by Tim Lees
In front of him lay Anna’s cigarette pack.
All her cigarettes were gone.
CHAPTER 43
THE PILGRIMS
“This is the gatherin’. The start of it, y’know? Starts small, gets bigger, bigger . . . For where two or three are gathered, see? Been dreamin’ of it half my life, yes sir, this place has haunted me, and now here I am, right smack dab in the middle of it all. The Plain of Armageddon. Ain’t that somethin’? Me. Right here.”
“Armageddon,” said Anna. “This is in Israel, I think.”
“Armageddon, Har Maddido, Harmagideon. Many names, many places. All one. I hear a sound like the sound of a great multitude, or rushing water or a mighty peel of thunder: ‘Alleluia! The Lord has established his reign!’ ” He squared his shoulders, stuck out his chest. “You will forgive me, ma’am, I am inclined to prophesy from time to time. It’s an old habit, one I never had good cause to break.”
She dug her last packet of cigarettes out, pointedly not offering him one.
“My habit,” she said, and lit up. “Habit which soon I will be forced to break. Unless you tell me there is 7-Eleven close by? You have vision of this, possibly? Or dream?”
I was hungry. I was tired. Not so much as if I hadn’t slept, more as if I hadn’t woken up. Hayes’s babble seemed to work its way into my head, so that even when I walked away, I could still hear him, like a radio you can’t switch off.
Pilgrim City was a hodgepodge town of tents and bogged-down vehicles, nearly a mile across. There were tents of every shape and color, bell tents and tarp tents and military tents and near-marquees, and over on the right, a ramshackle affair of bedsheets and polythene, flapping and cracking in the breeze. There were camper vans and flatbed trucks and Volkswagens and Fords, now mired among the faithful and unable to retreat; even a yellow school bus painted with the slogan God+me+HisWill=HAPPINESS!!!, a formula my schoolboy maths had somehow failed to teach me.
People were stirring now. Campfires kindled, kettles boiled. The smell of bacon frying. Someone had begun to sing a hymn. It was like Woodstock for the churches of the Midwest. In the middle distance, a small group gathered around the flagpole I had seen last night, which of course was not a flagpole but a simple wooden cross, seen sideways on. Some kind of impromptu service was in progress. New risers crept out of their tents to join in.
Was this a part of it? Was this what we had come to see? Or had we simply blundered into some weird local carnival?
To the left were the woods we’d come through in the night. To the right, and behind, a line of shallow hills, crested with trees. And in front, far off across the Indiana flatland, the diamond twinkle of a car slowly traversing some distant highway, reminder of a different and more ordinary world. But if this was where the Registry was doing its experiments, I couldn’t see a trace of it, not anywhere around.
Hayes left us, strolling through the tent town with palpable, if self-proclaimed authority. His walk was easy and relaxed. He passed from group to group, avoiding some, calling out to others, pausing here and there to chat or do a little business, since it seemed some kind of barter system was in use; we’d see him hunker down, delve into his shoulder bag, producing item after item for exchange.
Anna tied her hair back in a quick, ill-tempered move.
“Bastard. Now I have one pack left . . .”
“He’s not important.” But in the hour to come I’d find my eyes repeatedly drawn back to him. He’d commandeered us on arrival last night, inviting us to share what we’d assumed to be his campfire (it turned out to belong to a family of Lutherans, who, subtly intimidated, had retreated to a nearby tent as big as an English bungalow). Now, although we frequently lost sight of him, the peacock shimmer of his shirt would reappear among the grays and browns, this sea of devotees. We spoke briefly to a Catholic priest, who told us that, like Hayes, he’d had a dream about the place and utilized vacation time to visit it. We heard the same story from many people; how someone in their group had had a message, or a vision, or a deep conviction, and brought his family, or his congregation . . . A group of Hare Krishnas wove their way among the Christians, garish in pink and white, tapping hand drums, chanting. They weren’t immediately welcomed; there was shouting, even a near scuffle.
Anna tugged my sleeve.
“Chris. At airport, when you tried to talk to me. I did not listen. This was wrong. Now I ask what you were trying to say.”
I stared out over the crowd—the Gathering—and I could feel some sort of horrible presentiment in my stomach, like the onset of a bilious attack.
“Chris. You are holding back on me.”
“It’s nothing.”
“Is not nothing. Tell me, please.”
But I shook my head. These people had come here, and the god was coming here, so we’d been told.
Too much coincidence. Too convenient . . .
Anna nudged my arm.
“Chris, Chris. Is crazy man again.”
I looked around and saw Hayes heading towards us, a big grin plastered on his face. In his hands, he held two steaming paper cups.
“There y’go, now. Breakfast of champions.”
Coffee. I could smell it, wafting towards us; and good stuff, too.
It was harder to resent him after that.
He stood there, watching us drink as if we’d been two kids sipping milk on his family’s porch.
“You give, you get. That’s community, you know? An’ this”—he waved his hand, as if the whole site were his own creation—“is a community of love.”
“Tell that to the Krishnas.”
“Hey, that’s good! Yeah—that’s good . . .”
The coffee went down, sweet and strong. It worked its way into my veins. Soon the world seemed sharper, more in focus. Soon my brain began to turn again.
Something was happening out in the tent town. A wave of movement seemed to pass among its citizens; here, and here, then here again, I saw someone stand up, and look around; gaze at the sky, or at the trees, the low hills. There was an air of expectation, hushed excitement. Anticipation. They were like Millenialists, awaiting the New Age. Awaiting something, anyway. And a horrible image came into my head all of a sudden: a flock of sheep, just milling around outside the slaughterhouse. Oblivious to what still lay ahead.
“Mr. Hayes. Mr. Hayes, there’s a place we need to get to.”
He nodded, like he already knew. “Uh-huh, uh-huh.”
“Think you can help us?”
“We’re all travelers on God’s road, y’know? All of us. Even them.” He nodded to the Krishnas, pushed over to the side of the camp and slowly circling a little group of small-town churchgoers. “Don’t matter what the name we call Him by.”
“We’re looking for this . . . for . . . well, something . . .”
“Ain’t that the truth.”
“Secret facility,” said Anna. “You will not know.”
Hayes put his head on one side, creased his brow.
“Secret . . . ? Well, I couldn’t say. Couldn’t say ’bout that.”
He rummaged in his pocket, brought out a crumpled cigarette. He lit it with a Zippo, shut his eyes, sucked in the smoke.
Anna looked daggers at him.
“Might not be obvious,” I said. “A big house, maybe? Somewhere nobody’s allowed? Guards, or, you know, high fences, Keep Out signs? Somewhere like that?”
He listened with his head cocked. Blew out noisily. “Say . . . an army base or such like, yeah?”
“Maybe. That kind of thing.”
“Or, say—someplace no one goes in, no one comes out? ’Cept in big, swanky cars?”
Anna told him, “Smoke.”
He looked at her, looked at the cig, but there was no mistaking what she meant, and no resisting it, either. He frowned, then p
laced the cigarette between her fingers, watching her inhale, as if it were a circus trick he’d never seen before.
“Secret facility.” He chewed over the words. “I’d say—I’d say if that’s what you want, then best go up on the ridge there, see? Stay in the trees, it’s safer. Guess you’ll know it when you see it. Huh?”
He reached to take the cig back. Anna shook her head.
“Give to get,” she said. “Is rule here, yes?”
“Ah. Right. You got me there, sister. Community of love, too true. That’s what we’re all about.”
He was still grinning as we walked away.
CHAPTER 44
THE FACE OF LINCOLN
A group of schoolchildren surrounded us. The oldest was about twelve, the youngest maybe five or so. Yet they seemed like intermediary creatures, caught in mid-mutation from the clean-cut Sunday-schoolers they must once have been to something new, like twenty-first-century Huck Finns reverting to the wilderness. The tallest boy wore a suit and tie but went barefoot; a small, fat child was draped in a sheet, as if he were a monk, or Batman. The girls were in their summer frocks, with grass stalks plaited in their hair. We said hello, we traded names. And then they pelted us with questions, one after another.
“You Adventists?”
“You Witnesses?”
“You Nazarene?”
“You Catholics?”
“You Jews?”
A couple of them sniggered at the last one, and a boy towards the back whispered, “You niggers?” at which the girl in front spun around and shook her finger at him.
“Word,” she spat, and glowered till he shrank back, lowering his head. To us, she said, “You talk funny. Why you talk like that, huh?”
Anna said nothing.
“Ma’am, ma’am? What are you, huh? You Baptist, then?”
“Mormon,” said somebody.
Anna sniffed. She stuck her jaw out, drew herself up sulkily. “I am Russian spy,” she said, her breath misting the morning air in a cruel parody of smoke.
The kids debated this. But the big girl wasn’t fooled.
“Ain’t no Russian spies no more,” she said with the gravity of someone talking to an idiot. “Saw it on TV.”
“Oh yes?”
“Russians don’t send spies, see?”
“Yes they do.”
The girl considered this somewhat skeptically, then said, “We’ll pray for you” and led her little troop away, into the maze of tents, searching for better company.
I said, “Come on. Let’s go.”
“To what place? Secret facility? To madman’s daydream vision? Anywhere away from here, Chris, please. Anywhere . . .”
The fence ran straight across the ridge top. It was crowned with razor wire. Probably the same fence we had seen down in the woods last night. Twenty feet beyond it stood a second fence, and the grass between had grown up long and lush. Another quarter mile, and there was a wooden farmhouse, the front wall painted with a portrait of Lincoln. The former president watched us with calm, if rather wry, benevolence. It was a lovely piece, all reds and browns and near blacks. The door stretched out his beard in a thick brown oblong to the ground.
Two new blocks, long and low, clearly prefabs, had been added to the side. At the rear, a metal chimney rose some forty feet into the air, a scarf of steam draped on its rim. Other outbuildings, a barn and several smaller sheds or garages, lay scattered here and there. But it was no farm. I saw that. No animals, no cultivation. A couple of very expensive-looking cars were parked down there. Not the kind of thing, I thought, your average farmer would leave lying around.
Behind it, still inside the wire, there rose a low, dome-shaped hill. I didn’t take much notice of it for a while, but then something struck me. There were little turrets jutting from the ground, following the contour lines, all over it; I’d seen something like that before. I couldn’t swear to it, but they looked very much like airways.
“It’s underground,” I said.
“You know this?”
“I can guess.”
Hayes had told us to keep out of sight, and the reasons were plain. Armed guards, security men, stood around the buildings or slowly paced the inner wire. They carried guns over their shoulders. Big guns. They didn’t look like they were kidding.
“Secret,” Anna scoffed. “Secret facility! And what is this? Church outing!” She threw a glance at Pilgrim City, visible between the trees. “So many crosses. So many slogans. So many fish signs. For what? For this—this factory?”
“I knew a girl once. She had a sign on her car—a sticker. Like the fish sign, but with legs, and in the middle, it said, ‘Darwin.’ ”
“Yes. That is very funny,” she said, without a trace of humor.
“What do you make of the picture?”
“Picture?”
“Abe Lincoln. Honest Abe.”
“Oh. Is very pretty. Yes. Great art.”
“But do you think it means something? Or, you know, just decoration?”
“This is America, Chris. Pictures everywhere. It is advertising, I expect. Who cares?”
Deep below us, something boomed; a roll like thunder, and the ground beneath me shifted. I reached instinctively and caught her arm, and we clung together for a moment as the leaves spun down around us and the birds whirled screaming overhead. But it passed, and she carefully detached herself from me, testing the earth as if it were a fragile thing.
“We have not long, I think. We must decide now what to do,” she said. “We have car. We can go back, drive off, forget. Or we stay. And if we stay . . . we must have plan. Do you have plan?”
“I might have,” I said. But I didn’t quite know what it was.
“Oh, he’s a-here. He’s a-here, oh he’s a-comin’ soon. I feel it in my heart. I feel it.” The speaker, a handsome African-American, perhaps thirty years of age, clenched his fist and pressed it to his chest. “Feel it with me. Feel it, brothers and sisters. Ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom . . . Hear what it’s sayin’ now? The rhythm of your heart: Je-sus, Je-sus, Je-sus, Je-sus . . . You hear him callin’? You hear him callin’ now?”
The crowd murmured assent; voices rose up like a wave.
“He is here in the manger, he is here, he is here . . .”
The speaker led off on the singing. Soon others joined in.
“He is here in the temple, he is here, he is here . . .”
I said, “They’ll be very disappointed if they think it’s Jesus coming.”
“They will know this soon, I think.”
“They’re just waiting there. Standing around, just waiting . . .”
“In my country,” she said, “we have beautiful churches. Very, very beautiful. But we do not trust God.”
“He is here in the garden, he is here, he is here . . .”
“Mine, too,” I said.
And we moved on.
“I know that you are holding back, Chris. You must tell me one day. I am trained interrogator, after all.”
“You want me to confess?”
“I want truth, or what you think is truth.”
“About . . . ?”
“You know about.”
“Shailer’s place.”
“Yes. When you pass out. It worries you, I think.”
“That, and much else.”
“I apologize, not to listen to you earlier. I am stubborn, I think it does not matter. But perhaps it is important, after all.”
“Bit of a change of heart.”
“Circumstance changed. Everything changed. You will tell me now, please. What is on your mind?”
“Look. I know you think that I was only there a second. But can you bear with me? You know?”
She nodded me on.
“I met him.
He looked exactly like he looked in Budapest. And he talked to me. At least, I think he talked. He . . . communicated. Made me remember something. A stupid little thing, really. Something I hadn’t thought about in years.”
“Please talk. It takes my mind off cigarettes.”
Her hand went to her pocket, checking the half a pack she still had left.
I said, “This was a long time back. There were a bunch of us, all kids. I’m not even sure who was there. My mate, Dave, and some other guys. We were nine or ten. Not very old. And Dave, he’d got this modelling knife, very sharp, you know, for balsa wood and stuff. We were in the garden, he was passing round the knife, and telling us how sharp it was. And for some reason, I tested it on my tongue.”
“Tongue.”
Her tone conveyed sufficient skepticism for me to grow defensive.
“Yeah, I know. Stupid, stupid. It was a kid thing, OK? The others ran their thumbs across it, like adults do. I put it in my mouth. Everyone goes yeeeurgh! I got the interest I wanted. Told them I’d lick the blade. Perhaps it was a dare, I don’t know. But I remembered it. Not just doing it, but the exact sensation. How it felt.”
“You lick the knife.”
“I pressed my tongue against it. Against the edge.”
“And . . . ?”
“Nothing happened for a second. I didn’t feel it. I could taste the metal, and it tasted weird, sort of compulsive, and I pressed against it with my tongue, harder and harder. I thought, oh, that’s OK. That doesn’t hurt. Then I started bleeding.”
“Big surprise.”
“To me, yes. I knew the knife could cut me, but when it didn’t happen straightaway, it was as if . . . oh, I was immune or something. I don’t know. Then my mouth just filled with blood. I couldn’t swallow it. I stood there with my head down and the blood went all over the flowers, and it splashed the leaves and went on the soil. It sank into the ground, really quickly. That scared me, I remember. The ground just . . . swallowing it up like that. Swallowing me up, really. I was aware of that; that it was me there, vanishing into the ground. Part of me. The other kids were screaming. I suppose they got me to an adult after that.”
