by Jeff Long
“It’s not that,” said Nathan Lee. This was the end.
“I know,” Izzy said more quietly.
Part of him wanted to talk Izzy out of it. But in his place, Nathan Lee knew he’d be going, too.
“We covered a good bit of ground,” said Izzy. “Two thousand years. Not so bad.”
“At least talk to Miranda,” said Nathan Lee. “You’ve heard of the Sera-III. Let her immunize you.”
“It takes too long to kick in,” said Izzy. “Forty-eight hours. By then my brother could have disappeared again.”
It was Izzy’s idea to take a camera into the camp. The camera was a “lipstick” device rigged to beam a microwave signal across the river and up to the city. Uncertain how a camera might be received among the fanatics, its main works were concealed in a tattered, and hopefully inconspicuous, daypack. The tiny lens was mounted on a flexible cord that snaked up through his hair and along one stem of his glasses. He was wired for sound like an undercover cop. Wherever he looked and listened, they would see and hear.
There was no time for a proper send-off. He was anxious to see his brother, and at the same time afraid of changing his mind. Miranda arrived at the gate just as Izzy was leaving, and gave him a crushing embrace. “Are you sure?” she cried.
“Miranda,” Izzy said dolefully. With a wink at Nathan Lee, he got a second hug, and stole a kiss.
THROUGH THE EYE of Izzy’s camera, they descended down Highway 502 behind the wheel of a big truck filled with supplies. The road stayed empty as the valley floor leveled out. Then in the distance, they saw the bridge and the great stretch of crosses. “Wish me luck,” they heard Izzy breathe.
Over the coming days, the faceless masses gained a soul.
Through Izzy’s camera, a thousand details came pouring into Los Alamos. Until now, it had been easy to imagine the camp as an outdoor cathedral, flush with passion, grubby, but somehow not quite as bad as it was. In fact, conditions were primeval. The living mingled with the dying. Over Izzy’s microphone, you could hear shouts, chanted prayers, howls, pleas and song blending into white noise.
Hairy faces leapt at the lens with wild proclamations. Bodies lay where they had fallen. Others drifted facedown in the Rio.
Izzy wandered for three days, undetected, unable to find his brother. There were over a million people there. On the fourth day, Izzy turned the camera on himself and spoke to the city.
“It seems I made a mistake,” he said quite simply. “Don’t anyone follow me.”
33
The Prophet
It was like watching live cable feeds from Hell.
Izzy roamed the camp with his camera, doomed. He had drawn some of his own blood, and it tested positive. He could have fled the awful camp for some saner place to grow sick and die. Instead he chose to stay and serve the city as their eyes. If not for him, they would never have met the prophet.
A pair of semi-trailers full of food was burning. A mob ringed the heat, watching passively. They were starving, and yet no one tried to save the food. Izzy asked one of the gaunt spectators, who merely smiled.
A distant voice could be heard over the crackle of flames. “Cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the country….” People were shouting amen. “The Lord will make the plague cling to you until He has consumed you from the land which you are going to possess.”
His lens bobbing, Izzy went in search of the preacher. As he got closer, Nathan Lee started. Even over the television, he knew that voice. But when the camera reached the front of the crowd, he could barely recognize Ochs.
The fat had melted from him on his great, circular journey through the wastelands. Stripped to sinew and bone, he looked more giant than ever. He towered head and bare shoulders above the masses. His beard and hair were tangled in a foul nest. Dogs, or snipers, had lamed him. He used a metal fence post for his walking staff. It looked like a huge arrow. Plague victims welcomed his demands for atonement with outstretched arms. The flagellantes were hard at work all around him, whipping their own backs with chains and barbwire. As Izzy backed away, Ochs spoke through a mist of gore.
OCHS, THEY REALIZED, had to be the pilgrims’ unrevealed leader. At last, in him, the city believed there was someone with whom they could negotiate. Even though Ochs had been banished from their gates, people took hope because he had once been one of their own. They asked Izzy to approach him and get his consent to speak with Miranda and emergency council.
“He’ll make hamburger out of me,” Izzy fretted, but he finally did as they asked. To everyone’s surprise, Ochs agreed to a video conference late that same afternoon. The emergency council went into overdrive to prepare for the meeting.
Nathan Lee was brought into the council chambers as a consultant. The place was a beehive of specialists, support staff, and officials. Crews were setting up cameras and television screens, and on the far side of the room Miranda was arguing with one of the generals. Of late the generals had become belligerent, challenging her authority in public. Night after night, Miranda had trouble sleeping, convinced her father had installed her as the director merely to lull the city while the subterranean chambers were completed. Nathan Lee did not use her worries against her, not yet. When the time came, he reckoned she would be sick of the intrigues and deceit and would gladly go with him to the west.
A woman in a blue business suit came over to Nathan Lee. She introduced herself as an FBI negotiator and led him to a table away from the bustle. “We have two hours,” she said. “Our survival could depend on mediating a truce with Ochs. You were friends.”
“I knew him.”
“Who is he? What about him is real? What’s not?” She opened a dossier on Ochs and went through it with him. It was the biography of a make-believe man. The photos showed every phase of Ochs’s metamorphosis. Here was the thickly muscled football player, and the art dealer at a museum auction, and the professor before his class, and the explorer sun-bronzed on the Everest archaeology expedition. “That’s where I first met him,” said Nathan Lee. “There’s my father in the background. And me. I was seventeen.” It was unbelievable. For almost half his life, Nathan Lee had been burdened by the man.
Other photos showed Ochs at a Year Zero dig in Israel, and holding forth at some university function, and finally, in a daze, just before his deportation from Los Alamos. Then there was the still image lifted from Izzy’s coverage of the burning trucks that same morning. He could have been John the Baptist in ripped burlap with a bagful of locusts and honey.
“I’m not sure what you want,” said Nathan Lee. “Call him Professor. Or Doctor. Or David. Never Dave. Honor him, that’s important. He’s always thought a great deal of himself.” The FBI lady started writing.
Nathan Lee flipped through the file. Ochs had largely succeeded in ghostwriting his own biography. It was a portrait of ambition. Given the opportunity, he took all the credit and gave all the blame. He boasted credentials he’d never had, hid indiscretions, even lied about his weight on his driver’s license. There was his Neandertal discovery, minus Nathan Lee. For the first time, Nathan Lee saw the newspaper articles celebrating Ochs’s incredible discovery of the ice woman.
Yet Ochs hadn’t managed to completely rewrite his past. An Interpol document revealed at least some of his sins, most of them having to do with antiquities smuggling. It seemed like the least of evils now.
“Will he listen to you?”
“No,” said Nathan Lee.
“Why not?”
“He knows I want to kill him.”
The woman’s pen stopped. “You’re serious.”
“He’s that kind of man,” Nathan Lee answered.
“And you’re not?” she responded.
Nathan Lee had no idea what kind of man he was anymore.
She returned to her clipboard. “What does he want? A ministry? Food for his people? Revenge? Back inside the fence?”
Nathan Lee looked at the last photo of the wild prophet. He rememb
ered the burning food. “I think he’s found exactly what he wants.”
“But we can offer him comfort. We can South Sector him. Give him a hospital bed in one of the BSL-4’s. He could be very comfortable there.”
Nathan Lee thought about it. “It’s too late. There was a time when he would have done anything to get out of that camp. But I saw him on TV. He’s near the end of his journey. He only has a little more to go.”
“He must want something, though.”
Nathan Lee turned the question back on her. “No big mystery. The same thing you want.”
“Clarify,” she said.
“Ochs wants what we all want. Not right this minute, in this warm room with our good health and clean clothes. In the middle of the night, I mean.”
She didn’t write anything. She thought it was a communication problem. “But you see, we have to give him something. This is a negotiation.” The negotiator asked Nathan Lee to go through the dossier again. “If it jogs any memories, anything, I’ll be right over there.” She left him.
While Nathan Lee went through Ochs’s resumes, photos, diplomas, and other documents, he heard three generals talking. “We’ve got snipers,” said one.
“God, don’t martyr the bastard.”
“Would decapitation even work?” said the third. “What if he’s not really their leader?”
At ten before the hour, they miked Miranda and arranged her at the table. The shouting stopped. Their queen was ready.
“We link up at the top of the hour,” the FBI woman was briefing her. “Here’s a set of talking points we’ve worked up. Set a reasonable tone. Treat him as an equal. Don’t talk down to him. Don’t be submissive. Impress on Professor Ochs that we’re working on his behalf. Ask him what they want. More food? Medicine? The messiah clone?”
“Negative, the clone,” snapped the general with whom Miranda had been arguing. They’d already fought like dogs over this. “He’s a ransom asset. Call it mutual assured destruction. Ochs knows the score. He’s one of us, or used to be.” Heads nodded at the Cold Warrior wisdom.
“They want the monster?” one of the civilian deputies argued. “Give him to them. Wrap him up in a big red bow. Send him down.”
“He would never go,” Nathan Lee interrupted.
“But they’re his people.”
“He’s not the one they want,” said Nathan Lee. “He’s a fake.”
“It doesn’t matter. Send them any of the clones. Put a crown of thorns on him. They’ll never know the difference.”
“Ochs would know.”
“Ochs.” It came back to that, to trying to cut a deal with the unknown.
Miranda straightened in her chair. She folded her hands and raised her chin. The negogiator went down her list. “Tell them we’re close to the cure,” the woman said.
“But there is no cure,” Miranda said. “They know that. If there was, we’d be down there inoculating them all.”
Nathan Lee watched the group. They thought she was offering a gambit. “We could try that,” someone considered.
“Too late for that anyway,” said a lab chief. “They’re not going away. They can’t. These are very sick people. They have no shelter, no food, no sanitation. The secondary infections are rampant down there. The die-off’s happening already. For them, this is the end of the road.”
“Stick with the cure,” said the negotiator. “We promised them a miracle. It’s supposed to happen here, on this hill, in our labs. We just need time. They’ll respect that.”
“If we can just keep them stalled another two weeks, attrition will do the rest,” the lab chief said.
“Two weeks?” a man protested. “They could attack in two hours. We don’t know what we’re dealing with.”
The room fell quiet.
“We shouldn’t be here,” a man called out. “You have to order the evacuation. Immediately.”
Another voice spoke. “We should have been evacuated a long time ago.”
Miranda’s face was grey. Her eyes darted around the room, searching for Nathan Lee. She hesitated. Nathan Lee saw a frightened girl. She was afraid for them, afraid of herself, afraid she might be wrong.
The general charged into her indecision. “Negative, the evacuation,” he said. “The encampment covers I-84 all the way to Santa Fe.”
A scientist stood up. “Offer them the city. They can have everything. All they need to do is let us pass.”
“While we save ourselves?” said the general. “Not one truck would make it through.”
“Then use the back road,” someone said.
“That was built for light traffic. We’re talking about a convoy of heavily loaded, 16-wheel trucks. The back road can’t handle us.”
“We can’t be evacuated?” It was Miranda. She had argued against evacuation for months, and yet was as shocked as the rest of them.
“That option is injudicious at this time,” said the general.
“Injudicious?” she said.
Around the room, the other generals glanced at one another. “It is not timely,” said the general, “at this time.”
“Thirty seconds,” said a man behind one of the cameras.
Ochs appeared on their multiple screens, pacing back and forth, hairy, backlit by a fire. Izzy wasn’t doing a good job following him with the camera. Ochs kept sliding in and out of view. The camera seemed fixed in place. The one constant was a cluster of penitente crosses in the distance.
“Just get him talking,” the negotiator told Miranda. “Roll with any punches. Don’t provoke him. Remember, dialogue. Engagement. Today, tonight, tomorrow, next week. As often as possible. We’re here for him, 24/7. Whatever he needs.”
People scattered on every side as if Miranda were in the line of fire. Her solitary image flashed on the screens, then it was back to Ochs stabbing at the earth with his metal post.
“Five, four, three,” said the cameraman. Two fingers, one. He pointed at Miranda.
“Ochs,” she said loudly. “Can you hear me?”
Ochs stalked closer. He peered at a TV set beside Izzy’s camera. “Mystery,” he declared. “Is that you?”
Miranda was thrown off balance. She looked around the table. “Mystery?” someone murmured.
“The mother of harlots and the abominations of the earth,” said Ochs.
They had given Nathan Lee a slate to write messages on. He wrote Book/Revelation, and held it for her to see.
“You can use plain English,” she said. “We’ve had enough Bible-speak up here.” The negotiator winced. “You’ve been busy,” Miranda continued.
“Lots to do,” Ochs boomed.
“We’ve been busy here, too.”
“The things I’ve seen,” he muttered.
“Did you hurt your leg?”
“That,” he dismissed.
“Let us help. Your people are suffering.”
Ochs glanced around him. “Seasoning,” he said. “They’re not afraid. Just making themselves ready for the big day.”
Eyes locked on eyes around the room. Judgment Day. They held their collective breath.
“When’s the big day?” Miranda asked.
“Soon,” he smiled.
“What happens then?”
“You just told me, no Bible talk.”
“Knock yourself out.”
His eyes gleamed. “Doot eighteen,” he said.
Some people looked at their watches, like he’d given a time. Nathan Lee reached for a Bible.
“Are you going to cross the river?” Miranda asked pointblank.
One of the generals frantically cut a finger across his throat to shut her up. The negotiator muttered, “Don’t provoke him.” Too late for that, thought Nathan Lee. Ochs had made up his mind to raise this army the day they’d exiled him. Then he remembered Miranda’s father predicting Ochs’s return. They had known he would go preaching. They’d calculated the arc of his circle. It made no sense. Why set a madman loose in the wilderness if he was going
to come back to haunt you?
“The spirit guides us down here,” Ochs answered.
“You guide the spirit,” said Miranda. “I understand why you hate us. But these are your people. Show them a little mercy. Why burn their food?”
Ochs bent and looked into the lens. “You’ve got the wrong idea, Miranda. Tempting us is a waste of time. The sword has fallen on my people. Now they are the sword. Keep your food. And your spies, too.”
Abruptly Ochs was finished with them. He didn’t say another word, simply walked off camera. “Ochs?” called Miranda.
His suddenness stunned them. Everyone began talking at once.
“He didn’t even ask about the Jesus clone,” someone objected.
“We were going to offer him amnesty,” another said.
“What spies? We approached him in good faith. What about good faith?”
What about Izzy? thought Nathan Lee. They had rolled the dice with him and didn’t like the roll, and now Izzy was seemingly forgotten.
“I think we’re okay,” a woman was saying. “The man’s Stage One. Functional delirium. He’s probably already forgotten he talked with us.”
Round and round they went, analyzing the short, bizarre encounter.
“Doot-eighteen,” Nathan Lee spoke up. They looked at him. The room hushed. He abbreviated it for them.
“When you come into the land which God is giving you, you shall not follow the abominations of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who practices witchcraft, or is a sorcerer, or who calls up the dead. For all who do these things are an abomination to the Lord.”
Foreheads wrinkled in thought. “But we’re scientists,” someone protested.
“Mumbo jumbo,” snapped a general.
“Apocalyptic mindset,” the FBI negotiator declared. “He’s raving. There’s probably a thousand others just like him down there. I think we’re in the clear. They’ll talk themselves to death.”
The camera continued staring ahead. The sounds of the camp fed over the video microphone: the crunch of footsteps, the clink of metal, a rock hammering at a piece of wood. People walked back and forth as if the camera didn’t exist.
