“Well,” he said through the smile, “I’m afraid there isn’t much of an outside to talk to, properly speaking. It’s a real mess out there, Studs. You’ve heard the bulletins. We should all be thankful that—”
“You’ve got a radio station!” Studs shouted. “All you have to do is call for help!”
“There are other people worse off than we are,” Frankland said. “Much worse off. We have food, we have adequate shelter. Other people should be first in line…”
“We need a doctor!” Studs said. “What if we get sick? What if someone gets hurt?” Frankland saw Hilkiah out of the corner of his eye. Hilkiah sort of puffed, like a cat confronting a growling dog. All his muscles swollen, his neck taut, the prison tattoos ready to pop off his flesh with the tension that swelled his arms.
“I’ll take care of this, Reverend,” Hilkiah growled.
No, Frankland thought. That would be a disaster. He’d have to win them over; he’d have to convince them. Force would make enemies of them all.
He was right. All he needed was the rush, the feeling of the Spirit flowing into his body. And then he could convince them, convince them as he always did…
Frankland held the microphone away from his face, turned to Hilkiah. “No,” he said. “Not now. I’ve got to—”
And then Hilkiah’s head exploded, a huge splash of red and white superimposed for a brilliant second on Frankland’s retinal image of his aide. As the big body fell, as the crowd reacted in shock, Frankland heard the voice calling across the highway, from the deserted catfish farm.
“Send me my family!” the voice shouted. ” I want my children, Your Holiness, and I want them now!” The concussion slapped Nick’s ears. He watched Hilkiah’s body fall, and he thought rifle. As he turned and lunged to his feet in one strangely seamless motion, he knew in an instant what he had to do.
“Up!” hauling at Arlette’s arm. “Up! Keep down and run this way!”
“Send me my family!” a voice called.
The crowd was reacting, stirring like leaves in a slow wind. There were screams and shocked looks. Nick had hauled Arlette to her feet by one hand under her arm. He reached with the other hand, slid under Manon’s armpit.
“Up!” he said.
Oh God, he thought, don’t let the guards start shooting back.
Those people wouldn’t have any kind of fire discipline at all, he knew, they’d just start blazing away. The more bullets in the air, the more danger for everybody.
He had Arlette and Manon up and moving through the crowd. His hands were on their backs, pressing them down into a crouch to make a smaller target. Jason was scrambling to his feet, a wild look on his face.
There was a scramble at the head of the congregation, Frankland falling as if he’d tripped over something, the choir stampeding off their risers. Feedback shrieked over the speakers. And then one of the guards cut loose, a crackle of fire from one of the Armalites. It wasn’t automatic fire, but it might as well have been, the rifle snapping away as fast as the guard could pull the trigger.
Another shot, a single deep boom sounding over the rattle of the Armalite, and the crowd screamed as Dr. Calhoun fell, clutching at his midsection.
“Run!” Nick shouted. He hauled at Manon as she tripped over someone’s legs. “This way!” There was more chattering fire from Armalites. “Stop!” Frankland’s voice, an anguished shout over the loudspeakers. “Stop that shooting!”
“This way!” Nick panted. “Quick!” He tried to put his body between Arlette and the shooter, but he figured it was useless. A single bullet could tear through them both.
Another boom. There was a raw scream of agony, a sound that sent claws tearing along Nick’s nerves, and one of the Armalites stopped firing.
A scoped rifle, Nick thought. A sniper just picking his targets with all the deliberation in the world, and he was probably well concealed by the earthen bank surrounding Johnson’s catfish pond across the road. There was no way the guards were going to stop him, not the way they were using their weapons, firing fast and almost at random.
“Stop the shooting!” shouted Frankland.
The crowd was screaming, picking itself up, scattering in flight. To Nick they were just obstacles, slow-moving, stupid things blundering between him and his objective. He moved through them like an Olympic skier charging down the slalom slopes. Nick alone, of all these people, knew where he was going.
“This way! This way!”
Nick ran for the parking lot. Arlette, Manon, and Jason were with him. Manon’s eyes were big as saucers, and she clutched at Arlette, trying to shield her. They leaped a four-foot crevasse rather than queue up for a plank bridge.
The firing, a part of his mind observed, had died away. But the noise level had vastly increased as over a hundred people screamed and shouted and ran like panicked animals for cover. But this was an old field, plowed flat over scores of years and still rutted from the last time it was sowed with cotton, and there was no cover really, nothing but the buildings and a few trees and the dangerous crevasses left by earthquakes. Not enough to shelter everyone.
There were also the vehicles parked by the road. But you couldn’t run away to the parking lot, you had to angle toward the sniper to get there. Nick hadn’t led his group straight to the parked vehicles, he first took them parallel to the highway until there were plenty of cars between him and the sniper, then led them into the shadow of the Reverend Doctor Calhoun’s old bus, then on to a truck parked just beyond.
“You wait here,” Nick said. He pressed Manon and Arlette down behind a big tire. The truck body itself would provide little protection against a high-powered rifle, but the engine block would, and the engine block was behind the front tire.
“Send me my family!” The sniper’s high-pitched voice could barely be heard over the shrieks of the crowd.
“Just stop the shooting!” Frankland begged over wild feedback shrieks. Nick opened the truck door, checked to see if there were keys in the ignition. There weren’t. He passed a quick hand over the top of the dash, then over the top of the sun shade to see if the driver had stashed his keys there.
No luck. He needed to find another truck.
He herded the others to the next truck, checked there, found nothing. Moved everyone to the next. Frankland and the sniper were shouting at each other, trying to negotiate.
Olson, he remembered. The sniper’s name would be Olson. The loud, red-faced, blustering man. Now his bluster was backed by a large firearm, which elevated the bluster to a new level.
“We’re going?” Manon gasped, realizing at last what Nick intended. “We’re leaving the camp?”
“No better time,” Nick said as he groped for keys.
“That one,” Jason said, pointing to another truck. “I was in it yesterday.” Nick led the others to the truck Jason indicated, opened the door and saw, gleaming in the ignition, the dangling keys. He turned back to Manon and the others.
“Listen,” he said. “I’m going to start the truck and get it moving. I don’t want you in the truck just yet!
You move alongside the truck, okay? Crouch right down! Keep the engine block between you and the shooter. And when I give the word, you just pile in the cab next to me, and keep your heads down. Understand?”
Nick saw a series of nods. He looked in the wide eyes for comprehension and saw it. Adrenaline flamed through his veins. Nick crawled into the cab of the truck and slid across the bench seat to the driver’s side. He slammed down the clutch so hard that it hit the floor-boards with a boom. His hands shook so much that it took him two tries to get a proper grip on the ignition key. He pumped the accelerator, twisted the key.