As he approached a set of stairs, he tried to settle himself. As Sister Colleen had told him, he was going to die with dignity.
Someone yelled, “Killer!” and then all hell broke loose. More shouting and gunshots, and that weird warbling sound he’d heard on the news from Arab countries when they get all spun up.
“Keep walking,” Brother Zebediah said to him. “Don’t slow down.” There was fear in his voice, as if his reading of the crowd was as dire as Ryan’s.
He had no idea where they were going. For the longest time. All he could see were his own feet and the ass of the guard in front of him. There were occasional flashes of hooded faces, too, but they freaked him out so much that he didn’t want to look at them.
Finally, he was at the foot of some stairs, and hands were lifting him to help him climb. He yelled in pain, but no one seemed to care.
The stairs led him to a stage, and when he got there, the crowd really went wild.
He saw the man in black robes holding a knife. It was a long, ugly thing with a tarnished blade and an edge sharp enough to see from here. And somehow, Ryan knew it was for him. His body stiffened and he thought about running.
“Remember what I said,” Sister Colleen said.
“To hell with dignity,” Ryan spat. His words brought an agonizing squeeze that triggered the purple flashes again.
“Ryan!”
He recognized that voice. He looked up, and there she was, dressed to die, just like he was. The crowd yelled, “Avenge Brother Stephen! Avenge Brother Stephen!” over and over again, yet somehow over the din, he was able to hear his mom say, “I love you!”
His sense of shame overwhelmed him. He’d failed them both, and now they were going to die.
“Oh, Lord, Scorpion,” Venice moaned over the radio. “Both Ryan and Christyne are on the stage now. Can you see them?”
“Not yet, but we’re close,” Jonathan said.
“Hurry! A man with a hood covering his face is wielding a knife, and the crowd is cheering. He’s making a speech.”
“What’s he saying?”
“There’s no audio.”
Of course not, Jonathan thought. They were trying to convince the world that whatever this was, was unfolding from the Middle East. An audio track would kill the illusion. This Brother Michael guy knew what he was doing.
One hundred yards ahead, the crowd, dressed all in black, moved less like humans than a swarm of bees on a tree branch. Too many to count, they surged and ebbed at random. Whatever was going on had them fired up big- time. Even with the windows up, Jonathan could hear the cheering plainly.
“What do you want me to do, boss?” Boxers asked. “I can ram the crowd, but the bodies’ll probably disable the vehicle. That’d suck.”
Yes, it would, Jonathan thought. “We stick with the plan. Get Gunslinger in close enough to where she can make the shot on the generator. We need darkness.”
Which meant that they dare not draw attention to themselves too early.
“The angle’s gonna be a problem,” Boxers mused aloud. “All those people. Unless the generator is on a damn scaffold, it’s gonna be hard to get a shot.” While he spoke, his foot got heavier on the accelerator.
“Slow down,” Jonathan warned. “We get made too early, we’re screwed.”
“Scorpion, Scorpion. Mother Hen. Oh, my God, you have to hurry. Something awful is happening!”
Michael Copley stepped forward to the edge of the assembly hall’s massive porch, and he held aloft the knife that would change the future. How fitting that it was a butcher knife. The crowd-this flock that adored him, to whom he was more beloved than their own blood-cheered at the sight of it, because they thought they understood what it meant. They thought exactly what he’d intended them to think, and the response was a thunderous cheer.
With the blade raised high, he allowed the cheering to peak, and then he raised his other hand for silence. They obeyed.
Aware of the camera, he wished that he could remove this ridiculous mask and face the world who watched from afar so that they would know the identity of the man who would soon bring true justice. That was not possible, of course, because the world needed to continue to think that they were who they were not. The world needed to continue to believe that the Army of God was the Army of Allah-the Islamic enemy that they wanted so badly to hate. That was, after all, what the computer experts would determine when they saw that this signal was beaming from Pakistan.
As he addressed the crowd, his voice boomed. This was oratory of the old school, and his disciples would know exactly how to react. They had been in training, after all, for twenty years, the last decade made so much easier by the fortuitous disasters in New York, Washington, and Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
Thus, when he released his own carnage in Kansas City, Washington, Detroit and now in Maddox County, West Virginia, the states of America would truly unite in their natural hatred of Islam, and with their attentions distracted, he could fulfill his ultimate goal.
“Brothers and sisters,” he yelled, “God bless us all.”
“God bless us all,” they answered in unison.
“We warned them, did we not? We gave our demands, and they did not listen. We made a promise, yet they did not believe. And here we are on this night to fulfill that promise.”
The crowd cheered louder, and he let them go for a while. The world didn’t need to know what they were saying. They didn’t need to know the reason for the executions; they needed only to watch a mother and her son die in each other’s presence.
Copley looked over his right shoulder to Brother Franklin. “Bring me the boy.”
Ryan saw the man coming for him, and he panicked. “Please don’t,” he said, and he dug his frozen bare heels into the unyielding concrete of the porch deck. He pushed back, trying to run, and someone squeezed his arm again. He yelled. He screamed. Like an animal caught in a trap.
“No! Please. I’m sorry! Please don’t hurt me any more!” He heard the words leaving his mouth, and he knew that he was giving the crowd exactly what they wanted to hear, but he couldn’t stop himself.
The big man’s hand extended from the sleeve of his robe like a snake emerging from its hole, and it grabbed Ryan by the back of his neck. The hand had a ring with a red stone on the finger.
“Please!” Ryan sobbed. He wanted to run. He wanted to disappear. He wanted to fight back, but it just hurt too much, and there were too many of them. “I’ll do anything. I swear to God, I’ll do anything.”
Across the stage, he heard his mom screaming for him.
The man’s hand clamped hard around the back of Ryan’s neck, and he shifted behind the boy to more easily escort him to the anointed spot at the front of the stage.
Ryan allowed his legs to fold under him like a petulant two-year-old, and for an instant, he was free. Using his left hand for leverage, his feet found traction and he started to run.
Then it became unthinkable.
“Now, Scorpion!” Venice yelled into her mike. Never the calmest one under pressure, this was the sound of panic.
“Stop,” Jonathan commanded, and Boxers stepped on the brakes. They couldn’t plow through the crowd. Even discounting the useless carnage, there was no way for them to make it even halfway through the throngs. And if they did, what then? They’d be at every form of disadvantage, with no chance for escape.
“What are we doing?” Gail asked. Her voice wasn’t as stressed as Venice’s, but it was close.
Jonathan opened his door. “We’re adapting. Gunslinger, take your shot from here. Whatever shot you can get. Then take the truck and drive around back of Building Alpha. We’ll meet you there.”
“We will?” Boxers said. “That’s a plan?”
“That, or you stay with Gunslinger.”
He didn’t wait for an answer. He was already on his way to the back of the crowd when Boxers got his door open.
Christyne was screaming. No words, just the guttural, animal sound of panic and pain and fury. She saw the
