Whirlwind

by Hilary Norman

  For now, Reaper opened up his MacBook and looked at the image on the screen.

  At the text: They have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.

  And below that, photographs of his six chosen ones.

  This the first time that they’d all be able to see each other.

  Too risky earlier, in case one of them had decided to quit.

  Now, however, it was vital that they would be able to recognize one another.

  He felt, at that moment, immense fondness for all of them.

  And then he returned to his comfortable armchair, sat down and listened to his final recorded message to them, knowing that they’d all be listening now as he talked, once more, about justice and fear and courage.

  Another of his ‘leader of men’ moments.

  Still listening, he felt his right hand begin to tremble.

  Felt the flutter in his head, the precursor to dissociation.

  He understood his sickness, the one that had begun decades before his cancer, a relic, almost certainly in part, of infantile meningitis. Controllable to a point, but untamable without medication, without restraint.

  He had, over time, become its master, as it, paradoxically, remained his.

  ‘No,’ he told it now. ‘Not yet. You’ll have to wait.’

  And here it was again, the proof of his monstrous guilt.

  The ability to control. Making his childhood sickness his excuse for evil.

  The tremor ceased; the flutter in his head subsided.

  His calm, benevolent voice still speaking from his computer.

  ‘So. Shall we go through it one last time?’

  Reaper went on listening along with the others.

  ‘At around a quarter before ten this night, as the fine people of Shiloh Village and their dear ones file into church for their favorite service of the year, as the prerecorded bells of Saint Matthew’s ring out, the old house of worship brilliant with light, four of our number will take their place with them …’

  FORTY-SEVEN

  They hurried through the big open doorway, brushing snow from their hats and coats and faces, for the promised blizzard had stormed in about three hours ago, the National Weather Service warning of dangerous winds and life-threatening conditions. Advice statewide, in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, to stay home, some meteorologists estimating five feet of snow in the next several hours.

  Liza walked alongside Stephen Plain through St Matthew’s narthex at the west end of the church, moving farther into the nave, greeting Gwen and Jill on their right, waving at Betty Hackett and old Denny Fosse, Stephen taking time to give season’s greetings to Steve Julliard, once the local sheriff, now wheelchair-bound and mute after a stroke; her grandfather far more cordial with the villagers, Liza thought, than he’d ever been with her or her mother.

  His choice of seating in the fifth row of pews, halfway along, wasn’t too bad, she decided, Stephen taking the second place in, leaving her the aisle seat, which she liked, church services sometimes making her a little claustrophobic. Not that she ever attended out of choice; a christening in Boston her last visit, and that over a year ago.

  ‘Good turnout, considering the weather,’ Stephen said.

  ‘Very.’ Liza watched people, some bowing and crossing themselves before taking their places, all ruddy-faced, shedding hats and coats, exposing Sunday-best suits and dresses, Santa ties and snowmen sweaters, this service still clearly a big event for most.

  ‘A rotten place,’ Michael had said about Shiloh last night.

  Taking in the festive, cheerful atmosphere now, she decided he’d definitely been wrong about that. She unzipped her parka and stood up again to arrange herself more comfortably, cozy for now in her long red sweater, thick black leggings tucked inside her snow boots. She became aware of her grandfather’s disapproving glance, smiled back at him regardless, saw him shake his head but smile back anyway.

  Pleased by that hint of Christmas spirit, she remained standing and looking around, saw the Glover family up front, supposed that the child beside old Seth Glover was Grace, his granddaughter. Saw Norman Clay, another lifelong Shiloh resident who owned a pharmacy in the town, then Rosie Keenan, who waved at her; noted that people were moving forward from the rear pews as it became clear that the church was never going to fill tonight, and glancing back, there weren’t too many people she recognized, which was hardly surprising …

  And then, there he was.

  Michael Rider.

  Just walking in, a snow-covered black wool beanie in one gloved hand, clearing snow off the shoulders of his jacket with the other – not the old beaten-up leather jacket he’d worn last night, this one a black padded, zip-up waterproof over a black turtleneck sweater, and he looked pretty spruce, dark hair damp but neat.

  He sat in the rear pew aisle seat, and she wondered if he’d move forward with the rest. He’d said nothing to her last night about coming to the service, and it made no sense after badgering her to leave, and was it possible that in the end he’d come because of her? And maybe that had been him calling when she’d been out shopping, maybe he’d been wanting to tell her …

  She looked straight at him, but he seemed not to see her, or maybe he was avoiding her, in which case, why was he here?

  The kiss came back to her again, heated her cheeks, flustering her.

  ‘Sit down, Liza,’ Stephen told her. ‘They’re starting.’

  The organ began its familiar opening chords, and the choir – down to eight voices – began to sing ‘O Come, all ye Faithful’, and the congregation rose and joined in. The processional at St Matthew’s had never been grandiose, as Liza recalled, but all the elements were present: a female deacon and one altar server, incense being swung in a censer, the Gospel Book held high by the deacon – and of all those now moving up the center aisle with crosses and candles and incense, the only one Liza recognized was Simon Keenan, white-robed tonight with a narrow cincture around his waist, no head covering, a modest man for the job, she felt, and all the better for it.

  She shifted and turned her head, trying not to be too obvious, but Janet Yore, the elderly village dressmaker, had moved into the pew directly behind her, was smiling at her, blocking her view, so Liza did the only thing she could: smile back and face the front again.

  And go on singing.

  At the other end of Main Street, inside the Shiloh Inn, all was quiet except for the soft, muffled sounds of terrified weeping.

  Eleven traumatized guests, the duty manager and his wife, all on the floor of the bar, bound and gagged. Window shutters and drapes closed. Telephone system disabled, cell phones, tablets and one Kindle Fire confiscated. The inn’s wireless router disconnected. Entrances and exits secured.

  Two of the four men hired by Amos were standing guard. Halloween masks covering their faces, dark gray point-forty-caliber Sig Sauers in their black-gloved hands.

  The other two men back out in the village, calling on anyone who’d stayed home tonight, including seniors, infants, small children, the sick and their caregivers.

  Amos’s organized ‘cleanup’ being aided by the blizzard.

  ‘Keep it simple,’ he’d instructed the men.

  As at the inn, phone lines had been cut, cell phones removed, along with computers and readers, even Xboxes and any other smart devices.

  The rest taken care of by simple, credible threats from men in white Scream masks bearing deadly handguns:

  ‘Stay home and keep your mouths shut, and you live to see Christmas Day. Step outside, try to go for help or alert anyone, anyplace, and you die.’

  Not that anyone would get far out there.

  Whiteout and howling winds.

  No one coming in or out of Shiloh any time soon.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  The waiting nearly over now for the team.

  If all was going to plan inside the church, four members would already be in their pre-action positions. Isaiah in the back pew, north side of the aisle. The man na
med Luke at the end of the front pew if possible, taking the seat closest to the Stars and Stripes and the north-east fire exit. The man called Joel one row back on the opposite side, near the door that led to the undercroft.

  The woman named Nemesis down there, still concealed and waiting.

  As was Reaper.

  Ten rows of pews in the nave, room for six, comfortably, on both sides of the center aisle. St Matthew’s official capacity one hundred and twenty – no more than half-full tonight.

  The Whirlwind members all dressed in black, though not identically. Not a uniform, but a means of helping them to identify one another.

  Amos and Jeremiah were still outside in the white, wild night, sitting in the Volvo parked at the corner of Main and South Maple, keeping watch for latecomers, two in particular.

  Both men silent, Jeremiah’s tension palpable.

  ‘And here they come,’ Amos said, softly.

  The old Bentley bearing William and Freya Osborn pulled up close to the main entrance of the church, parking only a little askew, narrowly avoiding the buried fire hydrant behind the vehicle.

  Parking tickets the least of Osborn’s problems tonight, Amos thought.

  ‘OK.’ Jeremiah could feel blood pulsing in his ears.

  They watched the stout old man in his lambskin coat and hat get his door open and struggle out of the car, his boots useless, sinking beneath the piling snow, fighting the whipping wind to get his door closed, then holding on to the Bentley’s body as he worked around to the passenger side and hauled that door open, his wife pushing from her side, dressed in mink and equally useless, too-dainty snow boots.

  Amos sat still as the couple laughed, battling their way inside.

  ‘How much longer now?’ Jeremiah dug his gloved fingers into his right thigh.

  ‘Not long,’ Amos said.

  The two gunmen on the street, having completed their own tasks and having witnessed the two late arrivals, waited another minute, as previously instructed, and then, masks removed, began to walk, wind- and snow-buffeted every inch of the way, toward the Volvo.

  Amos opened his door, felt it almost flung out of his hand.

  One of the men bent to speak to him, but his voice was drowned by the wind, so he raised his right thumb, and Amos nodded in response.

  ‘I owe you,’ he shouted, with no risk of being overheard.

  ‘Believe it,’ the other man shouted back.

  Amos dragged his door shut again.

  ‘Ever see anything like this weather?’ Jeremiah said. ‘It’s like the fucking end of the world.’

  ‘It’s our best buddy tonight,’ Amos said. ‘Except we can’t hear the service. Makes it harder to time.’

  He watched the two gunmen, shoulders hunched, staggering back to their waiting four-by-four across the street. A good position from which they would keep watch on the church entrance, ensure that no one else tried to go inside once Revelation had begun.

  ‘They going to stay right through?’ Jeremiah asked.

  ‘They stay till they leave,’ Amos said.

  ‘So that’s it now? We go in?’

  ‘Another minute,’ Amos said, ‘and then we unload the bags and get ourselves to the door, and then we listen hard.’

  ‘What the hell are we listening for?’

  Amos threw him a look.

  ‘For the end of the fucking singing,’ he said.

  FORTY-NINE

  Inside, as the processional moved slowly around for the third and final time, Reverend Keenan stepped onto the chancel, bowed and crossed himself before the altar, then turned and moved to the pulpit.

  The voices stilled, the organ’s last notes faded to nothing, and the vicar took a breath.

  ‘The Lord be with you,’ he said.

  ‘And also with you,’ the congregation said.

  The sounds were the first discordant sign, and with them, the shock of freezing wind and snow blowing in and through the nave.

  Doors being opened. The main and north-east fire exit door simultaneously; that one being opened from the inside by a man in black with a badly-scarred face, fighting the elements to push the door wide, allowing a second man, also in black, to enter, his head and face snow-coated, stepping inside bearing a large bag.

  ‘Close the door!’ someone yelled.

  The door shut with a loud clang behind the stranger. Then another bang as the front door was closed.

  Simon Keenan collected himself.

  ‘Lift up your hearts,’ he said to the congregation.

  ‘We lift them up to the Lord,’ they responded.

  Gasps rose suddenly from congregants near the fire door.

  ‘Oh, dear God!’ Eleanor Tilden cried from the south front pew, right of the aisle.

  ‘It’s OK,’ John Tilden said beside her.

  Liza, rising from the fifth row, looked front left toward the fire door and saw that it was not OK. That the man who’d opened the door was now pulling things out of the other man’s bag – what looked like wires – and was fastening them, sticking them, she thought, to the fire exit.

  Wires and white cables and something wrapped in plastic.

  The second man’s gloved hands were shaking.

  ‘Oh my God,’ Liza said, very quietly, and sat down.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Stephen asked.

  ‘I don’t know, Granddad.’

  Alarm spread quickly, a great wave of fright all around the nave, and Liza stood up again, turned and saw that something else was happening back in the narthex.

  She looked for Michael and found him two rows from the rear, still on the aisle.

  This time he looked back at her, very briefly and grimly, then averted his gaze.

  He seemed, Liza felt with a great thump of fear, to be waiting for something.

  Dressed in black.

  ‘What the hell?’ Stephen Plain said suddenly.

  Liza swung around, saw that a third man was coming up the center aisle, black-clad like the other two, but much bigger, tall and heavyset and very intimidating, hatless and shaven-headed, gripping another large bag.

  He halted less than three feet behind Liza.

  Bent and pulled something from the bag.

  ‘Oh my God, he’s got a gun!’ a man yelled, sparking a jagged chorus of terror.

  Simon Keenan looked down at his wife, Rosie, in the front row beside the Tildens, then back at his congregation.

  Then at the big man in black, now holding some kind of a shotgun.

  ‘I don’t know what you want, sir’ – Keenan’s voice shook only slightly – ‘but I would remind you of where you are, and what tonight is.’

  The man did not answer.

  ‘They’ve all got guns!’ Janet Yore cried out from behind Liza.

  And people all over the nave of St Matthew’s Church began screaming.

  Heart pumping hard, body quivering with adrenalin, Michael stood up.

  He checked swiftly around, locating the other Whirlwind members, and saw Luke first – easy to identify because of his scars – being handed a shotgun by a man with close-cut brown hair and a lean physique – Jeremiah. Watched Luke, a shotgun now in each hand, quickly cross the nave and give one of the weapons to the man Michael already knew to be Joel, having spent the final waiting hours with him, and all credit to the silver-haired former doctor for not letting his fear show now, when it counted.

  Jeremiah had turned, was climbing the chancel steps, taking a position a few feet behind the pulpit, the best spot to survey most of the nave.

  Michael knew that Amos’s work at the entrance had to be complete.

  No going back.

  He moved out of his pew and began walking forward.

  Felt Liza’s eyes on him.

  Don’t look at her.

  He reached Amos – no doubting him, big shaven-headed thug of a man, the one who’d grabbed him that night and brought him to Whirlwind – and saw that his eyes were cold but calm, green irises speckled with brown. Nodding at
Michael now, drawing another shotgun from his bag and handing it to him.

  Do not look at her.

  Heart pounding even faster, Michael carried on walking, turned right at the front of the nave, passed Joel and reached the door that he knew, from the scale drawings, led to the undercroft.

  Opened it.

  Liza stared in horrified disbelief as yet another man emerged.

  Much older, thin, gray-haired, bespectacled, also wearing black.

  The same kind of jacket as Michael’s and the other gunmen, she saw, every vestige of hope dying, their jackets all combat-style waterproofs, with multiple zipped pockets.

  This man’s jacket was open, revealing a roll-neck and a large gold cross on a long chain around his neck, and he was not carrying a shotgun, only a black cane.

  The screaming lowered to fearful hushed layers of weeping, whispering, praying.

  ‘Thank you, Isaiah,’ the older man said to Michael.

  Who closed the door to the undercroft and took up a position before it.

  Sentry duty.

  Liza knew now why he had wanted her to leave Shiloh.

  His wanting her gone making this no better.

  Isaiah.

  ‘I know him,’ Eleanor Tilden, in the front row right of the aisle, whispered loudly to her husband, clutching his arm. ‘He was in the bar yesterday.’

  ‘Quiet,’ John Tilden hissed back. ‘Not now.’

  ‘He ordered Balvenie,’ she whispered.

  ‘Ellie, shut up,’ Tilden said.

  Walking slowly toward the chancel steps, Reaper heard them and smiled, climbed the steps and stopped, two feet away from the vicar, who was staring at him.

  ‘Apologies for the intrusion, Reverend,’ Reaper said.

  ‘You were here yesterday,’ Keenan said, fighting for calm.

  ‘Correct. You were kind, asked me if I was all right.’

  ‘Then in the name of God, what is this? This, of all nights, here, of all places.’

  ‘The perfect place,’ Reaper said. ‘Now I’d like you to go take a seat, Vicar.’

  ‘I’m not leaving this pulpit,’ Keenan said.

  ‘I don’t wish to threaten you,’ Reaper said, ‘but in case you haven’t noticed, there are five men in this church perfectly prepared to use their weapons if need be.’