The Revivalist

By Perry Slaughter

America as we know it is no more.

Forty years ago, a military experiment in nanotechnology ran amok, wiping out most of North America and rendering it an uninhabitable plain of silvery goo. To set one foot in that silent tide is to suffer immediate disassembly into one’s constituent molecules. But against all odds, the town of Wellington, Nevada, has held off the threat, thanks mostly to the presence of Carl McFarland, one of the scientists responsible for the disaster. Now an old man, Carl is largely ignored by the townspeople of Wellington, with the exception of his avid student Orrin Pritchard.

But when a wagon train appears on the horizon, somehow crossing the silver tide without harm, all that will change. What miracles do these strangers bring? What news from the world beyond? And how is it that their charismatic leader, Pastor Smith, can raise the dead with the touch of his hand? Is Carl once again the only person standing between Wellington and a great tide of evil—or is he himself now the town’s greatest threat?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sinister Regard
• Release date: Aug 11, 2015
• ISBN: 9781941928349

Perry Slaughter

Perry Slaughter first achieved notoriety in the mid-1980s with slender works of samizdat genre fiction hailed as “utterly bereft of any moral center.” More recently his short stories have appeared in Electric Velocipede and elsewhere. Mr. Slaughter divides his time between the northeastern United States and a yacht plying international waters. His passions include vinyl records, scotch whisky, and high-seas piracy. His exact whereabouts at any given time are unknown.Sinister Regard is proud to have undertaken a project to reissue some of his early novellas and short fiction in new print and electronic editions. For more information, visit www.perryslaughter.com.

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1.

McFarland edged stiffly around the crowd of townspeople massed in the giant revival tent, wiping sweat from the back of his neck. It was infernally hot. The church goons really had the space heaters cranked up, and the press of bodies was making things even worse. McFarland had noticed the welcomers opening and closing the tent flaps at regularly timed intervals, to let in a few seconds’ worth of cool evening breezes. He ran his wrinkled fingers along the red-and-white-striped fiberglass fabric of the tent wall. They came away wet. Condensation.

He raised his eyebrows. That just might hold the plague tide at bay long enough to spray it down and wash it away before it could do any damage, on the off-chance that any of it blew across the moat during the revival. These churchies certainly weren’t stupid.

And I ask again, people of Wellington, Nevada, shouted the preacher, a small bearded figure dressed all in black, waving his arms as he walked up and down the raised platform at the front of the tent, have ye been spiritually born of God? Have ye been spiritually reborn?

A dozen voices shouted, Yes! A few more, No! Scattered others, Amen!

McFarland sighed. It was the evening of Good Friday; there must have been close to a thousand people crowded into the tent, not counting the preacher himself and his dozens of glaze-eyed roadies, and it was clear they had no idea how to respond. Most of them were too young to have ever seen a televangelist, let alone a traveling revival.

The preacher crouched down at the edge of the platform and pointed into the crowd. I say unto you, nay! he bellowed. Have ye been filled with the fire of the Holy Spirit? Have ye received the gift of tongues? Have ye healed your fellow man, or cast out the devils from his breast? Have ye been ministered to by angels, and have the dead risen and walked at the touch of your hand? He darted to and fro like a whippet, pointing his finger at someone new with each question. Then I say unto you, ye have not been reborn, and ye have not tasted of the sweetness and mercy of Christ’s love!

McFarland’s eyes weren’t what they once had been, but he could see how the preacher’s high, pale forehead dripped with sweat and reflected the light of the sodium arc lamps mounted on poles all around the platform. McFarland had tried to tune out the preaching, but it was just too loud to ignore. He peered up into the dimness where the tent’s support bars criss-crossed, trying to spot the loudspeakers that had to be there. Damn, he’d give his eyeteeth for solar cells and storage batteries like these churchies must have.

And he’d give his withered left nut for five minutes with their microwave transmitter.

For verily, the preacher went on, Christ Jesus himself did all these things and more, and he has given unto his true followers to do the same! He healed the lame, the blind, the deaf, changed water to wine, fed thousands with a few loaves of bread! He cast out devils, yea, even an entire host of devils who called themselves Legion! He fasted forty days, faced the sorest temptations of the Devil himself, raised the dead, and overcame even his own death when after three days in the tomb—

Hell of a preacher, ain’t he, Carl? said a familiar voice. "He’s even got you starin’ with your mouth open like a goddamn carp."

Huh? said McFarland, turning.

It was Reed Jacobson, a wizened old mechanic in his late eighties, even more ancient than McFarland himself. Jacobson had separated himself from the crowd, and he jerked a thumb in the direction of the platform. "Course, he ain’t nowheres as good as your daddy used to be. Now there ’uz a man could put the smell o’ brimstone in your nostrils the way he pounded that pulpit. But that’s forty years ago."

McFarland nodded. Personally, he suspected that if there really was a hell, it would stink more like the hot sweat there inside the revival tent than it would any sulfide, but that wasn’t worth getting into with old Reed. Maybe I did get a little caught up, there, he said, "but not because I actually believe this rot. Preachers like this one use their words and their gestures to induce a kind of mass hypnosis."

Jacobson took off his tattered John Deere cap and scratched the liver spots on his pink scalp. Ayuh, whatever you say. I ain’t no fancy scientist. But anyways, I ’uz just gonna say you ’uz the last one I ’spected to see here to the revival.

You think I’d miss this? said McFarland. "Hell, Reed, these are the first other human beings we’ve seen in forty years. Their wagons actually made it through the plague tide without so much as a scratch that I can see, and I’m going to find out how they did it."

Power o’ God, if you ask me, said Jacobson with a wry, gap-toothed grin.

McFarland snorted. They’ve got a microwave transmitter on one of those wagons of theirs, and they obviously know not only the right frequency but also the right signal to deactivate those damned little machines.

You’re still on one ’bout them nanny-machines o’ yours?

"Nanomachines, said McFarland tersely. And if you didn’t believe me before, you sure as hell ought to believe me now, the way they rode into town this morning. The plague tide parted for them like they were the Israelites and it was the Red Sea."

’Tain’t a question o’ believin’ you or not believin’ you, said Jacobson. "I mean, machines so small you cain’t but see ’em less’n there’s a gazillion of ’em all together? Granted, I s’pose it’s possible, but it don’t do me no good to know it, at least not ’s I can see. Don’t change the fact that we’re here and they’re all around us and we cain’t go two feet past the moat without we get turned into guns or ammo or a lump o’ goddamn bean curd, does it? Know what I’m sayin’, Carl?"

"If you understand it, you can fight it."

You been fightin’ for forty years, an’ it ain’t got you nothin’ but old an’ bitter, said Jacobson. "I’m old an’ bitter, too, but it didn’t cost me near ’s much. Listen, Carl—and he squeezed McFarland’s shoulder with a gnarled old hand—God knows you’re a smart fellah, but let’s give this preacher here a chance. Mebbe he’s got somethin’ we can use."

McFarland bit off a vicious retort about the mentality of people who buy snake oil. He had a pretty good idea that any miracle the preacher and his goons had to offer would come cloaked in fantasy and ritual. Even if it kept the plague inactive, it wouldn’t give the town any freedom; it would only enslave them to superstition. That was the reason McFarland had bothered to show up at all, either to debunk the preacher and his so-called new religion, or to steal whatever secrets were locked up in those wagons for the common good of the town—both, if possible.

Does God love his children here cut off from the world in Wellington, Nevada? roared the preacher. A few voices cried out in the affirmative. "Yes, of course he does! How does he show it? By correcting them when they’ve gone astray! And are the people of Wellington, Nevada, being corrected by their God? I say unto you, yea—yea, whom the Lord loveth, he chastiseth, and whom the Lord loveth, he testeth! My dear sisters and brothers—and here the preacher’s voice dropped as he sadly shook his head—never have I seen so sore a correction, so sore a test, as that which has afflicted Wellington, Nevada, and indeed this entire great land, for the past forty years!"

A score of hallelujahs, mostly from the oldtimers, rose into the air. Jacobson waved his soiled cap, shouting, and McFarland’s lip curled in disgust. Anyone old enough to walk before the plague hit should know better than this.

For my friends, we as a community, as a nation, perhaps as a world, are under as severe a condemnation as ever God has seen fit to visit upon his children in his wrath and in his mercy! Our homes, our crops, our cities and towns, our forests and our deserts and our wildlife—even our very loved ones, should they venture beyond the safety of the community—are transformed before our eyes, even as Lot’s wife of old, into manna on the one hand, the very staff of life, or on the other into diabolical weapons of war!

A hush descended as the preacher turned his eyes upward. "My friends, God in his infinite wisdom