“Yes,” Luke answered slowly, his voice barely escaping his throat. He felt a cold chill around him, a chill that seeped to his bones. He stared straight ahead as Lucifer pulled him close again.
“You love your sister, don’t you, Luke? In fact, I would say that you love her more than any other thing in this world.”
Luke only nodded as an image of Beth seemed to leap in his mind. He saw her resting on a white pillow, her face peaceful and serene. The image was so real he thought it actually was real, and he wondered if Lucifer had opened a portal to her.
Lucifer watched him react from the image he had planted in his mind. “Do you realize,” he continued, “what is going to happen to Beth?”
Luke looked at him suddenly. “What do you mean?” he asked.
“Do you realize what is going to happen to your sister when she goes down to earth?”
“There is no way I could know. We are not shown the future; that is a part of the plan. But she did say that . . . ”
“That she has been given a mission. And it won’t be easy for her. Isn’t that right, Luke? Isn’t that what she said?”
Luke nodded sadly. “Yes, she said it would be difficult. But she is also excited.”
Lucifer laughed bitterly. “Of course she’s excited. Why would she not be excited when she is kept in the dark? It’s easy to keep the masses happy when they are kept unaware and filled with ignorance. But she has no idea what pain lies in store. She doesn’t understand the heartache she will have to endure. If she had any idea, believe me, she wouldn’t go.”
Luke tried to pull back, but Lucifer held him close. Leaning into him, Lucifer put his lips close to his ear. “Let me show you, Luke,” he whispered. “Let me show you what will happen to Beth. If I show you the pain she will suffer, maybe you can intervene and save her. If you could see the things she will have to go through on earth, perhaps you will see the wisdom of my plan. Once you see the pain those you love are going to suffer, it becomes easy to see that there is a much better way.”
Luke couldn’t seem to answer as Lucifer cast his spell. The master’s voice was perfectly pleasant, so calm and assured. He was so tall and handsome, so confident and strong. And his cold arms around Luke seemed to support him somehow, sustaining him with answers when he didn’t know what to do.
“Will you let me show you?” Lucifer asked again in that perfect, sweet voice. It was so soothing, so mellow, and yet it pierced Luke to his soul. “Will you watch what I show you? Do you have the strength to know the hard truth?”
Luke nodded slowly. “Yes, I want to see.”
Lucifer stood suddenly back and Luke felt his knees bend. He reached out for Lucifer, needing to steady himself.
“If I show you, do you understand that you will have to act?” Lucifer asked him, his voice more pointed now. “You can’t sit idly by once you have seen the truth. You will have to do something to save her, to defeat this evil plan. You understand that, don’t you, Luke? Once I show you the future, you will have to act.”
Luke nodded slowly and Lucifer smiled. “Then look, my young friend. Look at what is in store. This is a vision of your sister’s future and how she will suffer on earth. This is a vision of her future and what Jehovah will put her through.”
The dark vision began to unfold. Luke saw the little girl, and though she was young, he knew immediately it was her, for she had the same eyes and the same beautiful smile. But she was dirty, sick, and hurting. And she was only a child. He watched the scene open as if he were standing there nearby. He watched and he listened, feeling sick in his heart.
* * *
The girl looked up with terrified eyes–wide, dark, and expressive, but showing only fear. Her father pulled her close, and she felt him shudder beside her. He took a deep breath. “Stay here,” he whispered. He began to stand up as the sound of the vehicles drew close, the roar of their engines unmuffled by the hut’s thin plywood walls. The child pulled on her father’s fingers, not letting go. “Don’t leave me, Father,” she begged him. The father, himself very young, knelt on one knee and held his child at arm’s length, looking her in the eye. “I must go. I am village leader now that your grandfather is gone. And perhaps it isn’t the soldiers. It has only been four days. I doubt they would be back to trouble us so soon.”
The girl glanced at the sound of the approaching vehicles. Though only six, she was not fooled. She recognized the sound of the soldiers’ trucks.
The rains had stopped just twenty minutes before, and a heavy mist hung from the jungle canopy, dripping and wet, misty fingers that sifted through the trees but never quite reached the ground. The fog moved silently, almost as if it were alive, searching for something among the tall leaves. The surrounding mountains cast shadows through the thick underbrush, bringing on darkness before the sun had fully set. Far in the distance, somewhere east of the river, the roll of thunder echoed back through the trees as the rain squall moved away, pushing up the mountains that lay to the east. The air was so thick it took effort to breathe, for the smell of death seemed to be everywhere. Four rotting goats lay near the village fire, their coats turning oily as the carcasses rotted from inside. Four days earlier, the command had been given to leave the dead goats where they were. “They will serve to remind you,” the villagers had been told.
And now, only four days later, the soldiers were back. The army trucks sloshed to the center of the village and stopped. Beginning their work, the soldiers moved purposely among the trails and shacks. The murders took place in relative silence, with no screams of protest and few cries of pain, only the dull thud of weapons falling again and again. It was better to be silent, the villagers had learned, for there were worse things than dying and worse ways to die.
After four years of brutal oppression, the village had given up the battle for life. Their instinct for survival having been beaten away, the terrified villagers stood like cattle, huddled in submission. Their shallow eyes and sagging shoulders did all the talking for them.
The murder weapons were as primitive as the men who held them in their hands. Shovels, hammers, and iron rods–these were cheaper than bullets and effective enough. The tools were surprisingly tidy, the dull ends leaving few traces of blood, only bludgeoned, beaten bodies with purpled foreheads and broken necks. The carcasses littered the ground–four young men, two women, and three half-naked children. Their tangled bodies followed a line from the center of the village down the slope toward the river. The forest scavengers stood ready. They could be heard moving through the brush–lizards and rats and the greasy-feathered vultures that had learned to stay near the village where meat could most often be found.
The soldiers weren’t truly soldiers–at least most of them weren’t–but wild-eyed boys in ill-fitting uniforms, oversized jungle fatigues that draped over their bodies. The conscripts held their faces tight and tried to hide their trembling hands. Peasants and farm boys, most of them were, who had taken up with the soldiers because they had little choice. And now it was too late. They were as guilty as their leaders. The blood of their countrymen was smeared on their hands.
If the conscripts were hesitant, the officers were not. They were brutal and glaring and arrogant men. Indoctrinated into a cause that was bigger than them, historic, compelling, more important than life, they were focused on the moment and completing the task that The Brother had assigned them to accomplish that day.
The senior officer, a captain, stood to the side, swatting casually at flies as he smoked a thin cigarette. He was a squat man, with a thick neck and well-muscled thighs. His dark hair was combed over, hiding the shiny top of his head, and his eyes were black and tightly spaced over his nose. His nostrils flared as he breathed, and his look was intent. He looked to be mid-forty, but his ID revealed he was ten years younger than that.
The captain wouldn’t call his job pleasant, but there were worse things to do. And what he did was important. There were subversives in the jungle–sympathizers, former government o
fficials, doctors, lawyers, teachers, and such–and it was his task to find them, to ferret them out, to destroy the subculture where subversives could live. Whether such traitors actually lived in the jungle didn’t matter to him. Better to keep hoeing the soil than allow the weeds to take root.
The captain stuffed his hands into his front pockets, then took a deep breath and wet his dry lips. He barked out an order. “The remaining women and children–gather them over here!”
His men jumped at his voice, quickly stepping over the bodies of those who had already been murdered as they herded the villagers toward a clearing in the trees. The officer studied the group of women and children. The adult women were all old; the young and healthy ones having already been taken away. The few children that remained cowered at the back of the crowd, and the women gathered around them like old mother hens. The officer smiled at the sight. His training on the communal farms had proven useful indeed. Breed them, cull them, use them for labor, pelts, or meat. There wasn’t much to it. Any fool could succeed.
As he stared at the crowd, a young child caught his eye. She was a beautiful girl with wide, sullen eyes. She looked directly at the captain with a defiant look. The captain approached her and slowly reached out his hand. She recoiled and spat, and the officer laughed. Turning, he moved to the opposite end of the clearing.
The village’s twenty-three men were waiting on their knees, positioned shoulder to shoulder. Their heads bent to their chest, for casting their eyes on the officer was a capital crime. The captain walked the line, then grabbed an old man by the hair. Pulling, he forced him to lift his face. “Village leader!” he demanded. The villager hesitated a moment, then glanced down the line, answering the question with a flicker of his eyes.
The captain let go of the old man and strolled down the line. He approached a husky male, stopped, and looked down. “Village leader?” he asked.
The young man nodded slowly.
“Stand.”
The man pushed himself up, rising stiffly to his feet. Though he kept his head low, he stuck out his chest. The captain smiled. He liked that. Pride. Confidence. Strutting in the ugly face of death. He could relate to such a man. Perhaps he would let him live.
“Village leader,” he asked, “do you know why we are here?”
Of course the man knew. The soldiers were there to steal their food, their wives and young men, to sort out the undesirables–those who could reason, read, or think. The soldiers were there to bring terror. There was no purpose beyond that.
The village leader knew exactly why the soldiers were there. But still he shook his head and answered, “Brother, I don’t know.”
The officer leaned toward the peasant, smelling the dryness of his breath, a telltale sign of the fear building inside the man’s chest. “Yesterday, there were some enemy soldiers on the river,” he said. “My spies saw them take out from the river just north of here and move toward your village. Did you see any of these soldiers?”
“Sir, I saw nothing.”
“You must have seen something. Why do you lie?”
The man shook his head in terror. “No, sir. No enemy soldiers were here.”
The captain took a step back. “Do you think I’m a fool? The enemy soldiers took out of the river just north of here. Where else would they be going? Why do you lie?”
The villager lifted his eyes. “Sir, I swear . . .”
The captain swung violently, striking the villager on the side of his head. “Don’t lift your eyes to me, pig!” he cried in rage.
The villager forced his head to his chest, the skin on his neck folding into tight rings under his chin. The officer stepped to the side, clearing a visual path between the terrified man and the group of huddled women and children. “Village leader,” he asked, “do you have family in this crowd?”
The man shuddered visibly, his shoulders slumping. He looked across the clearing toward the huddled group from his village, quickly glancing into the terrified eyes of his six-year-old girl. She cowered, seeking refuge behind the wall of human flesh. The child caught his eyes, and the man turned away. He then saw his mother, a stooped and broken old woman near the edge of the crowd. She stood away from her grandchild, something they had all learned to do. Families never acknowledged each other when the soldiers were around, for they had learned that the officers liked to kill them in family groups. More efficient. Greater impact. It had all been carefully explained.
The village leader turned his eyes away from his daughter and answered. “I have no family, Captain, but the Great Leader We Love. The Party is my only family, Ankor my only home. There is no family in this village but Brother Number One.”
The captain snorted. This man had learned his lessons well.
“That is right, Comrade. Only Brother Number One. Now tell me again–what aid do you provide to the enemy insurgents?”
The village leader lifted his eyes, knowing it mattered not what he said. The officer had made his decision and his fate was now sealed. He knew from experience, from watching others die, that there was nothing he could say now that would change the outcome. Yet he felt almost calm, and a blanket of peace settled over him. He looked at the captain, staring him in the eyes. “I swear to you, sir, I haven’t done anything.”
The captain studied the man, surprised at his soft tone. So there was no fight left inside him. The captain was disappointed somehow.
The officer turned abruptly and screamed to his sergeants, “Tie this traitor to the tree! We will see if he lies!”
Four of the conscripts came forward and pulled the young father by the arms, dragging him through the wet mud as he struggled to stand. Lifting him by the neck, they threw him against the nearest tree. The groups of villagers were quiet as the man was tied and bound to the tree.
There was no trial, no words, not even a condemnation of death, nothing to mark the decision that had already been made. The captain walked to the canvas-topped army truck that had carried him to the village. Reaching behind the front seat, he pulled out a large leather flask. He had come prepared for something new, something different today. The liquid sloshed in the flask as he approached the condemned man. Pulling the soft cork, he doused the villager with diesel fuel. After soaking the man’s hair, head, shirt, and trousers, the captain poured the last cup of fuel on the villager’s bare feet.
A young lieutenant came forward, his rifle in hand. “What are you going to do, Captain?” the lieutenant hissed under his breath.
The officer didn’t answer. Wasn’t it obvious?
The lieutenant lifted his hand. “There is no need for this. This man hasn’t done anything.”
The captain motioned to the dead villagers. “Neither did any of these.”
The lieutenant glanced at the terrified crowd. “We have done enough here, Comrade Captain. Let’s move on up the river now.”
The captain reached into his trousers’ pocket. “Step aside, lieutenant, or you will find yourself also tied to the tree.”
The captain pulled out a small box of matches, then heard a faint cry of despair. Turning, he saw the wide-eyed little girl that had caught his attention before. She was beautiful, yes. A perfect specimen. She should be kept, for she would produce good stock for the Party one day. She looked to be five, maybe six–certainly old enough to understand what was going on. He smiled at her again, cocking his head to the side.
“Your father?” he mouthed to her.
The child stared, eyes wide in fear, then nodded her head.
The captain extracted a match from the box and struck it against the metal sheath that was strapped to his thigh. The wooden match sizzled to life. He let it burn a moment, staring at the flame, then looked at the girl and dropped the match at her father’s feet.
The fuel was slow to catch, for the diesel had mixed with the water on the ground and had soaked into the mud. Several seconds passed with no indication of fire. Then a thin stream of black smoke began to issue from the ground. A yellow flame b
egan to flicker, quickly catching at the man’s clothes.
The child screamed, and an old woman cried from the back of the crowd. The condemned man took a deep breath and turned away from his family. The flames caught at his trousers, then the tail of his shirt. Deep yellow, almost orange, the flames began to lick higher. Every eye, every head, was turned to the fire. Smoke began to waft through the low trees.
The man cried out in anguish as the little girl bolted from the crowd, running desperately to her father. A conscript stepped forward, but the girl slipped through his grasp, tears streaming down her face as she ran to the tree. She tripped on a low stump and fell at her father’s feet. “No, Father! No! You promised you would not leave me!” she sobbed.
The fire grew higher, and she was forced back from the heat. The flames cracked and burned, reaching ten feet into the sky. She reached again for her father, leaning into the heat. “I want to come with you!” she cried. “Don’t leave me, Father. Please, I want to be with you.”
The man looked down, then closed his eyes for the last time. The officer watched, a satisfied smirk on his face. The fire reached an apex, burning with a bright yellow flame.
The little girl rolled onto her back, swallowing the sickness inside. The captain looked down and their eyes met briefly again. She lay there, unmoving, tears brimming her eyes, then moaned once in anguish and curled into a tight, little ball. She pulled at her knees and her eyes slowly closed. Her breath became heavy, as if she were asleep.
* * *
The vision passed abruptly, and Luke found himself on the floor, his heart pounding inside him, a slamming ache in his chest.
The Great and Terrible Page 14