The Keeper: A Short Story Prequel to Forbidden

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The day Pavel and Gustov Malincovich learned that they were dead was like any other day in the Russian wasteland—hot, dry, and sublimely quiet.

The seasoned twins lived alone in the hovel where they had spent nearly thirty years practicing the near-monastic discipline of the hermit separated from the rest of the world. They were fifty-one years of age—identical in appearance down to their threadbare robes, the blue eyes in their weathered faces, and the grey beards that hung from their chins.

Their existence was a simple affair dedicated entirely to stripping away the distractions of a world gone mad to chase peace through perfect Order. A small price to pay for the promise of Bliss in the life to come.

But tonight everything the brothers thought they knew about life was about to change.

Pavel sat outside on a log beside his brother, staring in silence at the cook fire crackling at their feet, listening to the wind rustling through the trees at the edge of the clearing. His hands, rough from years of carving a living out of the wasteland, cupped a tin cup filled with water. He did not speak because there was nothing new to say, nothing to do but simply
be
. In that way, fear—the natural enemy of the living—could not control him.

Beyond the periphery of firelight the mud house crouched beneath a scraggly pine. Pavel pushed to his feet, about to go inside, when Gustov abruptly grabbed him by the arm.

Gustov was staring past him to the edge of the clearing.

When Pavel turned, he discovered the reason for his brother’s gaze: a man carrying a small lantern, coming toward them through the trees with soft, crunching steps. Fear sliced into Pavel’s mind—where had he come from? The nearest town was half a day’s walk to the south, where the brothers went once a month for supplies.

The man was dressed in a long tunic with a pack over his shoulder. His beard was almost as grizzled as Pavel’s own, though he looked a few years younger. He was alone.

Gustov was the first to speak their customary greeting. “Welcome to our fire, my friend. Our life is yours.”

The stranger shifted his gaze to Gustov. There was something particularly unnerving about the steadiness of it. “No. It’s not. But if you’re worthy, perhaps my life can be yours.”

“Are you in trouble?” Gustov said.

“Terrible trouble.”

“Who would cause you this trouble—out here, where there is no one?” Pavel said.

“You would.”

“But you are mistaken. We mean no one trouble. Certainly not to a stranger in need of shelter and rest.”

“I’m not looking for shelter or rest.”

“Then what do you seek?” Gustov asked, concern clear in his voice. “We have nothing of value but our hospitality.”

“I seek two dead men who would know the truth.”

This time he could not suppress his own fear.

“You mean to kill us?”

“No,” the stranger said. “You’re already dead.”

He was mad! Mind lost to the wasteland.

And that meant he was dangerous.

Pavel willed the tremor in his hands to quiet and spread them to calm the man. “My friend, as you can see, we’re very much alive, and we would like to stay that way. My name is Pavel and this is my brother, Gustov. Come, unburden yourself, tell us your name.” Pavel motioned to the log across the fire.

The stranger stared at them for a moment, then sat on the log and took a deep breath.

“My name is Talus,” he said. “Today, as I was coming to find you, I passed a gulch where I heard a faint and dreadful crying. So I veered from my course to find the source of such a mournful sound. I couldn’t manage the thought of passing someone in such terrible need, as you can imagine.”

“Of course.” Gustov nodded.

“There in the bottom of the gulch I found a girl who’d fallen from the crest. She might have been twelve—a beautiful, dark-haired girl. Her face was pale—dirtied and streaked with tears. But it wasn’t her sweet face that drew my attention…”

The stranger was staring at them, watching them carefully.

“Yes? Go on,” Gustov said after a moment.

“It was her leg. It was badly broken, you see. Her bone had snapped in half and torn jagged through her flesh. Her leg was bent at a terrible angle so that her heel was up by her shoulder.”

“God have mercy,” Gustov said. It was the appropriate thing to say in such a case.

“It wasn’t only her leg that drew my attention,” Talus said. “One of her hands was missing. It appeared to have been torn off by a wild animal.”

“God have mercy,” Gustov murmured again. But Pavel could only stare at the strange unrest in the man’s eyes. They shone in the firelight, misted, fixed.

“Tell me. What do you feel when I tell you this story?” Talus said.

“What any decent man would feel at the hearing of such a tragedy. Terrible fear!”

“Fear, and yet you do not weep. Doesn’t it break the heart, what I’ve told you?”

This time it was Pavel who answered, picking his words carefully. “Yes, in a matter of speaking. But our concern, of course, is for her destiny.”

“And what of her suffering in
this
life?”

For several long seconds none of them spoke. Talus stared between them both and Pavel felt as though he might have missed something.

“Her fate is settled, my friend,” he said, trying again to make him understand. “There’s no place for wondering how or why she met it or in tangling our own paths with other concerns.”

“Other emotions, you mean.”

So he did understand. “Yes. We have renounced emotion to follow a more perfect way—one cleansed of the sentiments that inevitably push mankind to ruin. These are the teachings of Sirin, that chaos follows when the weaker sentiments rule, as demonstrated by the great wars that drove us to these wastelands. Surely you know of them.”

“Of course,” Talus said.

“Then you also know that Sirin rose up in the aftermath of those wars and taught a new way. A new Order for humanity. We are followers of Sirin and of his Order. We have dedicated our lives to it.”

“So you are telling me that you feel nothing else. No sorrow. No empathy.”

“No,” his brother replied. “And it is our prayer that we never do.”

The stranger’s eyes lingered on them for a few seconds before he lowered his gaze to the fire, looking suddenly exhausted. Pavel glanced at his brother, not sure what to do or say.

“Don’t be afraid of what we tell you,” Pavel said, trying again. “Sirin teaches—”

“Taught,” Talus said, eye darting up.

“Pardon?”

“Taught. Past tense. Sirin no longer teaches.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand…”

The man reached for something in his vest. For an instant, Pavel wondered if it would be a knife or a weapon, and if indeed he meant them harm. But he pulled out an old newspaper, brittle and yellow around the edges.

“Haven’t you heard?” he said, holding up the headline:

Pavel sat back, fear filling him like an icy current. Gustov stared with bulging eyes.

“Do you even know what year it is?” Talus asked.

Pavel’s mind was racing. Gustov looked at him with wild eyes.

“It’s…” Pavel quickly tried to add it up. “It must be…I’m not entirely—”

“It is Year Two,” Talus said.

“
Two
?”

“With Sirin’s passing a new calendar was set. It is two years since Sirin’s assassination. His successor, a man named Megas, has taken those teachings of your beloved master Sirin and twisted them into something darker than any fear you knew before. Do you think you have schooled your emotion so well that you feel no hope? No sorrow? No happiness or anger? I’m telling you that you don’t feel them because you are dead, and not by your choosing.”

“This is madness!” Gustov said, hands on his head.

“Yes. It is.” Talus dropped the newspaper clipping to the ground and reached into his tunic again. “I should know.” He withdrew a soft leather cloth wrapped around something from his pack. “I created the means by which it was done.”

“Means?” Pavel said. “What means?”

“The virus that has taken your humanity.”

His brother stood. “You must go. You, who say these terrible things. Harbinger of death. You will infect our path to Bliss with your fear!”

Talus remained seated on the log and carefully untied the string that bound the cloth. Inside lay a clear vial containing a liquid the color of blood. He set the small vessel in a knothole next to him. Firelight flickered over the rounded glass surface.

“If only you were right. I would go into the wilderness never to return! The truth is that you are the first people I’ve had contact with for two years, and because of my isolation I’ve retained my humanity. But now my life is no longer in humanity’s interest.”

“The first human you’ve had contact with? What about the girl?”

“Only a story to judge your reaction. I had to know.”

“Know what?”

“That you were indeed among the dead.”

“Dead men don’t walk and breathe and bleed!” Gustov said.

“They don’t?” Talus said quietly.

Gustov started to object again, but Pavel held up his hand to stop him. Perhaps it was better to allow the man his delusion.

“Let him speak. Please, Gustov, sit.”

His brother hesitated, then complied, and Talus continued.

“Under Sirin’s message of hope, the world found peace. But that peace began to crumble while you were hidden here in the Russian wasteland. It was then that I made the discovery that crushed the world.”

Pavel could not deny his intrigue at the man’s tale.

“I was among seven elite geneticists who oversaw a secret mission to unravel the genetic roots of emotion. I developed the program, the computer models that helped us understand our research. None of us knew who ran the project, only that we had limitless resources at our disposal. Do you know what DNA is?”

“DNA? Yes.”

Did all madmen speak with such precision and clarity?

“It was I, Talus Gurov, who identified the genetic components that make us superior to animals and define our very humanity—the DNA responsible for controlling specific functions of the limbic system where the emotions reside.”

“But it is our
spirit
that makes us human!” Gustov cried.

“Did God create only spirit? Or did he create the human who loves and laughs and hopes?”

“Who are you to teach us about God’s intentions?”

“I am a human! I am filled with laughter and hope…and tonight with sorrow and fear and a terrible anger.” Talus took a deep breath. “What I didn’t know was that my findings were being used to create a highly contagious virus named Legion, which contains the power to strip away our very humanity. It also rids man of all emotions but one. The only one required to control the masses.”

Pavel knew it before the stranger even said it.

“Fear,” he whispered.

“Yes. Fear.”