He called out the next hymn, “Amazing Grace,” one of his favorites. Some of the other churches had done a lot of Christian lite rock in their services. They would get a couple guys with a six-string and a bass and a drummer and sing some up-tempo songs no one had heard before and a lot of people liked that. Not Bellman. He was about the basics. “Amazing Grace” was the gold standard that Christian music was going to be measured against, and that was what they would sing in his church.
They finished the hymn and he gestured for the congregation to sit. The congregation did, and people put their hymnals back into the racks and settled in for the sermon. Bellman never wrote his sermons out. He kind of got an idea about what he wanted to say and then simply said it. He figured it was best if your sermon came from the heart. Anyway, his old audience of grizzled infantrymen wasn’t going to take some overly prepared performance seriously. You had to look those guys in the eyes and really talk to them, and that’s how he tried to do it in his preaching.
Bellman stepped to the pulpit and opened his mouth but then paused and said nothing. There was the screech of tires and the roar of engines outside. A lot of them. Something was happening.
The congregation heard it too, and they looked around confused. One man at the back stood up and went to the closed door and pushed it open a crack. It flew wide open and the People’s Volunteers were there, a dozen of them, smiling slyly, strutting as they walked inside, AKs up.
The foot soldiers pointed their rifles at the congregation, which sat staring and silent, as their leader swaggered down the center aisle. He had gotten his mojo back since his encounter with Turnbull. Bellman’s face registered nothing but contempt.
“If you’re not here to hear my sermon, you need to leave,” said the pastor.
The leader laughed. He was back in the role he loved, the only guy in the room with a gun, the one in charge.
“Fuck you, preacher. You make me leave.”
“You use that language in the Lord’s house again and I will.”
“Oh, your old ass is going to do something about it?”
“If you’re asking if I will walk down there and throw your ass out of my church, the answer is ‘Yes’.”
“Well, come on, old man.” The others laughed. One of the PVs stepped to an old woman in the aisle and grabbed her purse. She shrieked, and a man in the row behind her stood to defend her. Another People’s Volunteer hit him across the gut with the butt of his rifle. The other PVs burst into laughter as the man crumpled.
“Get the hell out of here!” Bellman roared.
“Where’s your friend?” asked the leader. “We’re here for him. And to collect some donations.”
“Go to hell,” said Bellmen.
“For a preacher, you got a mouth on you,” said the leader. He turned to his men. “Find him.”
The PVs commenced looking down the rows, scrutinizing the parishioners and grabbing purses. Three of them broke off to head to the back and they went through the door into the administrative areas, weapons up.
Do-Rag was greatly enjoying the party. “Get your wallets out, bitches! I’m taking a collection!”
The leader turned back to Bellman, who was gripping the sides of his pulpit so hard it seemed he might break them off. “You think you can just have your little church like you used to? You think you can just do whatever you want? You think you can disrespect us? No, you can’t do shit. You think this is your town, but it’s our town.”
A woman with her cell phone caught his eye – she was dialing 911, and the leader just laughed. “Go ahead and call the PSF. Call them! Hell, walk outside and talk to them because they’re here with us. Nobody is coming to rescue you. You belong to us. You’re ours now. You’re going to do what I say you’re going to when I say you’re going to do it, and you’re going to give us what we want, and you’re going to shut the fuck up about it.”
Do-Rag was a couple feet behind his boss, smiling broadly, when he saw Will Collins move his hand behind his back. Where Do-Rag came from, that’s where you kept your gun, and he reacted instinctively. Do-Rag swiveled and leveled the AK, firing a burst that caught Will Collins in the chest and sliced into his wife Sarah, blowing out her eye.
The other PVs reacted instinctively, opening up, panic spraying rounds into the seated crowd. The leader was stunned for a moment, and then he began yelling.
“Stop shooting, stop shooting!”
Bellman was on him grabbing his arm, going for his rifle. The leader kicked Bellman in the gut, pushing him back, and without thinking he raised his rifle and fired. Five bullets ripped through the minister’s abdomen, and Bellman sprawled back into the aisle.
“Stop shooting, stop shooting!” the leader yelled. The PSF officers who had been outside securing the area were at the door now, weapons in hand, looking in, horrified.
The shooting stopped.
Smoke wafted across the sanctuary. It was silent for a moment, and then there arose a chorus of moans and screams and yells. The three PVs who had gone off to investigate the administrative rooms burst back in, looking panicked at the chaos.
“Let’s go!” shouted the leader. “Let’s go!”
He stepped forward and found his Nike submerged in an expanding pool of blood from an elderly woman his men had shot in the face.
The People’s Volunteers ran out the door and to their cars, wasting no time clearing out of the area.
Turnbull and Langer burst out of the wood line in a full run heading across the grass towards the church. The stained glass window facing them had been largely shot out – it did not take a genius to know what had happened well before they arrived at the sanctuary door.
Bodies, some alive, some clearly not, were strewn across the floor and the pews. Some people were focused on first aid; others shook and cried, useless. Others carried the wounded out to their own vehicles.
Dale Chalmers was there, dazed. Turnbull came over to him and he looked up, his jaw still bandaged, as he leaned over the corpse of the pastor. None of his family had been hit, but the brains of the school teacher sitting in front of him were splattered across his white shirt. Turnbull knelt beside him as Langer went to help other casualties. He checked for a pulse on Bellman, but knew there would not be one.
“Who?” Turnbull said, knowing the answer.
Chalmers blinked dazed.
“Who?”
“The Volunteers again. They’re gone now. And the PSF were here too. They didn’t do anything to stop it. They just started shooting for no reason.”
“Call 911. Do it now.”
“We did, a bunch of times. They, they won’t come. Not the PSF, not the paramedics. The dispatchers just hang up on us.”
Langer was putting pressure on a teenager with a sucking chest wound; his eyes were black with rage. But Turnbull allowed himself to feel nothing. He was in operational mode.
“Who has medical training, military combat lifesaver training, nurse school, anything?” he shouted.
A hand went up, a middle aged man who was helping a boy shot through the right arm. “I was an EMT.”
Turnbull pointed to the open area behind the pews. “That’s the casualty collection point. You take it over. You’re the doc until a real one shows up or we get them all out of here. The rest of you, if you have an SUV or a station wagon, back it up here. You’re our ambulances. Everyone else, if you have a wounded family member, you stay with them. Everyone else, our EMT is going to tell you what to do. If you have a sweater or something you can use to apply pressure to a wound, take it off and put it where the EMT says.”
People began gently moving the wounded to the casualty collection point as others ran to get their vehicles. Turnbull began his own triage, walking from casualty to casualty, coldly assessing which was likely to live and which was likely to die – or was already dead. He counted 12 dead, including Pastor Bellman. He organized the evacuations, selecting the most seriously wounded who would have the best shot at the hospital to go first.