“I’m trying really hard not to think about how high we are,” Connor said. He looked downright queasy.
Miranda squeezed his hand in sympathy. “Just try not to think about it.”
“Yeah, right.”
Finn returned with several of the archers. They stepped onto the platform with an easy grace.
“The village is not far,” said Finn. “But we need to go, it will be dark soon. And I am guessing none of you are used to rope bridges.”
The ragged company got to their feet. One by one they tentatively followed Dalton onto the bridge. Doug spoke with Finn as the rest filed by. Connor stepped onto the bridge ahead of Miranda, clutching the ropes so tight his knuckles turned white. Doug caught Miranda’s hand before she limped onto the bridge.
“You okay, Miri?”
Miranda nodded, still appalled by her outburst. “I just need to get Delilah off my back and sleep for a week. It’s been a bitch of a day.”
“You will need to stop that,” Finn said.
“Stop what?” Doug asked.
“The cursing. Your women should take care. The Prophet teaches that profanity is unseemly in a woman.”
An unpleasant tingle raced along Miranda’s spine, raising the hairs on the back of her neck.
“The Prophet?” Doug asked. “Is that your leader?”
“The Prophet is the God All-Father on Earth,” Finn answered. The archer closest to Finn nodded in agreement. “But do not be uneasy, for He loves all of God’s true children. He had a vision that you would come. That is why we were out here to save you. The God All-Father is anxious to meet you and divine the Heavenly Father’s purpose in sending you to Him.”
Miranda broke out in a chill sweat. Finn smiled at them, his golden eyes as guileless as a child’s.
“Well,” Doug said, “at least we aren’t barging in unannounced.”
Finn and his companion roared with laughter. “After you,” Finn finally managed, motioning for Miranda to precede them on the bridge.
Miranda clasped the rough ropes in her hands and stepped onto the foot rope with her good leg. She looked down to the forest floor, to the zombies that wandered below. The distance between the bridge and the ground seemed as nothing compared to the abyss they had just flung themselves into.
39
.
The bridges became more substantial as they traveled nearer to the village. Spaced wooden footboards were the first improvement, then the webbing between the hand ropes and the bridge decks became more substantial. The last bridge was the most elaborate yet. Oval-shaped metal supports arched overhead, fastened with industrial-sized metal bolts to a deck of thick wooden planks three feet across. Lanterns were attached, illuminating the walkway, and heavy-duty webbing stretched six feet up the sides. A small child would not be able to fall through it, even where it attached at the bottom.
At the end was a gate.
Miranda’s apprehension waned in the face of pain and exhaustion. From knee down her leg was spectacularly swollen and so painful she could barely limp, even with Connor’s help. To divert herself from the unnerving rope bridges she had tried to figure out how much sleep she had gotten in the past three days, only to find that the simple arithmetic involved stumped her. Delilah had finally surrendered fifteen minutes ago. She snored into Miranda’s ear. Several times they had crossed small platforms from one bridge to another and the others had offered to carry her, but Miranda was afraid the pit bull would end up plunging to her death in the transfer. Delilah would just have to wait until they were somewhere more secure.
She leaned into Connor whose arm wrapped around her waist. Two imposing, unfriendly looking men stood outside the gate. The lantern light glinted off machetes slung on their hips. Finn greeted them and conferred for a moment, then turned to the group.
“Evening service has already started. Miranda and Mario will be taken to the infirmary so that the healer can assess them.” Finn turned his attention to Miranda, who was closer to him than Mario. “Members of the Prophet’s Guard will escort you. The rest of you will come with me to service. Welcome to New Jerusalem.”
After a series of bolts and cross beams retracted, they stepped over the threshold. More tall, imposing men waited, presumably the escort to the infirmary. As far as she could see, dwellings of all sizes were built in the treetops. Lanterns flickered among them in no discernible pattern. She had caught glimpses as they approached the village, but Miranda found herself unprepared for the sight before her. Giant platforms that dwarfed the one they had first encountered after their rescue were built into the branches of a grove of giant Sequoias. Everything was ringed with the same high webbing as on the last bridge. Intricate log support structures girded the platforms and buildings, all of which were connected by the enclosed style of bridge.
“It’s like Swiss Family Robinson on steroids,” Connor whispered.
With a leader who calls himself a prophet, Miranda thought.
A middle-aged woman with a practical look about her approached them.
“This is Bethany, our healer. She will take Miranda and Mario to the infirmary,” Finn said. “The rest of you will come with me.”
“Can we get the dog off my back first?” When Finn, Dalton, and both of Prophet’s Guardsmen looked at her warily, she asked, “Is there a problem?”
“Most of the people here have only seen wild dogs,” Bethany said. “We’ll do it at the infirmary.”
“Are you all right, Miranda?” Doug asked, a silent question in his eyes: Can you hold your shit together?
Miranda could tell that Doug was unhappy about splitting up, but there was nothing any of them could do about it. “Go ahead. Don’t worry about us,” she answered.
She had fucked up earlier. She wasn’t going to again.
The infirmary reminded Miranda of a frontier cabin, with its whitewashed wood plank walls and cozy pot-bellied stove. Frontier except for the salvaged modern windows overlooking the walkway outside. At the other end of the mobile home-sized building, several young women were filling a round wooden bathtub that sat next to the wood-burning stove with steaming water.
Delilah was freed from the sling on Miranda’s back. Miranda felt as if she might float away now that the squirming pit bull no longer weighed her down. Mario took Delilah out to do her business and stretch her legs. He had been reluctant to leave Miranda alone but relented when Delilah began to whine and paw at the door. The Prophet’s Guard accompanying Mario had kept a healthy distance from them.
When Mario returned, Bethany took him to the examination area near the door. Miranda was led behind a large curtain that divided a row of cots.
“There you go,” said Pamela as she helped her into a chair by the cots. The slight teenaged girl had been assigned to look after Miranda “Let me pull this curtain and I will get you undressed.”
Pamela tapped a steaming pail of water next to Miranda’s feet with her toe and grinned. “I kept some of the hot water for you before the other girls put it all in the tub.”
While Pamela set about undressing and bathing Miranda, Miranda set about feeling ridiculous. After a few minutes, she began to relax. The water was scented with a fragrant herb and the light lather of the homemade soap and soft washcloth felt wonderful against her skin. She could hear the low murmur of Mario’s voice answering the healer’s questions.
To just sit and be taken care of felt like such an indulgence. Between the pleasurable sensations of the warm cloth caressing her skin and the lack of an imminent threat to her life, a bone-crushing weariness descended. Miranda let Pamela’s word wash over her and had begun to nod off when a bolt of lightning-sharp pain shot up her leg. Pamela’s face turned up, her brown eyes contrite.
“I barely touched it.”
“It’s okay,” Miranda assured her.
“How many children do you have, Miss Miranda?” Pamela asked. She moved the washcloth over Miranda’s other leg with practiced ease.
“None,” Miranda y
awned.
“No children?” Pamela lowered her voice. “Is it that you cannot? How old are you?”
“I’ve never tried, and I’m twenty-nine,” Miranda answered, amused by the girl’s lack of tact.
“Then not too old,” Pamela said, sounding satisfied.
“I guess not.”
“I will be fifteen soon,” Pamela said, voice brimming with excitement. “Once I am married, I will have many children, the Prophet be praised.” The girl wrung out the cloth and set it aside. “All done.”
Pamela allowed Miranda to dry herself while she fetched a long tunic from a hook and helped Miranda up from the chair and into the garment. Pamela shifted Miranda to a cot and cleared away the pail.
“Thank you,” Miranda said when Pamela returned. ”Whatever’s in the water smells wonderful.”
“The water is scented with sage and lavender. Sage is the Prophet’s favored scent, and lavender is mine.” Pamela inspected Miranda for a moment. “Your hair is red?”
“Yes,” Miranda said, trying to keep her eyes open. At this rate, she would be asleep by the time the healer examined her.
“Why is it shorn?”
Miranda ran a hand over her head, as if to confirm the state of her hairstyle. “I buzzed it off so there’d be nothing for a zombie to catch hold of. It was as long as yours before that.”
“But you will grow it long again, surely?”
Miranda shrugged.
“You should,” Pamela offered, with an assurance far beyond her years. “The Prophet teaches that a woman with shorn hair is like a flower that has not yet blossomed.”
“Thank you, Pamela, that will be enough.”
Bethany, the healer, spoke sharply as she walked up behind the girl. “You should be helping the others, not idling here.”
Pamela flushed a deep scarlet, mumbled an apology, and scurried away.
“I’m sorry about that,” Bethany said, her voice more indulgent now that the girl was out of earshot. “That one will talk you to death if you let her. Let’s see what’s going on with this leg of yours.”
Miranda pulled the tunic up. She answered the questions asked of her and tried to not wince or whimper. As thankful as she was to be out of danger, Pamela’s questions made her uneasy. The sooner they were out of New Jerusalem, the better.
40
.
Finn led Connor and the others farther into the village. The density of the village increased until they came to a wide plaza. Across the plaza stood the largest building Connor had seen thus far. The murmur of raised voices from inside the building pierced the silence. Finn stopped just outside the building’s wide doors. In the light of the torch illuminating the entrance, Connor could see a life-sized outline of a man, arms raised overhead in supplication, painted on both doors.
“Follow me.”
Finn opened the door. The warmer air inside the building enveloped Connor like an embrace. A raised dais illuminated by hurricane lanterns was on the far side of the one room building. In the rest of the space, where people were crammed into rows ten deep, the hurricane lamps were turned low. There must be three hundred people here, Connor thought. When Finn stopped and leaned against the back wall, Connor and his companions did as well. It wasn’t the first time Connor had stood at the back for church.
The slender man on the dais held his arm out to the gathering. He looked taller than Connor but shorter than Doug. One look at his pointed cheekbones, sharp nose, and golden eyes told Connor all he needed to know of who Finn’s father was.
“…reveling in the life of an unrepentant sinner. We could not believe Our luck, to live where We did, when city after city had fallen! You would think the end of the world would have caused Us to reflect, to re-evaluate Our life, but We did not.”
“God All-Father, save us,” the people answered.
The man on the stage continued with the ferocity of a carnival huckster. “We were foolish enough to think Our life, the life of an unrepentant sinner, would continue as before. But the Heavenly Father had other plans for Us.”
He stopped and looked down for a moment. When he looked back up the crackle of energy that raced through the gathering raised the hairs on Connor’s arms.
“Criminals such as We were rounded up, beaten until We could hardly walk, and thrown beyond the barricades. It’s funny,” he said, sounding amused. “How a person can summon strength they never knew they had when it is their own life on the line. We limped a little faster than the others, but not quick enough. We escaped the Hollow Men that attacked Us, but We were bitten many times. We locked Ourselves inside a building and waited to die, to turn.”
Suddenly, the room was filled with upraised voices, calling out to their Prophet. Under the cover of all the noise, Doug leaned over to Connor and said, “This whack job actually think he survived an untreated zombie bite.”
“Does it surprise you,” the Prophet demanded fiercely. “That a sinner might be saved by God?”
More cries from the crowd: All-Father Be Praised this, God All-Father’s Judgment Save Us that.
“Nothing to do with this” —the preacher said, jabbing his finger into his chest— “this meat, saved Us. We huddled in the corner, waiting to die, when We saw a book.” Jeremiah held aloft a worn Bible. “It made no sense to Us so We threw it aside and slept, such was Our pride! When We woke again Our fever raged worse than before. We glanced at the book that lay open beside Us and the scales fell away from Our eyes.”
The entire congregation said, “And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books.”
Connor realized he held his breath. The man who stood before them was mesmerizing. And completely insane.
“It was as if the words jumped off the page! They demanded Our attention! We realized that the Hollow Men were not a disease, not an epidemic,” the Prophet continued, eyes fever bright. “They were the judgment of God the Heavenly Father.”
Again, the congregation answered him. “For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.”
“Humanity had turned from Him. We worshipped the false gods of science and money. We had forgotten that We are only shells for the piece of the Heavenly Father that dwells within Us. ‘He sees every hidden thing, all of it written in His books of life and death.’ When He withdrew from humanity, only empty husks remained.”
“He did not withdraw from you, Pappa,” a high voice, a child’s voice, called out.
“But He did! He did! Don’t you see, My little one?” The Prophet stepped off the dais and walked over to a small boy seated on the floor. He picked the child up and began to pace back and forth in front of the congregation, the child on his hip.
“We had turned into a zombie. We had died and become what We feared. When We grasped that God had turned away from Us, We thought, ‘I should join my brothers and sisters.’ There was no point in denying Our nature, because there is no way to hide from His judgment!”
Connor looked at the child in the Prophet’s arms. The boy was about three, with the soft curve of cheek and chin that came with childhood, but there was no mistaking it: he too was the man’s child. He scanned the rest of the congregation. To Connor’s eye there were at least eight other kids of varying ages who bore such a strong resemblance to this prophet that he might be their father as well.
How many kids does this guy have?
“We accepted Our fate. We opened the doors and went outside, but the other Hollow Men shunned Us! They ran from Us! We pursued them, but they wanted nothing to do with Us. We fell to Our knees and cried out to God! We held His Bible, confessed Our sins, begged for His mercy. We begged to be accepted by Our hollowed-out brothers and sisters. We told Him that We understood His plan.”
The preacher set the boy down, as the congregation again joined in.
“We heard an angry voice that filled Us with fear: You understand nothing.”
Their prophet looked out over the congregation, nodding his head in approval.
“For God had spoken to Us,” he said. “God had restored Us, delivered us from Our fate as a Hollow Man. He commanded Us to collect the righteous and to build a New Jerusalem of God-fearing men. He told Us that We would be His Prophet, His God All-Father On Earth, for those who might one day be worthy of His Judgment. Our wicked, sinful life before would show the righteous His mercy for those obedient to His Will.”
The preacher took a deep breath. He bowed his head and brought his folded hands to his lips. “Praise be the God of Judgment.”
“Praise be the God of Judgment,” the congregation answered.
The preacher looked up. The room brightened as more of the Prophet’s Guard turned up the hurricane lanterns throughout the room.
“Those foretold in Our Revelation have arrived,” he said, hand outstretched to indicate where Connor and the others stood.
Everyone in the room turned in their seats. Whispers began as heads bobbed and necks craned, seeking better views.
“We will conclude Our service now, so that We may offer a proper welcome. Finish your devotions in your homes, My Children. Praise be the God of Judgment.”
The whispers became chattering and gawking. People began to file out the now opened doors, but rubber-necked so much that a bottleneck of foot-traffic formed.
The preacher came through the crowd, which parted around him.
Finn addressed him, “Prophet, I present Doug Michel, lately of San Jose, and his companions.”
The prophet nodded and held his hand out to Doug. “We are Jeremiah Butler.”
“Doug Michel,” said Doug as he shook his hand. “We’re in your debt.”
Jeremiah shook his head and demurred. “There are only four of you.”
Undead Age Series (Book 1): Love In An Undead Age Page 27
