I open my mouth to scream but the arm around my throat makes it impossible to inhale. Where are Suzy and Frankie and Julian and Karen? Where are Winnie and Diego? I begin to pick out shadowy figures in the moonlight—four of them, plus the one holding me down. They wear the dark blue uniforms of the Church of America Peacemakers; I see crucifixes on their armbands. One is illuminated by the screen of his phone; he’s young, not much older than me. I try to see Harp in my periphery, but nothing moves where she ought to be. I can’t turn my head—afraid of what will happen if I do, afraid of what I’ll see there.
“Yep, we got ’em,” says the man—Randy—into the phone. “They match the picture on the feed … no, no accomplices present. Thank you, sir. Frick’s blessings to you as well.” He hangs up and addresses the group. “Blackmore says somebody’s got to be helping them. We have to move.”
Blackmore. The group springs to action. The one holding me hoists me up, sets me on my feet, but my legs tremble so hard I think they’ll buckle. No accomplices present. Sometimes late at night, Julian goes on runs to the northernmost point of the cliff side and back. Sometimes Frankie patrols the caves around the pool to ensure they’re all empty. But how can all of the soldiers be gone now? How could we have made it this far only to get snatched up this easily? My arms are pulled roughly behind my back and the person pulling them groans.
“This one’s got a broken hand.” I realize it’s a woman. “I can’t cuff her.”
Beside us, someone sighs. “Just knock her out. I’ll do it, if you think you can’t take her.”
I move my head a fraction. The man who’s just spoken leans over Harp’s bed and scoops something into his arms. When he straightens up, I see Harp’s body, limp and lifeless, her head lolling back on her neck.
“Harp!” I try to struggle out of the woman’s grasp and one arm gets loose, but then I feel a sharp blow between my shoulder blades, knocking the wind out of me. The man carrying Harp laughs; he moves towards the back exit. The woman pulls me against her with one arm. The other arm reaches towards the man with the flashlight.
“Can I use that a second?”
“Don’t hit her too hard,” he warns, handing it over. “Blackmore wants them alive.”
My heart thumps painfully. I pull with all my energy against the woman’s hold, but she’s far stronger. I have less than seconds. If she knocks me out, there’s nothing I can do to help Harp. I shout in frustration and feel the woman’s arm rear back, the heavy flashlight in her fist. Then the room is flooded with light. At first I don’t understand—I’ve never seen Cliff House lit. The Peacemakers react with panic. The woman freezes, but the other three retrieve guns from holsters I hadn’t noticed. The one carrying Harp drops her to pull out his, and in the second before she hits the ground, I see her arm jut out to break her fall.
“Easy does it,” calls the man who seems to be in charge. He looks around, trying to identify the source of the lights. “Don’t do anything stupid now. Let’s talk this through—these girls can’t be worth that much to you.”
I look up, hoping to see Diego march in with guns blazing, the remaining soldiers flanking him, controlled and furious. But I don’t see anyone but the Peacemakers, and Harp’s body on the floor, eyes shut too tight.
“Randy,” the man mutters. “Call for backup.”
Randy nods, taking his phone from his pocket. He hasn’t quite brought it to his ear when I see a flash of movement from across the room and hear Randy’s accompanying howl of pain as he drops the phone. He turns slightly and I see the knife protruding deeply into his hand. The man who held Harp is closest to the movement; he reacts quickly, shooting twice in that direction. There’s a yelp from behind the bar. My stomach turns—Frankie.
“What the fuck!” Randy screams.
“Language, Randy!”
“Fuck you, Nelson, there’s a knife in my hand.” Tears stream down his face as he turns to where I’m held and points his gun at me.
“Randy, don’t!” shouts the female Peacemaker. I feel her grip on me loosen just a little.
“They want her alive, Randy,” says Nelson urgently. “We have to keep her alive. You swore on the Book of Frick.”
“Yeah, well, that was before I got stabbed in the fucking hand!” Randy shouts.
He fires.
But before he does, in the half-moment between his voice hitting my ears and his finger pulling the trigger, I drop to the floor as heavily as I can. The Peacemaker’s hold on me breaks as the room explodes into sound and fire—I hear her scream, clutching her shoulder; Randy’s bullet has hit her where my head has just been. I hear the shatter of glass and Diego’s unintelligible shouts from above; I hear the steady, deafening pop of guns from every direction. It isn’t just the Peacemakers, but the remaining militia, too—they’ve placed themselves at strategic angles on the balcony above, behind overturned tables and the wide oak bar. I roll under my cot, where my few possessions are piled. I grab my sledgehammer and crawl. There isn’t time to think; there isn’t time to breathe. Blood pumps in my ears and I realize I’m whispering to myself: “Get to Harp. Get to Harp.” Then someone reaches under the cot I’ve crawled under and grabs my arm; I swing around to kick out at him, screaming, unable to hear my own screams in all the chaos.
“Vivian!”
Julian drops to a crouch so I can see his face. He holds out his hand and I push myself out from under the cot to take it; he leads me at a sprint, past the commotion, towards the exit. The air above us splits as a bullet flies past, too close; Julian pushes me to the ground and fires back. He drags me around a corner and I hear a woman screaming—Winnie? Julian blocks me with his body, watching for movement, digging into his pocket with trembling hands. He throws a set of keys at me.
“Get out.” He nods at the exit several yards to our left. “Get a car and bring it to the entrance. Wait five minutes. If no one comes after five minutes, run. If one of them comes, run.”
“No!” My ears are ringing from the gunshots and my voice is too loud. “I have to make sure Harp is okay!”
“We’ll get Harp. Don’t worry. Just go.”
He looks at me with his deep brown eyes, at once assured and pleading, and I feel something in me—some wall I’ve built—give way. I take the keys and the sledgehammer and I run, ducking my head under my arms as though that will protect me. I burst through the back exit and race around the building, the cold air searing my lungs, the terrifying pops inside Cliff House muffled under the sound of wind in my ears. It’s dark, but for the first time, a glow spills out onto the still-water pools beyond the cliff—it’s probably beautiful, but I’m too aware of how visible I am. When I reach Amanda’s two remaining cars, my shivering hands struggle to fit the key into one of the locks. I accidentally scratch deep grooves into the paint. Then the key fits, the door opens, and I throw myself inside, turning on the engine but not the headlights. I race on screeching tires to the entrance, reaching to throw open the passenger side doors. I check the clock: 12:14. Five minutes, Julian said. But how does he expect me to leave when those minutes are up, if Harp is not here beside me?
“Come on, come on,” I whisper. I try to keep my eyes away from the clock for as long as I can, but they dart back there of their own accord after what feels like forever—12:15. I listen for gunfire. But either it’s stopped or I can’t hear it over the tinny, wheezing sound I recognize as my own breathing. I check the clock again.
12:16.
I kill the engine, throw the door open. I step into the night again, holding my sledgehammer close to my body. I move towards Cliff House, but the front doors burst open then, and Winnie rushes out, half-dragging an ashen Harp beside her. Winnie has a gun, and Harp carries her laptop—both appear to be uninjured.
When she sees me, Harp wrests her elbow out of Winnie’s grip and runs to embrace me. Neither of us seems able to speak. Winnie breaks us apart and pushes past me, climbing into the driver’s seat. “We have to move,” she says.
“What about the others?” I ask as Harp and I crawl into the back seat.
“We’ll meet them in L.A.,” Winnie says darkly. She doesn’t wait for me to ask for more information. She floors the gas and we race away from Cliff House. I have only a second to look back at the building, hoping I’ll see someone leave it. But no one does.
We drive south, merging onto the interstate slightly before two a.m. For the first twenty minutes, I listen to Harp breathe heavily beside me. I wait for my teeth to stop chattering, my ears to stop ringing with the echoes of gunshots. But they never do. When we’ve put more than twenty miles between us and San Francisco, I have to whisper the question I’m so afraid to ask:
“Is everybody okay?”
There’s a long pause, but I know Winnie heard me—she shifts uncomfortably in her seat.
“Suzy took that first shot, after Frankie threw the knife,” she tells me in a dull voice. “She was still breathing when we left, but she didn’t look good.”
Suzy’s face floods my mind—her dimples and big green eyes. Her brow furrowed as she hunched over her laptop, fingers playing across the keyboard like a piano. I can hardly pretend I knew her well, but she was good and brave, and she helped us. I shudder, feeling a painful knot form at the back of my throat. Harp coughs lightly.
“I think—Karen got hit, too.” She sounds rueful. “I saw her across the room right before you pulled me out, Winnie. There was—there was a lot of blood.”
Winnie doesn’t react for a long moment. Then she slams her hand down on the steering wheel. “Fuck! I can’t believe we were that stupid. Diego and I were outside packing up the cars, and Julian was on a run. The Peacemakers came in on a boat; they docked it down the beach. When Suzy and the others noticed it, all three of them went down to investigate, leaving you completely uncovered. We managed to sneak in right after the Peacemakers, but by then it was too late. So stupid.” She practically screams this last word. “What were they fucking thinking?”
Neither Harp nor I reply. Winnie goes quiet; she continues to drive at exactly the speed limit, no more, no less, so as to draw no attention to us. Her silence turns into a physical presence that I have no wish to push up against. It seems obvious to me how the Church of America found us—they had to have tracked us down through the blog. They were quicker than Suzy thought they’d be. I’m sickened by guilt. I keep thinking of the small, surprised sound I now think must have been Suzy taking a bullet. I close my eyes and try to let the sound of Harp’s typing fingers lull me into calm, but it doesn’t work. I can still see their faces so clearly.
Three hours into our drive, Winnie pulls into a rest stop to get a cup of coffee. Beside me, Harp frowns at her screen and lifts the laptop, moving it slowly from one side of the car to the other. When she catches my look, she says, “I’m trying to pick up Wi-Fi. The rest stop has an unprotected network, and I want to check the feed.”
The feed. I can only imagine what the Church of America will say when they discover what happened. If none of the Peacemakers survived, they’ll paint us as unhinged; if any of them did, if they find any identifying information about Amanda’s militia, we’ll all be in danger.
“Bam!” Harp points to the full signal strength and pulls up the Church’s website. I lean over to see. Our faces are still in a sidebar—“WANTED FOR SPIRITUAL THREATS” the caption reads—but we’re not the top story. There’s a headline in a peppy bright blue font. “PRAISE FRICK! PRAISE THIS MIRACLE!” Animated angels flank the words, cute and chubby-cheeked, doing a celebratory dance. Below is a video. Harp looks at me, worried.
“Play it.” I feel a wave of anxiety creep up my spine. Anything that makes the Church of America this happy is sure to be bad.
Harp presses play. The camera focuses on a podium in some swanky outdoor setting, fresh flowers and fountains. Beside it stands Michelle Mulvey in an evening gown, smiling at someone off camera. There’s a smattering of applause as Ted Blackmore approaches the microphone. I inhale through my teeth in anticipation.
“For the last three and a half months,” Blackmore begins as the unseen crowd hushes themselves, “I’ve spoken on behalf of the Church of America. I consider myself a good man, a devout man,”—he’s interrupted as the audience cheers; he gives them a shy, grateful smile so convincing even I’m slightly won over—“however. There are good men, and there are angels. And as we know, my predecessor, Adam Taggart, falls into that last category.
“A week ago, I had a dream. I dreamed the blessed Mr. Taggart and I were in his office, consulting the Book, drinking hot cocoa, as we so often did before he went to his reward. In the dream, I voiced some of the struggles I currently face. ‘Brother,’ said I, ‘how can I encourage your people on their path to salvation? How can I speak for them, in a world tormented by evil, by grown men lying with other men,’”—his voice gains resonance and the crowd begins to murmur, calling out, “Amen!”—“‘by women who turn their backs on their hearths and descend into promiscuity, by atheists who deny you, by Believers who fail to honor you with their hard-earned dollars’”—Blackmore shouts now, and this last he booms in a furious snarl—“‘by little girls who spread lies to save their own wretched skins!’” The audience sounds like thunder; the list has worked up a fury in them. Blackmore feigns exhaustion, takes a long sip of water. Mulvey hands him a towel, with which he gratefully mops his brow. When the crowd finally quiets, he continues.
“In my dream, I asked the Enforcer: ‘Isn’t there anyone in this blessed country who’ll join me? Isn’t there anyone who can help spread Frick’s word across this troubled land?’ And I’ll tell you what happened next: Taggart said nothing at all. He looked me in the eye, pushed the Book to me, and pointed to a passage. It was the Parable of the Starbucks. ‘Dost thy recognize me as thy own Father?’” Blackmore quotes reverently. “‘You are my child.’”
“Harp.”
She looks at me. I hardly realize her name has come out of my mouth—a drowning sound. I want to warn her of something, but my brain is all white noise. I can’t find the words even to think them. I want Blackmore to stop talking. I need him to stop talking.
“When I woke up, I meditated on that a long while,” he continues, “not knowing what it could mean. But soon enough, I found out. What the Enforcer meant is that his work on this doomed planet was not quite finished. What Taggart meant was that he would send us someone he himself could speak through, a man with Taggart’s own convictions; his own unparalleled brain; his own blood.
“His only son.”
The audience gasps but I barely hear them over the high-pitched buzz in my ears. We watch Blackmore step back from the podium and another person enter the frame to shake his hand. “No no no no no,” I hear Harp murmur in horror beside me; she lifts her hands to cover her mouth. I feel a sour pit form in my stomach and I know I’m going to be sick but I have to watch it first; I have to see it happen. The new person turns from Blackmore to the cheering crowd and you can hardly make out his face at first because the flash of cameras turns him into a streak of white light, a ghost. For a second, there’s a look of surprise on his face but then it melts into a warm smile. When the flashes stop, there’s only him and the audience’s delight with him: his handsome face and his long fingers waving. The letters pop up in the lower-left-hand corner of the screen, spelling out what I knew they would: PETER TAGGART, NEW CHURCH OF AMERICA SPOKESMAN.
Peter steps up to the microphone and coughs once, shyly, while the crowd grows still. Blackmore and Mulvey stand off to the side, beaming proudly at him.
“Thank you,” Peter says. “Thank you. Frick bless you.”