*
Cable snaked through the block hung below the triangle. The electric winch whined, and the great concrete lid rose from the bunker.
Below Frankland saw packaged food. Flour, beans, rice, condensed milk, baby formula, canned fruit and vegetables, vitamins. Two years’ supply for two people. Plus seed corn and fertilizer so that crops could be raised after the food ran out.
The Rails Bluff area had finally run out of food. What had been plundered from the Piggly Wiggly, the Wal-Mart, and the cupboards of the residents would be gone within a day or so.
Frankland decided to open the bunkers of the Apocalypse Club. These were supplies laid aside for the End Times by his followers, people who had answered his radio appeals and who had intended to join him here in Rails Bluff when the end of the world was clearly nigh.
But they hadn’t arrived, not one of them, and hundreds of refugees had come instead. He had to feed the people who were here, no matter who the food actually belonged to.
The Apocalypse Club had thirty sealed caches behind Frankland’s home. Some belonged to the Elders, who had three months’ supplies in their bunkers, and others to the Lions of Judah, with six months’ supplies. Some belonged to the Roots of David, who had a year’s supplies, and others belonged to the Seventh Seals, who had purchased supplies for two years or more.
Actually there were only three Seventh Seals: Frankland, Sheryl, and Hilkiah. Response to Frankland’s radio appeals had not been as great as Frankland had hoped. Hilkiah had bought his supplies on credit from Frankland and was slowly paying off the debt a few dollars at a time.
If necessary Frankland would open them all. But he would set a personal example and start with the Seventh Seals, with his and Sheryl’s own personal supplies, and work from there down the list.
Things were moving along too well for material considerations to impede progress now. It was just as he had written it down in his Plan, years ago. Day 7— all unite in love and praise of Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Everyone was pulling together. Everyone was praising God. Sin had been vanquished, in the persons of people like Magnusson and Hanson and MacGregor, and everyone had rejoiced in their repentance.
The only thing that Frankland regretted was the death of Robitaille. If he’d had a chance to work with the priest a little more, he’d probably have been able to bring him around.
Frankland bent and helped Hilkiah move the heavy concrete lid to the side. “There,” he said. “Let’s get it moved to the kitchens.”
“Brother Frankland?”
Frankland turned to find Sheriff Gorton approaching, along with a well-dressed, white-haired man in a coat and tie. Other than for Frankland and the other pastors, who wore ties for services, ties had been pretty rare since the End Times had begun.
The stranger looked somewhat familiar, though Frankland couldn’t place him.
“Brother Frankland,” the Sheriff said, “this is Gus Gustafson, from the County Council.”
Frankland wiped the soil from his hands and shook Gustafson’s hand. “Pleased to meet you, Brother Gustafson,” he said.
Gustafson glanced around the camp with ice-blue eyes. “It’s quite a place you have here, sir,” he said. “Quite an accomplishment.”
“Thank you. But all glory goes to Christ Jesus and the Holy Spirit.”
“Ye-es.” Gustafson’s blue eyes darted from one place to the other. “When I tell the rest of the council members what you’ve done here, I’m sure they’ll be impressed. I think the county owes a vote of thanks to you for helping so many of our people.” He cleared his throat, and his voice turned brisk. “But what I’ve come to tell you, sir,” he said, “is that the state is now able to take some of this burden off your shoulders. We’ve managed to open a road through the piney woods east from the county seat, and from there to Pine Bluff and points south.”
“Well, good!” Frankland said. “Can you send us some supplies? Because,” he confided, “the food situation is getting a little critical around here.”
“I believe what the government has in mind,” Gustafson said, “isn’t to send food here, but to send the people where the food is. You’ve heard about the President’s evacuation order, right? Well, a refugee camp is being set up in the Hot Springs National Park. The whole county is being evacuated to there.”
Frankland stared at Gustafson in amazement. “But the evacuation’s all about water, right? We don’t get our water from the river! We have wells— good wells!”
Gustafson cleared his throat. “The water’s only a part of the situation, as I understand it. This area is still subject to strong earthquakes that can cause casualties and damage the infrastructure. It took a road crew three days to bulldoze through the piney woods to get to Rails Bluff from the county seat! The Emergency Management people would have a lot of trouble shipping food into an area this remote, and so it makes more sense to pull people out of the area to a place where they can be fed more efficiently.”
Frankland gave an astonished laugh. “That’s the government for you!” he said. “They never think about the people at all!”
Gustafson cleared his throat again. “Well, that’s as may be. But tomorrow morning they’re sending a big convoy of National Guard vehicles to pull everyone out of here.”
Frankland shook his head. Poor old Gustafson just didn’t get it. “You don’t understand,” he said. “The people here are happy. They’re praising God. They won’t want to leave.”
Sheriff Gorton dug into the dirt with the toe of his boot. For the first time Gustafson looked surprised. “You’re sure about that, sir?” he said.
“Oh yes.”
“Well,” Gustafson nodded, “in that case, just to ease my mind, I’m sure you won’t mind if we ask them.”
*
Sweat poured down Charlie’s nose as he punched number after number into the cellphone. Nothing happened at all. Maybe he’d worn out the batteries.
He threw the receiver down, rubbed his unshaven face. He was not a derelict, he thought. Not.
*
Exhaust from the line of National Guard trucks blew over the camp. Frankland watched in black despair as the long line of people, clutching their small bundles and their children, began to move out of the camp, past the black walls of Sheryl’s Apocalypse, toward the waiting vehicles.
“This isn’t necessary!” Frankland called. “You can stay here! We have everything you need!”
“In the Year 70 a.d. the Temple was thrown down!” Frankland’s own voice mocked him from the loudspeakers.
Uniformed Guard personnel helped the women and children into the trucks. Officers stood by with clipboards.
“Thank you, Brother Frankland, for all you’ve done.” This was Eunice Setzer, one of his own congregation, shuffling from the camp with her three children.
“You don’t have to leave, Sister Eunice,” Frankland said as he put a hand on her arm. “We’ll take care of you here.”
“Sorry, Brother Frankland,” she said with downcast eyes, and with a twist of her body slipped free of his grasp.
“Look at Sister Sheryl’s Apocalypse!” Frankland cried. “Lift your eyes and look at it! The Beast. The Woman of Babylon! That’s what’s waiting for you! That’s what’s waiting for everybody! We want to prepare you for that!”
They walked by in silence, past the angels with their vials and trumpets, past the Four Horsemen, past the City of God descending in glory. They walked as if none of it mattered, as if the End of the World was not at hand.
“Betrayal!— verse ten!” Frankland’s voice boomed from the loudspeakers.
Betrayal. St. Matthew had it right. Frankland was betrayed, and so was God.
“I’ll be staying, Brother Frankland,” Sheriff Gorton assured him. “They’re not evacuating law enforcement, that’s for sure.”
Frankland readied himself for a last appeal, and he raised his arms in exhortation, but the words didn’t come. The Spirit went right out of him, something that had never happened before. The promise that God had made him, made him amid the fury of the rain and the lightning and the shaking of the earth, had come to naught.
He slumped and turned away. And then, out of the shuffling crowd, someone took him by the arm.
“Brother Frankland.”
Frankland looked up, saw the pornographer Magnusson gazing at him with a peculiar expression in his face. The man had probably come to gloat over Frankland’s defeat. “Yes?” Frankland said.
Tears glimmered in Magnusson’s eyes. “I’m staying, Brother Frankland!” he said. “I’m staying with you! I owe you my salvation.”
To Frankland’s utter surprise, Magnusson threw his arms around Frankland and began sobbing on his shoulder. Slowly, Frankland put his arms around Magnusson and began patting him on the back.
“Praise God, Brother Magnusson,” he said. “Praise God.”
Ten minutes later, the National Guard officers blew their whistles, and the convoy began to move off, the inhabitants of Rails Bluff staring out the back of the trucks from under the olive-green canvas.
When Frankland called for a head count, there were eighty-seven people left in the camp, including the three pastors and their families. There were probably less than a hundred others this side of the piney woods, mostly farmers who refused to leave their land, along with a few people in the Bijoux Theater too sick to be moved and under the care of a National Guard medic.
The awnings of the empty camp flapped disconsolately in the morning breeze. Frankland walked along the lines of tents, gazing in disgust at the garbage left behind by the six hundred people who had left earlier that morning, the plastic Star Wars cups and plastic sheeting and stained foam bedding.
Day 8—the people confirmed and strengthened in their faith.
He had planned for years for this. For the moment when the world began to come apart, when the people would be lost and need his guidance. He had given that guidance. He had shared his own food with refugees who had nothing to call their own. He had preached to them from the depths of his heart.
And now this. They had abandoned him, all but eighty-seven loyalists. Abandoned him for Hot Springs National Park! What a humiliation.
No more betrayals, he thought. He had been naive. He hadn’t foreseen the seductions that the liberal humanist/satanist government would offer to his people. Now he knew.
No more government! That was the answer. You could not serve God and Caesar. There would be no room in the camp for anything but the Lord and praising the Lord and preparing the people for the end of the world.
No more desertions. No one would leave again. The soul was what mattered, and Frankland was going to save the souls of everyone here. That was his charge.
And anyone else— any more government— who tried to interfere, Frankland would deal with it.
Personally.
*
Charlie Johns looked into the one container remaining in his refrigerator, the week-old pieces of duck, and wondered if it was all right to eat. It looked all right. It smelled like it had been in the refrigerator a while, but didn’t smell bad.
Maybe if he drank some brandy with it. Brandy was a disinfectant, wasn’t it?
The house was full of flies, and Charlie didn’t want to think about the reason for that, so he took the food into the shady backyard along with a bottle of Martell. He sat in the shade under his Russian olive tree and ate the duck along with swallows of brandy. He dug bits of rice off the ribs, sucked all the remaining meat off the bones, gnawed at the cartilage. Then he sucked the bones for a long while.
He stared at the pool while he ate. The neighbor kids had been coming over to take drinking water from it, and they’d kept it clean of leaves and sticks and windblown junk. He’d thrown chlorine into it every day and figured it was still safe to drink.
The cramps started an hour later. He barely made it to the toilet in time. He shuddered and sweated on the toilet for hours as he emptied everything that remained in his bowels.
When the spasms finally ended, he barely had the strength to crawl to the car and drape himself across the front seats.
*