Remo’s return to the compound was considerably smoother, largely due to the fact that the guards he encountered this time were more hurdles than obstacles, lying dead on the gravel path. He was sure there must be some stragglers somewhere around the facility, but he’d take care of them as he came across them. And he was mad enough to do it slowly, because his true target was miles away now, probably already resting comfortably in the back seat of a little Cessna on his way to God knew where.
So he’d clean up shop here, and worry about Walker and the Forben twins later.
He was right about stragglers. There were more than he expected, beginning right at the fence line. But they were scared. They’d seen too many bodies and no bullet holes. Ripped off limbs, yes. Gouged out eyes, yes. Heads crushed like overripe squash, yes. But no bullet holes. Whatever demon did this to their comrades, they were not eager to meet.
But meet him they did. They didn’t know where he was, and they couldn’t tell where his path took him. When they heard a scream from the south, they looked that way, only to hear another strangled scream from the north. And with each scream, their numbers dwindled by ones and twos.
Remo was running a clockwise spiral around the facility, working his way in toward the center, toward the two-story warehouse where he’d left a score of dead guards and two girls he should have killed a long time ago. He was meeting less and less resistance, and when he circled his way through the lower level of the main building and began to mount the stairs to the top level, he was pretty sure there weren’t any more guards.
That didn’t explain the singing, though, that he heard winding its way mournfully down the main hallway on the upper level. One door was slightly ajar, leaking a weak beam of illumination across the hallway.
“And we, who living, yet remain, caught up, shall meet our faithful Lord.” The baritone was mostly strong and soulful, but with a hitch in it that came from crying. “This hope we cherish not in vain.” Remo silently pushed open the door. “But we comfort one another by this word...come in, young man. Come in.”
Remo came in. The Reverend Billy Walker sat at a metal desk, cleared of everything except a leather Bible worn with years of reading and re-reading. He made no move to either attack or to defend, which was enough to make Remo suspicious.
“There’s no one left, is there?” the Reverend asked. He took a white handkerchief from his breast pocket and wiped his eyes, then his forehead.
“None that I’ve seen,” Remo said flatly.
“And my girls?”
Remo frowned. “Gone.” Then he clarified, “Took a copter out.”
Walker nodded. “Well, at least there’s that,” he said softly to himself.
“Guess you got left behind.”
“Left behind?” Walker smiled weakly, then laughed. “I was always going to be left behind. That was all part of the grand plan.”
Remo studied the man. Old but not decrepit. He wasn’t making any threats, wasn’t presenting any of the usual aggravation at being defeated. “You’re not your usual run of the mill terrorist,” Remo said. “You haven’t made any demands; you’ve kept under the radar. What’s with all this? What did you have to gain?”
Walker wiped his nose with the handkerchief. “No demands?” he scoffed. “Oh, I made a whopper of a demand.” He began to tear up again, and Remo rolled his eyes.
“You know who I am, don’t you?” he said to Remo. “What I do.”
Remo shrugged. “Some preacher with a plan to blow up the world is all I know.”
The Reverend nodded. “I’m in a foolish kind of business,” Walker said. “I try to tell people that things can be better, point them to an example of how to live, and show them the promise of Heaven.”
“Sounds like a preacher to me,” Remo said.
“But I don’t do it for money,” Walker added. “That’s what makes it a foolish kind of business. My only gain is realized beyond this world, and I willingly sacrificed that.”
“And this is where you’re going to tell me why, right?” Remo sighed. “Go ahead, get it off your chest.”
Walker looked directly into Remo’s flat, black eyes. Not many people could do that. “Do you believe in God, young man?”
Remo shrugged. “Depends on which one you’re asking about.”
Walker sagged. “‘The devils also believe, and tremble,’” he said. “I believe, with all my heart and soul. I believe He lives, I believe He loves us, and…and I believe with all my heart that He’s coming back for us one day.”
The tears were flowing again, necessitating another wipe with the handkerchief. “I’ve seen so much in my life,” Walker continued. “Seen so many people come to God…only to later leave Him, to fall away and lose their salvation. I couldn’t save them.”
“People are free to make their own choices,” Remo said.
“Ah, but how many people are tempted into the wrong choices?” Walker countered. “Why would one willingly give up glory? Even my brethren in the ministry, men and women of God who’ve done great things, began to fall into the gutters of unrighteousness. Of idolatry. Of prostitution. Of greed. And I knew that if God did not return quickly, very quickly, there would be none left to come back for. ‘And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened.’”
“So, your plan was to kill everybody before anyone who was good had a chance to be bad?”
“Oh no,” Walker said shaking his head. “No, I had far more hubris than that. I knew people would die, of course. But I didn’t really want to destroy the planet. I just wanted to hold it hostage.” He looked up at Remo with red, baleful eyes. “He promised to come back. He promised! And if the Earth were going to crumble, then He’d have to come back before that, wouldn’t He? Wouldn’t He?”
Remo stood silent, as the Reverend’s body shook with great heaving sobs. He almost felt sorry for the guy. He only killed a bunch of people in what he thought was the greater good. Give him a paycheck for it, and a phone line straight to Smitty, and what would be the difference between the two of them?
“And now I am damned to Hell for all eternity,” Walker moaned. “‘For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh.’ But now? Now it was for nothing. Nothing at all.” He lay his head on the desk, both hands cradling the leather book his forehead lay upon.
“Hey,” Remo said, interrupting the sobbing. “Hey, chin up. I hear your boss, he’s supposed to be real big in the forgiveness business, right? I mean, that’s what he does, isn’t it?”
Walker looked up, a glimmer of hope in his eyes. “I’ve asked Him,” Walker croaked. “Every night, even though I knew I was going through with it.”
Remo shrugged. “Well, ask him again.”
Walker bowed his head and closed his eyes. He murmured a small, private prayer, hands clasped in the traditional way. After a few moments, he whispered, “Amen.”
He looked up at Remo. “Do you think He did?”
Remo stood beside the Reverend and put a hand on his shoulder. “Only one way to find out,” he said. He flicked his hand, brushing the tips of his fingers against the man’s temples, shorting out the nerves in his brain. Walker’s body fell back in his leather chair, eyes open toward the sky, jaw slack.
And Remo thought he’d be damned if the man didn’t look at peace. “Now, how the hell am I going to get back?” Remo wondered. Then he heard the sound of an approaching motor.
· · ·
Uri Kotov threw up over the side of the jeep as Boris weaved around bodies when he could, and drove over them when he had to. Boris’s crotch told the urine-soaked tale of how he had barely made it into the guard shack when the test bomb he had set in place went off unexpectedly. But this time, the blast was much louder, preceded by a burst of light and smoke coming from the direction of the storage facility. Uri had been tipping his chair backward as he read, and the rumble of the detonations knocked him to the floor, causing him to catch something delicate in his zipper.
“All our comrades,” Uri moaned. “We are lucky not to have been blown up ourselves.”
Boris grunted. “Don’t be stupid,” he scolded the younger man. “Do these men look like they died in explosion?”
Uri looked again at the next cluster they passed, and noticed that while some of them were certainly dismembered, none of them had burns of any kind. “A devil,” he said in awe.
“Ignore them,” Boris said. “We go see who lives, we get our money, we go home.”
Uri silently agreed as the jeep threw gravel back as it took the path into their base camp. Outside the main building, they found a man waving them down with both arms. They stopped.
“Where is everybody?” Uri blurted out.
“Dead,” the man said. “They’re all dead! They’ve been killed by a maniac! Do you have enough fuel to get out of here?”
Boris grunted. “What about our money?”
“You can go look for money if you want,” the man said. “But what good is it if you’re not alive to spend it?”
Uri pointed to the back of the jeep. “We have fuel, and extra fuel,” he said, indicating the plastic tanks strapped in there. “Get in.”
The man got in.
“Wait,” Boris said. “Who are you?”
Remo grabbed them both by the back of their scalps and crushed their heads together into a single object. “You ask too many questions,” he said, tossing them out the sides and settling into the driver’s seat.