Jack raised his hands. “Be at peace! The Children of Lazarus are all bound … we are all safe from one another, and that is the way that harmony can grow.”
The audience buzzed with troubled chatter, but gradually they all stopped talking to one another and looked at him.
“This is still a night of sport and celebration. This is what you came for!” The preacher half turned and pointed one hand down at the pits and the other at Benny and Nix.
The crowd stared for a moment longer, and then they roared with cheers and applause.
“Ah, crap,” said Benny.
White Bear goosed the applause for a full minute and then gradually quieted everyone with downward waves of his hand. “In ancient times,” he said in a voice every bit as loud and booming as his father’s, “those who had committed terrible crimes would suffer public execution.”
A ripple of applause.
“Or public humiliation.”
Bigger applause.
“But we are a civilized people!”
Applause and expectant smiles. Everyone knew what was coming now; everyone was in on the joke.
“My father is a holy man, and he says that the world is both heaven and hell and Gameland is purgatory.”
Someone in the back of the crowd actually yelled, “Hallelujah!”
Benny felt outrage bubbling in his chest. He was not the most devout churchgoer, but even he knew that this was no kind of religion. Preacher Jack might be crazy enough to believe some of this, but for White Bear it was all about manipulation.
White Bear roared, “So here in purgatory sinners get a chance at redemption. They get a chance to earn the right to be part of New Eden.”
Someone—Benny thought it was a guard—began a chant of “New Eden!” and soon the whole crowd was shouting it out as if it was something they believed in already. Sheep, Benny thought. Just sheep.
Nix laughed aloud, but only Benny heard her. It scared him as much as what White Bear was saying.
“So, tonight my father and I are going to set an example. We are making a new law, and we will be the first to abide by it!”
“Tell us, White Bear!” someone shouted, and everyone clamored the same.
White Bear pointed to Benny and Nix. “We got two sinners here. Two murderers. They led an attack on the camp of Charlie Matthias. You all knew Charlie, and you knew him as a good and decent man.” If the applause was not as enthusiastic, Benny saw, it was at least very loud. “They murdered my brother. And a few days ago they participated in the murder of my other brother, Zak, and his son. The blood of my family is on their hands!”
The crowd booed and called for blood to pay for blood.
Here it comes, Benny thought, and braced himself.
White Bear quieted the crowd once more. “But hear me—these are no longer zombie pits. It is forbidden to call them that ever again. These are the Pits of Judgment. Sinners go in there to face their crimes. Heaven itself decides the truth. If the accused is innocent, or if there is true repentance in his heart, then he will emerge unharmed from the pit. And if not …”
The crowd waited for it.
“… then the Children of Lazarus will make a sacrament of their flesh!”
The crowd went wild. Benny stared. Maybe some of them had started to believe this nonsense, or maybe it was all just a new game to them. Either way, they were totally sold on it.
White Bear, as grand a showman as his father, held one hand aloft so that the audience held their breath, and with the other he pointed at Benny and Nix. “It is time!” he proclaimed. “Cast them into the Pit of Judgment.”
Benny’s last thought before Digger and Heap pushed him over the edge was, Oh, brother.
Then he and Nix were falling into darkness.
71