digging deeper and deeper. Could Satan’s soldiers hear the scratching sounds? Or perhaps they were the ones making the imaginary lice dig into his skull. Satan had powers, after all. Incredible powers he could transmit through his soldiers. Powers that Eric knew could easily inflict pain without so much as a touch.
The one called Tully was saying something to him, lips moving, eyes burrowing into Eric’s, but Eric had turned down the volume hours ago. Or was it days ago? He couldn’t remember how much time had passed. He couldn’t remember how long he had been in this cabin, how long he had sat in this straight-backed chair with his wrists handcuffed and his feet in shackles, waiting for the inevitable torture to begin. He had no sense of time, but he did know the exact moment his system had begun to shut down. The exact second his mind had gone numb. It was the instant that David dropped to the floor, the thud of his body forcing Eric to risk opening his eyes. That was when he found himself staring directly into David’s eyes, their faces only inches apart.
Eric had seen his friend’s mouth open. Thought he heard a faint whisper, three words, no more. Maybe it had been Eric’s imagination, because David’s eyes were already empty when the words “He tricked us” left his lips. He must have heard his friend wrong. Satan hadn’t tricked them at all. They had tricked him, instead. Hadn’t they?
Suddenly, the men were scrambling to their feet. Eric braced himself as best he could, closed fists, shoulders hunched, head down. Only there were no blows, no bullets, no wounds inflicted of any kind. And their voices melted together, the hysteria in them breaking through Eric’s self-imposed barrier.
“We need to get out of the cabin. Now.”
Eric twisted around in the chair, just as one of the men pulled him to his feet and started to shove him toward the door. He saw another man, with some weird contraption mounted on top of his head, come up out of the floorboards. Of course, they had found the hidden arsenal. Father would be disappointed. They had needed that stockpile of weapons to fight Satan. Their mission had failed before they could deliver them back to their home camp. Yes, Father would be very disappointed. They had let everyone down. Maybe more lives would be lost, because all the weapons that had taken months to amass would now be confiscated and put under Satan’s control. Precious lives might be lost because they had failed their mission. How could Father protect any of them without these weapons?
The men shoved and pulled at him, hurrying out the cabin door and down into the woods. Eric didn’t understand. What were they running from? He tried to listen, tried to hear. He wanted to know what could possibly frighten Satan’s soldiers.
They gathered around the man with the strange headgear, who brought out a metal box with blinking lights and odd wires. Eric had no idea what it was, but it sounded like the man had found it down with the weapons.
“There’s an arsenal underneath large enough to blow this place to kingdom come.”
Eric couldn’t help but smile and immediately felt a jab to his kidneys. He wanted to tell Mr. Tully, the owner of the elbow in his back, that he wasn’t smiling about them being blown up, but rather at the idea that any of them believed they would ever be allowed into the Kingdom of God.
No one else noticed his smile. They focused on the dark-haired man with the crazy gogglelike contraption now pushed up on top of his head, reminding Eric of some life-size insect.
“Tell us something we don’t already know,” one of the men challenged.
“Okay. How about this. The entire cabin is wired,” the insect man told them.
“Shit!”
“It gets even better. This is only a secondary switch.” He showed them the metal box he held. “The real detonator’s off-site.” Then he pointed to the blinking red button and flipped a switch. The light shut off. Within seconds it snapped back on, blinking again like a pulsing red eye.
The men turned and twisted, craning their necks and looking around them. Some of them had their guns drawn. Even Eric’s head pivoted, his eyes suddenly clear and squinting into the shadows of the woods. He didn’t understand. He wondered if David had known about the metal box.
“Where is it?” demanded the big guy with no neck, the one everyone