Sinner

by Ted Dekker

Instead she stood there and let her fingers tingle.

  And let the silence work deeper.

  Then Johnny spoke.

  “Who has believed our message, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?”

  Kat knew these words penned by a prophet several thousand years ago! Johnny had poured over them with her like an excited child. He had a copy of the scrolls found near the Dead Sea dating back to the time before Christ. The book of Isaiah, chapter fifty-three.

  She knew the words and had become as addicted to them as Johnny was.

  Kat gripped both fists before her chest and raised up on her toes in her excitement. Show them, Johnny. Show them the light!

  “He grew up before the world like a tender shoot out of dry ground.” Johnny’s voice was soft and low, so that she had to lean into the words. They should have been screamed.

  But in his softness, Johnny was screaming. Not a single soul could hear this and not know: Johnny was indeed screaming.

  “He had no beauty, nothing in his appearance that would make man desire him. He was despised and rejected and hated by men. A man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. They hid their faces from him. Who was this man?”

  No one dared answer. It was Johnny’s prerogative, Johnny’s honor. His voice trembled with each word, as if by uttering them he sowed magic in the air.

  The sound of weeping began to wax through the valley, softly, like the hushed sniffs of a mother remembering the long-past death of her son.

  Johnny lifted one hand and spread his fingers.“He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for the evil in our hearts. He was smitten and afflicted, and his brutal punishment brought us peace.”

  A single tear leaked down from behind his dark glasses. Show them, Johnny. Show them!

  “Who was this man?”

  Still not a soul dared speak. Not yet.Who could dare interrupt?

  “He was led like a lamb to the slaughter, cut off from the land of the living. He bore the sin of many and his name was Jesus.”

  A roar erupted. From humming silence to ground-shaking thunder, these three thousand followers who’d entered the kingdom of light could hold back their agreement with the words of magic no longer.

  They tilted their heads and opened their throats and filled the air with a cry that drew tears from Kat’s eyes in rivers.

  It was so dramatic, so over the top, so unearthly, yet so, so, so real. And Kat could hardly stand it.

  “Show them!” she cried, eyes clenched, hardly aware that she was yelling aloud. “Show them. Show them, Johnny!” In this moment there was nothing she wanted so desperately as to see that light again.

  “Show them, Johnny!”

  The crowd’s roar had peaked, and that last cry screamed above them all in its high pitch. Show them, Johnny.

  He slowly turned his head and looked down at her. A tortured smile spread over his face. He continued to speak but kept his eyes on her.

  “He taught that he was the only way, and that following him made for a light burden, open to all: the poor, the disadvantaged, the sick, the lepers, the widows, the lost and hurting and wounded. And he taught that the path was narrow, missed by most. For that teaching they hated him, and he warned any who dared follow him that they, too, would be hated.”

  Johnny took his eyes off Kat and scanned the people who stood in the lights of the surrounding porches and three overhead streetlights. The sun had vanished behind the western mountains, leaving behind a gray sky. The evening was cool, but Kat’s skin tingled with heat.

  Show them, Johnny.

  “They will come for us because they hate us. Not because we are Christians or Muslims or Hindus, but because we would rather follow the teachings of Jesus and die than deny them and live.”

  Kat had been so fixated on Johnny that she hadn’t seen the woman who approached the right of the stage, staring up at Johnny. It was the woman who’d spoken to Holly yesterday. The government’s agent, Darcy Lange, who’d come wearing sunglasses like Johnny, despite the dark.

  Had he seen her?

  “But I’m not asking you to die,” Johnny said. “I’m only asking you to follow the light that first rescued you from the darkness.”

  “Is this the same light that I followed?” Darcy’s voice rang out for all to hear. She walked toward the stage as Johnny turned.

  “When I was a child, was this the truth that the priests shoved down my throat, Johnny?”

  She stepped up the two crates that led to the platform.

  “Are all my nightmares and my cold sweats the result of this light from heaven that has miraculously come to save the lost?”

  They’ve come, Kat thought.

  “When all of this is over, will all your faithful disciples be left with the same fears that have haunted me for the last thirteen years?”

  She faced the people and snatched her glasses from her face. Kat stared into her bright eyes.

  “When they kill your daughters and sons who blindly followed you here, will you clap for joy and sing praises to the light?”

  Kat wasn’t sure what kind of power the woman possessed, but her voice sliced through her heart like a razor.

  “Do you really want blood on your hands?” she cried.

  The words might as well have been kicked from a mule. Kat caught her breath.

  “You’re fools! All of you, complete fools for believing all this nonsense about the sweet little baby Jesus!”

  Kat wanted to scream again, this time in fear. How dare she say this? Show her, Johnny. Show her!

  But Johnny only smiled.

  “Hello, Darcy.”

  The woman spun back to him, jaw set.

  “Welcome to the kingdom of light.”

  BILLY BOILED with hatred but he was no longer confused, and that alone was worth any price he might pay for the evil roiling through him.

  He burst into the command center with Kelly at his side and eyed Kinnard, who still wore his glasses. “I need to speak to you.”

  Kinnard closed his phone. “Of course.”

  Billy glanced around. “Where’s Darcy?”

  “She’s not with you?”

  Billy had offended Darcy. The thought that he should discuss all of this with her before he pulled the trigger crossed his mind, but Kelly touched his elbow and he pulled back from the thought.

  “This is Kelly. You’ll recognize her from the photographs on the wall.” He nodded at a corkboard that held a dozen pictures of the featured conspirators in Paradise. Hers was next to Johnny’s and had a question mark under it.

  “We have some information. Outside.”

  Kinnard exchanged glances with the others and followed them out-side. “We’re ordering the evacuation of Johnny in fifteen minutes,” he said, closing the door behind him. “Does this—”

  “Change of plans,” Billy interrupted. A shaft of fear crashed through his mind and was gone. “We need to take them out.”

  Kinnard hesitated before speaking. “Take them out.”

  “Make an example of them. Before this becomes contagious. Meaning kill them. Drop a bomb down their throats. Take them out!”

  He hadn’t meant to hurl the words at Kinnard, but they came from a place of dark hatred that had fermented in his belly for a very long time.

  “I’m not sure you have the authority—”

  “You know very well that I have the authority to do whatever I think is reasonable to remedy this flagrant disregard for our nation’s laws,” Billy snapped.“We have inside information that confirms the town is planning an all-out assault on any force that enters the town. They will let us enter and then slaughter us. Knowing this, I’m ordering a preemptive strike on Paradise. I want you to bomb them. I want you to kill them all.”

  “Do you have any idea what kind of fallout we would be facing?”

  “What did I tell you?” Kelly mumbled under her breath. She faced the mysterious CIA man who’d first saved Billy and Darcy from the killer in Pennsylvania.�
�Don’t tell me the idea of cutting them down doesn’t draw your blood to the surface. Their betrayal is unpardonable. One strike and this is all over. Just do it!”

  Billy glanced from one to the other, surprised at the frankness of Kelly’s demand, as if she were the true leader here.

  But she was right. One strike would end it all, including Johnny’s life.

  Billy pressed. “Truth be told, I don’t care one iota what you think we should do here, Kinnard. I want you to order the strike, and I want you to do it now. This is my responsibility, my call.”

  “The snipers are in place, we could take out Johnny.”

  “And create a full-scale revolt? Make a martyr out of a felon? Aren’t you listening? They’re armed to the teeth down there! The guns they dumped on the road were nothing but a lie. We need to end it. Now!”

  For a few moments they stood in the night air, the woman born of Black and two men, deciding the fate of the world. At the least a very significant part of the world.

  “You’re sure?” Kinnard said

  But the right corner of his mouth twitched, unsuccessfully betraying a grin of approval.

  “Absolutely.”

  Kinnard dipped his head once.“Okay. Okay, then. I hope you know what you’re doing. The bomber is fueled. We can get it airborne in minutes.”

  “Just do it.”

  Billy glanced around. Where was Darcy?

  He needed Darcy.

  * * *

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  * * *

  “WELCOME TO the kingdom of light.”

  He was smiling, not a big grin plastered on his face, but a whisper of a smile that reached deep into Darcy’s chest and filled her with rage.

  The world was gathered and would peer in on this stage through the camera’s eye. Enough military force to wipe out every living creature in this valley was gathered on the cliffs above them, waiting the order. Three thousand believers stood to her right, most probably willing to live or die for this so-called kingdom of light.

  But all of them were truly at the mercy of two people now, facing each other on the stage. Johnny and Darcy. Two childhood acquaintances who’d grown up on opposite sides of the question that the whole world wanted answered, even if they long ago stopped asking.

  Is it real?

  Is there really another “kingdom” unseen by human eyes?

  And what, please tell us, what does the here and now have to do with this ancient prophet named Jesus?

  Darcy knew the answers. No. No. Nothing.

  True, she acknowledged there was more to the way the world worked than what we can see with our eyes. Her own gift was proof enough. But reality, in its purest form, surely had nothing to do with a solitary rebel who’d been put to death two thousand years ago!

  But Johnny . . . he stood there with that gimpy grin because he actually, truly, completely believed all that hooey.

  She took a deep breath, stilling the fury building in her chest. “Johnny, please. You have to listen to me. They don’t know I’m here.”

  “Why did you come, Darcy?”

  She glanced at the people, expecting more participation from them. How had three thousand strangers fallen into lockstep so quickly? Well, she’d affected them with her one outburst, and she wasn’t done with them yet, not by a long shot.

  But Johnny first.

  She looked into his glasses. “Maybe I shouldn’t have come. Do you realize what’s about to go down here? How many snipers have us in their sights at this very moment? They’re going to use force if you so much as lift a finger, I thought you should know that.”

  “Force?” Johnny looked at the people.“My friends, this is Darcy Lange, a representative of the United States government, and she says they’re going to use force.”

  “Please, I’m begging you, Johnny,” Darcy said, keeping her eyes on him. “It doesn’t have to be this way. You’ve taken this too far.” Those who were looking at her eyes shifted uneasily under the power of her words.

  Johnny swung around and faced her. “But we haven’t taken it anywhere yet. This is only the beginning, surely you know that.”

  Her anger seeped out. She shoved a finger at the mountains. “The monastery was the beginning!” she cried, leaning into her words. “The beginning of a lie! We can end it here, tonight.” She stomped one boot. “Give this up!”

  “How can you ask us to deny the truth?”

  “And just what is that truth, Johnny?”

  “That Jesus is the Light of the World.”

  “Jesus? Only Jesus? Do you even know how foolish that sounds? You’re spitting in the face of the world!”

  She was still focused on Johnny, but her words reached into the crowd. A well-rounded woman standing at the front was shaking, bug-eyed eyes on Darcy. She looked too frightened to cry.

  The whole western half of the crowd had been smothered by her accusation of foolishness and was already staggering under the weight of doubt her words had awakened in them.

  Johnny looked out over the people again. “We are not here to itemize the rights or wrongs of Christianity or Islam or Buddhism or any religion. We are here because we believe the Light that came into the darkness is hated by that darkness. I believe Jesus is the Word made flesh. Despised and rejected by all but a few. He said you would call us fools.”

  Darcy leapt to the edge of the stage and faced them all. “It’s a lie!” she screamed.

  The effect was immediate. As if her words had physical power, they hit the nearest people like a gale. But it wasn’t enough. They should be falling under the force of their doubt, Darcy thought.

  “It is all a big mistake,” she cried, “taught to you by your parents and their parents, all this nonsense about light! Think for yourselves! How dare you insult the American people by defying our laws and dying for a faith in what you can’t prove!”

  The round woman in the front was on her knees, eyes clenched tight, begging some unseen force to rescue her. Darcy’s words reached all the way to the back of the dimly lit town square, filling it with the sound of whimpering and shifting feet.

  Darcy pushed before anyone could form an argument against her.

  “You’re giving up your lives as zealots for a truth that is based on a lie!”

  “No!”

  The scream came from Darcy’s left. A young, dark-skinned teenager with hair past her shoulders stood at the front, glaring at her.

  She knew this girl from the Net reports. It was Katrina Kivi, the one who’d stopped the school riot in Boulder City, Nevada.

  “No, that’s not true!” the girl cried. “I was a witch full of hate until I saw the kingdom of light. It filled me with love, although I can say that loving you at this moment isn’t easy.How dare you step on our stage and tell us that we are foolish!”

  Darcy was at a loss. The girl stood firmly against the full weight of Darcy’s words. She’d swayed all of Washington to embrace constitutional change but she couldn’t sway the mind of one teenager?

  “I was once a true believer too,” she finally said. “I’ve earned the right to question.”

  “Then question,” Johnny said from her left.

  She watched Katrina Kivi’s eyes shift to where he stood. They widened and the girl’s mouth parted slightly.

  Darcy turned. Johnny had removed his glasses and stared at her with bright blue eyes

  “Show her, Johnny,” Katrina said. “Show us all.”

  “I’ve heard your words, Darcy. I’ve listened to you explain the world and remain unconvinced. The question is, are you willing to look into my world and see the light?”

  “There is no light but what your trickery shows,” she said. “You are a trickster.”But she felt inexorably drawn to see what all the fuss was about. Her breathing thickened at the mystery of it all.

  “No, I won’t use any illusion. I’ll simply open your eyes. What you see is beyond my ability to control.”

  “Show her, Johnny.” There was a desperation
in Katrina’s voice now. Darcy glanced over and saw that she was walking slowly toward them with her hands clasped in front of her. Tears wet her cheeks.

  “Please, Johnny, show us.”

  “Why, Kat?” Johnny asked.

  “Because I want to be reminded.”

  “You have eyes of faith.”

  “But you’re here, and she’s here, and we’re all here. Isn’t that why he gave you your eyes?”

  Johnny gave her a slight nod and looked at Darcy.

  “I’ve listened to you. Will you look at me?”

  “I am looking at you.”

  BILLY PACED in the command center’s lounge, ignoring Kelly, who stood with her arms crossed watching him. Looking into her eyes did nothing but fill him with more hate, and he already hated the hate seeping from his pores like a sour sweat.

  He’d ordered the room closed to all but them and Kinnard, who was making the final arrangements now. The clock on the wall read five minutes past six o’clock.

  They were looking for Darcy. She’d gone off sulking, and not having her with him at this time was making him sweat.

  “Stop it, please,” Kelly said.

  Billy absently lifted his hand and trimmed the nail on his index finger with his teeth. “Stop what?”

  “Pacing. You’re making me think that you’re full of second thoughts.”

  She lowered her arms and walked up to him. Placed her hand on his cheek and brushed his hair back.

  “Are you?”

  “How could I have second thoughts about killing Johnny?” he snapped. “He’s ruined me!”

  “Not Johnny. I know how much you hate him. I’m talking about the others.”

  The three thousand or so conspirators who’d joined Johnny in his stand against the law.

  Billy turned away from her, fighting back a fresh wave of fury.

  At Johnny.

  At Paradise.

  At the three thousand.

  At Black.

  At Kelly.

  At himself.

  Where was Darcy?

  “They’ve made their own choice,” he said. “Three thousand fewer bloggers to clog up the Net next week.”

  His eyes stung and he blinked away blurred vision.

  Kelly turned his face back to hers. Her eyes watched his lips, then rose to his. “Accept it, Billy. This is what you were born to do. It’s a great honor.”