Vivian Apple Needs a Miracle (7 page)

Ted Blackmore, Church spokesman, and Spencer Ganz, representative of the New Orphans, sign the Treaty for the Spiritual Engagement of Our Nation's Young. Ganz and his associates will lead a three-month, $5 million campaign to engage underprivileged secular American youth in the word of Frick through community outreach, teen-oriented literature, and brand giveaways. All hail the righteous Frick for this glorious day!

“Ted Blackmore,” I whisper.

“I
told
you!” Harp does a small jig on the stone wall, the laptop bouncing with her. “I
told
you Goliath works for them! It makes sense they'd make it public—the Church looks like they've neutralized the Orphans and he looks like a big shot. Ha!”

“Look how upset they look.” I point out the faces I recognize in the group behind Goliath and Blackmore—Gallifrey, Daisy, Kanye, so many others. At the end of the line, pregnant and uncharacteristically sullen, is Edie. “This must have blindsided them.”

I hear a faint noise above us and look up to see a figure standing at the edge of the cliff, calling out my name. Winnie. I wave back. Harp scrolls through the rest of the press release and wades into the comments below, reading out choice Believer reactions: “‘Thank God the New Orphans have come around to the side of light! The angels smile down on us this day!'” I watch Winnie jog around the perimeter of the ruins and down the steps. She makes her way along the rock wall to us. When she arrives, she's out of breath.

“I came to tell you—both of you—that guy, Goliath, the head of the New Orphans? They just put a story on the feed—”

I gesture at the laptop. “We saw it.”

“Oh.” Winnie takes a noisy gulp of air. “Really wish I'd walked, then.”

She lingers on the wall with us, and though she says nothing, I can feel a strange tension in the air. Harp must feel it too, because she snaps the laptop shut.

“I guess the meeting's over, then?” she asks. Winnie nods. “Great. I'm starving. You know, it might be nice for you to pack us a little lunch, next time you kick us out to strategize. Nothing big—just a couple of sandwiches or something.”

Harp bounds past us, heading back up to Cliff House. Winnie sits down along the rock wall and stares out at the horizon. I notice for the first time how pale she is, the heavy bags under her eyes. She looks a lot rougher than she did last week. “Are you okay?”

“I was about to ask you the same thing. How are you settling in?”

I shrug. “I guess pretty great, considering my mother hates me and I'm sitting around useless while the big strike against the Church gets planned.”

Her expression stays carefully neutral. “Mara doesn't hate you.”

I wait for her to elaborate, but she just gazes at the sea. I feel a twinge of annoyance.

“Well, I wouldn't care if she did. She's been an epically shitty mom, and I'm not going to beat myself up for calling her out on it. I should have done it
ages
ago.”

Winnie picks absent-mindedly at a fingernail. Is she even listening? Or has she taken a side already, my mother's side? Winnie leaves Cliff House every evening to return to her apartment and my mom. She feels responsible for her. I imagine with a surge of anger the conversations they have—long ruminations on all the things I've done wrong, all the ways I've let Mom down.

“If you have some kind of problem with me,” I say then, “just tell me.”

Winnie starts at this. “I don't have a problem with you, Viv.”

“Why aren't you talking to me, then? I've been here over a week, and we haven't had a single conversation.”

“I'm sorry.” Winnie stands up and faces me. “The truth is, I'm wondering if bringing you here was the right thing to do. This mission we're planning? This ‘strike against the Church,' as you put it? It's bigger and more dangerous than anything we've done before. And you're here now. And you're—well—feisty. Diego told me how you insisted on going to Point Reyes. Don't get me wrong; if I were in your position, I'd be doing the same thing. But I don't want you on this mission. I don't want you anywhere near it.”

“What are you planning?” I ask, not expecting a straight answer.

“An attack on Church headquarters,” Winnie says. “Once we can figure out where exactly that is. Amanda wants us to set up a bomb and detonate it. She wants us to pick off the survivors as they run for safety. It's awful, Viv.” Winnie shakes her head. “It's too much. Some of us are not going to come back from it. That's not the issue, for me. I signed up for this. I knew what I was getting myself into. What keeps me up at night is the idea of the employees inside. Not the people in charge. The low-level employees: receptionists, janitors, the cooks in the cafeteria. I can't stop imagining what their faces will look like the moment before we blow up the building with all of them inside.”

I'm taken aback by her honesty, and by the plan itself. The rational part of me knows it's too much, but there's something else—some deep vindictive strain in me—that feels satisfied by it. I try to feel what she does for these people. I know not every Believer is evil; most of them must be like my mother, lost and afraid. I can understand a little why Winnie doesn't want to target them. But then a series of images flick through my brain: Goliath shaking Blackmore's hand, the smug smile on his face; the Three Angels in their robes, pretending to speak for God; my father taking the wine Frick hands him, my father drinking it. I shake my head.

“They knew what they were signing up for too. They know what the Church is.”

Winnie cocks her head to the side. “So you think they deserve what they get?”

“I don't know.” I echo something Grandpa Grant, my mother's father, once told me. “You make choices, and there are consequences.”

“I wish I could see things as clearly as you do,” Winnie says after a long moment. “It's really black-and-white for you, isn't it? Good versus evil, Believers versus Non-Believers, you versus the whole world.”

“That's not how I
see
it. That's how it is.” I stand up straight. “Anyway, you don't have to worry about me, okay? I can take care of myself.”

Winnie's mouth twists into a grim smile. “Don't you think it's possible for me to believe that and worry about you at the same time?”

I don't know what to say. My thoughts stray back to Mom. If Winnie might die carrying out this attack, as she seems to believe is possible, what happens to my mother? She's confused and still Believer-inclined—if the Church gave her a second opportunity to be Raptured, I'm not sure she wouldn't take it. Who will protect her from them? I'm about to ask, but I hear a sound—Harp stands at the edge of the cliff where Winnie did, calling down to us. She waves her arms in wide circles. Winnie follows my gaze.

“Is something wrong?”

I strain to hear Harp's voice over the sound of wind in my ears. Her words travel down to me as an echo: “Another Angel! Another Angel!”

I race up toward Cliff House, Winnie at my heels. The two of us burst in, breathless. Diego and the others are gathered in clusters around laptops. They watch an identical moving image. As I approach, I see the face of the female Angel, a blond woman identified beneath as
MICHELLE MULVEY, CHURCH OF AMERICA EXECUTIVE VP
. A wide shot establishes her to be behind a podium in a crowded ballpark.
HISTORIC DAY FOR THE CHURCH OF AMERICA! LIVE BROADCAST FROM CRUSADERS STADIUM IN LOS ANGELES
, the ticker reads. I grip Harp's hand.

“God loves the United States best, out of all his nations,” Michelle Mulvey announces, the amplification lending an echo to her cool, clear voice. “This we know from the Book of Frick, but also by looking into our own hearts. Frick tells us the Creator loves our boldness, our entrepreneurial spirit. So too does He love the way we've always led the world in industry, innovation, and moral righteousness. Today, the Church of America is so proud to embark on an audacious new initiative in that spirit. We proudly announce the opening of over seventy new Church branches worldwide—”

Julian hisses at the screen.

“—in countries such as Canada, Mexico, Italy, Iceland, Kazakhstan, and many others. Additionally”—Mulvey glances behind her, at a line of rigid, blue-uniformed men wearing helmets painted with stars and stripes and crucifixes—“we're honored to introduce you to the new Church of America police force—the Peacemakers—who will enforce Frick's justice in cities both here and abroad, seeking out dangerous enemies to salvation. Blessed are they! Today, we proudly embrace our fellow nations in this, our collective hour of need. God may not have made you American, but embrace His Church warmly and he might lessen the anguish of your spiritual torture when September twenty-fourth finally comes. Hail Frick!”

The stadium erupts into enthusiastic applause, and Mulvey waves like a beauty queen. Diego closes the laptop with an angry flourish. “The globalization of the Church of America,” he mutters. “Probably should have seen that coming.”

“Other countries didn't have the Church before now?”

I don't realize it's a dumb question until it's out of my mouth, and Harp gives me a weird look. Diego rolls his eyes.

“A few imitators have popped up here and there—I know a Church of Great Britain made a stab at it last year—but nowhere is it like here,” Julian explains gently. “And that's exactly what the corporation is taking advantage of. Things are dire all over—extreme weather, poverty, terrorism. But only here has someone provided such a convenient narrative for it. After the first Rapture, the rest of the world is starting to wonder.”

“Our grandma back in Mexico has already hung a little portrait of Frick up over her mantel,” Diego adds. “She calls him Santo Padre—Holy Father. Their market's going to expand like crazy once they spread the message overseas. Have you really,” he asks me, with patronizing curiosity, “never wondered what was happening in the rest of the world?”

I feel my cheeks flush. The embarrassing truth is that I haven't. My scope of the world has been so small all my life: only in this last year—these last few months, really—has it widened to include the rest of the country. I knew the apocalyptic phenomena affecting the United States weren't limited to us alone, but I guess I never gave thought to how other countries were handling it. The Church permeated my own life so deeply, I assumed it had sunk its claws into all seven billion of us. But this is stupid, I realize now, and so self-absorbed. I remember something Winnie told me the morning I met her: the apocalypse isn't happening to me alone.

Diego paces in front of us, brow furrowed, hands clasped behind his back. “Amanda will send us to Los Angeles. If Mulvey's in Los Angeles, it's fair to assume that's where the Church of America's new headquarters are. When we find it, we'll plan the attack.”

There's a sharp, uncomfortable tension among the nearby soldiers, and I get the feeling Winnie's not the only one with doubts. Harp's brow furrows.

“Attack?” she echoes.

Diego pauses. “We need to call another meeting. Winnie, could you please take Viv—”

“I already told her the plan,” Winnie interrupts. “So they might as well stay. Harp, we're planning to target the current Church headquarters—which we can now safely assume to be in Los Angeles—with a coordinated, violent attack. Amanda wants no survivors.”

The silence in Cliff House is electric. Beside me, Harp stiffens—I hear her draw a breath that she waits a long time to release. The soldiers hanging around all have bleak looks on their faces; Frankie watches Diego furiously.

“You know what will happen if you kill Mulvey or Blackmore, or any high-profile Church employee?” Harp asks. “You'll turn them into martyrs. You'll turn them into Frick and Taggart. You'll make them bigger and more powerful than they ever were.”

“We'll also take them out of the picture,” Diego replies. “And with their apocalypse three months away, and the second boat even sooner, that's enticing. You realize what another Rapture means, right? They're going to do it again and again, until they come up with something else, something big enough to keep people believing and buying. Listen.” His tone gets strident. Harp has fixed him with an intensely skeptical look. “I appreciate your concerns, but you're not a part of this. We've weighed the alternatives, and this is the only viable plan.”

“It's a stupid plan,” Harp shoots back. “There's a better one sitting right in front of you, and it's so easy, and so effective, with so much less murder involved. Right, Apple?”

I turn to her. “What?”

Harp beams at my confusion, like she's just discovered she's the smartest person in the room. “Seriously? It's so obvious. We have the best possible weapon there is against the Church. It's the only thing in the world we have.”

When I frown at her, Harp shakes her head. She still can't believe I don't get it.

“The truth, Viv.”

“Just write it like it happened.”

I sit at a desk by the windows—beyond the screen of Harp's laptop is the blue of the ocean. It's early the next morning, and the sky is the pale pink hue that darkens every afternoon into an alarming, fiery red no meteorologist seems able to explain. I'm exhausted—Harp kept me up late, working out the details of her plan, and when I slept I slipped from nightmare to nightmare.

“Viv,” Harp says patiently beside me. “It's not that hard. We can fix it up after you've finished, make it sound snappy. Just tell it like you're telling it to me.”

I sigh and stare at the screen. Harp has already typed in a headline:
THE TRUTH ABOUT THE CHURCH OF AMERICA
.
I look up at her.