By nine, they had broken camp. The cables, hoses, and wires were pulled from the water and electric hook-ups and the two RVs and the two coach buses slowly backed out of their respective driveways. The vehicles lumbered off one by one, transmissions groaning, led by Pantera’s RV along the narrow access road past the parking lot to State Road 60.
Constantine followed in his car behind the Ford Taurus and the SUV, driven by a couple followers. Probably outsiders, Constantine thought, like me. He’d figured that only “insiders” rode in the RVs. What he needed to do, at some point in the immediate future, was to become one himself—an insider—so he could get to know what Amato’s “Master” was all about.
After driving slowly along State Road 60 for a few minutes, he followed the caravan onto the entrance ramp to Interstate 95. Together, they headed north.
Chapter Nine
The Cure
Three hours later, the caravan exited the interstate onto State Route 9 just outside Dillon, South Carolina, a few miles south of the North Carolina border. Minutes later, the RVs and buses lumbered into the Bass Lake RV Campground.
They would have arrived earlier in the day, but about halfway there from Walterboro, they pulled off the interstate and took up one whole side of the parking lot at a McDonald’s near the exit. Amato and his biker colleagues shuffled into the restaurant and ordered one hundred and fifty-three Quarter Pounders, each with side orders of small fries. They paid for everything with a debit card drawn on the ministry’s checking account.
Within half an hour, everyone had gotten a burger and fries. Constantine thanked the pretty twenty-year-old girl who handed him his bag of food by his car. She had long, sandy hair and a fair complexion with freckles dotting her nose, and she wore a tie-dyed pixie dress. The girl nodded, flashing him a shy smile. Her name was Mary.
An hour later, the caravan negotiated the bumpy gravel and dirt entrance road of the Bass Lake RV Campground before pulling into an open area, more or less an open field set aside for parking recreational vehicles. Goldstein had called ahead to reserve four spaces with electric and propane hookups for three days at thirty-six dollars a day
Within half an hour or so, the camp was set up. There wasn’t that much to do and after two months of traveling from RV campground to RV campground, Pantera’s followers had turned moving in and moving out into a well-oiled process.
There were a few other campers around them, mostly snowbirds on their way back north after spending the winter at some modular park down in Florida. With the camp settled, everyone seemed content, glad to be living this transient, mobile existence. Most, if not all, were fully under Pantera’s spell.
That afternoon, Constantine sat around a wooden picnic table with a small group of the converts. Amato had given them the task of grilling hot dogs for whomever wanted one at a rickety line of old grills provided by the campground. He turned to a tall guy in his late thirties standing next to him, one of the exceptions to Pantera’s mostly younger converts.
“How long you been here?” Constantine asked the man.
“Month,” he said. He was tall, with pasty skin on the lumpy side, and tired, almost droopy eyes and spoke in a slow, deliberative manner.
“Where you from?”
“Miami,” he said.
The guy told Constantine his name was Danny Stewart. Before following Pantera, he’d been a lawyer working for a medium-sized firm in downtown Miami. One day, while on his way back from lunch, he’d stopped to listen to Pantera preaching at a small park near the Intercostal. After only five minutes, he was hooked, feeling the urge and need to transform his life. He found out where Pantera’s small group was staying—in an RV park near Ft. Lauderdale—told a senior partner he quit, packed a couple suitcases, and went to the RV park.
“His words,” Danny tried to explain, “what he says, man, the way he says it. He woke me up that day to the emptiness of my life. To the truth. That my life was a lie, a complete sham…an illusion, like he says. I was an automatic man programmed by my parents and society to think what I was doing was real, that it meant something. He made me realize it’s not, that all I left behind back there meant nothing. And from that realization, from acknowledging that, I felt my self-esteem coming back. I felt meaningful.” He smiled. “I felt happy.”
Danny turned to Constantine, his eyes wide, holding his smile. “Now I’m part of the solution, like the Master says,” he went on, “instead of part of the problem. I am becoming authentic.”
“Authentic?”
“Yeah, doing things that really matter,” he said, then paused a moment. “Helping the species survive, helping some guy down on his luck. Finding God. That’s what it means.”
That’s the party line, the message, Constantine thought. It was what Pantera had talked about in the two sermons he’d heard so far. Pantera wanted whomever would hear and listen to do what they needed to do to become “authentic.”
Pantera emerged a moment later from his RV and was immediately surrounded by converts. Some of them streamed from the buses to be near him. Unable to help themselves, some of them reached out to touch his white robe. He smiled as he strolled with them and from to time held up his hands to fend them off. With him were Renata Singh, Richard Avery, Nick Amato, and the accountant, Stu Goldstein. They walked to the Taurus, got in together, and drove off.
“Going to preach,” Danny told Constantine. “Convert the deluded.”
Constantine nodded and smiled. Look who’s calling who deluded, he thought.
A couple of hours later, Pantera and the others returned to the camp. A few cars had followed them back and their eight occupants, men of various ages, exited. They followed Pantera and the others toward the camp, taunting them, yelling names, and waving their arms above their heads menacingly.
“Faggots!” one of them yelled.
“Commies!” yelled another.
Still another shouted, “Beware false prophets who come in sheep’s clothing, for they are ravenous wolves!”
Nick Amato kept turning around, glaring viciously back at them. He shouted something—a curse, Constantine thought. Once, he turned and stood his ground, giving them the finger, but Pantera reached out and pulled him back. Finally, Amato’s three biker comrades ran over and formed a line between the eight taunters and Pantera, Singh, Goldstein, and Avery. Soon, other converts joined the human barricade. Constantine got up and ran over to join the wall of defense.
The taunters stopped a few feet from them and each side glared at the other for a time. Then, Constantine noticed that Pantera had somehow edged his way into the narrow space between the line of his followers and the group that had come to challenge him.
Both sides hesitated, gawking at him. What was he doing?
Pantera faced down the group opposing him for a time, then turned around and gave an equally disgusted expression to those supporting him. He then stepped forward and stood boldly before the other side. His hands were on his hips and he looked at them for a time, his expression changing from a glare to one of amusement.
“You’re not aware that there’ll come a day when my enemies will perish?” he asked the eight taunters. “That everything they thought and did, and the very lives they led, and all they believed in, will be as nothing?”
The way he said this, his stance and the fire and certainty in his eyes and voice, seemed to stop the taunters cold. They stood before him, glaring, but seeming to tremble as well.
“Let me say it to you this way, my friends,” Pantera went on. “The souls of those who do not hear the Word I preach shall die two deaths, one in this life on Earth, and another in the afterlife. They will never gain salvation, not in this world or the next.” Then he stuck out this right arm and aimed his index finger at them. “None shall be saved who does not hear the Word and enter the Kingdom of God.”
In the next moment, he turned and walked back to his RV. Everyone seemed stricken by some invisible force—unable to move, unable to speak.
&nb
sp; After a few moments, the taunters began grumbling to themselves. Some were shaking their heads at having just heard what seemed like a curse emitting from the weird preacher’s mouth. Facing the likes of Amato and the other bikers and a veritable army of frowning and scowling Pantera converts, they seemed to have second thoughts about whatever they had originally had in mind. They turned around and started back to their cars.
Constantine saw one of them, a young guy in his twenties wearing a greasy hat with the emblem of a deer across the front, step forward and walk toward the preacher’s followers. Wearing a wide grin, he was patted on the back as he began strolling with the group back to the camp.
One of the taunters who had been walking back to their cars noticed the defection. He stopped and turned, yelling out, “Hey, Lucas! Lucas! What the hell ya doing?”
Now the rest of the taunters had stopped as well. Lucas yelled back to them, “I’m staying. Gonna join up with these good people. Get along home without me.” He waved them off. After a few moments, however, the men started toward the camp again, and it seemed that the altercation might flare back up.
But seeing this, Lucas shouted, “I said go on along home without me. I’m not going back with you. Tell Lori I’m sorry.” He sighed and looked at the smiling faces of Pantera’s followers around him. “I’m staying here.”
The taunters looked at each other for a time. Some of them shrugged, others flipped Lucas off. Someone shouted, “Asshole.” Another yelled, “Faggot.” Moments later, they returned to their cars and drove off.
Around nine o’clock that evening, Pantera emerged from his RV. Just like the day before, everyone stopped whatever they were doing to gather around him and listen to what he had to say. Constantine again edged his way toward the front.
“Gather round and hear the Word,” Pantera began as he had the day before.
That seemed to be the standard way the man started his sermons, Constantine mused. Gather round and hear the Word.
“I want to tell you a story I call ‘The Cure’,” Pantera went on. “You see, a terrible disease, like a bad flu or something, swept throughout this particular country, and many, many people starting getting sick and an alarming number of them died. Soon enough, it became apparent that no one was immune from the virus that caused this disease.
“So the president and Congress got all the great doctors and research biologists together to come up with a cure. And, you know, it took a few anxious weeks while more and more people got sick, and more and more people died, before finally, after mixing together various chemical potions, they came up with a pill that could cure the disease. Only taking the pill wasn’t enough. The doctors told everyone that in addition to taking the pill on a daily basis for a couple weeks, they had to follow a strict regimen that included eating right, exercising, meditating, getting enough sleep, that sort of thing.
“Well, you know, there were some people who refused to take the pill and they got sick and died. And then there were those that took the pill, but didn’t follow the regimen, and they got sick and died. Then there were a number of people who took the pill and followed the regimen for a while, but stopped. For a time, they got better, but after they stopped the regimen, they got sick and died.
“And then there were a smaller number who took the pill and followed the regimen, and they all got better. And they became the rulers of the country.
“Enter the Kingdom of God and be saved.”
That signaled the end of the sermon—in this case, another parable—and Pantera’s followers mumbled, “Enter the Kingdom of God and be saved.”
A couple hours later, back in his car, Constantine thought about the simple parable that he called “The Cure.” It explained exactly what Pantera was doing—giving the masses a pill and a regimen to get better, to gain salvation. Only those who took the pill and followed the regimen would enter the promised Kingdom of God and be saved.
He sighed and picked up his Network smartphone to begin dictating that day’s report.
Chapter Ten
Rescue
Constantine slept in the back seat of his car that night. In the morning, he intended to approach Nick Amato about donating it to Pantera’s ministry upon the premise that he had indeed decided to fully commit.
Deep in the early morning hours of that moonless night, with darkness and silence hanging over the camp, Constantine was awakened by the sound of hushed voices and footsteps. He slowly rose from the seat and spotted the source of the noise. Four men dressed in black were moving stealthily and methodically toward the main RV—the one occupied by Pantera, Renata Singh, Amato, and Avery.
Within seconds, Constantine’s eyes had adjusted to the darkness and he saw that the four intruders were carrying billy clubs. They clearly meant to do harm if necessary. A moment later, Constantine realized what was happening: Dick Avery had likely hired these thugs to forcibly rescue his son from Pantera’s “cult.”
Constantine turned off the overhead light before slowly exiting the car. He gently shut the door behind him, then, staying low, hustled toward the main RV. It was his hope to thwart Richard Avery’s kidnapping and, in the process, earn himself notice and praise and perhaps admission into Pantera’s inner circle. He might go from outsider to insider in one fell swoop.
However, he hadn’t quite figured out just how he was going to do that. Using martial arts skills honed by Network training would likely give away that he was not some ordinary schlep named Donald Summers, fed up with life and therefore ripe for Pantera’s message, but instead was some type of field agent sent to investigate Pantera.
Constantine scampered to the rear of Pantera’s RV and waited as the four intruders made a final run for the side door. They stood there for a moment, getting their bearings and gathering their nerves. Finally, they appeared ready for their next move: breaking down the door and entering the RV. Constantine took a deep breath and stepped out from behind the vehicle, shouting, “What you doing, man?”
Each of the intruders turned to face him.
“Fuck,” one of them whispered.
In the next moment, Constantine was banging on the side of the RV.
One of the intruders, a big, burly guy who looked like he’d had a long career as a bouncer and repo man—and whatever he was now—approached Constantine in a lumbering fashion, ready to strike. Constantine widened his stance and banged on the RV again.
As the burly one got nose-to-nose with Constantine and was lifting his billy club for a strike, the side door of the RV opened and out stepped Nick Amato. A moment after that, Amato’s three ex-Road Warrior comrades exited the other RV and were running over to join the brewing fracas.
“What the fuck’s this?” Constantine heard one of them say.
This show of force ended the rescue mission. The burly one lowered his club and backed off.
“Lucky for you, shithead,” Amato said.
By now, the area around the main RV was filling up with followers from the buses and tents set up in the vicinity. That was the cue for the rescue team to flee. First one turned and trotted off, then the next, and finally the other two, including the big burly one. They ran into the darkness past the parking lot, toward the woods that led to the state highway. Constantine surmised they had a vehicle parked somewhere out there.
“What was that?” Amato asked of no one in particular.
“Rescue mission, I think,” Constantine said. He explained what he suspected, that Richard Avery’s father had hired these guys to forcibly remove his son from the caravan and take him home. Richard cursed and stalked back into the main RV in a huff.
Pantera stepped forward and patted Constantine on the back.
“Well, your diligence just saved him from that,” he said. “A father sometimes wishes to hide his son from the truth. He teaches the lie, and then objects when the son wishes to escape from it.” Then he gave Constantine a curious look. “You’re new here.”
“Yes,” Constantine said. “I saw you speak
yesterday. And before that, when I was down in Key West on vacation. Over Christmas. But when I came back north, I couldn’t get your message out of my head. I’d heard you’d be heading north when the weather broke, so here I am.”
Pantera looked around him, at the gathering of sleepy followers.
“It’s over now, my friends,” he said. “Thanks to this man.” He looked back at Constantine. “What’s your name?”
Constantine almost blew his cover in that moment. “Ju…Don,” he said, trying to recover. “Donald Summers.”
“Well, Donald,” Pantera said, “I’m wide awake. Got time to talk?”
He waved his arm toward the main RV. Constantine shrugged, nodded, then followed him inside.
Chapter Eleven
Savior
“You’re different,” Pantera said to Constantine after sliding into the seat across from him. They faced each other in a booth that appeared to serve as the kitchen table in the mid-section of the RV.
“Excuse me?”
“Different,” Pantera went on as he cocked his head ever so slightly. “You’re trying to look like one of my typical followers, but I see something else in you.” He frowned, then said, “Something different.”
Constantine suddenly wondered whether Pantera might have guessed his identity.
Singh, Avery, and Amato had returned to the RV with them and been quickly shooed to bed by Pantera. He told them to get some sleep. They were breaking camp once the Sun rose. He didn’t feel safe there between the rednecks and cult-busters. And he wanted to discuss some things with Constantine. Alone.
“So tell me about yourself,” Pantera continued.
Constantine recounted the main points of the Summers backstory. After graduating high school in Libertyville, Illinois, not far from his present home in Gurnee, he’d attended Northwestern and obtained a degree in finance. Upon graduation, he had landed a job with Dwyer & Clattner, where he had remained ever since—nine years, and finally creeping past a six-figure salary in the past year.
The Messiah Page 5