Scavengers (17 page)

“
Dejah!
”

She turned as she was dragged along, masses of humanity pressing in around her, but she whirled at the sound of his voice.

“Shaun!” She said something else, but the noise washed out her words, and he could only see her lips moving.

Her eyes met his. The din of the crazies in the auditorium escalated as she was led through them. 

Frantic, Shaun grabbed the nearest man’s shoulders, and pushed himself onto his back.  From there he hovered two feet above the guards. They looked up at him with shock. A pistol rose above the heads of the crowd, aimed in his direction. The guard looked nervously at Shaun and scanned the crowd. He shouted at Shaun, but his words were lost in the wave of shouts and open gratitude to God for this new gift, this bride for Reverend Keller, salvation of the Church of the Risen King.

  Shaun twisted, dug his feet into God-knows-what to push himself over the human barricade.  He landed hard on the floor near the base of the stairs, ducking, and rolling past the guards. He leapt to his feet, darting past the base of the stairs. He pushed past Keller and grabbed for Dejah.  She reached out to him. Her fingertips brushed the palm of his hand.

“We’ve got to get out of here!” he yelled.

Her face was drawn with panic and worry as Reverend Keller turned and realized that Shaun was there. His dark eyes flashed with a dangerous fury. His face contorted with ugly rage. Keller thrust Dejah through an open door leading backstage. 

He turned, seething, and came at Shaun, one hand outstretched and curled into a claw, every move charged with anger. Keller lunged for him.

Shaun ducked left to dodge Keller’s oncoming attack. From behind, another hand gripped him, clamping onto his upper arm. Pain shot through his shoulder. His arm was wrenched violently backward.

“You need help fighting a sixteen-year-old, Keller?” Shaun shouted, spittle flying. His body shook from fear and trembled with rage.

Reverend Keller’s fingernails clutched Shaun’s neck. They dug deep into his flesh. He felt himself choking.

“You have been sent as an instrument of Satan!” Keller hissed.

Shaun gagged. His breath came in gasps. He felt the pain of his windpipe being crushed.

Then, a strange lucidity seemed to overcome the reverend. The change was so sudden it was surreal. It was if he’d been possessed, and then the spirit of evil left him. A puppet whose strings had been released. The man’s killing hand released the boy. Shaun fell backward into the gathering guards. Carson’s face came into view and it became evident that the hand firmly grasping Shaun’s forearm belonged to him.

The Reverend blinked at Shaun. Then he looked up at the men who held him. “Tonight,” Keller said. “Ensure this warrior of Satan is punished.”

Keller turned, disappearing through the backstage door. Shaun caught a glimpse of Dejah peeking around the door, tears in her eyes. A hand shoved her hard into the hidden depths of the building and that was the last Shaun saw of her. He gasped, trying to catch his breath.

As the guards dragged him off, he spotted David, moshed by the crowd, face creased with worry as he watched Shaun, flanked on all sides by Keller’s gruesome ghoul squad, escorted from the room like a prisoner off to die.

It was night. Dejah only knew that because when dinner arrived, the windows in the corridor beyond the door were dark. Otherwise, the room seemed timeless. After she ate a tasteless meal delivered from the café, a homely woman with little to say made off with their dishes. When the woman had gone, she felt plunged again into an aimlessly drifting sea.

Her body seemed healed. She was free of physical, if not emotional, pain. Anxiety at not being able to call Selah was like a cold spike pressing against the inside of her chest, a palpable pressure. Every time she swallowed, her throat ached with the threat of tears. But she had to be stronger. Now she had Shaun’s life to worry about, too.

The memory of him being choked by Reverend Keller and then carried away by the militants was too much to bear. She pushed it from her mind.

What filled her thoughts were memories of Selah, of life together in the times before all of this happened.  She couldn’t focus on the bizarre situation with Keller right now. Worry for Selah consumed her, overshadowed and rushed in through every spare thought. Everything else mattered little. It occurred to her that the lunatic reverend could touch her, rape her, and have her tortured. But none of that mattered if it bought her more time, more leeway to design a plan for escape. The only thing that mattered was Selah. Staying alive. Getting Shaun, and then getting back to Selah.

Not knowing where her daughter was or whether or not she was well or safe was bad enough. But having to sit here, locked away in this room, unable to do one damn thing about it, was downright maddening. It raised her pulse, stoked her anger, and it hurt.

It hurt like fucking hell.

She swallowed a sob. She wouldn’t let it out. She couldn’t let these other bitches see her in a state of weakness.
Daughters of Heaven, my ass
. For all she knew, they were spies for Keller. He struck her as a man who would use every shred of psychological leverage he could gain, and he was a master manipulator.

It was evident that he’d been leading these people astray for years before the infection even hit the area. The plague just provided the backdrop necessary to implement whatever fucked up plan for world domination that he thought he had. This man had been lying in wait for something like this to happen so he could spring into action and become the savior and king to this flock of sheep. Classic cult leader.

Dejah took a deep, shuddering breath. Instinct began to kick in and Dejah knew that she had to formulate some sort of plan. Just sitting here waiting for a window of opportunity was folly. She hardened her gaze and looked around the room.

The Daughters of Heaven had taken their customary places around the posh chamber.  Judith lay across the divan, gazing up at the ceiling as if she could somehow mentally check out of this place and spend the evening in some spiritual otherworld away from the rest of them. Her hair was beautiful reddish brown, her complexion fair, the color of solemn innocence. Her pink almost sheer gown draped to the floor, her legs propped together at the end of the divan.

Karen, dressed in a blue gown similar to Judith’s was already curled atop her bed, dozing.  Dejah thought it was a crime how lovely she seemed. So young. She couldn’t help but suspect the reverend of some kind of perverse intent for all of them…although he hadn’t yet proven that theory. It was obvious that Karen had been here for a while, long before the infection spread through the area.

This chamber wasn’t new either. Whatever sham Keller was running in this church, he’d been at it for some time. Dejah wondered how many other Daughters of Heaven he had tucked away throughout the massive church complex or ensconced in some other buildings or mansions across the country. Keller was clever; she’d give him that. To elude cameras and questioning eyes, he must have been pretty shrewd with his comings and goings. He also must have paid off more than a few congregation members. You couldn’t have a church this huge without a few blackmailers in the bunch. Adders in the grass. Dejah considered what Keller’s eventual plan might be for them. If he was sleeping with Karen, the woman hadn’t said. She hadn’t said very much at all.

Keller stayed out of the room last night, only coming to fetch her in the morning, when he’d announced to her in the hallway – in a crazed sort of euphoria – that God told him that she was sent to be his bride.

Dejah shook her head at the incredible memory. Worst of all, he really seemed to believe it.

I sure ended up in a house of creeps
.

On top of Keller’s delusions, she had to deal with the power-hungry, cult-enslaved guards that served Keller and fulfilled his every request. She could see how Keller so easily manipulated them. None of them were too smart, and all of them desired to be something more than what they were: important, necessary, bad-asses to be feared. Hell, Thomas was a teddy bear compared to some of these guys. 

She looked across the room at the final Daughter of Heaven. Zanine sat sideways on an overstuffed recliner. One leg dangled over the side, shapely and bare. The woman stared at Dejah with malice in her eyes. Zanine seemed the only one to take the reverend’s announcement of the impending marriage badly. Dejah recalled television documentaries about polygamist cults and the women caught in the turmoil of these twisted relationships. Some of them embraced the situation. Others were victims, some were child brides — forced into sexual and domestic slavery. She could see that Zanine reflected the attitude of a woman who was jealously guarding her position as one of Keller’s wives.

Or concubines
.

Something inside of Dejah stirred her to speak to the woman, but she forced herself to remain silent. Zanine glared at Dejah like a dog guarding the last bone in the house. There wasn’t anything Dejah really had to say to the bitch anyway. It wasn’t like she was here in this situation by choice. And, she didn’t want anything she might say to be taken back to Keller and used against her in whatever torture rites the King of Creeps engaged in.

She looked from Karen to Zanine. Zanine continued staring at her, her face screwed tight in anger, looking like she wanted to say something. Maybe she’d been told not to talk to Dejah. Dejah sighed.

Screw it,
she thought.
I don’t have the energy for this chick’s drama.

Dejah propped herself up on her bed. Her feet ached. Her heart ached. She was exhausted with worry.

“Better get your beauty sleep,” Zanine finally said with a frigidness in her voice.

Dejah propped herself up on one elbow. She gazed across the room at Zanine. “Excuse me?”

“You’ll be serving the reverend in his chambers soon. You won’t want to look so tired and haggard like you do,” she said.

Dejah blinked. She resisted the urge to smile. She resisted the urge to shudder with revulsion. Instead she maintained an expressionless composure.

What should I say? Shove it up your ass, darling? Fuck you very much, my dear?

“Thanks,” she managed with restraint.

Zanine gave a coy smile, like she knew secrets that Dejah didn’t and never would. Almost like this was some sort of high school clique. Like Zanine was top dog and Dejah some lowly class nerd to be ridiculed.

Dejah felt heat in her cheeks. She clinched her teeth, flexing her jaw muscles. She stared hard at Zanine, who didn’t flinch.

Dejah stood. 

Instead of walking the few strides to where Zanine sat and slapping the bitch, Dejah went to the door. She gave the knob a gentle turn, trying to open the door. She pushed against the solid wood with her hip and a little force. It didn’t budge; it didn’t even move. The backside of a deadbolt told her there was more than one lock securing the door.

Dejah ignored Zanine, who closely watched her every move as she walked across the room and lay beneath the canopied bed in her corner of the room. She kept her eyes averted from Zanine. The locked door didn’t entirely surprise her, but it did add to her anxiety. It cemented the fact that she was a prisoner here. And there was no question in her mind the reverend was far more than an egomaniacal evangelist.

People in this congregation admired him. Now those people who are here are trusting Keller to spiritually guide them in a time when everything they knew and loved — the entire world — is coming to an end. These people blindly put their lives in the hands of a madman.

Why did Keller have his goons save us
? she wondered.

Maybe the militants had good intentions, saving them for humanity’s sake. Or maybe, under orders of the reverend, they were corralling people here in the church complex, in this miniature city, to make their own form of demented spiritual civilization, their own new world.
The chosen ones
. This church compound was obviously constructed with some sort of communal living in mind.
But where the hell did all of the weapons come from?

Flashes of news broadcasts about the Branch Davidians went through her mind, not helping her disposition. Nor did random images and thoughts of Jonestown, or the Heaven’s Gate cult. But no doubt was left in her mind that — after what she’d seen and heard from the reverend, plus the blind group-think among his followers, plus his constantly humorless state and how Shaun was treated — this was a cult. And every passing day seemed a precarious step closer to a precipice.

Dejah stared up at the bed’s canopy and the image of Shaun struggling to get to her cycled through her mind. She was haunted by his desperate look. She’d been helpless. To have reacted violently to the reverend wouldn’t have helped anyone.

But you sure can’t help him now, can you? Not Selah, not Shaun, not anyone who’s counting on you to be there for them.

It wasn’t her fault.  She was doing what she could. She wouldn’t let those voices of defeat pull her down.

She rolled on her side so her back was to Zanine. Her eyes filled with tears but she wouldn’t indulge her urge to cry. Dejah clutched her hands to her chest as if clinging to her last threads of hope. Though she didn’t know where salvation would come from, she trusted that it would come.  She would be free.  She refused to believe that the sole reason her gift, or power, or
whatever
the hell it was, was given to her just so she could live to be this crazy reverend’s bride.

She said a prayer to God for revelation, for comfort, for help. She tried to have faith that he heard her and was with her, but it wasn’t easy.

Finally, she drifted asleep.

*       *       *

Roughly dragged along by two guards, Shaun was led to an abandoned section of the adjoining school to the end of a hallway with double doors leading outside.

The two men who manhandled him wore rifles. They shoved him to his knees. Moonlight shone through the windows onto the cold tile floor. The guard to Shaun’s right was a fat, gray-bearded white man wearing John Lennon glasses who looked stupid and dead inside except for the distant spark of a craving that bordered on the perverse. The other guard Shaun knew by name: Reeves. He was dressed in sharp fatigues, perfect picture of a military man gone wrong, ready to bring all the fires of hell down upon a kid who dared bring the reverend disgrace amongst his people.

“You got it comin’ kid.” Reeves sneered. He stepped forward and launched a boot into Shaun’s side. Shaun yelped and tried to scramble backward out of the path of Reeves’s foot. He banged against the double doors. “You fucked up pretty good, you know. Y’all had it just fine here – no reason to cause a stir. No reason to go launching yourself at the holy Reverend Keller because he stole your girl.”

“She’s not my girl. She’s my
friend
, and we thought we were brought here under a gesture of goodwill, not as prisoners of some nutjob!”

“Yeah, well, things change, kid. You heard the reverend. God brought that woman here to be his bride. To serve the church. Which pretty much leaves you the odd-man out. Especially if you’re not on board with the plan. We have a pretty good thing goin’ here. Don’t need some little shit like you fuckin’ things up.”

The fat pasty dude gave a belly laugh and shifted the rifle in his hands.

“Open the doors,” Reeves ordered.

The fat man went past Shaun and unchained the doors. The metal links clanked in the hallway, echoing as the chain clattered free.

“For some reason, the reverend ordered you punished, not killed. So, maybe he doesn’t want you dead, but I suppose he might not be too damned upset if there was an accident. After all, your blood wouldn’t be on
his
hands that way.”

Night wind rushed into the hallway. The scents of cold trees, prairie grasses, and autumn’s damp leaves swirled around them. There was just the stray hint of something else, too. Death. Decay.

Moonlight poured through the open doorway onto Shaun in solid beams as he stood, defiant before the two men. He was just as tall as they were. Shaun sized them up, entertaining the thoughts of escape.

“Go on,” the fat white man said, ramming his rifle butt into Shaun’s chest.  It knocked the air from him. Shaun reeled backward, tripping over the threshold onto the wood-chipped ground outside. He stumbled to get his balance against a yellow ducky for children to ride. He looked around – a swing set, teeter totter, merry-go-round. This was a play area for the younger kids at the school. A chain link fence surrounded the small area, and beyond the fence, in the distance, over the tops of a tree-clad hill, figures shambled toward him.