The Rapture of Omega (22 page)

They didn’t hear me—they couldn’t have—but the sound of my own cries empowered me to fight back at the reign of terror that held my body hostage. I stood up, strong now, as the men continued to hold the boy under the water. I began to walk toward the river, quickly breaking into a dead run. They saw me when I was about five feet from the bank. It was too late.

Their hands were occupied with holding the boy down, so I was able to fire four shots, striking both men and catapulting them backward. The other two were busy with the other children so, before they realized what was going on, I took aim and fired. I struck one of the men in the forehead, blowing the back of his head against the white tent. The children, still screaming, scattered. The other man lifted his AK-47, aimed it at me, and furiously jerked on the slide. He clearly had no idea how to use it. Regardless, I shot him twice in the chest.

I didn’t see the boy anymore. He was still underwater. Illeana had fled into the tent. My mind was broken into bits and pieces of what was real and what was not. As I wedged my gun into my belt, I heard Michael screaming from behind the white tents in the distance. I had no idea
how much time had passed when I sat frozen, unable to move. Nothing mattered right now except for saving the little boy.

Taking a deep breath, I dove into the river. It was deep; I dove hard and never touched the bottom, which was going to make it difficult to find him. I made my way underwater to the other side, feeling all around me, but finding nothing. As I came up for air, I heard Michael screaming again, this time closer. There was a helicopter above, its spotlight illuminating me in the river. The wind from its blades churned and chopped the water violently, making my situation much worse. I took a deeper breath and dove down again.

Where are you?
I frantically waved my arms about in the murky, dark waters, hoping to connect with the child. My lungs were on fire, screaming for air, and feeling as if they would burst. But I would not leave him in this water.

I began to feel light-headed and I knew I had been under entirely too long, when my hand brushed against the material of his robe. I grabbed it and pulled his body to mine, pushing off the river’s bottom. I prayed I would make it to the top before I passed out.

It felt like forever, but I finally broke through the surface, gasping for air. Still holding the child, I made my way up the riverbank and put him on the ground. Michael was there.

“Jesus! Cee, I thought you drowned! Are you okay?” he screamed over the noise of the helicopter.

I ignored him as I stared down at the body of the lifeless child. Knowing the chances were bleak, I straddled myself over him and started performing CPR. I was weak from the river, and found myself tiring quickly. As I gave him compressions and put air into his water-filled lungs,
I was unaware I was sobbing. Michael knelt down next to me and put his hand on my back.

“Cee, stop, he’s gone.”

“No! He’s not!”

I continued until I physically couldn’t go any further. Still straddling the little boy, I stopped, sobbing louder than before. Michael tried to put his arms around me but I shoved him away.

At that moment, I heard a small cough.

I looked down just in time to see the boy turn his head and spew the dark water from his lungs. He began screaming now, the most wonderful screams I had ever heard in my life. I slowly lifted him off the ground and held him as he laid his head on my shoulder. We cried together.

I now was able to comprehend what had happened while I was in the water. There were law enforcement personnel everywhere, something I clearly hadn’t noticed after coming out of the river and saving the little boy. Michael yelled at one of the uniformed officers to get an emergency medical technician to tend to the little boy. There were two EMTs gently pulling him off me within seconds. He didn’t want to let me go.

“Ma’am, we need to take him to the hospital as soon as possible,” one of the men said softly.

I nodded. “Go on, honey, these men aren’t going to hurt you, I promise.”

“I want Mommy! Mommy!” the boy cried.

After more sobs, he relented and was carried to a waiting ambulance. I had never felt more tired in my life. Soaking wet and covered in mud, I looked around me at the loss of life, thinking I must be in the grips of a nightmare. The human mind wasn’t made to absorb such a sight. All of these people were someone’s parents, children,
brothers or sisters, aunts or uncles. Again, I felt a horrific rage surge from within.

“Where is Illeana?” I sternly asked Michael.

“They’ve got her cuffed inside the tent. Cee, listen, you’ve been through a lot. Why don’t you—”

I ignored him and headed straight for the tent. Michael followed, pleading along the way. We had been past partners, we were lovers, and best friends; he knew me better than anybody. That said, he knew something was coming down between Illeana and me.

“Cee, think before you do something stupid—she’s not worth it!” he begged.

Hundreds of uniformed and plainclothes officers were around, covering bodies, tending to the children, and keeping the ever-growing media out. However, when I entered the tent and saw Illeana standing to the side, it grew immediately quiet. She was standing between two federal agents and had her hands cuffed behind her back. The instant she saw me, the sickening smile that I had grown to loathe began to spread across her face. I stood in front of her, inches away with a hardened stare.

“Well, hi there, Sergeant. Did you have a good swim?” she said calmly.

She must have known what was coming because her smile faded just as I threw the hardest punch I’d ever thrown—hitting her square in the face and knocking her backward. My hand was still sore from the punch I laid on Paula Terman, a punch that didn’t compare to this one. I was becoming a regular Muhammad Ali.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing? You can’t do that!” one of the agents yelled as he grabbed her to keep her from falling.

The blood from her nose poured down onto her white robe, splattering it in a sickening reminder of the blood
of others she had shed. Michael put his hand up to the agents, a silent order to let the assault go unnoticed. My hand began to instantly swell, but I no longer felt any pain.

“Take this piece of garbage and get her out of my face,” I ordered two federal agents.

Although shocked to be given an order from a local police sergeant, they conceded when Michael nodded at them. As they were escorting her from the tent, she turned ever so slightly and looked at me. Through the flowing blood, I saw her smile had returned.

After she had gone, I noticed a group of living adults that had been handcuffed and seated on the floor.

“Who are they?” I asked Michael, gripping my swollen hand.

“They’re members. They stayed in the tent and were going to kill themselves after the children. They didn’t go with the others in case those men you shot couldn’t handle drowning all those kids. Fuck, CeeCee! I heard you scream on the radio and heard the gunshots when I got here and thought I was too late.”

“Michael.” I felt the tears well up in my eyes again.

“C’mon, let’s go outside.” He put his arm around me.

We went to the side of the tent that was opposite the bodies. I had seen enough. I sat down on a large rock and Michael embraced me.

“I’m so tired,” I said quietly. “Michael, you can’t imagine what I saw. They were holding them under the water and I couldn’t save them all! It made me sick and I couldn’t…” My voice began to crack.

“Shh, it’s okay, baby.” He rubbed my shoulders. “CeeCee, these people were sick. They made a choice! If you stopped them today, they would have done it another day. But you did save those children!”

He stepped in front of me. “Listen, I have to supervise the scene here. Why don’t you rest here for a while, and I’ll find someone to take you home. You can give a statement tomorrow. God knows this is going to be an awful scene to process and clean up. I can only hope that storm passes us,” he said, referring to the rumbling in the sky.

“CeeCee! Are you okay?” Naomi asked breathlessly.

I hadn’t even noticed her approach us. Coop was with her, a look of shock on his face at the gruesome display of bodies and traumatized children.

“I’m okay. What are they going to do with the children?”

“First they’re going to have to find out who all of them are, which is going to be a chore in itself. Then, I really don’t know. This is a hell of a mess,” she mumbled.

I couldn’t help but wonder if she still felt guilty over her earlier decision to end the investigation. I hoped not. The thought that the bodies we’d found in the barn didn’t come close to being the worst of it made me shudder.

“How did you figure out they were back here, CeeCee?” Coop asked.

“Something Illeana said to me on the phone when we were in West Virginia. This whole time I thought I knew what the numbers on the wall meant, but she told me I hadn’t figured it out yet. I thought she truly believed in what she preached, about Eve’s coming and all, and how she kept saying they were preparing because it would be soon, and all that.” I reached up and pulled a clump of mud out of my hair. “She would have never just hidden out. She felt too strongly about the coming, and when Michael told me they were not in West Virginia, I noticed today’s date and it pretty much all came together.”

“8-24,” Coop announced. “I would’ve never figured it out. Fuck! This is unbelievable.”

“You saved that little boy,” Naomi said. “I looked in on him in the ambulance and I think, physically, he’s going to be okay. He’s beautiful.”

“To think that innocent child watched his parents die, knowing he was next. Imagine what he was going through,” I said.

“Don’t do that to yourself, CeeCee,” Michael said. “You can think about it until the end of time and you’ll only make yourself nuts. Most times we’ll never understand the reasons why, but we have to accept those reasons regardless.”

“Agent Hagerman, we need you over here,” a fellow agent called.

“I’ll be there in a minute!” He looked down at me. “You’ll be all right? Coop, can you take her home?”

“Of course we will,” Naomi answered for him.

As Michael walked away, I told them both I was perfectly capable of driving my car home. The only injury was my hand.

“How did you do that?” Naomi asked, inspecting the swelling balloon.

“I must’ve caught it between rocks when I was in the river,” I lied. “Right now, I want to see who those survivors are, and see if they’re talking.”

We walked into the tent where the group was still seated, guarded heavily by officers in uniform. Naomi asked the sergeant, Jim Keyes, if they’d said anything.

“Nope, not a thing, Captain. We can’t even get their names, let alone if any of the children belong to them. They just sit there and stare like a bunch of zombies.” He shook his head.

“If you can, let me know when you get them identified, Jim,” I requested.

“Sure, CeeCee. You okay?”

“I’m okay, thanks for asking,” I said, patting his arm before leaving the tent.

Naomi, Coop, and I stood quietly, staring at the sea of bodies that covered the clearing. It was surreal. In my opinion, none of them looked at peace. Death was marked on each of their faces, some with their eyes open, painting a disturbing portrait of their frame of mind when they took that first step into the river. Their heads rested on the feet of the members that died before them, and so on, forming the large circle.

For them, the Rapture of Omega had finally come.

The media helicopters hovered above, no doubt showing the rest of the nation the gruesome and final resting place of the cult members. I realized then that the children were no longer there.

“Where are all the children?” I asked Naomi, scanning the landscape.

“They took all of them up to the farmhouse. Every children’s services worker in the county is up there with about a dozen counselors, trying to calm the children down and find out who they are, and if they have any relatives. It’s a mess.” She rubbed her eyes.

I wanted to go up there. I thought if I saw the children again, knowing I had saved them, I’d feel a little better about the situation. As I started up the trail, I saw the sheriff talking to one of the federal agents at the opening of the tent. I gave him a slight wave; he nodded back.

Once I reached the front porch of the main house, I realized I had made a serious mistake. The screams and cries coming from inside told me that the children were just as hysterical as they’d been earlier, if not more. I found Lori near the front door. Her eyes were red and swollen; this night was taking its toll on everyone involved.

“How are you holding up?” I asked.

“Um, not great, as you can see,” she sniffed. “I’ve never in my life imagined anything as horrible as this. I can’t imagine what those children went through when they watched their parents die.”

She began to cry softly and reached into her purse to grab a tissue. I looked down the hallway into the prayer room, where the children had converged with the other caseworkers. I touched Lori’s arm and asked her if she would be okay. When she said she would, I went down to the room.

There wasn’t much room to walk around. With fifty children and twenty caseworkers, it was packed. The workers had separated the children into groups by age. The older children had seemingly calmed down, while the little ones were still hysterical. I walked over to a group of the youngest children and saw little Jack Martz huddled against another child, crying. I bent down and gently brushed his cheek.

“Hello there, Jack Martz. Do you remember me?” I said softly.

Hiccuping and rubbing his eyes while maintaining a grip on his friend, Jack looked up and nodded ever so slightly.

“You gave me the wose,” he said, barely audible.

“That’s right, I gave you the rose. My name is CeeCee,” I said slowly, calmly, and kept a warm, inviting look on my face. “Do you remember a long time ago, a little girl, just a baby, named Lola?”

The little boy Jack was holding on to perked up at this. His face lit up and he raised his head. “I do! I ’member Lola!”

“You do? Good. What about you, Jack Martz?”

He nodded, his tears appearing to lose their momentum. “I wember Lola, too.”

“Very good. I want to tell you a story about Lola. You know Lola’s mommy died, too. And she was very sad,” I began, and when Jack let go of his friend and crawled up on my lap, I certainly didn’t protest. “But then, Lola came home to live with me. She has two sisters, a brother, and a mommy and daddy who love her very, very much.”

“You Lola’s mommy now?” Jack asked.

“Yes, that’s right. And she’s very happy, just like all of you will be strong little boys, and will one day be happy again, like Lola.”

They were quiet for a few moments, drinking in what they could understand. I noticed the other children around me had quieted down a little, to listen to the story about Lola.

“Can you be my mommy, too?” Jack asked.

He caught me off guard. Knowing children as I do, I should have anticipated that question, but given my state of mind, I can’t say I was thinking all too clearly. I needed to be extremely careful when choosing my words. God knows if I could have taken them all home, I would have—but that simply was not an option.

“Oh, Jack, I would love to be your mommy, but there’s lots of other nice mommies out there, too! Some that would love you just as much, give you puppies and toys”—I tickled him slightly in the belly and he giggled—“and make you just as happy as Lola! But I’ll always be your friend. Okay?” I smiled wide.

Jack reciprocated. “Okay! When will I meet my new mommy?”

“How about if we all try to calm down and answer the nice lady’s questions for right now, and I’ll work on it. Deal?”

Jack and his friend nodded up and down furiously, tugging my heartstrings with a vengeance. An image
flashed through my head of Jack being carried to the river and drowned, and I almost had to physically shake my head back and forth to remove it. I suspected I would have a lot of those images in the coming weeks, and most likely months.

I stood up and lightly kissed the top of Jack’s head. “I’ll see you soon, Jack Martz.”

One of the women social workers mouthed a silent,
“Thank you,”
as I walked away. Scanning the crowd of children, I noticed something. When Lori had come back into the room I asked her about it.

“Lori, there were four children living in this cult that had fumarase deficiency. I don’t see them anywhere.”

“What’s fumarase deficiency?” She was visibly confused.

“It’s an extremely rare genetic disorder. The children have physical impairments, facial disfiguring, body deformations, and other things. Believe me, you couldn’t miss them. I don’t see them anywhere.”

“Let me check around.” She paused. “You don’t think they were…” She let her voice trail off, not wanting to admit the horrific possibility.

Unfortunately, I was thinking the same thing.