True Believers

Nona shaded her eyes with her hand as she approached the Bright Gate, which glowed nearly as intensely as the morning sun it reflected. The two massive, polished steel doors had remained closed since the quarantine began, opening only a handful of times to put any known afflicted inside, never to let anyone out. No one got to leave Rotton. Nona reached in her robes and pulled out a picture of her daughter, taking a moment to remember her. Then she sucked in a deep breath and plodded forward.

The two guards stationed at the gate trained their air rifles at another woman, who pleaded with them beside the gate, her cries shrill. One of them switched, aiming at Nona, but she didn’t slow. She held out the stamped steel plate with the high oman’s seal. The guard lowered his weapon and held the plate up to the sky, as if checking for authenticity. “Looks good. What do you want in there with all that death?” he asked.

“I intend to kill a god,” Nona said.

#

Inside, the Spotted Death was worse than she could’ve believed. How many infected lived here and how many more would be sent to Rotton before the disease was finally stopped? If it ever was. Isolated cases still broke out beyond quarantine. She tied the cloth mask tight over her mouth and nose. They said it could get in through the breath, that wisps of sickness could travel through the air and anchor into your body, spreading out like the sand. If those dull, blue spots—like tiny bruises—started showing on her skin there would be no leaving Rotton. Only the foolish still clung to the hope of a cure.

Imojin, her daughter, could be foolish. She had often fallen for grifters passing through town, offering easy solutions to hard problems—grifters like the woman who sold her a flower that supposedly turned sand into fertile soil. Nona could hear Imojin now, going on about how these flowers bloomed in a southern oasis known for magical resistance to the spreading sands and how, if everyone got one, they could transform the desert strangling Aznir into some impossible paradise. The plant died within a week and still she praised the flower and blamed herself for its demise, for not loving it enough, or, perhaps, loving it too much.

Someone reached for Nona’s ankle with a crusty, wrapped hand, bandages brown with dried blood. “Care to bless a dying man?” he asked, his voice muffled by the bandages covering his face.

Nona tensed, but didn’t pull away. “The Only blesses all who ask,” she said.

“No blessings from you?”

“Not today.”

“The Believer would’ve bent down and whispered into my ear, stirring my will to live.”

His descriptions matched the High Oman reports of the Believer’s sermons. “Has he come to you?”

“Not I. But I’ve seen him preach. I wasn’t strong enough to make the sickness stop.”

“Strong enough?”

“I wasn’t a true believer.” The man pulled his hand away, and hugged himself tight. “Would the Only have me back?”

“Not for me to say. You could always seek the Only’s counsel. Search the stars and speak Their name.”

“I doubt I will see another night.”

“Doubt is death.”

The man bowed his head, his shoulders shuddering. Nona couldn’t tell if it was the disease or something else setting him to shake. She bent down to see what ailed him but stepped away once she realized he was laughing. “Those are the Believer’s words. Perhaps he stole them from your god. No matter what god I follow the message is always the same. Believe strong enough or live strong enough or love strong enough.” He glared at her with blotchy, cataract-riddled eyes. “The Believer is true in his claims, at least.”

“How so?”

“Around us he breathes freely with no mask. He touches us and tells us we would be healed if we simply believed we were worth saving. I saw him kiss one of us, right on an open sore, and still no blisters ever rose on his skin. Just by believing he will never succumb. He wills a thing and it is done.”

“So the rumors say.”

The man’s mouth moved underneath the folds of cloth wrapping his face. Blood spread across his bandages in the shape of a smile. “So they say.”

#

Rotton was a labyrinth. Rows of worn buildings flanked the old cobblestone streets, jagged cracks shooting up from their foundations. Faded paint chipped away from their walls. These streets were somewhat less crowded, still peppered with afflicted, but not like the gate. She wondered why they crowded the gates. Maybe they still hoped they might get to leave.

Nona continued deeper into Rotton. She eventually came across the damned ones, those with the Spotted Death that failed to die from it, but remained symptomatic. Mummies, some called them. They stabilized, still suffering painful boils but no longer in danger of imminent death. Ignoring that everyone was wrapped in cloth, it was almost like walking around Aznir’s residential district. A woman waved from a balcony as she reeled strips of wet cloth out to dry on a clothesline while a boy pedaled his bike down the road, ringing a bell as he passed her. Three mummy children played Skip-the-Stone in the street while some older ones looked on, holding hands.

Nona asked some of the mummies about the Believer. Rumors put him everywhere. A few said he claimed the tallest building in the quarantine where he could be heard by all afflicted, to give them hope. Others described him as without place, ephemeral, able to pass through walls and beneath the earth and fly freely on the wind. One led her down a maze of alleys just to bring her before a toilet stall. He pointed at it and said, “the Believer lives in there,” then howled with laughter. None of them offered any truth. Hours of false leads and fruitless conversation.

Nona came to a marketplace where dozens of stalls lined the road, each housing a smattering of scavenged goods. One table displayed a flute, a gilded birdcage, a wrench, a bent horseshoe, a stone Ice Fight set with three pieces missing, and a half empty bottle of wine. Nona bent down to inspect an air tank at one of the stalls, surprised that it was half full.

“Looking for some air?” asked the merchant behind the stall. Only her eyes and the pale, cracked flesh around them were visible. Her bandages were heavy with dust.

“How long have you lived in Rotton?” Nona asked.

The merchant cast her eyes down. “Four years.”

“The Only help you.”

“The Only cannot save me from this place.”

“What about the Believer, then? Do you think he will save you?”

The merchant eyed the crowd before leaning toward Nona. “Let the Eskodo take him.”

“You call out to the old god?”

“The new ones do not impress me. Not the Only. Not the Believer.”

Nona tensed her neck and bit down on her lip. “The Believer is a false god.”

“Just as false as your precious Only,” <shitty>. “Are you trying to find him?”

“I am.”

“To what end?”

“My business is my own.”

She rolled her eyes. “Leave Rotton, Oman. Go back to Aznir. There is nothing for you here.”

Nona grabbed the merchant’s shoulder and shook her once. “Tell me where he is.”

The merchant hesitated, but then nodded and pulled back from her grasp, her lips wet with spit, nearly sneering. But then she bent down slowly and produced a pamphlet depicting two large eyes framed by cloth wrappings. “I BELIEVE” at the top. Below that was a time and a place: Auser Square. The back of the paper displayed a crude map. “Must be fate that one of his followers left this with me yesterday. Take it.”

Nona picked up the pamphlet. “What changed your mind?”

“I know that look. That steely persistence. Seemed the fastest way to be rid of you and your god was giving you what you wanted.”

#

Auser square sat in the center of Rotton, deeper still into the quarantine zone. The buildings around the square suffered from a lack of maintenance, mostly dilapidated. Nona noticed a dearth of people around the area, except for the square itself. Afflicted teemed there. A stage of sorts stood in the middle of the square, constructed from clay rubble piled underneath a metal billboard displaying a row of uniformed men and women with the words, “Enlist in the Falcons Today,” printed across the bottom. The word “Vultures” was crudely scrawled in large, maroon letters across the length of the sign.

The noon sun bore down on Nona and sweat seeped from her forehead, stinging her eyes, but she could still make out movement near the stage. She didn’t need to see to know who it was. The crowd’s sudden silence told her all she needed. “Welcome,” a man said, “you wondrous hopeful.” His voice was high pitched, almost nasal, but projected well.

The crowd replied in unison. “We thank you, Believer.”

Nona felt her flesh prickle though the air was still. She clenched her teeth.

“What brings you out here, friends?”

“To witness!”

The stinging left her eyes and she could finally focus. The Believer stood with his arms wide, wearing a simple tattered cloth robe, dingy around the hem.

“Then behold.” The Believer let his robe fall to the ground to display a bare chest: pale and unblemished. He closed his eyes as the crowd around him gasped. “How long have I lived among you wretched and discarded? Since the beginning. Since the disease started. I kiss the dying and yet suffer no affliction.” (He inhaled deeply). “Tell me, why is this?”

“Belief,” the crowd said.

Nona’s shiver deepened. She scanned the crowd. No Imojin, though the crowd was too large to see everyone. Nor did she see her among the few others on stage, in the back.

“The most powerful force in existence.” The Believer pointed a finger at the crowd. “It can cure any woe.”

“Show us!”

The crowd was animated now, hands raised.

The Believer slipped off his sandals—little more than rubber held to his feet with straps—and stood barefoot on the billboard. “Watch as my flesh presses against this burning hot steel. Listen to it sizzle. And see with your own eyes that it remains unmarred and fair. Do we doubt?”

“Banish all doubt!”

“Why must we shun it?”

“Doubt is death!”

Nona felt compelled to run, to get away from the crowd, but couldn’t. The crowd was like a single mass and she saw no easy way to pass through them without forcing people apart. She pulled the cloth tighter over her face.

The Believer continued calling out questions and the crowd spat back its rehearsed answers, and yet all the mummies responded loudly and passionately through cloth-covered mouths. Nona’s own voice nearly joined them, just because it felt right to do so. The Believer performed more feats of will to prove his power—holding his breath for nearly ten minutes, catching arrows fired at him while blindfolded, laying on a bed of knives and coming off it unpunctured— and the crowd watched them all, supporting his deeds with collective gasps and applause.

“You have borne witness,” the Believer said. “I perform to help you. To show you how to overcome. How to surmount. Only by being true believers will you drive back the sickness that racks your body. Belief will save you all!”

“Yes!” called the crowd

“Believe your flesh will be cleansed!”

Nona felt trapped, her shoulders shuddering as if she was being watched. The crowd was now primed, ready to start…something. She scanned the area, looking for a way out.

“I believe!” the crowd said.

“Believe you will cast off your wrappings! Shed your cocoon and let your shining, perfect flesh touch the sun once more! Believe you will be free!”

Fists shot into the air as mummies chanted the Believer’s name and started unwinding their wrappings. The surge of the crowd pushed Nona toward the stage. One woman ripped her wrappings off her face, revealing pale, blue spots and open sores. She screamed for the Believer to save her. Another mummy shoved the woman, knocking her down, and she stayed there, sobbing into the sand.

Hands grazed Nona as she threaded her way through the mummies. An old man with knobby joints poking through his wrappings pointed at Nona’s mask and told her to believe, to save herself. He took unsteady steps toward her, as if his legs were about to buckle, and a dozen or so approached her from all sides with outstretched arms, chanting at her to shed her cocoon.

Nona gripped the pistol hidden within her robes and cocked it, hoping she remembered to open the air valve. A cloth-wrapped hand reached for her, reaching to pull her mask down. She jerked away. The mask was her only protection, though how much protection could it be, really. The cloth had holes and if the fever carried on the breath then the breath could go through the holes. More hands reached for her face.

If she fired, how many would she kill? Not enough. She took her hand off the pistol and reached instead for her writ, pulling it out and holding it above her head.

“Be gone!” Nona shouted through her mask. “In the name of the Only!”

The Only still carried authority, even here. Or omans were still feared. Either way, those surrounding her stopped and backed away, one of them spitting curses as she withdrew. The crowd spread out like insects, heading away from the square and down various roads and alleys, their chants and screams growing quieter. The Believer, still on stage, clapped dust from his hands and was helped back into his robe by a larger man. The pair headed down the street in the opposite direction as the crowd.

As Nona left to follow them only the weeping woman remained in the square, staring up at the sky perhaps, seeming to search for something, her boil-pocked mouth contorted into a scream, though no sound came out.

#

Nona followed The Believer to a large building with a worn, faded sign that read “Kunta Preservatives” on the far end of Rotton. Nona pulled back the tarp that served as a door and heaved as a sickly stench hit her nose. Crates lay smashed across the floor, their contents looted long ago. She tightened her mask. She took two steps farther inside and rounded a corner, bumping into the larger man that helped the Believer with his robe. He scowled, which was exaggerated due to a disfigurement cleaving his upper lip in two, but whether that was from violence or inflicted by the Spotted Death, she couldn’t say.

“Tarsis,” came a voice echoing from deeper inside, “let her in. I’m curious why she followed us.”

The large man said nothing but took one step to the side, letting Nona pass. Beyond the crates, a cavernous, empty room sprawled before her, where people lay on the floor, organized into neat rows. All dead and in various stages of decay, some little more than bones. She drew closer and saw the entire warehouse floor was covered with bodies. The Believer crouched down beside a body, putting something in its mouth.

“You made quite the spectacle,” the Believer said. “We don’t see many omans from beyond the gate. Actually, not ever.”

“All of these people are dead,” Nona said.

“Oh, yes,” Tarsis said. “Most have been dead for years. Some for only a few days.”

“Why are they here?”

“You’re looking at true believers.” The Believer spread his hands wide and looked to one side, then the other. “They begged me not to burn them. They have faith that I will one day be able to bring them back to life through sheer conviction.”

“And how many have you raised?”

Tarsis scowled at her. “You mock his miracles?”

“I saw no miracles. Just a man with hot feet willing to endure pain. How many have you raised?”

The Believer stepped toward her and inclined his head slightly. Up close he was a different man. Red, jagged veins shot out around his irises like lightning bolts and his breath stank of sick and rot. His lips were split in several places, dry and bleeding, and his skin somehow paler. He reached out to touch her and Nona pulled away. The Believer laughed.

“None so far,” the Believer said, “but I am close. What do you fear from me, oman?”

“I have no fear,” Nona said.

“That mask you wear says otherwise.” He pulled his hand back.

“Tell me, what do you fear?”

“Me?” The Believer smiled. “I have no room for fear—not with all the pity for those who lack will.”

Tarsis stood behind her, suddenly, putting a hand on her shoulder, squeezing hard. “Let me throw her into Rotton’s streets. She serves nothing but—” Nona pulled her gun from her robes and squeezed the trigger—pop—and Tarsis staggered to one side. He howled and fell onto a row of corpses. Nona aimed her gun and pulled the trigger twice—pop-pop—putting two more steel spheres through his chest and Tarsis fell silent.

The Believer held his hands up. “So, an assassin then.”

“Among other things.” Nona reached her other hand inside her robes and pulled out a picture of Imojin. “This girl was last seen in your inner circle. I’ll make you a deal. You lead me to her. She walks out with me and I’ll let you continue your folly here.”

“I never forget a face,” The Believer said. “You are close to her?”

“She’s my daughter. She paid to be smuggled into quarantine when she heard of your miracles. I don’t care if you keep giving false hope to these poor fools. I just want my daughter back.”

The Believer led Nona farther into the warehouse, down more rows of corpses, which was all Nona needed to know, to finally know. And yet, morbidly, she had to see her. The Believer stopped and stood next to a body, looking down at it. Nona stepped closer, motioning with her gun for the Believer to back away. She bent down to inspect the face. She knew it well. She’d seen it many times, worried over it, fought with it, loved it, held it, kissed its forehead before bed. There was no question.

Imojin’s face was riddled with open sores and blue spots but it was definitely her. How wrong she seemed, how wrong for her ever to be so still. Even when she slept, she would kick her legs and toss her arms. But here she was, motionless among a pile of unnamed dead. Nona took a moment to let the lump gathering in her throat dissipate. “I had hoped I might never see her again,” Nona said. “That maybe she left all this madness for the West.”

“She was one of the strongest faithful I knew, besides Tarsis. I thought for sure she could will the sick away.”

Nona leveled her pistol on him. “Bring her back.”

The Believer looked to one side, his arms raised. Nona knew that look, had seen it when she went after other enemies of the High Oman. He was thinking about running. She wished he would.

“Back?” the Believer said.

“It’s simple. If you can will her back to life, like you’ve promised countless others here, I let you go. Otherwise, you can join them—same as Tarsis.”

“I am drained for today, after the miracles.” The Believer blinked as Nona cocked her gun. “But I will try.”

“Let’s see it.”

The Believer bent down next to Imojin and pressed his lips to her forehead. Nona kept her gun on the prophet’s head. The pistol shook, only slightly, and she had the trigger pressed down halfway. It wouldn’t take much pressure to finish it, here and now. But she didn’t. She waited instead.

He made a grand show of it. He clenched his fists and made cords stand out in his neck. He squeezed his eyes tight. He spread his arms, muscles tense and trembling. He sighed once, fell to his knees, and shuddered. His theatrics, at least, were appropriate. For one brief moment she almost believed—

Nothing happened. This was a farce, just as the omans had said.

“Do you know why you’re disease-free?” Nona said. She aimed her pistol at his back. “You’re a carrier. You’re immune to the disease and you’ve been spreading it. You’re no prophet. You’re the origin of all this. And you’re responsible for all these dead. And now my daughter.”

“Wait,” the Believer said, straining,“I feel someth—”

Nona pulled the trigger and the Believer slumped, letting out a wheeze. She kicked him over to one side and let tears fall from her eyes. She lingered there, kneeling beside Imojin, the stale air thick with the dead’s stink. Dust particles, stirred from the Believer’s collapse, hung in the air, drifting slowly back down to the floor. She exhaled and shuddered.

A cough echoed across the emptiness. Nona aimed her gun at the Believer but he remained still. From the corner of her eye she saw something move and turned, bending down over Imojin’s pale, bloated face. Impossibly, Imojin’s eyes fluttered open and color returned to her cheeks. Nona could hear a sharp, long inhale. Her girl looked at her.

“You’ve come back to me,” Nona said. Imojin’s face turned to confusion and fear. Nona searched for words of comfort, things she wished she could’ve said before, but none came. Still, she was content to hold her, to have her again.

The Believer rasped one long, last breath. Simultaneously, air and spit escaped Imojin’s mouth in a spray. Imojin’s eyes dimmed. Her cheeks paled and she fell limp once more.

Nona turned to the Believer, to kick him, to scream at him to bring her back, bring her back, but he was gone, too. She shook his body. She even tried believing, to her disappointment, trying to use her own will to bring her daughter back. But Imojin remained dead and still, haloed in the blood of the Believer.

#

The fever hit Nona halfway back to the Bright Gate. She felt raised bumps spread over her skin but she dared not look at them lest they become real to her. Out of sight they were like the spreading sands, something that could be ignored. She would’ve stayed in that warehouse to die amongst the dead, but the high oman needed to learn of the Believer, and belief, and the horror of it. The gate was dim now, reflecting the red of the setting sun. She collapsed a hundred yards from the Bright Gate, next to a mummy.

“Oman, you’re back,” the mummy said. She recognized the bloody smile in his face wrapping, now dried to a deep brown. “I learned how to believe. I might not die tonight after all.”

Nona moaned.

“You look like you belong here.” He bent down and started to wrap her. “Be sure not to doubt. Doubt is death.”

Nona tried to push him away but was too weak. He wound strips of cloth across her exposed skin while she gritted her teeth. Nona looked up, tracing the stars to see the face of the Only and called out Their name, but the only face she saw was Imojin’s. Her daughter stared down at her and Nona knew not what to make of it. Even when Nona closed her eyes, Imojin was there, in her head, tirelessly watering that flower, singing to it, praising it, loving it, doing all she could, in spite of the fact that it would never be enough.

###

Released: February 15th, 2022

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