“We need to move,” Lewis said.
“Agreed.” Behind June, Faraday rose to his feet.
Manny did the same. “Okay. We go. Time to split up. Keep in touch.”
—
After another peek around the corner, Lewis waved them forward, then slipped around the corner toward the gas pump. Manny continued across the clearing toward the stone armory. June followed, rifle up, heart beating fast. Behind her, she heard the crunch of a footstep in the gravel and glanced over her shoulder to see Faraday following Lewis. Now the clock was ticking.
As she got closer, she identified the song. “I Shall Be Released.” She knew the Nina Simone version, but she wasn’t sure who wrote it. As she crept along the side of the armory, the singers went silent for a moment, then began something new. She recognized it immediately. “This Land Is Your Land,” by Woody Guthrie. She didn’t get it. Fucking folk songs?
They reached the end of the armory. The line of trees helped hide them from the grassy meadow ahead and the lodge on the left. Manny crouched and peeked around the corner to the right. June leaned forward and looked over his shoulder. She saw a small cinder-block structure with a heavy steel door and a small window opening blocked by metal bars. No light came from inside. A single guard stood at the building’s far side with his back to them, craning his neck to see something beyond. He wore a dark green rain slicker and carried an AK-47 over one shoulder. Snowmelt dripped off the roof onto his hood.
The singers launched into another verse. Manny turned to face June. “Wait here,” he whispered. Before she could answer, he unholstered his pistol, crept silently up behind the guard, and cracked him across the skull with the pistol. The guard staggered. Manny grabbedhis hood and pulled him back from the corner and whatever he was looking at there.
The guard tried to fight him. Manny hit him again and the guard dropped. Manny took a wrist and hauled him behind the armory, where he pulled a roll of duct tape from his pack. June looked at the guard’s face. He was just a kid, no more than eighteen. Manny slapped a silver strip over the kid’s mouth, then rolled him over and began to tape his wrists behind his back.
June crept up to the jailhouse window and peered inside. Several figures were huddled together in the dark. “Psst,” June whispered, then put a finger to her lips. The figures separated and came to the window. Carlotta and Ellie, wearing their coats, eyes haggard but now hopeful. June reached through the bars and they clasped hands. “We’re getting you out of here. Where’s Peter?”
“They took him,” Carlotta said softly. “Right after they started singing.”
Manny came up, grinning widely at Carlotta as he took a heavy sledgehammer from his pack. “Wait,” June whispered, then went to peer around the corner of the jailhouse, trying to see what the guard had been looking at.
She caught a side view of Peter standing before a freestanding plank wall. He wore an ill-fitting coat and pants, a stranger’s boots without laces. His wrists were cuffed and raised over his head, held by another pair of cuffs to a large ringbolt set high in the wall. He did not look happy.
The singers were arrayed in front of him in a broad semicircle. Hundreds of them, men, women, and children. Each held a couple of rocks. Even the children.
June jumped back and put her hand on the big hammer, stopping Manny’s swing. If he started pounding at the jailhouse door, the mobwould come running. She pointed around the corner and he went and looked at the crowd. When he returned his brown face was pale.
June leaned close and whispered, “Got any ideas?”
Manny nodded and keyed his earpiece. “Lewis, if you’re going to make some noise, now’s the time.”
“Thirty seconds. You gonna love it.”
June said, “Give me those bolt cutters. When Lewis kicks things off, I’ll get Peter. You get Carlotta and Ellie. If things get messy, we’ll meet you back at the Tahoe.”
Manny nodded, his face tight as he slipped off his pack and gave her the tool. Then he squeezed her shoulder. “You’d have made a helluva Marine.”
“And I know why he calls you brother.” She leaned in and kissed his check.
The singers came to the end of the song. After a moment, they heard someone begin to speak, projecting to the crowd. It was the Messenger, Garrison Bevel. June recognized his voice from that freaky-ass tape.
She peeked around the corner again and saw him standing in front of the crowd, wearing a raincoat and wide-brimmed hat. His back was to Peter. The snow was falling again. “Good evening, my friends. Today is a glorious day for our Movement. As I stand here before you, our friends are on their way to make history and change the world. Before the sun rises again, the Dark Time will be upon us. The future, our future, begins now.”
On the recording, the Messenger’s voice was compelling. In person, it was even more powerful. It rose and fell, warm and wise, like a loving father talking to his beloved children. Even knowing what she knew, June found herself falling into the cadence of it.
“This man before you has tried everything to stop us. He hates everything we stand for. He has already murdered two members of ourMovement. He would murder us all if he could. Like the world we are leaving behind, this man is beyond redemption. And for that reason he must die.”
June looked at the faces in the crowd. They could have been anyone. Her neighbors, her coworkers, someone she passed on the street. She wondered what had happened in their lives to bring them to this dire place.
The Messenger kept talking. “However, as hateful as this man might be, as much as he might deserve to die, his death will serve a much larger purpose. As our great project begins, his death will be an anointing, a blood christening of the new world we are making. And you, my friends, through your participation in this ancient ritual of sacrifice, will bring forth a fresh flowering of humanity like nothing the world has ever seen.” He rubbed his hands together. “Now, friends. Are you prepared?”
A roar came from the crowd. They brandished their rocks, their faces clenched in anger. June didn’t want to believe they might be evil. Surely something in their lives had broken them down, changed them. They didn’t start out like this, she was certain of that. No baby came into the world already wanting to burn it down. It was the Messenger who had taken their pain and twisted it, distorting their hearts and souls. He had made them into this mob, ready and willing to kill for him. To trade their souls for any hope of easing their suffering.
But they had also chosen this path of their own free will. And choices have consequences. So June would do what she had to do to save Peter.
She keyed her earpiece. “Lewis, seriously, fucking go already.”
