The Lost City

by Carrie E. Gruhn

  “It’s all right.” I spoke, surprised that my voice was loud enough to have reached to the ears of these restless men. I offered Lilah my hand, and puzzled she gave it. So we stood, united against those who opposed her and I began to speak. “I know a little of what happened while I was outside. Lilah told you that she came from Paul and that he wishes her to be put in command of the defense work, here. She is a woman but that does not lessen the fact that she knows more about Paul’s plans than perhaps anyone else. You see she helped get this ready for us. From the very first Paul took her into his confidence. Together they brought the stores we found here or superintended the bringing of them. They mapped and plotted out the whole course of action because her ideas have been good and she and Paul worked together well. Now for some reason Paul feels danger is drawing near to us and since he could not leave the work out there he sent Lilah to carry on here.” I faltered, not quite sure what to say more.

  “We’ll grant you that the girl helped Paul get this place ready. The guards who were put at the gates to pass on us agreed to that part all right. But what about her work with Damon?” The question was put coldly.

  I lifted my chin defiantly. “Paul worked with Damon, too. In fact they were both part of the group who brought about his rise. Paul deeply regretted his part in that and has done everything to undo it—you know that!” Begrudgingly some of the men who knew Paul nodded, but the others were still incredulous. I bit my lip scarcely knowing what to say next. “Paul and Lilah were working on this place before Damon came. For a while it was stopped, but all the time Paul could not feel sure that it might not still be needed, so he never completely let go of it. You know that the only reason he is not here now is because he felt he had to go out and lead others to come here, first of all directing them to the Messiah!”

  Another man stirred restlessly then blurted out, “Do you mean this Paul you are talking about is the same Paul that brought me to see the Messiah under Damon’s very nose?”

  “Probably. At any rate he thought it more important to go out there to tell others of Jesus than to stay here and be safe or to help keep us safe. Besides he knew he had others who could carry on and Lilah is the one he thought best to send to us.”

  The men stirred uneasily and I could almost read their thoughts as they weighed my inadequate appeal. I longed again for Lilah’s clarity of thought, her cleverness to voice what she thought. She squeezed my hand and I knew that she felt more confidence than before I had come, so perhaps they would listen after all. One man moved into a shadowed corner beckoning the others to him. They huddled in a tight group away from our hearing. I became tense; every muscle ached until Lilah shook me and pulled her hand loose. I saw then that she had been as tense as I, but she went about breaking up the tenseness by moving around, putting a book in place here and settling a curtain against the box walls there, as if completely unconcerned by the discussion at the far end of the room.

  “Aren’t you afraid they won’t give in?” I whispered as she came past me. She gave me a smile which was more a grimace and shrugged her shoulders.

  “I did think so but now that you’ve come on my side I think they will listen.”

  The group of men broke and came to stand as if reluctant to waste time sitting.

  “Okay. Maybe all you say is right but we want proof that Paul sent her. We admit that we are all more or less in the dark as to the best course of action in case of real trouble. If the Doctor were here we’d not question his right to tell us what to do. So, if he sent her we can afford to take orders from her, too—if he sent her!” Thus slowly, clearly the spokesman enunciated their doubts and my heart sank.

  “You can prove that he sent you?” I asked Lilah. She answered by another expressive shrug of her slim shoulders.

  “I brought a letter from him. They read it but it didn’t seem to make any difference.”

  “Anyone can write letters! You say that the doctor wrote it. Perhaps he did but until we know for certain we have no other choice than to believe that it could as easily be a forgery.” The spokesman pronounced his ultimatum firmly but not unkindly. Nevertheless, what he said was undeniably true.

  For a moment my heart beat wildly. Why had I not thought of that? Of course it was true that anyone could write a letter, in fact several letters! That would mean that the love letter could be a forgery, too! Dismally I knew that my hope was false. Even as I knew that the letters I had read could not possibly have been forgeries I also knew that I could furnish the proof they wanted. I trembled before the knowledge, not only from a momentary return of the jealous, selfish wish to refuse Lilah help but from dismay at having to reveal my inmost secret heart to these men, many complete strangers to me—all of whom I had met only recently. Reluctantly I reached into my pocket and drew forth the letters, thankful that I had not destroyed them in heartbreak and despair. I saw Lilah start and her hand instinctively snatched at the love-letter then fell slowly to her side as I pretended not to see. I heard her breath catch in her throat and I knew that she was suddenly shaken by fear and contrition at the accident that had given away her secret to me.

  “Paul wrote a letter to me, too. I—I would not have shown it to you but for the proof that it contains.” I suddenly could not read it aloud myself but handed it to the spokesman and waited while he slowly read it through.

  “But you have given me the wrong letter—this one is from one who signs himself Isaac.”

  “That signature is part of the proof I mentioned.” I knew that my voice was barely audible. “No one but Paul and I knew about—about Rebekah—and Isaac—and the field. It was a sort of secret pretending between just ourselves. So I know he did write the letter—and he asked me to help Lilah. I know that he wrote that letter because it had meaning only for me. I think perhaps he signed it Isaac so I would be sure it was from him and no one else.”

  “You are absolutely sure that no one else knew about this game or whatever it was between you and your husband?”

  “Absolutely sure. My mother might have known a little about my part, the Rebekah part, but she would not have known about Isaac—certainly not about the field.” Then I gasped for there had been another who knew about the field—and about Rebekah, too—Dal! But he could not have used his knowledge to forge a letter. He had vanished before Paul’s eyes. So there was no one left who could possibly know.

  “I hope you will accept our apologies, Commander.” The spokesman saluted a little wryly and Lilah accepted the apology and the appointment as graciously as the queen she looked to be.

  I could not take my eyes away from her shining eyes, her proudly held head with its black gleaming hair that was like a velvet cap gem-lighted in the lamp-light. I was not surprised that Paul loved her. I had seen her when she was all scorn and arrogance but tonight she seemed humbly regal, as if she accepted the post, for which she had been fighting, reluctantly knowing how great was the responsibility. I had cause to hate her but I could not envy, no, nor hate her for I glimpsed a darkness in her eyes, a twist to her smile that hinted at unhappiness—from despair. She had not meant that I would know her secret yet; now I knew hers—she knew mine.

  25

  STRANGER WITHIN THE GATE

  IN THE DAYS THAT FOLLOWED Lilah’s acceptance, as director of our city of refuge, events followed so swiftly there was little time to brood and weep over my heartbreak. Not that the task of preparing for our defense did not move smoothly under Lilah’s capable management, but the catastrophies that smote the earth were moving closer to us, it seemed. We were beginning to feel them ourselves.

  The earth quaked as never before. We had thought it impossible for it to withstand more shocks, but they were following in such rapidity that the seismographs had long since ceased to attempt to keep track of their positions or intensity. Sometimes we could hear the earth grinding and groaning; sometimes we could feel it move as if heaving mighty sighs which set the wall hangings to swaying and dishes to rattling in our crude cupboards.
Sometimes it was more a sensation than an actual hearing or feeling. The rock walls reverberated with one tremendous shock and shuddering the earth sank into exhausted, almost unnatural, quietness under our feet. We waited anxiously. Radios had become increasingly unreliable and unscheduled news trickled in spasmodically. We knew that some new calamity must have been wrought by that quake and we were not wrong!

  Before the first words came to us we began to see the effects of that shock. High overhead great unnatural clouds drifted into the brassy sky. Once again acrid smoke stung our nostrils yet this smoke and the heavy clouds of steam-mixed smoke came from a distance. A great gaping pit had been opened by that last shock and from it the scalding steam and sulphurous smoke blew high into the sky, even encircled the whole earth. Our lamps and lanterns made pitifully small light by day or by night. We huddled close inside. It was impossible to do gardening or any other outside work in the heavy, oppressive darkness. Our hearts chilled as the death cry of one of our cattle split the air for we knew that the lions that had been driven out and away from our valley had come down to prey again on the untended herds and flocks. Certain braver souls went out seeking their sheep and their cattle, even taking those that they found into their own quarters for safe-keeping, and so that they might have fresh milk while the cattle could still provide it in their wasting bodies. They, too, felt the heaviness and the strangeness, and even out on the hills seemed too confused to eat—standing sadly, lowing mournfully and hopelessly to add to the depressive disquietude.

  This black shroud held the world prisoner for several days and when it began to thin, it still lessened only slightly so that there was only a third of the usual light by which to go about. The moon was like a great red ball, a portent of doom. The sun was like a clotted ball of blood and the smoke that had hid it seemed better to the eye than the baleful red light swirling slowly in the eddying smoke. Still the air was tainted with the suffocating odor of burning gases.

  Communications came slowly to us and they were not encouraging. The darkness brought on new fears and a sort of madness. There were frantic attempts to dig strong cellars or to find caves and mountain hide-outs such as ours for fear of a new bombardment from the heavens. Screaming people became frenzied, they lifted up their voices begging the rocks and the mountains to fall on them. New cults and religions sprang up even against the strident commands of the Prince and his Beast or because of them and incited by them. People worshiped the rocks, the stars and the elements as they sought to appease them and get security for themselves by offering horrid sacrifices in the lewdest of orgies and rites. Many new cults induced mass suicide attempts, but death seemed to have fled from the earth, at least it eluded those who tried to make a pact with it. Instead of escape from the nightmare and the chaos that ruled the world the ones attempting death found only terrible suffering and agony from self-inflicted wounds or poisons which burned and ate but did not consume. Simon shook his head and looked toward the sky which seemed no longer to give the promise of God’s nearness.

  “I do not see how men can refuse to acknowledge God and turn to Him for hope in all this hopelessness and despair! If God hid His face and sent darkness and earthquake when His Son hung on the cross, how can they deny that it is His hand that is shaking the very foundations of the earth because of the wickedness that He can no longer countenance!”

  We had come outside for a few minutes for fresh air to relieve the choking congestion in our lungs. Little Toni clung tightly to my hand and would rather have returned to the more familiar quarters, but we lingered a little while trying to see new rifts in the smoke-barrier.

  “The radio does not sound as if people were turning to God—I wish Paul would come back. Surely he has done all that he can and should begin to take thought for his safety.” I had forgotten my heartbreak in fearing for him.

  “Hark, what is that sound?” My mother came to stand with stilling hand on my arm. “It is like the sound of heavy iron wheels and the feet of horses running—”

  “Mommy! Horses can’t run in the air, can they?” Toni asked anxiously. Mutely I shook my head. Yet to his young ears the sound had been as if many horses and heavy machinery had passed, stirring the smoke with their passing. What horde was this which whirled by us brushing our temples with their millions of wings?

  In a few hours we were to learn of a new terror that had looked on us and seeing the blood of Jesus “on the lintels and the door-posts” had passed over us and sought victims elsewhere. As if the smoke had been a planned screen to hide their coming it lifted to reveal to a stunned and unbelieving world a new plague. Perhaps these locusts were born out of man’s own fertile brain. Certainly it had been learned that the new insecticides and the new drugs had been successful only for short seasons. Each new and stronger drug or insecticide had killed only until a new and more resistant germ or insect could be produced. These winged monsters that made the dark cloud in the sky were distorted copies of their ancestors. These were locusts that had learned and developed new tastes since the fields and the meadows had become menacing to them. They did not stop in the fields or the corn rows but came into the houses, the shops, and the business places seeking the men who had brought about this mutation, and their fever-laden teeth spread new torment and terror.

  Once these new locusts tasted blood their thirst was insatiable. Men writhed and screamed unable to withstand or hide from locusts which tore window screens to shreds and broke the very window panes with the weight of their onslaught. Horror came to chill our hearts as we listened to the desperate calls for more nurses, more rooms, more beds, more drugs to ease the suffering of those who had been bitten, then to become violently ill, yet to live in spite of wasting fevers. Other messages came to us via the air and they were more horrible than the tales of suffering and torment, because they were the cursings and the hatred spit out of the mouths of the Beast and his Prince.

  “Do not be deceived, my people! God thinks to take the world from us, but this is his last stand! We will stand and defy God Himself if He dares come down out of His heaven. If He will not come to us then we will mount up to the very gates and tear them from their hinges and cast Him and all His cowardly, snivelling cohorts out with Him!”

  Again, “Where is this God of love and what kind of love is His that can send the stars to wreck and ruin people? He claims to love? What kind of compassion tears the roots out from under the men He made, if indeed He dares still claim to have made them? He is not here because He is afraid to come out and fight in the open, but let Him watch while we destroy every last follower who slinks at His feet! We command the knowledge He thought to have kept hidden from us—there isn’t any niche or corner of scientific exploration that we have not entered! God thinks to smash us but His atom has been smashed and we will not be stopped! Still your chattering teeth if you can, you listeners at radios in your hidden refuges—if your God intended rescuing you, why did He leave you to suffer and to be hunted down as wild animals? Where are His armies of which you have boasted? Where is the King who is supposed to stand where now I, your Prince, stand? I am the only Prince, the only king who holds the earth in his hand because I am not afraid to walk on the earth that I claim or to lead people called to follow me! Of what good are followers without one to follow? God’s day is past—man’s day is here!”

  More and more frequently came Damon’s cursing challenge to God. We listened to its echoing as men took it and spread it more and more defiantly with a gathering, malicious hatred that spilled over in atrocities such as never had been perpetrated before in all of the world’s history. The locusts had pointed out with unmistakable accuracy many who still refused the mark of the Beast. For not one taken sick was without the mark and ones not afflicted were unmarked. Months crept by and at last the fever spent itself, the locusts either disappeared or finally succumbed to the new insecticides or monstercides! Even as men rose from their beds still weak and emaciated their mouths spewed cursing and hate for those who had nursed and
cared for them. There was no thought of repentance, only a greater, more wicked defiance.

  Like grey shadows of unreality two figures drifted in and out of the broadcast pictures and each time rage and frustration distorted the voice of the Prince and his followers more horribly. The two prophets still moved among the people and there were still a few who listened to them. Men still tried to lay hands on them, but they could not reach them for a blasting fire that stopped them. Men began to turn their cursing against them, blaming them for the pestilences and the plagues and seeking out any who showed inclination to heed the warnings uttered by the prophets. It seemed utterly impossible that any could escape such purposeful trackers, yet every day the gate was opened to let refugees in to our city that, large as it was, was becoming crowded. Questioned they told of miraculous trips led by the prophets whose presence had seemed to set up an invisible shield about them, enabling them to pass unnoticed almost before the very eyes of the enemy. As quickly as each small group reached the more wild portions of country the prophets would vanish, leaving them to go on alone.

  However the Prince had hinted at knowledge of our hidden city—and we were to learn that his was not an idle boast. Several times planes came swooping low over our mountains and we felt the baleful eyes of observers and cameras mapping out our whole valley even following the entering wadi back and forth until each curve and detail must have been completely familiar.