by Jack Colrain
“You didn’t have to miss anyone. You could have stayed. You and Chloe didn’t need to miss me.” He gave Chloe a smile and a nod, and she finally let go, sitting in the chair to his left, nearer him than Jill. She hung onto his hand.
Jill shook her head, her eyes narrowing on him. “I didn’t just mean Chloe and me, Cody. I mean the church misses you. You’d be such a boon to us. Another complete family—living, united. The Archimandrite agrees, and that’s why we came out to see you.” She pointed back at the looming church. “All you have to do for us to be together is come and unite with us.” Her eyes glowed with what looked like fervent hope, or the coke he thought she had kicked. Maybe both.
Cody stood and took a step towards the edge of the restaurant’s seating, as if to get a better view of the church. Since Chloe’s hand was still in his, he lifted her up with him so she sat in his arms. “How are you liking Mommy’s church?”
“It’s OK, I guess,” Chloe replied, unconvincingly. It was the tone of a child who didn’t want to cause any ill-feelings between the adults around her, and was going with politeness. She looked back at the church nervously, her eyes darting towards various people in the plaza—mainly the ones wearing buttoned shirts over turtlenecks.
“You sure? If you really want to be here...”
Chloe’s eyes widened, and her head started to shake before she caught herself. “No...”
“No?”
“She’s still a little shy around some of the other kids,” Jill cut in.
“All the other kids are scared, and that makes me scared, too.”
Jill stood—smiling falsely, in Cody’s opinion. “It always takes time for kids to adjust—"
“You said you were both settled,” Cody said pointedly. “What are you scared of?” he asked Chloe.
Chloe looked at her mom, and then shrugged in Cody’s arms. “I dunno. I don’t like some of the people. They look at me weird.” Jill’s smile edged towards becoming a grimace, and she stepped closer to father and daughter.
“You sound like you need a hug.” Cody cuddled his daughter tighter into his arms, holding her against his chest. “You know Mommy and I both love you, right?” He nodded towards Jill, hoping she would feel put at ease by being included. He felt Chloe nod against the side of his head. She held on tight to him, almost squeezing the breath from Cody despite her size.
“I want to go home with you, Dad,” she whispered, her voice trembling.
“Then that’s where we’re going.”
“We're going where?” Jill demanded.
“Home!” Chloe yelled, half deafening Cody before he could say anything.
Jill’s eyes darted around. “Okay, then.” She reached out a hand. “We can walk back to the Church—”
“Home with Daddy!”
“No. No, honey. The Church is our home now.”
“No!” Chloe insisted, and Cody backed away from Jill, too conscious of the looks they were drawing from other diners and bystanders. Cody nodded toward the restaurant, to Daniel, who was at his side in a heartbeat, and Cody passed Chloe to him. Jill’s eyes had already widened as she’d leapt to her feet, exploding “Danny?! What the—” She lunged for Chloe then, who was already holding tight to Daniel, tearful but silent. Cody blocked his ex, and she lashed out with a wild punch at his face. He rolled with it, pulling a chair in between them as he spun aside. Jill stumbled over the chair, almost falling as she yelled at him, her obscenities all but drowned out by Chloe’s screams of terror and confusion.
As well as some of the Mozari church guys running towards them, a couple of the restaurant’s patrons were getting to their feet now, and Cody knew how this situation must look to them; he’d seen it enough times as a cop. He pulled out his badge and gun, pointing the muzzle into the air. “Police Officer!” he yelled. “This woman is under arrest for custody violation.” The diners looked uncertain, but hesitated. “Get her to safety,” he told Daniel. Daniel backed off, reassuring Chloe as best he could. He moved carefully, so Chloe could hold on safely.
“He’s taking my daughter!” Jill shouted.
“Then you shouldn’t have violated the custody terms!” Cody snapped, holding her back. A couple of the other cultists were almost upon him, so he pointed the gun at them, forcing them to halt. Keeping himself between Jill and direction Daniel had taken Chloe, he stepped towards the cultists, holding his pistol in a practiced Weaver stance. “On the ground now!” he yelled. “On the ground!” As they slowly obeyed, he stepped to the side, lining up to run for the road back to the parking lot.
“Put the weapon down,” someone called from behind him, and he heard the sounds of running boots. Cody held the pistol pointed to the sky and opened his badge wallet as he turned. Three fully armed soldiers were running towards the scene, their rifles raised.
“They took my daughter,” Jill yelled. She started to move away, but one of the soldiers aimed at her, and she had the sense to stop moving again.
“Police officer,” Cody shouted back. “I could use your help, guys.” The soldiers traded glances momentarily, and the nearest one signaled to the others, who lowered their weapons slightly. “What’s going on?”
Cody flashed his badge again. “This woman’s in violation of a federal custody order and transported a minor across the state line illegally. Her friends from the Mozari church seem to be reluctant to see that order enforced.” Understanding crossed the soldiers’ faces, and Cody put the badge away before they could get close enough to see that it wasn’t a BPD badge. If they did check, at least telling them about the state line crossing laid the groundwork for an excuse as to why he was out of his jurisdiction. “Can you make sure nobody gets too frisky while I check that my partner got to the car OK? It’s parked on the other side of the Massachusetts Avenue roadblock; we had to walk.”
“OK, but be quick.”
Cody tried not to show them how relieved he felt right then. He kept his breathing under control so as not to be too obvious about letting out a long-held breath. “Thanks, guys. I owe you one.” Holstering his pistol, Cody set off at a jog.
Daniel was pretty sure a couple of Mozari cultists were following them, but he knew Chloe wouldn’t be able to outrun them on her own, and he wouldn’t be able to outrun them if he was carrying her. There was no point in scaring her, though.
Thankfully, there were still plenty of people on the streets, kids included, and neither he nor Chloe were wearing anything that particularly stood out.
Then he heard Cody’s voice in his memory. People notice people running, he’d said. As soon as they broke the line of sight of people in the plaza, Daniel put Chloe down and took her hand. “You OK?”
“Is Daddy coming?”
“Yeah. He’ll catch up with us, OK? D’you think you can put up with me till then?”
She nodded mutely, but managed a smile that did little to calm Daniel’s nerves. To complicate their path, he took her through a closing store that he’d earlier noticed had doors on two different walls, so that anyone following would only see them going in, but not coming out the other set of doors. Chloe momentarily dragged him aside to look at a t-shirt she liked, but he reminded her that the store was closing. “Maybe next time,” he said as they exited the store.
Outside, Daniel risked a glance around them and saw two cultists—one preppy-looking younger guy and one balding with a comb-over—shuffling along and turning in an attempt to spot their quarry. They didn’t see him, so he ducked sideways into a McDonald’s.
“You need anything. Chloe?” he asked.
“I do need the bathroom,” she said.
“I bet. That was pretty scary, huh?” He pointed towards the restrooms at the back. “Go right ahead.” He wasn’t worried that the cultists might catch up with them; they would assume their prey would keep going in whatever direction they had gone, and even if they did come in for some reason, they were both guys, so they wouldn’t be able to walk into the ladies’ room without causing an uproar.
Of course, he would see them first in any case. He leaned on a wall near the door, pretending to be pondering the menu on the wall so that he could watch the street while hiding his face.
After a moment, the cultist with the lank comb-over strolled past on the other side of the street, looking around rather lazily. If he noticed Daniel, he showed no sign of it. He went on, turning into an alley leading away from the direction of the parking lot where Daniel’s SUV was waiting. There was, after all, no reason for them to know where he and Chloe were going.
When Chloe returned from the restroom, Daniel stepped out cautiously, looking for either of the cultists. Neither were in sight, so he took Chloe’s hand again and walked her the rest of the way to the parking lot. “This is our car,” he said. Now, we just wait here for your dad.”
“Thanks, Uncle Danny,” she said quietly, looking around towards the pedestrian entrances.
Danny unlocked the car. “Do you want to sit inside, or wait out here?”
“I’ll wait. I can watch for Daddy.”
“OK. You watch that way,” he said, pointing, “and I’ll watch the other entrance.” She nodded and put her hand above eyes like a scout shielding them from the sun in a cartoon. Daniel suppressed a smile.
Cody joined them a couple of minutes later, immediately ducking down to hug his daughter.
“You OK to drive us out?” Cody asked after a couple of minutes of solid father-daughter hugging.
Daniel nodded. “I remember how we came in; I’ll backtrack.”
“Cool.” Cody helped Chloe into the back seat and got in there himself. “Remember to buckle up—” He stopped himself with a chuckle as she tugged at the seatbelt she had already secured. “Excellent.”
He turned back to Daniel. “Any trouble getting here?”
“Nah, we just walked. Even managed a bathroom break. You?”
“Not really. That’ll come later, when the Jill makes noise about who I really am.”
“If she does. She’s the one who broke the law and endangered her child.”
“Depends how much she thinks she can gain. Thankfully, Chloe isn’t something she can gain. Not even the way the world is today.”
“Scary and getting scarier,” Chloe piped up.
“That it is,” Cody agreed. “That’s why we need to make sure to look after each other.”
Six
New York City, NY.
The Chapel wasn’t the oldest one in the metropolis, but it had seen its fair share of decades. Around a hundred years old, its stonework was dulled and darkened by soot, yet its stained glass windows had been kept bright and clean by generations of parishioners so that their colors shone even more beautifully by contrast, especially in such morning sunlight as speared through between the surrounding buildings in summer.
Father Jackson was holding morning Mass when he saw the Mozari-worshiper join his congregation. The man looked around curiously, as if unsure whether he was allowed to come in or not. Father Jackson didn’t mind at all; the Church should be welcoming, in his opinion, and if a lost sheep wanted to return after being briefly led astray by a new fashion, that could only be a good thing. He couldn’t interrupt the liturgy, as the two dozen people attending the Mass were already listening intently and awaiting their turn, but he could and did give the man a friendly smile and nod, beckoning him to join the congregation.
The man strolled forward, frowning and tense. “Your invisible God can’t save anyone,” he said loudly, making everyone look around. “He’s going to get the world killed.”
“My son,” Father Jackson began, “there’s no need for such rudeness—”
“Only the Mozari can save us! They’re the only real thing up in the sky. You’ll get the world killed!”
With that, the guy pulled a pistol from the back of his pants and started shooting. Father Jackson heard something snap near his ear, and he stumbled, falling to his knees, the side of his face cracking against the altar. A woman in the front pew crumpled with a whimper as the shooting continued. Screams filled the church, and one man who had the look of a veteran or ex-cop lunged at the guy from the side, knocking his aim away from the other parishioners. A couple of people bolted for the door, and the would-be defender of the Church fell back as three rapid shots caught him in the chest and face.
There was a blessed silence then, as the cultist reloaded, fumbling with his pistol. More people fled while Father Jackson struggled to his feet and pulled off the altar covering, hurrying forward and trying to hurl it over the man’s head before tackling him to the ground. Stars exploded in Jackson’s head as the cultist cracked him on the temple with the pistol butt. “The Mozari won’t save you,” the cultist snarled, kicking the priest in the ribs. He raised the pistol again.
“Drop the weapon!” two voices shouted in unison. Father Jackson saw the cultist turn, the pistol turning with him, in the direction of two Guardsmen standing in the doorway with their rifles trained on him. Jackson tried to squeeze himself deeper into the floor as a three-round burst cracked out.
Then the cultist fell, his pistol clattering away.
“Are there any others?” a voice demanded urgently. “How many active shooters?” Father Jackson realized it was one of the soldiers, who were both scanning the room, eyeing the pews suspiciously, fingers on their triggers. He found his voice in a hurry, answering, “Just one. Just him.”
They lowered their rifles, and Jackson took a long, shuddering breath. “There was just him.”
Greenwich, CT.
“With four dead, including the shooter, and nine injured, this is only the latest incident of violence ascribed to radicalized members of the Church of the Mozari,” the news anchor was saying while, in the background, footage played of NYC paramedics helping shaken men, women, and children out of a church. “In reaction to this and the firebombing of the community church in Silver Creek, Alabama, where ten members of the congregation were immolated when unable to escape the burning building, people are beginning to voice increasing concerns about the nature of this new religion. Has it gone from being a magnet for fans of TV pseudo-documentaries about ancient aliens to being a magnet for a more dangerous form of rebellious outsiders?”
The news hosts went to a segment shot at the First Church plaza. The Archimandrite, Charles Kebbell, smiled a little too widely while flanked by buff-looking cultists who resembled nothing so much as Secret Service agents on protection duty. “The Mozari don’t condone any of this violence, of course,” he stated. “They’ve come to save us from the wars that we ourselves love to create. From our own violence, in fact.”
“You say that,” the reporter in Boston said, “but how do you then address the destruction of Houston and Shenzhen—”
“After our missile forces from those cities attacked them? They have a perfect right to defend themselves, surely?”
“And Sydney, Islamabad, and New Delhi?”
“Sydney, they have explained to me, was an accident; a meteor deflected from impacting their ship was unfortunately recognized too late as heading toward a city rather than an empty area of the Australian desert. They attempted to deflect it further, of course, but sadly, it was too late. The other two cities... Well, as I said, their intent is to save us from our propensity for violence, and those two countries were going to war. The Mozari’s actions saved many more lives than were lost. Just as was the case with our own atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which ended World War Two.”
“And their conflict couldn’t be prevented without destroying entire cities?”
“Sometimes surgical procedures require the removal of healthy tissue from around infections or tumors in order to be certain that a disease is truly gone.”
“And did the shooter in New York or the arsonists in Alabama believe they were surgeons?”
Kebbell appeared completely unfazed. “As I said, we abhor all violence; our way of life is to promote life, and the continued creation of it, not its destruction. Clearly, anyone who pe
rpetrates such a violent act is not truly of the faith but afflicted by some mental health issues. Perhaps they are even lying to throw the First Church into a bad light.”
Daniel, Cody, and Nathan were watching the national news over breakfast. Maria had already risen early to check on the ripening tomatoes, and Chloe was out there helping her. She seemed to be enjoying learning about gardening and plants, Daniel had noticed. Nathan switched the TV off when the local weather segment came on since none of them needed a vacuous presenter to tell them it was going to be a glorious summer’s day.
“Jill called the house again last night,” Cody said. “Still begging for me to bring Chloe back to the Mozzarellas and for us to be a family there. She can’t take a hint.”
“At least she hasn’t done anything crazy about it,” Nathan said. “No lawsuits, no attempt to snatch her back...”
“That kind of worries me, and that’s why I’m glad you let Chloe stay here this week. She knows the house, which means the other Mozzarellas might know the house. If any of them come calling, I can look after my property, but I don’t want them to find Chloe there.” Cody said. “I know Hukk still loves Chloe enough to put her first, same as I do, but somehow I don’t feel the same way about the rest of them.”
Daniel balled his fists. “More likely, that creepy Archimandrite guy won’t let her out to try, just in case she jumps ship on them, as well.”
“Daniel may have a point,” Nathan agreed. “You’ve seen the interviews with that guy, and you’ve seen Chloe’s reactions to being at that church of theirs. We all know it’s no place for Chloe. Or any other child, for that matter.”
“Whatever the reason, I’m just grateful for it. And for you guys letting me and Chloe stay here.”
