I am all the graveyards that ever were, and all the lives resurrected… but so are you.
— RAYNA BUTLER,
True Visions
After the feverish visions dwindled into nightmares and the blackness of utter sleep, Rayna Butler drifted, clinging to a strand of life as thin as a silkworm’s thread. Descriptions of Heaven that her mother had provided during daily devotions did not resemble this at all.
When she finally returned to her body, her life, and her world, Rayna found that everything had changed.
Still huddled inside the dark, stifling closet, she realized that her clothes were soiled, stiff with dried perspiration. The sleeves of her blouse, wadded and discolored, were pinkish from blood that had seeped out of her pores along with copious fever sweat. Though the discovery was odd and disturbing, Rayna felt emotionally flat and sensually deadened. She didn’t even smell her clothes.
Struggling to her feet, Rayna felt her weakened muscles tremble. She was incredibly thirsty, unable to understand how she could have survived without fresh water. She didn’t try to understand how anything made sense anymore. Each step, each breath, comprised a little victory for her, and she knew there would be many more difficult things to come… and to overcome.
Rayna looked down at herself and noticed now that her clothes were dusted with tangles of her pale yellow hair, long strands that had fallen from her scalp and downy flecks of prepubescent hair from her arms. It made no sense. Her skin was pale and perfectly smooth.
Moving with painstaking slowness, afraid her body might break at any moment, the girl went to tell her parents about all the fever visions and religious revelations. Saint Serena herself had spoken to her! Rayna was sure she could figure out what the shining woman meant. The heavenly instructions had to be true echoes from the voice of God, which Rayna had been able to hear only because of the depths of her sickness.
When she reached the master suite, though, Rayna found her parents lying in precisely the same positions that she last remembered seeing them, only now their bodies were swollen and blackened with the onset of decay. Although the sudden shock and stench slammed open her senses, Rayna remained staring for a long moment until finally she turned away.
In other halls and rooms, she found two more bodies, servants who had not fled the governor’s mansion, as she had thought. Her home was utterly silent.
At least the water was still running. In her bathroom the girl activated the long streams of a purging shower. Water gushed from outlets in the wall, and Rayna clawed off her stained clothes and stood naked under the cold flow as she gulped mouthful after mouthful. The heating systems no longer worked, but her skin was numb anyway. All of her joints ached and gritted as if her cartilage had turned into broken glass. She grasped a bar for balance and simply endured the rushing streams. More strands and clumps of hair fell away from her scalp and rushed down the drain carried by rivulets of cold water.
The girl had no means to mark the time that passed, nor any interest in doing so….
When finally she emerged, dripping and rejuvenated, Rayna stood before the polished full-length mirror— and saw a stranger. Her rail-thin body had changed in ways she had never imagined. All of her hair had fallen out. Her scalp was bald, even her eyelashes and eyebrows were gone. The arms, face, and chest of the eleven-year-old were completely smooth, and in the daylight streaming through the windows, her skin took on a translucent, luminous quality. Like an angel.
She didn’t know how long it had been since she’d last eaten, and though she was famished, Rayna knew she had a more important duty to perform first. She dressed in clean clothes, then went to the private family chapel where she had prayed with her mother. Sitting before the altar of the Three Martyrs, the child asked for guidance, remembering the revelations Saint Serena had given her. Finally, as her thoughts and memories became clear, the girl picked herself up and went at last to the silent kitchens.
Much of the food was rotting, and some of the storage units had been ransacked by halfhearted looters. She must have been unconscious, hidden in her closet, for days. She found the body of another household servant sprawled near the food preparation counter. The sickly smell of decaying flesh mingled with the raw odors of spoiled meat. She wondered what the cook had meant to prepare before the Demon Scourge struck her down.
First the girl drank more water, cool clean liquid that came from the mansion’s cistern. Her body was dehydrated. She had lost a great deal of weight. Her eyes were sunken and hollow, her cheeks pressed against her teeth. She gulped a long drink and then stopped when her stomach rebelled. She found some cheese in a food locker and ate a small bowl of canned stew cold, but the spices were too strong and she threw up.
Still weak but knowing she needed to nourish herself, Rayna drank more water and found a small loaf of stale bread. That was good enough for now. The repast of bread and water held a simple, pious purity that imparted heavenly strength to her.
Though she still felt weak and shaky, Rayna decided she had rested enough. She left the governor’s mansion behind, turning her face toward the too-quiet city below. The plague was a scourge from God, but Rayna had survived. She had been chosen for great works.
Though she was only a child, she was absolutely clear about what she had to do now. The lovely vision of Saint Serena Butler had given her instructions— and now Rayna had her mission.
She set off barefoot down the hill.
* * *
THE PEOPLE SHE saw going about their business looked gaunt and exhausted. They flinched at any startling movement. Everyone had seen many friends and family members die, had done their best to tend the sick if they could. Many of those who had recovered were lame and twisted, a cruel joke on those strong enough to overcome the plague. They used makeshift crutches or crawled, searching for food and calling for help. Even the intact survivors had broken spirits, unable to bear the burdens and responsibilities of doing the work of ten.
Rayna walked alone, her eyes bright, looking for what she needed to see. From the streets, she made out furtive shapes above her, shadows in the windows of dwellings and shuttered businesses. Though just a girl, she ventured forward, tall and confident, so pale-skinned that she might have been a living skeleton… or a manifestation of the Spirit of Death. There would be plenty of stored food for the survivors to scavenge, but soon, if they did not dispose of the rotting bodies, if they did not take care of the infections and infrastructure breakdowns, deaths from a cascade of related causes would add a great many to the numbers who had fallen from the Demon Scourge in the first place.
Rayna picked up a fallen crowbar from the gutter. Earlier, she remembered her father talking about riots in the streets, people fighting each other. Martyrists had marched in desperate processions; many people— both participants and innocents— had died in the brawl. Now the crowbar felt heavy and warm in her hand, a sword to be wielded by a righteous young woman who had received direct instructions from Serena.
Finally she saw the first target in her mission.
The ethereal girl stood before the window of a shop that sold mechanical devices, appliances and innocuous conveniences that had thus far escaped the waves of rioters and looters. League citizens used such things without a thought to their origin, ignoring the fact that high-technology devices were distant cousins of Omnius. All machines, all electronics, all circuits, were temptations, inherently evil. They insinuated themselves into daily life so that people blithely accepted the pervasive presence of machines.
Drawing a silent breath, Rayna swung the crowbar and smashed the shop window, laying bare the vulnerable appliances. Then she began to pummel them into metal and polymer debris. This was her first strike against evil. Her visions had told her to root out the infestation from within, obliterating any vestiges of thinking machines so that humans could avoid such weaknesses in the future.
In an eerily calm frenzy, Rayna smashed everything she could see. When she found no further mechanical manifestations, she sought out another building, an accounting firm that contained calculating machines on the second floor. The girl destroyed those as well. One man, looking weak and frightened, came out to stop her, but cringed when Rayna issued a stony, determined curse, berating him for allowing machines into his place of business.
“Humans will face only misery if we do not eradicate all aspects of the mechanical demons. I have heard the voice of God, and I will act accordingly!”
In the face of such a vehement pronouncement, albeit from such a small person, the man ran away.
For now, with so much work to do, Rayna did not make distinctions between the levels of technology, the variations of computer sophistication. She went tirelessly from business to business, until finally two members of Parmentier’s skeleton security force stopped her. But she was no more than a child, the daughter of the dead governor, and after looking at her, they gave each other knowing glances. “She’s been through a rough time. She’s just taking out her anger in the only way she can. Right now, I’m too tired to take care of anything that’s not an emergency.”
“I even turn a blind eye to half of those.” One of the security men, tall and dark-skinned, pointed a stern finger at Rayna. “We’ll leave you this time, girl, but don’t get into trouble again. Go back home.”
Rayna saw how late it was. Tired, she did as she was told and returned to the governor’s mansion.
The next day, however, she was back again with her crowbar, seeking further targets, smashing all thinking machines and related devices.
This time, though, she was accompanied by a small crowd of watchers, many of them haggard Martyrists. They began to chant in support, picking up cudgels of their own….