(Wrath-09)-Spiders From The Shadows (2013)

by Chris Stewart

  Sara smiled sadly, wishing Mary was with her now. She missed her dearly, her optimism and simple faith. “I will send a child to lead them.” There was a bond between them now that was good and strong, and it hurt Sara to think sheI want to be like younuwlyp might not see Mary and little Kelly Beth again. But something told her that she wouldn’t. Their role in her life was over. Mary and Kelly were on their own.

  Azadeh had stood up against the back wall, listening to Sam and Sara talk. Now she moved forward carefully, her eyes on Sara. Her face showed great relief at the woman’s return. Being the only female in the room was extremely uncomfortable for her, her culture and its teachings deep and strong, leaving her off balance and unsure around the three young men.

  Sam watched Azadeh move forward to stand at Sara’s side, seeing the look of relief on Azadeh’s face. Sam and his brothers had tried to be careful around her, no man jokes or “dudes” or talk of things she wouldn’t understand, but it was difficult—impossible, really—to put her at ease. There was a world between them, a world that would have been difficult to bridge under the best of circumstances. As things were, with the United States having been turned upside down and smashed on its head by an enemy that was certainly from the Middle East, it was that much more difficult for either party to really be at ease.

  Sara looked at Azadeh standing at her side and beckoned her to the window. Having spent twenty-five years as the only woman in the house, being married to a man who was nothing if not a warrior and raising three sons who were as much like their father as any sons could be, Sara immediately understood. She was first and foremost a woman, and she could see more in Azadeh’s anxious eyes than her sons would ever understand. When Azadeh didn’t move, Sara took Azadeh by the hand. Leading her to the window, Sara pulled her down beside her and they sat side by side on the floor.

  “Didn’t you learn anything?” Ammon pressed after his mother had sat down.

  Sara ignored him for a moment as she studied Azadeh’s face. She was so beautiful, with her enormous eyes and soft, brown skin. She looked—Sara didn’t know; she had to think about it. And then it came: She looked royal. Noble and imperial. “You’re lovely, Azadeh, do you know that?”

  Azadeh kept her face down as tears pooled in her eyes.

  Sara pulled her close. “It’s going to be OK,” she said.

  Azadeh tried to pull back, but Sara wouldn’t let her. “It’s going to be OK, Azadeh. It’s going to be all right. You’ve got us now. We are your family. You’re not alone.”

  Azadeh’s shoulders started shaking. A single teardrop slid from her cheek and fell silently to the floor. No one saw the falling tear but Sara, and she pulled the young woman close once more. Azadeh fell against her shoulder, hiding her face against Sara’s neck. “It’s OK . . . it’s OK,” Sara repeated again and again.

  Her sons sat silently by, dumbfounded. Where had these tears come from? They had no idea Azadeh had been feeling . . . what? They didn’t know. One moment she was smiling at them, trying to follow their conversation with her halting English; the next minute she was crying in their mother’s arms. Sam shot a look to Ammon and Luke, who only shrugged their shoulders. They remained silent for a moment until Sam knelt down and touched Azadeh on the arm. She turned to look at him, embarrassed as she pulled away from his mother’s shoulder.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered while drying her eyes. “I’m not bad. I feel not bad. I just—”

  Sara put her finger across her lips. “It@ofwlyp’s OK, Azadeh. Frankly, we all feel like crying sometimes.”

  “No kidding,” Ammon muttered from behind her. “Every time I smell Sam, I want to cry.”

  They were silent for a second; then they started to laugh. What began as mere giggles soon burst into long, deep, tension-releasing roars. Luke was rolling on the floor. Ammon bent over, holding his side. No one said anything for a moment. Sam sniffed his armpits. “Holy cow,” he said.

  Azadeh laughed the hardest, though she wasn’t even certain what they were laughing about.

  Sam looked at her, embarrassed, then sniffed himself again.

  Glancing at Azadeh, he couldn’t help but feel better. It was so good to see her smile.

  “What can you tell us, Mom?” Sam asked after they had finally settled down. “Did you learn anything at all?”

  Sara wiped her eyes a final time. “No. I really didn’t. I didn’t see or talk to anyone. Honestly, I don’t know anything more than you do.”

  “Is Secretary Marino really going to be the next president of the United States?” Ammon asked.

  Sara thought carefully. “As I understand the situation, yes, he should be.”

  “Are you certain?” Sam pressed her.

  Sara nodded in a barely perceptible movement of her head. “Near as I can tell, it’s true. But I don’t know who else is out there. None of us do. Is there someone who should be ahead of him? He tells me they’re all dead.”

  Sam took a breath and looked away. “I believe him,” he said.

  “So do I,” Sara answered. “I’ve known Brucius Marino for many years. I trust him. More importantly, way more importantly, your father trusted him. He told me many times—” She suddenly stopped. The room was quiet for a moment. “Your father and Secretary Marino met frequently over the past year or so,” she continued carefully. “Neil considered him a trusted friend.”

  Ammon slid a little closer. “Do you think we’re being listened to in here?” he asked in a hushed voice.

  Sam glanced toward the door. Sara looked surprised. “Us? Here? Of course not, Ammon,” she said. “There’s no need for them to do that. What could they possibly learn from us?”

  Sam didn’t argue as his eyes swept the room. He wasn’t nearly so sure.

  “It’s just too weird,” Ammon offered in a frustrated tone. “A month ago, yeah, sure we had our problems, but we didn’t have anything like this! Nuclear detonations over the Gaza Strip and then Israel. What’s happening over there? We don’t even know. Haven’t heard a thing. Anti-ICBMs pop up everywhere: Iran. Iraq. India. Russia. Most of Europe on hair-trigger nuclear alert. A nuclear explosion over D.C.” He paused, all of them thinking of Neil Brighton, Sara’s husband and the father of the three boys, their hearts as heavy as melted lead. “Then the EMP attack across our country. From coast to coast, it hit us all. Now there’s a struggle to save the government, a death match to see who has power. Think about that. We don’t really have a government, so many of our leaders have been killed. We don’t even know who’s in charge! For the first time in our history, two men have claimed the presidency. The entire federal government has I want to be like youor twcollapsed into shambles. I never would have dreamed it. I never could have dreamed it. Not here. Not in this country.” Ammon fell silent, exhausted at his words.

  His brothers looked at him. “Got that right, baby,” Luke said.

  Sara listened, thinking. “There’s no doubt who should be the president,” she said.

  “Are you certain, Mom?”

  “Absolutely, Ammon. Secretary Marino should be the next president, assuming there’s no one else higher in the line of succession that we don’t know about, and I don’t think that there is. Brucius would have no reason to deceive me.” She paused. “I just don’t think he would lie.” She was speaking to herself now, making her evaluation. “If there’s no one ahead of him, the Speaker of the House, the president pro tempore of the Senate, et cetera, then he’s the president. He’s certainly ahead of Fuentes—that we know for sure.”

  “Who is this Fuentes guy, anyway?” Sam sneered. “Where did he come from? Who’s ever even heard of him?”

  No one answered.

  “Is Secretary Marino—” Sam hesitated. “Is he going to go and claim the office, then? Does he have the guts to do it?”

  Sara bit her lip. “He does, and yes, he will.”

  “You’re going to help him, aren’t you, Mom?”

  Sara looked away.

  They were silen
t for a moment. Outside, they heard birds calling in the nearby trees, but it wasn’t a pleasant sound. They were large birds, dark and greasy looking, with black feathers and a constant, hungry cawing that grated on the people’s nerves. They listened, all of them thinking.

  Sam looked down at his dirty uniform, still covered with coal dust from the railroad yard back in East Chicago, mud from the ditch he’d waded through after jumping from the Air Force tanker and running through the night, a splatter of blood from when he’d tied up the shooter on the beltway that ran around Washington, D.C. A tinge of smoky scent still lingered from the fires that had been burning through the western quadrant of the city. Sniffing at his clothes, he thought back. All if it, from the first bomb over Gaza to the chaos they found themselves surrounded by now, had taken place in not much longer than a month. But it was all a blur now, the old life—the good life—a faded memory. They didn’t use to drink from dirty water. They didn’t use to worry about where their next meal was coming from. They used to sleep in beds in heated homes, drive cars, talk on cell phones. They didn’t use to panic about infection from every scratch or every upset stomach, knowing there were doctors and medicines around.

  They didn’t use to look at every passing stranger and wonder, “Will he try to kill me for my food?”

  They didn’t use to look at senior government officials and wonder, “Is this guy on our side?”

  They didn’t used to wonder if their government would survive.

  But everything was different now.

  Another day. Another world. The old one was so far gone it was hard to even remember what it had really been like. So much was different now. None of them would ever be the same.

  Sam fingered the nylon laces on his filthy leather boots. “You know@ofwlyp what today is?” he asked.

  Sara shrugged. Luke kept his head down. Ammon looked confused. “I have no idea,” he said. “I couldn’t tell you what day, what month, I’m not even sure what year it is anymore. It’s like there is no time here; it’s all just one long, never-ending circle of bad things and really weird stuff like,” he nodded to the windows, “strange birds with red eyes that look like mini-vultures waiting to swoop down and claw our eyes out.” He took a breath and laughed. “Nope, don’t know what day it is.”

  Luke looked up. “It’s Sunday,” he said.

  “Sunday,” Sara breathed. “Oh, that sounds good. I love Sundays.” She turned to Azadeh. “Sunday is our holy day,” she explained.

  Azadeh nodded, understanding. “I like Sundays, too,” she offered, hoping to please them.

  “Sunday comics,” Ammon said. “Dildog or whatever that thing was called. Man, that used to make me laugh.”

  “Sunday afternoon meant ice cream. It was the only day your dad would let you eat it, remember?” Sara said.

  “Which is why we always hid a couple of spoons in our bedrooms,” Ammon laughed, glancing at his brothers. “We’d slip down to the freezer in the basement, spoons in hand. Go through half a gallon in one night.”

  Sara smiled at them. “You know what’s really funny about that?”

  They looked at her and waited.

  “Your dad used to do the same thing.”

  Ammon stood up and pointed to his brothers. “I knew it!” he cried. “I told you guys I caught him with a spoon once. He looked so guilty standing there with a wet spoon sticking out of his shirt pocket.”

  Sara started laughing. “You want to know something else that’s funny? You guys didn’t think we knew, but we could hear you every time you snuck down there. Your voices would carry up through the heat vents. Yeah, we always knewr somewhere el

  FOURTEEN

  They gathered in a small room at the end of the hall, their chairs facing each other and only a few feet apart. Azadeh watched the others but didn’t participate, sitting slightly behind them on the floor. Sara reached for her hand and held it between the chairs.

  Sam pulled out his small military Scriptures, held them a moment then looked up at his family and cleared his throat. “I used to laugh at these,” he said. “I’m sorry to tell you that, but it’s true—I used to think it was ridiculous. I mean, come on: angels, visions and parting the sea. Dead men living. Healing the sick. But then a good friend—you’ve heard me talk about Bono—asked me a very simple question. ‘Someone had to write the Bible,’ he said. ‘I mean, you hold it in your hands. It’s there. Someone wrote it. Now the only thing you have to figure out is this: Did the men who wrote it know God?’

  “I thought about that a lot. Did ancient prophets really write those words, and did they know God, not just know of Him, but know Him?” Sam dropped his head, his voice cracking. “Now I know they did, and that gives us more power than anything else we could hope for in this world.”

  He fell silent, his eyes down to the floor, then looked up at them again. “You don’t know how many nights I have thanked God that He gave me such a family. I mean, you guys know about my mom and dad. I would have been like them. I know that. But from the first day I came to your house—and I’ll remember this forever—from that first day I was thrust into your home, you always made me feel loved. I don’t know how or why you’d do that, but I am grateful. You’re my family, and I would do anything for you.”

  His voice trailed off. No one said anything. Azadeh watched him carefully. She got only a little of what he was talking about but there was something in his words, something in his eyes, a lost look, an orphaned look, that she immediately understood.

  Sam looked at them, then bowed his head and said a short prayer. “OK, how do you want to do this?” he asked.

  They were quiet for a moment until Luke said, “Do you remember how, when we were kids and traveling, we used to say our favorite Scriptures in the car before we’d fall asleep? Let’s do that now. That can be our Sunday sermon.”

  They went around the circle, Sara going first. Sam was last. He thought a minute then told them, “I don’t have a single favorite Scripture. Mine is a series of Scriptures, but they tell the story of my life, I think. So this is how I see the Lord. This is how I see myself.”

  Sara watched him carefully, sensing this was one of those rare moments when she would get to see what was inside one of her children’s hearts.

  Sam cleared his throat again. “OK. Three things. A leper went to Jesus and begged him, ‘Lord, if thou will, thou can make me clean.’ A weeping father brought his suffering son and placed him before the Savior. ‘Heal him, Lord,’ he begged. ‘I will if youI want to be like youV7wpx; } believe,’ the Savior told him. ‘I believe, Lord,’ the father said, then he caught himself, realizing the weakness of his faith. ‘Lord, help my unbelief,’ he begged again. Last one, OK? Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a publican, the other one a Pharisee. The Pharisee stood before the others and said, ‘God, I thank thee that I am not like these other men, unjust, adulterers, sinners even as this publican.’ But the publican stood afar off and would not lift even so much as his eyes up to heaven, but beat upon his chest and cried, ‘Forgive me, God, for I am a sinner.’”

  Sam paused for a moment. The room was silent. No crying birds. No footsteps in the busy hallway.

  “That is who I am,” he concluded, his voice low as he looked at them one by one. “You know me. You know how I’ve lived. It was hard for me. I’ve always had to struggle to do the right thing. From the very beginning, I knew I wasn’t like the rest of you; I was a sinner, rebellious. I had too much of my old man inside of me, I guess.

  “Can you see what I’m saying? These Scriptures I have talked about are me: Lord, You can make me clean. Yes, I believe. I want to believe. Please, can You help my unbelief? Forgive me, Lord, forgive me, please, for I’m a sinner.

  “But that’s not the end of my favorite Scriptures. The best one, the one that gives me hope, the one that means more to me than any of the others is so clear. Romans chapter eight, verses thirty-eight and thirty-nine. It’s a keeper: “For I am sure that neither death, nor life
, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, [n]or height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

  He stopped and looked down.

  “At the end of the day, I know that’s true. I’m a sinner. We all are sinners. But God has the power to make us holy. He can make you holy. Even make me holy. And that’s the only thing that gives me hope.”

  * * * * * * *

  Luke stared at his brother, the Spirit settling like a peaceful blanket over his troubled soul. As he listened, the Spirit told him, “Everything you have been taught and believed is true. Jesus is the Christ. He is the Savior. That is the only thing that matters. Everything else will be all right.”

  And from that moment, Luke never doubted. His faith was surer than even the growing devastation and evil all around him. He could feel Lucifer’s expanding power, but he realized the Savior’s light was still more powerful. Luke felt a reassurance that God knew them and cared for them and wouldn’t stay His hand.

  The words of a prophet suddenly came to his ears. He didn’t know which prophet it was, he didn’t know when he’d heard the phrase or even that it was buried somewhere in his mind, but the Spirit brought the message in words he couldn’t miss. “My dear friends, you are a royal generation. You were preserved to come to earth in this time for a special purpose. Not just a few of you, but all of you. There are things for each of you to do that no one else can do as well as you.”