She paused, eyeing them fiercely.
“Instead, we will evade them and travel to Flagstaff on our own. And there, in Flagstaff, we will speak to the world—on
The line of choppers approached, rotors thudding.
Without waiting for an answer from the group, Kate rode down the trail.
They all followed.
79
WHERE WAS HE?
What was this place?
How long had he wandered?
The details escaped him. Something had happened, the earth had exploded and was on fire. The Antichrist was responsible and Eddy had burned him alive. So where was . . . the Messiah? Why hadn’t Christ returned to redeem His Chosen and rapture them into heaven?
His clothes were charred, his hair was singed, his ears buzzed, his lungs hurt, and it was so dark . . . . Acrid smoke poured out of fissures wherever he walked. A dark haze blanketed the land like a fog, and he could see no more than a dozen feet ahead.
An image loomed at the limit of his vision, round and nodding, vaguely human.
“You!” he shouted, and scrambled toward the shape across the stony ground. He tripped over the smoldering stump of a dead pinon, the rest of it reduced to a circle of ashes.
The shape loomed.
“Doke!” he called, his voice muffled in the smoke. “Doke! Is that you?”
No answer.
“Doke! It’s me, Pastor Eddy!”
He ran, stumbled and fell, and lay for a moment breathing the cooler, fresher air close to earth. Climbing back to his feet, he pulled out a kerchief and tried to breathe through it. A few more steps. A few more. The dark object grew larger. It wasn’t Doke. It wasn’t a man. He reached out to touch it. It was a dry rock, hot to the touch, balancing on a pillar of sandstone.
Eddy tried to concentrate, but only fragmentary thoughts came to him. His mission . . . his trailer . . . clothes day. He recalled washing his face at the old Red Jacket pump, preaching to a dozen people with the sand blowing, chatting on the computer with his Christian friends.
How had he gotten here?
He pushed himself away from the rock, unable to see through the deepening haze. To his right was a glow and a soft roar. A fire?
He went left.
A charred rabbit lay on the ground. He nudged it with his boot and the thing twitched convulsively, flopped on its back, its sides heaving and its eyes widening with terror.
“Doke!” he called, and then he asked himself:
“Help me, Jesus,” he moaned. Shakily, he knelt and clasped his hands, raising them to heaven. The smoke swirled around him. He coughed, his eyes streaming water. “Help me, Jesus.”
Nothing. A distant rumble sounded. To his right, the flickering glow was leaping higher, an orange claw raking the sky. The ground began to vibrate.
“Jesus! Help me!”
Eddy prayed fervently, but no voice responded, no words, nothing in his head.
“Save me, Lord Jesus!” he called out.
And then, suddenly, another shape coalesced in the blackness. Eddy scrambled to his feet, flooded with relief. “Jesus, I’m here! Help me!”
A voice said, “I see you.”
“Thank you, oh thank you! In the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!”
“Yes,” said the voice.
“Where am I, what is this place?”
“Lovely . . . ,” said the looming figure.
Eddy sobbed with relief. He coughed again, hard, into his ragged kerchief, leaving a stain of black sputum.
“Lovely . . . I’ll take you where it’s lovely.”
“Yes, please, take me out of here!” Eddy stretched out his hands.
“So lovely down here . . .”
The reddish glow of the fire to his right suddenly flared up, casting an appalling glow in the dense haze. The figure, illuminated dull red, moved closer and Eddy could now see his face, the bandanna around his head, the long braids on his shoulders, one of them unraveling, the dark veiled eyes, the high forehead . . . .
“You . . .” Eddy backed up. “But . . . you’re . . . dead. I saw you die.”
“Dead? The dead never die. You know that. The dead live on, burned and tortured by the God who created them. The God of love. Burned because they doubted Him, because they were confused, hesitant, or rebellious; tormented by their Father and Creator for not believing in Him. Come . . . and I will show you . . . .” The figure stretched out its hand with a ghastly smile, and now Eddy noticed the blood; his clothes were drenched with blood from the neck down, as if he’d been dipped in it.
“No . . . Get away from me . . . .” Eddy backed up. “Help me, Jesus . . . .”
“
The ground shook and opened beneath Eddy’s feet, gaped into a sudden, bright, roaring, orange blast furnace. Eddy fell, fell, into the terrible heat, the impossible heat . . . .
He opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came.
No sound came at all.
80
LOCKWOOD GLANCED AT THE BIG CLOCK mounted on the paneled wall behind the president. Eight o’clock in the morning. The sun had risen, the world was going to work, traffic on the Beltway was slowing to its usual crawl.
That’s where he had been yesterday: in his car, stuck in Beltway traffic, AC going full blast, listening to Steve Inskeep on National Public Radio.
Today, the world had changed.
The National Guard had landed on Red Mesa, on schedule at 4:45 A.M., the LZ about three miles from the former location of Isabella. The mission had changed, however. The assault had become a salvage operation—the rescue and evacuation of the injured and the retrieval of the dead from Red Mesa. The fire had become uncontrollable. Riddled with bituminous coal seams, the mesa would probably burn for the next century, until the mountain was no more.
Isabella was gone. The forty-billion-dollar machine was a tangled, burning wreckage scattered across the mesa, and blown out from the cliff to the desert floor below.
The president entered the Situation Room and everyone stood.
“Take your seats,” he growled, slapping some papers on the table and sitting down. He’d had two hours of sleep but, if anything, the brief rest had worsened his mood.
“Are we ready?” the president asked. He punched a control at his chair and the clean-cut visage of the FBI Director, his salt-and-pepper hair still perfect, his suit immaculate, appeared on the monitor.
“Jack, give us an update.”
“Yes, Mr. President. The situation is under control.”
The president’s lips tightened skeptically.
“We have evacuated the mesa. The injured are being medevacked to area hospitals. I’m sorry to say it appears our entire Hostage Rescue Team lost their lives in the conflict.”
“And the scientists?” the president asked.
“The scientific team seems to have disappeared.”
