Margaret's Ark (18 page)

Of the crowd, most were college students in this early season, rushing out to see the sights they'd avoided during the frozen winter. Now they emerged to spend and flirt and talk. The mating ritual of the young.

Jack stared across the road and watched one couple walk slowly from the lights, hand-in-hand. She, of the long blonde hair falling over her ankle-length black coat, teeth perfect, visible even from Jack's vantage point, looking at her companion with desire. The boy was built big, a sportsman, but moving in a gentle, slow gait.

“Gentle,” Jack whispered, seeing another face, so different from this one save the natural beauty. Dark complexion, long, braided, black hair, brown eyes staring into his with the same love and warmth and lust and friendship which the blonde girl so freely offered to the boy. A choir of angels around them singing praises as she smiles and says,
“I do....”

“Praise God! For he has chosen the instrument of your deaths!” Jack squinted away the image and focused on the strangers across the way. He stepped up onto one of the cement pylons, balancing his feet on either side of the rounded top like a miniature version of King Kong on the Empire State Building. The wind whipped behind him, tossing his loose shirt in the gust, exposing his pale skin to the passing headlights, forcing him to balance, to forget. As he yelled, his chest contracted, revealing ribs, giving him the look of a skeleton in the pale hue of the lamps.

“He has shown me what will come! He has told me of a sign which He will cast down upon you all, so you can understand for yourselves that this is no false prophet you see before you. On the fortieth day, He will pour the rains upon your heads!”

Ladies and Gentlemen, introducing the new Mr. and Mrs. Jack and Anita Lowry! Music playing, Anita’s face glowing beside him, and flowing across the banquet hall’s floor and... No!
 

“Come hear God's plan for all of you! If you do not listen, then you will die without His saving hand! You will drown clinging to the side of the boat! I - “

He faltered, wondering what
boat
he meant, thinking of the priest last week, trying to remember what was said. It didn't come; too many other images clinging to the side of his memory like hands on the rails of a ship. Other moments, a picture on the paper he'd seen through the grillwork of a newsstand. Others and more others, still. He tried to regain his train of thought.

Across the street, the couple had slowed their sojourn and were now watching him. The boy had taken a step back towards the shopping area, holding the blonde's arm between them like a bridge. For a moment, Jack's gaze met the girl's. She smiled. He reached out.

“Come, please, and save yours –Ah!” His foot slipped. Jack stumbled from the pylon, his shin connecting with the concrete. Just as quickly, he righted himself and tried to ignore the pain, staggered to walk it off. “Forgive me, Lord, for doubting you,” he shouted to a sky partially obscured by the artificial lights around him. “I have sinned, and yet you still believe in me!”

He looked across the street, thrust both hands into the air, in her direction. “Please! How can you ignore this! You must listen. You must fall to your knees and beg God for forgiveness before it all ends. You must be purified and redeemed in Christ's blood, born again into the mercy of His light!”

The girl pulled herself free and walked to the edge of the road. Jack hesitated, unsure what to say next. She kept looking through the flashes of headlights running through the river of Atlantic Avenue, her face soft, caring, darkening to that other vision, that other face, his bride, his love, squeezing his hand while a man Jack should know raised a glass and spoke
and no… and no and this is not true;  please stop  –
.

The boy ran up and laid a hand on his date’s shoulder. Jack squeezed his eyes tightly shut but opened them when all he saw was his brother – the other, he does not remember – speaking. When he opened his eyes, the girl was hesitating at the edge of the road.
Of course
, he realized,
she’s pulled by God's words, by the Truth.

A tractor-trailer roared by and blocked his view. When it had passed, the girl stood on the island separating the north and southbound lanes. The boy shouted something to her from on the far side –
a scream as the best man raised the glass to his lips , a roar and the world shook and lurched. The ceiling buckled the same moment as smoke tore into the hall from –

Jack stared at the girl's face, urging her on with the words which God had planted upon his lips, reaching her soul and pulling her while he shook his shoulders violently, trying to cast away the demons attacking him from behind with false memories.

The boy started across, stopped as a car raced by, swerving, sounding its horn. The way for the girl was clear now and she ran across, stopping as soon as she reached the concrete pylon which had been Jack’s earlier pulpit. The boy finally crossed over and moved to her side.

“Do you believe,” Jack said, never taking his eyes from her soft face. The blonde hair fell forward and she pulled it aside. “Do you believe that God loves you and wants you to be with Him in Paradise when the rains come?”

“Let's go, Kim,” the boy said, and grabbed her arm.

“Release that Child of God and repent your evil, or God will destroy you where you stand!” Jack felt a rage he did not understand. At the boy, at the faces on the television screen that first dark day of his Awakening into this new, confusing world, faces long dead staring at him in grinning conquest... no, it was the Rage of God. The power of Jesus Christ surging through his veins towards this unbeliever. His thoughts were making no sense, the images were of the Devil, he had to focus!

The boy's scowling face mirrored Jack's mood. “You want to make me, Bonehead?”

“Sam, no, stop.” Kim’s voice was quiet, calming, still loud enough to be heard above the traffic. “One second.”

She fished through her coat, removing items and stuffing them into her pants’ pockets; then, she removed the coat altogether. The wind coming over the hill behind them from the harbor, the breeze of the passing cars and trucks, fought to carry it away. Jack felt something stirring within him, seeing such beauty taking off her coat.

God, forgive me. I am a sinner. I do not want to feel this way
. He straightened. “God is love, and power, and is forgotten by all. He wants to be heard.”

“Come on, Kim! What are you doing?”

She stepped past the pylon and held out the coat. “Here,” she said. “Take this. I can get another one, but I want you to have this.”

“Oh, for the love of...” The boy reached around and tried to take it from her. She moved enough to keep her arm extended beyond his reach.

“Take it. It's cold out here, and you'll catch pneumonia.”

Jack looked at it. All sound around him faded; all was silence. The coat was thick, rough textured and heavy. For him. She was giving it to him. He reached out, not taking it away from her but feeling its coarseness on his fingertips.

The boy reached around suddenly and ripped the coat from her hands. Before Jack could react, the coat sailed forward and covered his face. “Take the stupid thing. Is that what you want? There, he has it now. When they fish his drunken corpse from the harbor tomorrow and the coat’s ruined, don't whine to me. That's where it's going to end up, you know. On a bloated corpse, like all these people end up, stinking up our water.”

Jack screamed and pulled the coat from his face but it was
too heavy, crushing him down, pressing him into the earth. Where was his wife? His family? His world? Too heavy, pressing harder, no sound now, no hand in his, no hand no hand only a hand no hand....
Jack whimpered, blinked away the pain, saw the boy holding the girl’s arm. Her perfect skin buckled and stretched beneath his fingers.

“You're hurting me,” she said, and pulled her arm free. “You're such a jerk!” She looked back at Jack. “It's yours. That's all.”

“Bless you,” Jack said, shaking, still able to stand upright. But the memory of the crushing weight lingered, and the pain, of his heart. He looked at the boy, forced himself to focus on the present, on the true world. Again the images on some forgotten television mounted to a wall above a bed, smiling, evil. He was speaking before he could stop himself, “And may God condemn you for your sins. May your skin blister and burn for eternity for your cruelty to so many innocent people....”

The boy hesitated for a moment, confused, then his face burned red in the street light and he straight-armed Jack in the chest. The world spun; he saw the lamps, then the stars. He hit the ground, came up facing the direction of the open-air restaurant at the end of the wharf, illuminated but deserted this cold night. He almost walked in that direction, forgetting what had just happened, wondering where he should stand, wondering if he should find the shelter where he'd been staying the past two nights. He suddenly couldn’t remember how to get back there.

But when he stood up, something shifted under his feet. The coat looked like a gutted animal, bunched up as it was, and he remembered. No, he did not remember; there was nothing before, nothing but darkness and pain. He was free now.

“I'm not going back!” the girl's voice yelled. “Not until I know he's okay.”

Jack spun around. The boy was standing over him. He reached out and caught Jack's ears, one in each hand. Jack kicked and pounded the other's arms with his fists, ignoring the cast. He had no strength. “I am God's messenger! He will destroy you all - ah!” The boy twisted, pouring liquid fire into Jack's head. Everything went black, then blinding daylight,
something too large moving off his chest, painful lights, someone screaming “Over here!” but the pain in his chest was too much as the concrete slab was rolled away and his head flopped sideways to see a hand in his own.
Jack screamed.

“Let him go! All right! I'll leave; let him go!”

Once again Jack fell to the sidewalk, but only from his own weight, the weight of the world blown away in a moment, taking everyone to a better place but leaving him to whimper and suffer for his sins.
...I need to focus, I need to preach...

“About time,” the boy said. Jack couldn’t speak, couldn’t move except to look up in time to see the boy take the girl’s hand. She looked back towards him, her body obscured by tears filling his vision. Without looking in either direction, the boy pulled them both into the road. A car blared its horn and the couple waited until it passed; then they ran together across the street.

Jack watched them turn past a light post. The girl never looked back. He waited for her to do so, waited with an uncomfortable yearning to see her face again, her eyes. Then they were gone. Jack fell sideways and cried, and cried, face bathed in tears that washed the hurt away in small streams falling to the cobblestone walk. No one came; no one noticed him curled beside the pylon. After a time, it ended. He was empty, and cold. He stumbled to his knees, then used the pylon to pull himself upright. The coat was still there. He picked it up, gathered it in his arms. He turned and walked, slowly, almost painfully, into the night-shadowed park.

*     *     *

“How do you have it?”

“Black.”

Margaret handed Carl the mug of decaf coffee.

He took a tentative sip, then said without looking up, “They're good people. They just panicked. That's...” he took another small sip without finishing the sentence. “They just panicked.”

Margaret sat on the opposite end of the couch. Though the night wasn't cold, she'd lit a fire in the underused fireplace, and hoped the last cleaning six years before was enough to prevent a chimney fire. There weren't many California houses with fireplaces, but she'd always equated a comfortable home with one, having grown up in the Midwest. It seemed appropriate to light a fire tonight, give her new guest a calm environment.

Carl's left eye was a thick swell of blue, a smear of yellow along the edge of his temple. It was an obvious sign things had gone wrong. When he hadn’t returned on Saturday, she assumed the Jorgensons needed time to work things out among themselves. There was a chance he wouldn’t return, but that possibility seemed remote to her. When Margaret returned to the ark from church with the girls, he was there. They noticed his eye. He never explained completely what had happened, even when Katie and Robin insisted, but he did allude to the fact that his parents would “pretty much do anything” to keep him away from the project. He’d slept last night in his car, parked in a far corner of a supermarket’s parking lot.

The thought that Carl’s father, Margaret had assumed it was his father, had punched his own son... it filled her with a lingering sadness. Not so much for Carl, but because she understood what his parents might be going through, the desperation to take things so far.

Like the earlier episode with Robin, terrified that her friend Crystal would die in the flood, how much more did Carl now fear for his parents? After what had happened, he probably didn't feel much sympathy. But the angel David's words came back to her, how those on the outside would think of her as the days progressed. Those who
did
join her and the others, did so knowing they were leaving everyone they loved to die.

Margaret and Carl sat in silence, watching the fire and sipping their coffee. The house was quiet. Margaret routinely disconnected the house phone after nine o'clock. If any of the crew needed her, they used the cell. Most nighttime calls were cranks, offering detailed instructions on the best route to hell. She'd gotten good at bowing out of these discussions gracefully, usually earning only two or three repeat calls. Though one legitimate call might mean a new volunteer, as it had for the college student Fae and the pot-bellied David Whitman, they could simply call before nine.

Katie and Robin had fallen asleep two hours ago. The days spent running among the construction had one advantage - the girls never objected to going to bed when they got home.

“So they're not coming back?” Carl asked, speaking of the old couple who had bowed out that morning.