Sins of the Assassin

Chapter 29

Clyde Winthrop ran a small grocery store and souvenir stand. It didn’t take long to find him. The population of Addington, North Carolina, currently stood at twenty-three people, most of them living along a ridge that caught the easterly wind off the mountains, which tended to minimize the smoke from the coal fire outside the town that had been burning continuously, just under the surface, for thirty-one years. Even with the air filter humming, it was still smoky in the store, a dark, irritating haze that made your throat raw. Outside was much worse.

Winthrop, a pudgy black man with short hair and a thin mustache, his eyes rimmed with red, didn’t look up from his book as Rakkim walked in. “Howdy.”

Rakkim nodded. He could hear the steady thumping of the generator outside.

Leo closed the door after him, coughing, holding a handkerchief over his mouth.

“Got particle masks for twenty-five dollars,” said Winthrop, perched behind the register, still reading. “Filters are five dollars each. Last about a half hour.” He wrote a note in the margin of the book. “Won’t do you much good in the coal fields, but it will make walking around town more tolerable.”

Leo stayed bent over, gasping.

“Mr. Winthrop, we’re friends of your cousin Bill Tigard,” said Rakkim. “I’m afraid I have some bad news for you.”

Winthrop put the dog-eared paperback down. A Short History of Space and Time.

“Bill and Florence…the boys, they’re all dead,” said Rakkim. “I’m really sorry. Sorrier than I can express.”

Winthrop showed no emotion, his face a mask holding itself together by sheer force of will. “Raiders?”

“The Colonel’s men burned them out. Murdered them as they tried to escape.”

Winthrop cocked his head. “That doesn’t sound right. What business did the Colonel have with Bill?”

“They were looking for us,” Rakkim said softly. “Me and Leo here.”

Winthrop stared at him. “You said you were his friend. Well…Bill was always a poor judge of character.” He turned away, looked out the soot-grimed windows, and watched the smoke whirl down the street. “I haven’t seen or talked to Bill in over ten years. Hardly know what we argued about now…except it seemed important at the time.” He cleared his throat, spit a black wad into a tissue. “You come all this distance just to tell me the news. That’s a long way, even for a guilty man.”

“I’m here because I need a favor,” said Rakkim.

“Of course you do,” said Winthrop.

“I’m looking for the Church of the Mists. I thought you could help me.”

“Mister, only reason anybody comes to Addington is to be able to tell their friends that they looked for the Church of the Mists. Everybody searching for that miracle. We get all kinds of college kids and Bible study groups, sometimes soldiers trying to prove to each other how brave they are. Even got a few politicians. Desperate ones, mostly, fearful of the next election and with good cause. They all come to Addington, and they all rent breathing masks and safety gear, go out for twenty minutes or so, and then run back hacking up filth and filled with ghost stories about how close they got. Just another few feet, that’s what they say. I was so close…yap yap yap. Of course, that’s the ones that do make it back. Plenty of them don’t. Least a dozen this year alone. That’s why there’s a five-hundred-dollar deposit on the gear. Take it from me, mister, hardly nobody ever reached the Church of the Mists and lived to tell about it.”

“Malcolm Crews did,” said Rakkim.

Winthrop looked surprised. Nodded. “He was the only one. Couple years ago, and the fire’s gotten even worse since then. Credit where credit is due, though. He did it. Showed me the proof and everything. People look for the church because they think it will change them. Heal them or something. Well, Malcolm Crews found the church, but it didn’t do him much good. Turned him clear inside out.”

“He’s a warlord now up in Tennessee,” said Rakkim. “Leader of a bunch called the End-Times Army.”

“Yup,” said Winthrop. “Crazier than a shithouse rat, just like I said.”

“Is the church really surrounded by fire?” said Leo. “A wall of fire, yet it doesn’t burn?”

“That’s right,” said Winthrop. “I attended services there when I was a boy. Nice little church. Nothing fancy, but filled with the Holy Spirit. Addington was a good town, full of God-fearing people making honest wages in the mines. Then the coal fields caught fire and that was that. Tried for years to put it out, but nothing worked. Air just got worse and worse, until everybody up and left.”

“Not you, though.” Leo still held the handkerchief to his face. “Why did you stay?”

“This is my home,” said Winthrop.

“Can’t be healthy,” said Leo. “Emphysema, lung cancer-”

“I was born here,” said Winthrop. “That so hard for you to understand?”

“You’re sure Malcolm Crews found the church?” said Rakkim. “It wasn’t just a tall tale?”

Winthrop’s thick fingers clenched the counter. “My daddy helped build that church, mister. I was baptized in that church. The front doorknob was special made. Silver, to keep out the devil, and with a raised Jesus on the cross for extra protection. Malcolm Crews stumbled back that day, no safety gear at all, face blistered, tongue swollen so big he could hardly talk, and he had a brand of that crucifix burned into the palm of his right hand from where he threw open the door.” He looked at Leo. “The church doesn’t burn, it’s under God’s own protection, but that silver doorknob, it gets hotter than blazes.”

“Mr. Winthrop…I’d like your help in finding the church,” said Rakkim. “You know where the church is. You must know how to get there.”

“I know where the church was, but everything’s different now. You can’t just stroll out there. On the best day, with the wind just right, you’ll still be blind five minutes in and there’s nobody to come get you when you lose your way.”

“I’ll make it easy for you,” said Rakkim. “You want the man who murdered your cousin and his family to die for his crimes, then help me find the church, and I’ll do the rest. You want me to pay for getting them killed, then send me into the smoke with bad directions. Either way, you win.”

“Vengeance is mine, says the Lord,” said Winthrop. “According to the Good Book anyway.”

“The Good Book also says the Lord works in mysterious ways, so you just sit back and let me do what I intend to, Mr. Winthrop. Think of me as one of those mysterious ways the Lord was talking about.”

Winthrop chewed on the idea. “I lied before,” he said finally. “Bill was a good judge of character. Too good. That…that’s what we fought over. I was a lesser man in those days. He was right about me then, I imagine he was right about you being worthy of his friendship too. If you’re bound and determined to find the church…I’ll do what I can.”

An hour later, Rakkim was lost in clouds of billowing black smoke, his respirator kept clogging, and twice he had broken through a thin crust of soil, flames boiling up around him. The radio connection with Winthrop failed within five minutes, just as Winthrop said it would. Even wearing two-inch asbestos boot protectors, his feet ached from the heat. He kept walking, one hand reaching forward, one hand out to the side-blindman’s bluff, seeking the house of the Lord.

The ground was uneven, vegetation blackened, crumbling to dust under his steps. A few gnarled trees remained, leaves gone, but no insects, no birds, no animal life. Just Rakkim, sweating, his clothes soaked. The smoke thinned out slightly along the ground, but the air there was even more toxic, coal gas seeping from the earth. He had no idea how Malcolm Crews had survived, let alone found the church and returned. Touched by the hand of God or the devil himself, that’s what Winthrop had said. Maybe that’s what it takes.

Rakkim banged out the filter of the respirator, coughing, eyes and nose burning. He stumbled, fell to one knee and cut himself on something…a broken bottle. Orange Nehi. Knee bleeding now, he walked on. Hot wind on his face, flames in the distance, the smoke rippling in the greasy light. The wind howled, shrieking as fire erupted from the earth, a pillar of flame, fire spreading. He stepped back. Stepped around, patting at the eddies of smoke. Taking the long way around.

This way…The voice leeched out of the darkness, and he thought of coal gas spurting from fissures in the rock. This way…

Rakkim stumbled on, head throbbing as he followed the voice. It was coal gas. Or wind caught in the vortex of the flames. Maybe he was light-headed from carbon monoxide or something worse. There was always something worse. He followed the voice anyway. Stumbling, he lurched forward, stepped through a human rib cage. Another step and he crunched through a skull, the bone blackened from the heat, held marginally together by the eroded respirator around its jawbone. Rakkim cried out, disgusted, as the human dust blew around him, and the voice howled in the smoke, laughing now. He hurried on, his breath like fire in his lungs.

This way…

He lost track of time and distance. The map that Winthrop had drawn so carefully for him, the map that he had committed to memory…it was gone now. What had happened to his sense of direction? The pride of the Fedayeen…cover his eyes, his ears, block his nose, suspend him in a warm, saltwater bath so that all sensation is gone. No matter. The Fedayeen will always be able to point to true north. Not today.

A wall of flame rose up before him, higher and higher, twenty…thirty feet tall. Sweat poured down his face as he backed away. The flames undulated, stretching out before him, the smoke itself held back by the heat.

This way…

That way led to death, he was certain. That way led straight into the flames.

I told you, THIS way…

The flames danced in the wind, bobbing along. He felt the rock baking underfoot, thought of the old stories of eggs frying on sidewalks in August, eggs over easy with a side of Rakkim. He staggered back as the flames shot even higher, then flickered, a whole section of the firewall extinguished for a moment before starting to rise again.

Rakkim smiled.

Yes…

He backed off from the heat as much as possible, stayed in the smoke…waiting. After a few more minutes, the wall of fire shot straight up, even higher than before, then just as abruptly died. Rakkim raced toward the guttering fire, leaped over the rocks and into the smoke as the flames rose higher again. Wisps of smoke clung to him as he stood upright. The fire stirred the smoke as he walked forward. Squinting now. The church…he could see the church through the ebbing smoke.

A nice little church, that’s what Winthrop said, and considering the decades spent in the middle of a burning coal field, it was still pretty nice. Paint peeling, windows cracked, the steeple singed, but intact. Everything else for miles around had burned up, but this little church remained. Rakkim walked closer, felt the heat on his back, but his face seemed cooler. He looked around for some natural explanation, a ridge of wind that kept the flames at bay, a cave bathing the chapel in cool, subterranean air…but there was nothing. Just the church.

The wooden steps creaked as he walked toward the door. One of them was broken but he stepped past it. The silver doorknob gleamed in the dim light. Just like Winthrop described it, Christ on the cross embossed on the center. He reached out a hand, felt the heat an inch away. Hesitated. Then grasped the knob, screamed as he opened the door.

He eased inside, groaning, clutching his hand. The door closed quietly behind him, all by itself. No voice in his head now, and though the voice had led him here, he was relieved at the silence. The cool silence. No sound here…except the rustle of running water.

Water? He looked around. A small stone fountain lay to the right of the pulpit, water bubbling up and filling the basin, the overflow running down a channel into the floor. He plunged his aching hand into the basin, sighed as the icy water numbed it. He stared at his submerged palm. The crucifix from the doorknob was clearly marked on his skin. No blistering. A clear brand. Definitely a conversation starter when he got back to the republic.

He laughed as he leaned against the basin, exhausted. Finally removed his hand from the water. It still throbbed, but the pain had subsided. He took out the handkerchief that Winthrop had given him, wet it in the basin, and wiped the grit and ash off his face, scrubbed himself clean. Then he splashed cold water on his face, cupped his hands, and drank until he was ready to burst. He rested against the basin for a moment, reveling in the sensation…the calm. He was tired. He had barely slept since he and Leo had left Seattle, just snatched a few hours here and there, always skimming the surface of sleep, alert to strange sounds, but here… there was peace in this church. Clean air too; the only whiff of smoke came from his own hair and clothes.

The inside of the church was untouched. The pews in place, the hymn-books in their holders, the candles ready. Someone had dropped a small paper fan with a picture of Adam and Eve printed on it. Most images he had seen of the first couple showed them shamed by their nakedness, cast out of the Garden by an angry God, but in this depiction they seemed more like young lovers, a girdle of leaves around their nakedness, holding hands-they looked as though they were embarking on some risky but exciting adventure, a honeymoon even. Rakkim wished he could have gone to this church when it was filled with people, would have liked to have heard them lift their voices in song. He walked over to the organ, pressed one of the keys-the sound echoed. The church smelled like sandalwood, still no trace of the acrid smoke that he had been trudging through for hours. He flexed the fingers on his right hand, saw the crucifix move. No pain. A stained-glass image of Jesus beamed down from above the pulpit. Jesus smiling, a lamb beside him. No fire and brimstone for this Jesus. No smiting the wicked. Forgiveness reigned. No wonder they crucified him.

He checked out the back windows, saw another wall of fire. The church truly was surrounded by fire, unburned among the burning. He knelt down in the aisle. Said a prayer of thanksgiving for his arrival at this holy place. Said another prayer asking to be delivered back to Winthrop’s store. He offered still another prayer, this one for Sarah and Michael, asked God that they be kept safe until his return to Seattle. Rakkim could take it from there. He almost pressed his forehead against the cool stone floor, but stayed on his knees, eyes closed, as he prayed.

He awoke to the sound of thunder, awoke curled on the floor. Up quickly now. Glanced at his watch. Six o’clock! He had slept for two hours. He looked at his right hand, touched it. No pain. The brand was part of him now. He gingerly reached the doorknob, found it cool to the touch. Which made as little sense as anything else about the church.

He stepped outside as the flame wall started its down cycle, ran straight through the guttering fire and into the smoke beyond. Tripped on some loose rocks, landed hard on his arm, and scooted up. Didn’t look back.

The rain started as he walked quickly back the way he thought he had come, the clouds opening up as he ran through the perpetual twilight. Steam rose where the rain landed on the hot rocks, made breathing even harder, but the cool rain soaked his clothes too, and that was a blessing. The storm brought high winds, thinning out the smoke a little, and soon he was seeing familiar landmarks, slabs of rock he had passed on the way in, a discarded camera, a broken water bottle…the crushed skull. He hurried on, slipping on the wet ground, splashing through mud, hurrying faster, not sure he would ever find his way out when night fell.

Faster now as the smoke eddied around him. No ghosts, no whispers on the wind. He was sure-footed, effortlessly dodging the flames that still rose all around him. Faster, faster, faster.

He burst out from the smoldering coal fields, rain beating down as he staggered onto the streets of Addington. Through the haze, he saw Winthrop’s store in the distance, lights on, the generator thumping away. He ran a hand through his wet hair, wiped at his face, walking slower now. His muddy shoes squished with every step. No one was on the street. The other storefronts were deserted, windows spiderwebbed from the heat.

Leo and Winthrop were drinking coffee when Rakkim walked through the door. Leo knocked over his chair and ran to him, hugged him, crying.

“What’s his problem?” Rakkim said to Winthrop as Leo clung to him.

“He’s got sense, that’s his problem,” said Winthrop.

“O ye of little faith,” chided Rakkim, squeezing Leo until he yelped.