CHAPTER 17

            Charlie waited patiently while the plastic earpiece buzzed a low droning tone into his ear. He glanced at his watch. Almost ten. Maybe they’d slept early. Suddenly there was a click as the receiver was lifted on the other end.

            “Hello?” said a soft voice.

            “Hey babe, it’s me.”

            “Charlie. How are you? Did you find them? Is everything all right?”

            “Daniel and I are fine. We’re with some friends in Clive.”

            “Clive? Not Bighton?”

            “No. We had a hunch they might be going to the bazaar to stock up on food.”

            “And?”

            “Well, we spotted Jack.”

            “Spotted? What does that mean? What happened?”

            “It was crowded. We saw him, he saw us, and he bolted.”

            “To where? Where could he possibly go? Clive is so sm–“

            “The woods. He ran back to where he came from. I think he and Harold have been camping out there, using the supplies they stole from the center.”

            Charlie heard Naomi’s pained sigh crackle through the earpiece. Then she said, “So you didn’t get him? What about Harold?”

            “I have no idea about Harold. We haven’t seen a trace of him. We tried going after Jack, but it was hopeless. And by now he could be anywhere. And then the storm came.”

            “I’m so sorry, Charlie. How are you holding up? How’s Daniel?”

            “Ok I guess. This has all been pretty confusing for him, and I’m exhausted. I just... I just really don’t want to give up on them.” Charlie breathed heavily, the last bits of energy draining from his body. Neither of them spoke for a few moments.

            “So then what’s the next move? What’s left to do?”

            “I guess we’ll stick around here for a while. Maybe they’ll be back, though I doubt it. Or maybe someone knows something. Did we do the right thing, Naomi?”

            “We can’t blame ourselves, Charlie. We did our best.”

            “I mean, should we have told them the whole story?”

            Naomi sighed, her anxiety translated into a burst of static through miles of cables and wires. “We used our best judgment. They were aggravated from the beginning. We both saw it. I think we made the right choice.”

            “I hope so. But I can’t help thinking things might’ve been different if they knew.”

            “A wise man once told me, ‘don’t fret the what ifs’,” Naomi said, her voice taking on a motherly tone.

            “Sounds like a smart guy,” Charlie said, chuckling.

            “He was. And still is. Keep praying about it, love. And I will too.”

            Naomi and Charlie said their goodbyes and goodnights and the line clicked off. Charlie slumped into his chair and realized with a sudden and acute aching just how much he longed for his wife. They had been married for one hundred and ninety-three years, he realized. Not all of those years had been happy and carefree.

There had, of course, been the painful discovery that Naomi was incapable of bearing children. That diagnosis had cast a grey shadow over their lives for months, and had only begun to recede with Sophie’s adoption process. Of course, that had been a trial in itself, hurdle after hurdle, financial and emotional, physical and spiritual, to the point that Charlie had even doubted the wisdom of their choice.

            And then there’d been Sophie’s teen years. The economy had been spiraling out of control and Charlie and Naomi had both taken on extra work. If he was honest with himself, he knew at the time that Sophie had been neglected. She’d found the attention she wanted amongst school friends, who nearly lured her straight out of the truth. But they made the decision, and that had changed everything. The decision to simplify, to shed the weight of the house and the extra car and the hundred other things they didn’t need and couldn’t really afford. They moved into a rental a few neighborhoods away, got out of debt, and spent more time together as a family.

            It was one of Charlie’s proudest decisions, though it had seemed like a leap off a cliff at the time. The reasons, though, were right all along. Jehovah had to come first. Anything that hindered his family’s spirituality had to be dealt with decisively, immediately, and thoroughly. It worked. The family drew closer. Sophie’s attitude improved. She was baptized at a convention a year later. And then, right when things were beginning to take a positive turn...

            The Great Tribulation, such as had not occurred since the world’s beginning. Everyone knew it was going to be challenging. There wasn’t a Witness the earth over who hadn’t been studying it–in ever increasing frequency and detail–right up to its dramatic start with the attack of the harlot. But the consequences of those fateful actions taken by governments and world leaders across the globe coupled with the economic collapse turned the entire planet into a heaving, chaotic squalor of wanton violence and lawlessness.

            Global panic. That’s what it had been. Those had been times of terror and tragedy, but Jehovah’s protective arm had been there all along, leading his people step by step towards deliverance. Charlie had been scared, but ever so thankful that Naomi and he had had the courage to act as they had before it had been too late. They stepped, as a family, through the Last Days into the New World.

            Where were you when it happened?

            It was the question everyone loved to ask. No one would forget where they’d stood at that dramatic moment when the heavenly pronouncements began and warrior angels descended from the tumultuous skies to deliver the final, fatal blow to Satan’s system.

            I was huddled together with my family in the basement of our house with our service group.

            I was with our entire congregation in a hidden bunker below our assembly hall.

            I was hugging my two Bible students in our Kingdom Hall’s bathroom as soldiers prepared to fire shells at us from their tanks in the parking lot.

            I was being held captive by the Atheist Army in a ransacked library.

            I was about to be executed by a firing squad of ex-police militia fighters.

            There had been no shortage of stories. Some of the more dramatic ones had been made into documentary films, others had been compiled and printed in books. Charlie had never read them, though. He had no need to. The stories were all around him, at the ready on every tongue asked to recall them.

            Then had come the peace, the reconstruction, the preparing for the great welcoming. First the righteous, the previous half century’s Witnesses, brought back in a period spanning nearly four decades. And alongside them, many young children.

Technically, the children were of the unrighteous, but they came back just the same, ahead of the rest of the unrighteous, given a first chance to learn and adapt to life in the New World. They’d been claimed as casualties by poverty, plagues, war, famine, or as a result of the chaotic Tribulation’s multitude of woes. Their fate had rested in the hands of others. But now they were back, and fully grown, a significant chunk of Earth’s population.

            Hopes had been high for the rest of the unrighteous. Perhaps they, too, would come back as those children had, eyes wide and hopeful, wonderful and yearning. Maybe some were that way. Charlie had no way of knowing. All he knew was that the four they’d tried so desperately to assist in the last week and a half were moving in the wrong direction. And now two of them were missing, and that was on his head.

            Sleep. Maybe that’s what would make it all better.

***

            “Brother? What are you talking about?” Hyde scoffed, rubbing the back of his head with his hand.

            “I guess you wouldn’t recognize me,” Jack said, pulling Hyde from the ground and helping him dust the dirt and grass from his jacket. “I was just a little kid when you died.”

            “Died?” Harold said from the other side of the cave.

            “Yeah. You had leukemia, didn’t you? It was slow at first, the doctors even thought you might beat it. But then it caught up with you. And you didn’t make it any better with that tough-guy attitude you always had.”

            “I have no idea who you are or what you’re talking about,” Hyde said stiffly.

            “I can’t believe this,” Jack said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “This is just...crazy.” He stood with his back to the others and watched the rain outside the cave. The sky was invisible against the falling daggers of rain.

            “You two must think I’m pretty stupid,” Hyde said. “Trying to trick me into going back. You think I couldn’t figure out a stupid ruse like that. Well, forget it. I know you’re from the town. And I’m not going back.”

            “The town? Why? What happened?” Harold asked, catching a whiff of something conspiratorial as he rubbed his wrists and ankles. A black blue bruise was beginning to show on the side of his face and neck.

            “I never went to the town, but I know it’s there, not far from the cabin they kept me in.”

            “What cabin? And what do you mean ‘keeping you in’? Were you being held prisoner?” Harold pried.

            “Enough, Harold. I’m willing to bet he knows exactly as much as we do. One minute he was dying and the next he woke up in a small room without any clothes in a house in the woods. Is that about right?”

            “Real convincing,” Hyde said, rolling his eyes.

            “You know, you messed me up pretty bad as a kid,” Jack said quietly.

            “I said I don’t know you. Now shut up and stop trying to mess with my head.”

            “I looked up to you so much. I thought you were so cool with your rifle and your hunting skills, and knowing how to carve things with your pocket knife. Remember how you used to talk about how one day you’d join the army, learn how to hunt people like a secret agent, like one of the super spies in a movie. That’s the whole reason I joined the army, you know? Because of the stuff you used to rave about. I forgot that you were just a kid when you said all that stuff. It didn’t mean a thing.”

            “Stop it,” Hyde snapped.

            “And on top of all that, you treated me like garbage, Hyde. You were always putting me down, making me feel small, making me do stuff I didn’t want to do just for your laughs. Why? What did you get out of it? Were you just angry because I was healthy? Were you just jealous? What was it? What did I do to deserve that?”

            “I don’t know, I don’t know, just stop talking! I don’t know!” Hyde pulled the hair at his temples and clenched his fists against his ears, trying to block the world out.

            “It wasn’t just you that Dad beat on, you know. Maybe that’s what you thought, maybe you thought you were his only punching bag. But it wasn’t true. He hit all of us. You. Me. Even mom. Oh yeah, I saw it once. I never told you because I was afraid you’d take one of the rifles to him and I didn’t want you to go to prison and leave just Mom and me alone in that gross old house.”

            “Please, please stop,” Hyde said. He rocked on his knees, face nearly touching the ground.

            “You were just a selfish little boy. I can see that now. You still are. Nothing’s changed. Except now I’m the big brother, and I’m gonna be calling the shots, and I’m going to show you what it’s like to be hurt by someone you know.”

            “Jack, now hold on and think about this for a second,” Harold said, trying to sound in control.

            “Can it, Harold. You’re just as bad as this kid. I wouldn’t be stuck in some cave in a thunderstorm if it weren’t for you and your stupid theories, which, by the way, have all turned up false so far.”

            “There’s no proof of that,” Harold said.

            “No proof! I’m looking at proof right here–this is my older brother! You hear that, Harold? I’m younger than him by three years. And yet, here he is, just as I last remember him, but obviously not sick, and obviously still a kid. Wake up Harold, this place is real. We’ve come back from the dead. I don’t care if you think that’s too crazy, or if you’re just fighting to defend your own arrogance. I can’t tell anymore. But I’m done playing games with you. I’m going back.”

            “Now just wait a minute, Jack, think about what you’re saying. That’s a very dangerous suggestion.”

            “Why? What’s so dangerous about this place? Name one thing!”

            “We don’t have the answers we came looking for. We just need more time,” Harold insisted.

            “I’m leaving in the morning. As soon as it’s light out and the rain has stopped, you’re on your own.”

            “What about me?” Hyde whimpered quietly.

            “What about you? I’m not your parent. You can do whatever you want. But if you’ve got any brains at all you’ll follow me so we can get you a square meal and a shower. You look like a homeless bum.”

            “I’m not going back,” Hyde said.

            “Then stay. Really, I don’t care. I’ve spent so much of my life running from your shadows. What you do is your business,” Jack said. He opened his pack, unrolled a sleeping bag, and prepared to bed down.

***

            I’m ready, she had said. Naomi had understood, or she thought she had, but she needed assurance. I’m ready to learn, Adrina confirmed. Naomi felt it was the first time she’d breathed in weeks. A great weight lifted. The needles of stress in her back and neck withdrew. Naomi had smiled, and stuttered, and wondered for a moment if she had possibly misheard.

            Naomi rushed through her chores that morning, cleaning the house in a frenzy that washed over her in a blur. She swept, scrubbed, and polished to the tune of a classical vinyl spinning softly in the den. The house was empty. Sophie had taken the women to the lake for a swim. The rains from the night before had risen the water level considerably. Several waterfalls could be seen on the north end of the lake. Naomi didn’t mind working alone. She had a lot to process internally before she was ready for Adrina’s first session.

            Go slow, Naomi reminded herself. This was a new slate. There would be so much that Adrina would know nothing about. But now, as Adrina finished off the last of the pizza that Naomi had cooked that morning, she could barely contain herself. She reeled herself back in and decided to start with a question.

            “So, Adrina, maybe you can first tell me what you know so far. You know, what you’ve heard.”

            Adrina looked up, wiping the corner of her mouth with a cloth napkin from the table. “I’m not sure I know much. We’re supposed to be dead, right? But this isn’t heaven.”

            “That’s right. This isn’t heaven. We’re on Earth.”

            “What part of Earth? It looks like a picture I saw once in a book. Is this Europe?”

            “No. Actually these mountains once belonged to the area near the American-Canadian border, near the Western coast. This used to be part of Vancouver.”

            “I’ve never been to Canada. Heard it’s pretty.”

            “Well remember, there’s no Canada now, and no America, those are old territories from the previous system, and now we have new names…” Too much, too soon, Naomi chided herself. She glanced over at Adrina, whose face was wrinkled with confusion.

            Naomi smiled. “You’re from Detroit, right? Born and raised?”

            “Yes, unfortunately. Nothing like this place. Mostly just city and cars.”

            Naomi turned, pulling a large envelope from a bag hung on the back of her chair. She flipped the tab open and removed a large white sheet of paper. It was a photograph.

            “Do you recognize this place?” Naomi asked, sliding the photo across the kitchen table. Adrina tilted her head slightly and shrugged.

            “Not really. Somewhere around here?”

            “Actually, no. This is far from here. This water here is part of what you might know as St. Claire Lake. And this here is Belle Island. And this area here is Grosse Point.”

            “This is Detroit? Must’ve been taken ages ago before the buildings went up.”

            “I suppose it probably looked like this back then, too. But actually this photo was taken by some friends of ours a couple of years ago. They mailed this over when they heard that you’d be coming back here.”

            “A couple years? But where are the houses? The roads? Where’s the pollution?”

            “It’s all gone. That was one of our jobs, after Armageddon. We went through and cleaned it all up. There are just a few houses here now, though most folks in this area still live in what used to be Detroit. It’s a community of about five hundred people now. No more skyscrapers, no more traffic, no more gangs, no more pollution.”

            “I always thought Armageddon was just something in the movies.”

            “For many it was. And usually it was a misnomer for any kind of global disaster or epidemic, but in actuality, the Bible had prophesied that Armageddon was a war that God would carry out against the governments of the Old World.”

            “Which governments?”

            “All of them.”

            “Even America’s?”

            “Even America’s. They were all part of a wicked old system that needed to be wiped clean.”

            “Did you fight in that war?”

            “No. It was a war fought by God, led by Jesus Christ and supported by his angels. We didn’t participate. We just watched.”

            Adrina mulled over this for a moment. Naomi found it difficult to read her expression. “You have pictures of that?”

            Naomi nodded. “Pictures, videos, even entire museums. I can take you to go visit one sometime.”

***

            The man in the dark coat and red hair entered the campgrounds quietly, surveying the layout of the tents, sleeping bags, and stacks of supplies. Inefficient, but it wasn’t his job to attend to such matters. A man at a picnic table was rubbing his face in his hands. He nodded to the man in the coat.

            “What’s missing?” asked the man in the coat. He held in his hands the brim of a large, black hat that gave him the air of a sheriff from a dusty town in the wild west.

            “About half our water, fifteen tins of beans and dried fruit, a lantern… Anything else, Claire?” The seated man asked in a raised voice over his shoulder.

            “Rope seems to be missing, too,” Claire said from within a tent.

            “And some rope,” the man finished. His eyes were red, and the man in the coat wondered if it was caused by the smoke broiling up from the fire or the lack of sleep.

            “Rope? How much?” He asked.

            “How much rope, Claire?”

            A pause. “All of it.”

            “It’s about thirty yards, then,” the man at the bench said. He let out a sigh and set his elbows on the table.

            “And you’re sure these items weren’t simply misplaced?”

            “No way,” the man said. “We’re careful. We catalog everything. We’re out here for weeks at a time, can’t afford to lose things and then have to trek all the way back into town.”

            “And what are you are doing out here, if I may ask?”

            “Botanical studies. We’re trying to map all the flora on the west side of the ridge. Supposed to get it done before the rainy season really kicks in, but now, well, who knows what’s gonna happen.”

            The man in the coat shook his head slowly and made mental notes. “This ever happen before?”

            “You mean getting stuff stolen like this? Nah. But there are rumors in these hills…” The man leaned forward and raised an eyebrow.

            “Rumors?”

            “Yeah. Campers tell ‘em, sometimes loggers that pass by. Say their stuff goes missing sometimes. Just like us. Supplies, mostly water and foodstuffs, non perishables…” He paused for dramatic effect. “What do you make of it?”

            “It’s a little early to speculate.”

            “Some say it’s kids from a family in these hills, just playing practical jokes on people, you know, like the old days.”

            “Stealing as a practical joke?”

            “Exactly, that’s my thought. Doesn’t make sense. Somethin’ else is going on here. I got a bad feeling about it, you know.”

            “I’ll do my best to look into it,” said the man in the coat.

            “Good. And when you find out what’s up, you be sure to come back here and let us know?”

            “We’ll see,” the man said. He nodded, lifted his hat a few inches from his head, and brushed his red hair back with his long fingers. He thanked the campers, set his hat back on his head, and left.