The Stolen Gospels

by Brian Herbert

  Most of all she missed her best friend, Alicia Koppel. For more than two years they’d been inseparable, and had shared the endless problems of growing up. Now she needed Alicia more than ever, but couldn’t reach her.

  In memory she heard Alicia’s voice, saying in street slang, “Hey dopegirl, you high-flyin’?”

  Then Lori noticed the dog had come around behind her and was sniffing at her purse, whimpering again. It had been a police dog.

  No! Lori thought. Get away from me!

  The dog pawed the purse, and Lori pulled the bag away, holding it on her lap.

  “Bobo was the top drug-sniffer in the department,” the blind woman said.

  Thinking fast, Lori said, “I had some food in my purse today, and he probably smells it.” She nudged the animal away, and reluctantly it returned to its master.

  The “granola” woman—despite the aroma around her—appeared to be of no interest to the dog.

  Without looking, Lori knew her mother was staring at her, and the teenager felt her face burning. Maybe she could get to the bathroom and flush the stuff down the toilet.

  Dixie Lou asked everyone to hold hands, which Lori refused to do, and instead she kept her arms folded across her chest. Jackson uttered a strange prayer to an entity she called “She-God,” which she described as “all-powerful” and “the hope for womankind.” Then she asked those in attendance to identify themselves by name and occupation.

  She-God? Comparative Religion was one of the few classes Lori had enjoyed in high school (and she’d done well in it), but she’d never heard of a deity by that name. She wanted to tell herself it was just another absurdity in a long line of ridiculous things in her mother’s life. But Lori wasn’t so certain this time.

  One by one the attendees identified themselves, with Camilla going first, providing a bland description of her secretarial job for the Fort Lawton Army base in Seattle, in a civilian secretarial pool. The participants moved around the circle away from Lori, and a wiry woman with dark hair said she owned an herbal pharmacy in the suburbs, with exotic ingredients imported from all over the world. The sari-adorned woman, with a pinched face and tiny eyes, spoke of a She-God temple—whatever that was—in her backyard, and said she sold handmade religious paraphernalia. Su-Su Florida made a pathetic, thinly veiled sales pitch for her high-earth orbital excursion agency, and another woman said she was a family counselor.

  When Lori’s turn came, last among the visitors, she announced in a firm voice, “I’m a hopeless cigarette junkie.”

  “Lori!” her mother whispered, as embarrassment reddened her face.

  Then Lori proceeded to light a cigarette, fending off her mother as she did so.

  All around the circle, the women glared at the rebellious teenager and whispered to each other. Even the blind woman seemed to be looking at her disapprovingly, with eerie white, sightless eyes.

  “Lori, give me that cigarette!” her mother insisted, in full voice.

  With a slight smile, Dixie Lou picked up the statuette and approached the errant girl. She knelt down, face-to-face with Lori. The teenager blew a puff of pink, scented smoke in the woman’s face, as her mother groaned in displeasure.

  “I’m sorry she’s being like this,” Camilla said. “Perhaps we should leave. She didn’t want to come tonight. I’ve been having trouble with her.”

  “What brand of cigarette is that?” Dixie Lou inquired of Lori, in the calmest of tones.

  “Pink Paradise.”

  “I’ve told her a thousand times not to smoke,” Camilla said. “I just don’t know what I’m going to do with this girl.”

  “Regular or light?” Dixie Lou asked, still focused on Lori.

  With a perplexed expression, the girl replied, “Regular.”

  “My favorite. May I have a drag?”

  Before Lori could reply, the woman had the cigarette in her hand and was inhaling deeply from it.

  “But let’s do this afterward, okay?” Dixie Lou said. She dropped the cigarette into a flower vase, where it fizzled out in water. “We’ll smoke and have a nice little chat, OK, Lori? So you’re a hopeless addict, eh?”

  “Yeah. I’d have my lips sewn onto a giant cigarette if I could.”

  “You’re awful, Lori,” her mother said. “You used to be such a nice girl. Always respectful and a good student. I don’t know what’s come over you.”

  “You do have quite an imagination,” Dixie Lou Jackson said to the girl. “Maybe it’ll make you famous someday.”

  Lori considered lighting a second cigarette, but resisted the urge. Instead she took a deep breath and stared back into the woman’s dark brown, impenetrable eyes, a gaze that bored into her.

  “A most interesting young woman,” Dixie Lou observed, at long last. “An old soul, I suspect, despite the clever subterfuge she’s putting on for us.”

  Lori squirmed. She felt warm, uncomfortable, didn’t like this woman for some reason, and it had nothing to do with the fact that she was black. Lori knew a lot of street people, of many races, and made no superficial judgments about them—not based upon skin color or any other aspect of their appearance.

  An old soul? Maybe she’s right. And maybe I don’t like the way she looks too closely at me.

  Dixie Lou’s cimmerian eyes glistened. “We’re here this evening to discuss women’s issues, Lori. And it’s about time, too. For thousands of years people have been talking too much about men’s issues, and the world has suffered for it. Have you ever noticed that most women are less violent than men, less aggressive, less destructive? Women are even better drivers, so they get lower insurance rates.”

  Lori didn’t respond. What kind of weird talk is this? she thought.

  Dixie Lou continued: “If we’re so much better than men, why do you suppose we haven’t been more important throughout history?”

  Lori shrugged. She felt perspiration on her upper lip, wiped the moisture off.

  “Because men are physically stronger,” Camilla suggested. “Because they—bully us, dominate us.”

  “Precisely,” Dixie Lou said, “because we’ve been pushed, slugged, slapped, stabbed, beaten, raped, and shot for thousands of years. But I’m here to tell you we won’t be treated that way anymore.”

  Lori didn’t respond, but her mother and others murmured assent.

  “Remember, Lori,” Dixie Lou said, “you can do anything if you set your mind to it. You can accomplish anything.”

  “We’re just as good as men are!” a woman exclaimed.

  “Better!” Dixie Lou shouted.

  A murmur of assent passed around the circle, which consisted of fourteen women and Lori.

  “Do you know who this is?” Dixie Lou asked, pointing to the statuette of the woman.

  Lori shook her head, smelled the burning wax of the candles.

  “It’s She-God, representing all women since time immemorial. We’ll discuss what She’s holding later this evening.”

  Momentarily, Lori focused on the tiny sword. Again, she wiped perspiration from her upper lip.

  Returning to her original place, Dixie Lou spoke briefly about herself. Without elaboration, she said she was an executive, and that she had not led a goddess circle for a long time. And she asked, “Why do you suppose we’re all here?”

  Lori saw blank faces looking back at the group leader.

  “To feel better about ourselves,” Su-Su said. “We’ve been pounded down by the system.”

  “And who runs the system?” Dixie Lou asked, rhetorically.

  “Men!” several women said, simultaneously.

  In the distance, Lori heard what sounded like the rhythmic throb of a jet helicopter.

  “Some of you have attended these circles before,” Dixie Lou said. “But such experiences pale in comparison with what lies in store for womankind!”

  Lori found herself staring at the statuette, which stood amid the burning candles. The figurine was strangely familiar, something that . . . or representing some
thing that . . . lay just beyond the reach of her memory.

  “Men have written most of the history books,” Dixie Lou was saying in the background of Lori’s awareness. “But think of this: What about herstory books? Instead of history, written by men about men, herstory is our story, the tale of female journeys written by us. Much of our past is veiled in mystery, because men have perverted and destroyed the truth. They have rewritten it in order to maintain themselves in power, making themselves look good at our expense.”

  Lori didn’t fully agree with what she was hearing. Sure there had been abuses by men against women over the centuries. Every intelligent, liberal-thinking person knew that. But she liked boys and one day she would like men. Besides, things had gotten better for women, hadn’t they? Weren’t most American men treating the ladies in their lives with respect now, as equals?

  She sighed, wished she knew the truth about her father, not the distorted, incomplete version told by her mother. She didn’t know where he was, if he was alive or dead. All such inquiries she’d made to her mother had been rebuffed. She missed him, remembered fun they’d had together when she was small . . . before he went away.

  As Lori watched, Dixie Lou adjusted the position of the statuette.

  Suddenly something surged in the girl’s mind, a powerful but unformed and unclear thought.

  She locked gazes with Dixie Lou, and a violent shudder passed through the black woman, whose dark eyes were open wide in shock and fear. Dixie Lou pulled her hand away from the statuette, and her lips moved without making a discernible sound.

  The noises of the helicopter grew louder, a throbbing, vibrating intrusion. To Lori, the craft seemed to be passing directly overhead at very low altitude. Almost too close, it seemed.

  Dixie Lou snapped to awareness. Her gaze darted around wildly, like a trapped animal.

  The noise grew louder still, and remained that way for several moments. Then a percussive explosion shook the house, followed by the thunderous crash of glass, and the glare of bright lights outside. Through the window Lori got a glimpse of a helicopter. A uniformed man knelt on the running board, firing an automatic rifle at the house. Another man behind him hurled something that crashed through a kitchen window. A second explosion rocked the house.

  Camilla scrambled for cover, pulling Lori with her. The girl grabbed for her purse, but dropped it.

  Screams filled the air, and the guide dog barked. Something heavy landed on the roof. Men shouted outside, amidst the helicopter noise and gunfire.

  “What the hell is going on?” the blind woman cried out. Then she screamed as the front door burst open, followed by a burst of gunfire that tore through her chest and face. Her horribly mutilated body thudded to the floor. Another woman wailed, “Oh God, I’m dying! Who would do this to us? Why?”

  Concealed from the gunmen by a couch and desk that had been moved aside for the meeting, Camilla and Lori crawled toward the hallway behind them. Bullets shattered a glass-fronted Victorian cabinet, and Camilla complained of pain in her lower legs. Then something exploded by the right side of her head. She crumpled to the floor.

  “Mom!” Lori cried out. She saw two men in the living room, carrying automatic rifles. Silver-and-black uniforms with caps, and black cross insignia on the lapels and arms.

  Fighting tears of rage, she dragged her mother into the hallway and then into a large hall closet, pulling the door shut behind them to form a dark cocoon.

  Lori’s heart raced. She felt her mother’s wrist, checking for a pulse. It was erratic.

  “I’ll be okay, sweetheart,” Camilla assured her, struggling to speak. Her voice faded. “I’m . . . fine.”

  Lori suppressed a sob. She felt the wrist again. The pulse was slow.

  “Mom!” she husked. “Mom!”

  No response.

  How badly was she hurt? There wasn’t enough light to see, and the girl was afraid to poke around on the head, for fear of exacerbating the injury. Her mother’s legs had been wounded, too, so Lori worried about a severed artery. Hurriedly, she removed her own long cotton stockings and tied one tightly around each of her mother’s thighs, hoping these makeshift tourniquets would slow any loss of blood.

  Sticky wetness covered the right side of Camilla’s head, a definite wound, so this was the side Lori kept up, atop her lap. It seemed to her that the wound would bleed less this way. She prayed it was only superficial.

  Hugging her mother tightly, she wished she hadn’t been disrespectful to her. Camilla was unresponsive, breathing irregularly.

  “Mom, can you hear me?” Lori whispered.

  Still no answer. The breathing became more erratic, then settled into a regular pattern.

  Oh God, Lori thought. Please don’t let my mother die! Take me if you must, but not her! She remembered seeing the blind woman hit by gunfire and falling. And many of the others. They had to be dead. It was so horrible, so senseless.

  The thickly-carpeted closet was devoid of objects. Desperately, Lori felt in the darkness around the edges of the rug. Lifting a corner she found a smooth, hard surface beneath. There was no hatch leading to a crawl space, no escape.

  An explosion rocked the house. Shouts came from another room, and more gunfire. The dog started barking again, then gunfire sounded and the animal yelped.

  “Four minutes!” someone called out. Lori couldn’t tell if it was male or female. The voice was peculiar, a high-pitched whine.

  She heard the voice again, a little farther away this time, shouting commands. This person seemed to be in charge. Gunfire rang repeatedly.

  A woman cried out: “Save us, oh She-God!”

  She-God again? Lori didn’t understand. Dixie Lou had said the entity was all-powerful, and what else? She couldn’t recall.

  Cautiously, she opened the closet door, but it bumped into something. She pushed harder, saw that a woman’s body was blocking the door. Squeezing out through the opening, she identified Su-Su Florida on the floor, not moving. Blood ran from her side, pooling on the hardwood beneath her.

  Feeling the woman’s carotid artery, Lori detected no heartbeat at all.

  “She’s dead,” a voice said, startling the girl. Turning quickly, she saw Dixie Lou Jackson, who had emerged from another doorway. Blood ran down her face, from a deep gash high on her forehead. “That way,” Dixie Lou said, pointing to a closed door at the end of the corridor. She gave Lori a shove in that direction, but the girl resisted.

  Going back, Lori dragged her mother out into the corridor, while Dixie Lou protested, trying to get her to go the other way. Dixie Lou went ahead.

  Struggling with the almost lifeless weight of her mother, the teenager made her way to the door just as Dixie Lou opened it. Breathing hard, the UWW officer leaned against the door jamb.

  The door opened into a garage, but not the one in the front of the house that Lori had seen upon arrival. On the side of the house, then? At the rear? In the confusion she had lost all sense of direction. The small garage, illuminated by an overhead bank of lights, contained only one vehicle—a sleek, black van with tinted windows and mirror-like tires and wheels. Everything high-gloss.

  “Help me into the van!” Dixie Lou said.

  But Lori pushed by her and pulled her mother toward the vehicle instead. Cursing and muttering at the teenager, Dixie Lou stumbled behind her, and closed the door behind them.

  Lori tried to open the rear passenger side door of the van, but it wouldn’t budge.

  “Get out of the way,” Dixie Lou said. She touched what looked like the same black hand-held transmitter she had used inside the house, for control of the music and holo-recording system. The van’s door slid open, and the rear seats folded flat into the floor.

  Lori laid her mother on the floor and propped a folded blanket under her head, while Dixie Lou went around toward the driver’s side door. Suddenly the black woman cried out, and fell on the concrete, face down. She twitched and groaned. Hurrying to her, Lori saw another wound, on the back of h
er neck.

  As quickly as she could, Lori helped her into the front passenger seat and engaged the safety harness, which clicked over her the moment it was touched. Lori also had contact with Dixie Lou.

  Abruptly, the teenagers neck flopped to one side. “What are you doing?” Dixie Lou asked.

  Lori hesitated, because she had received a strange tingling when she touched the woman, somewhat like when she felt the paper of the goddess circle flier. She shook her head to clear it, said, “I’m going to drive. I don’t have a license, but I know how anyway.”

  “Not necessary. Get me the remote control. I just had it a moment ago. Look outside for me.”

  Lori did as she was told, found the unit and climbed into the driver’s seat, closing the door. She handed the device to Dixie Lou, who fumbled with it and swore, trying to make it work. Finally, she slammed it down on the console and said, “Doesn’t work. You’ll have to drive after all.”

  Fighting to remain conscious, with blood running down her forehead and neck, Dixie Lou muttered something about a homing signal they were supposed to pick up, and she must have damaged the transceiver when she fell.

  Following additional instructions, Lori punched a code on a dashboard computer pad. The engine surged on, and the garage door slid open behind the vehicle.

  “Let’s go, let’s go!” Dixie Lou said. “Drive this thing fast.”

  “OK.” Lori put the van in reverse.

  Seeing a black handgun on the console between her and Dixie Lou, Lori grabbed it. The gun, a .45 long-barrel, was heavier than her mother’s .38 that she had used for target practice, and was one of the new rapid-fire automatics, but she thought she could figure it out. On the handle of the weapon she saw what looked like a sword-cross design.

  For a moment, the woman met Lori’s gaze, with eyes full of pain. “I hope you know how to use that,” she said.

  “I do.” Lori released the safety and cocked the weapon, then laid it on her lap. With a silent prayer, she nudged the accelerator and roared backward out of the garage, onto a side driveway. The house was illuminated in spotlights from the helicopter, which hovered noisily overhead. Flashes of illumination came from the house as the van backed up.