Rodney drank a slug of water and cleared his throat as the vote neared his place in the alphabet, determined to make a clear declaration of his vote. Not long after Mr. Stippleman declared his “yea,” the unofficial vote counters started to celebrate. The measure seemed to have passed relatively easily. After careful tabulation, the President confirmed that verdict, declaring the measure passed by three hundred and seventy-one votes to one hundred and forty, with only a few abstaining.
Again, Rodney found a discordant note in this accomplishment, knowing that the walkout of the rebels made the victory possible and that those opponents would not remain silent. With these facts in mind, Rodney supported several moderating measures, which he hoped could offer those who feared the power in Jerusalem assurance that the mortal citizens of America still had a voice in governing the newly formed state. He voted with the majority that the immortals would be allowed into the Congressional chamber while the elected representatives were in session, on an invitation-only basis. He voted for a request to Jerusalem that they designate representatives as liaisons between the two governments, to further define, and contain, the relationship. He voted for the formation of a defense department and for language that defined immortals as “discretionary consultants” in matters of defense.
When pressed, Rodney and most of the delegates on Pearl’s List, would affirm that these measures were intended to assuage the fears of other mortals, rather than to limit the powers of the immortals. He also believed that the Jerusalem representatives would understand the new government’s intent and would gracefully regard their pedestrian attempts at a semblance of sovereignty. In spite of Pastor Phil’s explanation that they were not reading his mind, Rodney believed that the Ruler and his representatives would know all of what happened, even in a closed meeting. He felt like a little boy wresting with his father, knowing that he could get away with using all his might, without any worry about really harming his much larger parent. In his experience, the immortals were not easily offended.
The following two days wrapped up the business of that preliminary gathering, with further definitions for the relationship between The United American Republic, as the new nation would be called, and the Ruler in Jerusalem. They also defined more of the departments and offices of the government of the Republic, and agreed that some states and provinces would be redefined. Natural disasters and man-made destruction, had altered the landscape of the continent enough that, not only did the former provinces of Canada join with the new government, but many of the former American states no longer existed as they had ten years before. A map of fifty newly defined states would go home with the delegates, for consideration among the various local regions, making some effort to maintain whatever state or regional identity remained around the continent.
Because of Mexico’s place in the Dictator’s rule, as well as the linguistic barrier, it did not join the new Republic. Introductory decisions regarding international relations specifically mentioned reconciliation with the neighbor to the south. Having fought in Texas, Rodney saw this as a stretch for him personally, turning an old enemy into a new friend.
On the afternoon of the fourteenth day of the congress, Rodney sat slouched in his seat, exhausted from the mental output and emotional stress, of those two weeks and entirely focused on going home to see Emma and Daniel. He was remembering his phone conversation with Daniel the night before, feeding the young man’s fascination for things political and technical, by describing the electronics used in and around the congress.
A snapping sound, a crash and a chorus of shouts, awoke Rodney from his daydream. Instinctively, he jumped from his seat and looked up the aisle toward the noise. At the back door of the auditorium, he saw a dozen people being herded quickly into the room. Behind them came men with masks and helmets, body armor and clubs, what looked like a streaming phalanx of riot police.
All four of the double doors leading into the back of the auditorium filled with these heavily armored troops, pushing people and striking any who resisted. Rodney remembered his resolution that all that he would need to do in any violent attack would be to keep people alive for a few minutes, maybe even a few seconds, until the immortals showed up for a rescue. He looked around for the means to stall the attack. At the front of the hall he saw the folding tables on which documents had been distributed to the delegates. He caught Will’s eye, and that of another former soldier named Simon Jackson, and motioned for them to follow. He turned and ran down the aisle, pushing past panicked delegates who were attempting to escape. When he reached the front of the auditorium, he turned and found that five men had followed his lead. He shouted quick instructions to them. Two men to a table, they dumped the literature and turned the tables on their sides, lifting them as shields facing up the aisle.
Rodney then ran and shouted to the Vice President of the Congress, who stood at the podium, to tell everyone to duck down in their seats. He knew that delegates would be difficult to root out and control within the bolted-down rows of seats. As he turned to join Will on a charge up the aisle, he could see another pair of delegates grabbing a fourth table. Rodney quickly directed each pair up a different aisle.
Delegates knotted up against each other, trying to obey the direction from the podium, where four burley security guards stood around the Vice President, as he repeated the call to stay in their seats and leave the aisles clear. The sight of the table-shields pushing up the aisles finally convinced those who hesitated to get out of the way. The tables were slightly too wide to go sideways up the aisle, unless held high enough to clear the arms of the seats. A few delegates simply fell to the ground and let the tables pass over them on their way to the collision with the attackers.
Rodney and Will met the formation of riot troops one quarter of the way up the aisle. The guards and staffers, whom the armored attackers had herded ahead of them, dove into seats along the way, both empty and occupied. The unexpected defensive maneuver stalled the riot troops in two of the aisles as the front rank slowed and the following ranks stumbled into them. Rodney and Will, however, collided with a cadre running full force down their aisle, throwing the Iowa delegates backward. A second later, a half dozen able-bodied delegates jumped in behind the table and added their weight to the roadblock.
Delegates in the seats pushed and crawled away from the aisles as the attackers attempted to fan out, hurdling rows and even running across the top of the seats. Ambitious delegates tripped attackers passing above them, causing some of the armored assailants to crash hard against metal seat backs, or to become wedged in between rows.
Just as Rodney felt the chaos begin to crescendo, certain that the attackers would overrun them, he felt a blast wave from behind him pushing him forward and ultimately onto the underside of the overturned table, which sledded to a stop on top of fallen attackers. Every person in the room who was not already laying down, had been knocked to the floor.
He had felt that sort of blast force several times in battle, but this one was not preceded by an audible explosion and he saw no smoke, no sparks, no flying shards, and smelled no gunpowder or chemical explosive. Rodney rolled over on his back and looked up at the podium. There stood the Vice President still on his feet, behind the microphone, but he had turned around and was looking at four people standing on the top of a temporary half-wall that had been constructed as a part of the decorative background for the stage. Three men and a woman, all very tall and imposing, leapt down from their unlikely perch and landed softly on the stage. One of the men patted the Vice President reassuringly on the shoulder and then addressed the delegates.
“All delegates of this congress, feel free to get to your feet if you are able. Those who planned to attack this meeting and hold its members hostage, will not be able to stand up until I give the command.”
Indeed, Rodney found that he was able to get to his feet, helping Will who was bleeding from one arm. However, the attackers remained on the floor, as if nailed there. Delegates began hoistin
g themselves back up onto their seats, many of them checking heads and hands for blood, where they had been battered by one means or another. A low level of noise arose from the men and women helping each other up, checking injuries and gathering scattered possessions.
Once on his feet, and convinced that the situation had been saved by the immortals, Rodney helped locate the most severely injured of his colleagues, until he saw one of the immortals approaching him. Something inside him told Rodney he was going to be in trouble. It was a feeling familiar to the days when he and Steve sought creative ways to disrupt school or escape from boredom. But, as the man approached, Rodney saw only peace and unearned acceptance on his face, and he felt himself wriggle free from those old boyhood fears.
“Rodney,” the man said, reaching out to take his hand. “You’re learning, but we will have to work on doing better to minimize casualties in the future.” Rodney hesitated at the clear implication that the immortals had expected him to act in some way to stall the attack and, further, that they were offering to help him with tactics for future situations. It was as if they knew his nature, though he had never met them, and they expected from him just what he expected from himself, on his best day. He felt all of this from those few words and the touch of this stranger.
“My name is Matthew,” the immortal said. He was a tall, pale man with short dark hair, a plain face and bright and playful eyes. “We got here just in time to stop some serious butt kicking, I see.”
This crude commentary startled Rodney, for a second, and then struck him as funny. His response, however, had to wait while the woman who had appeared as part of their rescue mission spoke over the microphone.
“I want to apologize to this congress for our uninvited entrance into your chamber. But I believe you will agree that it was an emergency situation, which merited a momentary suspension of your rules. I want to further ask your permission for us to invite a couple of dozen of our compatriots to clear out the attackers and to attend to the injured.”
When she finished, she stepped back from the microphone and looked at the Vice President for a response. The President had climbed onto the stage and she motioned for the Vice President to answer over the microphone so all the delegates could hear him.
“Yes, we welcome your help in these extraordinary circumstances,” he said, looking at the President and other delegates to gage their agreement with his words. Seeing only affirmation in the room, he continued, “And we would further like to thank you for your quick and effective assistance.” Delegates who were able, began to applaud, Rodney among them.
Behind him, Rodney heard a strange sound and turned to see immortals hoisting two or three armored attackers onto their backs and hauling them out the double doors. They seemed to be limited only by the width of the doors and not by the weight of any number of muscular, fully-armored men. The attackers appeared paralyzed and offered neither resistance nor any sign of life, except for wide eyes blinking and gawking wildly.
Rodney shook his head, thinking, “How else would they do that?”
He found Sara and Pete in two separate rows, Pete having jumped up to trip one of the attackers striding across the seat backs. Pete had flipped over a row of seats during his successful effort. A few impressive bruises had already started to appear on his head and arms, and a couple of other places that Rodney didn’t care to look at. Sara, on the other hand, had evaded injury by lying on the floor throughout the attack.
Rodney returned to make sure Will was getting the care he needed, a significant flow of blood coming from his left elbow. Rodney had left him with a torn shirtsleeve pressed against the cut to stop the bleeding. He looked at the cut again, trying to decide whether Will needed a tourniquet until the healers got to him, but it didn’t seem that severe.
The healers didn’t linger over any one person, simply inquiring about their injury and then touching them, or healing them with a word. Rodney stood entranced, watching this process, which he found more fascinating than the process of hauling away the attackers. He watched the reactions of the injured, who looked at the healers like grateful children, confident that mom or dad would make it all better. The smiles that blossomed along the aisles as the healers progressed, soothed Rodney’s traumatized soul.
When he had finished surveying the situation, and decided that no one needed his help, Rodney walked outside to call Emma. He would tell her the story of the thwarted attack and ask her about her health, about the baby and about Daniel. He wove through the remaining bodies of attackers prone on the floor, saw the rooms where the immortals were taking their captives and gladly passed into the early evening air, releasing a compressed sigh of relief.
By the time he had finished his phone call, Sara, Will and Pete had joined him, each calling home, as well. Will showed no sign of a cut on his arm and Pete showed Rodney where a couple of those nasty bruises had disappeared.
The congress had formally dismissed for the night and would hold a closing session in the morning.
The four from Somerville joined Pearl, Jesus, and three others, for dinner at a Mexican restaurant they had not yet visited. They sat around a pair of tables pushed together and spoke animatedly of the day’s stunning events. Rodney noticed the hostess edging closer to their table, as the conversation continued, obviously trying to hear what they were saying. When their server returned with their drinks, the hostess took the tray from her, so she could deliver them to the table herself. Again, Rodney could tell that she paid more attention to what they were saying than to serving the drinks. This made him curious.
“You ever hear of such a bizarre day in all your life?” he asked, assuming the hostess didn’t care that he had seen her eaves dropping.
She smiled at Rodney, as the others at the table stopped talking to look at her. She didn’t seem as self-conscious as Rodney knew he would be if the roles were reversed. Instead she said, “Oh, I’m really not surprised, just really interested in the things they do,” she said, referring to the immortals. “You see, the reason I have this job is because of them,” she said.
Sara picked up the bait. “How is that?”
“Well, I was quite a mess a few months ago, just gettin’ by, doing things I shouldn’t have been, hooked on drugs. And one night this guy just shows up in my room. I figured he was a customer, if you know what I mean, and that I was just too stoned to have heard him come in. But he says to me, ‘Tamara, I’m here to get you free from all this and I have a new job for you.’”
Tamara started to tear up a bit, but persisted with her story. “And just like that, I was clean, sober and had no taste at all for getting high anymore. And this guy gets me out of the rat trap I was living in and introduces me to these people setting up this restaurant and needing a hostess.” She grinned and motioned to include the whole restaurant, as if it were a generous provision just for her. The sincere joy and gratitude in her face provoked a few tears in the eyes of her listeners, as well.
“They can’t do anything wrong, as far as I’m concerned. And I’m a loyal follower of their King in Jerusalem,” she said.
Rodney smiled. He was moved by Tamara’s story, but was not entirely comfortable yet with the sort of evangelical fervor she exuded. Of course, he wasn’t the only one. All of his friends around the table had been intentionally non-religious all their lives. They had looked at faith and had turned it down years ago. Here, in front of them, stood a living witness to a new faith in a new kind of world. Most of the delegates seated around that table wished for a fervor like Tamara’s...some day.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The first Pittsburgh congress ended on the fifteenth day, with instructions, contact numbers, plans for future meetings, proposals for leadership appointments and issues arranged for future agendas. Even with two special guest speakers, two immortals who had each served as President of the United States in decades past, Rodney remained focused on getting home.
As on their trip to Pittsburgh, the organizers of the congress
arranged for a flight back to Iowa that stopped first in Tennessee and Illinois, as it happened. All of the delegates hugged Pearl before she left the plane in Memphis and she left them teary-eyed. Rodney felt more like a kid coming home from a fantastic summer camp, than a congressional representative returning from founding a new nation.
When they finally landed in Des Moines, the airport had been cleaned up somewhat, with fewer wrecks in sight of the runway. When he hugged Emma and Daniel, Daniel complained that it had been so much cooler when that crashed plane marked the entrance to the airport. Rodney laughed at something he would have said himself when he was fifteen. Daniel carried Rodney’s bags and Rodney hung onto Emma, as they walked to the van. He checked her belly for signs of a little one, but knew it was still early.
All serious conversation evaporated at the van, where Chip leaned very nonchalantly, his arms crossed, a pair of sunglasses perched on his nose. Rodney laughed hard at the sight of the mechanical member of the family.
“How’s Socks?” he asked Daniel.
“He’s fine. I think he has a girlfriend. I’ve seen him running with another coyote sometimes in the evening, and you can hear two of them howling when it gets dark.”
Rodney drove for the first time in over two weeks, piloting the van back to Somerville, with Daniel and Chip in the back and Emma copiloting. Several spots in the highway had been repaired since his departing flight and some of the wreckage along the road had been cleared. More of the fields along the way also showed signs of cultivation than Rodney had remembered from his outbound trip.
Emma asked him questions as they traveled and Rodney noticed that Daniel stopped chattering with Chip when he found the answers interesting. The most curious question for all three of them was Rodney’s role in the newly formed government. In his current role as congressional representative, he would carry part of the load of introducing the resolutions passed by the congress to folks around Somerville. But, beyond that, he could only wonder, along with Emma and Daniel, about what he would be doing. Emma did smile with relief when she heard about the assurance that he could stay on the farm.
The REIGN: Out of Tribulation Page 31