“Boy! Pocket that weapon!”
Lead shoved the pistol in his pocket and instinctively held his hands out.
“You’re now in Lead Group Two, number 2305.” The guard handed Leonard six bullets from a box sitting on his table.
“Hold still.”
The guard uncapped a felt pen and wrote LG2-2305 across Leonard’s shirt. Another guard escorted Leonard to the back of a pick-up truck where he waited with a group of hollow-eyed fugee boys. No one spoke.
They drove out of the fugee camp, north along the river to a town called Bullhead. In Bullhead, the boys were unloaded and marched into a circus tent. A one-armed guard directed them to banquet tables where they were served warm bread and soup. While they ate, a barber clipped their hair ragged and short. More guards came and collected the hair trimmings in plastic bags.
The pistol bulged uncomfortably in Leonard’s pants. He had loaded it during the truck ride. He had considered the shape and weight of each bullet before loading it into the tumbler. Each new item was wealth unimagined, magic.
At the end of their meal, a man with a long salt and pepper hair climbed onto the center banquet table. An enormous silver cross hung down the front of his red satin robes. He stepped over plates and bowls, but paid them no regard.
“Boys!” He said extending his arms to the heavens.
He jerked his head skyward and shook as if in convulsion, when he looked back at the boys his face was smiling with joy and rapture. His eyes showed wild and crazed. His voice boomed and echoed throughout the tent with strength inexperienced by the pitiful fugee boys.
“Boys! Thou art lucky! Thou hath survived the Apocalypse! Thou hath survived the Rapture! Thou hath survived the Plagues and the Viruses! God hath judged thee!”
The man paused as though waiting for applause. When none came from the bewildered fugees, he continued.
“He hath found thee unworthy with the rest of us to be taken in the Rapture, but worthy like the rest of us to inherit what remains! Thou art lucky to be given the chance to prove worth! Thou art the meek! Thou art the meek who shall inherit this Earth!”
His eyes swept the room, pausing to look into each awestruck face of each fugee boy.
“God hath graced us with his divine wisdom, and in that wisdom he has granted us the means for redemption. Thou will be redeemed! We shall be redeemed!”
The man threw his hands to the heavens.
“Redemption!”
The guards in the tent immediately threw their hands in the air and repeated the cry. The man shook his fists.
“Redemption!”
A few of the fugees caught on and slowly raised their hands.
“Redemption!”
The man was lifted off of the table by two stone-faced guards. The fugee boys kept their hands raised. Leonard’s belly was full for the first time in memory, tears rolled down his cheeks as a guard placed a small square of chocolate in front of him.
“I don’t blame you.” Terence said.
Lead covered his eyes.
“Don’t condescend to me,” Lead hissed. “Have you ever been so hungry? Have you ever so wanted for food, for purpose, for answers and direction?”
Terence looked hard at Lead. His answer was slow and deliberate.
“Yes, I have. Do not feel shame in what you say. Please go on.”
The days at Church Camp stretched to weeks. The fugees were separated into groups for living and training. Leonard was placed in Lead Group Two, which consisted of seven boys aged thirteen to seventeen. In charge of their group was a grizzled veteran everyone called Jones. The boys were from refugee camps all over the Zona, all with similar stories of hunger, plague, and abandonment.
Each morning Jones ran them through calisthenics. The boys were made to run around their dorm tent until the dust kicked up a slow cyclone; then they did stretches, push-ups, and sit-ups. Afterward they were given rations of broth and made to do the exercises over again. Those who did not complete the regimen were given no broth and were held out from the afternoon feed line. The fugee boys worked tirelessly to be fed. They were given two meals a day in addition to morning broth. The food made them feel like royalty. No one missed more than a meal during those first weeks.
Group Leader Jones showed them how to use their assigned weapons; how to field strip and clean. He pulled Leonard from the exercise regimen and showed him the trigger, the sight, the safety, and how to quickly reload. At night, Jones read to the boys from the Bible. He made hand gestures in the light of an oil lamp and the boys imagined they saw angels and spirits in the shadows. Jones told them stories of the old world and its evils. He took them to the crucifixion of the boy who had accidentally discharged his firearm. They watched the boy scream as the sun burned his face and blood dripped from his impaled wrists, to be swallowed in the desert dust. The lesson was not lost on them.
Leonard and the fugees grew stronger. They grew to love the guards who fed and commanded them, especially Jones. Once a week they stood in front of a stage with all the other fugee boys and guards to watch the red robed preacher testify. The guards referred to this as Group Meeting and the message was always the same; they were lucky, they should be dead or in Heaven, but God had both rejected them and saved them. The world had been destroyed by the storms and plagues, which had been brought by sin. Always the red preacher pontificated on the sins of man. Now was their time. They were the inheritors. The world was theirs to claim and the old mistakes could be righted. Redemption was at hand.
The routine went on unchanged for two months. Leonard was comforted by the structure of the day, in always knowing what was expected. During the Leonard’s ninth Group Meeting, the red preacher gave a new message.
“Thou art the survivors,” he said. “Thou art blessed in the Lord’s eyes if thy purpose is redemption and redemption is at hand. Children, the old world was a place of sin. The old world was a place of placation and disregard for right, for holy, for good.”
The red preacher thrust his right hand into the air for all to see. A black crucifix was freshly tattooed across his palm. It sweated blood.
“Children, thou will be saved and in claiming thy salvation thou will strike against the heart of the old world’s sin. Thou will be vessels of the Lord. Thou will be the flaming sword of Gabriel come to life in a swift fist that strikes the heart of the old world and all of its sin. Just north of us, children, just over the horizon lies the capital of sin, the city of sin, the gathering place for all that is sick and unholy, Las Vegas! Those old enough, those of us who were men before the Storms know without convincing. Las Vegas is the city of sin on purpose, the capital of whores, criminals, blasphemers, homosexuals, and race traitors!”
Leonard looked to the guards and fugees. They all watched silently, consuming the red preacher’s every word, held by the magic of his zealotry.
“Who wants to show God we’re grateful to be alive?”
One of the guards broke the silence.
“I!” Said the guard.
Then the others joined in. Slowly at first, but building upon faceless mob confidence. The voices of hundreds came together as a roar, the roar of animals.
“Who wants to earn this world? Who wants to claim this world!?”
The red preacher was no longer looking to the crowd. His face was lifted up and screaming to the heavens. The guards and fugees roared on.
“Who wants to tear sin asunder!? Who wants to tell the Almighty that we understand!? Goddamn it, we understand!”
The red preacher leaped across the stage waving his hands and shouting. The crowd had taken to chanting in rhythm.
“Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.”
The red preacher waved his hands at the floor, signaling for silence. The chanting died down.