“I hate myself,” Lindell cried. “I always have. There have been times where I felt like even God Himself couldn’t stand to lay eyes on me.”
Edward felt a twinge of compassion for the man and released his grip. Lindell fell to the floor in a sobbing heap. “There is still hope,” Edward said. “We can pray, and all will be forgiven.”
“God doesn’t hear me anymore,” Lindell protested. “But he still hears you.”
Edward didn’t bother to correct Lindell. Instead, he simply knelt beside the damaged man and prayed for his soul. He prayed with an earnest heart and asked for God’s attention.
He didn’t have to open his eyes to know they weren’t alone. It was only a matter of seconds before he heard the fluttering of enormous wings and felt a familiar touch on his head.
“Shhhhh,” a voice whispered. “Peace.”
Lindell continued to weep after being touched, but there was a different cadence in his sobbing. No longer were his cries those of a sociopathic menace who is watching his mind slowly unravel before him. Instead, his cries were those of a drowning man desperate for a life preserver.
Edward didn’t know when their mysterious visitor left them. But Lindell must have sensed it because he opened his eyes and searched the underground chapel fervently for any sign of the unseen guest. By now his eyes were bleeding at the corners, his nose was running scarlet, and he was coughing up blood. But there was a clarity in his gaze that hadn’t been there before.
Nero was finally dead.
Chapter 42
The cell was typical. Dingy floors, lots of shadows, iron bars. Hardly the kind of place where anyone would want to spend the rest of their life. A few meager rays of light came through a small window, pushing the shadows back.
The man sitting on the urine-stained cot didn’t notice he had a visitor. His face was buried in his hands.
Edward made a grunting sound to let Lindell know he was there. The disgraced minister raised his eyes long enough to show that he had been crying and covered his face again to hide his shame.
“Go away,” he growled like an injured animal. “We have nothing to talk about. They‘ll be transporting me soon, and nothing you can say will make that any better. I‘m going to a place that will chew me up and spit me out, and that seems about right to me.”
Although a week had passed since being imprisoned on that island, Edward still found it difficult to control his emotions. He tried his best not to seem angry. “You stole my family from me. Don’t I deserve at least a few minutes of your time?”
“I wanted to die, and you insisted on saving me,” Lindell said. “You could have had your revenge against me, let the Morningstar virus do its worst, and been done with all of this. Instead, you told them to inject me with the antidote that was in your vial. Why did you do it? Why didn’t you just let me die?”
“I have to live with the choices I make, and I couldn’t have lived with that choice.”
“What do you want from me?” Lindell said, moving to the end of his cot where the shadows were heaviest. “We don’t have anything to discuss. Nothing I can say will ease your pain. Nothing you can say will ease mine.”
“You wanted to know why bad things happen to good people,” Edward explained. “I’m here to give you an answer to that question. From the looks of your cell, I think you‘ve already come to your own conclusions.”
Lindell had drawn on the cinderblock walls in various colored chalks, depicting one sprawling scene after another of good versus evil. In the foreground was a simple man, kneeling in prayer, his eyes cast toward Heaven. Above him were legions of angels and demons fighting for his soul. The world around the believer was filled with traps, snares, and dangers, all rigged to detonate at the slightest touch. The poor man was doing his best to remain strong when there was so much to be afraid of. Angels had gathered around him in a show of support, shielding him from the worst of the attacks. Yet, some of the evil wormed its way in, finding the man, infecting him like a disease. In some scenes, the rebels seemed to be gaining the edge in battle. Other times, the seraphim appeared to be winning. The one constant was that they never ceased fighting for the man‘s soul.
“I feel like I’ve been dropped in the middle of a minefield,” Lindell said. “Everywhere I turn is some sort of danger. One wrong move will spell instant death for my soul. Why am I forced to live this way?”
“It’s the nature of the fight,” Edward said. “Good versus evil. Righteousness versus sin. God never promised us life would be easy, only that we would be given strength to persevere.”
“But there would be no need for strength if there were no trials.”
“Steel would break if it wasn't tempered over and over again by fire,” Edward countered. “The fire makes it stronger.”
“I've spent enough time in the fire,” Lindell said smugly.
“Bad things happen to good people,” Edward said. “Whether we like it or not, that’s the way of the world. Lots of bad things happened to me. You were the cause of most of them. But I know that the bad has its purpose in my life. Like steel, I’m also forged into something stronger because I’ve walked through so many flames. I’ve been tempered by pain and grief. There was a purpose to all I‘ve gone through. There was a purpose to all you went through too. You just can‘t see it yet.”
“God doesn’t have to allow any of this,” Lindell reminded Edward.
“He doesn’t,” Edward admitted. “You’re right about that. But the one thing we have to remember is that this life is fleeting. The bad will only last a little while, and if we’re faithful, there will be a reward for all the suffering.”
“You can save the sermon,” Lindell said. “I’ve preached this one dozens of times before. Much better than you, in fact. There’s nothing new here.”
“Just because it’s not new doesn’t make it any less true.”
“You know they’ve been fighting in here,” Lindell said, motioning to the shadows. “I can hear them at night, screaming, praying, killing each other. The good ones visit me too. They both want me. Neither side has given up.”
“I suspected as much,” Edward said. “But you have the power to change the course of that war. Once, I changed the course of the war that was being waged for me. I came here hoping to help in your war as well.”
“I can hear the clang and clamor of angel swords above me,” Lindell said. “I have no power over them. What power could you possibly have?”
Edward studied the broken man through the bars of his cell. “I forgive you for all of the torments you inflicted on me. I forgive you, and I will continue to pray for you. My prayers for you will help in this war. In order to pray for you, I first had to forgive you. I‘ve done that now.”
Lindell looked surprised. “You don’t know what you’re saying. You have no reason to forgive me. You have no family because of me.”
“I‘m fully aware of what I‘m saying,” Edward admitted. “I can’t tell you I didn’t struggle with the decision. But I know that is what I’m supposed to do. Refusing to forgive you is the very thing that would give evil a foothold in my own heart. I can’t allow that. I have to rise above and do what is right. I can‘t allow the deaths of my wife and son to be in vain.”
“If you’ve come here hoping to see a miraculous transformation you’re probably going to be disappointed,” Lindell said, motioning to the way the shadows on the wall seemed in constant struggle with the light that streamed in through the window. “I haven’t made peace with all of the things that happened to me. This is reality, and there isn‘t always a happy ending. The angel choirs won‘t be singing today on my behalf.”
“I’m not disappointed,” Edward said. “I’m patient. I will keep praying for you until we win this war. Somehow, I think God still has great things in store for you. In the beginning you asked why bad things happen to good people. Here is my take on that. The world, as you‘ve so aptly described, is a battlefield. It‘s not a place for wimps, whiners, o
r the weak. It’s a place where angels and demons wage war. It’s a place where prayers are offered for lost souls who sometimes find their way and sometimes continue wandering in darkness. God needs mighty soldiers in this war. That is why bad things happen to good people. God is building his army one soul at a time. He’s using the fires of tragedy and heartache to forge strength and victory. With so much evil in the world, God needs those who will rise up to fight it. At the moment, I’m wandering back into the fold. It is my prayer you will rejoin that army one day too.”
“Time will tell,” Lindell said as the shadows began to move and coalesce into a winged shape on the cinderblock wall. “Time will tell.”
Edward was about to walk away and leave Lindell to the shadows when a thought occurred to him. “You posed a question to me once. I’ve answered it. Now, I will ask you a question.”
The look on Lindell’s face was one of genuine curiosity. “Ask it,” he said.
Edward nodded and smiled. “The book of Job is an object lesson in suffering. It’s essentially the guidebook on bad things happening to a good person. Yet that’s only part of the book, and unfortunately, it‘s the part most people focus on. But my question to you doesn’t involve the suffering. It involves what happened afterward. What happened to Job in the end? Do you consider that at all?”
Lindell thought about it for a moment as the shadows swirled and roiled on the walls behind him like a building thunderhead.
“You know the answer,” Edward said. “What does the Bible say about Job’s life after all of the tribulation?”
Lindell hesitated for a moment, at first unwilling to speak.
“Go ahead,” Edward encouraged him.
Lindell’s voice trembled as he spoke. “So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning: for he had fourteen thousand sheep, and six thousand camels, and a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand she asses.”
Edward nodded. “Bad things happened to a good man, but in the end, the Lord rewarded him for his faithfulness. You should think on that for a while.”
Edward walked away to the sound of a broken man weeping. As he looked over his shoulder, he saw the winged shadow on the wall wasn’t the only one in the cell with Lindell. Another figure was there as well, and the two were locked in a struggle.
Somehow, Edward suspected that the battle would rage well into the night. Silently, he said a prayer for Lindell’s soul and had faith that it would be enough.
Epilogue
The church looked like it had been abandoned for many, many years. It sat on an unkempt corner lot that was littered with refuse thrown from passing cars and the cardboard homes of vagrants who squatted there. The stained glass had been removed long ago, and in its place were sheets of mildewed plywood that had been hastily nailed up at awkward angles. The wood siding was flaking in places, rotting in others, and completely overrun with termites if you knew where to look. Several families of birds made their nests in various portions of guttering and high up in the steeple. From the looks of things, the only god that was worshipped here anymore was one of decay and ruin.
People passed by the old Wildwood Baptist Church on a daily basis without giving it a second thought. The place was widely known to attract unsavory types, and drug deals on the corner weren’t uncommon. That’s why no one gave the homeless man a passing glance. Pulling his hood tight over his head to block out the winter wind, the vagrant staggered toward the ramshackle cemetery, pausing every step or two to lift a paper bag to his mouth and sip from his bottle. The lock on the front doors had long since been ripped out, and the bum nearly fell as he crossed the threshold.
The act was over the moment he was inside and certain no one could see him. With confidence and purpose, he stood up and walked down the aisle that passed between twin rows of old, moth-eaten pews. Graffiti had been spray painted on the walls and on the backs of the pews. No doubt many amateur taggers had honed their craft within these walls. On the podium at the front of the church, a particularly motivated vandal had painted a neon blue angel with a matching halo. The vagrant approached the symbol, looked over his shoulder to make sure no one had followed him in, then traced the angel’s halo in a counterclockwise direction with the tip of his index finger. From behind a nearby door came the hiss and click of an electronic lock disengaging.
The bum headed for the door which was situated to the right of what had formerly been a choir loft. He entered quickly and slammed the door behind him. What was on the other side of the door was completely at odds with the rest of the church.
Now, there was no further need for the façade. Irritated by the itch of fake hair, the vagrant pulled at his beard, ripping it out in clumps. Several men working at a bank of computers stopped what they were doing long enough to notice him. Behind them a wall of video monitors showed news footage from various parts of the globe. Some of the feeds were live news feeds. Others had the looked of closed circuit security camera surveillance.
“Nick Gentry,” a white-haired man with horn-rimmed glasses said in between glances at his screen. “Glad to have you back.”
“Glad to be back, Moses, ” Nick said.
“We weren’t sure if you survived the debacle at The Garden,” Moses said.
“I nearly didn’t,” Nick said. “Thanks to my Kevlar vest and the Lord’s protection, it all worked out in the end. Edward Mills and Halford Lindell presumed I was dead. They saw enough to reinforce that belief. I crawled out of there in the midst of the pandemonium, ascertained that the biological threat was contained, and hightailed it back here as quickly as I could. The integrity of the group wasn’t compromised.”
“And the Morningstar threat?”
“It’s been stopped,” Nick said. “Nero oversaw the production of the virus. Lindell thought it best to produce a cure. Even in the midst of his master plan, both halves of that man were at war. Thank God for the half that had the foresight to product an antidote.”
“The main thing is that lives were saved,” Moses said, turning back to his computer and typing a string of commands.
“Is John the Baptist around?” Nick asked.
“He’s in the Upper Room,” Moses said. “He’s been waiting to speak to you. A lot has happened since you received your last assignment. As you can see, a breach in security forced us to move our base of operations. We’re still getting setup here.”
“Good thing I checked my messages,” Nick said. “Otherwise, there’s no telling what I might have walked into.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” Moses said. “If I were you, I’d go on and see what The Baptist has for you.”
Nick nodded and headed up a flight of stairs to a room that looked like it was designed for paperwork instead of prayer. Maps of various countries were mounted to corkboards and impaled with different colored pushpins. Filing cabinets took up space on one wall while a bookcase filled with religious texts sat against the opposite wall. A run of the mill mahogany desk was the focal point of the room. It was a typical office save for the partition that sat on top of the desk, preventing Nick from seeing the identity of the man sitting on the opposite side. In all the time he had worked for The Halo Group he had never seen the face of the man they called John the Baptist. Although he wasn’t Catholic, he felt like he was in the middle of a confessional every time they spoke with a wall of some sort between them.
“Mr. Gentry, do sit down,” John said in a voice that had been stripped of any accent it might have once held. “We have some new business to discuss. Congratulations on your work with the Slaves of Solomon. We did some real good there, I believe.”
“I think so, sir,” Nick replied.
“I have a new case for you. One that builds on your work with Lindell and the Slaves.”
“Oh? How so?”
“There’s a town that’s being visited by the death angel. The town has been given thirty days to give up its secrets or the death angel will lay claim to all of the first born sons just as it did
in Egypt. I want you to go investigate since you have experience in these matters now.”
“What kind of secrets?” Nick asked. He thought he heard John the Baptist snicker from the other side of the partition.
“If I knew what kind of secrets we were talking about, they wouldn’t exactly be secrets, now would they?”
“I suppose not,” Nick admitted.
“Your flight leaves in an hour,” John said. “I have a file ready for you. You can read it on the plane.”
“An hour?” Nick said.
“The forces of evil don’t stop. Which means neither can we. The Lord has much work for us to do. The Halo Group is depending on you.”
Nick sighed. “Very well, then. Looks like I’m going to be busy for a while.”
“The Halo Group values your contributions,” John said. “You’re not only doing the work of your government but you’re also doing God’s work. You should take pride in your assignment.”
“Yes, sir, I do.”
“Do you have anything else to say on the matter?” John asked.
“ Just two things,” Nick said.
“What would that be?”
Nick smiled. “Keep me in your prayers, and bring on the death angel. After what I saw on Nero’s island, I’m ready for him.”
“You may change your tune once you get there,” John said. “But I admire your enthusiasm. There is one more little thing.”
Nick caught a hint of hesitation in John’s voice. “What is it?”
“This one may get a little personal.”
“What do you mean?” Nick asked.
“The town you will be visiting is your hometown. The people you will be interviewing will be members of your own family. We think this attack may have something to do with you…and your dealings with the Slaves of Solomon.”
“So you think the people I love are going to be punished because of something I’ve done.”
“We haven’t ruled it out.”
“I’ve gotta go,” Nick said, rushing toward the door.
The Tears of Nero (The Halo Group Book 1) Page 27