All Bad Things

—8—

To train his troops, Samson finds inspiration in movies with ridiculous titles from almost a hundred years ago found in the King’s studio. Commando, three different Rocky movies, something about a kid who learns karate, and a dozen others. They’re so badly degraded that Samson can’t begin to follow the plots, but they all show men and women fighting against evil and corruption with quick–cut training scenes, the end result of which is always the same—they have become unstoppable killing machines.

And so the Church’s training is fierce and rapid. Every soldier in God’s Militia drills, practices, marches, spars. They are schooled in flashy hand–to–hand, acrobatic sword work, double–fisted gun combat, and a form of battle meditation that focuses on ramming magazines into guns, slamming knives into sheathes.

It is a brutal training regimen, and those who survive know that they are the best of the best, God’s appointed soldiers. Those who can make the cut survive. Those who can’t, don’t. There is no room for the weak. For weakness, as Cyrus’s ever–expanding good book says, is a lack of faith.

With that, the Church’s soldiers go forth to grow their ranks and salt the Earth, certain that they can do no wrong because God, James King, and Luke Samson guide their hands.

They convert scores. They kill hundreds.

They catch the spy in one of the buildings half buried in mud and swamp–grass along Franklin.

Samson looks down at the man on the floor in front of him, torchlight throwing flickering shadows across his face, hands tied behind him. He says he’s just a squatter, one more scavenger in a world filled with them. But he’s too well fed, too clean. Doesn’t have the haunted look of a man who lives by the hour.

Samson’s army has set up camp at the corner of Western and Los Feliz in preparation for their final push into that den of sin, Hollywood. It’s been a long year of fighting and training since they took the Angelus Temple, and Samson feels every day of that year in his bones. The Church slowly expanded its territory north into Los Feliz and Glendale, building and strengthening. Cyrus hasn’t seemed to be in any hurry to make a move on what he had said was their “next” target all those months ago, but all that time James King has been screaming in Samson’s ear about putting the whoremongers and homosexuals in Hollywood to the sword, making his blood boil and his head throb. It was tearing Samson apart, but thankfully Cyrus finally—finally—gave him the go–ahead, and now he’s on the march.

There has been surprisingly little fighting as they’ve moved down from Los Feliz. Guerilla tactics, mostly. Overgrowth of mutant oak, sage, and manzanita has crept down to Los Feliz from Griffith Park, making the whole area perfect for ambushes, but the fact that there have been so few tells Samson that Hollywood is waiting for something. He’s just not sure what.

“What’s your name?” Samson asks the spy, crouching down to eye level. The man’s been beaten, one eye swollen shut, enormous bruise on one cheek, blood matted in his hair. Samson looks up at the squad who brought him in, at their leader, Lieutenant Volkov, standing at attention.

“Jensen,” the man says, voice thick and slurred.

“That a first or a last name?”

“Dunno. Just Jensen.” His eyes aren’t tracking very well and go in and out of focus. Probably has a concussion.

“We been clearing the streets since Vermont. You’re the first person we’ve seen hasn’t taken a shot at us. Everybody else has cleared out. How come you haven’t?”

“Live here. Not gonna run just ‘cause somebody’s shootin’ the place up,” Jensen says.

“A man of principle,” Samson says, remembering how King used that word in many of his sermons, though he’s never really understood what it means. “Okay. But I don’t believe you.”

The man’s eyes snap into focus on Samson’s face, then drift back into their lazy orbit. “It’s the truth.”

“I think you’re a spy. From Hollywood. Here to check on us, see how strong we are, what we’re doing. That right, Jensen? You a spy?”

“Just live here.”

Samson backhands him with a fist wrapped in a leather sapglove, the lead weights in the knuckles cracking the man’s cheekbone and sending him to the floor. To his credit he doesn’t cry out, just hisses in pain.

“Don’t lie to me. I’ll just make it hurt more,” Samson says. The man lets out a croaking whisper, words too quiet for Samson to understand. He leans down close, grabs the man’s face in a crushing grip. “What was that?”

“I said you can burn in Hell.”

That’s when Samson sees that Jensen’s hand isn’t empty, sees the wires from the device in his fist disappearing into his sleeve. Samson tears the man’s shirt open, revealing the bricks of plastic explosives strapped to his chest.

There’s a click as Jensen thumbs the detonator, and Samson doesn’t remember anything after that.

Samson wakes to the sounds of gunfire in the distance. He coughs up plaster dust, pushes aside bricks and debris. The building is a ruin, but he, miraculously, is not.

“God provides,” King says, reaching down to help him up. Samson waves away the assistance. If he can’t get up on his own, he doesn’t deserve to get up. He can’t see out of his left eye, his left forearm is broken, and he’s covered in cuts, many of which are going to need stitches, but he’s in better condition than he has any right to be.

“I shouldn’t have survived that,” he says.

“Like I said, God provides.”

Samson stands and looks out at the ruin around him through his one good eye. There’s a charred lump of exploded meat where Jensen was, bits of him still burning. He’s not sure, but he thinks most of the explosives didn’t go off, just burned. But then how did the building come down around him?

He gets his answer a second later when a high–pitched whistle pierces the air. The ground quakes with the explosion of another building. Of all the weapons God’s Militia has collected, they’ve never been able to lay their hands on artillery. Seems Hollywood hasn’t had the same problem.

There’s a groan from the corner. Volkov slowly drags herself from the wreckage. Samson hobbles over to help her out.

“You all right?” he says, once he’s gotten her standing. She nods, her eyes clearing. She’s cut up just as bad as Samson, a wide lump on her forehead with a bruise that spreads down the side of her face.

“What happened? How did he have a bomb? Who checked him?” Samson realizes he’s shaking her and then stops, takes a deep breath, waits for her answer.

“Warner did, sir. He—” She stops as she sees the other members of her squad, broken limbs and blasted bodies scattered through the rubble. “He checked the prisoner. None of us thought to check him a second time.”

A traitor. Samson had already guessed that much. He couldn’t remember which one Warner was, though. The army had gotten so big so fast that he couldn’t keep track of everyone anymore.

Another whistle of mortar fire, another explosion. They’re coming closer together now, louder. They’re walking the block, back and forth, laying waste to the entire area. It’s a good plan. Samson wishes he could have done it to them instead.

“Come on. Back up the hill.” Samson guides Volkov out to the heavily cratered street, dodging falling brick, flaming chunks of wood. There are bodies everywhere. The few of his people still standing are taking cover, trying to regroup, but with no officers to take charge, they’re just an unruly mob dying by the score.

Communication is a shambles. Most of the radios were held by officers, and many of them are dead or dying. By the time Samson finds everyone and leads them back up Western to Los Feliz and out of the way of the mortar fire, they’ve lost dozens more. A quick triage to see how badly beaten they are—very, as it turns out, down by at least two–thirds of their original strength—and Samson has them back on the move.

Samson knows if the roles were reversed, he wouldn’t wait long before he sent troops in to mop up, and with his army in such disarray, it won’t take much to finish them off.

Retreat is just a nicer way of saying “run away,” and it goes against everything in Samson’s being, everything he’s ever preached about, but as he looks around at the dead and wounded, he knows there’s no way they’ll survive a fight. There just aren’t enough of them left. So he has the strongest take up the rear to watch their flank and gets as many of his people out as he can.

He looks behind him as they head toward Vermont and he swears he sees James King hanging his head in shame.