Chapter Text
Eden was thankful when Mary May and Jerome insisted that she leave clean up to the townspeople who’d finally come out from their homes in the wake of the plane crash. To Eden’s surprise, it looked like at least fifty or sixty people were still in town. She knew from Rae-Rae’s farm that John was already sending parties out to the isolated farms and houses, but she hadn’t thought about literally any of these people when she’d approached the town.
She hadn’t just saved Mary May and Jerome, she’d saved every non-Peggie in Fall’s End.
Including several children.
“Anyone who could leave or send their kids somewhere else already did,” Mary May explained softly when Eden started staring at a little family that had come in for some food. “But some families . . . this is all they have. All they know. They don’t have anywhere else to go.”
Eden nodded. “I’ll protect them.”
Mary May smiled and snorted but didn’t argue.
Sharky nudged her arm. “We’ll protect ‘em.”
Eden gave Sharky a big grin. “Thanks.”
“Don’t worry Chica,” he laughed. “You’n’me are ride or die now!”
Eden held up her hand, fingers spread and palm flat. “To hell and back?”
Sharky reached out and curled his fingers over the back of her hand and winked when she did the same. “To hell and back, Dep.”
A skitter up her spine prompted Eden to add, “Swear on the Father, Mother, and the Son?”
Mary May gave her an odd look, but Sharky didn’t seem to think anything of it. “Swear on the Dad, the Mom, and the Dude!”
Eden laughed and pulled him in for a hug. “Remind me to make you a friendship bracelet, Bestie.”
That sent Sharky into a spat of laughter while Mary May shook her head.
The radio behind the bar suddenly blasted with static. “This is Grace. I’m at Mother of God Church. I could use some help.”
Eden didn’t even have to ask - Sharky was already up and moving. “Let’s go, Shorty!”
She laughed and waved to Mary May as she followed him back into the early afternoon light.
Eden tried not to cry as they moved bodies out of the cemetery. Not because she upset over the Peggies being killed - though that didn’t help, admittedly, - but over the fact that Grace Armstrong felt like Hope.
Not the emotion, her sister.
From a young age, Hope Rook had been the epitome of calm and steady. She’d always watched the world with a curious sort of zen detachment that belied a deep empathy for everyone and everything around her. She and Eden both had been infamous for their kinship to animals and the natural world so much so that their father had to impose rules about bringing home animals. It had been necessary because of an incident where Hope had found an injured cottonmouth in their yard, and Eden had managed to safely get the snake into a box. They’d had some hare-brained idea to nurse the poor thing back to health in their room using an old fish tank as a makeshift terrarium.
Eden could still hear her mother’s terrified shriek upon finding the snake nearly a week later, healthy and eating the mice the two girls had trapped from their grandmother’s barn.
Grace felt like a person who’d save a dangerous but innocent creature rather than leaving it to die. In fact, Grace had been the one to command the Resistance backup that had shown up not far behind Sharky and Eden to start wrapping the dead in torn sheets and preparing proper burial. “They’re crazy motherfuckers,” Grace said with a sense of deep serenity, “but they’re still children of God.”
Eden was more or less heterosexual, but man did she fall a little bit in love when she heard Grace say that.
To make her parallels to Hope even more obvious, Grace adored Boomer. Hope had always been a dog person, even though she liked all animals to an extent. Apparently, Grace was much the same way. Boomer seemed to sense that, but Eden didn’t mind the dog sticking close to Grace. She felt better that the animals seemed to be cleaving to the Specialists.
“Deputy.”
Everyone in the immediate vicinity froze except for Eden. She had been half-expecting this. Three Story Missions was enough to draw attention of any of the Heralds. However, her heart still raced as she keyed her radio. “Can I help you, Mr. Seed?”
He chuckled into the radio. “No, Deputy, the question is how I can help you.”
She saw several of the Resistance members pale, and Grace turned to look out to the road. “Is it?”
“Yes, Deputy. Sin is pervasive. It leads us down dark paths.”
“Like stealing people’s property? Or torturing them?”
“Now Deputy,” John cooed, his voice still light and airy, “It almost sounds like you’re accusing me of doing that.”
“I just fought off a group of your men trying to destroy graves because they wanted to demoralize people. One would think you’d’ve wished to preserve these graves as they are. After all, your own brother is a veteran of a foreign war. His grave will deserve an American flag as a marker of his honor.”
John was quiet for a long moment, so long that Eden almost thought he was done with the conversation. “My brother’s honor is not tied to a failed empire, Deputy.”
“And my morality is not bound by your concept of sin,” she shot back. “Call me a sinner all you want, Mr. Seed, it does not change anything about me.”
“Such pride,” he replied patronizingly.
“Superbia is an outsized belief in one’s own talents,” Eden all but snarled. “It is not pride to be sure in one’s faith or worth.”
A knowing swelled then, a skitter up her spine and a sheet of goosebumps on her arms telling her that her deities were right there with her. “Adonai - God, brought me here to save as many people as I can.”
“God told the Father to do that.”
“And Joseph is failing.”
Several gasps came from the Resistance. Grace stared at her with a thoughtful look. It was Grace’s steady regard, so like Hope’s, that gave Eden the courage to continue. “Joseph is failing because the people he’s trying to save are running the opposite way as fast as they can. Sure, maybe the world ends in fire, but they will all burn not because they refused God, but because they refused to follow a man who carves sin into his flesh while holding the symbols of our salvation in his hands. We are already saved, Mr. Seed, and no amount of sin will ever close Heaven’s gates to any of us.”
Grace was smiling at her. Sharky looked a little stunned. The other Resistance fighters regarded her with awe.
“And you think you can save these people? With the blood of the Project’s Flock on your hands?” John’s voice was hard, his tone stern.
“All I can do is try. Try to save every Peggie and citizen in this county. I’m not the one that declared war, Mr. Seed. You have look to your brother for that.”
“It is a shame at how mistaken you are, Deputy. No matter. My men will be bringing you to me.”
Eden was tempted to let him have the last word, to immediately try to see if she could get to ground and not be captured this quickly. She knew that John’s forces would know where she was based off of the failed assault and even perhaps triangulating her radio’s location. However, she decided that she wasn’t going to let him have his little dramatic pronouncement.
“Then I’ll be seein’ ya soon, handsome,” she cooed in her sultriest voice. “I’ll do my hair and everything.”
One of the Resistance fighters barked a laugh. “Shorty, you are Grade-A crazy,” Sharky muttered.
Eden grinned. “That I am. Look, when they come for me I want all y’all to back off. Let them have me.”
“And why would we do that?” Grace asked, crossing her arms in front of her chest.
It was on the tip of her tongue to say that it wasn’t like she’d stay in John’s clutches long, but held herself back. She wasn’t sure anyone would even remotely believe that they were in a video game, and she didn’t want them to think she was a wacko like Joseph.
Well, you are either haunted by the ghosts of your siblings or suffering from some form of DID or something, Yael piped up.
And you are a Christian witch who regularly uses tarot cards to talk to God, Hope added.
Oo, and don’t forget the fact that you have sexual fantasies about being the focal point of a Seed Brother gang-bang! Eve chimed in.
“Shut up,” Eden muttered to herself. Grace frowned but didn’t comment before Eden finally answered. “The Seeds are going to be gunning for me, bad. If they come for me, I want all y’all to back off and go back to Fall’s End. Get Jerome and Mary May. Regroup before trying anything.”
The Resistance fighters seemed to accept that, but Sharky and Grace shared a look. “You sure, Dep?” Grace asked. “Even if we could get you outta John’s hands, there’s a lot of damage he could do to you in the meantime.”
“Your lives are worth more to me than any amount of hypothetical danger,” Eden replied. “And anyway - as long as you can get to me before they haul me into John’s bunker, I’ll be okay.”
“If you say so,” Grace murmured. “If you say so.”
John regarded his radio as he leaned back in the office chair he preferred. The control room of his Gate was silent besides the soft whirring of the air conditioning. He preferred it that way.
He’d ordered his men to hunt down the Deputy, to bring her to him. However, he’d told them to go in gently.
All I can do is try. Try to save every Peggie and citizen in this county.
She wants to save you, John.
Between Joseph’s dream and the Deputy’s own words, John no longer doubted that she was meant to be a part of the Flock. That she was meant to be more than just one of the sisters walking the Path. Unlike Pastor Jerome who spoke of the Project in scathing tones and had taken to quoting every verse of war he could find in the Old Testament, she spoke of God’s love. On some level, she had to understand the Project’s goal.
We are already saved, Mr. Seed, and no amount of sin will ever close Heaven’s gates to any of us.
John wished he could actually believe that. Believe that anyone such as he was truly worthy of paradise.
He picked up one of the photos that the Project’s surveillance team had gotten of the Deputy. The picture had been captured by one of their photographers, who’d caught her standing at the edge of the parking lot of the Hope County Jail. She looked into the distance, her face at three-quarters profile. Her lips were parted, and wisps of hair had escaped her braided bun and floated in the wind that blew in the same direction she was looking. Her face was scraped up, and he could see blood spatters on her clothes, but none of that detracted from the gentle beauty of her face. She looked like a painting of the Madonna, especially with the late afternoon light softly limning her in gold.
It did not take a genius to know what Joseph meant by her being more than just a Flock sister.
“Brother John,” came the voice of one of his most loyal Chosen, “we have the Deputy in custody.”
“Bring her to the Cleansing,” he replied. “And tell the Ranch to prepare for a guest tonight.”
“As you wish.”
John set down the photo.
It was time to prepare for a Cleansing.