The Mark: The Beast Rules the World Read online

  At one point, after taking two more rights and thus heading in the general direction of the back of the station, he felt the vehicle dip and hoped he hadn’t found a hole too deep to pull out of. When the front grille hit something solid, he hit the brakes and briefly turned on the headlights. He shut them off again quickly, hoping the GC hadn’t seen anything in the distance. Buck saw that he needed to back up and swing left around a five-foot-high or so mound of dirt and boards.

  He wanted to turn on his brights and be able to see if anything else obstructed his path to the back of the station, but he didn’t dare. By the time he could make out the shape of the place, he slowed to just a few miles an hour and crept along in the uneven dirt, bouncing, jostling, and—he hoped—not sending up too much dust. It was a starry night, and if the GC noticed anything blocking the sky, they were sure to come nosing around the back.

  Buck phoned Zeke.

  “I hear you,” Zeke said.

  “You hear me? From inside? That can’t be good.”

  “That’s what I was thinking. You ready for me?”

  “Better come quick. Carrying anything?”

  “Yeah, one more bag. Figured I might as well not leave anything I could bring.”

  “Good thinking. Come on.”

  “Gotta open the spigot and turn on the timer.”

  “For how long?”

  “Five minutes.”

  “Anything on the monitor?”

  “They’re just sittin’.”

  “Good. Let’s go.”

  Buck knew he could come back the way he came, and though the ride would be pretty rugged, he estimated he could do as much as 40 mph. But in case the GC could hear the Hummer as well as Zeke could, he jumped out and started loading the car to save time.

  The inside light stayed dark as he opened the door to get out, and he left it open. He opened the back door on the far side and crept around to start lifting. The first box was almost too heavy, and it was all he could do to not cry out under the weight. He heard Zeke coming up the stairs.

  Buck lugged the box onto the backseat from the car door farthest from the station’s back door, feeling every sore fiber from his recent ordeal. When he got back around the car to grab the other box, figuring Zeke could load the bag he was carrying and the one on the ground at the same time, he nearly ran into the young man, startling him.

  Zeke grunted. Buck tried to shush him, but Zeke dropped his bag and lurched back inside, slamming the door. Buck heard him lumbering down the stairs. Now they were making way too much noise.

  Buck yanked open the station door and called out desperately, as quietly as he could, “Zeke, it’s just me! C’mon, man! Now!”

  “Oh, man!” Zeke hollered. “I thought it was them! The timer’s goin’, the gas is spittin’. And they’re comin’, Buck! I can see ’em on the monitor!”

  Buck turned and opened the back door nearest the station. He picked up the bag that had been waiting and the one Zeke had dropped and hurled them across the backseat. He left the door open and jumped behind the wheel, slamming his door and putting the Hummer in gear. Zeke barreled out and dove into the backseat, knocking one of the bags out the other side, where Buck had left the door open.

  Buck floored the accelerator, but Zeke yelled, “We can’t leave that bag! It’s got lots of stuff we need!”

  The door had started to close when Buck took off, but when he hit the brakes, it swung the other way and creaked against the hinges. “Get it!” he screamed, and Zeke scrambled over the stuff and out onto the ground, his foot dragging a bag out too. And here came the GC mobile around the station in front of Buck.

  “Go! Go!” Zeke yelled, forcing himself into the backseat with both heavy bags tucked under his arms.

  The door was still open, but Buck had to move. He gunned the engine and slammed into the GC car, driving it back against the station as his back door shut. The guards had weapons out and appeared to be reaching for door handles. Buck knew he couldn’t outrace bullets, so he threw the Hummer into Reverse, floored it, and the monstrous vehicle climbed the hill of debris near the door.

  Buck stopped at the top as they teetered some twelve feet above their pursuers. He shifted into Drive, and when the GC saw the vehicle start to move, they lowered their weapons and dove out of the way. The Hummer dropped almost vertically, ramming the hood of the little car and blowing both of its front tires. The engine gushed water and steam, and Buck could tell he had rendered the GC vehicle useless.

  Rather than look for the guards, he merely backed up six feet, whipped the wheel right, and sped off into the night. Zeke had somehow gotten the door shut, but neither he nor Buck had time to buckle in. As the Hummer lurched across the plains at high speed, both men were thrown around like rag dolls, their heads hitting the ceiling, their shoulders banging the doors.

  Buck skidded to a stop.

  “What?” Zeke demanded.

  “Buckle up!”

  They both did and off he flew again. Fewer than five minutes later, as Buck found a route that would lead them back to Chicago, the sky behind them went from night to day in a massive orange ball of flame. A few seconds later the sound and the shock rocked the car anew. Buck, high from the adrenaline, knew how close they had come to dying.

  Zeke, laughing like a child, kept turning in his seat and looking back at the flaming horizon. “Well,” he said, cackling, “so much for that job!”

  CHAPTER 8

  Mac and Abdullah sat sullenly in David’s hospital room, whispering. “Thirty days?” Mac said over and over. “Hard to believe.”

  “No way of staying around here,” Abdullah said. “Not that I’ll miss it. Well, in some ways I will.”

  “I know I will,” David said, coming to full attention whenever he heard footsteps in the corridor. “So much we can do from the inside that we’ll never be able to pull off from the outside.”

  Mac let out a sigh that made him sound old and tired. “David, this may sound like I’m kissin’ up to the boss, but you know I wouldn’t kiss up to you if you were the potentate. But we both know you can do anything technologically. Get yerself healthy and do whatever you got to do to keep tabs on this place from anywhere in the world. Isn’t that doable?”

  “Theoretically,” David said. “But it won’t be easy.”

  “Somehow you’ve got this place bugged, sliced, and diced. Why can’t you access computers here the way you did that buildin’ in Chicago where we’re all likely gonna wind up?”

  David shrugged. “It’s possible. I can’t imagine psyching myself up to get it done. Not without Annie.” David caught the glance between Mac and Abdullah. “What?” he said. “You know something you’re not telling me?”

  Mac shook his head. “We’re just as worried as you. Makes no sense. No way she wouldn’t let you know where she was, if she could.” He paused and a twinkle played at his eyes. “Unless she locked herself in that utility room again.”

  David laughed in spite of himself. Annie was one of the most disciplined, buttoned-down employees he’d ever had, but one out-of-character stunt she pulled would hang over her head as long as she lived.

  The way Hannah Palemoon knocked at the half-open door told David way more than he wanted to know. A sob rose in his throat. Mac stood and David nodded to him. “Come in,” Mac said.

  David tried to ignore the small, corrugated box in Hannah’s hands and desperately searched her face for some trace of optimism. She approached slowly and set the box near David’s feet. “I am so sorry,” she said, and David collapsed inside.

  His pain, his fatigue melted away, overwhelmed by grief and loss too great to bear. He groaned and drew his fists up under his chin, turning from his friends, rolling onto his side, drawing his knees up, and folding in on himself.

  “Lightning?” The question forced its way past his constricted throat.

  “Yes,” Hannah whispered. “There would have been no pain or suffering.”

  Grateful for that, David thought.
At least not for her.

  “David,” Mac said huskily, “me and Smitty will be right outside—”

  “I’d appreciate it if you could stay,” David managed, and he heard them sit again.

  “I have a few of her personal effects,” Hannah said. David tried to sit up, feeling the cursed dizziness. “It’s just her purse and phone, jewelry, and shoes.”

  David finally sat up and put the box between his knees. His breath caught at the charred smell. The phone had melted in spots. One shoe had scorched holes in the heel and toe.

  “I have to see her,” he said.

  “I wouldn’t recommend it,” Hannah said.

  “David, no,” Mac urged.

  “I have to! She’s not really gone and never will be unless I know for sure. This is her stuff, but did you see her, Hannah?”

  The nurse nodded.

  “But you didn’t know her. Had you ever seen her before?”

  She shook her head. “Not that I know of. But, David, I don’t know how to say this. If the woman in the morgue were my best friend, I wouldn’t recognize her.”

  The sobs returned and David pushed the box toward the end of the bed, shaking his head, his fingers pressed lightly against his temples, tender and fiery to the touch. “You know she was my first love?”

  No one responded.

  “I had dated before, but—” he pressed a hand over his lips—“the love of my life.”

  Mac stood and asked Abdullah to shut the door. He pulled the hanging curtain around the bed so the four of them were cocooned in the dim white light. Mac lay a hand gently on David’s shoulder. Abdullah reached for a knee. Hannah gripped David’s sheet-covered foot.

  “God,” Mac whispered, “we’re long past asking why things happen. We know we’re on borrowed time and that we belong to you. We don’t understand this. We don’t like it. And it’s hard for us to accept. We thank you that Annie didn’t suffer,” and here his voice broke and became barely audible. “We envy her because she’s with you, but we miss her already, and a part of David that can never be replaced has been ripped away. We still trust you, still believe in you, and want to serve you for as long as you’ll let us. We just ask that you’ll come alongside David now, unlike you ever have before, and help him to heal, to carry on, to do your work.”

  Mac could not continue. Abdullah said, “We pray in the name of Jesus.”

  “Thank you,” David said, and he turned away from them again. “Please don’t go yet.” As he lay there, his friends still by the bed inside the curtain, he realized that there would be no formal funeral for Annie and that even if there was—because she was an employee—he would have to conduct himself as a somber superior, not as a grieving lover. When he was forced to separate himself from this place, he didn’t want it to reflect upon her and call into suspicion everyone she knew or spent time with.

  He heard the drape being opened again. Hannah put the box under the head of the bed, and Mac and Abdullah returned to their chairs. “You need sleep,” Hannah said. “You want me to get you something?”

  He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Hannah, but I really have to see her. Can you unhook me and help me down there?”

  She looked as if about to refuse him, but he saw the light of an idea come to her eyes. “You’re sure?” she said.

  “Absolutely.”

  “It won’t be easy.”

  “And this is?”

  “I’ll get a wheelchair and I’ll pull the IV along with us.”

  Zeke was wearing his trademark getup when Buck presented him to the Tribulation Force at the new safe house and introduced him to Tsion. “When the boss gets back, we’ll make you a full-fledged member,” Buck said. “But meanwhile, find yourself some privacy and appropriate whatever you need to settle in, make yourself at home, and become part of the family.”

  “By all means,” Tsion said, embracing the fleshy young man. In thick-soled, square-toed, black motorcycle boots, black jeans, black T-shirt under black leather vest, Zeke was a stark contrast to the sweatered, corduroyed rabbi, standing there in his Hush Puppies. “Welcome and God bless you.”

  Zeke was awkward and shy, and while he shook hands all around and lightly returned hugs, he stared at the ground and mumbled replies. Soon enough, however, he was exploring, unpacking, moving a bed, setting up his stuff. An hour later he returned to the central meeting place near the elevators. “This place is really uptown,” he said.

  “Literally,” Leah said, clearly bemused by the man who had once changed her entire look and given her a new identity.

  Zeke stared at her, and Buck got the impression he didn’t know what she meant but was afraid to admit it. As if to cover his embarrassment and change the subject, Zeke dug in both back pockets and one vest pocket for huge rolls of twenty-Nick bills, which he slapped noisily on the table. “I intend to earn my keep,” he said. “Put this here in the pot.”

  “You might want to wait until it’s official,” Buck said. “Rayford will be here tomorrow night and—”

  “Oh, it’s all right. Consider it a donation, even if I get voted out or blackballed or whatever.”

  “I don’t see that happening,” Chloe said, burping the sleeping Kenny Bruce on her shoulder.

  “Oh, man!” Zeke said quietly, noticing the baby. He approached slowly and reached carefully toward Kenny’s back. “Can I?”

  “You may,” Chloe said. “Your hands clean?”

  Zeke stopped and turned his hands before his eyes. “They have to be for my kinda work. Can’t smudge the new IDs, you know. They look dirty, ’cause I work on engines and stuff, but they’re just stained.”

  He bent at the knees before Chloe and gently put his meaty hand on Kenny’s back. His fingers nearly stretched from shoulder to tiny shoulder. Zeke lightly touched the boy’s feathery hair.

  “Sit and you can hold him,” Chloe said, as the others watched. Buck was especially amused by Chaim, whose eyes filled.

  “Want a turn?” Buck whispered.

  “It’s been so long,” Chaim whispered, trying to make himself understood. “It would be a privilege.”

  Somehow Kenny slept through everyone’s turn, even Tsion’s. He was last and quickly passed Kenny back to Chloe, as he was overcome. “My children were teenagers when they . . . when they . . . but the memories . . .”

  “We need to identify a body,” Hannah Palemoon said, pushing David’s wheelchair and pulling his IV to the desk just inside the morgue.

  “Sign in,” a bored older woman said.

  “Forget it,” Hannah said. “The system is behind by several days. Nobody’ll ever check anyway.”

  The woman made a face. “Less work for me,” she said. “I’m just filling in.”

  David’s heart raced as Hannah pushed him past rows and rows of bodies as far as the eye could see—on gurneys, in lateral refrigerators, and sheet-wrapped head to toe, shoulder to shoulder on the floor. “She’s not one of these, is she?”

  “Next room, around the corner.”

  Hannah steered him to the foot end of a covered body on a bed. He took a deep, quavery breath. Hannah lifted the sheet from one foot and peered at the toe tag to make sure she had the right corpse. “You’re sure you want to do this?”

  He nodded, though now not so sure.

  She showed him the tag thin-wired to the big toe. It bore Annie’s name and rank and serial number all right, plus date of birth and date of death. The foot was swollen and discolored, but no doubt hers. David reached to envelop it with both hands and was struck by the cold stiffness.

  It was the other foot whose shoe had showed lightning damage. David began pulling the sheet from it, ignoring Hannah when she cleared her throat and said, “Uh, David . . .”

  He recoiled at the damage. The heel was split wide and the big toe mangled. He covered her feet and dropped his head. “You’re sure she never felt that?”

  “Positive.”

  “Fortunato was given the power to call down fire from heaven on t
hose who didn’t worship the image.”

  “I know.”

  “I could have easily been struck.”

  “Me too.”

  “Why her?”

  Hannah did not answer. David tried to wheel himself between beds to the other end of the body. His IV stretched. “Let me,” Hannah said, and she pushed him slowly. When he reached for the sheet, Hannah reached over his shoulder and put a hand on his forearm. “You may want to look only at her face,” she said. “There was severe cranial trauma.”

  He hesitated.

  “And David? For some reason no one closed her eyes. I tried, but with time and rigor mortis . . . well, a mortician will have to do that.”

  He nodded, panting. His head throbbed, and when he was able to control his breathing again, David lifted the sheet and brought it down to her neck, careful not to look. With another deep breath, his eyes traveled to hers.

  For an instant it didn’t look like Annie. Her eyes were fixed on something a million miles away, her face bloated and purple. Burns on her ears and neck evidenced where her necklace and earrings had been.

  He sat staring at her for so long that Hannah finally said, “OK?”

  David shook his head. “I want to stand.”

  “You shouldn’t.”

  “Help me.”

  She pushed the IV stand around the chair so it was next to him. “Use that to brace yourself. If the room starts to spin, sit again.”

  “Starts?”

  She locked the wheels and put a hand on his back, guiding as he rose. He pushed with his left hand on the arm of the chair and pulled with his right on the stand. Finally, up and wobbly, Hannah’s hand still on his back, David cupped Annie’s cheek with his free hand. Despite the cool rigidity, he imagined she could feel his caress. In spite of himself, he leaned over her until he could see past where a tuft of hair had been pushed up in front. Behind that was a silver dollar–sized hole that exposed her brain.