by Jon Land
Only when the kingdom approached becoming functional did Harlan Frye share with his chosen brethren the true intent of his plan. Lacking the means to impart Judgment Day at that point seemed not to deter the Reverend in the least because he knew the means would be delivered unto him in good time. A second member of the Seven fled in the wake of the first with whom he had shared the truth of his vision years earlier, perhaps prematurely, proving their unworthiness. Frye looked forward to their deaths amongst the rest of the masses when Judgment Day dawned.
But how to find a means whereby the truly worthy could be saved? Destroying civilization meant nothing if it could not be rebuilt in the image God had determined for it. That meant that this means had to allow for the luxury of selectivity—unheard—of and impossible in anyone’s mind except the Reverend’s, the only person who had been made privy to the true word.
Harlan Frye surrounded himself with others who felt as he did, subordinates and underlings from various arenas who furnished him with reports on their current projects. He read them all, searching and waiting. It was easy to be patient when awaiting the inevitable.
The patience had paid off just three years before, the means to preserve the worthy while ridding the world of its refuse shown to be in reach. It was so surprisingly simple. And fitting, wondrous in its clarity.
God had done it! God had created it for him to make use of!
Frye first fretted over not realizing it earlier, then reconciled to himself the fact that he had simply been neither ready nor worthy. That had all changed. The Reverend had surmounted the final obstacle en route to the achievement of his destiny.
Until now. Even as Judgment Day had come within sight, he found himself under siege. Seated in the back of his theater, Frye could not take his eyes off the still shot on the large screen picturing Blaine McCracken from the waist up. The screen’s proportions exaggerated the V-shaped torso. His facial features had been enhanced by a computer into an almost cartoonlike clarity. His dark complexion showed every crease and line. A jagged scar ran through his left eyebrow like a train track. McCracken’s close-trimmed beard looked as though it had been stuck on randomly in uneven splotches. His eyes were narrow and intensely focused, making it difficult to stare into them even off a screen.
Harlan Frye made it a habit of evaluating a man out of comparison with himself, primarily on how he would fare before a crowd of faithful in need of reassurance. McCracken wouldn’t fare too well because he couldn’t lie with his eyes, couldn’t look at people and let them think they had him fooled.
Frye, on the other hand, could change his appearance as easily as most people changed their clothes, be what he needed to be when he needed to be it. Even the mirror could be fooled, never giving back the same image twice. He was a half foot shorter than McCracken and flabby where his antagonist was taut with muscle. The Reverend’s face, though, exuded warmth, reflecting what he had been told since childhood was a glowing spirit. It wasn’t something he tried for, any more than McCracken tried for his glare of fierce intensity; it was simply there. People’s eyes had always been drawn to him. Sometimes the stares were uncomfortable, like the first ones cast his way by Preacher John Reed. But as the years wore on, the Reverend Harlan Frye learned how to manipulate that glowing spirit to his great advantage.
Audiences, both live and television, loved watching him, couldn’t get enough. And yet in photographs, he was easily dismissed. Frye’s face was strangely soft-looking, a morning’s shave all he needed to chase back any unwelcome shadows until the next day dawned. His hair was plain and neat. Depending on the angle, he could have looked anywhere from thirty to fifty. In short, the Reverend enjoyed a terribly mundane appearance, so much so that he was almost like putty: able to mold himself into whatever the moment required, even as his faithful molded him into whatever they needed to see. Given the task, no two of them would have painted his portrait the same.
The one constant remained his eyes. They were like an owl’s, big and deep-set. They dug into people and trapped them in their own thoughts. People didn’t want to look into them, yet once they did, they couldn’t break the stare. Strange, Frye reckoned, how McCracken’s eyes came to life on the screen, while his remained utterly dormant in stills. The contradiction bothered the Reverend and had led him to refuse posing for standard photographs. The one exception was those shots that caught him in the midst of a service. Then his eyes leaped to life the same way they did from the stage or the pulpit.
“So this is our nemesis, Major,” Harlan Frye said, from his accustomed spot in the theater’s rear.
Major Osborne Vandal had been patiently waiting for the Reverend to comment for nearly twenty minutes; he would have waited twenty years because Harlan Frye had saved his life. Not in the physical sense, but in the equally important moral sense.
Osborne Vandal had spent the last seven years of the Vietnam War in an especially brutal Vietcong POW camp. He came out with a hand that had been crushed and rendered useless by repeated torture. Doctors told him he’d be best off to let them amputate; a prosthesis would serve him better. Major Vandal wouldn’t hear of it. He wanted to remain a whole man, even if that meant he’d be a disfigured, fumbling one.
Vandal gazed down at the hand now, flexing the fingers that for nearly two decades had formed little more than a palsied, shrunken claw he kept tucked away in his coat. He could grasp things just fine now, and besides the scars and discoloration, his bad hand looked almost no different from his good, thanks to—
“Major?”
The Reverend’s voice drew him from his trance and Vandal looked up, clearing his throat.
“Sir,” Vandal started, unhappy to be the bearer of bad news, “we have now been able to confirm that McCracken did come into possession of the list that Ratansky stole from Sister Barbara.”
“How?”
“The IRS computer was broken into earlier today. The names on the list were fed in.”
“Then he knows of me, Major, doesn’t he?”
“That is a safe assumption, sir, yes.”
“And just where does that leave us?”
“With the need to prepare for McCracken’s next move.”
“Potentially one from a limitless number.”
Major Osborne Vandal didn’t seem to agree. “I’ve studied this man, Reverend. He fought the kind of war over in Vietnam I wish I’d had the chance to fight. Over there, and over here, his greatest strength lies in his consistency. But that can be a burden as well as a blessing.”
“How so?”
“It creates predictability. Based on what we’ve learned, I think I know where McCracken is heading next. I intend on having a number of teams waiting to intercept him in several select locations.”
“Would you care to elaborate, Major?” Harlan Frye listened as Vandal obliged. When Vandal ceased speaking, he nodded, almost smiling. “I’m impressed. I believe, Major, you are starting to grasp the message in all this.”
Frye stepped into the aisle, so that the bulk of the projector’s beam was lost. Only the corners of the screen remained alight, the rest casting him in an eerie luminescence.
“This is happening because there are doubters in our realm, Major. The kingdom is not yet pure. We are not yet ready. The sign is clear.”
“Sir?”
“McCracken is a lesson, as so much else has been before his coming. He will serve as a test of our mettle, of our true resolve. Did we panic when the calamity in Beaver Falls befell us? No. We responded in kind, searching for another means instead of accepting the loss. I have been to the lab this evening, Major. I have seen the wonder we are about to salvage from his debacle. A miracle, I tell you, a miracle! The time has come to summon the others to us.”
Frye took a deep breath.
“And when they reach the kingdom I will inform them that Judgment Day will dawn inside of a week’s time. The Lord delivered onto us a great gift in Beaver Falls, but He cloaked it in the robes of disaster. Stripping the ro
bes away was one test. Disabling McCracken is a second. The Raymond woman represents the third. Has there been any progress on that end?”
“I’m afraid not, sir, and we should not take the threat she poses lightly. She is currently on a path that could take her much closer to us than McCracken.”
“Threat, Major? Did you say threat? The woman is not a threat so much as a blessing for the knowledge she possesses and must be convinced to give unto us.” Frye’s hands stretched outward and open, palms up at shoulder level when they stopped. “Don’t you see? Is not the point of this clear to you? We are close. We are oh, so close. Our Lord is truly a demanding one. The obstacles He places in the path of our destiny challenge us at every turn, and yet each challenge is accompanied by an opportunity. He must be sure we are truly worthy to take back the world, to save it from itself while it can still be saved. Truly an awesome task, a terrible responsibility.” The slightest of smiles crossed his face. “Don’t you see, Major? Our Lord has saved these greatest challenges and opportunities, not threats, for last. Once they are overcome, nothing will stand between us and the destiny it is ours to fulfill. Then and only then will His doubts vanish. Then and only then will His faith in us be solidified.”
The Reverend Harlan Frye stepped out of the projector light and became a dark specter once more.
“We must pass these tests, Major. You are confident in your strategy pertaining to McCracken?”
“I am, sir.”
“Then let us concern ourselves with the challenge posed by the Raymond woman and obtaining from her what it would be to our great advantage to possess.”
“We have managed to trace the area from which she made a number of phone calls, sir. I’ve studied her file. I think I know where she can be found.”
“Her children as well, then?”
“Yes, sir.”
Harlan Frye allowed himself a pause in which he mouthed a silent prayer of thanks for the understanding he had been granted and vision of what he needed to do.
“Bring Earvin Early to me,” he told Major Osborne Vandal.
PART THREE
THE SEVEN
SANPEE, CALIFORNIA:
WEDNESDAY; 8:00 A.M.
CHAPTER 18
“Thing you should do,” T.J. Fields advised Karen Raymond back in the trailer park Wednesday morning, “is beat it the hell out of here. Take your kids and run. I’ll come if you want and ride shotgun.”
The Skulls had driven Karen back to the trailer park in Sanpee after rescuing her from the shootout that had taken Alexander MacFarlane’s life the night before in Torrey Pines State Park. She’d been in no shape to talk then, too frazzled and scared. T.J. had eased her into a rocking chair in the same trailer where her sons were sleeping in twin beds. The television was tuned to a music channel. T.J. had closed the door softly behind him and planted his massive frame on the trailer’s front steps, shotgun balanced across his knees.
“I can’t do that,” she said, an hour into a damp, misty morning after a fitful night’s sleep. “Before last night, I could have, but not anymore.”
“Why?”
“Because I know they can’t let me live now. Wherever I go, they’ll track me down.”
T.J. looked at her from across the picnic table where their coffee sat cooling. “I got some pretty out-of-the-way places even the animals live near ’em don’t know about.”
“It doesn’t matter. They’ll find me.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because there’s too much at stake,” Karen replied. “Look, you told me you’ve been reading the papers, watching the news.”
“Yeah.”
“And there hasn’t been a single mention of my lab team being murdered at Jardine-Marra, and you won’t hear anything about Alex MacFarlane’s killing last night. They make things go away, T.J. They can get away with anything they want.”
“I don’t see another option ’sides running, babe.”
“There’s one.”
T.J. rose at that and glared down at her. “You fixin’ on paying these Van Dyne boys a visit, I’ll knock you on your head and tie you down to a chair.”
“I know someone who works there.”
“Someone you trust, that it?”
“I don’t trust anyone.”
“But you’re gonna meet him.”
Karen shrugged. “If I can.”
“Then we do it my way, babe.”
“The whole tour, Sister?”
Margaret Rennick, chief organizer of Sister Barbara’s church on wheels, looked up from her notepad.
“Every town, Margaret,” Sister Barbara elaborated. “Every date.”
“I thought perhaps you meant just for the next few weeks or so.”
“I didn’t. Cancel all of them.”
Rennick didn’t bother hiding her disappointment and concern. “Yes, Sister.”
“And I’ll also want you to make sure all those on staff are given a full six weeks severance pay.”
“What do I tell them?”
“That I’m not well; no, better to just tell them I’ve had the sign that another change is upon me and that their efforts have been greatly appreciated.”
“You … won’t be around to tell them yourself?”
“No, Margaret.” Sister Barbara’s gaze was somewhere between sadness and resignation. “I’m going home.”
The appearance of the Reverend Harlan Frye’s men last night had given her no choice. She needed to think, to plan. And, by all indications, there was likely little time to do either. She had vastly underestimated Frye’s madness and the extent of his vision.
Nearly a decade ago, when her popularity and belief that she could make a difference were at their peak, she had agreed to become one of the original members of the Seven. It seemed the right move at the time, a natural progression of her growth. Frustration over the limitations of what one could accomplish provided the attraction to what seven might be able to with their resources pooled. The potential seemed limitless.
But Frye had changed all that the first time the Seven ventured down into the kingdom he had constructed for them. It was then that he had shared the truth of a vision of Judgment Day Sister Barbara had never dreamed could actually become a reality. But last night had proven otherwise. Sister Barbara had spent the dark hours following the departure of the Seven’s two soldiers reviewing her determined desperation of these past two years. She had left the kingdom resolved to stop Frye by proving him wrong about the fate the world deserved. But now that he possessed the means to became the maker of that fate, everything had changed. Sister Barbara would have to plan carefully; quickly, yes, but carefully. And where better to plan than within the last remnants of her former life of fame and fortune:
The Oasis.
The Oasis was a massive theme park located in the majestic, rolling hills of Asheville, North Carolina, she had built as a haven for neglected, abused, sick, and underprivileged children. Two hundred acres of pure enjoyment in the form of a water park, amusement rides, playing fields and courts, all to take their minds from the lousy lot life had dealt them. There was no charge. Admission was by invitation only, and no weekend slots remained until after the summer. No long lines, no worry about tickets or rationing money between hamburgers and ice cream. Everything was free. A fleeting dream for those whose lives were living nightmares.
The actual home Sister Barbara had seen so little of these past two years was a sprawling mansion built on the outskirts of the rides and games that brought happiness and joy to so many who might not have otherwise known it. When she got back there tomorrow, she would begin to lay the seeds for Harlan Frye’s destruction. But the Reverend’s soldiers were sure to come for her, waging a war in which time had become the most crucial weapon.
“Yes,” Frye called into the speaker from his position behind the desk of his private office.
“He’s here,” returned the voice of Major Osborne Vandal.
“Send him in.”
The knobless door to Frye’s private office within the kingdom slid mechanically open and the hulking figure of Earvin Early glided in. Of all of Early’s unusual features, the way he moved was the most unsettling to Frye. A man with that size and bulk should be lumbering and awkward. But Earvin Early moved with a flowing, dancelike rhythm, each step graceful and precisioned.
The Reverend Harlan Frye regarded him in the bright light of his office and wanted to look away. Early’s stringy, grease-laden hair hung in all directions, partially obscuring his face. The festering sores and boils on those portions not obscured looked more significant than the last time they had met. Early’s clothes, though, were the same, as were his bloodshot, yellow-toned eyes that seemed to have leaked red into the whites. The giant held those eyes narrowed like a cat, calm and intense at the same time. Always at the ready.
Earvin Early, his massive frame shrouded in his dark, stitched-together canvas overcoat, stopped ten feet away. The Reverend Harlan Frye smelled the stink coming off him and struggled not to react.
“It has been too long, my brother.”
Early’s steady gazing was piercing. He spoke in a strangely melodic voice. “Time keeps all his customers still in arrears. By lending them minutes and charging them years.”
Often Frye could identify the author of the particular lines Early chose for his words. In this case he could not. In all the years they had known each other, from that first night when a half-dead Early was pulled from the river, Frye had never heard the giant utter a normal sentence. At first unnerved, he had long ago grown used to the habit and found himself easily able to interpret the proper meaning.