Chapter 9
All my life I’ve sensed something deep within myself, linking me with other women. Now I know what it is.
—The Reflections of Lori Vale (unpublished manuscript)
A golden sunrise illuminated a desolate plain in eastern Washington State, casting long shadows from the rock escarpments and barren hills as the flaming sphere became brighter, sharing its warmth with the earth.
Walking briskly up the Hill of Golgotha, Vice Minister Styx Tertullian smelled the rank, musty odor of human death and saw tiny droplets of dew glistening on clusters of three-toothed sagebrush and great basin blue sage. Overhead, red-tailed hawks and turkey vultures soared. He was thankful for God’s wisdom and generosity in allowing mortals such as himself to behold such wonders. They made him think of far greater glories awaiting him in the Kingdom of Heaven. Styx wore a silver robe, with a long black stole draped over his shoulders.
In his left hand he carried a gleaming double-edged sword, freshly sharpened to a razor’s edge.
To reach the eternal, heavenly reward the Vice Minister needed to remain true to his faith, as he was doing this morning while trudging up a dirt and sand pathway lined with human skulls, some of which still had skin clinging to them that hadn’t been picked away by the carrion-eaters. He paused for a moment, admiring the translucence of a piece of flesh as sunlight passed through it, then continued on.
This hill was a Bureau-built reconstruction of the far-away site of Jesus’ crucifixion by the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, in collusion with the Sadducees. In ancient days the skulls had been of Christian martyrs, but in the modern version they represented something entirely different—the vengeance of the Lord against blasphemers and schemers.
An eye for an eye. Blood for blood.
The Bureau of Ideology was the agent of God.
On adjoining land, the headquarters of the Bureau included millions of square feet of underground structures, with sixty-six levels of subterranean office space, living quarters for staff, and facilities for the storage of vehicles and aircraft. To the uninformed a portion of the land looked like a small town of four or five thousand inhabitants, containing houses, businesses, a central park and six churches in a variety of architectural designs. Some employees of the Bureau—predominantly men—lived in the houses, but most, comprising in all nearly thirty thousand persons, lived in underground apartments. None of these people were married. They were the governmental equivalents of Catholic priests and nuns, married through their professions to God.
To prevent the leakage of secrets to ideological enemies, only a few employees were ever permitted to leave the area. It was five miles across barren land to the nearest boundary of the facility, which had no visible delineation and only a few plainclothed guards, since other methods of security were employed. Chief among them were implanted medical devices connected to the vital organs of all BOI employees as a condition of employment, ensuring that none of them—other than the highest officials—could approach the perimeters. If they attempted to do so, the implants were triggered and heart and brain functions ceased. Human nature being what it was, with its inherent weaknesses, attempts to escape were occasionally made, though none successfully. Regular security patrols rounded up the bodies.
On the other side of the boundary the potentially curious were kept at bay through a different but allied means, electronic signals that transmitted outward for two miles in all directions around the facility. These signals confused the brain functions of approaching persons who did not have implanted protective devices, causing them to turn around and leave without knowing why. For like reasons, aircraft did not fly low over the facility, or near it—and the Bureau had other equipment to detect and thwart drones. In addition, through political arrangements and technology, the town and surrounding unimproved land did not appear on any maps or tax rolls, and did not show up on the satellite surveillance reports of any nation.
Styx smiled to himself as he walked up the path lined with human skulls, for he believed that even if the Bureau technology failed massively, if every backup power system went out, God would still find a way to camouflage the facility, through inclement weather or other means. The Bible provided ample evidence of the Lord’s repertoire of storms, floods, fires, and earthquakes, all employed to cleanse the world of sin and wickedness.
Some Christians didn’t understand that being devout involved duties. It wasn’t enough to simply identify oneself as a Christian and attend church. It took strength, commitment, and good works to gain God’s attention and grace, not weakness, uncertainty, and laziness.
God is strong and energetic, as I must be, Styx thought.
Ahead, just around a bend in the path, he saw the top of a wooden cross, and the stench of death became stronger. He inhaled it, for these were his enemies and he enjoyed smelling them in their decay. Presently the cross came into full view, and then a long line of many more like it, all rough-hewn in the traditional manner. The nearest cross was not occupied, but most of the others were, with vultures perched on a number of them.
An Asian woman with short black hair, her clothes torn and bloody, hung on the second cross, her wrists and ankles having been nailed into place within the hour, so that fresh red blood still ran from the wounds. Her eyes were closed. Open sores covered her skin. Her breasts heaved in and out, fitfully.
A wooden sign posted over her head by the BOI tribunal proclaimed, in blood-red paint:
Amy Angkor-Billings
Blasphemer and Harlot
Styx stood at the foot of the cross and gazed up at her, through his wire-rimmed glasses. An immense turkey vulture sat atop the post, just above her head. Soon this magnificent predator and its winged brethren would gouge out the sinner’s eyes with sharp beaks and tear the flesh from her bones with sharp talons.
Using the flat of his sword, he touched the side of her bloody face. This had once been a woman of classic beauty, with high cheekbones and an exquisite, if petite, figure.
Slowly, Angkor-Billings opened her large green eyes, revealing what at first looked like reverie to Styx, but which he subsequently categorized as pain.
Good. This Bible-hater deserved to suffer. Crucifixion worked nicely for such a purpose, and there were other methods from biblical teachings and stories. Sharp swords, slingshots, fire. . . .
Styx and the Bureau of Ideology were a microcosm of the Lord Himself, employing the power of the Almighty to fill the hearts of heretics with terror.
“Good morning, Amy,” Styx said. He pressed the tip of his sword against skin on the inside of her thigh where it had not previously been cut, drawing a trickle of blood.
She stared at him condescendingly with green Asian eyes, as if he were vermin and she a queen. Styx loathed her, and all women who were like her. They didn’t know their places, didn’t recognize that woman was created from the rib of man to serve him and bear his children. Genesis 3:16 stipulated that women were to obey their husbands, and there were other biblical passages that placed them in subservient roles to men.
Maintaining pressure on the tip of the blade, he ran it up the inside of her leg under her dress, slicing the skin and causing more blood to flow.
“Your symbol is a sword merged with a cross,” Styx said in a low, menacing tone. “The Sword of She-God? Is that what you call your blasphemous symbol?”
No response or emotion from Amy.
“Well this is the Sword of God!” he exclaimed, stepping back and raising his sword. With the tip of the weapon, which was of the finest Spanish steel and workmanship, he touched the front of her right shoulder and then her left and finally the center of her forehead. It was the sign of the cross in reverse, to eliminate any Christian blessing that might linger on this soul and body. Sometimes he enjoyed doing that, to gain the attention and favor of the Lord. It was like an excommunication.
Again he stepped back, and this time he swished the long blade through the air with his dominant left hand, coming ever so close to her face.
She didn’t flinch or move a muscle.
Overhead, the vulture made a grunting sound.
Despite interrogation drugs that had been administered to her, Amy remained strangely resistant. She gazed scornfully at her silver-robed tormentor, then looked up at the heavens and smiled. “My She-God watches over me and protects me,” she said.
Vice Minister Tertullian felt like finishing the blasphemer off with a quick upward thrust of the sword into her female parts. But that would be too good for her. It would allow her to escape the exquisite pain that had been ordered for her by the tribunal. Besides, he might still be able to extract information from her.
He withdrew the sword.
“Why were you talking to those families?” he demanded. “Why did you bring them all to Greece? What was on the holo-recorder you destroyed? You’d better talk, you heretic—”
Amy smiled calmly, didn’t respond. She knew he was referring to the people that the BOI had taken prisoner in the raid on Katherine’s compound, the birthmothers, fathers, and siblings of the she-apostles. She felt sorry for the families, but there was nothing she could do for them, nor for Katherine Pangalos. She could only hope that some of them had escaped. It didn’t surprise her that none of these vile men had mentioned the children . . . at least not yet. Fearing the families might fall into the wrong hands, she’d warned them ahead of time not to talk, not to even reveal the existence of the special children . . . for the safety of the little ones. But even if they did talk, they didn’t know much of anything. The UWW had lied to them, telling them only that their children were involved in a top-secret government study.
“Who owns that Greek country club setup?” Styx demanded, “We’ve traced real estate records to a network of fictitious corporations. Who owns the corporations?”
Again, no answer.
“The question is too tough for you, eh? All right, here’s an easy one. Tell me about your paramilitary operations, how they’re all tied together on the worldwide web.”
Her expression didn’t change.
“What are the Internet codes? Tell me!”
Amy gazed into the distance.
“We already know a lot. How do you think we ambushed you and Dixie Lou Jackson? You might as well tell us the rest.”
“Internet paramilitary operations—Hmmm—Intriguing idea. I am sorry, Styx Man, but I know nothing of military matters, computers, or electronics. Women aren’t good at those sorts of things, you know. . . .”
Styx seethed. For years there had been rumors of clandestine female military activity and a secret UWW Internet network. If only someone with specific knowledge would step forward. The BOI raids had nothing to do with the Internet, though. In Seattle, a Bureau operative with a parabolic microphone had picked up details of conversations involving the caretaker of Dixie Lou’s home near there, and a trap had been laid. The attack in northern Greece had been made possible by an informer.
“When I feel like it, I’m going to cut off your head and toss it over there,” Styx announced, with a stiff smile. With his sword he pointed toward a pile of skulls, where hungry vultures and hawks were hopping about, looking for morsels. “Unless you decide to cooperate.”
“It doesn’t matter what you do to me,” Amy said, her voice strong and clear, “because we have a little surprise in the works for you.”
“And what is that?”
“Are you really that stupid to ask?” she replied. “Just what do you think ‘surprise’ means? Anyway, you’ll find out what we’re going to do soon enough, and it will set your male chauvinist world on its ear.”
“You’re bluffing.”
Lifting on her nailed feet to breathe more easily, Amy said, “Whether I live or die makes no difference. A process has been set in motion, and no one, not you, nor I, nor any nation, can stop it.”
“And that process is?”
A smile curled at the edges of her mouth. “Part of the shocking surprise, of course.”
“Lying slut.”
He tried to stare her down, but couldn’t. Oh, how he wanted to finish her right now, gouging out her eyes first! “Patience, Lord,” he whispered to himself. “Lord, grant me patience.”
Hearing voices, Styx looked back along the path he had just traversed. Guards were bringing up more women he had taken prisoner the previous evening, in the goddess circle raid. All would be crucified, including two that could not walk and were being carried.
Looking back at Angkor-Billings he saw to his horror and amazement that she was smiling beatifically, gazing heavenward. How he longed to kill her immediately! This was one of the Lord’s temptations placed before him, designed to make him strong.
Vice Minister Tertullian turned away, went to the next cross, and then the next, and continued on down the line. All of the prisoners were still alive, but some only barely; a few were moaning, others were openly defiant, or staring numbly, or slumped unconscious. Most were women, but a handful of their male accomplices had been brought in as well, ferreted from their loathsome cells of sedition.
Pausing before one of the men, who was breathing fitfully, Styx spat on his bloody, hair-covered legs. What sort of man would follow women, in violation of holy law?
With a swift stroke of the blade, Styx lopped off his bearded head. It tumbled to the ground at the foot of the cross.
Two vultures hopped close to the head, peering at it with interest. Their dark, hungry little eyes took everything in.
* * *
Lori lay in unfamiliar shadows, trying to convince herself she had experienced a nightmare and was back in her bedroom at home. The jumble of events in her mind bore the earmarks of unreality. They didn’t make any sense.
She heard a distant machine whir followed by silence, then a resumption of the sound, and silence again. She knew from the shadows in this confined area and the unfamiliar noises that she was not in her bedroom, not in her home. She lay on her side, with her eyes open.
She was shaking, and thought she knew why. Her street friends used to say the marijuana she often smoked with them had been laced with stronger, unknown drugs. Still, she thought she could beat it. . . .
Lori sat up on the bed, flipped on a small lamp on the side table. It cast weak light.
The room had a single dark-stained wooden door and no windows. The walls, bare of paintings or other adornment, were rough and coated with a white chalky substance that had been worn away in places, revealing a brownish-gray surface underneath.
She drank a glass of water slowly, and as she did so she tried to take her mind off her old life and the way she had been wasting her time: the drugs, the drinking, the partying and sex with boys she didn’t know. Her mother—although Lori would never admit it at the time—had been right about one thing, that Lori had been going down the wrong path, and perhaps a perilous one.
She feared that her mother actually was dead, had a terrible feeling about this. She really really wanted something to calm her. Fumbling in the pocket of a robe, she found a pack of cigarettes one of her street friends had given her. Not the Pink Paradises she would have preferred, these were Greek, a brand she’d never heard of. Still, they would have to do. She struck a match, and with a shaking hand lit a cigarette and took a deep drag. The taste was rough, with a faint taste of menthol that more burned than soothed.
Lori switched the light off, climbed back into bed and sat up with an ashtray on her lap, smoking the cigarette, causing the ember tip to glow orange in the low illumination of the room.
I must be strong, she told herself.
* * *
On the cross, Amy blocked out the pain in her hands and ankles, from the large nails securing them to the crossbar and post. Rolling her eyes upward, she prayed to the glorious She-God, asking Her for strength. Moments later, with a mighty effort, she ripped one of her hands free, and then—trying to hold on to the crossbar with her free hand, she pulled the other hand free. Blood gushed, so slippery and painful that she could not hold on.
With nothing supporting her upper body she pitched forward, slamming her head into the base of the cross and cracking bones in her ankles, which were still bound and secured to the cross.
She went unconscious for an undetermined time, then awakened to the most intense pain she had ever felt in her life—even worse than her tormentors had originally inflicted on her. She resisted the temptation to scream out, fearing one of her enemies would hear her.
The She-God whispered encouragement to her, enabling Amy to untie her own ankles, and pull them free. Then, unable to walk and barely able to move her hands, she crawled on the dirt to a vantage point, where she could see the perimeter of the Hill of Golgotha. She had hoped to reach freedom, so that she could inspire her sisters in United Women of the World, but her heart sank at what she saw.
A high chain link fence seemed to encircle the hill, within the limited range of vision that she had. With a Herculean effort, she crawled to another vantage point on the other side of the hill, losing blood and filling her wounds with dirt.
Again she saw the fence, and uniformed, roving guards.
Knowing that she could never hope to climb the fence and escape, with her strength ebbing fast, she vowed not to let her hated enemies—especially that slimy, cruel Tertullian—get their hands on her again.
Not alive, anyway.
Crawling back the way she had come, she found a sharp spike that she had noticed on the ground, and had hoped she would not have to use. She took a deep breath, and this time did not pray or delay at all. What she had in mind would take every bit of remaining strength she had.
And all of her courage.
Pointing the sharp end of the spike at her chest, over her heart, she lunged down on it. The spike penetrated her skin, but not far enough. Rising with great difficulty, she slammed down again on the steel point, and this time felt the crunch of bone and cartilage as it broke through.