They drove east on the 10 in silence for hours, or possibly days. There was no way to be sure. The state line came and disappeared, and Arizona directed them to a northbound turn onto I-17 at Phoenix. Thirty miles north of Phoenix, not far from the Interstate, Payton motioned for Daniel to get off the highway. Payton directed him through a series of black, mountainous desert roads until they came to a stop at some kind of cliff-side factory.
Purely utilitarian, the place must’ve been twenty thousand square feet, if not more, with dingy cinder-block walls and a flat aluminum roof. It was a relic, like something airlifted out of East Germany or the old Soviet bloc. A single metal staircase on one side led up from the ground to a small grated landing in front of a normal-sized door. Near the back of the building, beyond the stairs, was a cluster of electric generators that prevented the building from depending on local power.
The rain had stopped long ago, leaving a clotting glaze over the vehicles and the blackened ash-like roads, and a musky, metallic odor drifting through the damp air. Alex never awoke as Daniel and the old man carried her up the stairs, following Payton and Lisa. Payton mumbled a sequence of numbers, which Lisa typed into a keypad to the right of the door. They heard a tiny clack as the door unlocked.
Inside, they were greeted with a completely open space, much of which held a massive gymnasium outfitted with state-of-the-art equipment.
“What is this?” Daniel asked, the first time he’d spoken since before they’d left California.
Payton leaned against a wall for support, refusing help from any of them. He peeled off his blood-soaked black shirt and tossed it in a trash bin near the door.
“My home,” Payton replied, his voice barely audible but echoing throughout the giant chamber.
Everyone took their turn at resting and showering and changing into fresh clothes. Alex required help just moving, so Lisa aided her in a quick bath and change of clothes before she was allowed to sleep. More bomb shelter than home, the place was stocked with enough food to last through a nuclear winter, so everyone enjoyed being properly fed for the first time in a long time.
A lofted second floor extended over the open area to the right of the entrance. It was open and visible to the main area below, but sectioned off by the long stairway that led up to it. Typically, Payton slept here, but now he insisted it be used by Alex for her recovery.
Daniel and Lisa worked with the old man for hours assessing the damage: Payton was more or less his usually fit self, though profoundly dehydrated and in desperate need of sleep. Alex, on the other hand, they could barely believe was alive. She suffered from second-and third-degree burns on her stomach and right arm, which had created dark scabs. Each had gone far too long without being properly treated, and the resulting infections now boiled in her bloodstream. She also had a severe concussion and a few broken ribs due to her ejection from the Mustang.
Payton’s home came complete with every medical supply one might ever need, including painkillers and strong antibiotics to fight Alex’s infection, and these were administered not long after their arrival. But combined with the concussion, she was largely confused and incoherent when awake, vomited occasionally, and had a dangerously high fever she could not seem to break.
All five of them—even Payton, who rarely spoke and spent much of his time among his training equipment—feared each time Alex fell asleep that she might never reawaken.
With every moment feeling like
now
, it became difficult to fall into the routine of day and night, but they all did their best while waiting for Alex and Payton to recover. Makeshift beds were created from whatever could be found. Meals were shared. And they waited for a sense of what to do next. They tried to engage the one-handed man and discover his secrets, yet he refused to share even his name, seemingly content in his silence.
It was sometime during the
awake
period after their third sleeping cycle that Daniel and Lisa seated themselves in front of a gigantic flat-screen television and turned it on for the first time. Payton’s high-tech equipment allowed them to pick up on signals still being transmitted by some of the major news networks, but most were intermittent and unreliable, since the satellites that normally broadcast their transmissions were slowly dying, one by one.
They were in a small seating nook near the facility’s kitchen, located directly beneath the second floor, where Alex rested. It wasn’t long before they were joined by the old man— who’d taken to staying at Alex’s side whenever he wasn’t sleeping—and Payton, who showed up covered in sweat, his sword held tightly in one hand.
The news was not uplifting. The darkness and the blackened earth had spread completely, covering the entire planet. It was done; transformation complete. Video reports from all over the world showed much of what they had already seen— the volcanic rock and scattered wildfires that covered the earth, the oceans that were still evaporating, the occasional raining blood, and the rivers that had turned into hot lava.
Natural springs and wells had become dark pits of deadly flame—flames so hot, no one could safely approach them. The global suicide rate had peaked to an all-time high, and there were countless reports of people losing their sanity. Going completely mad, these individuals were breaking into homes where others were huddled in fear, and killing them all—or worse. Bizarre new religions popped up all over the globe, most of them taking their cues from the bloodred rain, utilizing ritual sacrifices of animals or even human beings in attempts to appease whatever gods had been angered into unleashing these horrific conditions upon the planet.
The slow loss of the world’s oceans was having a dramatic effect on sea life. It was unprecedented: Both the fish and underwater plants were dying and drying up, starting with those nearest to shorelines. Every kind of ship—from tankers and ocean liners to battleships and submarines—made for the nearest port they could reach. Many of them made it. Several thousand did not, some hitting land on the dried-up ocean floor, others opting to sail for the central areas of open sea still existing, hoping to ride out the phenomenon for as long as possible.
Similarly, the fiery storm clouds enveloping the entire planet had caused authorities to ground all aircraft. Astronauts manning the International Space Station managed to send a few grainy images of the earth down to the surface; the pictures showed the opposite of what those on the planet’s surface saw. Instead of black clouds with fire peeking through, these new images revealed what at first seemed to be a small sun.
The world was on fire.
Three sleep cycles later, with everyone else asleep, Payton sat up, unable to achieve unconsciousness.
He watched the news footage, alone in the kitchen nook, the volume low. The sounds were of little interest to him. His attention was focused on the blurry video of Oblivion. It seemed no one was able to get close enough to him to get his picture, but whether that was Oblivion’s own doing or that of the young British girl Charlotte, who was still held under Oblivion’s thrall and could control electrical transmissions, was open to debate. The best the news had been able to achieve was this one fuzzy image, shot with a super-high magnification from miles away.
Payton didn’t need to see every detail to know exactly what he was looking at. He remembered Oblivion’s cold, lifeless face, his eyes of fire, and his stone-gray skin all too well.
Oblivion had led his army and the Secretum eastward toward Syria until finally turning sharply south. He was already approaching the northern Syrian border, and speculation was rife among the newscasters as to where his final destination might be.
Most of them agreed that in all likelihood . . . he was headed for Israel. Though there was no evidence anyone could come up with to support this theory, somehow it just seemed to fit.
What Oblivion had done to Payton, what he’d done to Alex, what he was doing even now to the rest of the Loci, not to mention his march of destruction upon the world . . .
It was unforgivable. There was no punishment too harsh, no anger too severe, no death he could give to Oblivion that would be slow or painful enough. Oblivion would pay for this, and so would the Secretum. Every last one of them.
In conjuring Oblivion into human flesh, the Secretum had betrayed the entire human race.
And as far as Payton was concerned, betrayal was the worst sin in the book.
“Girls,” he chided the three young ladies sitting at the back of the classroom. “Pass that note to the front of the class, please. It will be read aloud before this period is over.”
There were groans and sighs at the back of the room, while snickering presided over the front. It was a small room at the private Catholic school, allowing for no more than twelve students at a time, and even now it wasn’t full.
But this was many a student’s favorite class, a fact that Father Bernard prided himself in. Who would have ever guessed that Theology could become
any
teenager’s favorite subject? It reinforced the instinct he followed when, fresh out of seminary, he’d chosen to spend the first few years of his career teaching, influencing the lives of the younger generation, before moving on to his own parish.
“Now, we were discussing the passage in Joshua where God struck down the city of Jericho and every living thing in it, for Israel’s sake, so that the Israelites could move into this land. As you should recall, God had promised this land to the Israelites many generations before, so this action was taken to restore to them what was rightfully theirs.”
A hand shot up. “Father?”
“Yes, Simon,” he replied to one of his favorite students, a brilliant young man with tremendous potential. Father Bernard had high hopes for this one.
Simon had a quizzical look upon his oval face. “The passage says that God wiped out the entire population of the town—that’s tens of thousands of lives. And under the rule of King David, the Israelite army decimated countless peoples in God’s name, butchering and slaughtering their enemies. Yet back in Exodus, the Ten Commandments command us never to take a life. And later in the New Testament, Jesus raises the dead and heals the sick and commands His followers never to kill.”
Father Bernard smiled. “Yes. Quite the paradox, is it not? You have stumbled upon one of the great mysteries that theologians and scholars have wrestled with for centuries. But I believe the answer lies in the book of Romans—chapter six, verse twenty-three.” He waited, watching the boy, knowing his keen mind could very likely call up the passage from memory.
Simon’s shoulders settled. He had an
aha!
look on his face. “ ‘The wages of sin is death,’ ” he quoted.
Father Bernard nodded. “Whether or not any of these peoples died at the very hands of God himself, the important thing to remember is that they were all wicked, deceitful,
depraved
people. Do you understand?”
“So they deserved to die? And their wickedness made it
okay
for God’s people to murder them?”
Father Bernard tilted his head to one side in thought, and then shrugged. “Far worse than their mortal death was the eternal punishment they received
after
death. And that fate would have awaited them regardless of how and when they met it, because they were unrepentant. It doesn’t matter if we agree with their deaths at the hands of the great patriarchs of our faith; it was a different age, subjected to a different way of life. What matters is that they were deemed unrighteous in God’s sight.”
The lesson ended; Father Bernard went home for the day and thought no more of the conversation he’d had with Simon. Late that night, he received a telephone call from the school’s administrator, who informed him that one of the girls sitting in the back of his classroom that day had accused him of inappropriately touching her.
An investigation was launched, and Father Bernard was placed on administrative leave. He was sure he would be cleared of the charges, but the girl who’d accused him had prepared her story too perfectly, and it was eagerly verified by several of her friends. Even his best students looked at him differently when he came in to speak to the administrator. No one volunteered to speak up in his defense.
He was never convicted of any crime, but the damage was done. Despite his innocence, he swiftly lost his job, and his rights and title as a priest were revoked.
Nineteen Years Ago
In a small city in northern England, over two hours away from his previous home, Bernard resettled and tried to find some peace in his life. His kindhearted brother, Frederick, had been good enough to offer him a job, believing that the charges against him had been fabricated.
Bernard served as the manager of the meager office supply company owned by his brother. The hours were long and the work was far from thrilling, but he liked the people he was working with, and he smiled and laughed with them often. And no one here knew anything of his past or the false charges that had ruined his career.
One spring morning he was recounting a funny story to his employees when two police officers arrived at the office.
“Yes, can I help you?” he asked the approaching officers.
“Please turn around and place your hands behind your back, sir,” one of them ordered. “You’re under arrest for defrauding your tax filings for the last five years. We have evidence linking your office to the laundering of more than fifty million pounds.”
Bernard pleaded with them, certain it was a mistake. He had always kept spotless records and was strict about ensuring that his employees did the same.
A few days later, word reached Bernard’s ears inside jail that his brother had unexpectedly left the country in a rush, leaving no forwarding information or reason to believe he would ever return.
Bernard fell physically ill upon hearing this news. He remained silent and inconsolable at the trial, where he was sentenced to an eighteen-year prison term with a possibility of parole after eleven years.