The John Milton Series Boxset 2

by Mark Dawson

  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 couldn’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.”

  He looked at the woman, and she gave a firm, sure nod. Magrethe was a hard woman. She wasn’t squeamish, not like so many people were these days. Seth had always left it to her to euthanize the cattle that couldn’t be saved. She would take them out around back and put a bullet in their brains. Lundquist knew that he could rely on her to see that the job was done.

  “Can you do that, son?”

  “Sure. I can do it.”

  “What about Milton?” Finch asked.

  “We have to assume that he’s coming.”

  “How could he know we’re here?”

  Lundquist had thought about that. How wou
ld he know that? There was nothing to say that he would, but he might have spent a little extra time with Tom Chandler, or any of the others he had killed, and maybe he would have been able to get the information out of them. He was resourceful. They couldn’t assume that he would be ignorant.

  “He’s coming. You need to be ready for him. You need to take him down.”

  LUNDQUIST OPENED the door of the trailer and pulled himself up and inside. He took out his flashlight and played the beam over the large barrels of ammonium nitrate, diesel, and nitromethane. The blast would be triggered by four hundred pounds of Tovex Blastrite Gel. A time-delayed fuse led from the cab to a dozen blasting caps. The explosion would be enormous. Volcanic. What a statement it would be. Like the Israelites sounding their horns and the walls of Jericho coming crashing down.

  The other militias would come to their side.

  The country was like a powder keg. All it needed was a spark.

  The start of the Holy Revolution.

  The return of the Lamb, riding at the head of God’s army.

  He jumped down onto the wet yard and closed the door up nice and tight.

  Michael was waiting for him at the door to the tractor cab. He had an M16 in his hands.

  “I’m sorry, Pops.”

  “What for?”

  “If we’d been more careful up there. The other day. If… I don’t know, maybe this wouldn’t have happened the way it has.”

  “It’s God’s will,” he said. “Do what I told you and we’ll still make history.”

  “You think?”

  The boy’s doubt was pitiful. The same for his need for Lundquist’s approval, but, as much as it irritated him, he couldn’t deny that he had affection for him.

  He extended his hand. Michael took it, and Lundquist gripped his hand hard.

  “You’ve done well, son. I’m proud of you. Maybe we see each other again when this is all said and done, maybe we don’t, maybe we have to wait until we’re both in Heaven, but you take care of things here and then I guess you’ve done everything I could have expected from you. Can you do that?”

  “I can do it.”

  “I can’t ask for any more.”

  Lundquist let go. Michael’s eyes were damp. He proffered the M16 and Lundquist took it, sliding it into the cab.

  He reached for the rail and hauled himself up.

  “Good luck, Pops,” Michael called after him.

  “Ain’t nothing to do with luck, son. ‘Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not into thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and He shall direct thy paths.’”

  “Amen,” Michael said.

  “Amen.”

  Lundquist turned the ignition, and the truck’s engine rumbled. He pressed down on the gas, feeding it revs. Michael looked up at him, his eyes still wet, and slammed the door shut. Lundquist put the truck into first gear and rolled slowly out of the yard.

  He figured he could make Green Bay in four hours.

  Chapter 44

  MILTON WAS slow and cautious as he made his way back into Truth. He knew that the focus of the search would be up in the wilderness, that the Guards would not have expected him to have been able to slip through the cordon, and, even if they could have anticipated that, they would not expect him to head back into town again. They would expect him to take a car and drive away as far and as fast as he could.

  That had never crossed Milton’s mind.

  He had made promises, and his word meant something to him.

  He had promised to kill Lundquist, and he would.

  He had promised to come back for Mallory, Arty, and Ellie, and he would do that, too.

  The town was eerily quiet. The storm was unabated, and that would have been more than enough to clear Main Street of pedestrians, but there was no traffic on the road, either. The stop lights at the junction flashed red, amber, and green, reflecting on the wet asphalt, but there were no cars to observe them. Perhaps the residents were frightened. Soldiers were abroad, and men had been killed. A maniac was running amok. Perhaps they were all hiding indoors.

  Milton moved from cover to cover. He was absorbed into the welcoming darkness of an alley, and then he rushed to hide in the lee of a big industrial bin. He ducked down behind the wing of a car and pressed himself into a doorway.

  He heard the grumble of an engine, deeper than a car, and ducked down behind a bus stop. A Humvee, olive green, with a fifty-calibre machine gun mounted atop it, rolled at a medium pace right down the middle of the street.

  Milton waited until it was out of sight and then hurried on.

  HE WAS passing a takeaway that he had seen when he had first come into town when he saw him.

  Arthur Stanton.

  He was inside, using a payphone that was fixed to the wall. Milton stood in the doorway for a moment, assessing the place, and then stepped inside.

  There was a table and a couple of chairs just inside the door, and Milton sat down so that his back was facing the door. Arty had the phone pressed to his ear and a frown on his face.

  “I told you,” the proprietor called out to him from behind the counter. “Everything’s down. Storm’s knocked the whole thing out.”

  Arty put the receiver back onto its cradle and turned to the door. His face was anguished, pale, and it looked like he had been crying. He was distracted and he didn’t notice Milton until he reached out and took his sleeve.

  “What—” he said, his face twisting with fright.

  “It’s me, Arty. Remember? John.”

  The disquiet seemed almost to worsen.

  “It’s Mr. Milton.”

  He stopped. The shock lifted to be replaced instead with upset.

  He gestured to the seat opposite. “Sit down.”

  He swayed from foot to foot, unsure what to do, but, with a softer “Arty,” Milton gently tugged on his sleeve and he sat.

  “I don’t know what to do,” he said.

  “Where are Mallory and Ellie?”

  He didn’t hear the question. “I got out. I climbed up, got out through the roof. I tried to open the door, but it was locked. Mallory said I was to call a number, 313-338-7786—I remembered it, see—but they say the telephones aren’t working, and I can’t do what she wanted me to do. She said I had to go south, to Detroit, but I don’t know how to get there.”

  “Arty. You have to tell me where they are.”

  “In the big shed,” he said, his face open and surprised, as if that was something that surely Milton must have known. “On the farm.”

  MILTON FOUND a car on a back street, put his elbow through the window and unlocked it from the inside. He got inside, with Arty in the passenger seat next to him, hot-wired the ignition and drove away. It took less than a minute, and it didn’t look as if he had been seen.

  “Which way?”

  Arty pointed to the south. Milton turned onto Main Street and drove carefully, wary of attracting attention.

  “How did you get away?”

  “I climbed out. There was a hole in the roof.”

  “And then?”

  He repeated himself. “I tried to open the door, but it was locked. Mallory told me to run into town, so I did. But the telephones don’t work and now I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

  He was getting agitated again. “It’s okay, Arty. Don’t worry. I’m here now. We’ll soon have this sorted out.”

  “But what are we going to do?”

  “Fix it.”

  Milton drove on. “How many people did you see there?”

  He screwed up his face. “There was a woman and Mr. Finch, the plumber. We saw them most of all. There were a lot of people in the other barn the night they took us there but they all disappeared. We didn’t see any of them again.”

  “Did anyone have any weapons? Guns?”

  “The woman and Mr. Finch—they have shotguns.”

  “Anything else?”

  “No. I didn’t see anything.”

  “
Well done, Arty. You’ve done very well.” Milton cleared the outskirts of the town and put his foot down. “Hold on.”

  MILTON KILLED the lights a mile out and rolled up to the start of a long drive that led towards farm buildings. He switched off the engine and rolled to a stop, water splashing beneath the tires as they passed through deep puddles.

  “I want you to stay here,” he said to Arty.

  “What about Mallory? And Ellie?”

  “I’m going to go and get them. But you have to stay here. Do you understand?”

  He shuffled awkwardly in the seat.

  “Arty—you have to stay here. Do you understand?”

  “I just want to help.”

  “I know you do, but I don’t need help. And you’ll get in my way. Stay here.”

  Arty grunted that he would. Milton opened the door, exited the car, and slipped into the cover of a clutch of fir trees. He crouched down, flexing his sore arm, and assessed the terrain ahead.

  The farm was encircled by a fence. Thirty yards behind the fence was a log gatehouse that reminded him of a frontier stockade. A log was lowered across the dirt road like the arm of a highway toll booth. An oblong of light stretched out from the side of the gatehouse, a door that Milton couldn’t see. The oblong was split in half by a shadow; someone was in the booth and had come to the doorway.

  The farmhouse was at the end of the road, lights glowing in the downstairs windows. There was another light above the porch, swaying in the wind. Surrounding it were sagging sheds, bungalows. There was a bunkhouse, probably added as farm and family grew. Now the house was empty and silent, huddling under cedar and pinon trees. He saw other buildings: a tall grain silo, two barns. Faint light glimmered from a number of ramshackle constructions he could see in the distance. There was a long line of vehicles parked along the shoulder of the lane between the guardhouse and the farm.

  Save the lights, there was no sign of life.

  And then there was.

  He heard the sound of a powerful engine. He ducked right down as a pair of high beams swung out from behind one of the barns. A truck, a big eighteen-wheeled semi, crawled slowly out of the yard and rolled through the gate and onto the lane. He saw the figure of a man in the yard, but he was much too far away to be able to identify him. The truck bounced along the potholed track towards him, the lights stretching out across the furrowed fields until they were interrupted by the trunks of the fir trees, casting inky black shadows for a dozen feet behind him. He couldn’t make out any detail through the darkness and the rain and he stayed down low as the semi drew nearer. The brakes sighed as it reached the end of the track, the tractor swinging onto the main road and the trailer following after it.