by J O'Keith
Somehow, Thomas hid his true emotions and conceived of a plan to help the three of us escape. When he learnt about the tracking devices, he informed his superiors that he thought he may have seen two people fail to board the boat. He then followed them to the hospital.
The only reason he had not killed them, he told his superiors, was because he was waiting to see if they were planning to contact any of the other believers, that perhaps there was a secret Holy Alliance cell the A.P.D. did not know about. He pretended that his suspicions were correct and that they had contacted a family in Massachusetts.
He correctly pre-empted the A.P.D’s next move. They emptied out every agent working in their headquarters and surrounding area and sent them on a nationwide manhunt to find the two fugitives. Thomas said he would lead a team into the hospital, he and Jude were the first ones up the stairs of the hospital where Thomas had put me and it was sheer coincidence that they got to me so quickly. Or was it?
Anyhow, the reason he told me to keep my mouth shut in the car was because everything said in there was being recorded. Thomas’ original plan had been to say that I had witnessed and confronted the two Christians and the reason my arm was in such a state was because they’d tortured me to try and extract the fugitives’ locations. Apparently, Atheist citizens are rewarded for such perceived valour and he felt he would have had every chance of convincing my superiors that I should join the A.P.D. There were few places I would be safer than on the inside of this bloated organisation, but most importantly they were currently the only people allowed to fly abroad so it would give me my best chance of escaping.
My spontaneous laughter ruined everything. Thomas told me that he overreacted, and that many a passenger in the back of an A.P.D. laughed or tried to communicate with the officers. But given that it was his plan that had emptied out the J.F.K. headquarters for the first time in history and he had the last survivor of the tunnel Christians in the back of his car and she was laughing as if she’d seen the good Lord himself, I think he had every right to take the steps he did.
In that moment, he decided to shoot me with a chemical compound with the lazy acronym J.U.D.A.S. that would make any common person think I was dead for around twelve hours. The substance was still in its trial stages, but its basic purpose was to allow an A.P.D. agent to fake their death around a group of Christians and then wake up a while later to take them by surprise. He had absolutely no idea if it would work; in fact, it worked so well he was convinced he had killed me, which made him act with such reckless abandon that we left America that very day.
He and Jude dumped my body in the boot of their car and drove straight into headquarters. The only people on base were the A.P.D. agents who were patrolling the hundreds of thousands of surveillance cameras that were littered all over New York. Thomas used his new security clearance to access the underground munitions storage complex and he tells me he loaded himself up with enough firepower to take out a small city.
Thomas was certain that his time was up, that our time was up, so we might as do as much damage as we possibly could. He was all for the Christian virtues of forgiveness and compassion, but perhaps if we’d remembered the importance of kicking butt and standing up for our rights we wouldn’t have found ourselves in the mess we were in.
Jude dropped two grenades into the command centre housing the remaining A.P.D. agents who were still on the base, which eliminated them and took out all of the surveillance cameras on the base. At the same time, Thomas hijacked a small plane from the aircraft hangar. The plan was that Jude would act as if Thomas had gone rogue and report to his superiors who were out on duty and ask what he should do. While this was a risky move, given that it would switch the A.P.D’s attention onto their now abandoned headquarters, it would allow the senior agents to override the missile system which would automatically have been triggered because Thomas did not have clearance to take a plane from the hangar without authorisation from his superiors.
Thomas said the reason they would’ve called off the missiles and drones and allowed Jude to chase him was because they had spent untold fortunes on that base, as well as storing crucial data on the Unbelievers in that facility, so they would always prefer an option that would protect their precious headquarters.
He had also calculated that this tactic would allow Jude to steal a far more impressive plane than Thomas did, one which had a stealth mode which made the plane untraceable. The authorities would think that this would guarantee Thomas’ plane was taken down, but in truth it would guarantee that at least Jude would survive. He was under strict orders to make sure I was carried into the plane and make a genuine attempt to destroy Thomas’ plane, it was the only way to make the authorities believe Jude was genuinely attempting to take Thomas out.
They were both convinced I was dead, but their faith did not allow them to accept this to be true. Even if I had passed away, by taking me with them they could at least ensure that I was afforded the proper Christian burial rights, instead of being sent to an industrial incinerator by those heartless Atheists.
How I wish I was awake when I was sitting in Jude’s plane. The dream of flying has been with me since as long as I can remember, and as my time of execution draws ever nearer it is increasingly unlikely I’ll ever experience that thrill while I’m awake. But I am eternally grateful for Thomas and Jude believing in something beyond science and taking me with them.
When Thomas would retell the next part of the story, I could always see the goose bumps sparkle across his skin. While the A.P.D. brought Jude’s story, they were not convinced that he could take down Thomas’ plane alone, so they sent hundreds of drones to help him finish the job. Like all A.P.D. agent’s Thomas had undergone the basic four week pilot training programme, but after that he never set foot in a plane again, let alone flying a real one in a real combat scenario.
So when his computer assistant informed him that he was being fired at by numerous drones and Jude’s plane, he was forced to lift the plane to an altitude where the drones could not reach him, but do so before their firepower severely damaged his plane. Somehow, he managed to get hit only twice before he was high enough to avoid the drone’s fire. But he knew that ascending to such an altitude would only give Jude’s plane an even better chance of taking him down because it was far more agile than his older aircraft at such heights.
If it weren’t for the heavy rain that started pelting down as soon they ventured into sky, Thomas would probably have been killed in those dark skies. Jude, who was even greener than Thomas at flying a plane, struggled to keep his humungous plane in the sky, let alone try and take down his friend. In fact, at one point Thomas kept his plane in a straight line so that Jude could land a hit, otherwise he was certain the A.P.D. would cotton on to the fact that they were working together.
Once they passed beyond American airspace they had nothing but the Atlantic Ocean ahead of them and knew exactly where they planned to go. Europe had been the first continent to fall into the hands of the Atheists, so that was never going to be an option. The Caribbean islands had yet to fall into the hands of the Godless, but they would have been the most obvious destination, and would the first place the A.P.D. would start bombing to try and find them.
They were heading for the Azores Islands in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean; specifically, Faial Island. Previously, it had been the home of a small group of people who had chosen to remain neutral throughout the Great War and had yet to be conquered by the Atheists. But a few months ago, the Capelinhos Volcano erupted, wiping out both the base and its native population. Thomas had seen the devastation the volcano had wrought on the island when he gained access to the satellite photos of the destruction on the island. It wasn’t inhabitable, but it would be our starting point.
Before heading in that direction, Jude had to get rid of the tracking device on his plane. Because Thomas was playing the Christian fugitive, he was able to get rid of his before taking off, but if Jude had done the same thing the authorit
ies would have realised he too was an enemy. The tracking device was to be found underneath the pilot’s seat – it was placed there as it also recorded the pilot’s heart rate, allowing the authorities to find out which pilot’s had the best temperament under challenging circumstances.
Removing it was simple, but disposing of it in mid-air was another matter. Opening the hatch at such a height would see the strength of the air suck us both out of the plane, even if we were tightly strapped to our seats. Destroying it was near to impossible because it was made of titanium among other things, and although Jude had brought some guns and grenades on to the plane, destroying it in this manner was even more dangerous than opening the plane door. He was hoping I would wake up, so one of us could pilot the plane while the other came up with a solution to destroy the tracking device.
To make matters even more difficult, we needed to destroy it as soon as possible; we were about to fly over the Caribbean, at which point it would become clear we were heading in the direction of Europe, and the area they scanned to search for us would significantly decrease. Out of sheer desperation Jude began to kick the device violently in the faint hope that its red light would extinguish.
By the time his right foot was numb with pain, he came up with a plan. He would place me on the pilot’s chair for a few minutes while he took the device to the back of the plane, attach the tracking device to one of the two large missiles that were docked at the back of the plane but were still rested inside the plane’s lower deck, meaning he wouldn’t have to open any of the doors. There was every chance that I would have crashed the plane by the time he attached the device, but he was certain it was the only chance we had.
Unfortunately, there was no way that he could communicate with Thomas, who has still ahead of him, because when Thomas removed the tracking device it automatically disabled his communications system.
Sensibly, he taped my hands to the yoke, an aeroplane’s equivalent to a steering wheel, so that I didn’t nosedive the plane and lead us to our deaths. Then he ran to the back of the plane with the tracking device in hand, physically pushed open the compartment where both missiles lay, and tried to attach it to the one on the left hand side. The only problem was that he’d used most of the tape attaching me to the aeroplane and so couldn’t physically attach the device to the plane. Thinking on his feet, he took the gum he was chewing out of his mouth and stuck it onto the device, thereby using it to attach the device to the plane. It barely stuck to the missile, but it was the nest he could do. For some reason he was certain I would wake up at that particular moment and crash the plane, but I remained unconscious as he removed the tape from my hands and fired the missile into the ocean waters.
We no longer had any communication with the A.P.D. headquarters and had no way of knowing what there next move would be. Both boys told me the period between leaving American airspace and landing on Faial Island was the longest few hours of their lives.
Their plan had been so audacious and unexpected that the A.P.D. did not have a valid response. For all their manpower and technology, they had set up a bureaucracy that was only capable of anticipating a number of circumstances; for example, destroying all of the tunnels below the USA to eliminate those of us living below. But they could not have dreamed that two undercover agents would wipe out one of their teams and steal two planes from their own base.
And that’s part of my ideological problem with the whole atheist way of being. It fails to anticipate the miraculous, which will always make it vulnerable to people like us. Whether or not you want to believe in the Lord, you have to acknowledge that there are amazing things in this universe that cannot be explained by the sciences. But if you only legislate for anticipated progress, you’re only handicapping society from attaining its truest possibilities. With God on our side, what we can achieve is endless. Without him, all you’ve got is white noise that signifies nothing.
Landing on Faial Island was easier than they could have anticipated. The volcanic eruption had flattened most of the land on the island, making their landings far smoother than they anticipated.
Apparently, the minute Jude carried me off the plane I began to stir. After giving me a few minutes to properly wake up, Thomas told me how they reached here while Jude searched for some transport to take us across the island. While landing his plane, Thomas had spotted several large buildings that had been unscathed on the other side of the island. He had desperately wanted to land there, but the ground was too uneven and mountainous in that region, so he decided that they would have to land the planes on the side of the island where the volcano had done most of its damage.
For my entire childhood and adult life, my life’s primary purpose had been to escape America. But now that I had finally achieved what should have been an impossible goal, my main concern was what we did next. For me, it wasn’t enough to wonder from land to land like some helpless refugees, constantly looking over our shoulders, waiting for the Atheists to strike. I wanted to build a proper Christian community, use this opportunity to start again and be true to God’s word like never before and eventually become strong enough to overrun those Godless infidels.
I revealed my innermost feeling to Thomas, and he responded,
“While I admire your convictions and am sure as heck glad that we’ve got someone with your mindset on our side, you’re being too naive blue eyes.”
“I don’t think so at all, maybe, maybe you’ve spent too much time with them to dream big enough to realise God’s dreams for our civilisation.”
“I’ll give you that. But if you, me and Jude stick around here and start us a little community it’ll take us decades before there are even ten or more of us. And that’s working on the assumption there’s enough food to keep us going and that darn volcano doesn’t go exploding on us again. Forget the fact that it’ll take them less than a year to find us, even if they try their worst.”
“I didn’t think of that. What should we do?”
He pulled a world map from his black jacket and positioned it between us.
“We’ve got a plan up our sleeves, this always meant to be a rest stop. Right now, we’re in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Now, as you can imagine, there are quite a few A.P.D. agents who are actually members of the Unholy Alliance. This’ll come as news to you and there’s no way I could of told you about this back in America, but we’ve even got a couple brothers and sisters of other religions in all four corners of the planet.
“The minute that news of our own escape broke globally, they’ll have launched their own escape plans. Most of them won’t make it, heck, I’m still in shock we got out alive, but we’ve got a rendezvous point, here.”
“Indonesia – that’s the other side of the world. It’ll take us a while to get there, why didn’t we go there straightaway – surely...”
“If we hit airspace close to one of the mainland continents, our planes would have been shot down before you can start saying the Lord’s Prayer. Right now, we’re in one of seven safe spots across the globe. The six other islands have all seen nuclear testing done on them over the last ten years and the A.P.D. won’t go near them – they assume that even if we use them as havens we’ll all end up dying from radiation poisoning and secretly, they’d kind of like it if we went there as I’m convinced that their biggest fear is wiping us out too quickly cos their arguing like little children about what will happen once we’re all gone.
“Their reason for unity will collapse and there’ll be all out civil war, they’ll wipe themselves out. We need to get ourselves to this island in Indonesia, connect up with our people and work out how we can convince them we’re all dead. Because then they’ll do all the hard work for us, then we can set up your Christian community and take this planet back within a century.”
“That’s a long time.”
“Mere seconds on God’s watch.”
“I’m sold, but how do we get there?”
“We’ve got two options. The first – the easy one
– is that we get to the other side of the island and if we find us some fuel for these planes we fill the tanks up and fly Jude’s plane all the way to Indonesia.”
“But you said...”
“...If we cross land. Our plan is to take the long road, fly around Africa, back up into the Indian Ocean before hitting Indonesia. The reason we stole that plane is cos it can fly for 40 hours on a full tank.”
“But isn’t there a chance we’ll be spotted by one of their planes. Won’t they be looking for us?”
“Absolutely, but wherever we go we’re gonna face that risk. The faster we make it to that Indonesian island the better.”
“Even if it’s guaranteed to get us killed? What’s the other option?”
“If there isn’t any fuel we’ll need to build a raft – a real big raft – and it’ll take us several months before we get close to Indonesia. Problem is they’ll have submarines and boats looking for us everywhere, but I doubt they’ll find a raft with no GPS or sensor.”
“But if they find us on a raft, it’ll be game over right?”
“I thought it was game over when we tried to steal those planes, and now we’re thousands of miles away from America with no sign of the bad guys. Something tells me a little audaciousness will get us everywhere.”
“OK, let me try and work this out. Let’s say we reach the meeting point on Indonesia – is it a big island?”
“It’s called Samosir and it’s got an even bigger volcano than the one here, but it hasn’t exploded for something like 75,000 years. Used to be a tourist hot spot but the nuclear testing put an end to that.”
“Why are they testing so many nuclear weapons? And if they find out we’re there can’t they just nuke the island to get rid of us?”
“I’ve heard whispers in the A.P.D. that there’s a lot of friction between their American and South Asian counterparts – they’ve both been showboating they’re new nuclear arsenal and I suspect won’t be afraid of using them on each other sooner rather than later.”