The large casinos were there, but the names had changed. Tropicana, Caesar’s Palace, MGM Grand and Excalibur had changed to Fatty’s, The Eastern Experience, Wonderland and Victory Park. I suspected that the large number of Asian faces in uniform that I saw around me had some influence on the names they chose.
I pulled my new gray-on-green Humvee into a parking space—they had a lot more free spaces than I remembered—and sauntered into Fatty’s, trying to not look like a tourist, but failing nonetheless. It was the casino where Reba and I had stayed 12 years before, and inside it looked pretty much the same. The carpet was still red, but the slot machines were gone. I thought about it and it made sense; caps wouldn’t work in a slot machine.
It was a late morning, and the place looked pretty quiet, so I walked up to the bar. The bartender was a man in his 40s who looked like he’d been there a while.
“So where’s the action?” I asked him. “I remember this place use to be hopping nonstop, day or night.”
He smirked. “You must be thinking of Las Vegas. This is Vanity Fair. A different kind of action.” He threw his chin toward the door. “It’s Saturday morning. Action is all at the auction.”
“Auction? What are they selling?”
He smiled thinly. “People.”
The auction was held at what used to be The Hard Rock Hotel. It was already in progress when I stepped in the back door. I was startled to see that several hundred people were in the crowd that was bidding on the people on the stage. A man stood at the podium—complete with working microphone—and led out as one after another “slave” was brought before the bidding audience. After watching for a few minutes I realized that most of those being sold as slaves were either young girls or boys from around age 10 to 25. I cringed as they led a girl who looked 13 onto the stage and ripped the blouse off her to show her bare skin. I bit my lip, and then decided to do something. I started forward until a hand gripped my forearm and held me back.
“Careful Faithful,” a familiar voice said. “The last guy who tried to interfere got a bullet in the head.”
I turned and saw a familiar face. It was Pilgrim. I smiled and she smiled back. But then she got serious very quickly.
“What are you doing here?”
“I was about to ask you the same thing,” I said. “I thought you’d be in your Daddy’s arms by now.”
“I was on the way to Daddy,” she said. “But then my bike died out in the desert. I hitched a ride into Vanity Fair to see if I can find another way west.” She looked at me and frowned. “If you’re intent on doing something, I think there’s a better way,” she said.
She went back out the door and I followed her down a darkened hallway. At the end I saw a sign that read: Loading Area. Two big men stood on either side of the door.
“Out there is where they keep the ‘product’ until it is their time at the auction,” said Pilgrim. “First, we take out those two guys. On the other side of those doors is a cage. It holds about 50 people. If we can get that cage open, then some of them have a chance of making it out of town.”
I nodded. “It’s worth a try.”
“There’s one more thing,” Pilgrim said. “There’s a girl there, my age. She goes by the name Ellie. Dark hair. Hispanic. She was on the manifest that they had inside. I want her saved for sure.”
I nodded again, then motioned for her to stay back while I approached the two big men. I acted like I was drunk, stumbling down the hallway, making as if I would go through the double doors. The big black man on the left with a nametag that read, “Bob” held up his hand to stop me.
“Heya Bob,” I said in a slur. “Can ya tell me where I parked my horse?”
He started to respond, but my fist caught him on the tip of the chin. Just as I suspected, he had a glass jaw and collapsed without a sound.
The other man, a clean-cut blonde with a flattop, reached for his pistol. Before he could draw it, I heard a whir and a short arrow sprouted from his chest. He looked down at it in surprise before collapsing with his partner.
Pilgrim ran up with a crossbow. I looked over at her in surprise.
She smiled. “Learned about crossbows long ago, but this was my first chance to actually shoot one.”
“Could have fooled me,” I said.
We pushed through the double doors and realized that we were in the loading dock area of the old hotel. Only one guard stood outside the metal pen that was located on top of the dock. Just as Pilgrim had said, around 50 people were sitting or standing in the pen. Pilgrim’s crossbow made quick work of the single guard. Within minutes we had the gate opened and were letting people out.
While the people filed out, Pilgrim handed me a clipboard with a list of names on it. “See anyone you know? Now’s the time.”
I scanned the list, knowing that most were young people, the only people worth selling, apparently. And then a name jumped out at me: Reba Hawley.
“That’s impossible,” I said quietly.
“What?” Pilgrim said.
“She’s here,” I said, stammering. “I thought for sure she was dead.”
“Who?”
“My wife.” I looked up at the crowd of people who were climbing down, suddenly confused. And then I spoke to the crowd.
“Anyone seen a woman—late 30s—light brown hair, got a birthmark on her left cheek?”
No one responded. And then I looked closer at the manifest. “Sold: General Despair” it read.
“She’s been sold,” I said, more to myself than to Pilgrim.
Pilgrim looked down at the manifest in my hands. “Ellie’s been sold too. To Despair as well.”
I thought quickly. “If he’s buying more than one, then he’s probably loading them onto a truck, which means they’ll probably come out this way.”
Pilgrim nodded. “We can catch them as they leave.”
We went back inside and tried to mingle with the group. Even when the two guards and the open pen were discovered and the auction broke up, we remained in the crowd. Finally, as we saw the last of the remaining slaves being led out to the loading dock, we broke from the crowd and followed them out the double doors.
I didn’t know what Pilgrim’s plan was, but she seemed to be running things, so I let her. It wasn’t until we got out to the loading dock and ran into about 50 Chinese soldiers that we realized that no plan would get us out of this mess.
Pilgrim turned to run, and I followed suit. I figured that there would be another chance to rescue Reba. But then we saw the dozen soldiers behind us, and knew that we had just run out of options. Two big Chinese soldiers in gray uniforms grabbed my arms and pulled them tight behind me. I saw two more do the same to Pilgrim. Then they pushed us through the crowd to an enormous man in a general’s uniform.
“This is her,” said a white man in a colonel’s uniform. “This is the Secretary’s daughter.”
“You are sure?” the general said.
“I should be,” he said. “She was my student for two years.”
I looked at the general, who I figured was over 300 pounds and close to seven feet tall. “I didn’t know the Chinese grew them that big.”
He frowned at me. “I’m Korean.”
I turned to the colonel. “So you’re the traitor they call Apollyon.”
“His real name is Wiseman,” said Pilgrim. “Which is awfully ironic, since he is neither wise nor in my eyes, a man.” Her eyes bore into the older man, and I felt proud of the wisp of a girl that I helped get across the Muddy.
The colonel glared at her, but said nothing. The big general chuckled with us, apparently amused at our comment.
“You must be the famous Infinity Richards,” he said finally. “After all of this time, once again we have you in our grasp. What have you been doing all of this time?”
“I’d say she kept busy,” I said. “Killing Coalition soldiers, helping decent folks feed their families, assisting me in getting guns to the Secretary’s army. Stuff like that.”
<
br /> The general smiled again. “Oh yes, the munitions train that you were trying to get to the Secretary’s army. I’m afraid it has been destroyed.”
“I saw,” Pilgrim said to the general, then turned to Apollyon. “I also saw your son Damien’s head blown off after he tried to take the train over. Sorry about that.”
The Colonel’s eyes grew wide and he lunged for Pilgrim, pulling his pistol as he moved. I was closer and knew that even though I couldn’t stop him, I had a decent job of blocking the shot. I stepped forward just as the gun went off. I felt a hot flame rip through my chest, and sagged to the ground.
The general responded by pulling out a sword—really? Who carries a sword these days?—and slashing across the throat of Apollyon. The former history teacher clutched his throat and collapsed as blood flowed freely.
I didn’t pay a lot of attention to what was going on with Wiseman, since I figured I only had a couple of minutes myself. But before I knew it, both the General and Pilgrim were standing over me. Pilgrim had a look of concern on her face, but the General seemed to just be waiting for it all to be over.
“Did you see Reba? And Ellie?” I asked Pilgrim.
She shook her head.
“Keep your eyes open for them,” I gasped. “Tell Reba that we’re still married.”
Pilgrim nodded.
“General, is it all right if Pilgrim here takes my dog for me? Hopeful doesn’t have anyone else now.”
The general frowned, then nodded.
“Don’t you go eating him now,” I said.
The general laughed. “We are a bit more civilized than that. You have my assurances that the dog will stay with Miss Richards.”
Knowing that Reba and Hopeful were taken care as best as I could considering the circumstances, I took a deep breath and relaxed.
“Funny,” I said. “I don’t feel much like dying.”
As Pilgrim smiled above me, the loading dock faded into oblivion. Back to ToC
29. THE VALE OF MEGIDDO
INFINITY: DAY 1590: WESTERN NEVADA
For the past two years, I’ve seen a lot of hardship. I’ve watched people drown, starve to death, be blown up, be shot, and be hung. But watching Faithful die was the first time I’d seen someone close to me die in front of me. It had been a pleasant surprise to run into him in Vanity Fair. But just as soon as I got used to him being there, he was gone.
I stood there with the massive General Despair, my hands still strapped behind my back, and felt totally helpless. And before I even had a chance to mourn the man who had helped me get this far on my journey, I was loaded into the back of a giant army truck and we drove out of the underground parking garage.
My truck was in the back of a caravan of four trucks. I was told to sit down on a bench seat along the back of the truck with five other girls and women of various ages. An Asian soldier sat by the tailgate, his AK-47 in hand. It was hot; the August sun had risen high in the sky, but they had rolled the sides up on the truck so that the air would get to us and keep us tolerably comfortable.
The line of vehicles turned left outside and then turned right on the Strip to head outside of town. As we passed the casino called Fatty’s, I saw a new Humvee that looked like something from the arsenal that Faithful and I had found. And when I looked closer I saw a familiar yellow dog inside it, with the window down.
“Hopeful!” I shouted. “Come on, boy!”
The soldier shouted something in Chinese, or Korean, or Indonesian. Then he yelled in English: “Silence!”
I ignored him. General Despair had promised Mack that he would let his dog come with me, and he’d lied. Now I had the chance to rescue that last living thing that Mack cared about, and I wasn’t going to fail him.
“Hopeful!” I shouted again, and saw the yellow dog jump from the open window and started chasing the truck, barking. The big soldier raised his rifle as if to shoot Hopeful. I stood and rammed my body, my arms still tied behind me, into the soldier. The gun fell out of his hands and clattered to the pavement behind us. He turned and backhanded me. I responded by ramming him again, and he fell out of the back of the truck and onto the hot pavement below.
Hopeful barked again. He ran around the soldier, who was sprawled on the street.
“Jump, boy,” I said, and the dog jumped. He caught the top of the tailgate with his front paws and tried to pull himself into the back of the truck. With my hands tied behind me, I had no way of pulling him into the truck. But two of the women in the back jumped up and helped him, grabbing him by the scruff of the neck and pulling him inside.
Hopeful seemed happy to see me, and I was happy to see him. And then, surprisingly, he completely forgot me and ran over to a woman who sat by herself in the corner. She looked at least 50, but in this age many women looked older than they were. Hopeful wagged his tail and snuggled up to her, licking her in her downturned face. The woman responded slowly, the dog’s attention stirring her out of her reverie. She reached down and put both hands on either side of the dog’s face.
“Hopeful,” she said quietly. Then I saw a smile break through on her face. A light bulb went on in my mind.
“Are you Reba?” I said. “Reba Hawley?” She looked up slowly at me, as if she were trying to recognize me.
“Do I know you?” she said.
“No,” I said. “But I knew your husband. Mack Hawley was trying to find you. He died trying to rescue you.”
She sighed. “He always was a fool.”
“He loved you,” I said. “His dying words were that I was to find you and get you out of here.”
“Still trying to rescue the world, I see,” another woman said from the other side. She was dressed in an old T-shirt and shorts. She looked vaguely familiar, but the ton of makeup she had on made it hard for me to see who it was.
“Don’t you recognize me, Finn?” she said. A rueful smile crept across her face.
“Ellie?” I said, not believing it.
“Two years is a long time out here,” she said. “You don’t look the same either. You look like some kind of mountain woman.” Her eyes tracked up and down on my tanned, weathered face and my leather and khaki hodgepodge of clothes, my utility belt and my bandolier.
“Yeah, well you look like some kind of…” My voice trailed off as I stared at my friend who looked closer to 30 than to 20.
“I look like what I am,” she said. “A whore. Like I said, two years is a long time. I did what I had to do to survive. Looks like you did too. Still looking for your father?”
I nodded. “He’s out there, closer than ever before.”
Ellie frowned. “That may be a problem. General Despair is calling all of his troops together for one final assault on Camp Zion. They say that this is the end. Now that he’s captured the infamous Infinity Richards.”
A third woman now spoke up, and I realized she was dressed in military fatigues. “You’re Infinity Richards?” I nodded. “I have a message for you.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a familiar slip of paper. She opened it up for me to see: 2-27-22-12. I marveled at my Father’s amazing and pervasive messenger system.
I didn’t need my Bible to know what the message was. Two years of carrying a Bible had given me lots of time to become familiar with it. It was one of my favorite verses and a promise from my Father. It was from Revelation 22: “Look, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to each person according to what they have done.”
I thought about the words. I thought about what I had experienced in the past four years, about what everyone had experienced. And I thought about what kind of reward my Father would bring to General Despair.
The truck ride took about two hours. We left Vanity Fair and hit flat, empty desert. When the highway started down an incline into a broad valley—what others had referred to as the Vale of Megiddo—I started to see that I was surrounded by an encampment. I looked out the side window and saw enemy soldiers, trucks, tanks, and tents that stretched to the horizo
n. Ahead of us, the mountains stood as if a barrier—and a promise—of what was to come. But the valley I was in was full of the Army of the Coalition.
The trucks drove through the encampment for quite a while. I had considered jumping out the back of the truck after we lost the soldier in the back. But at first I doubted my ability to survive in the hot desert with my hands strapped behind me. Now I realized that even if I escaped from my confinement here, I’d still be surrounded by an enormous camp of hostile soldiers.
We stopped in an area that featured two round-topped metal huts. Soldiers came to the back of the truck and helped us get out. The women and girls who were with me were led away to one of the metal huts. Hopeful followed Reba and Ellie; I was led in the other direction.
They took me into the other hut. From the outside, it looked like just another storage shed. But the inside was another story. One end was furnished to look similar to the casinos in Vanity Fair, and was apparently the living quarters of General Despair. A massive four-poster bed served as the centerpiece of the living area.
The other end of it was obviously a planning area. Computer terminals with flatscreen monitors lined one wall, and the other wall featured a massive flatscreen TV that was at least ten feet across. As I watched, it showed aerial photos of the mountains directly to the west of us.
General Despair stood talking with several officers in some Asian language, who gestured at the images they saw on the big TV screen. I could see soldiers look in the image, scurrying and clambering across mountain paths, as if they were ants protecting their nest.
“Behold Camp Zion,” General Despair said to me, raising his arm to point at the screen. “We have been looking for it for quite some time. Your father—the Secretary—is elusive. But I suspect he senses how close you are, and how close we are.
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