Forced Conversion Page 4

  In this world at this time, it wasn’t enough to save your soul by mere belief, you also had to protect it from the ultimate temptation, the soul-sucking perversion that was conversion. That’s what Sanctuary was all about. The miles of cramped tunnels and quarters, the stockpiling of supplies, and the training of guards and warriors; they were all motivated by the need to protect the souls of the Believers from forced conversion by the evil ConFoes.

  The Believers had made Sanctuary as pleasant as they could for a hidden, underground fortress, but it certainly wasn’t heaven. They would all go to heaven some day, of course, if the ConFoes didn’t forcibly convert them first. But their defenses were strong and their beliefs were stronger.

  Still, there was no need to test either right now. If she could lead a counter-attack that eliminated the ConFoes on her tail, Sanctuary could continue unbothered and untested for many more years. In that time, the Plan could be perfected. Maybe it would never have to be implemented at all. Perhaps the evil bastards that comprised the Conversion Forces would retreat to their own unnatural sanctuaries and leave the Believers alone. Then the meek truly would inherit the earth. But until the last of the dreaded ConFoes left, her people, the Believers, would fight to survive. They would battle to continue in this world, along with all the other misfits, scavengers, gangs, and cults that chose not to convert.

  In the eyes of the Conversion Forces, they were all malcontents . . . mals. Yet, they were the ones that were content with the world. It was everyone else that had forsaken it.

  She brushed aside her meandering philosophic thoughts as she entered Grand Central and began issuing terse commands. Pre-packed supplies and ready weapons were quickly grabbed up by the men and women of Sanctuary’s fighting force. The troops were keyed up and ready even before she had arrived. The sentries had reported hearing distant gunfire the day before and communication had been lost with one patrol; they knew without being told that this was not a drill.

  Maria could have debriefed and stayed behind. She certainly was spent from her efforts to outrun her pursuers. But the adrenaline still coursed hot within her, despite the familiar surroundings and the air-conditioned feel of the air about her. Besides, she was a Believer and her assigned task was to defend the faith and the faithful by force of arms.

  More importantly, she was the one who had led the heathen ConFoes here.

  She was the one who knew where they had been and how many there were.

  She was the one who had abandoned Joshua to their bloodthirst and torture.

  She was the one who seen the grinning glee of the ape that led the ConFoe pursuit.

  She was the one who, due to an incident long ago in the city, would never . . . could never . . . join the mothers in the rooms below, caring for their children.

  She was the one who could never contribute to the gene pool, who had nothing to contribute to the future of Sanctuary but to offer her life for the taking of the Believers’ enemies.

  She was the one who was destined to be the martyr.

  Her momentary reverie was interrupted by the appearance of Sanctuary’s Commander of Resistance, General Fontana. The sentries had alerted the General of her return and he had hurried to Grand Central as quickly as possible.

  “Lieutenant Casini?” said Fontana softly as she turned and saw him. Maria saluted briskly, but did not wait for Fontana’s cursory return salute before launching into her situation report. She spoke quickly, without emotion, or even adjectives. “ConFoe intrusion northeast, on a vector from the highway.”

  “How many?” asked Fontana, with an arched eyebrow.

  “Seven, sir, at least according to Joshua. His squad engaged the enemy in a firefight along Fortymile Creek.”

  The General frowned. “A bit rash, given that he was outnumbered. Why didn’t he fall back for reinforcements?”

  Maria shook her head briefly. “I can’t say, sir. All I know is that the other two members of the squad are dead.”

  “Dead?”

  “They’re using real ammo, Sir. Hollow point, by the look of it. And grenades . . . and not just stunners.”

  The General’s face hardened. He nodded for her to continue.

  “Joshua . . . Sergeant Czerwinski was severely wounded and is attempting to lead the enemy away from Sanctuary. Unfortunately, a portion of the ConFoe patrol is on my track. I am about to take a strike force out to eliminate those ConFoes and, then, track back to relieve the Sergeant . . . or avenge him.”

  The General gave a curt nod of concurrence. “Get to it, then, Lieutenant. Dismissed,” he said as he saluted and began to move back into the deeper tunnels to report this latest danger to the political leaders of the Believers.

  Maria saluted back and quickly went about fulfilling her duties with the professionalism of a soldier and the enthusiastic determination of a zealot.

  It was now Maria’s turn to prove herself in organized combat as the General had back in the years before Sanctuary, the chaotic years of food and energy shortages, civil unrest, gang dominance, and declining population. Those years had been the turning point, the years in which conversion had mutated from a highly prized option for the few to an officially-encouraged government program and, then, ultimately, to the brutally-enforced, soul-sucking mandate it now was.

  The intensity of recent events and the crucial nature of her immediate responsibilities quickly forced thoughts of history aside, however, and focused her concentration on upcoming tactical issues. She turned back to her troops, barked a few terse commands, and began quickly to walk toward the entryway. A formidable fighting force followed close on her heels, ready to cleanse the blasphemous ConFoes from the Believers’ hidden and hitherto peaceful valley.

  Unintelligible shouts from the entryway spurred Maria and her forces into double-time. A score of safeties clicked off almost simultaneously, the soft, sharp sound of each reverberating with the booted footfalls of the soldiers off the strong, sure walls of the main shaft.

  As the doorway came into view of the anxious troops, a scene of panic and pandemonium greeted them. Sentries and outside workers were streaming in the already partially shut metal door that would seal the mine.

  Maria was about to protest that their enemies were few and that she had the forces to claim victory over them, when she realized that her kindred were not fleeing any mortal foe. Cries of “Fire!” drowned out all more detailed explanations and, as she raced ahead of her now somewhat confused troops, she saw that the simple word “fire” was insufficient to describe the nightmarish conflagration that was coursing quickly along the valley floor toward their precious Sanctuary, like the torrent from a burst dam in hell itself.

  A continuous low roar rumbled from the rampaging wall of flames. A stiff rush of air from up-valley and even from the mine itself was sucked unceasingly toward the base of the firestorm, feeding it. Orange and yellow vortices whirled madly about the advancing line of incineration, reaching high into the thick smoke billowing into the sky and occasionally bending down to torch off a tree or spark another leap forward.

  A lone sentry rushed in a heedless, yet exhausted, panic from the hot agony and death that bore down upon him. He flung himself toward the closing door and collapsed to the ground just inside the entrance at Maria’s feet. His chest heaved for breath. “I’m . . . I’m . . . the last,” he gasped between long, sucking breaths. His arm moved to comfort a painful stitch in his side as he attempted to focus and calm his thoughts.

  He saw Maria staring down at him as the giant door continued to close.

  “Intentional,” he rasped as he exhaled. Seeing no comprehension on Maria’s face, he gathered his thoughts anew and tried again. “They . . . the ConFoes . . . they set it.”

  Without another thought or word, Maria leapt out the closing door an instant before it clanged shut with finality. The dancing red and yellow and orange of the approaching fire was already reflected in the door’s dull, weathered surface, but she paid it no mind as she raced away, s
outheast and upward, hoping, praying to stay ahead of the flames.

  She had moved by instinct, before she had even thought it through consciously, but her racing thoughts matched the tempo and heat of the flames pursuing her as she put the tactical situation together during her new flight for a new sanctuary.

  If the ConFoes set the fire, they were most probably not caught by it. The ConFoes tracking her were alive. The fire had been set to kill her. That meant they would now leave this place and report. Soon someone would investigate, and the entrances and ventilation shafts of Sanctuary, denuded of their cover of peaceful pines and scraggly undergrowth, would be noticed. And then the dreaded ConFoes would bring in whatever force they needed to destroy her home. They had to. Their entire ConFoe philosophy demanded it. Anyone who could not be converted, must be destroyed.

  No exceptions. No survivors.

  A rabbit streaked in front of her in wild-eyed panic, soon to be yet another innocent casualty of the ConFoes’ philosophy of destruction.

  Her instincts, her hind-brain, demanded that she flee blindly ahead, too. But she forced herself to stop, to think, to survey the terrain. The firestorm would certainly consume the valley; it would probably jump the lower ridge at the south end and careen on until the approaching weather slowed or stopped it. She needed to move out of its path, not before it. She needed to find a place where the rock and snow were free of fuel for the flames, where she could withstand the passing of the hellfire that consumed the valley and move back, back north and east toward the bastards who started this so she could stop them before they reported in.

  Her eyes fixed upon a steep, barren patch of exposed rock well up the ridge wall. If she could clamber up fast enough and anchor herself somehow in the middle of the bare expanse and hide beneath her emergency blanket (courtesy of another ConFoe she had “met” since she had come to Sanctuary many years ago) while the fiery tumult scorched everything about her, she just might make it.

  * * * * *

  The door to Sanctuary remained firmly shut.

  “I can’t believe she did that,” said the first watchman, shaking his head over Maria’s foolhardy behavior. “She’ll never survive.”

  “Anything’s possible,” responded his colleague in genuine awe of the display of faith he had just witnessed. “God works in mysterious ways.”

  * * * * *

  All the next day, Derek staggered, zombie-like, through smoke and haze and falling ash back, east-southeast toward the rendezvous point, where they had left their vehicles to commence this misbegotten mission. The heavy smoke and ash of the unexplained forest fire to the southwest irritated his throat as he sucked in breath with a wheezing sound.

  Several of his squad-mates held damp kerchiefs (or, in Manning’s case, women’s panties) over their mouths as they trudged along, but Derek had abandoned that tactic. He was too tired to hold his hand up to his mouth as he walked. Besides, any covering reduced the already meager amount of oxygen needed to fuel his muscles and what was left of his pain-racked brain.

  He stopped for a moment and bent over, leaning on his weapon like a cane, coughing flecks of blood onto the gray soot and ash that covered the low, lacy vegetation that held fast to the rocky ground. His life in the Conversion Forces had managed once again to reach a new low. The only thing he could imagine worse than this miserable mission would be to have to do it over and over again, like the damn training exercises back at boot. Then he heard A. K. and Manning somewhere ahead, greeting each other with tales of fire and conquest and death, and he knew he had been wrong. Bad as this had been, and it had been bad—physically, emotionally, and morally bad beyond all comprehension—the two psychopaths ahead would make the next mission even worse and the next and the next and the next.

  Macho bullshit A. K. and his evil little ferret-boy, Manning, had made each and every day of his life in this squad worse than the day before for more days than he could remember. And the steady slide of life in the squad into an abyss of pain and torture and mayhem was rapidly accelerating. Maybe it wouldn’t be forever, but it would be for a long, long time. Longer than he could possibly bear.

  “Yo, Derek!” barked A. K. from up ahead, his graphic pleasantries with Manning apparently concluded for the moment. No doubt the gruesome debriefing and rehashing of the hellhole of a mission would be continued later at a conveniently amusing time, like over a meal. “Get your ass in gear,” boomed their squad leader. “We gotta get the gear stowed and move out, find some clear air for the Hummer’s laser relay link-up and report.”

  Derek was in no mood to move, much less comply.

  “I’ll provide look-out while Wires moves up and unloads,” he shouted weakly, as Wires passed his position. The Converter moved slowly, but steadily, under his burden of equipment toward the vehicles.

  Derek heard a string of expletives from A. K. as foul as the air about him.

  “Fuckin’ Wires. Can anybody tell me why we even bother to bring him along?”

  Pancek felt obligated to fill the ensuing silence. “According to . . .”

  “Shut up, moron!” A. K. immediately interrupted. “If I ever really need some asshole to quote regs to me, you’ll know. I’ll put a gun to your head and give you the time between when I pull the trigger and when the round enters your friggin’ brain.”

  “You tell ‘em,” giggled Manning.

  “You shut up, too, maggot! I’ll kill you just for sport.”

  Sandoval showed some uncharacteristic cojones by distracting his violent companions. “Hey, man, let’s chow down before we spleet.”

  Chow, now that might be worth making it back to the trucks. Still, Derek waited for a few minutes so he wouldn’t have to help carry stuff. Finally, he heard the group begin to unload the Hummer, then a minor commotion and a string of curses from Manning, punctuated with “Gimme that back, you thief!”

  That was the last discernable thing Derek heard of the squad, until the explosion.

  * * * * *

  Maria did not hear the last conversation between Derek and his squad-mates. She was too far away. But she did hear the explosion.

  She had waited to hear and see the explosion.

  Even though she knew it was coming, she involuntarily flinched at the sight of the blast. The fireball from the Hummer’s fuel tank expanded in a hemisphere of orange-hued death before collapsing back upon itself and morphing into a black pillar of oily smoke. The greasy dark plume contrasted sharply with the lighter, cooler, pine-scented miasma of yellow smoke hanging over the wilds from the still-raging forest fire miles away to the west and south.

  Her time on the steep, barren slab of granite the day before was still too fresh in her mind for her not to flinch at the sight of fire. It was only yesterday that the scorching orange death had sought her out, surrounding and attempting to crush in upon her as she took refuge under her blanket and breathed and re-breathed the air caught in her knapsack at the last moment before scrambling under the foil and asbestos cover.

  It was a miracle that yesterday’s fire had not consumed her, that she was even alive to flinch at the sight of today’s fiery explosion. The purloined ConFoe blanket had, thank God, not failed her. In fact, it had performed remarkably well, reflecting and minimizing the transfer of heat from three sides as she was suspended in what seemed to be a lava lake in Hades itself.

  Technology can be a wonderful thing when it’s not ruining the world completely.

  The first-degree burn on one side of her body was testimony that her plan had not been perfect, however. And even the relatively minor pain of that burn was too fresh and too closely associated with the searing flames of the orange death for her hind-brain not to scream for her to flee at the sight of this new fireball.

  The granite on which she had pressed herself during the firestorm, already warm from the sun, had heated like a pizza stone in the conflagration, searing her as she pressed against it. Yet she had no choice but to press fiercely against the scalding rock, no ability to ea
se up and raise her body off it even a fraction of an inch, lest she dislodge the blanket or loose herself from her precarious perch and move from the frying pan into the howling fire.

  In those minutes that seemed like ages, the fire also forged her soul, hardening her for the task ahead. She would not be the martyr. They would be martyrs. She would be the instrument of their martyrdom.

  In one way, the fire made her task easier. Once the wall of flame had passed and she was able to move again, the smoke gave her cover. Her newly tempered resolve gave her speed. At first, she merely kept pace with the group of ConFoes that had pursued her as they returned the direction from whence they came. But, they had eventually stopped for the night and set watch, while she had continued on, past them, toward the highway, where their vehicles would be. As dawn broke, she had spied their trucks, even at some distance, during a period of relative air clarity. The sight had hastened her steps and made it easy to beat the plodding soldiers to the vehicles.

  She had little in the way of special equipment with her, but a bit of wire, an opened gas tank, and a small electrical spark was all she had really needed.

  When the pyre devouring the fuel and ammo and plastic and rubber that had once constituted the ConFoe vehicles died down and the smoke cleared, she would go back and check to make sure that they were all dead, that they were all martyrs to their unholy, blasphemous, technological cause.

  After all, their godless technology had destroyed the world and now it was trying to destroy heaven.

  Chapter 4

  In the very instant of the flash of the explosion, Derek decided. He made no move, no flicker of a motion, toward his squad-mates.

  In the moments that followed the showy destruction of the blast, while hunks of burning plastic and metal still rained down from the sky in a circle around the resulting crater, he consciously confirmed what his subconscious had decided unbidden. He closed his eyes only a second in thought, his retinas still retaining the after-image of the fireball that consumed the ConFoe equipment and personnel.