Briarpatch by Tim Pratt (37 page)

“Even if Ismael
does
believe me, I’m not sure he’d leave these people behind,” Darrin said. Without the binoculars, Ismael’s cultists were just a handful of white specks moving around the ugly, functional buildings of the compound. They looked like sheep. “He thinks he’s helping them, taking them to the better world.” He shook his head. “I don’t even think his plan will work though. It’s crazy, right?”

Orville rolled over. “I don’t know. When I jumped from the bridge, and saw the light below me, it really did look like a portal opening up that I would pass through, you know? Multiply that by fifty or so. . . .”

Darrin grunted.

He had his doubts. His glimpse of the light had been an issue of perception, not a physical process at all. Maybe the force of dozens of people jumping all at once would tear apart reality more seriously, but it seemed like a long shot. But then, what did Ismael care? He’d spent months getting the group together, and he’d send them all to their deaths, but if it didn’t work the way he hoped, so what? He’d only wasted time, and time was one thing he had in ample measure. He wouldn’t regret the deaths of his followers . . . and neither would they, assuming they all made it safely through to the light. But it would still be a tragedy, as much as Jonestown, as much as Heaven’s Gate, a bunch of deluded people led away from their best interests at a madman’s behest.

“I doubt I could even get in to see him,” Darrin said.

“Nah,” Arturo said. “He’s got a couple guys at the gate, watchin’ the road. Maybe you could find a path through the briarpatch into the place, get to his inner sanctum or whatever, but who knows if those guys are armed? All it takes is one bullet and, bam, you bounce out to someplace in the briarpatch, who knows how deep?”

Darrin nodded. “But we know where he’s going, and when. Nicholas told us that much, and I doubt Ismael would change his plans just because we know about them. He’s got a brainwashed army down there, so what can we do to stop them?”

Ismael intended to march his people to the bridge in eight days, once the last of them was properly prepared. Nicholas had finally admitted that if Ismael succeeded in passing on to the better world, all the estates of the people committing suicide would be willed to Nicholas in a few months through a series of blind trusts. Nicholas was no better than a grave robber, and perilously close to an accessory to mass murder.

“Well, exactly,” Bridget said. “What
can
we do? Park the Wendigo outside their gates so they can’t get out? There are only four of us, and I’m not much good in a fight. You want to run up to Ismael when he leads the march and try to convince him you’re on the level, ask him to leave those people behind?”

Darrin sighed. “No. I have an idea. It sucks, and it’ll take just about all the time we have left to even try, but I can’t think of anything else.”

4

“So that’s the plan,” Darrin said after a few days of travel into the briarpatch. He sat uncomfortably on a rough wooden stool at the base of an equally rough wooden throne on a raised dais. A breeze blew through the white pavilion, carrying with it the smell of smoke and bears.

Echo sprawled in her high seat. “Huh. I’m not so clear on what’s in it for
me.
Things are pretty cushy here. Why leave?”

“Do you still hate Ismael?”

Echo laughed. “Does a bear shit in my throne room?”

Darrin glanced and sniffed around. The answer was definitively yes. “So help me for that reason. To ruin his plans. To get back at him.”

Echo looked at the ceiling and hummed thoughtfully. “But you want to let him go to the better world, right? I don’t
want
him to fulfil his life’s dream.”

“No, no,” Darrin said. He’d hated lying to Harczos, but had no qualms about doing so with Echo. “We’re going to
tell
him we’re taking him to the better world. But it’s a trick. We’ll tie him up and take him as deep in the briarpatch as we can and we’ll dump him. We’ll give him a fake map to the light of a better world and let him waste a few decades looking for it.” Darrin rooted around in his pack and came up with one of his thick sheaves of maps. “See? I already made the map.”

Echo clapped her hands. “Sounds fun, Darrin. When you can’t kill somebody or even really torture them much without them disappearing, I guess psychological torment’s the best you can do. I never knew you had this perverse streak. I would’ve made things between us a lot kinkier if I had. Okay. Me and the bears will be there. It’ll take us a few days to make the trip anyway. You mind if we take a few of the cultists back with us when we’re done? We can always use more recruits.”

Darrin hesitated. “What if I
do
mind?”

Echo shrugged. “I’ll do it anyway. I just won’t expect applause.”

He shook his head. “I won’t let you take people against their will. If that’s your price, I’ll find another way.” He stood up.

She rolled her eyes. “Sit down, Darrin. Don’t be a drama queen. Some of these people are ready to jump off a bridge from what you told me. I’m not looking for hostages. I’m looking for converts. If they want to come with me, willingly, what do you care?”

Darrin rubbed his eyes. “Echo, if you hurt them—”

She shook her head. “Why would I hurt them? I’m the mama bear here, Darrin. Any of my people can leave any time they want. But they like being here. They just want someone to be the leader. Just like Ismael’s little cultists do. At least I won’t convince them it’s a good idea to jump off a bridge.”

Darrin sighed. Echo seemed less sadistic since joining up with the bears, certainly, but he was under no illusions. He was dealing with a devil but she was his best chance to stop Ismael, who was a worse devil, if only by virtue of the fact that he’d be around causing trouble for centuries. Giving up a few people to Echo’s cult in order to save them from
Ismael’s
cult was hardly a clear win, but the alternative was worse. “Fine,” he said and had the surreal experience of shaking the hand of his old lover, the queen of the bears.

5

Ismael woke on the morning of the great leap with more than his usual amount of trepidation.
I have allowed myself to hope
, he thought.
Thus, I am sure to be disappointed
. He’d allowed himself to hope about Darrin too, and that had ended as badly as anything ever had.

Ismael emerged from his room and went down the stairs into his private dining room. His followers ate together in a converted barn, but Ismael preferred privacy. Nicholas was waiting for him at the table, wearing a suit of all things, even though they had a three mile hike in the pre-dawn air ahead of them. Ismael sat and took one of the croissants from the box Nicholas had brought.

“You think Darrin and his merry men are going to try to stop us?” Nicholas said.

Ismael shrugged. “We have them outnumbered. And you have your pistol. If Darrin approaches, shoot him in the chest. The briarpatch will lift him out of our way.”

Nicholas grimaced. “Sure. I hope it doesn’t come to that. I don’t want to shoot at Darrin.”

“Mmm,” Ismael said, nibbling the pastry he didn’t have much of an appetite for. “Are my people gathered in the yard?”

“Yeah. Doing spontaneous calisthenics to clear their minds.”

“Good,” Ismael said. He’d always worried that trying to teach many people at once would be more difficult than single prospects, like Bridget and many others before her, but the opposite had proven true. Once you had a group of dedicated people, they created a normalizing atmosphere, and new recruits could be assimilated quickly. Limiting their food intake, reinforcing their places as part of a group—not as individuals—all the tried-and-true approaches of cult leaders worked well for him. But unlike Jim Jones or David Koresh or Marshall Applewhite, Ismael
did
have a true revelation, and could offer real salvation.

All these desperate people—runaways, recent divorcees and widows, disillusioned hippies, all the types susceptible to cults like this—wanted someone to show them miracles, and take responsibility for their lives. They’d all been across the bridge behind his shed, and seen their own corpses. They’d all been to the scenic overlook, and seen the light. They knew what they were going toward. They were 47 empty vessels, waiting to be filled with light.

And, with luck, Ismael would be able to go with them. He imagined a serene pool of light appearing below him when they all jumped from the bridge, and Ismael himself falling down, and through, and finally into the light he’d so longed for.

And if it didn’t work, well, he’d try again, with a bigger group.

Ismael put down the pastry and rose. “It’s time.” Out in the courtyard, lit only by the light of the moon and stars, his people were gathered, dressed in their white clothes—no colours, and nothing they’d owned before—wearing simple walking shoes. “My people!” he shouted. “What will you do this morning?”

“Leap!” they shouted back, in one thunderous voice.

“How will you leap?”

“Headfirst!”

“Where will you land?”

“In a better world!”

“Let us go.” He began walking, with Nicholas by his side. The followers mostly didn’t like Nicholas, seeing him rightly as an outsider, but they understood he was the caretaker of worldly necessities, helping to keep them insulated from the miseries and indignities of the wider world. They’d signed all their possessions and estates over to a trust, which Nicholas administered, keeping the farm running. Someone had to tend to worldly matters, at least until they managed to leave that world behind. . . .

The electric gates swung open, and Ismael led his people up the compound’s long driveway toward the road to the bridge. The lights of San Francisco twinkled in the distance like earthbound stars.

“ISMAEL!”

The voice was loud, amplified, and seemed to come from everywhere. Nicholas was startled, spinning around, and the followers made confused noises, but Ismael was calm. “It’s only Darrin,” he said, then raised his voice “Keep walking, my people!”

“Ismael!” Darrin’s voice on the megaphone went on. “You don’t have to do this! I found Harczos! He showed me the path to the light! I can show you! Spare these people!”

Ismael gritted his teeth and walked on. Lies. Nicholas had brought the same message days ago, and he hadn’t believed it then, either. Besides, he wasn’t endangering these people. He was saving them.

“I can’t let you do this, Ismael!” the voice boomed.

“He cannot stop us!” Ismael shouted, for the benefit of his followers. “We are many! We go in search of a better world!”

“A better world!” his followers shouted, louder than Darrin’s amplified voice.

But then, out of the gloom ahead of them, the bears emerged. At least a score of them, blocking the dirt road completely.

“Oh, fuck me,” Nicholas said.

Ismael cursed. One of his followers screamed, and that set off a general panic of voices and confused milling at his back. He’d warned them all about bears, in very strenuous terms, when they entered the briarpatch to see miracles, so naturally they were afraid, faced with them now. Ismael wasn’t afraid the way his people were—the bears couldn’t hurt him—but he was confused about their presence. Had Darrin somehow led them here? But how could anyone get the bears to do anything?

One of the bears, a huge grizzly, came forward. A woman rode on its back.

“Echo,” Ismael said. “Nicholas, shoot her for me, would you?”

“Fuck that,” Nicholas said. “She’s got an army of motherfucking bears, Ismael!”

“Coward.” Ismael reached out to take the gun from Nicholas’s jacket. He didn’t reach it in time. The bear Echo was riding roared and surged forward, rising up, and lifted a paw. Nicholas fell backwards, whimpering, and scampered away on all fours. Ismael watched him run with disgust. Apparently he didn’t
really
believe he was immortal, despite the fine story Ismael had spun to convince him. Echo cooed at the bear, and it sank back down on all fours again.

“Be calm, my people!” Ismael said, but it didn’t seem to have much of an affect. The neat row of followers behind him dissolved. People were running back to the compound. Not all of them, but some, and the others would follow soon if he couldn’t seize control.

“Izzy,” Echo said. “You know how you never settled that outstanding balance you owe me? Well, don’t worry. I think this is
plenty
entertaining. We’re square now.”

“Ismael.” Darrin emerged from the shadows beside the road. He looked older, more serious somehow, and not just because of the beard. “I just want to save these people. Tell them to go back to the compound, and I’ll take you to the better world.”

“Of course you will,” Ismael said. “Why wouldn’t you? How have I ever wronged you?”

“It’s true,” Darrin said. “I can take you there in one jump. Just take my hand. I’ll show you.”

Ismael shook his head.

“What can it hurt?” Darrin asked. “Let me touch you, and you’ll see.” He held out his hand.

Reluctantly, but plagued as ever by the shadow of hope, Ismael extended his hand.

Darrin clutched it, and a passageway did appear to Ismael’s eyes, not far from the place where Darrin had emerged, a ragged opening in the air that led somewhere else. And in that space . . . there was light.

Tears sprang to Ismael’s eyes. It was not the pitiful light of the scenic overlook. It was the pure soft cleansing light he sometimes glimpsed when watching people leap to their welcome deaths. It was truly the light of a better world.

Darrin pulled his hand away, and the light vanished. Ismael cried out and tried to clutch him, but Echo’s bear shouldered into the way. “Please,” Ismael said. “Please, please, please.” How had he ever doubted? Darrin meant him no ill. Darrin would help him.

“Tell them to go back, Ismael.”

Ismael whirled. He wanted to save these people from their misery, but if the choice was a slim chance of reaching the light through their deaths, or the
certainty
of reaching the light by leaving them to their suffering, the choice was clear. “The omens are bad today!” he shouted. “There are bears and voices from the darkness! Return to the compound, and continue your meditations, and we will try again tomorrow! Nicholas will give you further instructions!”