“How long has it been since you had a proper vacation, Mom?”

Both my parents looked up at me, my mother totally taken by surprise. My father’s expression was a little more guarded.

“A while,” she said with a little chuckle.

“A year ago. We went to Florida.”

“That was two years ago,” I reminded my father.

“Oh. I guess it was.”

“Don’t you think she deserves a vacation?” I studied my mother for a moment, realizing that she really did look particularly tired. “She does a lot around here, taking care of the two of us.”

“She’s fine.”

My father turned up the sound on the television, signaling the end of the conversation. But I wasn’t done.

“How about a trip to Albuquerque, Mom? You could do some shopping, maybe see a few movies. You haven’t done that in a while.”

“By myself. I don’t know, Matthew.”

“It’ll be fun. I hear they have a pretty nice spa over that way, too. Some sort of springs.”

“Your mother’s fine right where she’s at,” Father announced, killing the light that had popped into her eyes.

“I don’t know,” I said, pulling a folded piece of paper from my pocket and sliding it toward my father while my mother turned to the sink, beginning the water for the dirty dishes. “She deserves a break.”

My father’s eyebrows rose as he noticed the paper. He glanced around the room, concentrating on the air vents, making me wonder if he knew about the bugs. He opened the note, his eyes widening at the sight of one of those photographs I’d found hidden in his desk drawer. Underneath, on the paper, I’d written:

Ruth is going to Memphis. Mother will be safe there, too.

His eyes narrowed as they rose to meet mine.

“Albuquerque is nice this time of year.”

My father slid the note and the photograph into his pants pocket as he stood. I watched with something like bated breath as he approached my mother. Doing something I hadn’t seen in years, my father slipped his arms around my mother’s shoulders and pulled her back against him.

“Maybe a little shopping trip wouldn’t be a bad idea. We could use some new drapes for the bedroom.”

My mother sighed heavily, the relief clear in her voice. “It would be nice.”

“I’ll arrange it, then. You can leave tonight.”

 

 

The Guardians gathered that night in an old farmhouse off the highway. I stood toward the back of the crowd, leaning against a forgotten tractor that was more a rusted heap of old metal than anything else now. Tucker was a few yards in front of me, standing on a low platform someone had set up for him. He was looking over the crowd, taking note of those paying attention to him and those more involved in their own conversations than the meeting about to commence. And then his eyes fell on me.

There was glee in those eyes that chilled every inch of my body even in the warm fall air.

“Gentlemen, if we could come to order!”

The group turned to him, settling down as the moment they’d all gathered to see arrived.

“As you know, we’ve come to a new point in our line of evolution. We were brought together by Brother Gerald in order to protect this town, to protect our church from outsiders who threatened to corrupt the souls of our congregation. Under his direction, we rid this town of the teen hoodlums who made travel in the south part of town impossible after dark. Under his direction, we rid this town of criminals who vandalized our businesses and destroyed our personal property.”

A cheer when up.

Tucker smiled, holding up a hand to calm them. “Under Brother Gerald, we began a campaign to rid the town of businesses that do not fit our standards of living. We sent the bars where women took off their tops and men ogled their naked bodies, packing. We rid the town of the gun shop where the owner was less than diligent about the people he chose to sell his guns to. And we slowed the business of a sex shop that sold items of degradation to our church members.”

People around me were nodding, clapping, cheering these words. In my mind, however, I was remembering the accident that killed that gun shop owner, the harassment that nearly took the life of his friend, Alli Sullivan, Crispin’s wife.

They were cheering criminal activity that Tucker was spinning into something that it wasn’t. He made it sound like charity work. What it was, was murder.

“After Brother Gerald’s unfortunate arrest, the Guardians were lost for several months. But then Brother Briggs came along and pulled us back together. Briggs showed us that there was still work to be done. He brought the mercenaries to town who taught us self defense tactics, who taught us how to face the Stone Security operatives without fear. He put a virus on their computer so that we could learn about their methods, learn what we needed to know about them to take them down. Thanks to Brother Briggs, we are days away from sending Jack Stone and his people packing for good.”

A wild cheer went up at that.

“And now…we are so close to our ultimate goal, brothers!”

Another wild cheer.

I looked around the big, open field at faces I’d known for all my life. These people were cheering for mayhem, for all the things the Bible taught us were wrong. They were cheering for a murderer! If they only knew…but maybe they did. Maybe I was the one who was too naive to understand that these people knew exactly what they were doing here.

“We are gathered here in this field so that you may witness the delivery of the weapons that we will use to rid this town, once and for all, of the unwanted elements that have drifted through our open gates. It is time for us to protect our own, to keep our congregation safe from outside influence.” He lifted his arms, diving deep into preacher mode. “We have been persecuted from the beginning of time. Christians were hunted by pagans, hated by rulers, persecuted for their unwavering beliefs in God. Children were stoned in the streets, mothers burned alive in front of their husbands and children. Fathers were drawn and quartered. And even when those times were past, when the world became more sophisticated in its beliefs, we were still persecuted because we refused to worship a Scripture that had become warped and twisted in the hands of mortal man!”

He looked out over his audience, his hands still raised in the air. “We were murdered in the streets, our children ripped from our homes, our men persecuted for imagined crimes in courts we didn’t believe in! But no more! We won’t be persecuted anymore. Now we stand and fight!”

The crowd screamed with excitement.

“Tonight is the beginning of the end of those days. We will no longer be afraid. We will no longer be told our beliefs are wrong or immoral! We will no longer allow outsiders to invade our homes, our communities, and spit on our beliefs!”

It was wild, the way the people around me responded. They screamed and yelled, acting like teenagers at a rock concert. If I closed my eyes, I might imagine myself at a USO event. But this wasn’t entertainment meant to take a soldier’s mind off of what was happening around him. This was a nightmare.

It was true, people in our church had been persecuted. In modern times, too. I had a friend in the Army of the same religion. He told me that people he grew up with, people he’d gone to school with, left ugly notes and dog feces on his door after he converted. And his story wasn’t the only one I’d ever heard. Friends talked about keeping their religious affiliation to themselves when they went to college because of misinformation that led to uncomfortable questions and harassment not unlike what had happened to my Army buddy.

It was a cruel world. I didn’t disagree with that conclusion. But it didn’t mean that people who didn’t like our religion, people who might not understand us or agree with our beliefs, deserved to die.

These people couldn’t really believe that, could they?

But I was afraid they did.

“Tonight we change the world!” Tucker announced as a large truck came barreling down the narrow lane into the field. It pulled right up to the altar where Tucker stood, two men getting out and flipping down the tailgate. As I watched, crates filled with assault rifles were lifted out of the truck and moved into the crowd, where men rushed to grab their own.

Assault rifles? What the hell was Tucker planning?

“Here, brother,” Shane Wilkins, a former football teammate, said, handing me a gun of my own.

I held it in my hands, my muscles remembering its weight and shape. I’d had one very similar to this when I was in the Army. I knew how to use this weapon. Worse still, I knew what kind of damage this gun could do to the human body. It was something I wasn’t sure most of the men around me could truly appreciate.

“What do you think?”

I turned to find Tucker had come into the crowd and was standing beside me.

“Impressive.”

He smiled. “Our benefactor did quite a job finding these beauties for us. And there’s plenty more across town, waiting for the rest of the brothers to claim.”

“Rest of the brothers?”

“Some of our out-of-town brothers are coming to town to help with the purge. That’s what we’re calling it, the purge.”

“Appropriate.”

Tucker slapped me on the shoulder—a lot of people had been doing that lately—and moved close so that only I could hear his next words.

“I find it curious that both your sister and mother decided to go out of town this week. Was that your doing?”

“I haven’t seen my sister in weeks.”

“Yes, but your mother…”

“I only suggested that she looked like she needed a vacation. My father agreed with me.”

He nodded, a knowing look in his eyes. “Just so you know that we can still get to them if we feel it is necessary. Memphis is not such a long drive. Neither is Albuquerque. Maybe your friend’s girl, Malaika Gray, could help us find our way. She is from that area, is she not?”

“I wouldn’t know. Quentin is no longer my friend.”

Tucker studied my face. I was convinced he could see the shaking that was tearing my soul apart, could see the fear that I was trying to bury under layers and layers of fake calm. The words, he knew, kept playing over and over in my head, bouncing around until I thought I might scream.

He knew!!!

But then Tucker backed off.

“If you wouldn’t mind taking a handful of men to the side of the barn over there,” he said, pointing. “We’ve set up a little practice area. I’d like you to show those who don’t know how, the ins and outs of using these guns.”

“Yes, sir.”

I watched him walk away, flipping off the safety on the gun and thinking very seriously about pointing it toward the back of his head. I knew I wouldn’t get away with it, not in this crowd. But, for an instant, I thought it might be worth it.

Instead, I did as I was told, speaking to a few of the guys around me, telling them I could show them how to fire the weapons. About a dozen guys followed me to the back of the barn, where there were, indeed, a couple of targets hung up.

I was teaching these people to murder.

How the hell had I gotten here?