The REIGN: Out of Tribulation

by Jeffrey McClain Jones

  “We can heal him,” James said simply.

  At that moment, Ellie noticed Rodney’s missing finger tips, when he wiped a bead of sweat from his brow. She made eye contact with Rodney and asked, “Would you like us to restore your fingers, as well?”

  Rodney looked at his hand and then at the girl. James, in the meantime, stepped over to Daniel’s side and held out his hand. Daniel looked at the handsome young man and offered his throbbing hand without hesitation. All of the adults looked at Daniel, Rodney postponing his answer to Ellie’s question.

  James held Daniel’s wounded arm gently in one hand and very lightly moved his other hand over the injury, barely touching the improvised bandages.

  Daniel suddenly shouted. “Hey!” He pulled his hand back quickly, as if he had burned himself on a stove.

  In fact, Daniel had felt a brief intense heat, which caused him to pull his hand back instinctively, forgetting how much such a move would hurt his wounded hand. But it didn’t hurt. In fact, the arm felt perfectly fine. Daniel just sat there staring at James, realizing that he had been healed. Because of the bandage, however, none of the adults knew what had happened.

  “What’s the matter?” Emma asked her son, glancing suspiciously at James.

  The healer smiled. Emma looked at Daniel who clearly felt no more pain.

  “Is it better? Is the pain gone?” she asked, a bit franticly.

  Daniel, still staring at James, nodded his head. “It feels fine. It’s not hurt anymore.”

  Emma tenderly touched the arm and, when Daniel didn’t flinch, she started unwinding the bandages.

  While everyone focused on Daniel, Ellie had walked right up to Rodney, her face now less than a foot from his. She reached for his hand and held it between hers. Rodney looked at the lovely young girl. He felt something stir in his heart, remembering how he felt when Anna had touched him a couple of weeks ago. The girl was standing too close, but he didn’t want to step away. He even felt an urge to wrap his arms around her, but balked at the thought, disturbed by what seemed to him a perverse impulse.

  Before he could react to all of this, however, Rodney felt a buzzing in his missing fingertips. He looked at his rough hand, clasped between the pure pink hands of the girl, and he felt as if he had fallen backward through time. His feeling of palpable nostalgia overwhelmed him to the point that he could literally taste it in his mouth. His brain had to adjust to his hand being whole in the present, not only the past.

  When Emma finished unwrapping Daniel’s arm, she rubbed it and smiled, looking up at Rodney to celebrate. She paused, however, when she saw the look on Rodney’s face. Emma stood up and stepped over to where Ellie held Rodney’s hand. A surge of intense jealously welled up in Emma. The mix of emotions at seeing Rodney’s hand restored, at the same time as seeing the way the strange girl stood so close to him, caused Emma’s face to flash red and then pale and then red again.

  Ellie, aware of what the adults were feeling, released Rodney’s hand and stepped back, looking at Emma with the most open and friendly smile—no fear, no guilt or pride, nor anything other than simple kindness. That smile disarmed Emma, who turned now to look at Rodney’s hand. She took it in her own and looked at the perfect fingertips. She even glanced at his other hand to check that she really held the one that had been injured.

  Now Rodney felt Emma’s closeness and her hands gently holding his. They had been together for more than two weeks now, yet they hadn’t shared this kind of focused physical contact in all that time. James and Ellie stepped close to each other, turning and taking each other’s hand. They seemed pleased with themselves. They also seemed pleased at the warmth they witnessed between Rodney and Emma.

  Pete stood with his mouth open a full inch, his eyebrows floating higher and higher on his forehead. He swore softly and stared at Rodney and Emma.

  Daniel sprang to his feet and laughed at the funny looks on all the adults’ faces, as well as the stream of four-letter words that escaped Pete’s mouth. James and Ellie looked at Daniel and laughed, as well. They began to leave, still hand in hand, but just before they stepped out of sight, James spoke to Pete.

  “Remember why you came over here,” he said simply. Then the two of them stepped quickly around the side of the house and disappeared.

  Pete furrowed his brow and then remembered why he had come to get Rodney in the first place. “Oh, yeah,” he said.

  Rodney broke away from his gaze at Emma, glanced at Daniel, who was laughing and waving his perfectly well arm around, and then looked at Pete.

  “Hey, man, I came to get you ‘cause there’s trouble over at Chester’s place,” Pete said.

  “Chester?” Emma asked.

  Rodney shook his head, knowing Chester was much too complex to explain briefly, then he answered Pete. “What kind of trouble?” Though he assumed it had something to do with shooting.

  “I’m not sure exactly,” said Pete. “A couple of strangers went up to his place for some reason and he started shooting. Bill Wakeman said there was some sort of siege going on over there.”

  Rodney knew why Pete had come to get him. Just as Pete had become the de facto mayor of Somerville, Rodney had become the de facto sheriff. More than that, however, Pete knew that Rodney was one of the few humans on earth that Chester trusted, even a little.

  “I’ll follow you,” Rodney said to Pete. To Emma he said, “Chester’s an old kook that lives on the other side of town, always getting in trouble. I’ll go see if I can settle the situation.”

  As he walked toward his old vehicle, he looked again at his restored fingers. When he turned to get in the driver’s door of the PFV, he saw that Emma was looking at him. Daniel waved his healed hand to say goodbye, with a silly grin on his face. Rodney smiled and waved back with his healed hand.

  Out of habit, Rodney checked for the pistol he had mounted in a makeshift holster, on the right front corner of the driver’s seat. It was still there. He pushed the start button and checked for enough juice to get him there and back. The gas tank was empty. He had to rely on the charge already stored in the battery. It wouldn’t be a long drive, about five miles through town and out west.

  With Pete in the lead, humming along at an urgent speed, Rodney made the trip to Chester’s place in just over five minutes. When they had crossed the treacherous bridge and reached the bottom of Chester’s long, gravel driveway, Rodney could see no sign of invaders, no vehicles, and he heard no sound of gunfire. Pete pulled over next to the drive, about fifty yards from the house, not wanting to get within easy shooting range. Rodney pulled just ahead of Pete and parked. He touched the pistol for a moment and then left it. Even concealed, it seemed out of place in his current life, and he certainly didn’t intend to shoot anybody today.

  Pete looked at him when he stepped out of his vehicle. “No gun?”

  “You think it’s that kind of situation?” Rodney asked him.

  Pete shrugged. “You didn’t used to ask that question. It was always a gun-totin’ situation.”

  Rodney raised his left eyebrow and shook his head slightly. Approaching any situation involving Chester was potentially dangerous, but Rodney didn’t expect a weapon would help calm Chester down.

  They began walking cautiously toward the house. Rodney hesitated when he saw some movement, fifteen or twenty feet up in one of the oak trees, to his right. Whatever moved there had to be something bigger than a squirrel, from what he saw. Chester had certainly eaten all the squirrels in the area, anyway. Again, Rodney spotted movement among the branches. It looked like someone was making hand signals to another person on the ground. For a moment, he wished he had brought his gun.

  Pete, walking two paces behind Rodney, stopped and tried to see what his friend was looking at. When he saw the motion in the tree, he ducked behind a stump, which turned out to be too short to protect him from a sniper in the tree. Rodney could hear Pete curse and scramble for better cover.

  Rodney stood still, waiting for someone to m
ake a move, though he felt exposed to both Chester in the house, and to the unidentified person in the tree, who also had some unseen accomplice nearby. Figuring that they had probably all seen him by now, he called out.

  “Chester, it’s Rodney. I’m coming up to the house.”

  For a second he held his breath, in case one of the strangers was going to shoot at him. Still he heard no gun fire. Then he heard Chester calling from the house.

  “Rodney, look out. There’s government agents in the trees.”

  That sort of warning would generally have sounded to Rodney like nutty paranoia, but he had seen a person in the tree, making Chester look sane, for a change.

  “Who’s that in the tree?” Rodney shouted up to the oak.

  “Hello. Electricity grid repair,” said the voice in the tree, a man’s voice. He didn’t sound scared, even though Chester had apparently chased him up a tree, and pretty high up at that.

  Then another voice, that of a woman, answered. “We came by to check cables on Mr. Butler’s property,” she said in a steady tone.

  A second later, an arrow smacked into a pine tree ten yards in front of Rodney. He winced and started toward Pete’s hiding place, but stopped half way. “Who’s shooting arrows?” Rodney asked impulsively.

  The woman answered. “That’s Mr. Butler. At first it was gunfire, now it’s arrows.” Again her voice provoked the twang of a crossbow string, but this time instead of an arrow sinking into a tree, Rodney heard Chester cussing as if he were in pain.

  “Surely he didn’t shoot himself with a cross bow,” thought Rodney.

  “Why’s he shooting arrows?” Pete stage whispered this from the bushes.

  Rodney shook his head. “Chester, you okay in there?”

  He could hear some knocking and thumping in the house, then Chester answered. “I’m fine, but you gotta get those government people off my land.”

  Rodney assured him. “Okay, Chester, I’ll talk to them, and we’ll all get off your place.”

  Approaching a bit more boldly now, Rodney walked to the oak tree and looked up, and then around at ground-level for the woman. Behind him and to his right, he heard fabric brush past a pine tree and he turned to see a woman in her thirties, with perfect, brown skin and beaded hair. At the same time, the man in the tree began his descent, which he accomplished in three quick jumps, landing lightly on the ground a few feet away. Rodney managed to stifle his startle instinct at the man’s rapid and graceful drop to the ground. Most startling, however, was the look of the man. He appeared to be about forty years old, except that he was as energetic and limber as any twenty-year-old, and his face looked like an airbrushed Hollywood glamour photo. The two strangers reminded Rodney of the woman he had glimpsed at Pete’s house, and of Hyo and Young.

  “I’m Billy,” the man said, stretching out his right hand. “And this is Lucinda,” he said, gesturing casually toward the woman.

  “You’re electric company workers?” Rodney asked, his skepticism hijacking his voice.

  Pete approached cautiously. Pete was not as confident as Rodney that Chester wouldn’t intentionally shoot him, and he had no interest in discovering what it felt like to be shot by an arrow. Rodney introduced his friend, who kept a tree between him and the house.

  “How about we take this down the driveway, out of firing range,” Pete said.

  Everyone agreed, though none of the others seemed as worried as Pete. In fact, as they walked along the driveway, Lucinda hummed a beautiful tune, even as Pete checked over his shoulder for incoming projectiles.

  While Rodney had survived the revolt by his bravery and military experience, Pete had survived by keeping his head down, both figuratively and literally. He felt no compulsion to appear brave around Rodney, or anyone else. Survival was his number one goal, against which all else paled in comparison.

  Behind Pete’s car, they stopped and Lucinda answered Rodney’s previous question, “We’ve been assigned to restore electric power to this area. A major line runs across Mr. Butler’s property. We approached the house to check with him, before we repaired the line.” She smiled at this point and Billy took up the story.

  “He started shooting as we approached,” he said.

  “Shooting arrows?” Pete asked.

  “No, it was buck shot at that point,” Billy said. He smiled again.

  Rodney was hoping for more, but that mute smile was the best he was offered.

  Pete interjected. “Where’s that power line?”

  Billy pointed to the north. “About a quarter mile in that direction.”

  “Where’d you leave your truck?” Rodney asked, looking around for a utility van, or truck.

  Billy hesitated a moment. Lucinda spoke up. “We’re traveling light.”

  These two new strangers fit onto a list Rodney had been accumulating since he first met the two Koreans. For a moment, he considered following that rabbit trail toward whether Anna’s name belonged on that list. Just this day he had met James and Ellie and Lucinda and Billy, all cloaked in mystery, and smiling peacefully. Still in the middle of it, Rodney didn’t have time to work all this out, but he promised himself that he would try, when he got a chance.

  Pete was continuing with the two strangers, thinking of the value of getting power back to the parts of Somerville that had no local solar or wind power. “I think you can just get to work on that line. Chester isn’t inclined to negotiate, as you can see; but we sure do need our power back.”

  Lucinda and Billy both agreed, apparently not feeling obligated to get permission from Chester, having made a polite effort to talk with him. Rodney noted that these amazing strangers didn’t know everything, since they didn’t know that Chester wouldn’t be interested in talking.

  Pete asked, in a way that Rodney knew was less than sincere. “You want us to help you get back in there?”

  Billy said, “That’s not necessary, we won’t have any trouble getting to the downed line. And we’ll stay clear of Mr. Butler’s house.” Smiling again, he seemed to Rodney wholly unperturbed by being shot at. New management, indeed.

  Rodney and Pete got into their vehicles, and Lucinda and Billy stepped carefully into the trees east of the drive, seeming to disappear instantly. Rodney threw his car into reverse and stopped next to Pete.

  Looking through his passenger side window, which had been missing for months, Rodney asked Pete, “Are you beginning to understand those stories about aliens invading?”

  Pete laughed. “Oh, so I’m not the only one who thinks there are a bunch of not-quite-human strangers hanging around here?”

  “So far they seem pretty harmless,” said Rodney.

  “Harmless? I don’t know about that,” said Pete. “But they seem damned useful to me. If they get our electricity back on line, I don’t care if they came from Jupiter.”

  Rodney laughed half-heartedly, not sure he shared Pete’s pragmatic acceptance of the new folks in town. He looked at his restored fingers, however, and raised his eyebrows as high as they could arch.

  Pete backed up his SUV, spun around on the gravel, and left Chester’s house behind him, in a cloud of pale golden dust. Rodney watched him go and then put his vehicle in drive. He slowly drove up to Chester’s house, sounding his horn every few seconds so as not to surprise the old hermit. As he had hoped, Chester recognized the vehicle and came out of his front door, his crossbow lowered to waist high. He looked around to see if Rodney was alone, and then dropped the crossbow to vertical, pointing at the ground.

  “Where’d them government people go?” Chester asked.

  “They’re gone,” Rodney said, avoiding a direct answer. “They didn’t seem dangerous to me and Pete, so we let ‘em go.” To Rodney this was a joke, but he knew it wasn’t humorous to Chester, so he changed the subject.

  “You run out of buck shot?” Rodney asked.

  Chester, a tall but hunched man of about sixty, lowered his shaggy head and cursed. Rodney noticed that tobacco stains still discolored Ches
ter’s mustache and beard, and a quick brown spit in the direction of the front yard confirmed his observation.

  The delay in Chester’s answer came from embarrassment, as much as frustration. “I take good care of my weapons, as you surely know. So how in the Hell do you think two shotguns and a cross bow could all go bad in the same day?” He waved what must have been his second crossbow. Like any ardent survivalist, Chester had multiple weapons, and backup systems for his backup systems.

  “What do you mean ‘gone bad’?” Rodney asked.

  “I mean, the firing pins stopped working on both shot guns, and the trigger broke on the crossbow, like I never seen one break before.” Chester’s normally blotchy, red complexion was unusually ruddy, under the stress of the failed defense of his land.

  Rodney remembered how his own gun that had strangely stopped working a couple of weeks ago and wondered at the oddity of Chester’s story.

  Chester sought to reassure Rodney. “Oh, I got plenty o’ other weapons. These were just the ones I had handy, at the moment.” He shook his head. “I’m startin’ to wonder whether there ain’t something even stranger than usual about them government folks. Did they seem strange to you?”

  Rodney nodded. “Yeah, I’ve been seeing quite a lot of strange new folks around lately, just like those two. Definitely not from around here,” he said. Again he joked, without expecting Chester to catch the humor in it.

  “Not from around here is right,” Chester said. “They’re saying it was aliens that came to knock off that Dictator over there, was aliens that snatched up bunches of people and even tore open the graves. That’s what they’re saying.”

  Knowing Chester as he did, Rodney assumed he was talking about speculations he had heard over his short-wave radio. Chester’s short wave connections had been handy numerous times during the resistance. But Rodney didn’t trust a lot of what Chester heard from his cronies on the other end of those radio waves. On the other hand, the number of anomalous occurrences that Rodney had witnessed over the past month, made him hesitate to dismiss even the wild rants of Chester and his friends.