in New Mexico. I know you have drought in Illinois and Indiana. These are the signs of His coming.
The Reverend moved across the screen to a window and the camera followed showing the swirling blizzard over the rooftops and the distant ships in the bay.
Here in the holy city of Charleston we have snow where no snow ought to be. Maybe Hell has frozen over too, my friends, because Carolina sure has. And so has Florida. And so has Georgia. Is this not evidence that mankind’s sins have sorely displeased the Lord and that His great reckoning is upon us?
The camera swept back to him, eyes still blazing down the lens, challenging the viewer.
You need to make a vow of faith to make your peace with the Lord and you need to make it fast. If you have wandered from the flock then now is the time to return. Be reconciled with your Lord and do it now, for time is running out. The true Church will always welcome you. Call the number on the screen right now. Salvation is waiting.
A graphic of a dove flew across the screen, wiping the Reverend from view and dragging an infomercial in on its tail.
Franklin reached forward and fished a key ring from the jar. It had a phone number stamped on it next to a website address, the same ones that were now scrolling across the screen beneath images of American soldiers marching on dry foreign soil. The picture changed to a group of wounded servicemen and women gathering together in a field hospital, some with bandages round their heads, others with limbs missing – all of them praying.
A caption crashed onto the screen:
OPERATION SAVIOUR
Saving the souls and rebuilding the lives of those destroyed in the Holy wars
The door opened behind them and Miss Boerman reappeared. ‘Reverend Cooper can see you now if you’d like to follow me.’
The first room they passed through was divided into small cubicles, each containing a computer terminal, a phone and an operator. There must have been twenty of them, all fairly young, all talking and tapping, filling the room with the hum of overlapping conversations.
The next room contained two parallel lines of people stuffing envelopes with the same books and key rings they had seen on the coffee table. One was in a wheelchair, another had a prosthetic hand and Shepherd put it all together – the youthful demographic, the discipline and order, even the limp and the scar on Miss Carolina’s face – these must be some of Cooper’s Christian soldiers, rescued from wherever they’d been fighting and now doing the Lord’s work for the Church that had saved them.
They followed Miss Boerman up some narrow stairs and through a heavy door into a different world. Gone were the utility desks and bare brick walls. Everything on the upper floor was plush and expensive. They were in some kind of salon with deep red velvet furniture and wood panelling on the walls that had been painted a soft, expensive, chalky grey. There was a fire in the hearth and split logs piled neatly to one side of a carved marble surround.
‘Let me see if he’s ready,’ Miss Boerman said, disappearing through a hidden door in the panelling.
Franklin leaned in to Shepherd, keeping his voice low. ‘Looks like the good Reverend lives above the shop, you know why he does that?’ Shepherd shook his head. ‘Because in the state of South Carolina religious organizations are exempt from property tax. It means he can live in all this luxury, right in the heart of town, without paying a dime to do it.’
He stood back up as Miss Boerman stuck her head round the edge of the hidden door.
‘The Reverend Cooper will see you now,’ she said.
43
By the time the sun dipped low enough to touch the horizon, Liv and Tariq were ready to leave. Following the discovery of Kasim’s theft everyone had decided they should try and get to Al-Hillah as planned, food or no food. They didn’t really have much choice.
They filled as many canteens as they could carry and drank freely from the pool to fully hydrate themselves before the long march ahead. One small consolation of Kasim’s clandestine departure was that he had not been able to take much water as filling the canteens at the pool would have been too obvious. As a result Liv and Tariq had plenty of spare water containers for their journey. They were heavy but Liv consoled herself