“God’s Law?” Angel finishes my thought. “We don’t follow His laws anymore. We don’t even believe God exists, do we?”
Nothing spits from my mouth in response as my mind stumbles through the Biter camp, the hovels, the smoky fires, their unwashed bodies and yellow teeth, the howls of feral men, visions of writhing, grinding dancers, groping at each other, fucking and groaning in the grime.
“No,” I decide. “How could any God leave His descendants to this? But that doesn’t matter, Angel. God or no, the Biters are savages, animals. I won’t submit to them; I won’t allow them to fuck us like that. I’d rather fight them or burn on the wall than have a filthy Biter’s hands on me.”
“Then fight, Rimma.” Angel’s voice bristles with anger. “Go ahead and fight and get your head bashed in or your throat slit. You forced me to swear an oath to let you, and I’m helpless to stop you even if I tried. But you haven’t the right to demand that choice of anyone else. I won’t watch another Paradise. I’m going to trust Mag.” She glares at me. “I’m going to trust her because I have no other choice.”
Her hands in fists, she crosses her arms, stares straight ahead and nods at Mag. In a fury, I want to shove her from the tree and laugh as she screams and bounces through the branches, but I don’t. She’s being exactly who and how I demanded her to be—innocently trusting and hopeful, a believer in goodness and peace, as delusional as Deacon Abrum.
Shifting from my seat, I fumble for a footing on the lower branch and start down the sappy tree. Angel descends above me, showering me with dead pine needles as she climbs. On the ground, I belt my steel knives, heft my spear, and give Angel the gleaming reapers to carry any way she likes. We march up the East Spoke silent as a pair of matching stones.
At the back of God’s House, she hands me the sickles. “I’m going to tell mum.” There’s no give in her voice, but I see in her eyes, she’s begging me not to argue. I nod my acceptance. “She’ll need time with the other women to prepare,” she adds.
“Go then, Angel.” I tuck the sickles in my belt, reach up, and begin to climb the ladder, small chinks of mortar shaking loose into my eyes.
The air smells smoky to me, the acrid smell of Biter fires wafting through holes in the shield during the night. The end approaches and I’m helpless to stop it, stuck pacing and worrying and tasting yellow bile in the back of my throat as my stomach clenches. Angel spreads the word as I mull over whether banishment is preferable to waiting inside these walls. Would I rather be cast into the Biters’ ranks or kneel in a newly plowed field? It scarcely matters; it won’t be my choice. Angel doesn’t realize it, but it won’t be her choice either. That’s not how Heaven works.
**
Angel and I are prisoners in God’s House of Law. Our dramatic capture occurred less than one hour after Angel told my mother that we’d defied Deacon Abrum, opened the gate to Heaven, chatted up the Biters and told them we’d kneel in exchange for our lives. Needless to say, her tale wasn’t well received. My sister slouches forlornly against the wall, stunned, her eyes pewter saucers fresh from the dishpan, laced with wet tears. In contrast, an odd calmness filters through my body and mind, this outcome unsurprising, inevitable, and beyond my control. I’ve been napping on and off on the floor, worn out from days and nights perched in a pine tree.
Banishment qualifies as a most serious matter in Heaven. In my lifetime, I remember five—two for impermissible pregnancies and three for rape, the details murky after so many years. The elders and deacons judge the evidence and rule on banishments, but witnessing remains a vital component of the process. It fosters a consensus and instills the terror of transgression in the mind of every participant.
After the evening meal, men begin to file in. Deacon Solom herds me to a straight-backed chair to the left of the deacons’ dais, leaving Angel hunched against the wall. My stomach gurgles with hunger and the narrow-faced deacon peers at me with the aspect of a man who just gagged on a sour plum. He wears his thin black hair plastered to his head with spit and tucked behind his ears, only accentuating the massive size of his lobes.
“I’ll take those.” The man stretches his palm toward me as he eyes all the steel wedged in my belt. My spear is stuck up on the roof.
“I think not,” I say, sliding out one of the longer kitchen knives and resting it in my lap, my hand lightly on the handle.
The deacon’s lips work, his tongue exploring his teeth. “Fine, just keep it in your belt. Don’t wave it about like a lunatic.”
With a nod, I tuck it back in my belt and smile at Angel in triumph as the man shuffles away.
“Peace, Sister,” Angel whispers. “It’s bad enough without you threatening to stab the deacons.”
“I did no such thing,” I say with a giggle, an inappropriate sound that raises eyebrows.
“What’s the matter with you?” Angel asks.
No reply comes to mind. I don’t know how I feel; blank, emotionless, numb perhaps, tired of feeling afraid and powerless before an enemy far stronger than I, before my allies who intend to turn a blind eye.
His arms raised for quiet, Deacon Abrum lumbers up the steps to the dais. Men cram the room, shifting along the walls and crowding benches. The griping and murmuring softens but continues unabated. Filaments on the walls and suspended from the ceiling flicker and hum, dim and brighten, possessing minds of their own. Blue light shines in the windows from a crackling shield.
“We meet here to discuss a matter of banishment,” the portly deacon announces.
“We have greater concerns to discuss,” a man raises his voice from among the cramped benches.
“Yes, of course.” Deacon Abrum nods wisely. “We’ve all now seen Biters at our gates. And there they shall stay if men and women obey God’s Laws. Rimma stands accused of repeatedly opening the East Gate against God’s will, granting access to Biters, jeopardizing Heaven and all its descendants with blatant disregard.” He points a thick finger at me as he frowns at the gathered men. “What if, while she consorts with Biters, they decide to enter our gates? What if they take this foolish woman captive and invade by the hundreds? What if she’s the reason that hundreds of Biters camp out there now, waiting?”
His words stun me, silencing the congregation of listeners. I hadn’t considered the possibility that the Biters came because Angel and I spoke to them. I glance at her frightened eyes where she curls against the wall, almost invisible. But that couldn’t be, they knew about our shield already, our bone wall, about Paradise.
“What if,” Deacon Abrum continues, “for her sins, the fate that befell Paradise happens here, inside our walls?”
A man standing in the rear steps forward a pace, hat in his hand. “Deacon?”
“Yes, Davian. Speak so all may hear.”
Davian avoids looking at me as he addresses the room. “Perhaps you’re right, she deserves banishment. Seems to me she does for risking us all. But the gates stand closed and we don’t dare open them to cast her out. Even so, I’m not for handing one of our own over to Biters.” Davian’s eyes glance my way before he retakes his seat.
The man who spoke earlier rises to his feet.
“Yes, Garth.” The deacon nods. “Speak so all may hear.”
“I won’t argue with Davian. I don’t think any of us will. But we have more pressing problems than this one girl and what’s done and over with. We have Biters at our gates and our shield wall will fail any day now. The Biters know it and we know it. Are we running, fighting, or kneeling and praying?”
The voices in the room swell like the flashflood in our shallow river, drowning the room in noise. Men argue with each other, disagreements escalating to shouting. I catch words of defiance, reasons for caution, concern for the women and children, the muttering of doomsayers insisting nothing will work. I’m irrelevant, my sins forgotten in the encroaching chaos, the cacophony of sound, filaments flaring and popping, Biters howling and fucking. Deacon Abrum’s thunderous voice roars above it all, demanding silence.
The snapped gavel not yet replaced, Deacon Solom picks up a candlestick and bangs it on the dais, shocking even Deacon Abrum who grabs it from his hands in a huff.
“Enough! Silence!” the stout man booms. “Anarchy accomplishes nothing. God requires order, laws, standards of discourse.” He glares across the sweating faces, the room uncomfortably stuffy. “We meet here to decide the matter of banishment,” he declares, red-faced, a finger shaking at me. “Banishment and none other.”
“The shield?” Garth asks, gesturing to the flickering filaments, the azure glare streaming through the windows.
“All in favor of banishment? Show of hands,” Deacon Abrum instructs the room, ignoring the dismay of the men staring at the windows. Hands rise with little enthusiasm. He scans the votes of the deacons and elders. “Done. When the Biters pack up and move on, the banishment stands.” He swings his head toward me with a doleful and satisfied frown. I return the grimace, feeling…disappointed, the best word for it. Not because of my banishment, for that will never come to pass; the Biters won’t be moving on. But because I had hoped for better from Heaven. I’m disappointed for Angel.
“God will not fail us.” Deacon Abrum reverts to his deep fatherly tone. “God’s Garden will thrive as it has for centuries. God is wise; God is gracious. Since the beginning of time, His intentions have remained clear and He has never wavered—Save the chosen, His descendants. Those outside the Gardens at the breaking of the world were tainted by sin, undeserving of salvation. Their children’s children’s children bear the sins of the fathers, just as ours embrace the glory and righteousness of Heaven. This is God’s test of our faith. To abandon Heaven is to abandon God.”
Deacon Solom begins to clap in a dainty patter. The other deacons and elders join in, smiling benignly. Before me, I behold the worried faces of Heaven’s men as the room goes black.
The shield explodes.
Windows shatters, slivers of glass spraying inward, glittering in the brilliant blue flash of light. The flare brands my eyes, leaving white spots swimming in a sea of darkness, the whole world gone black as night. I scramble blindly across the floor on my hands and knees, crawling in splintered glass, searching for Angel. Men bark orders in the dark, a few wounded crying out, the sound of bodies scrambling over benches and chairs, the door thrust open. Outside God’s House of Law, other voices reach my ears, women and children screaming, calling for loved ones, wailing with fear and pain.
“Angel? Shit!” A sliver of glass stabs my hand. My cheek stings, blood tickling down the side of my face.
“Rimma, where are you?”
“Here.” I rise unsteadily to my feet, carefully brushing glass from my hands and trousers, wincing as new shards prick my palms.
“Rimma?” She asks again.
Tentatively, I step forward, bumping into her knee. “Are you hurt?”
“The glass flew over me,” she whispers as she finds her feet. “Are you?”
“We need to get out of here. Hold my wrist and stay close.”
Angel’s hand clutching my wrist, we creep through the darkness along the wall, bumping into overturned benches and men tripping in the blackness as they seek the door. I never considered that when the shield failed we’d be left without a shred of light, utterly blind, struggling to find our footing out of buildings, on pathways, to each other. Outside, cries and shouts weave a tapestry of terror and panic. We stumble into a corner, groping, and glimpse the door as our eyes adjust to the moon’s pale light and a dusting of sparkling stars.
Ghostly figures run down the East Spoke toward the first fields. Women and children running toward the Biters to kneel, just as Angel told them to.
“This way.” Angel pulls on my wrist as she points after them. “We have to hurry.”
“You’re not serious.” I back away, flipping my hand and grabbing her wrist, the glass burrowing into my palm. “We’re not kneeling to Biters.”
“But Rimma—”
“We’re not kneeling to Biters. We’re not getting fucked by Biters,” I shout and gesture toward the fields. “Do they know? Do those women know what will happen to them?”
“They’re going to survive,” Angel insists. “Survive, Rimma.”
“No, they’re…Fuck!”
An inhuman sound rises out of the black night all around us, faint but unmistakable, the frenzied yips, barks, and howling of Biters. “Trust me, Angel,” I beg her. Without waiting for a reply, I turn on my heel and dart around the side of the building, grabbing for the ladder to the roof, counting on Angel’s fear to carry her with me. “Hurry,” I snap, starting up, my fingers barely gripping the rungs, Angel following on my heels. As we scramble up, the howling tears through Heaven, drawing closer. I drag Angel over the edge to the roof to the first sounds of screaming.
Afraid to twitch, we lie on the roof where we landed, arm in arm, panting in each other’s faces. My heart drums, blood roaring through my veins. Angel whimpers as we listen to Biters storm into the heart of Heaven, their savage howls blending with the first harsh, guttural grunts of fighting and wailing cries of the fallen. I roll to the edge, my eyes peering through the creepers at the women’s residence. Biters bearing torches crash through closed doors, shattering glass, heaving anyone they find cowering in the darkness out to the courtyard. Two men chase a screaming woman to the end of the balcony and pull her down behind the wisteria. Biters throw furniture through gaping windows, amassing anything burnable for an immense fire in the courtyard that bursts into colossal flames.