I hear it too; the crowd on the other side of the gate. Word must have gotten out that their savior is coming home. Through the narrow slats in the gate, an ocean of bodies presses forward, desperate for a look, a touch, a whisper, anything. A reverend on the other side preaches: “All our troubles have a part. Our groaning, our burden, they are His plan.” Arms raise, fists beat on chests. “They shape us so we may see His truth. So that we may work, we may fight—and we have worked and we have fought, and today, today, our suffering will bear fruit.”
My flesh is a single, perfect, God-given fig meant to feed all the hungry. I am their savior in Angel whites and skin peeling off the bone.
“Are you ready?” Theo asks.
I can’t answer.
Sister Kipling looks over at us and says nothing. She’s gilded like a saint, and I want to tear her apart. I want to ruin her, I want to make her hurt the same way she hurt me. Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.
A gate guard bellows, “Clear!” and it’s met with the roar of motors and the rattle of chains.
The gates creak apart. Graces shake themselves and stamp their feet. I reach out to each, whispering that it’s okay, to find solace because I’m going to buzz out of my skin with the strength of their emotions. The preaching turns to a cry: “We have sown seeds with our suffering, and now it is time to reap what we are due!”
I can do this. I trust the ALC to do this too.
CLANG.
The gates come to rest, and the mouth of Hell is open.
There are so many people waiting. A sea of white robes and white faces, painted with grass stains, dirt, and the gold and gray of the clergy; soldiers, children, and everyone I’ve ever known. The preaching stops, and the silence is a physical thing, crushing down on all of us, a vacuum left in the aftermath of hundreds of people sucking in a breath. There’s no oxygen left. Or maybe that’s just my lungs liquefying between my ribs, choking the air out of my chest.
This is all for me. Because I have come back. Because I have saved them.
The death squad escorting us starts toward the crowd, and they crush forward to meet us. A tide, a thousand prayers rising from the earth. The soldiers tighten around us, their bodies a wall, but hands still stick out between them. Someone snags my jacket. A nail hooks Sister Kipling’s robes.
“Seraph!” a woman cries, cradling a baby to her chest. “Bless you! Bless you!”
Every face is one I left behind. Sister Faring, a young mother who helps teach Sunday school and smiles when Sister Mackenzie describes what it’s like to burn in Hell. Brother Gailey, an old man who spends his days in the chapel atrium and critiques the apprentice reverends with a raspy growl. Sister Clare, who is my age, barely, clutching her mother’s sleeve. We weren’t friends, but sometimes we shared snacks, and that was good enough for us both.
There’s a deep whining in my throat, animalistic and terrified, like the nest in Reformation. Theo pulls me closer, his body warm and solid against mine. A Grace tugs away from their handler, overwhelmed by the noise, and people surge back to avoid them. I whisper them back, begging them to be quiet, to not make things worse. I’m scared, I’m scared too, I know.
We reach the edge of the swarm of believers, a squadron of soldiers breaking away from the mob to follow while others bellow for them to disperse. We’re in the middle of the final road to New Nazareth, the desiccated corpse of Pennsylvania Christian University, surrounded by parking lots turned to farmland and squinting against the sun glaring off Kincaid Chapel. The river, the same river I tried to cross to Acresfield County, loops around campus, trapping Acheson between water and this awful colony.
“Where to, sister?” the head soldier asks me.
“The dorms.” I can’t be out here any longer. “The dorms, please.”
But before we can flee, a monster emerges from the crowd like the sun emerging from the clouds. She is wrapped in white and gold, a cross burned into her bare neck, a wedding ring glinting on her finger as if she didn’t order a death squad to shoot her husband between the eyes. Tattoos crawl up her arms and jaw, demons and angels and Genesis and Armageddon, and every other beautiful and terrible thing.