“I know,” Terence said. “That’s the service.”
“I don’t know how many I’ve killed in total, maybe twelve.” Lead’s voice trembled. “I haven’t been preaching long, but I can’t remember all the faces of the men I’ve killed or detained, or who got away.”
“They don’t retire us,” Terence interrupted. “In earlier days, Preachers worked together or at least knew each other. Church later realized we needed to be kept separate. Never knew a Preacher to leave service in any way but death or disappearance; at least it was that way when I knew Preachers.”
Terence shifted his back to the sun. “Preacher’s retirement is at the end of a mark’s club or under another Preacher or Crusader’s blanket. Make no mistake; you did right in following me out here.”
Terence laid his head under the tarp. The wind flung a plastic bag through their campsite.
“Do you know how many you put under the blanket?” Lead asked.
“No. Lots though. Not all my killings were put under blankets. I was a shooter in the guards. I’ve killed more than I can remember, more than what’s right for any man. I’m guessing a lot more than you.” Terence closed his eyes. “My soul is rolled up so there ain’t a way out of it. If I had another fifty years of saving men I couldn’t break even with the destruction I’ve wrought.” He looked at Lead’s back.
“I remember the first. Most nights if I remember my dream, it’s about that first killing. A man is not the same after he has killed another.”
Terence told his story.
The last year of San Diego was similar to the past years of San Diego in its wealth and splendor. People existed in beauty and opulence, except for those who were indigent; they settled for living near beauty and opulence. Highways stretched through miles of neighborhoods marked with greens and ocean views and weather that range from great to almost great. This was Terence’s home. He lived in an apartment a few blocks from Balboa Park, and a short walk from the zoo. He owned an annual pass to the zoo, which he and Christine, his wife, used almost every weekend. They walked the paths, weaving between tourists, to watch polar bears, orangutans, Meer cats; not so much there to observe the animals, but to be young and together and in love. When John, their son, was small they’d rent him a stroller. When John grew bigger, his child legs carried him through the zoo and park until he turned tired and cranky, then Terence would perch him on his shoulders and carry him like a Czar through the bird and monkey habitats. Some weekends they camped on the beach, or in the eastern mountains. The adventures were often repeated but never grew dull in their repetition due to the company. Their family was one held together in honest love.
Their apartment was a one-bedroom on the bottom floor of a three-story art deco building. The walls were painted white; the rooms furnished and trimmed in bamboo and sea green. Johnny slept on a racecar bed in the living room next to the kitchenette.
For work, Terence taught history at a charter school in El Cajon. The commuter traffic east on the Eight was always light; the serious commuters always came west from El Cajon to Downtown. Terence rode his morning commute for an hour each a day, five days a week, part of the inconvenience of city living.
Christine stopped working after Johnny was born. She had been a teacher. She preferred being a mother. Christine looked after the little one and kept house and planned the weekend trips her family lived for. They didn’t have much room at home, but it was enough. Terence worried about what they would do when John got older. They would have to find someplace bigger, further from the ocean and parks and zoo to stay in their price range. He did what he could. Teachers weren’t paid a lot. He worked, she didn’t. The concern lingered but was swept away in the good times.
The Storms started with rain. Talking faces on the television had argued about the weather for a long time, for decades. Some said it was getting too hot. Some said the heat was normal, that change in the weather was normal. They argued and argued and their voices became a steady drone that filtered into the background of all the other ambient noise of human existence. People stopped listening. Some never had.
The rain got worse and it brought winds and darkened days. The people of the coastal cities kept working, shopping, living. They watched their televisions and looked for answers, solutions, direction. With renewed attention they listened to experts argue about the cause of the weather and when it was going to end. The experts cried and moaned about God or science, some both. San Diego became less beautiful and buildings were damaged in petty floods. The beaches and parks closed. Many of the streets were closed, but people continued to live and to make the best of things, as the saying went.
Terence was at school when the first wave hit. It came as a wall of ocean pushed by Pacific earthquakes and what they later referred to as a sudden and unpredictable shift in the Earth’s polarity. The wave rode into the city of San Diego and broke the homes of man and creation and beauty. Klaxon alarms blared and radios and televisions switched to emergency messages, never to return to regular broadcasting. Terence abandoned his class. He ran out into the ceaseless deluge. He drove west, towards San Diego, towards the ocean and the waves.
The highways were rendered useless in both directions, loaded with cars first used and then abandoned by people who too late realized they could not navigate through standing water. People left their cars and walked in the rain, blank and confused, numb with tragedy. Terence opened his car door against the force of winds. He ran in ankle deep water towards San Diego, towards home. The horizon held funnels of tornadoes which ripped and tore and broke that which the waves hadn’t. Terence ran towards the horizon and tornadoes and destruction. He ran against the crowds fleeing and panicked. Blue bolts of lightning arced across the sky, illuminating clouds that would always remain. Terence broke from the crowds and waded through a runoff ditch. Somewhere in the sludge he lost a shoe. None of it mattered, Terence was going home.
“My neighborhood was wet rubble, unrecognizable. Buildings, landmarks, shopping centers, everything was ripped apart by waves and winds. The roads were choked with pieces of buildings, and overturned cars, and corpses. I found my home late in the night using street signs as the only remaining landmarks. I used my cell phone like a flashlight. The signal towers were not broadcasting anymore, but I kept my phone in false hope.
There was almost nothing left of my apartment complex. The top two floors were ripped clean away, like they’d been uprooted by the hand of God. I waded into my living room, which was open to the elements. Everything had washed out except my bed. In all that destruction, in all that devastation, my bed stood in its room, my last material object; a monument. I laid on it. Of course it was soaked but that didn’t matter. I waited for my family. I waited for Christine and Johnny to come home so we could leave together. I watched the sun peek through rain clouds. A rainbow formed overhead. The water rose to mattress level. I rolled to a sit and let my legs dangle in the water. From under the bed, a tiny hand reached for me.”
Johnny lay under the bed, peaceful, unmoving. In the panic of the tidal wave, he hid in the safest place he knew, under the bed of his parents. The wave struck and carried his mother and his home away and yet he remained, trapped under the bed in the water. Terence touched the hand. It was real. Terence’s chest clenched, his heart beat frantically. He pulled the boy out. Johnny was wearing his pajamas and blue galoshes. His skin was a similar hue of blue. Terence felt the boy’s necks and wrists. He shook Johnny and screamed and moaned at the boy and God in equal parts. Terence grasped the boy to his chest and rocked him, tried to force warm life from his own body to that of the child. His mind groped for direction, explanation, anything sane and rational. He lay down with the boy and closed his eyes. He whimpered, lacking words.