CHAPTER 7

            The private library of the Lewis family cabin sat on the southwest side of their house. A pair of stained French doors at the back wall opened to a veranda overlooking the lake, which now appeared purple in the retreating light of a setting sun. Clouds were beginning to roll in, churning their way around the mountains on a train of thunder and milky lightning. A few stray raindrops sputtered against the roof. Daniel could taste the static in the air. He wrapped himself in a wool quilt and carried another block of wood to the furnace at the center of the room. Embers swarmed from the fire as he threw it in.

            Normally, rainy evenings meant curling up on the couches and reading a good book, but none of the pages from the floor to ceiling shelves of the four walls could hold Daniel’s attention. He was distracted. No, obsessed. The events of the day kept coming back, like those awful looping video clips from the Armageddon Archives he’d seen years ago.

            He hadn’t understood all the words the men had exchanged angrily in the clearing, but hadn’t needed to. Their sharp, hateful sounds told Daniel all he needed to know. And then Jack, with that strong arm of his, swinging at Harold with all his uncontrolled fury. The images and sounds made Daniel dizzy and nauseous and he prayed for relief. The anxiety slowly retreated.

            Daniel had struggled to understand human imperfection all his life, but it had never been as difficult at it was now. Compared to the things he’d seen that morning, the minor flaws and traits he’d encountered among past brothers and sisters barely registered.

            It had been fifteen years since Daniel had had his first encounter with imperfection. It happened during the construction of a residential unit. One overseer had requested supplies for a modification to a house he was building with his team while another brother had insisted that the supplies be used to complete their initial assignment. The argument was brief and quickly resolved, but it had left a searing impression on Daniel’s mind. Never before had he seen such conflict between brothers. Daniel now realized just how insignificant it had really been.

            There were words on the pages of books that described a time, long ago, when such things had been common. Quarreling. Fighting. Drunkenness. Even–as difficult as it was to believe–murder. But it had all seemed so remote, distant realities never to be witnessed again. The words had never materialized in Daniel’s perfect imagination. That such things could be commonplace, let alone possible, was simply inconceivable to him.

            But now the horrors had shape and form. People of the Old World really were that awful, that violent, that cruel. They hurt each other and killed each other, just as the words recounted. Daniel shuddered and wrapped the blanket tightly around his legs.

            Jack had been a soldier. Not a soldier for Jehovah, as the ancient scriptural accounts had mentioned, but a soldier for Satan’s system. His government would tell him who to kill and he would go do it. The government might even change their mind about who were its enemies and allies, and the soldiers, like Jack, would have to listen and start killing the other guys, because their government had told them so. No thinking, no questioning, just killing.

            Why? Daniel wondered. Why had he been chosen?

            Daniel had always assumed that there would exist some obvious link between the resurrected unrighteous and those assigned to welcome them. Mothers welcoming mothers, Chinese welcoming Chinese, family welcoming lost relatives. But where was the common ground between him and Jack? Jack was a killer and a fighter, ever on the lookout for a target to lash out at, a reason to blow up, but Daniel... He was simple. He loved peace. He loved his family. He loved Jehovah.

            Daniel sighed, and laid himself down on the couch, staring deep into the leaping flame-feathers.

            Why me?

***

            It was past midnight and Liping was wide awake. The rain had been falling now for four hours, and each droplet intensified her worry, as if they might somehow seep through the roof shingles and drown her in her bed. She rolled onto her side and wrapped the pillow around her head.

            It had been a Monday when the rain had first started falling on their town. Monday the fourth, a very unlucky day. They were optimistic at first. Henan Province had been suffering a drought for most of the year. Liping’s uncle’s family had lost their harvest because of it. And now, finally, relief was coming in the form of a pitter-patter drumbeat against the blue tin roof of her small restaurant.

           But when the first day of solid rain had come and gone, tensions began to rise. Her neighbors began worrying. Too much rain after a drought was bad. The ground couldn’t handle it. People began murmuring about floors. The rumors quickly gained veracity through TV and radio broadcasts. Flash floods were likely. Villages in the lowest elevations were encouraged to evacuate, though few listened. Villagers living near the river watched anxiously as the water chewed its way higher up the banks, gaining speed and turning into a muddy maelstrom. Liping’s family were among them. The river was heavily polluted, and Liping didn’t need a high school education to understand that the flooding of such a contaminated river spelt disaster for anyone in its path.

            What Liping didn’t know, and what state media outlets had failed to report, was that the real danger was a poorly constructed dam higher up the Zhengzhou river. It had been built by private contractors who, in an effort to cut costs, built with a low-grade concrete that contained four times the amount of sand permitted by regulations. The builders had never factored in the added strain of so much rain. If anything, they’d expected the water to gradually recede as the river was diverted and choked away into a thousand up-steam creeks and reservoirs built by heavy industry enterprises as a place to dump their wastes. For years the dam had barely held back the river at its normal capacity, and it stood no chance against the increased stresses of thirty-four hours of solid rain.

            The first stress fractures were discovered by computer sensors at ten PM on Monday night. A night shift dam worker reported them promptly, but the messages were ignored when the head honchos realized there was nothing to be done. By noon on Tuesday, it was too late, and the shoddy slabs of concrete gave way to a 10 million ton wall of water. The poorer sections of the town were hit the hardest. Homes were dragged from their cheap foundations and concrete-and-brick walls were slammed to nothingness, instantly killing hundreds of inhabitants. Small mountains of mud and rocks buried many others. In less than fifteen minutes, thirteen thousand were killed.

            But Liping knew none of this. As the dam gave way, she was lying on a hospital gurney drifting in and out of consciousness, weak anesthesia coursing through her veins. She had all but died when a young doctor fresh out of grad school inserted the scalpel into her abdomen to perform a rushed Caesarian section. Had she been checked in only two hours later, after the first droves of those injured by the dam’s collapse stumbled through the hospital doors, the fate of her unborn daughter would have been completely different.

            As it was, the ensuing confusion after the delivery of her 6-pound, 8-ounce baby girl resulted in further tragedy. Four more pregnant women were admitted to the hospital on that same night. All gave birth, and three died from complications, many having gone into early labor from the shock of the disasters unfolding that day. In the panic of that frantic night, the screaming newborns were placed in a single ward without being properly documented.

            In the next few days, as the families of the deceased mothers trickled in and learned of the hospital’s error, the situation turned into a first-come-first-serve free for all. Since the other three babies were boys, they were selected first. Feifei was never claimed.

            Liping’s last memory had been looking up at the cork board ceiling tiles and fluorescent bulbs of the Zhengzhou Municipal Hospital. Doctors and nurses buzzed around her with squeaking sneakers. Black-brown mud streaked the linoleum floors. So much rain.

            Liping threw the covers haplessly to the foot of the bed. The room had a slight chill but the sheet had been too much: fine beads of sweat had broken from the skin of her arms and legs. She flicked on the lights and made a pot of green tea.

            And that’s when she heard the sound. It was slight at first, innocent and easily dismissed through the drone of rainfall trickling over the roof. But when it came again, it startled her. Her head darted towards the door. A sound from beyond her room, a scraping from somewhere deep in the darkness of the hallway leading to the lobby. Liping felt a wave of goose bumps flood over her, from the tips of her toes all the way up to her shoulders.

            Liping reached for the doorknob and realized with dull dread that there was no lock there. No keyhole. Just a knob. Whatever was out there making that awful sound could easily decide to creep its way down the hall and into her room, and there would be no barrier to stop it.

            The scraping noise came again. It was clearer now. Something metallic. Liping shivered.

            “Hello?” She called out in a raspy whisper. There was no response.

            Her heart was racing now. There was nowhere to hide in the small room. Liping’s eyes desperately surveyed the space over and over, looking for something she could defend herself with. Her mind went to the knives in the kitchen. But that was down the hall, down where the sound was coming from. She felt the small hairs at the back of her neck raise on end.

            Liping was not an adventurous woman. Like so many from her generation, she’d been taught that caution and distrust were the keys to self-preservation. So it was neither courage nor curiosity that moved her towards the door at the other side of the room. It was something else. Something that told her that she must take control. She gripped the cold brass doorknob in her trembling hand and eased the door open.

            The hallways separating the guest rooms had a new look at night. Long gone was the sunlight filtering in from the glass panes on the ceiling. With heavy rainclouds overhead, even the moonlight was a stranger to these corridors. Only the sliver of light peeking form her room illuminated what little she could see at the end of the hall. Liping pressed on, her heart pounding. The light behind her was just strong enough to cast eerie renderings of her body’s shadow against the wooden walls, cartoon villain silhouettes that scared her even more. She expected at any moment to be attacked by her own shadow. Still, she pressed on.

            The hallway seemed to stretch on to infinity on that dark, moonless night. Thunder shook the building. The doorway where the hallway opened into the lobby was a great black gaping mouth, lurching nearer and nearer. Left foot. Right foot. Left foot...

            The scraping sound was still there, louder now with each step. As she approached the lobby, Liping could tell the sound wasn’t originating from there, but from somewhere to the right, somewhere beyond the swinging doors that led to the kitchen.

            Perhaps it was a wild animal? A feral cat that’d snuck through a window, perhaps, or a rat? The thought was comforting. Liping had seen both around the center from time to time. The others had told her they were harmless, but to Liping, those eyes looked hungry. Liping shot a glance leftwards to the front entrance, but both doors were shut tight, rattling slightly as the rain pounded down. The floor was clean and dry. No tracks. Slowly, she made her way to the swinging doors.

            A flash of lightning paralyzed her for a moment as the room glowed in a haze of blue electricity. Thunder rolled over the center and whipped chunks of rain against the windows. Liping was terrified, but she was determined. She had committed to this path, and now she would find the answer. She raised her hand, pressing it ever so slightly against the right swinging door. The kitchen lay just behind…

            The tiled floor was littered with items Liping had never seen before. Boxes, paper containers, utensils of every shape and size. There were items on every surface. Many of them she couldn’t make out in the low light of the orange floor bulbs. The scratching continued. It came from somewhere below, somewhere near the floor.

            Liping drew a sharp breath and forced herself to call out: “Hello?”

            The noise stopped. A black shape slowly rose from behind the counter. There was no face, only flowing lines around its body and arms. And in what appeared to be its hands, jutted the unmistakable gleam of two butcher knives. Liping screamed.

***

            Instinctively, Liping stepped back, stumbling through the doors she’d just emerged from. A shoulder hit the doorjamb and she howled, more from the fear than the pain. A rack of metal utensils clattered loudly as her flailing arm slammed against them. She reached blindly with her hand, frantic to defend herself. She lifted one of the utensils from the hook and held it with two hands in front of her.

            The creature stood still, perfectly masked by the shadow of the large metal countertop and hanging shelves. There were no features to it at all, just the silhouette and the knives. Liping continued moving against the far wall, feeling the chill of the tiles against her bare feet. Then she felt something at her back. With her free hand, she reached behind to feel the wall, and... yes! A light switch! With a sudden wave of dread-tinted courage, Liping threw the switch.

            The flash of white light was blinding. Liping shielded her face as the bulbs clunked on overhead. Then, realizing her vulnerability, she brought her arm back down and squinted through burning eyeballs.

            It was a woman. Long, curly brown hair flowed over her shoulders and onto her frilly nightgown. The sleeves were long and billowy. Her hand held cleavers, but her face wore an expression as terrified as Liping’s.

            “You scared me half to death!” The woman exclaimed. “What are you even doing in here?”

            “I could ask you the same thing,” Liping said.

            “And what were you gonna do with that, anyway, scramble me to death?”

            Liping glanced at her hands to find herself gripping a steel spatula. “You didn’t answer the question–what are you doing in here?”

            “Ease up, P. F. Chang, I was just lookin’ for something to eat. I couldn’t sleep. Started gettin’ hungry.”

            “My name isn’t Chang, it’s Liping.”

            “It was a joke. I know your name. You think I’d forget it? There’s like four people livin’ here.”

            “I know that. I’m not stupid.”

            “Says the woman with the spatula. Look, do you know where they keep the food or not?”

            Liping nodded. The irritation wore off as the relief set in. The women set down their weapons and entered the pantry, a large, well-stocked room adjacent to the kitchen. Adrina found a loaf of bread and a some cheese to munch on and sat herself down on one of the small stools in the kitchen. Liping sat across from her, rubbing her face and scalp.

            “Can’t sleep, huh?” Adrina asked between mouthfuls.

            “It’s this rain. It keeps me up.”

            “Oh. I don’t really mind it, actually. Usually find it pretty soothing.”

            Liping ignored this and helped herself to a piece of cheese from the platter. It was sour and smelly and made her face winkle in disgust.

            “Ugh, how can you eat this? Are you sure it hasn’t gone bad?”

            Adrina smiled. “No, it’s not bad. That’s how it’s supposed to taste. It’s actually some of the best cheese I’ve had. I’ve been wondering where it comes from. Actually all the food here is good. Have you noticed that?”

            “I haven’t had much of it. But what I have had has been ok.”

            “Such a strange place...” Adrina said. Her eyes took on a distant look, as if she could see through the ceiling and into the starry night. “Where are you from, anyway?”

            “I’m Chinese. From Henan Province.”

            “China. Ok. I’m from Detroit, Michigan, USA.”

            “I see. Nice to meet you.”

            It occurred suddenly to Liping that this whole time she’d been speaking her mother tongue with this foreigner. This foreigner who spoke perfect, unaccented Chinese. Liping had known some foreigners back in Zhengzhou, a handful of English teachers or university students. Some had studied Mandarin for years, but none spoke like this. It was odd, too, that everyone she’d met in this place seemed to speak at least some Chinese. And when they spoke, they spoke it like natives.

            “How do you speak such good Chinese?” She blurted out suddenly.

            “Huh? Me? What do you mean?” Said Adrina.

            “Right now. You’re speaking Mandarin. Where did you learn it?”

            “Me? You might wanna check your hearing, ‘cause I don’t speak a word of anything but English.”

            “That’s nonsense,” Liping said, enjoying the joke. “Your Mandarin is flawless.”

            “Girl, you ain’t hearin’ things so good. I don’t speak Mandarin. You’re speaking English.”

            “No, no, no, you’re joking with me. I don’t speak English–“ Liping’s words were cut off as a young, muscular man in short blond hair barged through the doors separating the kitchen from the lobby. Liping and Adrina both recognized him from the incident the day before. He’d been the violent one. The women were immediately quiet.

            “Doesn’t anyone sleep around here?” He growled. His Chinese was good too!

            “Oh, so now you shut up. Could’ve used this silence when I was still in bed. Which one of you nut cases was that screaming earlier?” Jack asked, stumbling his way around the two and moving towards the pantry. Liping caught Adrina’s hand moving from the corner of her eye. She placed a hand towel over the knives and slid them between a stack of pots.

            “Anything to drink around here?” Jack asked.

            Adrina pointed to the far end of the room where a large plastic jug of water sat. Jack glanced at it without interest and continued rummaging through the contents of the pantry. “I didn’t mean water,” he said under his breath.

            “Well, you ain’t gonna find no liquor in there,” Adrina said, eating the last piece of cheese from her plate.

            “Oh? Why’s that?”

            “I saw them haul it off this afternoon. Wine bottles’n everything. I don’t think there’s a drop left in the whole house.”

            Jack groaned, “That’s ridiculous. Just because of some little scuffle?”

            “I dunno, you hit him pretty hard.”

            “You saw it?”

            “Yeah I did.”

            “Then you know he started it. I wasn’t looking for a fight.”

            Adrina shrugged. “I dunno, you both looked pretty wasted.”

            “Maybe. I don’t know how, though. Only had a glass worth. Never went over the edge so quickly before.”

            “Maybe it’s mountain wine or some kinda hillbilly whisky. There’s all kinds of crazy stuff here.”

            “Tell me about it,” Jack said, filling a paper cup with water after all and throwing it back as if it were something in a shot glass. “This is one weird place,” he mumbled.

            Liping and Adrina nodded grimly.

***

            “Taking a day off?” Naomi asked as she gathered empty plates from the breakfast table. Rays of golden sunlight flooded through the glass windows. The rain from the previous night had finally stopped and the air outside was warm and humid and smelled of wet grass. Birds weaved and swooped busily in the hazy morning light.

            But none of this seemed to sway Charlie’s attention from the pile of books spread around him in a semi-circle at the end of the long oak table. A yellow memo pad was pinned under his right hand by a fountain pen that scribbled madly. Naomi repeated the question.

            “No, just gonna go in a little later today. I’m doing some study,” Charlie mumbled.

            “For Harold?”

            “For myself.”

            “Oh,” Naomi said. She made the sound with her lips in a ring, a face that usually made Charlie laugh. But now, with his attention wrapped up in the books, he missed it, and she felt foolish as she erased the expression and stacked dirty dishes next to the sink.

            “I’m going to leave these for later,” she said in a more serious tone. “I’m running late already. I want to take Adrina to the lake today, get her out of the center. I think it’ll help.”

            “Mm-hm,” Charlie said. “Have a good one.”

            Without saying another word, Naomi grabbed her bag and left for the center.

***

            Charlie could sense Naomi’s irritation from the sound the door made as it shut louder than usual. He was prodded by a twinge of guilt and made a mental note to apologize later. But for now, his full concentration was needed on the task at hand. He prayed for a third time that morning, seeking direction for the question that had plagued his mind since their guests had first arrived days ago. When he finally opened his eyes, he was astonished to find that nearly an hour had passed.

            Before their four guests had returned, the question at the forefront of Charlie’s mind had always been, What do our guests need? Well, they needed food and shelter and comfortable surroundings and of course plenty of care and patience. Everyone knew this. It was in the books and the talks. Traveling elders stressed it on each of their visits. But after more than a week in the new role, Charlie was seeing things differently. The question he ought to have asked was, What must we become to help these people?

           It wasn’t just a matter of satisfying physical needs and being friendly and hospitable. More was required. If they were going to help the unrighteous, they would need to intensify their imitation of Jehovah’s adaptability, reasonableness, and humility. It was the only way.

            This revelation brought along with it a flood of Biblical examples. He pored over the study materials carefully, jotting notes as he went:

            Jehovah’s patience with the fledging nation of Israel. His becoming their Provider, Protector, Deliverer.

            Paul’s words at First Corinthians 9:22: Become all things to people of all sorts...

            The very meaning of Jehovah’s name.

            But how? How did one become what an evolutionist needed? Or what about a skeptical, superstitious woman from Old World China? A violent soldier on a short fuse? A skittish addict?

            But that is what some of you were...

            The words came to Charlie as if in a dream.

            Yes, of course, that was true. These ones had been forgiven. They were no longer who they were in their old lives. All the old sins had been washed away. They simply didn’t realize it yet...

            And so what were they left with? Why were old, imperfect traits exhibiting themselves so strongly? What element was missing from their meticulously constructed habitat?

            Time. Had it really only been a week? Charlie leaned back in his chair, stretching and sucking in the fresh morning air as it seeped through an open window. He wanted to help these people. He really did. And yet... And yet, the truth was, that deep down inside, he was not enjoying their company. Their blatant imperfections, their total disregard for righteousness, their antiquated worldliness, all remnants from a system he wanted to forget... There was a rift there that couldn’t be patched.

            And yet Jesus did it, didn’t he?

            Yes, he had. A perfect spirit creature, second in honor and position only to Jehovah, master worker and knower of all things physical. He’d descended to Earth to live amongst wickedness, amongst a generation that would eventually demand his execution. And even the good ones–the ones who would eventually go on to shepherd the congregations and be rewarded with heavenly kingship!–had taken years to change. The stripping off the old personality didn’t happen overnight. It came off one layer at a time.

            Jesus had been patient with them. He’d seen the potential. He’d nourished it. And eventually it bore fruit. The gap between a perfect spirit creature with billions of years of experience and imperfect humans raised in a corrupt world was unfathomable. It put things into perspective. Charlie was faced with a much more manageable task. He’d been in that Old World. He’d grown up in it, and its traces were still on him, probably more than he knew. Who was he to judge someone who’d just stepped out of it?

            Charlie took a deep breath and marveled. After all these years, even in the New World, Jesus was continuing to set the example for humanity.

            Back to the drawing board. Who was Harold? Certainly not a criminal. Not back then, not now. He wasn’t a murderer or a thief. He simply didn’t believe in God.

           And the man was smart. Charlie could see it the first time they’d met. Charlie had felt Harold’s eyes studying him like the contents of his wine glass. As unsettling as it had been, Charlie instantly knew that Harold had the marks of a genius. Where Charlie could see only beauty and love, Harold could see everything but. Harold’s mind was clinical, his eyes were nimble hands in surgical gloves cutting and dissecting, peeling away the layers until only facts remained. How could Charlie match that? How could he help a man so clearly opposite in every way to himself?

            He’d said something about the birds, hadn’t he?

            It had been an offhand comment during their first meal, but it was as good a place as any to start.

            Charlie stacked the books in a neat pile and stuffed his notepad and pens into his canvas backpack. Then, slipping out the cabin’s kitchen door, he hopped on his red bicycle and sped downhill, down towards Clive.