A vivid memory once more filled his head, an epoch for him that changed his life’s course. His mother was staying with Grandma in another state and she had left him her number, for emergencies, with a warning to call collect, to reverse the charges. Paul hated his step-father, whose drinking and abuse had grown with each passing day of separation from his mother. One day, he had forgotten to call her collect and talked to her for a long time begging her to come back soon. When his step-father arrived from the bar and found out his call wasn’t collect, he went crazy. Paul never learned whether the source of the rage was the cost of the call or the depth of jealousy. Regardless, his father had beaten him worse than God was beating him now.
And for Paul, God always accepted the charges.
Unable to hold onto his rifle, John Parkington let it go and turned onto his back to take in the sun once more. His body started to shake. He heard rumbling sounds all around him. Who knew death was so loud? So active? His foggy eyes squinted, trying to focus on the wind turbine that seemed to be signaling him.
“J O H N D E A—”
The tower holding Buck and the wind turbine, firmly mounted to the rocky base of the ridge overlooking the Wrights’ ranch, started to move. It creaked and groaned, and then its metal supports weakened further to an over-powering force. The tower pitched back and then forward fiercely. Pushed to their limits, the metal supports let go, releasing the tower, turbine, and its one occupant down to the earth, where it crashed into a bramble of disconnected pieces, like discarded dinosaur bones. Even dinosaurs had their weaknesses.
John knew what this meant, feeling sadness for his new friend’s loss , but he also felt bathed in peace, his own pain now gone along with his fear. He prayed his son would fare well and that his wife and his friends would also. He closed his eyes and welcomed the everlasting light he knew would come.
“Buck!” Wilber screamed as he watched, unable even to stand while the earth shook below him. The tower Buck was on crashed to the ground. This was too much to bear. It was his fault. He shouldn’t have put Buck there, thinking it was the safest place on the whole property. He looked over to Olivia to see if she had seen, and confirmed his nightmare. Her face was buried in her hands; she was sobbing.
“These bastards took my boy away,” he yelled only to himself, since no one could hear anything above the earth’s roar. He tried to hoist himself unsuccessfully over the rock wall his grandfather had built. He and its stones were thrown as if they were paper.
Then it stopped, just as quickly as it had started.
Driven by anger and sadness, Wilber scrambled over the wall and ran down the hill, firing one shot after another, screaming a primal scream, which terrified the survivors below. Upon seeing this madman running, screaming at them, the remainder of God’s Army turned and ran back the way they had come. Running, shooting anything that moved, now in the grip of blood-lust, he ran through the wall of fire that still raged, created by him, not feeling the sting of its fiery fingers.
One by one he picked off his enemies, first running after them and then running away from his anguish. But anguish caught up with him. He stopped amongst the carnage he had caused and collapsed, sobbing inconsolably, curled up, his head pressed into the ground.
Darla rocked back and forth cradling her brother’s body, unaware of the shaking violence just belched from the depths. She was in her own hell.
Joselin dutifully knelt beside her friend, resting her hand on her shoulder, unable to imagine anything else she could do. A noise from the trees alerted her and she brought up her weapon, ready to dispatch anyone else who threatened her friend.
It was a young man, holding his hands in the air, approaching with a curious look of wonder, almost awe.
“Darla?” he asked. “Is that you, Darla?”
Darla continued to rock back and forth; her body and Danny’s were like one.
The man walked up to them, stopped to look down and waited, and then asked again. “Darla, is that…” he trailed off, his voice cracking.
She stopped rocking. Slowly she lifted her head, her face a muddled mess of blood, dirt, and tears. She looked at Steve, knowing it was him before she set her eyes upon him, and plaintively held out one shuddering arm.
Steve fell alongside them, enveloping them in his arms and his own tears of sorrow and joy.
Thompson Journal Entry
Continued…
The Passageway
When I built my beach warehouse, I knew I would need to have some way of connecting the two places. So, I built a passageway—many thought we had bad plumbing problems because of the size of the excavation of earth—that runs underground. Besides the ability to go from one to the other unseen, the passageway offers you safety and security. And if all else fails, you can use it as a means of escape.
You’ll find a button on the north wall behind the bookshelf that is much like the entrance bookshelf; it’s a false door. Be sure to close it behind you so that your whereabouts are not known to anyone who may enter. This passageway takes you into what would be the kitchen pantry of the beach warehouse.
41.
An Opening
“What’s happening out there?” Sally asked frantically, and then noticed her father’s arm was swollen and purplish. “Oh crap, what’s wrong with your arm?”
“I broke it falling off the roof,” he said holding it carefully, “but that’s not important. How do you know about the passageway?” Bill moved them toward the workshop.
“Well, ah…” She looked at the Fernandez family, her face tensing up some more.
“They’re Max’s friends: Miguel, Maria, and Ana.” Bill walked with her through the workshop, its lights flickering, illuminating the room weakly, barely holding back the darkness. “Go ahead. You were telling me how you knew about the passageway?”
“Oh, right. It’s in the journal. You know, the leather-bound book Max left us?”
Bill knit his brows in puzzlement. “How would Max’s grandfather know about this passageway?”
“Really, Dad?” Sally scowled at him, eyebrows raised in exaggeration. “Lame question. First, it’s great-grandfather, and of course he wouldn’t know about this, unless he was also a fortune teller. Max started writing in the journal about fifteen years ago, just a little bit at first and then a lot more recently.” She thought a moment. “I guess as sort of an instruction book for us.”
Maria said something in Spanish to Miguel, who cleared his throat and glanced between Bill and Sally. “Sorry, but shouldn’t we go now?”
“What’s going on out there?” Sally asked.
“A bunch of thugs are out there. I think they’re with Clyde and they’re demanding the food and supplies. They already burnt down our house and they’re probably going to do that to this one too. We’re leaving Rocky Point.” Bill spoke rapidly. He tried with much difficulty to find the door latch on the metal bookshelf Max had shown him not that many days ago; his broken arm and the time limitations on them stressed him.
“Mr. Clydeston burnt down our house?” Sally’s voice rose in disbelief.
“Yes,” Bill grunted in pain. “Where is the damned thing?”
Sally reached up and the gun she forgot she was holding clanged against one of the shelves. Her whole body reacted as if she had been slapped, everything completely tense. Switching the firearm to her other hand, she reached up again and pulled on an unseen lever. It released with a click. “Here.” Snapping back to reality, she ran to Max’s computer.