The Brunist Day of Wrath: A Novel

by Coover, Robert

  Young Abner may have seen the making of that bomb. After Darren sent him back here, he patrolled the grounds, finding little of interest (a pair of cracked sunglasses that he is wearing because they make him feel more heroic, a jar of honey with a homemade label in a cabin cupboard which he ate) and there were still some pesky children running around, so he posted himself up here on the Point to guard the camp as he was asked to do. It’s drier and the chiggers aren’t so bad. He was resting against a tree, half asleep, considering what acts of retribution he might have undertaken had that jezebel’s trailer still been down in the parking lot, and keeping a lazy eye meanwhile on the sky over the Mount just in case something started to happen, when his brother’s motorcycle gang suddenly came roaring in below, guns out and firing into the cabins. That woke him up in a hurry, and he spread himself flat, peeking at them over the edge, his heart banging away at the stones under his chest. He recognized Nat immediately, even though he was supposed to be one of the ones who got killed. The one without a head, they said. Well, he was certainly still wearing it. And bossing everybody like he always does. Who was missing was his other brother, the little one. They left their motorcycles outside the Meeting Hall and charged in like storm troopers, kicking the doors open, blazing away.

  After that it was quiet and they stayed in there for a while and Young Abner was just thinking about rising from his prone position and scuttling down the back way while he still could, when two of them came out and started prowling around and he ducked his head again. The next time he got up the nerve to look, there they were, the whole gang, coming up the path to the Point. He had to scramble behind some thick bushes, which were not much protection. Scared spitless, as that wall-eyed boy who worked for Clara Collins used to say. Then the worst possible thing happened: his family has been eating a lot of canned beans lately with the inevitable consequence and it was like the devil had got into his bowels and was just trying to get him killed. But Nat and the others kept studying the Mount through their binoculars and arguing and they didn’t hear it (it was only the softest little poot), so God was still watching over him and answering his prayers. He saw now that Nat was wearing a leather jacket that said KID RIVERS on it in metal studs, and the main thing you’d say about him was that he didn’t look like a boy anymore. But it was Nat. Or at least the head was. Maybe they sewed it onto somebody else’s body. He realized, seeing him again up close, how much he hated him. And feared him. The big one in the undershirt, who looked like Goliath in Young Abner’s Illustrated Bible for Children, had a shiny policeman’s badge on his greasy leather vest, and the others wore bracelets and necklaces and upside down crosses in their ears like earrings. Not all of them were real Americans. Maybe none of them were. Some kind of monster aliens. Young Abner knew he could shoot them. That’s probably what he was expected to do—but what if he missed? He didn’t want to die! And if they weren’t all human, it might not do any good to shoot them. Nevertheless, he kept the revolver Darren gave him pointed at Nat the whole time just in case they did see him there; at least, before they killed him or did other terrible things, he’d be able to get back at his cruel brother for scarring his forehead. Nat shouted and shook his fist in what might have been some kind of prayer but sounded more like cussing, and then at last they all went away.

  Young Abner could hardly breathe, and when he crawled to the edge for another look, he saw that they had joined up with a sixth motorcyclist down below, an old crippled guy with a gray braid whom Young Abner recognized from the last time they were here, the one little Paulie was riding with when they left and the only one who looked like he might still be human, and they all went over to the emptied out trailer lot. He couldn’t see well through the trees, but it looked like two fat men got into a fight in which they both fell down, or maybe they were killed by the others; they didn’t get up again. One of the fat men was that big Goliath guy with the police badge. The others started vandalizing the few trailers and caravans still parked there while the old guy with the braid limped back up toward the Meeting Hall. He got some things from a sack that looked like big firecrackers, and he tied them up and settled them into a canvas bag. When the others came up to the Main Square, they were dragging along an older woman with scrawny arms and legs but a poochy belly. They must have found down in the trailer park. Did he know her? Possibly. From the old church. They dressed her in a raggedy Brunist tunic and one of the bikers put another one on like maybe they’d converted and he stowed his motorcycle inside the house trailer he’d driven up from below and the two of them drove away in it. The others stole other caravans and trailers and did the same, but before they left they splashed the buildings and grounds with big cans of gasoline and set everything alight. As they pulled out, he fired his rifle a few times in the general direction of the camp access road just to be able to say he had done what he was supposed to do. He will say they were shooting back, it was a real fire fight, he’s lucky to be here, and he fired a few shots into the trees behind him as evidence of that. He didn’t see what happened to the canvas bag, but now he can guess.

  After they were gone and he was alone except for the two dead men, he could pass wind as much and as loudly as he wanted—he thought of it as a kind of exorcism, and God-blessed himself with each ker-blatt! Down in the camp the fires were dying out. One thing Young Abner knows all about is building fires—burning the trash being one of his main chores growing up—so he gathered dry kindling and firewood from the stacks by the fireplace in the Meeting Hall and paper from the church office files and added it all to fires that were still smoldering, crumpling the paper to let the air get through and building little tepees with the wood. He knew that to make big fires you had to start with little ones. He broke up some of the wooden folding chairs and made the tepees bigger with them. Some of the gas cans were not completely empty and he sprinkled what was left over his constructions, and also into the old upright piano in the Meeting Hall, tossing a burning splinter in (there was a sweet responsive whoosh!), and then he capped the empty cans tightly and left them on the fires just for fun. He also remembered the old creosoted half-rotten boards from the ruined cabins and piled up on the far side of the trailer lot, and though it was hard work, he managed to haul most of them into the Main Square and add them to the cabin and Meeting Hall fires and they caught right away. While passing through the trailer lot on the way to get another armload, he paused to study the two dead men (the bearded one with the police badge was especially scary with his bulging eyes, which seemed to be looking right at him and crying, but crying blood, and with little red blood-worms crawling out of his nose and mouth and ears) and he took out the revolver and shot them both in the head, killing them a second time. It didn’t make much sense to shoot them both if he was trying to take credit, but he did. And that was when the huge bomb went off on the Mount of Redemption, and he hurried back up here to the Point to see what was happening. He saw the black spot where the bomb went off over there and all the crowds that had gathered and saw the helicopters and people shooting at each other and falling over, and he watched them for a while. They looked like white ants fighting black ants.

  Down in the camp, the spreading fire is popping and crackling healthily now, thick smoke billowing. There are flames in the bushes. If it gets hot enough, he knows, everything will catch and burn. He ties his bandanna over his nose. The smoke will draw attention. He may have to leave soon. But not yet. It’s an amazing sight. He can’t take his eyes off it. A God-sized bonfire, only lacking the bodies of the wicked. But he can imagine them, God plucking them from across the face of the earth and bringing them here and tossing them in, watching them scream and claw at the air as they fall, and knowing that it is good because He is good. The way Young Abner used to throw ants into his trash fires. “Let them be cast into the fire, into deep pits, that they rise not up again! For a fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn unto the lowest hell, and set on fire the foundations of the mountains!” Texts he knows well, having o
ften recited them over the dying ants. They will be at the heart of his ministry. “For our God is a consuming fire!” His voice is a little too high. He tucks his chin in and practices making it deeper. “For our God is a consuming fire!” Better. He fondles the revolver, points it at the continuing mayhem on the hill. It was fun shooting the two dead men. He wishes he had something else to shoot. Behind him, somewhere below, even as he makes that wish, he hears a cry. A girl, it sounded like. Maybe God has just answered his prayer, and appointed him His avenging angel.

  The Brunist Followers on the Mount of Redemption are not sure whether it is the beginning of the Tribulation or if they are into the midterm Rapture and the dreaded Abomination of Desolation or if it’s the Final Rebellion and the all-consuming battle of Armageddon, but, wherever they are in God’s awesome plan, the End Times are as horrific as the Bible said they would be. There was a mighty explosion that rocked the world on its axis and, some say, caused the sun to bounce, followed by the unleashing of a great slaughter, which seems to have no end. Indeed, depending on how you read the Bible, it could last for a thousand years. In the mind of God, of course, a thousand years is just an instant, the seeming passing of time being an illusion of human existence. For God, all things happen at once, and that’s exactly how it seems on the Mount of Redemption right now: eternity squeezed into one punishing explosive moment. They have heard the trumpet judgments, felt the earth quake under the scorching sun, been stung by the ice and fire raining from the cloudless sky, experienced within themselves the shattering of the bowls, for it is written that “as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to shivers.” “Send the fire!” they sang in genuine hope and longing, and now the fire has been sent and the bodies of the wounded and dead, as yet unraptured, litter the hillside. Day of wrath, O dreadful day! When this world shall pass away, and the Heavens together roll, shriveling like a parchéd scroll! They have known this was coming, all the shriveling and shivering, ceaselessly they have announced it, prayed for it, sung about it, and yet they have not known, could not have known. The paltry human imagination is not up to it. When the fire (when the fire)/Comes down from Heaven (down from Heaven),/This old world (this old world),/Will melt away (melt away)!/ Millions then (millions then)/Will cry for mercy (cry for mercy)/But it will be (it will be)/Too late to pray! Those with clear consciences smile with pious joy as they welcome their transport into the hereafter, their raised eyes ablaze with an inner light, while others, less certain of their fate, cry out in desperation to the Lord Jesus Christ for mercy, for forgiveness, for an end to the torment. Christ Jesus has indeed made his Glorious Appearance, returning as so often foretold, but he seems as stunned by events as the wailing believers who swarm about him, groveling at his feet, hands reaching out over other reaching hands to touch his garments, tug at them in supplication. All believe now. How can they not? He is, in the crushing horror, what hope remains. Children have crawled up on him, each trying to climb higher than the other, as if clambering up a crowded ladder to Heaven. As others have cried out, he has remained silent; as others have fallen, he has remained standing, overseeing what must be. Somewhere on his vesture and his thigh, they know, is written KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS, but under the clinging children this cannot be seen. His demeanor is stern, but composed. Bullets seem to have passed right through him!

  Don’t you have anything to say to these people?

  What can I say that I’ve not already said? I am confused by their confusion, oppressed by their hope. It’s all very sad. Yet I long for such innocent longing!

  Then what are we doing out here? It’s really dangerous! And we’re not even ducking!

  I know. Somehow that feels out of character.

  But this is madness! Where is that wretched fellow who was with us?

  Somewhere under all these others, I suppose.

  Shouldn’t we at least be protecting all these children?

  No. They are protecting us.

  Helicopters clatter overhead with hollow amplified voices like those of creatures from outer space. “You must leave this property immediately! Put down your weapons! You are all under arrest!” They go largely unheeded. Though many have been brought low, the remaining Brunist Defenders and Christian Patriots, under the command of Ross McDaniel, the deputy acting sheriff and Patriot sergeant-at-arms, have managed to pin back the enemy forces at the top of the hill, using the excavated outline of the temple floor plan as a shallow trench bulwarked by fallen bodies, and they continue to exchange sporadic gunfire. At least, for the moment, the shooting has stopped from the base of the hill, where the town banker, exercising his wartime experience as a decorated senior officer, has pushed aside the state governor and the frightened young National Guard captain and ordered the rattled troops to stop firing and take cover behind the buses. With the megaphone wrested from the young officer, he turns to the outraged townsfolk, arriving now by the carloads, seeking revenge for the horrors visited upon them, and appeals to them to put away their weapons, warning them that they could face imprisonment or worse. They should return to their cars at once and clear the area. None do—it was the banker himself, after all, who urged them all to arm them-selves—but at least, after his warning, they stop taking potshots at the tunicked zealots on the hillside. He moves through the crowd, seeking out law officers, firemen, medics, conferring with them, and as he points out various positions, they all spread out.

  Although they think of themselves as righteous servants of God and country, the citizenry at the foot and those in the air are serving human laws, not divine ones, and thus are recognized by those fighting the Holy War of the Last Days as members of the legions assembled by Satan, it being in the nature of the Powers of Darkness that they do not know they are the Powers of Darkness, just as, though they are doomed, they cannot know that they are doomed, else they would not play the roles in God’s grand scheme that they are obliged to play. Such are the beliefs of the ardent young Brunist evangelist, presently scrunched down in the puddled grave at the temple cornerstone intended for the last remains of the Prophet Giovanni Bruno, together with the hysterical First Follower and visionary who is his constant companion. As he once replied to the young woman accused by many of being the Anti-christ—and perhaps she is indeed an unwitting manifestation of that enigmatic figure, so essential to the Apocalypse—when she protested that it seemed unfair of the deity to single out a chosen elite: “Well, too bad. That’s how it is.” Victims have fallen in on top of them, but they have been pushed out again.

  “Can we fly to Heaven now, Darren?”

  “No, we’ll wait here.”

  “I’m afraid. I want to go sit in my chair.”

  “Stay down, Colin. We’re safe here.”

  “I want my chair!”

  “Here, this is like your chair.”

  “It’s wet!”

  “No, it’s all right. Just sit on me. Raise yourself up a little so I can… there. Is that better?”

  From the other empty cornerstone grave comes the stentorian voice of the spiritual leader of the Holy Remnant, the Brunist Bishop of West Condon. “Sound the alarm on my holy mountain! Let all the habitants of the land tremble, for the day of the Lord has come!” He has been foxholed there by his loyal supporters, who shield him from those who wish to kill him. He is staunch and unbowed still, fist raised in defiance of the stuttering gunfire around him. “There has never been such a day before, and there won’t be no other after it! The sun and the moon they’ll go dark, and the stars will quit their shining!” On top of the Mount of Redemption, intent on thwarting the will of the Almighty, is the Romanist villain who thrashed him so mercilessly when he was held, like the Apostle Paul, in captivity: It is all falling into place. Divine history is revealing itself. He is who he has always thought he is. “Do you hear?” he bellows, his voice resounding over the scorched hillside. “Yea, God is fed up with the wickedness on earth and nothing will escape His fury!”

  His chief guardian, the black-be
arded deputy acting sheriff, hunkered down in the trench next to him and firing at anything that moves up on top, is not so certain God has the upper hand. Through carelessness they have ceded the higher ground, and now they are easy targets out here on this barren hillside and risk total decimation. He turns to the Christian Patriot nearest him, the bishop’s new son-in-law. “I want you to cover me, Lawson. Keep them pinned down up there. They’re mostly just kids and scared outa their skins. You shouldn’t have no problems. If they show more’n their cowlicks, put a bullet in their dumb brains to give ’em something new to think about. I’m gonna make a run for them backhoes.” He selects two Brunist Defenders to go with him, and as they are about to attempt their run, another in a plaid shirt and billed cap, leaning on his rifle, struggles to his feet and begins to sing: “Stand up, stand up for Jesus, ye soldiers of the cross!” Yet another rises beside him, then another. “Lift high His royal banner, it must not suffer loss!” Soon there are half a dozen, then ten, twelve others courageously pulling themselves erect and raising their militant voices, rifles at their shoulders, their fusillades pounding the hilltop rhythmically as they sing. Even the old fellow in the wheelchair pushes himself forward and joins in with his sharp nasal caw. “From victory unto victory His army shall He lead…!” It works. The Patriot leader and his team run low behind them, sprint the final open yards, and reach the backhoes before the first shots are fired at them, bullets now whanging ineffectually off the backhoes’ pressed steel bodies.