop. Dry with no taste, and a sort of not quite eggy aftertaste…lessness.”

“Any side effects? Nausea? Upset stomach?”

Holden slapped the back of her head. “Are you serious? You’re using me as a guinea pig?”

She grinned at him and took a small bite. “So how’s the apocalypse growing on you?”

“I’ve been indoctrinated my whole life with visions of how the end of days would unfold, typically with snazzier special effects each year. This? I’d still give it one star.”

She perched herself on his shoulders, legs either side of his head. “I always thought there’d be demons or angels or something when the world ended.”

“Since the first campfire story to the latest massively multiplayer online free-for-all, we all grew up with certain expectations.” He said. “Sure, they get rebranded and repackaged each generation, but they always have that same tired, tried and tested premise. This seemed different at first but it’s just the same shit.”

She fed him another bite. “At least in games you have some kind of enemy to shoot off your frustrations. If anyone would’ve told me the end of the world was gonna be so much work, I’d have taken a Repose and gone to sleep.”

“Don’t you dare.”

She dangled forward, upside-down over his face. “Why? Would you miss me?”

He smirked. “Of course. I’d be stuck without you playing peacemaker between your dad and brother.”

“Nothing about my winning personality? My scrappy determination to fight the odds?”

Holden pushed her head away to clear his line of sight. “Y’know, Chloe once reported on survivors of a natural disaster. One guy told her it’s hard to fight for your life when there’s nobody left to fight. Maybe that says something about us as a species.”

“Smooth, Crayson. Bring the ex up.”

“That man was a rescuer. He said it’s not force or overwhelming numbers, or even our own self destructive nature that would end us, but simply unexpected, unthought-of situations we can’t prepare for.”

“Well no shit. Who’d be able to prepare for this?” she said, waving at the upside-down apocalypse.

“Which brings me back to those high budget, snazzy imaginings. Think about it. If the Kinsley Foundation thought of this very situation and developed ideas to survive it, there’s probably some moron out there who wrote a story or made a movie about exactly what’s been going on.”

“Well if they did, nobody heard of it.”

Holden grabbed her ankle and shoved her off his shoulder. She fell in an undignified heap behind him as he crawled over to the edge.

“Hey, you asshole!” She said. “What’s the big idea?”

He shushed her with a finger and pointed down with the roasted rodent’s twisted wire. A familiar child with a box trailed after Cheppard’s circle, spiraling down to the steeple of the courthouse’s spire.

“Looks like this ain’t the only rat your father made.” Holden said. “Young Jamie’s scurried off to the sheep brigade.”

Below them, he crept down the spire’s spiral staircase, shuffling cautiously along its underside with his box of cat. From Holden and Wendy’s vantage, he looked like a child edging down a wide waterslide, taking his time, careful to stay as far from both sides as possible, away from the unprotected inner drop and just as far from the edge that coiled around the spire’s outer walls and its now glassless arches open to the sky.

By the time he slid off the bottom, every head in the congregation had switched from contemplative bowing to an expectant stare in his direction. Cheppard quit his sermon and opened his arms to welcome the kid in, and made a show of keeping his innocent eyes away from one particular window. Holden leaned out to see what the pastor was hiding.

 “There’s two people across the courtyard.” He said. “Why would the holy man keep that hidden from the boy?”

He slapped Wendy’s ass and gestured with a side nod for her to follow. They crawled back to the bridge, where Holden volunteered three survivors to watch it. Peter, Marv and Kerrie, if he remembered their names right, were fast learners. He only hoped their intelligence extended to curbing their feelings for Rhea and George.

“Seems we have need of your parkour skills.” Holden told Bobert and Alfredo. “There’s a couple stuck in the attic of your nan’s condo.”

He slung a roll of cables around his shoulder, just in case, and led them to roughly where he thought they needed to be. Alfredo and Bobert, already familiar with the building, flipped and slid through the debris in the corridors to the door of Grandma Bobert’s neighbors. As soon as they burst in, however, all ideas of rescue fizzled out.

The two bodies were exactly that. Just bodies, one obese, one underdeveloped, both dehydrated and starved to death. The same could not be said for the clouds of flies and cockroaches and maggots, and other foulness they couldn’t identify. They scuttled in and out of the moist clothes, stretched as they were against the bloated stomachs of the corpses. Through the decay, one t-shirt clearly read: “When the apocalypse hits, us gamers are gonna be the only ones not panicking. We’ve been training our whole lives for this shit.”

Alfredo pulled his own t-shirt up to cover his face. Bobert didn’t acknowledge the smell and simply draped a discarded sheet over the bodies, noting the nod of appreciation from Cheppard across the way. He waved back an acknowledgement.

“Well, there’s nothing we can do here.” He said. “And I’m somehow doubting they have anything worth taking.”

Alfredo grunted in agreement and ducked out the door. “They should have trained harder.”

Their sour expressions told Holden their time had been wasted, but he shook his head and patted a fallen beam sticking through the broken floor.

“Georgey-boy once told me he couldn’t foresee any situation where jumping and climbing the way you two do could ever be construed as useful.” He said. “Yet you two reached us when we couldn’t reach you and you navigated all this while making it look easy. When him and his missus get back, I want you two to give us a crash course in this art of yours.”

“We could teach you the basics.” Alfredo said. “We’d need a place where the ground ain’t threatening to break under your feet for the advanced stuff.”

Holden scratched his stubble. “Given how we’ve rid ourselves of less desirable individuals, if you can call members of a flock that, we might just have the luck of the devil on our side. I’m starting to feel a change in the wind.”

As the words left his lips, the muggy stillness of the air broke against a fresh, crisp breeze.

…

Across the bridge, descending on a slight incline higher into the earth, George followed Rhea’s phone light through a less crowded corridor. The battery was near dead and only flight mode and battery saver functions kept its beam strong, not that it illuminated anything of note. Aside from signs and advertisement posters still hanging the right way up, the ceiling underfoot was bare, save for a single line of blown lights running its middle length.

Their footsteps echoed like a drip in a sewer, possibly due to the subway’s brickwork and arched, underground architecture, or maybe it was simply because neither George nor Rhea could bring themselves to break the silence first. Each echo interrupted before they could, leaving their mute surrender lasting until they reached the plaza of Center Park Station.

“Well fuck me sideways.” George said, staring down into it. “That’s a whole lot of crap to wade through.”

While the majority of the old world’s debris had sunk into the station’s concrete floors, the rest had accumulated at its center, where, through a pyramidal roof, a large staircase and four elevators dominated the hall. Every surface was pocketed with holes and George leaned down to grab the rebar through the concrete crust still clinging to it. It was firm in his hand.

He breathed a sigh of relief, a cloud that hung in the cold, damp air. “Seems solid enough. You wait here. I’ll go ahead and see if it’ll take my weight.”

“No,” Rhea said. “I’m lighter. I’ll go.”

He blocked her from leaving. “Yeah, I think I’ll take this one. You’ve had enough dangling over empty space for one day.”

She threw up her hands and swept a gesture for him pass. “Fine, play the hero.”

George took a step down into the pit. His foot broke through the skin of stone into moist dirt on the other side. The metal and rock were icy under his fingers.

“Just a few minutes ago, you were all over me.” He said. “Now I’m getting the cold shoulder again?”

“George, just do what we came to do, alright?” Rhea said, flashing her phone light into the jumbled mess.

He eased down to the next rung. “I’m serious. You don’t talk to me, you’re being an ice queen and just this morning you cheated on me with another man. Call me paranoid, but I’m starting to suspect you don’t actually want to be with me.”

She clambered down beside him and glared, her face to his, an inch apart and seething. “Of course I want to be with you! I’m trying to help, aren’t I? I stopped you killing yourself, I stood by you when everyone thought you were stupid for building your damn bridge, and I’ve been the peacemaker between you and my dad for what feels like fifty fucking years and when the two of you finally pull yourselves off each other’s throats, I went with you!”

George studied her panting face and ignored her spittle on his. “Well, now I’m even more confused.”

Rhea dropped into the rubble. “Do I have to spell it out to you?”

“Well, yeah.” George said, following her down. “That’d help, y’know, on account I’m not psychic.”

She shivered and rubbed her hands for warmth, and waded through the debris around the elevators. Maybe it was the darkness, but not seeing George made it easier to talk.

“Why did you want to die?” George said.

Rhea reached the opposite side of the bowl and searched for a footing. “Why have you been avoiding me?”

“When was I avoiding you?”

“Since all this began. Since we got married.”

He sighed another cloud of cold. “Well I’ve been a little busy since then, in case you hadn’t noticed. Maybe you haven’t been keeping up with current events but the world happens to be ending around us, or did you not notice?”

“And instead of being with me when it happens, you ran away to cling to the nearest blond.”

He reached the rungs under her and kept pace as she clambered up. “Is that what this is? Jealousy? Not that I blame you, of course. I enjoyed having a couple of groupies hanging around. Those are Wendy’s words, by the by, not mine.”

“You don’t get it, do you? You’ve never believed in anything.”

“I believe in us. Like I said, I enjoyed the attention. Doesn’t mean I’m gonna run off with one if them. I don’t even know which one of them is the blond one. Or which ones Cazz or Laura.”

Rhea hauled herself onto the ceiling of the next passageway. “I mean faith, George. You don’t have any. Do you have any idea what it’s like to see you and dad fighting all the time? To be caught in the middle of it? I watched everything I was raised to believe happen just like I was told it would, and I still picked you over that? You went against everything I was taught and you still managed to get us here. Every step closer to that fucking mountain is another step further from my beliefs. You made me lose my faith, George, and I don’t think you can grasp what that means.”

He reached the ledge and sat beside her. “Maybe I can’t. I’ll never understand why people rely on something beyond what they can make for themselves. But when I was ready to end it, that’s when you saw me outside the chapel. I jumped as you called and in that second I didn’t want to die anymore and by some miracle I was saved long enough to see you again. If there’s a case for higher powers, maybe that’s where it lies.”

Rhea slowly shook her head, but said nothing.

George wrapped his arm around her. “I was already falling when you called my name. But here’s the rub. I’ve been terrified of falling ever since. I’ve been hiding it by making Holden do most of the outside work.”

“You jumped after me.”

“Like I said. Terrified of falling. Terrified, I’ll fall. More terrified you would.”

Rhea’s head flopped onto his shoulder. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Told you. Busy. World ending.”

The light on Rhea’s phone died, leaving them in darkness. “Huh. Guess we’re feeling our way back.”

“Now why’d you fuck Eddie?”

Rhea stiffened. “Seriously?”

“It’s dark. You don’t have to look me in the eye or see what’s on my face. So tell me now while it’s just the two of us.”

There was a ling pause before she spoke. “I think I slept with him because I didn’t want to die rejected by everyone I loved. You and dad, you’re both so bad at showing how you feel. You act like I’m an inconvenience and, well, he’s not been right since he fell on his head. I just wanted to feel like I was cared for. That I mattered to someone. To anyone.”

“You played peacemaker when me and you dad pulled you two ways, didn’t you? You matter to both of us. I don’t much like complimenting your dad, but he loves you as much as I do. In his weird, twisted way.”

“Huh. You showed about as much love and care as a robot and my dad told me I was better off jumping to my death. And I’m pretty sure that was only to guilt trip you into going after me.”

“Well it worked.”

“He probably intended it to be after I was out of reach. If I jump, you’d jump. And if you jump, everyone but Holden would probably jump as well.”

“Then your dad overestimates how popular I am. He’s got followers. Holden has followers. Me? Nobody jumped after me.”

Rhea shivered in the dark and George wrapped his arms around her. Even in the gloom, her tears were visible. He wasn’t too proud to shed his own.

“I always loved that about you.” She said. “You never hide your tears.”

“Says the women who didn’t want to be seen with me when I cried near the end of that movie.”

“A bunch of toys falling into a metal furnace isn’t heartbreaking.”

“They reached out to each other when they thought their time was up. It was moving.”

“It was a kids movie. You know they were gonna be saved.”

“I saw your tears.”

She pressed her forehead against his. “No, you didn’t. I wouldn’t cry at anything stupid like that.”

“No, I mean these.” He said, rubbing her cheek. He pulled away a glistening drop. “Where’s that light coming from?”

They looked around and squinted through the darkness, and sure enough, down the passageway they sat in, there was a pinprick of light.

“There’s light at the end of the tunnel.” Rhea said. “We have to head towards the light.”

George helped her up and they stepped carefully through the arches of the subway corridor. The further they went, the lighter it got and the harder a rising breeze blew. It took ten minutes, fighting the wind and the sharp grit it carried, nicking their skin and forcing them to shield their eyes, but they emerged at the mouth of the subway entrance of Center Park’s East Gate, and before them East Road stretched out to the mountains.

Grit and trash whipped through fast air currents, banging off of the eroding structures that remained and obscuring flashes of lightning while drowning out booms of thunder. Rhea and George shielded their entire faces and ducked back in away from the gale, staring down the eight blocks between them and the bridge to the mountain shelter. There was less than half a city between them and the promise of safety.

“Funny weather we’re having.” George said, shouting over the wind. “Let’s get back and tell the others we might make it after all.”

…

When Alfredo and Bobert returned to guard the bridge, grandma Bobert offered them a blanket to protect against the rising wind, and flatbread to give them calories to burn against the lowering temperature. Laura and Cazz followed her, caped in their own blankets, somehow understanding what they were instructed to do despite the old woman never once saying a word.

Bobert recognized the bread. It hadn’t been flat to begin with, but after the lobster tank had landed on the pack, miraculously bottom side down without spilling or breaking, the loaf had gone stale without spoiling. All the air had been squeezed out of it. He kissed his pruned cheek and took a bite, savoring his first carbs in over a week as he leaned on the metal bannister. His bliss was short lived when he was zapped by a rude bolt of static.

The stiff breeze had risen, carrying with it cool air from high below. It shattered the sweaty, stagnating heat and brought with it shreds of cloud. The dry world sucked in the moisture and within half an hour the world was drenched and dripping. The already brittle dregs of stone cracked with a cacophony of snaps, calling watchful eyes to every corner as they popped and crumbled.

The pops were ignored by grandma Bobert, who led Cazz and Laura to collect water droplets in buckets. Thirsty mouths were delegated ladles of the first ice cold, un-boiled freshwater they’d seen on this journey while Holden took the Rhea-and-Georgeless opportunity to use a whole bucket to scrub himself clean with a fresh towel.

The change in the winds was a welcome one until it carried the smell of burning. It alerted them to the glow of orange below and Holden and Wendy returned to their balcony to check out the next phase of Cheppard’s divine plan. In the pit of the spire, the pastor and his people, hooded in blankets of their own, were busy piling wood.

“Burn the walls.” Cheppard told them. “Burn that central pillar.”

“Hey, pastor!” Holden called down. “What are you doing?”

Cheppard seemed genuinely surprised to see him and threw back his makeshift hood. “What am I doing? What are you doing here? We went our separate ways, remember? What we do here is of no concern to you.”

“It is if you’re lighting fire under our asses.”

 Cheppard’s flock didn’t pause in their work. Anything flammable they could salvage was laid in the arches and around the earthward end of the spire’s support pillar. Faint fumes teased Holden and Wendy’s nostrils. Gasoline and deicer cans lay next to bottles of cooking oil and emptied spirits, anything they could salvage to get a flame going One bonfire was already burning at the base of the pillar. Cheppard reached in with a soaked rag on a stick and raised up a flaming torch.

“These haggard stones need little more than a nudge to shrug off from this world wreaked by cataclysm.” He said, passing the torch to Jamie. “Run to the top, boy. Set ablaze the leash that tethers us to this mortal coil.”

Jamie took the torch with a bow and raised it over his head to the whoops and cheers of the congregation. He ran up the underside of the staircase, torching the burning end to the soaked piles of wood in each window as he passed. Then at the top, in front of Holden and Wendy, he lit the pyre around the stone shaft in the middle.

“Jamie, what are you doing?” Wendy said. “You’ll die.”

“We’re going to fly to heaven the same way the Kinsley Foundation did,” he said. “In out own tower.”

The oils and other chemicals took to flame across the damp wood, which spat and sizzled in protest against burning while wet. Jamie threw down the burning stump and looked Wendy straight in the eye.

“Please tell your dad I’m sorry. I know he said he’d look after me, but I just want to see my parents and Miss Benet again.”

He ran back down the spiral under-stairs to the bosom of the flock. They gathered around him with outstretched arms. His words brought tears to Wendy’s eyes. Although it might have been the smoke.

She ducked back through the buildings to work her way around to him. Holden went after her and caught up as she reached their crew, who had only now become aware of the smoke.

“Don’t.” Holden said, gripping Wendy’s wrist. “It’s bad enough losing the kid. We can’t lose you as well.”

She pushed him off. “We haven’t lost shit. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. He thinks he’s flying off to see his mom and dad.”

“The boy’s what now?” Zeke said from the side. “Where is he?”

He followed Wendy to the entrance of the spire. The wood had dried in the heat and was burning fast. Zeke pushed past the pillar fire and tripped down the underside of the staircase. Wendy ran after him, saving him from slipping through a burning archway out into the sky, and steadied him for the rest of the journey down. The snap of stone cracking in the heat made them jump.

Back up above, Holden hesitated at the entrance ringed by flame. He called back to Bobert and Alfredo. “I’m going down. Fuck. Carry on if I die. Also, try to save me if it looks like I’m about to die. Then save Wendy and the kid. Do it in that order.”

And with that, Holden held his breath and ran through the growing flames. Alfredo turned to Bobert.

“Think he needs us?” He said.

“When don’t they?” Bobert said. “Nana, guard the bridge!”

The old lady nodded and repositioned herself at its entrance, smacking her palm with the ball end of the ladle.

“We’re in hell and it’s falling apart. Can’t you see it?” they heard Cheppard as they ran through the flames.

At the center of the burning pit, the pastor placed the marble down and pointed in the direction it rolled, towards the park. “This world isn’t completely upside down anymore. A ball rolls downhill, towards the deepest pit, and we are on the outskirts of it. Look with your own eyes. This marble, provided by our youngest lamb, has been rolling towards it faster each day.”

“Get away from my boy!” Zeke said, barging through the crowd. “Jamie, come on. We need to get out of here. This place is on fire, for god’s sake.”

“He knows.” Cheppard said. “He was the one who set it. For God’s sake.”

Jamie clung to the pastor’s tattered robe and hid his face from Zeke. Cheppard waved his arm at the three-sixty panorama beyond the arches.

“Look at the park, the innermost circle of this city. After traversing through a rising inferno, why else would frost be forming in it now if it were not the final circle?”

Zeke held out his hand. “Jamie, boy. Son. I know you want to be with your folks, but think what they’d want. Your mother, your daddy, they’d want you to live. They’d want you to grow up and be happy.”

Cheppard patted Jamie’s shoulder. “And normally I’d agree with you, even support you in your efforts. But I can’t ignore the proof of my own eyes. The deepest pit of hell is a frozen wasteland, reserved for those who commit betrayal, and your son has led my daughter into it. If she is lost to me, I can at least save your ward. I can save you.”

A loud crack from the outer walls warned off those under it as crumbling masonry exploded and a fracture cut through the rock from one window to another. Several wary faces peeked up from under their head sheets.

“It is finally happening.” Cheppard said. “You might make it back up if you run now, but I’ll hope you’ll stay with the boy.”

He didn’t wait to see Zeke’s choice and turned his back to the room to stare out at the waiting drop. Wendy, Holden, Alfredo and Bobert slid to a stop at the head of the stairs, where the pastor’s zealots shielded him with a defensive line of bodies. Zeke found himself on the inside and wrapped his arms around Jamie, who crouched and rocked on the balls of his feet with his hands clamped around his knees.

Holden and Wendy pushed through, but the crowd condensed to keep them out. Alfredo and Bobert took advantage of the space and skirted the edge, yet two more blanket covered zealots stepped between them and Cheppard. The rest of the flock yanked them back.

“Truth is not subjective.” Cheppard said. “There is Truth and there are lies. And here we are with the Truth laid bare before us. My own daughter has turned against me, drawn in by the lie they tell even to themselves. They hope to build their bridges of scaffolding to the promise of safety and continued life. I say hope is most dangerous on the scaffold.”

“Whoa, we’re halfway there.” Bobert said.

Alfredo nodded. “On a wing and a prayer.”

Wendy pulled them back by their ears. “That’s not helping.”

“I said it was a prayer. He’s religious.”

Holden pushed two of the zealots aside. “Zeke, Jamie. Come back up with us. You’re not prisoners here. The pastor’s not forcing you to do anything you don’t want to. The choice is yours.”

Cheppard nodded, although he still didn’t look back. “Listen to him, everyone. What Mister Crayson says is true. You must choose this. Your choice determines your faith. I’m not here to convince you to come, only to show you the way.”

To Zeke’s amazement, the line between him and the stairs parted. Wendy held out a hand, tears on her face, silently pleading with him to return. Zeke shook his head.

“I’m not leaving without my boy.” He said, pulling Jamie into a hug. “He’s my second chance, don’t you see? Either I keep you alive and well for Cynthia or I deliver you to the angels, either way I’m supporting someone for a change.”

Cheppard nodded. “Eloquently put. But I would like to hear your son’s opinion on the matter. It must be hard to hear your father tell a boy he barely knows what you’ve always wanted to hear from him yourself, isn’t it, George?”

Zeke looked around. “He’s not here. But if he were, I’d tell him he was right.”

“He is here.” Cheppard said. “He’s waiting to push me off the edge. Are you going to do it this time, George? Have you bolstered your conviction? I thank you for bringing daughter back to me.”

The two hooded figures beside him pulled back their hoods. George and Rhea faced the onlookers. George’s fist clenched.

Then dropped.

“No,” he said. “I still can’t do it.”

“Dad,” Rhea said. “I’ve been selfish. And I know you think I betrayed you, but you’re not seeing straight. You’re not yourself. You’re as tired and malnourished as the rest of us and your head has a hole in it. You need help.”

“And there’ll be bandages and doctors waiting over the edge, are there?”

“Well, yeah.” George said. “According to you, that’s the quickest route to heaven. I’m sure they have doctors aplenty.”

“George!” Rhea said, and slapped his arm.

He pointed to her dad. “I actually forgot about the dent in the padre’s skull, but head injury or no, he’s putting everyone’s lives at risk.”

“No he isn’t.” a voice from the flock said. Ingrid stepped out, holding hands with Norris, who smiled at her and bade her speak. She gulped. “The two of us, we used to be clients of the Craysons. We were fine until the chest went down, swapping food or favors for the stuff. But the past few days have been torture and now there’s nothing left. I can’t put it into words but we can’t deal. I need to know there’s something better than this.”

A man on crutches next to them waved one. “I’ll stay if any of you can tell me my name.”

He was met with a gang of wondering looks and prompts for others to speak up.

“Yeah, thought so. Poor Tyrone, stuck on crutches since his wheelchair sunk into the rock. Not one of you asked if I could help. You didn’t ask if I could contribute anything. That’s my whole life. What do I have waiting for me after this? Huh? Tell me.”

Again, nobody could, and Tyrone hobbled back into the crowd. The man next to him raised his hand.

“I don’t have a physical disability but I if even one women can name me, I’ll stay.”

“What?” Wendy said.

“Tell me my name and I’ll stay.”

“Norris?”

“I’m Norris.” Norris said. “He isn’t.”

“To be fair, we’re all tired and hungry.”

“My name was Steve.” He said, and said no more.

“Face it,” a women who’s name they did know said. Ursula gestured around. “The pastor’s right. Look at the city. We’re totally in hell, and I don’t see how burning forever figures in my future. I’m joining the good guys.”

“And you, Yandi?” Holden said. “I thought you were doing well with us.”

Yandi shrank away. “I’ve been working nonstop for what feels like years now and there’s no end in sight. What’s your plan, Holden? Get to a mountain and hope there’s a cave to cower in while the sky falls down? Kill anyone who doesn’t agree with you like you did with Eddie?”

“Hey, I didn’t kill—”

“Everything the pastor told us came true. He told us the central circle would be frozen and it’s freezing right now. He said it would be the ninth circle and we spent the last million years crossing eight before we got here. What other proof do you need?”

“I started in limbo.” Tina said. “I followed you through lust, gluttony, avarice and prodigality. I went through wrath and sullenness, heresy, violence and fraud, led by you, Crayson. I won’t let you take me into treachery.”

Holden frowned. “Now I know what I sound like to the rest of you.”

The flock held hands and stood as one against the invading bridge builders.

“All of you.” Holden said. “This is madness. Faith lies in the mind and hand.”

“Exactly. It lies in your mind.” Cheppard said, finally turning. He pointed to Zeke. “But here’s Truth. You want to see your Cynthia again, don’t you? You want to see your ex wife and your brother and gain their forgiveness.”

“I thought I’d found a new love with Cynthia.” Zeke said. “She got me. Even helped me ration the sauce so I didn’t guzzle it all away in one night. Baby steps, y’know?”

“That’s what awaits you if you just have the courage to ask for strength. Ask for it so you can overcome all that holds you back.”

“I believe you. I haven’t touched a drip since we got here, and that’s saying something. Maybe all I’m looking for is forgiveness.”

“You don’t need forgiveness.” George said. “Cheppard killed Cynthia. He’s been connected to the deaths of everyone who died since we met.”

“Lair!” Cheppard said. “So, the serpent finally sheds its skin. I see you for what you are now. A devil to tempt my daughter.”

“Listen to him!” George said. “He’s a freakin’ crackpot. All this talk about faith and jumping, it’s suicide. It’s literally suicide.”

Cheppard laughed. “Boy, you’ve made no secret of your disdain for your father, but the moment Zeke gained any happiness, the woman providing it just happened to die? I might have revealed her sin but at least I had the decency to pray for her salvation, a service attended by everyone but you and Mister Crayson there. Yes, Crayson, as in the gang that held us hostage and decided their damned drugs were more important than human life.”

“That he wasn’t part of.”

“I’ve been building the bridges you’ve been using since this started.” Holden said. “Don’t compare me to them.”

“And was it not your bridge and forced labor that killed them? I almost died on that deathtrap, too. Only the grace of god saved me.” He pointed at George and Holden. “These men killed the drug hoarders because they wouldn’t help build their bridge. We all know they’re only out to save their own. George Travers said it himself.”

“That is not what I said—”

“And was it not you, after turning my own daughter to betrayal that put young Eddie in a position where his only way out was suicide? Was it not you who turned my daughter into a harlot who tempted that poor man with promiscuity? And is it not you who still tempts us with false promises of continued life here in hell?”

“You’re an idiot! We aren’t in hell, we’re in the middle of a crisis. If we band together we can get through this.”

Cheppard pointed in opposing directions and spun on the spot. “Didn’t you listen to a word everyone here said? The sky is an inferno, the world is factually upside down. We have molten lava bleeding through the skin of our planet and the wind is burning us, and every step we’ve taken has been filled with torment and suffering and only your own self inflicted blindness is keeping you from seeing that we are in the Rapture. Look at it, George! Look! Really look! What do you think all this around us is? We are in Hell!”

As he said it, the stone around him exploded. The battle from the heat of the fires against the build-up of frost had taken its toll on the battlefield. Another fracture sliced a wall in two.

“We believe the lord can deliver you from evil if you simply prove yourself to Him with a leap of faith.” Cheppard said. “This is Hell. That is Truth. And we are leaving before the gates close forever.”

His ten zealots pulled George and Rhea away from their leader and shoved them back to the others. George tore a hand off his arm and lunged at Cheppard with a punch to the jaw.

Cheppard, unfazed, turned the other cheek. “So, the Beast shows his true colors.”

George grabbed his collar. Cheppard pushed his hands away. George punched again, but the pastor blocked it and twisted his arm, forcing a scream from George’s throat, who bent to his knees and fell further when one of Cheppard’s collided with his face. The pastor left George clutching his nose and placed his hands on Jamie’s shoulder.

He smiled at Zeke. “What’s here for you now? I know it’s scary, but you still have the chance to be brave. This is your chance to repent, to show what you’re truly made of instead of wallowing in what you could have been or were. And your reward is right there on the other side.”

For a moment, Zeke said nothing. Cheppard smiled his reassuring smile and held out a hand. As George’s eyes fluttered open, he saw his father’s hand reach out for Jamie’s, reaching with the same conviction of a hand enclosing a bottle. He closed his eyes again, not wanting to see his loss.

A small meow broke the silence. Jamie’s attention snapped across the street, back to where they’d come from. Fido waited at its edge. He pulled away from Cheppard and tugged on George’s sleeve.

“Fido’s on the other side. We need to get him.”

“It’s a lie!” Cheppard said. “It’s the trick of the devil come to tempt you to stay!”

Jamie didn’t hear him. He ran for the staircase, up to the bridge and pushed. Wendy ran after him to hold on to it and calm him down.

“Wait a second, kid.” She said. “We’ll get your cat.”

Rhea stood between her husband and their fathers. “All we have to do is work together and we can survive this. We can join up with the Kinsley Foundation and live in peace. Isn’t that what you wanted? Isn’t that what you want for me?”

Cheppard shook his head. A single tear rolled down his cheek. “Do you really think they’re going to let you live? They abandoned us. Evil is as evil does, and they abandoned all humanity.”

“And what did you do, dad? You preached and you promised, but you never did anything to help! At least George and Holden are doing something!”

“You think my role in this is useless? Wasn’t it me who got your husband his place with Mr. O’Toole’s training team? I was the one who gave him the opportunity to become the man building your bridges.”

“Exactly! You left the hard work to him and a few others and then sat back to judge them, or didn’t you figure out what your reports were going towards? The JRC was a filter for the Kinsley Foundation. Your judgement got people killed.”

Cheppard hung his head. “At least I wanted to save them.”

“It doesn’t matter what you want.” George said, wobbling to his feet. “All that counts is what you’ve done, not what you’re doing now or you intend to do. Make a mistake? Make up for it, but don’t tell me it was done with the best intent!”

“You should take your own advice, boy. I intend to lead a leap of faith. Your good intentions paved a road to hell.”

George staggered over and punched again. Cheppard casually avoided it and swept George’s legs out from under him.

“Alright, that does it.” Holden said. He jumped in to catch George, kicking at the pastor’s knee. Cheppard caught his foot and forced it into George’s ribs.

“I’m no stranger to violence.” Cheppard said, signaling his flock not to intervene. He grabbed George in a choke hold. “I served time in the very prison you met my daughter in. Oh, I was entirely innocent, of course. Wouldn’t hurt a fly unless provoked. It was a struggle to be sure, to accept a system that puts innocent men behind bars while evildoers remain free. The prison pastor at the time offered me an assistant position after a few introductory beatings. It gave me the tools I needed to overcome my lot in life.”

“Dad, stop it!” Rhea said, pulling his arm from around George’s neck.

“The pastor believed in me so much he bet on my every fight. And before every fight, he’d hand me a goblet of His blood and a bite of His bread, and tell me to feel His strength in me. And I did. My body bloomed through hard toil and blood and flesh and faith.”

He flung Rhea off and dodged another punch from George. Then a Holden punch and dodged again. The Cheppard danced through flying fists and spraying blood. Alfredo jumped him from behind, only to be twisted into the path of George’s knuckles, which in turn banged his head into Bobert’s. They collided with a flash of pain across their eyes.

“And when I finally believed, I prayed the man I was mistaken for would be found. That very week he turned himself in with all the missing evidence. I was free, and to drive the point home that very same day I met the love of my life.” He locked eyes with Rhea through the tangle of men he held back alone. “That was the day I met your mother.”

“Then why are you hurting us now?”

He flipped George over his shoulder and hammered him into Alfredo and Bobert, on top of Holden. “Everyone thinks God works in mysterious ways, but he’s actually quite straightforward if you open your eyes. He knew you would try to stop me. He knew your husband would play devil’s advocate, spin lies and try to lead you into damnation! But I was prepared, honed, conditioned, educated to fight back against him. I made a deal with the man upstairs and now, my daughter, it’s time to deliver.”

He planted a foot on the pile of bodies and reached back for a chuck of the exploded masonry. Dirt and grit and frost churned through the air, slicing into his skin, but he ignored the small cuts to focus on one, the oldest and deepest, still oozing after days down the side of his head. He turned George’s to the side with a mild slap, and without a word, brought the rock down hard on his son in-law’s temple.

“This brought me clarity, son. Maybe it’ll open your eyes as well.”

George’s eyes did open, briefly, then rolled back in his head and closed again. Cheppard held out his hand to his daughter, and the trembling Rhea skirted back with a scream. He turned his fingers to Zeke instead, without a pause. Zeke looked at his son lying bloody and broken on a wheezing pile of Holden, Bobert and Alfredo. Beside him, Wendy clutched a pale and shaking Jamie. Rover’s single meow echoed through the street.

“If we do this,” Zeke said. “It’ll be the end of the boy’s life, and we’d be the ones ending it.”

“To save his soul.” Cheppard said.

Zeke groaned to his feet and shook the shakes from his fingers. “Now I don’t generally agree with my boy. He’s too soft in the head, see?  It takes a fool to be sentimental about the Here and Now, head all lost in the future. A man like that, who ignores the Then past, a man like that won’t ever understand regret.”

“True, he can’t.”

“Which is why I can’t join you, if you don’t mind. Couldn’t live with myself, not even in heaven, not knowing I took part in murdering a child. Wouldn’t sit right with me. Besides, even if your little scuffle here might’ve been between grown men, one of them was still my boy.”

He clenched his fists and took a deep cough, sputtered and swung a right hook. It missed Cheppard by the same length as his arm, and the momentum carried him backwards into the confused pastor, who steadied him instead of retaliating.

“Thanks.” Zeke said, and missed again.

The Cheppard’s flock grabbed Zeke’s arms and hoisted him off. He was spun and hit with a long, heavy metal object and tossed on top of George with a cry from one of their mouths. The zealots picked them up and carried them back to the staircase, barring their return with pipes and splintered wood plucked from the corners of the room.

“See the power infused in my followers?” Cheppard said. “Their rods and staffs comfort them. But I ought to thank you. I understand why my journey to salvation was delayed until now. I had to weed out the faithful from the faithless, to sort the worthy from the unclean.”

He stood at the center of the spire’s loft and his followers joined hands around him.

“Well done, my children. Now here we stand at the, what’s that word Mister Crayson came up with? Bottop? Here we stand at the bottop of this tower, to at last perform that which has been denied to us for so long. This is our leap of faith.”

“Dad, please don’t.” Rhea said from her shaking corner. Her voice was hoarse and didn’t carry through the maelstrom 

Either Cheppard didn’t hear her or he refused to answer. Instead he turned to Holden, who was digging himself out from the dumped pile of his friends’ prone bodies.

“You turned my daughter and her husband against me, and you’re leading these people to their eternal doom. I’ll pray for their souls, but you are an abomination. You are not welcome in my kingdom.”

He opened his arms and grasped the hands of his closest followers as another crack reverberated through the tower. Three of the four arches no longer supported its weight, and the final wall and central pillar cracked too. Stone erupted into cascades of dirt and shrapnel. With a roar of wind and a flurry of frost, the steeple’s exterior walls slid off from the spiral staircase, spinning with the faithful standing on the ceiling of its spire, their hair and clothes and the fins of a red bandage streaming fast as they looked up at those they were leaving behind.

Rhea screamed, ran for the edge, reached for her father, missed by a mile as he and his followers kept their gaze upon her. Her father’s expression was pure love and longing. They plunged through the liquid air, ragged cloaks swirling around them.

The steeple bore ahead from its people, drilling a tunnel of pure, golden sunlight through the clouds.  The zealots held onto each other, hands clasped in a circle around their freefalling shepherd, and together, descended into the breach.

The remaining survivors held on to each other, too, dumbfounded, as the clouds swirled shut behind them.