One of the women in the congregation saw them first. “There!” she gasped, pointing at them. The man with the book whirled around to face them. He was unarmed. He spread his hands wide in a sign of peaceable innocence and took a step into the darkness.
“We are unarmed,” he said, his voice booming through the woods. “You are welcome to our fire, but with weapons sheathed. My flock is peaceful, and we welcome peaceful sheep alone.” A few cries of Amen! went up from the congregation.
Patrick looked at Ben. Ben looked at Patrick. “He looks unarmed,” Ben whispered. “And old. I think we could take him.”
“They outnumber us by a thousand percent.”
“But they’re mostly old women. I think we can take them, too.”
Patrick weighed their options. It was unlikely an old preacher and his unarmed, elderly followers had climbed dozens of trees and nailed living (and presumably fighting) people there. And they had a fire, and a good number of people. He decided to go along with it, at least for the time being. “Here goes nothin’,” he whispered. “Out of the frying pan...”
He slipped the machete back into its sheath and pocketed the baton. Ben followed suit, flipping the bat over and grabbing it by the thick end. “Sorry if we caused any alarm,” Patrick said, walking toward the group with his hands spread wide like the preacher’s. “We saw the bodies in the trees, and we thought—“
“Abominations,” the reverend said sadly, shaking his head and clicking his tongue. “A sign that God has abandoned this world, to be sure. But we hope, and we pray, and we believe that He will return.” There were more cries of Amen!
“You’re not concerned about the fire?” Ben asked. “That it might draw attention?”
“We built the fire for warmth. We will not be scared off God’s great gift of earthen providence by the likes of sinners.”
“But the bodies—“ Patrick started, but once again, the preacher interrupted him.
“There is a great strength in numbers. We are stronger now than we were before you arrived. The evil man does evil deeds, but evil finds him, too, in the end. If we must be that end, so be it.” A young man in dark trousers and a dirty white shirt whooped joyfully from the other side of the fire. “Amen, brother,” the preacher told him. He turned back to the newcomers. “I’m Reverend James Maccabee, and this here’s the New Herald Christian Church. You boys are welcome to stay for the night, or longer, if your souls are at peace here.”
“We really appreciate it,” Patrick said. “We won’t be a bother. We have our own blankets and food.”
“Dirty, thin blankets and canned food, I reckon?” the reverend asked with a smile. “Nonsense. You boys keep those things for the road, where life is hard. In our church, our guests are part of the flock. If you’ll allow, we’ll put you up in a tent, and you’ll share our meat tonight.”
“Did you say meat?” Ben asked.
The reverend nodded. “These woods are plentiful, for those who know where to look. The good Lord, in His mercy, has provided us with deer for tonight’s meal.” He gestured across the fire, and, indeed, two women were hunched over a deer, trimming its hide from the red flesh, preparing it for the fire. “With the Lord’s guidance, we never want for food.”
Tears welled in Ben’s eyes. He hadn’t eaten a morsel of real meat in over two years, and even that was a rotting pigeon that had been dead under the El for at least two days. The memory of dysentery still made his stomach turn. Fresh meat was a miracle. Surely these people were God’s own chosen ones. “Thank you,” he said, his voice trembling. “Just...thank you.”
The preacher clapped his hand on Ben’s shoulder. “Thank the Lord, son. Thank the good Lord.”
Dinner that evening turned into a great feast in honor of the new guests. The church’s gatherers dug roots and wild onions from the earth and softened them together in a pot of boiling water. There was even a type of flatbread, made from ground wild grass and edible flowers set on a flat rock over the flames. The grease from the deer soaked into the crude, crisp dough and made it a pliable, earthy wrap. Patrick and Ben were given seats of honor in the inner circle around the fire, just to the right of Reverend Maccabee. The man said grace over the food, thanking God for his provisions in these dark times, and he prayed for their safety and protection. With a rousing Amen! the congregation began to eat. Patrick could not remember a more satisfying meal.
The congregation was in high spirits. Reverend Maccabee laughed and shared stories with Mrs. Goodson, an elderly woman Patrick assumed would be the administrator in a normal, pre-M-Day brick and mortar church. When they’d licked the last of the grease from their fingers, the reverend settled back against the log he used for a bench, and the conversation gradually became more solemn. A handful of the church members, the younger and stronger among the group, wandered off and began linking together a wooden scaffold off to the side of the little clearing, right next to the biggest tree in sight. Fire had left the burned earth hard and dry, and two young men struggled with a set of stakes that refused to be driven into the ground.
“Our altar,” Maccabee explained, seeing Patrick’s wondering gaze. “We’ll have an evening service before bed.” Ben offered to help the two men, and Maccabee reckoned that they’d be glad for the assistance.
“Do you have a service every night?” Patrick asked as Ben trotted off to struggle with a dull stake.
“Every night, and every morning. We build our altar where we can, if the Lord provides us with the means for Eucharist. Otherwise, we have a simple prayer service.”
“That’s nice,” Patrick said. He had never been much for structured religion (or unstructured, for that matter), but it was comforting to know that even in times like these, organizational worship could still exist. It was something left over from the time before. So much had burned away or died in the Jamaican attacks; there was little left to carry over into this scorched new era.
“It makes life worth fighting for,” the preacher agreed.
Patrick wondered if the people nailed to the trees had fought for their lives. He looked up at the blackened trunks above. There were no crucified bodies, at least not within sight. He was thankful to the fog for that much. “Do you know who did that to those people?” he asked, indicating the trees.
“The same one who is the source of all evil thoughts and deeds.”
“Miley Cyrus?” Patrick asked. The reverend didn’t smile.
“The devil himself. That Lucifer.”
Patrick started. “Lucifer. Light bringer!” he breathed, barely above a whisper.
The reverend nodded. “So he is called. A strange name for the Prince of Darkness. But then, he is the Great Deception.”
Patrick pulled out the notebook and circled “Light Bringer.” Cripes, he thought, this first peril is a doozy. He wasn’t sure how to word his next question without sounding like a loon. But, he reasoned, if there was one person who would take it seriously, it was a man of the cloth. “So...how would one go about...you know...fighting the devil? If one were so inclined?”
Maccabee spread his arms and raised his eyes heavenward. “With prayer.”
“That’s it?”
“It is our best weapon against the darkness.”
Patrick frowned. “I was hoping for something a little more actionable. Like, ‘with a crossbow.’”
“Well,” said the older man, a sly gleam in his eye. “Prayer is the best weapon, but that machete might just be second best.”
The preacher got up to go check on the altar progress, leaving Patrick alone at the fire. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out the worn piece of notebook paper. He unfolded it carefully and held it down to the firelight. We’re going to make it, he thought, reading the scribbled print. God knows I don’t know how, but we’re going to make it to the Magic Kingdom.
&n
bsp; •
Lucy shivered against the river wind. It was dark, and cold, and she was so tired, she just wanted to stop at the nearest bank and go to sleep. But that one guy, the skinny one, he had told her not to stop for anything, ‘cause it was so dangerous. But boy, was she miserable. Cold, and wet with river spray, and tired, and aggravated, and headed straight back to stupid freaking Hannibal with its stupid freaking Tom Sawyers and Becky Thatchers. Whose idea was it to keep that little tradition alive, anyway? Dressing up those kids was so freaking stupid.
She had passed the Arch about an hour ago, so she couldn’t be that far from home. But jeepers, she was tired. She could almost close her eyes and drift off...
She jerked back awake just before the boat crashed into a heavy wooden dock. She jerked the wheel, just like the boys had shown her, and she zipped back out into the center of the river. “Holy hell!” she cried aloud. That was close.
She was thirsty. She needed a Red Bull. Whatever happened to Red Bull? They probably went out of business when everybody died. People probably spent all their money on funerals and stuff. Not on Red Bull.
Poor Red Bull.
She saw a light flicker up around the next bend. She squinted through the foggy darkness and continued on toward it. Not like she had a choice. She scuttled around the bend and saw it wasn’t just a light; it was a torch. A full out fire torch, just like in Indiana Jones! She instinctively ran a hand over her whole body, clearing any snakes, spiders, mutant millipedes, or monkey brains that might be crawling around on her. Ugh. That movie was so gross.
The guy holding the torch was waving at her. Oh, yeah, like I’m gonna stop and pick up a hitchhiker, she thought. Nice try, rapist. She was glad she’d been directed not to stop. She tried not to look at the man as she sped past. Maybe he would think she hadn’t seen him. But dammit, trying not to look at something you really wanted to look at was impossible, because that made you want to look at it even more, and the fire drew her eyes, so she did sneak a peek, and she gasped when she was close enough to see his face. She turned the tiller and sped across the river at a diagonal, away from the man on the bank. She knew he couldn’t jump into the boat from where he stood, but still. She wanted to get far away. Even in the firelight, she could tell something was wrong with him. It was just a small discoloration, but it scared the bejeebers out of her. He had what her grandma called the Devil’s Eye.
•
That night, Patrick dreamed of fire demons on horseback chopping off the heads of crying children with axes of brimstone. The rotten egg sting of sulfur poisoned the air as the heads spun in the wind. When each head landed on the scorched earth, it burrowed deep into the ground, and a tall, gnarled tree exploded from the soil. The trees had human faces etched into their trunks, and they screamed and wailed as the fire demons galloped through them, slaughtering more fodder. The trees cried tears of yellow blood that spilled down their trunks and pooled at their roots. The yellow goo rose into a tide that washed over the forest and soaked everything with its bitter metallic stink. A great hole ripped open in the center of the forest, and the yellow blood began a quickening spiral into the core of the Earth, pulling and sucking the screaming trees and decapitated bodies down with it. The Earth sucked the forest dry, revealing an entire army of fire demons, armed now with sledgehammers and red-hot railroad spikes. Each demon turned to the creature on his left and drove the hot spike through its brain. Somewhere, beyond the plain of massacre, from deep within the hole in the Earth, their prince laughed.
Patrick opened his eyes with a gasp. Two dark eyes stared down at him from above. He lurched up in his bedroll and scooted back into the corner of the little tent. “Easy, son, easy,” said Reverend Maccabee. “You’re all right now. You was havin’ a nightmare.” Patrick looked around uncertainly. Ben was still asleep under his blankets. He heard the easy crackle of the fire outside. He exhaled heavily through his mouth.
“Sorry. Was I shouting? Did I wake you?”
“It’s all right,” the reverend said, a queer look of concern on his face. “Friend Patrick, I have to tell you; nightmares are one of the tools of the devil.”
Patrick rubbed at his eyes. “I think you have nightmares confused with FOX News.”
The reverend did not laugh. “I’m as serious as the grave, son. The devil works in many ways, all of them terrible. One of those ways is through our dreams. Our nightmares. A soul burdened with nighttime terrors is a soul in the grasp of Satan.”
“Uhm--I think I maybe just had a bad root last night or something. Could be the deer. I’ve never really had venison. I’m not sure how my body reacts to it.” He thumped his chest and belched. “’Scuse me.”
The preacher took Patrick’s hand in his own and squeezed it gently. “The only way to be bathed in His light, to shut out the Darkness, is to be saved. Do you want to be saved, Patrick?”
Ooooh boy, he thought. Here we go. “Do you think I should be saved?” he asked, trying his hand at diplomacy.
“I think those among us who are not saved are doomed to an eternity in the fires of Hell.”
“So that’s a yes, then.” Patrick examined his current options and discerned the path of least resistance. He decided that the simplest road was the sidewalk to salvation. Besides, Madame Siquo’s list made him uneasy, and one more layer of protection against the devil couldn’t hurt. “Okay. Then saved I shall be. Do we do this in the morning, or...?”
Maccabee shook his hand in excitement. “Once you decide to be saved, there’s not a second to lose! We must bring about your salvation. The devil may enter you at any time.” Patrick fought harder than that very same devil to keep at least six inappropriate jokes from escaping his mouth. Now just wasn’t the time. “If you’re ready, we’ll do it right now.”
Patrick shrugged. “Sure. What about Ben? Should we wake him up? We should probably save him too. He’s got all kinds of blights of the soul.”
The reverend glanced over at the sleeping figure. “Your friend is untroubled in his sleep. No signs of Satan have been made manifest to me. The New Herald Christian Church believes a pure soul is already saved and needs not the cleansing.”
“Oh, trust me, that soul’s not pure. The devil’s been entering that one for years. Let’s wake ‘im up.” Patrick tapped Ben on the crown of his head. “Hey! Wake up! We’re gonna get you baptized!”
The trio stumbled out of the tent, eyes bleary with sleep. Reverend Maccabee approached the three night guards and explained the situation. Two of them broke off and began waking up the congregation in their tents. “You really don’t have to wake everyone up,” Patrick said.
“Oh, just me?” Ben sneered with a yawn.
“Salvation is a joyous occasion, brothers!” the reverend said with a broad smile. “Your brothers and sisters shall witness your cleansing and be heralds of the Lord’s joy.”
In ten minutes, the whole party was assembled. The members of the church seemed tired, but happy. They swayed and clapped in the night as the old would-be administrator led them in an uplifting hymn. Reverend Maccabee threw on a purple cloak over his black pants and shirt, then mounted the wooden altar and motioned for Patrick and Ben to do the same. “I hate you,” Ben whispered as they climbed the stairs. “I just want you to know that.”
“Those are the devil’s words coming through you, Ben. Soon, you won’t mean them anymore.”
Two of the men from the watch climbed the steps after them; the altar was plenty spacious for the entire group. Reverend Maccabee held up his hands, and the people below fell silent. “Brothers and sisters!” he boomed. “Tonight, we have in our midst two poor sinners. Two decent human beings, two good-hearted boys, who have found themselves plunged into the devil’s well. These two young men, like so many others, crave the forgiveness of the Lord. And, brothers and sisters, the Lord is good.” Cries of Yes he is! and Amen! peppered t
he crowd. “Our God in Heaven is a kind God. He is a merciful God! He is a forgiving God! He is the Way, the Truth, and the Light, and it is through our God that we shall be saved!” Amen! “And so it is with great joy that we, His pure flock, offer salvation to the lost. It is with humility and awe that we are able to cleanse these young men here tonight.” He turned and stepped over to Patrick and placed his open palm on the sinner’s forehead. “Son of our Lord Jesus Christ, brother to all men and women, do you reject Satan and all his evil works?”
“All of them. Even the little ones,” Patrick said.
“Is it your wish to accept the Lord Jesus Christ into your heart, and to purge the demon from your soul, to free your worldly body and eternal spirit from his clutches?”
“That is my wish, yes.”
“Do you cry out for forgiveness from our Heavenly Father and beg him for his mercy?”
“I do. I do cry out.” He leaned forward and whispered, “Should I cry out now, or...?” But Maccabee continued.
“Is it your wish to be saved?”
“Yes, being saved is a priority,” Patrick nodded.
“Then. By your own admission and acceptance, you ask us, the holy flock, to cleanse you of your desire to do evil.” Patrick opened his mouth to say that he never really desired to do evil but decided not to embarrass the minister. He seemed to be having such a big moment. “The Lord God asks us to be cleansed in three ways, just as He is the three spirits in one God. We cleanse with prayer.” He made the sign of the cross over Patrick’s head and mumbled a quiet prayer. When he was done, he placed his hand once again on Patrick’s head. “We cleanse with water.” He motioned to one of his two assistants. The young man stepped forward and handed him a halved geode full of water. The preacher poured the water on Patrick’s head and let it spill down his face and neck. Patrick cried out in shock from the cold, but the assistant knew to expect this. He took Patrick’s hand and squeezed it in support. Maccabee handed the cup to the second assistant, who went to refill it for Ben’s salvation. The reverend turned back to Patrick. “And we cleanse by sacrifice.” He nodded to the assistant. The young man pulled Patrick’s hand up and back behind him, securing it, palm out, against the trunk of the large tree next to the platform. Maccabee reached into his robes and pulled out a hammer and a thick, iron spike. “What--wait, what are you doing?” Patrick asked, suddenly alarmed. He squirmed and struggled to break free, but the assistant held his hand firmly in place. Maccabee put the point of the spike to Patrick’s palm and, with one strong, smooth stroke, drove it right through his flesh and into the tree.
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