Mac Walker sneered back at Father Riel, his hand again slamming down against the table.
“To hell with your god! I’m dying over here! I dragged my dying ass to this piece of shit place – for nothing! We got no plan! That’s it! Nothing! You want to stand there and tell me how God will provide? How about He takes this cancer out of my lungs? How about He flies us on out to wherever we can go so Khalid can hook up that goddamn little toy box of his? How about He fixes those messed up crippled fingers of yours? How about He brings back all the poor bastards this government has killed off? How about it, priest? Where is your god in any of that? Tell me! Tell me, because I would sure like to know!”
The tip of Father Riel’s staff hit Mac in the middle of his chest with enough force to send him crashing onto the floor, putting him on his back struggling for breath. The speed at which it happened left the others at the table momentarily stunned before Bear bolted from his chair to confront the priest.
‘What the hell you think you’re doing!”
Again Father Riel’s staff struck with both incredible force and speed, this time halting Bear’s progress as it stuck him in the side of the head, causing Bear’s eyes to momentarily lose focus. Reese was the next to charge the priest, though he made it only halfway down the table before his legs were swept out from beneath him, sending him crashing to the floor as well.
The Russian rose from his chair and prepared to turn the large table over onto the priest’s legs, but he too failed to follow the speed of Father Riel’s staff as it descended onto the top of his head, making him cry out in pain and stumble backwards, eventually tripping over Mac’s still prone body.
That left only Dublin and Cooper Wyse still sitting in their seats. Dublin moved slowly to where Reese lay, while Cooper, with Brando sitting quietly next to him, stared calmly back at both Khalid and the priest. Unseen to them were the two revolvers the rancher held pointed at them from underneath the table.
“Hey, now, no need for this to go real bad real quick. Emotions are running a bit high for everyone. I’m gonna just keep on sitting here and wait for all you to do the same so we can have a more reasonable conversation with one another. That sound ok with you, Father Riel?”
Bear was helping Mac to his feet, while the Russian appeared ready to try and charge the priest again. Dublin and Reese were already returning to their own seats. Yakov turned to Mac while pointing back to Khalid and Father Riel.
“You want me to kill them now? Break that damn stick up your ass, priest.”
Mac waved the Russian away, as he slowly returned to his chair, his breath still coming in short, rattling, gasps.
“No…I wasn’t acting right. I apologize, Father Riel and Khalid. My head, I’m not myself, letting my own fear and frustration take the place of good manners. That said, goddamn if that walking stick of yours don’t pack a hell of a punch! Everyone, please, let’s sit back down here and think this through. I’m sorry again for my…outburst. It was disrespectful. Please, accept my apologies.”
The priest allowed a small smile to sneak across his face, as he looked over at Mac with a newfound respect. To witness a man as proud as Mac Walker be so quickly willing to seek forgiveness for their actions, was something increasingly rare in a world gone empty of nearly all moral responsibility.
“I shall count that as your first confessional, Mac. Welcome to the Church!”
Father Riel’s attempt at humor was met with stony silence until finally the Russian slapped his hands together and threw back his head and laughed.
“You make joke!”
Mac smiled back at the priest, glad to see the mood so quickly lightened following his outburst. Fatigue was again overtaking him, but he did not want to sleep, wanting instead to remain awake to experience whatever small moments remained in his life. Sleep was too much like death, and he had finally accepted he would be getting plenty of that soon enough.
L.
Early the following morning, before he thought any of the others were yet awake, Mac quietly moved into the chapel room, taking one of the portable short wave units with him. He hoped to contact the Texas Resistance for an update.
Though his breathing remained more a wheezing back and forth of air coming and going in his lungs, interrupted by periods of increasingly painful coughing, Mac found that not having laid down to sleep left him actually feeling somewhat more refreshed. He remained dead tired to be sure – but not dead, and he found that an acceptable alternative.
The interior of the chapel was still a murky dark, the sun not yet risen enough to provide light through the large stained glass windows. Mac sat down in one of the wooden benches and powered up the short wave, adjusting the frequency to the same one he had last spoken with Royce Calhoun on.
“This is Walker for Calhoun. Copy.”
Mac waited a full minute for a response that did not come before repeating the message.
“This is Walker for Calhoun. Copy.”
Again the shortwave remained silent.
Mac left the device on and placed it next to him on the bench, and then found himself staring up at the life sized carving of Jesus Christ on the cross that hung directly over the altar area. As an example of artwork, Mac found the details and coloring of the carving impressive. The eyes of Christ looked back at Mac with the same weariness Mac had been feeling for days. The carving depicted an expression in Jesus of a man who knew his end was very near, and that it was his own people who had so willingly put him there.
“So, why didn’t you just come on down from that cross? Smite all the bastards who did that to you? Son of God, right? Well if you had that kind of power, why didn’t you use it?”
Mac’s voice echoed inside of the empty chapel, before fading to silence and leaving him to sit alone again in his own thoughts as a hint of daylight from outside began to creep across the floor.
“It is not for us to judge God, Mac. To attempt understanding of something as vast and unending as the mind of God is the epitome of human arrogance, the very arrogance and pride that has been our downfall as human beings from inception.”
The voice startled Mac as he moved to jump up from the bench. The priest was already beside him, lowering himself slowly next to Mac, leaning heavily against his staff as he did so.
Father Riel looked up to the Christ statue for a moment, and then closed his eyes.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
Mac’s response to the priest’s quoted Bible verse was immediate.
“You don’t give up, do you? I’m not interested in hearing that shit, Father. I don’t want to be disrespectful here, I did enough of that last night, and I apologize for that again, but those words mean absolutely nothing to me.”
Father Riel turned toward Mac, his words slow and deliberate, in the deep tones of a voice that seemed to originate from another time.
“You loved and respected Alexander Meyer, did you not? And was he not a man of great faith, Mac? Despite all that had been taken from him, including his own daughter, his faith in God remained to the very end, correct?”
Mac focused on his breathing, and remaining calm under the weight of the priest’s persistence in trying to save his non-existent soul. It was then Mac again heard the voice of the Old Man from his dream the night before.
I need you to be right when your moment comes, Mac…
Turning to look at the priest, Mac nodded in agreement at Father Riel’s description of Alexander Meyer’s faith.
“Sure – he believed in God, a higher power…whatever.”
“And that belief never entered your own mind, Mac? You were never willing to consider the possibility of such a thing? That there could be something far greater than our own incredibly brief and small lives?”
Mac’s hands were gripping the lip of the bench tightly as another wave of pain ran down his spine.
“No, Mr. Meyer was an honorable man. Yeah – I loved him and respected him. Did everything I could to protect him. The thing is though, we were all stuck in that cave, as the drone bombs dropped over our heads, because of how messed up this world has become. So where is God’s hand in all of that priest? When Dominatus was being attacked, I saw a woman, a mother of a young child, have an ice pick pushed through her skull. I had friends killed because a government wanted to silence them for what they may or may not have known. After years of service to that same government, I was put in prison for doing nothing more than saving the life of a woman who was getting the shit beat out of her by a drugged up loser. And now I’m dying of this cancer that was injected into me by the same sadistic son-of-a-bitch who ran that ice pick through that poor woman’s head. Where is your so-called God when all of that is happening?”
Father Riel slowly nodded his head, as he repositioned himself on the bench to allow his legs to more easily stretch out into the aisle of the church.
“You have very valid questions, Mac, questions I have in my own life asked of God. You’re in pain, both physically and spiritually. That is understandable. I too, know pain, Mac. This body of mine…poses not insignificant challenge.”
The priest held up his hands to better show his grotesquely bent and arthritic fingers.
“I was diagnosed with a form of acromegaly at the age of ten. By fifteen I was nearly seven feet tall, and living in constant pain. My joints were terribly inflamed from the accelerated growth. At eighteen I had an operation to remove a tumor that was growing within my pituitary gland, causing my body to produce much higher levels of growth hormone. For nearly two years following that operation, I was able to live relatively pain free. It was then I joined the Church. It was my belief the experience of knowing great physical pain would allow me insights into helping others going through similar pain.
“Shortly after my twenty first birthday, I awoke sweating terribly, racked again with that same, all too familiar pain in my joints. The doctors confirmed another tumor, but by then, the war on the Catholic Church was fully underway by the globalists, and access to medical services was denied me due to my affiliation with what the new government deemed a ‘business of false faith’. So, I lived my life as God had made it. I took the pain, the affliction, and grew stronger…spiritually stronger, from it. My hands, as you can see, pose my greatest challenge. Attempting to move my fingers even slightly feels as if I am immersing them in fire, so great is the discomfort.”
Mac interrupted the priest, his eyes staring at the just referenced abnormally long and disfigured fingers.
“And where is God in your suffering? If you have been forced to live your life in such pain, and to see all of those churches burned, and all of those people of faith persecuted by the globalists – why would God allow those things to happen?”
Father Riel looked back to the carved depiction of Christ’s suffering.
“Those examples are not of God. They are of us. We are responsible for them. God cannot provide absolute safety and security for the human race anymore than a parent can for a child. There are dangers inherent in all forms of existence. Is that not one of the fundamental evils of the New United Nations? It has empowered itself with the promise of removing the dangers of existence. Tell people they need not worry over security, for that security will be provided them. Those people then give up freedom and liberty for that false sense of security. God grants each of us choice. If society has chosen to forsake God, to forsake freedom, to forsake liberty – who are we to judge God for our own mistake?”
Mac sat silently, considering the priest’s words carefully, before finally whispering two brief words.
“I’m afraid.”
Father Riel placed his right hand on Mac’s shoulder.
“What do you fear, Mac?”
Mac’s eyes locked with those of the Christ statue.