False Gods

by W. Glenn Duncan Jr.

“The Lord has called and …” she screeched.

  “We will Follow the Way,” boomed the unseen congregation.

  A burst of gunfire followed by a response from Mother Mary.

  Ana placed the something in Dariell’s hand, and I saw the truth.

  “No!”

  I jumped forward and through the doorway.

  Lifetimes too late.

  Dariell was bringing the disposable paper cup down from his lips. He reached out to place it on the altar but lost his grip, it fell on its side and his knees buckled. His hands scrabbled like claws on the altar cloth, succeeding only in pulling it with him when he fell. It billowed over him like a shroud, and scattered the candles to the floor, burning still.

  I stopped ten yards from the altar, realizing that I was out in the open, and turned to the right.

  The church was full, and the whole congregation was standing.

  Some had their heads bowed.

  Some were looking at the ceiling.

  Some were looking at me, like a vision.

  Some were still holding the little, angelic-white cups. Others had already let them slip from their grasp.

  In one of the back rows I heard a clatter and a crash.

  They fell then, like a series of demented dominoes.

  One here.

  Three there.

  A black man on my left.

  An Asian woman in the front row.

  Most collapsed vertically; a few just sat down in the pews. Others fell forward on their knees like they were getting one last prayer out, “Hey God. Open the door, I’m on my way.”

  Within twenty or thirty seconds, there was no more movement.

  The People’s Church of the Reformed Temple, Lincoln chapter, was still.

  Cowboy’s voice beside me.

  “Aw man, that is jes’ fucked up.”

  I had no words.

  At Cowboy’s side, Kimberly mumbled, “We must follow the way.”

  I looked across the hall at the three hundred people who had followed the way and wondered if Kimberly would ever understand how lucky she was.

  A grunt.

  We turned.

  Ana was slumped in the chair on the far-side of the altar, her upper body draped over her knees. She was gurgling and shaking. I lowered the Colt and took a step.

  She bolted upright and roared.

  “Hah!”

  Her body shook and pulsed as she laughed.

  The sheet over Dariell’s body caught fire and started to crackle underneath her words.

  “Perfect! Perfect!” She clapped her hands together. “Even better than I expected.”

  Her lips curled back and she cackled.

  “Not an original thought in their useless heads. Not one that I didn’t put there. I wondered if maybe one of them might not go through with it, but not a single one resisted.”

  She noticed me about then. Leaned back on her throne and placed her hands lightly on the chair arms.

  I took another step forward, to which she tilted her head to the right and played the hint of a smile over her mouth.

  “Dariell’s injuries … that was your doing, I assume.”

  I boggled. She shrugged.

  “It doesn’t matter. They were perfect. And those idiots saw exactly what I told them to.”

  Her eyes widened in the flickering light from Dariell’s pyre.

  “Kimberly,” she said.

  I sensed Kimberly bowing her head between me and Cowboy.

  Ana went on.

  “You have served Father well. He has been called by Our Lord to the New World and left us behind. You are now called to serve me. Come here Kimberly.”

  Cowboy moved sideways to halt Kimberly’s steps and I raised the Colt.

  Dariell’s sheet-covered form crackled louder as the flames spread to the carpet and licked at the altar.

  “Not a chance in hell, Ana,” I said. “Kimberly’s going home.”

  Ana’s grin widened. Feral. Insatiable.

  “You are home, Kimberly. You belong here. Serving me.”

  I heard Kimberly’s hands shuffling on Cowboy’s jacket as she tried to step around him.

  “It doesn’t matter.” Ana waved her hand. “I’ll always be in her head. She’s stupid, and weak. Just like the others. You saw what happened to them.”

  She looked me in the eye and I could tell, despite the comforting weight of the Colt, I wasn’t the least scared person in the room.

  “Look at them. Incapable of independent thought. Willing, desperate even, to accept what anyone else says, no matter how ridiculous. They didn’t deserve to live. None of them. Pointless, miserable excuses for life. Pathetic, sniveling little—”

  I’d had enough of everything right then, so I did what anyone else would.

  I shot her.

  Turned to Cowboy.

  “Let’s get the hell out of this godforsaken place.”

  The three of us walked down the central aisle of the church as the altar burned behind us. In places we had to step over—and maneuver Kimberly around—the bodies of the devout that had fallen into the aisle.

  I tried not to look at them.

  Wondered if any of them were Lucy’s family.

  Wondered how the fuck this had all happened.

  Wondered if there was a way to scrub my brain clean.

  Cowboy and I, with Kimberly between us, reached the front doors of the church and stiff-armed them open.

  We crossed the small porch and walked down the wooden steps. Set foot on the gravel. Stopped to take a couple of breaths of the clean, clear night air.

  I heard the fire starting to take hold of the church and turned back, expecting to see the flickering of flames in the front windows.

  I did not expect to see seven men in black, with balaclavas and bullet-proof vests, pointing what I considered to be the wrong end of their MP5s at us.

  Chapter 42

  “Rafferty,” someone growled from the darkness.

  I recognized the voice and my shoulders slumped.

  Would this night never end?

  Steve Wesson stepped into the light from the side of the church.

  He was dressed the same. Business shirt with the sleeves rolled up and tie loosened at his throat. Suit pants and dusty leather shoes. And a nifty bullet-proof vest stenciled with big yellow letters. ATF.

  Probably thought he was macho as hell.

  “I thought I made it clear that you were to fuck off and not come back,” he said. The gang with the guns parted to let him walk through. “You didn’t listen to me and now you’ve stepped in serious shit.”

  He jerked his chin at the guy furthest left, who swung his weapon down, letting it hang from its sling as he moved his hands to his utility belt and took a step forward.

  I held up a hand.

  The guy on the left stopped dead. The other six swayed backwards and four of them tensed their trigger fingers. Steve was caught with his mouth open.

  “Let me give you three reasons,” I said, “why it’s a bad idea to pursue that line of thinking, Stevie-boy.” He grimaced.

  Maybe that was what his mother called him.

  I hoped so.

  I turned my open hand into a single finger pointed up.

  “Number one. Any moves by The Magnificent Seven here to take us into custody will be met with a swift and furious response.”

  I dropped my finger.

  The Barrett cracked in the distance at the same time as the .50 caliber slug screamed over Steve’s head with about four inches to spare and slammed into one of the church’s porch posts. Maybe I dreamed it, but I thought I saw Steve’s hair ruffle in the bullet’s wind wake.

  The hotshots gripped their weapons tighter and looked into the night in different directions, none of them even close to where I knew Mimi had fired from. She’d be on the move anyway, so their attempts to locate her were pointless.

  Steve turned to look at the front of the church. From eighteen inches above the decking, t
he post was gone. It had ceased to exist, and the porch roof wobbled and sagged.

  “Not even your fancy bulletproof vest would stop one of those with your name on it, my friend.” I gave him a tired smile as he opened his mouth to protest. “Yeah, I admit it, your guys might even get their shots off.”

  I pointed the finger at his chest.

  “But I guarantee, even if they get lucky and took the three of us out, you will be the first one down and that the others will not survive the night.”

  Fourteen eyeballs swiveled to look sideways at Steve through the balaclava slits.

  “Number two. You are gonna be busy. Once the clean-up crew gets here and secures the site, you’ll learn how big your workload is about to become. Working out how and why the psychopathic leader of this church perpetrated kidnapping, extortion, drug abuse, and systematic rape during your watch is going to chew up so much of your time, you won’t have any left to deal with us.

  “And a heads up, if you do want to find out the how and the why, you’d better get inside the church before it burns down. She’ll need medical attention for her leg, but I don’t think you’ll even have to hit her to get a confession. She really wants to talk.

  “And finally …”

  Once the adrenaline starts to wear off, it’s amazing how tired you get. My ankle started to throb and a pulse pounded behind my left eye.

  “Finally,” I repeated. “None of this is my fault. And the last thing your career needs, Stevie-boy, is me telling the press, and anyone else who will listen, about how the ATF showed up a day late and a dollar short to prevent the mass murder of over three hundred innocent people.”

  He closed his mouth and swallowed at that.

  “And believe me, I can be very talkative when I want to.”

  I started to flash him a winning smile, then thought, fuck it.

  “So run along and play now, Stevie. We’re going home.”

  Cowboy touched Kimberly’s arm and we turned and followed our wavering shadows in the direction of the Sierra.

  He shouted as we reached the edge of the firelight.

  “You’re one lucky fuck, you know that, Rafferty?”

  I turned back and looked at him, silhouetted against the flaming church.

  “Goes to show what can happen through the power of prayer, Wesson,” I said.

  “Yeah?” he said. “Who the fuck would you pray to?”

  “My Mother Mary.”

  Cowboy chuckled and the three of us walked into the darkness.

  Chapter 43

  Cowboy eased the Sierra to the kerb in front of the Troupe house and killed the engine.

  The sky was bursting into life, all crimson and gold.

  I turned to the back seat, where Kimberly lay under a blanket with her head on a gun case rolled into a makeshift pillow. She stirred and her eyes flickered. Mimi, with her head propped against the windowsill, slept on, the boy nestled in her arms, both breathing softly.

  “You’re home, Kimberly.”

  “Huh hmmm.” She sat up and blinked at the morning light beyond the window.

  “Home?” she said, and looked back at me. “Really?”

  I nodded.

  She frowned and looked at the floor of the truck. What she didn’t do was throw the door open and go running down the front path back to her parents.

  Maybe I’m just old-fashioned but that struck me as odd.

  “Mom’ll be angry with me.”

  “Why in hell would you think that?”

  “She told me to trust the church leaders. I did and look what happened. I didn’t even keep my purity vow to Brian.”

  I rubbed a dirty hand over my stubbled chin and sighed.

  “I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t know shi … ahh much about religion, Kimberly. And I know even less about children. But …”

  She raised her head and looked at me.

  “I used to have a Mom, a Dad and a sister.”

  Her eyes widened like I’d told her I could fly.

  “And what I do know is that, no matter what, my Mom and Dad never stopped loving my sister and me. Even when things got hard. Or bad.”

  Cowboy nodded.

  “Other people. Other beliefs. Other things. They’ll come and go. Most of them’ll be good and a few of them won’t. But family …” I paused. “Family will be there for you until the end.”

  I blew out a breath.

  “How about we go wake them up?”

  She nodded and when she smiled, she looked like the girl in the photos.

  I lifted an arm out the window as Cowboy started the engine.

  I hoped I hadn’t over-estimated Kathy-Lee and Wayne in my impromptu speech about family.

  Looking at them, in their matching bathrobes, standing on the porch with their daughter encircled in their arms again and smiling at me through a curtain of tears, I thought I had played it about right.

  Thank you, Kathy Lee mouthed.

  I nodded.

  Wayne kissed the top of Kimberly’s head and squeezed her tighter.

  Cowboy popped the clutch and the Sierra leapt away from the kerb.

  “We left a lot of people dead back there, boss-man.”

  “Uh huh. But we got one back alive, and right now that’s gonna be good enough for me.”

  Mimi and the boy snored quietly from the back seat.

  “Make that two, boss-man.”

  Chapter 44

  “They can’t bury a story like this, Rafferty. It’s not right.”

  I shrugged.

  Hilda and I were having dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant where I was making a helluva mess with my pho, but I didn’t care since it was so good.

  “Right doesn’t come into it, hon. The government can’t be seen to have stood by while a couple of hundred citizens were murdered. They can, and they will, bury it,” I said, mopping at my chin. “It happened in the middle of the desert, to a bunch of people isolated from their families and friends, which is close as you can get to it never having happened. There’s no-one left to tell the story and Steve’ll swing the whole thing his way to get another rung higher on the government ladder.”

  “What about Kimberly and the other girls?” She sipped her wine. The delicate way her fingers cradled the glass and the wonderful things her lips and throat did as she swallowed helped me to remember that there were still good things left in this world.

  “I don’t think even Steve is enough of a prick to give the girls too much grief and, if I was them, I’d be working damn hard to forget it all.” I spooned up more broth. “Every last, little, disgusting piece of it.”

  “You’re probably right,” she said.

  “Often am,” I said to the table.

  She left that one alone.

  “And the boy?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “The boy you rescued,” she said. “What happens to him?”

  “Well … there was no-one else left alive, and we sure as hell weren’t going to hand him over to Steve and his men in black, so …” I shrugged, knowing we’d done the right thing, but still working to get my head around it.

  Hilda goggled. “You’re kidding!”

  “They’ve wanted a kid for a long time, you know that. And then Mimi found out that she couldn’t … well, this seemed like the perfect solution.”

  “But,” she spluttered, “but … I mean, I love them both, but they, well, with the stuff they do …”

  I reached for her hand. “You think he’s worse off now than with the people who took him to Lincoln?”

  She didn’t respond, but her hand softened in mine. Seemed like she thought we’d done the right thing, too.

  “It was nice of Lucy to come up and see Kimberly last week,” Hilda finally said, spearing the last piece of spiced beef.

  It had been more than nice, it had been necessary.

  It had taken me a long while in the days following Kimberly’s return, to explain to Kathy-Lee and Wayne about Lucy, and why I thought it wo
uld be a good idea for Kimberly and she to talk.

  They agreed to meet at a café downtown and were relieved when she turned out to be normal. Lucy jumped into the role of big sister and, when I left the four of them, there were cautious smiles around the table.

  Not as many smiles twenty minutes later when I sat down with Don at a nearby bar and told him about our Lincoln version of Shootout at the OK Corral.

  “Holy shit, Rafferty,” he said. “I know I said it was a possibility, but I didn’t think he’d go through with it. He’d never shown a tendency to violen—”

  “It wasn’t him,” I said, taking a long pull on my beer.

  “What?”

  “It wasn’t Dariell. It was Ana.”

  “But …”

  “Dariell was the preacher, the figurehead, but Ana was pulling all the strings. It was her, right from the beginning. To create the church, con the faithful into handing over their money, shift his doctrine to preach about the end of the world. Hell, the whole damn mess was her idea.”

  “Why did Dariell go along?”

  “She gave him what he couldn’t get himself. The girls.”

  “Huh?”

  “I never showed you a picture of Kimberly, did I?”

  Don shook his head.

  “She’s a dead ringer for Lucy. And the other girls at the compound. And they all look a helluva lot like Ana.” I took another long swallow. “I imagine there’s something in Dariell’s background that gets him hot and bothered about young blonde girls and Ana played into that by making sure there was a supply to keep him on the leash.”

  I felt like I might be sick.

  I stopped talking and drank more beer. That helped.

  “But …” Don goldfished.

  “Try to understand it if you want. I’m done,” I said. I slid a manila envelope across the table.

  “What’s this?”

  “Transcripts of the FBI interviews with Ana. I made the mistake of reading them. They’re all yours now.”

  “How did you …”

  “Let’s just say they came down with the latest snow.”

  Don ripped open the envelope and started reading. I saw his eyes widen about halfway down the first page.