The Mark: The Beast Rules The World (20 page)

“I am urging my brother not to admit anything to Father, and yet I do not know how long he can avoid being tested to the ultimate. The only way to keep from officially applying for work there is to run away or tell my father the truth. Can you help in any way? I am sorry to trouble you with this during such a terrible time for you.

“Rest assured that I am praying for you. And while I assume you know this, Leah reports that your compatriots in the safe house are also upholding you daily.

“With utmost respect and honor, your sister in Christ, Ming Toy.”

David called Personnel. “Can you give me the status on a Chang Wong?”

“Yes, sir. Impressive resume. Mentioned publicly, at least among the brass, by Carpathia. A no-brainer. He’s going to work here as soon as we can get him processed. Only question is where. I suppose you want him; everybody else does.”

“Can’t say for sure. Just wondering.”

“Your area makes the most sense. You wouldn’t turn him down, would you?”

“Too early to tell, but I’m not a follower. Just because everybody wants him doesn’t mean I should be desperate to snag him.”

“True enough. But he’d be an asset.”

“What’s next?”

“Don’t know. We expected him yesterday. It’s in his court. He completes the paperwork, makes his app official, and we make an offer.”

“And if he accepts?”

“He’s in.”

“He’s not graduated high school.”

“We have tutors. He could teach high school.”

“When would he start?”

“A few days. Delay would be because of the new freeze. You saw that, right?”

“No.”

“Should have it in your E-mail.”

David didn’t want to appear too eager. “I’ll find it. Thanks.”

“You want this kid if we can get him?”

David had to think fast. If he got him and then David and the others disappeared, the kid could be found out as an enemy of the state. But if their disappearance looked like an accident, there would be no suspicion of them or anyone they associated with. On the other hand, if taking the mark was prerequisite to hiring, the issue was moot. The kid would refuse, the father would turn him in, end of story. David would not be under suspicion for wanting him or spending time with him.

“Would I be able to do a preliminary with him?”

“Interview? Hmm. Not protocol, but I don’t see the harm.”

“Where’s he staying?”

“Four-oh-five-four.”

That close to Hannah. Wonder if she knows? “Thanks.”

David hurried to the hospital. Hannah greeted him professionally and asked the typical questions about bleeding, discomfort, and pain. Then she asked him to follow her to a private room for removal of the stitches.

“You look OK but distracted,” she said, dousing his head with disinfectant and soaking the bandage.

“Can’t imagine why,” he groused.

“Sarcasm? Remember, I’m on your side.”

“Did you know the Wongs are staying on your floor?”

“Who are the Wongs?”

David smacked himself in the forehead.

“Terrific,” she said. “So much for sterility. Close your eyes.” He obeyed and she doused him again. “So, who are the Wongs?”

He told her the story.

“What’re you going to do?” she said.

“Bug their room.”

“You can do that?”

“I can do anything.”

“I’m gathering that. But how?”

“I’d tell you, but then-”

“Yeah, I know, you’d have to kill me.” She looked embarrassed to have said that with his having just lost his fiancee. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“My fault,” he said. “I started it.”

She lightly tugged at the bandage, making his eyes water. “Bear with me,” she said, squirting more liquid.

“That stuff supposed to make it easier?”

“We tell ourselves that,” she said. “Fortunately, you had a good surgeon. Oh, yeah, it was me. I cut enough hair that all we’re dealing with is scalp and wound and stitches. Imagine if there was hair too.”

“I don’t want to think about it.”

“Think about something else and I’ll hurry.”

“You can’t just yank it?”

“Not with stitches. Those have to come out the right way. If I pull one out with the bandage, you’re on the ceiling. Now try to get your mind on something else.”

“Like what?”

She stopped and put her wrists on her hips, careful to keep her gloved hands from touching anything. “David, I hardly know you. How would I know what you have to think about?”

He shrugged.

“Think about freedom,” she said. “About being away from here forever.”

“You call that freedom? It’s just another form of prison.”

“I’ve been wondering about that,” she said. “It has to be less tension, don’t you think?”

“Different kind, I guess. Ow!”

“Sorry. Be brave. Tell me more.”

“Well, we won’t have to worry about who’s watching and listening and whether my secure E-mail and phone connections have been compromised. We won’t have to worry that we’ve already been found out and they’re just letting us hang ourselves and expose others before they arrest us.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” she said.

“But we’ll never be free again. We’ll be fugitives.”

“So you’ve already ash-canned my idea.”

“No, why? I assigned it to Mac and Abdullah.”

“Because if it works, no one’s even looking for us. We get new IDs, change our looks, and start over.”

“But without the loyalty mark.”

She hesitated. “Well, yes, there is that. Hold on. There we go.” She held before his eyes the long bandage in a pair of surgical scissors. Besides disinfectant, it showed his blood and the imprint of his wound, two staples, and several stitches.

“Can I ask you something?” he said. “Totally off the subject.”

“You mean may I?”

“Ah, one of those. Showing off your education.”

“Sorry. Incurable.”

“I guess we’ll need a grammar cop at the safe house, in case Tsion and Buck are out. Anyway, why do you people think we want to see that stuff? The yucky bandage, I mean.”

“Yucky?” She morphed into baby talk. “Does he hate to see that yucky stuff?”

“Doctors and nurses are forever doing what you just did. Just remove it and toss it. You think I need to see it or I won’t pay?”

She shrugged.

“You all must just love this stuff,” he said. “That’s all I can figure. By the way, you never said anything about staples.”

“You just answered your own question.”

“I’m lost.”

“I showed you so you know what’s next. The stitches are separate, so they come out individually. It’s not one of those deals where I cut or untie and then the whole thing just sort of tickles as it comes looping out. It won’t hurt, but there are several. And there are two staples that have to stay in till the stitches are out, just in case, to hold everything together. When the stitches are gone, I’ll know whether the scar can contain that big brain of yours. Then I have to get under each of those two staples, one at a time, with a wire cutter.”

“You’re joking.”

“No, sir. I cut through the staple-”

“Ouch.”

“Not if you don’t flinch.”

“You’re the one who’d better not flinch.”

“I’m good. I promise. Then I grip each remaining end, that would be two for each staple, and slowly curl it out.”

“That’s got to hurt.”

She hesitated.

“I needed a real fast ‘Not at all’ right there.”

“I admit you’ll feel it more than the stitches. It’s a bigger invasion, thus a busier evacuation.”

“A busier evacuation? You could be in management.”

“What should I say? The big, yucky staple displaced more tissue than the itty-bitty stitchies. If any of the scar tissue adhered to the metal, you may feel it give way.”

“I don’t like the sound of ‘give way.’ ”

“What a wuss! It won’t even bleed. And if I feel it’s too early and it would cause trauma, we’ll put it off.”

“Not unless it would kill me. I mean it, Hannah. I want to be done with this.”

“You don’t want any reason to have to come back and talk to me.”

“It’s not that.”

“No,” she said dismissively, obviously feigning insult. “I can take it. I don’t know any other believers with reasons to come around, but that’s all right. Just leave me here to suffer alone.”

“Get on with it.”

“Shut up and I will. Now think about something else.”

“Can you talk while you work?”

“Oh, sure. I told you I was good.”

“Then tell me your story while you do this.”

“Story’s longer than the procedure, David.”

“Then take your time.”

“Now there! That was a sweet thing to say.”

Hannah Palemoon’s story actually took David’s mind off what she was doing. And she did take her time, pausing between each stitch. She teased him by showing him the first, but his look stopped her.

She had been raised on a Cherokee reservation in what was now known as the United North American States. “You wouldn’t believe the misconceptions about Native Americans,” she said.

“Never been to the States, even when it was just the United States of America. But I read about it. They called you Indians because of Columbus’s mistake.”

“Exactly. He thinks he’s in the West Indies, so we must be Indians. Now it’s Indian this, Indian that. Indian tribes. Cowboys and Indians. Indian nation. Indian reservation. The Indian problem. American Indians-that was my favorite. And of course, anyone who

hadn’t visited the reservation assumed we lived in tepees.”

“That’s what I would have guessed,” David said. “From pictures.”

“The pictures are from the tourist sites. They want to see old Native American culture; we’re happy to show it. Dress in the old garb, dance the old dances, sell ‘em anything they want made from colorful beads. They didn’t want to see our real homes.”

“Not tepees, I take it.”

“Just like any other depressed economy. Multifamily units, tiny houses, house trailers. And the tourists didn’t want to know that my dad was a mechanic and my mom worked in the office of a plumbing company. They’d rather believe we were part of a raiding party, drank firewater, or worked in a casino.”

“Your parents really didn’t?”

“My mother liked to play the slots. Dad lost a pay-check one night playing blackjack. Never went back.”

“And you were a vet.”

“Vet’s assistant, that’s all. My uncle, my mother’s brother, was self trained. Didn’t have to be licensed or certified or any of that other stuff, like on the outside. Unless you wanted business from the outside, and he didn’t. And he wasn’t into weird stuff either. Tourists asked if he danced and chanted and brought dead pets back to life. He was a good reader, read everything he could find on patching up animals, because he loved them and there were so many of them.”

“You didn’t want to be a vet?”

“Nope. I read all the books about Clara Barton and Florence Nightingale. Did well in school, especially science, and was encouraged by a teacher to take advantage of opportunities for Native Americans at state universities. Went to Arizona State and never looked back. Cost me more because I wasn’t from Arizona, but I wanted distance between me and the reservation.”

“Why?”

“I wasn’t ashamed or anything. I just thought I had more opportunity outside. And I did.”

“Where did you hear about God?”

“Everywhere. There were Christians on the reservation. We weren’t churchgoers, but we knew a lot who were. That teacher used to talk to me about Jesus. I wasn’t interested. She called it ‘witnessing,’ and that sounded way too weird for me. Then at university. They were everywhere. You could get witnessed to walking to class.”

“Never intrigued you?”

“Not enough to go to any meetings. I was afraid I would wind up in a cult or a multilevel-marketing scheme. The big thing with those kids was getting people to admit they were sinners and that they couldn’t do anything about their sin. Tell you the truth, I never felt like a sinner. Not then.”

“So, wrong approach for you.”

“Not their fault. I was a sinner, of course. I was just blind to it.”

“What finally made the difference?”

“When I found out who disappeared in the vanishings, I was mad. Those churchgoers I knew. Christians from university. My high school teacher.”

“So you must have had an inkling.”

“An inkling? I knew. People were saying God did this, and I believed them. And I hated him for it. I thought about those people and how sincere and devout they were, how they cared enough for me to tell me something that made me think they were strange. I didn’t want any part of a God who would remove them and leave me here. I wanted a hero, someone to believe in, but not him. Then I saw all the news about Carpathia. The Bible talks about how so many will be deceived? I was at the top of the list. Bought the whole package. Found put he needed medical people, hopped the next plane to New York. Wasn’t so sure about moving on to this beautiful, godforsaken desert, but I was still loyal then.

“I started getting squirrelly about Carpathia when he started sounding like a politician, trying to put everything in the best light. He never seemed genuinely remorseful about all the chaos and the loss. I didn’t agree with him when he said all this proved that God couldn’t have been behind the disappearances, because why would a loving God do that? I believed God had done it, and it proved he wasn’t so loving after all.”

Hannah finished her stitch-removal work, stripped off and discarded her rubber gloves, washed and dried her hands, and pulled on another pair of gloves. She sat on a stool next to David. “Still have the staples, but we can both use a break.”

“Somebody had to lead you to God. I’m dying to know where you met another believer here.”

“Didn’t know there was one till I saw your mark plain as day as you lay there on the ground. I tried wiping it off, then almost danced when I realized what it was. I couldn’t see mine and had never seen another, just read about it.”

“Where?”

“Remember when we were told that Tsion Ben-Judah’s Web site was contraband?”

‘“Course.”

“That was all I needed to hear. I was there. It was all Greek to me until he predicted the earthquake. First, it happened. Second, my whole reservation was swallowed up. Lost everybody. Mom, Dad, two little brothers, extended family. I’ll bet we were one of the only places in the world that had no survivors. Zero.”