Judgment Stone (9781401687359)

by Robert Liparulo

  The boy had just emerged from behind the far end of the Southwest Range Building, running on top of the wall that faced the excavation. He looked like a cartoon character, zipping faster than humanly possible.

  She spoke into the radio: “Jordan. Jordan!” The boy stopped in the center of the wall where it widened into a structure that supported the thinner, eight-foot-wide walls that winged out from it and once contained monk cells. He reached into a pocket, then two more before finding his radio transceiver. “I’m here.”

  “I know. I see you.”

  He looked around, spotted her and Phin on the roof, and waved.

  “What are you doing? Where’s Tyler?”

  “I’m . . . he . . .”

  She sighed. “Did he get away?”

  She thought she saw him nod.

  “Find him. Elias, you there?”

  A fountain of flames shot into the sky in front of the basilica. The mosque blocked her view of the entrance. She noticed wisps of black smoke floating through the air from various spots around the compound.

  She said, “What are you doing?”

  His voice came through, as clear as if he were standing next to her. “When the gunfire started, all these monks streamed out of the church. I chased them back in.” Another fountain of fire.

  “They’re all in there?” It was too early for vespers.

  “As far as I can tell. Three bodies on tables near the altar. I think they were bodies. They were covered with white sheets. Looked like a memorial service.”

  She told Phin, “They would all have been there.” She took it as a divine sign that their mission was blessed. Beth and Tyler hadn’t gotten the memo.

  “Nev,” came Elias’s voice.

  “Yeah?”

  “This church doesn’t have other exits, do you know? I strolled around, didn’t see any.”

  “Wish I were recording this,” Phin said. “That’s more words I’ve heard him say at one time in years.”

  She frowned at him, spoke into the radio: “If I remember right, no, just the one.”

  Flames streamed up, disappeared, leaving a drifting black snake of smoke.

  “Try not to burn the doors,” she said. “I knew the guys who made them.”

  “They’re nice,” he said.

  Carved by Byzantine artists in the fourth century, the doors contained reliefs of animals, birds, flowers, and leaves. Her friend had been one of the engravers, an ornery cuss, but what talent he possessed.

  The radio squawked with Toby’s voice: “What’s up?”

  Nevaeh saw him standing on the outcropping, a small figure almost lost among the complicated textures of the rocks. “Where were you? Did you see where Beth went?”

  “You don’t have her?”

  Nevaeh dropped her hand, said to Phin, “He was goofing off. Still ticked about having to be lookout.” She raised the radio. “What about Tyler? Did you see where he went?”

  “You lost him too?”

  “Just watch for them. Don’t leave your post.” She dropped the radio into a pocket and headed for the edge of the roof where Beth must have gone over. She could feel the boots’ pistons moving up and down to compensate for the roof’s pitch. Without looking, she leaped over the edge. Her boots and braces prepared for impact and she landed on her feet. Above her, Phin jittered around on the edge of the roof.

  “Come on,” she said. “Let’s find her and get out of here.”

  [ 54 ]

  Jordan had clomped past, kicking dirt down onto Tyler’s face. Tyler didn’t even spit it out of his mouth or wipe it from his eye. He simply closed that eye and pressed his lips together. His heart pounded, feeling like it was strong enough to beat the deck from the wall, loud enough to draw Jordan’s attention. He tried not to breathe, but that didn’t work so well; he wound up pulling in air louder than he would have had he kept a regular rhythm. Dirt went down his throat.

  Someone else was up there with Jordan: the woman he’d heard through the panic room door, Nevaeh. Right there, saying, “Jordan! Jordan!”

  The boy stopped, only a few feet away, said, “I’m here.”

  “I know. I see you.”

  And Tyler realized they were talking on radios.

  Nevaeh spoke to someone else, but Jordan stood up there listening in. Someone named Elias had apparently kept the monks from coming to their rescue when Mom fired the gun. Then another person said, “What’s up?” Sounded young, a teenager. He’d been away from his post, and Nevaeh wasn’t pleased. Tyler learned two important things from this conversation: the teen was up in the mountains, watching the compound, and Mom had gotten away. Tyler felt like he did on Christmas morning, hearing that. The talk ended and Jordan moved off, toward the front wall.

  Tyler lifted his head to look at the mountain rising to the south. Lots of places from which to watch St. Catherine’s. He finally wiped the dirt away from his face, his eye watering to wash out what he couldn’t get with his fingers. He kept looking at the mountain, slowly scanning back and forth. The spy wasn’t anywhere he could see, so the spy couldn’t see him either. When he got back into the compound, he’d have to be careful—and warn Mom.

  He dropped his head to the deck and wished she were with him now. And Dad. If Dad were here, he’d wipe the monastery floors with their backsides.

  But he wasn’t here.

  Tyler wiggled, seeing if the deck would shift. Then he rolled onto his stomach and stood. The platform creaked but didn’t move. He grabbed the door, operated the thumb-latch, and pushed. The door didn’t budge. He put his shoulder into it, and still the door pretended to be a wall.

  Oh, come on!

  It was unlocked last time. He had tried to get Mom to come see, told her they could surprise Dad by tossing breakfast rolls at him while he stood surveying the dig—his favorite spot was near the wall within roll-shot of the deck. It would be funny. But she hadn’t thought so. He’d bet any money Mom had mentioned it to Gheronda, who had boarded it up or locked it or otherwise rendered it no longer a door. Just to make sure, he rattled the handle, pushed at the door with his palm, chest, knees.

  The deck creaked and shifted, ratcheting away from the wall another inch. Tyler grabbed the handle and turned his feet sideways to get them on the sliver of floor that protruded from under the door. He stood there, cheek pressed against the splintery door, trying to make his entire body cling to it like paint. He couldn’t stay like this; even the minimal expansion of his chest as he breathed threatened to knock him back onto the deck.

  He pressed the toes of one foot to the deck, then lowered his heel, gradually shifting weight onto it. The deck made a low groaning sound, but it didn’t move. He put both feet on it, watching the gap between the deck’s rear edge and the wall.

  Maybe if he didn’t move, he could wait out whatever was happening with the Tribe in the monastery, without the deck collapsing and without being spotted. But then Mom wouldn’t know about the spy. She’d sneak around, looking for Tyler, and sooner or later the teenager in the mountains would see her and tell the people inside where she was. Then they’d take her away. And Dad would go after them. And Tyler would become an orphan. Saying it like that—being an orphan—wasn’t so bad, but what it meant—Mom and Dad gone, dead—was the worst thing he could imagine. Just the thought of it brought tears to his eyes and made his guts ache. He couldn’t stand here and let that happen.

  He looked up to the top of the wall, way overhead. The beam was closer, and if he could get on that, he could reach the top.

  He tested the railing. It wobbled but seemed sturdy. Gripping with his fingertips the little edge of wall available on his side of the door and the railing itself with his other hand, he stretched his leg up to get his foot on the top railing. He hopped up, rising fast, sliding his fingertips up with him. The railing teetered out, creaked. Tyler wavered, moving his hips back and forth, trying to keep from falling. The railing wobbled with him. The railing and he settled into a slight back-and-forth moti
on, something he could live with. Now he had to turn around. He rotated his head, then his shoulders, then his hips. He lifted one foot, turned it around, and placed it on the opposite side of the other foot. He lifted that one, turned it around, and he was done: standing on the railing, gripping the wall, facing the deck and more important, the beam, which was above him and a little ahead.

  He stretched to reach it, touched it with his fingers, couldn’t get his hands around it. Shifting his feet back on the railing, he rose onto his tiptoes. His fingers were almost . . . over . . . the . . . post . . .

  The railing snapped backward, collapsed.

  And Tyler fell.

  [ 55 ]

  Jagger knew they had the right place as soon as they drove into Zdravets. A man came toward them from the far end of the street, his face wracked with grief, tears streaming down his face, mouth open in a wail Jagger couldn’t hear. In his arms was draped the body of a child, his head and feet bouncing as the man ran.

  “Oh, dear God,” Owen said, speaking, Jagger knew, to his Lord. “Please say we’re not too late. Please.”

  But the evidence to the contrary was bobbing and flopping toward them in what was surely his father’s arms. Jagger’s stomach turned into a tight fist. He thought of Tyler, how recently he’d carried him like that, Tyler bleeding from a hole in his back, blood everywhere. And now Jagger could see the blood coming toward them, smeared on the father’s face, turning the boy’s arm into a grotesque barbershop pole.

  As they drove nearer, the man made no attempt to avoid them. “Stop!” Jagger said.

  Owen slammed on the brakes, and they both jumped out. Owen reached the two, quickly examined the boy, holding his fingers to his neck. He looked at Jagger, shook his head. He spoke to the man, who sobbed out a few words, then took off running again, wailing. Jagger watched him run past the car and continue up the road, as though hoping to catch his son’s spirit before it left town.

  But for the grace of God, Jagger thought and felt like an utter fool still questioning God, for not embracing Him after he and Tyler could have so easily been that man and boy. Lord, he prayed, thank You for saving Tyler . . . I’m sorry I’ve been so stupid. Clinging to his words like a shadow, he remembered praying something to the same effect when Steampunk was standing over him. What had he done since to show he was truly sorry? Please take away the poison that’s keeping me from loving You the way I should . . .

  Owen grabbed his arm. “He was tending his crops and was late getting to a church service in a barn around the bend. He found the boy when he arrived, others too. Get in the car.”

  They drove a hundred yards and followed the road as it curved. They saw the barn, and Owen punched the accelerator, bounding over the curb and sliding to a stop behind an old sedan. Owen’s door burst open and he swung his feet out.

  Jagger caught the back of his shirt with RoboHand. “The guns,” he said. “They might still be in there.”

  Owen pulled free, saying, “Do you think they would have let the father leave with his boy if they were?”

  Rounding the hood of the Beamer, watching Owen disappear into the barn, Jagger saw the bicycles and froze. Only for a second, long enough to imagine the children riding them here, dropping them in the dirt to rush inside. No, no . . .

  The scene inside was worse than he’d imagined, worse than he ever could imagine. Bodies everywhere. Sliced and severed and leaking blood into the hay floor. A woman wailed, a choking sob that jabbed at his heart, as she mourned over the body of a girl, twelve or thirteen years old. Owen knelt a few yards away, checking for a pulse on another child. He scrambled on his hands and knees to another, then another.

  Jagger dropped his head into his hand. He rubbed his hook over his temple, down his cheek, hard. He needed the pain, used it to cut through the chaos in his head. He wanted to scream.

  Owen was yelling at him. “Jagger!” He was pointing up the central aisle. “Check them!”

  Bodies, strewn between the pews, draped over them. Jagger ran to the nearest, a woman in her thirties. Eyes staring at the dark ceiling overhead. He pressed his fingers to her neck. He moved to the next person, an elderly man, his fingers clawing at a gaping wound in his chest. He snaked through the pews, checking, checking. He crawled to a man who was crumpled in the central aisle, missing an arm. Jagger had to roll him over, unfolding him to get to his neck. They were all dead, every one.

  He started weeping, overwhelmed by death, the smell of blood, the soft flesh of the bodies. He felt a hand on his back, but he didn’t look, just kept weeping.

  “We just missed them, Jagger,” Owen said over him. “Maybe by an hour.” It was about that long ago that Jagger had seen the lights flicker and disappear. “We have to go. There’s still a chance we can catch them. And we don’t want to be here when the cops show up. Foreigners at the scene of . . . of . . . even massacre doesn’t cut it this time. We have blood all over us. They’ll hold us if for no other reason than to have somebody in jail. Jag . . . ?”

  Jagger pushed up from the body. He was shaking, felt his muscles quivering on his arms, down his legs. He spun toward Owen. “How could this have happened? How could God have let it?”

  Owen reached out; Jagger backed away. He pushed his hand into his pocket and pulled out the cloth. The fragment flew up and landed in the hay. He dropped and crawled to it, grabbed it and squeezed.

  When he looked up he saw an angel to the right of the door. He was on his knees, one hand over his chest, the other resting on the head of a dead child. Some embers swirled around him slowly, but most seemed pooled in his lap, flowing out to move over the child, like a blanket unfurling to cover the body. His head was lowered and he was weeping.

  “There you are!” Jagger yelled. He snapped his head toward another, bent over the body of the first woman whose pulse he’d checked. “And you!” A third was at the far end of a pew, his fingers moving gently over the head of a man. “You!” Pointing. “Where were you when this happened? What did you do to stop it?”

  Owen put his arm around Jagger’s shoulder. Jagger turned and pulled, but Owen held on. “Jag, I know.”

  Jagger looked at him. “They’re right here! They were here, when this . . . this atrocity went down. What good are they if they can’t stop this?”

  “They’re here to comfort.”

  “And protect, I thought. Aren’t they supposed to protect?”

  “When they can, if it’s God’s will.”

  “So God willed this?”

  “It’s the result of a fallen world, Jag. A sinful world.”

  “That God allows.”

  “Yes.”

  Jagger didn’t want to hear Owen’s answers. Not standing here in the stench of blood, the bodies of men and women and children all around, people who had been praying when they’d been cut down. He waved his hand around, taking in each angel. “They did nothing.”

  “We don’t know that,” Owen said. “Maybe they fought, were overwhelmed. Maybe they comforted the dying, made them feel less fear. I think of angels as restrainers, mitigators of the evil that permeates the earth. We look at the bad things that happen and say, Hey, where were you? And all the while they’re holding back the flood, making it less bad than it would be without them.”

  “They didn’t restrain evil here.”

  “It doesn’t look that way to us.”

  “How could it have been worse?”

  “I don’t know, Jagger, but God was here, His angels were here. Something good will come of this.”

  “Not for them, not for those kids who’ll never grow up to love a spouse, have children, grow old . . .”

  “I think they might disagree with you,” Owen said. “My guess is they’re pretty happy now.”

  “If dying like this isn’t so bad . . .”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “If God makes everything all right, why are they crying? Owen, the angels are weeping over these people!”

  “Jesus wept.”
/>   And that just made Jagger sad and confused. So many contradictions. He walked out of Owen’s embrace and knelt beside the angel. He reached out and brushed his hand over the child’s cheek. Hearing of the Clan’s massacre in the nightclub, he had felt his doubt about Owen’s determination to get the God Stone away from the Tribe loosen, a little bit of it fall away. Witnessing this, this slaughter of innocents, his doubt crumbled like a cracker under the boots of an army. But he didn’t want to just get the Stone back, he wanted to stop the Clan altogether. He wanted to kill them.

  He rose and left the barn, Owen following. He kept thinking about the big bright light he’d seen shooting into the sky from this place, from the people whose blood he had all over him. Bale had seen it too; that’s what had drawn him here. At the car, before opening the door, he said, “All those people dead. The Clan used something God made to murder them.”

  “Humans always do,” Owen said and climbed into the car.

  [ 56 ]

  Thinking the police would approach the village from the same direction they had, Owen went the other way, ending up on a winding dirt road. He punched the airport into the GPS and saw that they could reach it the way they were heading, losing only about ten minutes over trekking back the way they’d come.

  Neither spoke, each caught up in his own thoughts. Owen started praying, and Jagger was glad the fragment’s effect had worn off. There was no way to look at the beam of light or the angels or the way the sky rippled with color without feeling a bit of God’s glory; it was calming and awesome and . . . sublime. Jagger already had enough in his head, feeling like all of it was peeling away layers of his brain. He didn’t want to add anything to it, even if it was sublime.

  He looked down at his bloody hand, open in his lap. Even his hook bore smears and globs of the stuff. He rubbed them on his khakis, but the blood had already dried. “Stop up here.”

  “Where?”

  “Right here.”

  “There’s nothing here.”

  “Will you stop? Please?”