{Little Rock, AR | Cult of Night}

The dirt stemmed the bleeding from the scrapes on Matt’s shins and knees. Sweat carved a trail through the dust on his forehead and mixed with the blood dripping into his bloodshot eyes. His scarred chest heaved with his labored breathing. His heartbeat resounded as everything slowed down.

Three months in this hellhole.

They’d separated him and Lucy from the start.

{Three Months Ago}

“You understand we have to test you, separately,” the man called Justice with the light brown hair and light brown eyes explained.

“Yes, your honor,” Lucy said without hesitation.

Matt wanted to protest, but without her, he relied more on the empty inside. This place called for it. “Yes, your honor.” The concept of ‘isolation’ came straight out of the Brainwashing 101 textbook.

They’d arrived at 2:00AM, after lights out. The organization left Matt in a cell with a cot and a small TV. They gave him a bowl of thin soup to eat. He poured it out without tasting it. He hoped Lucy did the same. Loud music woke him, blaring in his cell at 4:00AM. Drums and horns. Sleep deprivation made the brain malleable. Matt gave himself a week tops before he felt the effects.

“Welcome to the Cult of Night.” The TV kicked on with a video message from Justice Lee carrying on about the glory of the winged ones and their glorious mission.

Matt set himself to push-ups while he waited for the next interruption. He needed to focus and keep the words out. The video finished, and a man opened the door with a pile of clothes in hand, shitty khaki shorts and no shirt. It would be his uniform for the next ninety days.

Matt followed the silent apostle through the windowless halls of the underground bunker. Although April afternoons leaned on the warm side in Arkansas, pre-dawn hours treaded in the just above freezing range. They walked out into a field constructed into a massive military-grade obstacle course. A ramp approached a rope to swing across to the next obstacle and a wall to climb. The course repeated on with the walls varying in height and one barbed wire crawl at the end. Fun.

Two other male initiates emerged from the tunnel and then Lucy appeared last, shivering. They let her keep her shirt. She made eye contact with Matt. He broke it when the gunshot went off.

The course tested him, and that was saying a lot. Matt’s baseball season work-out taxed even his teammates, and he pushed himself further every day. This obstacle course was hell.

Matt was sweating in the cold. Lucy struggled to keep up at first. As far as he could recall, she never picked up a sport or physical activity for school. Maybe not even outside of school.

Matt’s lungs screamed at him to stop and take a breath, but no way. He’d never experienced barbed wire before that day, and really never wanted to again. He finished first. One of the other guys came in second. And to his surprise Lucy came in third, looking as disheveled as the rest and breathing heavier.

Matt spared her a small, quick smile, and Lucy returned it. They both watched the last guy get caught in the wire.

They were waiting for him at the end of the course when the apostle growled, “What’re you doing?!” When they gave him exhausted confusion in return, he shouted, “Go again!”

Five hours. They ran the course for five hours. Well, ‘run’ was a kind word. They dragged their broken, beaten bodies through the finish line only to start again. Lucy fell over on the third run, and one guy helped her up. She kept going.

Physical exhaustion and starvation caused Matt some concern. He trusted himself not to fall in their trap because thinking aligned for him a little differently. He never considered how Lucy might do under these extreme circumstances. Not that he was prepared for circumstances quite like these.

At the five-hour mark, the apostle shot the gun again. “Labor!”

Matt’s stomach growled, ferociously. Crawling out of the barbed wire trap on the last lap, he wanted to faint from food deprivation.

Lucy looked like a paper wad dripping with mud. Her skin was pasty, her hair was a mess, her clothes were ripped some from the barbed wire, but her resilience still impressed Matt.

They reported to the apostle, who led them to a rice paddy field beyond the outer walls of the compound. There, another silent apostle directed them to a nursery paddy and showed them how to sheer the seedlings for planting. They transferred them to a growing field and started setting the rice.

It was back-breaking work in water, sinking their bare toes up to their calves. With no food and little sleep, Matt gritted his teeth until his head ached.

Lucy wobbled every so often. She took to sinking to her knees and planting the seedlings while catching a break. No one said a word.

Matt lost track of time, so he couldn’t place how long they’d worked before the first apostle returned. “Showers!” he called.

That sounded like exactly what they needed. They followed him to a long tin outbuilding built similarly to a stable with stalls.

The apostles directed each of the initiates inside one. No shower head or spouts. Matt turned around in time to watch the first apostle crank the lever on the fire hose.

The lukewarm blast hit Matt and bruised his ribs. He heard grunts and groans from the other stalls as more hoses cranked on. He lost touch with reality for a bit until he heard a scream, Lucy’s. She cried out and kept screaming in the stall directly beside him. Water splashed over from her side.

Ice. Cold.

Matt shouted beyond her screams to his apostle. “Hey! What the—”

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

The strange man signaled to someone, and Matt’s water ran cold. He growled against it and shut his mind off to the thousands of tiny ice needles pounding into his body at once. Eventually, his legs collapsed beneath him, and he fell to his knees.

Lucy’s cries had stopped long ago, and Matt no longer heard grunts from the other initiates. But the water kept coming for what felt like hours. When it stopped, Matt fell over to his side, a bruised ice cube.

The flat-footed motherfucker splashed into the stall. He put his mid-twenties face in Matt’s and said, “Combat.”

Matt glared at him but pushed up from the floor on very sore legs.

The apostle smiled with stains on his teeth before asking, “What’s your name?”

“Matthew—” he began until a fist collided into his empty gut. Matt fell back to the ground and dry-heaved into the mud.

“Your name is Initiate. You don’t know anyone anymore. Forget the girl exists. Justice Lee claimed her already.”

Matt grounded his teeth to keep from shit-talking.

The apostle continued, “And you? You’re mine. I’m making you my special project until the next Propagation Cycle. Feel honored. And if you break before the Cycle, I get to keep you as my dog. Understand?”

Matt had developed a pain in his jaw throughout the day. He needed to quit with the grinding shit as dental care would be sparse in the apocalypse.

“Maintain the mission,” Xelan had said to Matt at Iona.

Stay on mission. “Understood.”

The apostle said, “To the arena,” and left Matt to follow him.

It turned out the arena was literal: a big circle for fighting.

Lucy fought one of the other initiates. She possessed no fighting skills whatsoever, and it showed. That being said, she surprised Matt time and again by attacking vital areas without hesitation. She ended the fight by throwing a sloppy punch in the dude’s throat.

When Lucy won and faced the others, Matt felt something. It was big and terrible. Bigger than anything he’d felt aside from the urge to kill. Bags under her black eyes, blood on her mouth, hair tangled, clothes clinging to her, and bruised everywhere. Matt caught the apostle checking him out. He couldn’t say anything to Lucy. Couldn’t even show her a single sign of concern.

Matt hopped into the arena. His dad had made him comfortable fighting early in life. He pitied whatever initiate got in the ring with him right now after the day they’d all shared. The apostle approached the space, and Matt’s heart pounded against his chest.

The apostle said, “Initiates witness proper fighting form. Learn it. Apply it.” He assumed a well-balanced stance across from Matt in the ring.

Fuck.

Stay on mission.

Matt mirrored the guy’s feet.

The apostle nodded as if he approved. He worked himself closer and bounced away on light, untired feet.

Matt, on the other hand, knew his knees knocked, and his arms wanted to fall off. Take the beating and live to fight another day. He swung at the apostle. The man grabbed Matt’s arm and flung him out of the stone circle.

Matt ate dirt and grass. Losing after the day he’d had was just fine with him.

The apostle climbed onto his back and said into his ear, “I know you can do better than that.”

Matt pushed up fast and knocked the apostle off of him. He jabbed at Matt, who dodged and kneed the apostle in the ribs.

The man grunted as he fell to the ground. Matt twisted his arm around the man’s head and squeezed his bicep in.

Holy cattle prod.

Security from out of nowhere electrocuted Matt with tazing wands until he drooled and seized on the grass. For six glorious minutes, he couldn’t feel how much pain his body was in. He could hear Lucy scream for him, though. Through heavy lids, he watched the apostle take her inside with one backward glance for Matt.

The man returned a few minutes later with no animosity or anger. He said, “I’ve a few recommendations for your future in this place. You aren’t like the other initiates at all. You’ll still work and train with them, but I believe you’re already cut out for this.” He held out his hand.

Matt rolled to his side, coughed in the dirt, and refused it. Shaky, warily, he climbed to his feet on his own.

The apostle continued, “But if you try to fucking kill me again, they’ll use bullets next time.” He pointed up to the men in the guard towers with rifles.

Matt nodded. His jaw hurt too much to talk.

“Good. Chow time,” the apostle said and led Matt back inside. They went to his cell. The man handed him another bowl of weak soup. “This time you’d better eat it. Enjoy the show.”

Matt scanned the cell for the camera. There wasn’t much in the room aside from the two pieces of furniture and the vent. He glanced at the vent grate and caught the glare of a lens.

Damn.

But of course they were watching him.

Matt sat down on his bed and stifled a groan. Sitting. He’d missed sitting so much. Inspecting the thin broth, he brought it to his nose for a sniff. Chicken. Matt took a careful sip. His stomach growled in the painful way where it felt like the front of his stomach had become glued to the back of it. He ate.

The TV kicked on.

Justice Lee’s slightly squared face appeared on the screen. “Good evening, initiates. It is so wonderful to have you here with us. I hope your day was educational and that you’re ready for rest, tonight. Before you sleep, I will read the entirety of Cinder’s Verse to you. I expect you to listen. Do enjoy the history lesson of our glorious masters.”

The cult leader’s voice droned on until 1:00AM.

And every day carried on exactly the same. Both of them had lost so much weight. Lucy’s delicate frame shrank into a wraith. Matt suffered a heat stroke last week in the fields. They put him back out the very next day.

{July 2006}

Three fucking months later, Lucy and Matt had earned the right to take part in the Propagation Cycle and upgrade from initiate to worker. Fuck the weird, freaky cycle thing and fuck working for these people. He wanted and thought of nothing beyond this moment.

Matt’s breath rasped out of him. His busted knuckles of his loose fists kissed the summer night air. The apostle he’d nicked-named ‘Jeff,’ charged for Matt with a squeal from a hog.

Deep inhale. Easy exhale.

Sink in the feet and brace the knees. Don’t look at her. Try not to enjoy this too much.

The man tried to spear Matt, but Matt dug in, locking the dude’s head in his arm. He grabbed him by the waist of his khakis, lifted him to the air, and drove them both into the ground.

The guy’s neck made an audible crunch. He pushed Jeff away from him and checked his stupid fucking face. Eyes wide open. Features stuck in a permanent grimace. Head lolled to the side. Matt had killed him.

The surrounding group stayed silent.

Matt stared down at the man who’d tried to manipulate him over the last three months. He beat, starved, and mentally abused Matt, not unlike his father. Dead eyes stared up at him. He leaned forward to observe the injury. His hair brushed along his face. Jeff’s neck was broken at the C3 and C4 vertebrae, but Matt would need a knife and table for a better examination. He doubted this place would let him check it out. No, he settled for never hearing that annoying, grating voice again. Or seeing that stupid fucking grin.

Matt stood and wiped the dust off. He turned to face where Lucy stood in the crowd of onlookers for his proper initiation. Could she see it in his eyes? Not relief. Not remorse. Matt felt alive. Like someone had hooked a battery up to him and gave him some juice.

If it sparkled in Matt’s eyes, would Lucy fear him? If he trembled with the energy, would she mistake it for adrenaline? She met his gaze with an empty expression before she glanced behind him.

Justice Lee clamped his hand down on Matt’s shoulder, and he wanted to break the older dude’s arm. “Excellent job, young man. Taking out an Enforcer so deftly is impressive.”

“Thank you, your honor.” Matt’s voice sounded lower to him, heavier.

Justice Lee said, “You’ve earned the position of Collector. You’ll join a unit that will teach you the workings of the position. You’ll also upgrade in rank. We’ll discuss the extra benefits after I test the next initiate.”

“Yes, your honor.” Matt had lived his entire life in a disguise. Letting this guy hear whatever he wanted came second nature to him.

The Justice finally took his hand off Matt’s shoulder and stepped over to Lucy. “Initiate,” he said.

Lucy straightened. “Your honor.”

Justice Lee commanded, “You qualify for the Pleaser test, tonight. Follow me.”

What the actual fuck?! Matt opened his mouth, high from his first kill, ready to take the entire place down until Lucy looked over her shoulder at him with a shake of her head.

Fuck. That.