He sipped his Scotch and thought of how far he had come. He marveled at the simple fact that his plans—everything he had thought would never really happen—would become reality within the next 72 hours. He was in awe—of himself, of this place, and of the majesty of powered flight. As so often happened, he knew he should be praying, but it was the furthest thing from his mind. He did what he wanted when he was in the tower. He could pray when people were watching.
The Cessna touched down and began its taxi run over to the warehouse where it would be refueled and restocked. It would be back in the air in a few hours. The pilots would rotate shifts to avoid fatigue. So far, there hadn’t been any incidents. The planes were on schedule and most of their work had been done.
He grimaced a little as he thought of Mary again. She had been beautiful and bright, even if the devil had gotten his claws into her and dragged her down. Now she was suffering in the inferno, and there was no saving her. The Seraphim had delivered her unto judgement, but she had made her own fate. She could have chosen differently—she could have stayed with Burke and she would have remained angelic. The possibilities would have been endless.
No matter, he sniffed, Soon, she will have plenty of sinners to keep her company.
I woke up the next day after sleeping all morning. I had only slept for four hours but at least I would get back on a normal schedule. After raiding the MCP compound and being bounced around in the back of the Land Cruiser for most of the night I was aching and tired and regretted my decision to go with the Lancaster’s on their not-so-stealth excursion. I was angry with them because they had tricked me. We had not discussed specifics of the ‘raid’—admittedly, partly my fault—but I think that they purposefully didn’t tell me the whole plan. I’m not sure I would have gone with them if they had.
Regardless, I woke up and decided to go for a bike ride. I was sore but I would do a nice easy ride up Two Hearted Gulch and maybe cool off with a dip in the river. I had the whole day off and it was a beautiful summer afternoon, so I had a late breakfast and then went mountain biking for five hours until evening set in. I was biking home when I decided to take a detour into the center of town. On a whim I decided to get dinner at the Thirsty Clogger. I would get a burger and a couple of beers and maybe read the novel I was currently working on. I wanted to forget all about inhalation burns and biblical scripture.
The attractive-but-not-interested-in-men bartender knew me, of course. I was the lonely ER doc who came by one or twice a week to have a burger and read his book. This time I went with the chicken pot pie. The Clogger made good comfort food and I was happy. I spent almost three hours there and by the time I rode home with my bicycle light blazing a path through the darkness, I was exhausted. I went home, showered and fell face first onto my bed with only a towel wrapped around my waist. I woke up with the sun blazing through the window onto my naked butt.
It was late morning as I pulled on some clothes and headed for the kitchen. There was a message on my cell phone, but I didn’t check it. I like to wake up and drink coffee for at least half an hour while I peruse the news and check my email. The first thing I saw was that the story had finally made the news. It wasn’t page one, but I found a couple articles online about two murder victims in Hawk Claw, Colorado. There was a tiny Denver News article and a slightly larger one in the Rocky Mountain Post. Neither piece had any specifics—nothing about Bible verses or inhalation burns—just vague allusions to a connection between the two deaths. The MCP was not mentioned.
I was standing on my deck starting my third cup of coffee as I played the voicemail and held the phone to my ear. I recognized a hospital extension number. It was a call from someone at work.
“Dr. O’Neill, this is Joan, the charge nurse in the ICU. I’m sorry to bother you at home, but if you can call me back… there’s been a tragedy. We’re calling people to let them know what happened and you’ll get an email later today. I’m sorry to tell you like this, but I’ve got a lot of people to call… Dr. Angela Lancaster, one of our ICU doctors, has died. There was a fire at her ranch last night. Both her and her husband died. We’re planning…”
I didn’t hear the rest of the message. My legs had suddenly gone weak and I sat down hard, dropping the phone in the process.
Deputy Emily Holland drove back to the Sheriff’s office after speaking with Franklin Monteiro for three hours. She had learned a lot, and it made her think about her boss, Sheriff Edwards. She felt like he was an honest man, and she didn’t think he was in league with the MCP. She had a suspicious nature, in general, but she had been mulling it over and she couldn’t see any reason not to trust him—although she would still, as promised, hold back Frank’s name. She went inside the Hawk Claw Sheriff’s Department and knocked on the Sheriff’s office door. He yelled for her to come in.
“Sir,” she said, “I’m sorry I missed the meeting this morning. I was gathering information, and I wanted to update you.” The Sheriff motioned for her to sit. She continued, “I want to explain… I apologize, but I can’t reveal my source at this point. He won’t go on record. He only agreed to talk to me if I gave my word that I would leave his name out of it.”
“You’re an officer of the law, not a reporter, Deputy. You don’t get to hold back information from your superiors. And if he won’t go on record, he isn’t very much use to us.”
“I know, sir—on both counts. If you really want his name, I’ll tell you, of course. But he’s paranoid about the MCP and I told him I’d keep his name off the record… he had a lot to say. Maybe all of it is old news to you, I don’t know. But I believe him. So here it is. This man is an escapee from the MCP. He joined them two years ago. He’s a drug addict—a heroin addict, although he said he couldn’t get any drugs while he was in the MCP. He said the place is essentially a prison, and everything they do and say is monitored. There are cameras everywhere. Everything they do is recorded. And there are scales. Industrial scales at the entrance to the MCP compound where they weigh every vehicle that enters and exits. That way they keep track and can tell if any people are being smuggled in or out.”
“How did he get out?”
“He stowed away on a construction vehicle after taking off some items that weighed about the same as him.”
“What about the cameras? You said there were cameras everywhere?”
“He thinks they have too many cameras to monitor them all in real time.”
“I see. Go on.” The Sheriff’s expression was not betraying anything.
“He says they—the MCP—are murdering people.”
“Has he witnessed this?”
“Not directly, no. He says they would ‘disappear’ people, fairly regularly, it sounds like. He gave me an example—a woman who he had had sex with. It’s considered a sin, but apparently, it’s only enforced for the woman. She disappeared the next day. They aren’t allowed to talk about it. But everyone knows.”
“That sounds awfully hard to verify. It could all be his imagination. Maybe this woman ran away, too.”
“Yes, sir… but there’s more. He says there’s a bounty hunter. A man who does all the ‘dirty work’ for the MCP—like some kind of divine punisher. My informant thinks that’s who does all the killing. He couldn’t give me a name, though. He also said that the MCP sent people to try to entrap him—to try to lure him into buying drugs. He said the MCP had been suspicious for a long time that he wasn’t a true believer and they tried to catch him up in a sin so they could get rid of him. He had been planning his escape for months. He had an implant—just like the one on the victims. He showed me the wound, sir. It was still healing. He dug the implant out of his own back. I could see the tattoo. He said the MCP calls it ‘getting your wings’—like angel’s wings—but that it was a GPS tracker—another way they kept tabs on their members. I doubt if he dug a hole in his back just to sell this elaborate lie to me, sir. He wouldn’t even have any motivation to lie to me—I didn’t pay him or reward him in any way.”
“Where is he now?”
“I’m sorry, sir. I swore to him it would go no farther than me. I’d like to keep it off the record for the moment if possible. He’s in hiding from the MCP.” She knew that Sheriff Edwards could easily deduce that the man was hiding in the Church—he had known that Emily had gone to the Church to talk to Santos.
As if reading her mind, he said, “Father Santos has him hidden away in that hidden room of his, doesn’t he? That’s OK, Deputy, you can pretend to keep your secrets—for now. Is there anything else?” he said.
“There’s a few more things,” she said, and she took out a notepad. She had jotted down some notes as soon as she had left the Church. “He says that the MCP isn’t 20,000 strong. He claims to have done some rough calculations based on the number of buildings in the compound. He thinks it’s more like 5,000 but he doesn’t have any definite numbers. And he says there are construction vehicles—general contractors, plumbers, and electricians, constantly coming and going. I thought I could start calling around to try to get info from any of them. I saw a Stonepoint Construction truck while I was up there—they did my parent’s remodel.”
The Sheriff nodded. “That’s one of the few companies the MCP will use. Is that it?”
“No. I saved the best for last, sir. I showed him pictures of the victims. He didn’t recognize the woman—but then I showed him the second victim. And he gave me a name… He said it was Ezekiel Abraham.”
“The man who left the note on your vehicle,” said the Sheriff.
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you give him any prompting?”
“No, sir. I was very careful. He gave me the name completely spontaneously. He said it was someone he had known, and you couldn’t forget a name like that. He said that he hadn’t had many friends ‘on the inside’, and that you never knew who was a ‘true believer,’ but that Ezekiel was in his study group and they had been friendly.”
“Good work, Deputy,” the Sheriff said.
“Thank you, sir,” she said.
“Is there any chance we can flip him? Make him testify?”
“He said that, if we can guarantee a conviction for Burke, he’ll talk.”
“Let me think about that. Maybe we can approach him—maybe you can approach him—with a deal. I’ll have to talk to the D.A.; and right now, we don’t have much to bargain with.”
“There’s a couple more things, sir. He said they have vicious packs of dogs that are one of the ways they keep people in line. Apparently, they let them roam at night and that’s how they keep everyone inside after lights out. He said the dogs roam the compound from 10p.m. to 6 a.m., and they’ll kill anyone they find outside. Hard to believe... but he was sure of it. And… one more thing.”
“By all means, keep it coming, Deputy.”
“Well… two things, really. More speculation than anything. Not my speculation—the witness’s speculation. He said that he couldn’t understand why the MCP would suddenly go from being extremely secretive—regarding the killings—to publicly advertising them. As he put it…'As soon as you cops see the scripture on these dead bodies, who will you think of? The MCP.’ I’m paraphrasing, he wouldn’t let me record it and I wrote it all down later because I didn’t want to scare him off. But I thought he had a good point. All of a sudden, the MCP has completely changed their M.O.—and instead of quietly ‘disappearing’ people, they’re making public examples of them. He couldn’t reconcile it. He said it was definitely the MCP that was doing this, but it was not their style at all.”
“Maybe they’re doing this because the victims were escapees. Maybe they only ‘disappear’ you if you’re still inside the MCP—but both of these victims had escaped and therefore they had to be made examples of.”
“It’s possible, sir. But he had a more… dramatic explanation.” The Sheriff just waited. “We discussed the scripture,” she said, “The actual lines of Bible text that were written on the victims. And he noted that the second victim had verses from Peter—but he said it was incomplete. He said it went on to talk about Armageddon—or Judgement Day. He was sure there was a connection.”
“You’re not going to tell me they’re a doomsday cult, are you, Deputy?”
“I don’t know, sir. The witness was pretty certain about it—he said that they must be planning something if they had burned that particular scripture into the victim’s skin.”
“What do you think, Deputy?” the Sheriff asked.
“Sir… I think that, despite the fact that this witness is an addict… he seemed pretty level-headed. And he was quite certain about this one point. He said that the MCP was definitely planning something big.”
“It might explain,” the Sheriff said, “Why they suddenly don’t seem to be too worried about publicity.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Emily said, “You don’t have to worry about the media—or law enforcement—if you believe that the end of the world is right around the corner.”
When the Seraphim told him about the fire at Tumbledown Ranch, The Messiah, Lucas Burke, had laughed out loud. He had been unable to control himself. Had it just been the Seraphim present, it wouldn’t have mattered, but Reverend Thompson had been there, too. Thompson’s eyes had gone wide and his eyebrows had risen with shock. The good Reverend had been horrified. Burke had quickly recovered and expressed a semblance of, if not sympathy, at least impassivity. But later, Burke hadn’t been sure why he had been the one needing to alter his behavior. It made him angry—the more he thought of it, the more irked he became.
Burke didn’t know why he continued to tolerate Reverend Thompson. Clearly the man didn’t have the stomach for what they were doing. He had, upon multiple occasions, voiced reservations. Why is it necessary to include the second part of the plan? he had asked. I can see the need to silence heretics and punish unbelievers—the Seraphim must do what he must do. I understand the importance of the airplanes, but I don’t quite grasp the necessity for what we are doing in Washington…
Burke cleared his throat, wishing he could clear Thompson away as easily as a little phlegm. Lucas Burke was sitting in the MCP air traffic control tower watching planes take off. All his most important visions had come to him in this very chair. It was a strange temple, indeed, but somehow this was where the Lord spoke to him most clearly.
He thought of the Reverend Marcus Thompson. The feelings that man elicited often lurked in the background until, at moments like these, they would suddenly make his blood boil. In the past, he had needed Thompson—the man was a respected member of society and thousands of Burke’s followers had found the MCP through Thompson. But now they were loyal devotees to the Messiah. Thompson was nothing more than a figurehead—a bloated politician. He spent more time with “community relations” than anything else. He had distracted that Sheriff’s deputy the other day, and she had gone away empty handed. Burke had to admit, Thompson was good at smooth talking and misdirection, and that had been useful in the past. He had given the MCP its respectability when they were just getting started. People trusted Thompson, and it had paved the way for them up until now.
Until now, Burke thought. Everything was different now. They didn’t need to pretend anymore. They didn’t need a politician anymore. They didn’t need to control the media, and they didn’t need to ‘spin’ what was a universal truth. They were going to reshape the world as had been prophesized; anyone who didn’t like it would end up like poor Mary Elizabeth Sorrow, or Ezekiel Abraham, or the meddling doctor and her husband. There was no room in the new world order for mercy.
No mercy, Burke thought. He reflected on the conversation again and his anger grew.
The one thing I don’t understand, Thompson had said, Why it is necessary to slaughter hundreds of thousands—maybe millions of people? The world is going to change forever, and the prophecy will be surely be fulfilled. In the end, it’s true—they will all probably die anyways. But the sudden extinguishing of so many… I don’t see where this is foreto
ld.
Burke had looked at him, unbelieving. It had only been the Seraphim, Burke, and Thompson present. But it didn’t matter. Thompson had questioned his authority directly. Burke had, at first, been so shocked that he hadn’t responded. There had been a long, awkward silence. Finally, Burke had spoken.
You’ll do as I command, or you will be forsaking me.
Yes, my Lord, Thompson had said.
Burke shook his head and tried to remember why he tolerated such insolence. It was infuriating. The very thought of it made him want to unleash the wrath of the Seraphim again.
And suddenly, he wondered what was holding him back. Had he not done so already, and in many cases, it had been punishment for a lesser sin? Mary Elizabeth Sorrow was dead. That young woman had been in the prime of her life—and yet, Burke had nodded approval when the Seraphim had come to him. Without a word, he had commanded that she be put to death, and proven that he would make an example of anyone who went against the will of the Messiah.
Yet he had allowed Thompson to speak openly against him—and why? Because of his so-called ‘connection to the community’? This was no longer of consequence. They had no use for Thompson anymore, now that the dawn of a new age had finally arrived.
People would ask questions, of course, but he would make something up. The Reverend Thompson is on sabbatical. He has traveled to Africa, where he is spreading the word of the Messiah. He’ll be returning in three months, I’m sorry but you’ll have to wait until then to speak with him.
The Armageddon Prophecy Page 9