The Salvation State Read online

  I used to be good, she thought miserably. I was as good as anyone. Better than most.

  But even that thought was sin creeping in. It was prideful. It was shameful.

  “I need fortitude,” her father prayed, “to do what must be done.”

  Rebecca thought she had a fair idea of what that meant. In a few minutes, Dad would come thumping up the stairs. Outside her door, his belt would come off. Then her door would open and she’d be told to turn over.

  She wished it would come from Mom this time. It would only be the flat end of a brush, coming from Mom. And as fit as Mom was, she just didn’t have the upper-body strength Dad had. Rebecca could keep quiet when Mom did it, could keep her dignity, even through the hug that always came after.

  It would not be Mom, though. Mom had already turned in for the night.

  Rebecca remembered a time not so long ago when she’d had no idea what a beating felt like. Until last year, the very thought had never occurred to her. It was the kind of thing that happened to other kids.

  I used to be good.

  But Dad did not come thumping up the stairs right away. He finished his prayer, but he stayed downstairs. The sound of his hard black shoes receded. He was pacing again, away from the vent.

  He was talking on the phone now. Rebecca could still hear him, if only barely. She had no idea who was on the other end.

  “Michael Riggs, yes. Youth pastor at Emmanuel in Annapolis. … Yes, it’s affiliated directly with New America Unity. … No. You don’t say? … Wow … News travels fast, I guess.”

  Usually Rebecca wasn’t an eavesdropper. More often than not, she put a towel or a shirt over the vent, then a book on top of that during secret conversations such as these. But this conversation was about her. That made it her business, or so she told herself. Anyway, she didn’t feel like moving from the bed.

  “No, she hasn’t had one of those yet. … I thought those weren’t administered until a kid turned sixteen. … She’s fourteen. Well, almost fifteen.”

  What happened at sixteen? Rebecca wracked her brain, but nothing clicked. All the best things came at eighteen. People didn’t even go to the Citizen Registry until they were eighteen.

  Whatever this is, it isn’t anything good.

  “You’d come to us? Really? That’s … unexpected, but yes, I could arrange it. I have a church office. … That’s awfully soon, but … well, yes. We could be ready Tuesday. No services Tuesday until nighttime. Sure. … Is the app online?”

  An app? That was weird. Dad hardly ever downloaded anything.

  He was off the phone now, and there were footsteps again. Not pacing. Approaching up the stairs. Thump, thump, thump.

  They stopped outside her door. She waited to hear him undo his belt. If she heard that, she’d just turn over right now and at least avoid having to be told to do it.

  The door opened and she sat up. Looking through her room into the lighted hall, she only saw him as a shadow. But his hands were empty. He was still wearing his belt.

  “Your little stunt made the Feed. Everyone will know about it by morning.”

  She wasn’t surprised. He was Pastor Mike, probably the most popular youth pastor in all of eastern Maryland. Rebecca’s mess up would be his mess up, as far as people were concerned.

  “Are you even sorry?” he asked, coming in, switching on the light, and closing the door.

  Rebecca shielded her eyes and blinked. She knew she should be sorry. What she had done was wrong. She had broken the rules. She didn’t want to make her guilt any worse by lying about it, so she shook her head. “I just needed a day,” she said, silently scolding herself for the pleading tone behind the words. Then, more strongly, she said, “One day off. That’s all it was.”

  He sat next to her on the bed, looking her dead in the eyes. At that exact moment, he didn’t even look angry. There was something else, a totally different feeling buried behind his expression, but Rebecca could not figure it out.

  “Rebecca, it’s not just that you cut school. That would have been bad enough. But the forgery—writing as your mother to the school’s attendance office…”

  “It was the only chance I had of getting away with it.” Her voice was quiet, not attitudinal in any way. It was only the truth. “I wouldn’t have done it if I’d known I was already busted.”

  “No doubt,” Dad said. “But you did do it. Don’t you understand that people look at us differently, Rebecca? That we’re held to a higher standard?”

  She knew, all right. “I’ll be punished at school. They’ll probably give me, like, a million years of detention. Everyone will know I’m not ‘above it,’ if that’s any help.”

  Now it was her father’s turn to shake his head. “You’re not going to school next week, honey. You’re staying at home. And you’re coming with me to work on Tuesday.”

  Staying home? She didn’t understand. That was … well, no different than cutting class again, even with parental permission. In fact, with Dad in on it, staying home was a crime.

  “I don’t get it. What’s Tuesday?”

  He reached over, wrapped his arms around her, and hugged her. “I love you, Rebecca. You know that, right?”

  Bewildered, she hugged him back. Granted, it was better than the belting she had expected tonight, but it was weird. Troubling. She felt no comfort in the embrace. Quite the opposite—a mounting dread expanded outward from her father’s fingers, spreading across her back and swallowing her entire frame.

  “I love you too,” she said. And it was true. As difficult as her relationship with her father had grown over the past year or two, she still loved him. “Dad, what’s going on?”

  He let go and stood with his back to her. “You’re getting your Solomon test on Tuesday,” he said. “I’m looking into options for alternative education, starting with Second Salvations. Since you come from an intact family, there’s an application, a whole process. They may not even take you.”

  A Second Salvations camp? Kids called those “See Ya Later” camps. No one even knew where they were. People called the kids who went there “Forgottens” since they disappeared until the age of eighteen. Second Salvations was for orphans, criminal kids—kids whose parents had given up on them.

  Rebecca opened her mouth. At first no words came. Her vision seemed to tunnel. Her breath caught.

  “I don’t know what else to do,” he said, still not looking at her.

  But she had ideas. Other solutions. Lots of them. “Dad—” she started, her voice barely a squeak.

  “No. You have nothing to do with this decision. Your mother and I will work it out. And you are not to set one foot outside your door until breakfast tomorrow morning. Am I understood?”

  Her breath returned. Her first inclination was to argue, to yell, to beg. Something. But she knew that would only harden his resolve. “Yes, Dad,” she said, holding one hand over her chest. Her heart thudded. It physically hurt. It had only taken a few words, but Rebecca suddenly felt more afraid—more betrayed—than she would have ever thought possible.

  Her father turned the light back off and left her.

  She thought of her window. She considered running away. She could wait until they were both asleep.

  No. Mom will stop this. Mom won’t let this happen.

  Besides, there would be nowhere to go. And she wasn’t that brave. Not by a long shot. She couldn’t run away.

  That must have been what they were fighting about. Mom will save me.

  She lay back down, turned over, buried her face in the pillow, and prayed.

  God, please make Dad change his mind. Help Mom to convince him. If You do, I’ll be good again.

  It would be hard, she knew. No matter what happened now, even if she was spared the unknown horrors of Second Salvations, she would never be able to forget that her father had, effectively, disowned her. Her daddy wanted to give her away, and she felt orphaned.

  I’ll still be good, she prayed. I mean it, God. You’ve made Your
point.

  I promise.

  ****

  Sunday, August 9

  Second Salvations Camp 6: Angel Island

  Ruth Black sat at her desk and powered on the computer.

  Our desk, she thought, noting the clear glass of water with Matthew’s teeth in it. But the Reverend hardly ever used it. Matthew got the title and the glory, such as there was to be had, but Ruth did most of the real work.

  It was a comfortable office, all oak wood walls and soft brown carpeting. There were few pictures—she and Matthew didn’t have children of their own—but there were several excellent oil paintings in elaborate frames. The largest depicted the original Reverend of Angel Island, Archibald Simmons, standing amidst a flock of supplicant children, his arms outstretched, his expression stony and stern.

  A bulletproof window looked out over the grounds and the main quad. Ruth set the outside of the window to mirror mode. She didn’t like people watching her work, not even Matthew. But she did like watching them, and she would frequently steal glances at the activity on the quad while she filtered the promising applications from the unpromising.

  Strictly speaking, she should not be “working” at all. It was Sunday, and it was well into the evening. In a few minutes, punishments would begin, and it would be lights-out for everybody after that.

  The campers gathered outside the double front doors of the main praise-and-worship building, under an illuminated crucifix that cast its massive cross shadow over them. They waited. Led by the purest among them, they sang hymns.

  Just now, they were singing “Are You Washed in the Blood?” one of her husband’s favorites. She recalled, from her wedding day, a different children’s chorus singing it. He’d only recently been elevated to Reverend back then, and was new to the responsibilities of running the island. Had it really been seven years?

  Yes. Seven years ago today. And just like last year, Matthew had failed to remember their anniversary. What was it he had said last August?

  I’m a … busy man, Ruth. I love you every day, not just on anniversaries.

  There had been no apology. So she wouldn’t bother bringing it up tonight.

  Against the backdrop of desktop computer icons, Ruth saw her reflection in the screen: the thin line of her mouth, the tight bun of her dark hair, with a touch of gray, even though she was only twenty-nine.

  Matthew was only thirty-eight.

  She laid a handkerchief over the glass with his teeth in it. It was one of three fittings he possessed, each slightly different from the others. He alternated between them, depending on the occasion. The teeth in the glass were his “functional” set. Why did he always leave them lying around? Why couldn’t he just have surgery?

  But she knew. He liked his fake teeth. He liked having three sets of them.

  “Focus,” she said to herself. “Let’s see what the riffraff have to offer tonight.”

  Her messages showed more than a dozen new applicants. There were the standard adoptions too, various sad cases who’d lost their parents or whose parents had been stripped of custody for any number of reasons. The applications were more interesting. From there Ruth would often find the best candidates for future leadership roles in Second Salvations. Unlike the adoptions, applications allowed her to discriminate, to select.

  Among those applications, she found the teenage daughter of an assistant pastor. Rebecca Riggs, the form claimed, exceled in bible studies, choir, kickboxing, and shooters club. For the past two years, however, she’d developed quite the rebellious streak. Ruth studied the girl’s school photograph: straight ash-blonde hair, pale eyes, confident smile. As much as Ruth searched the girl’s face, she could not see the devil anywhere in it.

  She hadn’t been tested yet. Tuesday, the application said.

  Pretty, Ruth thought. And promising.

  The test would be informative, but…

  I like you. Yes. I like you already.

  Ruth considered herself an excellent, and immediate, judge of character.

  The other applications were fairly standard. Nothing special. The same went for the adoptions, although it didn’t matter much anyway, as far as those went. Angel Island would get assigned their fair share of adoptions, keeping the numbers as even as possible among the Second Salvations camps.

  But there was another case to review. A boy whose file was labeled “Monitoring.”

  Daniel Forester of Pittsburgh, age sixteen. His picture came from school too. His hair was too long, his face bristling with unshaven corn-colored peach fuzz, his blue eyes blank and uninterested. He looked … unfed. Prematurely aged into his early twenties.

  His father had been arrested for sedition and was currently debilitated from exposure and housed in a prison infirmary. Mother was recently unemployed and reportedly exhibiting symptoms of spiritual and mental illnesses, including depression, and no mention of current job applications anywhere.

  Daniel Forester, a complete unbeliever from a family of unbelievers. Heretics, all. An attached video even showed him disavowing God’s very existence.

  “Blasphemer,” Ruth muttered.

  But the law had made him get the Solomon test on his birthday last week, and the results were compelling.

  Wow. Daniel, if you only knew.

  But kids never knew. A person’s Solomon results were known only to the state until he or she reached the age of adulthood. For interesting cases like this one, the church and state had two whole years to take advantage—or, more often, to ignore them. The world was rife with mediocrity.

  Poor Daniel. To be both faithless and parentless at such a young age.

  She’d have to act soon, before someone else snatched him up. There were ways to deal with the oh-so-sad Mrs. Forester. Custody could simply be taken from her, given her current situation. Or she might kill herself.

  Ruth considered. Then—distraction.

  The clock tower struck eight. Outside, the doors to the narthex swung open, admitting the campers. They flowed in, a slow and silent tide, to bear witness. Inside, four of their number would already be waiting, three boys and a girl. The Reverend would preside over their discipline. He was good at that. He would be good for Daniel too.

  But what Daniel really needs, Ruth thought, studying the boy’s picture, is a good mother.

  ****

  Monday, August 10

  Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

  Daniel pulled onto Route 8, bringing the speed up to sixty-five. He wasn’t sure how much faster the old-world Toyota jalopy could actually go. The whole car vibrated whenever he took it past fifty. Anyway, sixty-five seemed awfully fast, even though the posted limit was seventy. He’d only gotten his license three days ago, and highway driving still made him nervous.

  He checked the rearview mirror, acutely aware of the other cars coming right up on his behind before passing. He was also aware of the sloppiness of his longish, unkempt hair. He supposed he could try cutting it himself before it got completely out of control.

  “Do we have enough money for gas?” Mom asked. It was the first she had spoken since they had gotten into the car almost half an hour ago. She was looking away from him, staring out the passenger-side window. Looking eastward—where, if you drove far enough, the roads had been shut down for years, sealing society off from the wreck of cities like Philadelphia and from the radioactive poison everyone said still hung in the air.

  Philadelphia, where Mom and Dad had met. A beautiful city, she’d said, back when she had cared about such things. If you knew where to go. Nicer than Pittsburgh, until the dirty bombs.

  Dad had driven him past those closed roads once, when he had been nine. On the other side of the fencing, the roads were broken. Parts had been overgrown with new and untended grass. The Earth is taking that part of the world back, Dad had said. In its own time. In its own way.

  We’re coming, Dad.

  “There’s enough gas,” he said, eyeing the antiquated needle gauge. They had half a tank left. Should be plenty.


  “For the ride back too?” Mom pressed, but her voice was flat, emotionless.

  They had more than a hundred dollars left over from her last check. They’d be able to get food and other necessities from the Samaritan Kitchens back home. They were down to it, but they weren’t done yet.

  “We have enough money for that. More than enough.”

  They were leaving Pittsburgh, but they were only going to Butler. It wasn’t like they were taking some kind of a road trip. And it wasn’t as though it was their first time doing so.

  “We can’t afford this anymore. He won’t even know we’re there.”

  Last time, Dad had slept through the whole visit, wheezing on a respirator. Daniel had held his hand and felt nothing in return.

  “This is the only day of the week we can see him,” Daniel said. “We won’t abandon him.”

  Driving into Butler, the smoke stacks of the prison smelting yard and refinery rose into view.

  “It’s not good for you,” she said, making no mention of herself.

  “We don’t have to live there. It’s only for an hour. It’ll be okay.”

  They approached the gate. There was only one guard, gas-masked and rubber-gloved. Butler’s service penitentiary didn’t get a lot of visitors.

  “You should abandon us both,” said Mom. “You should ‘find God,’ like everyone else. You’re young enough. They’ll believe you if you try hard enough.”

  Dad had said something similar the last time they had spoken. It was a first for Mom, though. And even after years of being taught otherwise by the both of them, Daniel had to admit the idea made a lot of practical sense.

  “Only if you find God with me. They’ll believe us both. I’m not playing that game alone.” Finally, he thought. We can find out how the rest live. Together, if you say yes.

  He imagined it. He thought of Mom finding work, of himself being allowed into after-school activities, maybe even a college-prep class or two. He thought of the two of them playing catch-up and making it.