“Play ‘Get Out of Your Own Way,’ ” her father said.
As the steady beat began, Cheyenne remembered they had sung this song also at the show. It built and built until it reached a crescendo, and then confetti rained down on a jubilant crowd.
“I think I understand your mother a little more these days.”
She shifted, facing him, startled. “What do you mean?”
“I know I’ve never talked a lot about her.”
“There’s been no reason to talk about her.”
The gray in his hair seemed to have spread, along with the wrinkles under his eyes. He gave her a sad glance. “You have so much of her in you. We were kids who were crazy in love. I was only twenty-four years old when we had you. Your mother was twenty-two.”
“And yet somehow you managed to deal with it, didn’t you?” She could hear the bitterness discoloring her words. The only time it ever surfaced was when the subject of her mother came up.
Maybe that’s why we’ve never really talked much about her.
“She always felt like an outsider,” Dad said. “Even though she was so beautiful, just like you, she’d always felt the prejudices of others. The narrow-minded views of people, not only about her but about her relatives. Certain minority groups have made progress, but Native Americans have been forgotten. At least, that’s how your mother felt.”
“We weren’t the prejudiced ones,” Cheyenne said, looking back out to the empty fields on the edge of the highway. “We didn’t do anything to her.”
“Some demons chased her. I knew that back then, but now I know they were literal demons. Ones that knew her vulnerabilities and her insecurities. Nova let her vices take over. She believed she couldn’t ever be a fit mother or wife. So she took off.”
It was strange to hear him say her mother’s name. Most of the time he said “your mother.” She wondered what Nova meant, if it had a deeper meaning.
“Do you know what happened to her? Really? I know if you did, you probably wouldn’t tell me.”
“I don’t. I promise, Cheyenne. I tried to find her. I even hired people to look. But there was nothing. Play ‘Iris’ by U2.”
The song started to play and sounded sad despite its urgency.
“I listened to this a lot after she left. You were in kindergarten, and I’d been promoted to a director at the company, and suddenly I’m there freaking out. Thank God for your grandparents. I don’t know what I would’ve done without them.”
For a moment Cheyenne didn’t see him as her father but rather as a man who carried the scars of trying to make it in this world, who had tried to have the dream and then watched as it all blew up way too soon.
She let the music fill the space as she searched for something to say. Instead, the singer filled in the words for her. “I’ve got your light inside of me.”
2.
Ten or twenty years ago the farm might have been pretty with its red barn and towering silo resting in front of a field of corn or soybeans. There was only a field of tall grass now, waving back and forth in the strong March winds. As the dirt road they had been driving on for several bumpy minutes finally came to an end, Cheyenne studied the abandoned property, wondering if anybody other than Jazz was planning to meet them.
“Can you fill me in on the plan now?” she asked her father.
“The plan was to drive here,” he said, pulling into the circle that went around the house, the barn, and the silo. “Other than that I don’t know anything.”
“You know more than I do. Are we going to be farmers now? Live off the land. Eat grass.”
“Very funny. Come on. Get your backpack.”
“Have you ever been here?” she asked before climbing out of the car.
“No. But I know it’s not going to be like the St. Louis hideout. Or the bunker in Colorado.”
“Can we go back, then?” she joked, grabbing her bag that felt heavier than she remembered.
Her father carried a sports duffel bag. It matched his outfit, with the Nike logo on his workout pants and hooded sweatshirt. She had joked with her father and asked if he was suddenly trying to get into shape since she’d never seen him dressed like an athlete before. He told her that to prevent being spotted in public, he was trying to look younger and wear things that helped cover his face in as natural a way as possible.
As her father closed the trunk of the car, Cheyenne looked at his bag. “Do you have any dress pants or shirts in that bag?”
He laughed. “Nope. Nothing that has the word dress in front of it.”
“What’d you do with all your suits? All those ties and shoes?”
“Goodwill was happy to take several boxes of stuff from me. All I know is that it’s easier running away from someone when you’re wearing tennis shoes.”
Cheyenne felt sad hearing this and knowing he wasn’t trying to be funny, not in the slightest. He’s been on the run for some time. And he left everything behind. Everything, Cheyenne realized, except for her.
The front door to the red farmhouse squeaked open as she turned the doorknob. She figured nobody was here, unless their vehicle was hidden in the barn. The only light filling the entryway and room came from the windows, and as they walked, a haze of dust suddenly awakened and began to rise.
“Is anyone here?” she asked.
Her father stopped and pulled a calendar off the wall.
“It’s from 2027,” he said, coughing as more dust swirled around him. “I don’t think the owners have been here for a long time.”
“Is anyone else coming out here besides Jazz?”
He tossed the calendar featuring photos of cows onto a square wooden table with room for only four people. “They didn’t say.”
Cheyenne noticed a thin silver MacBook on the desk in the main living room area. She walked over and opened it. Instantly a video began playing, with a country singer crooning to a corny electronic disco beat as middle-aged men from all over the nation danced to the song.
This isn’t a coincidence.
The song called “Cotton Eye Joe” was from the nineties, but the video had been a recent sensation since it was some worldwide contest for the best “Daddy Dancer” out there. Why they picked this song other than its humor, Cheyenne didn’t know, but she did know it made Malek laugh. A lot. And he played it for her in the office. For about two weeks straight, the video began to play every time Cheyenne walked into the office.
She looked around the room again, quickly trying to see if anybody else was there. A part of her was hoping, just as she had with her father. As the fiddles and the sweeping techno music bounced along, she saw her dad giving her an amused and baffled look. Then a door at the back of the living room opened, and sure enough, the culprit walked out with a big grin on his face.
“Malek!” she shouted as she rushed over to give him a hug.
“Whoa, whoa,” Malek said as he was smothered by Cheyenne. “Easy there.”
She stepped back to make sure she was really seeing him. He looked the same, from his spiky hair to his casual clothes that he never bothered to update.
“Miss me?” he asked with his mischievous smile.
She couldn’t help but give him another hug. This time he gave one back.
“Okay, let me turn that off,” he said as he walked over and shut off the video. “Like my new computer?”
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“Hello, Mr. Burne,” Malek said.
Cheyenne had forgotten for a moment that her father was in the room with them. Malek and her father knew each other from the few times her father had visited her, either at the offices themselves or while staying in Chicago.
“Hello, Malek,” her father said, appearing hesitant enough to indicate he didn’t know her friend would be showing up.
“What are you doi
ng here?” Cheyenne repeated. “Are you part of everything that’s happening? Dad, have you been in touch with—”
“I saw your father the last time you did—right before he disappeared,” Malek answered quickly. “But I’ve known about your father’s involvement with the mission.”
“Where have you been?”
Malek seemed to marvel at her for a moment. “You’re crying.”
Cheyenne shook her head, laughing and then wiping her eyes to see that he was right.
“I guess you really did miss me,” he said.
“I haven’t heard from you since you left. Jerk.” But she couldn’t get the smile off her face.
“You didn’t try very hard to track me down,” Malek said.
“Really? How would you know? I tried.”
He nodded. “I know. I wanted to be invisible. PASK does a good job of making you obsolete if they want to.”
“Do you know Jazz?”
“Yeah. Mostly through CC—clandestine communication. So very spyriffic. I met him once.”
“Why didn’t you say goodbye before disappearing?”
“Thought you got rid of me, didn’t you?” Malek asked.
“A little heads-up would have been nice.”
Her father stood beside her now as they spoke in the deepening shadows in the room.
“Do you see everything that’s happening? How could I possibly begin to tell you? You and that analytical brain of yours. I see it spinning like a top even now.”
Cheyenne didn’t respond.
“The only reason you’re here is your father.”
She shook her head and turned to her dad. “No.”
“No? Then why else?”
“Tom and Susan Parschauer.” She could picture the faces of the couple. “Did you meet them?”
Any joviality from Malek ended. “No.”
“Whoever did that to them…Look, all I know is some very bad things are happening. And because of them, my world suddenly got uprooted. Just like yours.”
“But I chose, Cheyenne,” Malek said. “I believe the same way your father did.”
“So belief means you’re getting revenge against the company that fired you?”
“You don’t understand,” he said.
Keith Burne walked over to the door and opened it. “I’ll let you guys talk.”
As her father left them in the house, Cheyenne stood, waiting for more from Malek. He moved toward her, smiling and looking sincere.
“I can’t believe you’re actually here,” Malek said.
“I could say the same.”
“PASK fired me for the same reasons your father was fired. And they told me—they threatened—that if I contacted you for any reason, I would be killed. Or something would happen to you.”
“So you went and found God and didn’t even tell me?”
“It wasn’t that simple, Chy.”
“And I get it now about shaking things up. I’m okay with it. I see PASK and Acatour in a whole other light. After what happened to that poor couple—”
“You don’t know a fraction of the truth,” Malek said, picking up the laptop.
“But the things Jazz is talking about, like Chicago being destroyed by God. Do you actually buy into that?”
“Chy, you know me,” he said as he briefly glanced out the window. “You know how I question everything. Everything. Right? You know that. You know that I challenge authority, but I swear, this isn’t that. I’m not being rebellious for rebellion’s sake. I’m not getting revenge over my job. And the things the Reckoner has said? Yeah, I believe them. I really believe something big is going to happen. And we’re going to help make it happen.”
For a few moments Malek searched the room. “I’m double-checking to make sure there aren’t signs of someone having been here.”
Before he could pass her, she gently held on to his arm and forced him to stop.
“Faith is different for everybody,” she said.
“No, it’s not. Faith isn’t subjective, like staring at a piece of art and thinking how you feel about it. There’s something that’s truly incomprehensible about true faith, because it does not compute. There’s no analysis you can make of it. You just give your heart blindly, and you know. And the most brilliant sort of algorithm isn’t going to make someone believe. Only God can stir the heart.”
“I guess He hasn’t done that with mine.”
Malek smiled at her. “Not yet.”
Cheyenne shivered. This time it was Malek who initiated a hug.
“I’ve really missed you,” he told her. “You never thought you’d hear me preaching to you, did you? Come on. Let’s go to the barn.”
3.
From the outside the barn appeared as if it might collapse at any moment, especially as Malek opened its wide, squeaking doors, yet inside a makeshift workspace had been created. A large oak table resembling one that could be found in a boardroom rested in the center of the barn, with business chairs on wheels surrounding it. Malek flipped a switch, and warm light spilled over them. As the outside dirt switched to soft rubber underneath her shoes, Cheyenne walked inside and heard Malek shutting the doors behind them.
“What is this place?” she asked, looking at the two sets of desks lining the conference table on each side. More chairs were set up with computers in front of them.
“Looks like the bunker in Colorado, right? At least a little?”
She looked at several black metal boxes the size of a shoebox resting on the table just as her father stepped inside the barn.
“What do you guys do here? Play video games?”
“Yeah,” Malek said. “A game called Preparing for the Unveiling. It’s quite fun to know that America is going to be in chaos in less than a month.”
“I see you’re cynical as ever.”
“No. This isn’t cynicism. It’s sadness. I always wanted to get back at the powers that be, at the corporations, and even at the company that fired me, but this isn’t any of that.”
“What is it, then?”
Malek looked at her father for a moment, perhaps to see if he wanted to answer. But her dad seemed content to let him continue.
“I want to help wake people up. To show them the lies they’re being fed. To show how every single person out there is being manipulated. And I want them to hear the truth. To at least hear God’s truth.”
She wondered what had happened to Malek to get him to this place. How had he been convinced to suddenly embrace this thing he used to mock? How had Christianity suddenly become so important to him?
I’ll ask him that at another time.
“So how are you going to wake everybody up?” she asked.
He picked up one of the boxes and held it in his hands. “We, Chy. How are we going to wake everybody up?”
She sighed as she sat on the conference table, swinging her legs and staring at Malek. “This past week I’ve been to an underground bunker, a secret church in an old warehouse, a secret getaway in a mansion, and now I’m at an abandoned farm. I still have no idea what all this is leading to. What ‘we’ are supposed to do.”
“After the Reckoner contacted me, I asked him the same thing, and his message was this: to be silent before God, for the day of the Lord is near. The Lord’s prepared a sacrifice, and he’s blessed those he’s inviting in.”
“Are you telling me to be silent?” she asked, a friendly smile on her lips.
He mirrored it. “Nope. I’m telling you you’re blessed. You just don’t know it. Not yet. You’ve been chosen, Chy. By something much stronger than fate.”
FIFTEEN
The Great Escape
1.
Midway through the song, Will knows.
He’s known it all along, to be honest. It’s been so obvious, yet he’s never r
eally uttered it out loud. Some truths are harder to admit to yourself. That’s why silencing them is so easy.
I’ve been silent for too long. Not only about this. But about everything that matters in my life.
The truth terrifies him. It’s scary because it’s so reckless, so unbridled and mysterious. Yet at the same time, it’s amusing. Like a boyhood prank that’s turned political on a worldwide platform.
All morning he’s been watching and looking up images and video footage of the wave of graffiti spread over Chicago. Ten major acts of vandalism have taken place throughout the city at important places like Millennium Park, where the reflective “bean” art structure has been painted with the words “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.” At Navy Pier a colorful “A Change Is Gonna Come” covers the sidewalks. “Fight the Power” can be found in Buckingham Fountain, while “Get Up, Stand Up” is spray-painted at the front of the Shedd Aquarium. It doesn’t take a music lover to know all the messages are song titles.
Will has a hunch, so he tells Tolkien to play a song called “Reckoner” if there is one, and sure enough, a Radiohead tune begins to play. Will thinks back to that trip into the country that suddenly felt like being in a spacecraft shooting into warp drive with a million stars passing by them. Hutchence had played a Radiohead tune then as well, so obviously he likes the band.
“You can’t take it with you.” The lyric pops out at him, because Hutchence has said it numerous times, often out of the blue, making Will wonder exactly what he was saying. Coming from the song “Reckoner.”
Hutchence is the Reckoner. And, of course, it makes sense. All the ways of getting people’s attention. All as a way of warning them what’s coming. But realizing this gives Will a sense of dread.
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