The Eye of Moloch (50 page)
The rough corridor gradually narrowed until up ahead they saw the last door between the modern construction and the older passages of the mine. They’d just dragged themselves through this portal when another explosion rocked the place. This time the tremors seemed to spread and multiply as though a deep fault in the mountain had been disturbed. The earth heaved and everyone was thrown from their feet.
When it was quiet again, Noah reached out to find her hand again, but Molly was gone.
The door behind them slammed shut and he heard the bolt on the other side slide home.
“No,” he whispered.
Noah clawed his way to the door and threw his fists against it, calling out to her. Through the small glass window he could see her in there feeling her way back along the route they’d come. He grabbed the handle and strained against it with everything he had but it held fast. Desperate, he took the flashlight and ran ahead to look for another way around, but the tunnel only constricted further. From that point on there was no other way back.
His companions cleared the path as he returned to the sealed door. Through its cloudy window he could just see the security monitor
mounted high on the other side. The wide screen still showed the multi-inset view that Lana had wired together before.
And soon there she was, in the middle of the screen. Molly had found the chair they’d set up for her in the computer room and was seated there. She leaned forward and felt for the microphone, touched the button on its base that would activate it, faced the nearby camera, and began to speak.
On the upper corner of the monitor he saw the fortified entrance at the front of the place being pushed inward and the truck they’d left to block the way skidding aside like a toy. The gigantic blade of a bulldozer pulled back through the opening and then a squad of men rushed in.
Noah pounded again on the door, harder and harder until he felt the bones in his hands nearly break against the unyielding metal. When there was no more will in him he pressed his ear to the thick glass. He could just barely hear what she was saying over the intercom speakers inside.
“I came here to tell you the whole truth,” Molly said, “and then I got here and realized that’s been tried before. These people who want to run the world, all their secret knowledge is here, but you don’t really need those secrets to see what they’re about. All you have to do is look around you, and really listen. They’ve already told you exactly what they’ve got in mind for you.
“It’s not their own secrets they’re so interested in keeping anymore. It’s your secrets they want. They’re building this vast, all-seeing eye, I’m sitting here in the midst of it, and I know you’ve heard about pieces of what they’re doing, but do you realize why they’re doing it? They’re trying to see into your heart, people, into every corner of your mind, and believe me, it isn’t so they can answer your prayers. It’s a power they want because it belongs to God. Most of us have only sat by and watched as they stole everything that’s ours. Now they’re trying to take what’s His, as well.
“It won’t be me that continues this fight to restore what’s been lost;
it’s got to be you. All of you, anyone who hears this, it’s up to you now. I’m not asking you to all be the same, to all think the same; it’s your precious differences that once made this country great, and can still make it great again. All I’m asking you to do is remember what it means to be an American.
“I’ve talked enough; I’m not going to say any more. No more talk about the past. I’m going to let your enemies show you who they are, and the evil that you good people are up against in this battle that never ends. Let them show you what’s always at the end of this one-way, progressive road they’re building toward your future. And then it’s up to you to choose whose side you’re on.”
There was a clatter in the background and Molly raised her empty hands in surrender. There were tears in her pretty eyes, not because she was afraid, he imagined, but rather because there was so much she’d left undone.
A man in full body armor walked up beside her, put the muzzle of his pistol against her temple, turned briefly to share this moment of triumph with his gathered colleagues, and then shot Molly Ross in the head.
H
is mind was struck numb with shock and sorrow, and Noah was still moving only for the sake of the others.
Had he been alone he would have waited to be found and then gladly died fighting them with his raw and bleeding hands, just so he could feel in some small way that he was beside her again. But he wasn’t alone, and so they ran.
The tunnel shrank to barely shoulder-width as the path continued to ascend. They were exhausted, arms and legs worn out from the long climb, dragging their wounded and barely able to keep their footing on the slick stone. The climb only got harder but still they pressed on.
Noah was in the lead when he smelled fresh air and soon after he saw the metal grate at the end of the line. He braced himself against the drag of the slope and kicked hard into this final barrier, and again, and again until it began to weaken at the rusty frame and finally gave way.
He pulled himself from the tunnel and emerged into a small clearing; there wasn’t any visible sign of civilization on this side of the mountain. Tyler Merrick was next. The two of them together helped the others out
and onto the cold, wet ground and when that was done there was no strength left to stand.
No one arose from where they lay. Whether it was fatigue alone, or that plus all the sadness and defeat of what they’d just endured, they all stayed right where they were, motionless but finally breathing freedom.
“All of you, hold it right there.”
The firm, cold voice had come from a shadow near the trees.
Hollis was lying motionless beside him and Noah reached over for the gun in his belt, but before he could touch it a boot came down hard on his injured hand and pressed it to the turf. The blinding glare of a flashlight hit his face.
“Who are you?” the man asked.
If this was to be the end, Noah thought, then he should answer as Molly might have done.
He was worn out and winded, his chest still ached from the strain of the run and from the loss of her, but he brought himself up to an elbow and looked the man above him in the eyes. Noah formed his words carefully, giving a breath to each of them so at least one by one they’d be as strong as she would have wanted them to be.
“We . . . are . . . Americans.”
He fully expected to be shot in the next moment and he would have taken that bullet with no regrets.
But it didn’t happen.
Instead the man picked up the pistol Noah had dropped and then took a step back. He then made a motion toward the trees and another of them came near.
“There were only four places you could have come out, Mr. Gardner”—the man was helping Noah to his feet as he spoke—“and we covered them all. If we’d gotten here sooner maybe we could’ve—”
“I don’t understand. Who are you?”
“Virginia Ward sent us,” the man said. “We’re here to take you home.”
T
hat word
home
meant something different to all six of the survivors, but for each one it was also just another treasured thing from a past to which they could never return. The nearest they could come was a place they’d only heard about from Molly Ross, but never seen. That was their destination.
Over the first fourteen hundred miles they traveled in short, guarded segments from one safe house to the next. In these caring hands, after several days of good food and rest and medical care it wasn’t too long before all were on the road to a full recovery.
Virginia Ward’s men had left them near Cheyenne, then. From that point on, Thom Hollis knew the way.
They rode northwest as far as the main roads would carry them, divided up and hidden among the sleeper compartments of a convoy of long-haul truckers sympathetic to the cause. The final leg of the journey was taken on horseback and later on foot from the last place of friendly sanctuary just south of the Bighorn Mountains.
Though the weather was mild, the terrain was as harsh as it was unspoiled, and without a savvy woodsman for a guide Noah and the others
would have never made it through the rugged wilderness. Even experienced hikers, hunters, and adventurers stayed away from this part of the high country. Many who’d wandered into the region in the past had been lost, never to be seen again.
Of course, that’s why the settlement was founded where it was; why Molly and her mother had chosen this patch of remote, forbidding land as their place of last refuge for the Founders’ Keepers. Though the route to get there was hazardous, in a place like this her people might be safe from the worst of the world outside.
Noah hadn’t known what to expect upon his arrival, and at first glance there wasn’t much to see.
From a hill overlooking the valley ahead he was able to count only a handful of simple dwellings and a broken dirt path that wound between them. At this distance the man-made additions to the woods were nearly invisible among the tall aspen and evergreen trees. Hollis came up to his side and pointed out nine more structures, for a total of thirteen.
At the end of this last long day of travel, now with only a final half mile to go, Noah sat to rest and think for a while, and Hollis sat beside him while the others went on ahead.
“I’m sorry,” Noah said, after a time.
“You’re sorry for what?”
“I should have kept her from going back into that place. I should’ve protected her.”
Hollis smiled at that. “One thing I learned about Molly a long time ago. Once she set her mind to something, wild horses couldn’t drag her off it. You couldn’t have stopped her. Hell, I tried and I couldn’t stop her, either. Just put yourself at ease about that, at least. She did what she felt she had to do, like always. The Lord moves in mysterious ways.”
Noah looked over at him. “That God business, that’s new for you, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, it is.”
“And what brought this on?”
“Had my eyes opened up, I guess, in the course of those last few days. I finally heard His voice.”
“You heard a voice.”
Hollis nodded.
“And this was when you were running a fever of what, a hundred and five?”
“Nevertheless.”
“But we lost this one, Hollis. Molly’s dead, and so are a lot of other good people. We accomplished nothing at all in Pennsylvania. Everyone who was chasing us before, as far as we know they’re all still after us. I don’t really see any answered prayers here. If this is God’s will, I don’t understand it. That voice you heard might as well have been coming from hell.”
“A month ago I might’ve said the same thing,” Hollis said. “Come tomorrow, you might feel different.”
It was nearly sundown and, after a few more minutes of quiet reflection, they got to their feet again and continued on. At the border of the clearing the path became gradually wider, graded even and cleared of a late-season snow.
First they passed a small log cabin with firelight warming its interior in the dusk, a wispy curl of wood smoke from its chimney dispersing in the light breeze. Next came what appeared to be the beginnings of a general store, and a closer look through its picture windows confirmed it was exactly that. The shelves inside were filled with provisions: canned foods, fuel and lamp oils, medicines, dried meats, burlap bags of seed and grain, soaps and other essentials, batteries, and a cache of ammunition and some hunting and trapping needs.
At the midpoint of the main thoroughfare stood a longer, taller building, solidly and artfully constructed, with wide doors and a heavy brass bell hung beneath its awning. It could have been a meeting hall, a school, a storm shelter, a church, or a fortress, depending on the needs of the day.
Some of the small, simple homes appeared to be occupied; others were dark. As he walked along he saw a checkered curtain pull aside behind a front window. The face of a child came close to the glass. She smiled and gave a little wave, and as he returned the greeting Noah was touched by the honest, innocent nature of the exchange. This little girl had greeted a stranger with no concern at all for his intentions; if he was here, he was a friend. Surrounded as she was by her family and her neighbors, within these protected borders there wasn’t much for her to fear.