Chapter Twenty-Seven

In which our heroine manages not to crash the car as she learns more about CCSA enclaves.

For a while there were no billboards. The landscape was bleak and flat; the shoulders were littered with random auto parts and trash, occasionally upstaged by a shrine in the form of a cross festooned with flowers (some brightly artificial, others long-faded) where someone had died in an accident. Probably because their car fell into a pothole, Lorinda thought.

Stimpy sent and received messages. At one point he instructed her to take an exit onto a two-lane country road paved with a nubbly asphalt that made it feel like they were driving on an endless rumble strip.

The landscape here was a little more pastoral. They passed family farms, the occasional hill, not-entirely-level acres of furrowed earth. Sometimes a fruit or vegetable stand would appear near the road, a simple booth made of planks or plywood, unmanned, with nothing on display, and featuring a hand-painted sign reading POTATOS or PEPPERS + ONOINS. In the middle of one gone-to-seed farm field sat a sprawling six-story brutalist concrete slab of a building with a sign reading CENTRAL TEXAS REGIONAL POORHOUSE & WORK FARM painted on its side.

“It’s like a hundred years ago out here,” Stimpy muttered.

Lorinda indicated his device. “Are you sure they can’t track you?” she asked.

“We have our own satellite network. Totally secure. Made in the USA, and maintained by them, too.”

“Really? How does that work?”

“I’ve already told you too much,” Stimpy said. “I’m actually much more worried about CCSA cameras. Bill says he’s turned off the ones in this part of Texas, but you never know. Anyway, they usually don’t bother with these back roads.”

“So what’s your real name?” Lorinda thought she might catch him off guard.

“We’re about an hour out from Revelation,” he said, ignoring the question. “You’re a good driver.”

Once again they were back on a decomposing highway. After a while the signs started to appear: small, low, amateurishly hand-painted signs. They all displayed the same style of not-quite-Gothic lettering and the same version of Jesus: tall, white, buff, handsome, ruggedly bearded, clad in loose “heavenly” robes and sandals. In one, under the text GET RIGHT WITH JESUS OR GET LEFT BEHIND, He held out his arms in an offer of a welcoming embrace. In another — ARE YOU READY FOR THE RAPTURE? — Jesus gazed at the viewer with let’s-talk-turkey frankness. Finally, they came to one that read YOU’RE TWENTY MINUTES FROM REVELATION — AND AN ETERNITY IN HEAVEN, under which Jesus gestured toward an Oz-like skyline in the middle-distance, foiled in its attempt to be radiant and glowing by its sun-bleached, flaking paint. A couple of minutes later, a huge, blazing electronic billboard appeared. Against an image of a leather-covered book that proclaimed itself THE HOLY BIBLE in gilt letters, scrolled glowing red words in Gothic script:

TAKE NEXT EXIT FOR DOMINION DOMAIN THE SEVEN MOUNTAIN COMMUNITY “JUST FOLLOW THE SIGNS”

“Oh, God,” Stimpy sighed. “Them.”

“Who?”

“You’ll notice they’re inviting people. They need bodies and income like everywhere else.”

“Who? I’ve never heard of it. Or them. Or whatever.”

“It was one of the first enclaves. Totally theocratic. Way, way beyond Revelation. It’s based on some crackpot, hyper-Christian horseshit, that everything — everything — in life should be run according to the fucking Bible.”

“That’s blasphemy,” said Lorinda sternly.

“Is that you talking or Perfecton?”

“Neither,” Lorinda laughed. “I was joking. Anyway, I thought we already had a theocracy, as you call it.”

“The CCSA? Hah. This country, it’s like a big contest, a competition to see who can come up with the most extreme ideas, the most extreme laws, government, everything. As long as those ideas are right-wing, authoritarian, fascistic, whatever you want to call it. So, yeah, the whole thing is a theocracy of course.”

“And this Dominion Domain is …?”

“It’s got to be the most extremely theocratic enclave in the country. At least that was its original goal.” He rubbed his face, as though what he was about to say caused him pain. “There’s a line in Genesis that says that God gave man dominion over the earth. So some power-hungry Christo-fascist UnVir wankers in the 1970s decided that this meant Christians should control what they called the seven — not six, not eight — but seven aspects of society. Lemme see if I can remember.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “Religion — because DUH — family, education, government …” He paused and laughed. “Oh, right: media, business, and entertainment. Because Adam and Eve were deeply into starting a wholesale fruit and vegetable business empire, and Jesus had strong opinions about entertainment.”

Lorinda shot him a dry look. “This is another ‘let’s fool the naïve small-town girl’ routine, right?”

“No! I swear! You have no idea how crazy these people are. Right after The Split a bunch of these clowns set up this enclave — with a couple of billionaire backers to buy the land for them — and ran it according to their idea of strict Christian principles. Women couldn’t work and had to obey their husbands. No abortions, no contraception, no teaching science, history … no teaching of anything, really, except Scripture. All art and entertainment had to reflect their … what’s the word? Oh, right: ‘values.’”

“I guess women didn’t get to vote.”

“Vote?!” Stimpy laughed. “No one got to vote! They didn’t even pretend it was a democracy. They had a Council of Elders. You can guess how many women were on it. I’ll give you a hint: less than one.”

“Well,” said Lorinda, letting that sink in, “it’s not that different from our government.” She thought for a moment. “And it’s still like this?”

Stimpy smiled. “Hah! No, not exactly. I guess you can sustain a community of religious zealots if it’s surrounded by a healthy economy to mooch off, like the Hasidim in Brooklyn.” Unable to stop himself, he added: “That’s in New York. Your home state.”

“I’ve heard of Brooklyn,” she said, sidestepping the obvious confession that she’d never heard the word Hasidim.

“But of course,” he continued, “the CCSA has never had a healthy economy.”

She squelched a knee-jerk objection.

“So poor Dominion Domain ran out of money in, like, year three. Huge healthcare issues. People were just dropping dead. Of curable diseases! Their one hospital shut down. All the sane doctors left. Are you with me?”

“I’m with you,” said Lorinda, who was intently focused on navigating through a particularly bad stretch of road. “I’m just trying to avoid destroying this car.”

“Anyway, what happened next was a textbook example of what happens when religious lunatics try to run anything. They turned on each other. Everyone accused everyone else of not being pious enough. Or observant in the ‘correct’ way.” Lorinda could feel him getting worked up. “What did they expect? It’s irrational! It's all based on opinion and feeling and,” he practically spat the word, "faith! Of course they were doomed to start disagreeing about everything. Including the meaning of that magic book of theirs. Written by cavemen thousands of years ago!”

Lorinda couldn’t help smiling. “It wasn’t cavemen who wrote the Bible. I do know a few things.”

“Well,” he said, “maybe I exaggerated. But just a little.”

“Are you an atheist?”

“Ren — Roger — had this expression. He says ...” He stopped. Took a labored breath. “He used to say, ‘I’m not an atheist. I’m an anti-theist.”

“Meaning against God?”

“Yeah. Against the whole idea of religion. I mean, look at this garbage-dump country. Religion at work.”

“There’s some good stuff in that caveman book. My parents like it.”

“Don’t get me started.”

She laughed. “You’re always started.”

As he considered that, she saw a wide, deep gash in the road ahead and stepped on the brakes. The Lada slowed down, hit the fissure with a mighty thump, and emitted what seemed like a long death rattle. But it survived. Which is more than could be said for the upside-down pickup truck in a ditch just to the side of the distressed pavement.

Lorida’s thoughts quickly moved on from the hazards of driving in the CCSA. “I miss my parents,” she said. “It feels like I’ve been gone a month. And my brother. My friend Emmie.” Her eyes teared up again.

Stimpy finally spoke. “You all right?”

“I’m okay. Just sad. So what happened then?”

“In Dominion Domain? The billionaires who’d seeded the place saw that it was going to fall apart if they didn’t do something fast. So what did they do? They threw a little more money at it and forced the Council of Elders to turn it into a theme park. Probably inspired by Revelation, right down the road, which was doing pretty well.” He saw Lorinda’s eyes widen. “Don’t get excited. They don’t have rides. It’s more like, I guess you could call it a lifestyle theme park. Ever hear of Williamsburg, Virginia?”

Lorinda shook her head.

“Doesn’t matter,” he said.

“So did all the religious people leave?”

“They probably wanted to,” Stimpy said, “but they had no place to go. Remember, these people were too fundamentalist for the rest of the CCSA. Nobody wanted ten thousand religious fascists for neighbors. Also, most of them had no money — they’d donated it all to their beloved enclave, which was also their church. So the residents, most of them, stayed and got jobs working for the theme park as actors, guards, cooks, hotel workers, janitors, whatever. Advertising. Someone’s got to write the billboards.”

“If they don’t have rides, what do they have ?”

“I’m not sure exactly,” Stimpy said. “I haven’t been there and I’d like to keep it that way. I know the main thing is their Seven Mountains exhibit. It’s seven crappy papier-mâché hills, and you go inside them one at a time and learn about that ‘mountain’ by watching little plays and lectures and,” he rubbed his face again, “Christ, it’s so stupid. Families — you know, religious families, or people who just can’t figure out what else to do with their lives — go there to spend a day, or maybe a few days, and wander around the seven ‘mountains’ and soak up the indoctrination. Like that ark theme park in wherever-it-is … Kentucky? Oh, and they also have people pretending to be teachers and students in a make-believe Biblical school. And people working in some kind of fake Biblical factory.”

“Where they make Bibles?”

“Hah. Funny idea: The Bible being printed while it’s being written. ‘Stop the presses! Paul just wrote an epistle!’ No, it’s supposed to be a factory from Biblical times. You know, a bunch of cavemen working in a factory. Perfectly historically accurate. I don’t know what they’re supposed to be making.”

“Myrrh? Frankincense?” Lorinda and Stimpy both laughed.

“I’ve heard they even have their own caveman video studio,” Stimpy said. “That’s about all I know about the place. Don’t make me think about it again, please.”

“So,” said Lorinda, ignoring his plea, “they turned their enclave into a make-believe place.”

“Yeah, but remember, what they had before the theme park was also make believe. Pious, fundamentalist make believe.” He was getting worked up again. “None of the paying customers, the dipshits who go there and take pictures of their kids posing with the fake Bible cavemen, ever bother to ask themselves, ‘If this kind of life is so wonderful, why sell tickets? Why put on a show every day? Why not just fucking live it?’”

“And you care because?”

He looked at her for three full seconds before saying, “What?”

“Why does it make you so angry?”

“Because it’s so fucking stupid!” He stuck his head out his window and let the air calm him down. Finally, he turned to her and said, “It’s a legitimate question. I think it bothers me because … look, this country is controlled by ruthless and greedy people manipulating stupid and ignorant people. I’ve suffered the effects of that — and so have you! This Dominion Domain is like a little nuclear reactor of ignorance. Pumping it out every day. And the people who live there … if one of them pulled out a gun and shot you because you had sex without the blessing of holy matrimony, their fellow Seven Mountaineers would cheer him as a true Christian.”

“What about ‘Thou shalt not kill’?”

“Exactly.”

Lorinda nodded. “I guess it is pretty fucking stupid.” She frowned and shifted in her seat. “This country is … kind of full of stupid things, isn’t it?”

“You are acquiring wisdom, Grasshopper.”

“What?”

“Oh. Right. See, there w—”

”Look.”

They had arrived at Revelation. It was not radiant and glowing.

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NEXT: Chapter Twenty-Eight. In which Lorinda and Stimpy enter Revelation.

PREVIOUSLY in THE SPLIT!

Chapter One. In which we meet our heroine and her dainty little gun.

Chapter Two. In which Lorinda demonstrates her bartending virtuosity.

Chapter Three. In which our heroine receives a promotion and prepares to celebrate.

Chapter Four. In which our heroine proves herself an immoral citizen of the CCSA.

Chapter Five. In which our heroine goes to church.

Chapter Six. In which Lorinda contemplates her future, ignores Pastor Doug, and gets something unexpected from Emmie.

Chapter Seven. In which Lorinda learns something that threatens her big dream.

Chapter Eight. In which our heroine freaks out.

Chapter Nine. In which our heroine says the forbidden word as an unwelcome visitor arrives.

Chapter Ten. In which two unpleasant men perturb our heroine.

Chapter Eleven. In which our heroine seems to have found a solution to her problem.

Chapter Twelve. In which that black truck follows our heroine all the way to Austin.

Chapter Thirteen. In which Lorinda lashes out.

Chapter Fourteen. In which our heroine gets a taste of life in the big city.

Chapter Fifteen. In which our heroine meets a fellow bartender and has a drink.

Chapter Sixteen. In which Lorinda once again takes a swing with her little pink gun.

Chapter Seventeen. In which our heroine prepares to escape.

Chapter Eighteen. In which our heroine gets in a truck with a couple of slightly scary strangers.

Chapter Nineteen. In which our heroine learns that she’s got a long way to go.

Chapter Twenty. In which our heroine spends a night in a gas station.

Chapter Twenty-One. In which our heroine learns about the enclaves of the CCSA.

Chapter Twenty-Two. In which our heroine learns way too much about the enclaves of the CCSA.

Chapter Twenty-Three. In which our heroine experiences liberty run amok.

Chapter Twenty-Four. In which our heroine’s escape is disastrously derailed.

Chapter Twenty-Five. In which our heroine finds herself back at the gas station.

Chapter Twenty-Six. In which Stimpy, on the road to Revelation, reveals Ren’s real name.

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