by Mark Dawson
“I got it,” he called down.
“Quietly,” his sister chided. “Can you get through?”
“I think so.”
“Go on, Arty. Be careful.”
He looked down at Mallory.
“Go on.”
He reached out until his fingers locked into one of the vents set into the ridge beam. He swung his leg up and through the hole, then pulled the rest of his body out and into the dark night. Mallory looked up through the opening. The sky was hidden behind a shroud of thick, black cloud.
“He knows what he’s doing, doesn’t he?”
“You can trust him,” Mallory said, a little defensively.
They heard a bang and then the noise of Arty’s feet skidding on the wet shingles. Mallory held her breath until she heard him dig the heels of his boots in and arrest his slide. There was a pause, and then they heard the sound of his feet as they banged on the wall and then, finally, the wet splash as he dropped down to the ground.
Mallory closed her eyes. She found that she had crossed her fingers.
She heard the sound of his footsteps as he came around the barn to the door. Her heart hammered in her chest. What if they were out there? Magrethe Olsen and Morris Finch. What if they had posted a guard? She felt sure that she would hear the boom of a shotgun, the sound of his body slamming into the ground. She felt sick.
There was no boom.
Instead, she heard the scrape of the metal bar as it was pulled through the brackets.
She hurried across to the door as Arty tried to pull it open. The lock caught, rattling in the frame. Arty pulled again, harder this time, but the lock held firm. There was a crash as he threw his shoulder into it, but, still, it didn’t move. There came another slam, even louder, with the same result.
“Arty!” she said through the door. “Stop.”
“I can’t open it,” he said, his voice frantic with panic.
“Don’t worry.”
He was crying. “I’m sorry, Mallory.”
There came another crash as he threw himself at it again.
“Tell him to stop,” Ellie said urgently. “They’ll hear him.”
“I tried, Mallory, but it’s too strong. I can’t open it.”
“Stop, Arty.”
“What do I do?” he sobbed.
“Go to Truth. Just like we said.”
“I don’t want to go.”
“You have to, Arty. The sooner you call that number, the sooner we’ll see each other again.”
“313-338-7786. I got it.” There was a moment of silence, just the sound of the rain on the shingles, and then she heard him again. “Okay, Mallory. I’ll do it.”
“I love you, Arty.”
“I love you, too.”
She heard his footsteps, coming quickly as he ran, and she pressed her ear to the knotted wood until she couldn’t hear them anymore. Her cheeks were wet with tears.
Chapter 42
MILTON HAD been on the move all day. He could have reached the edge of the forest more quickly, but he was still as weak as a baby, and he knew that he needed to move carefully. For all he knew, the Guard had a second perimeter team sweeping up after the first one. If that was true, he didn’t know what he would be able to do. The thought of going back into the deeper forest again was not something he was happy to contemplate. He knew that he didn’t have the strength.
He didn’t have the time.
Ellie and the Stantons didn’t have the time.
He moved carefully through the trees, staying low, and then, when they petered out, he scrambled from bush to bush until he was at the edge of another field. This one was not full of corn. It had been allowed to go fallow, restoring its fertility for a crop the next year. Milton estimated that it was a full mile across the field to the railroad on the other side. He guessed that he had exited the forest two miles to the west of the point that he had entered.
A mile. He would normally be able to cover that in a flat run in five minutes. He was injured and tired, though, so call it seven minutes, maybe eight.
He set off into the open field, feeling naked as he left the cover of the leafy canopy overhead. The field had been ploughed, and his feet caught against the ruts and jammed in the troughs, slowing him down. He fell for the first time when he was a quarter of the way across, getting his legs beneath him again and pushing on. He fell for the second time when he was two-thirds of the way across, landing heavily in a muddy puddle.
He had started to raise himself when he heard the sound of an engine. He dropped to his belly again, pressing himself down amid the mud and the mulch, and held his breath. The engine drew nearer, and then he heard the bounce of a suspension as it crossed the railroad track and started to work across the field. He watched as a Humvee came into view, springing up and down across the uneven field. It went by less than fifty feet away from him, and Milton was sure that he must have been spotted. He saw two men in the vehicle, a driver and, next to him, a soldier armed with an automatic rifle. The driver swung the Humvee around so that it was facing into the forest.
Away from him.
They hadn’t seen him.
Milton got up and ran.
He heard another engine, louder than the Humvee, and when he risked a glimpse into the blackened sky, he saw something that made his heart sink.
A black dot was approaching from above the forest to the north, low and fast, the sound of its engines growing louder and louder as it drew nearer. He recognised it as it cleared the edge of the field: it had the distinctive shape of a UH-60 Black Hawk.
He was at the edge of the field now, the steep rise of the railroad embankment above him and the unruly thatch of scrub directly ahead. He dived head first into the vegetation, rolling deeper inside and praying that he hadn’t been seen.
He turned back and looked.
The Black Hawk swept on, flaring as it approached the parked Humvee, the pilot gently guiding it down onto the rutted field twenty feet away from it. The doors slid open, and soldiers started to disembark. Milton counted fifteen. A hand signal was relayed from the ground to the pilot, and the engines roared powerfully again. The chopper lifted back into the air, the forward landing wheel rotating slowly as the nose dipped. The pilot swooped over the trees and executed a sharp turn to port, hurrying back to the north.
Milton stayed where he was, praying that his position was obscured by the vegetation. The fifteen men unslung their packs and prepared their weapons. The passenger in the Humvee jumped down, stepped across the field to the senior man amid the new arrivals, and gave him his orders. The soldiers formed up in two squads and tramped across the field. Milton watched as the two squads deposited a pair of men every half a mile. They were setting up a cordon.
Milton waited there until his breathing returned to normal.
He had been lucky.
If he had been five minutes longer in getting out of the forest, he would have been trapped. A cordon to the south and patrols in the forest all around. Two pincers that would have caught him above and below, gradually narrowing his freedom to move, until he had nowhere to go. He would have been helpless.
But now he saw that he had a chance. They thought he was still in the forest. They were concentrating the search for him there.
He crawled through the bracken and thistle until he reached the start of the embankment. He turned back again to make sure that he was not observed and then clambered up it. The railroad was ahead of him, the thick sleepers at eye level as he lay prone next to them. Beyond that, in the near distance, was Truth.
Milton pushed himself up to his haunches and then, unsteadily, to his feet. He crossed the rails and slid down the other side until the rise of the embankment shielded him from the soldiers in the field.
He started to walk and then to jog, and then he started to run faster and faster until he was sprinting towards the town.
Chapter 43
THE NATIONAL GUARD arranged for a Humvee to drive them back into town. Lundqu
ist told them that they lived out at Seth and Magrethe Olsen’s farm, so they took them there. He had them stop at the end of the driveway, before the gate and the guardhouse, saying that they would walk the rest of the way. The last thing he wanted was a couple of soldiers nosing around. The Freightliner was parked up in the yard. They might wonder what a vehicle like that was doing on a farm, and if they looked inside…
He needed to avoid that.
They waited until the Humvee had started to turn around, and as it slipped and slid across the muddy track back to the main road, they walked around the gate and made their way across the yard to the farmhouse.
Lundquist knocked on the door. There was the sound of hurried activity inside and then footsteps. The door opened. Magrethe Olsen was standing there, Morris Finch behind her, his arm resting on a French dresser with a pistol clasped in his hand.
“Morten,” Magrethe said, “we thought you were dead.”
“You should have more faith.”
He bustled past her, Michael tailing in his wake.
“What happened?” Finch said, putting the pistol back into a holster that he was wearing on his belt.
“The Englishman,” he said. “Milton. He happened.”
He suddenly felt dreadfully tired, exhausted right to the marrow of his bones. He went over to the sofa with the quilted cover and slumped down into it.
“The others?”
“All dead.”
Finch blanched. “What do you mean?”
“You want me to spell it out for you, Morris? Milton killed all of them.” They both just stared at him. “God is testing us. He wants to be sure that we are worthy for the task that He has set before us.”
All he wanted to do was sleep, but he was cold and, anyway, he knew that particular luxury was for other men. Weak men. He needed to get warm, think about what he needed to do, and find a moment’s peace where he could work it all out without being bothered by his son or Magrethe Olsen or Morris Finch or anyone else.
HE WENT upstairs to the bathroom. There was a shower over the tub, and he cranked the water on, twisting the faucets around until the water that cascaded down was almost too hot for him to stand under. He undressed and stood there for ten minutes, letting the heat seep into his skin and bones, scrubbing it into his scalp, almost scalding himself in an attempt to drive out the cold from the icy rain and their soaking in the river. He let it run down his face and into his eyes and mouth and ears, kneading his cheeks and his forehead with his knuckles, until he felt red raw.
He was tired. His mind started to drift, and he couldn’t stop it.
He thought about what he had seen all those years ago.
Thirty-five years ago.
His vision.
God's word.
He had been in the jungle. An eighteen-year-old conscript thrown into the deepest circle of Hell. It was sweltering, so hot that his brain felt as if it was boiling inside his skull. His rifle company was in pursuit of the enemy, but the VCs tricked them and led them into an ambush. Machine guns, grenades, knives to finish off the wounded. It was a turkey shoot, and most of his platoon had their tickets punched that day, but he had been spared.
A miracle, by any definition.
He squeezed his eyes shut as the water ran over his face and tried to remember.
There had been a glowing light through the trees. When he followed it, he was led to safety. Praise be to God. He couldn’t remember much of what happened next. Even in the immediate hours afterwards, all he could recall were fragments: the glowing lights that seemed to rise from the ground; the beautiful music that was everywhere and nowhere, all at once; the calm and strong voice that talked to him. The memories merged into one as the hours became days and then weeks and months and years.
He couldn’t remember the words, but the message had been imprinted on his consciousness.
These were the Last Days.
The End Times.
The government would be taken over by the antichrist.
He would be responsible for firing the first salvo in the Last Great War that would wipe the stain of its evil from the Earth.
The Lamb was coming.
He had asked when.
You will know.
What would he have to do?
You will know.
Time passed, he had waited, and now it was upon him.
He did know.
The time was now.
He opened his eyes, turned around, and let the water fall onto his shoulders and back.
He knew that there was no way God's word could be put into effect the way he had planned, not now, not now since there was so much heat in town. The National Guard, for one. The FBI would be back once they were notified that one of their own had gone missing, presumed murdered. The ATF might get involved, too. Lundquist didn’t need to be reminded what they had done at Waco.
John Milton had brought down the full might of the federal government onto Truth and had slammed the lid shut on what he had worked so long to put into place.
Lundquist had worked everything out. Years of planning until the operation was perfect. A series of attacks all across Michigan and Wisconsin, happening all at once, Holy Christian soldiers going forth to do battle against Satan.
The assassination of the vice president would have been the first salvo.
That wasn’t going to be possible now.
He needed to adapt.
The hot water came down, and Lundquist closed his eyes and prayed for guidance.
MAGRETHE HAD laid out a set of Lars’s clothes, and Lundquist changed into them and went downstairs. If the woman thought anything about seeing him in her dead son’s check shirt and jeans, then she didn’t say anything. She was in the kitchen preparing a pot of hot coffee. Morris and Michael, who had showered in the downstairs bathroom, were waiting for him in the sitting room. Magrethe brought the coffee inside and shut the door behind her. There were cups on the table, and Finch went to work, pouring the coffee and distributing the cups.
They sat quietly for a moment, sipping at their drinks.
Michael was the first to speak. “What are we gonna do, Pops?”
“We’re going to relax.”
“It’s all gone to shit.”
Lundquist felt his temper flare. “No, it hasn’t.”
“My boy is dead,” Magrethe said. “George Pelham is dead. The others you took up there, they’re dead, too. I don’t know, Morten. I don’t much like agreeing with your boy, but, you ask me, he’s right. It’s exactly what’s happened. This can’t be what God had planned for us.”
“Obstacles are sent to test us. We could’ve died up there with the others, and we didn’t. What does that say to you?”
They frowned. No one answered.
“Michael?”
“Says we got lucky. Falling in the river says that saved us from him.”
“No, it says the Good Lord spared us so we could continue to do His work.”
Magrethe shook her head. “It don’t look that way to me.”
“Where’s your faith, Magrethe? You don’t remember your Bible? ‘Jesus said unto him, if thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.’”
She looked down, abashed. “I know that.”
“Hand on my heart, none of what’s happened so far has changed my dedication to our cause a single bit. This is a war. We are fighting Satan and all his minions. Men die in war. Men have died, and I’m going to make damned sure that they didn’t shed their blood in vain. You remember what Jefferson said? ‘The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.’ I’m going to make sure that their sacrifice refreshes that tree. I’m going to make sure that people see them as patriots and our foes as tyrants. I’m going to make damn sure that happens even if it kills me to do it.”
His vehemence struck them dumb and, for a moment, all they could hear was the rain hammering against the kitchen window.
Magrethe could
n’t look at him. “So what are we going to do?”
“We got to think on our feet. Things change. Plans need to be adapted. We have to move tonight.”
“But the VP?”
He shook his head. “He got lucky. We don’t have time to wait. We’ll pick another target.”
“But we’re not ready. Some of the men who were going to fight are dead.”
“That doesn’t mean that we can’t start without them.”
“How we gonna do that, Pops?”
“I’ve been praying to the Lord for guidance, and He has showed me the way. There’s the federal courthouse down there in Green Bay. They’ve got a lot of things they need to be apologising for: abortion, for a start. You want to get me started on the blood that they’ve got on their hands? What about the Second Amendment? They try to put restrictions on semiautomatic weapons. You confident they wouldn’t take everything away if they thought they could? What you say I drive that truck right up to the front doors and blow that place to kingdom come?”
There was a pause as the others absorbed his words. Lundquist would have gone ahead without them, but he found to his surprise that he needed their approval.
Michael stood. “I’ll come with you.”
Lundquist had already anticipated that Michael would want to do that. He had dismissed it. He didn’t need him and when you came down to it, this was something that felt like it needed to be done alone. He knew that he wouldn’t come back alive and, even if he did, he was ready for the government to kill him so that he might get the chance to spread his gospel far and wide. He wanted some time to himself. Michael would be in his ear the whole time and, even if he was quiet, Lundquist knew that he wouldn’t be able to pray.
“No.”
Michael shook his head. “I can’t let you do that on your own.”
“I need you here, Michael. We’ve got three witnesses in that barn. One of them is a federal agent. They need to be shot right away. Should’ve been shot already. Once they’ve been shot, they need to disappear without a trace. You, Morris, and Magrethe need to take care of that.”
