The Apostates (67 page)

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When Arch-Deacon von Manstein came to, he was bound and gagged and laid on his side in the rear of his own A.P.C. He struggled with his restraints, but to no avail: they had been tied with professional precision. He muttered and whimpered in fear. Struggling to look around he could see that he was alone in the A.P.C., but someone was obviously driving it. von Manstein attempted to use his neural implant to raise the Church, or the Regime, also to no avail. Whoever had kidnapped him had activated the [Virtue-net] dampener in the A.P.C. He was effectively locked out of the network. von Manstein imagined that he must have been captured by the Apostates and that they were probably laying waste to his valiant force of the Faithful at that moment. He had been on the verge of victory, then it was cruelly snatched from him, at the last moment.

von Manstein began to weep uncontrollably when he thought that the Apostates would put a stop to everything the Church and Regime had worked so hard for. He would not see the Born Again Gathering and the Second Coming, and he would instead be humiliated by the Apostates and probably die in some sacrilegious ritual. He tried to yell, but only murmurs came. He caught a glimpse of something stirring behind the tinted glass that separated the rear of the A.P.C. from the cab. He heard the unlatching of the hatch to the cab. He swallowed in fear: he figured the driver had initiated autopilot and was coming back to shut him up. The hatchway door swung open, but all was obscured in shadow. The figure drew near; he whimpered incoherently.

“Arch-Deacon von Manstein: for years you
tormented and violated me. In my young mind at the time, I mistook what you
were doing as parental love. Since then I have come to realize
what the true nature of your crimes were,” the figure spoke.

von Manstein’s eyes widened and he recoiled and struggled in vain when he realized that the Prelate Ayane Inoguchi stood in front of him, albeit, a more gnarled and grizzled version of the Prelate than he had remembered. Half her face was burnt and scarred, and she only had one hand: the stump covered in some metal plate. He shrieked when he saw the full extent of her condition.

“Yes! Look upon your handiwork. All this,
too, is your fault. You made me what I am, all those years ago in the
H.O.V.E.L., now it is my turn to repay your...guidance.” The disfigured Prelate
managed a smile with the untouched side of her mouth. The Arch-Deacon whimpered
and sobbed uncontrollably.

“That’s right you coward. Now we have a
long drive. In the meantime, I’d appreciate it if you’d shut the fuck up!” With
saying that, she used the metal plate over her stump to knock him unconscious.
She didn’t want to listen to his childish sobbing all the way back to Portland.

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Greta Sanchez rushed around the ward, assessing the newly-arrived patients’ needs, then, she assigned nurses and orderlies to each. For the most extreme cases, she would page the doctor on duty. The casualties had been flooding in as the Pacific War was coming to a head. The allies had invaded Okinawa, and the fighting had been described to her as a Hellish, new level of brutality. The civilians now fought against the U.S. army, and they were committing suicide rather than come under U.S. rule. She had been told stories by wounded soldiers, about Japanese women driving their children off cliffs to avoid capture. She had never imagined that the war would reach this level of insanity. But, now it was time to deal with the reality of the situation, after all, she’d rather be practicing her trade than sequestered to laundry detail.

Greta analyzed another patient: he had
multiple gunshot wounds to his torso. The bullet fragments had been removed by
medics at a field hospital. But his sutures had become infected while being
transported by ship back to San Francisco. She assessed the wound and decided
that nurses and orderlies would be able to handle the patient.

“Oh, my dear! Johnny my boy! Oh, I’m so happy to see you safe!” Nurse Wainwright was hysterically happy. She half-ran, half-waddled over to an injured aviator. Nurse Wainwright smothered the man in his bed. Nurse Sanchez lingered in the general area pretending to stock supplies at the nurse’s station so she could eavesdrop.

“Easy! Easy Clementine! How the hell are
you? It’s been a while,” John H.P. Schrubb, aviator extraordinaire, replied to
Nurse Wainwright’s onslaught.

“Oh, my sweet, holy boy! You sure did go
out there and gave those Japs hell! How many did you kill?” Nurse Wainwright
interrogated. She put one hand on his cheek and smeared it like putty.

“Well, I was just doin’ my job ma’am. But,
if you have to know: I believe I claimed fifty of their planes.” Schrubb winced
in slight pain at Wainwright’s weight on his core, and her rough treatment of him.

“Johnny: I’m so proud of you! Of course, if
you could had killed every last one of those yellow, bastards the Christian
world would be better for it!” Nurse Wainwright exclaimed. The hate in her
beady eyes, behind thick-rimmed lenses, reinforced her statement.

“Now, Clementine: No need to kill ‘em all. They just needed a good, old ass kickin’ from our boys!” John Schrubb was the voice of reason in this conversation, and that was scary to Nurse Sanchez. It didn’t bode well for the future. Nurse Sanchez was aware of who the Schrubb family were, being the political dynasty that had recently risen to prominence in the last decade. They had been getting cozy with captains of industry and people of influence and were poised to rocket to the top of society.

“Johnny: you’re so modest. Hey, guess
what I have for you?” Nurse Wainwright teased.

“I have no idea, ma’am. What is it?” John H.P. Schrubb was puzzled.

“Hello, my boy! Christ thanks you for your faithful service! It gladdens my heart that you have returned to us relatively unscathed!” Reverend Wilhelm Wainwright stood ever-clad in his white suit, matching wide-brimmed, white cowboy hat, and snakeskin cowboy boots.

“Reverend! Thank you so much for coming!
You came all the way from Texas to see me?” John’s eyes grew wide at the sight
of his childhood hero; he had grown up listening to the man’s sermons in Texas.

“Yes, my boy. I wouldn’t miss the
homecoming of our local hero. You’re a true hero for our faith.” The Reverend
took his hat off and patted John H.P. Schrubb on his forehead.

“How are you, mother? Good to see you
looking over all these fine warriors—examples to us all!” The Reverend bent
over to kiss his mother on the cheek. Nurse Wainwright embraced the Reverend
with the strength of an ox. Once the Reverend replaced the air in his lungs she had squeezed
of him, he turned back to John H.P. Schrubb.

“I’ve been following the headlines here at home. It seems the end of the war is at hand. I am guessing our favorite flyboy had a huge contribution to this most fortuitous turn of events,” the Reverend complimented his former pupil.

“Well, Reverend, I am just abiding by the
values that you had instilled me, and did what God put me on Earth to do,”
John stated in a stoic manner.

“That’s my boy: a true paragon of Virtue!
You have quite the future ahead of you, yes indeed! For the Lord has ordained
it!” the Reverend proclaimed with a finger in the air.

“You know, Reverend: that’s all I asked
from the Lord, to give me the strength to use the influence I’ve been
blessed me with to guide the lost to His light!” John confessed. Nurse Sanchez
found his words endearing and troubling all at once. He truly sounded devout
and pious to her, but what about the people who did not believe the way he did?

“My boy: stick with me and my Church and you
will be rewarded in this life and the next for your devotion. My Church has big
plans: there is a reawakening at hand—a rebirth. We will return this land to
Christian roots—you just wait and see,” the Reverend said. He sounded convinced that
his vision would come to pass.

“That is all I ask!” John winced in pain.
Nurse Wainwright jumped to his attention.

“Oh, poor boy! How many times were you shot down out there anyway?” she inquired while giving him an infusion of methadone to ease his pain. Shortly thereafter, John Schrubb’s face slackened, and his eyes became heavy, and he grinned.

“Well...uh...I was shot down three
times...but...I sure did give them hell each time. I took down nine of them for
each time they got me...gosh...I’m sleepy.” John nodded off
because of the drug. The Reverend turned to his mother.

“Perhaps, we should let our little hero
get his rest. He’ll have a busy schedule out there on the campaign trail,”
Nurse Sanchez suggested. The Reverend scratched his goatee.

“Didn’t you say Warren Wynham was here
somewhere? I would like to make my rounds to him as well,” the Reverend
informed her.

“Yes, my dear! Right this way. I’ll take you to him. In the Marines, that one. Took some shrapnel while storming the beaches at Okinawa. Killed two of them yellow devils with his bare hands before he succumbed.” Nurse Wainwright delighted in the macabre details of the story while she led the Reverend away. The Reverend smiled and nodded with pleasure as she went on.

Nurse Sanchez went on with her duties, checking on patients and assigning duties. She had found the conversation troubling. Nurse Sanchez tried to imagine living in a country where a fundamentalist religion installed puppets within the government and attempted to usurp power. She was thankful to have lived through the F.D.R. years and to live under a government, which took the separation of Church and State seriously. But...what if?

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Private Alexander Burke awoke to the feeling of life: shooting pains pierced the right side of his body and face. His vision was blurry and he couldn’t focus. Only one eye was receiving light. He seemed to be having trouble thinking coherently: it took him several minutes to realize. He seemed to be under the influence of morphine. He lifted a hand to his face and felt that it was wrapped in gauze: that was why he couldn’t see out of one eye. Burke tried to remember what had happened to him. Everything was hazy. He had no idea where he was currently. He deduced that he must have been wounded badly to experience this much pain on morphine.

Burke willed himself to focus. What had happened to him? He had been on the Iowa: that much he remembered. He was part of a gunnery crew, and a battle had taken place. He recalled that the battle went on for hours, and that they had fired so many times he had lost count. Everything had been going according to routine, when suddenly he remembered an explosion, and a fire had broken out. Then the details had come rushing back to him, like a slap to the face. Burke remembered struggling below deck to find his friend, Private Jones, who was beyond saving. Burke remembered feeling great sorrow at that moment, but then he had struggled to save himself; to get away from the raging inferno. Then he remembered nothing after that. Here he was: in a hospital bed somewhere; alone. He surmised that his parents probably had no idea where he was or what happened to him. His friend Jones was dead and he was truly alone.

Burke, found himself thinking about the nature of his injuries. He did not know the extent. What if he was crippled or horribly disfigured? The rest of his life would be spent alone and scared. He looked to the stand on the side of his bed: there was a bottle of something; pills. All he would need to do is reach for the bottle, and consume all of its contents. He would be put out of his misery, and would not need to face the bleak future in store for him. Burke tried to summon the strength to reach for the bottle. But, when he actually did move an inch or so, the shooting pain raged into a torrent, and he groaned in agony.

“Whoa there, soldier! You were wounded pretty bad. You’ll hurt yourself if you try to move!” the voice sounded familiar to him, but he couldn’t quite place it. It was a voice that he had taken pleasure in hearing, and a voice that he had dreamed of that had kept him company in dark days when solitude drained his morale. He felt a gentle touch lower him back to a comfortable position. Then those same hands adjusted his sheets, tucking him back in. It was the way he would want to be helped into bed for the rest of his life.

“Well, soldier, there you are. All set.
You can go back to sleep now. A nurse will be near if you need them,” the nurse
instructed him. Burke had her name on the tip of his tongue, and he struggled
to force the words out of his mouth.

“So, sleep tight there,” the nurse began
to walk away.

“Nurse...” he managed to say.

“Oh? Something else?” the nurse turned
back to him.

“Nurse Greta...Sanchez!” he forced out
with some strain. Greta looked at him intently.

“You know my name?” Greta attempted to get
a better look at the man’s face.

“Old...Ebbit...Grill...D.C. You told
me...to return to you,” Burke fought and won the battle to finish his sentence.
Greta looked at the patient card. It read: “Private Alexander Burke”.

“Alexander Burke, welcome home. It appears I owe you a promise.” Greta held out a soothing hand on the exposed side of his face. He cracked a half-smile and focused his eye upon her face.

She reached over and picked up a newspaper, laying on the bed stand, “Well, Private. You won the war for me, didn’t you?” Greta held the newspaper in front of his face. He grimaced, and attempted to focus in on the headline and photograph. The newspaper was the San Francisco Chronicle. He surmised that he must be in the Presidio. The date of this edition was August Fifteenth, 1945. The header at the top read: “Victory Extra”. The image, which he first thought was a photograph, was actually the headline, which read: “PEACE!”, in an oversized font, that took up half the front page. She flipped the paper over. There was another headline about atomic weapons dropped on Japan, being the most destructive force in history. It was accompanied by an aerial photograph depicting a towering cloud: an explosion, miles high...a mushroom cloud. Burke was suddenly overcome with emotion. He could do nothing else but weep. He wept for his fallen comrades, but also for what he realized could only be the death of hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians. And, he also wept for the end of this ghastly, apocalyptic conflict. Greta held him, being caught off guard by his burst of emotion.

That V-J Day, she came back to him in the
evening, to celebrate victory with a shot of whiskey, watered down for him, of
course. Greta sat and listened to Burke’s stories: the exotic locales he had
visited while on his voyages, and the horrific experiences he had witnessed.
She was transfixed by the level of detail that he had retained. It seemed he
had an encyclopedic knowledge of many subjects. Greta had reciprocated by
filling him in on her own experiences as being part of the Cadet Nurse Core.
She gave him the nasty details on her boss: the wretched Nurse Wainwright, and
the humiliation she had suffered at the hands of her hatred for other
ethnicities. Hearing about her treatment enraged Private Burke, but she had
calmed him by also telling her how Doctor Hornsby had recognized her talent and
rescued her from the torture.

Greta filled him in on the extent of his injuries: she told him his right eye was undamaged, but he would carry the scarring from his injuries for the rest of his days. His other injuries, shrapnel to his core, had missed major organs and arteries. He thanked her for easing his worry.

In the weeks to come, he would steadily recover. Each day she would come and spend time with him, even going for meals with him to the hospital cafe, when he was finally able to leave his bed. On the day he was scheduled to be discharged, he called in the promise she issued to him for winning the war. He proposed to her, providing that he would purchase the ring with his benefits.

Greta Sanchez accepted his proposal and gave him a kiss: a familiar one that brought memories flooding back from the night in Washington D.C. He went home a happy man that night, despite the massive scar across the right side of his face. Greta Sanchez would still be stationed at the Presidio for some time longer because the casualties had only begun to reach the hospital. The job prospects in San Francisco seemed fairly numerous, and Private Burke had given thought to remaining in the Navy, in an administrative capacity for a few more years.

It seemed obvious that the best place to
settle would be San Francisco. Eventually Greta Sanchez and Alexander Burke
wed, and they purchased a house in San Francisco’s Sunset District, where
recently, the last of the sand dunes around the area were leveled to give way to
new construction. The expansion of the Sunset District completed San
Francisco’s conquest of the peninsula. Greta would insist upon retaining her
last name, instead of taking Alexander’s, which in time, he came to understand.
Greta soon finished her service in the Cadet Nurse Core, and received a
discharge with honors. She continued her career in medicine, working at Saint
Mary’s Medical Center. Alexander retired from the Navy and began a career as a
history teacher at Lowell High School, not far from his house in the Sunset
District. The couple would eventually settle into a fairly comfortable and
standard American, middle-class lifestyle. They would purchase two Chevy model
cars in the Fifties and Greta would become pregnant soon thereafter. Nine
months later they would have a baby girl. With the family now established they
would find their routine, and would live through, and enjoy American hegemony
that the war had ushered in, as the last two superpowers in the world, fought a
series of proxy wars to fight for the scraps of the European empires that had
crumbled in World War Two.