DANA
What are we up against? Do we have a chance? Will our tunnel-busters do anything?
RACHEL
What am I, a weapons expert?
DANA
You’re why we’re here. You’re the cause of all this.
Manning appears, kneeling on the windward side. He has to hang on to the flank of the truck, wearing gloves now, to keep from getting blown over.
He tells us the trucks are ready.
We’re moving out.
An hour later, in a gale that has only increased in fury, our convoy grinds to another halt, this time on a knife-edge crest beneath a limestone crag.
“Goats!” comes the squawking voice and image—Dana’s—from the Humvee #1 tablet screen on our truck’s console. Through the chalky windshield I can make out a flock of hundreds, driven by Bedouin herders, shambling in the gale along the road crest.
Giora and Ben-David are waving from ahead. The convoy lumbers off the road into a bulldozed cutout on the slope beneath the crag.
Shelter.
Temperature drops immediately to about 110. Crazy as it sounds, this feels cool.
Giora, Hemi, and the soldiers pile out and scramble to top off their radiators, check their loads, and tighten down all lashings. Dana dismounts from the lead Humvee and comes back to us.
DANA
(to all)
Hydrate! I mean it. Get some water in you!
Rachel clomps past me with an odd expression. She stalks toward the front of the column. When I call to her, she doesn’t answer. I chase her.
Some kind of commotion has broken out ahead. I see Ben-David’s chest and shoulders above the milling goats. Two Bedouins in robes are speaking to him in an agitated state. Manning crosses toward them.
The flock blocks the road completely. The herders carry shepherd’s staffs. Their garb is hooded robes and sandals. Little boys carry leather slings like David in the Old Testament.
The Bedouin patriarch speaks to Ben-David in Arabic. Rachel has pushed forward. She stands at Ben-David’s shoulder. I shove through, beside her and Dana.
DANA
(indicates Bedouin elder)
He says a man met him on the road and gave him a message for us.
Apparently the patriarch wants money. Ben-David digs in his pockets. He hands the man several bills. The elder accepts them. He produces the note.
Ben-David indicates Manning. The Bedouin hands Manning the note. He points to the summit of the crag looming overhead.
A man stands there, a hundred feet above us, silhouetted against the burning sky.
Rachel peers.
Dana reaches for binoculars.
Manning and Ben-David squint, shielding their eyes against the glare and the churning dust.
The man is Instancer.
Every hair on my body stands up.
Instancer holds motionless. The gale booms around him, whipping his khaki shirt and military-style trousers. His hair blows sideways in the wind. He stands beside some kind of desert-rigged truck. He’s alone.
I turn instinctively to Rachel.
Her expression betrays nothing.
Dana peers at Instancer through binoculars. I see her adjust the focus knob, pulling the eyepieces deep and hard against her sockets.
I rap Dana’s shoulder, for a look.
DANA
Get your own.
I’m peering as hard as I can at Instancer. He makes no movement. Just looks down at us. Too far away to make out his expression.
Manning opens the note, scans it, and passes it to Ben-David. Rachel pushes to Ben-David’s side. He hands the paper to her.
Whatever the message says, it sobers these three completely. I see Manning meet Ben-David’s eye.
Ben-David glances toward Rachel, then back to Manning.
BEN-DAVID
(to Dana)
Lieutenant, arm your men.
Instancer holds his position directly above us.
His note is passed to me.
It’s an iPhone photo.
I squint in the sun-glare.
The pic is a close-up of the hood of a desert truck, apparently the same vehicle Instancer is standing beside now.
In the dust on the hood a finger has scrawled:
CUINHELL
Manning has crossed to Ben-David. He is speaking to him with quiet but urgent intensity. I can’t hear what they’re saying; they’re too far away. Whatever action Manning is urging, Ben-David is rejecting it.
The herders, with fresh energy, drive their flock clear of the road.
I see Manning indicate Rachel. He’s speaking with greater vehemence to Ben-David. Ben-David continues to rebuff him.
Instancer watches from the crest of the crag.
Suddenly Manning turns his back on Ben-David. He strides toward Rachel, who stands beside me on the shoulder of the road. Manning seizes her by the elbow, hauls her roughly toward the front of the column, toward Dana’s lead Humvee.
Dana herself continues staring through binoculars at Instancer.
Ben-David pursues Manning. He orders him to release Rachel. I’m crossing with long strides after both of them.
The lead Humvee’s driver and gunner stare as Manning approaches, dragging Rachel.
MANNING
You two, dismount! I’m taking the vehicle.
The soldiers look to Ben-David, who is scampering as fast as he can to catch up.
MANNING
(to soldiers)
Get out, I said!
Ben-David overtakes Manning. He orders him to take his hands off Rachel.
The soldiers are staring. Ben-David tears the flap open on his holster. Manning hears the military Glock 19 come out. He hears it cock.
BEN-DAVID
Stop, goddamn you! Where do you think you’re going?
Manning turns back.
MANNING
Where are we going? The same place Instancer’s going. The only place we can go.
Manning again shoves Rachel toward the Humvee’s door.
MANNING
(to Ben-David)
Keep behind us in your truck. I want to see your headlights in my rearview every second.
Instancer watches from the peak. Every eye has turned toward him. He mounts to the cab of his truck. We see the vehicle clearly now—a Chevrolet Chinook 5500 HD, the biggest, most powerful stock pickup on the planet. The engine starts. The oversize all-terrain tires churn into the dust.
Dana has at last joined our group. Manning orders her and the soldiers to break out the tunnel-busters. He hands me the Zombie Killer.
MANNING
(to all, re: Ben-David)
Protect him!
I’m scanning the faces of the troopers. Manning has taken over the convoy completely. He has usurped Ben-David as commander and overpowered the others by the sheer force of his personality. That, and the desperate urgency that has overtaken all of us with the apparition of the Adversary.
MANNING
(to Rachel)
Get in. Take the wheel.
RACHEL
Go to hell.
MANNING
I intend to. And you’re going with me.
Instancer’s truck reverses out of its overlook position, shifts into a forward gear, and accelerates from sight down the far slope.
Manning watches for a long moment, then turns back to Rachel.
MANNING
You conducted Instancer into this world and, by God, you’re gonna conduct him out.
BOOK SEVEN
END OF DAYS
30
MEGIDDO
WE’RE FOLLOWING Manning and Rachel.
Three hours have passed. The convoy has found its way down, at last, off the crest line. The trucks lumber west through a storm front growing more violent by the minute.
From Beit She’an, Highway 71 runs northwest twenty miles to Afula, a sizable agricultural town, then Route 65 turns southwest, ten miles to Megiddo. It’s kibbutz country,
farmland parched to ash.
I have been fretting that we would somehow fail to find Gehenna. The absurdity of this now becomes apparent. From ten miles east of Afula, both sides of the highway, and indeed the driving lanes of the road itself, are packed solid with refugees and displaced persons streaming toward that exact location.
ME
Who are these people?
BEN-DAVID
End-of-the-Worlders.
Pilgrims in the tens of thousands shuffle westward. Heat tornadoes shimmer in the distance; cloud formations press menacingly upon the Earth. Khamsin-driven grunge compels each trekker to seek protection beneath hoods and head wraps. Beneath Bedouin-style robes we spy not shoes or boots but bare feet and worn, open-toed sandals.
We have entered the Bible.
Ahead, Manning’s Humvee is honking, trying to clear the throughway.
Ben-David shouts down from our cab to one ragged straggler.
BEN-DAVID
Where is everybody going?
STRAGGLER
Gehenna.
BEN-DAVID
Why?
STRAGGLER
Who knows? People just started moving. It’s crazy.
I’m recording the spectacle on my phone. The sense is of collective derangement, of mob energy mounting out of control. Threadbare trekkers are hauling themselves up onto our running boards. Others are clambering up the outboard rails.
Ben-David swings out onto the flank of the truck. Giora shouts at him to get back in. Over the comm channel I hear Dana reinforcing this call. Ben-David ignores both of them. He’s trying to protect the tech gear in the cargo beds. The tailgates of the trucks are sealed only by canvas. Already free-riders are tearing their way aboard with pocketknives and bare hands.
I’m on the channel to Manning, reporting the emergency.
MANNING’S VOICE
(from comm channel)
Follow me. We’re cutting cross-country.
I’m squinting right and left across the wasteland. The dust bowl as far as I can see is carpeted with tent encampments and hobo jungles. Vans and camper-shell pickups, sedans and mini-buses squat not only along the shoulders of the highway but fan rearward across open country, first in ordered rows, then in chaotic clutches, finally in a mad jumble back, back into the flat, burned-out badlands.
Giora is shouting to Ben-David to get back to the cab. Manning’s Humvee is pulling away. Already its taillights are being swallowed amid the multitude.
Around our convoy flows a river of the desperate and the devout—children and ancients, male and female, the hale and the infirm. Aged indigents hobble on crutches and walking sticks, enfeebled crones are being borne in wheelbarrows and towed under blanket wraps in wagons and two-wheel carts. I’m thinking, These are the church ladies we saw boarding buses on Central Park West. They’re the Chasidim from Crown Heights and Borough Park. Plus tens of thousands from Europe, Asia, Africa. How have they survived in this hell? Where do they get water? The faithful must be perishing by the hundreds every night.
Ben-David returns. He hauls himself inside, dropping hard into the seat beside me.
BEN-DAVID
Go. Go!
Our convoy commander points left, to an unpaved agricultural road. Giora turns onto it. The column picks up speed over open ground, shedding the last of the hangers-on.
An hour passes. We’ve lost Manning and Rachel. We’ve lost the road.
DANA
(over comm channel)
Amos, are you watching the needle?
Ben-David checks the EXT TEMP gauge: 121° Fahrenheit.
Another forty minutes. The electrical storm intensifies. Comm signals sizzle and break apart.
Barometric pressure is plunging. I feel it in my ears. The leaden sky turns to ink. The gale rises. The heat has become unimaginable.
Where is Instancer?
Ahead?
Behind?
Is he at Gehenna now?
Where is Manning?
His channel comes through in snatches on the console screen depicting Humvee #1. But his vehicle locator signal has vanished. We have no idea where he is.
The sky crackles with migdalim. Gloom devours our headlights. It’s not yet six, but our truck creeps forward on a track gone to midnight.
BEN-DAVID
(into comm channel)
Rachel, this is Amos. Where are you?
We can see Rachel and Manning on our console screen (and even hear them in bits and pieces) but they can’t hear us. They’re not responding.
BEN-DAVID
Rachel, do you copy? Rachel!
(to himself)
Goddammit, what the fuck’s wrong with this thing?
Five more minutes pass. On the screen we can see Manning and Rachel. They’ve stopped.
MANNING
Amos! Dewey! If you copy . . . don’t follow us. I say again: stay back. We’ve entered some kind of defile . . . intense heat . . . way beyond—
Manning’s signal breaks up. Ben-David tries every channel to reach them.
Nothing.
They’re blind too in this storm.
Their EXT TEMP gauge reads 134° Fahrenheit.
Video from Manning’s Humvee returns. We can see him. He’s getting out of the vehicle. Great sheaves of gale-driven sand boom in. Rachel is shouting something to Manning. Something about water bags . . .
BEN-DAVID
They’ve boiled over.
The Humvee’s forward exterior camera shows Manning struggling to raise the hood. He’s wrestling a desert water bag from its rig on the Humvee’s grille.
An endless minute passes.
Now Rachel gets out. She too struggles forward into the storm.
Another minute.
Suddenly both Manning and Rachel come pounding back to the cab, diving in, in obvious extremis.
They have one water bag between them. Manning presses it into Rachel’s hands. He shouts to her to drink it, drink it all. It takes all Manning’s strength to get the doors closed. Rachel is upending the flax water bag above her mouth. But the liquid seems to vaporize the instant it gushes forth. Rachel gets only drops. She sucks the tube. The bag is dry.
INT TEMP 141.
Manning’s in the driver’s seat now. He starts the engine. Rachel shouts something that the channel garbles.
MANNING
We have to move. We’ll die if we stay here.
In Ben-David’s cab, I’m trying everything I can think of to get a fix on Manning and Rachel’s position. But the electrical storm is driving every instrument crazy. The magnetic compass on Ben-David’s dash is spinning like a top.
ME
Amos, we have to find them. Go forward!
BEN-DAVID
Where? Into a ditch? Over a cliff?
Our driver Giora inches tentatively into the gloom. Three minutes. Five. How long can Manning’s engine run at these temperatures without coolant? How long can Manning and Rachel keep functioning before they go into heat shock?
Ben-David and I can see Manning and Rachel in snatches, half depixelated on the dash tablet.
Suddenly Manning’s head lurches wildly out of the frame.
The Humvee’s cab upends.
MANNING
Quicksand!
Manning and Rachel are lifted out of their seats and pressed against the overhead. The cab rotates ninety degrees onto its side. We hear steel bolts snapping. Manning and Rachel are flung powerfully into the windshield.
The Humvee stops with a violent wrench. Manning and Rachel rebound off the dash and windshield.
In Ben-David’s cab, a red light starts to flash on the tablet screen linked to Manning’s Humvee. An automated voice repeats:
AUTOMATED VOICE
MAYDAY! MAYDAY! All stations, MAYDAY!
The Humvee has stopped on its side.
ME
Manning! Manning, can you hear me?
I’m bawling into the mike on the convoy system and into my own phone.
No response.
The gun turret behind and above Manning and Rachel bangs open with a thunderous clang. Rachel, hanging on to the steering wheel with both hands, barely keeps herself from being flung rightward over the center console. Manning in the passenger seat is bowled sideways into the armored window of the starboard door.
The Humvee is pinned at the foot of a collapsing dune. The right-hand door is buried against tons of sand, the driver’s door submerged beneath the dune caving in from above. Rachel struggles against its subsiding weight.
Manning manages to clamber over the high, boxy console. He squeezes his body between Rachel and the steering wheel, seating his shoulders against the door. Planting both soles against the console’s left inboard edge, he pushes upward against the doorframe with all his strength.
A weight of tons presses from above.
No hope.
Manning falls back.
Sand pours into the cabin through the open hatch of the gun turret. For moments Manning and Rachel struggle to climb over the seatbacks, seeking the last avenue of escape—through the opening of the turret.
The collapsing dune seals this.
Darkness. I keep calling Manning’s name. A flashlight switches on. The interior of the Humvee’s cab is sealed like a tomb. INT TEMP 145°.
RACHEL
We’re going to die here.
Manning lets himself topple rightward and down, onto the passenger-side doorframe, which has become the vehicle’s floor.
In Ben-David’s cab I can see Manning, illuminated by Rachel’s flashlight, groping across the instrument panel. At once the Mayday call shuts down.
MANNING
(from comm channel)
Amos . . . Dewey, if you can hear me . . . do NOT attempt rescue. I say again . . . DO NOT enter this section of ground. It’s unstable. Our vehicle has plunged into a sinkhole. A dune has collapsed on top of us.
Manning instructs me, at all costs, to get Ben-David to Gehenna.
36 Righteous Men Page 20