Apocalypse Burning

by Mel Odom

  “What about your missus?”

  Delroy shook his head. “I’ve made enough mistakes coming here. I don’t need to make one more. And that one would be a big one.” He laid his head back on the headrest and closed his eyes, shutting out the familiar streets and all the painful memories.

  Just get me free of this town, Lord, Delroy prayed. He hoped God was listening, but he didn’t know if He was. No, it’s not that you don’t know; it’s that you don’t believe, Delroy. You call this one fair and square. He wanted to cry but he lacked the strength and he knew it would do no good. He kept his eyes closed good and tight.

  Then he grew aware of how long the car was sitting at the red light. No red light lasted that long. Delroy lifted his head and peered forward. The light was still red. To his left, Walter Purcell sat patiently with both hands on the steering wheel. If he noticed the passage of time, the deputy gave no indication.

  The growling pop of a loud exhaust suddenly thundered into Delroy’s ears. The side mirror showed the approach of a yellow-andred Harley-Davidson motorcycle. The lone rider, dressed in scarred black leather, kicked his feet out as the motorcycle drew even with the cruiser.

  Drawn by the noise and the closeness of the motorcycle, Delroy looked at the rider.

  He was young and blond, his bare arms and neck covered with tattoos. He wore wraparound mirror sunglasses. As Delroy watched, the rider’s skin switched from tan and tattoos to a hint of reptilian scales.

  The rider grinned. Somehow his voice carried over the thunder of the cycle’s exhaust. “Glad to see you’re hanging around here, Preacher.” The thing glanced over his shoulder and made a show of taking in the town. “Lotta people here to hurt. And as long as you’re around, I get to hurt them.” He smiled, bright and cruel and cold. “I have to admit, playing with you has become more exciting than I thought it would be. You’re being stubborn, but that just makes the chase better.” He twisted the accelerator and revved the engine, cracking ominous thunder all around them. “But in the end, I’m going to bring you down. Your faith is weak.”

  Delroy fumbled for the door lock and pushed the button down.

  The thing on the motorcycle laughed uproariously. He made a pistol of his thumb and forefinger and shot Delroy with it.

  “Are you all right?”

  Surprised by the deputy’s voice, Delroy turned to look at Walter.

  “I said, are you all right?” Walter asked again. He nodded at the lock. “You afraid of falling out?”

  Delroy glanced back at the side of the cruiser, only then realizing the sound of the throbbing engine had disappeared. The street beside him was empty.

  2

  United States of America

  Fort Benning, Georgia

  Local Time 0941 Hours

  Megan pulled Goose’s pickup truck to a halt in front of the counseling center where she worked during the day. She felt guilty about getting here late. Anger at Major Augustus Trimble, commanding officer of the chaplains at the post, still pounded her temples.

  She had confronted the major in his office only a short time ago. Megan had wanted Trimble to acknowledge that the Rapture had happened and start classes for the young people on the base that would explain what was going to happen during the coming seven years of the Tribulation.

  Trimble had refused, had shouted her down, and had her escorted from his office. Megan hadn’t gone graciously, but she had gone.

  Maybe Trimble hadn’t come around in his faith to the Lord, but she had. Somewhere up there, she knew Chris was in heaven with God and would be safe from all the coming savagery. It was a lot to be thankful for. However, she wasn’t convinced that God cared much about the present situation she was in.

  Gerry Fletcher had been a child in her care. As one of the civilian counselors for the post, Megan saw a number of children and teenagers who had problems with drugs, alcohol, and emotional trauma. Gerry’s problem had been his father, Private Boyd Fletcher, who had a history of violent behavior.

  The night of the Rapture, Gerry had been in the post ER with Megan, recovering from his latest session of abuse from his father. Megan had made the choice—against hospital, counseling, and military policy—to not inform the parents. She and the hospital staff had hoped that she could convince Gerry to testify against his father this time and break free of the cycle of abuse.

  Instead, Gerry had ended up on top of a building in an attempt to commit suicide. He’d fallen by mistake, though, and Megan had barely managed to get hold of him. But that respite lasted only seconds. Despite Megan’s best efforts, Gerry had slipped from her, plummeting to certain doom.

  But halfway down, Gerry had been raptured. He’d never had to endure the horrible death from the four-story plummet. His empty clothing had landed on the pavement below.

  But no one believed that Megan had truly dropped the boy. They believed that she had faked the fall.

  “Boyd Fletcher retained a civilian attorney who is waiting in the wings for the deposition of the provost marshal’s case against you,” Lieutenant Doug Benbow informed her.

  “A civilian attorney?” Megan paid only a little attention to the young lieutenant sitting next to her in the truck. He was currently assigned to act as her military legal representative in the matter of the dereliction of duty charges against her regarding Gerry Fletcher.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Why would he want a civilian attorney?” Megan asked, knowing there was something she’d missed.

  “Megan.” Benbow frowned a little as he looked at her. “Have you heard a word I’ve said on the trip over here?”

  It hadn’t been Megan’s idea to bring him along. But when Benbow had seen how upset she’d been after leaving Trimble’s office, he had volunteered to accompany her. He was planning to catch a ride to his office in one of the jeeps ferrying people back and forth across the post. He’d said he hoped that the time would give them the opportunity to talk.

  He’d talked, Megan realized. She just hadn’t listened. Her mind had been too full of the things she needed to do for the kids she cared for. If Trimble and the post chaplains—at least the ones who believed in the Rapture and the coming Tribulation, which not even all Christian churches believed in—wouldn’t teach the kids about the trials and horrors ahead, she had to make other arrangements to take care of her young charges.

  “I was listening, Lieutenant.” Megan felt defensive and she hated that. “I heard a word or two. Now and then. Sometimes complete sentences. I just didn’t get the whole civilian-attorney part.” She switched the truck’s ignition off. The engine died and left the cab full of strained silence and distant noise muted by the glass. “I’m listening now.”

  “Not including last night,” Benbow said, “how much rest have you been getting?”

  “Enough,” Megan replied.

  Benbow gave her that familiar earnest look that reminded her he was nearly ten years younger than she was.

  “Nearly enough,” she amended.

  “I think we’re talking more in the not nearly enough range,” Benbow said. “In fact, I believe we’re more in the red-line range here. The drop-dead-can’t-make-another-move red-line range.”

  “I’ll get more rest when things slow down.” Megan glanced at her watch, hoping Benbow would take the hint.

  “Things,” Benbow said in a measured voice, “are not going to slow down soon. If they ever slow down again. You’re going to have to slow down.”

  “Look, Lieutenant—”

  “Doug. Please. I’m trying to talk to you as a person, Megan. As a friend. Maybe a few days of knowing you don’t seem like a lot, but they’ve been extremely hectic days. I’ve seen you at your best.” Benbow paused. “And I’ve seen you at your worst.”

  Megan knew that. Sometimes in order to talk to her about the impending military court investigation, Benbow had ended up helping her prepare meals, do laundry, and babysit. He’d wedged snippets of conversation between her counseling sessions and all the
emergencies that seemed to be hers to deal with. He’d also, on more than one occasion, gotten roped into making supply runs for her.

  “You are a friend. I appreciate what you’re doing,” Megan said. But what you’re doing barely even touches the big picture of what’s going on. She didn’t say that because she didn’t want to take away from any of the tremendous effort Doug had made on her behalf to get the charges dropped. She knew he’d been doing that. And not only because she’d signed off on the paperwork.

  Benbow sighed. “We’ve reached the point where you’ve got to do more than just appreciate what I’m doing. You’re going to have to start listening and acting on the advice and guidance I’m giving. You’ve got a lot riding on this, Megan.”

  “I wasn’t derelict in my duty that night,” Megan said. She still remembered how cold the air had been on top of that building as she’d tried to talk Gerry Fletcher down. She’d never really realized how long a four-story drop was until that night. The boy had gone up because he’d blamed himself for the trouble his father was in. He was wrong, of course, but he’d been following the program of self-blame his father had instilled in him as a child.

  He was still a child, Megan told herself. He was only eleven years old. Barely old enough to understand all the guilt and persecution his father had heaped on him, and way too young to carry it.

  “I know you weren’t derelict,” Benbow said. “You were protecting Gerry Fletcher from his father.”

  “That’s right,” Megan said. “If this … situation … goes to court, I can bury Boyd Fletcher in reports citing his abuse of his son.”

  “Fine,” Benbow said. “Now that I have your full and complete attention, let’s roll with that. Let me take the opposing counsel’s viewpoint for a moment. Please bear with me.”

  “I can do the opposing counsel’s position for you: Why didn’t I make recommendations that Gerry Fletcher be taken from the home?” Megan frowned. That question kept coming up during their discussions.

  Benbow nodded. “Exactly.”

  “I don’t see what difference that makes.”

  “Because the opposing military counsel will use your failure to act to his own advantage,” Benbow explained. “And to Boyd Fletcher’s. Which will enable Fletcher’s attorney to use that information as well.”

  After hearing how Trimble had twisted everything she’d said in his office around to suit his own needs, Megan suddenly found herself more attentive than usual to Benbow’s words. Over the past few days, she had convinced herself that nothing would come of the provost marshal’s investigation. After all, why single out Gerry’s disappearance from among the millions of disappearances worldwide? But the threat of legal action hadn’t gone away. It was still headed right at her, with a rumble that was starting to resemble that of an inbound freight train.

  Benbow hadn’t told her she was in denial about the situation, and she didn’t really think she was, but the possibility of getting fired from her position as counselor or even jailed because the act was directed against a military person just hadn’t seemed real to her. The kids she helped needed that help. Surely the base commander had to realize that.

  “How can he use that?” Megan asked.

  “You’re being investigated for being derelict in your duty. If you take the stand and talk about Boyd Fletcher’s abuse of his son, or allow documents concerning those events to surface during the hearing, the opposing counsel is going to use them to show that you’ve got a history of being derelict in your duty. He’s going to convince the jury that you should have acted prior to the night in question. He’s going to say that your dereliction of duty started long before the night you climbed up onto that building with Gerry Fletcher.”

  “The decision to remove a child from a home has some heavy repercussions for the family as well as the counselor. I felt that taking Gerry from his family would have been more detrimental to him than letting him stay.”

  “More detrimental than getting beaten?”

  “There had been only one incident at that time.”

  “But others followed?”

  “Yes. By then,” Megan said, remembering the situation with helpless frustration, “Gerry had locked into a pattern of lying to protect his father. I would have had to tear down his stories before I could have helped him.”

  “Wouldn’t that have been the right thing to do?”

  “I would have lost his trust. And, yes, that would have affected everything.”

  “Was the situation at Gerry’s home then a matter of life or death?”

  “I didn’t think so.”

  “What about the night in question? The night you willfully didn’t tell Boyd Fletcher his son was in the hospital.”

  “I wasn’t sure then, but I knew something had to be done. Things had been escalating, but a lot of time had passed since the last violent incident. That night I didn’t feel that the situation had gotten completely out of control until Boyd Fletcher showed up drunk at the hospital and Gerry climbed up on that building.”

  “You weren’t certain what your course of action would be when you arrived at the hospital?”

  “No. I was working my way through the situation.”

  “Megan, the jury judging you is going to be made up of men—maybe a few women, God willing, because they hopefully know what it’s like to be a mom or an aunt or a big sister—who live on a daily basis prepared to make life-or-death decisions between heartbeats. Pull the trigger; don’t pull the trigger. And with everything going on in the world right now, those men are tuned directly into that mind-set: Take charge and make a difference. They may very well feel that you didn’t take appropriate action. That ‘working your way through a situation’ wasn’t what was needed to save Gerry.”

  “Because I didn’t take Gerry out of his home?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Then why wouldn’t they blame Boyd Fletcher? He’s the one who created the situation. He came into the ER in a drunken rampage that night. It took two MPs to subdue him, and both of them had to be treated for injuries. Gerry was scared of his father. That’s why he ran and that’s why he ended up on that building.”

  “They will blame Boyd Fletcher,” Benbow agreed. “But they’ll only blame him for his part in this. Trust me, Boyd Fletcher isn’t going to get off scot-free in the eyes of the military men he serves with. At least, not with most of them. And probably not with the army. I’m willing to bet his career is over, one way or another. But that court and that jury are going to hold you accountable too, Megan.”

  “For what?”

  Without flinching, Doug answered, “For allowing the situation to come to that. For not notifying the parents their son was in the ER. For failure to act.”

  “I was acting.”

  “You just told me you didn’t know what your course of action was going to be.”

  “That’s ridiculous.” Megan had to rein in her anger before she exploded all over the young lieutenant.

  Benbow held up both his hands in supplication. “Easy. I’m just pointing things out. Better now than on the stand in a courtroom, don’t you think?”

  Megan took a deep breath and nodded.

  “There’s a lot of blame to pass around on this,” Benbow said. “The people who are going to serve as your jury are soldiers, not counselors. Their world is more black and white than yours. Their whole existence is keyed into things that they can do and can’t do. And they know exactly what those things are every minute of every day. If they don’t know, they can ask. Usually before they have to ask, someone has already told them. If things change, if situations change, they’re told that, too. It’s easy for them to forget that a lot of us have to make decisions for ourselves. And that we’re fallible.”

  “I did everything I could do. Keeping Gerry with me that night, that was part of what I could do.”

  “Keeping him there without telling his parents he was in the hospital was dereliction of duty. They had a right to know. You were derelic
t in that regard. So was the hospital. But none of the hospital staff involved are available to press charges against. Boyd Fletcher is after you. His statement says he feels that Gerry’s stay there, without his knowledge, was directly your responsibility.”

  “In a way, it was,” Megan said. “Over the last few weeks, I couldn’t get his mother to come forward about the abuse issues, but I hoped I could talk Gerry into telling the truth that night. Then we could have acted.”

  Benbow nodded agreeably. “We can’t start with that night because that depends too much on your testimony. The jury may see that as prejudiced.”

  “Prejudiced?”

  “They may think you’re trying to cover your own complicity in this.” Benbow shook his head. “We have to lead the jury up to that point. We have to start before then to develop the history you were acting on. We’re going to have to train those people to think like counselors, to understand what the constraints of your job are, and to put them into context with the situation that night.”

  Megan felt familiar frustration. She knew most counselors dealt with that feeling on a daily basis. So many things should be simple when dealing with clients, but they weren’t because many individuals didn’t want to deal with those issues and had long since built up personal support groups among family and friends to help them avoid those issues.

  She let out a long breath. “All right. I can see where you’re coming from.”

  “Not me. Where Boyd Fletcher and opposing counsel are going to be coming from. That’s a big difference. You need to keep that in mind. I’m on your side, Megan.”

  “I know.”

  “Prior to that night, did you feel Gerry was in danger in his home?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why didn’t you have him removed from the home?”

  “For two reasons.”

  “Two is good,” Benbow said, smiling a little. “I’d prefer a dozen, but I’ll settle for two. It’s twice as good as one.”