“Like Moses or Samson.”
“Exactly.”
Samson died in chains, Nemo thought, blind and alone. “So what’s our stop, Peter?”
“Oregon Hill.”
“Where’s the meeting?”
“Hollywood Cemetery.”
“Of course. I should’ve known.”
OREGON
HILL
HAD
BURNED
TO
THE
GROUND
YEARS
AGO
. Hardly anyone lived there to put out the blaze. Lightning struck one of the houses and spread to them all. Only the chimneys remained standing, looking like skinny giants in the moonlight. Nemo and Peter walked beneath them, weaving their way through the burned out wreckage. There was a stream of people now, all headed toward the gates of Hollywood Cemetery.
The cemetery had thrived in recent years. The fundies kept it up, planting flowers and burying their dead in plots most of them couldn’t have afforded before the Bin. It was a magnificient monument to the dead, the perfect place to wait for the Rapture.
Torches burned at the gates. The crowd fell into single file, passing through one at a time. A pair of armed guards scrutinized them as they passed, occasionally stopping someone and pulling them out of the line. Nemo slid the crowbar down his pants and left his shirttail out to help conceal it. As he approached the gate, a large black man with a sawed-off shotgun stepped in front of him. “I don’t know you,” the man said.
“Gabriel invited me.” Nemo pointed a thumb over his shoulder at Peter. “He’s my date.”
The man didn’t crack a smile. “Do you speak for him?” he asked Peter. What a question, Nemo thought. Peter could barely speak for himself.
“Yes, I do,” Peter said in the same solemn voice the man had used.
The man stepped aside and waved them through. This was a ritual, Nemo realized, the way new lambs were brought into the fold. He looked back at the gate, where most of the people passed through without being stopped. They all knew each other—or someone would vouch for them. He never would’ve gotten in without Peter.
“What happens,” Nemo asked Peter, “if you speak for me, and I turn out to be a spy?”
“I would be cast into Hell.”
Nemo didn’t want to know the details of that ritual.
THEY
FOLLOWED
THE
CROWD
TO
THE
RIGHT
WHERE
A
RING
of torches burned at the base of the Monument to the Confederate Dead, a ninety-foot, steep-sloped pyramid made of rough-hewn granite. There were probably two hundred people there already. More men with guns herded the newcomers to the far side of the pyramid where there was still room. Nemo had no idea that the underground was so large, or so well armed. He wondered how far all these people had come to be here. He’d heard that Richmond was a stronghold for the underground—easy striking distance to the Bin, but not as dangerous as D.C. itself, with a long tradition of living in the past.
Nemo and Peter stood about twenty feet in front of the base of the pyramid. People continued to file in behind them. On the face of the pyramid, a smooth stone set just above eye-level had
Memoriâ in AEternâ
chiseled into it in six-inch-high letters. It was almost 300 years old, a monument to a lost cause. They were standing on the graves of over 18,000 soldiers. Squat stones numbered them—
153-172, 173-190
—examples for these new martyrs, in another dying world. Nemo had been here many times to visit his grandparents’ graves on the other side, overlooking the river. He’d brought Rosalind once, but she’d been sullen and withdrawn, telling him he was morbid to visit the dead.
Most of the crowd was looking up. Nemo followed their gaze and saw what everyone was looking at. It was Gabriel, clad in white robes, torches around him, standing on a crude wooden platform perched atop the pyramid, a bullhorn in his hand. The last of the faithful took their places at the back of the crowd. The only sounds were the hiss of torches, the barking of dogs in the distance, and the breathing of several hundred people.
“Praise God!” Gabriel screamed into the bullhorn.
“
Praise God
!” they roared.
“The Day is at hand!”
“
The Day is at hand
!”
“Praise God!”
“
Praise God
!”
“The Day is at hand!”
“
The Day is at hand
!”
Nemo looked around at the hundreds of faces transfixed. Even the guards, their guns across their chests, had their eyes on Gabriel, roosting on a pile of stones, his hair streaming in the wind like smoke from the torches. The Bin had done this to them, driven them to this.
“Bless you, my children,” Gabriel said in a softer voice. They sighed like the wind in the trees and waited to receive the word of God.
“Do you know what Friday is, my friends?” He leaned out to them, searching their faces, turning on the tiny square of plywood that was his pulpit, so that he might see them all—each and every one of them—so that they might see him. “Do you know?” He let the question hang in the air. Even the dogs were silent now. No one breathed.
“Friday, all the souls in Hell rejoice. They celebrate the hundredth birthday of the Antichrist. A hundred years ago Newman Rogers was born. No one remarked it. Wise men did not kneel before him. Oh no, like the sly serpent in the garden, he entered unnoticed, creeping along the ground, whispering into the slumbering ears of the weak, the fallen, the sinful—
Follow me! Follow me! Follow me!
” His voice had fallen to a whisper, his breath hissing through the bullhorn, as he dragged out the e’s in a sibilant rasp. Nemo looked around him. They were all buying it. Every last one of them.
“And follow, they did! Twelve billion! Imaging it, my children. Twelve billion! Twelve—the number of the disciples, a mere handful, followed by nine zeroes! Imagine the racket they will make as they sing his praises—this Newman they believe has made them New Men—freed from the Judgment of God! Imagine Our Savior as this chorus of evil rises to His ears!
“I say: No more!”
He spread out his arms, and the congregation shouted, “
No more!
” He whirled around to each point of th compass—“
No more! No more! No more!
”
He waited for the echo to fade into silence. “Behold, I come quickly, saith the Lord, but they have not listened. They are like Adam and Eve hiding in the Garden, imagining God cannot see them—twelve billion of them! They pursue their lives of empty pleasure with no thought of their salvation. Imagine them, on Judgment Day. They will not have time to look up from their gluttonous feasts. They will not have time to turn their beautiful faces from their mirrors. They will not have time to rise from their lewd beds. In the blink of an eye, they will be cut off forever from the Grace of God—for it will be the End of Days!” He looked off to the north, as if he could see the damned from his high vantage point. He shook his head at their foolishness and turned his back on them. “Do not mourn for them. They have cast their lot with Satan.
“We may seem like few, a mere handful. How can we be heard over their din? What are we to their billions, their nine zeroes? We are the anointed ones, the children of God, the chosen few. We speak not with our voices alone, but with the voices of all the faithful who have gone before us, and who cry out to us now. Beneath your very feet. Listen! They call to us from the earth, pleading with us to slay this serpent who holds them captive. You stand upon their graves. Thousands of Christian soldiers, who died with Christ’s promise in their hearts, calling to you, yearning for the Grace of God. Listen, and you can hear them. Listen!” He cupped his hand to his ear and circled the platform as the dead talked to him, told him their secrets. “I hear my father, who labored in the vineyard all his days, calling to me for deliverance. I hear your fathers, and your fathers’ fathers, and their fathers before them. Your sisters, your mothers. Your sons and daughters. Even the infants wailing for us to set them free. Listen! Listen!”
The faces in the torchlight were intent with listening to the dead, their faces twisted with longing to set them free. They could all hear them.
“They have been waiting so long, waiting for the promise to be fulfilled. Answer them, my children! Answer them! He is coming!” Gabriel threw up his arms, and the crowd began to chant, “
He is coming! He is coming! He is coming
! He is coming!”
He brought down his arms, and they fell silent. “Ready yourselves,” he said. “The time is at hand.” He thrust his right fist into the air, and everyone in the crowd did the same. “
The time is at hand!
”
And then he was gone. Down a rope ladder, Nemo guessed. The crowd continued to chant, until that too faded away, and they stood there in a daze, smiling at each other, laughing and crying, charged up and eager to do the will of God, or Gabriel. Either one would do. Nemo felt someone take his arm, and turned to find the man from the gate.
“Come with me,” he said. “Gabriel wants to see you.”
Peter stepped forward as if to joint them, but the man held up his hand. “Go home.”
“But I found him for you,” Peter whined. “Tell him, Nemo.”
“Go home,” the man repeated, and Peter sulked off.
THE
CROWD
PARTED
BEFORE
THEM
AS
THE
MAN
LED
NEMO
up the hill into the heart of the cemetery. Curious eyes followed them. A little girl, riding on her father’s shoulders, pointed at Nemo, and her father smiled his apologies. There was something else in his eyes, too. He knows why I’m here, Nemo thought. He knows who I am.
“Where’re we going?” Nemo asked his guide, but he didn’t answer. The crowd was behind them now, the torches, expect for the ones atop the pyramid, were just a glow on the other side of the hill. Soon, they too were out of sight. They were walking on a narrow asphalt road. Even that was kept in perfect repair. Nemo wondered if there were plans to repave it in gold. Beyond low iron fences, gravestones and monuments glowed in the moonlight. Nemo listened for the voices of the dead, but couldn’t hear them, except for Angelina’s.
“You ever kill anyone with that gun?” Nemo asked.
The man ducked his head. “Before I was saved, that’s about all I knew how to do. Had no faith.”
“What about now?”
But his guide didn’t answer. They’d reached their destination, a dark, cast-iron structure, ringed by armed guards. One of them opened a door, and Nemo walked inside, the door closing behind him. In the glow of candlelight, Gabriel sat on a sarcophagus. He indicated the other end of it, and Nemo sat on the cold stone.
“I saw you in the crowd this evening,” Gabriel said. “It inspired me. I hope you found it enlightening.”
“Very impressive,” Nemo said. “I especially liked the way you played off the bullhorn. The snake bit was really good. And the way you sometimes sounded like the voice of God and sometimes like a riot.”
“Perhaps sometimes they are the same thing.”
“Or maybe you think that because you’re they guy with the bullhorn.”
Gabriel laughed. He could afford a sense of humor. He had a dozen guys with guns if he took offense. “Do you know who’s buried here?” he asked.
Nemo looked around at the elaborate gothic iron work. “No idea. Is he going to talk to us, too?”
Gabriel smiled. “You think I’m a charlatan, don’t you?”
“Most everybody I know is these days. Don’t take it personally. You were going to tell me who we’re sitting on?”
“This is a monument to James Monroe, the fifth president of the United States. He was quite an important man in his day. Let’s hope he made his peace with God. Not likely. He was an Episcopalian, you know.” He said “Episcopalian” as if it were something obscene. “He once had a run-in with another Gabriel—Gabriel Prosser—he led a slave rebellion in 1800. Monroe had him hanged, along with thirty-five of his followers. He lamented that the uprising signaled the end of the ‘tranquil submission’ of the slaves. That’s what I signal now.”
“That’s how you see yourself—as a freer of slaves?”
Gabriel smiled. “No, we shall sink the slavers’ ships—you and I—and end it once and for all.”
“I haven’t said I’ll do it.”
“You have already said no. If you hadn’t changed your mind, you wouldn’t be here. You have been the victim of an abomination, deceived by the Whore of Babylon, Bride of the Antichrist. Now the scales have fallen from your eyes.”
Nemo felt the crowbar against his leg. He was tempted to knock some of the smugness out of this strutting prophet, but the guards would be on him in seconds. “Save that crap for your zombies, Gabriel. I’m not interested in you or your crazy religion. I’m here for my own reasons, and I don’t care to discuss them with you”.
“The Lord moves in mysterious ways. You are here for His reasons, whether you know it or not”.
Nemo was beginning to wonder what he was doing here. He wanted to get on with it before he lost his nerve. “Look, are you going to lay it out for me, or are we going to discuss theology all night?”
Gabriel nodded. “Very well. This Friday at ten A.M., you will return here, and we will download a copy of your identity and implant the virus. It will take only a few minutes, and you won’t even know it’s there. You will enter the Bin precisely at noon. No more than thirty minutes before, you will have swallowed an antidote for the lethal injection. Don’t eat anything that morning, drink only water. After you are uploaded, my men will recover your body. They will bring you here, and I will restore you to life in a world reborn.”
“How can you be so sure you can get my body back?”
“We have infiltrated their security. Our men will be in place. The moment you enter, they will recover your body”.
“But D.C. isn’t the only entry into the Bin. Do you have somebody going in all over the damn globe?”
“Only you. The virus attacks the main operating system. All entries to the Bin will be rendered inoperable.”