by J. Thorn
Her shoulder supported the single strap of the messenger bag as she slung it over her neck. Jana shoved her wallet and keys into the pockets of her jeans.
She scavenged leftovers from the fridge, devouring a cold plate of flounder and mashed potatoes. She glanced at the kitchen counter and slid the butcher knife from its base. Jana measured the length of the bag in her head and compared that to the knife in her hand. Rather than risk the knife slicing through it, she left it on the counter.
She decided to move out on foot given that she did not see anything but military vehicles on Mayfield Road. She didn’t want to draw the attention of the men who came for her a few hours ago.
Brittle, yellow leaves brushed her ankles and swarmed near the fence. Most of the trees dropped their leaves and the wind enjoyed knocking them about. A dog barked far off in the distance. Jana heard none of the traffic that usually sped down Mayfield at the end of the block. She looked at the dark windows of the neighbor’s house, hoping nothing looked back. The stench of rotting garbage displaced the usual fall fragrance of hot apple cider. She kept her back to the house and stepped sideways down the driveway. Her injured leg bumped into the wall, forcing her to stifle a scream of pain.
She slowed her pace and scanned for movement. From the lawn she looked back at her house. She remembered John’s glance as he pulled away. Jana fought the conflicting emotions of loss and infidelity. She hoped she could find her husband and ask for an explanation of those photos, provided he was still alive. She noticed a marking on the brick to the right of her front door near the bay window. Jana squinted and bent over toward the house. The red pentagram glowered above the house numbers, 2913.
She scuttled down the sidewalk toward Mayfield. Doors swung open in the November wind, slamming back and forth in their frames. White, floating drapery escaped the windows and danced in the night air. The ghosts of suburbia left still cars in driveways and toys on lawns.
Jana realized she forgot a flashlight. She cursed under her breath and started toward her front door when the sound of a JLTV moving down Mayfield stopped her in her tracks. She jumped behind a hedgerow as the headlights cut across Mayfield and pointed down Plainfield. The vehicle crept along while a soldier on the passenger side passed a spotlight up and down each house. The beam blasted the entire property with a blinding intensity. The soldier swung the light from the window to the door. Once he located the pentagram, the vehicle inched farther down the street to the next house. When it was a block away, Jana spied another soldier aiming the blinding light at empty houses on the other side of Plainfield.
She made it to the corner of Plainfield and Mayfield. On a normal evening, customers would be driving through the ATM station at the bank. The drive-up window in the fast-food restaurant across the street would be pulsing with squawking voices from the window intercom over hip-hop bass lines of the customers. Across the street, the Mayfield Street Bar would have its front door open to allow smokers a place to spill out onto the sidewalk. But on this evening, Jana saw nothing. She walked toward the ATM machine. The cold reflection of the moon shone off the display screen. The cash dispenser and drive-up window appeared deserted.
Jana sprinted across the street to the fast-food restaurant where chairs and tables sat empty. The emergency floodlights flickered from behind the shattered doors. Jana stepped through the metal frame and stumbled over trays scattered across the floor. She turned and walked out.
She scampered past more shops and businesses, all of which sat deserted. She saw cars at weird angles near the edge of the road. Jana imagined drivers leaping from their vehicles and scrambling toward safety, away from an unknown threat. She did not want to get close for fear there might be someone inside.
Jana stopped at the next intersection where the traffic lights swung in silent protest. A gas station on the opposite corner offered Jana the hope of dry goods and snacks. As she got closer to the sliding doors, she saw shards of glass covering the curb and stacked pallets of windshield-washer fluid. More glass crunched under her feet as she placed one foot inside the store. The hairs came up on the back of her neck and adrenaline flooded her system. Her senses tingled and as she turned back toward the abandoned gas pumps she caught movement out of the corner of her eye.
A dark flash knocked her to the ground. Jana’s head bounced off the pavement with a sick, dull thud. Her eyes focused and then blurred on the dark fluorescent bulbs hanging underneath the canopy. She heard low voices speaking to her and about her. They swam in her ears and she was unable to decipher any of it while her brain struggled to regain control. Before passing out, Jana heard one thing clearly.
“Get her inside before they come back.”
Chapter 16
Route 480 fanned out in front of the JLTV in a ribbon of gray. Alex and John brushed the broken glass from their clothes while exchanging weary smiles.
“Why are you alive?” John asked.
“What?”
“Why are you alive? Why didn’t the Covenant gun you down like the rest?”
Alex cocked his head to one side, peering into the silvery guardrail speeding past.
“Because they needed me.”
“Are you telling me they had no medical support other than a vet?”
John regretted the comment as soon as it left his mouth.
“You really are an asshole,” Alex said.
“I’m sorry, it didn’t come out right.”
“How long until we reach State Road?”
John looked down at his watch to calculate. “Probably twenty or twenty-five minutes unless we hit another roadblock.
“That should be enough time.”
“Enough time for what?”.
“Time for me to tell you what happened to me, provided you want to know,” Alex said.
“You’ve got a captive audience.”
Alex sat up and stared out of the front of the JLTV as he spoke.
“My wife said shit was going down in Cleveland. We live out in Chesterland, so I didn’t pay as much attention to it as I shoulda. She saw something on the news about a possible order to martial law because of a terrorist threat. I stood in front of the tube watching the dolts on the local broadcast. They had grainy phone video of troops knocking doors down in the poor neighborhoods. No surprise to me they started there. I got pissed and shut the TV off. I get so tired of it blaring and babbling constantly.
“I went downstairs to help get the kids into their pajamas. We heard sirens off in the distance, nothing out of the ordinary. After we got the kids down for the night, I picked up a Bill Bryson novel hoping to laugh myself to sleep. I think my wife was already in bed but I can’t quite remember. Anyway, I heard what I thought was thunder, which was odd for November. It seemed to get louder and the noise became more frequent. Julie came down to the living room and asked me if I had heard it. I think at that moment we both knew something wasn’t right.
“She flipped the TV back on. There was nothing but snow on every channel. We have satellite TV, so I thought the storm was messing with the reception, you know? Julie went upstairs and turned on the TV with the old rabbit ears. Again, nothing.
“I started getting worried so I went out to my truck. I turned the key and turned the radio on. At first I thought one of the kids messed with the tuner because every one of my presets generated the same white noise, as if the stations disappeared.”
Alex shifted in his seat again and stopped.
“Go ahead, I’m listening,” John said.
“Gimme a second.”
John squirmed and looked out the window trying to give Alex time to hide his emotions.
“The lights in our house and in every house on the street went out. At almost the same time, I heard bulldozers coming down the road. They weren’t bulldozers but those damn APCs sounded like it. At the far end of our street, I saw soldiers jumping out. Within seconds their guns erupted with flashes of fire followed by loud cracks. I heard screams and knew heavy shit was going down.
>
“I stepped out of the truck at the exact same moment a JLTV stopped in front of my house. Someone yelled ‘freeze’ and I did. The next thing I knew, I was face down in a pile of wet leaves off the edge of my driveway. A knee was the middle of my back and I had trouble breathing. Someone ripped my wallet out and I could hear them talking about my business cards I kept in there. Another voice said something about being ‘useful to Father,’ but I couldn’t really hear the whole conversation. They zip tied my hands and feet and lifted me by my arms. I saw three soldiers knocking in the front door. I…I heard Julie screaming. I could see the terror on my kids’ faces in the window. There were more bursts like firecrackers, more blasts of light and then my house was silent. I refused to believe what happened. A soldier barked into a two-way radio and another military vehicle pulled up. A driver got out and slammed me into the side of the vehicle, knocking me out cold. When I woke up, I was flat on a gurney and surrounded by priests in black shirts and white collars. I thought for sure I was in hell, being tortured by priests for abandoning my Catholic upbringing.”
John stopped the JLTV a half-mile from the State Road exit. He placed a hand on Alex’s shoulder and pushed the vision of his own wife from his mind.
“I’m sorry, Alex.”
“So am I, John.”
“Take your time and say your piece. I want to hear you out, but I also need you in a proper frame of mind. We could meet trouble once we get off the highway and you need to be focused.”
“There isn’t much more to tell. I was spared and detained because I was not part of the established medical community. I’m a vet. I think they killed most of the doctors because they linked them all to abortion. How sick is that? Go ahead and ask me what you want to ask me.”
“Your wife, your kids?”
“I’m pretty sure they’re gone. I’d like to get back to Chesterland to find out, but it’s not worth the risk. Once they realize we’re not at my Shaker office and John the Revelator is gone, that house will be one of the first places they check.”
John sat in silence. The JLTV’s engine rumbled, begging for another run at a pile of twisted metal when Alex spoke.
“Your wife?”
“No,” John said. “I don’t know where she is or how she’s doing. I’m going to find her and I know she’ll try to find me.”
Alex paused before speaking again.
“What the fuck do you think is going on, man? I would not have been surprised if Al Qaeda or the Iranians or even the fucking Russians pulled shit like this. I would not have been surprised if a warhead detonated over DC. But this…this shit is unreal. These are our own troops.”
John shook his head and massaged the steering wheel with his hands. His voice rose.
“Somebody, somewhere high in the ranks snapped. Hitler did the same thing with Nationalism in Nazi Germany. It’s all I can figure. The hardcore Born Agains have been frothing at the mouth to launch a final Holy War. They believe in a real apocalypse where God purges the planet of the unfaithful. Imagine all the nut jobs out there with guns and ammo. It looks like our own government has been compromised, but it’s possible these soldiers are part of a paramilitary force being controlled by the church. They could be hired guns in army camo.”
“Dude,” Alex said, “I never thought it would go down like this. Global warming, dirty bomb, maybe. But never did I think men of God would gun down people in their homes.”
Alex wiped at both eyes and suppressed his hitching chest.
“Let’s get off of 480 and see who’s playing at the Jigsaw tonight.”
John took the ramp and turned left onto State Road. Like all the neighborhoods they drove past, everything stood in darkness. They saw the flames as soon as they made the turn as a raging fire consumed a dozen vehicles on a used car lot. Spastic flames leapt from the showroom windows illuminating the cold neon signs above.
In the next block, smashed tables and chairs lay in splinters on the road. The storefront window of a mom and pop furniture dealer sat in pieces on the littered sidewalk. To the right, a convenience store was bathed in blood-red pentagrams. They looked at each other with raised eyebrows and low whistles.
“Home of the resistance?” Alex asked.
John nodded in agreement.
“Something went down here.”
“Isn’t the Jigsaw up ahead?”
John nodded again and guided the JLTV into the right lane. Streetlights stretched across the road a foot or two above the ground.
“I think this is as far as we can take the JLTV,” John said.
“Yeah, whether it’s planned or not, we’re not getting past those.”
John pulled over. The air smelled of burning fuel and plastic. Alex grabbed a gun from the back of the vehicle. Their breakout and subsequent escape tossed the dead passenger about like a ragdoll, leaving the man’s limbs pointed at various grotesque angles. Alex suppressed the urge to vomit.
The two men exited the vehicle and dropped low to the ground as they jumped over fallen light posts. John saw the “Jigsaw” sign a block down the street. Glass crunched under their boots as another blast threw debris in their direction from the car lot. Alex stopped and ducked behind the side of a pharmacy.
“If we approach in camo and with guns, they might fire at us,” Alex said.
“Do you think anyone is in there?”
“Do you think those light posts fell like that on their own? Yeah, they’re in there, and I’ll bet they’ve already seen us.”
Alex hesitated for a moment.
“You still have that radio?”
John rummaged through the bag on his shoulder. The force of the collision with the minivan threw it around the inside of the JLTV. Plastic shards of radio fell through John’s fingers to the sidewalk.
“That ain’t gonna help us,” Alex said.
“What if we yell something that will distinguish us from the Covenant?”
Alex nodded and stepped out from behind the wall. He took a few steps toward the Jigsaw to a point where he knew he would be heard.
“I hear Sleep is reuniting for a show,” he said.
A beam of light hit the pavement in front of John. Bouncing red dots found their mark on the forehead of each man, followed by a booming voice.
“Drop your weapons and walk towards the side door where the bands load in. If you so much as step on a crack, we’ll shoot you. Consider yourselves lucky we didn’t blast your ass for wearing camo out here, you dumb fucks.”
John dropped his weapon to the pavement, as did Alex. They walked side by side toward the door with red points moving in lively patterns across their chests.
Chapter 17
“I am the Alpha and the Omega, says the Lord God, the one who is and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.”
Blank, compliant faces stared up at Father who sat atop the highest chair while the rest of the group scrambled at his feet.
“Amen,” the group said.
“In chapter five, John writes about the sacrifice that must be made on the Lord’s behalf. He tells us to follow the obedient examples of the angels. He says worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing."
“Amen, Father,” said one man with greasy hair and hollow eyes.
“What do you think the Revelator means?”
A woman with a purple bruise on her cheek spoke up. “John is telling us we must sacrifice ourselves to God.”
“Yes, that is correct.”
Father peered at the group over the top of his Bible. The ritual of the Holy Gauntlet always delivered a range of emotions, including sorrow for the souls that would not survive. It was a necessary initiation to weed out the infidels. The faithful would be saved and provided shelter in St. Michael’s. Father kept those who participated in the Holy Gauntlet.
He would usher them through one door and into the rectory for a light banquet. Those who did not participate were sent through anothe
r door and led away by soldiers with guns. Those followers would never be seen in the church again. Father determined who stayed and who died by looking into their eyes during the ceremony. Those with the light of God would be saved and those looking at the floor in shame would not.
“The infidels bring death and destruction. They spent many decades and generations contaminating our Christian way of life. They drink, lie, smoke, cheat, fornicate and abort like the beasts of hell. God has called his Holy Covenant forth to cleanse His place of the abysmal sin. ‘And when the fourth seal was opened, I heard the voice of the fourth being saying, Come. And I looked, and behold, a pale horse, and the one who is sitting upon it, his name is Death, and Hades is trailing after him; and authority to him is given over one fourth part of the earth, to kill them with war, and famine, and death, and by the wild animals of the earth’.”
Father watched as the congregation devoured the passages.
“Are we Death?” a man asked.
“No, we are the Light. Death has ridden down the wicked. There is no saving them from eternal damnation,” Father said.
“Would another care to read from The Revelation of John?”
A short, slight man stood and pushed his way to Father’s feet. A sling held his left arm and he limped with a grimace.
“I would, Father.”
“Then come to me, son.”
The man accepted the Bible held out by Father and picked up the narration of the Sixth Seal from Chapter Six.
“And I watched when he opened the sixth seal, and a mighty earthquake took place, and the sun became black like animal-hair sackcloth, and the full moon became like blood, and the stars of heaven fell to the earth, as a fig tree shaken by a strong wind casts its unripe figs, and the sky retreated like a scroll being rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place. And the kings of the earth, and the great people and the generals and the rich and the powerful, and everyone, slave and free, hid themselves in the caves, and among the rocks of the mountains, and they are saying to the mountains and to the rocks, ‘Fall on us, and hide us from the face of the One sitting on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb; for the great day of their wrath has come, and who shall be able to stand?’”
