Holy Night

Holy Night

Birmingham, United Kingdom

August 20, 2065

    Fatimah Sultan sat on the park bench, holding a bottle of Coca-Cola and looking at the sunset.  She wore a pink hijab, a loose-fitting white shirt, and jeans that went down to her ankles.  Abigail had told her that maybe she should try to bend the rules a bit, wear clothing that was concealing but tight, but she liked the way she dressed just fine.  Besides, she didn’t know how Abigail could go outside in short shorts every day; Birmingham hardly ever got above room temperature.  She smiled and laughed as Abigail told another joke.

    Abigail Jansen couldn’t be more different. She was the quintessential teen rebel, wearing skimpy clothing and dark makeup and piercings, and her short-cropped hair was dyed black and cyan.  She had a mischievous grin on her face almost constantly, and she’d started drinking beer when she was fifteen.  She was holding a bottle even now.  Technically, it was legal now that she was sixteen, but only in certain circumstances, and being in a park was not one of them.  She was currently occupied telling crude jokes about the leaders of Axiom.

    “You know, there’s a theory out there about how most of the really vile homophobes are really just repressed, and they’re lashing out at gay folks who are actually happy,” she said.  “So what does that say about Scott whatsisname - that Minister of Purity jackass?”

    Fatimah chuckled.  “Dad says bigots aren’t very happy,” she said, “so you’re probably right.  He has this whole explanation worked out.  It’s not really funny, though, so now’s not the time to talk about it.”

     “C’mon, love,” Abigail said.  “We’ll get the mood back on track soon enough.”

     “Dad says that those who fear other faiths are insecure in their own.  Axiom can’t be a very solid faith if the very existence of Muslims and gays threatens them.  It’s the same with the terrorists at the beginning of the century.  They weren’t secure in their faith.  They wanted to stamp out other beliefs because they were afraid of the world outside their narrow view.  They had a bunch of other stuff going on too.  Mostly, they were disaffected, angry at the world.”

    “Kind of ironic that Axiom is like the terrorists, isn’t it?  The whole reason Axiom took over the U.S. is because their rhetoric sounded good after 2045.”

     Fatimah knew what that date meant.  Everyone did.  In September of that year, an Islamic terrorist group, one of the last, had built four high-yield nuclear weapons and detonated them in Los Angeles, New York, Boston and Chicago.  The attack had killed almost three million people and wounded at least six million more.  The group responsible had been completely annihilated shortly thereafter by a global coalition, but the damage done by the attacks was so severe that the global economy collapsed once the war against the terrorists had finished.  The U.S. suffered most, and the Axiom Party, a nationalist Christian movement preaching rhetoric about spreading God’s rule across the world, had risen to power amid the chaos, ultimately seizing dictatorial control of the country by 2048.  They were vicious toward “heretics,” especially Muslims, and millions of people, including Fatimah’s parents, had fled the country.  Axiom had since subsumed Canada and Mexico, and every nation in the Americas had been effectively rendered a satellite state.  2045 had been a bad year.

     “I guess so,” Fatimah shrugged.  “That just proves Dad’s theory.  The people over there were scared, and they put those lunatics in power because they thought that would make things better.”

     “It did make things better,” Abigail said.  “For the white Christians, anyway.  Everyone else, not so much.”

     “It’s kind of the same here, too, though.  There’s a lot of discrimination here.  People think I’m dangerous because of what I believe.”

    “Yeah.  I’ve seen the way people treat you.  It’s fucked up.  You’re a great person, and people act like you’re a monster just because of your skin and how you dress.  People can really be arses sometimes, can’t they?”

    “They can, but you’re not.  You don’t think of other people as less than you.  I think this is what people should be like, y’know?  People from different backgrounds, different cultures, just getting along, understanding and caring about each other.  Mom and Dad always talk about that, how things could be if people could just think in the long term.”

    “Long term?”

    “Yeah.  We’re going to tear the world apart eventually if we can’t all work together.  We’ll run out of resources, we’ll fight over the remainder, and then civilization will collapse, unless we collectively find a solution.”

    “Damn, that’s bleak.”

    “You think?  Say, what time is it?”

    “A bit after 7,” Abigail said, checking the smartband on her wrist.  “Do you want me to get you home for dinner?”

    “Sure.”  Abigail’s thoughts activated a program in her smartband, and the sleek silver car parked a few dozen meters away began moving slowly down the street, heading toward them.  

    Then the lights went out.

    In an instant, every spot of light in the city was snuffed out.  Abigail’s car continued gliding, slowly losing speed.  “What the hell was that?” Abigail demanded.  “Blackout?”

    “No,” Fatimah said, her voice little more than a whisper.  “Your car’s drifting.  The engine’s shot.  Can you do anything with your smartband?”

    Abigail checked quickly.  “No,” she said, “I can’t.  But it’s not connected to the grid, so that means a solar flare.  Please be a solar flare.”

    “We would have had a warning on the news,” Fatimah said, almost shaking now.  “Fuck, fuck, fuck.  It’s an EMP, probably Axiom.”  Tears formed in her eyes.  “They’re coming.”

    Fatimah and Abigail ran down the street, soon reaching a more crowded area .  Here, cars had crashed into each other as their engines and brakes had abruptly stopped working.  Those who could had gotten out of their cars had done so and were busy helping those who could not.  Most of the people who’d crashed had survived, but some clearly hadn’t.  Fatimah shuddered.  This was only in one city, and on a downtown road rather than a highway.  How many had died on the highways, on rural roads, on planes?  The EMP blast, if high enough, would stretch from Lisbon to Moscow.  That area contained well over half a billion people, and now none of them had a single working electrical appliance.  No cars, no phones, no planes, no refrigeration, no Internet, no robotics or prosthetics.  Across Europe, hundreds of thousands had likely died almost instantly, as their cars, trains, and planes crashed or as the medical equipment sustaining them failed.  The death toll would soar into the millions in the coming months, no matter what anyone did to mitigate the damage.  “Where are we going?” Abigail shouted.

   “Back home!” Fatimah shouted back.  “I’m taking my family to your place.  When Axiom shows up they’ll hit the Muslim neighborhoods pretty badly.  Even on the off chance the army can hold the city, I don’t want to be there.”

    “Sounds like a plan.”  Suddenly, a shout rang through the air.  A man in a police uniform was desperately pulling at the door of a car.  Abigail and Fatimah ran over to the car, reaching through the window to leverage their weight behind the policeman’s.  The door opened with a hideous rasping screech, and a young couple got out.  “Thank you,”  the man said.  “Is - is there anything we can do to help?”

    “You could help rescue,” the policeman said, “but I’d recommend you find your way somewhere as safe as possible.  The army’s got EMP-shielded tech.  They’ll be able to stop the invasion when it reaches us.”  It was obvious to everyone that this last statement was a lie, and everyone shifted uneasily.  The policeman turned to Fatimah and Abigail.  “Thanks for the help, girls.  Now get somewhere safe.  The streets are going to get very nasty soon.”  The girls nodded and ran off.

    As they rushed through the streets and alleys of Birmingham, the girls saw more destruction.  Shops were burning as looters tore them apart, looking for anything that could help them survive the coming darkness.  On one occasion, Abigail almost tripped over the corpse of a man who had been mugged.  They took detours to avoid large crowds, hoping to keep their distance from any potential attackers.  After a solid hour on foot, they reached Fatimah’s house.  It was a one-story suburban house on a well-kept plot of land.  It looked pleasant under normal circumstances, but now it looked scarcely less vulnerable than anywhere else in the city.  Fatimah burst inside, with Abigail  following just behind.  “Mom!  Dad!  Omar!” she shouted.  “Axiom is coming!  We need to get to Abigail’s house!  Come on!”  The house was utterly silent, and for a moment, Fatimah feared that something awful had happened to her family.  Then, there was a noise in the kitchen, and her parents and little brother emerged.  Mustafa and Jamilah were first to appear.  Though only in their early forties, their faces were so lined by stress from what had just happened that they looked ten years older.  Omar, only ten, emerged and stood next to his mother.  He was trying to look brave, but Fatimah could tell he’d been crying.  Her parents rushed forward and hugged her.

    “Thank God you’re safe,”  Mustafa said, crying.  “Thank God.”

    “We were so worried,” Jamilah said.  “I was afraid you might have been killed.”

    “I knew you’d come back,” Omar proclaimed, in a trembling voice that indicated he hadn’t known that at all.

    “We need to go,” Fatimah said urgently.

    “But the house,” Jamilah began.  “If we leave, everything will be taken.  Everything we own-”

    “Our lives will be taken if we don’t get out!  If a lynch mob doesn’t blame us for the attack and kill us, then Axiom will kill us when their soldiers show up.  We have to leave, now, for somewhere they can’t find us.”

    “She’s right,” Mustafa said.  “Everyone out.  Take some food and water.  We’re going to Abigail’s house.  I don’t think the Axiom troops will search a Christian neighborhood for Muslims.”  They grabbed what supplies they could carry, put it into backpacks, and abandoned their home.  They moved on to Abigail’s house, another long trip on foot.  By the time they got there, the sun had set completely.  Abigail’s parents, a middle-aged pair who looked and dressed much more professional than their daughter, hurriedly allowed them in.  “I can’t thank you enough for this, John and Mary,” Mustafa said to Abigail’s parents.

   “Oh, it’s no trouble,” John said.  “We’ve been friends for a long while, and so have our kids.  You’re welcome to stay as long as you need, even if that means hiding you from occupation forces.  We have some space in the basement for you to stay.”  Just as Fatimah’s family finished filing into the basement, they heard the thunder of the first bomb.

    “Do you think that hit our house, Mom?” Omar asked fearfully.

    “Either way, it doesn’t matter,” said Jamilah.  “We can’t go back.”

    For two days, the Sultan and Jansen families stayed indoors, listening to the roar of the Axiom hyperjets and the dull thunderclap noises of the bombs.  During the first night and early into the morning of the twenty-first, they’d heard British weaponry firing, but that had stopped.  Refugees had come pouring in from the bombed-out neighborhoods, begging for shelter.  The Jansens had fed those who came to their door, but they weren’t equipped to provide living space to any more people.  From what the refugees had said, Fatimah came to the conclusion that the military targets had been obliterated within the first few hours.  The bombing going on at present was simply an attack on those areas of the city containing “undesirables.”  The sheer scale of human misery inflicted on the city was like nothing Fatimah had ever even heard on the news, much less experienced, and it was all because Axiom had taken it upon themselves to deem certain kinds of people unfit for life.  Fatimah had disliked a lot of people, mainly ignorant people who thought that her beliefs and race made her inferior to them, but she’d never really hated anyone until now.  She was angry enough that thoughts of vengeance on Axiom soldiers kept her awake well into the night, even after the bombing stopped.  Finally, though, she drifted off to sleep, dreaming restlessly.

    Fatimah awoke to the sound of movement on the floor above.  She looked around, and saw that the rest of her family was awake too.  She opened her mouth to speak, but Mustafa shushed her.  “They’re here,” he whispered.  Fatimah went stock-still.  There was the sound of talking in various accents, and then a loud thud and a scream.  The footsteps on the floor suddenly stopped.

    “Are they gone?” Omar whispered.  No answer.

    Suddenly, the basement door was smashed to splinters.  Light shone from the doorway, framing a black, spiky silhouette.  “Get up here, Satanists,” the silhouette snarled.  “Get up or I’ll shoot you.”

    Fatimah’s family walked up the stairs, carefully stepping past the sharp pieces of wood littering the steps.  As they stepped into the living room, they saw half a dozen men dressed in black body armor and carrying huge machine guns, keeping Abigail and Mrs. Jansen backed into a corner.  Mr. Jansen was nowhere to be seen.  Fatimah had heard stories about armor that used an exoskeleton to increase its wearer’s strength tenfold and magnetic fluids to distort light and block bullets.  The British army had only been in the beginning stages of developing these machines, but Axiom had probably gone a lot further.  There was no hope of fighting or fleeing.  The sense of vulnerability was only increased by the fact that Fatimah wore only shorts and a camisole.  She could almost feel the soldiers looking at her, like spiders crawling on her skin.  The oldest man stepped forward.  Fatimah noticed that his uniform had a glinting hologram of a silver bar on it, in addition to the white star of the Axiom flag.

    “I am First Lieutenant Jason Stern of the Holy Axiom Armed Forces,” he announced.  “The godless nation of the United Kingdom has been brought into the light.  It is our sacred duty to complete this land’s transition into a province of the dominion of the Most High, governed according to His laws.  You, Satanists, violate these laws.”

    “What laws?” Abigail spat.  “This is a free country.  So was yours, until you ruined it!”

    “Abigail!” Mrs. Jansen exclaimed.  “Be quiet!”

    “You will be silent,” Jason snapped.  “Women should not defy men.  I will be lenient, but one more indiscretion and you will be severely punished.”  Abigail seethed.  “Satanists, explain yourselves.”

    “We-we knew you were coming,” Mustafa said shakily.  “We hid, thinking you would harm us.  We pray for your mercy, sir.”

    “Cowards, like all your kind.”

    “I think you’re being unfair, sir.  We’ve been active members of the community.  We’ve fed the homeless, given to charity, worked, paid our taxes.  We haven’t hurt anyone.”

    “That is irrelevant, and most likely false.  The societies of the world are corrupted by false notions of morality.  Satan speaks, claiming that all mankind is equal, that morals are based on what harms and what does not.  Morals come from God.  No other code is valid, and you have broken this code through your beliefs.”

    “That’s exactly your problem,” Fatimah spat.  Everyone turned to look at her.  She thought about stopping, but she didn’t care.  There was nothing to lose anymore, now that they’d been found.  “You have your morals, your code.  But the thing is, it’s not about people.  It’s all about the rules.  You treat people’s beliefs as a judge of what kind of person they are.  You don’t care about what they do or what the consequences are.  All you care about is the rules.  You can go on all night about God and your precious morality, but at the end of the day you don’t give two shits about people.  If you’re so godly and moral, why are you the ones doing the killing?  How many are dead already, just because you think you’re better than everyone else?”

   Jason stared at her, his face blank.  It dawned on Fatimah that he wasn’t looking at her with anger, or even hatred.  There was simply an empty coldness.  He doesn’t see me as a person, she realized.  I’m just the enemy to him.  Jason stepped across the room and struck her across the face.  She fell, spitting blood.  Wincing, she tried to rise, but Jason’s boot held her down.

    “We are servants of God,” Jason said, as much to the rest of the room as to her.  “Operation Tribulation has disabled all electronics across the entire Eastern Hemisphere.  God’s Law will reign as soon as our troops secure the fallen nations.  It does not matter what you think.”  He lifted his boot.  “I won’t hurt you further,” he said, almost tenderly.  “Go back to your family.”  Confused, Fatimah obeyed.  Her father hugged her close.  “Arrest the British family for sheltering Satanists,” Jason ordered.  The men seized Abigail and Mrs. Jansen, and one of them emerged from another room with an unconscious and bloodied Mr. Jansen.  “The Satanist family is to be taken to the designated Satanist district.  They are not to be harmed on the way there, am I understood?”

    “Yes, sir!” the soldiers responded in unison.  

    The hell is this? Fatimah thought.  Is he being nice?  Are we actually going to come out of this okay?

    “Except,” Jason continued, “for the two girls.”  Fatimah felt a chill run down her body.  Oh God.  

    Immediately, the girls’ parents started screaming and crying incoherently, clawing at the soldiers in a desperate attempt to save their children.  The Axiom soldiers seized Fatimah and Abigail and marched them out of the rain, ignoring the desperate pleading of their families.  The night was cold, and their skin was immediately covered in goosebumps.  One of the soldiers noticed.

   “I could warm you up, if you like,” he said, smiling widely.  Fatimah shuddered.  There was a van parked outside the house, but the soldiers marched the girls past it and down a few other roads.  Eventually, they crossed paths with a featureless black van.  The doors in back were opened, and the girls were rudely shoved in.

    The van’s interior was lit by sterile white lights, and there was a metal bench on each side.  The van contained about twenty girls and young women, ranging in age from fourteen to twenty or so.  Most of them were Arabs or Pakistanis, but a few were white, and all were clearly terrified.  Jason and another man got in.  “Well, the van’s full,” the first man said.  “Should we tell them what comes next?”

    “Sure, Ben.”  Jason turned to face the girls, and told them their fate with a voice as calm as the eye of a hurricane.

    No.  No.  No.

    Fatimah’s vision went gray, and she started swaying.  Nausea sank its claws into her gut. She collapsed to her knees, opened her mouth, and vomited all over the floor, heaving until she was only spitting up bile.  The other girls screamed - louder than they had when Jason had spoken, at least.  For a moment, she wanted to attack Jason, to force him to open fire and kill them all before they could be sent to hell, but she couldn’t get to her feet.

    “Told you one of them would puke,” Jason said, smiling.  “I gave that one a little hope, to make her freak out more.”

    “Wow,” Ben said.  “I almost feel sorry for her.”

    “Don’t.  It’s not like she’s a person.  She deserves this.  And you said none of them would puke, so you owe me twenty.”  Ben sighed and pulled a twenty-dollar bill out of his uniform, handing it to Jason.  Jason walked over to Fatimah and hauled the violently shaking girl back to her seat.  She stared at him numbly, all hope gone.  “Hey,” he said.  “I heard Coke helps with nausea.  You want one when we get there?”  She didn’t say anything back.

    The van drove on, into the endless night.