There was a voice raised, echoing across the broad lawn they were crossing, and then another, this one excited. Shots rang out—pistol, .22-caliber.
“Stop,” the first man shouted. The other, right behind him, cried excitedly, “What is that? What’ve you got?”
Mack aimed, braced on his elbow, and squeezed off two rounds, dropping both men. Immediately, more townspeople came out of the house. They were cursing with rage, and letting loose a fusillade of bullets in their direction. No discipline but too many bullets to risk crossing the field of fire.
No choice now, they had to head for the garage.
“Move it! Fast!”
David and Caroline carried the portal.
Then Mack saw two more men coming from around the front of the house. They were not in a hurry. One of them raised a Benelli Riot Gun and blew away a security guard.
“Those two are trained,” Mack said. “They know how to kill and we need to be out of their line of fire right now.”
Moving among the disabled vehicles in the new parking lot, Mack led them toward the old garage. He knew this place as well as he knew every other corner of the Acton estate, and he knew that there were older vehicles in here, vehicles without sensitive electronics.
The garage was brick, built in the same grand style as the house, an incongruous place to store dusty trucks. The side door, as he knew, wasn’t locked.
Taking no chances, he sent Katie in first. When nobody blew her head off, he followed with Caroline and David. Inside, the cars and trucks loomed, a silent row of angles and shadowy bulk. There were a couple of pickups, a Buick Roadmaster, a black Cadillac from half a century ago, a Chrysler convertible from even earlier, and a mid- seventies Pontiac.
Mack had previously identified the pickups with their simple mechanicals and magnetos as good bets. On his way back in from his visit to the town, he’d fueled one of them up and made sure its battery worked. He led them to it and opened the door.
“They went in there,” a voice said from outside. Then the other: “They showin’ any iron?” Then silence.
Mack whispered, “We have one chance. We start this and we blast out through the garage door. That’s our chance.”
David said, “We can’t leave, the gate’s closed.”
“The power failed. Therefore, it opened automatically. That’s the way it works.” Mack replied.
“You certainly know a lot about this place,” Caroline said.
“I know everything about this place.” As he spoke, he watched David carefully. He had detected something there beyond the general level of mistrust of Mack Graham. Did David know anything more? Suspect it? Mack was watching.
“They came in this way,” a male voice said.
Mack saw a shape appear at the door, so he got David and Caroline into the truck. There was room behind the seat for the portal.
“What about me?” Katie asked.
“Ride in the bed,” Mack said.
“I will not.”
He took Katie by the collar of her blouse and lifted her off the ground.
“You will. And you will provide covering fire or they will shoot our tires out, because these two know what they’re doing. Do you understand me?”
The two shooters had opened the garage door and were moving carefully closer. Good soldiers don’t hurry unless that’s the only choice.
“Okay, folks,” one of the men said. “We saw you come in here and we got the door covered. We want to see what you’re carrying.”
With an enormous rattling cough, the old truck’s engine came to life. Mack jammed the gas to the floor and it shot forward, slamming into the garage door.
One of the men raised his rifle and fired across the line of vehicles, but the bullet hit a dust-covered Oldsmobile and went wild.
Mack backed up until the truck hit the back wall, then ground the gears into first.
“Is it fragile?” he shouted.
“Of course it’s fragile!” Caroline responded.
On Mack’s second try, the truck crashed through the door and out into the driveway.
Mack turned out into the grounds, avoiding the choke of vehicles in the drive and—he hoped—most of the marauders.
He drove down the driveway and through the gate into the outside world.
A view opened to the flaring dawn in the east, as to the north and west, the supernova set in purple haze. Mack headed toward Raleigh, from which he could see smoke rising. Was the convoy already there and raising a little hell? Fine, he’d deliver the portal, and with it Caroline and David. Let Wylie join him in tearing the information out of them, he was good at it. And Katie, too. She was going to enjoy sweet revenge.
DAVID FORD’S JOURNAL: EIGHT
I am writing this in my notebook as we drive toward Raleigh. There is little time, and I believe that this will be my last entry. After this, anything can happen. Herbert Acton offers no instructions for this period of extreme chaos.
In my last entry, I spoke briefly of the plan that I see, and with the appearance of the new star, its outlines are extremely clear. Also, it is already in our hands, in detail. The plan was expressed to a man half-mad with God, in a cave on the island of Patmos. The Book of Revelation was written in the reign of the Roman Emperor Nero, about a year before the great fire that consumed Rome.
In all probability, the Romans were right to blame the Christians. On one level, John’s book is a coded message about the destruction of what was then the great Babylon of the world, the center of sin and oppression, Rome.
On a deeper level, though, Revelation is a document of the lost science, which describes very precisely what will unfold as time ends.
We are most assuredly being judged. Those who will not go forward are tainted with the mark of the beast; the elect are ascending. And the dead have indeed risen, in the sense that, statistically, there is a living body here on earth—or was, before this happened—for every single person who has ever lived in history. Reincarnation is real, and, as this disaster began, all human souls were in the physical state.
And now we see the final sign: “And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads.”
Seven is the number of completion. A dragon may be a comet or star. In this case, it’s the lowering monster that is bringing the destruction of the world.
I have written of the elect and the condemned. Now, I turn to the matter of us, those who are going in neither direction.
I will not write down what is to happen to us, for two reasons. First, nothing is certain. Second, in doing so I would, perhaps fatally, betray a great secret.
I do not believe that the man driving this vehicle has our best interests in mind. I believe he means to harm us.
I sit here, writing and waiting. It is my belief that Caroline and I and the portal—all three of us—have fallen into the hands of the enemy.
