James Axler – Road Wars

“Pass me the blaster. Thanks. Yeah, let’s go out into the world and find us some food, what’s your I remember. Sure I do. Abe. It’s Abe.”

The two men left the empty cave, the fire smoldering to extinction. They picked their way through the wet slush, over the crest of the hill, finally vanishing toward Seattle and their meeting.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Mildred lay on her side, wrists bound behind her, a bruise swelling beneath her right eye, where the Apostle Simon had savagely punched her to demonstrate to his doubting followers that be wasn’t scared of her.

Jak, bound hand and foot next to Mildred, had also been beaten to the dirt by the skinny leader of the Slaves of Sin, using his staff with the tortured Christ at its head.

She knew that the albino teenager was awake and fully conscious, because he and Mildred had taken the chance for several snatches of whispered conversation, stolen moments of talk that gave neither of them very much cheer.

“Seen they sent four out toward spread,” Jak said. “One got your blaster.”

“Yeah. Saw them go. I make it nine left here with us. Haven’t heard any shooting from the house.”

“Sound might not carry. Been gone good time. Wonder when fladgies start getting worried.”

“How long before Krysty, Doc and the boy come out after us, Jak?”

The young man hadn’t answered her, his silence telling her everything she needed to know.

A little later, while the Slaves of Sin sat around their largest fire, chanting an interminable dirge about salvation through suffering, Jak had whispered to Mildred again.

“Face facts,” he said. “Could be Krysty, Doc and kid chilled. We get chanceany chancemust take it. Or torture and chill us. No other hope.”

NEARLY AN HOUR had passed, and the flagellants were becoming increasingly restive.

“Apostle Simon, shouldn’t we send out searchers to find what’s happened?”

But their leader was steadfast. “The Lord will show us the way when He is ready, brothers. He would not allow any of his chosen lambs to stray from the fold and fall among wolves. All we need is patience.”

“Why not make Him a sacrifice of these two demon spawn?”

“Or let us scourge ourselves, mightily, that our delicious blood shall freshen the desert as token of our grace and our humble love for Him?”

The Apostle Simon rapped the butt of his staff on the earth. “The moon that was hidden will soon come from behind the clouds. Its light will show us the way.”

It had been pitchy dark for three parts of the hour, but everyone could see the bright circle of the moon, about to be revealed from behind the shifting rack of cloud.

“Got one hand nearly free,” Jak breathed. “Bit more time is all need.”

“Might not get that if they go ahead and murder us because Jesus Christ!”

It seemed that everyone saw the apparition at the same moment, as the moon broke through, flooding the wilderness with its bright silver sheen. It was a young child, a boy, naked except for a white breech-cloth around his louts. His hands were spread, showing the blackness of blood in the center of his palms, a similar mark on both his bare feet. There was a crown of leaves around his forehead, and his face was smeared with ashes. He had appeared from the arrayo that ran toward the distant house, walking slowly toward the paralyzed fladgies, less than sixty yards away from them.

“The Lord Himself,” someone gasped.

“Truly the Son of God,” a second man whispered in a voice filled with awe.

“It might be a a trick,” their leader stammered, his face in the moonlight as pale as whey.

“No trick, Slaves of Sin,” said a booming voice from the blackness, somewhere behind the advancing child. “I have sent my dearly beloved among you as a token of how worthy you are of my approval.”

Mildred glanced at Jak disbelievingly, her eyes wide. “It’s” she began, hushing herself as the albino shook his head at her.

The boy was now a scant twenty yards from the nearest of the religious crazies, his piercing blue eyes gleaming from the shadows of his face.