Hailstone (20 page)

Her eyes fell on half of a red label hidden under a pile of clothes. Magda crouched down and uncovered an unopened bottle of vodka, forgotten and undiscovered. She weighed it in her hand. She unscrewed the lid and put it to her lips. She breathed in the vapours and thought about oblivion. She thought about the doctor, and her kidneys and liver. She had little doubt the next few days would kill her anyway, just like it had killed Adam, why not simply give in to the craving as a last act of defiance against Preacher and everything he stood for? Perhaps death would not be so bad.

She closed her eyes. The tiniest drop touched her lips and burned onto her tongue. Zack had said they had Kat somewhere. Kat was in danger, how could she even think of giving up like that? She’d tear apart Hailstone to find her, that had been the promise.

Magda opened her eyes and replaced the cap. The taste of vodka on her tongue teased her a moment longer and then disappeared. A footstep creaked in the room.

“What are you doing?” Zack asked from the other side of the closet door.

Magda rose to her feet. She turned out the light and stepped away to give herself a little room. Zack was a black shadow in front of her. She swung the bottle in a wide arc and slammed it into the side of his head as hard as she could. The glass shattered and Zack slumped to the floor.

Magda went and turned on the light, then returned to the man on the floor. He bled from a cut on the side of the head. She kicked him in the ribs; no movement, but he breathed evenly. The sight of his naked body made her skin crawl.

She slammed out of the room and ran to the kitchen, where she pulled out a drawer. The violence of the motion sent the drawer flying into the table. Cutlery scattered over the floor.

Her hands shook so much she almost couldn’t pick up the meat cleaver. She dropped the knife twice before she got out of the kitchen.

By the time she returned to the bedroom she had control of her fingers. She dropped down on Zack and used her knees to pin his elbows. She slapped him with her free hand. “Wake up!”

No answer. She slapped him again, this time as hard as she could. He groaned. She pinched his nose closed until his eyes opened. “Magdalene?”

Magda let go of his nose and put the knife to his throat. “Where’s Kat?”

“What?” he looked bewildered. “What cat?”

Magda slapped him again. “Where’s my girlfriend, asshole?”

Zack blinked a few times and appeared to regain his senses. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Using violence to get my way. Guess who I learned that from?” Magda showed him the meat cleaver, just in case he’d missed it, and placed the blade right on his Adam’s apple. “Where’s Kat? What have you done with her?”

“Magdalene please, let’s talk about this.”

“Oh, now you want to talk?” Magda leaned down closer. “Fine, Zack, I’ll talk, you listen good. If you don’t tell me where my girlfriend is, I’m going to get my good knife all covered in your blood, and considering it’s as blunt as a spoon, that’s not going to be much fun for you. I, on the other hand, am really hoping you don’t talk, after what you just did to me. If you do tell me where she is, you may just have time to get to hospital to get some stitches in your head before you bleed to death anyway. Are we understanding each other yet, you son of a bitch?”

Zack stared at her. “She’s in the church,” he said.

“The church? Are you certain?”

“I put her in there myself.”

Magda dropped the knife. She balled a fist and punched him in the nose, just like she’d seen Kat do to Joseph. Then she took her meat cleaver, ran from the room and locked the door behind her.

She dropped the knife in the hall and bolted for the front door, only to find it locked from the outside. Deep in the house, Zack thumped on the bedroom door.

Magda picked up a heavy doorstop from the lounge room floor. She weighed it in her hand; it felt like there was a brick inside all that awful, grimy pink lace.

She ditched it at the front window. Glass smashed. Magda wrapped her arm in a throw rug from the sofa and knocked out the jagged shards of glass that remained in the frame. Honestly, when you had to break out of your own house, you knew you were in trouble.

She climbed out of the window to the sound of the bedroom door breaking, but she didn’t care about Zack now. She’d slowed him down. She dropped into the bed of geraniums and bolted across the lawn. She looked up and down the street; it was near empty, and the tiniest line of pale blue behind the houses showed how close dawn was. No doubt Zack would be calling Preacher right now. She didn’t have much time.

Magda clutched her coat around herself to keep out the cold. She bolted down the street toward the church. She was barely halfway there when a car engine revved out of a driveway at the other end of the street. She half turned, knowing full well it was Preacher’s car. She caught sight of Zack staggering across the lawn.

Then she stopped dead, met by the steady, far-off thrum of engines and a sight Hailstone rarely saw. The light in the sky faded and the sun rose; a helicopter hovered in the rising blue. It was low enough for Magda to see there was a number on the side, but what number she couldn’t make out. It hardly mattered.

She bolted the rest of the distance to the church. Preacher screeched to a halt behind her. Magda found the church doors locked. She hammered on them. “Kat!” she yelled.

Doors slammed behind her. More cars screeched into the street and stopped around the church. Magda kept on hammering at the door. “Kat are you in there!”

“Magdalene.” Preacher pulled her away from the door and spun her around.

Magda looked from him to Zack, who clutched his head with a bloodstained hand. She pointed at him. “He needs to go to hospital,” she said. “And if you stand in my way you will too. You wait until the world hears you ordered him to rape your own daughter.”

“I know about your little website,” Preacher said. “I put a stop to it.”

“Oh really?” Magda threw his hand off. “Hate to break it to you, but you can’t stop the internet!” The last word broke on a yell. She looked around, uncomprehending, at all the cars and vans parked around the church.

“What’s going on?” Joseph walked out of the shadows and stood between her and Preacher.

“Joseph, get her out of here,” Preacher said.

Joseph looked at him in much the way a person might look at a spider. “Okay,” he said. He looked at Magda. “You don’t want to be here.”

“Kat’s in the church,” she said.

Joseph went white. “Are you sure?”

Magda nodded.

Joseph threw himself at the door, but it didn’t budge.

“Joseph what are you doing?” Preacher roared.

Joseph bounded back to him. “Give me the key.”

“Your father is going to hear about this
.”

Joseph put one hand around Preacher’s neck. With the other, he reached into Preacher’s pocket and withdrew a set of keys. He tossed them to Magda. “You have less than two minutes,” he said.

Magda didn’t bother asking what would happen in less than two minutes. She gave Zack a murderous look when he moved toward her, then unlocked the doors with a hand that shook badly. She yanked them open and bolted into the church.

“Kat!” she screamed. “Kat are you in here?”

At first there was nothing but silence and echoes. Then the echoes broke and a strident curse rose from a pew near the front. “God damn it!”

Magda uttered thanks to a God she didn’t believe in and ran down the aisle. She found Kat in the second pew from the front, her hands tied to the back of the seat.

“Mags, what took you so long?” Kat had a bruise on her face and looked strained, but her words were light.

Magda burst into tears, which didn’t make it any easier to untie the knot with hands that still shook. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry I got you into this, Kat.”

“Fine, fine, but let’s get the fuck out of this place, it’s creepy. Do you know those bastards frikkin kidnapped me? I hadn’t even got home! And they smashed up my cameras.” Kat rubbed her wrists together when the ropes went slack and gave Magda a smug look. “Good thing I hid the memory cards before I left the hospital.”

“Thirty seconds!” roared Joseph from the doorway.

“Till what?” Kat asked.

“I don’t know. With any luck, until Preacher self combusts.” Magda took her hand and they ran back down the aisle and out of the Church.

Outside, Preacher looked like he’d swallowed a lemon when he saw Kat. Zack leaned against a car looking ill. Blood stained the hand that clutched his head. There was a crowd on the street.

“I don’t know what you think this is going to achieve,” Preacher said. “I will never allow you to pursue an immoral lifestyle. You or anyone in this city. It’s against God.”

Magda looked at him for a moment. “Fuck you,” she said.

“I agree with that.” Kat took Magda’s face in her hands and there, in the middle of the street, in front of Preacher and Zack and the crowd, they kissed.

It was the first really passionate kiss Magda had ever experienced. She tasted Kat’s lips and tongue. Flashes of light went off around them and she could hear the click of shutters.

Then a sonic boom shook the street and a surge of heat and light blast through the air. For a split second Magda thought it was just her and Kat until she heard someone scream. Joseph shoved them back into the crowd and turned around to watch.

Magda finally tore herself away from Kat. Flames licked the gutted walls of the church. Preacher was on his knees in the middle of the street and Zack looked like he’d been knocked unconscious by the blast. Around her, cameras clicked and people buzzed. Joseph had a faint smile on his face. He looked back at her. “Now we’re free, Mags,” he said.

He walked away.

Magda stared after him, but before she could follow and ask what he meant, a man with a huge video camera on his shoulder swung to face her and Kat, and a woman with heavy makeup barred her view of Joseph. “Are you Magdalene McAllister, Preacher Semple’s daughter?” she asked, her voice rising on a note of excitement.

“Call me Mag
da,” Magda said.

“Magda we’ve all seen the footage of what’s happening in Hailstone. Will you do a live interview with us? I’m Renee from National News Channel 16. The whole country is following your story. Will you tell us what you think of Preacher Semple, your father, and the Congregation of the Holy Bible?” she stuck out her microphone. Around them, other cameras and microphones appeared.

“It’s a cult,” Magda said. “I never wanted anything to do with it.”

Kat tapped the reporter on the shoulder. “Hold on,” she said. She took Magda’s hand and spoke to her too quietly for the cameras to hear. “TV news from all around the country is here,” she said. “They’re like vultures. They’ll eat you up. I can handle this if you want.”

Magda looked at the flashing lights and then at Kat’s serious eyes. She nodded.

Kat leaned closer. “I heard them talking,” she whispered. “Police have come from outside Hailstone to find out why the police here won’t do anything. It’s a matter of time before they come for Preacher. Don’t let him leave.”

Then she let go and faced the cameras. Magda stepped out of the frame, but watched Kat for a few minutes more.

“My name is Kat Catrall,” Kat said into the microphones. “I am responsible for the website you’ve all seen. Magda McAllister and I have been targets of a cult that is obsessed with control. People have died because of their methods. I spent the night imprisoned in that church ... no I don’t know who blew it up ... but I have footage of the damage this cult has done to people. I want you to play it.” She took a memory card out of her back pocket.

Magda backed out of the crowd completely. She found Preacher in the middle of the road where she’d left him. He was still on his knees, staring at the flames. He looked, for the first time, like an old, old man.

She knelt to check for a pulse in Zack’s wrist, even though she would rather have just kicked him. He was alive, but the pulse was weak, so she took the phone from his pocket and called an ambulance.

Then she returned to Preacher. “Get up,” she said.

Preacher looked right through her. Then he struggled to his feet. “Magdalene
.” His voice cracked. “How did this happen?”

She glanced over her shoulder at the church. The flames had died down to a smoulder; there would be little left of it soon. Sirens wailed in the distance.

“You tried to control people,” she said. “Most of us don’t like that.”

“Satan still speaks through you,” he whispered. “You did this. You were in the church.”

“Listen to yourself!” she shook her head. “All my life, anytime I’ve said something you didn’t like, it’s been Satan. Do you have any concept of how badly you’ve fucked me up with that? It’s not Satan, Preacher, it’s me. All me. And now I’m telling you to wake up to yourself. Your cult has a body count. The things you’ve been doing are illegal. And there is no way I can express the depth of how much I despise you for what happened last night.”

Preacher’s face furrowed like a drought-stricken field. “Last night?”

Magda wasn’t sure if he’d taken in anything she said. She grabbed his face to make sure he was listening, even though the feel of the stubble over his papery cheeks made her skin crawl. “You told Zack to rape me. Didn’t you?”