by Alex Grecian
7
Skottie’s flashlight went dark, leaving her in the pitch black of the church hall. She checked the switch, pushing it in with her thumb three or four times, but it was dead. She clipped it to her belt and waited for her eyes to adjust.
What if Maddy wasn’t even in the compound?
She pushed the thought out of her mind. She would scour the church for her daughter and, if Maddy wasn’t there, she would move on to the next logical place and search it. She would keep looking until she found her.
The building appeared to be deserted. She had gained entrance through the unlocked front door and gone through the vestibule to a long hall with a red carpet, just as Travis had described. From there, it had been slow moving, stopping to check each empty office along one wall, then doubling back and checking the rooms along the other side of the passage.
She heard people yelling outside, and she hoped Travis and the sheriff hadn’t been caught. She rolled her shoulders to loosen the tension in her neck, then adjusted her grip on the Glock and moved to the next office along the hall.
8
Goodman lifted a machine gun from one of the crates and hefted it. “I’m thinking if Maddy’s alive, she’s over there in the church,” he said. “And these guys are gonna figure out we’re still in here and come lookin’ any old time now.”
“I would prefer we not shoot our way out.”
“You’re not a real fun guy, Doc.”
“I am a fun guy. This is not a fun situation.”
“You go help Skottie look for her girl. I’m gonna create a distraction.”
Travis considered arguing, but he agreed with Goodman’s logic. Their phones and radios were dead. Skottie was cut off in the church. The longer they spent searching, the greater the odds they would be caught. Once that happened, the chance of finding Maddy alive would plummet.
“If I can get to that truck, will it still run?” Goodman said.
Travis shook his head. “It would have to be a Faraday cage. Clearly it is not.”
“You ever get tired of me asking what you’re talking about?”
“It would have to have been altered to withstand the pulse, but it has a canvas top. At this point it is as useful as your nephew.”
“It might still make decent cover.” He patted the stock of the machine gun. “You see any clips for this thing?”
They hunted quickly through the crates until they found ammunition for the Kalashnikov. Goodman slid the safety lever up and inserted a magazine into the weapon, then took three more clips and stuffed them in his pockets. The sound of voices outside the garage grew louder as Heinrich’s men returned.
“Follow me as soon as you can,” Travis said. “Try not to get killed.”
“Beer’s on me when this is over.” Goodman flipped the gun’s safety back down.
“I will hold you to that promise.”
They flattened themselves against the wall on either side of the opening. Goodman took a deep breath, then ducked and launched himself out across the crumpled tin door. His hat fell off and tumbled down the corrugated slope. He fired off a burst from the Kalashnikov that sent up a spray of mud and ice, then scrambled to his feet and grabbed his hat before heading toward the basketball court.
Travis waited a minute for the brown shirts to give chase, then slipped out through the gaping hole in the wall and sprinted for the church. Bear loped ahead of him, then circled back and got ahead again, keeping pace. The sky was a deep silky purple at the edges of the cloud cover. Fat raindrops spattered on Travis’s face. The world went silent for a split second as lightning flashed across the sky, and then came the rolling drumbeat of thunder.
Goodman was running in a zigzag pattern, going the opposite direction, using short bursts from the gun to tear up divots of grass. One of the brown shirts caught up and grabbed the end of Goodman’s flapping shirttail, but the sheriff bashed him with the butt of his gun and the man went down in a heap, blood spurting from his nose. When Goodman reached the basketball court, he dove behind the truck, then clambered up on the hood, and fired another burst into the air. Everyone except Travis stopped in their tracks and looked up at him.
“You all know who I am,” he said. “And you know I mean business, so drop your guns and raise your hands high.”
Travis kept going. As he drew close to the church doors, he could hear the church’s flags rippling above him and a rope banging against the solid metal flagpole. A tall woman, the skin of her face drawn tight against her skull, stepped around the corner and raised a handgun at him. Her fingernails were painted bright red. Bear leapt forward and Travis raised his Eclipse, but he knew they were reacting too late. An instant before the woman could pull the trigger, her head exploded in a soft plummy mess of gray and red. The woman toppled forward, her gun skittering away under a hedge.
Travis looked for Quincy up on the cell tower, but the rain was coming down harder. He waved in the right direction, knowing the deputy could see him through his rifle scope, then turned and ran to the church.
9
Skottie was coming out of the last office at the end of the passage when the door to the vestibule opened, a black rectangle in the deeper darkness. She raised her Glock and pointed it down the length of the hall. Something nudged her leg and she jumped, startled. She reached down and felt a familiar furry mane under her hand. Bear snorted into her palm.
“Skottie?” Travis said from somewhere. “Skottie, it is me.”
She lowered her gun. “You didn’t find her?”
Travis entered and let the door shut behind him. “No.”
“None of the lights are working in here, and my flashlight’s dead, too.”
Travis filled her in on what they had found.
“So Maddy’s not out there,” Skottie said. “And she’s not in any of these rooms here.”
“That gives us only one direction in which to go.”
They were little more than silhouettes moving through the murk, but as their eyes continued to adjust, they were able to pick out details. Travis pointed to the series of framed photos as they drew near the double doors that led to the nave.
“Pride goeth before a fall.”
“Why isn’t there anybody in here?”
“Too much going on out there,” Travis said. “But Rudolph is here. I feel sure of it.”
They stood sideways and pulled the doors open, keeping themselves close to the walls on either side, presenting minimal targets for anyone in the nave. Bear looked to Travis for a signal, and when Travis crooked his index finger at him, the dog charged silently through into the church. Travis and Skottie followed him. Tall candles lined the center aisle, flicking shadows at the stone walls around them. A man stood alone at the far end of the room, resting his hands on the edge of the podium as if about to give a homily.
“Welcome, friends,” Heinrich said.
10
The hardest thing Ransom had ever done was to walk from the outbuilding, down around the swimming pool and the far corner of the church, and out to the parking lot. When he started, it was still dark. There had been a few early risers in the compound, perimeter guards and cooks preparing breakfast, but no one had questioned him. They were used to Rudy’s experiments, people like Kenny who showed up out of nowhere and disappeared as quickly as they had come. All of these poor creatures moved erratically and spoke slowly, if at all, so Ransom’s presence there wasn’t unusual.
By the time he had reached the green van with its bloodred spots, Ransom had lost what little control he had over himself. It was hard to remember how to move his arms and legs, and muscle memory was slipping away. He had rested for a while, sitting with his back against the van, and then spent another long while standing back up, working the key fob and opening the door. He fell with his upper body and head on the driver’s seat, the door still open, and then drifted into sleep.
When he woke up, the sun was rising and he could hear shouting across the compound. A soft rain was coming down, pattering gently against the van’s metal roof. Ransom grabbed the other side of the bucket seat and pulled himself up behind the wheel. He sat for a few minutes, getting his breath, mustering his energy, then maneuvered the key ring in his hand until he was holding the key by its base. Unable to bend down and look, he stabbed blindly out in the direction of the steering column and managed to insert the key in the ignition on his first try.
He took a moment to savor this small victory, then began the process of turning the key. The engine chugged, then died. He held his breath and worked the muscles in his shoulders, down his arm, clasped his fingers together. He turned the key again. The van made a sickly rasping sound, then chugged harder and shuddered to life.
Ransom smiled and began the painstaking process of putting the van in reverse.
11
“All we ever wanted was to be left alone,” Heinrich said. The golden lightning bolt fastened to the altar loomed huge behind him. “All you had to do was let my father live out the rest of his days in peace.”
“Bear,” Travis growled. “Ataku!”
Bear leapt silently forward, moving fast and sure up the red carpet toward the altar.
“No!” Heinrich ducked behind the podium and came back up with a Kalashnikov identical to the guns being stored in his garage. “Call the dog off!”
But he didn’t wait for Travis to obey. He fired off a burst that tore up the carpet and splintered the sides of several pews, but missed Bear by at least a foot.
“Bear, haltu!” Travis said. “Preta.”
“‘Preta’?” Heinrich said.
“Tell my friend where she can find her daughter, and tell me where my father is.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Dr. Roan. You have no leverage here. Please put your pistol down. And you, lady, drop your gun and lay down those rifles you’ve got on your back.”
Travis and Skottie glanced at each other, and Travis shook his head. Bear was still too far away from the podium. There was no chance. The two of them laid down their handguns, and Skottie unslung her rifles, set them on the floor.
“Kick them away from you.”
“Why are you doing this?” Skottie said.
“Doing what? You came into my home.”
“After you came to mine,” Skottie said. “Give me my daughter back.”
“I didn’t take her.”
“You ordered Deputy Puckett to do it,” Travis said. “You are responsible for that and for countless other crimes, including slavery and weapons dealing.”
“You want to know what I’m responsible for?” Heinrich said. “I turned a freak show into a profitable enterprise. Do you know how much this church made last year? How much we’re predicted to make by the end of this year?”
“But at what cost?”
Heinrich moved the machine gun away from Bear, pointing it at Travis.
“I didn’t make this place,” he said. “But I took my father’s demented hobby and made it work. Everything I’ve done is for the good of this town and this county. I provide jobs, I provide infrastructure. My father’s not going to live forever, and I’m all these people have. They need me.”
“Your brother was right about you,” Travis said.
“Enough,” Heinrich said. “I didn’t want to kill you, because that’s gonna cause a lot of problems, a lot of attention. But I don’t really see that I have much choice at this point.”
He pulled the trigger and fired another burst that went wide over their heads. Skottie and Travis both ducked and scrambled for cover behind a pew.
“Ataku!”
Heinrich raised the Kalashnikov again, but stopped and turned away as a sound like thunder rocked the church. An engine roared and tires squealed as the wall behind the altar bulged inward and broke, stones crumbling and wooden studs splintering. Heinrich backed away and fell against the podium. Through a new hole in the wall, they could see the chrome grille and bright green hood of a van. The window above them, with its depiction of an electrifying tempest, came out of its casing whole, plummeted to the floor, and shattered into a thousand glittering pieces. Rain arrowed in at them through the perfect round hole above, life imitating art. The van disappeared as the driver backed it up, then slammed forward at the wall again, smashing all the way through. It hung up on the shattered remains of the wall, its tires spinning three feet above the ground on a stony ledge. The engine ground as the driver tried to back away, and the van bucked up and down, but couldn’t get enough traction to break free.
The iconic lightning bolt above the altar trembled.
“Heinrich!” Travis stood and waved his hands. He pointed at the altar. “Move!”
Heinrich looked up just as the bolt tore free from its base. It toppled over on him and continued down to the floor, where it broke apart. When the dust settled, Heinrich lay bleeding but conscious, grabbing feebly at the carpet.
Bear turned in a circle and sat down, craning his neck so that he could see Travis, looking for some kind of assurance.
Travis grabbed his Eclipse off the floor and ran past the dog, kicking the Kalashnikov under a pew. When he got to the wall, he jumped up on the front bumper of the van and scrambled over the hood and out into the compound. The engine was still grinding, the tires still spinning, kicking up wet sod and mud in a diminishing spray. Several parishioners were approaching the van from behind, but they were moving cautiously. The driver’s-side door was swinging loose on its hinges, and crushed glass from the windshield littered the shrubbery.
Behind him, Travis could see Skottie inside the church, leaning over Heinrich. She stood up and shouted something, but he couldn’t hear her over the sound of the engine.
“What?” Travis shouted.
“He said she’s in the basement! They have her down there!”
“Go. Take Bear.”
She nodded and disappeared from sight.
Travis pulled the van’s door free and stuck his gun in at the driver, but the familiar figure hunched over the steering wheel didn’t move. Travis stepped around to the back of the van where the doors were hanging open. Inside, drawers and cabinets installed around the walls of the van had come open, spilling medical supplies and tools. The windows had been covered on the inside with sheets of black metal, and there were manacles bolted to the floor. Whatever evil purposes the vehicle had once been used for, it had been altered in such a way that it had resisted the EMP effect.
Travis went back to the cab and pushed Ransom’s head off the steering wheel. He got his father under the arms and pulled him out of the van. As soon as Ransom’s foot came off the accelerator, the tires stopped spinning and the van went quiet. Travis gathered his father up like a sleeping child.
A man in a brown shirt came running at him across the grass. Travis saw him from the corner of his eye and pivoted, driving his elbow into the man’s throat. Ransom’s limp body threw Travis off and he adjusted his stance as the brown shirt went down on one knee, his hands coming up in an effort to ward off the next blow. Travis kicked him in the face. The man twitched once and went still, his chest rising and falling steadily. Travis could feel blood pounding against his skull, hear it throbbing behind his ears. He stepped backward, resisting the urge to keep going, to grind the unconscious man into the mud. He closed his eyes and concentrated on his breathing, on the cool raindrops sliding down his face.
When he could think clearly, he carried Ransom back inside the church, laid his father on a pew, and checked for a pulse. It was weak. Ransom’s body was unnaturally still; it lacked the subtle signs of life, the tiny shudder of straining muscle, the rise and fall of the diaphragm, the flutter of eyelashes. Ransom had always been proud of his wardrobe: his bespoke suits, monk strap shoes, and the tiny martini-glass tie tack with its emerald oliv
e that Arletta had given him on their fifth anniversary. Now he wore a University of Kansas sweatshirt and dirty track pants. White stubble had replaced Ransom’s long silver hair.
Travis touched the odd crescent-shape wound on his father’s temple. He recognized it as the same injury Margaret Weber had suffered before she had been put in the lake, and he realized that the first time he had spoken with Heinrich Goodman in the church nave, Ransom must have been nearby enduring pain and torture.
Travis put his hand on Ransom’s chest and whispered, “I am sorry, Father. Perhaps Judah would have found you in time. Mi malsukcesis.”
There was a clatter of rock and metal. Deputy Griffith scrambled over the hood of the van and jumped down onto the wet red carpet.
“Hey, my radio died,” he said. “I figured I better come in.” He looked around. “Damn, this place is ruined.”
Travis wiped his eyes and stood, broken glass crunching under his boots, the carpet squelching. The lightning bolt sculpture had ripped the altar apart and smashed the podium, but Heinrich was nowhere to be seen. The Kalashnikov no longer lay where Travis had kicked it.
He moved toward the open door next to the altar, his grief and anger forced aside by a jolt of adrenaline. At least, he thought, Skottie had Bear with her.
“Hey!” Quincy pointed at Ransom’s unmoving body. “Who’s that? Is he okay?”
Travis turned around. “That is my father. And, no, I do not think he is okay.”
“Lemme take a look, amigo.”
Quincy knelt on the floor in front of the pew and unbuttoned Ransom’s shirt.
“Have you had training as a paramedic?” Travis said.
“A few basic courses the sheriff made us take.” Quincy looked up at him, and Travis saw that the skin around his eyes was dark and swollen. “You know, I killed that lady out there.”