The Watchers (24 page)
BELIEVERS GATHERING, LAGOS-BENIN CITY HIGHWAY, NIGERIA
That day's attack went down in history as the bloodiest and most galling example of religious fratricide to stain the African continent that whole year. By the time the remaining insurgents fell back and seemingly melted into the bush, over 300 Christian believers had died. As for the number of slain attackers, the numbers varied widely between the army's official estimate of 425, the media's number of 78, or local eyewitnesses' accounts of three or four dozen bodies lying in a dismal heap right in front of the stage.
Almost as dismaying to the Christians of southern Nigeria, however, was the fact that even though the world press had fixed its eagle eye on the Believers Gathering that day, the only story which survived into the following news cycle was not that of their people being massacred, but of the appearance and mysterious disappearance of Abby Sherman.
By the time press-pooled footage of Abby's cryptic speech, her bizarre contortions with Sister Okoyeâwho soon became a household name in her own rightâand her narrow brush with death was analyzed and talk-showed into oblivion, the attack itself seemed to have been reduced to a convenient catalyst, a mere backdrop for the main event.
Nigerians who had lost their loved ones on that horrific day had another perspective on the matter.
Yet, thankfully, many of them pointed to Abby's speech itself as their solace. The young American had described for them her visit to heaven and the incredible peace that had since come over her. For those forced by the day's later events to contemplate eternity in a fresh new light, her words proved life-changing.
Of all the facets of this story that kept it
page one
worldwide, however, the one aspect most compelling in the hours and days to follow was the simple question,
Where in the world did Abby and her friends go?
OUTSIDE THE BELIEVERS GATHERING
â LATER THAT AFTERNOON
The simple explanation for Abby, Lloyd (or
Dylan
) and Sister Okoye's unlikely, and nearly invisible, escape was that it had been aided by the giftings of not one but two Iya Agbas.
After the threesome had run from the stage, they had not stepped ten feet inside the ministers' shelter when Okoye had stopped, her eyes blinking rapidly, and warned them of evil approaching. They then made an abrupt turn and raced down a flight of stairs into a basement area when, just as Okoye had warned, a phalanx of radical Islamic guerrillas burst onto the floor above them and mowed down a dozen prominent Nigerian clergymen, all in a matter of seconds.
Fearing the gunmen would follow the stairs and find them hiding below, the three rushed to the far end of the dark basement where a bend in its corrugated tin wall had allowed a sliver of sunlight to intrude. From there they heard the appalling massacre as it was taking place above them.
Unwilling to exit into an unknown location, Lloyd had fished out a small mirror and positioned it on the other side of the wall to have a look. After quickly pulling back the mirror, he warned them with alarm in his eyes that escaping from here was out of the question. Three enemy pickups sat parked right outside the shelter wall with aft-mounted fifty-millimeter guns at the ready.
Sister Okoye laid a calming hand on Lloyd's shoulder and told him that, despite the threatening presence, it was safe for them to pass that way.
“You're crazy,” he said. “I'm telling you, there're men out there with their fingers on triggers right this second, aimed this way. We wouldn't make it two yards.”
Okoye smiled and glanced at Abby. “Sister Abigail, do you wish to tell him why we
can
pass this way?”
Indeed, Abby had snapped back to the present and told him with a smile, “Because there's a mighty warrior angel, Captain of the Ranks, standing right outside this wall, ready to blind their eyes.”
Lloyd began to protest again, but then he remembered the reason why he was here and stopped himself. Had he not halted his killing because of supernatural sightsâa flash of light which seemed to have healed Abby? Glowing beings guarding the pair?
“All right,” he said. “I still wonder if this isn't suicide, but if you'll let me go first, I'm willing to give it a try.” He pulled a handgun from a side pocket in his pants and quickly checked its load. Then, scrambling down gun first, he squeezed himself through the wall's small opening.
The two women stood and watched each other, waiting for Lloyd's “all clear.” It came as a soft
thump
on the metal wall. Next, Sister Okoye clambered down and disappeared. Abby, now more at ease with the reliability of her Sight, followed eagerly. She rose up in a twilit strip of grass, crowded with pickup trucks, seething with men and their demonic controllers, and in her myopic surface vision she'd failed to look up and notice the angel her Sight had shown her just a moment before.
Lloyd was standing motionless before the pickup's grill, immobilized by either fear, wonder at his not being detected, or some combination of both. As Abby dusted herself off, Sister Okoye nudged Lloyd's shoulder and roused him back to reality. “Come with us, warrior man,” she teased him with a decided edge to her voice.
They took off running, away from the trucks and the shooting, and toward the trees. The men with the guns never looked their way. And the cameras, which remained fixed on the official entrance to the ministers' shelter, never caught them as they hid behind a helicopter and waited thirty seconds before sprinting into the nearby forest, just after a patrol of jihadist killers sauntered by.
Within minutes of their escape, Abby found herself jogging through knee-high grass behind Lloyd and Sister Okoye along a lush green wall marking the edge of Nigeria's rain forest. She did not yet realize that behind this very rampart of leaf and vine, equatorial jungle stretched across a broad swath of coastal Nigeria all the way east to the Cameroon border.
Mere hundreds of yards behind them, isolated rounds of gunfire still popped every few minutes. Screams from the wounded and dying drifted over on a late afternoon breeze. Abby shivered and quickened her step each time one of the sounds reached her ears, for she could hardly wait to travel beyond earshot of the horrors.
Suddenly a shot rang out more loudly than the others. A faint whistle and a hiss came from the grass just beyond her head. Harsh shouts echoed behind them.
They'd been spotted.
Sister Okoye, who swiftly took the lead despite her age, did not give an outward sign of having heard anything. Instead, she surged ahead with several lunging strides, then turned left without warning and disappeared into the trees. Too hurried to even register her surprise, Abby followed.
A curtain of bright green leaves and vines tried to block her progress, but she just gritted her teeth and plowed ahead. Abby was too determined to be stopped or even slowed by anything like undergrowth. She pushed through, feeling leafy cords drape across her face and neck. Blinking, she forced her feet to propel her forward.
Abby opened her eyes. She was shocked to find, instead of gloom and shadows, a vaulted, leafy cavern. It was like stepping into a whole new world. They were in that interlude between late afternoon and evening when the sun expends the last of its light in an eerily diffuse glow. As a result, the entire forest seemed alight with an unearthly, radiant green.
Her head craned upward, toward the distant canopy. The only sounds reaching them now came from nearby: the chattering of birds, the piercing shrieks of howler monkeys, echoes of untraceable cries against the cavernous jungle roof. Closer still could be heard the slapping of their shoes, the unavoidable thump of their breathing.
Sister Okoye continued to amaze Abby with her competence and fitness. Still arrayed in her silk dress, the aging woman hiked the fabric about her knees and moved just as gracefully and tirelessly as the younger two. In fact, she was now their leader; it was Okoye who had run unerringly to the fringe of rain forest a third of a mile from the Gathering compound.
For Abby, a jungle that at any other time might have felt gloomy and dangerous now felt like a haven. Every step away from the horror behind them seemed like a mile toward safety and calm. Not to mention the chance to sit down with Sister Okoye and ask a few pertinent questions on the real purpose for this journey.
Roughly a half mile into the forest, Okoye's remarkable endurance ran out and she asked them for a pause. They stopped under a break in the canopy, where stars already twinkled in anticipation of dusk.
“It'll be nighttime soon,” Lloyd warned. “Are we heading somewhere specific?”
Okoye smiled and said, “Yes. We are.”
“Well? Are you going to tell us about it?”
She shrugged. “It is a place where we will be safe. Or saferâ”
A helicopter thundered overhead. A spotlight beam shot through the canopy and lit up the ground at their feet. Behind them, a rustling in the leaves betrayed the approach of a group along the trail.
His eyes as large as quarters, Lloyd yanked the two women back from the trail and flat onto the forest floor. Their only shelter from the eyes of those approaching was a low depression in the ground and the trunk of a huge ginkgo tree.
Resentful of Lloyd's rough tactics, Abby looked up to see battered Nike shoes strike dirt just five feet away. Then, as she stared at the machetes and AK-47s dangling from their belts, the Islamic symbols stenciled on white headbands, she vowed never to find fault with Lloyd's tactics again.
Abby cringed, for her sense of cozy safeness in the jungle had just been dashed to pieces. The killers were actually on their trail!
The unthinkable happenedâa loud shout, and then she looked up into a row of gun barrels trained at them. Faces staring into hers, filled with hatred. The truth sank in with a bitter tug at her insides.
They'd been caught!
The shouts multiplied into a storm of angry voices. The barrels motioned upward.
Stand!
The three slowly rose to their feet.
The disk of light from the helicopter found them, blinding them and beating their heads with the downdraft from its rotor blades.
Abby felt
fear
. And once again that smell assaulted her nostrilsâ so strong now that she could taste it like a bitter, metallic tablet on her tongue.
Sister Okoye met Abby's eyes and grabbed her hand. Abby blinked and then peered closer at the row of guerrillas. She almost jumped back at the horrors that greeted her sight. Every one of these men was almost wholly consumed by a group of the most grotesque and revolting evil spirits she had yet seen.
The middle guerrilla moved forward and leveled his machine gun at his waist, preparing to fire on them.
“Stop!”
It was Lloyd. He had his hands held high as though the gesture might stop the bullets. The guerrilla smirked at the desperate stall tactic and tensed his muscles again.
“Brotherhood!” Lloyd shouted.
The man relaxed a bit, scowling at Lloyd. “What you say?”
“I am the Brotherhood's man. The inside source.”
“Then what you doin' out here with
them
?” he said with a confused expression.
“Finding out the Iya Agba safe house,” Lloyd replied. “The old woman's taking us there.”
The guerrilla said nothing but stared at Lloyd through an angry sneer. “Who's your boss?” he asked.
“Shadow Leader.”
The man rolled his eyes, apparently placated. But not enough. He then asked, “What's the sign?”
Lloyd stepped forward, closer to the lead man, and pointed to the sickle blade that hung loosely at his waist. It was the last thing Shadow Leader had taught him about the Brotherhood before his departure for Los Angeles. The name of the Brotherhood. Their symbol and the instrument of their harvests.
“This,” said Lloyd, pointing. “This is the sign. The scythe.”
The man's face relaxed, and he nodded to Lloyd. He then made a sudden arm motion to the hovering chopper overhead. The spotlight blinked out and the chopper flew away. Next, he gestured to Lloyd to leave the two women and join the other men behind him. Lloyd quickly complied.
“What does this mean?” Abby whispered to Sister Okoye.
“It means he is a traitor,” Okoye answered in a flat voice. “Could you not sense it? Did you not feel the darkness around him?”
Abby turned to the older woman, shaking her head. “I felt nothing of the sort,” she said. Inwardly she chastised herself for having allowed her latent attraction to blind her to Lloyd's true character.
“So, if you are Shadow Man,” the lead gunman said, “your final test, then.” He tossed Lloyd an AK-47 rifle. “You do the harvest.”
Still holding the machine gun in his left hand, Dylan held up the scythe in the other. The men had made a mistake. For a true Brotherhood harvest, he only needed the scythe, not the gun. He gripped the scythe by its handle in the proper manner, turning and examining its blade with a pensive expression on his face.
Then his arm recoiled suddenly, sending the blade whistling through the shadow. It struck the lead gunman across the throat and sliced open his jugular vein.
Before the others could react, Dylan swung the AK-47 into both hands and opened fire.
Abby shut her eyes from the scene and turned away. Sister Okoye did not flinch at all but stood without blinking and gazed steadily at men who would have surely killed her as they now jerked wildly and crumpled to the ground.
The gunfire ended. No one spoke as the smoke swirled upward in the humid air. One of the bodies twitched; Dylan stepped over and watched the dying man carefully, his weapon aimed at the man's neck. But he expired soon after, sparing Dylan from having to shoot him again.