Ε

I rushed to the hospital as quickly as my feet could carry me. A man had been discovered at the edge of the forest by the hunters. I paid no attention to my surroundings or the wonderment of those who saw me running, still wearing my cooking apron and cap. I ran until the ache in my thighs spread to my calves and then to my belly. My heart pounded like thunder in my chest. I ignored the pain. There was only one thought in my head: he is alive!

My husband had disappeared three weeks ago. I had been taken to the hospital, where our first baby was born and then died. He thought he had lost me, too, and had a note. No one had ever returned from the desert. But I knew in my heart that he would. My beautiful and strong husband had survived. Oh, how I missed him.

When I arrived at the hospital, his mother was already there, waiting for me. She stopped me from going inside.

“Wait,” she said. “You need to catch your breath and relax. He is not awake, anyway.”

“Why” I asked her. “Why should I wait? I have already waited three weeks.”

“He is,” she said slowly, “different. You need to be strong.”

Then she let me go on alone into the room where he lay. He was stretched out on the bed, covered in white. His mother was right. To say he was different was an understatement. It didn’t look like him at all. He had been transformed. All that I could see were his hands and face, and they were as white as the sheets that covered the rest of his body. His head was bare of hair, nothing, not even around his closed eyes. His skin looked as smooth as a baby’s. He was sleeping, his face as peaceful-looking as an angel.

The doctor and nurse saw me enter the room. They watched me carefully, worry on their faces. Frightened and not knowing what else to do, I ran back outside, where his mother was still standing. I fell at her feet crying.

“It is not him,” I sobbed. “It is not him. Not him. Not him...” She crouched down, wrapping her arms around my shoulders. “My child,” she said with sympathy, “Something has surely happened to change him. But who else could it be?”

Ζ

For three days, he slept. For three nights, I could not. I spent most of my time at the church, praying that he would wake up, that he would be alright, that he would again love me.

The last three weeks had been hard on me. Not only did I lose a baby but I had lost a husband, too. Tradition dictates that a woman alone should return to the house of her father. But I insisted that my husband was not dead. My mother-in-law supported me in this belief, as did her own husband. For two weeks, we waited. Then, it seemed, all hope was lost. I begged my mother-in-law to take me into her house, for I knew my husband was alive. I continued my duties as a wife in the kitchen. But the elders of my family were already beginning to consider that I should re-marry.

Of course, the options were limited. None of the young hunters would have me; some of them even openly said that I might be cursed. There were a few senior hunters whose wives had died that looked on me with hungry eyes.

My father-in-law protected me and treated me as his own daughter. In his eyes, I could see that he had given up hope but he promised me, “as long as you believe my son is alive, you are my daughter.” And he never failed me on these words.

And now, I was not even sure if I was right. I could not be sure that the man who now lay in the hospital was my husband. There was some resemblance but with his pale skin and scars that covered his body, he resembled a being from nightmares.

There were legends told by children that spoke of human-like creatures that lived beyond the forest, beyond the desert. These creatures were once human. They had survived the nuclear apocalypse because they were immune to the poisonous land. They were white-skinned and hairless and their bodies were covered in scars. And they had retained the technology of the past, the evil that they used on their flesh and under their skin. It was said that the hunters that disappeared occasionally from the outskirts of the forest became a feast for these monsters.

The elders discouraged these stories but they were good stories to tell in the dark: frightening, ghostly, and unreal. Unreal, that is, until now. For in our own hospital, a man lay, perhaps a survivor of these creatures, the post-humans.

There were only a few who knew the appearance of the man who lay in the hospital but word was spreading. A few hunters, family mostly, had set themselves up as security outside his room. No one was to enter, no one was allowed to look. If he was indeed one of our own, he would not be treated as a freak. If he were indeed my husband, then he would need help, not wide-eyed stares. And, of course, though no one said so, if was not one of us, then he might be dangerous.

As I prayed and reflected in the church, I was interrupted by one of the hunters, a friend of my husband. He touched my shoulder and said, “he seems to be awake. He is not speaking much but he is asking for his wife.”

It was a starry night as the hunter accompanied me in the short walk to the hospital. The doctor and nurse had returned to his residence a long time before. Except the hunters and the man, there was no one else at the hospital.

The hunter stopped at the door and said, “if you need help, I’ll be waiting outside.”

The man in the bed looked up at me and I nearly burst into tears when he asked me the simple question, “are you my wife?”

“You don’t remember me?” I asked.

“I don’t remember much,” he said. “I remembered that I had a wife. I thought she died. That’s why... that’s why I.”

“Do you know my name?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t,” he answered slowly.

“What do you remember?” I asked. And with that he started to cry. He looked at his own hands and I reached out to hold them. He looked at my hands and then his own again, still crying.

“I remember that they took me. They wanted me to be like them...”

“The post-humans?” I ventured.

“They called me Alpha.”

Η

After a long silence, he asked me, “can I go to church? I think I need to pray.”

“Why?” I asked him. “Have you sinned?”

“I don’t know. I need guidance. I don’t think anybody can help me right now except God.”

So I went out to one of the hunters. They had orders to watch him, but no one had said that he couldn’t leave the hospital. When he was discovered, he had been naked, so we gathered together some clothes that might fit him. I helped him stand up, and as I saw his naked body, I began to cry. There were deep scars all over his body, some of them very terrible. His muscles were almost certainly damaged.

He saw my tears and looked at his own body. “They don’t hurt at all,” he said, trying to re-assure me. “Actually, I feel strong. I’m sure I can at least dress myself if you would like to wait outside.”

I couldn’t turn away from him, my eyes locked on the lines that crisscrossed his body.

He gazed into my eyes with pity then hurried to get dressed. As the scars disappeared under fabric, I began to feel a little better. I tried to still my imagination. What had they done to him?

“Do I look human?” he said to me as he finished.

I nearly gasped at his choice of words. With his bald head, he would still stand out too much. I went out of his room again, seeking a hat. One of the hunters let me borrow his lucky hunting hat. When we emerged from his room, the hunter smiled approval.

“That hat could make anyone look handsome,” the hunter said.

“Thanks,” I told him. “Who will go to church with us?”

Three hunters were present. One would go home to his wife, the other two would accompany us.

I was just at the church not an hour before, so I hoped the priest would still be there. He could help counsel this man who thought his name was Alpha.

As we entered the church, he made a strange motion with his hands, touching his head then his body. At first I thought nothing of it, until we got to the front of the church and he looked at the cross and did it again before kneeling. The priest was not there, so we would have to pray alone. I asked him if he want me to pray with him.

He looked at me and said, “a little bit of silence, that’s all.”

I stayed next to him, also praying on my knees. That’s when I heard him murmuring something. My mother told me that it was rude to listen to other peoples’ prayers but after a few minutes I realized that he was repeating the same thing over and over. The words were repetitive but had a beautiful rhythm. I strained myself to catch a few words. It was not any traditional prayer that I had ever learned. Suddenly, I realized he was not praying to God but to the mother of Jesus, Mary.

I immediately stood up. The hunters, who were at the back of the church also stood up. I went back to them and told them I needed to find the priest, that I needed his help. He was probably asleep but it was urgent.

The priest’s residence was attached to the church and I knocked frantically at the door. A bleary-eyed elder answered the door. It took him a second to remember who I was.

“What is it, Martha?”

“It is the man from the desert. He is praying,” I said.

“And what is so important about that, that you should wake me from my bed?” he said impatiently.

“He is praying to Mary,” I answered.

His stunned silence was almost an answer to itself. Finally he managed to say, “that’s impossible...”

“Why? Why is it impossible?” I demanded.

He collected his composure, shook off the question, saying, “go back to him. Watch him. Please don’t talk to him anymore. Let him pray. Let him sit. But wait for me. I will be there soon.”

He turned on his heels quickly, probably to dress himself more properly. I turned on my own heels and returned to the church. The man who was definitely not my husband was still praying. I sat with the hunters. It was then that I realized one of them was my brother-in-law. I rarely saw him, since he lived at the other side of the village. His name was James but the hunters all called him Trigger. It was a nickname earned during a shooting contest. He was so fast, they said, that he could shoot an animal in the heart and the head and no one could be sure which shot had killed the beast.

“Trigger,” I said to him. “This is not your brother.”

“I know,” he said.

“How do you know?”

He laughed. “With all those scars on his body, I do not recognize any that I gave him.”

“You knew all this time?”

“Yes. I just didn’t think it was right to upset you. You would find out on your own. Anyway,” and he motioned to the man praying, “he certainly doesn’t know who he is anyway. I’m not sure what he’ll do if he finds out that he doesn’t belong here.”

“That’s the question, isn’t it,” I said, “where does he belong?”

The priest entered the church quietly. I saw the sun breaking in the distance. He looked at the other hunter whose name I couldn’t remember. “Go and wake the council elders. Tell them to come here immediately.”

Θ

“He is from another village,” the priest said.

“How can you be sure?” one of the elders asked.

“He is Catholic,” the priest answered.

The elders sat in stunned silence. A few asked, “how do you know?”

And with that, the priest turned to the man, “You are certainly not our lost Joshua. His wife and brother agree that you are not him. If you are not Joshua, then what can we call you?”

“They – the post-humans – called me Alpha,” he answered.

“Alright, Alpha, I’m sure you have many questions, but first, I want you to repeat the words of the prayer that you prayed earlier.”

He could barely begin, “Hail Mary,” when the elders gasped.

“He is certainly an outsider,” one said.

“A Catholic,” said another.

“From another village,” said another.

“Wait,” I said, “how do you know these things from a simple prayer?”

The priest looked at me with pity. He seemed to have forgotten that I was still there. The elders looked a little uncomfortable at my presence. Trigger was next to me. He, too, looked at me.

“Come with me,” he said and I followed him out into the early morning. The sky was beginning to turn from red to orange. A few stars still hung overhead. We sat on the steps of the church and I waited for my answer.

“Do you remember your history books?” he asked me.

“I assume you mean the time before the apocalypse?”

“Yes. A long time ago, there were many types of churches, many different ways to worship God, and... many ways to pray.

“What you heard was a Catholic prayer. The Catholic church was the most ancient church in the world. They were from a city called Rome but those types of Christians filled the whole Earth. Their traditions were old and their leader was a type of king.

“When the fire fell from the sky, our village was saved because it was thought that our church was holy, that it was right. So, we continued the traditions of our ancestors, worshiping God in the same way that they did. It is generally taught that the other churches must have been evil, and that is why the world was destroyed.

“But if that man comes from another village, with a different type of church... then...”

I finished his sentence, “then that means the world was destroyed for a different reason.”

“Not only that,” he continued, “but now we know for a fact that there is another village out there, beyond the desert. For hundreds of years, no one has ever seriously considered the possibility. The journey journey was considered to be impossible. But somehow, this man, Alpha, has survived. And it may have something to do with the post-humans... who may not simply be the flesh-eating monsters that we thought they were.”

“What of that?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said, “but I think this news is too shocking for the rest of the village to hear. I mean, that there are other villages, and the post-humans, too... It is something like Galileo telling everyone that the world isn’t flat.”

“Oh. So what will they do?”

“I think they probably want to make him disappear,” Trigger said.

“They can’t do that,” I said, “unless they send him back into the desert.”

The priest was standing in the doorway, “We’ve already made our decision. That is exactly what we are going to do.”

Ε

I rushed to the hospital as quickly as my feet could carry me. A man had been discovered at the edge of the forest by the hunters. I paid no attention to my surroundings or the wonderment of those who saw me running, still wearing my cooking apron and cap. I ran until the ache in my thighs spread to my calves and then to my belly. My heart pounded like thunder in my chest. I ignored the pain. There was only one thought in my head: he is alive!

My husband had disappeared three weeks ago. I had been taken to the hospital, where our first baby was born and then died. He thought he had lost me, too, and had left a note. No one had ever returned from the desert. But I knew in my heart that he would. My beautiful and strong husband had survived. Oh, how I missed him!

When I arrived at the hospital, his mother was already there, waiting for me. She stopped me from going inside.

“Wait,” she said. “You need to catch your breath and relax. He is not awake, anyway.”

“Why?” I asked her. “Why should I wait? I have already waited three weeks.”

“He is,” she said slowly, “different. You need to be strong.”

Then she let me go on alone into the room where he lay. He was stretched out on the bed, covered in white. His mother was right. To say he was different was an understatement. It didn’t look like him at all. He had been transformed. All that I could see were his hands and face, and they were as white as the sheets that covered the rest of his body. His head was bare of hair, nothing, not even around his closed eyes. His skin looked as smooth as a baby’s. He was sleeping, peaceful-looking as an angel.

The doctor and nurse saw me enter the room. They watched me carefully, worry on their faces. Frightened and not knowing what else to do, I ran back outside, where his mother was still standing. I fell at her feet crying.

“It is not him,” I sobbed. “It is not him. Not him. Not him...”

She crouched down, wrapping her arms around my shoulders. “My child,” she said with sympathy, “Something has surely happened to change him. But who else could it be?”

Ζ

For three days, he slept. For three nights, I could not. I spent most of my time at the church, praying that he would wake up, that he would be alright, that he would again love me.

The last three weeks had been hard on me. Not only did I lose a baby but I had lost a husband, too. Tradition dictates that a woman alone should return to the house of her father. But I insisted that my husband was not dead. My mother-in-law supported me in this belief, as did her own husband. For two weeks, we waited. Then, it seemed, all hope was lost. I begged my mother-in-law to take me into her house, for I knew my husband was alive. I continued my duties as a wife in the kitchen. But the elders of my family were already beginning to consider that I should re-marry.

Of course, the options were limited. None of the young hunters would have me; some of them even openly said that I might be cursed. There were a few senior hunters whose wives had died that looked on me with hungry eyes.

My father-in-law protected me and treated me as his own daughter. In his eyes, I could see that he had given up hope but he promised me, “as long as you believe my son is alive, you are my daughter.” And he never failed me on these words.

And now, I was not even sure if I was right. I could not be sure that the man who now lay in the hospital was my husband. There was some resemblance but with his pale skin and scars that covered his body, he resembled a being from nightmares.

There were legends told by children that spoke of human-like creatures that lived beyond the forest, beyond the desert. These creatures were once human. They had survived the nuclear apocalypse because they were immune to the poisonous land. They were white-skinned and hairless and their bodies were covered in scars. And they had retained the technology of the past, the evil that they used on their flesh and under their skin. It was said that the hunters that disappeared occasionally from the outskirts of the forest became a feast for these monsters.

The elders discouraged these stories but they were good stories to tell in the dark: frightening, ghostly, and unreal. Unreal, that is, until now. For in our own hospital, a man lay, perhaps a survivor of these creatures, the post-humans.

There were only a few who knew the appearance of the man who lay in the hospital but word was spreading. A few hunters, family mostly, had set themselves up as security outside his room. No one was to enter, no one was allowed to look. If he was indeed one of our own, he would not be treated as a freak. If he were indeed my husband, then he would need help, not wide-eyed stares. And, of course, though no one said so, if he was not one of us, then he might be dangerous.

As I prayed and reflected in the church, I was interrupted by one of the hunters, a friend of my husband. He touched my shoulder and said, “he seems to be awake. He is not speaking much but he is asking for his wife.”

It was a starry night as the hunter accompanied me in the short walk to the hospital. The doctor and nurse had returned to his residence a long time before. Except the hunters and the man, there was no one else at the hospital.

The hunter stopped at the door and said, “If you need help, I’ll be waiting outside.”

The man in the bed looked up at me and I nearly burst into tears when he asked me the simple question, “Are you my wife?”

“You don’t remember me?” I asked.

“I don’t remember much,” he said. “I know that I had a wife. I thought she died. That’s why... that’s why I left.”

“Do you know my name?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t,” he answered slowly.

“What do you remember?” I asked. And with that he started to cry. He looked at his own hands and I reached out to hold them. He looked at my hands and then his own again, still crying.

“I remember that they took me. They wanted me to be like them...”

“The post-humans?” I ventured.

“They called me Alpha.”

Η

After a long silence, he asked me, “can I go to church? I think I need to pray.”

“Why?” I asked him. “Have you sinned?”

“I don’t know. I need guidance. I don’t think anybody can help me right now except God.”

So I went out to one of the hunters. They had orders to watch him, but no one had said that he couldn’t leave the hospital. When he was discovered, he had been naked, so we gathered together some clothes that might fit him. I helped him stand up, and as I saw his naked body, I began to cry. There were deep scars all over his body, some of them very terrible. His muscles were almost certainly damaged.

He saw my tears and looked at his own body. “They don’t hurt at all,” he said, trying to re-assure me. “Actually, I feel strong. I’m sure I can at least dress myself if you would like to wait outside.”

I couldn’t turn away from him, my eyes locked on the lines that crisscrossed his body.

He gazed into my eyes with pity then hurried to get dressed. As the scars disappeared under fabric, I began to feel a little better. I tried to still my imagination. What had they done to him?

“Do I look human?” he said to me as he finished.

I nearly gasped at his choice of words. With his bald head, he would still stand out too much. I went out of his room again, seeking a hat. One of the hunters let me borrow his lucky hunting hat. When we emerged from his room, the hunter smiled approval.

“That hat could make anyone look handsome,” the hunter said.

“Thanks,” I told him. “Who will go to church with us?”

Three hunters were present. One would go home to his wife, the other two would accompany us.

I was just at the church not an hour before, so I hoped the priest would still be there. He could help counsel this man who thought his name was Alpha.

As we entered the church, he made a strange motion with his hands, touching his head then his body. At first I thought nothing of it, until we got to the front of the church and he looked at the cross and did it again before kneeling. The priest was not there, so we would have to pray alone. I asked him if he wanted me to pray with him.

He looked at me and said, “A little bit of silence, that’s all.”

I stayed next to him, also praying on my knees. That’s when I heard him murmuring something. My mother told me that it was rude to listen to other peoples’ prayers but after a few minutes I realized that he was repeating the same thing over and over. The words were repetitive but had a beautiful rhythm. I strained myself to catch a few words. It was not any traditional prayer that I had ever learned. Suddenly, I realized he was not praying to God but to the mother of Jesus, Mary.

I immediately stood up. The hunters, who were at the back of the church also stood up. I went back to them and told them I needed to find the priest, that I needed his help. He was probably asleep but it was urgent.

The priest’s residence was attached to the church and I knocked frantically at the door. A bleary-eyed elder answered the door. It took him a second to remember who I was.

“What is it, Martha?”

“It is the man from the desert. He is praying,” I said.

“And what is so important about that, that you should wake me from my bed?” he said impatiently.

“He is praying to Mary,” I answered.

His stunned silence was almost an answer to itself. Finally he managed to say, “That’s impossible...”

“Why? Why is it impossible?” I demanded.

He collected his composure, shook off the question, saying, “Go back to him. Watch him. Please don’t talk to him anymore. Let him pray. Let him sit. But wait for me. I will be there soon.”

He closed the door quickly, probably to dress himself more properly. I turned around and returned to the church. The man who was definitely not my husband was still praying. I sat with the hunters. It was then that I realized one of them was my brother-in-law. I rarely saw him, since he lived at the other side of the village. His name was James but the hunters all called him Trigger. It was a nickname earned during a shooting contest. He was so fast, they said, that he could shoot an animal in the heart and the head and no one could be sure which shot had killed the beast.

“James,” I said to him. “This is not your brother.”

“I know,” he said.

“How do you know?”

He laughed. “With all those scars on his body, I do not recognize any that I gave him.”

“You knew all this time?”

“Yes. I just didn’t think it was right to upset you. You would find out on your own. Anyway,” and he motioned to the man praying, “he certainly doesn’t know who he is anyway. I’m not sure what he’ll do if he finds out that he doesn’t belong here.”

“That’s the question, isn’t it,” I said. “Where does he belong?”

The priest entered the church quietly. I saw the sun breaking in the distance. He looked at the other hunter whose name I couldn’t remember. “Go and wake the council elders. Tell them to come here immediately.”

Θ

“He is from another village,” the priest said.

“How can you be sure?” one of the elders asked.

“He is Catholic,” the priest answered.

The elders sat in stunned silence. A few asked, “How do you know?”

And with that, the priest turned to the man, “You are certainly not our lost Joshua. His wife and brother agree that you are not him. If you are not Joshua, then what can we call you?”

“They — the post-humans — called me Alpha,” he answered.

“Alright, Alpha, I’m sure you have many questions, but first, I want you to repeat the words of the prayer that you prayed earlier.”

He could barely begin, “Hail Mary,” when the elders gasped.

“He is certainly an outsider,” one said.

“A Catholic,” said another.

“From another village,” said another.

“Wait,” I said. “How do you know these things from a simple prayer?”

The priest looked at me with pity. He seemed to have forgotten that I was still there. The elders looked a little uncomfortable at my presence. James was next to me. He, too, looked at me.

“Come with me,” he said and I followed him out into the early morning. The sky was beginning to turn from red to orange. A few stars still hung overhead. We sat on the steps of the church and I waited for my answer.

“Do you remember your history books?” he asked me.

“I assume you mean the time before the apocalypse?”

“Yes. A long time ago, there were many types of churches, many different ways to worship God, and... many ways to pray.

“What you heard was a Catholic prayer. The Catholic church was the most ancient church in the world. They were from a city called Rome but those types of Christians filled the whole Earth. Their traditions were old and their leader was a type of king.

“When the fire fell from the sky, our village was saved because it was thought that our church was holy, that it was right. So, we continued the traditions of our ancestors, worshiping God in the same way that they did. It is generally taught that the other churches must have been evil, and that is why the world was destroyed.

“But if that man comes from another village, with a different type of church... then...”

I finished his sentence, “then that means the world was destroyed for a different reason.”

“Not only that,” he continued, “but now we know for a fact that there is another village out there, beyond the desert. For hundreds of years, no one has ever seriously considered the possibility. The journey was considered to be impossible. But somehow, this man, Alpha, has survived. And it may have something to do with the post-humans... who may not simply be the flesh-eating monsters that we thought they were.”

“What of that?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said, “but I think this news is too shocking for the rest of the village to hear. I mean, that there are other villages, and the post-humans, too... It is something like Galileo telling everyone that the world isn’t flat.”

“Oh. So what will they do?”

“I think they probably want to make him disappear,” Trigger said.

“They can’t do that,” I said, “unless they send him back into the desert.”

The priest was standing in the doorway, “We’ve already made our decision. That is exactly what we are going to do.”

Ι

“Are you sure about this, James?” I asked him.

“Yes, I’m sure. He may have been changed by the post-humans but he is weak. He cannot possibly survive on his own.”

“But what about the post-humans? If he escaped, then they will be looking for him.”

Trigger smiled. “I doubt they can shoot as well as I can.”

“And the sickness?”

“They say you can survive the sickness for a few weeks before it kills you. If I feel the symptoms, then I will return.”

I thought about his wife. Before I could say anything he said, “Claire will almost be overjoyed to see me go. Our marriage has never been a happy one. In any case, blood is thicker than water. I want to find my brother. I am going to find him — your husband — and bring him home. Wherever he is, I will find him.”

At that, I was quiet. I missed Joshua very much and I knew if anybody could find him, it was James.

His hunting gear was on his back and he was already ready to go. The other hunter who had been with us at the church was also packed and ready. I remembered his name now. He had earned the nickname Switch in school. It had something to so with his calm outward appearance and explosive temper. He was a new hunter with few friends who not yet made his first-kill. James had taken him under his wing and they had developed a strange bond. They made a good pair: Trigger and Switch.

Alpha, too, had been given supplies by the other hunters. On Alpha’s back was enough water and food for a week’s journey. Unknown to him, the two hunters had been given orders to take him out into the desert and kill him. I looked at James as he slung his bag over his shoulders. He wasn’t a murderer. He had already assured me that he would not kill Alpha if he could help it. He meant what he said, that he would search for Joshua. I looked at the other hunter and hoped that he would do the same.

As they left, Alpha looked weak, barely able to carry his own bag. And he didn’t have the extra weight of weapons and ammunition on his back like the hunters. I walked with them to the edge of the forest and I gave James a hug.

“I’ll see you soon, sister,” he said to me, before disappearing into the trees.