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The Christ
Clone Trilogy 03 - Acts Of God
By
James Beau Seigneur
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Home FreeDecker walked through the dark and nearly abandoned halls of the U.N. Secretariat Building. It was late and nearly everyone had gone home. Christopher would be there though; somehow Decker knew it. Opening one of the mammoth mahogany double doors which led to Christopher's spacious reception area, he was surprised to see Jackie Hansen still there.
"Come on in," Jackie said, as she preceded Decker into Christopher's office. "He's waiting for you." Jackie seemed placid in an almost surreal way. She said nothing of the fact that Decker had been gone for so long, and nothing in her voice hinted that she was at all surprised to see him.
As he walked into Christopher's office, it was strangely cold and dark, much as the halls had been. The air had a strange musty smell. Something... everything was wrong. He looked around him and saw no one. He had somehow lost sight of Jackie and it now seemed that she had simply vanished, looking about, Decker sensed movement to his right and turned to see the high back of Christopher's desk chair rotating away from him. "Christopher?" he said. There was no answer. Decker approached the desk and called out again. Still, there was no reply.
As he neared the spot, he reached out for the back of the chair to spin it around. Suddenly Decker jumped back in horror as he came face to face with his worst possible fear. It was Christopher. At least it was Christopher's face, but he was not at all as Decker remembered him. His eyes were cardinal red, the specific hue of which differed not one shade from the sticky liquid which trickled from the corners of his mouth and matted the hairs of his normally neatly-kept beard. His skin appeared somehow scaly and iridescent green. His teeth, jagged and sharp, dripped pink with saliva and blood. His fingernails were long and claw-like.
And in those claws he held the source of the blood: the leg of Jackie Hansen, ripped clean from its socket and with several large bites already taken from it. On the floor beside his chair, Jackie Hansen lay nude and barely alive as the blood drained from her body. Deep gashes in her flesh revealed the tracks of Christopher's claws where he had torn away her clothes. On her face was the same serene smile Decker had seen earlier, and in her eyes as she looked up at Christopher was the unmistakable look of love.
"What do you want?!" Christopher growled, spitting out his last bite of bloody flesh as he jumped to his feet and threw Jackie's dismembered leg to the floor, hitting her in the stomach and leaving the appendage lying across her bare breasts.
Decker screamed and ran in terror but Christopher charged after him. He looked for the door but in his panic, he simply could not find it. He looked desperately for a way — any way — out, but there was none. Decker ran like a man possessed, dodging and trying to stay ahead of his pursuer, but it was impossible. The younger and stronger Christopher stayed right on his heels. Every move Decker made, he seemed to anticipate. Struggling to keep going, Decker began to believe that Christopher was toying with him like a cat with a trapped mouse. Then suddenly, he spotted a window. It was open, but it was nineteen floors down. Still, he had to get away. Christopher was so close behind him he could feel his breath on his neck. With all his strength, Decker ran and leaped for the open window just as Christopher reached out and caught the leg of his pants with the extended claws of one hand. Razor sharp, the claws dug deep into his leg, tearing long bloody stripes through skin and muscle, but it was not enough to slow his momentum. Free of Christopher, Decker looked below him to his chosen alternative: certain death.
Desperately, instinctively, he tried to grab at the air and inexplicably his hand found something solid. It was the seat in front of him. He was still on the plane, headed for Babylon. It had all been a dream, but he was covered with perspiration and his heart was pounding as hard as if it had been real. He was exhausted.
Decker unfastened his seat belt, stood up and stretched, and walked to the restroom. He had found years before that trying to go back to sleep after a disturbing dream was nearly impossible. He had to get up and let the thoughts of consciousness — and perhaps a splash of cold water on his face — purge the dream from his mind. A few moments later, when he returned to his seat, Decker found that this had not been entirely successful because the dream, though exaggerated like a carnival mirror in its form, was nonetheless a reflection of the real fears he bore.
Decker shifted from side to side, adjusted his seat, added a pillow, removed a pillow, adjusted his seat again. He was very tired, and probably still several good nights of rest away from full recovery from the effects of the last plague. He needed to sleep, especially now, to be prepared to confront Christopher about Petra.
When he finally found a comfortable position and his mind began to relax, he thought back to the dream and how absurd it had been. He had not had a nightmare like that since he was a child. Still, he thought a moment later as he slipped closer to sleep, he should be prepared, be ready, to defend himself. The most obvious means was a handgun, but he couldn't buy one because he didn't have the mark. Perhaps a knife. A large kitchen knife should be sufficient. Getting it in past security might be difficult, but. . .
Decker opened his eyes abruptly and sat up straight in his seat.
Is this how it was with Tom?! he wondered. Had Tom had a similar dream which led him to shoot Christopher? Then another thought struck him: Was this just a dream at all, or had it been hypnotically planted in Decker's mind by the KDT, like a time bomb waiting for this exact moment to go off— to set him off? And if this failed to have the desired effect, would there be others? Had the KDT planted other dreams, other thoughts, other visions? When he got to Christopher's office would he see things as they really were or would reality be hidden behind a mask fabricated by those who wanted Christopher dead? What monster, he wondered, had Tom seen standing there on the stage at the U.N. the night he shot Christopher?
And what now drove Decker to see Christopher at this time, just as the KDT appeared to be losing power? Was it really to try to spare the lives of those in Petra, or was it to take the life of Christopher?
To the last question, at least, he thought he knew the answer. He wanted to try to spare the lives of those in Petra. Yet he knew that in going to Babylon he might be doing exactly what the KDT wanted. The feeling that he must go and see Christopher at this precise moment might have been their intent all along. If it was, then he was a pawn, playing out the role of Judas, and believing it was his idea when he really had no choice in the matter.
It didn't matter.
Whether it was his own idea or one that had been planted in his mind by the KDT, he had no choice: he had to go.
Decker was not even sure if he truly controlled his own will, but to the extent that he did, he made one vow. Under no circumstances would he bring a weapon, any weapon, or anything that could be used as a weapon with him to Christopher's office. Even if his worst fears about Christopher proved true, even if he appeared to be or really was a green scaly demon as he had been in his dream, Decker vowed he would do nothing to harm him or even to protect himself.
It was an easier decision than it might have seemed. If he was wrong about Christopher then he must not allow himself to do anything against him. And if he was right, then he would just as soon die anyway.
6:23 p.m., Monday, July 13, 4 N.A. (2026 A.D.) — King Nebuchadnezzar International Airport, Babylon
Decker's plane arrived in Babylon six minutes ahead of schedule. A limosine was waiting, ready to take him wherever he wanted to go. It would have been very easy for Decker to tell the driver to take him to his apartment, but he knew what he had to do and there was no use delaying it.
He took a deep breath. "The U.N. Secretariat Building," he told the driver.
Slipping the fake bandage from around his hand, Decker placed his right palm on the identipad and stared at the screen of the retinal scanner beside the door of the executive entrance to the Secretariat Building. "Decker Hawthorne," he said clearly.
"Verified," a soft female-sounding electronic voice responded, as the lock clicked and the door opened.
Apparently no one had thought to tell the U.N. security system to search the World Health Organization's database for U.N. executives who had not received the communion and to restrict their access to the building.
"Good evening, Mr. Hawthorne," the guard inside the door said cheerfully.
"Good evening," Decker responded, a little startled. He had been through that door a hundred times, at all times of the night and day, and had always been greeted as cheerfully as tonight. What startled him was that it was just the same. He had been so sure that somehow it would be different. The building was brightly lit with just the right level of shadow, and the air was refreshingly cool in contrast to the arid Iraqi night. Though it was nearly 7:30 p.m. a few employees and guests were still in the lobby, in the elevator, and walking down the halls as he made his way to the top floor and Christopher's office. Finally he arrived at the entrance to the offices of the Secretary-General. He had been away for longer periods than this on U.N. business and always returned with a feeling as though he had never really been gone. That much at least was different; now as he stood outside the dark wood double doors, he had the strange sense that he should knock.
As he stood there going over again in his mind what he was going to say, suddenly one of the doors opened. His heart seemed to stop in anticipation of seeing Christopher coming through the door toward him, and then start again as Jackie Hansen appeared. She was rushing off somewhere and was startled to see an unexpected face.
"Decker! How are you?" she said as she recovered her composure and wrapped her arms around him. Even with a large bandage on her cheek, she was a beautiful woman. The effect of the communion had continued its work and she seemed even younger and more vivacious than when he had seen her last, a little more than a month before.
"I'm fine," Decker answered, as he returned the show of affection.
"Oh, Decker. We need to talk, but I'm late for a psychic enhancement class. Will you be here tomorrow?"
"Yeah, I guess so," Decker answered.
"Okay. I'll talk to you then," she said, and hurried down the hall.
"Is Christopher in?" Decker called after her. "He's in his office," Jackie called back.
Decker walked quietly across the carpeted floor toward Christopher's door. This was it. There was no turning back. Decker knocked on the door. There was a pause. "Come in," came a faint call from deep inside Christopher's large office. Decker opened the door. Christopher was sitting at his desk looking toward his door to see who was coming to see him this late in the evening. Suddenly the look in his eyes went from mild curiosity to rapturous joy.
"Decker! Oh, Decker, am I glad to see you!"
Decker stood expressionless as Christopher ran to greet him with a long, firm hug.
"You don't know what it's been like around here without you. Debbie Sanchez is very competent but she's no Decker Hawthorne when it comes to dealing with the press. I am so glad you're back!"
"I... uh... I'm glad to be back," Decker answered, not sure what else to say.
Christopher released his hug and backed up to get a better look at Decker. "So, how have you been?" Christopher asked, almost absent-mindedly. "Oh," he said, as though he had just recalled the plagues and all that had happened in the past few weeks. "I'm sorry, Decker. Here I am just thinking of how happy I am that you're back. Are you all right?"
"I'm ... I'm fine, I guess."
"You've lost a lot of weight."
"Well, it's been a tough few weeks."
Christopher nodded. "At least you're still alive," he said gratefully. "Here, come sit down." Christopher motioned toward a sitting area near the windows with a view of the hanging gardens. These were not the windows Decker had jumped from in his dream, and they were, of course 'closed' because the windows in the U.N. complex of buildings were not made to open.
"What can I get you to drink?" Christopher asked, starting toward the wet bar.
"Uh... just water," Decker said as he sunk into one of the comfortable arm chairs. Decker wanted so much just to forget about the last few weeks and accept Christopher's warm welcome-home and go on about his life. But by now the images of Rhoda Donafin and her family and the others in Petra were burned into his memory. He had to complete the task that had brought him here.
"I need to talk to you about your decision to march on Petra," he said resolutely.
"We can talk about all of that later, Decker," Christopher answered, as he returned with a glass of ice water, handed it to Decker, and then sat down across from him. "Tell me how you've been."
"You need to reconsider your decision," Decker said, ignoring Christopher's request.
"Decker," Christopher said, taken aback by Decker's insistence, "it's late. You've been away for over a month. A lot has happened. Do we really need to have a policy discussion right now?"
"Yes. Please," Decker persisted.
"It will be a month before the first phase of deployment even begins. Why is it so important that we discuss it right this minute?"
"Because it's wrong," Decker responded bluntly.
Christopher raised an eyebrow, signed, and leaned back in his chair. "Decker, this was not a decision I rushed into. The Security Council has been pushing me to do this since the plagues first began."
"Well, tell them you won't do it," Decker interrupted.
"I can't do that, Decker."
"Why not?"
"Because I agree with them. I didn't at first. You know I've always held out hope that the KDT and their followers would join us. I've done everything I can to get them to listen to reason."
"Have you?" Decker didn't intend for the question to sound like an accusation, but it did.
Christopher seemed surprised and a little hurt. "Decker, stop. I can understand the public losing their faith in me, but will you abandon me, too?"
"I haven't abandoned you."
"Decker, I don't like having to deal with Petra anymore than you do. But it has to be . .."
Christopher stopped in mid-sentence as his expression suddenly changed to shock and then disbelief. Getting up from his seat, he crossed over to Decker, took hold of his forearm and tore away the bandage that covered the back of his right hand. Decker did not resist.
"So this is why you question my decision! You have abandoned me! You, of all people! I trusted you!" Christopher backed away, shaking his head in disbelief. "You told me you would receive the communion and then you disappeared."
Coming near again, he looked Decker in the eye. "Bob Milner tried to tell me when you called here saying you needed a vacation that he sensed something was wrong. But I didn't want to believe it! I said you were probably just tired! I actually got angry with him for suggesting such a thing! But I see I owe him an apology." Christopher shook his head again. "It wasn't enough that you betrayed me once 2000 years ago!" he said. "You had to do it again! You never went to get the communion. You were hiding . .. you were ..." Christopher stopped himself short and just stared. "No," he said more slowly, as a look of sympathy and understanding swept over his face. "You were . . . you were kidnapped! Decker, I'm so sorry. I had no idea. Why didn't you tell me? Are you all right? How long did they hold you? Did they hurt you? How did you get away?"
Somehow Christopher realized what had happened.
The look of caring and concern was so real, Decker could no longer remain aloof. This was what he had hoped to see when he had watched Christopher's speech. Now he was sure. The relief swept over him like a flood as he knew for certain his concerns about Christopher had been unfounded.
"I'm... I'm fine," Decker stammered, but it was obvious he was not. "Actually," he said, smiling in relief, "I feel terrible. I'm exhausted, my teeth hurt, my head hurts, and my tongue and the inside of my mouth feel like I gargled with Drano."
"So, you did go through the plagues. I thought maybe you had been held in Petra all this time.
"I was only there for a few days. When they released me, I went back to the U.S. Actually, being kidnapped and held in Petra was a walk in the park compared to what I've been through in the past several weeks. Of course, I've had it no worse than any one else."
"I'm just glad you're back," Christopher said. "Did they torture you?"
"No, they just scared me pretty good." Decker reached for the glass of water which had thus far gone untouched. "You know what I really need?" Decker said, as he looked at the water.
"Just name it!" Christopher answered.
"What I really need is a beer."
"Hefeweizen Dunkefl" Christopher asked, referring to a German dark wheat beer that Decker was particularly fond of and that Christopher sometimes kept on hand.
Decker's eyes lit up. "You have some?"
"I even have one cold."
Decker nodded eagerly and collapsed back into the chair. It was the first time he had really relaxed since before he was kidnapped, for it was not just his body that relaxed, but his mind as well. He wanted to apologize to Christopher for all the terrible things he had thought about him, but realized that discussion could wait for another time.
Christopher poured the beer slowly into a tall glass and handed it to Decker, who sucked off the foam. "This is so good," he said, pausing only long enough to take a breath and lick the foam from his lips before drinking down several refreshing gulps. Christopher stood watching, apparently sharing Decker's enjoyment.
"Decker, look, you're tired and you're . . . well, you're not as young as you used to be," Christopher said. "Besides, it's been hard on everyone with all these plagues. Have you seen a doctor?"
"No. I guess I should."
"Why don't you go home and get a good night's rest. I'll have Jackie make an appointment for you tomorrow."
Decker nodded agreement. He was tired and he thought it would be a relief to get back to his apartment.
"And while you're there you can finally take the communion," Christopher added, "discretely, of course. It wouldn't be good to have anyone find out you had waited so long."
"Yes," Decker agreed. "I'll do that." Still, though he no longer believed Christopher to be a monster, Decker had come a long way and he had not yet achieved his purpose. "But before I go," he added, "there are a few things we must talk about." His expression made it obvious that he would not be swayed from his intent. He wanted to talk and it had to be now.
"All right," Christopher smiled accommodatingly and sat back down opposite Decker. "What is it that's so important that it can't wait 'til morning?"
"Christopher," Decker began, sitting forward in his seat and setting his beer down so he could use his hands to express himself, "when I was taken to Petra, at first I just wondered whether or not I'd ever get out of there alive. They never tortured me. For the first three days they tried their best to convince me that you were evil and that Yahweh was good. After that, I guess they just gave up. They let me go wherever I wanted throughout the whole encampment. I had a chance to meet the people and talk to them, to see what they thought about what was happening. And I realized some things. Most of them are not KDT crazies, Christopher. They're just ordinary people who have been convinced by the circumstances that the KDT have their best interests at heart and that you are their enemy.
"On the plane to Jerusalem after your resurrection," Decker continued, "you told me that my role would be to serve as communicator of your message to people who were not familiar with the concepts of the New Age. Well, I served you in that role for three years, and I thought that job was pretty much complete. There's not a man or woman on the planet who hasn't been thoroughly familiarized with the message of the coming advance in the evolution of Humankind: movies, television, radio, newspapers, magazines, books, songs, plays, billboards, bumper stickers . . . your vision of the future is everywhere. There's not a child in school from age three and up who has not been trained in the ethics and tenets of the New Age. Even the younger ones learn the message through cartoons, toys, and games.
"The mission has gone so well, in fact, that I was beginning to think that I had worked myself out of a job. But on my last night in Petra, I realized there was still much work to be done. But it was with the least likely of audiences: the people of Petra, and maybe even with the fundamentalists."
Christopher shook his head to indicate the hopelessness of what Decker was suggesting. His skepticism did not deter Decker. "Christopher, I'm convinced that we can reach these people . . . make them understand that you're not their enemy... that what you offer the world is not to be feared, but welcomed."
Christopher seemed unconvinced but Decker continued, clarifying one point, "I'm not saying there's hope for the KDT. I think they probably are beyond the point where they can be persuaded by reason. But their followers: I'm certain that many of them can be persuaded if they're just presented with all the facts."
"Decker, believe me," Christopher answered, "more than anyone, I understand how you feel about this, but I think you're underestimating just how hard these people are to deal with. Don't you think I've tried? I've had the best cult deprogramming experts and psychiatrists in the world working on this with some of the fundamentalists in prison. They're still working on it, but they're getting nowhere."
Decker was well aware of this. His office had been responsible for distributing information on the program to the press. "But the psychiatrists and deprogrammers are missing the point," he responded. "They're never going to convince the fundamentalists of anything as long as the KDT continue to appear infallible. Everything that the KDT says is going to happen, does happen. Everything they attempt, they accomplish. Sure, Bob Milner may come along later and stop what they've started, but in the meantime they've accomplished their purposes. But if just once we could alter events so that the KDT would fail in one of their prophecies, the whole foundation of their control would fall apart!
"In Petra," Decker continued, "they told me that the plagues were coming. The KDT told their followers that in response to the plagues, you would act first against the fundamentalists and then assemble an army to march on Petra. They even said when it would happen: September. They've told everyone. It's commonly known throughout the camp.
"But you can 'short-circuit' the prophecy — prevent it from coming true! If you don't march on Petra, then the KDT and their followers will have to admit they were wrong. I believe you should go to Petra, but instead of assembling an army for war, you could send a peace envoy. Show your true face as peacemaker and benevolent leader instead of the demonic beast the KDT has made you out to be. The KDT took me to Petra to convince me that they were right and you were wrong. What I'm suggesting would allow us to turn that completely around, so that we could use what I learned while I was there to our own benefit, so that we can convince their followers of the truth about you and about Yahweh."
"Decker," Christopher responded, "all the KDT have done with their 'prophecy' about how I would respond is to state the obvious. It's like an accomplished chess player or a good military strategist. They can predict what their opponent will do several moves in advance because they know what their own moves will be and they know that their opponent will have no choice in how he will respond."
"But can't we respond differently? Can't we change our response?"
Christopher shook his head. "It's not that easy, Decker, and the KDT knows it. That's why they can speak with such confidence. It's not a coincidence that each of the plagues has been worse than the one before. We must stop the KDT before they're strong enough to act again, or the next plague will kill everyone on the planet except the KDT and their followers in Petra. No one outside the walls of Petra, not even the fundamentalists, will be spared."
"I'm only asking for a brief delay. There are so many in Petra who simply have been misled by the KDT," Decker argued. "If you march on Petra in September they will suffer the same fate as those who have misled them."
"I don't know what it is that you think I'm going to do," Christopher responded. "Do you think we're going to go in there and kill everyone? The people of Petra will be given the same opportunity as the fundamentalists have been given to denounce Yahweh and the KDT. Anyone willing to leave Petra and reject the KDT will be allowed to do so."
"But they won't!" Decker insisted. "If you march on Petra in September, you'll be doing exactly what the KDT said you'd do. By your own actions you'll be giving credence to the KDT. Can't it wait even a month? You said yourself that they've been weakened enough that they won't be able to call down any more plagues for a while." Christopher did not answer, but it was obvious he had not changed his mind. Decker tried another approach. "Christopher, when I recommended that you institute the mark, it was to use the biblical prophecies to our advantage. What I'm suggesting now is the same thing, except I think now we should do just the opposite of what the prophecies say." Then another thought occurred to him. "Besides," he said, "if you march on Petra in September, you could be walking right into a trap."
The suggestion brought an uncharacteristically chilly stare from Christopher. "Odd, Decker, but I get the feeling that it's not me you're concerned about."
"Not exclusively, no," Decker admitted quickly. "I'd be lying to tell you otherwise. But my motives don't make what I'm saying any less true. If you can wait just a month, the people in Petra will realize that the KDT are wrong and their stranglehold will be broken. We can accomplish our goals and avoid a massacre."
"Decker, don't you understand, every day of delay is like putting off the removal of a life-threatening cancer. In one month — a single month — these people you're trying to protect have killed over 200 million people and nearly every aquatic creature on the planet! I have no desire to kill anyone," Christopher continued, "but you are wrong. If I delay my plans, they will not see they're wrong. They will simply find some way to reinterpret the prophecies to say that I'll be coming the next month, or the next, or the one after that. Do you have any idea how many times in the past these religious types have used exactly that kind of'prophetic revisionism'? The leaders of the Jehovah's Witnesses practically made an art of it — predicting numerous events that never happened, including the end of the world in the 1870s and 1914, and again in 1975. Time after time their leaders made their predictions and time after time they failed. And when the predicted dates passed, they'd make up some story about how what they predicted actually did happen but only 'in the heavenly realm' or 'invisibly.' Or else they'd claim that they never actually made the prediction and that what they said had just been misinterpreted or taken too literally by others. And yet, time after time their followers believed them. No amount of truth would shake them from what they wanted to believe." Christopher shook his head to indicate the hopelessness of any attempt to convince the KDT's followers that they were wrong. "If I postpone the march on Petra for a month, the KDT will simply make up some excuse; they'll do exactly as the leaders of the Jehovah's Witnesses did. And their followers will go on believing their every word."
What Christopher was saying made sense. As he thought it through, the faces of Rhoda and Tom, Jr. and Rachael and Decker Donafin and all the people of Petra seemed to blur in his memory. Maybe Christopher was right; maybe he was just tired and old. "But we can't just . . ." Decker tried to think of something, some new reason, but it seemed he was running out of arguments. Still, he could not just give up and let the people of Petra die. There had to be a way . . . something he had not thought of yet.
"I'm sorry we can't agree on this, Decker," Christopher said, "but I have to do what I believe is best. Now frankly, I just don't have the time to continue to discuss it." Christopher got up and went back to his desk, leaving Decker sitting there. Had he not left so quickly, he would have noticed the sudden look of startled recollection which swept over Decker's face, and the expression of sheer horror which followed it: horror so great that all thoughts of Petra — the whole reason he had come here — were totally eclipsed in his mind.
Decker had seen something. It was no monstrous metamorphosis such as he had seen in his dream on the plane, but it was every bit as terrifying. It was the look on Christopher's face when he said he didn't have time to discuss it. It was only a look, but its meaning was inescapable. It was something Decker had seen just once before. It was exactly the same expression he had seen on Christopher's face in Lebanon when he asked about Tom.
In that instant, the universe changed.
Then he said it.
"There's something else."
With those three words, Decker crossed a line of restraint that he had maintained for over twenty years. He had advised, even argued with Christopher, but never before had he challenged him. In reality his words could have meant anything. He simply could have let it drop. But to Decker it seemed that he was caught in a swell which he could no longer navigate but only press through.
"Decker, there's nothing more to discuss." The look had not left Christopher's face.
"I'm not talking about Petra," Decker said, rising from his chair to face Christopher on even ground.
"Then what?" asked Christopher, apparently unaware of the tempest in Decker's mind and heart. "What else have I done that has not met with your approval?"
Decker sensed a thinly veiled sarcasm in Christopher's voice that he had never heard before. Then suddenly, he understood why Christopher had never called him while he was in Derwood. Christopher no longer needed him; he had served his purpose in reaching those unfamiliar with the New Age philosophy and was no longer of any use. In truth, Christopher no longer had time for Decker.
"You were going to leave Tom Donafin," he answered.
Christopher responded with a look of complete puzzlement. "What in the world are you talking about?" he asked, his voice showing not only confusion about the relevance of Tom Donafin to the current conversation, but growing anger as well. "Leave him where?"
"When Tom shot you," Decker began, "I was standing right next to him. When I realized what he had done I asked him 'Why?' Tom started to answer, but all he had time to say before he was killed was, 'He was going to leave me.'
"It didn't make any sense at the time. I thought it was just the ramblings of a lunatic. Later I became convinced that the Koum Damah Tatare had brainwashed him. But when I was at Petra I had the dream again." Decker paused to breathe and calm his pounding heart. He hadn't tried to, but he was beginning to sound more and more like a prosecuting attorney about to drive home his point to the jury. Christopher didn't like being put in this position and it was obvious that he didn't care for Decker's tone.
"What dream?!" Christopher demanded, wanting to waste no more time at this game. "What are you talking about?!"
"It was the same dream I had in Lebanon."
There was a long pause while Christopher studied Decker's face in confusion. "You mean," he asked, "when I rescued you from the Hizballahl\ That's what this is all about?!"
"That's what Tom was talking about," Decker answered. "I never told anyone about that dream except Tom and Elizabeth. In the dream you came into my room to get me. 'It's time to go,' you said. But when I was following you out, I stopped you to ask about Tom." Decker watched Christopher for any reaction to what he was saying. There was none. "I asked you where he was. You knew but you didn't care. If I hadn't insisted, you would have left him there to die."
"But that was just a dream!" Christopher interrupted, his good hand outstretched, appealing to Decker's reason.
"But it wasn't just a dream!" Decker shot back in anger. "In New York you told me that you used astral projection to come to Lebanon to rescue me. It was you! It wasn't just a dream!"
Unable to argue the point, Christopher's arm dropped to his side.
"You came there to rescue me!" Decker continued. "Just me! You had no intention of rescuing Tom! You were just going to leave him there to rot away and die! That's what Tom must have realized." Christopher's disposition suddenly seemed to change. His anger and defensiveness vanished and instead he just waited and listened. "I don't know how Tom knew it was more than just a dream, but I'm sure that's what he meant when he said you were going to leave him. Somehow, Tom knew that it wasn't just a mistake or an oversight. You were going to leave him.
"You don't really care about Humankind — about people — at all. If you did, you would never have forgotten about Tom."
Christopher's composure had now become so incongruous with the situation that Decker had to pause. Not only was Christopher undisturbed, he almost seemed amused.
"But he wasn't a part of your plan," Decker began again haltingly, growing more and more unsure as the look of amusement on Christopher's face became more and more pronounced. "You didn't need him to carry out your plans. You only needed me." Decker stopped, the last words falling from his lips merely from the momentum of the words that had gone before.
Christopher now smiled broadly, and it became painfully obvious that he was smiling to himself and not at Decker. Decker had expected denial or anger; certainly not this.
Finally the smile became outright laughter.
"Damn!" Christopher said finally, almost shouting. "That's pretty good, Decker! Even if it did take you twenty-three years to realize it."
Decker was stunned. Was this an admission ... or just ridicule?
"Frankly, Decker, arguing with you is taking more time than it's worth anymore," Christopher said. "To tell you the truth — something I do as seldom as possible," he added and then raised his hand in mock surrender, "it never even occurred to me to rescue Tom Donafin. As you said, I was there to get you." Christopher shrugged. "Why should I have cared what happened to Tom Donafin?
"Of course, at the time, I had no idea who Tom was. I thought he had been killed along with the rest of his family in an auto accident. You see," Christopher explained, "Tom Donafin was supposed to have died years before in a little late-night meeting that was arranged for his family with a drunk driver. It was a beautiful sight — blood and broken glass everywhere," he said, digressing. "The drunk driver wasn't even scratched. He felt so guilty about it after he sobered up that he hanged himself in his jail cell. He left a wife and two sons nearly penniless. And the best part: when he hanged himself, the guard was watching. He didn't even try to stop him. It was perfect.
"Well. . . almost perfect. I thought the whole Donafin family had died. Apparently Yahweh's minions managed to hide your friend Donafin from us all those years." Christopher shrugged off any personal responsibility for the oversight, "I had no idea who he was when I came to get you out of Lebanon.
"You know," he said, pointing his finger in the air and shaking it slowly to emphasize his syllables as a realization dawned on him, "I'll bet that's why he let you think he was dead all those years! Donafin, or Saul Cohen, or somebody, must have realized that the best way to hide him from me was to let you think he was dead. If the two of you had stayed in regular contact after I moved in with you, sooner or later I would have realized who he was and arranged another 'accident.'"
Then another thought occurred to Christopher. "The day I was shot, was Donafin standing there with you at the U.N. when you told me you wanted to introduce him to me?"
Decker nodded a nod that was more a question than an answer.
Christopher smiled. "Yahweh wasn't taking any chances," he said. "He must have had a whole legion of angels surrounding him. I didn't even see Donafin. I just assumed the friend you wanted me to meet was waiting in your office." Christopher spoke as if this was just a normal, everyday conversation. Decker was stunned and confused — not at the specifics of what Christopher was saying — but at the fact that he was saying it at all.
Christopher either interpreted Decker's expression as a request for additional explanation or just wanted to further Decker's agony by continuing. "You see, Tom Donafin was the last of his line, the last blood relative of Jesus — or Yeshua, or whatever the hell you want to call him. Anyway, according to an ancient law, a blood relative of one who is murdered has the right to seek out the killer and avenge the murder. I knew that I would be killed; that was never in question. It's in the prophecy. In fact, it fit perfectly into my plan. How else could I have staged such a dramatic resurrection with the whole world watching? But I had someone else in mind to actually pull the trigger."
Christopher laughed a contemptible laugh, "Poor Girard Poupardin. The pathetic fool was there to shoot me to avenge Albert Moore — a man who didn't give a damn about him. It didn't really matter who killed me." Christopher shook his head with the regret of a chess player who realizes he made the wrong move. "I just wanted it to be a murder. Instead it was a damned execution! It's a minor point in the larger scheme of things, but I spent a lot of time setting that up!" It was clear that Christopher did not like Yahweh beating him at his own game.
Christopher regained his composure. "No matter," he said, putting the defeat behind him. "It was rather sweet irony, though, that Poupardin was so determined to kill me that when Tom Donafin robbed him of the pleasure, he turned the gun on Donafin instead."
"Oh, and in all modesty," he added with a grin, "I think timing my death to coincide with the beginning of the madness, and then ending the madness when I killed John and Cohen, was a master stroke. Who would have suspected that the spirit beings who appeared at my call at the Temple in Jerusalem were the same ones who had wreaked bloody carnage with the madness only moments before?"
Christopher smiled and waited for Decker to respond, and the longer he waited, the bigger his smile became.
"Then it's all true?" Decker finally managed to ask, not only in disbelief that he had been right, but even more so that Christopher was admitting it. "All the things that the KDT say about you are true. You really are the Antichrist, the son of Satan!"
"In the flesh," Christopher replied, bowing grandly and mocking Decker. "But don't act so surprised. I've never made a secret of it. I even told you as much on the plane to Israel after my resurrection, and on several occasions since then. I've been saying it all along, but it didn't seem to matter to anyone. Of course, I've always couched it in stories of how evil Yahweh is." Christopher shook his head in wonder. "It's always amazed me how eager humans are to believe that line. All I have to do is draw their attention to some pretty bauble or trinket that's just beyond their reach, tell them how unfair it is that they don't have it, and that if God was really good and loving, he wouldn't keep them from having it. Money, power, sex: it all works pretty much the same. Of course the most seductive temptation for humans has always been telling them they can be their own god, or at least be equal to God. It worked with Eve in the Garden of Eden — 'you will be as God,' I told her. It's worked throughout the centuries. And now the very same lie has worked with the New Age for all of Humankind"
"So your entire life," Decker had to force the words from his lips, "your entire life has been an act?"
"Please, Decker, let's not trivialize my accomplishments with terms like 'act,'" Christopher said. "I prefer to call it a magnificently orchestrated, brilliantly executed lie."
"And the prophecies about you in the Bible are all true?"
"Of course," Christopher said without emotion.
"But then you must know that if you go to Petra you will lose."
"Ah, true," Christopher agreed. "But even if I do not, it will make no difference. The time of my end has been set. It does not matter where I am. For my purposes, going to Petra is simply the most favorable of the available options. It is to Petra that Jesus will come. I will not cower in fear in some dark corner when that day arrives. I will go there to Petra to meet him! I will stand defiant at his return and I will bring with me those I have stolen from him! I will no more fear him in the end than I have served him in the past! I will never yield! I have set myself against him and I will defy him until the end. And thereafter, I will curse him boldly from the flames of hell!"
"But why? If you know you will end up in hell, why go through with it?"
Christopher laughed. "Call it hatred of God. Call it independence. Surely you can understand that. I simply refuse to serve. The poet John Milton understood it. He put it quite succinctly back in 1667 in Paradise Lost: 'Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav'n,' he wrote, paraphrasing the Lord Lucifer. And, to take others with me, of course! It's really quite simple. Man was made to rule and reign with God. To love and be loved. When I take those that God had intended for himself, I anger him, I enrage him; and most important, I hurt him! Do you have any idea," Christopher said in great earnestness, truly wanting Decker to understand, "what it's like to tweak the nose of God?" Christopher threw up his hand in exhilaration at the thought. "The rush of sheer, raw power that swells through you when you watch his face and know that you," Christopher looked back at Decker and struck the air with his clenched fist to emphasize each point, "by your will! by your power! have intentionally made God, the one who created the Universe . . . weep!"
Decker was lost. . . defeated. Scott Rosen and the KDT had been right about Christopher; about everything. And whether Christopher called his life an act or a lie, Decker realized that his own life had been a sham. On that backdrop nothing really mattered anymore. Still, there was one thing Decker wanted to know. "Christopher," he said. The feel of Christopher's name on his lips, the sound of it in his ears, shook Decker with the memory of all the years he had spoken it before and been deceived. "Just one more question." Where before Christopher had no time for Decker, his expression now indicated an eagerness to answer; he was truly enjoying this.
"Why me?" Decker asked. "Why did you pick me?"
Christopher looked at Decker, momentarily surprised by the unexpected query. Then suddenly his cheeks expanded as he pressed his lips together, trying to control his response. Giving up and yielding to the impulse, Christopher exploded into riotous, prolonged laughter.
"Can you really be so stupid?!" he roared with derision. "Can you really believe that you were so important to my plans that there has to be a reason that I picked you? I could just as well have chosen any of at least a thousand other people." Christopher paused to wipe a tear of laughter from his eye before he continued.
"Okay," he said, trying to sound serious but enjoying this far too much to conceal it, "I'll tell you why I chose you." Christopher stopped to savor the moment. It was a joke whose punch line had waited twenty-three years for just the right moment to be told.
"You," Christopher said, and then paused, struggling to deadpan the delivery of his response, but enjoying the sound of each syllable as it rolled off his tongue, knowing the effect it would have on Decker, "you just happened . . ." Christopher laughed despite himself, "to be in the right place ... at the right time!!"
Christopher now roared with laughter so uncontrollable that he had to take hold of the back of a chair to steady himself.
Decker's mind and body went limp. Had he the presence of mind to notice it, he would have found it quite inexplicable that his heart continued to beat under the weight of his chest as he suddenly came to understand that the sum total value of his life had amounted to nothing more than a joke for Christopher's entertainment.
Up until this moment he at least had his anger. Now even the anger was gone. It was not satisfied, it was just finished. Now there was nothing. Nothing had meaning. For more than two decades Decker had built his life around Christopher. Now, not only was that gone, snatched out from under him, it had all been a farce. Not only had he been betrayed, he had been a fool! He was a joke!
Decker's arms felt heavy and his shoulders slumped, giving the impression that he had simply curled up to die but that someone had propped him up with a stick. He stood there for a long moment, unable to move while Christopher looked on in delight.
Christopher went over to the bar and poured himself another drink. "You've been quite a project, actually," he said. "I've brought you along; given you opportunities to advance your career. I'm sure you remember the boy in Jerusalem who ran from behind the Wailing Wall — the boy you brought home to Jenin after the riot. I arranged all of that. Getting you taken hostage to Lebanon served two purposes. First, it got you out of the way for a few years until I was ready for you. You were starting to ask too many questions. I couldn't risk having you publish a story that might expose my origin, and I couldn't be sure that dear Uncle Harry would be able to keep you quiet. I needed you locked away for a few years. A minute ago you said that I had come to Lebanon only to rescue you" Christopher said with a grin. "In truth, I wasn't there to rescue you at all. It was more like getting you out of cold storage." Christopher shrugged, "Tom Donafin was of no consequence to my plan. He could have stayed there and rotted for all I cared.
"The second purpose for having you taken hostage was that it provided a way to get you and Jon Hansen together. Of course, there were other ways I could have arranged for you to meet him. You could have met him while working on a news story. But this way, with him rescuing you just as you were about to collapse from hunger in Lebanon, you had a couple of days together and, because of the circumstances, there were strong emotional ties built.
"Moving in with you after you were released meant I had to get rid of Harry and Martha Goodman, but that was easy enough. I just had to make sure they were on one of the planes that was going to crash. That's why Harry Goodman came to see you the night before he died. He thought he was there to tell you about his latest research, but I had put that thought in his head so that he would be delayed and have to take a later plane.
"Actually, the toughest part was getting you to accept the job with Hansen. I almost gave up on you there, but you finally came through, thanks to the behind-the-scenes work of Robert MHner and Alice Bernley. After that, it was pretty easy. I just had to play the perfect kid and, from time to time, make up some ridiculous story about dreams I had." Christopher's only purpose in telling Decker these things was to make him hate him more. It was working.
"But you helped along the way," Christopher said as though he was sharing credit, though in fact his point was to ridicule Decker. "When you suggested the idea about requiring that everyone who took the communion also take the mark I nearly lost it trying not to laugh. Not only did you swallow my lies hook, line and sinker, you even cut your own bait!"
"Then what you told me about Elizabeth and Hope and Louisa being reincarnated . . .?" Decker asked like a fighter dropping his fists and leaving himself open to be hit.
Christopher just laughed and shook his head.
"And the story about the Theatans?"
"It's amazing what people will believe," Christopher answered smugly. "I didn't make it all up, though. I adapted the name from the teachings of one of the New Age groups. Of course, they got it from me originally."
"And the confessions of the fundamentalists on television?"
"Contrived, for the most part. Of course, there is a lunatic fringe among the fundamentalists who actually do say such things."
Decker fell silent, closing his eyes for a moment to try to endure it all. "So what now?" he asked finally, helplessly, barely managing a whisper.
"Now I prepare a brilliant speech, an inspiring plea, whipping the people of the world to a fever pitch against Yahweh. I'll issue a bold challenge, appealing to their sense of pride, their incredible propensity to overestimate their own worth, and despite both, their inconceivable willingness to sell themselves and their birthright for a little temporary gratification. I'm certain I can depend upon their willingness to believe flattery, no matter how preposterous and insincere. Then I'll gather all of the peoples of the world, Humankind," he added with a snicker, "at Meggido and I'll lead them into 'glorious battle' at Petra."
"I meant," Decker stammered, "what about me? What do you plan to do with me?"
"I know what you meant!" Christopher answered scornfully. "That's up to you. You can either take the mark or be executed. It's up to you."
"You're not going to kill me?"
"There's no profit in that," he said. "Except for a few special exceptions like John and Cohen or Albert Moore, I never kill anyone myself. It's much more enjoyable when someone else does it. It just heaps one more coal of guilt on their heads for later on.
"So, there you have it," Christopher said. "If you'd like, you can take the mark tomorrow and live until you die — which should be about three months. Oh, but of course, we wouldn't want you to get kidnapped again or lose your way to the clinic, so I'll have U.N. Security assign some 'bodyguards' to stay with you just to make sure you get there safely tomorrow. Or if you prefer, I'm sure the executioners can squeeze you in and you can have your head cut off before the night is out.
"Take a few minutes to think it over," Christopher said, as he turned to go back toward his desk. Then stopping and turning back he added in an engaging tone that seemed totally out of place, "Actually, Decker, the next few months should be quite interesting for you." Christopher walked back to where Decker was standing. "You've always enjoyed new experiences," he said. "Think of it. You have the opportunity to know the feeling that I've experienced since before your world began: to know that with every passing second, you're moving a little closer to eternity in hell. First you'll feel the horror and dread, and then the denial, and the anxiety, and the nightmares. Pretty soon," he said, now sounding philosophical, "you'll come to realize that there is really only one possible response." Christopher paused as if to give Decker a chance to realize for himself what the one possible response was. "Hate!" he said finally, standing face to face with Decker.
"You'll hate me. You'll hate everyone around you. You'll even hate yourself. But most of all, you'll hate God. After all," Christopher explained, "he's the one who put you here in the first place.
"Think about it, Decker. You never asked to be here. You'd be better off if you'd never been born! So who deserves your hatred more than God? He stacked the deck against you right from the start!"
Christopher smiled and turned to walk away.
"And if I tell anyone?" Decker asked.
Christopher laughed a pathetic laugh. "Who would you tell? Besides, no one would believe you. Of course, if you insist on making a nuisance of yourself, I'll just have to make an exception and kill you myself." Christopher shook his head and added, "Don't be stupid, Decker. Unless, of course you're in a hurry to see hell." Christopher looked at Decker and laughed once more before walking back across his large office to his desk. Finishing his drink, he pressed a button on a control board at his desk which slid back the panels of a wall, revealing an 84 inch television screen. The set was already on, muted and tuned to a satellite feed of the executions. Christopher had apparently been watching them before Decker came in. Turning the sound back on, Christopher sat down to watch.
At first Decker took no notice of the scene portrayed on the screen but slowly the repetitious sound of blade after blade falling and decapitating victim after victim awakened his attention and he could not help but look upon the melee of blood and death. To Decker's surprise, Christopher appeared to take little pleasure in these deaths. Instead his focus seemed fixed on the faces of the executioners as they led the condemned to the guillotine, positioned them to die, and then released the blade.
As Christopher watched, Decker thought back to what Scott Rosen had said. He had told him about the plagues and the executions and about the coming battle at Petra. As the blades continually dropped and were raised again for the next victim, Decker began to comprehend the true significance of what had happened. To this point it had been quite enough to consider his own misery. His hopes and plans of helping to build a better world and a New Age had all turned out to be a lie. Christopher's promise that he would someday be reunited with Elizabeth and his daughters had been nothing but a tool to lure Decker forever away from them. His whole life had been wasted. He had been played for a fool and had proven himself more than worthy of that designation. And now he was only weeks away from eternity in hell. And yet, it occurred to him that there was an even worse toll for his life: he had actually had a key role in bringing on the world's destruction.
"How many?" Decker asked.
Christopher did not need to ask for clarification; he understood the question. "If you look in the bottom right of the screen," Christopher said pointing, "you can see I've got a special feed connected to this set that gives a running count of the executions. Right now it's just a few shy of 3,058,000," he answered. "The second number is the estimate of how many are left. We got off to a slow start," Christopher said almost apologetically. "You'd be amazed at the logistics that go into something like this. And, of course, we were at a complete standstill during the darkness, but my people are working around the clock at 114 locations with 22 more coming on line by Wednesday, each with at least twenty guillotines. They assure me the job will be completed by early September."
Decker looked at the second number on the screen. "You intend to execute 14 million people?" Decker asked aghast.
"Oh, I'm sure there will be a few stragglers," Christopher acknowledged, "but the police and security forces are doing a great job of rounding them up. Of course, it would have been more, but nearly three million of them died during the plagues."
Over 214 billion people had already died in the wars and other disasters. Christopher had given the numbers in his speech. Fourteen million more would be executed. Two billion or more would die in the battle at Petra. For those, however, death was only the beginning of their miseries, for beyond the veil of death waited damnation. Their fate had already been sealed with their rejection of Yahweh and their acceptance of the seal of Christopher's communion on their hand or forehead, a seal which Decker had first proposed.
Christopher had said that he could have picked any of a thousand other people and it was probably true: it didn't have to be Decker. If someone else had been chosen then perhaps they would have come up with the idea for the mark, or else Christopher or Milner would have proposed it. It was a part of the prophecy, so one way or another it would have happened with or without Decker. But that was not much comfort, for it had not been someone else. He had been involved from the very beginning. Decker looked back and could now see clearly all the times he had been seduced by the vision of Christopher's New Age into justifying whatever Christopher said and did. And though he did not yet bear the seal of the communion, he was no less marked, for the blood of billions was, at least in part, on his hands and head. Time after time he had accepted whatever Christopher said, no matter how bizarre, without questioning. Day after day he had helped Christopher build a foundation of deceit. Lie after damnable lie, Decker had been a part of it all and he had justified it as being for the 'good of Humankind.'
Decker's words of just a few minutes earlier came back to haunt him. "There's hardly a man or woman on the planet," he had said, "who hasn't been thoroughly familiarized with the message of the coming advance in the evolution of Humankind: movies, television, radio, newspapers, magazines, books, songs, plays, billboards, bumper stickers . . . your vision of the future is everywhere. There's not a child in school from age three and up who has not been trained in the ethics and tenets of the New Age. And even the younger ones learn the message through cartoons, toys and games."
My God, he thought, what have I done?
As a child in school, Decker had read with disbelief about the atrocities of history: the Nazis in World War II, Goebbels, Guering, Hitler; the mass slaughter of seventeen million Russians by Stalin. Later there was the genocide of Pol Pot, Idi Amin, and the like. Now as he looked at his life, he realized he was no better than any of them. True, he had not administered the torture and death himself, but he had facilitated it. All of it. He was no better than any of them.
Christopher had said the only possible response was hate, but Decker felt something far worse: the crushing weight of his guilt.
While Christopher watched the executions, Decker winced as each drop of the blade gave bloody demonstration of the result of his sin. Finally, but unexpectedly, his guilt found its voice in anger. There was hatred in his heart — Decker could not deny it — but it did not feel quite the way Christopher had described it. It filled his lungs with the frigid air of defiance. There was, he thought, yet something to be said.
"Christopher," Decker said softly, almost whispering.
"Yes," Christopher answered calmly, as though nothing the least bit unpleasant had occurred.
"What's hell like?" he asked.
Christopher muted the television and turned his chair to face him. "I'm afraid it's every bit as bad as you've heard," he said in a consoling tone. There was no real sympathy in his voice. It was just that he knew, for the moment, that there was no way left to hurt the old man. "Of course I've never actually been there. It's just an ignorant myth that hell is Lucifer's home. That's a bit like suggesting that a criminal's headquarters was in prison because that's where he wound up at the end of his career. "But as far as what it's like," he continued, very seriously, staring off into space as if he could actually see it there before him, "I believe it's a good deal like the darkness of the last plague . . . only a lot hotter."
Christopher had ended his description with a bit of dark humor but there was something else in his voice, something unexpected. For just that brief moment, Decker could sense the terror Christopher felt as he talked about it.
"And you'll be there, too?" Decker asked.
Christopher was roused from his vision of hell by Decker's voice and now smiled enthusiastically. Rising from his chair, he walked back over to where Decker still stood. "That's the spirit!" he said, urging Decker on. "You want to see me in hell right alongside you!
"Vengeance!" he said.
"Anger!" he prodded.
"Hatred!" he urged.
"You're catching on faster than I expected! You'll fit right in!"
"Oh . . ." Christopher paused, "but don't get your hopes up too high. I'll be there with you, but, well, in Lucifer's kingdom there are a number of different levels . . . ranks, I guess you might call them. And with rank comes power; in this case, the power to be feared and hated. And I'm afraid you're nowhere near high enough in the pecking order to do anything to me."
Decker did not respond.
"Does that make you hate me even more?" Christopher asked in a condescending voice.
"Yes," Decker answered truthfully. But it was not his hatred that he was thinking about.
"Good!" Christopher responded, delighted.
"When we get there," Decker said slowly, continuing toward his point, "and when you're looking out over the flames of hell at all of those you've brought with you . . ."
"Yes?" Christopher said, goading him on.
"... you won't have any trouble finding me in the crowd."
Christopher laughed a hearty, cruel laugh and shook his head at Decker's attempt to distinguish himself even in hell. "Why?" he asked. "Will you be shouting your curses at me?"
Decker didn't answer.
"Well, you'll have to be yelling pretty loud to be heard over the billions of others!" Christopher said with a caustic chuckle. "You don't get it, do you?" he asked. "That's one of the few things I can actually look forward to in hell. Every time someone curses me for their pain it will be confirmation that I have accomplished what I set out to do. I'll love it. I will thrive on it. And, you know, it's really ironic," he said, truly amazed and cheered at this fact, "funny really, but even though it will be obvious that I enjoy their curses, it won't stop the damned from cursing me. They'll be so enraged, they'll just do it all the more." Christopher shook his head at Decker's feeble attempt and started back toward his desk.
But Decker wasn't through. "No," he said, pausing to reflect. "I won't be cursing you."
Decker dropped his eyes to the floor for a moment as his guilt briefly overpowered his anger. Biting his lower lip, Decker raised his eyes again and stared defiantly at Christopher, who had come back and now stood directly in front of him. Christopher waited, unsure what Decker had in mind, but eager for whatever amusement he was about to offer. "You're not the one that's responsible for me going to hell," Decker said, "I am." Christopher was unimpressed by Decker's realization and rolled his eyes in disgust.
"So, when we get there," Decker continued, "if you ever decide you want to look me up, you won't have long to look."
Decker paused to take a final rebellious, recalcitrant breath. His moment was here. It was not much to make up for a lifetime that had been reduced to a bad joke, but it was all he had, probably all he ever would have that could be put on the other side of the scales. He would hold on to it for as long as he could. Every instant he could stall put Christopher an instant closer to hell, and that in itself seemed worthwhile.
Christopher waited.
Decker's stare grew surprisingly cold and steady. Finally, when he knew Christopher would wait no longer, he spoke. "I'll be the one down on my knees among the flames of hell, thanking God for giving me exactly what I deserve!"
Decker's words were slow and crisp and firm, but they had not been shouted. Still, in the sudden silence that followed, they seemed to echo through the languid air and shake the entire room.
Christopher's teeth clenched and his nostrils flared, and Decker saw the muscles in his neck tighten like bands of steel. Christopher's burning gaze felt as though he was looking right into Decker's soul. He was. In a moment, Christopher seemed to find what he was looking for, and he did not like what he had seen: Decker had not just said this to enrage him. He actually meant it.
Christopher breathed in deeply and exhaled audibly like a bull set to charge. His eyes were flames. His face was red and his body stiffened and actually shook with rage.
Decker stood motionless, unable to take much pleasure in Christopher's reaction because of the awful weight of his own guilt. Christopher's brow was tightened in anger, the likes of which Decker had never seen in any man. His face was flush with fury. And then he did something which seemed very strange to Decker. He started to turn to the left as if he was going to simply leave.
Was he just going to turn back to the televised executions?
As Christopher's upper body turned, Decker assumed his feet would follow, but Christopher's feet were planted firmly on the floor. Swiftly, he raised his right arm up and to the left, his right hand forming a fist. Decker held his ground in anticipation of a backhanded blow delivered against his face with Christopher's full weight. He determined not to move or flinch. He would not give Christopher the pleasure of cowering before him. Then suddenly and totally out of place, Decker's eye caught a strange glint of light. It was just above Christopher's head and about a foot and a half beyond where Decker assumed his hand, now hidden by his leftward-turned body, to be.
Christopher raised his heel and pivoted on the ball of his right foot, and then turning with his full force and speed toward Decker, he straightened his arm at the elbow. Decker instinctively tightened his jaw in anticipation of Christopher's blow.
But, strangely, there was that glint of light again, and it was moving in perfect synchronization with Christopher's clenched fist.
As his fist came closer, Decker was suddenly dumbfounded by what he saw. It appeared that Christopher would actually miss him, his fist passing a good eighteen inches or more short of Decker's face. Christopher even seemed to be leaning back, as if to increase the certainty of a miss.
Then Decker realized Christopher had something in his hand. And again there was that strange glint of light.
Suddenly, Decker realized what it was.
From thin air... from nowhere, Christopher had drawn a brightly polished, double-edged sword and he was swinging it with incredible speed and with all his might toward Decker. As it came closer, Decker realized that it was aimed for his neck.
While some time is required to describe it, the entire incident took only a fraction of a second to occur. There was nothing to do. There was no time to duck or even blink. The blade was only inches from his neck. Swiftly it sliced through the air toward its mark. In an instant it was there, its cold edge pressing against the skin of his neck just before it penetrated.
Helplessly, Decker watched Christopher's hand, clutched tightly around the sword's grip, as it passed almost effortlessly before him, propelling the blade through his neck. The muffled crack of metal against bone as it separated his spinal column between the fourth and fifth vertebrae barely slowed the blade in its bloody path through skin and vein and muscle and sinew and nerve fiber.
Then it was through.
Decker's head had been completely severed from his body, and Christopher followed through with his stroke. Surprisingly, it had all been relatively painless.
Decker felt himself toppling as his head tipped and rolled to his left and off his shoulders. The room appeared to spin as his head tumbled freely to the floor. His forehead hit first, causing Decker to wince in pain as his head bounced and rolled,
landing finally on his left ear. At that moment, Decker's body crumpled to the floor beside him.
From start to finish it had all taken little more than two seconds. In his last moments of consciousness, as the blood drained from his brain, Decker could see Christopher standing there, his rage satisfied as he smiled down at him, the sword raised above his head as Decker's blood ran slowly toward its hilt and dripped down upon his hand. Beside his head, but out of Decker's line of sight, the blood pouring from his headless torso spurted erratically as his heart convulsed and stopped. Soon the flow would slow until it was drawn out by the force of gravity alone. The same was true of Decker's head. Since it had been severed from the heart, there was no pressure forcing the blood out as would be the case with a normal wound; the only force draining blood from his head was gravity. The result, as Decker realized firsthand, was that a few seconds of life and consciousness remained after decapitation. Even in death, Decker's curiosity had found some distraction.
"I was wrong, Decker. That was more fun than I realized!" Christopher said as he walked away. "I'll see you in hell!"
Decker could feel the blood draining from his brain and watched the room grow dark as he began to lose consciousness. At least it was quick, he thought.
Then Decker heard something ... a voice. With the loss of blood to his brain, he had no idea where it came from, but he was certain it was talking to him. Then he remembered something and the realization hit him like a freight train. Despite his condition, despite his disorientation, no Other thought in his life had ever been clearer. He knew what he had to do, and he could not help but muse (if his body were still a part of him, he would have laughed out loud) that it should come to this: a split second from death and yet he realized that it was for this very day and hour and moment that he had been born.
At once Christopher stopped dead in his tracks.
"NOOOOOOO!!!!" he screamed, his voice erupting in a sound so terrifying that its source could only have been deep beneath the gates of hell. If Decker had still been able to hear, he would have recognized the voice from years before when he had been at a point near insanity. If he had still been able to see, as Christopher turned back and raised his sword again, he would have seen for the first time the true face of the man he had brought up as his own son. All the evil works and imaginings of mortal man could not have shown more darkly than did the hatred upon this true face of death.
Charging to where he had left Decker's truncated head and body, Christopher grasped the sword, dropped to one knee, and with all his might brought the edge of the blade down squarely just in front of Decker's right ear, splitting his skull from side to side with a sharp crack and spilling Decker's brains out upon the floor.
I Pull his hair!"
The Christ
Clone Trilogy 03 - Acts Of God
By
James Beau Seigneur
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Home FreeDecker walked through the dark and nearly abandoned halls of the U.N. Secretariat Building. It was late and nearly everyone had gone home. Christopher would be there though; somehow Decker knew it. Opening one of the mammoth mahogany double doors which led to Christopher's spacious reception area, he was surprised to see Jackie Hansen still there.
"Come on in," Jackie said, as she preceded Decker into Christopher's office. "He's waiting for you." Jackie seemed placid in an almost surreal way. She said nothing of the fact that Decker had been gone for so long, and nothing in her voice hinted that she was at all surprised to see him.
As he walked into Christopher's office, it was strangely cold and dark, much as the halls had been. The air had a strange musty smell. Something... everything was wrong. He looked around him and saw no one. He had somehow lost sight of Jackie and it now seemed that she had simply vanished, looking about, Decker sensed movement to his right and turned to see the high back of Christopher's desk chair rotating away from him. "Christopher?" he said. There was no answer. Decker approached the desk and called out again. Still, there was no reply.
As he neared the spot, he reached out for the back of the chair to spin it around. Suddenly Decker jumped back in horror as he came face to face with his worst possible fear. It was Christopher. At least it was Christopher's face, but he was not at all as Decker remembered him. His eyes were cardinal red, the specific hue of which differed not one shade from the sticky liquid which trickled from the corners of his mouth and matted the hairs of his normally neatly-kept beard. His skin appeared somehow scaly and iridescent green. His teeth, jagged and sharp, dripped pink with saliva and blood. His fingernails were long and claw-like.
And in those claws he held the source of the blood: the leg of Jackie Hansen, ripped clean from its socket and with several large bites already taken from it. On the floor beside his chair, Jackie Hansen lay nude and barely alive as the blood drained from her body. Deep gashes in her flesh revealed the tracks of Christopher's claws where he had torn away her clothes. On her face was the same serene smile Decker had seen earlier, and in her eyes as she looked up at Christopher was the unmistakable look of love.
"What do you want?!" Christopher growled, spitting out his last bite of bloody flesh as he jumped to his feet and threw Jackie's dismembered leg to the floor, hitting her in the stomach and leaving the appendage lying across her bare breasts.
Decker screamed and ran in terror but Christopher charged after him. He looked for the door but in his panic, he simply could not find it. He looked desperately for a way — any way — out, but there was none. Decker ran like a man possessed, dodging and trying to stay ahead of his pursuer, but it was impossible. The younger and stronger Christopher stayed right on his heels. Every move Decker made, he seemed to anticipate. Struggling to keep going, Decker began to believe that Christopher was toying with him like a cat with a trapped mouse. Then suddenly, he spotted a window. It was open, but it was nineteen floors down. Still, he had to get away. Christopher was so close behind him he could feel his breath on his neck. With all his strength, Decker ran and leaped for the open window just as Christopher reached out and caught the leg of his pants with the extended claws of one hand. Razor sharp, the claws dug deep into his leg, tearing long bloody stripes through skin and muscle, but it was not enough to slow his momentum. Free of Christopher, Decker looked below him to his chosen alternative: certain death.
Desperately, instinctively, he tried to grab at the air and inexplicably his hand found something solid. It was the seat in front of him. He was still on the plane, headed for Babylon. It had all been a dream, but he was covered with perspiration and his heart was pounding as hard as if it had been real. He was exhausted.
Decker unfastened his seat belt, stood up and stretched, and walked to the restroom. He had found years before that trying to go back to sleep after a disturbing dream was nearly impossible. He had to get up and let the thoughts of consciousness — and perhaps a splash of cold water on his face — purge the dream from his mind. A few moments later, when he returned to his seat, Decker found that this had not been entirely successful because the dream, though exaggerated like a carnival mirror in its form, was nonetheless a reflection of the real fears he bore.
Decker shifted from side to side, adjusted his seat, added a pillow, removed a pillow, adjusted his seat again. He was very tired, and probably still several good nights of rest away from full recovery from the effects of the last plague. He needed to sleep, especially now, to be prepared to confront Christopher about Petra.
When he finally found a comfortable position and his mind began to relax, he thought back to the dream and how absurd it had been. He had not had a nightmare like that since he was a child. Still, he thought a moment later as he slipped closer to sleep, he should be prepared, be ready, to defend himself. The most obvious means was a handgun, but he couldn't buy one because he didn't have the mark. Perhaps a knife. A large kitchen knife should be sufficient. Getting it in past security might be difficult, but. . .
Decker opened his eyes abruptly and sat up straight in his seat.
Is this how it was with Tom?! he wondered. Had Tom had a similar dream which led him to shoot Christopher? Then another thought struck him: Was this just a dream at all, or had it been hypnotically planted in Decker's mind by the KDT, like a time bomb waiting for this exact moment to go off— to set him off? And if this failed to have the desired effect, would there be others? Had the KDT planted other dreams, other thoughts, other visions? When he got to Christopher's office would he see things as they really were or would reality be hidden behind a mask fabricated by those who wanted Christopher dead? What monster, he wondered, had Tom seen standing there on the stage at the U.N. the night he shot Christopher?
And what now drove Decker to see Christopher at this time, just as the KDT appeared to be losing power? Was it really to try to spare the lives of those in Petra, or was it to take the life of Christopher?
To the last question, at least, he thought he knew the answer. He wanted to try to spare the lives of those in Petra. Yet he knew that in going to Babylon he might be doing exactly what the KDT wanted. The feeling that he must go and see Christopher at this precise moment might have been their intent all along. If it was, then he was a pawn, playing out the role of Judas, and believing it was his idea when he really had no choice in the matter.
It didn't matter.
Whether it was his own idea or one that had been planted in his mind by the KDT, he had no choice: he had to go.
Decker was not even sure if he truly controlled his own will, but to the extent that he did, he made one vow. Under no circumstances would he bring a weapon, any weapon, or anything that could be used as a weapon with him to Christopher's office. Even if his worst fears about Christopher proved true, even if he appeared to be or really was a green scaly demon as he had been in his dream, Decker vowed he would do nothing to harm him or even to protect himself.
It was an easier decision than it might have seemed. If he was wrong about Christopher then he must not allow himself to do anything against him. And if he was right, then he would just as soon die anyway.
6:23 p.m., Monday, July 13, 4 N.A. (2026 A.D.) — King Nebuchadnezzar International Airport, Babylon
Decker's plane arrived in Babylon six minutes ahead of schedule. A limosine was waiting, ready to take him wherever he wanted to go. It would have been very easy for Decker to tell the driver to take him to his apartment, but he knew what he had to do and there was no use delaying it.
He took a deep breath. "The U.N. Secretariat Building," he told the driver.
Slipping the fake bandage from around his hand, Decker placed his right palm on the identipad and stared at the screen of the retinal scanner beside the door of the executive entrance to the Secretariat Building. "Decker Hawthorne," he said clearly.
"Verified," a soft female-sounding electronic voice responded, as the lock clicked and the door opened.
Apparently no one had thought to tell the U.N. security system to search the World Health Organization's database for U.N. executives who had not received the communion and to restrict their access to the building.
"Good evening, Mr. Hawthorne," the guard inside the door said cheerfully.
"Good evening," Decker responded, a little startled. He had been through that door a hundred times, at all times of the night and day, and had always been greeted as cheerfully as tonight. What startled him was that it was just the same. He had been so sure that somehow it would be different. The building was brightly lit with just the right level of shadow, and the air was refreshingly cool in contrast to the arid Iraqi night. Though it was nearly 7:30 p.m. a few employees and guests were still in the lobby, in the elevator, and walking down the halls as he made his way to the top floor and Christopher's office. Finally he arrived at the entrance to the offices of the Secretary-General. He had been away for longer periods than this on U.N. business and always returned with a feeling as though he had never really been gone. That much at least was different; now as he stood outside the dark wood double doors, he had the strange sense that he should knock.
As he stood there going over again in his mind what he was going to say, suddenly one of the doors opened. His heart seemed to stop in anticipation of seeing Christopher coming through the door toward him, and then start again as Jackie Hansen appeared. She was rushing off somewhere and was startled to see an unexpected face.
"Decker! How are you?" she said as she recovered her composure and wrapped her arms around him. Even with a large bandage on her cheek, she was a beautiful woman. The effect of the communion had continued its work and she seemed even younger and more vivacious than when he had seen her last, a little more than a month before.
"I'm fine," Decker answered, as he returned the show of affection.
"Oh, Decker. We need to talk, but I'm late for a psychic enhancement class. Will you be here tomorrow?"
"Yeah, I guess so," Decker answered.
"Okay. I'll talk to you then," she said, and hurried down the hall.
"Is Christopher in?" Decker called after her. "He's in his office," Jackie called back.
Decker walked quietly across the carpeted floor toward Christopher's door. This was it. There was no turning back. Decker knocked on the door. There was a pause. "Come in," came a faint call from deep inside Christopher's large office. Decker opened the door. Christopher was sitting at his desk looking toward his door to see who was coming to see him this late in the evening. Suddenly the look in his eyes went from mild curiosity to rapturous joy.
"Decker! Oh, Decker, am I glad to see you!"
Decker stood expressionless as Christopher ran to greet him with a long, firm hug.
"You don't know what it's been like around here without you. Debbie Sanchez is very competent but she's no Decker Hawthorne when it comes to dealing with the press. I am so glad you're back!"
"I... uh... I'm glad to be back," Decker answered, not sure what else to say.
Christopher released his hug and backed up to get a better look at Decker. "So, how have you been?" Christopher asked, almost absent-mindedly. "Oh," he said, as though he had just recalled the plagues and all that had happened in the past few weeks. "I'm sorry, Decker. Here I am just thinking of how happy I am that you're back. Are you all right?"
"I'm ... I'm fine, I guess."
"You've lost a lot of weight."
"Well, it's been a tough few weeks."
Christopher nodded. "At least you're still alive," he said gratefully. "Here, come sit down." Christopher motioned toward a sitting area near the windows with a view of the hanging gardens. These were not the windows Decker had jumped from in his dream, and they were, of course 'closed' because the windows in the U.N. complex of buildings were not made to open.
"What can I get you to drink?" Christopher asked, starting toward the wet bar.
"Uh... just water," Decker said as he sunk into one of the comfortable arm chairs. Decker wanted so much just to forget about the last few weeks and accept Christopher's warm welcome-home and go on about his life. But by now the images of Rhoda Donafin and her family and the others in Petra were burned into his memory. He had to complete the task that had brought him here.
"I need to talk to you about your decision to march on Petra," he said resolutely.
"We can talk about all of that later, Decker," Christopher answered, as he returned with a glass of ice water, handed it to Decker, and then sat down across from him. "Tell me how you've been."
"You need to reconsider your decision," Decker said, ignoring Christopher's request.
"Decker," Christopher said, taken aback by Decker's insistence, "it's late. You've been away for over a month. A lot has happened. Do we really need to have a policy discussion right now?"
"Yes. Please," Decker persisted.
"It will be a month before the first phase of deployment even begins. Why is it so important that we discuss it right this minute?"
"Because it's wrong," Decker responded bluntly.
Christopher raised an eyebrow, signed, and leaned back in his chair. "Decker, this was not a decision I rushed into. The Security Council has been pushing me to do this since the plagues first began."
"Well, tell them you won't do it," Decker interrupted.
"I can't do that, Decker."
"Why not?"
"Because I agree with them. I didn't at first. You know I've always held out hope that the KDT and their followers would join us. I've done everything I can to get them to listen to reason."
"Have you?" Decker didn't intend for the question to sound like an accusation, but it did.
Christopher seemed surprised and a little hurt. "Decker, stop. I can understand the public losing their faith in me, but will you abandon me, too?"
"I haven't abandoned you."
"Decker, I don't like having to deal with Petra anymore than you do. But it has to be . .."
Christopher stopped in mid-sentence as his expression suddenly changed to shock and then disbelief. Getting up from his seat, he crossed over to Decker, took hold of his forearm and tore away the bandage that covered the back of his right hand. Decker did not resist.
"So this is why you question my decision! You have abandoned me! You, of all people! I trusted you!" Christopher backed away, shaking his head in disbelief. "You told me you would receive the communion and then you disappeared."
Coming near again, he looked Decker in the eye. "Bob Milner tried to tell me when you called here saying you needed a vacation that he sensed something was wrong. But I didn't want to believe it! I said you were probably just tired! I actually got angry with him for suggesting such a thing! But I see I owe him an apology." Christopher shook his head again. "It wasn't enough that you betrayed me once 2000 years ago!" he said. "You had to do it again! You never went to get the communion. You were hiding . .. you were ..." Christopher stopped himself short and just stared. "No," he said more slowly, as a look of sympathy and understanding swept over his face. "You were . . . you were kidnapped! Decker, I'm so sorry. I had no idea. Why didn't you tell me? Are you all right? How long did they hold you? Did they hurt you? How did you get away?"
Somehow Christopher realized what had happened.
The look of caring and concern was so real, Decker could no longer remain aloof. This was what he had hoped to see when he had watched Christopher's speech. Now he was sure. The relief swept over him like a flood as he knew for certain his concerns about Christopher had been unfounded.
"I'm... I'm fine," Decker stammered, but it was obvious he was not. "Actually," he said, smiling in relief, "I feel terrible. I'm exhausted, my teeth hurt, my head hurts, and my tongue and the inside of my mouth feel like I gargled with Drano."
"So, you did go through the plagues. I thought maybe you had been held in Petra all this time.
"I was only there for a few days. When they released me, I went back to the U.S. Actually, being kidnapped and held in Petra was a walk in the park compared to what I've been through in the past several weeks. Of course, I've had it no worse than any one else."
"I'm just glad you're back," Christopher said. "Did they torture you?"
"No, they just scared me pretty good." Decker reached for the glass of water which had thus far gone untouched. "You know what I really need?" Decker said, as he looked at the water.
"Just name it!" Christopher answered.
"What I really need is a beer."
"Hefeweizen Dunkefl" Christopher asked, referring to a German dark wheat beer that Decker was particularly fond of and that Christopher sometimes kept on hand.
Decker's eyes lit up. "You have some?"
"I even have one cold."
Decker nodded eagerly and collapsed back into the chair. It was the first time he had really relaxed since before he was kidnapped, for it was not just his body that relaxed, but his mind as well. He wanted to apologize to Christopher for all the terrible things he had thought about him, but realized that discussion could wait for another time.
Christopher poured the beer slowly into a tall glass and handed it to Decker, who sucked off the foam. "This is so good," he said, pausing only long enough to take a breath and lick the foam from his lips before drinking down several refreshing gulps. Christopher stood watching, apparently sharing Decker's enjoyment.
"Decker, look, you're tired and you're . . . well, you're not as young as you used to be," Christopher said. "Besides, it's been hard on everyone with all these plagues. Have you seen a doctor?"
"No. I guess I should."
"Why don't you go home and get a good night's rest. I'll have Jackie make an appointment for you tomorrow."
Decker nodded agreement. He was tired and he thought it would be a relief to get back to his apartment.
"And while you're there you can finally take the communion," Christopher added, "discretely, of course. It wouldn't be good to have anyone find out you had waited so long."
"Yes," Decker agreed. "I'll do that." Still, though he no longer believed Christopher to be a monster, Decker had come a long way and he had not yet achieved his purpose. "But before I go," he added, "there are a few things we must talk about." His expression made it obvious that he would not be swayed from his intent. He wanted to talk and it had to be now.
"All right," Christopher smiled accommodatingly and sat back down opposite Decker. "What is it that's so important that it can't wait 'til morning?"
"Christopher," Decker began, sitting forward in his seat and setting his beer down so he could use his hands to express himself, "when I was taken to Petra, at first I just wondered whether or not I'd ever get out of there alive. They never tortured me. For the first three days they tried their best to convince me that you were evil and that Yahweh was good. After that, I guess they just gave up. They let me go wherever I wanted throughout the whole encampment. I had a chance to meet the people and talk to them, to see what they thought about what was happening. And I realized some things. Most of them are not KDT crazies, Christopher. They're just ordinary people who have been convinced by the circumstances that the KDT have their best interests at heart and that you are their enemy.
"On the plane to Jerusalem after your resurrection," Decker continued, "you told me that my role would be to serve as communicator of your message to people who were not familiar with the concepts of the New Age. Well, I served you in that role for three years, and I thought that job was pretty much complete. There's not a man or woman on the planet who hasn't been thoroughly familiarized with the message of the coming advance in the evolution of Humankind: movies, television, radio, newspapers, magazines, books, songs, plays, billboards, bumper stickers . . . your vision of the future is everywhere. There's not a child in school from age three and up who has not been trained in the ethics and tenets of the New Age. Even the younger ones learn the message through cartoons, toys, and games.
"The mission has gone so well, in fact, that I was beginning to think that I had worked myself out of a job. But on my last night in Petra, I realized there was still much work to be done. But it was with the least likely of audiences: the people of Petra, and maybe even with the fundamentalists."
Christopher shook his head to indicate the hopelessness of what Decker was suggesting. His skepticism did not deter Decker. "Christopher, I'm convinced that we can reach these people . . . make them understand that you're not their enemy... that what you offer the world is not to be feared, but welcomed."
Christopher seemed unconvinced but Decker continued, clarifying one point, "I'm not saying there's hope for the KDT. I think they probably are beyond the point where they can be persuaded by reason. But their followers: I'm certain that many of them can be persuaded if they're just presented with all the facts."
"Decker, believe me," Christopher answered, "more than anyone, I understand how you feel about this, but I think you're underestimating just how hard these people are to deal with. Don't you think I've tried? I've had the best cult deprogramming experts and psychiatrists in the world working on this with some of the fundamentalists in prison. They're still working on it, but they're getting nowhere."
Decker was well aware of this. His office had been responsible for distributing information on the program to the press. "But the psychiatrists and deprogrammers are missing the point," he responded. "They're never going to convince the fundamentalists of anything as long as the KDT continue to appear infallible. Everything that the KDT says is going to happen, does happen. Everything they attempt, they accomplish. Sure, Bob Milner may come along later and stop what they've started, but in the meantime they've accomplished their purposes. But if just once we could alter events so that the KDT would fail in one of their prophecies, the whole foundation of their control would fall apart!
"In Petra," Decker continued, "they told me that the plagues were coming. The KDT told their followers that in response to the plagues, you would act first against the fundamentalists and then assemble an army to march on Petra. They even said when it would happen: September. They've told everyone. It's commonly known throughout the camp.
"But you can 'short-circuit' the prophecy — prevent it from coming true! If you don't march on Petra, then the KDT and their followers will have to admit they were wrong. I believe you should go to Petra, but instead of assembling an army for war, you could send a peace envoy. Show your true face as peacemaker and benevolent leader instead of the demonic beast the KDT has made you out to be. The KDT took me to Petra to convince me that they were right and you were wrong. What I'm suggesting would allow us to turn that completely around, so that we could use what I learned while I was there to our own benefit, so that we can convince their followers of the truth about you and about Yahweh."
"Decker," Christopher responded, "all the KDT have done with their 'prophecy' about how I would respond is to state the obvious. It's like an accomplished chess player or a good military strategist. They can predict what their opponent will do several moves in advance because they know what their own moves will be and they know that their opponent will have no choice in how he will respond."
"But can't we respond differently? Can't we change our response?"
Christopher shook his head. "It's not that easy, Decker, and the KDT knows it. That's why they can speak with such confidence. It's not a coincidence that each of the plagues has been worse than the one before. We must stop the KDT before they're strong enough to act again, or the next plague will kill everyone on the planet except the KDT and their followers in Petra. No one outside the walls of Petra, not even the fundamentalists, will be spared."
"I'm only asking for a brief delay. There are so many in Petra who simply have been misled by the KDT," Decker argued. "If you march on Petra in September they will suffer the same fate as those who have misled them."
"I don't know what it is that you think I'm going to do," Christopher responded. "Do you think we're going to go in there and kill everyone? The people of Petra will be given the same opportunity as the fundamentalists have been given to denounce Yahweh and the KDT. Anyone willing to leave Petra and reject the KDT will be allowed to do so."
"But they won't!" Decker insisted. "If you march on Petra in September, you'll be doing exactly what the KDT said you'd do. By your own actions you'll be giving credence to the KDT. Can't it wait even a month? You said yourself that they've been weakened enough that they won't be able to call down any more plagues for a while." Christopher did not answer, but it was obvious he had not changed his mind. Decker tried another approach. "Christopher, when I recommended that you institute the mark, it was to use the biblical prophecies to our advantage. What I'm suggesting now is the same thing, except I think now we should do just the opposite of what the prophecies say." Then another thought occurred to him. "Besides," he said, "if you march on Petra in September, you could be walking right into a trap."
The suggestion brought an uncharacteristically chilly stare from Christopher. "Odd, Decker, but I get the feeling that it's not me you're concerned about."
"Not exclusively, no," Decker admitted quickly. "I'd be lying to tell you otherwise. But my motives don't make what I'm saying any less true. If you can wait just a month, the people in Petra will realize that the KDT are wrong and their stranglehold will be broken. We can accomplish our goals and avoid a massacre."
"Decker, don't you understand, every day of delay is like putting off the removal of a life-threatening cancer. In one month — a single month — these people you're trying to protect have killed over 200 million people and nearly every aquatic creature on the planet! I have no desire to kill anyone," Christopher continued, "but you are wrong. If I delay my plans, they will not see they're wrong. They will simply find some way to reinterpret the prophecies to say that I'll be coming the next month, or the next, or the one after that. Do you have any idea how many times in the past these religious types have used exactly that kind of'prophetic revisionism'? The leaders of the Jehovah's Witnesses practically made an art of it — predicting numerous events that never happened, including the end of the world in the 1870s and 1914, and again in 1975. Time after time their leaders made their predictions and time after time they failed. And when the predicted dates passed, they'd make up some story about how what they predicted actually did happen but only 'in the heavenly realm' or 'invisibly.' Or else they'd claim that they never actually made the prediction and that what they said had just been misinterpreted or taken too literally by others. And yet, time after time their followers believed them. No amount of truth would shake them from what they wanted to believe." Christopher shook his head to indicate the hopelessness of any attempt to convince the KDT's followers that they were wrong. "If I postpone the march on Petra for a month, the KDT will simply make up some excuse; they'll do exactly as the leaders of the Jehovah's Witnesses did. And their followers will go on believing their every word."
What Christopher was saying made sense. As he thought it through, the faces of Rhoda and Tom, Jr. and Rachael and Decker Donafin and all the people of Petra seemed to blur in his memory. Maybe Christopher was right; maybe he was just tired and old. "But we can't just . . ." Decker tried to think of something, some new reason, but it seemed he was running out of arguments. Still, he could not just give up and let the people of Petra die. There had to be a way . . . something he had not thought of yet.
"I'm sorry we can't agree on this, Decker," Christopher said, "but I have to do what I believe is best. Now frankly, I just don't have the time to continue to discuss it." Christopher got up and went back to his desk, leaving Decker sitting there. Had he not left so quickly, he would have noticed the sudden look of startled recollection which swept over Decker's face, and the expression of sheer horror which followed it: horror so great that all thoughts of Petra — the whole reason he had come here — were totally eclipsed in his mind.
Decker had seen something. It was no monstrous metamorphosis such as he had seen in his dream on the plane, but it was every bit as terrifying. It was the look on Christopher's face when he said he didn't have time to discuss it. It was only a look, but its meaning was inescapable. It was something Decker had seen just once before. It was exactly the same expression he had seen on Christopher's face in Lebanon when he asked about Tom.
In that instant, the universe changed.
Then he said it.
"There's something else."
With those three words, Decker crossed a line of restraint that he had maintained for over twenty years. He had advised, even argued with Christopher, but never before had he challenged him. In reality his words could have meant anything. He simply could have let it drop. But to Decker it seemed that he was caught in a swell which he could no longer navigate but only press through.
"Decker, there's nothing more to discuss." The look had not left Christopher's face.
"I'm not talking about Petra," Decker said, rising from his chair to face Christopher on even ground.
"Then what?" asked Christopher, apparently unaware of the tempest in Decker's mind and heart. "What else have I done that has not met with your approval?"
Decker sensed a thinly veiled sarcasm in Christopher's voice that he had never heard before. Then suddenly, he understood why Christopher had never called him while he was in Derwood. Christopher no longer needed him; he had served his purpose in reaching those unfamiliar with the New Age philosophy and was no longer of any use. In truth, Christopher no longer had time for Decker.
"You were going to leave Tom Donafin," he answered.
Christopher responded with a look of complete puzzlement. "What in the world are you talking about?" he asked, his voice showing not only confusion about the relevance of Tom Donafin to the current conversation, but growing anger as well. "Leave him where?"
"When Tom shot you," Decker began, "I was standing right next to him. When I realized what he had done I asked him 'Why?' Tom started to answer, but all he had time to say before he was killed was, 'He was going to leave me.'
"It didn't make any sense at the time. I thought it was just the ramblings of a lunatic. Later I became convinced that the Koum Damah Tatare had brainwashed him. But when I was at Petra I had the dream again." Decker paused to breathe and calm his pounding heart. He hadn't tried to, but he was beginning to sound more and more like a prosecuting attorney about to drive home his point to the jury. Christopher didn't like being put in this position and it was obvious that he didn't care for Decker's tone.
"What dream?!" Christopher demanded, wanting to waste no more time at this game. "What are you talking about?!"
"It was the same dream I had in Lebanon."
There was a long pause while Christopher studied Decker's face in confusion. "You mean," he asked, "when I rescued you from the Hizballahl\ That's what this is all about?!"
"That's what Tom was talking about," Decker answered. "I never told anyone about that dream except Tom and Elizabeth. In the dream you came into my room to get me. 'It's time to go,' you said. But when I was following you out, I stopped you to ask about Tom." Decker watched Christopher for any reaction to what he was saying. There was none. "I asked you where he was. You knew but you didn't care. If I hadn't insisted, you would have left him there to die."
"But that was just a dream!" Christopher interrupted, his good hand outstretched, appealing to Decker's reason.
"But it wasn't just a dream!" Decker shot back in anger. "In New York you told me that you used astral projection to come to Lebanon to rescue me. It was you! It wasn't just a dream!"
Unable to argue the point, Christopher's arm dropped to his side.
"You came there to rescue me!" Decker continued. "Just me! You had no intention of rescuing Tom! You were just going to leave him there to rot away and die! That's what Tom must have realized." Christopher's disposition suddenly seemed to change. His anger and defensiveness vanished and instead he just waited and listened. "I don't know how Tom knew it was more than just a dream, but I'm sure that's what he meant when he said you were going to leave him. Somehow, Tom knew that it wasn't just a mistake or an oversight. You were going to leave him.
"You don't really care about Humankind — about people — at all. If you did, you would never have forgotten about Tom."
Christopher's composure had now become so incongruous with the situation that Decker had to pause. Not only was Christopher undisturbed, he almost seemed amused.
"But he wasn't a part of your plan," Decker began again haltingly, growing more and more unsure as the look of amusement on Christopher's face became more and more pronounced. "You didn't need him to carry out your plans. You only needed me." Decker stopped, the last words falling from his lips merely from the momentum of the words that had gone before.
Christopher now smiled broadly, and it became painfully obvious that he was smiling to himself and not at Decker. Decker had expected denial or anger; certainly not this.
Finally the smile became outright laughter.
"Damn!" Christopher said finally, almost shouting. "That's pretty good, Decker! Even if it did take you twenty-three years to realize it."
Decker was stunned. Was this an admission ... or just ridicule?
"Frankly, Decker, arguing with you is taking more time than it's worth anymore," Christopher said. "To tell you the truth — something I do as seldom as possible," he added and then raised his hand in mock surrender, "it never even occurred to me to rescue Tom Donafin. As you said, I was there to get you." Christopher shrugged. "Why should I have cared what happened to Tom Donafin?
"Of course, at the time, I had no idea who Tom was. I thought he had been killed along with the rest of his family in an auto accident. You see," Christopher explained, "Tom Donafin was supposed to have died years before in a little late-night meeting that was arranged for his family with a drunk driver. It was a beautiful sight — blood and broken glass everywhere," he said, digressing. "The drunk driver wasn't even scratched. He felt so guilty about it after he sobered up that he hanged himself in his jail cell. He left a wife and two sons nearly penniless. And the best part: when he hanged himself, the guard was watching. He didn't even try to stop him. It was perfect.
"Well. . . almost perfect. I thought the whole Donafin family had died. Apparently Yahweh's minions managed to hide your friend Donafin from us all those years." Christopher shrugged off any personal responsibility for the oversight, "I had no idea who he was when I came to get you out of Lebanon.
"You know," he said, pointing his finger in the air and shaking it slowly to emphasize his syllables as a realization dawned on him, "I'll bet that's why he let you think he was dead all those years! Donafin, or Saul Cohen, or somebody, must have realized that the best way to hide him from me was to let you think he was dead. If the two of you had stayed in regular contact after I moved in with you, sooner or later I would have realized who he was and arranged another 'accident.'"
Then another thought occurred to Christopher. "The day I was shot, was Donafin standing there with you at the U.N. when you told me you wanted to introduce him to me?"
Decker nodded a nod that was more a question than an answer.
Christopher smiled. "Yahweh wasn't taking any chances," he said. "He must have had a whole legion of angels surrounding him. I didn't even see Donafin. I just assumed the friend you wanted me to meet was waiting in your office." Christopher spoke as if this was just a normal, everyday conversation. Decker was stunned and confused — not at the specifics of what Christopher was saying — but at the fact that he was saying it at all.
Christopher either interpreted Decker's expression as a request for additional explanation or just wanted to further Decker's agony by continuing. "You see, Tom Donafin was the last of his line, the last blood relative of Jesus — or Yeshua, or whatever the hell you want to call him. Anyway, according to an ancient law, a blood relative of one who is murdered has the right to seek out the killer and avenge the murder. I knew that I would be killed; that was never in question. It's in the prophecy. In fact, it fit perfectly into my plan. How else could I have staged such a dramatic resurrection with the whole world watching? But I had someone else in mind to actually pull the trigger."
Christopher laughed a contemptible laugh, "Poor Girard Poupardin. The pathetic fool was there to shoot me to avenge Albert Moore — a man who didn't give a damn about him. It didn't really matter who killed me." Christopher shook his head with the regret of a chess player who realizes he made the wrong move. "I just wanted it to be a murder. Instead it was a damned execution! It's a minor point in the larger scheme of things, but I spent a lot of time setting that up!" It was clear that Christopher did not like Yahweh beating him at his own game.
Christopher regained his composure. "No matter," he said, putting the defeat behind him. "It was rather sweet irony, though, that Poupardin was so determined to kill me that when Tom Donafin robbed him of the pleasure, he turned the gun on Donafin instead."
"Oh, and in all modesty," he added with a grin, "I think timing my death to coincide with the beginning of the madness, and then ending the madness when I killed John and Cohen, was a master stroke. Who would have suspected that the spirit beings who appeared at my call at the Temple in Jerusalem were the same ones who had wreaked bloody carnage with the madness only moments before?"
Christopher smiled and waited for Decker to respond, and the longer he waited, the bigger his smile became.
"Then it's all true?" Decker finally managed to ask, not only in disbelief that he had been right, but even more so that Christopher was admitting it. "All the things that the KDT say about you are true. You really are the Antichrist, the son of Satan!"
"In the flesh," Christopher replied, bowing grandly and mocking Decker. "But don't act so surprised. I've never made a secret of it. I even told you as much on the plane to Israel after my resurrection, and on several occasions since then. I've been saying it all along, but it didn't seem to matter to anyone. Of course, I've always couched it in stories of how evil Yahweh is." Christopher shook his head in wonder. "It's always amazed me how eager humans are to believe that line. All I have to do is draw their attention to some pretty bauble or trinket that's just beyond their reach, tell them how unfair it is that they don't have it, and that if God was really good and loving, he wouldn't keep them from having it. Money, power, sex: it all works pretty much the same. Of course the most seductive temptation for humans has always been telling them they can be their own god, or at least be equal to God. It worked with Eve in the Garden of Eden — 'you will be as God,' I told her. It's worked throughout the centuries. And now the very same lie has worked with the New Age for all of Humankind"
"So your entire life," Decker had to force the words from his lips, "your entire life has been an act?"
"Please, Decker, let's not trivialize my accomplishments with terms like 'act,'" Christopher said. "I prefer to call it a magnificently orchestrated, brilliantly executed lie."
"And the prophecies about you in the Bible are all true?"
"Of course," Christopher said without emotion.
"But then you must know that if you go to Petra you will lose."
"Ah, true," Christopher agreed. "But even if I do not, it will make no difference. The time of my end has been set. It does not matter where I am. For my purposes, going to Petra is simply the most favorable of the available options. It is to Petra that Jesus will come. I will not cower in fear in some dark corner when that day arrives. I will go there to Petra to meet him! I will stand defiant at his return and I will bring with me those I have stolen from him! I will no more fear him in the end than I have served him in the past! I will never yield! I have set myself against him and I will defy him until the end. And thereafter, I will curse him boldly from the flames of hell!"
"But why? If you know you will end up in hell, why go through with it?"
Christopher laughed. "Call it hatred of God. Call it independence. Surely you can understand that. I simply refuse to serve. The poet John Milton understood it. He put it quite succinctly back in 1667 in Paradise Lost: 'Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav'n,' he wrote, paraphrasing the Lord Lucifer. And, to take others with me, of course! It's really quite simple. Man was made to rule and reign with God. To love and be loved. When I take those that God had intended for himself, I anger him, I enrage him; and most important, I hurt him! Do you have any idea," Christopher said in great earnestness, truly wanting Decker to understand, "what it's like to tweak the nose of God?" Christopher threw up his hand in exhilaration at the thought. "The rush of sheer, raw power that swells through you when you watch his face and know that you," Christopher looked back at Decker and struck the air with his clenched fist to emphasize each point, "by your will! by your power! have intentionally made God, the one who created the Universe . . . weep!"
Decker was lost. . . defeated. Scott Rosen and the KDT had been right about Christopher; about everything. And whether Christopher called his life an act or a lie, Decker realized that his own life had been a sham. On that backdrop nothing really mattered anymore. Still, there was one thing Decker wanted to know. "Christopher," he said. The feel of Christopher's name on his lips, the sound of it in his ears, shook Decker with the memory of all the years he had spoken it before and been deceived. "Just one more question." Where before Christopher had no time for Decker, his expression now indicated an eagerness to answer; he was truly enjoying this.
"Why me?" Decker asked. "Why did you pick me?"
Christopher looked at Decker, momentarily surprised by the unexpected query. Then suddenly his cheeks expanded as he pressed his lips together, trying to control his response. Giving up and yielding to the impulse, Christopher exploded into riotous, prolonged laughter.
"Can you really be so stupid?!" he roared with derision. "Can you really believe that you were so important to my plans that there has to be a reason that I picked you? I could just as well have chosen any of at least a thousand other people." Christopher paused to wipe a tear of laughter from his eye before he continued.
"Okay," he said, trying to sound serious but enjoying this far too much to conceal it, "I'll tell you why I chose you." Christopher stopped to savor the moment. It was a joke whose punch line had waited twenty-three years for just the right moment to be told.
"You," Christopher said, and then paused, struggling to deadpan the delivery of his response, but enjoying the sound of each syllable as it rolled off his tongue, knowing the effect it would have on Decker, "you just happened . . ." Christopher laughed despite himself, "to be in the right place ... at the right time!!"
Christopher now roared with laughter so uncontrollable that he had to take hold of the back of a chair to steady himself.
Decker's mind and body went limp. Had he the presence of mind to notice it, he would have found it quite inexplicable that his heart continued to beat under the weight of his chest as he suddenly came to understand that the sum total value of his life had amounted to nothing more than a joke for Christopher's entertainment.
Up until this moment he at least had his anger. Now even the anger was gone. It was not satisfied, it was just finished. Now there was nothing. Nothing had meaning. For more than two decades Decker had built his life around Christopher. Now, not only was that gone, snatched out from under him, it had all been a farce. Not only had he been betrayed, he had been a fool! He was a joke!
Decker's arms felt heavy and his shoulders slumped, giving the impression that he had simply curled up to die but that someone had propped him up with a stick. He stood there for a long moment, unable to move while Christopher looked on in delight.
Christopher went over to the bar and poured himself another drink. "You've been quite a project, actually," he said. "I've brought you along; given you opportunities to advance your career. I'm sure you remember the boy in Jerusalem who ran from behind the Wailing Wall — the boy you brought home to Jenin after the riot. I arranged all of that. Getting you taken hostage to Lebanon served two purposes. First, it got you out of the way for a few years until I was ready for you. You were starting to ask too many questions. I couldn't risk having you publish a story that might expose my origin, and I couldn't be sure that dear Uncle Harry would be able to keep you quiet. I needed you locked away for a few years. A minute ago you said that I had come to Lebanon only to rescue you" Christopher said with a grin. "In truth, I wasn't there to rescue you at all. It was more like getting you out of cold storage." Christopher shrugged, "Tom Donafin was of no consequence to my plan. He could have stayed there and rotted for all I cared.
"The second purpose for having you taken hostage was that it provided a way to get you and Jon Hansen together. Of course, there were other ways I could have arranged for you to meet him. You could have met him while working on a news story. But this way, with him rescuing you just as you were about to collapse from hunger in Lebanon, you had a couple of days together and, because of the circumstances, there were strong emotional ties built.
"Moving in with you after you were released meant I had to get rid of Harry and Martha Goodman, but that was easy enough. I just had to make sure they were on one of the planes that was going to crash. That's why Harry Goodman came to see you the night before he died. He thought he was there to tell you about his latest research, but I had put that thought in his head so that he would be delayed and have to take a later plane.
"Actually, the toughest part was getting you to accept the job with Hansen. I almost gave up on you there, but you finally came through, thanks to the behind-the-scenes work of Robert MHner and Alice Bernley. After that, it was pretty easy. I just had to play the perfect kid and, from time to time, make up some ridiculous story about dreams I had." Christopher's only purpose in telling Decker these things was to make him hate him more. It was working.
"But you helped along the way," Christopher said as though he was sharing credit, though in fact his point was to ridicule Decker. "When you suggested the idea about requiring that everyone who took the communion also take the mark I nearly lost it trying not to laugh. Not only did you swallow my lies hook, line and sinker, you even cut your own bait!"
"Then what you told me about Elizabeth and Hope and Louisa being reincarnated . . .?" Decker asked like a fighter dropping his fists and leaving himself open to be hit.
Christopher just laughed and shook his head.
"And the story about the Theatans?"
"It's amazing what people will believe," Christopher answered smugly. "I didn't make it all up, though. I adapted the name from the teachings of one of the New Age groups. Of course, they got it from me originally."
"And the confessions of the fundamentalists on television?"
"Contrived, for the most part. Of course, there is a lunatic fringe among the fundamentalists who actually do say such things."
Decker fell silent, closing his eyes for a moment to try to endure it all. "So what now?" he asked finally, helplessly, barely managing a whisper.
"Now I prepare a brilliant speech, an inspiring plea, whipping the people of the world to a fever pitch against Yahweh. I'll issue a bold challenge, appealing to their sense of pride, their incredible propensity to overestimate their own worth, and despite both, their inconceivable willingness to sell themselves and their birthright for a little temporary gratification. I'm certain I can depend upon their willingness to believe flattery, no matter how preposterous and insincere. Then I'll gather all of the peoples of the world, Humankind," he added with a snicker, "at Meggido and I'll lead them into 'glorious battle' at Petra."
"I meant," Decker stammered, "what about me? What do you plan to do with me?"
"I know what you meant!" Christopher answered scornfully. "That's up to you. You can either take the mark or be executed. It's up to you."
"You're not going to kill me?"
"There's no profit in that," he said. "Except for a few special exceptions like John and Cohen or Albert Moore, I never kill anyone myself. It's much more enjoyable when someone else does it. It just heaps one more coal of guilt on their heads for later on.
"So, there you have it," Christopher said. "If you'd like, you can take the mark tomorrow and live until you die — which should be about three months. Oh, but of course, we wouldn't want you to get kidnapped again or lose your way to the clinic, so I'll have U.N. Security assign some 'bodyguards' to stay with you just to make sure you get there safely tomorrow. Or if you prefer, I'm sure the executioners can squeeze you in and you can have your head cut off before the night is out.
"Take a few minutes to think it over," Christopher said, as he turned to go back toward his desk. Then stopping and turning back he added in an engaging tone that seemed totally out of place, "Actually, Decker, the next few months should be quite interesting for you." Christopher walked back to where Decker was standing. "You've always enjoyed new experiences," he said. "Think of it. You have the opportunity to know the feeling that I've experienced since before your world began: to know that with every passing second, you're moving a little closer to eternity in hell. First you'll feel the horror and dread, and then the denial, and the anxiety, and the nightmares. Pretty soon," he said, now sounding philosophical, "you'll come to realize that there is really only one possible response." Christopher paused as if to give Decker a chance to realize for himself what the one possible response was. "Hate!" he said finally, standing face to face with Decker.
"You'll hate me. You'll hate everyone around you. You'll even hate yourself. But most of all, you'll hate God. After all," Christopher explained, "he's the one who put you here in the first place.
"Think about it, Decker. You never asked to be here. You'd be better off if you'd never been born! So who deserves your hatred more than God? He stacked the deck against you right from the start!"
Christopher smiled and turned to walk away.
"And if I tell anyone?" Decker asked.
Christopher laughed a pathetic laugh. "Who would you tell? Besides, no one would believe you. Of course, if you insist on making a nuisance of yourself, I'll just have to make an exception and kill you myself." Christopher shook his head and added, "Don't be stupid, Decker. Unless, of course you're in a hurry to see hell." Christopher looked at Decker and laughed once more before walking back across his large office to his desk. Finishing his drink, he pressed a button on a control board at his desk which slid back the panels of a wall, revealing an 84 inch television screen. The set was already on, muted and tuned to a satellite feed of the executions. Christopher had apparently been watching them before Decker came in. Turning the sound back on, Christopher sat down to watch.
At first Decker took no notice of the scene portrayed on the screen but slowly the repetitious sound of blade after blade falling and decapitating victim after victim awakened his attention and he could not help but look upon the melee of blood and death. To Decker's surprise, Christopher appeared to take little pleasure in these deaths. Instead his focus seemed fixed on the faces of the executioners as they led the condemned to the guillotine, positioned them to die, and then released the blade.
As Christopher watched, Decker thought back to what Scott Rosen had said. He had told him about the plagues and the executions and about the coming battle at Petra. As the blades continually dropped and were raised again for the next victim, Decker began to comprehend the true significance of what had happened. To this point it had been quite enough to consider his own misery. His hopes and plans of helping to build a better world and a New Age had all turned out to be a lie. Christopher's promise that he would someday be reunited with Elizabeth and his daughters had been nothing but a tool to lure Decker forever away from them. His whole life had been wasted. He had been played for a fool and had proven himself more than worthy of that designation. And now he was only weeks away from eternity in hell. And yet, it occurred to him that there was an even worse toll for his life: he had actually had a key role in bringing on the world's destruction.
"How many?" Decker asked.
Christopher did not need to ask for clarification; he understood the question. "If you look in the bottom right of the screen," Christopher said pointing, "you can see I've got a special feed connected to this set that gives a running count of the executions. Right now it's just a few shy of 3,058,000," he answered. "The second number is the estimate of how many are left. We got off to a slow start," Christopher said almost apologetically. "You'd be amazed at the logistics that go into something like this. And, of course, we were at a complete standstill during the darkness, but my people are working around the clock at 114 locations with 22 more coming on line by Wednesday, each with at least twenty guillotines. They assure me the job will be completed by early September."
Decker looked at the second number on the screen. "You intend to execute 14 million people?" Decker asked aghast.
"Oh, I'm sure there will be a few stragglers," Christopher acknowledged, "but the police and security forces are doing a great job of rounding them up. Of course, it would have been more, but nearly three million of them died during the plagues."
Over 214 billion people had already died in the wars and other disasters. Christopher had given the numbers in his speech. Fourteen million more would be executed. Two billion or more would die in the battle at Petra. For those, however, death was only the beginning of their miseries, for beyond the veil of death waited damnation. Their fate had already been sealed with their rejection of Yahweh and their acceptance of the seal of Christopher's communion on their hand or forehead, a seal which Decker had first proposed.
Christopher had said that he could have picked any of a thousand other people and it was probably true: it didn't have to be Decker. If someone else had been chosen then perhaps they would have come up with the idea for the mark, or else Christopher or Milner would have proposed it. It was a part of the prophecy, so one way or another it would have happened with or without Decker. But that was not much comfort, for it had not been someone else. He had been involved from the very beginning. Decker looked back and could now see clearly all the times he had been seduced by the vision of Christopher's New Age into justifying whatever Christopher said and did. And though he did not yet bear the seal of the communion, he was no less marked, for the blood of billions was, at least in part, on his hands and head. Time after time he had accepted whatever Christopher said, no matter how bizarre, without questioning. Day after day he had helped Christopher build a foundation of deceit. Lie after damnable lie, Decker had been a part of it all and he had justified it as being for the 'good of Humankind.'
Decker's words of just a few minutes earlier came back to haunt him. "There's hardly a man or woman on the planet," he had said, "who hasn't been thoroughly familiarized with the message of the coming advance in the evolution of Humankind: movies, television, radio, newspapers, magazines, books, songs, plays, billboards, bumper stickers . . . your vision of the future is everywhere. There's not a child in school from age three and up who has not been trained in the ethics and tenets of the New Age. And even the younger ones learn the message through cartoons, toys and games."
My God, he thought, what have I done?
As a child in school, Decker had read with disbelief about the atrocities of history: the Nazis in World War II, Goebbels, Guering, Hitler; the mass slaughter of seventeen million Russians by Stalin. Later there was the genocide of Pol Pot, Idi Amin, and the like. Now as he looked at his life, he realized he was no better than any of them. True, he had not administered the torture and death himself, but he had facilitated it. All of it. He was no better than any of them.
Christopher had said the only possible response was hate, but Decker felt something far worse: the crushing weight of his guilt.
While Christopher watched the executions, Decker winced as each drop of the blade gave bloody demonstration of the result of his sin. Finally, but unexpectedly, his guilt found its voice in anger. There was hatred in his heart — Decker could not deny it — but it did not feel quite the way Christopher had described it. It filled his lungs with the frigid air of defiance. There was, he thought, yet something to be said.
"Christopher," Decker said softly, almost whispering.
"Yes," Christopher answered calmly, as though nothing the least bit unpleasant had occurred.
"What's hell like?" he asked.
Christopher muted the television and turned his chair to face him. "I'm afraid it's every bit as bad as you've heard," he said in a consoling tone. There was no real sympathy in his voice. It was just that he knew, for the moment, that there was no way left to hurt the old man. "Of course I've never actually been there. It's just an ignorant myth that hell is Lucifer's home. That's a bit like suggesting that a criminal's headquarters was in prison because that's where he wound up at the end of his career. "But as far as what it's like," he continued, very seriously, staring off into space as if he could actually see it there before him, "I believe it's a good deal like the darkness of the last plague . . . only a lot hotter."
Christopher had ended his description with a bit of dark humor but there was something else in his voice, something unexpected. For just that brief moment, Decker could sense the terror Christopher felt as he talked about it.
"And you'll be there, too?" Decker asked.
Christopher was roused from his vision of hell by Decker's voice and now smiled enthusiastically. Rising from his chair, he walked back over to where Decker still stood. "That's the spirit!" he said, urging Decker on. "You want to see me in hell right alongside you!
"Vengeance!" he said.
"Anger!" he prodded.
"Hatred!" he urged.
"You're catching on faster than I expected! You'll fit right in!"
"Oh . . ." Christopher paused, "but don't get your hopes up too high. I'll be there with you, but, well, in Lucifer's kingdom there are a number of different levels . . . ranks, I guess you might call them. And with rank comes power; in this case, the power to be feared and hated. And I'm afraid you're nowhere near high enough in the pecking order to do anything to me."
Decker did not respond.
"Does that make you hate me even more?" Christopher asked in a condescending voice.
"Yes," Decker answered truthfully. But it was not his hatred that he was thinking about.
"Good!" Christopher responded, delighted.
"When we get there," Decker said slowly, continuing toward his point, "and when you're looking out over the flames of hell at all of those you've brought with you . . ."
"Yes?" Christopher said, goading him on.
"... you won't have any trouble finding me in the crowd."
Christopher laughed a hearty, cruel laugh and shook his head at Decker's attempt to distinguish himself even in hell. "Why?" he asked. "Will you be shouting your curses at me?"
Decker didn't answer.
"Well, you'll have to be yelling pretty loud to be heard over the billions of others!" Christopher said with a caustic chuckle. "You don't get it, do you?" he asked. "That's one of the few things I can actually look forward to in hell. Every time someone curses me for their pain it will be confirmation that I have accomplished what I set out to do. I'll love it. I will thrive on it. And, you know, it's really ironic," he said, truly amazed and cheered at this fact, "funny really, but even though it will be obvious that I enjoy their curses, it won't stop the damned from cursing me. They'll be so enraged, they'll just do it all the more." Christopher shook his head at Decker's feeble attempt and started back toward his desk.
But Decker wasn't through. "No," he said, pausing to reflect. "I won't be cursing you."
Decker dropped his eyes to the floor for a moment as his guilt briefly overpowered his anger. Biting his lower lip, Decker raised his eyes again and stared defiantly at Christopher, who had come back and now stood directly in front of him. Christopher waited, unsure what Decker had in mind, but eager for whatever amusement he was about to offer. "You're not the one that's responsible for me going to hell," Decker said, "I am." Christopher was unimpressed by Decker's realization and rolled his eyes in disgust.
"So, when we get there," Decker continued, "if you ever decide you want to look me up, you won't have long to look."
Decker paused to take a final rebellious, recalcitrant breath. His moment was here. It was not much to make up for a lifetime that had been reduced to a bad joke, but it was all he had, probably all he ever would have that could be put on the other side of the scales. He would hold on to it for as long as he could. Every instant he could stall put Christopher an instant closer to hell, and that in itself seemed worthwhile.
Christopher waited.
Decker's stare grew surprisingly cold and steady. Finally, when he knew Christopher would wait no longer, he spoke. "I'll be the one down on my knees among the flames of hell, thanking God for giving me exactly what I deserve!"
Decker's words were slow and crisp and firm, but they had not been shouted. Still, in the sudden silence that followed, they seemed to echo through the languid air and shake the entire room.
Christopher's teeth clenched and his nostrils flared, and Decker saw the muscles in his neck tighten like bands of steel. Christopher's burning gaze felt as though he was looking right into Decker's soul. He was. In a moment, Christopher seemed to find what he was looking for, and he did not like what he had seen: Decker had not just said this to enrage him. He actually meant it.
Christopher breathed in deeply and exhaled audibly like a bull set to charge. His eyes were flames. His face was red and his body stiffened and actually shook with rage.
Decker stood motionless, unable to take much pleasure in Christopher's reaction because of the awful weight of his own guilt. Christopher's brow was tightened in anger, the likes of which Decker had never seen in any man. His face was flush with fury. And then he did something which seemed very strange to Decker. He started to turn to the left as if he was going to simply leave.
Was he just going to turn back to the televised executions?
As Christopher's upper body turned, Decker assumed his feet would follow, but Christopher's feet were planted firmly on the floor. Swiftly, he raised his right arm up and to the left, his right hand forming a fist. Decker held his ground in anticipation of a backhanded blow delivered against his face with Christopher's full weight. He determined not to move or flinch. He would not give Christopher the pleasure of cowering before him. Then suddenly and totally out of place, Decker's eye caught a strange glint of light. It was just above Christopher's head and about a foot and a half beyond where Decker assumed his hand, now hidden by his leftward-turned body, to be.
Christopher raised his heel and pivoted on the ball of his right foot, and then turning with his full force and speed toward Decker, he straightened his arm at the elbow. Decker instinctively tightened his jaw in anticipation of Christopher's blow.
But, strangely, there was that glint of light again, and it was moving in perfect synchronization with Christopher's clenched fist.
As his fist came closer, Decker was suddenly dumbfounded by what he saw. It appeared that Christopher would actually miss him, his fist passing a good eighteen inches or more short of Decker's face. Christopher even seemed to be leaning back, as if to increase the certainty of a miss.
Then Decker realized Christopher had something in his hand. And again there was that strange glint of light.
Suddenly, Decker realized what it was.
From thin air... from nowhere, Christopher had drawn a brightly polished, double-edged sword and he was swinging it with incredible speed and with all his might toward Decker. As it came closer, Decker realized that it was aimed for his neck.
While some time is required to describe it, the entire incident took only a fraction of a second to occur. There was nothing to do. There was no time to duck or even blink. The blade was only inches from his neck. Swiftly it sliced through the air toward its mark. In an instant it was there, its cold edge pressing against the skin of his neck just before it penetrated.
Helplessly, Decker watched Christopher's hand, clutched tightly around the sword's grip, as it passed almost effortlessly before him, propelling the blade through his neck. The muffled crack of metal against bone as it separated his spinal column between the fourth and fifth vertebrae barely slowed the blade in its bloody path through skin and vein and muscle and sinew and nerve fiber.
Then it was through.
Decker's head had been completely severed from his body, and Christopher followed through with his stroke. Surprisingly, it had all been relatively painless.
Decker felt himself toppling as his head tipped and rolled to his left and off his shoulders. The room appeared to spin as his head tumbled freely to the floor. His forehead hit first, causing Decker to wince in pain as his head bounced and rolled,
landing finally on his left ear. At that moment, Decker's body crumpled to the floor beside him.
From start to finish it had all taken little more than two seconds. In his last moments of consciousness, as the blood drained from his brain, Decker could see Christopher standing there, his rage satisfied as he smiled down at him, the sword raised above his head as Decker's blood ran slowly toward its hilt and dripped down upon his hand. Beside his head, but out of Decker's line of sight, the blood pouring from his headless torso spurted erratically as his heart convulsed and stopped. Soon the flow would slow until it was drawn out by the force of gravity alone. The same was true of Decker's head. Since it had been severed from the heart, there was no pressure forcing the blood out as would be the case with a normal wound; the only force draining blood from his head was gravity. The result, as Decker realized firsthand, was that a few seconds of life and consciousness remained after decapitation. Even in death, Decker's curiosity had found some distraction.
"I was wrong, Decker. That was more fun than I realized!" Christopher said as he walked away. "I'll see you in hell!"
Decker could feel the blood draining from his brain and watched the room grow dark as he began to lose consciousness. At least it was quick, he thought.
Then Decker heard something ... a voice. With the loss of blood to his brain, he had no idea where it came from, but he was certain it was talking to him. Then he remembered something and the realization hit him like a freight train. Despite his condition, despite his disorientation, no Other thought in his life had ever been clearer. He knew what he had to do, and he could not help but muse (if his body were still a part of him, he would have laughed out loud) that it should come to this: a split second from death and yet he realized that it was for this very day and hour and moment that he had been born.
At once Christopher stopped dead in his tracks.
"NOOOOOOO!!!!" he screamed, his voice erupting in a sound so terrifying that its source could only have been deep beneath the gates of hell. If Decker had still been able to hear, he would have recognized the voice from years before when he had been at a point near insanity. If he had still been able to see, as Christopher turned back and raised his sword again, he would have seen for the first time the true face of the man he had brought up as his own son. All the evil works and imaginings of mortal man could not have shown more darkly than did the hatred upon this true face of death.
Charging to where he had left Decker's truncated head and body, Christopher grasped the sword, dropped to one knee, and with all his might brought the edge of the blade down squarely just in front of Decker's right ear, splitting his skull from side to side with a sharp crack and spilling Decker's brains out upon the floor.
I Pull his hair!"
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