“In the Year 70 a.d. the Temple was thrown down!” Frankland’s own voice mocked him from the loudspeakers.
Uniformed Guard personnel helped the women and children into the trucks. Officers stood by with clipboards.
“Thank you, Brother Frankland, for all you’ve done.” This was Eunice Setzer, one of his own congregation, shuffling from the camp with her three children.
“You don’t have to leave, Sister Eunice,” Frankland said as he put a hand on her arm. “We’ll take care of you here.”
“Sorry, Brother Frankland,” she said with downcast eyes, and with a twist of her body slipped free of his grasp.
“Look at Sister Sheryl’s Apocalypse!” Frankland cried. “Lift your eyes and look at it! The Beast. The Woman of Babylon! That’s what’s waiting for you! That’s what’s waiting for everybody! We want to prepare you for that!”
They walked by in silence, past the angels with their vials and trumpets, past the Four Horsemen, past the City of God descending in glory. They walked as if none of it mattered, as if the End of the World was not at hand.
“Betrayal! —verse ten!” Frankland’s voice boomed from the loudspeakers. Betrayal. St. Matthew had it right. Frankland was betrayed, and so was God.
“I’ll be staying, Brother Frankland,” Sheriff Gorton assured him. “They’re not evacuating law enforcement, that’s for sure.”
Frankland readied himself for a last appeal, and he raised his arms in exhortation, but the words didn’t come. The Spirit went right out of him, something that had never happened before. The promise that God had made him, made him amid the fury of the rain and the lightning and the shaking of the earth, had come to naught.
He slumped and turned away. And then, out of the shuffling crowd, someone took him by the arm.
“Brother Frankland.”
Frankland looked up, saw the pornographer Magnusson gazing at him with a peculiar expression in his face. The man had probably come to gloat over Frankland’s defeat. “Yes?” Frankland said. Tears glimmered in Magnusson’s eyes. “I’m staying, Brother Frankland!” he said. “I’m staying with you! I owe you my salvation.”
To Frankland’s utter surprise, Magnusson threw his arms around Frankland and began sobbing on his shoulder. Slowly, Frankland put his arms around Magnusson and began patting him on the back.
“Praise God, Brother Magnusson,” he said. “Praise God.”
Ten minutes later, the National Guard officers blew their whistles, and the convoy began to move off, the inhabitants of Rails Bluff staring out the back of the trucks from under the olive-green canvas. When Frankland called for a head count, there were eighty-seven people left in the camp, including the three pastors and their families. There were probably less than a hundred others this side of the piney woods, mostly farmers who refused to leave their land, along with a few people in the Bijoux Theater too sick to be moved and under the care of a National Guard medic.
The awnings of the empty camp flapped disconsolately in the morning breeze. Frankland walked along the lines of tents, gazing in disgust at the garbage left behind by the six hundred people who had left earlier that morning, the plastic Star Wars cups and plastic sheeting and stained foam bedding. Day 8—the people confirmed and strengthened in their faith.
He had planned for years for this. For the moment when the world began to come apart, when the people would be lost and need his guidance. He had given that guidance. He had shared his own food with refugees who had nothing to call their own. He had preached to them from the depths of his heart. And now this. They had abandoned him, all but eighty-seven loyalists. Abandoned him for Hot Springs National Park! What a humiliation.
No more betrayals, he thought. He had been naive. He hadn’t foreseen the seductions that the liberal humanist/satanist government would offer to his people. Now he knew.
No more government! That was the answer. You could not serve God and Caesar. There would be no room in the camp for anything but the Lord and praising the Lord and preparing the people for the end of the world.
No more desertions. No one would leave again. The soul was what mattered, and Frankland was going to save the souls of everyone here. That was his charge.
And anyone else—any more government—who tried to interfere, Frankland would deal with it. Personally.
Birdsong floated on scented air from the Rose Garden. The President sat behind the desk that had been given from Queen Victoria to Rutherford B. Hayes, the one made from the timbers of HMS Resolute. He wished he were on the Resolute right now, with eight inches of solid oak planking between him and the rest of the world.
“It’s your call, Mr. President,” said Boris Lipinsky.
Solemn faces, arrayed in a half-circle around the desk, gazed at the President. It was one of those moments where, whatever their ambitions, these people were clearly glad to be on their side of the desk, and not his.
Reports had come in, over two days, from the HAZMAT teams that had been sent to sample the water pollution levels of the Mississippi and other rivers in the disaster area. The reports had been terrifying. General Frazetta had been right. The Mississippi, along with several of its major tributaries, had become an efficient pipeline for the delivery of every conceivable toxic substance to the water systems of every town and city along the river. There probably weren’t enough water filters in the world to clean the pollutants out of the drinking water.
“Mr. President?” the Minority Leader said. “May I say a word?” The President fixed the man with a look. ” No,” he said.
Another few moments ticked past on James Monroe’s bronze-dore clock. Then the President sighed and put his hands flat on Rutherford B. Hayes’s desk.
“It’s out of my hands,” he said. “I cannot permit millions of people to drink poisoned water. I realize that shifting our efforts from managing a disaster to managing an evacuation is going to strain our resources to the maximum, but I want the evacuation to commence.”
He looked at General Shortland. “You’ve got till tomorrow morning to get your plans finalized, General,” he said. “I’ll make the announcement at nine a.m.”
Charlie Johns looked into the one container remaining in his refrigerator, the week-old pieces of duck, and wondered if it was all right to eat. It looked all right. It smelled like it had been in the refrigerator a while, but didn’t smell bad.
Maybe if he drank some brandy with it. Brandy was a disinfectant, wasn’t it?
The house was full of flies, and Charlie didn’t want to think about the reason for that, so he took the food into the shady backyard along with a bottle of Martell. He sat in the shade under his Russian olive tree and ate the duck along with swallows of brandy. He dug bits of rice off the ribs, sucked all the remaining meat off the bones, gnawed at the cartilage. Then he sucked the bones for a long while. He stared at the pool while he ate. The neighbor kids had been coming over to take drinking water from it, and they’d kept it clean of leaves and sticks and windblown junk. He’d thrown chlorine into it every day and figured it was still safe to drink.
The cramps started an hour later. He barely made it to the toilet in time. He shuddered and sweated on the toilet for hours as he emptied everything that remained in his bowels.
When the spasms finally ended, he barely had the strength to crawl to the car and drape himself across the front seats.