“Yes, you do. That’s why you made me stay on the path. You knew he was dead.”
Preacher hesitated. She was right, of course. She wasn’t a child. That was the problem. He wanted to tell her not to worry, not to think on it. She didn’t require an explanation. He was the adult, and he could make that decision, as parents did for their children. Yet he knew that to do so was to loosen his already tenuous grip on his foster daughter. Treat her as a child, and he’d earn her disdain. He would have taken that chance if he thought it would truly stop her from learning the truth. It would not. She’d proven already that she was as curious—and as dogged—as he.
“They killed Rene, too,” she said as he tried to decide what to tell her. “Is it the same thing?”
“Yes, it appears so. Eleazar claims that to give life…” He struggled for the kindest words.
“They must take it,” she said, again as if this were a simple matter, one that anyone ought to be able to see. “They killed the old man to bring back Charlie. And now they’ve killed Timothy James…”
He didn’t hear the rest of what she said. He knew the rest. They’d killed Timothy James to bring back another. Then, once that child was raised from the dead, there were five more…
“We must go,” he said. “Back to town. Immediately.”
Preacherheard the weeping before he saw the town ahead. Wailing and sobbing and crying out to God. That’s what he heard, and he ran as he hadn’t since he was a boy. Ran so fast he could no longer hear anything but the crash of sound, like the ocean’s surf, rising and falling.
From the end of the main road he could see the crowd. The entire village it seemed, gathered down at the hall, the mass of them blocking the road. People sobbing. People on their knees. People standing in stunned silence.
He looked back for Addie, but she was right there.
“Go to Sophia!” he said.
She hesitated, but she seemed to see the fear in his eyes, nodded, and veered off in the direction of the house. Preacher kept running. When he reached the crowd, he prepared himself for what he might see. The horrors that could cause such wailing.
On a normal day, if the villagers saw him coming, they’d make way. He was the preacher. But now, even when he nudged through, they resisted, pushing him back until he had to shove past, as if he were at a cockfight, jostling for a better view.
Finally, the villagers seemed to see him, to recognize him. Or they simply realized he would not be held back. The crowd parted. There, at the front, he saw…
Children. All six of them. Sitting up in their coffins, looking about, as if confused, their parents grabbing them up, hugging them, wailing.
Now that the thunder in his ears had died down, he realized what he was hearing. Sobs and wails of joy. Praising God. Thanking God.
He looked at those six children and those six families, and there was a moment when he wanted to fall to his knees with the others. To say,This is a miracle. To accept it as a miracle.
Then he remembered the body in the woods. Timothy James, lying in the dirt, covered in blood, staring at the sky.
Six children alive. Six people dead.
Dear God, who else did they take? Who else did they murder?
He reeled, stomach clenching, gaze swinging to Dobbs, embracing his child, his big body shaking with joy. Preacher glanced down, about to back away. Then he saw the blood on Dobbs’s boot. Timothy James’s blood on his boot. Timothy James’s murder on his hands.
“What’s going on?” a voice cried.
Everyone went still. The voice asked again, and it was a high voice, a reedy voice. A child. Preacher turned to see one of the resurrected—six-year-old Jonas Meek—pushing his mother away as his gaze swung over the crowd.
“Who the bloody hell are all of you?” the boy asked.
Eleazar leaped forward as the crowd gasped and the boy’s mother fell back, crossing herself. Jonas began to push up from his coffin, his face fixed in a snarl as he said something Preacher didn’t catch.
“Restrain him!” Eleazar said. “Quickly!”
Two men leaped in to do it as Eleazar strode forward, cloth in hand. He pressed it to the boy’s face, ignoring his struggles. Preacher caught a whiff of something familiar from his college science classes. Chloroform.
As Jonas went limp, Eleazar’s voice rang out over the stunned crowd. “I warned you that this might happen. Iwill sedate them all now, to prevent further injury. They are confused and will act most unlike themselves for a day or two. But all is well. Your children are returned to you and all is well.”
Preacher stepped forward, but before his boot even touched down, Dobbs was there, moving unbelievably fast for a man of his size. He planted himself in front of Preacher.
“You don’t belong here, Benjamin,” he said.
