Through the door, Mitch heard the faint reply: “What the hell?” The sound of a key scraping in the lock followed it almost immediately, as he’d hoped. The guard pushed the door expecting resistance from the hydraulic arm above. With the crucial pin removed, there was none, and the door swung open violently. He practically fell into the room, propelled by his expectations and excitement. He entered as Mitch had expected he would, leading with a drawn gun. “What on God’s green Earth is going—” he shouted, losing his train of thought as he stumbled a step farther inside than he intended. Mitch swung the crucifix at his weapon hand. The feeling of the man’s forearm snapping resonated up the cross, providing an instant sense memory of other bones that had broken under his hands. The sound of the gunshot in the room refocused Mitch and he swung with the back of the cross, driving it flat into the man’s face like a tennis racket. Overweight, over forty, and caught full in the face with a piece of oak, the guard crumpled to the floor. His pistol clattered across the room. Mitch watched it slide right up to Byron’s feet, as if he’d pulled it toward him telekinetically. The man bent over and picked it up. Mitch waited to see what he would do with it. He was too far away from Byron to close the distance fast enough to take it. He had to hope Byron wouldn’t turn it on them.
He had no such luck.
“Am I in your way now, asshole?”
The sound of Amye’s stick snapping against the back of his skull echoed in the room like a lightning crack. He staggered forward a step before swinging around with the gun. Amye shrieked and collapsed in a ball as he tried to draw a bead on her. Mitch skipped across the room like he was coming out of his corner after the bell and delivered a hook into Byron’s neck just below his ear. The man fell, stiff legged and slack faced. His head made a sound on the floor like someone dropped a coconut. Mitch grabbed the pistol out of his hand and tossed it away behind him. He folded Byron’s arms and rolled him over onto his side so he wouldn’t choke on his tongue or vomit. He put his hands on Amye’s shoulders. “Are you okay?” She looked at him with wide frightened eyes and nodded mutely. “Thank you,” he said, helping her up off the floor.
He turned and said, “Is everyone okay?” The others nodded and mumbled their state of good health. Looking around, he searched for the gun he’d tossed aside, finding it untouched on the floor near Nick and Alexa’s feet. He walked over and picked it up. He didn’t know guns. Their makes and models were as foreign to him as high performance cars. Hell, any car! All he knew was that one went fast and the other shot bullets. The feeling of it was comforting, though. Its weight was potent. He imagined it kicking in his hand, sensing the power of sending something faster than the eye could follow into someone else to tear and break flesh and bone. His ears were still ringing from the guard firing it into the floor. Though he couldn’t see smoke, the smell of spent gunpowder in the room lingered, lightly tincturing the air with sulfur. There was nothing this thing couldn’t ruin. He held it out to Steve, who cocked his head as if to say, “Who, me?” Mitch nodded. Steve took the gun, thumbed on the safety, and held it at an angle away from his own body and everyone else, pointed at the floor. Mitch instantly felt good about the decision to give it to him. He didn’t want that kind of power.
The two of them dragged the guard the rest of the way into the room next to Byron and Mitch searched him for another gun, finding a small pistol in an ankle holster. The guard was snoring loudly, but Mitch didn’t feel bad for crushing his nose. The old fart had been ready to shoot him; he was lucky to get out of it only needing a CPAP mask.
“Time to go,” he said. The parents filed past him toward the door. As Izzy walked by, he handed her the throwaway piece. He figured if Steve knew what he was doing, maybe she did too. She didn’t disappoint. “Where did you guys learn to handle guns like that?”
“I’m a New Hampshire woman,” she said, without elaborating.
“Live free or die,” Steve echoed.
“I’m all for the first part! The rest I’d rather put off as long as possible.”
“Where did you learn to move like that?” Izzy asked.
“I used to box.”
“That part with the cross didn’t look like any pay-per-view I ever ordered,” Steven said.
Mitch glanced at the others. Amye had a starry-eyed look of admiration he was certain would die as soon as he told them the truth. He couldn’t help thinking of reading Yeats in his cell. This was the moment where the center either held, or the ceremony of innocence was drowned. If he told them, would it change anything? He hoped not; these people were all he had at the moment. “I might’ve learned a thing or two in prison.”
Amye gasped and took an involuntary step away. The others stood their ground.
“What did you do?” Steve asked. His question wasn’t loaded with threat, but Mitch had seen people’s attitudes toward him pivot drastically when he’d been honest about his past. The new spark of fear in Amye’s eyes gave him pause.
“I... hurt someone I thought was threatening my family. I almost killed him, but I got lucky and he lived.” Lucky. The word felt wrong on his tongue, as if the sound itself objected to its utterance in that context. Mitch wondered whether everyone would have been better off if he had killed Junior. He’d have gotten a longer sentence, and maybe Violette wouldn’t have had someone to dump Sophie on when she wanted to go on the road. She would’ve had to stay home and raise her daughter instead. But, that’s where the alternate timeline broke down in his imagination. Eventually, he realized, she would’ve wanted to go have fun with her friends. He imagined her leaving Sophie with Meghan, coming home late to find Faye in her living room, demanding money with bourbon-stinking breath and swaying on her feet. He saw Sophie lying in her crib, dying in the next room just as it had actually happened. That he couldn’t even imagine a better world than the one he lived in nearly broke him. He took a long shuddering breath. Everything he’d resented about Violette leaving—the sudden unwanted responsibility, the stress, the loss of his independence—he missed all of it when Sophie died. That she’d been taken from him again was unbearable. He’d do anything to get her back, and that frightened him even more. He couldn’t do anything. He had to do the right things, or he’d fuck up both their lives all over again.
Alexa put a hand on his arm. “Are you okay?”
“I guess so,” he told her. Suggesting he was in any kind of way all right wasn’t honest, though. He felt as far from okay as he felt from Sophie. “I did my time, and I’ve worked real hard to learn how to manage my... violent impulses. Sometimes, it all feels like it was for nothing, though.” He trailed off, fearing he’d lost them. All the allies he’d earned would see him for who he was and abandon him, as they should if they had any sense.
“I’m glad you still have work to do,” she said, squeezing his arm. “Don’t give up now. We need you. Your girl needs you.”
The others drew near and reached out for him, grabbing ahold of his hands, his shoulders, pressing their palms against his back, over his heart. They touched him and told him to stay strong. Izzy said, “Keep your gloves up. Keep fighting.”
He looked in the faces of the people around him, and, for a moment, felt a glimmer of hope. They were afraid, but not of him. Still, they couldn’t draw around a campfire and sing “Kumbaya” just yet. “It’s getting late. We’ve got to get moving,” he said. He gestured toward the door hoping no one noticed how badly his extended hand shook. They let go of him and started to file out of the room. Mitch stood waiting with his hand on the key the guard had left hanging in the door, waiting to twist it as soon as they were all clear. Byron groaned and coughed and sat up, rubbing his neck like he was coping with a bad hangover. Mitch found himself hoping it felt at least that bad. He pushed down his resentment; Byron wasn’t his problem any longer. There was no reason to hold that grudge. Not after the deadbolt was thrown. He started to pull the door shut.
“Wait!” Byron shouted. “You can’t leave me here.”
Mi
tch sighed and hesitated a moment. “You had your chance. If we find your boy... we’ll try to get him somewhere safe. What’s his name?” Byron’s eyes narrowed. His look communicated everything Mitch needed to know about reconsidering his decision to leave the man behind. He began to pull the door closed.
“They’re coming, you know. Church starts at dusk. I’ll be out of here in minutes, and I’ll tell them where you’re going. You think you’ve escaped? All you’ve done is brought the Lord’s wrath down on all your heads. I’ll be standing by his right side when—”
As badly as he wanted to go back in and put Byron down for another nap, he closed the door on the man’s vitriol and twisted the key in the lock. He tested the door to make sure it was secure, and turned to go. Ahead of him on the stairs, the others from the Parents’ Ministry stood waiting. As if he had a plan.
• • •
He leaned against the long bar and the door popped open without setting off any alarms—at least none Mitch could hear. He opened the door wide enough to poke his head through. When the weekend warriors had brought him to the Parents’ Ministry he’d been disoriented and seeing through blurry eyes. Now, trying to make his best guess where Sophie would be, he couldn’t tell the difference between any of the buildings except for the chapel at the center. The campus seemed peaceful, almost tranquil. Nothing stood out as an obvious choice.
He ducked back inside. “It looks pretty clear out there, but I don’t know where to go.”
Amye pointed at a clock on the wall above them and said, “It’s almost time for the late service. On a night like tonight, everybody will be at the Grace Amphitheater.”
“Is that what it sounds like? Big outdoor thing?”
Amye nodded. “The outdoor sermons are the big ones that end a retreat. There’s always lights and music and stuff in the normal chapel, but this one is more, like, I don’t know. Tribal, I guess. There’s bonfires and stuff.”
“Where’s that?” he asked. Amye pointed over his shoulder. He understood what direction she meant, but without being able to see through walls, it didn’t mean much to him. “How about our kids? Do you know where they are?” She shook her head. “That guy, Roper, mentioned something called the ‘safe room,’” he said.
“My husband and me have been in pretty much every building in the retreat, but I’ve never heard of a safe room.”
“Anyone else?” They all shook their heads. Mitch rubbed at his temples. He didn’t want to go downstairs to get Byron. The guy wasn’t about to help them, and even if they tried to force him to cooperate, they had no assurance he wouldn’t lead them right into the lion’s jaws. No. He was no help. They had to do this themselves.
Nick stepped forward. He tried to talk, but his words were strangled. He cleared his throat and tried again. “We tried to leave yesterday because Alexa overheard someone talking about... what was it, dear?”
She had been nearly catatonic locked inside the room, but on the other side of the locked door, she appeared to be coming back to life. “The Children’s Crusade. They said that Pastor Roper was going to ‘lead the children to salvation,’ whatever that means. I didn’t like the way they said it, like it was some kind of euphemism for something else. And, you know, the actual Children’s Crusade ended up with all the children either dead or enslaved.”
“That story is apocryphal,” Nick said. “The ‘children’ were likely impoverished adults, and not actually children.”
“Do you think it matters to them whether traditional and modern accounts are reconcilable with historiography?” Mitch hadn’t asked Nick and Alexa what they did for a living, but he was getting the impression these two were teachers or historians or something. Their banter was cute, but there was no time for it.
“I don’t get it,” he said. “You think they’re taking the kids where?” Nick shrugged again. Mitch was getting the idea that if he spent enough time with the man he might be able to detect differences in the gesture that would reveal some kind of shoulder hunching sign language.
Alexa said, “If it’s a public spectacle, my guess is they’ll all end up at the amphitheater, if they aren’t there already.”
“I guess it’s worth a look.”
Amye objected. “I don’t think we should go. What if they find us? They have guns. We should get away and call the police.”
Mitch understood where she was coming from. The thought of the police coming made him imagine a Waco-style standoff. The image wasn’t entirely objectionable, at least not in part. The part where the whole damn compound went up in flames while Mitch and the others watched from a safe distance with their kids. “I’m all for calling the cops. Afterwards. But I’m not stepping foot outside this compound without Sophie.”
“Us either,” Izzy said. “We’re not leaving Michelle here for another motherfucking minute.” Steve stood behind his wife and put a hand on her shoulder. He didn’t have to say anything.
“Amye,” Mitch began, “No one is going to force you to do anything. If you want to go try to bring the police back, I’m not stopping you. If we find the kids, we’ll take Brendan with us.” Amye’s eyes welled up at the mention of her son. Looking at her body language, it was clear enough that she wanted to run as fast as she could away from Pastor Roper and his congregation of apocalyptic nuts. She was forcing herself to stand there with them. Even if she was terrified, she had heart.
“I’ll help you.”
Mitch hugged her. It was awkward, but she hugged him back tightly and breathed a long shuddering sigh into his chest. He said, “Thank you. You know this place best. We need you.”
“I’ll try not to let you down.”
Mitch let go. “It’s time to move.”
37
The sun was setting behind the chapel. Orange light colored the wispy clouds and reflected through the glass and steel dome crowning the building, making it glow like a jeweled censer. The entire compound was beautiful, elegant. Mitch felt a surge of frustration at its opulence. He’d spent the last year managing food stamps, rent vouchers, and heating assistance, all while working to pay for day care, eking out just enough to occasionally buy a pizza, Sophie a pair of shoes and a coat from a consignment store, or a toy for her birthday. He had to save up to go out on a date, and here he stood in front of a building that looked like it cost more than he’d see in a hundred lifetimes. Hidden in the woods, in the middle of nowhere. What could have been bought with the millions it took to build a small village around a chapel that resembled a crystalline Vatican? How much of that money had been funneled away from the people who gathered inside who could have used it to pay for heat in the winter or food all year ‘round? It made him angry and unfocused. He tried to concentrate on the task ahead. Money didn’t matter. All that mattered was moving forward. Finding Sophie and the other kids.
He crept toward the edge of the building and peered around. He couldn’t see anyone. The place seemed deserted. In the distance, he heard a swell of music and an amplified voice. He couldn’t tell what the speaker was saying, but he could tell from the response of the crowd, it was something they understood clearly and appreciated. “Church starts at dusk,” the gatekeeper had said. No one had returned for them yet, but he took the guards at their word when they said they’d be back. The Parents’ Ministry prisoners had to move, even if it meant exposing themselves. He looked back one last time to make sure everyone was accounted for before signaling them out into the open. The others were all hunched over, trying to hide in a shadow that didn’t exist. He realized what they looked like: people escaping.
He forced himself to stand up straight. “Everybody, get up,” he said. “Stand up straight.”
Nick, immediately behind him, replied, “Excuse me?”
“Have you ever wandered into a neighborhood you shouldn’t have?” Nick nodded his head. “Then you know if you walk around looking lost or confused, you stand out more than if you look like you belong, even when you don’t. We need to stand up and look like we k
now where we’re going.”
Nick’s brow furrowed, but he got it. He straightened his back and encouraged Alexa to do the same. Amye still hunched over a little, but she eventually relaxed. Steve and Izzy stood up. At his full height, Steve towered maybe a foot and a half higher than his wife. Mitch hadn’t noticed before. He seemed to be always hunching near her, trying to be closer.
“Better,” Mitch said.
“So where are we going?” Nick asked.
Mitch pointed toward a building catty-corner across the quad from them. Another man in black with a pistol on his hip stood in front of it. “There,” he said.
“But there’s a guy there.”
“Yeah, there is. Looks like he’s guarding something, right? Maybe the kids. Anyone know what that building is?” Blank faces stared back at him. “Amye, you said you and your husband have been up here a lot. Any help?” She hunched her shoulders.
Mitch held up a finger telling the others to wait, and stepped out onto the sidewalk, headed away from the guard. He moved as quietly and carefully as he could without looking like he was doing something shifty. He circled around to the side of the other building and reversed direction, slowly walking along the length of it until he was close to the guard. He paused. As soon as he emerged from the shrubs beside the wall, the guy would spot him, and with his bloodied face, he wasn’t passing for a New Life parishioner, no matter how straight his spine.
Come to Dust Page 18
