“I killed a man today, Evelyn. Met him downtown. Made some small talk. I thought it was all good, but then he drew a gun, and I just… reacted.
“There ain’t nobody out there to save us. We got to do it ourselves.”
–Marquise Jones, “Unnamed”. 3 Months After.
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“How the hell did you let this happen!?” Evelyn snapped.
“Pardon me,” Leah said, blasé as ever, “but it’s hard to run an investigation when all I have is the color of a cloak. You should’ve given me more to work with.”
Easy for you to say, Evelyn thought. Leah could march worldwide without so much as an N95 to keep her safe. It hadn’t been on Evelyn or Liam to stand around and ask questions to the monsters who’d attacked them.
“So what’s the deal then?” Evelyn asked, her mind calculating the possibilities. “How many have they got? What are their weapons? Are we dealing with long barrels? Tanks? Spears and swords? Did they nestle in just the one spot, or have they started patrols in the area?”
“Let her speak, love,” Liam said with a placating wave. “Are you absolutely sure that they want us, Leah?”
“Those were their exact words,” she said. “Not just you either. They’re after your entire family… Especially your kid.”
“Why her?”
“Beats me. Ezekiel wouldn’t say, only that this ‘Father Abraham’ guy wanted to talk about her.”
Evelyn’s cheeks reddened. “Well, it sounds like you found our enemy, and they’re well within range of the Styx. Just have Charon set up some mortars and be done with it.”
She sighed. “Oh, how I really, really wish that it was that fucking simple. After making contact with the Beholders, you can bet your ass that I put out contracts like nobody’s business to collect as much intel as possible before coming over to you. This isn’t anywhere near as straightforward as the eighty guys we thought.
“Their leader is with the main Beholder force. They have roughly twenty-five hundred bodies in their ranks. The vast majority wear white cloaks, which we have determined as their version of workers. However, many keep weapons on hand, so it would be no surprise if their entire congregation would spring into an attack if threatened. That they’ve made it this way, both on foot and this quickly, shows how well-equipped and coordinated they are.
“The black cloaks are the Inquisitors you faced directly, and there aren’t many in their ranks. From what we’ve uncovered, they seem to work like Hunters, rushing out to kill hollows… Or ‘sinners,’ as they call them. I caught part of their training bouts myself, and there’s no denying the skill.
“Then you have the Friars. They behave like bosses, officers, or middling leaders for their little group. While their orders tend to be minimal, everyone flocks to them like they’re gods. We think it’s because they’re in charge of reading the Beholder’s main book to their friends, if not outright giving them away. They can be identified with brown cloaks.”
Evelyn’s heart skipped a beat with that last bit. She glanced to the couch, where her Bible still sat, gifted to her by Nathaniel. Had she seriously been chatting with one of them this whole time!?
Leah crossed her arms. “It’s this last group that’s made this shit so delicate. Some of the Friars apparently entered Pandemonium a couple months back. I never paid them any mind because they had no power whatsoever. They’ve just been walking around and handing out this book to anyone who will listen. In a city like this, you can imagine our monumentally stupid this is.”
“You could no doubt make many friends that way, though,” Liam deduced, staring at Evelyn as he made the point.
She bit her tongue. There was no denying that she’d walked right into this grift. But she couldn’t just announce that to Leah. Not after defying her explicit orders to stay locked up.
“Exactly,” Leah continued, not catching the looks either exchanged. “Those Friars have become so popular that a few workers here and there have surrendered their worldly possessions to become Beholders like them, and they aren’t alone. As we speak, there’s a guy standing a block away from here, preaching endlessly to a crowd that’s been growing larger by the day.”
“And you can’t just go down there and lock him up without cause,” Liam said.
“I might do it anyway. Their group has even come up with a fun little name for me. ‘The Whore of Babylon.’” She scoffed. “But I have to think about how exactly I’ll shut this shit down. Hell, I’m not even sure who to trust right now. It’s more than a few workers who are listening to his crap. Some of our guards have come down, and even a Hunter or two have been spotted there. Add in the fucking Beholder army that’s set up shop next to the cliffs not far from here, along with the fact that they somehow know you made it to the city and our military capabilities, and I can’t expect it to be as easy as launching a missile and calling it a day. We need to be strategic about handling this, or we’re only putting out one fire by lighting another bigger, more uncontrollable one.”
“What’s the plan then?” Evelyn asked. “Leaving is still not an option. Not when they know about Cheyenne.”
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Leah stared deep. “First order of business is dealing with Father Abraham. He wants to speak to me directly, so I’ll listen to whatever he says to buy more time. Then it’s off to get some allies and handle this the old-fashioned way.”
“What do you mean?”
She stroked her scarf. “Way I figure it, if the hammer won’t work, it’s time for a scalpel. I gather a good group of mercs that haven’t dealt with these Beholders yet, give them the best armament this city has to offer and roll through their camp before they see us coming. Once Abraham and his Friars are out of the way, the rest of the external threat becomes minimal. At the end of the day, they’re still mostly workers with sticks and bows.”
Liam frowned. “But if some of your Hunters have become sympathetic to this Enclave, then trusting them might be a problem.”
“Yeah, but that’s Pandemonium’s Hunters,” Leah pointed out. “They’re not the only ones in the world.”
Evelyn weighed the thought. “You’re going to El Dorado, aren’t you?”
She nodded.
Liam raised an eyebrow. “Where?”
“This city’s got outposts all over,” Evelyn explained. “Some of them are more developed than others. Think of El Dorado as if it’s ‘Pandemonium Junior.’ It’s near Mexico City, several thousand miles away, but if you’ve got trucks and guns, you could be there and back in less than a week, with a hundred more soldiers to boot.”
Leah’s cheeks contorted into a grin below her scarf. “I see you’re not completely hopeless, Evelyn. Mother sure did a good job of teaching you our ways.”
She smirked back. “Trust me, I know everything about your kind.”
“So, what do you need from us?” Liam interjected.
“Same as before,” Leah said. “Lay low, keep quiet, and call Chantelle if you need anything else. I’ll be busy while dealing with this, and the last thing I need is more people to ask questions about you. Easy enough?”
Evelyn swallowed the lump in her throat and nodded. It wouldn’t be as straightforward as sitting here, not after engaging a Beholder directly. But if she voiced that thought out loud, their situation would get more sticky.
“Good,” Leah said after the pause lingered. She made her leave.
Evelyn and Liam turned their attention to the Bible on the couch. Right there, as if it had eyes of its own, watching their every move.
“Are you going to be the one to tell her, or should I?” Liam asked.
She grunted. “Leah doesn’t need to know about this.”
“She doesn’t need to know that one of the people chasing us gave you their Bible?”
“Yes. That. What do you think she’ll do if she knows I’ve been snooping around without her permission?”
“I think that she will be perfectly accepting of your concerns.”
Evelyn shook her head. As much as Liam liked to pretend they were all in this together, she knew Leah better than him. While they’d only ever had one brief encounter before her exodus to Cheyenne, Evelyn had witnessed her cruelty through the looking glass of Mother’s daily updates as humanity got exterminated.
Leah was what her people thought of her: the ultimate Hunter. In a world where the dead slaughtered the living to keep themselves going, she had risen to become the very epitome of what Evelyn had learned to fear long ago. Whatever “growth” Liam thought she might have experienced, Leah was only ever a couple weeks away from forgetting it completely, once again destined to become the brutal monster who cared for nothing other than butchering her enemies for sustenance.
Coming to Pandemonium had only happened out of necessity, and leaning on Leah’s resources was an extension to this end. But could Evelyn actually put faith in her to see the day through? Could she become beholden to anyone now that Mother was gone?
The answer was obvious. A clear, flat no. Their salvation could not be left to chance.
“I’m going for another run,” Evelyn decided.
“Did you not hear what she said?” Liam asked. “If these Beholders are in the city, why would you want to go out there?”
“Isn’t it obvious? Because they are in the city. Let’s face it, honey. Leah’s dropped the ball in letting things escalate to this point.”
“So you’re going to fight twenty-five hundred rezzers on your own?”
“No, I’m only going to get information. Same as before. Now that we know there’s a connection between Nathaniel and the rest of the Beholders, I can tug on that rope to find out more.”
For a moment, Liam said nothing, no doubt considering the options at play. Then he walked over to the couch and picked up the Bible.
“Are you sure that is all you want to learn?”
She scoffed. “Don’t start. This has nothing to do with that.”
“All I’m saying is that you’ve been fixating on this book ever since you got this damned thing.”
Her cheeks reddened. “I know what I’m doing.”
Of course, Liam wouldn’t understand. His life had been devoid of spirituality, and he cared for nothing more than the birds and the trees. To him, life was no more than a stroll around the Earth, day in and out, until it eventually killed him.
Not for Evelyn, though. She’d always known that something more lay beyond this fragile, short existence. Mother might’ve insisted otherwise, and Liam couldn’t give a shit, but now that Evelyn had been connecting with God again, she could see how wrong they’d both been. The fact that He’d seen the Hollowing coming proved His words were real beyond a doubt.
She mattered. Her husband mattered. Their child mattered. In God’s eyes, their lives all bore meaning.
That’s what made this so vile. The Beholders were using His words to find Evelyn and her family. The very wisdom that had gotten her through a difficult childhood with her single father was now being utilized to snuff her out. As the last surviving mother in this world too. No, she couldn’t allow these monsters to continue.
Evelyn would fix this, even if alone.