SEX REBELS OF JESUSLAND, final chapter 157

(Our serially blogged novel ends today. If you've been following the story, let me know what you think of it in the comments below.)

157. THE DAMNED.

They were in the air.

“It’s the one safe place. If there’s a civil war.”

Instead of the crucifixion being replayed, it appeared as if the Civil War was going to be replayed. The Men of the Gospel had called out the military, but some of them refused to serve. Still, there was a hardcore majority of soldiers who sided with the Men of the Gospel, folks too steeped in their own belief, who refused to believe their own eyes, who called the truth a fake, and held on to the fake as truth.

But there were three forces arraigned against them. First, those military who refused to serve. Second, a gathering minority led by the Muslims, who had taken over their camps, and some prisons, where the prisoners had revolted, and were manufacturing weapons. And third, the Old Christians, a silent majority now shocked into rebellion, ready to fight the Men of the Gospel and their army.

Meanwhile the Men of the Gospel were looking for Eve and Adam. Public enemies number one and two. They had upended the founding of the new religion, and endangered the advances of the very Reformation itself. They had to be found and brought to justice. They had to be seen to be punished as the Absolute Antichrists they were.

“We’ll find a house in this wasteland. Nobody will look for us here. We will be safe inside the Wound of Washington. They don’t know us here. They don’t get any news here, because they don’t have TV or the Internet. They don’t have electricity. We’ll live without electricity ourselves. Whatever happens anywhere else, the lives of the City of the Damned will go on as before. The society outside will not be interested in having any of them on either of their sides.”

They flew low in the powered parachute. Evening fires were being lit. Adam circled the scorched earth close to the blankness where the capitol dome once shone in the sun. Lincoln’s statue still sat, blackened, the walls around it blown away. A tiny group of people sat before him, as the nation far away from its granite repose gathered itself into new factions for a second Civil War.

“Let’s see what they’re doing.”

They landed and walked up to the little group, slowly, not to disturb. They hovered twenty yards away. There were five men and one woman. They were still recognizable, even though they were deformed by radiation. One of them led the small group in prayer.

“Dear God, You gave us the gift of freedom, which we will hold on to in this corner of our dear land. A new scourge has taken hold of our nation. We pray for Your guidance. We wait for You to call us once again, to lead us into leading our nation back to Your word. It’s time for freedom to be on the march again. Give us a sign, Lord. We are dedicated to serving our country as we did before. They need our leadership again in this new trial and test for the nation.” The praying man fell silent.

“Amen.”

Adam noticed that the former vice-president was the first to say amen. It was if the others – Rumsfeld the Hammer, Rice the Voice, Wolfowitz the Visionary, Rove the Brain – waited for him to speak first.

“Amen,” they intoned.

Cheney was dark, blackened darker than the woman, who seemed to be lighter than before. The right side of the face of Bush 43 the Rock was an angry red. He looked like two halves of the same person, taken apart and then spliced together again, as if he were a living détente of his own Civil War, half his body in revolt against the other one.

“Amen,” he said. The small group held hands.

Adam and Eve looked at each other.

“There’s something touching about their sentimentality, in a universe they must know to be indifferent.”

“They still have hope,” said Eve. “The focus of their sentimentality is strong.”

“Blinded by their own light.”

“Or lack of it.”

Adam nodded. “Let’s go,” said Eve.

“I saw an empty street with no fires back there. Would you like a street all to yourself?”

“To start with,” said Eve. “Then I would like to look around for a community.”

“I see,” said Adam. “You’d like a community so you can have some people to exert power over.”

Eve chuckled. “People to talk to, that’s all. There will be a lot to talk about.”

They got on the powered parachute and took off. The engine roared, a piece of unfamiliar technology in the low-tech environs of the City of the Damned. The powered parachute climbed, and Adam circled slowly over the statue of Lincoln. The group below looked up. Eve waved at them. Hesitantly, the group waved back, bent over on their knees. Eve waved back more animatedly; in turn, their waving grew more animated.

“See,” said Adam. “You’re exercising power.”

Eve laughed, her gaunt face dominated by her open mouth. Adam fired the engine harder and the powered parachute flew faster. The group below dwindled out of focus.

“Listen,” he said.

“What?”

“Do you hear it? There’s an echo of our engine coming from down there. Faint, but I can hear it. It must be bouncing off Lincoln.”

“I hear it.”

“Now it’s gone.”

Adam leaned forward into the open air of their future. Down there a society lay in chaos, shocked loose from its managed rigidity, a collective split in at least two pieces, joined in a fresh death struggle of a new Civil War. Eve leaned forward against Adam, her nipples hard against his back, the cold air streaming against their bodies from the front, shaving the past off them and blowing it behind them. In the dark they hurtled onwards, cocooned in flight, as the campfire smell of the City of the Damned rose up around them from the sleeping earth.