The silence carried on; Rulon seemed to have not heard. Then a skinny man carrying a red ax began to speak, too. “She’s righ, Fa . . .” He stopped, then cast his eyes to the floor, sheepish and confused.
Rulon’s losing control of them, Michael thought. And it was not hard to see why. The priest had become even more skeletal; his flesh was drawn severely against his cheekbones, his hair was streaked with blood. Rulon looked like he hadn’t slept for days, and his dark eyes seemed almost to roar in his skull, like twin tornadoes.
“Their sins . . . ,” Rulon said, and Michael saw tears of frustration—of building rage—in his eyes, which were now fixed on a point somewhere far overhead. “All I wanted was the boy. All I wanted was the chance to atone for my failure. I knew God would not have taken so much from me without reason. I knew God could not have raised the dead for no reason. All I wanted was the son. Oh, why do you hide him from me?”
Who the hell is he talking to?
“My letter told your captain that all you had to do was bring me the boy,” Rulon said, and now his gaze bore straight into Michael. His breath hitched. A sob rolled up out of him.
Jopek did bring me.
“Oh God, I have done so much to atone. What else must I do? All I want is my son.”
Hammy said worriedly: “Your son?”
The gaunt features of Rulon’s face contorted, changed into a mask of agony and helpless fury; and even as this mountain priest cried out in a wordless reckoning of rage and of love and venom, the understanding hit Michael like a cold bolt.
“All I want is MY SON!” Rulon bellowed. “All I want is MY BOY, MY CADY! All I have ever wanted was to bring my Cady back! But they would not give me his body when the Chosen began to rise, and YOU hid him from me, Michael Faris, you and YOUR CAPTAIN WOULD NOT GIVE ME MY BOY!”
Devastation and confusion fell across the faces of the Rapture. Michael saw the idea they’d had of Rulon evaporate. Their priest had told them that everything he did, every person he ordered them to sacrifice, he had done in order to protect them, to win them all their entry to Heaven.
Was that belief insane? Yes. It was.
But their priest had been a purposeful deceiver. Rulon had been attempting to atone for the accidental death of his son, the little boy who died in the Coalmount mines only days before the dead began to rise. Rulon must have taken that resurrection as a sign, a hope that his son, too, could return. . . . And so Rulon had tried to retrieve his son’s body from its casket in the Capitol; but the Capitol had been already become the Safe Zone. And so Rulon tried to summon the assistance and powers of God with worship and with blood; but that would not work, no, so perhaps just a little more blood would, yes, a little more . . .
And now Rulon was going to sacrifice Patrick, to try to trade one other innocent dead child for his own son.
“Bub, RUN!” Michael said, pushing past Holly, who only then lowered her shielding arms.
Rulon fired over Michael’s head, close enough for him to hear the song of the bullet. Holly screamed, pulling Michael back.
“Speak one more word,” Rulon said through gritted, bared teeth. “I beg you that.”
Rulon picked up Patrick . . . and Patrick’s head lolled back like a broken doll’s. Vomit threatened Michael’s throat, sudden and violent.
“‘Michael,’” murmured Rulon softly to him in the still, dead First Bank of Charleston. “‘God’s warrior.’”
The priest shook his head: a nearly wistful gesture. His forehead was kneaded as if he might weep. And yet, as he looked at Michael’s little brother, he smiled, too.
He looked like . . . hope.
“Michael Faris,” Rulon said, “you are no one’s warrior.”
And that was the end.
The Rapture retreated through the tunnel and, after a second, Michael ignored Holly’s screams and crawled into the shaft, heedless of his wounded hand’s anguish, out to the outer lobby, where he saw the Rapture vanishing into the cockpit of the jet. Rulon fired; Michael was forced to scrabble back, like a frightened dog. But in the last moment before he retreated, the only thing he saw, really saw, was Patrick: