The first two are clean misses but the third hits him in the forehead and the fourth in the throat. Henry has no shot on Martha because I’m in the way so he stands to shoot over my head. As he does I throw the hot tea into his face then grab for his gun. The guard that Martha hit gets off one shot that hits the coffee service and makes most of the china cups explode before Martha is across the room and disarms him.
I have Henry in a wristlock across the table to keep him from shooting Martha. I’m losing the battle because he’s much heavier. Just before Henry is able to turn the gun on me the guy in the stationmaster coat lands a flying foot on Henry’s face. A second later two men dressed as maintenance workers enter from both the front and back but there’s nobody left for them to fight.
The tech guy enters the room with his hands on the top of his head, he was either too scared or too smart to fight.
“Let’s go,” the stationmaster says and head for the airlock.
“Wait,” I say then use my com to see through the cameras positioned around the station. People are coming and going like normal.
“Most of them jumped onto a drone and headed down the line,” the stationmaster insists. “This is our chance.”
I stay focused on the cameras, the misplaced puzzle pieces jumping out one at a time until I’ve counted over three dozen cult hunters who are trying to blend in with the crowd. One in particular keeps speaking to his com, asking for the time.
They’re expecting us to leave.
“Close the airlocks.”
As soon as the doors are closed the car moves into position to take us down a branch line.
“The order had already been entered, we’re on our way to D.C. again,” I say.
Martha turns to the tech guy. “You said you can override the system and drive this car manually?”
He nods.
“The junction should take us down a branch line towards Strasburg. Stop the car there.”
We lock the stunned security guys in a room but use the shackles meant for Martha to secure Henry to a chair while the tech guy moves the car into position. The young man who posed as the Winchester stationmaster removes the oversized coat, hat, pants and glasses.
“You got my message,” Martha says.
She gives him a long embrace and I feel a twinge of jealousy.
“How did you know decompressing a car would get us back to Winchester for a rescue?” she asks him.
“We thought it was your idea. We were monitoring Cephas’ com like you said and it just started showing us how to find this car and how to stop the line.”
Martha turns and smiles at me.
“You just never cease to amaze do you Professor?”
“So says the tea party ninja.”
The young man walks over to me.
“I’m William, Martha’s cousin. Is it true Jesus touched you and healed you? Is it true you touched his dead body and saw him risen? Can you really recite the entire Bible from memory?”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you William. I’ve read the Bible many times but I can’t recite it by heart. I was healed by Jesus, I did help take him down from the cross and I did see him risen.”
William falls to his knees in front of me and Henry starts to laugh.
“Don’t get used to it, Cephas. I give this newfound adoration a week before the Christians remember how much of their blood is on your hands. You’ll never be one of them. Then you’ll be begging for my protection.”
His words don’t bother me but Martha’s eyes shift down and to the right. She must believe there’s some truth in what Henry is saying.
“We’ll be in Strasburg in one minute,” we hear over the intercom.
“We’ll get off here and send the car across the country,” Martha says. “We can take another car and disappear for a while.”
“I’ll track you wherever you go,” Henry says.
“Really?” I say.
I drop my com to the floor and step on it. My name disappears from the passenger list on the screen. Martha takes the chip that was in her back and drops it to the floor and crushes it and “Leper #1” disappears from the screen.
“You said it in your note Henry. Millions are disappearing worldwide and you don’t know why. Nobody’s disappeared, they’re just waking up and taking out the chips that you use to track them.”
“People won’t choose to live without their enhancements. It’s who they are now.”
Enhancements are who we are? I wonder…
Without warning I shoot Henry with his own stunner and he slumps over.
“I’m glad you shut him up, but you didn’t need to stun him. We’re leaving a man on the car to be sure it’s far away before Henry gets control back,” Martha says.
“That’s not why I did it. William, you impersonated the stationmaster by taking his coms right?”
“Yes. So?”
“So you used their reliance on technology against them. Henry is pretty enhanced, especially around the face. Let’s get a small chip out of him.”
William finds one behind Henry’s left ear where the skin is thin and removes it then stops the bleeding with a laser cauterizer. We walk into the Strasburg station and the elevator monitor lists both the name of the Winchester Station Master in red and Henry’s name in blue.
“Now take out the coms.”
When they deactivate only Henry’s name is left on the screen.
“They’ll figure it out quickly but for now we have a way to impersonate anyone who donates a chip.”
“So now that William’s been promoted from stationmaster to Director of the F.B.I. which tube shall we take and where shall we go?” I ask.
“I just said that to throw Henry off, we’re walking from here,” Martha replies.
“Walking? To where?”
“A safe place up in those mountains. It’s fifteen or sixteen kilometers as the crow flies but walking will leave no electronic trace.”
“William. Throw those coms in a random tube car. When they’re found it’ll look like we left by tube,” I say and he runs off to do it.
“You’re a crafty one.”
Martha and walks over and kisses me on the cheek.
The cheek?
***
Walking through mountains makes me feel like I’m back walking with the disciples so I tell Martha and William the story of my adventure from beginning to end. Martha prefers to stay quiet and take it all in but William asks many questions. His thirst to know more about Jesus and the disciples reminds me of a young child who is curious and excited about the world. He’s especially thrilled when I tell him about the times that Jesus spoke directly to me when to everyone else around him it seemed like he was speaking to Simon Peter.
“He planned for you to be there,” William says. “He knew all along you would be there to carry the message forward to this time. Wouldn’t it be funny if there was someone behind you too? Someone from even further in the future who’s carrying the message to that time?”
Pay attention to this question, Cephas.
I turn to Martha.
“Do you have people in Israel? Can you get messages to them?”
“Of course, but why?”
“Henry still has a time machine. He may try to send someone else back to change my trip and get a result that suits him better.”
“I don’t see how. Sending someone back after you were there won’t change anything and he can’t send anyone back to the same cave who arrives before you did. If he does then you would have seen evidence of it.”
“And as far as anyone knows there isn’t another cave in the area that’s been untouched from before the time of Jesus,” William adds.
“He doesn’t need to send someone to Jerusalem or even very far back. All he needs to do is send someone to kill me before I testify.”
“Wouldn’t he still need a different place to set everything up?” William asks. “The cave they used for your trip is still pretty high pr
ofile.”
“It could be done in an empty warehouse here in the U.S.,” I respond. “They could go back a few days and shoot me from a rooftop as I walk down the steps to the podium then claim the shooter was a Christian sent to stop me from testifying that I saw the disciples steal the body.”
“Is your mind always a step or two ahead?” William asks.
“More like ten,” Martha replies.
***
We reach the top of an open ridge and sit down for a rest.
“We’re pretty close now,” Martha says. “It’s just down in that valley.”
“You’ve been here before then?”
“Yes, many times. Though this is the first time I’ve walked all the way. There’s no hover line into the area so usually an old-fashioned electric bus takes you the last few kilometers.”
“An electric bus? It would have to be a hundred years old.”
“Things change slowly for people who’re trying to live without being seen by the government.”
“But the young Christians who set up the group ‘Four’ are good with technology. You’re running circles around the corps’ best tech guys.”
“Young people with Christ in their lives are ambitious and motivated. While the rest of our generation has been numbing their brains with sex and drugs we’ve put the time to good use. For generations now the whole country has been run by numbed people who saw no point in trying to exceed the work of their grandfathers. That’s what happens when people have nothing greater than themselves to live for.”
“The first time I looked into your eyes I said that you want to do more than exist, you want to live. So with all of our needs met by technology what’s left for a Christian to do?”
Martha smiles her brilliant smile.
“I don’t know, but I’m sure He will lead us there. There’s always the stars, maybe He wants to lead us out there.”
I can’t help but smile at her.
“Henry wanted proof Jesus is a fraud and when I could offer only my word that Jesus is real he said it wasn’t good enough. Sometimes I wonder if lack of “proof” of His existence is one of His greatest gifts to us.”
“What do you mean?” William asks.
“Even the most faithful people through history still had their doubts. We’re imperfect beings and we don’t have perfect faith.”
“Are you saying doubt makes faith stronger? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“I think what I’m saying is that exploring our doubts is a natural way of searching for Him. Maybe the point of faith in this life is the journey rather than the destination.”
William looks confused so I continue.
“Let me put it another way. If we knew with absolute certainty that there is a heaven, wouldn’t it make sense to just end our lives here and get there faster? More to the point, if you knew for certain you were going to heaven why would you bother to work hard to better your life here?”
“That’s the current state of mankind, just flipped on its head,” Martha says. “People are so convinced that we’ve created “Man’s Garden of Eden” that they waste their lives away without bothering to search for anything other than new pleasures.”
“So proof in either direction results in man stagnating?” William asks.
“The very essence of faith is that you don’t need proof.”
I see something through the trees. We’ve been walking through a thick stand of mixed hardwoods with a few pines scattered here and there and were just descending into a swampy spot near a stream when out of nowhere pops a small stone octagon building.
Martha asks William to give us a moment alone then turns to face me.
“I loved my time as your student. I loved lying in the grass and watching sunsets and holding your hand but--”
“But it’s over,” I say.
“Yeah. It’s over. I’ve been promoted to a leadership position and--”
“So is this goodbye?”
“It’s goodbye to that life, for both of us.”
“As I remember it, goodbye kisses don’t count.”
I take a step forward with my arms out to hold her but she backs away.
“I learned a lot more from being your student than the material you taught in class. You showed me that even when surrounded by temptation it’s still up to each of us to make our own choices. Then you proved you meant it by resisting everything the world used to try to ruin you. I just hope…”
I wait awkwardly for her to finish her sentence. She finally raises her head and meets my eyes.
“I just hope it isn’t the Christian world that ends up ruining you instead.”
***
As we walk past the little octagon house I see a collection of white buildings with green trim. They’re all hundreds of years old and show the signs of updating over time. In some places you can see original wood clapboard siding, in others there are one hundred year old synthetics that must have been put up when cutting trees was outlawed and there are even places where modern carbon fiber siding has been used. The mix of materials gives me the instant impression of a place that’s trying to hold onto tradition but is losing the battle one board at a time.
Martha leads me to a stone drinking fountain where the water is bubbling up without any sort of activation switch. She takes a long drink.
“There’s no water like this anywhere else on earth. It’s naturally purified as it bubbles up through the rocks so we get to drink it in the form that it was made by God, untouched by man. This place is called ‘Capon Springs’, it’s an ancient Native American word that means ‘medicine waters’.”
Since we did the walk without water I also take a long drink. She’s right, the water is clear and delicious. It makes me wonder just how much processing is done to city water supplies.
“Medicine waters?”
“Hundreds of years ago, right up through the late 1800’s, before the onset of even crude pharmaceuticals people believed that certain waters had medicinal properties and would flock to springs like this one to cure whatever ailed them. Resorts and bathhouses sprung up to give people a place to stay while they rested and healed. Of course, once even early painkillers and antibiotics like aspirin and penicillin were invented those resorts lost their business.”
The buildings of the resort are interspersed among enormous trees. As we pass one I see a small green plaque. I know it must be ancient because it’s made out of plastic, a material that was abandoned over one-hundred years ago. It says this maple tree was planted by some guy named Lyons in the year 2010, almost two-hundred years ago. Its trunk must be three meters around. When Mr. Lyons planted this it was probably as big as my thumb. Could he have ever imagined what his tiny sapling would become? If you had told him his tree would live through a nuclear and biological war would he have believed it? If you had told him that during the life of his tree that Christianity would be all but wiped out would he have said it’s impossible? Or in the year 2010 was he already seeing the incremental changes aimed at removing it?
As we walk along a central greenway I start seeing that we’re far from alone. There’s a large swimming pool where people are playing and relaxing. Nobody is wearing a com or using a computer. Most are engaged in real face to face conversations where they see and hear each other just as I dreamed my students would see and hear me in the classroom.
A group of children run past and I realize that I don’t remember the last time I saw children simply playing together without using electronics in some way.
“Is this a Christian hiding place?” I ask Martha.
“No. Everyone is welcome here. This is simply a place you can go when you want to enjoy a simpler life for a few days.”
A place where you can think.
The buildings have porches where people are sitting and talking but conversations stop as we walk past. I overhear things like “Is that who I think it is?” and “No way.”
As we approach the largest building many of
them are following us, including William. Someone on the porch spots us and yells into the building “Hey Brill, you’d better get out here.”
An old gentleman walks onto the porch. I recognize him as the bartender in San Francisco.
“Hello Brill,” Martha says. “I hope you don’t mind but I brought a friend to visit.”
“I figured you’d turn up here eventually. Welcome to Capon Springs, West Virginia Dr. Paulson.”
“It’s nice to put a name with the face. You left abruptly when we spoke in San Francisco.”
“That wasn’t me. That was my twin brother Austin. He’s always taking off for somewhere and poking into things where his nose doesn’t belong.”
“Actually, we had a very interesting conversation.”
“I suppose he promised this place could be your headquarters or something. Isn’t that just all I need?”
“Headquarters? Headquarters for what?”
“For the war of course,” William says from behind me. I turn to look at him.
“The war?”
“You’re the history professor. You know the True Holy War has never ended.”
I get it immediately. The True Holy War is the name for the unspoken war that has been waged since the late 1900’s by the Atheists and their allies against believers of all creeds. The Christians, the Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, everyone who believed in any sort of God whatsoever was a target. They went after the institutions of all religions by targeting marriage. They sought to weaken all religions through the Equalization and changing laws including the U.S. Constitution. They even started a nuclear and biological war then did their best to buy off religion by fulfilling man’s needs with technology. The True Holy War is the two-hundred year old war of believers against non-believers and now a few million Christians worldwide are the only ones left to carry on the fight in a world ruled by apathy and a love for self-gratification.
“So if this place is going to be headquarters, who’s the leader of the Christians in the war?” I ask.
Martha and William look at each other and then at Brill. Brill shakes his head and chuckles under his breath. Many members of the crowd raise their arms to make themselves human crosses.
“You are,” Martha replies.
Dear Reader:
Please allow me to reiterate the last line of this book which explains who is most needed in the very real fight we face today for the survival of religious freedom…