This man.
How could that be possible? He’d loved the preacher more than his own father. Trusted him. Adored him. A day ago he’d have died for the Reverend Black.
“Hmmm! Hmm!”
The girl was at his feet, shoved half beneath the pew. Her noises grew frantic as she tried to gesture with her entire body. The preacher’s coat was on the pew ten feet away. The girl dipped her head twice, and Gideon saw the stun gun beside the coat. He’d never seen one before today, but it looked simple. Metal points. Yellow trigger. He reached for it, then saw the real gun sticking out of a coat pocket. It was black and hard. He touched it once, but didn’t want to kill anyone.
It was still the reverend.
Right?
He wasn’t thinking straight, and his hands were tingling, too. The whole thing felt wrong, but life often felt that way. Mistakes happened. Things that seemed clear weren’t. He didn’t want to make a mistake now, but was so dizzy.
Was it really happening?
He bent for the stun gun and fell against the pew. New heat spread on his chest, and his fingers didn’t want to obey. They were far away, fumbling at the grip. His knees touched carpet, and blood from his shirt smeared the wooden seat. He turned his eyes to the girl beside him, saw the shiny eyes and yellow hair, the way she struggled and pleaded and screamed behind the tape as if to remind him that a woman was dying, and that it was Liz, who’d always loved him.
Gideon couldn’t allow that, so he pushed with all he had; he pushed and bled and found his feet beneath a vaulted ceiling and a wall of colored glass. The stun gun filled his hand, and shallow stairs led to the place Liz was dying. He asked his mother to help if she could. “I’m scared,” he whispered, and it was as if a dozen women kissed his face and lifted him. The pain in his chest went away. His head cleared, and he moved as light as any ghost across the carpet and up the steps to where pink light spilled down and motes hung in the air above the preacher’s head. Beyond the altar was Mary, in the glass, and in her arms an infant son. They wore halos and were smiling, but Gideon was angry and afraid and beyond such gentle things. He looked once at Liz’s bloody eyes, then put metal in the reverend’s back and lit the bastard up.
*
Channing watched it happen and felt a surge when the preacher went down. Above him, Elizabeth was unmoving. Maybe she was breathing, and maybe not. The boy, beside her, looked half dead with his bloody shirt and translucent skin. He wobbled where he stood and looked as if he, too, could drop at any second. She needed out of the tape before that happened.
“Hmmmm! Hmmmm!”
She tried to scream, but the boy seemed oblivious. He stared at the preacher and touched the man with a shoe. Beyond him, Elizabeth was open-eyed and paler even than the boy.
She wasn’t moving.
Was she breathing?
Channing screamed behind the tape, tasting it. The boy sat and looked at the face of the fallen man. He watched him stir, and even Channing saw the eyes flicker. He would wake and take the boy out. It would begin all over. Elizabeth would die, and so would she. They’d go back to the silo, or he’d kill them here. Who could stop it? The boy was glass-eyed and frozen. Liz couldn’t do it. Could Channing? She struggled against the tape, but it wasn’t going to happen. The man was moving for real, and the boy watched it happen. He waited for the eyes to open, then moved as deliberately as anything Channing had ever seen. He rolled to his knees, said something she missed, then put metal against the preacher’s skin and kept the trigger down until the battery died.
*
When it was over, Gideon looked down on Liz, then stumbled to the pew and used his teeth to work the tape off the girl’s wrists. Weak as he was, it took a long time; when it was done, he slumped to the floor and watched her do the rest.
She lost hair and skin, but the tape came off. “Is she alive?” That was her first question, and he blinked once. Channing stripped the last tape from her ankles. “Thank you, thank you so much. Are you okay?”
“I honestly don’t know.”
“Here, lie down, and try not to move. You’ve lost a lot of blood.” She made a pillow of the tarp and got him stretched out on the floor. He felt her hands, but from a distance. “What did you say to him? You waited for him to wake up. I saw it. What did you say?”
“Nothing you’d understand.”
“Tell me anyway.”
He blinked again and kept his eyes on her face. She seemed nice. He wanted to make her happy. “I said, ‘You killed my mother. I hope this hurts.’”
*
Channing told him again to lie still, then went to Liz, who was alive, but in terrible shape. Her neck was swollen and black, her breath the barest thread. “Liz?” Channing touched her face. “Can you hear me?”
Nothing.