There was nothing more to do. He walked across the sacristy and opened the door, which he had closed on his way in, and stepped into the church.
An unpleasant surprise awaited him.
Bev was in an open space in the aisle and someone was behind her and had his arm around her neck, holding a pistol to her head. And the parts of his clothing Jim could see were gray. This was a Reject, up close and personal.
“Drop the hardware, big boy,” he said in a gravelly voice, “or I’ll put this sexy lady’s brains on the ceiling of this church, which would be a shame.”
Jim hesitated, but then he felt something behind him: a muzzle on his neck.
“Do what he says, or your brains will join hers,” a man with a high-pitched voice said.
Jim laid down his AK-47, and he felt his Glock being torn out of his belt. Bev’s gun was nowhere in sight. She looked very scared, and Jim was surprised. It was a very bad situation, but he wouldn’t have bet she’d act like this when in this type of situation. He had thought she was tougher than that.
He himself was very calm. Jim knew this attitude was invaluable in bad situations, though all it was was the ability to see and think clearly despite being in imminent danger of losing your life. It could lead to solutions to problems where nothing seemed possible.
“Tie him up,” Gravelly Voice said, “then we’ll get to the first order of business.”
“What’s that? “Jim said.
“Having sex in church for the first time,” Gravelly Voice said, “with both of you.” For a moment, Jim heard guttural laughter, and then he saw stars. He had been hit in the head from behind, and he fell to the floor. But adrenaline was surging and he knew that if he did not stay conscious he and Bev were dead. Bev had been released by the man. They knew that managing a woman was easy.
“You should have gone to confession,” the man behind him said. And both men laughed heartily. The other was also dressed in gray—another Reject. “That’s where we were.”
“Did you find that little family in the closet?” Gravelly Voice said.
“Yes,” Jim said.
“They believed in God,” Gravelly Voice continued.
“Do you believe in God?” High Voice asked Jim.
“Yes,” Jim said. Maybe, Jim thought, if he answered in the negative he could begin to talk his way out of the situation, but probably not. But he knew he had to tell the truth.
“I don’t believe in God!” Bev screeched. “I don’t believe. Look at what God has done to the world.”
“Our feelings exactly,” Gravelly Voice said. “But I want to see something.”
With that, Gravelly Voice reached down Bev’s shirt, grasped something and pulled it out, and held it up. It was a thin gold chain and, dangling, light reflecting off it, a cross.
“And this,” Gravelly Voice said, “is evidence of how much you hate God, right?”
Both Rejects laughed heartily.
“Well, don’t worry,” High Voice said, “me and my partner are going to give you plenty of opportunity to get down on your knees and adore Him.”
For a moment, Gravelly Voice didn’t get it, but then he did and laughed heartily as well.
“Just take me with you,” Bev pleaded, “then you can have me all the time.”
“I don’t know,” Gravelly Voice said.
On the floor on his belly, listening to this, Jim was appalled, but some part of him wondered. Could he have been that wrong about Bev? Was she that cowardly? I guess, he thought, you never know people until it comes down to their survival. Still . . .
Jim looked up at her as the Reject behind him started to tie him up. He caught Bev’s eye. Her face was terrified and pleading, but there was a faraway look in her eyes, as if she was thinking about something else.
Jim calculated what he might do. But there weren’t many options.
Then he was aware that Bev was falling forward, as if fainting, and he shouted, but her fall seemed controlled and then her hands contacted the floor and faster than his eye could follow, she whirled on her head like a break-dancer and her foot smashed first in the head of the gravelly-voiced Reject, and before the other could react he, too, had been smashed in the head by a high-powered kick. Jim was amazed. The central fact was that within milliseconds both men were on the floor and he saw that one was unconscious, the other semiconscious, and both of their weapons had gone clattering away harmlessly.
Jim was on his feet in seconds with renewed vigor, and he ran over and picked up one of the AK-47s and whirled. Speed, he saw, was not necessary. The Rejects were still sprawled on the floor, one still unconscious, the other semiconscious, neither with any ability to get up.
Jim looked at Bev. Her demeanor, which had been of a young woman about to be raped and pleading for mercy, was now calm and hard. It occurred to Jim that the safest place for these jerk-weeds was the floor.
“What the hell was that?” Jim asked. “Some kind of karate?”
“No,” she said softly, “it’s a defensive move within the art of ninjutsu, which is not karate. Karate emphasizes the physical. Ninjutsu is a marriage of mind and body.”
“So your pleading with them was an act.”
“I was scared. But ninjutsu teaches you to understand that fear, takes it into account and teaches you to use it, to direct the power within yourself and the universe into your hand or foot or arm or head—whatever you intend to use.”
Jim shook his head.
“What’s next?” Bev asked.
“Why don’t you check around outside? I’ll be out in a minute.”
“What are you going to do with them?”
“I don’t know.”
“Okay, I’ll see you outside.”
Jim watched Bev as she walked to and disappeared into the foyer, then he turned his attention back to the gray-uniformed duo sprawled on the floor. He did, in fact, know what he was going to do with them. It had occurred to him when he opened the walk-in closet and seen the butchered family there, and it was also an outgrowth of something that Ben Raines had said in the SUSA. And he knew he wasn’t going to hesitate.
Jim pulled a knife from a scabbard on his belt. It was a wicked-looking knife, one that U.S. SEALs used. It had a six-inch blade with the serrated part on the cutting edge one and a half inches from the tip. Jim kept it so sharp he could give himself a close shave without soap and water.
He leaned over the gravelly-voiced man who was semiconscious and then Jim swung his arm in a vicious arc and ran the blade across his neck, almost taking his head off with the depth of the cut, cutting halfway through the spinal column, then leaped out of the way to escape the gushing blood. He did the same to the other man, and he did it with the same efficiency and proficiency that he might use in butchering a deer, except he had never felt the same rage he felt now. He looked dispassionately at them. Now, he thought, they would never rape and kill again.
He wiped the knife clean on one of the men’s shirt, avoiding the spurting bright red blood as he did, then replaced the knife in its sheaf and walked outside. Bev was just completing her reconnoiter.
“That was fast,” she said.
“Yep.”
“What’d you do?”
“I’ll tell you on the way,” he said.
SEVEN
Jim and Bev continued to head north, going deeper into Wyoming. As before, Jim took one of the safer county roads. They did not speak for ten miles, even though both knew that there were things to discuss. Finally, Jim said: “I guess you want to know what happened at the church?”
‘Yes,” Bev said, “I do.”
“I killed them both. Let me tell you why.”
He then detailed the horror show he had found in the sacristy, and how he wanted “to make sure that the duo did not kill again.”
“I figured you did,” she said.
“I didn’t give it much thought. It was the only thing to do.”
Jim paused.
“By the way,” he said,
“I want to thank you for saving my life.”
Bev laughed.
“All in a day’s work.”
Jim laughed. Then: “I was wondering,” he said. “How come your father allowed you to learn this empty-hand combat? You’re the daughter of a preacher. Didn’t he preach against violence?”
“This is the first time I ever used it to harm anybody, and I hope it’s the last.”
“How did you ever get into it?”
“Like I said, I was raised in Japan. There I met a relative of Dr. Masaki Hatsumi, of Noda, Japan, a thirty-fourth-generation ninja of the Togakure Ryu, a ninjutsu style founded in approximately 1550 in the Iga Province near Kyoto, which was the capital of Japan then.”
“Ninja. I thought they were all criminals, or just existed in comic books.”
“That’s a misconception. There are some criminal types, but most are good people. And they certainly do exist.”
“Why were you interested in it?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t like dolls. Empty-hand combat was just part of it.”
Jim laughed.
“Actually,” Bev said, “I liked the spirituality of it all.”
“What was that shout you made?”
“That’s what is known at the ‘ki’ or ‘kiai’ or ‘spirit shout.’ It’s used by ninja as well as other martial artists in empty-hand fighting. It’s a natural release of breath and noise that accompanies the expending of physical and mental energy. The Togakure masters compare the sounds ninja make to the sounds dogs make when growling and barking while fighting, or the yell used at the moment of lifting something heavy, such as weightlifters use.”
“Amazing.”
There are other yells too, attacking shouts, victory shouts, discovery shouts . . . and the highest form of kiai is the internal shout of what is known as ‘silent kiai’—a low, rumbling growl . . . of vibrations so low in pitch that they’re inaudible.”
“What else do you know?”
“Weapons. Everything a ninja knows.”
“Like what?”
“Oh, I can throw a shuriken—”
“That’s the star, right?”
“Yes.”
“I can handle a bo and jo—sticks—as well as the kurisgama, which is a weighted chain, and much more.”
“I really am amazed.”
“But I think the most interesting thing I was taught was the art of invisibility.”
“How does that work?”
“Well, I didn’t practice all of them, but some I did.”
“Like what?”
“Well, first of all there’s the night. The ninja were taught how to stay invisible in it, but all the ground and plants—”
“Like?”
“It’s called do-ton jutsu, or earth techniques, where you learn how to hide yourself and your gear among rocks or uneven ground. For example, we were taught how to shape our bodies like natural or man-made objects, such as boulders or statues, which are undetectable in darkness. There’s also moku-ton jutsu, wood and plant techniques, involving hiding in trees and foliage or tall grass. I was also taught how to hide underground.”
“Underground?”
“Yes, you bury yourself completely except for bamboo snorkels. You can imagine,” Bev said laughing, “how disconcerting it would be for a guard to be walking along and then see someone come up out of the ground at him.”
“I can imagine.”
There’re also techniques for hiding in a house. The one I liked best was the one where a ninja could climb up near a ceiling and brace him- or herself . . . People never look up when they come into a room.”
“By the way, do you have a black belt in ninjutsu?”
“I’m way past that. There are only a few other people in America who rose to my level. I’m one of the few people in America to be allowed to establish and promote the Togakure style in this country.”
“Wow. I better steer clear of you.”
Bev smiled.
“That’s right,” she said.
Jim looked at her. He knew that their relationship had gotten a couple of notches deeper, something that tends to happen when someone saves your life, or may depend on you for his or her life. He had heard once that when male and female cops rode in a radio car together the chance of them having sex was almost one hundred percent. Now he understood that totally.
They were quiet for a while.
“I was wondering,” Jim said. “How, ultimately, are the Rejects going to be controlled?”
“I don’t know,” Bev said. “Since the wars and the plague and all the chaos that’s been released, the American Constitution means nothing because it cannot be backed up with force.”
“So what is going to happen?”
“I think until some sort of stable government is created the chaos is going to continue.”
“What do you mean by stable?”
“Fair. That’s what’s wrong with the Believer philosophy. It’s unfair, therefore it ultimately won’t work.”
“I agree with that, “Jim said. “And what you said is exactly what Ben Raines would say.” Jim paused. Then: “The calamities didn’t shake my family’s faith.”
“Nor mine. So that’s two out of three or four billion. Add it up, Jim.”
Jim came to a crossroads and slowed the HumVee, then stopped. The land was flat sagebrush country, the powder-blue sky cloudless and immense. Wyoming was either mountains or desert—and the big sky. The only sky that was bigger than Wyoming’s as well as the other states was Montana, which was due north.
“You want to continue north,” he questioned, “or go east, west?”
“You’re driving,” Bev said.
Jim reached over and took one of the maps that Ben Raines had given him and examined it carefully.
“North, of course, will take us into Yellowstone. We have a couple of roads we can take there that will keep us off 191.”
“Suits me,” Bev said. “I’ve always wanted to see Old Faithful. Hope it’s still gushing.”
“I don’t think fanatics are going to stop it,” Jim said.
“In fact,” Bev said, “Yellowstone Geyser is a miracle that some people look on as proof of God’s existence.”
“Isn’t there a name for that? I mean people who believe that the wonders of the universe are proof of the existence of God.”
“Pantheism,” Bev said.
“We got a lot of stuff around here that would make you believe that. As long as I’ve lived in this country, there are still sights that take my breath away.”
“Japan is also beautiful,” Bev said, “and when we settled in Salt Lake City, of course, the beauty was incredible. All those weird colored rock formations, like in Arches National Park. You ever been there?”
“Yep. I went down to see the mountains once, and the salt lake.”
“Yeah. People think that Utah is all desert, but they have a bunch of mountains that are thirteen thousand feet high.”
Jim nodded.
“I just rode through some of it.”
“The city itself is beautiful,” Bev said. “I used to love to drive up into the mountains. From certain points on the road you could see the entire city, complete with all its lights, laid out. It reminded me of diamonds laid on black velvet.”
“That’s pretty poetic.”
“I call ’em as I see ’em.”
“Listen,” Jim said, “after seeing what you could do in that church and what you’ve been telling me, I’m not going to disagree with you in any way!”
Bev laughed.
They continued to drive north. Meanwhile, Bev worked the radio dial, which was on the AM band. She stayed at it a while and got nothing, finally turning off the radio in frustration.
“What happened to all the network people?” Jim asked. “What happened to the major networks in New York and Los Angeles? The satellites are still up there.” He automatically pointed upward. “And will be for years. Major cities were not destroyed
in the Great War, nor did everyone die of the plague. The networks stayed on the air until a few weeks ago. Then they just stopped broadcasting. What happened?”
“I heard the newspeople got sick and died, they got scared and ran off, the cities exploded in religious violence and they couldn’t get to work, or a combination of these things—take your pick. The Rejects killed them or scared everyone off,” Bev said. “Or . . .” She paused.
“Or what?”
“Or they joined the Rejects.”
Jim nodded. He believed her. Some people would do anything to survive, from selling their children into prostitution to turning their mothers in to the authorities. It had happened over and over again in history.
“Yes,” Bev said, “survival is everything to most people.”
“No question,” Jim said. “The urge, the absolute need to survive is so strong . . . You know what the most dangerous person you can face is?”
“No,” Bev said, “what?”
“Someone who doesn’t care if they live or die. That person is very dangerous.”
“No question,” Bev said.
When they were about fifteen miles from the church, and out of the desert and tooling through the forest, Jim got another surprise—this one pleasant. There was a Mobil gas station virtually in the middle of nowhere, and the pumps worked, and here were no cadavers around, or live people for that matter. In a way it was bizarre, as if he and Bev had started out some Sunday afternoon, taken a back road, and then decided to stop at this off-the-beaten-track gas station.
Jim filled up the tank, as well as the empty five-gallon gas cans in the bed of the HumVee, and topped off the oil, storing a couple of extra cases in the bed of the vehicle.
“I’d love to discard these gas cans,” Jim said, “but it’s not likely that I will. There will be fewer and fewer gas stations as we travel farther north.”
Bev nodded.
“The one thing that I don’t need,” Jim said, “is what gas stations commonly have, a mechanic. With all the farming and other motorized equipment we had around us I’ve been working on internal-combustion engines since I was knee-high to a spark plug. Because anyone who lives in the wilderness with the nearest mechanic a hundred miles away must learn. And as it happened I tuned up this little baby a couple of days before I met you, so we should be in good shape. Since it gets such low gas mileage you have to keep it well tuned.”
Survivor (The Ashes Book 36) Page 8