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Dear Diary I suppose I have to introduce myself to you in this, don’t I? My name is Faith, Faith Seed. I just turned 26 years old and I grew up in Hope County, Montana. Ugh, this feels so cheesy…I’m only writing this diary because Dr. Alighai told me to. I’m still living in Montana, but I’m in a group home of sorts, which is a nicer way of saying a private mental hospital with only a handful of patients located in the backend of nowhere, even more so than Hope County. This diary is supposed to be therapeutic for me, to get out my thoughts that I can’t tell my doctor, therapist or case worker. Even under clouds of heavy medication, there are some things about my life that are staying 100% private. I resent writing you, Diary, because I’m now worried I’ll slip up and reveal exactly what the lawyers want to know, what the police want to know and what all those true crime documentaries I used to watch on the Crime & Investigation Network want to know.Dr. Alighai is a nice man, who’s told me I don’t have to write this diary, but it would be best if I did write in it, presenting me with this clinical, green and black speckled composition book. I left this… suggestion in my bedside cabinet for over two weeks.It probably seems spiteful, that I’d reject the suggestion of somebody who was sincerely trying to help me. Dr. Alighai has that manner, where, like the other doctors here, you know he’s working to earn a paycheque, but also has that broad smile and gentle demeanour that gets lesser people to reveal all of themselves to him.Yes, lesser people. I am one of the Faithful, Diary, and I will not have that identity stripped away from me. They’ve already tried to get me to go back to my old name, from before I was baptised by the Father. Every now and again, a nurse will call out “Rachel” during medication time. Thankfully, they’ve stopped doing that – Nurse Hayes has a faint pink scar across her cheek from where I hit her and dug in my nails. It’s not her fault (or mine), I suppose. I was angry, and she was the closest person in medical scrubs.My name is Faith. I will never forget that, and I will never forget the teachings of the Father.So what if the Father got the date of the Collapse wrong and it never happened when he prophesied? It’s probably still going to come, with every day that passes. All those survival skills I learned from John and Jacob, my brothers, were for naught. When the time comes, I’ll be hundreds of miles away from where I’m supposed to be and so will the Father, damned to burn to death when it happens, outside of the safety of a bunker.All because of that one, stupid police officer who couldn’t leave well enough alone. I realise I’m writing like you already know the details of my life. The painful ostracization from my friends (even Tracey), my family, that eventually led to me experimenting with whatever drugs I could get my hands on. My best subject in school had always been science. It was much more fun to experiment on yourself, rather than sat in the school science lab, dissecting frogs or dropping potassium into water.Hope County is beautiful in terms of scenery, but it’s desolate and sparsely populated. Everyone learns to drive on the family farm, because once you’re a teenager, there’s nothing to do. You’re trapped. Everyone at school starts going to parties or dreaming of going to college far away from home. I never had those kinds of ambitions.I just lived in the moment, you know? My parents were shitty. We had a big house and all the luxuries of the world, but I looked for any excuse to escape. To be blissfully happy for even a few, fleeting moments. Drugs were the easiest way of accomplishing that. It made me laugh when one of the girls at school was crying to her friends that she’d be expelled for her red eyes, from a puff of weed behind the bleachers, and that her parents would “kill” her. My parents never even cared. I’d come home on more than a few ecstasy tablets, a tab of LSD still on my tongue, and Dad would barely get up from the couch, meanwhile Mom screamed that something needed to be done about me.When the screaming got too much, I’d just spend as much time as I could in the woods that surrounded us. Like all kids who grow up in Montana, I knew that it was dangerous to wander in too far, that there were grizzly bears and mountain lions out there and it was too easy to get lost amidst the maze of pine trees and firs. I’d mapped out a place where I could walk for hours, touching the flower blossoms on the shrubs as I went by, looking up to the cornflower blue sky and feeling just… so… ecstatic that I was here, within this wonderful place. Then, of course, I’d come down from the high, collapse down by the base of a tree, shining in sweat and hugging my knees, as reality crashed down around me, and thoughts of suicide started to creep in. What the fuck was I doing here? It started as simply wanting to disappear for a time, to make people worried, then evolved into wanting to disappear entirely, then death. With any luck, I’d be reborn elsewhere, perhaps into a decent family who didn’t abuse me, with friends who didn’t stab me in the back the moment I turned around.Once the misery from the comedown had passed, I’d wait until sundown, then sneak back into the house once I was sure my parents were asleep. Then the next morning, my routine would be the same, as it had been for the past few years. Go to school, hate it, skip classes, wander into the woods, maybe hitchhike and head to Aaron Kirby’s place, get some drugs from him. He was known as Tweak and he had a passion for chemistry. Perhaps if the world wasn’t so unfair, he’d some award-winning scientist, rather than some high school drop-out trailer park trash who experimented with every drug going. Maybe that was why I felt such a kinship with him. Who knows?All I wanted was to find a happiness that lasted.I remember when I skipped my Spanish class one afternoon and headed out to Falls End. I wasn’t planning on shopping there or getting a decent meal, I was just bored and wanted to see Tweak. It was hard to cut class in Hope County, though. The folks around here were the type to notice an obvious teenager out of high school on a weekday and drive you right back to that prison. Then your parents would get a phone call from them, since everyone knows everyone, and everyone tries to look out for each other’s welfare. (Such bullshit.)I had made it into the Holland Valley district, when I came across a tent that had been put up. I had been crossing through the corn and wheat fields, stroking my fingers through the stalks as I passed, when I saw this enormous white marquee, with a black cross painted on the top. It was just after midday, but there were plenty of people there, gathering just outside of the tent.You had to be pretty ignorant to not know of the Project at Eden’s Gate, living in Hope County. They had been active for a few years but were getting new followers with every sermon. My dad and mom had no use for religion. Sometimes, when they bothered to leave the house on the weekends, they would go to barbecues that were sponsored by the Church, then come home and bitch about the food being bad and being preached at. I never went to them, but I knew what Joseph Seed looked like – he’d been interviewed on the local news and people saw him around town.From where I was, I could see a whole bunch of men and women in military fatigues, talking animatedly. There was a girl in a white dress, with flowers in her hair, standing by Joseph, arm around his, cuddling into his side.I suppose I should have probably headed back and found another route. I remember thinking for a brief moment that curiosity killed the cat. Though in hindsight, I think it was more like God pointing me in the right direction.I joined the congregation that day, sitting at the back of the audience. Joseph’s eyes met everyone in the audience, like he was peering directly into your soul. He described how the world was sick and dying, but God had plans for it, plans for us, we were his chosen children and would survive to cultivate a new paradise. It was a little like Noah building the ark – the world had to be cleansed so it could be born anew. God had used water before, but now, Joseph assured us that He would use fire. Those who heeded the call and used their ingenuity to survive would be gifted a brand-new world, paradise beyond compare. There would be no snakes in this garden, only a perfect landscape as far as the eye could see, with bountiful resources for all who emerged from the bunkers Joseph and his followers were building all over the countryside.Every new person who attended got a copy of the Book of Joseph, passed out by one of the devout at the end of the service. I held it in my arms, eager to read the further sermons of this magnetic preacher, who stayed behind and met every single one of the congregants, talking to them about their lives. He and his brothers were from out of town and had only lived here a few years, but it felt as though they had lived here forever as our neighbours. They raised money, they held cookouts, they got John Seed (who had been a hot-shot lawyer in Atlanta, apparently) to provide legal counsel for people who had been unfairly jailed. Nobody suspected a thing about the Project at Eden’s Gate. It was about as normal as your next-door neighbour being Episcopalian, or Baptist, or something.Until they started taking people away from their families, nobody in Hope County suspected a thing.I lie to myself and say that I was taken away on a whirlwind of hopes and promises by Joseph Seed, but the reality is much… harsher. Dr. Alighai says I must confront it, but all in my own time.Diary, is it pathetic that I lie to myself all the time? I’m sure John, if he were still alive, would have something to say on atoning for this sin. You cannot trust a liar, but you can, at the very least, cut their tongue out to stop them spreading lies. Sadly, you can’t do the same for your own inner voice.I think I’ll leave it here for now. Apparently, the doctor gets to read this diary of mine at least once every two weeks, whether I give him permission to or not.If you’re reading this, doc, know that I hate you and you’re going to burn in flames when the Collapse comes. If you cared a single shred about my wellbeing, you would let me out of this miserable place. You could just leave a door or a window open. God would guide me to Joseph. God isn’t going to let Joseph be held behind concrete and bars. We’d meet again one sunny day, just as John’s favourite song used to croon. The collapse is coming, one day – and I need to be with Joseph.You have a wife and child back home in Canada, Doctor. You know the pain of separation, which is why you fly back to see them every other weekend. I want to be back together with my family, as dysfunctional as it may seem on the outside. I hate it here.I’ve always hated my place in this world. You’ve added kindling to the fire.