Sasha.
They unloaded her in Plano. The porters who cracked open her crate, two men in dirty jumpsuits, seemed disappointed she wasn’t food. One of the men was tall and balding, the other shorter and still fairly young. They had white skin, burnt reddish by the sun, and neither of them looked liked they’d bathed in quite some time. Their faces were gaunt. Sasha didn’t see any extra fat on either of them.
“Aw dang,” said the tall man.
“Welcome,” said the short one. “I hope yer ready fer what this is.”
They were not exactly the welcome crew she’d expected. Saul had told her a man named “David” would be waiting. But neither of the porters knew who David was. They seemed much more frustrated than joyous at her presence. The building wasn’t what she’d expected either. It looked like an old FedEx facility, with all the branding covered by red spray paint.
There was trash everywhere, mostly food waste from crates of aid supplies that had been opened too late. The spoiled food had been shoved into large piles and left to rot in one corner of the large room. Sasha guessed this had once been a loading dock, where delivery trucks would’ve dropped off and received packages. The room was filled with a mix of aid crates and miscellaneous boxes, stacked into piles by a ragged army of tired-looking men. Like the two men who’d greeted her, they all looked malnourished and skinny.
The only people not dressed in blue jumpsuits were a pair of armed guards. They stood in the back of the room, near a door that seemed to lead deeper into the facility. Both men had white-paint crosses daubed across the body armor on their chests. Both carried very large black rifles. One of them ran over once he saw her emerge from the shipping crate.
“Welcome to the Heavenly Kingdom, ma’am,” the boy drawled. He looked young enough to have come from her own high school. There was a dusting of acne on his unlined face and his round cheeks still held a bit of baby fat.
“Thank you, sir,” she said, and pointed to the cross on his chest. “It’s good to see that!”
The young Martyr smiled.
“Yes, ma’am. We wear the cross here.” He glanced at the porters and narrowed his eyes. “Most of us, anyway.”
He extended his hand. Sasha took it and he helped her take her first few steps into this strange new world. Her legs felt wobbly and unstable after so much time crammed into a crate. She was grateful for the help.
“I’m looking for David,” she said. “Do you know where I might find him?”
“No David here, ma’am,” the Martyr replied. “But Darryl’s the team leader for this receiving yard. He’ll set you to rights.”
They walked through the rear door and into the building proper. Sasha’s escort guided her past old offices and break rooms and to what looked like it had been a waiting area for customers. It had been transformed into an office. The only occupant was a single man surrounded by four folding tables, each piled high with a mix of paper shipping manifests and folding e-paper displays. He sat in the middle of it all and scrolled feverishly on a heavy government-issue tablet computer.
This man, Darryl, was tall and broad-shouldered but stooped forward. It looked as if his spine had been bent at the mid-shoulders. Sasha relished the deep lines in his face, the bags under his eyes, his receding hairline, and even the way his joints “popped” audibly as he stood when she entered. No man she’d met in the American Federation had aged so honestly, not even her father. Sasha realized with a start that this was the first older man she’d ever really seen. He must be fifty, at least.
“Hello, sir,” she started.
“Nuts,” he spat. “Not another one’a you.”
The man had a thick drawl, he sounded “country” in a way Sasha had only heard in movies. Her voice caught in her throat as she tried to respond, “Sir, I’m…I’m looking for David.”
“Ayep,” he grunted, “you’n every other teenager what’s come through my depot. I’ll tell ya the same thing I told them others: ain’t no David here.”
Sasha’s eyes widened. She squeaked and immediately hated herself for it.
“No…no David?”
Darryl must have seen the fear in her face and taken pity, because his tone softened.
“Listen, I uh…” he glanced at a small screen wrapped around his wrist, tapped it a couple of times and looked back to her. “I got about fifteen minutes left here before I got a meeting downtown. I can drop you off. Folks there can help you get set up, if’n you decide to stay.”
“I would appreciate that very much,” Sasha said. Her face reddened again when she asked, “Is there a restroom I can use around here? I’d like to clean up a bit.”
“Ayep,” the man grunted and nodded toward a red door in the back of his office. “That one’s private. No shower, but the water runs.”
Sasha couldn’t really smell herself anymore, which she knew meant she probably smelled terrible. The thing she wanted most was a long, hot shower with shampoo. Holy God, she realized, shampoo is amazing. She was so preoccupied with the thought of clean hair that she didn’t even chastise herself for the blasphemy. Sasha knew she wouldn’t find shampoo in this restroom, but any kind of clean was better than her current level of filth. She thanked Darryl and stepped into his bathroom.
Sasha told herself it wasn’t the worst bathroom she’d ever seen, even though that was a clear lie. The floor, once white tile, was so crusted with black and yellow she could only tell there’d ever been tile by the slight suggestion of square-ish shapes underneath the filth. The toilet had been shattered almost completely; all that remained was a little circle of busted ceramic around a hole in the ground. It seemed to function as a squat toilet, now. The sink was intact, but it also looked like it hadn’t been cleaned at all in the last year. The metal of the faucet was green where it should have been silver.
Sasha held her nose, turned the hot water on, and hoped for the best. It took her a round minute to stop hoping for hot water. Of course this place didn’t have a functioning water heater. This is a warzone, you stupid girl, Sasha cursed herself. She felt tears at the edge of her vision but fought them down. Slowly, deliberately, she pulled off her top, undid her bra, and hung both from the doorknob. As she did she thought of the Book of Romans.
“…we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”
The word of God gave her some comfort. But Sasha’s stomach still churned. As she scrubbed the grime from her body she confronted the fact that this was all Real now. She’d fled her home and her family, traveled to a warzone and now she was here. It was done, her great sacrifice was now real, not theoretical. The excitement she felt at that realization was marred by an anxious kind of horror at the things she’d never do now.
She hadn’t really thought about that before she’d left. But now Sasha realized that she was never going to graduate high school. She’d never go to college. She’d never see her father’s face again–
She started to cry. It surprised her a little. For days now her emotions had felt stunted, buried under the very immediate concerns of escape and survival. But as soon as she had a minute to breathe, everything she hadn’t been able to let herself feel flowed out of her, eyes first. She tried to fight it. But then she remembered something Pastor Mike had written in one of his columns for Revelator, “Embrace your pain, for you will hurt again. Embrace your grief, for it is a gift. Lean into the wounds the world gives you. Have faith that the Lord God does not send us burdens we are too weak to bear.”
She’d left behind a world where people denied their age with science, salved their pain with narcotics, and fought the natural order of the world the Lord had built. Sasha had wanted authenticity. She’d wanted to live the truth of Christianity without compromise. That meant leaning into this pain and letting it lift her up into the arms of God.
So Sasha leaned in. She sobbed and sobbed and sobbed, shook and shuddered with a pain more profound than any she’d known before. And then she stopped. She dried herself off, pulled her one fresh pair of clothes out of her backpack, and got dressed to go and meet the Heavenly Kingdom she’d sacrificed so much to join.
Darryl banged twice on the door, right as she slid on her socks.
“Ma’am, I gotta get movin’. Maybe do the make-up later?”
Sasha shoved her dirty clothes into her backpack, zipped it up, and opened the door.
The Heavenly Kingdom included rather more shit and bullet casings than Sasha had expected. She’d known, of course, that it was a warzone. The whole Kingdom was less than two years old. Plano had been taken just days ago. It had all been won by blood and violence. She’d just…sorta figured the Army of God would’ve cleaned up after itself.
Darryl’s truck was the oldest vehicle, and the first non-autonomous one, she’d ever ridden inside. It was frightening to think that one person’s movements were the only thing that stood between her and a grisly death. But her fear at that soon faded into anxiety at the state of the world around them.
The signs identified this as Plano. She knew the center of that city had been a stronghold for the Republic of Texas and its corporate masters. They’d been content to leave many of the surrounding cities in the hands of the Heavenly Kingdom, since that had meant more work for the SDF and Austin. Despite its proximity to the front, Plano’s status as a stronghold for some of the Republic’s wealthiest citizens and corporations had made it seem unassailable. The notoriously stingy Republic had spent heavily on the city’s garrison.
Sasha still didn’t know what had happened, how a Republican stronghold had fallen so fast. But she saw evidence of how the fall had gone down all around her. The city was devastated. They drove by a police station that was filled with bullet holes and burnt black around its windows. They passed an elementary school that looked as if it had been barricaded, turned into a fortress, and then blasted apart with rockets. The streets they rolled over had been cracked and broken by shellfire. Sasha stared out with wide, excited eyes as they passed mansions that had completely collapsed under the weight of heavy bombardment.
And all around them the streets were filled with soldiers. There seemed to be a checkpoint every two or three minutes. The Martyrs who manned those checkpoints looked impossibly young. That made Sasha feel a little less lonely. This is what it looks like when a generation comes back to God, she thought. At each stop Darryl pulled a laminated paper ID out of his pocket. The soldiers would take it, look it over, and then ask him about her. None of them met her eyes.
“Just arrived today,” Darryl always said. “She’s here to help build the Kingdom.”
“Thanks be to God,” was the usual reply. Some of the men at the checkpoints were enthusiastic, and shouted it with all the joy she’d expected to hear. But a few of them just looked at her with eyes that were half sullen, half hungry.
“Darryl?” she asked, twenty minutes and three checkpoints into their drive. “What…exactly happened here? I left home the day after Plano fell. It felt like, just, such a miracle. It seems impossible for things to change so much, so fast.”
Darryl fixed her with a look that Sasha couldn’t quite read. It made her nervous. The next words jumbled up as they left her mouth.
“It’s just, erm. Um, I mean– I know all things are possible through God but…how? How did we win here? From what I read on the news–”
The older man laughed. “Well there’s yer problem, trustin’ the news. Y’ain’t gonna read much true ’bout Texas there. All those foreign papers love the SDF,” he stressed each letter, pronouncing it “Ess-Deee-Eff,” and then spat out the window for emphasis. “And they treat the Republic like a real government, not like a collection of robber barons and their hired guns. Truth is, their position was always rocky. People ’round here would rather live under God’s law than the rule of the rich, or those prancing Austin faggots.”
He spat again, and somehow made the gesture look like an apology. “Sorry fer the curse, Miss Sasha. It’s been a minute since I spent much time ’round a woman.”
She smiled in response because she wasn’t sure what else to do. And then they turned a corner, past a mostly intact line of shops and a sign that welcomed them to downtown Plano. The wide streets had been cordoned off by sandbags and what looked like enormous fabric cubes filled with rocks. Several dozen armed men milled about and, in the center of the broad thoroughfare, Sasha saw what could only be a gallows built right in the middle of the two-lane street.
It was her first gallows. Capital punishment was illegal in the American Federation. She stared, horrified at the way the six corpses strung up there swung to and fro with the breeze. Sasha squeaked, just a bit, in shock. She was glad the bodies weren’t very close.
Darryl seemed to notice her discomfort. He looked down at her with a mix of pity and understanding,
“Ain’t always pretty, what we’re doin’. But it’s the Lord’s work.”
The truck rolled to a stop outside of a large red brick building that reeked of government. Sasha couldn’t tell what it had once been; the sign was too thoroughly burned. A new sign, made of white vinyl, identified this building as the “House of Miriam.”
“This’d be your stop, ma’am,” Darryl said.
“Th– thank you.” She forced a smile and then asked, “Should I just go in?”
“I’ll walk ya in. How’s ’bout that?”
Sasha nodded her gratitude. She wasn’t 100 percent sure what was supposed to happen at this point. Revelator had claimed that every man and women who journeyed to the Heavenly Kingdom would be given “meaningful work, food, and as much shelter as the Martyrs can provide.” She knew she could expect to be housed with other young, unmarried women, at least until she and Alexander were finally together.
But this trip, and the Heavenly Kingdom, was already so very different from everything she’d expected. That was reinforced when she stepped out of the truck and directly onto a pile of spent bullet casings. There were burnt cars in the street; burnt buildings all around her, and a vague but persistent smell of sour milk in the air. The feeling of dread that had built inside her since she’d left the crate hit a new crescendo.
And then Darryl took her inside the House of Miriam and everything changed again. Sasha saw a middle-aged woman sitting behind a desk in a big white room while younger women sat and lined the walls around her. The older lady had loose, friendly jowls and a mop of gray hair tossed into a lazy bun. She looked exhausted until the moment she fixed her eyes on Sasha. At that moment, her eyes lifted along with her lips into a smile that was the truest thing Sasha had ever seen.
“Praise be to God!” she cried. “You’ve made it!”
And then a sea of girls rose up around her. Most of them appeared to have been sewing up military uniforms. But at the woman’s call, every one of them set their work down and rose up to meet her. Sasha was swarmed by a sea of smiling faces as girls pressed their hands to hers, or embraced her, or prayed over her and chanted in tongues. A dozen people told her their names at once. Sasha went stiff at first, shocked and a little mortified by the mass display of physical affection by so many strangers.
But then the older woman made her way through the crowd and put her hands on Sasha’s shoulders. She brushed a stray hair out of Sasha’s face and fixed her with a smile that was more motherly than Sasha’s actual mother had ever been.
“It’s alright now,” she said in a voice that was pure comfort. “I’m sure you’re probably feeling frightened, and overwhelmed. But you’ve reached the Heavenly Kingdom. Loose yourself from the chains around your neck, O captive daughter of Zion. You’re home now.”
Something about the woman’s voice and the way her hands felt broke through the anxious wall around Sasha’s heart. She found herself in the older woman’s arms. She sobbed. And then she felt the press of bodies close against her. The mingled scents of lavender, citrus, and human beings filled her nose. It comforted Sasha in a way she’d never quite known. The anxiety and fear were gone now, but so was any sense of motive inspiration. She let her sisters guide her to a pillow on the ground.
The room got very busy. Girls scattered, they heated up water and prepared food and generally bothered themselves with every aspect of Sasha’s comfort. Soon she had coffee and buttered muffins and a heavy jug of gatorade. A fan was moved into position where it could blow more cool air on her face. The older woman sat down next to Sasha and started to speak.
“My name is Helen,” she said. “I watch over the newcomers here and I help them adjust to life in the Heavenly Kingdom. The most important thing for you to know is that you are loved and wanted here. You’ll have food and shelter and a purpose. Do you understand that, darling?”
Sasha tried to smile, but realized her face was still stuck in the same absent grin she’d worn since the greeting. After a long pause she managed to nod and speak, “Yes. Erm. Sorry. Sasha. My name is Sasha Marion. I’m from Virginia, in the American Federation.”
“Sasha,” Helen said. “Just Sasha. We have no last names here, and no nationalities beyond our allegiance to God and his Heavenly Kingdom. Do you understand?”
Sasha nodded. “Yes, I mean. Of course. I read every issue of Revelator before coming here. I know that nations and states are a worldly concept that only serves to separate us from God Almighty. I memorized Pastor–”
“It’s one thing to read the truth. It’s another to live it. Don’t worry, child. It’ll take some time to unlearn your old habits.” Helen had cut her off, but she’d done it so gently that Sasha didn’t even take it as a rebuke. She just nodded again. And then she remembered something.
“I need to find a young man. His name is Alexander. He’s in a mechanized infantry unit. I think he’s a corporal, and I have a picture of him printed out in my bag if it’ll help.”
“Dear,” Helen’s voice dropped an octave, “I know this is hard to hear, but the Martyrs have important work to do. They fight that we might build the Heavenly Kingdom. If the Lord sees to deliver him safe from the fray…”
Sasha really didn’t like the way she said “if.”
“…then we will find him, and reunite you two.”
“Re–?” Sasha gave a nervous laugh. “Oh, no. We’ve never met. Except for online. He convinced me to come. I mean, I didn’t come for him, but I was really on the fence until I met him.”
Helen’s expression shifted. She looked…was it anguished? Or angry? But Sasha didn’t detect any anger in her voice when she replied. “I know it’s hard, love. But you’re going to need to wait to hear from Alexander. For right now it should be enough that you’re here. You’re safe. You’ve done it. Do you know what this means?”
“It means I didn’t get caught.”
Helen laughed. She had a beautiful laugh. Sasha wanted to curl up and fall asleep inside it.
“No. I mean, well, yes of course,” she said. “But more than anything, it means that for all time, for ever and ever, you’re a person who made the choice to be brave. You took a leap into the dark and trusted that God’s light would rise to meet you.”
There were tears in her eyes. Genuine tears, wrapped up in genuine wrinkles and laugh lines that had never felt the touch of a surgical laser.
“That’s the most beautiful thing in the world,” Helen said. “I want you to know that.”
Sasha started to cry too. Helen embraced her, held her close, and Sasha was certain she’d never been happier.