Rebirth (22 page)

“I don’t understand. Who’s running this show?”

“Show?”

“Yes. Life. What is it all for?”

“Life is a lesson. When it is learned, only then will you understand what it was all for.”

“So, who’s right? Christians? Buddhists? Islam....”

“Religion is a beginning. It was meant to be the teacher.”

“But we messed that up didn’t we?”

“Religion became a means to rule rather than teach.”

“Why are you telling me all of this now?”

“Leif is a special boy. Protect him, keep him safe and I will guide him as best as I can.”

“Better than you led Joel?”

“Joel had his own ideas. He fought me and he fought his destiny. I could not alter his path towards self destruction. He was filled with anger in the end, guilt, hate, frustration. It would be difficult to say whether he could have recovered enough to become leader in what must come to pass. With Leif, we start anew, and you can help. We can work together in this.”

With that, Blank Man disintegrated before my eyes, black spots dancing on my eyeballs. I lay back and covered my mouth with my hands, staring up at the ceiling. “Holy shit.”

Chapter Forty Eight

Earl and his woman friend were never found. During the days that followed his escape, the soldiers hunted the surrounding area and placed men at the Castle Rock in case he returned, but he was never seen again. The Sergeant and I questioned the refugees from Earl’s camp. Where might they have gone? What might they do next? They were all very forthcoming but for the most part none of them could answer our questions with any certainty. One interesting fact came from a conversation with the oldest of the women, Sybil, who had three young children from three different men. She said that Earl himself had not fathered any of the children.

“He blamed me, but when you force yourself on so many women and still, no children, you need to take a closer look at yourself.”

“He’s always thought of himself as the Alpha male.” I responded. I had a flashback to the time I stumbled upon his journal. He spoke of destroying the homosexuals, and those unable (or unwilling) to have children. He saw repopulating the planet as every person’s duty. Yet here he had proven he could not have children of his own.

The woman who had freed Earl had been young, and probably quite taken with her leader. Just seventeen, Mary blindly followed him in everything. Earl would have thought he’d have his best chance to conceive with the youngest of them, and so kept Mary in his own tent. His control over her had led to his escape, and so the most I could hope, is that we never saw him again.

*****

I took Leif to the greenhouse the day following my encounter with Blank Man. Leif had taken an interest in nature, and studied one plant in particular. He would go daily to watch this plant develop from a seedling to a towering tree. With each new development his amazement never ceased to amuse me. But on this day, I brought him there hoping we could talk. The greenhouse was humid inside, no matter what the season. The smell of pine permeated the place, washing away the distinctively chemical smell of the outdoors. Next to the barn animals, this place most inspired him. We walked through the aisles, pine needles and dried leaves from the fruit trees that lined the concrete floor pad crunching underfoot.

The army Chaplain, and our full time botanist, was a tall man of African descent. He wore army issue glasses, a buzz cut and always dressed with his collar exposed, making him readily recognizable as a man of the cloth. We’d shared a few brief conversations over the course of my occupancy at the base.

The saplings had taken off during the last six years, and upon entering the greenhouse one was reminded of the indigenous forests that once populated the local landscape. The man-made ponds that acted as fisheries bred trout, bass and also feeder fish like minnows. The idea was that the Chaplain and his team would tag the fish and place them in Elle Lake, which was a mere stone’s throw from the base. This process was repeated time and again in a netted area roughly ten thousand square feet along the lake’s southern shores. This area was under heavy guard to prevent poaching. The objective was to have the fish repopulate the lifeless lake. The experiment worked, as the fish adjusted quickly to the lake water, feeding off the abundant fly population that bred along the shores in the dead fish the Chaplain’s team had placed for that very reason.

We found the Chaplain at one of the fish ponds, where Leif snatched up a shell from the rock wall.

“What are these?” I asked, pulling it from Leif’s hand.

“Zebra mussels,” the Chaplain replied. “They multiply like rabbits and eat all the toxins out of a fresh water lake. They number in the thousands in Elle Lake now, feeding along the lake bed, scooping up all the nasty goo that has collected there, suffocating the soil.” He knelt down beside Leif as he explained the process, his palms clapping together as he demonstrated the mussels at work. Leif got a kick out of it.

“Sounds cool.” Leif was truly fascinated.

“I’m excited about it,” he agreed and stood up, patting Leif lightly on his head. “We’re also considering planting a few of the hardier pines next month beyond the family housing buildings and maybe even the apple trees.”

“Wow,” I mused. “You were really prepared for the worst weren’t you?” I shook my head in awe of the planning that would have gone into this place. Hundreds of indigenous seeds stored, hundreds of plants in seedling form, fish eggs, animals to breed, birds of a dozen different varieties, a bee hive. There wasn’t much they’d missed. This base was like Noah’s ark.

“It’s a testament to man’s understanding of his environment. Of course, if the earth rejects our efforts, it was all for not.”

“Are you nervous about the planting?”

“Yes, of course, but I am also very encouraged. I believe life will find its footing again.” He pointed down to where an ant hill had formed in a crack in the cement. “Look at that. Have you ever seen an ant, Leif?” he asked kneeling down again with my son for a closer look, careful not to disturb the colony.

“I’ve seen pictures,” Leif said, bright-eyed. “Look at them all, Mom. Look.”

I knelt down beside him. “Aren’t they amazing, Leif? Did you know they can lift 10 times their own body weight?”

“Ten times! Wow.” He was mesmerized by their movements. Each step taken with a clear purpose of survival.

“I’ve been feeding them since I first discovered the colony,” he admitted, smiling ear to ear. “This is just another example of life reclaiming what it had temporarily lost. God’s creatures. Resilient, aren’t we?”

I smiled tight-lipped up at him and stood. “You must have a pretty interesting opinion on what’s happened, Chaplain.”

“Must I?”

“Mustn’t you? Isn’t this the end time? Haven’t we been living through the Apocalypse these past nine years?”

“As a man of God, I can say with conviction that the end of the age was prophesized. And an ending of sorts did occur.”

“And what about Jesus?”

“What about Him?” He moved to the raised pond and shook a can of fish food over the water.

“Well, I guess what I mean is, where is He?”

“You’re referring to the Second Coming.” His tone became tighter, like he’d been asked the question a thousand times. I moved closer to him while Leif remained behind, fascinated by the six legged insects.

“That’s the big one, isn’t it? Where is He?” He placed the fish food down, picked up a towel, wiped his hands and turned to face me. “Why hasn’t He come to rebuild His kingdom? When will the thousand years of peace begin?”

“Exactly.”

“I’ll tell you what I’ve told those that attend my sermons. That I can only quote the Bible, Sara, I do not presume to understand God’s plan, only to have faith in His divine will.”

“No offence, Chaplain, but, isn’t that a bit of a cop-out?” I flicked at the water abruptly with my fingers, frightening the dozens of fish into the far corner.

“Faith is a paradoxical thing isn’t it, Sara? You suffer an experience, or a vision, or a miracle, however you’d like to categorize it, and you find faith. Look at me. I was a botanist for many years before I was called into the service of the Lord. I studied plants, right down to the atomic level, and do you know what I found?”

“No.”

“God, Sara. I found God in those perfect, intelligently designed life forms. And imagine, if I could find God in a plant, God must be everywhere, in everything. I was blessed with new vision, to see God in all things. But just because my faith was secured, doesn’t make it make sense to someone else. We all must experience our own epiphany.”

I shifted my weight from one leg to the other. “I understand faith. I do. But Revelations spoke of this time, did it not? Isn’t this the end?”

His bottom lip curled. “I guess not.” He walked past me toward the vegetable garden and I followed, warning Leif not to move from his current fixation.

“So why destroy the earth if you’re not going to start anew?”

“I’m not saying an ending didn’t occur. But as for Armageddon… well, how could it be? Jesus has not revealed Himself to us.” He turned again to address me. “According to Scripture, a great battle between good and evil must still take place. From what we know, evil struck the planet nine years ago. Perhaps in those nine years Satan has been recruiting his army while God has been preparing His.”

“You think there will be more?” I shuddered at the thought. “You think this hasn’t been enough?” I was becoming visibly shaken. “Chaplain, how much more can we take?”

“God gives us strength, Sara. Take comfort in that, and in your son.” He’d noticed my composure had taken a turn. His hands on my shoulders felt reassuring, but nothing would remove the fear I felt in another end, worse than the one we’d just lived through, were living through. My faith in something greater, something that was leading us to some kind of salvation was shaken to the core. 

Chapter Forty Nine

Ten days after my discussion with the Chaplain at the greenhouse, I walked through the halls en route to the mess hall. I was late to meet Leif for a movie.

The hall was sparsely populated with late afternoon movie goers and filled with the aroma of pop corn. I noticed that the feature would begin shortly as I scanned the building for my son.

Having spotted him I walked to where Leif was standing, staring out the window at the rain as it punched into the earth, his palms flat against the glass and his forehead pressed against the back of his hands. The rains had been relentless for three days and didn’t show any signs of retreat. Leif was becoming despondent, aching to go outdoors. Any drawn-out duration of rain like that sent my heart plummeting to my stomach, reminding me of the first few months after the bombs fell. Sometimes I wondered how any of us survived it: that claustrophobic feeling you get when you feel caged in, the sameness of the day to day, same people, same problems, same solutions. Gil hadn’t survived it. I forced the memories from my head and focused again on Leif.

To think that my son would ever have to know such sadness produced a lump in my throat. Still, those days were behind me. I had every confidence the sun would shine again as it had after every heavy storm during the past nine years. I put a hand on Leif’s shoulder and squeezed. He tore his gaze away from the window and looked up at me. I offered a comforting smile and he returned the gesture.

“It won’t last forever, Leif,” I assured him.

“I know, but I want to kick the ball around.” His face sank.

I knelt down in front of him and he turned to face me. “Hey, why don’t we use this time to do something together, just you and me?” I suggested.

“Like what?”

“Well, we could play a game.” My mind raced to think of ways to entertain him. Then something pinched my leg in my jean pocket. Remembering the contents - I realized it offered the perfect solution. “For instance, have you ever played the game… pendulum?”

“Pendulum?” He’d probably never heard the word before. I inched the delicate silver chain from my pocket and let the heavy ring threaded through the chain fall from my palm. The chain fell taut, stopping eight inches from my hand, wrapped around my index finger.

Leif’s little hands reached for the pendulum, a gift from my witches. It was one of my prized possessions, bringing me back to that feeling of having some control over my own destiny. He rubbed the silver chain carefully between his thumb and forefingers, moving down to the ring that dangled at the end.

“This is a pen-du-lum?” he asked, still transfixed by the shiny metal.

“Yup, well, it’s a kind of pendulum.”

“What does it do?”

“It can answer questions.” This seemed like the easiest way to give Leif a sense of what would be asked of him in the future. If he felt he could control something like this with his mind, maybe he would believe that in all things.

I watched as confusion entered his eyes, forcing up his thick eyebrows.