The REIGN: Out of Tribulation

by Jeffrey McClain Jones

  Steve nodded, satisfied with that explanation.

  In just a couple of minutes, the two vehicles turned north onto Main Street, slowing down for safety sake. Rodney didn’t know their exact destination, so he had to be ready for Pete to slow down and stop at any moment. When he did begin to slow, Rodney drank another dose of irony. The hostage takers had chosen the old police station as their base of operation. From a military standpoint, it made sense; the station served as a formidable stronghold, compared to most of the town, and it still contained some emergency supplies. Rodney noted that Jason Cooper would have known about the condition and contents of the station.

  As they pulled to a stop across from the station, Steve couldn’t resist another laugh, “Hey, somebody call the cops,” he said.

  Rodney threw him a look that was supposed to resemble a father’s scolding gaze, but he didn’t quite pull it off, and Steve just smiled back.

  A crowd had gathered across the street from the station, under a street light. Rodney wondered whether that was safe, but reminded himself to dial back from his military training. He didn’t really expect shots in their direction.

  Rodney and Steve joined Pete, as he approached the onlookers. Among them, Rodney recognized Jay and Sara, as well as Warren Kline and a few other ex-troops of his. “The posse,” thought Rodney.

  Rodney took charge. “How many are in there?”

  Jay said, “I saw ‘em run in there, four guys with guns and the two hostages, the Koreans.”

  “Anyone know who the gunmen are?”

  Again Jay responded. “Sam there got the best look at ‘em before they reached the station.”

  Sam Kendall nodded to Rodney. He had served with Rodney in some fighting in Illinois, but had been at home recovering from a wound during the Texas campaign.

  “How ya’ doin’, Sam?”

  “I’m okay, ah, Rodney.” He hesitated a half a second, stumbling over not calling him “Captain” in peacetime.

  “You get a good look at ‘em?”

  “Not a good look,” Sam said. “It was already getting dark and they moved fast. But my impression is that some of them aren’t from around here. At least two of ‘em didn’t look familiar at all. One of the others looked like the guy who used to run the gas station before it was closed down. I don’t know his name. And the other one who looked familiar, I just seen around here sometimes, don’t know his name either.”

  “Who did you say called this in?” Rodney asked Pete, knowing the answer, but wanting to hear others react when Pete answered.

  “It was Cooper, the fire inspector,” Pete said.

  “Was he the one who told you why they were taking the hos­tages?”

  “Well, yeah, I mean he said it was people who lost their kids, or people he knew from the trip to retrieve their kids.” Pete hesitated. “Yeah, that’s what he said, it was people he knew from that plane trip.”

  “Where is he?” Rodney asked.

  Pete shrugged, “Home, maybe. He called my cell phone. I gave him the number just yesterday.”

  “How heavily armed are they?” Rodney asked, looking at Jay and then Sam.

  Sam looked at Jay and then said, “Automatic weapons, military grade.”

  Jay nodded in agreement. “They looked like they were wearing heavy vests, maybe flak jackets,” he said.

  Rodney thought about that. “Flak jackets? Or suicide vests?” he asked.

  That raised everyone’s eyebrows. When he saw that response, Rodney said, “If it’s those folks that flew all the way to the Middle East in search of their kids, then we’re dealing with desperate people.”

  Sara interjected a thought. “But, if they took the Koreans, what harm can they really do to them? We heard that you can’t shoot those people, or that they disarm guns without even touching ‘em.”

  Rodney remembered the conversation with Jay over those disabled weapons. He wondered whether Sara had convinced Jay that the immortals were not the enemy.

  He could see confusion on a couple of the faces in the small crowd. Clearly, not everyone had extensive firsthand experience with the immortals. The apparent selectivity of the immortals remained a curiosity for Rodney, one that he would have to think about later.

  Steve, who had been watching the police station, said, “Someone’s coming out.”

  Everyone turned to see a dark figure with an assault rifle step out of the door of the station, another similarly dressed person holding the door. The man leaving the building slung his weapon over his shoulder, when he saw the benign situation outside. He walked to the middle of the street and stopped there. Rodney thought then about blocking off the street in both directions, something to deal with after talking with this kidnapper.

  Rodney stepped out into the road, showing his hands as he approached. The people behind him could all see the stun gun tucked in the back of his belt, but no one anticipated any gunplay at this point. For his part, Rodney was thinking about the weapon he had lost to some sort of trick by Hyo and Young and of the others that Jay had shown him. Looking at the weapon slung over this kidnapper’s shoulder, he couldn’t resist a little provocation.

  “What’s that?” he asked, nodding to the weapon, as he stepped up to crown of Main Street.

  “What?” Asked the muffled voice of the kidnapper, speaking through a black ski mask.

  “Over your shoulder,” Rodney said.

  “My weapon?” the kidnapper asked.

  “I guess, if that’s what you call it.”

  “It’s an M-20, what are you talking about?”

  “Just seems funny to see you carrying a weapon that doesn’t even fire.”

  “What d’you mean, ‘doesn’t fire?’”

  Rodney shrugged. “Don’t take my word for it, take a shot into the air.”

  “What? Why would I do that?”

  “Just give it a try,” Rodney said.

  So the gunman lifted his weapon by the strap and grasped it like someone who had plenty of experience. That told Rodney something about who he was dealing with.

  The gunman flipped off the safety. The little crowd by the side of the road tensed. Rodney heard the click of several weapons behind him, he held up his hand toward them, to calm them down.

  The gunman hesitated when he heard those weapons being prepared. Rodney wondered if any of those actually worked either. How long a reach did Hyo and Young have? And were there other immortals around that he couldn’t see?

  Finally, pointing his weapon in the air the kidnapper pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. He checked the magazine, ejecting an unfired cartridge onto the asphalt. He checked the safety and pointed in the air again. He pulled the trigger again. Again nothing happened.

  He swore bitterly. “How did you know?” he asked, resignation creeping into his voice.

  “Folks like the two men you’re holding in there have been known to disable weapons. I can’t tell you how they do it, but I lost a perfectly good rifle to it myself. I didn’t expect them to let you guys wave around working firearms.”

  The kidnapper shook his head and then swore again.

  “I took you through this little exercise to make a bigger point here,” Rodney said, actually feeling a bit sorry for the guy. “What you’re doing here makes no sense at all. The only way you could hold those men hostage, is if they decided to cooperate. They have powers beyond what any of us have figured out. This whole scheme is fatally flawed.”

  Rodney turned around and motioned to the crowd behind him. “Steve, c’mon.”

  Steve obliged, walking slowly, taking his hands out of his pockets to avoid a misunderstanding.

  Then Rodney turned back to the kidnapper. “We’re coming in with you, so we can talk.” As Steve approached, Rodney introduced him. “This is Steve, an old friend of mine. Steve this is Ray Holman, he used to run the gas station in town.”

  Ray swore again. Rodney had recognized Ray’s voice and his build, a disadvantage to being one of the tallest men in town. R
ay had served in the same brigade as Rodney, but not under Rodney’s command, during the resistance. He was a good soldier and a family man. He had four kids the last time Rodney knew.

  With Steve and Rodney in tow, Ray turned and walked toward the police station, his rifle hanging down at his side, his hands strong enough, and legs long enough, that he could carry it by the pistol grip, pointing to the ground. Rodney was thinking Ray should just toss the weapon, but pride or habit prevented him from relinquishing the impotent rifle.

  Steve looked over at Rodney, hoping for some clue about what exactly they were doing. Rodney gave him a small, firm smile that said, “Nothing to worry about.”

  As they approached the door of the police station, it opened and the second gunman filled the doorway. “What are you doing?” He nearly shrieked.

  Ray called back. “The weapons are disabled.”

  “What?” his partner challenged.

  “The aliens disabled our weapons. Go ahead, try to take a shot into the sky.”

  Normally Rodney would have opposed this practice. Since he had started it, however, and he was confident about the Koreans’ abilities, he said nothing.

  After staring at them as they approached, the second gunman stepped onto the sidewalk, aimed at the sky, flicked off the safety and pulled the trigger. Then he swore.

  To Steve, all of this strained his ability to repress laughter, but he thought of terrible, tragic things and managed to keep his cool. He followed Rodney and the two kidnappers into the station, his hands back in his pockets. Until he put back on about forty pounds, those baggy pockets seemed too inviting to resist in an uncomfortable situation.

  Though the highway was lit only by streetlights, they still had to wait a few moments for their eyes to adjust to the low lights inside the station. The kidnappers only trusted the red emergency exit light. The black-clad kidnappers moved quickly, familiar with the layout and desperate to recover something from the debacle of that day.

  A brief argument ensued when the remaining two kidnappers saw Rodney and Steve, but an obscenity-laced explanation, silent test shots, and a great deflating sensation, brought the room to silence. They stood in the open area outside of the jail cells.

  Rodney could see Hyo and Young, each in one of the cells. He looked at Hyo and said, “What are you doing in there?”

  Hyo knew what Rodney was asking, but wondered whether it was time to end the charade for the kidnappers. He hesitated a moment and then said, “We didn’t want them to turn their hostility toward anyone else, so we thought we would go along for a while.” As he explained, the cell door clanked and then swung open, without anyone touching it.

  “What the...” said one of the kidnappers.

  Young followed his friend, and now all eight of them stood outside the cells.

  After a moment of silence, another of the kidnappers swore bitterly and another seemed to be crying.

  “What the Hell are we supposed to do?” Ray shouted.

  Rodney looked at Hyo and Young to see if they were going to finish this off. But they seemed to be waiting for him. He silenced a petty argument between two kidnappers that was just starting to gain momentum. “Stop it!” he said firmly.

  All eyes locked on Rodney. An officer in the military has to break up fights, take command of awkward situations, and sometimes serve as judge and jury. Rodney stepped into that role again.

  “Alright, everybody calm down. We just need to close this down and do it with whatever dignity we can salvage. Go ahead and take your masks off, I want to talk to you all face to face,” he said with authority but not anger.

  Ray was the first to comply, James Davis was the second, the other local kidnapper. The remaining two, from out of town, hesitated longer, looked at each other and then took off their masks. One of them, a dark-skinned man in his early thirties looked down at his vest.

  Rodney had forgotten about the suicide vests, so caught up in the joke of the useless rifles. When he saw that kidnapper glance at his vest, Rodney knew it was not just a flak jacket. What he didn’t know, was whether the bombers would be desperate enough to use those vests, or whether Hyo and Young had disabled them. Among the thoughts spinning through his head during those few seconds, how­ever, he found some confidence that the two immortals must have known about the vests and had certainly disabled them, as well. He released the breath he had been holding.

  “You disabled the vests too?” Rodney asked Young.

  Young nodded.

  Rodney swallowed and recovered his composure. Only Steve had noticed the gap, watching Rodney’s subtlest facial expressions and then comprehending the issue, only to see the fears relieved as soon as they formed. With that, Rodney recaptured the initiative.

  “How can you cooperate with these freaks?” The other stranger barked at Rodney. He stood about five-foot-seven, he held his curly head high, as if perpetually looking for a fight. Now he was fighting to recover his children.

  Rodney didn’t turn directly toward the surly challenge, deciding instead to try to diffuse the situation. “I can understand your feelings about your children, my two children were killed in the war. But I think you’ll find that trying to pick a fight with these gentlemen, and the millions of others they represent, is not going to get you very far.” He looked around at the four kidnappers. “In every fight you have to assess the relative strength of the enemy. I think you’ve seen here tonight what you’re up against.”

  Taking a deep breath, Rodney paused to think of some redemption for these desperate fathers. He turned to Hyo. “Who do we talk to about seeing the children?”

  Hyo looked a Young and Young answered. “I can make an inquiry and see what we can arrange. I’m sure there is some peaceful solution.” He sounded calm and confident, even if not prepared to make any specific promises.

  Rodney turned back to the kidnappers. “Ray and James, I know you boys. I know you mean well. Can I trust you to not do anything dangerous, at least until we get word back from Young?”

  They looked at each other and nodded agreement. Rodney looked each in the eyes to seal the deal. Then he turned to the two strangers and introduced himself. He got their names and promises to hold on before trying to take any kind of further action. The short, curly headed one, Michael Frayne still steamed, but Rodney found his promise convincing, nonetheless. The sort of desperation Frayne exuded did not seem prone to suicidal insanity, in spite of the bomb he wore on his chest.

  When the six mortals walked out of the police station, Hyo and Young insisting on staying behind, Rodney waved to Pete and the crowd. He collected the damaged weapons and suicide vests from each kidnapper, an easy task, given that they no longer worked. Then he said goodbye to them, as they trudged toward the north side of town, in the general direction of Jason Cooper’s house.

  Steve stood with Rodney, watching the dejected men melt into the night. He took a deep breath and looked at the starry night sky just above the police station. “You do this kinda stuff all the time?” He grinned at Rodney.

  Rodney laughed a tired sort of laugh. “I’m getting too old for this nonsense,” he said. Then they both walked across the street to brief the waiting crowd. Only Rodney could have convinced all of them that letting the kidnappers go was safe, his task made easier by the confiscated weapons and the fact that the victims of the crime were only the immortals.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Emma sat on the porch rocking slightly one bright morning, watching the birds hop along the edge of the driveway, picking up seeds and gravel. Cottonwood fluff floated across her view and she suddenly remembered something. When the healthcare system collapsed, the thing she missed most was allergy medicine. She had struggled to find sources, tried every option, legal and otherwise, and then gave up. She simply accommodated herself to having a stuffy nose all the time. She strained now to remember when that stuffiness disappeared. Instead of ignoring her allergies because she couldn’t do anything about them, she realized she had been ignoring
them lately because they no longer bothered her.

  “When did that happen?” she thought aloud.

  Rodney, who had just come back from the barn, which he was occasionally rehabbing, smiled at her. “What happened?”

  Emma laughed and blushed a bit. “You caught me talking to myself,” she said in search of recovery.

  “Yes,” said Rodney, a question still awaiting an answer.

  Emma sobered up and asked, “Do you have any allergies? I don’t know that about you.”

  Rodney looked at her thoughtfully. “A little, usually around the spring. I guess it would be around now.” Then he realized that he too had escaped the runny nose and itchy eyes.

  “Well, I’ve had pretty severe allergies,” Emma said. “The last couple of springs were terrible without medicine. But this year, nothing. No problem.”

  “Do you think the same folks who made the weather so much warmer got rid of allergies while they were at it?”

  Emma shrugged slightly, a positive-maybe look on her face. “And to think so many people hate them.”

  “Ah, that reminds me, I’m wanted in town today to mediate an arrangement for some of the parents.”

  “You told me already,” Emma said.

  Rodney took a deep breath. “I guess I’m nervous about it. You wanna come with me?”

  Emma considered a moment and then agreed. “Sure, I’d love to.”

  After lunch, they left for town, accompanied by Daniel and his mechanical friend, Chip. Daniel planned to introduce his walking science experiment to Dale Shelton, the robot tech, as promised. He was hoping for some free advice and maybe even a chance for some work. Life on the farm lacked the excitement a normal teenager craves.

  They dropped Daniel at Dale’s shop, along with Chip, waited for confirmation that Dale was in and then drove to the high school, where the parents of missing children were set to meet with representatives from Jerusalem. The grounds of the high school looked better than Rodney expected, considering that it had been shut down more than two years ago. It appeared that someone had been taking care of the building and grounds. Several dozen vehicles lined the north side of the parking lot. Rodney pulled into an open space and looked to his left. There, a couple he recognized was walking toward the doors nearest them.