The Salvation State Read online

  Published by Evernight Teen ® at Smashwords

  www.evernightteen.com

  Copyright© 2016 Marcus Damanda

  ISBN: 978-1-77233-671-9

  Cover Artist: Jay Aheer

  Editor: Tricia Kristufek

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  DEDICATION

  For Tripp McDavid—never forgotten.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Once again, I owe a debt of gratitude to the usual suspects, Barbara Posey and Matthew Bohlke, for their guiding light going back to the earliest days of this project, and to George Jakopssen for his continuing friendship and support. I’d also like to acknowledge my Salvation State “beta reader,” fellow author Sasha Wasley, whose later advice and encouragement helped get this story where it needed to be.

  Tricia Kristufek, you are merciless—a fine quality in an editor. I feel better now. Thank you.

  Special thanks to Jessica McEvoy, the amazing voice talent behind so many of my stories in audiobook and podcast format. Jessica, your ongoing feedback and collaboration mean everything to me.

  There are also a great many students at school who help keep me honest. I can’t mention all of them here, but among them, very special thanks go out to Cossette, Eleanor, Daniel, Michelle, Justin—and especially Alice, who has provided valuable critique not only on this book, but on all six of my young adult novels. Girl, you rock.

  To my friends at Evernight Teen, especially Christine Klocek-Lim, thank you for leaving the light on for me.

  THE SALVATION STATE

  Marcus Damanda

  Copyright © 2016

  Prologue

  Necessary Evil

  Friday, August 21

  Anne Arundel County, Maryland

  We shouldn’t have sent her away, Alison Riggs thought, switching off the radio.

  Silence filled the bus, blessed silence broken only by her husband’s breathing and the soft rain. She drove, soaking it in, hoping it would wash the second thoughts from her weary mind.

  The radio had been on 106.8 WFSH, the Big Fish, which was the kids’ favorite praise-and-worship station—Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, 24/7!—but Alison didn’t like it. She was thirty-five years old, but the music she preferred was three times that age. At least. Unaccompanied choir, whenever possible. Choir with piano was okay, she guessed.

  There had been a time—as she dimly remembered in her weaker moments—when she had felt differently, when she had tried to learn the violin, even. But she’d never gotten the hang of it. She could sing, however. And so she’d taken voice instruction and decided a cappella was the purest form of music.

  Ahead of her, the bridge loomed. Through the rearview, she could see some inconsiderate so-and-so riding right behind her with his brights on. She tapped her brakes, causing a few of her slumbering charges to jostle. Her tailgater made no adjustment. She sighed.

  The song had been a jazzed-up version of “More Love, More Power.” Old, but nowhere near old enough. Alison had never been comfortable with electric guitars and synthesizers pounding out the rhythms of her almighty God. It almost sounded like the godless techno music her brothers used to play when she had been her daughter’s age. Back before all of the death, before the Scourge, before the Revival. She didn’t want to hear it.

  Anyway, they were all asleep, even her husband, Michael. “Pastor Mike,” as the kids knew him, sat just behind her, his head thrown back. He snored softly, his sleep interrupted only by the occasional dream twitch or bump in the road. He’d done more than his share of the driving, both on the way to the aquarium and for the first half of the ride back.

  The kids had spread out to individual seats more than an hour ago. Eleven shadowy heads rested against the rain-streaked windows of their long blue church bus as it rattled and trundled to a stop at the toll plaza before the Bay Bridge.

  Smattering rain, the clack of the wipers, the fog-glow—all of it was enough to make her want to sleep as well, even as she stared down the rising silhouette of the enormous bent span of the bridge. Only thoughts of her daughter, Rebecca, kept her from shaking Michael awake now that they had stopped again.

  And regret. There was that too. And maybe just a trace of … what? Worry?

  Fear.

  As the bus idled, Alison identified the tailgating vehicle behind her: a massive, rumbling car-carrier truck. Thankfully it pulled aside to her right and took another lane at the toll plaza. Alison decided she would let it go ahead of her, even though she hated driving behind those things.

  And she remembered, again, that Rebecca had turned fifteen today, without so much as a phone call from her mom or dad.

  We could have picked her up. Just for today. Show her we still love her. She might have had a good time. Maybe that would have been enough.

  Michael wouldn’t hear any of that.

  But Rebecca would have loved the sharks, even though she would have at least pretended to ignore the Intelligent Design brochures the other kids had happily absorbed as part of the feature.

  We need to bring her back, Michael had said. Back to God, Alison. And if we can’t do it, we have to let someone else do it. Sometimes the only way to show how much you love—

  Alison tapped the glass of the driver’s side window, and it lowered. She flashed her travel account card at the laser reader until the red light blinked green. She couldn’t help but catch a few notes of the music that blared from the inside of a fancy Ford Exodus, one lane over to the left. “More Love, More Power.” The same station she had switched off.

  From inside the vehicle, the driver took no notice of her. The music became clearer as his own window went down, then muted as it went back up again.

  Alison let her foot off the brake, rolling the bus forward toward the bridge, back into the rain. It’s only one more week, she said to herself. The fix usually only takes two weeks.

  That had been the deciding point.

  It had been as close to a marital fight as they had ever had. Michael had wanted to ship Rebecca off to a Second Salvations camp. He’d been sure there would be room on Angel Island, wherever that was, and even gone so far as to submit an application, which had been quickly approved. But that would have taken their daughter away until the age of eighteen. She’d have been all grown up by the time they were allowed to see her again.

  She’d asked if they could try something less severe first. They could always reapply to Second Salvations if things didn’t work out at DTR—which stood both for “Damascus Teenage Retreat” and “Daughters,” since it was an all-girls reeducation site. They didn’t have to jump the proverbial gun straight to Second Salvations, did they?

  Second Salvations, Michael had said, is free. We’re not exactly made of money, you know.

  But Alison had insisted. And, for once, she had won. Rebecca had gone to DTR.

  When Alison thought of pushing those other points—such as picking Rebecca up for a day or even calling her on her birthday—she reminded herself that Michael had compromised. She would have to as well.

  The car-carrier pulled ahead of her as the bus thrummed onto the steadily rising bridge.

  Heading in this direction over the water, off the mainland and toward the smaller and more affluent shore, Alison could not help but think they might one day live here themselves, if Michael were to ever g
et his own church. It was a greedy thought, selfish even, but was it so bad to want Rebecca to be able to go to a good college?

  The Ford Exodus paced her, just to her left.

  Soon she would have only one lane. The bridge had construction work going on—strange to find the section unoccupied by workers at this hour, the rain notwithstanding—and either the Exodus or the bus would have to move ahead.

  The Exodus blinked its headlights. Even as she watched it slow for her, she saw the passenger side window come down. Inside, the driver was leaning across the empty seat. A young man, early to mid twenties, with horn-rimmed glasses and a bright blue shirt, grinned at her. And pointed straight ahead.

  Alison both heard and saw the car come off the carrier with just enough time to swerve—hard right, directly into the guard rail.

  Only, there was no guard rail.

  The loose car smashed down, trunk-first, still trailing chains from one of its front wheels and its undercarriage.

  Alison slammed both feet onto the brake and pressed with every ounce of strength she could summon—which was considerable, since she either went jogging or worked out at the gym five days a week. The bus fishtailed, rubber screaming a smoky exhalation.

  Ahead of her, the tumbling car she had avoided rolled over twice—its frame crumpling, shattered glass flying—and settled on its roof.

  The bus stopped, its front wheels hanging off the bridge. But that was all. Only the front. There was no tilting, no movie-like see-sawing of the bus toward a fatal plunge. Eighty percent of the vehicle, and all but two of its passengers, remained on the bridge.

  Her reflexes and leg strength had been enough. Barely.

  Even as the others jerked awake, many of them already shrieking their heads off, Alison stared through the front windshield into a void of empty nighttime space, rain still coming down, wipers swish-swishing.

  More than a hundred feet below her, the Bay was a still shot of a polished black floor. It could have been marble.

  She checked the rearview. Although she could make out many of her teenage charges—some thrown to other seats, others battered against the backs of the seats ahead of them, and two on the middle floor aisle—she could not, at first, find her husband. Then she turned in her chair.

  He, too, was lying on the floor. His nose and mouth were a bloody mess, and he was unconscious. The steel handrail at the exit steps glistened red.

  And kids were coming for her. Toward the front of the bus. How stupid was that?

  “No!” she cried, leaving her seat, holding her hands out in front of her, signaling them to stop. Then, summoning command and pointing, she said, “Back of the bus! Out the back! Now!”

  Amazingly, her words registered. Common sense, too, found a home amid the panic. They all turned. A couple even helped up their battered, injured friends—although Cassandra and Timmy bullied their way past the others, still shouting. Cursing.

  Light washed over the bus cabin even as Alison knelt by her husband and hoisted his unconscious form up by the armpits. Shielding her eyes against the glare, she peered through the front windshield and found herself dumbstruck by what she saw.

  A police air-ski, its searchlights uncoiling like luminescent octopus’s tentacles and reconfiguring at the scene of the accident. Eight spots of light circulated and pinpointed the bus, nearly blinding her. At first she could not make out the rider through the penetrating light.

  But air-skis were incapable of staying in one place, and as it hovered and turned—back and forth, swaying—she could see the parachute-equipped officer holding on casually with one hand and speaking into his shoulder radio with the other.

  How had it arrived so quickly?

  That was when she felt the second impact. She would never know who it had been, although she had time to suspect the driver of the Exodus. Whoever had done it, it was either a very powerful vehicle or one with a good length of empty bridge ahead of it before the collision.

  And now the bus did see-saw. Within it, the kids again were sent reeling—smashing into seats, walls, one another. On the floor, bodies slid toward the front of the bus. One left a crimson smear in its wake.

  Alison’s back met the steering wheel, and she hurtled past it into the glass. The windshield crackled, then spider-webbed.

  Dizziness.

  Under the bus, the sound of screeching metal. The sound of inexorable progress toward the edge. Toward infinity.

  This is no accident. Someone wants to murder us.

  She shook her head, trying to clear it, and punched the glass. She needed to appeal to the police officer out there, beg for help…

  She punched the glass again, adrenaline fueling the blows with a hidden strength, or a strength given from her faith in God.

  Instead of shattering the windshield, however, her arm simply punched through, producing a hole that barely contained it, trapping her in place. Blood washed down the broken glass in streams. And as quickly as she had found that strength, it was gone. Another surge of dizziness. She went limp, even as the bus tilted farther, compounding her vertigo.

  “Go out the back…,” she tried to yell, but she only managed a feeble croak. “Go out the back. Jump … now.”

  Through the maelstrom of competing noises, she thought she might have heard the back door open. But then, even as the bus slid forward one last time, right before the plunge, she thought she heard it shut again.

  They fell. All of them. Every one.

  Through all of it, unto the very end, Alison never thought to pray. Not once. She was thinking only of the girl she was leaving behind and what this would cost her. Not emotionally. Really, she and Rebecca hadn’t gotten along well for more than two years.

  She was thinking Second Salvations would have Rebecca after all.

  ****

  The song “More Love, More Power” faded but continued to play.

  Barney stepped out of the crumpled Exodus, leaving the door open—airbag deflating and fluttering—letting the guitars and synthesizers blur to an outro. He held his ribs gingerly with one hand. I’ll have bruises from this.

  The air-skier focused its lights on him—and also on the car-carrier, where his sister, Wendy, still sat behind the wheel.

  He held up his ID to the lights, grimacing.

  The cop spoke into his radio and hovered away, light tentacles writhing, then retracting to darkness.

  Barney waved, then polished his glasses on his shirt, pleased to find them still wearable. There was a crack in the frame, though, and his nose was bleeding.

  There would have to be a little cleanup here. Not much, but some. Local police and a few carefully selected contractors would see to it.

  “You should have sent her willingly,” he said to the gap in the bridge’s guardrail. “It’s what you said you would do.”

  Wendy stepped out of her truck to meet him and collect him for the ride back.

  You really should have, he thought, making the fault theirs, not his. It would have been better if you had.

  Part One

  Rebecca and Daniel

  (Two Weeks Earlier)

  Chapter One

  The Riffraff

  Friday, August 7

  Annapolis, Maryland

  Rebecca listened to her parents’ bedroom door close. That would be Mom, shutting herself away. She could still hear Dad downstairs, pacing. Praying. She could make out the words. He was in the kitchen.

  “Father God, give me wisdom. Give me strength.”

  Rebecca lay on her bed, the lights off, still in her jeans and T-shirt, staring at the ceiling. She’d hardly moved since she had been sent up here three hours ago, straight after a silent and uncomfortable dinner. Through her open second-floor window, she could see the moon, could smell the heavy summer air.

  She wished she was outside. She knew most of her friends would be at the bonfire tonight. There’d been another Old America “discovery” earlier in the week, all of it recovered from a single apartment on Jericho
Street. There had been an arrest. Some poor guy in his fifties, from what she’d heard.

  Out in the church yard, there’d be a barbeque. Tori and Cassandra would be there. Andrea would be there. Rebecca didn’t much care for seeing all that old stuff destroyed—secretly, she found it sad—but she did like the singing. She liked hanging out.

  Andrea. Traitor.

  Her father would have been expected to attend. He might have even gotten to run the event. Not now, though. Rebecca had ruined it. Dad had been real clear on that.

  Again, from downstairs: “I don’t know what I’m doing wrong, Lord. I’m trying. Nothing seems to be working.”

  Neither Mom nor Dad knew that the vent in the kitchen ceiling carried their words directly up to the vent by Rebecca’s bed. She could hear everything they said when they talked in there. Tonight, they had argued in the TV room—it wasn’t really big enough to be called a “living” room—and so the exact words of their whispered, heated spat had been muffled, indecipherable.

  But now… Good gravy, Dad must have stopped pacing right under the stupid vent. It was as though he was praying with the full intention of being overheard, even though he was still whispering. She couldn’t not hear this.

  “I don’t know what to do, Lord. Or … maybe I do. God, I need guidance. I need help.”

  Mom and Dad never fought. Only, tonight they had. They had argued. And that, too, was Rebecca’s fault.