“A hunch,” Sister Marie said.
“Hunches seem to have a bigger role these days,” he said. “I pray every day for God’s guidance. When I fret, second-guess myself, my actions often are ill-timed, ineffective, and simply wrong. A good hunch, acting on it, can bear much fruit.”
“Agreed.” Sister smiled.
“Becca Givens has given you an ultimatum,” Cricket said. “What do you plan to do, Father?”
“Well, late last night I was feeling really clever and thought, why not hand over my sermon? Let the mayor read it, make her comments, and then try to get me to change it. At first I thought, what a wonderful opportunity to let Christ’s message reverberate inside this woman’s mind. We’d argue, I’d have a chance to expand further on Christ’s gospel. Of course, I wouldn’t change an iota of the homily. But how long would she play that game? I suspect she’d get back in our faces, because we’re a threat—and one that’s not going away. She has to act, and so will we. She doesn’t get my sermon for review.”
“Your plan?” Sister asked.
“One hundred worshippers, not including staff and clergy, are going to take up residence here. We have three kitchens, water and gas on most days, a few small generators for generating electricity as we need it. If the city plays games, we have propane heaters and several hundred families willing to share food with us if we become prisoners in our own church. We’re carrying on as Christians: the Mass, confessions, weddings, funerals, baptisms, and homilies.”
“What about protection?” Cricket asked.
“They’re called the Patriarchs. A little old-fashioned of a term.”
“Very much out of style,” Sister said. “Gets under the devil’s skin.”
Father Muslovsky rubbed his day-old stubble, his blue eyes aiming past the women. At first Cricket worried he didn’t like Sister’s comparing the evil one to his real-life opponents. “Sister Marie, we have even bigger problems then an autocratic, nonbelieving mayor wanting to censor my sermons.”
24
The Visitor
The church’s sacristan briefly interrupted Father’s discussion when bringing everyone hot black tea, powdered milk, and packets of sugar. The woman’s movements were quick, and though lacking grace, she’d probably never spill a drink or bump awkwardly into Father’s desk or chair. A walking Psalm, she had kind eyes that spoke of goodness and mercy following us all the days of our lives.
Father smiled lovingly and thanked her for the hot drinks. When she closed the door, he found the sugar and stirred in two packets. “Confessions have gotten rougher since the EMP attack. People were doing things against their neighbors, even their own family members, that were just awful: hoarding, stealing, and much worse. But a new strangeness arose.”
Father took a sip and offered his remaining sugar packets to Sister and Cricket; both declined, saying the powdered milk was fine. “Can you be telling us people’s confessions?” Cricket sat straight in her seat, elegant in her washed blue jeans and black turtleneck sweater.
“No, I can’t. But I can talk in general of recurring sins, problems, vexations. And the one that kept being repeated was about a Visitor.”
“A stranger, criminal type?” Cricket questioned, goosebumps down her arms. She was looking for something known, perhaps terrible but understandable.
“We’re going to defend this cathedral, this pace of worship, with bodies. Bodies that are full of hope and love. I told Sergeant Wills I don’t want bloodshed. Perhaps it’ll come down to civil disobedience against the state. We’ll take the consequences, but in the confessions I heard of another kind of threat, a Visitor that appears in the late hours of the night. In all cases, the person is having a terrible dream and wakes up to something in the corner of the room or something caught in the corner of their eye, a thing hunched over, usually crouched on a chair, its long arms wrapped around its legs, its head resting on its legs. It’s thinking, waiting to storm into the person’s life, destroy them and the ones closest to them. In all the reports I get, it’s waiting, listening to all their fears, adding new ones. Some of the people believe this thing is feeding on their fears.”
Sister said, “Father, our citizens are witnessing a breakdown in all they hold dear. We’ve seen it firsthand. We know psychologically that trauma across a region, a country can produce common hysterical reactions.”
Cricket looked at Sister and wondered if she believed her own words or was playing devil’s advocate, an expression that really fit.
“Sister, I felt that way at first as well,” Father said. “But workmen, parishioners, and more than an unusual number of people not of our faith visited me describing very similar experiences. I’ve heard this awful vision repeated by many people outside the confessional.”
“Does this thing ever move, talk?” Cricket asked, thinking of the strange visitors she had encountered during her night travels.
“Yes, it does move. I saw it open its wings.”
25
The Exorcist
“I screamed to God and all his saints when it rose from the chair in my bedroom and passed overhead. I wasn’t dreaming. I was wide awake and couldn’t move.” Father Muslovsky stood up and walked to the window as if fearing paralysis by retelling the story. “My insides were frozen for days. I couldn’t get warm, even though temperatures were in the fifties and the natural gas was flowing.”
“Father, what did you see?” Cricket looked to Sister Marie, who looked as forlorn at that moment as the priest.
He returned to the desk, sat down, hands on his legs, and eyed both women.
“Physically gruesome. But that wasn’t the worst part. As it flew over me, it stung me in many places, like a jellyfish. I know because I’ve been stung before. It’s horrible. It’s like your skin’s on fire. This was the poison of a poisoned spirit. I must have been praying at the speed of light, for it never lingered, just brushed me with its evil. When I could move again, I remembered it pausing over me, attempting to infect me.”
He paused to take another sip.
Sister Marie said, “We can’t fly an exorcist in from Italy, but I’ll fight this evil with everything I’ve got if it takes hold of some poor soul.”
A chill zipped down Cricket’s back listening to Father Muslovsky. Since her discovery of the otherworld of freedom and adventure, she had also felt the existence of something unclean, an adversary of enormous power. It had arrived at the manger in the form of Boots the snow leopard. Listening to Father, she knew that Boots wasn’t the real enemy. And that the good-looking stranger, Angel, who believed he was carrying the Christ Child to safety was naively bringing the child to its destruction.
As she listened to Father continue, more of the dream materialized, awakened by the priest’s description of the Visitor.
She had followed the Christ Child and Angel. The terrain drastically changed, and they were no longer in the river city of Cincinnati but in a mountainous land of high peaks and snow. Even when Father offered her more tea, she heard him clearly but at some distance. She was high above the tree line in a windswept world of stone and twilight sky.
She was seated in a chair in a comfortable rectory with Sister Marie and the priest, and yet some other part of her roamed a mysterious world.
Cricket had lost sight of Angel and the child and realized that they had disappeared into a cave. She stood outside the cave and saw no one. At times the snowfall blinded her vision and everything disappeared. The child was lost in the vast mountains of another time.
Again, she heard the cries of a child, but the sound came from every direction. A voice told her to leave this vision and return to her good friend sitting next to her and her new friend, who was eyeing her as though he knew she was not only sitting in a chair across from him, but seeing her own vision. Yet her stubbornness kept her facing the cave and listening. Something flew overhead, and the child stopped crying.
Father was asking her a question, and she could no longer hold the vision; she b
ecame conscious of sitting in his office, her hands around the teacup. She lowered her head, saying, “Father, everything you’ve told us is true.”
Sister and Cricket sat in the car outside the church. Their driver said he needed a private meeting with Father Muslovsky. The car was warm, but Cricket still huddled close to Sister, holding her hand with both of hers.
“I had a vision while listening to Father,” Cricket said.
“I felt something listening to Father, too. Like we were being watched. He did, too, on some level. His eyes express so much. What did you see?”
“An awful place. Lonely mountains. Nothing alive except for the Christ Child. I believed the Messiah was being carried to safety by Angel. The two of them disappeared. I think into a cave. And I heard the child crying.”
Was the crying child her own child aborted a few short years ago? The doom of the place descended on her, and she cried in the back seat, hugging Sister. When she composed herself, she said, “What kind of person am I? I had no feelings for the child in danger, except to partake in some new adventure. That thrilled me. Fear of the place also thrilled me, but I had no feelings until now. That child… maybe the Christ Child… maybe my own that I carry or the one that I destroyed… all connected.”
Her sobs overpowered her, and Sister held Cricket’s tear-stained face against her neck.
“Sister, I don’t ever want to go back to that place.”
“Oh, Cricket, we both have started journeys we can’t turn our backs on. You’ve been given a great gift. Something that will save those you love. Part of your sadness is being alone in that terrible place, traveling to places, experiencing another dimension of being human, even the evil that’s there.”
Sister held Cricket’s face in her hands. “I believe in you. So do the girls, your husband, everyone close to you. You’ll never lose your connection to the warmth of friendship, of love, in these difficult times. Now I want you to think of the Virgin Mary and all that she lost, and what she never lost. And then look to Christ’s sacrifice. Our trials can never compare.”
The door swung open, and the driver got behind the wheel. “Thanks, ladies, for your patience. I couldn’t leave without a quick confession with my favorite priest. The world is looking a lot better.”
26
An Unfair Fight
Fritz and Cricket had been airborne for only five minutes when he said over the intercom, “So, what did you learn from Father Muslovsky?”
“Let’s talk later. Need to focus.”
There had been no time to discuss anything when she had finally arrived in midafternoon with only a few hours of daylight remaining. She had been rattled deeply by the frightening condition of being in two places at once. A moment of wicked humor arose, and she smiled at the thought of being in the old world of lights and electricity, googling her questions about out-of-body experiences and being in two places simultaneously.
She felt crazy and sad for not being able to help a child. Her insides froze with guilt. But she found a relaxed point below her stomach. Her energy stirred there, and she tried to push energy into that one good place. She continued to fly the plane and made the superhuman effort to bury those emotions, and she did so in short order, as warmth from her midsection aided her hands and feet on the flight controls.
Predator and PJ Bob had already preflighted and fueled the P-51 from a truck brought up from Lexington, Kentucky. According to Cleveland Command, the Youngstown National Guard base had been fighting with local bands of criminals and were unable to get a fuel truck safely on the road.
Cricket was trimming the plane, looking out over the bare forests and brown fields of northern Kentucky. “Like to do a few steep turns.”
“Be my guest.”
Stick-and-rudder planes were her favorite—pressure on the stick and rudder for pitch, bank and roll control, and a touch more power nearing forty-five degrees of bank. The back pressure on the stick increased, but she didn’t trim to relieve the pressure—not a good idea, since she’d have to retrim the controls a second time, thereby losing a smooth rollout with just slight adjustments in pitch and power. The goal of steep turns, like other maneuvers such as s-turns across a road, turns about a point—all maneuvers her dad had shown her in the first hours of flying—were to increase piloting coordination, smoothness, and accuracy.
Fritz and Cricket flew over Cincy’s big airport, in Greater Cincinnati, dead for months except for some old freighters and a National Guard C-130 that made a rare appearance. If Mexico or California had food to send, a workhorse like the C-130 would be the perfect aircraft in a very imperfect world.
“Cricket, turn to the southwest.”
She did and waited for further instructions.
“On your right, the freeway, westbound.”
Half a dozen vehicles, pickup trucks, cars appeared in pursuit of a single car perhaps a quarter of a mile in the lead.
“Maybe they’re all going to the same party,” Cricket said.
“Get lower and try circling. See what’s what.”
Cricket reduced power and kept the nose up, bleeding off some of her speed.
“Target 180 on the speed.” Fritz continued giving her heading changes, and at five hundred feet above the ground she could see what looked like an old sixties model. The car left the freeway and fishtailed onto a north-south road, and Fritz had Sister Marie’s bird binoculars. “Yep, they’re shooting at the car in the lead. Looks like an Impala.”
“What do we do? Maybe they’re chasing a bad guy?”
“The vehicles following don’t show any sign of law enforcement.”
Cricket said, “Police departments are using all kinds of vehicles for patrol.”
“Hold on,” Fritz said, passing the fast-moving parade. “Car behind is firing away, and the next cowboy is a guy working a machine gun mounted on the cab, standing in the truck’s bed.”
That news gave Cricket a sour stomach. Modified vehicles like the one below had shot her dad out of the sky. Still, a police department might indeed have sufficient need for such a weaponized truck in their post-EMP world. Her stomach was also sour due to the memory of the mountains and the lost child.
“How about a pass where you spray ahead of the lead attack car with a short burst? Make our presence known and see what they do?”
“We’re taking sides?”
“Yes we are. This ain’t Star Trek. The Prime Directive doesn’t apply.”
The car being chased was losing its lead. Cricket banked west, climbed to three thousand feet, increased her speed to 250, and prepared to enter the fray from a basic ninety-degree angle, modifying that angle to engage the bullies.
“Use the rudder to keep the burst between the cars. You may have to initially make small heading changes with shallow banks.”
“Roger that.” Cricket had hoped that by now the pursuers would have grown disinterested. But they persisted. She didn’t like an unfair fight either, and the gang of cars was gaining on the chased vehicle.
Two miles out, she turned toward her target and put the nose on the lead chase car and started her descent. No houses or buildings were in her line of fire. She came up on three hundred miles per hour and backed off the throttle to idle. After less than a mile, she banked right, overcompensated, and came back to the left. Within the final seconds, she kept heading on the black chase car and then slid the nose slightly right and fired.
She couldn’t see her bullets chewing up the asphalt, and kept shooting for a couple of seconds. In the short time since she’d decided to maintain fire, she had inadvertently relaxed rudder pressure and the nose had swung on to the lead chase car, which swerved out of control.
Fritz yelled from the back seat, “Fly the plane. Climb three thousand, come back around. I can’t see anything.”
“Fritz, I hit the car!”
“I know.”
They circled back and saw the first two cars off the road: the lead on its back in a ditch; the other crashed into a woo
ded area. Both in flames.
“Oh God, Fritz, what did I do? I know nothing about these people.”
“There, I see the last car. They’re stopped next to the car nosing into the woods. Oh, here comes the chased car!”
Cricket kept the crash scene in sight with a 360-degree turn. She muttered, “How awful” several times and watched in horror as the two occupants of the chased car pulled off the road several hundred feet away from their earlier pursuers and ducked into the woods.
“Let’s head back to Lunken,” Fritz said.
“No way. I want to see this played out. It’s my fault.”
“My fault, too. There’s nothing we can do. Cricket, we made the decision to try and help.”
“Help people that might have been worse than the ones after them!”
Compensating for flying into the wind, she raised her left wing, needing less bank, and missed the drama playing out below for a short period of time. With the wind at her back, she increased the bank angle to stay close to the mess and then saw several bodies lying on the street alongside the surviving chase car.
They circled in silence and watched the hunted car speed away.
27
Retreat to Lunken
All Fritz said to PJ Bob was to reload the 50-caliber Brownings. Cricket walked inside and went to the lounge, without candles or a lantern or windows. It was dark except for a sliver of daylight seeping in through the cracked open door. She collapsed into a large chair. She and Fritz had made a terrible mistake interfering. She couldn’t cry. Who were the bad guys, the good guys? Sure they’d felt they had to do something, but they hadn’t separated the two teams and prevented bloodshed. They had caused bloodshed. And perhaps the bad guys had always been in the chased vehicle.
American Blackout (Book 3): Gangster Town Page 8