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  “Stop it!” It’s all too much and Samson can’t take it. He’s been wandering through the streets for more than a day, exhausted, dehydrated, starving. This is all just a hallucination, it has to be. King, the tape, Volkov.

  “Nope. That’s all real,” King says.

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “Didn’t have to. I’m in your head. Hell, I am your head. Look, Samson, accept the fact that you’ve lost. That all of this is a psychotic break. You’ll feel better.”

  “I will fix this. You’re a lie. You’ve always been a lie and I was an idiot to follow you.”

  “I gave you what you wanted, Samson,” King says. “I gave you purpose. And when you doubted, I was there to guide your hand. You think I’m not real? Without me, you’re nothing. Not the other way around. You know what you should do? You should pick up that pistol from the floor and take my way out.” King makes a finger gun with his hand and puts it to his ravaged skull.

  Samson closes his eyes and screams. “No. That’s a coward’s way out. I’ll fix this. I’ll go up and talk to Cyrus and together we’ll turn the Church around.”

  He waits for King to tell him he’s insane or stupid, to mock him for what he’s done. But he doesn’t say a word. Samson opens his eye.

  James King is gone.

  ***

  Samson heads up the hill, his left leg dragging behind him. It’s taken most of the day to get this far and he’s not about to stop. He can see the tunnel leading to the Bastion of Faith up ahead. Church members are stacking boxes at the mouth, unspooling wires and attaching them to a box inside the tunnel. And there’s Cyrus sitting under an umbrella, giving them orders. He looks worried, a little haggard. No doubt he hasn’t slept much, either. He keeps touching the gun holstered at his belt as though he’s expecting the Hollywood army to overrun them at any minute.

  “Samson?” Cyrus says, peering into the trees as he approaches. “You’re alive!”

  “Don’t sound so happy, you liar,” Samson says, stepping onto the road. “I talked to Volkov. She told me everything. She showed me the tape.”

  Cyrus chews his lip, says nothing for a long time. Then, “Everyone, we’re done here. Back to the Bastion.”

  “But sir, the explosives aren’t ready.”

  “They’re ready enough.” Cyrus goes to the box with all the wires and pushes a button. A readout on the box glows red with 2:00. Samson thinks he’s set the bomb for two hours until the readout starts to tick down. Two minutes.

  The acolytes run out the back of the tunnel and up toward the Bastion, throwing nervous glances behind them. Soon Cyrus and Samson are alone.

  “Sealing the Church off from the rest of the world, Cyrus?”

  “It’s temporary,” Cyrus says. “Give us some breathing room. We’ve got enough food and guns in there to last long enough. And I’ve already got plans for moving our territory north into Burbank. So. Volkov. She was a spy for Hollywood, wasn’t she?”

  “Yes.”

  “Should have fuckin’ known.”

  Samson pulls the tape from where he’s stuffed it into his waistband at the small of his back. Its sharp edges have dug into his skin. Bringing it up here is only part of his penance.

  He throws it at Cyrus’s feet. Cyrus stares at it like it’s a dead rat. “Huh. Thought I burned that thing a long time ago. So you saw it. And I suppose she told you I was going to have you killed?”

  “You don’t deny it?”

  “Why should I? You know the big truth already. What’s one more little one on the pile?”

  “We can fix this, Cyrus. We can make the Church different. King didn’t want us to be murderers.”

  A noise in the distance. People moving up the hill. Hollywood soldiers? Has to be. Samson knows they couldn’t have been far behind him. He was lucky to get here before they did.

  Cyrus clears his throat. “I don’t have a lot of time, so I’ll keep this brief. You’re an idiot. You think people are going to get behind ‘be good to each other’? No. They need order and protection. They’re sheep for fleecing and if we don’t do it, somebody else will. Come on, Samson, you know how this works. You kill or you die out here. There’s no in between.”

  “It doesn’t have to be.”

  “Yes, it does,” Cyrus says. He pulls his pistol and shoots Samson in the chest. The bullet plows through Samson’s right lung. He staggers, but he doesn’t fall.

  “You’re the second person to shoot me today,” Samson says through clenched teeth.

  “Well, let me try it again to make sure it sticks.” Cyrus pulls the trigger. The gun jams. He racks the slide, desperately trying to clear it, but Samson is on him in a flash, the sledgehammer swinging up into Cyrus’s jaw. Bone shatters, teeth and blood go flying.

  Samson brings the sledgehammer around again, swinging it hard into the side of Cyrus’s head. His skull caves, spraying blood and brain across the floor of the tunnel. Cyrus falls to the ground, his limbs spasming, a low, thin wheeze escaping his lips. Samson stands on top of his chest and hits him again, kicks at his already–destroyed skull until it’s nothing but so much red paste.

  “It could have been different,” Samson says.

  A bullet whizzes over his shoulder, cracks the cement of the tunnel wall. At first he thinks it’s one of the Church Faithful, but it’s coming from the wrong direction. He turns to see a dozen Hollywood soldiers coming out of the trees toward him. He waves them back, yells at them to stop. Yells about the bomb. He needs to warn them, save them, needs to explain. He can fix this. He just needs time.

  They don’t give it to him. They rush him, firing blindly. He drops the sledgehammer, yells for them to listen. But a bullet pierces his other lung, and he’s got no air left to explain.

  They descend upon him with knives and hatchets, beating him, cutting him, slicing into his flesh. More join the fray. The tunnel fills with them, each looking for a piece of the monster. Each taking their revenge for a dead friend, a murdered lover, a slaughtered child, tears in their eyes. Samson lies there and lets them do it. It’s his penance, his punishment.

  He tries to say, “I’m sorry,” but the only sound is a terrible rushing roar that fills the tunnel with light and fire that kills Samson, kills the soldiers.

  And kills the truth.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Stephen Blackmoore is the author of the novels City of the Lost, Dead Things, Khan of Mars, and the upcoming Broken Souls. His short stories have appeared in the magazines Needle, Plots with Guns, Spinetingler, Thrilling Detective, and Shots, as well as the anthologies Deadly Treats, Don’t Read This Book, and Uncage Me.

  He can be found online at www.stephenblackmoore.com and on Twitter at @sblackmoore.