“What, are they serious? You’re going to chop my head off for wanting to think this through?”
“Not for thinking, miss. For deciding against. If you decide for, you just choose where.”
“So I don’t really have a choice.”
“Where you been?” one of the girls said, and others joined in.
“Of course you have a choice,” Alex said. “I believe I’ve made it clear. Accept the mark or accept the alternative.”
“The mark or death, you’re saying?”
“Still want to think it over?”
She shook her head.
One of the girls said, “You sure made that harder than it needed to be.”
“Well, I didn’t know there was really no choice.”
Before proceeding to the adult women’s lockup, Buck and Albie followed the young women to the lines in the middle building. It had already become a model of efficiency. The prisoners moved along steadily. They were ready with their forehead or hand choices, and the disinfectant/anesthesia was applied quickly. The injectors sounded like electric staplers, and while some recipients flinched, no one seemed to feel pain.
Almost all the teen males took their marks on their foreheads, and one of the last, as he got back in line, raised both arms and shouted, “Long live Carpathia!” That soon became the custom, as it did with the young women choosing to receive the mark on their hands.
Buck stood staring, wishing he could preach. They had made their choices, yes, but did they really know what they were choosing? It wasn’t between loyalty and death; it was between heaven or hell, eternal life or eternal damnation.
His heart raced as the line of young women neared its end, and they were herded back. In the next building he expected to see Mrs. Miklos. How many of her friends would be there with her?
The women’s facility was surreal, in that there was no cage. The guards, again, were mostly men, and they apparently didn’t expect trouble. The women sat, mostly passive, chatting quietly, but their curious eyes also took in the Athenas squad.
Buck strolled around the outside of the group of women, looking for Laslos’s wife. Finally he noticed a group of about twenty women in a back corner, on their knees. In the middle of the group, praying, was Mrs. Miklos.
“Shut up and listen up!” a guard bellowed, and most of the women came to attention. “This here’s Officer Athenas, and he’s got announcements and instructions.”
Alex began, but the women in the back—who Buck assumed were Mrs. Miklos’s believing friends—paid no attention and continued praying. Some gazed toward heaven, and Buck saw the marks on their foreheads. Others peered up and around the crowd at Alex, and Buck noticed that some of them had no mark. Laslos’s wife had apparently been trying to recruit new believers.
Athenas grew impatient with those kneeling in the back. “Ladies, please!” he said, but they ignored him. He nodded to one of his female assistants, who handed her high-powered rifle and side arm to a compatriot, pulled out her baton, and moved directly into the tough-looking women in the front, heading toward the rear. A young, thick, healthy woman, she stared down the menacing ones, clearly knowing that her comrades had her back.
“As I was saying,” Alex took up again, but he stopped when the attention of the women diverted to where his guard was headed.
“Ladies!” the guard bellowed. “You will cease and desist, face the front, and give Officer Athenas your full attention.”
Many did just that. Some stood and moved away from the group. Others remained kneeling but looked up. Still others kept their heads bowed and eyes closed, lips moving in prayer. Mrs. Miklos, kneeling with her back to the guard, kept her hands folded, head bowed, eyes closed, praying softly.
The guard poked her with the baton, and she nearly lost her balance. When Mrs. Miklos turned to look up at her, the guard bent close and shouted, “Do you understand me, ma’am?”
Mrs. Miklos smiled shyly, reset herself, and returned to prayer. The guard, clearly incensed, put both hands around the end of the stick, set herself, pulled the baton back, and stepped into her swing.
Buck was barely able to hold his voice, and Albie had to grab and hold him back as the hardwood baton cracked loudly off the back of Mrs. Miklos’s head.
Blood splattered several of the women as Laslos’s wife pitched forward, arms and legs twitching. Several women screamed. Many of the kneelers, even those with marks on their foreheads, stood and rushed to join the main group. One woman dropped to her knees to check on her injured friend, and the guard caught her just below her nose with a second vicious swing.
Buck heard teeth shatter, and she cried out as the back of her head hit the floor and her hands came up to cover her face.
The guard marched back to the front, the sea of women parting for her. Miraculously, Mrs. Miklos drew herself up to her hands and knees and slowly, majestically returned to her kneeling position, hands folded before her.
With her back to the rest, the gaping wound, emitting great back issues of blood that ran down her hair and onto her sweater, was exposed to everyone. Most averted their eyes, but Buck stared at the white of her skull at the top of the laceration. Her skull had shattered and surely bone had been driven into her brain. And yet there she knelt, silently continuing to pray.
The other woman, rolling onto her stomach, also slowly drew herself up, spitting teeth, blood gushing down her chin, and returned to prayer. Buck felt a tingle at the base of his spine, imagining the blinding pain.
The guard retrieved her weapons with a look of satisfaction and exhilaration. The crowd behaved with a who-wants-to-be-next? attitude, and Alex said, “We’ll see who’s strong enough to stand in the enforcement facilitator line.”
Buck, his pulse racing and his breath coming in gasps, stood stock-still as Alex finally reached the pivotal question. “Just so we’ll know,” he said, “how many will be rejecting the mark of loyalty and choosing the alternative?”
Mrs. Miklos stood and turned to face him. Her face was drained of color, eyelids fluttering. Her chest heaved with the effort of merely breathing. Blood pooled behind her from the ugly wound. She shook like a victim of advanced Parkinson’s, and yet she raised both hands, a beatific smile softening her macabre face.
“You choose execution by guillotine rather than the mark of loyalty,” Alex clarified.
The woman next to Laslos’s wife, her face swelling, her nose red, upper teeth gone, stood and raised both hands, smiling a cadaverous grin.
“Two of you then?”
But there were more, and now the rest of the women stood just to see who was making the choice. From the original group of the kneeling devout stood a half dozen, smiling, hands lifted. “You all want to die tonight?” Alex shouted, as if it was the most ridiculous thing he had ever heard. “I’m counting eight. You eight will—now nine—will go to the extreme right when you—all right, now ten—when you are led to the processing center. OK, you can lower your hands now. Two more. OK, twelve of you. No need to keep your hands up!”
A couple of women in front looked at each other and started toward the back, marks of the believer appearing on their foreheads as they lifted their hands.
“All right,” Alex said. “Those taking the mark stay left as we enter the center. Suicides stay to the right.” And as he said it, three more lined up behind the bleeding women.
Buck fought tears. He could give in to emotion and wind up a martyr this very night, and in the heat of the moment, that didn’t sound so bad. But he had a wife and a child and compatriots who counted on him. He stood blinking, panting, fighting to maintain control. These women were heroes of the faith. They would join the great blood-washed who literally made their bodies living sacrifices, soon to be martyred and appear under the very altar of God in heaven in snow-white robes of righteousness. He couldn’t help but envy them!
As the women were led out, Alex shouted over the din, “You can change your mind! If you have chosen this ridiculous option and wi
sh you hadn’t, simply step out of one line and into the other!”
But as the courageous filed past Buck, he saw the mark on each forehead and knew there would be no one turning back—no, not one. He fell into step with the female guard leading the doomed to the guillotine line. This proved no end of fascination to the others, who stared as they themselves stood in the loyalty lines, deciding where they would bear the mark of Nicolae.
When the guard moved past the head of the line to talk to the two men who would work the death machine, Buck stepped close to Mrs. Miklos and tried to appear as if he were interrogating her. “Laslos wanted me to tell you he loves you with all of his heart and will see you in heaven.”
She turned toward him with a start, blood still oozing down her back. She stared at the uniform and then at Buck’s forehead. Then at his face. “I know you,” she said.
He nodded.
“I don’t believe you have met Mrs. Demeter,” she said.
Buck was startled. The pastor’s wife had taken the blow to the face. “I’d shake your hand,” she whispered through her ruined mouth. “But then you’d be in line with us.”
Mrs. Miklos bent close to Buck. “Tell Laslos thank you for leading me to Jesus. I see him. I see him. I see my Savior and can’t wait to be with him!”
With that her knees buckled and Buck caught her. The guard reappeared and grabbed her. “No you don’t, lady!” she said. “You chose this, and you’re going to take it standing up.” It was all Buck could do not to punch the woman in the face. She turned to him and said, “What are we going to do with all these bodies? We weren’t prepared for anything like this.”
Buck headed to the back, where the guards were lined along the wall. This was the first they would see of any executions, and it was clear they weren’t about to miss it. Albie joined him, clearly overcome.
“That was Pastor D’s wife with Mrs. Miklos.”
Albie shook his head. “They’re champions, Buck. I don’t know if I can watch this.”
“Let’s get out of here.”
“Maybe we should be here with them.”
“We shall start with enforcement,” Alex Athenas announced. “Any who wish to switch lines may do so at any time. Ladies, once you have been secured in position in the apparatus, no change of mind will be honored. Inform someone before that or suffer the consequences.”
Buck stood paralyzed as Mrs. Miklos was led to the ugly machine. “Has that been tested?” Athenas shouted. “I want no malfunctions.”
“Affirmative!” answered the assistant, who would trade roles with the executioner with each victim.
“Carry on!”
From thirty feet away Buck read the lips of the executioner. “Last chance, ma’am.”
Laslos’s wife knelt and the assistant positioned her.
“Turn her around!” someone yelled. “We want to see it happen!”
Albie turned on the man. “Shut up! This is not for your amusement!”
The room fell tomb silent. In the stillness Buck heard Mrs. Miklos’s delicate voice. “My Jesus, I love thee, I know thou art mine.”
A sob attacked his throat. Seemingly all in one motion, the assistant fastened the clamp and stood quickly with both hands raised to indicate he was clear of the blade path while the other yanked the short cord. The heavy blade raced to the bottom of the shaft. Buck pushed past the others and out into the night air, disgusted at the cheer that met the sickening thud.
He was glad for the vomit that gushed from him, allowing him to sob openly. Tears cascaded as he thought of the cold workmanlike crews that would remove heads and bodies and make room for the next and the next and the next.
As he stood in the cool grass, convulsing now in dry heaves, he covered his ears in a vain attempt to muffle the thuds and cheers, thuds and cheers. Albie emerged and rested a hand on his back. His voice was thick as he bent and gently pulled Buck’s hands away from his ears.
“When I get to heaven,” he whispered, “after Jesus, those women are the first people I want to see.”
CHAPTER 18
Chaim took to pacing around in the Strong Building, repeating lines over and over. He usually carried a Bible, Rayford noticed, but sometimes a commentary or his own notes.
He didn’t sound eloquent or forceful or confident to Rayford. It was as if all he was trying to accomplish was getting the basics down and having some idea what he was talking about. He also looked miserable, and Rayford wanted to counsel him again on where he stood with God, but he didn’t feel qualified to make Chaim feel better about himself. Chaim apparently didn’t see Tsion as a personal mentor but only as a teacher and tireless motivator.
It struck Rayford that they all had had to endure the same doubts and fears when first they became believers. They had missed the truth, then feared they had come to God only as a last-ditch effort to avoid hell. Was it valid? The Bible said they were new creatures, that old things had passed away and all had become new. Rayford had worked hard to accept for himself the truth that God now saw him, in essence, through his sinless Son, the Christ.
But it had been almost impossible. He was new inside, yes. From a spiritual standpoint he knew it was true. But in many ways he struggled with his same old self. And while God’s truth about him should have carried more weight than his finite emotions, they were loudly at the forefront of his conscience every day. Who was he to tell Chaim Rosenzweig to just have faith and trust that God knew him and understood him better than Chaim himself ever could?
But if there was someone who seemed healthier more quickly than most, it was Hattie. The irony of that was not lost on Rayford. Fewer than twenty-four hours before she became a believer, she was suicidal. Months before, she had admitted to any Trib Force member who had the endurance to debate her that she understood and believed the whole truth about the salvation gospel of Christ. She simply had decided, on her own, to willfully reject it because, even if God didn’t seem to care that she didn’t deserve it, she did care. She was saying, in effect, that God could offer her the forgiveness of her sins without qualification, but she didn’t have to accept it.
But once she finally received the gift, her mere persistence was wearing. In many ways she was the same forthright woman she had been before, nearly as obnoxious as a new believer as she had been as a holdout. But of course, everyone was happy she was finally on the team.
Chaim, if Rayford could judge by facial expressions, was at least bemused by her. He was the next newest believer, so perhaps he identified with her. Yet Chaim was not responding as she was at all. Was it healthy envy that made him seem intrigued with her patter? Did he wonder why he hadn’t been bestowed with such abandonment with his commitment to the truth?
Rayford didn’t want to get ahead of himself, didn’t want to take too literally Tsion’s compliments about his return to effective leadership. But sometimes the surprise move, the one against the groove, was effective. Should he—dare he—conspire with Hattie to get her to see if she could jostle Dr. Rosenzweig off of square one? Tsion had become convinced that Chaim was God’s man for this time, and Rayford had learned to trust the rabbi’s intuition. But Chaim was going to have to progress a long way in a short time if he was to become the vessel Tsion envisioned.
Hattie had fed and was changing Kenny when Rayford approached her. What a bonus for Kenny that he had so many parent figures! The men doted on him, and even Zeke, though slightly intimidated, was extremely gentle and loving toward him. The women seemed intuitively to know when to spell each other, mothering him, but of course, most of the responsibility fell to Chloe.
“Have a minute?” Rayford asked Hattie as she lay the freshly powdered and dressed boy over her shoulder and sat rocking him.
“If this guy is drowsy, I’ve got all the time in the world, which—according to our favorite rabbi—is slightly less than three and a half years.”
Hattie isn’t as funny as she sees herself, Rayford thought, but there is something to be said for consistency. r />
“Could I get you to do me a favor?” Rayford said.
“Anything.”
“Don’t be too quick to say that, Hattie.”
“I mean it. Anything. If it helps you, I’ll do it.”
“Well, if you succeed, it helps the cause.”
“Say no more. I’m there.”
“It has to do with Chaim.”
“Isn’t he the best?”
“He’s great, Hattie. But he needs something Tsion and I don’t seem to be able to give him.”
“Rayford! He’s twice my age!”
So as not to draw suspicion, Buck suggested he and Albie get a head start on the next group by heading directly to the building immediately east of the processing center. This housed the lesser criminals, according to the organizing officer. Yet he had also said that the religious dissidents were in with the worst felons in the easternmost facility.
The two approached the guards at Building 4. “Ready for us?” one said with a Cockney lilt.
“Soon,” Buck said. “You’re next.”
“Heard whooping and hollering. Somebody choose the blade?”
Buck nodded but tried to make it clear he didn’t want to talk about it.
“More’n one?” the man added.
Buck nodded again. “Wasn’t pretty.”
“Yeah? Wish I’d seen it. Never saw somebody buy it before. You watched, eh?”
“Told you it wasn’t pretty. How would I know otherwise?”
“Sor-ry! I’m just askin’. How many you see then?”
“Just the one.”
“But there were more? How about you, Commander? You stay for the whole show?”
“Leave it alone, Corporal,” Albie snapped. “Several women chose it and showed more bravery than any man I ever saw.”
“That right, is it? But they wasn’t loyal to the potentate now then, was they?”
“They stood by their convictions,” Albie said.
“Convictions and sentences, sounds like to me, mate.”
“Would you choose to die if you felt that deeply?”