Desolation

“Buck!” Wilber screamed as he watched, unable even to stand while the earth shook below him. The tower Buck was on crashed to the ground. This was too much to bear. It was his fault. He shouldn’t have put Buck there, thinking it was the safest place on the whole property. He looked over to Olivia to see if she had seen, and confirmed his nightmare. Her face was buried in her hands; she was sobbing.

“These bastards took my boy away,” he yelled only to himself, since no one could hear anything above the earth’s roar. He tried to hoist himself unsuccessfully over the rock wall his grandfather had built. He and its stones were thrown as if they were paper.

Then it stopped, just as quickly as it had started.

Driven by anger and sadness, Wilber scrambled over the wall and ran down the hill, firing one shot after another, screaming a primal scream, which terrified the survivors below. Upon seeing this madman running, screaming at them, the remainder of God’s Army turned and ran back the way they had come. Running, shooting anything that moved, now in the grip of blood-lust, he ran through the wall of fire that still raged, created by him, not feeling the sting of its fiery fingers.

One by one he picked off his enemies, first running after them and then running away from his anguish. But anguish caught up with him. He stopped amongst the carnage he had caused and collapsed, sobbing inconsolably, curled up, his head pressed into the ground.

~~~

Darla rocked back and forth cradling her brother’s body, unaware of the shaking violence just belched from the depths. She was in her own hell.

Joselin dutifully knelt beside her friend, resting her hand on her shoulder, unable to imagine anything else she could do. A noise from the trees alerted her and she brought up her weapon, ready to dispatch anyone else who threatened her friend.

It was a young man, holding his hands in the air, approaching with a curious look of wonder, almost awe.

“Darla?” he asked. “Is that you, Darla?”

Darla continued to rock back and forth; her body and Danny’s were like one.

The man walked up to them, stopped to look down and waited, and then asked again. “Darla, is that…” he trailed off, his voice cracking.

She stopped rocking. Slowly she lifted her head, her face a muddled mess of blood, dirt, and tears. She looked at Steve, knowing it was him before she set her eyes upon him, and plaintively held out one shuddering arm.

Steve fell alongside them, enveloping them in his arms and his own tears of sorrow and joy.

Thompson Journal Entry

Continued…

The Passageway

When I built my beach warehouse, I knew I would need to have some way of connecting the two places. So, I built a passageway—many thought we had bad plumbing problems because of the size of the excavation of earth—that runs underground. Besides the ability to go from one to the other unseen, the passageway offers you safety and security. And if all else fails, you can use it as a means of escape.

You’ll find a button on the north wall behind the bookshelf that is much like the entrance bookshelf; it’s a false door. Be sure to close it behind you so that your whereabouts are not known to anyone who may enter. This passageway takes you into what would be the kitchen pantry of the beach warehouse.

41. An Opening

Rocky Point, Mexico

“What’s happening out there?” Sally asked frantically, and then noticed her father’s arm was swollen and purplish. “Oh crap, what’s wrong with your arm?”

“I broke it falling off the roof,” he said holding it carefully, “but that’s not important. How do you know about the passageway?” Bill moved them toward the workshop.

“Well, ah…” She looked at the Fernandez family, her face tensing up some more.

“They’re Max’s friends: Miguel, Maria, and Ana.” Bill walked with her through the workshop, its lights flickering, illuminating the room weakly, barely holding back the darkness. “Go ahead. You were telling me how you knew about the passageway?”

“Oh, right. It’s in the journal. You know, the leather-bound book Max left us?”

Bill knit his brows in puzzlement. “How would Max’s grandfather know about this passageway?”