A Pagan's Nightmare (14 page)

L
ANNY HAD BEEN SITTING
on the beach since dawn, trying to turn his confusion into comprehension. The sun rose boldly over the Atlantic, and behind
him lay battered beach houses, the destruction from Gretchen. Workers had arrived early at the houses, and soon the high-pitched
buzz of skill saws sounded in the distance. Each time a saw cut off and whirred to a stop, it reminded Lanny of his regular
life in Atlanta—arriving home covered in sawdust, taking a quick shower, and rushing over to Miranda’s apartment to see her.
It was so easy, so routine.

After a few more minutes of reflection, he took a sharp shell and wrote in damp sand all the possibilities he could imagine.

1) She’s out looking for me, maybe back in Atlanta.

2) She’s hiding on some other small island in the Caribbean.

3) She’s held captive, but safe.

4) She’s been captured and converted, and is now a zealot herself. (Is the condition reversible?)

All four possibilities fought for supremacy. One seemed just as likely as another. He refused to consider a fifth possibility—dead
and gone—simply because he knew Miranda was a smart girl, too savvy to fall prey to zealots. He remembered the feel of her
embrace and wondered if he’d taken it for granted. He remembered the photo album of their vacations together and wished he’d
brought it with him. Now here he was, alone on a Florida beach, wearing a T-shirt that broadcast a religion to which he did
not subscribe.

Just so I can roam freely.
He felt ridiculous. He started to pull the shirt over his head. But instead he made a fist and punched the sand.
How free is anyone who has to wear such garb? Feels more like imprisonment.

A hundred yards down the beach, perched behind a high dune, one of the men from the Lincoln watched Lanny through a small
telescope. His own T-shirt read “Enforcer of the Movement,” and he spoke to the driver of the car through a cell phone. “We’ll
need them to be together before we nab them.”

“Ten-four, Corporal.”

Lanny remained seated in the sand, watching small waves rise and crash. He heard power tools fire up again, and he wondered
how many of those workers had missing loved ones.
Do those remaining really miss them? And who has it worse: Distraught parents? Distraught kids? Little League teams with only
four players?

Oddest of all to Lanny was the lack of sadness—really of any emotion at all—shown by zealots. As if the fact of their domination
outweighed regret.

Lanny checked his watch. 8:46. With his toe he carved MIRANDA above the four possibilities. Then he stood and almost managed
a smile as he thought of DJ Ned back at the station, already two hours and forty-six minutes into his six-hour play list of
original pop songs. Ned had started with the A’s and was working through the list alphabetically.

Lanny turned from the ocean and brushed the sand from his behind. Ten minutes later he entered for a third time the main road
into the Pelican’s Harbor Retirement Homes community. The house was his best source for clues, and he wanted to search inside.
He parked his Xterra on the street and approached the house.

The beige Buick still sat in the driveway. Lanny knelt beside the back tire and checked for the penny in the tread. Still
there, still shiny.

On the front porch the black leather travel bag still sat against
the front door, and the note Lanny had left days earlier fluttered above the knob, its ink fading.

He broke in through a back window. Lanny pulled the screen off and left it teetering atop a bush. Then he crawled through
the window and landed headfirst in a spare bedroom. He knew this was the room where Miranda would have stayed. On his feet
again, he saw the bed made; the closet, empty. Same for the chest of drawers.

Lanny moved to the next bedroom, used by Miranda’s parents and reeking of old lady perfume. He searched their bureau but found
only some senior citizen pills, loose change. A calendar of events for community residents. A tide chart for August.

The living room was similarly neat, and the light blue carpet looked recently vacuumed. Lanny spotted a stack of mail on the
kitchen counter, yet his perusal of it yielded only a power bill, a cable bill, some AARP literature.

That’s when he spotted the flashing “1” on the answering machine. He pushed the button and saw Monday, 10:22 a.m. on the LCD
screen. He listened for the message to play, hoping to hear Miranda’s voice.

Instead he heard her mother.

“Miranda, we’re on our way to the marina to check on your dad’s boat. It’s 10:20 now, and we’ll be back by 10:45 to take you
to the airport. There’s some turkey and Swiss cheese in the fridge if you’d like to make a sandwich to take on the plane.”

Lanny saved the message and listened again, hoping to hear something, some background noise, anything, to gain insight. But
it was just a normal phone message, one that could have been left by any mother looking out for her daughter.

Hungry, Lanny opened the refrigerator and saw the package of turkey meat. He opened it, sniffed the contents, and decided
it had gone bad. He unwrapped a slice of Swiss cheese and ate that instead. He washed it down with a can of Diet Sprite. Four
cans of the beverage remained on the bottom shelf. Beside them sat a single bottle of Killian’s Red. Miranda’s favorite.

What now?
he wondered.
Where do I go next? What’s the smart move?

Lanny found a pen and notebook paper behind the answering machine. He took a sheet and began writing out a note, explaining
all he knew. When he’d finished, he searched for Scotch tape and, finding none, retrieved a hammer and small nails from his
truck. Before tacking the note to the front door, he added one additional line at the top:

(I want to make sure yon get this, so my apologies for nailing this to your parents’ door.)

Dear Miranda,

I have been searching for you for eight days now. As far as I can tell, the entire country, and possibly the Earth itself.
has been taken over by religious zealots. I am holed up in Orlando at Fence-straddler AM Radio. The DJ there, a guy named
Ned, is the only other non-religioous person I have met so far. We believe a reward is still being offered for our capture
and conversion, so We’re doing the best We can to stay hidden. Sometimes we pose as two of them, but this is difficult, as
the rules keep changing. Plus there are WANTED posters all over with onr pictures on them. I have looked everywhere I know
to look for you.
I
even Went to Abaco via plane but you weren’t there. I found your parents’ boat with the name “SANITI” freshly painted on the
stern. There was no sign of you. So I went on the air live to ask people to help me find you. No one responded. If yon get
this message, drive into Orlando to the radio station and knock on the door. If We are relnctant to open the door, just say
the code word: “ABBA.” Ned or I will open the door.

Love,

Lanny

Two minutes after Lanny left the house, the black Lincoln pulled up in the driveway. The driver got out with a tiny camera
and took a closeup picture of Lanny’s note. He hurried back to the car, drove to Orlando, and parked across the street from
the front door of Fence-Straddler AM.

L
ANNY DROVE ALONG
the coastal highway toward Cocoa Beach. Trying again to get his mind off Miranda, he slowed further and tuned his radio to
DJ Ned’s radio show.

Ned’s play list was by now to the R’s, and R.E.M.’s “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” pulsed through
the speakers. Lanny was in no mood to hum along to the chorus, though he could identify with the lyric and could still appreciate
original songwriting.

He turned off the radio, however, when he passed a particularly hard hit area. Hurricane Gretchen had pounded this neighborhood,
and music seemed inappropriate amid calamity. He thought of the parallels between his own misfortune and natural disasters.
More people displaced. Someone else missing a loved one.

Lanny pulled his truck to the shoulder and observed workers moving in and out of a peach-colored beach house. They wore prison
uniforms and appeared reluctant, mad even, that they had to repair this wind-damaged residence.

Lanny lowered his window, and the sharp scent of sawdust invaded his truck. That familiar smell! He considered his Religious
Howdy T-shirt and thought of posing as a volunteer worker, just to find out why zealots got punished within their own world.
But as he watched apathetic workers tote boards across the porch, he noted a sheet of plywood propped against a wall. On it
was painted the rule of entry:

Lanny pulled his gear shift out of park and drove away.
Code phrase? They now have a secret code phrase?

He arrived back at Fence-Straddler AM just before noon, parked in the producer’s spot, climbed out, and pounded on the door.
“Ned!” he shouted. “Ned, it’s me. The zealots are punishing their own people now. They even make them recite a national code
phrase!”

For a full minute he heard nothing.

He pounded again. “Ned, open up.”

“What’s our own code?”

“ABBA, you moron. Now let me in. We gotta leave this place.”

The door opened, music blared, and without so much as a “hello,” Ned scrambled back to his DJ booth.

“Nope, I gotta load the next batch of songs, Lann-o,” he said over his shoulder.

Lanny practically yanked Ned from his booth—which was a difficult task, given that Ned weighed two-forty. “We need to leave,
man. Right now. I just saw a black car parked across the street, and I’m sure I saw that same car following me into Pelican’s
Harbor Retirement Homes earlier this morning.”

Ned tossed his headset into his chair and went to his window and peeked out. Then he turned and sized up Lanny as if he were
the enemy. “You led them back here to capture me, didn’t you? You’re… you’re now one of them, aren’t you?”

Lanny frowned and shook his head. “You need me to curse again? Drink an alcoholic beverage? No, Ned, I am not one of them.
But they know we’re here. And they know you’re not broadcasting from Jacksonville.”

DJ Ned was still not convinced. He folded his arms, glared at Lanny, and came up with a test question. “What music genre did
the zealots hit hardest?”

“Disco.”

“Okay, but is dancing wrong?”

Lanny frowned in frustration. “No, man, I love to dance. But not right now. Right now we gotta flee this station. Is there
a fire escape out the back?”

Ned peeked out again at the Lincoln two floors below. “No, but there’s a first-floor window in the supply room that faces
the opposite way. And my Mercedes is parked on that side, as well.”

Lanny grabbed a couple of canned drinks from the fridge and stuffed them in a plastic grocery sack. “Where do we go… Miami?
The Keys?”

Ned kicked off his loafers and quickly slipped his feet into sneakers. “What if we wear dark shades and get lost in the middle
of a crowd?”

“What crowd? Where is there a big enough crowd? We should flee to Canada or Mexico.”

“How ‘bout a very large theme park?”

Ned must be deep in denial,
Lanny thought.
Who else, when being pursued by zealots and having lost their friends, would think of visiting a theme park?

Ned reached into his desk and waved two all-day passes at Lanny. “These were for a giveaway I was going to do on the air.
But I figure now we should keep ‘em for ourselves.”

Lanny glanced blank-faced at the tickets. “I can just imagine what that place will be like.”

Ned laced up his sneakers, insisting that his plan was the right plan, that to try to flee the country would be the worse
mistake.

Across the street from the front door of Fence-Straddler AM, a second black Lincoln had joined the first. Both cars sat idling,
and both drivers scanned the building with binoculars. The driver of the second car spoke into a two-way radio. “When the
DJ announces the last song on his list, we rush the building.”

“Ten-four.”

Ned announced over the air that he needed extra time for the W’s—who had lots of hits—and that he’d continue his show for
another hour. This was of course a lie; his intention was to flee in the next sixty seconds. Ned pulled open a second desk
drawer marked
Promotional Stuff,
and brought out two beige T-shirts, both still wrapped in plastic.

“These are blank, Lann-o. We can mark them up any way we like. You said all we have to do to move among them is to wear religious
clothing. So, we’ll pose in these.” He tucked one under his arm and tossed the second shirt over his booth.

Lanny caught it, yanked off the plastic, and slipped the shirt over his head. “What if they ask us for that national code
phrase?”

“You said that was for prisoners only. Anyway, we’ll plead amnesia. Or we threaten someone until they tell us the phrase.”

Lanny tucked his shirttail into his jeans. “I dunno, man. I have this feeling we should go to Canada or Mexico, anywhere but
the South.”

“We hide out in the theme park,” Ned said, pulling his own shirt overhead and leaving the tail hanging over his shorts. “I’ll
drive.”

And down to the first floor and out the supply window they went—Ned first, Lanny assisting from behind with a push and a grunt.

They drove away quietly, leaving the two black Lincolns on the other side of the buildling, still watching the front door
and Lanny’s Xterra, still tuned to Fence-Straddler AM and bobbing their heads to the Who’s “Who Are You?”

E
N ROUTE TO THE THEME PARK
, Ned whipped his yellow Mercedes into a convenience store parking lot.

“Be right back,” he exhaled. He climbed out before stooping to address Lanny, who had not unbuckled his seatbelt and had no
plans to do so. “Just gonna grab a newspaper.”