“You’re a survivor, Rod. You’re so strong that you’re gonna survive. But you might have to say goodbye to a lot of the rest of us along the way.”
Rodney squeezed his dad’s hand and kissed him on the forehead, something he never remembered doing before. The rest of the time in Buffalo his dad said little and they had little opportunity to speak one-on-one, but Rodney remembered his father’s affirmation and warning, even when he flew back home.
Only a month later, when record snowstorms piled one on top of the other, his father had one more heart attack and emergency vehicles were unable to get through the six feet of snow in time to save him.
Rodney looked at Emma and Daniel now, realizing the weight of his telling about this particular memory. He pulled back from the downward intensity and said, “You know, that was the winter of the big snows, crazy weather, maybe the craziest year for weather.” He was tired and his attempt to recover the mood of the night fell short.
Emma coaxed Daniel to get to bed before he fell over. She hauled him out of his chair and nudged him toward his room. Rodney got to his feet, feeling the brandy more than the coffee still. But he was just awake enough to sense Emma’s hesitation to go to her room. She put coffee cups in the sink and straightened up a little, while Rodney replaced his mattress in the living room and stirred the fire in the parlor, throwing on two more logs to prolong the added warmth.
As Rodney said something about going down to stoke the furnace, starting toward the basement stairs, Emma stopped him. She had a look in her eyes that Rodney had only seen hints of in previous days. He could feel her affection for him wrapping him up, even though she only put her hands on his arm.
She looked at him and said softly, “It’s really late tonight, but I’m looking forward to the night when you come knocking at my bedroom door.”
This bold and simple invitation assured Rodney that he had not misread the signs these past weeks. He smiled, welcoming her overture.
One big sigh and a gentle kiss on her lips was his reply.
“Good night,” she said, a satisfied little smile on her sleepy face.
“Good night,” he said, and watched her go to her room and close the door. He looked at that door for a second and then headed for the basement.
Christmas morning dawned to the smell of potato pancakes and bacon frying on the stove, as well as coffee percolating. Rodney rose while it was still nearly dark outside, the house being colder than it had been since they moved into it. He stirred and refueled the fire downstairs; and stirred the coals in the stove, adding small blocks of wood there, as well. He remembered his grandmother’s potato pancakes, ‘kartoffelpuffers’ she called them. Getting two eggs from the wild chickens outside was the hardest part.
No one padded around in socks for long in the cold house. The sound of boots on the wooden floor rumbled and scraped through the morning air, a homey sound for Rodney, reminding him of his grandfather’s ranch and early morning chores. But this time he was the cook, instead of his grandmother, and he was the man of the house, as well.
Anna had been a city girl, raised in Overland Park, Kansas, then Kansas City, Missouri and Des Moines. She hadn’t enjoyed the camping trips with the family nearly as much as Rodney and the kids. This was Rodney’s first experience of country living on his own, apart from his grandparents. But his new life, with Emma and Daniel, also followed many years of living without luxury. Life in the Army, and then in the resistance, often meant life outdoors, or outside of town. But this was different. Rodney had chosen to live in the country, to get distance from the loss of his family, but also to make a new start that tied him back to those ranchers and farmers in his bloodline.
After breakfast and cleanup, all three of them made their best effort at dressing up for the trip to Pete and Jenny’s. For Rodney and Daniel, this wasn’t as easy, or fruitful, as for Emma. She looked the part of a rose between thorns, when they climbed into the front seat of the van, the morning light waking up the colors of a long knit dress and sweater she had acquired from Jenny. To his mental shopping list Rodney added some nicer clothes for occasions that didn’t involve hammer and nails.
The sun warmed the December day even as they drove, the temperature climbing through the forties. The appeal of a white Christmas still lived dormant inside all three of them, but Rodney was glad for the easy drive on dry roads. “When would anyone get around to plowing roads these days?” he thought.
Somerville showed few signs of life on Christmas morning, but considering that the population had been reduced to an eighth of its prewar size, this didn’t surprise anyone. The extra cars in front of Pete’s house offered some hope of more human faces than Rodney had seen in one place in months.
With an apple pie in each hand, Rodney approached the front door of the house, up a half a dozen concrete stairs next to the post office storefront. Daniel knocked on the door, behind which they could hear other guests still taking off their coats and being greeted by Jenny and Pete. The latter opened the door and shouted for Rodney and company to come on in. Emma led the way and everyone gave Rodney room to maneuver through with the pies.
Sara was there, she looked at the pies in amazement. “You don’t have electricity or gas out at your place yet, do you Rodney?”
“Nope,” he said amid the clamor of greetings. “But Emma is resourceful and patient, and these are darn good pies.”
Beside Jay and Sara, the guests included Warren and Connie Kline, Russell Wayne and Becky Larsen. After he set the pies on the dining room table and took off his coat, Rodney came face to face with Becky, a dark haired woman of forty, with pale blue eyes and a triangular face. She looked hard at Rodney for a minute and fought back tears. Becky’s husband, Kevin, had been with Rodney’s unit near the end of the war and Rodney had been the last person to talk to Kevin before he died. The last time Rodney had spoken with Becky was when he visited her house to deliver the news of Kevin’s death. This Christmas Day, Rodney wrapped his arms around her and just let her cry into his shoulder for a minute. He had refrained from such affection on their last meeting, being alone with her and on official business. Now she was the wife of an old friend and a hug would do both of them some good.
Like the good commander he was, Rodney knew things he wouldn’t tell anyone, including the gruesome way Kevin died, burned alive by a heat ray the Dictator’s troops used in urban warfare, a modification of a nonlethal weapon that amounted to instantly frying enemy combatants. For the moment, he had to hide this image even from himself, to keep from falling apart in front of the guests and the Christmas tree.
When Becky let go and mopped the moisture from Rodney’s shoulder, she greeted Emma, and then followed Jenny into the kitchen, for more tissues and a drink of water. She must have been dreading seeing Rodney again, the way one dreads the surgeon’s knife, knowing it’s something one must suffer, but not enjoying the prospect any more than the pain during and after.
When Becky made her exit, Rodney made eye contact with Warren. A surgeon had reconstructed Warren’s jaw two years ago, after a gunshot wound he received during fighting around Somerville. Warren had been among those who didn’t enlist with the regular troops of the resistance, but fought more of an underground battle closer to home. Unlike others in the resistance, who resented the home front fighters such as Warren Kline and Chester Butler, Rodney respected their efforts. He knew that those who chose to fight from home did so for reasons equal to his own motives for joining the more organized fighting units, of military and police defectors.
Pete was standing awkwardly by the Christmas tree by this time. Rodney could tell he was up to something, but couldn’t figure out what it was. Pete was trying to find the perfect time to spring a surprise. When he judged that the maximum number of guests could see his tree, he said, “And now, let there be light.” With that, he flipped a switch with his toe and the Christmas tree lit up with dozens of tiny, colored LED lights.
Gasps and exclamations greeted the wondrous sight. Rodney kn
ew that Pete’s old house had no solar or wind sources for electricity, so the lights meant that they had been reconnected to the electrical grid. The post office had solar panels that provided a modicum of power for lights and computing. Most of the other guests, like Rodney, lived outside of Somerville’s downtown, and shared the surprise and excitement of Pete’s little show.
Jenny came back from the kitchen and said, “Can we turn on the regular lights now?”
The collection of friends laughed at this typical expression of the yin and yang of Pete and Jenny.
Pete smiled sheepishly. “Yes, Dear, you can turn on the lights. My surprise is over.”
Pete walked past Rodney and said quietly over his shoulder, “And we won’t check if the Internet is workin’ until after dinner.”
Like Rodney and Emma, the gathered survivors looked back on a string of previous holidays spent on the run or in hiding, or simply in want of necessities. Such memories enhanced the flavor of everything at that Christmas dinner, including the conversation and the jokes.
To an introvert like Rodney, this gathering missed much of the charm that had filled their cozy little Christmas Eve. But the level of normality at this gathering, heartened him greatly. Everyone around that table enjoyed everything on it with the force of years of celebrations denied and hopes postponed. They could not yet fulfill their deep collective drive toward returning to normal wholesome daily life, but, like a gulp of air to one who has been holding his breath, this Christmas would be a good start.
The always gregarious Pete, who charged his emotional batteries in gatherings like this, seemed unusually anxious to get done with the meal, meaning he wasn’t content to sit there talking for hours and hours, after they had sampled and devoured all the tasty courses. Instead, he signaled to Daniel that he wanted help with something, and the two of them scooted out of the room, Daniel baffled and Pete clearly scheming again.
After their experience with the Internet the last time Daniel was there, and with what Pete had whispered to him before the meal, Rodney expected Pete was employing the boy as his computer consultant, in order to establish whether there might be another surprise to present. “Good idea,” Rodney thought, not to get everyone’s hopes up only to be let down by a blank computer screen.
In a few minutes, Pete sped back into the room with Daniel in tow. Daniel had the mobile computer in two hands and Pete led the way with a larger display. Another show was about to begin. Rodney helped push dishes out of the way, Jenny scrambling to get some of them off the table, goodheartedly scolding Pete for breaking up her dinner. Daniel and Pete setup their presentation and Daniel confirmed everything was working.
“We are connected!” Pete said.
The room erupted into motion. Chairs scraping, voices raised, an atmosphere of Christmas-worthy excitement stirred the room. Everyone packed together behind Daniel, who was connecting the external display and mirroring the image from the mobile computer, so the whole group could see. When he finished, Daniel began to stand up, to surrender the controls to Pete, but Pete put his hand on his shoulder and said, “You drive, son, you’re certainly better at it than me.”
Daniel tipped his head sideways a bit, shrugged and sat back down. Again, the opening page offered news headlines. They mostly involved provocative phrases about the end of the war, the end of the Dictator and the beginning of the new government in Jerusalem. Asking Daniel to steer the computer may not have been fair, given that there were nine adults in the room who all wanted to steer him.
Rodney silenced the din of the backseat drivers with a hearty shout. “Hey, we can only hit one link at a time. Give the kid a break. We need to be fair about this.”
“You tell him what to click,” Becky said to Rodney. A half a dozen voices seconded that motion. That consensus should not be a surprise, given that none of the guests had surfed the Internet in the last year. The information-starved gathering would welcome any news of the wider world.
“Let’s see about this new government in Jerusalem,” Rodney said.
Daniel obliged, clicking on that headline. In a few seconds, a new page loaded, again showing that headline “A New Government in Jerusalem.” Below that, ran an article posted by an international news agency that they all recognized from before the war. The tone of the article immediately reminded all of them of the free press days before the Dictator:
“Those loyal to the new King in Jerusalem continue to gather in unprecedented numbers. Their arrivals occur in the surprising rapid manner that we have come to expect of these unusual people, many of whom had been presumed dead by relatives and friends, before the Dictator’s demise.
Whether you believe that they are aliens, or humans raised from the dead, the numbers of these loyalists who gather in Jerusalem are truly impressive. Around the new outdoor throne of the King, tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, gather daily. No one can count such a throng. But those who fear this new ruler, after the brutal reign of his predecessor, may have good cause to fear someone who inspires such ecstatic veneration.”
In the middle of that page, a photo showed a huge gathering of people, with a sort of stage in the distance, from which emanated an odd light. As Daniel allowed the mouse cursor to hover over that picture, it instantly expanded and began to load a video.
The video window enveloped the whole display. The dumb-struck holiday gathering saw the crowd in the photo come to life. Huge numbers of people flowed and surged, making the sort of wave motion one used to see in stadiums, except in a more organic pattern. As the camera zoomed into the crowd, Rodney felt as if he recognized these people. Not that he saw people whom he knew personally, but rather that the people in the video frame reminded him of the strangers who had been popping in and out of town.
“Now we know where they are when they’re not here,” Rodney said, half to himself.
“Like the Koreans, you mean,” Warren said in a similar dream-like voice.
Rodney nodded. All of them locked onto the screen. They marveled at the visual effect of so many people, so closely packed together, dancing and singing, and waving their arms, faces alight with enraptured smiles—a gigantic crowd and yet moving in harmony. Then one of them flew up in the air above the others, the camera zooming toward him, a young man with black hair. He seemed to have launched himself clear of the crowd, free from gravity. Half the Christmas viewers in the room gasped at the sight. The camera operator’s surprise showed in the shaky image and uneven focus. The young man hung in the air impossibly for a several seconds.
“It’s fake,” Jay said. “It’s some kind of computer trick.” He sounded angry. Not everyone in the room resonated with that anger. Their assorted experiences with the exotic strangers, such as the Koreans, tempted most of them to believe their eyes.
The camera pulled back, then they could see dozens of little circles of people suspended in the air, twirling and waving, still celebrating, but without any obligation to remain earthbound. Gradually, most of them drifted back to the ground, caught by those below them or slipping into slender openings in the massive throng.
Rodney noticed how it was shot all from one camera, like a news story would be, not like a movie with computer graphics. If the video was fake, it fooled him, at least. He didn’t answer Jay’s accusation, however, and Jay remained silent, watching with the rest.
Again, the camera zoomed in, this time on a part of the crowd mostly made up of children. This unleashed even more involuntary noises from the gathering at Pete’s house. All of them simultaneously realized something they had not articulated. They had not seen any children for months. For most of them, Daniel was the youngest person they had seen since the night of the torn graves.
The children in the video all looked toward the stage in the distance. You could see them shouting and singing, waving their hands toward that stage and jumping up and down. And they sustained their fervent celebration, never seeming to tire. Once, it seemed as if a wave of energy, like the blast from a hu
ge distant explosion, pushed back at the celebrants, and they fell back into each other’s arms, recovering their balance and doing it all again, with equal gusto.
“What are they doing?” Jenny asked. “Why are they there?”
As mesmerizing as the video images were, Rodney wanted more information, as well. He tapped Daniel on the shoulder, “can you make the video smaller so we can read more of the article, if we want?” he requested.
Daniel obliged once again. This time the video remained in the upper right hand quarter of the screen while the text showed on the left. Rodney read on,
“Never before has this reporter seen such unbridled adoration of a ruler by any number of people. And, of course, there is the question of how they manage to defy gravity in the midst of their celebrations. Our reporters on the scene have been unable to discern any sort of trickery, and have speculated that these radical loyalists possess some sort of technology, that allows them to levitate for short periods of time, as seen in the video attached to this story.”
“Neither have we discovered reports of persons being injured in these raucous celebrations, as incredible as that would seem, with such a great crush of people and such vigorous dancing. Furthermore, there seems to be no security assigned to control the crowd or even to protect the Ruler, whom we presume is on the throne that you can barely see in the distance.”
“There has been some speculation regarding the light that appears to shine from behind or in front of his dais or throne. If these are in fact humanoids from another planet, as some have speculated, and they have technology for cancelling gravity, they may also possess an energy source that produces this constant glow, unlike any earthly light.”
As Daniel tried to scroll down, the text window locked up. At the same time, the people in the video stopped moving. And, with that, the wireless Internet signal disconnected.
With the computer screen frozen, the gathered neighbors simply stared at the words they had read before and looked at the still photo of the celebrants in Jerusalem. All of the strange occurrences of the last few months coalesced in their minds, during that silence. Each individual’s struggle to explain unprecedented events collapsed together into deeper consternation.
The REIGN: Out of Tribulation Page 12