She closes her eyes briefly to consult her memory map, opens them again as a stupid minivan driver blazes past, spraying turbid slush everywhere. There are more flashing lights. The big USAF base is some miles ahead, off to the right, behind a chain-link fence surrounding the area of a medium-large European state.
“Forty to fifty minutes,” she says, pressing down on the accelerator. The yellow glare of the gate lies off to one side and astern, just beyond the horizon, lighting up the starless sky of the Other Place. An echoing glare of light lies dead ahead, straight down the highway. “Then we can shut down Schiller’s revival service.”
She glances sideways to check his reaction to her words. Howard is staring intently at the pizza box on his lap instead of listening.
“What is it?” she asks.
Howard looks up. “I think they’re onto us,” he says.
MORNING AT THE NEW LIFE CHURCH.
The New Life Church isn’t just a church—it’s a campus and office complex, with multiple buildings housing the World Prayer Center and a whole slew of small group ministries focussing on specialized niches.
Its worshipers are, in Raymond Schiller’s eschatology, misguided at best and damned at worst; or they were, until he convinced the Board of Overseers to give him a fair hearing at a prayer retreat in the compound near Palmer Lake. The Board of Overseers have now been Saved, and are duly grateful. As a sign of appreciation they have agreed to make the main sanctuary available for Ray’s big tent event, in a joyous celebration of the Golden Promise Ministries’ bounteous commitment to the people of Colorado Springs. In fact, they’re pulling out all the stops to bring their flock to the true cause—they’ve rearranged the main sanctuary for a largely standing congregation and, with the Sheriff’s Department providing volunteer fire marshals and a waiver, they’ve got a roof to cover 8,000 souls. New Life only has about 9,000 regulars at present and barely a third are likely to show for a non-Sunday special organized by a different local church, but Golden Promise have been love-bombing Colorado Springs and environs with advertisements for the event for the past week; and once they’re Saved, the new converts will be most zealous in their attempts to bring friends and family along.
Kick-off is due at 2 p.m., for an event that is planned to run all afternoon. It’s a tight schedule. The Golden Promise team are supposed to complete their tear-down by 9 p.m. so that the sanctuary can be returned to order for the Sunday morning service. The reality, as Ray has explained to Pastors Dawes and Holt, is that Sunday is cancelled.
It’s morning at the New Life, although Ray couldn’t be certain if his watch didn’t tell him so. “Who ordered this?” He frets at sister Roseanne: “Our Lord sends his storms to protect the flock of the faithful until it’s time to take what is ours of right, but if it stops them coming to Church…”
“I’m sure it will be all right, Father?” She clutches his day planner apprehensively. “The Lord will provide snowplows and road salt, I’m sure!”
Ray glances at her sharply, but there’s no sign of irony in her hopeful face. Irony is a sin, but his handmaids are faithful followers, pure and chaste even without a host to guide them. He nods slowly. “I’m certain He will.” He turns his head to his security chief. “Alex. Our expected drop-in guests. You’re ready for them?”
Alex nods. “We have security in plain clothes checking the doors, and the parking garage barrier is manned. I’ve issued mug shots and everyone’s been briefed on the troublemakers; the control room’s manned and watching for them.” He cracks his knuckles. “They won’t get past us.”
Ray closes his eyes. “They are approximately twenty miles north of here, coming south along the Ronald Reagan Expressway. Slowly, because of the weather. The Holy Spirit told me so.” He opens his eyes. “Now, what of the other task?”
“It’s being taken care of. I sent some missionaries.” Alex has a habit of becoming uncharacteristically terse when he is discussing something that he thinks Schiller is best insulated from, lest he end up on a witness stand someday.
Ray nods, thoughtfully. “I’ll be in the vestry. Bring them to me as soon as you have them, unless I’m on stage; in that case, hold them until I’m ready.” He stands and rests a hand on sister Roseanne’s shoulder for a moment—his sense of balance has been erratic this past day or so. “God be with you.”
PATRICK IS IN THE KITCHEN, BREWING UP A POT OF TEA, WHEN he realizes something is very wrong.
Moira is upstairs in the bedroom, tucked up and crashed out on a cocktail of temazepam and Imodium to keep her guts under control. The chemo this time round is visibly eroding her, like a too-fast river wearing down a sandstone bed. It cuts into her earlier with each course. She won’t be stirring much before noon, but he needs to get moving and buy food, then call the shop about her car. So he’s up and about in a pair of worn bedroom slippers and a dressing gown that’s seen better days, sluicing hot water around the teapot and getting ready to spoon loose leaf tea into it. The Irish Breakfast blend brings back memories, not all of them bad.
It’s unnaturally dark outside, and the weatherman’s got no clue about what’s happening: there’s something on the news about an extreme weather event and a blackout that’s hit the phone company—backhoe through a cable, probably, or a fire in an exchange. But Patrick pays scant attention to the radio. Something is tickling his nerves.
He can’t say precisely what it is, but his hackles rise. Then, a moment later, he feels it. It’s a tight, warm sensation at the base of his throat, in the other tattoo they applied when he signed the contract.
There is a reproduction grandmother clock in the front hall, patiently ticking away the seconds. Patrick darts through and opens the cabinet door on its front, pushes aside the lead counterweights and disturbs the pendulum that has counted out the twilight hours and months he’s spent here with Moira. Leaning inside the cabinet with its muzzle on the floor and the butt close to hand is a sawn-off pump-action shotgun. Five in the tube and one up the spout. He keeps it for emergencies, along with the discreet camera on the front stoop and the screen inside the door. Right now the camera is showing nothing much, just the usual view of the steps and the mailbox, but something about it isn’t quite right—
There is a hammering on the door. “Police! Open up!” There’s nothing on screen, but right then the tattoo heats up like a bad patch of sunburn and begins to glow.
Out of time for the subtle stuff, Patrick feels an old and familiar fury:
Patrick swears angrily and works the slide, ejects a cartridge, and pulls again.
His tattoo is burning hot now. The kettle begins to wind up to an eerie banshee scream from the kitchen as it comes to a rolling boil.
Another cartridge goes rolling across the floor as Patrick squeezes the trigger again: another misfire. He glances down as he reloads, futile—the red plastic tubes projecting from the cartridge bases are glowing cuprous green in the shadows. They’re loaded with banishment rounds, but it looks like someone’s brought countermeasures.
Patrick drops the gun and legs it towards the kitchen, hunting wildly for anything suitable—the knife rack by the worktop, the kettle screeching its iron lung out—grabs Moira’s favorite carving knife and the aforementioned iron jug, skids back into the hall, and turns at bay as the door opens.
They are not the police.
