Upon This Rock

by David Marusek

  “But bath day isn’t until Sixthday,” Frankie added.

  “Oh?”

  Deut said, “Cora will show you how to get a basin of warm water in the kitchen.”

  Cora sighed theatrically and headed for the door. “Follow me.”

  Deut called after her, “Thank you, Cora.”

  Ginger, meanwhile, was wandering around the room holding up her cell phone. “I can’t seem to find a signal,” she said.

  Deut said, “That’s because the mountain is in the way.”

  “Then how do I call my parents?”

  “You can’t, unless you ride into town.”

  The twins covered their mouths, and Frankie said, “I’m sure Proverbs will take you, Miss Ginger, if you ask him.”

  Ginger snorted. “I’m sure he would, but I’d rather drive myself. I’ve been handling snowmachines since I was six, you know. My dad sells them.”

  VW4 1.0

  WHILE WAITING FOR Ranger Masterson to take him out to ground zero, Jace rehearsed in his mind how the recovery should go down. He had chosen to reveal his find to his colleague rather than to Chas, he supposed, because Masterson was the devil he knew. Given Masterson’s views on the mission of public land management, upon seeing the alien artifact, his overriding concern would be for containment. Keep a lid on it. Keep the situation from becoming a media stampede and harming the wild nature of the park. Masterson would work with him.

  So when Masterson showed up and again asked Jace what had happened to his snowmobile, Jace shrugged and said, “See for yourself.” It was early afternoon; they had a couple hours of daylight left. They hopped on Masterson’s machine and took the outbound Stubborn Mountain Trail to the Trapper’s Slough Trail.

  This was Jace’s plan: about a hundred feet (30 m) before they reached ground zero, Jace would tap Masterson on the shoulder to stop. Then Jace would pop the lens caps off the binoculars and hand them to him saying:

  I was across the river last week when I saw a tiny sun float down to Earth inside a giant cone of welder’s glass. I mapped out a search grid covering the probable impact point and spent the last week walking the area with a metal detector. I was about to call off the search last night when I saw a weird light here. I checked it out and found that thing . . .

  He would point at the thing, whose tulip top should be visible in the daylight above the scrubby, snow-covered brush.

  I didn’t understand the danger and got too close to it, and it stole all of my physical energy. It stole the gas from my tank, too, and the juice from my batteries, and the butane from my lighter. I was lucky to make it back at all.

  Then, using the tow line and come-along, they would ratchet his snowmobile out of the danger zone. Then they would document the artifact with photos and videos from a safe distance. Then they would go back to the office and put in a call to NASA. One alien-spouting ranger was crazy. Two alien-spouting rangers, one of them a licensed peace officer, with photos and GPS coordinates would . . . should . . .

  So Jace got on the back of Masterson’s snowmobile, and they left the Bunyan place. What he had failed to factor in was how Masterson would react when he saw the renovated trapline cabin along the way. Jace had forgotten that the trail to the artifact led right past it.

  Masterson brought the snowmobile to a sudden halt. “What the fuck,” he said and dismounted. Jace’s tracks to the cabin were still clearly visible, as well as an adjoining set on top of them. Masterson looked in the cabin window with his headlamp and went inside. Jace stayed with the machine and waited.

  When Masterson returned, he was clearly furious, and Jace said, “Let’s discuss this later, okay? You probably have some questions, but believe me, this cabin isn’t the main event. I swear to you, there’s something way more important up ahead. And dangerous.”

  Masterson took control of himself and got back on the snowmobile without comment. They continued down the trail. Jace saw at once that the Prophecys, or someone on a snowmobile, had already followed his tracks to the artifact. When they came upon his discarded helmet, Masterson stopped for him to retrieve it.

  Jace braced himself for the scene he would witness just ahead: one or more bodies at the foot of the alien lamppost, all life sucked out of them. The near certainty that they would be Prophecy bodies did little to lessen the horror (but he refused to feel guilty for their misfortune).

  When they passed into the search zone with the checkerboard of tracks, Masterson pointed at them and shouted over his shoulder, “What the hell?”

  “Keep going,” Jace shouted back.

  When they were still a hundred feet from ground zero, Jace tapped Masterson’s shoulder as planned and opened the binoculars. Masterson braked the snowmobile and took in the scene.

  “Mind telling me what the fuck is going on out here?”

  Jace couldn’t see the lamppost from where they had stopped, so he dismounted. “Follow me. All will be revealed.”

  Jace approached ground zero cautiously, like a hunter, expecting to see the tulip looming over the treeless landscape at any moment. So he was surprised to come upon his Ski-Doo parked where he’d left it, the camera still resting on the seat, and no tulip, no lamppost, no Prophecy bodies in sight. He hurried to the spot and found the hole and ice chips.

  “They took it!” he wailed. “They fucking took it!”

  Next to him, Masterson regarded the hole. “I’m still waiting,” he said, “for any of this to make one shred of sense.”

  “Okay, okay,” Jace said. “This might sound crazy.”

  “That’s a given.”

  “I was across the river last week when I saw a tiny sun float to Earth inside a giant cone of welder’s glass . . .”

  VW5 1.0

  DELL BUNYAN AND his daughter left. The girls got their city guests squared away. The toddlers were warned to be on their best behavior and to stay away from the towering pile of supplies stacked in the middle of the common room. And no one was allowed near the boys’ bunkroom where the older boys and Corny were sleeping off their exhausting day and night of driving and hauling.

  Poppy never came in from the prayer cabin for breakfast. He was probably sleeping in too.

  The boys dragged themselves out of bed in time for lunch. Sue stuck close by Adam’s side, and Deut instructed Ginger in the finer points of cooking on a wood-fired range.

  The children stared with open mouths as Sue massaged Adam’s shoulders. Adam arched his back like their missing cat and said, “I’d let you do that for hours, but it’s getting late, and we haven’t accomplished anything yet today. Ithy, how cold is it outside?”

  The boy pulled a chair next to the window to check the outdoor thermometer.

  “Forty-two below (–41C),” he announced.

  “Oh, good,” Adam said. “It’s warmed up some.”

  Hosea and Proverbs both looked at Adam, who sighed and said, “I don’t want to hear it.”

  Proverbs spoke anyway, “I thought the whole point of getting this stuff in was so we could leave the rest in the truck till things warmed up.”

  “And besides,” Hosea added, “the sno-gos both need some attention. We gotta repair the Yamaha track as it is.”

  Adam rose and paced the room as he pondered the situation. At last he said, “Proverbs, you work on the Yamaha. Hosea, start figuring out what part of this pile needs to go to the storeroom first. Hasn’t Poppy come in at all?”

  Sarai said, “No.”

  Adam went to the window and scraped ice so he could see the prayer cabin. “At least he’s up.” There was smoke coming from the stack. “We can use the plastic sleds to move stuff up to the keep. If he comes in and we’re all sitting on our hands . . .”

  He left the thought unfinished, and Sue said, “Surely, you deserve a day off after all that work.”

  Adam smiled at her. “Doesn’t work that way around here, babe.” He fetched his parka from a peg next to the door. “I’ll just go see what his plans for the day are. Sarai, quick make
me up a tray for him. Meantime, you boys get a load started.”

  POPPY DIDN’T ANSWER Adam’s repeated knock. The door wasn’t bolted, so Adam opened it a crack and said, “It’s me, lord.” When there still was no response, he opened it a bit more and peeked in. His father was seated at his desk, reading the Bible. He was dressed for the outdoors — boots, parka, hat — and Adam could see his breath in the frosty air. The thing, the bizarre object they had wrested from the ice, lay on the floor where they had left it last night. Adam brought the tray inside and bumped the door shut with his hip.

  “It’s warmer in the house, lord,” he said, placing the tray on the desk next to the open Bible. He went to reload the stove, but the firebox was already full, and the flames roared and cackled. Yet, Adam could feel little heat coming out. Damp wood maybe. He shut the cast-iron door and cranked the handle tight. Made sure the intake and damper were open and clear.

  “I came to see what you’re doing out here,” he told his father. Poppy continued to ignore him. “And to let you know we’ll wait till it warms up a bit before hauling in the rest of the supplies. Instead, we’ll start moving the perishables up to the keep.”

  Poppy’s head snapped up. “Did you tell anyone?”

  Adam looked at the object at his feet. “No, lord. You told me not to.”

  “Well, don’t. I have so much to learn about it first.” He did a double take when he saw the lunch tray lying next to his elbow. He picked up the moose roast sandwich and began to eat. “I think I know what it is,” he said between bites. “That terrible light I witnessed? A falling star. If it was, then this is the trumpet that belongs to one of two herald angels. Either the Third Angel or the Fifth Angel, in Revelation. The Third Angel poisons a third of the waters of Earth, and the Fifth Angel holds the key to the bottomless pit of Hell. [see A Taste of Wormwood]

  “But I’m not finished studying it, and I don’t want you talking about it.”

  “No, lord, I won’t,” Adam said. “Anyway, like I said, we’ll need the key to the gate.”

  The dozens of keys on Poppy’s keyring came in all shapes and sizes. He unthreaded an old brass key and dropped it into Adam’s hand. In turn, Adam gave him a spark plug.

  “Where’s the other?”

  “Um,” Adam said. “Proverbs must still have it.”

  VW6 1.0

  THE TOBOGGANS WERE of the molded-plastic variety you could buy at Fred Meyer. They were toys meant for fun on sledding hills, not tools for hauling freight in the extreme cold. One trip up the tailings slide was enough to reduce two of them to a handful of colorful plastic shards.

  So Adam suspended all non-essential outdoor chores. Instead, he and Hosea assigned the middle boys to tasks within the keep, of which there were varied and many. Sue went along to learn and help.

  The house was mostly empty in midafternoon when Poppy surprised Sarai by slamming the front door and bellowing, “Gather round! Gather round!”

  Sarai came out of the kitchen. See-Saw came out of the girls’ room with Nummy and Elzie.

  Poppy surveyed his small audience and said, “Where is everyone?”

  Sarai said, “Some in the keep. Some in the toolshed. Some in the bathhouse.”

  “Round them up! Everyone. I have important news!”

  Sarai sent See-Saw to the outbuildings to round everyone up and to tell Cora to go up to the keep. Poppy visited the kitchen and poured himself a cup of coffee while he waited. The common room filled with voices, and when everyone returned from the keep, Sarai came into the kitchen to inform him. Poppy couldn’t decide whether she was being surly or sullen with him, but either way he didn’t like it. However, now was not the time.

  Poppy crossed the common room to the corner where he usually presided over Worship Time. He leaned over Mama P and crooned, “Wake up, Mother. You won’t want to miss this.” She didn’t stir or open her eyes. “Soon, Mother,” he whispered. “Soon you will have to decide.”

  When his congregation settled around him, Poppy cleared his throat and intoned, “You have borne witness to the glory of the Father. You have seen His handprint in the snow where He pressed me down and deprived me of breath.”

  “Yes, lord, we have,” chorused the children.

  “You have borne witness to —” Poppy broke off and said, “Where’s Proverbs?”

  Adam sighed and said, “I told him he could take Ginger to the Bunyans’, lord.”

  “Why? Did she have enough of us already?”

  “I don’t think so, lord. She said she wanted to phone her parents to let them know she arrived safe.”

  “And that couldn’t wait until Mail Day?”

  “Mail Day was yesterday, lord. She would’a had to wait a whole week.”

  “And when does Proverbs intend to return?”

  “Soon,” Adam said. “Anytime now.”

  Poppy was not pleased, and Cora chose that moment to add a bit of information of her own. “She’s got her own phone, lord.”

  “What was that?”

  “A cell phone,” Cora said. “Ginger Lawther brought a cell phone with her.”

  Now Poppy was even less pleased. He looked at Sue and startled her with a direct question. “You have a phone too?”

  “Uh, yes,” Sue said. “I do.”

  “Yes, lord.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You will address me as lord.”

  Sue glanced around at the others and hesitated only a moment. “Yes, lord, I do have a cell.”

  Poppy extended an open palm. She reached into her jeans pocket and surrendered her phone to him.

  “And another thing,” Poppy went on. “From now on you will dress like a woman, not a man.”

  Sue glanced at the girls in the room, all of them in long skirts.

  “I’m sorry, lord. I didn’t know.”

  “Don’t fret over it, daughter. You’ll learn our ways soon enough. In case you need ’em, there’s dresses in all sizes in the storeroom. Sarai will show you where.”

  “Thank you, lord.”

  “Now, daughter,” Poppy went on, “Adam tells me you are a faith-filled young woman, but I’ll bet you didn’t expect to come here to witness miracles.”

  “No, lord, I didn’t. What miracles?”

  “On the night before we came to town, our Heavenly Father revealed to me a terrible light in the sky and a pressure that all but suffocated me.

  “But what I didn’t know then was that something fell to Earth from Heaven on that same night. Something precious and perfect.”

  “What was it, lord?” the smaller children clamored to know.

  “It was something that an angel in Heaven lost on Earth.”

  Amid their cries of amazement, the children shouted, “What was it, lord?”

  Adam squeezed Sue’s hand and they joined the chorus. “What was it, lord?”

  “It was something the federal devils tried to steal while we were away.”

  Gasps. “What was it, lord!”

  “They were the same devils that stole our garden patch and airstrip.

  “Last night, while your brothers were busy moving this great pile of provisions, the flat hats tried to steal what the angel had lost, but Elder Brother Jesus smacked them down with His mighty hand.”

  Small mouths hung open.

  “Elder Brother Jesus struck the ranger’s sno-go who was trying to steal from the angel and forced him to walk all the way back home with his ponytail tucked ’tween his legs.”

  Deut looked up. Ponytail?

  “So now,” Poppy continued, “who wants to see a wonder that was wrought in the forges of Heaven?”

  “We do! We do!”

  “Who wants to proclaim all glory to the Almighty?”

  “We do! We do!”

  “Then turn on the lights, and I will fetch it for you.”

  The winter sun was gone, but the girls had lit only one of the propane lamps in the common room. Cora dashed to light the other two. Poppy stepped outside and lef
t the door hanging open. Dense air flowed over the threshold in a river of fog. A minute later he reemerged carrying a long, sparkly object. When he held it over his head for all to see, it threw off rainbow shards of light.

  Everyone cried out in wonder, even Adam who had discovered it, and Cora said, “What is it, lord?”

  “It’s what it looks like. It’s a herald’s trumpet. An angel’s lips touched it just last week when one of the seven seals was broken and a vial of wrath poured out.

  “Which angel and which seal I don’t know yet, but I will continue to study and pray until the Holy Spirit reveals the answers to me.

  “I don’t know why the angel came to drop his trumpet, but it proves one thing beyond a shadow of doubt, something we already knew, that the Last Days are upon us. After all, that was why we went to town for our final supply run, wasn’t it? That was why we encouraged your brothers to invite their betrothed to join us in our keep.”

  Sue squeezed Adam’s hand. Betrothed?

  Frankie said, “Why is the trumpet so long, lord?”

  “It might seem long to us, child, but angels are not puny creatures like we are. They’re more like giants. In fact, before the Flood, when angels sometimes married human women, their children were a race of giant s called the Nephilim. But Father God didn’t approve of his angels marrying human women, and He let their children drown in the Flood. Not even giants could tread the floodwaters for forty days and forty nights.”

  The children hung on every word.

  Sarai said, “What makes you think it’s from Heaven, lord? It just looks like glittery glass to me.”

  No one understood why their sister was always challenging their father. The congregation grew quiet and studied its feet.

  But Poppy seemed not at all bothered. “It does look like glass, don’t it?” he said merrily. “I’ll give you that. It probably is glass, but glass made in Heaven, not our corrupted kind here on Earth. How do I know this? Watch, I’ll show you.”

  Poppy stepped between the ceiling-high pile of supplies and the large wood stove. The stove had been fashioned from the firebox of a steam engine boiler, and it dominated the common room with its plate-iron immensity. Poppy grasped the trumpet like a long bat and wound himself up for a swing.