sensations that time had stolen. The smell of her hair. The slant of her nose. The exact shade of her eye.
I could remember them all. Ish. But memories are like regrets, they linger and haunt you, but they evolve with time. They lose their edge. Become idealised.
I wondered, in some quiet giggling abstraction, if I'd even recognise her when I saw her again. Then my brain reminded me she was dead – must be. Had been for five years.
Idiot. It said.
All this way, for nothing.
Without even realising it, I'd placed a hand on the door handle and begun to push. And that, really, was all there was to it. Inside this room I'd find out. Had she been here? Was it really her that sent me the message?
I felt like a pilgrim who never expected to get to his shrine.
I relaxed the pressure on the door and stepped back. The air was full of light. Hallucinations turned my brain upside-down; twisted synaesthetic confusions swapping sounds for tastes, musical tones for physical feelings, emotions for colours.
Scents for light.
In the detention room, the syringe I took from Nate's pack had been marked: SNIFF.
I recalled a time that seemed long ago, and a chase through city streets, and a big man in red injecting another man with… Well. With something that made him a little less than human. That sharpened-up his senses. I recalled being pretty fucking impressed, at the time.
And now here I was. A wolf in the true sense.
And I turned away from the Comms Room with my nose in the air, and followed a pulsing trail of light-stink that moved and shifted like electrified neon, because maybe it wasn't my problem, and maybe it wasn't part of my mission, and maybe no one would care but me – but some things need to be finished, whether it's your job to finish it or not.
Jasmine could wait.
She'd waited five years.
I found John-Paul Rohare Baptiste in a room decked in red and blue velvet, with flags hung-up behind him. The country they signified was dead.
It had been easy, closing-in on him, down bunker tunnels and twisting corridors, with lights shimmering before and behind me, sniffing the air.
He smelt of me.
He was sloshing with me.
He was talking as I stepped quietly inside, through a door marked: STUDIO
'…and… and so I'm putting this message on… onna loop…'
He was swaying unsteadily. Face all busted-up – cleaned of raw blood but clearly bruised – eyes crossed. He was holding himself upright on the barn doors of an old TV camera, staring deep into the lens. The red light was on.
'…we've… had some troubles. You c'n… c'n see from my face, I think. But… h-hallelujah! We have prevailed, my sons and daughters. God's righteousness has… has shone through. We have been sorely tested, and faced down the… the evil of ignorance. We have endured our great Exodus, and in the… in the process have found our 'Promised Land'. My children… we have been found deserving of glory.'
There was nobody behind the camera. Nobody behind the glass window in the control-booth set to one side. Not any more. Not since I stopped-off to say hello.
It had been impressively soundproofed. John-Paul hadn't even noticed.
There was nobody listening to him. Nobody except me, and the world.
What was left of it.
'I send out this message to say to you all: do not be alarmed. We have moved, as God's will has dictated. But our mission remains steadfast. We must build a brighter tomorrow. We must open the eyes of the children! Amen. Mm. A-men.'
His eyes rolled and closed-up; communing with the divine. His withered face creased in a perfect smile.
'And… and so I say to you all, continue to send me the architects of the future. Continue to bring me your sons and daughters. Bring them to Cleveland, and Toledo, and we will reveal to them the paradise we are building here.
'We will take them and raise them up, and… a-and…ah…'
His voice tailed off. His eyes fluttered open.
I pushed the silver pin a little harder against the frail skin of his neck. He hadn't even heard me approach him. Hadn't been aware I was behind him, looming like some great fucking bat, until the sliver of metal was pricking his throat.
The sliver Rick gave me. Buried in my own flesh.
John-Paul gurgled.
The red light continued to burn.
'Wh… who… who's there?' He said, not daring to move.
'I'm the Holy Ghost.' I said. 'I move in mysterious ways.'
'Y-you! You would… you would commit this sin before the World? Y-you would expose your evil?'
I leaned down until I was close to his ear, senses alive with the drug, tasting his fear. Enjoying it.
'I will if you will.' I said.
'Wh… what d… do you m…?'
'The children, Abbot. You were about to tell us about the children. About how you 'raise them up.' That was as far as you got. Why not… tell us about that?'
'B-but… But I…'
'Now, now. The world watches, your Holiness.' I pressed harder with the pin. 'Let's not scrimp on details.'
And so he told them.
He told them how he'd survived. He gibbered and snotted and cried as he went, and he dressed it up in holiness. Didn't matter. Still came across like a desperate man polishing a turd.
It wasn't murder, he said, it was the Touch of God. It wasn't blood, it was divinity itself.
Listen: people might be a little short-sighted when confronted with miracles. And okay, maybe humanity has a hole in its common-sense where the idea of deity sits nice and firm. Maybe there's something to be said for the infuriating fucking gullibility of mankind, but here's the thing:
You can only push it so far.
I think the message got through.
I think what they heard, out there, clustered round TVs for weeks to come, as the message looped and re- looped over and over, was not a divine prophet delivering words of hope and purity…
…I think what they heard was a wretched little freak, explaining with patience and politeness how he'd stolen the blood of a thousand kiddies, how he'd convinced the world of his perfection, how his acolytes had flocked to serve him, just to fend-off the virus that was killing him.
He told them that there were no 'marks.' No angels pouring out their vials onto the earth. Nothing. Just people with a particular type of blood. Whole ethnic groups, with genetic traces that he neither understood nor cared about, but had nothing to do with the wrath of God.
He told them that the virus was just that: a virus. Biological. Predictable. It killed certain people and left great swathes of others alive. The O-negs. The Native Americans. Eastern Asians. Australian Aborigines. He told them he knew this because he'd been with the group who found it all out. They'd seen what the virus killed and what it spared, and they'd failed utterly to find out how to stop it. They'd hidden away down here in the bunker until the virus caught up with them too, and there was a time of madness and… and things he couldn't remember, and then…
Then he was reborn as John-Paul, the Holy.
Stealing blood to stave-off the virus. Whole transfusions of O-neg, to replace the juices the Blight guzzled every day. Injections of plasma from Iroquois captives, to plant whatever genetic armour they possessed deep inside him.
He told them everything. Then his voice went quiet and his face went slack, and he told them that children
