Children of the Earth (24 page)

Their chant drowned out her cries.

God of Earth, come
what might,

Overtake
the world tonight.

Eunice looked up at Luna, her face like a dying star hurtling through the galaxy, full of fire and hope and the last bright vestiges of life. Then she went dark, and through gaps in the spinning bodies Daphne watched the old lady crumple to the ground.

Pandemonium broke out on top of the hill, the Children of God screaming at each other to get out of the way so they could shoot, as Luna knelt beside Eunice and drew the dagger from her thigh holster, pricking the old woman’s finger and using the blood to trace a teardrop on her forehead. Seeing this, the Children of the Earth broke apart and fell to their knees, drumming their hands on the earth in a rhythm like fire crackling and buffalo stampeding.

“You killed her!” Daphne shrieked, just as the first shot rang out and ricocheted wildly through the valley, missing the Children of the Earth by several yards.

The earth shook again, pitching her forward. There was a deafening crack like thunder beneath her feet, and from up on the hill she heard the terrified screams of the congregation fill the air.

“The ground is opening!” someone hollered. She turned to look, and sure enough a crack had formed in the earth. Within moments it widened from a hairline fracture to a gaping wound. She stumbled backward, away from it, the ground still pitching and rolling under her until she lost her balance and fell onto one of the bodies beating the earth, into the achingly familiar scent of soap and motor oil.

• • •

Owen grunted under the sudden weight. Silas had kept a firm grip on him as the ritual began, yanking him around the circle as his feet scrambled for purchase on the ground, but then Luna’s blue light burned out every other thought in his head, and he found himself caught up in the power of the chant, pounding his fists on the earth until it shook on its axis and he forgot his reluctance, forgot the pain in his lungs, forgot everything but his destiny. In the heat of the ritual he could feel the God of the Earth rising, a presence vast and heavy that flowed through Owen’s veins like smoke. Now he was eager to see his one true father—not whatever dirty hippie had impregnated his mother, but his
real
father, the father of them all: the God of the Earth.

The body rolled off of his and lay panting in the dirt, a tangle of dark hair and slim, muscular legs.

“Daphne.” Her name broke through the chant and escaped his lips like a puff of steam. It jogged something in the back of his mind and cut the roiling rage and ecstasy the ritual had awakened. He reached down and grasped her, pulling her to her feet. Her arms were warm, making him ache for something he had almost forgotten.

“He has her!” The cry came like the scream of a hawk down the hill. Owen looked up to see Pastor Ted charging them, his suit jacket flapping in the wind, stumbling over the rippling earth. He stopped in front of the widening fissure, fear creasing his face as he stood shaking his fists.

A phalanx of youth group militia flanked him, guns raised.

“He’s going to do to her what they did to Eunice!” Pastor Ted’s scream was high-pitched and agonized as he shouted instructions to his army. “Take him down! Save our prophet!”

“No!” Daphne leapt to her feet, waving her arms. “He’s just—”

Before she could finish, Owen heard the click of a trigger and felt the heat of a metal bullet.

He saw it coming in slow motion, a silver sphere revolving in lazy circles against the blood-red sky. He saw the way it changed the air around it, currents tumbling away in elegant curls. He saw the shooter’s eyes widen in horror as she realized where the bullet was headed, and in slow motion he saw Pastor Ted’s mouth flap open and Daphne drop to the ground, arms over her head.

Owen felt his mind clear and his eyes blaze green as he dove in front of Daphne, into the gunshot’s path. He stared down the bullet, and in his mind he stretched the fabric of space and time, bending the air between them and forcing the bullet’s trajectory just a little to the left.

Just a little more.

He trembled with the effort, his eyes glowing painfully hot, sweat pouring down his neck and soaking the collar of his shirt.

The bullet hovered, currents of atmosphere twisting around it like a waterfall. Owen squeezed a hot rush of breath through his lungs and felt every ounce of concentration explode out of him, smacking the bullet so that it grazed his shoulder, leaving a dazzling sear of pain on his clavicle before speeding away into the church parking lot.

From the corner of his eye, he saw Daphne climb slowly to her feet. He had saved her life, and he’d saved himself, too. But he could sense that the worst was still to come.

• • •

Tears streamed from Doug’s eyes as he peeled into the church parking lot. He left his truck idling in a no-parking zone, not even bothering to shut the door as he half-ran, half-staggered toward the sparkling white building with the steeple that scraped the sky.

It was his wife’s funeral, goddammit, and his asshole parents had tried to make him miss it. They said it wasn’t safe for him to be out in his condition, but he knew the truth: Ol’ Vince Varley didn’t want folks seeing his son cry in public. He was a Varley man, and Varley men were supposed to be tough.

But Doug didn’t care what they thought anymore. His dad was down at the rig, drilling deep enough to hit that fault line and making the whole town shake, and when his mom took her eyes off of him long enough to go to the bathroom Doug grabbed the car keys and ran. He’d be late, he figured, but at least he’d get to see his wife’s face one more time before they put her in the ground. At least he’d get to say goodbye.

He saw the people gathered on the lawn and ran faster, trying to conjure up the old Doug from his halfback days as the ground quaked just like Dwayne had warned it would, making it feel like he was running across the surface of a trampoline. The funeral procession must have started already, and he
had
to get there before they lowered Janie into the ground.

But as he got closer, his eyes narrowed in confusion. Something was going on in front of the church, something that looked more like a standoff than a funeral. There was a crater in the earth that he could have sworn hadn’t been there before, and the Children of the Earth were on one side of it, on their knees in some kind of circle like they were praying or something.

On the other side of the crack, standing so close that his toes were practically over the edge, Pastor Ted raised his arms to the sky. But he didn’t look like he was talking to God—he looked angry. And instead of wearing black and holding flowers, the people surrounding him wore head-to-toe camo and carried guns.

Doug ran, ignoring his confusion and the stitch of pain growing in his side until it exploded suddenly, hot and sharp. He clutched his chest, gasping, but he didn’t think to look down until the pain forced him to his knees.

He glanced at his chest then and saw thick red liquid seeping out from around his fingers, a carnation of blood on the front of his shirt.

Did I seriously
just get fucking sh
ot?
Doug asked himself before falling face-first onto the ground.

• • •

Daphne heard the whoosh of the bullet change direction and staggered to her feet just in time to see Doug fall, blood gushing from his wound. She tore off her jacket and ran to him, stumbling as the earth pitched with another series of tremors. She half-sat, half-fell beside him, pressing the balled-up fabric against his chest.

“Call an ambulance!” she screamed, trying to staunch the blood. From the top of the hill she heard snatches of the congregation conferring, someone arguing that the paramedics were all out in the hills with the firefighters. “Just do it!” she screamed.

But Doug shook his head.

“Don’t bother.” His eyes were foggy, his voice laced with pain. “It’s in my heart. I’m going to die.”

“Don’t say that.” She shook her head, wiping sweat from his brow and pressing the soaked jacket tighter against his chest. “You’ll make it, Doug. Just hang in there.”

His face twisted. “I don’t even want to,” he croaked. “All I can think about is Janie. If there’s an afterlife or whatever, maybe I can find her and . . . and make it up to her somehow.”

He winced as a fresh spurt of blood trickled down his side. “Maybe, like, our son is there, and we can be a family for real.”

The ground heaved. Daphne grasped his shoulders, steadying them both. The smell of sulfur filled the air, and the sky darkened to the color of blackbirds’ wings.

“Daphne.” A white film was spreading over Doug’s eyes. “You have to stop my dad. All these earthquakes are probably his fault.”

“Vince?” Daphne’s forehead creased.

“Yeah.” Doug could barely choke out his next words. “He’s drilling . . . this pipeline and hitting . . . a fault. It’s deep, Daph. Too . . . deep.”

He fell back, panting. The film over his eyes was thick as cobwebs, and then his breathing slowed. Two labored gasps later, his hand went limp in hers.

Daphne looked down at him, at his eyes staring up into nothingness, the tears drying slowly on his face. He had only just turned into someone tolerable, someone she could actually stand, and now he was gone.

“I hope you’re right,” she murmured, gently shutting his eyes. “I hope you and Janie and Jeremiah really can be together again.”

A fusillade of shots rang out behind her, and she threw herself to the ground. At the sound of guns reloading, she peeked out from between her fingers and confirmed what she’d already suspected: The guns weren’t aimed at her. The youth group shouted instructions as they tried to take down the Children of the Earth, firing a fresh round of ammunition that filled the lawn in front of the church with the acrid stink of gun smoke. Owen stood facing the hailstorm of bullets, green beams of energy shooting from his eyes as he deflected one round after another, protecting the Children of the Earth. Some of the bullets dropped to the ground at his feet like discarded cherry stones while others ricocheted back to the youth group at full speed.

Daphne heard a shout of agony and saw a woman from the congregation fall, clutching her shoulder. She’d caught one of Owen’s deflected bullets; the more the youth group shot at him, the more there would be.

She screamed for a ceasefire, but her voice was lost beneath the chanting and the gunshots and the grinding of the earth’s plates below her feet. She had to get closer to the Children of God, to make them hear her, but it would mean circling the parking lot and approaching them from behind. It was the only way to circumvent the crack and the war zone of bullets filling the air with gunpowder and metal. She began to run.

God
of Earth, open wide
.

Release the power
deep inside!

The chant spread like a storm, and the crack in the earth lengthened, blocking her way. The tremors had widened it to the size of a six-lane highway, creating a sinkhole in the concrete. She gasped as someone’s Volvo tumbled into the abyss, its car alarm bleating in useless protest.

There was no way to tell how deep the crack went, only that its sheer rock walls extended further down than she could see. It divided her from the church, from Floyd and Karen and Pastor Ted, from the Children of God. Across the fissure the youth group stood in formation, guns still raised, eyes wide and mouths agog. Behind them, near the entrance to the church, the rest of the congregation huddled in a shivering mass, her aunt and uncle among them. Pastor Ted rushed back and forth from his flock to the front lines, eyes bulging above crimson cheeks as he exhorted the congregation to pray their hearts out, to pray as hard as they could, for the End Times were truly at hand.

But on Daphne’s side of the crevasse, there was only herself and Doug’s corpse and the Children of the Earth.

It was an image she’d seen before, a picture that had already seared itself into her memory. There was a great crack in the earth and a great battle raging before her—and she was on the wrong side.

Her second vision had come true.

30

THE CHILDREN O
F THE EARTH
bounded to their feet, cawing in delight as the crack widened, putting ever more distance between Daphne and the Children of God. Seeing her there, Pastor Ted screamed a command to the gunmen.

“Don’t shoot!” he hollered, his voice carrying across the divide. “Our prophet’s still there!”

A geyser of jaundiced steam poured from the crevasse, obscuring his face. It wrapped foul-smelling tentacles around Daphne’s legs and steeped her hair in a primordial stench of rotten eggs and decay. As she brought her hand to her mouth she felt molten liquid slosh from the crack and scald the tops of her feet. She yelped and leapt back, leaving a slick black pool where she’d been standing.

Daphne wiped a viscous streak from her eye and stepped forward. A hissing sound came from within the fissure, trying to warn her back, and the stink made her gag reflex leap in her throat. But she needed to know what was in there, what they were up against. Holding her breath against the stench, she leaned forward and peeked inside.

A river of burbling lava filled the chasm. It bubbled and eddied, moving slow as mercury, blazing with molten igneous pustules. Black bubbles stretched across the surface, belching and sputtering before bursting into fireworks of hot tar.

Daphne watched, fascinated, as a single, scaly tentacle rose from the muck. Thick and muscular as a boa constrictor, it felt its way along the sheer rock wall before dropping below the surface in a chorus of slurping and gnashing sounds.

God of Earth,
and minions, too,

Ri
se and let us worshi
p you!

The chant throbbed in her head as a red-veined eye the size of a softball peeked up from the river of ooze. It disappeared, only to be replaced by the slimy, silver tip of a fin.

These were the minions, Daphne realized with nauseous shock. They had been shadows in her vision, but the Children of the Earth had coaxed them from the depths with their chanting. Now they were perilously close to walking the earth, and Daphne was powerless to stop them. It was only a matter of time before they got their bearings and made their way to land.

Behind her, the Children of the Earth kept chanting. She could no longer distinguish words, only the caterwauling of voices raised in ecstasy.

They surrounded her, clutching at her dress, breathing hot commands to join them, to succumb to them, to help them rouse the God of the Earth. Owen stood off to the side, hands on his knees, panting and gasping as he tried to catch his breath. He was dizzy from fending off the bullets with his mind, his lungs still clogged with smoke, and he barely noticed his brothers and sisters clawing at Daphne.

“Get off of me!” Daphne slapped their hands away, punching and kicking at the flailing tangle of limbs. She squinted against the incandescent green of their eyes until she found the person she was looking for, the person responsible for the chaos all around.

In the midst of the writhing mass of dancers, Luna stood perfectly still. She wore a scarlet robe with sleeves that brushed the ground, a band of pure gold circling her waist. Her hands were spread at her sides, and her head was thrown back, the pose of someone waiting to be taken. Bliss gleamed in her smile. Luna’s dreams were coming true, Daphne realized; all along, she’d wanted this war, this chaos. She’d worked even harder to make it happen than Daphne had to stop it.

“Why?” It was the only word Daphne could choke out, and it was a question she should have asked a long time ago, a question that might have prevented everything. “Why are you doing this? What do you want?”

Luna laughed bitterly, her teeth glinting. “To save the earth. This is my father’s planet, and we’ve let everyone destroy it for too long. Now it’s time to listen.”

It’s time to listen.

The words stuck like a dagger. Luna had listened: She knew exactly how to reach her God, exactly how to fulfill his plan. She had gathered his children, opened the Vein, even killed people to please him. She had never questioned. Unlike Daphne, her mind had never been plagued by doubt.

Luna fixed her with a faux-sympathetic smile. “I thought you were supposed to be a prophet, Daphne? Where is your God?”

Daphne had no reply. Because Luna was right: She hadn’t listened to the signs. She was supposed to be a prophet, a leader––but behind her, yet another corpse lay cold on the ground, and her God was nowhere to be seen. She’d hesitated and second-guessed and waited, and now it was too late.

It’s time to l
isten.

Luna’s laugh was rich and throaty as tarnished pewter.

“It’s too bad your God never showed up, Daphne.” Luna was looking past her now, beyond her shoulder at the fissure in the earth. “Because mine did. In fact, here he comes now.”

• • •

Owen felt a thrill course through him as the earth shook, its plates separating with a deafening crack as the fissure split into a gaping canyon. A pillar of molten fire exploded from within, brighter than the sun and twice as angry. It grew until it overshadowed the church’s steeple. It reached the top of the mountains and then towered above them, higher than the highest skyscraper, so tall it seared black streaks into the stratosphere.

It pulsed red anger and white-hot light, so bright that Owen felt his pupils contract and saw dark sparks float behind his eyes. But he couldn’t look away, and he didn’t want to. This was his true father, the father of them all. This was the voice from his dreams and the force that had drawn him to Carbon County, that had controlled his desires and destiny ever since his eighteenth birthday—ever since his birth.

His true father was here, and he was more terrifying and magnificent than Owen had imagined.

The flames bent and contorted like a dancer wracked with pain, then straightened toward the heavens, torching the sky. Within moments they started to spread outward, whirling and dipping across the landscape, and in the depths of the inferno a form began to emerge.

First it was the outline of a mountain, the whorls of flame describing rugged rock outcroppings and a snow-dusted top. Then it shifted again, mutating into a great white whale that dove toward the earth in a graceful arc. The whale blurred and faded, and now it was a massive oak, its branches stretching over their heads as leaves made of sparks and flame trembled in an imaginary breeze.

Owen found himself dropping to his knees along with the rest of the Children of the Earth. This god, their father, was so huge, so powerful—it made sense that they had followed his voice wherever it led them, that they had sacrificed lives at his command. It made sense, even though he knew in his heart that it wasn’t right.

Tears of joy shimmered in Luna’s eyes, and Owen realized that the apparition blazing before her was an exact replica of the tree tattooed on her back. It was like Luna had remembered it from a long-ago memory, or a dream, and knew that one day she would see it again.

• • •

It’s time to lis
ten.

Daphne had seen this pillar of fire before, in her visions. She’d seen it emerge and heard the screams that now echoed all around. She’d seen a pair of green eyes disappear into the open maw of the chasm before her as a dark figure spiraled downward to the center of the earth. She knew what the images
were
, but what did they
mean
? What was she supposed to do? What did God
want
her to do?

The fire shifted again, shaking off its leaves in clusters of sparks that started small fires in the grass. Flaming branches fused into a giant pair of arms, and the trunk split to become two legs, each ten stories tall. A flickering fireball expanded where the uppermost branches had been, and in the shimmering heat a nose appeared, then ears, then fire tendrils of hair that licked at the sky and scorched the blood-red clouds black.

The tree was becoming a giant man. A cavernous mouth sliced his head, and dozens of giant bats flew out, wingspans wide as an eagle’s. They swooped, screeching, over the Children of God. One parishioner, a newcomer to town who ducked just a moment too late, was scooped up in a pair of fur-covered feet and carried off into the mountains, his cries a pitiful echo.

The man of flames opened his eyes, and Daphne felt her body stiffen and her heart pound in her ears. Across the divide, the Children of God flung their hands over their eyes, sobbing for mercy.

The monster’s eyes were green and glowing, like those of the Children of the Earth. Within them, in vivid high definition, an endless parade of horrors played out. Forests were razed and children massacred, mountains of garbage grew into infinity and entire populations of fish flopped belly-up to the surface of polluted waters. Daphne saw cities choked with smog and rivers rank with chemicals, polar bears sliding off of melting ice caps and birds poisoned by fertilizers. And she saw gaping holes in the earth, scars across its surface that bled oil until they ran dry.

This, she realized, was the God of the Earth. He was here, just as Luna had promised he would be, to reap revenge for the destruction of the planet. And, just as Luna had predicted, Daphne’s God was nowhere to be found. She still didn’t know what He wanted of her, what she had to do to stop this insanity. All she knew was that, so far, she had failed.

She tried to focus on her visions, to put the pieces together as the God of the Earth raised a fiery leg high over their heads, emerging from the crevasse. Each footstep produced an earthquake of its own, sending shock waves across the ground and tossing the Children of God into the air like popcorn. He walked with slow determination, scanning the parishioners with his terrible green eyes, leaving smoldering bonfires wherever his feet landed.

“Satan is among us!” Pastor Ted dropped to his knees. “Kill him! Kill him before he destroys us all!”

The militia reloaded their weapons and advanced, filling the air with the echoing boom of gunshots, spraying the God of the Earth. The blasts would have left any human dead ten times over, but instead the bullets melted on contact, leaving wet streaks of silver running down his massive legs.

The God of the Earth threw back his head and roared, a noise that made the thundering gunshots sound like pennies dropped into a tin can. Daphne’s ears rang in protest, and she clamped her hands over them, but there was no drowning out his cries.

The air around him turned to steam, shifting and melting as he stopped before a row of gunmen, the youth army’s front lines. Visibly trembling, yet determined to stand their ground, they raised their guns—but before they could shoot he scooped a half dozen of them into a hand the size of an SUV.

Daphne caught the sickening aroma of charred flesh. She watched the youth army’s limbs blacken in his clutches, their hair turn to flaming haloes. Within seconds they were obliterated, the last of their cries dying into the scorched sky. He tossed their ashes aside, showering the heads of the living as he scanned the crowd for his next victim.

At his feet, standing no higher than the God of the Earth’s ankle, Pastor Ted was a purple mess of tears, the knees of his new suit charred from the burning grass. “God, save us!” he begged, clasping his hands in prayer. “Deliver us from this evil and bring your Rapture down upon us now, that we may be saved and live in eternal glory in thy name!”

The congregation followed, falling to their knees as another tremor convulsed the earth. They pleaded with God for a miracle, for deliverance, begged Him to come back and fulfill His promise to lead them to freedom.

Uncle Floyd’s voice boomed out over their prayers. “Don’t be stupid!” He ran from one praying parishioner to the next, trying to drag them to their feet. “God isn’t going to save us now. We have to save ourselves. Run for the parking lot and get in your cars! Drive away as fast as you can!”

Tears pricked Daphne’s eyes as she watched him try to round up the hysterical churchgoers. Even Uncle Floyd had abandoned his faith in God, just as Janie had before him. Daphne had always admired the Peytons’ faith, even if sometimes she had trouble sharing it. But now she had no choice: Skepticism had gotten her nowhere, and questioning hadn’t led to any answers. God had spoken to her. He had sent her visions. It was time to put her doubt aside and listen.

As the congregation ran in crazed circles, the God of the Earth raised a foot the size of the Peytons’ trailer and brought it down hard on a gray-haired couple clasping hands as they ran. They were squashed instantly, their bodies no more than outlines against the singed grass.

Thundering toward the church, the God of the Earth grasped its sloped roof and rocked the building like a child trying to loosen a tooth, shaking it on its foundation so that screams poured from its broken windows, the terrified cries of those trapped inside.

The roof began to glow scarlet with heat. As it started smoldering, the God of the Earth leaned forward and bit the steeple with massive fangs, yanking it from its roots and spitting it at the congregants still scrambling across the lawn. They leapt away as it arced from his mouth and landed point-down, the cross that had topped it so proudly now digging into the earth. The steeple incinerated instantly, oxygen rushing through its hollow core to fan the flames until they licked the sky with scarlet tongues.

Seconds later, the church ignited. The building, so new that the paint had barely dried on its walls, bloomed in a lotus of fire. Sparks and debris littered the air; Daphne watched as dozens of Bibles fluttered to the ground, pages flapping like a flock of pigeons.

She froze as the fire screamed its way to the church basement. It was only a matter of seconds until it reached the secret rooms below, until it caught the arsenal. And then . . .

“Duck!” she screamed, the wind carrying her voice over the divide. Bodies thudded to the ground on both sides of the chasm, and Daphne followed, protecting her head with her hands but unable to look away.

The underground arsenal exploded. A mushroom cloud of gunpowder, ammo, and broiling smoke engulfed the sky as bullets rained down in arcs of glittering silver. The earth seized from the explosion, shaking the ground in a series of epileptic spasms, and Daphne clutched at the grass, terrified of being pulled into the divide, her knuckles white and her fingernails bleeding into the dirt.