The Hole (13 page)

Unfortunately, the view was still poor and the best he could do was affirm that more of the crazies had gathered. Someone behind him said, “Get away from there, we’re going to-”

And then an arm was around Elliot’s chest, dragging him backwards, and four men carrying a pew hurried past, flipping their enormous load up against the window’s empty frame.

“That won’t hold!” Elliot shouted. “There’s too many!” But they weren’t listening-and probably couldn’t have heard him anyway over the noise from the pack of children cowering on the floor to his left.

He wished he could see. The man who’d held him-Elliot didn’t know any of their names, except Jeffry, who was futilely directing, and Andrews, who was with the men near the window-let go and Elliot spun around in the near dark, trying to see Evajean. He couldn’t find her, however, and, anyway, he wasn’t sure what he would have done if he had. They were trapped in the church with the exits blocked and some indeterminate number of crazies out there, ready to tear the citizens of Nahom apart if only they could figure a way in. The real trouble was, after his experience in the cave, Elliot knew the crazies were smart. They weren’t like slow and dumb movie zombies you could count on to just keep walking into the closed door until they either rotted or the wood collapsed from all that gentle nudging.

So he found a seat at one of the few remaining pews, waiting for Evajean to find him, and thought about what to do next. What were the chances the crazies-who he could now make out shouting from beyond the church’s walls-weren’t after him and Evajean, that they’d leave them alone in favor of Nahom’s Mormons? Not likely, especially since the woman in red had shown such interest in him. He hadn’t seen her in the mass of crazies coming down from the ridge, but their number was so large that he could have just missed her.

No matter what, he knew he couldn’t count on Uncle Jeffry and his boys to protect him and Evajean. They were on their own, just like she’d predicted. These people would fight for their own and Elliot needed to be ready to do the same.

He stood up, and saw Evajean. She was with the men near the window now, talking to one of them, who had to lean down close to hear. She looked up when Jeffry again called his people to attention.

“We don’t have a lot of time,” Jeffry said, standing atop a pew three rows ahead of where Elliot sat. “Those people out there, those beasts, are going to get through that window or another window and they’re going to try to hurt us like they did before. We need to be ready to fight them and we need to be ready to die to protect what’s ours. I want you men finding anything you can to defend yourselves. There’s a sword above the bookcase in my office and I have a few letter openers, too. Not a lot, but it will have to be good enough.” He paused while a pair of men broke from the pack to get the weapons. “The rest of you, look for anything. Break legs off these pews or the chairs if you need to. Once that’s done, we’re going downstairs.”

Downstairs? Elliot hadn’t seen any way down. Why had Jeffry just now mentioned it? Of course going into a basement was their best bet, since that’d limit the ways the crazies could get to them.

But then Jeffry said, “And once we’re downstairs, everyone here knows what to do.”

Shit, Elliot thought. What does that mean? He remembered the men in the woods, the treasure hunters, and Andrews’s mention of blood atonement. None of the things those same people might know to do in the basement were going to be good. Was this a suicide cult, like Jim Jones? Were they going to lead the children down below and then everyone would drink Kool Aid and die peacefully while the crazies pounded to get in?

No. No, they were gathering weapons. You don’t arm yourself before drinking poison. Still, Elliot wasn’t going to take any chances. He ran to Evajean.

“We have to find a way out of here, ” he said, trying to keep his voice low enough that nobody but she could hear.

“You think?” she said. “What are they going to do, Elliot? In the basement, what are they-”

“I don’t know,” he said. “But it’d be damn stupid of us to stick around to find out. I don’t want to be locked down there with them no matter what they’re up to.”

Evajean glanced around. “But how do we get out? The doors are- They’ve stacked all that stuff up against them and the windows are locked.”

“And the crazies,” Elliot said. “We’d have to get by them.”

Evajean didn’t hear this, however. She was reaching out and grabbing the arm of a man standing nearby. He turned, startled, and she said, “We need to get our dog. We forgot our dog back at the house.”

The man stared at her.

She said again, “Our dog, the one I brought with me.”

The man said, “No. Those people out there will hurt you. Uncle Jeffry-”

“Look,” she said, “all I’m asking is, when you all head into that basement, you let us stay up here. We’ll get the dog, come back, you let us in. Okay?”

His eyes shifted to Jeffry, who was talking with a group of women while the men tore apart the pews. “Uncle-”

“Don’t worry about him, okay?”

The man shrugged. “I’ll have to talk to Uncle Jeffry.”

Evajean said, “Okay, fine, you do that. But I want my dog.”

Shaking his head, the man walked away to help his friends tear apart furniture.

“What the hell was that?” Elliot said, when he was gone. “The crazies are out there. We’re not going after that dog.”

“No. But if they think we are, they won’t expect us to head down into the basement with them. And we don’t want to be in that basement, right?”

Elliot nodded. “Right. Okay, you’re right. But that doesn’t help us with what we’re going to do once we’re left up here-if Jeffry lets us get away with your plan. We still can’t get out.”

“One thing at a time,” she said. “We can just hide if we have to. There has to be somewhere in here where-”

“They’re going down,” Elliot said. Jeffry was standing by the door to his office, waving his hands and directing the men, women, and children in a careful line past him. The entrance must be in there, Elliot thought. Under the desk or behind the bookshelf. A secret passageway.

“Just stay here,” Evajean said. “Don’t do anything to make him change his mind.”

“Shit,” Elliot said, pointing.

“What?” But then she saw. Jeffry had called over three men and was talking to them while glancing and gesturing at Elliot and Evajean. “They’re not going to let us,” she said.

“No,” Elliot said, “and we can’t get out.”

The men broke away from Jeffry and began walking across the now empty floor of the church toward the two of them. Jeffry called out, “I’m afraid getting your dog is too dangerous. I’m going to have to insist you come with us.”

“I want my dog!” Evajean shouted at him as the men closed in. One grabbed her by the arms and the other two flanked Elliot. Neither he nor Evajean struggled-there wasn’t much of a point-and they were soon stumbling across the church and into Jeffry’s office.

The desk had been pulled out and swung against one wall and the carpet pulled aside. Underneath was a trap door, four feet on a side, leaning open as the last of the townspeople climbed down the latter into whatever lay underneath the church.

“Let go of us,” Elliot said as they got near Jeffry. Evajean shook herself in the arms of her captor, but remained quiet.

“I won’t do that,” Jeffry said. “I’m sorry about this, really, but the simple fact is that the two of you have become too important to let you get killed by those people out there. I’ll do my best to explain, I promise, but for now you’ll have to trust me. We’ve dealt with them before, we know how to get through it again. My men are strong. All will be well.”

“Go to hell,” Evajean said. “We don’t want to go down there with you.”

Jeffry stared at her. “You mustn’t-”

“No,” she went on. “Goddamn it, I spent the day helping your mindless women make that stupid food and I gotta say, you people are as nuts as any of the crazies outside.”

“Ms. Rhodes,” Jeffry said, tilting his head, indicating to the men to continue getting the two of them down into the basement. “You may speak like that out there, in that world of gentiles, but we do not use such language in Nahom. I ask you to respect that.”

Evajean laughed. “Out there?” She shook her head. “Whatever,” she said. “Whatever. Take us down there. Do whatever you want. But I’m going to get my goddamn dog when this is done.”

Elliot, scared deep into his guts, had to grin. Evajean was the stronger of them, he knew. And now he knew, for reasons he wouldn’t have been able to articulate, that she’d get them through this. She’d stood up to the death of her husband and pushed for this quest to find answers about his demise. She’d hauled herself out of that wrecked truck and hunted through the woods to help Elliot. She was the strong one.

Neither of them said any more as they were pushed to the ladder and made to climb down. Down turned out to be quite a bit further than he expected, thirty feet at least, by his count of the rungs, and then he was standing on hard packed earth as he watched Evajean come down after him.

The room was small and lit with torches and candles along the walls and in the hands of several of the women. It was another cave, like the one the woman in red had taken Elliot to, but larger and supported in places by thick logs. The people stood with their backs against the stone and wood, leaving the center open, and it was here the ladder touched down. Evajean dropped next to Elliot and looked around, startled by the size. The three men who’d grabbed them came next, and then Uncle Jeffry. As soon as he was down, Jeffry directed Elliot and Evajean to join the others against the walls.

“I’m going to close it now,” he said to his people. “I will close this door above us, lock it, and then it will be braced with heavy boards. Nothing will get through and nothing will interrupt us before we finish.” Several of the people near Elliot nodded at this, like it was part of a rehearsed speech they’d all listened to before.

Jeffry pointed at the trap door and one of the men-it was Andrews, Elliot saw-broke from the group and climbed the ladder. When he reached the top, there was a loud thump and the scraping of wood on wood. Then Andrews came back down and nodded at Jeffry as he went past and back into the group by the wall.

“There,” Jeffry said. “We’re safe now, the door is strong. Gather yourselves and pray that it remains so and pray for what we must now do.”

And so they did. Elliot sat between two women, with a young boy in front of him and next to Evajean, and watched as all of Nahom’s citizens bowed their heads and, except for the ones holding the torches and candles, clasped their hands, and he waited as the tense feeling in his stomach returned far worse then before. Uncle Jeffry was up to something-all these people were up to something-and Elliot didn’t know what it was but he had the undeniable feeling that it was bad and that he and Evajean should have run when they’d had the chance.

The people prayed, whispering to themselves. Elliot realized with growing concern that the language they were speaking wasn’t English and he knew-terror mounting even more-that it was the same language the people in the cave had been speaking, the same language as the crazies. Not babbling, not gibbering, but a language foreign to his experience until just a day ago. He turned to Evajean and could see she’d noticed it too. He reached out and pulled her to him and she huddled against his chest as the chanting grew louder.

“What is that?” Evajean said, her mouth turned up to his ear.

“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s-”

“It’s the crazies’ talk,” she said. “It’s not safe. Elliot, we need-”

And then the chanting stopped. They watched as Uncle Jeffry, kneeling in the center of the cave, slowly pushed himself from the ground and stood up. His eyes were closed, pressed so tight that the skin of his face wrinkled, like a child squinting dramatically in the sun. He stumbled two steps forward then caught himself and forced his body fully erect. The people around Elliot sighed, a long release of breath, and then Uncle Jeffry raised his arms and in each hand he held one of the odd stones like Elliot had seen the treasure hunters put in the hat.

Up until this point, Elliot had been on board with the theory that the plague was a virus of some kind that infected people, broke down their mental state, and drove them mad before killing them. That’s what the news had said-and the scientists and physicians the reporters interviewed reiterated the message. The plague was natural. And of course it was because what else could it be?

But now, as he watched what happened next, he had to set that theory aside entirely. The events of the last several months, circumstances that had destroyed his life has he’d known it, taken his wife and child, and then thrust him into this bizarre adventure with the lady who lived across the street, had fit the theory. This, however, what Uncle Jeffry was doing-or what was being done to him, Elliot didn’t know which-couldn’t be fit in to what he’d been told and what he’d thought. For a moment, he thought he was just going mad, that this was the end of his sanity. But then he saw that Evajean was watching it too and he knew, suddenly and terribly, that the world was a very different place than he’d ever believed.

The rocks Uncle Jeffry held burst to fiery life. The one on the left, a green stone the size of a baseball, cut through by black and silver veins, pulsed outwards in a clean, white glow, like the fuzzy aura around the full moon. A woman near Elliot gasped and fell over sideways, hands around her throat, kicking out with her feet. The others ignored her, however, totally consumed by what was happening to Jeffry. As the glow from the first rock expanded, the second, yellow and red in tight crystal swirls, arced amber light towards its companion. The beam moved at an impossibly slow pace, sliding along a path over Jeffry’s head until it reached the green stone. As the lights combined, Jeffry screamed, face turned up to the ceiling of the cave. Fat tubers of illumination crawled from the now nearly blinding glow and swarmed around Jeffry like loosed snakes.

Evajean ducked her head against Elliot and he held her close. Jeffry turned his face toward his congregation, pivoting around until he’d inspected them all… “Pray!” he shouted, his voice fractured by static. “Pray that the righteous will win the day, that the blasphemers are punished by the Lord our God. Pray, I tell you and do not stop until those who would do us harm are are banished from this plane back to the horrible realm from which they come.”