“Is that so?” the man said. “Well, you’ll have plenty of time to explain it.”
With that, the man turned on his heel, barked “take him” to his companions, and the next thing Justin knew, he was handcuffed to the back of a motorcycle, riding precariously behind another, similarly brown-clad police-type man as they sped through the dusty, bone-jarring darkness.
So bewildered by this time that he almost couldn’t grasp what was going on, he simply tried to keep his place on the bike, his eyes clamped shut against the dirt and bugs, and not think about it. The only thing that kept going through his head was the old cliché about out of the frying pan and into the fire. Only with him it was more like out of the frying pan and into another frying pan. And then into a bonfire.
When, after what seemed like hours, the group of bikes finally came to a halt, it was full daylight, maybe an hour after sunrise, and Justin cracked open his dust-crusted eyes to blearily survey his new surroundings. Having no idea where he’d ended up and therefore with no preconceptions, the scene he now beheld was nonetheless far from encouraging.
Before him was what Justin could only think of as an armed compound; tall chain-link fencing, topped with barbed wire and other sharp-looking things, surrounded a group of maybe two dozen squat buildings. Armed men, all dressed like his captors, stood and strolled around the perimeter and others kept watch from twenty-foot tall wooden towers at each corner. A gate of sorts, mounted on a rolling base, was surmounted by a large, hand-lettered sign which read:
St. Alferd’s Church of the Holy Redeemer. Faithful Only, Others Shot On Sight.
Still rubbing dust from his eyes, Justin read the sign twice, to make sure of what he was seeing (Saint Alferd? Probably a misspelling of Alfred. But shot on sight?!), before the gate opened and one of his captors gave him a fairly good shove in the back and propelled him rudely into the compound.
Here, he soon saw, the paramilitary feel of the place only increased. Every man he saw wore some variation of the same drab uniform, was armed in one way or another—some quite heavily—and all around the buildings and fence were sandbags, firing ports, and various defensive constructions that gave the place the overall feel of an Army base. Over on one side he saw a group of children playing on a set of playground toys, supervised by a pair of gaunt-looking young women, but other than these few, the camp seemed populated exclusively by men.
He had no time to mull any of this over, though, as his captor and escort guided him, none too gently, towards the largest of the compound’s buildings, a two-story affair that was, given the huge cross hung up over the main entrance, obviously some kind of church. Again, he was prodded forward before having a chance to really look at it and soon he was in the cool, dark spaces of the building’s interior. His captor shoved him along through a big open area filled with folding chairs that was obviously the main worship area to a sort of side office, where he was told to sit on a hard metal chair before an empty metal desk. He did and the man left, closing the door behind him and leaving Justin alone.
Clean and all but devoid of decoration, the small office had only the door, no windows, the desk, two chairs, and, behind the desk on the wall, a big cloth banner, dark red with embroidered white lettering, which read: And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said: Take, eat; this is my body. And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying: Drink ye all of it; for this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.
It wasn’t long, only a few minutes, before the office door opened again and another man came in and took the chair behind the desk. Like most of the men he’d met here, this fellow was largish and obviously well-fed, if not actually overweight. Unlike the others, this man seemed to have undergone some sort of terrible accident, as his face was horribly scarred, from crown to chin, in a way that bespoke crude, amateur, possibly improvised surgery. One eye seemed almost scarred-over, the lips didn’t meet correctly, showing broken teeth, and one ear was conspicuous in its absence. All in all, he wasn’t much to look at, but Justin had seen some pretty horrific things in the last few years; this didn’t particularly phase him. Then again, it was hard not to stare.
“Greetingsh, brother,” said the man, his voice deep and resonant but also saliva-riddled and gargled. The “s” sound in particular seemed to give him a lot of trouble. “My name ish Brother David. I am the Schief of Shecurity.”
“Uh, hello,” said Justin awkwardly. “My name is Dr. Justin Kaes.”
“Yesh, I know,” said the man, approximating a smile.
Justin goggled. “You know who I am? But how?”
“Unimportant,” said Brother David simply. “And not why I wanted thish meeting.”
Seeing that this man was going to direct the conversation, one way or the other, and that he wasn’t about to let on any more than he wanted, Justin waited as he paused and stared with his one good and one questionable eye. Trying to look something like tough, Justin stared right back until the general air of discomfort reached an intolerable level and he finally had to look away. Evidently this pleased—or a least placated—Brother David and he resumed speaking.
“Here is the shituation, Dr. Kaesh,” he said phlegm-ily. “You have treshpasshed on the shovereign territory of the Church. Ash a reshult, you have been taken into cushtody and will, pending judgment by the counshil, be held here. In time, you will probably learn more of thish plashe and the Church, but that ish not my concern. And now, I bid you God Blessh.”
And with that, he got up to leave.
“But wait!” said Justin urgently.
The disfigured man paused and stared at him again as he reeled in astonishment and struggled to form words. Then, seeing something in Brother David’s glare that didn’t invite questions, he gave it up and shrugged.
“Very well,” he said. “At this point, I’m frankly too tired and hungry to discuss it. Is there at least somewhere where I can lie down? Perhaps get some water?”
“Of coursh,” nodded David. “Brother Shteven will show you to your temporary quartersh.”
As nonplussed as he’d ever been, utterly lost for words and equally devoid of thought, struck numb, as it were, Justin just nodded and waited for whatever came next.
The first man he’d met, evidently Brother Steven, replaced Ugly David and led Justin out of the office, through the big, church-like building and then across the dusty, sun-seared compound. As they went, Justin could feel the eyes of this place’s denizens on him but was past caring why they should be so curious; probably just normal xenophobia, he thought.
They finally came to a low cinderblock building much like all of the others in the compound. Brother Steven unlocked the door, using a key from a ring on his belt, and then shoved him through the darkened portal, where he stumbled hard and fell heavily and painfully to the floor. Behind him, the thick metal door clanged shut, plunging him into cool semi-darkness.
Groaning, he rolled onto his side, all but spent, and lay there for a moment, wondering if there might be some water in this place, before it dawned on him that he was not alone. Frightened all over again, in a very shrill and immediate way, he scrambled awkwardly to a crouch and backed up against a wall.
And then, rolling out of the shadows in an old-fashioned wheelchair, appeared the one person in the whole world whom Justin would have bet he wouldn’t find in a prison cell inside some kind of armed religious survie compound, Mr. Howard P. Lampert.