by Matt Moore
The tall woman limped to Archie, the hinge of her prosthetic leg squeaking, and handed back the pistol.
Archie faced the priest-turned-renegade. “The arrests last night making you jittery?”
“Yes,” Pious replied. “I fear the Two Witnesses were arrested. They will not survive long against the Dragon.”
Archie braced for more of Pious’s ramblings. How Daniel’s full name—Daniel Derick Deanne—clearly mapped to Revelation 13:18 and its telling of a man whose name would be “666.” Or the bracelets and headbands bearing the One Faith logo indicated the Mark of the Beast. Instead, he led Archie through a narrow doorway into a room that would have been the dining room. Computer equipment covered tables and shelves. Young men and women typed furiously. One monitor showed a web page being built, a red headline screaming: “Global Warming is not man-made, but God’s punishment. Revelation 16:9!” Another stated: “First the Flood, Now the Fire.” Archie scanned for Timothy’s face, but didn’t see him.
The two men passed into a smaller, windowless room that contained a desk and chair against one wall, an old battered couch opposite. Pious shut the door and sat in the chair.
“Timothy was also arrested last night.”
A cold lump settled in Archie’s belly. “Pious, I’m sorry.” He sat on the couch, springs squeaking. Archie replayed the previous evening in his mind, wondering if he’d missed something.
“I do not blame you, Saul. I am sure it is not your fault. I have always known Daniel has many spies, many ways of gathering information. Thus far, I have been confident he has not become aware of my plans. Otherwise, he would not attend the gala tomorrow.”
“I don’t want to know details, Pious.” Archie wiped a forearm across his forehead. “I know too much already.”
“I understand, Saul, but Timothy did know.” He remained still as he spoke as if immune to the dry, suffocating heat. “I fear that Daniel will discover our plans, not just for the gala, but how organized we are. That we have infiltrated his organization. Timothy is strong and faithful, but not one can resist Daniel.”
Archie couldn’t disagree. He didn’t believe Pious’s stories that Daniel personally interrogated prisoners, extracting answers as he shredded their souls, but wondered about rumours of former black site interrogators working their trade under the auspices of the Environmental Protection Agency. If Timothy was being waterboarded, Archie hoped the interrogators weren’t looking to know if the guy who sold guns to Timothy had once known Daniel. “Pious, I’m sorry about Timothy, but what does this have to do with me? Do you have my money?”
“Timothy was to be the shooter in my plan to assassinate Daniel.”
Archie held up a hand. “I don’t—”
Pious leaned toward Archie. “And I want you to take his place.”
Archie shot to his feet. “Wait a second. I did my bit. I’m done.”
“Why are you helping us, Saul?” Pious asked, looking up at Archie. “We’ve barely paid you what we promised, so it’s not for the money. You do not share our belief that Daniel is a Beast of Revelations, turning all away from faith in Our Lord to his ‘One Faith’ of the power of man. You waited while Timothy called me last night when, with your part of the arrangement complete, you could have left. And why did you come here today?”
“Because you owe me.”
“Nothing more? Money is your sole motivation?”
“I have to eat, Pious.”
“Timothy told me you began to confess something to him about knowing Daniel. Are you trying to make up for something, Saul?”
Archie ignored the pressure in his chest. “Do you have my money or not?”
“There is more than just survival, Saul. You must live for something.”
“Tomorrow. I survive today, I wake up tomorrow, and repeat.”
Pious remained seated and still. “Timothy held similar beliefs. He was trapped in Venezuela after Wormwood fell. At the time, he was a high school student doing volunteer work. Out of twenty-five students and five chaperones, only he survived. He described the young man he had been and how much of himself he had to sacrifice to endure that horrible place.” Pious finally stood. “From what I know of you, I suspect you have endured similar things, which is why I paired Timothy with you. I knew you would grow to trust him and hopefully assist him in his mission.”
“Find another shooter, Pious.” Archie turned for the door.
“I have none. I lost my best people in last night’s arrests. I have been in contact with allies willing to help, but they have no one who could be here in time. Those who are left to me are children who have never held a gun.”
“Not my problem.”
“Something I have not heard you say is that you have no experience in doing this. Are you a sniper, Saul? Is that how you knew which rifle would be best for our mission?”
The room shrank, the heat unbearable. The clockwork efficiency of lining up a head in the sight, squeezing the trigger, and finding another target assaulted him. “Keep the money. I don’t want to see you again.” He grabbed the door handle, slick in his hand.
“If Timothy’s assassination attempt failed,” Pious continued, “my fallback plan was a frontal assault on the museum. Most of my people may die, and plenty of innocents as well, but after this attempt security around Daniel may become impenetrable, and the blow we were dealt by the arrests might mean this is our only chance. Walk away and I will have no choice but to move up the attack to when Daniel’s motorcade arrives. Can you live with that kind of blood on your hands?”
“It’s not on my hands. You have the guns. Do what you want.” Archie walked toward the rear of the house, listening for but not hearing Pious following him.
In the kitchen, the woman Pious had called Joan pushed herself to her feet. “You leaving? I thought—”
“Let me out.”
Joan frowned, then motioned to one of the boys to unlock the door. “God be with you, Saul,” Joan said as Archie stepped outside into the searing mid-morning sun. Archie headed for his car, Pious’s word replaying in his mind. Gunfire and screaming—pained, panicked, threatening—filled his head.
It had been a day like this—brutally hot. About eight hundred more, dying from dehydration and toxicity, had arrived during the night to join the thousand surrounding the small base where Archie and the other volunteers had been stationed. With water for hundreds of miles surrounding the impact site contaminated by an unknown toxin brought by the meteor, those people had had no hope except the base’s water supply. But the two portable purifying units barely produced enough for the compound’s hundred people.
Two days earlier, they’d heard the second wave of the relieve effort, which would have brought a dozen more purifiers, wasn’t coming. And they were on their own. Faced with the growing crowd, the commanding officer had had the gate locked, telling the people to disperse or risk him using force. With nowhere else to go, they remained—baking in the sun, pleading to be let it.
Archie didn’t know who shot first. But when the gunfire began, Jimenez had rounded up the volunteers and brought them to a building at the centre of the base. They huddled there, terrified as gunfire chattered, bullets thudding against concrete walls. As the day’s heat pressed in, Jimenez explained he really wasn’t an engineer. He was CIA, trying to foster a rebellion against the government. And he’d keep them safe if they did what he told them.
When night fell, Jimenez darted out into the compound, returning with guns and ammunition. He passed them out to the volunteers, explaining how to use them.
Sheer chance resulted in Archie getting a rifle instead of a submachine gun.
No one slept.
Before dawn, with half the soldiers dead, Jimenez starting taking the volunteers from the safety of the building into the compound. They had to take the soldiers’ places, he explained. He positioned Archie on the roof of a two-storey building.
Just after sunrise, a burst of automatic weapons fire cut the silence. Ano
ther burst answered. In moments, the air was alive. Archie crouched behind an air vent.
Jimenez appeared next to him. “Find a target!” he screamed.
Archie inched to the peak of the roof and looked down at locals trying to make it through rolls of concertina wire to the fence. Some carried guns, others machetes or clubs.
A pistol pressed into the back of his skull.
“Find a target,” Jimenez repeated. “If you won’t shoot, you’re a liability.”
Archie brought the rifle up. Heart hammering but hands steady, he centred the sight on a man in a red shirt firing a bolt action rifle.
“Pull the trigger.”
Archie obeyed, the crack of the rifle lost in the firefight.
The red-shirted man fell, limp and lifeless.
“Nice shot!”
Archie shut his eyes, tears welling, empty stomach threatening to heave.
“It’s you or them,” Jimenez whispered in an eerie, quiet tone. “It isn’t murder. They forced this. You aren’t a monster. Your guilt proves that. Now do it again, but this time . . .” Jimenez maneuvered Archie’s fingers to change his grip on the trigger and guard.
Over the next ten minutes of Jimenez’s tutoring, Archie killed seven people.
When the perimeter fence finally gave way under the sheer pressure of bodies pressing against it, it was no longer about water. Jimenez had already gathered what was left of the supplies and passed them out. Leading the charge of surviving volunteers—a third of those who’d arrived only one day ago—they shot their way through the wave of villagers and headed into the mountains.
Archie reached his car to find a One Faith logo spray-painted on its hood. Down the street, a pair of Disciples yelled at the old couple, still on their porch. Archie unlocked the car, got in and screamed, slamming his hand on the steering wheel.
In the elevator lobby of the parking garage, someone had scrawled “Thanks for the shaft” on the notice about limited elevator use. Archie climbed the stairs to the third floor. The paperclip in place, he activated his computer. Didn’t matter if Mai had a new contract or someone was looking for a few semiautomatic pistols, his bank account was running low.
He took a moment to curse Pious, then scanned his inbox, finding nothing.
Jobs used to come easier. When he’d returned from South America, a friend had put him in contact with Esteban, a project manager at NuCleen, one of the few competitors to Daniel’s companies. Esteban had lined up a few contracts, but sensing Archie’s feelings toward Daniel Esteban had put Archie in contact with groups doing underground research to challenge Daniel’s claims. They’d been loosely organized, often splintering at the slightest hint they’d been discovered. Though interested in the research, Archie found himself disgusted with the timid engineers. More and more, he associated with the tough, reliable men and women who worked as security. A lot of them wanted guns.
And Archie needed money.
Through Jimenez, he located people who could get him weapons. Many of them had that eerie calmness about them and recognized a kinship with Archie.
Archie learned what he could from them. About guns and ammunition. How to spot a trap or a tail. Staying calm and evaluating a dangerous situation. But the central piece of wisdom, the code to live by, was: don’t get involved.
It was good advice. Most of his clients wound up dead. Self-styled revolutionaries looking to replace Daniel or black market profiteers selling air conditioners or portable gas-powered generators, they’d either implode, get sold out or find their safe houses raided by police. Or burned down by Disciples.
Their decisions, Archie told himself. Just like it was Pious’s decision to storm the gala.
Then why did he feel like a coward?
Because, Archie had to admit—crazy as the man’s motivation was—Pious’s fight was his fight. No one in years had wanted to take the fight directly to Daniel. He’d known from the beginning why they wanted that rifle.
Scores of ghosts he’d lined up in his gunsight haunted his sleep.
Again, Archie thought of the Beretta, the taste of it in his mouth, his thumb on the trigger.
“I did not expect to see you again.” Pious extended a hand toward the couch.
Archie sat. “I’ve changed my mind.”
Pious nodded, eyes betraying nothing. “May I ask why?”
Archie had intended on telling him no, but with the invitation offered, it burst from him. How he’d just received his Masters degree when he’d started with Daniel’s team, working on a hybrid fuel cell. Back then, Daniel had been just another team leader at another car company.
When Archie discovered Daniel’s efficiency calculations for the cell were inaccurate and it was no more efficient than others on the market, he’d informed Daniel during a staff meeting. He’d been so proud, thinking he’d prevented a major embarrassment.
That smirk had grown on Daniel’s face. “Archibald, the numbers don’t matter. How much pollution the car produces isn’t the issue. Getting people to adopt our product—getting them think what we want them to think—is. Then we can make changes. Then the people will go where we tell them.” The rest of the team had nodded, looking at Daniel like he was preaching gospel.
A year later, Archie was let go just before Daniel left to form PureRun. The rest of the team would become his first Disciples.
For the next three years, he’d gotten by on contracts while Daniel’s influence expanded, but when a charity asked for volunteers with engineering experience to go to Venezuela to re-establish infrastructure following Scythe’s impact he’d gone to do some good. But Daniel’s speech halted the help that should have followed him. Five months later, he’d emerged from the jungles a killer. And the anarchy in Venezuela had consumed most of northwestern South America.
“And all I had to do,” Archie concluded for Pious, feeling empty and drained, “was tell the Junior VP of R&D. He never liked Daniel. Thought he had too much salesman in him. If I’d told him, Daniel would’ve been fired. Discredited. Then no PureRun, no speech, no Disciples.
“But I was afraid for my job. My job. And a year later, that VP’s private plane went down in the New Mexico desert.”
“And your experience in Venezuela would have been one of charity, not violence, making you a better man.”
Pious’s words rubbed raw a deep wound, but Archie stayed quiet. The priest laid a hand on Archie’s shoulder. “There was no way to stop Daniel. He was pre-ordained. Wormwood gave him his power and his sign. God put you in his way for a reason, and kept you alive after Wormwood fell to harden your resolve and show you a path.” Pious made the sign of the cross over Archie. “I consider what you have told me to be a confession, Saul. I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
“Doesn’t make me feel better.”
“Take whatever advantage you can.” Pious pushed his chair aside and knelt. He fit his fingers into a small groove in the floorboards and lifted a 2’ by 2’ trap door, revealing a wooden box in a cavity beneath. He lifted the box, setting it on the desk. “My plans.”
Archie extended his pass to the security guard. From the cuff of his green uniform hung a One Faith bracelet. Just like the one Archie wore.
After running the pass through a scanner, the guard motioned toward the metal detector. With a nod from the guard at the detector, Archie stepped through the machine. It beeped and the guard motioned for Archie to wait before running a wand up one of Archie’s legs and down the other. Other guards appeared, suddenly interested in Archie. The wand hummed when it passed over Archie’s waist. Archie let a guilty grin grow and pulled up his cummerbund to reveal a massive belt buckle embossed with the One Faith logo. The guards barked laughter and waved him on to the double set of doors, wishing him a pleasant evening.
Inside, the museum’s atrium buzzed with the conversations of the guests as they milled under massive green banners reading “One Faith, One World, One Currency.”
He circled the huge room, one of hundreds of men in a tuxedo, looking for his contact—a redheaded server with the nametag “Jacob.” Faces he’d seen on television and computer screens breezed past him, drinks in hand—a governor, a famous actress, an award-winning singer. One Faith bracelets adorned all their right wrists or headbands on foreheads. Daniel’s true believers.
Archie willed himself to be calm and alert. To be aware of eyes following his movements or faces that seemed constantly nearby.
Commotion near the main entrance caught his attention. Through the gaps between heads and shoulders, he spotted Daniel—smiling, shaking hands, pecking women on the cheek—wearing a forest green tuxedo and flanked by a security detail. Archie turned and moved away from Daniel as the crowd pressed forward. He rounded a large man wearing a kilt, side-stepped a blonde in a jade dress, collided with Daniel and froze.
A Cheshire-cat grin grew on Daniel’s face. “Archibald!” He extended a hand.
Archie, caught off guard, shook.
Daniel pumped his hand while his handlers gave Archie a once-over. “Goodness, how long has it been? Where are you working, now?”
“Contract with NuCleen,” Archie lied.
Daniel’s grin grew. “Trying to take me down?”
Archie froze, something inside him whispering Daniel knew everything. He ignored it and returned the smile. “You’re not the type to be afraid of competition.”
“I pity my competition. I wish they would see the light and join me.”
Past Daniel, Archie caught sight of a redheaded man carrying a tray of champagne.
“You know, Archibald, I am sorry how things ended between us. I could use someone like you. Someone not afraid to speak their mind. A special advisor, as it were, answerable only to me. However,” Daniel took a step closer, “I’d need to know who the liars are at NuCleen spreading misinformation about my products. You know the company will fold in a month. Why not join me?”
Archie held Daniel’s gaze, nodding. “I’ll think about it.”
