NEXT BEST HOPE (The Revelation Trilogy) (24 page)

Ushers handed the couple bulletins for the day’s service and suggested which aisle for them to use to find their seats. They handed out visitor cards and asked for the cards to be dropped in the offering plate so that someone from the church could visit them within the next few days. The couple filtered their way through the throng that began to fill the auditorium and took their seats four rows from the front in the center section.

The service began with music. In the choir loft, more than a hundred voices combined in praise. In the pit a conductor directed fifty instrumental musicians in the church orchestra. A blonde woman in a skin tight dress sang into the mike with her eyes closed, the hand not holding the mike lifted in the air with its palm raised towards the sky. When she finished singing, the crowd applauded, and a tall man with salt and pepper hair wearing a thousand-dollar suit motioned for the crowd to be seated.

He welcomed everyone to the service and made a few humorous remarks to set the congregation at ease. Then he turned the service back to the musicians who continued to warm up the crowd. After another twenty minutes, when the music had reached its crescendo, an older, gray-haired man appeared on the stage with a microphone in his hand. The decibel level of the music lowered dramatically, the lights dimmed as he walked to the front edge of the platform and began almost in a whisper to sing “In the Garden.” The crowd listened as he sang the verses and without prompting joined him on the chorus.

“
For he walks with me and he talks with me, and he tells me I am his own
,” they sang.

When he finished, a person could have heard a pin drop in the vast auditorium.

While the silence lay on the congregation like a warm blanket, a spotlight pierced the darkness as it shone on a man who knelt at the front steps of the stage in prayer. It was the man who had welcomed the crowd earlier. The light stayed on him for several minutes, the crowd hardly breathing, until he rose and walked to the pulpit that had risen from a trap door beneath the platform while he was praying.

Pastor Preston pirouetted in the pulpit.

His arms hung at his knees. He raised them slowly with his palms turned outward, and the lights came up in the room. At the same time, the crowd stood up.

“The Lord calls us to strike the enemy,” he began. “He will fight with us.”

People in the crowd began to cry; others clapped; some shouted hallelujahs.

“Let the people of the Lord stand and be counted,” he said.

When the noise died down, before Pastor Preston could resume his remarks, one of the couple stood to his feet. “I object,” he said at the top of his voice.

Members of the congregation stared at him. Nothing like that had ever happened in their church.

Pastor Preston ignored the outburst.

“I object,” the man said again, refusing to sit down.

Ushers made their way down the aisles and stood at each end of the row where the man and his companion sat.

Soon the whole crowd was aware of the disturbance.

“Can I not speak to the people of God?” the man said.

Pastor Preston stopped and stared at his first ever heckler.

“Identify yourself, sir,” he said.

“I’m Brother Billy Bright,” the man said. “We used to be members of the same ministerial alliance when I pastored the First Baptist Church in Kilgore. My friend here is Reverend DeShaun Moore, former pastor of the New Church of God in the Danville community.”

The ushers looked at Pastor Preston, awaiting his direction.

Preston thought for a second, and then his face softened.

“Of course, Brother Billy,” he said. “You may speak.”

Brother Billy sidled his way to the aisle, climbed the steps of the altar at the front of the auditorium and stood next to Pastor Preston, who hesitated a moment before he handed him the microphone. Their shoulders almost touched when Billy began to address the crowd.

“Brothers and sisters, the Lord can speak to each of you without the help of people like Pastor Preston and me. You must search your hearts to discover his way for you.”

Members of the audience scowled at him as he continued.

“The army of God is an army of love, not hatred,” he said. “If we want to follow Him, we must lay down our guns.”

Pastor Preston reached out and grabbed the microphone away from him.

“Thank you, Brother Billy,” he said. “You’ve had your say. Please take your seat and worship with us.”

Brother Billy tried to wrest the microphone back but Pastor Preston yanked it out of his grasp and nodded at the ushers. Two of them grabbed Brother Billy’s arms and began to haul him up the center aisle. Two others pointed at DeShaun, who stepped to the aisle and walked behind the others out of the auditorium.

The crowd watched the scene until the rear doors of the sanctuary closed behind the intruders.

When the ushers got Brother Billy to the outside steps, they pushed him hard. He tumbled down the steps, and DeShaun rushed to his side where he lay disheveled. Blood trickled out his nose.

“Go peddle your wares somewhere else, and don’t come back here,” one of the ushers said from the top step. “And take your queer nigger with you.”

DeShaun reached in his coat pocket for his .45-caliber pistol, but Billy grabbed his hand.

“It’s not worth it,” he said.

DeShaun helped Billy up, and the two men walked to the parking lot where they got in Billy’s Jeep, DeShaun behind the wheel. As they drove out onto the street, Brother Billy turned to DeShaun. “That went well, don’t you think?” he said.

DeShaun, still shaking from anger, looked at him for a minute and burst out laughing. “We need to teach you some manners, Brother Billy Bright,” he said.

BY THE TIME
Pastor Preston and other prominent ministers in New Israel stepped out of their pulpits on that first Sunday after the Battle of the Mississippi Bridge, they had kindled the fiery flames of war from the embers of discontent. In states that had tried to ride the fence, groundswells of support for secession snowballed into a rush to judgment.

Within three weeks, New Israel counted twelve former federal states as its own.

Expansion came not without sacrifice. Federal troops stood their ground at U.S. military bases, refusing to surrender the facilities. Firefights erupted and both sides lost soldiers in action. But the military strategy was defensive for the most part. Each side defended its turf, but didn’t seek to storm its neighbors’ battlements. Each awaited the other’s next move.

After a month and a half, New Israel and the U.S. settled into an uneasy informal truce.

For J. Franklin Westmoreland, this stalemate proved unacceptable.

“Partial conquest is no conquest at all,” he told Stanley in his freshly christened War Room. “I have been called to bring in God’s kingdom, not his neighborhood.”

Nussbaum waited for Frank to have his say and then went to his side.

“There is something I need to show you, my old friend,” he said. “Let’s take a little ride.”

Westmoreland consented and followed Stanley to the secure parking lot where Stanley walked to a Mustang convertible. He put the top down and opened Frank’s door on the front passenger side.

“Remember when we used to listen to Delbert McClinton?” Stanley asked.

“
I had a sky-blue rag top Mustang; it was a 1964
,” Frank sang. “
When Rita leaves, Rita’s gone.
”

They left the Baylor campus and trolled along the streets of downtown Waco. Shoppers walked the sidewalks and passed in and out of new boutiques. At an outdoor park, teenage boys played baseball while teenage girls giggled and watched. Where a crack-house motel used to be, construction equipment cleared the lot for a new public library.

It seemed as if each church they passed had recently experienced a facelift, a building program underway or repairs in progress.

Stanley turned down a residential street and drove slowly along the tree-lined lane. Old couples stopped on the sidewalk and waved when they saw Nussbaum’s car. A man just home from work washed his car with a garden hose, sang, and squirted his kids when they came within range.

After thirty minutes or so, Frank tired of the ride and asked Stanley where they were headed.

“We’re already here,” Stanley said. “I just wanted you to see what the Lord has already accomplished through your work. The community doesn’t live in fear. People have begun to leave their doors unlocked for the first time in a generation. The gangs that once patrolled these streets are no more. Grandmothers don’t worry about their babies dying in drive-by shootings.”

Westmoreland thought about what Stanley said.

“So what’s your point?” he asked.

“Our successes will spread when people around the world see what we have done,” he said. “We will take the world by example. The victory will be complete.”

“But it would take fifty years to convert society a little at a time,” Westmoreland said. “Why wait that long if we can move now and bring this sort of world to everyone?”

“Because there will be a lot of body bags before we’re through,” Stanley said.

Because he had been focused on the conversation with Westmoreland, Stanley had lost his bearings. When he came to the railroad tracks, instead of turning, he crossed over the rise and continued along a road that led through an old warehouse district south of town on the banks of the Brazos River. The road narrowed to a one-lane blacktop and then changed to a rutted gravel trail. When the river came into view, the men saw an old tin building, its windows long ago knocked out by rocks or pellet guns. An eight foot wire fence topped with barbed wire blocked the road two hundred yards from the rundown building and cordoned it off on all sides. Every ten yards, a CM soldier stood guard along the fence armed with an M16 assault rifle.

Stanley tried to turn around and retrace his steps, but he had gotten too close to the fence. A young soldier approached him.

“Can I see some ID, sir?” he asked.

Nussbaum showed him his driver’s license. The soldier glanced at Frank for a second and recognized him from the picture that hung on his barracks wall. He snapped to attention and saluted both men.

“That’s not necessary, son,” Westmoreland said. “We’re just looking around.”

“I would be glad to arrange a tour for you through the facilities,” the soldier said.

“I don’t think that’s necessary. We’ve seen enough,” Stanley said.

“Nonsense,” Frank said. “We’ve come this far. Let’s take the tour.”

The soldier got on his walkie-talkie and called someone. Soon the gate slid open. The young man pointed to a small shack near the old metal building and told Westmoreland and Stanley to report there and someone would show them around.

By the time Stanley stopped his Mustang in front of the shack, a small dark-haired man with a slight mustache had taken his position next to their parking spot. He wore a New Israel military uniform with insignia on his sleeves, designating him as a captain.

“It is a great privilege to welcome Prophet Westmorland to the Executive Order 12 Facility for Region One of Texas,” he said as Stanley and Westmoreland got out of the car. “I am Captain Jennings, the facility commander, at your service. Please follow me.”

Jennings walked ahead of the men down a concrete sidewalk towards the warehouse. As he walked, he held his hands clasped together behind him. In one hand, he held a TASER with a long handle that looked like a cattle prod. He walked like a busy man with much to do and looked at the pavement with his shoulders slumped forward. Whenever he approached a soldier, the soldier would stop what he was doing and stand aside at attention until Jennings passed.

Once they entered the building, Stanley and Frank heard a repetitive sound like a mule driver slapping the leather reins against the backs of his team.

“What’s that sound?” Frank asked Jennings.

“That’s coming from the flogging station,” Jennings said as he turned his head and looked back at Westmoreland. “I’ll show you.”

The building was open to the high ceiling where skylights allowed diffused sunlight to fill the room. Movable partitions divided the floor space into compartments of varying sizes shut off with windowless doors. A soldier stood guard by each door.

Jennings stopped near one of the doors, and the guard opened the door to allow them to enter. He closed it behind them.

In the enclosed space, Frank and Stanley came to a row of about half a dozen machines that looked like devices one would use to test a golf club by swinging it at a high speed through an arc.

There were no golf clubs attached to the machines; rather each had a whip with nine straps of leather affixed to it. Steel ball bearings dangled from the ends of the straps.

“Our engineers are very efficient,” Jennings said. “Stand behind the yellow line, please.”

Westmoreland and Nussbaum did as they were told and positioned themselves so that their toes were behind a broad yellow line on the floor about eight feet behind the device. Jennings took a set of gloves and protective eye wear that hung on pegs near the control panel and put them on. He took a sheet of plywood and leaned it against a metal folding chair in front of the device. He glanced back at his visitors to make sure they were in position, then called out, “All clear.”

Two seconds later, he flipped a switch on the machine, and it swung the straps and ball bearings in a wide arc. The ends of the straps struck the plywood with a thud and returned to their original position poised for another slash through the air. He flipped the switch again, repeating the demonstration. Jennings turned off the machine, walked to the plywood and carried it to the men for their inspection. They could see indentations in the board and slivers of wood that were peeled and ready to flake off the sheet.

“At an Order 12 facility, we have learned through experience that ten lashes is the most effective daily regime. Most people can’t take more than that,” Jennings said as he threw the plywood on the floor.

On the other side of the partition next to them, the men heard one of the machines hum into action. They heard the straps whistle through the air for a second and strike something, but the sound of the impact was not like that when it hit the wooden board. It was a duller thud.