Part Two: The Outside

Chapter 6

‘Hey, Ronnie, wake up,’ Oliver shakes me from my sleep.

I stir as I raise my heavy head from a difficult night’s rest. The first night in Oliver’s apartment was horrible. While he’s graciously volunteered to sleep on his tattered couch, his bed is hard and his pillow is lumpy. With nothing but a thin blanket to cover me, my eyes kept falling on the wall he’s devoted to his research. As if the fact that Oliver snores so loudly that it could probably collapse the entire building wasn’t hard enough, I felt like I was being watched by Ezekiel, his unmoving eyes pinning me to the bed.

I rub my eyes and stretch out the tightness in my neck as he strides over to me, shirtless, with a mug of coffee in his hands.

‘What’s going on?’ I yawn. ‘Am I on the roster already?’

He sits on the edge of the bed and hands me the mug. ‘We’re on dinner prep, but that starts this afternoon,’ he explains. He puts a cigarette in his mouth and lights it up. ‘But, Ezekiel’s speaking today.’

My eyes involuntarily fall on the wall as he takes a long drag from his cigarette.

‘This is the first speech he’s giving since the Riverside attack. I want to get some footage of what he has to say.’

I think back to the footage of the giant tree and the glowing mushrooms that now stand in Riverside. I have to admit that I’m curious what Ezekiel would have to say about that as well.

I try to mask any anxiety on my face by taking careful, big gulps of my coffee. ‘So, what? You want me to be your assistant or something?’

‘Just like old times,’ he playfully winks at me.

Somehow, he finishes his dubious form of breakfast before me, but I’m not far behind and we get dressed and ready to leave. I arch an eyebrow at him as he lays his camera over his neck.

‘You’re still carrying that old thing around?’

Oliver rolls his eyes. ‘How many times do I have to tell you not to tease the camera? It hurts her feelings.’

‘Oh, it’s a “her” now?’ I retort as we make our way downstairs.

‘Yeah. Her name’s Trixie.’

I roll my eyes, laughing as we step through the compound’s gates and make our way to the Fellowship Centre.

The landmark skeleton statue that stands as the crown of Return to Eden’s Fellowship Centre is made from papier-mâché, aluminium foil, and other recycled materials. It looks like an arts and crafts project made by a child, but I keep my judgement to myself. When Oliver and I enter the assembly hall, there are people lined up in a queue, waiting to get to Ezekiel.

The man of the hour is illuminated by candlelight as he sits beneath a flower arch on a high wooden stage. The people in the queue chat with quiet excitement as they patiently wait their turn to hold his hand and touch their foreheads to his. Those who have taken their places in the audience greet each other with pecks on the mouth and tight hugs. It’s a strange kind of intimacy that makes me slightly uncomfortable. It feels almost voyeuristic watching all these people gawk at Ezekiel and cling and hold onto one another.

‘Wanna go greet him?’ Oliver asks.

I’m momentarily taken aback by the question. ‘Sure.’

We join the queue to meet Ezekiel and I notice that Oliver and I are the only ones who don’t have our heads shaved. I’ve got mine braided in corn rows, while he stands out with his brown hair gathered in a bun at the back of his head. We’re also the only ones in casual clothes, while the rest of the congregation is dressed in the same pastel-coloured oversized attire.

As I step up to Ezekiel, he beams at me. ‘Welcome, friend. Are you new?’

I nod and instinctively extend my right arm. ‘Veronica.’

The smile on Ezekiel’s face vanishes as he looks down at my prosthesis. He stiffens, jaw tightening. I swallow hard as curiosity grows behind me. ‘An abomination,’ he mutters.

I freeze. ‘Excuse me?’

With his head still down, I watch as he inhales a deep breath. ‘Are you from inside the Gates, new friend?’

‘Up until yesterday.’

After a moment, he looks back up at me, his eyes softer. Now that he’s regained his composure, he gingerly shakes my hand. ‘Everyone is welcome here,’ he says politely with a forced smile.

He leans his head forward. I awkwardly follow his lead and let him touch his sweaty forehead to mine as he squeezes my hand hard. I’m the first to finally break away and I turn away from him quickly. I can feel his eyes still on me as I scan the crowd for Oliver. I find him sitting right at the back of the assembly hall. He takes pictures of the queueing congregants as the line dwindles and everyone is seated after several minutes. Finally, the light over the audience fades away and the blinds over the windows close, leaving the candles surrounding him on stage to illuminate him as the centre of attention.

Ezekiel sits cross-legged, his back straight, as he looks out at the crowd with a megawatt smile on his face. There’s nothing but utter and complete silence in the room. Looking around, I can’t tell if the congregation is smiling back at him. Regardless, Ezekiel is statuesque and his smile never falters as he rolls his eyes to look at different segments of the crowd. It gets creepier the longer he stays silent. I’m just about to ask Oliver how long this is supposed to go on for when Ezekiel’s voice fills the room.

‘While I was in the mountains, conversing with Mother Earth, I was given a sign,’ he declares calmly. ‘It’s nearly time to nourish her once again.’

There are whispers of excitement at the announcement. I have a more sobering reaction, thinking about the two men who killed themselves inside the Gates. I push down a gag reflex as the image of Ezekiel’s congregants convulsing on the ground and having entire trees sprout from their bodies flashes across my mind. I look over at Oliver who has his camera trained on the stage, the shutter going off as Ezekiel continues.

‘I don’t know who Nature is calling to yet, but they will be revealed soon. In the meantime, the trees have told me that the sacrifice of two of our beloved brothers continues to grow and spread within the Gates.’

The crowd erupts in applause and cheers. Everyone rises to their feet, singing in unison. I think back to the email Angela sent me, to the footage of the unnatural foliage growing back stronger, spreading. It still makes my skin crawl remembering how unnatural it was. I exchange a sidelong glance with Oliver, whose face is unreadable; he looks just as out of his element as I feel in this moment.

‘The Generals of Vulindlela shoot down innocent birds with their hydro-dome for no reason other than committing the crime of flying too closely to the city. Yet they call us terrorists when our brothers willingly nourished the soil with their bodies. They tear people from their homes, tearing families apart. They lacerate the sacred ground that grows our food so they can make printers to produce artificial food.

‘You can’t taste printed food, did you know that? There’s no texture or flavour. They don’t even have to chew, they can just swallow the paste leaking from the printer in the likeness of food.’

That last part is a lie. Chewing printed food is optional, it’s not the standard.

 ‘They call us rats when they can’t even grow their own food,’ he says. ‘They can’t even feed their own children. I feel sad for them. They’ll never know a love like the one Mother Earth gives us.’

There’s moderate applause and Ezekiel acknowledges it with a shallow nod. It goes on like this for the next several hours as the room only goes darker and the candles around Ezekiel shrink. He’s one hell of an orator, that can’t be denied. It’s like his mind is a machine, pumping out word after word without thinking about whether any of it makes sense. It’s getting stuffier inside here, but people are still enraptured by what he has to say. I don’t blame them; this guy could make anything sound like gospel.

‘If you didn’t understand it before, I hope you understand it now,’ he says. ‘Our cause is the noblest, the most righteous of all, beloveds. We’ve been fighting a shameful war against our planet.’ Somehow, he’s able to find my face in the crowd and he stares me down with a glare. ‘And we need to repent for it.’

My blood runs cold as I feel him talking directly to me. His eye twitches ever so slightly, a lightning bolt of conniption flashing across his face. Then, in the blink of an eye, his expression changes as he addresses the general crowd again.

‘As if anyone of them would know the true pleasure of biting into a crisp, juicy apple,’ Ezekiel continues, his voice soaring. ‘Feeling the sweetness or the tartness set your taste buds alight. Who inside the Gates knows the feeling of hearing its crunch and feeling it nourish you the way Nature had intended it for you.’ he pauses. ‘The Generals. They know the pleasure of that because we grow it for them. They gorge themselves on organic food, while their own citizens are forced to rely on food printers that waste even more of our Mother Earth’s resources. That’s not fair. That’s not right!’

The crowd goes berserk. They leap to their feet and the atmosphere thickens as people cheer and jump around in jubilation. He silences them by placing his forefinger on his lips. They hush immediately, like obedient schoolchildren.

‘Please join me in prayer to the Sacred Mother.’

Everyone raises their hands to the sky, their heads bowing. Ezekiel brings his palms together in contrition; next to me, I hear Oliver’s camera clicking away as the congregation repeats after Ezekiel:

‘Our bodies are not ours. Our souls are not ours. We pledge our bodies and souls to fulfil our duty to nourish the Earth without question and delay. By the will of Mother Earth, we shall repay our debt by feeding our flesh to the soil.’

As the congregation chant the words feeding our flesh to the soil, I look around the room, my heart growing heavy and weary. I look over to the stage and freeze the moment I see Ezekiel’s eyes glued on me, unmoving and empty. The corners of his mouth slightly turn upwards in a menacing, mocking smirk.