Behind him, an engine cranked loudly, failing to catch. LaRouche turned and found Jim in the driver's seat of the pickup truck, and Wilson riding shotgun. The pickup's engine caught and ran roughly for a few seconds, but evened out. They both looked up at LaRouche and he nodded sternly to them, so Jim simply cranked the wheel hard to the left and completed a tight U-turn, then drove back towards the convoy.

They never asked LaRouche what he intended to do, nor expressed concern about him being by himself. They all knew that it wouldn't do them any good, because LaRouche had already made up his mind what he was going to do, and LaRouche was nothing if not mule-stubborn.

He slid into the driver's seat of the van, putting his rifle in the pa.s.senger's seat.

The keys were in the ignition. He cranked them and the van started up nicely.

He looked in the rearview mirror and saw the man still wedged in the back, murmuring something and wriggling around. LaRouche called out to him coldly, "Cool it back there. You might hurt yourself." Then he pulled the shifter into drive and hit the gas.

CHAPTER 8: THE LORD'S WORK.

The drive was short, but each pa.s.sing second LaRouche's mind delved deeper into some dark compaction at the core of himself. He stared straight ahead, colors turning to black and white, eyes drying, saliva turning thick in his mouth. The man in the back of the van prayed loudly for G.o.d to kill LaRouche, pled for his life, and finally offered LaRouche a high-ranking position in The Lord's Army.

LaRouche never responded to any of it.

He pulled into the business park and drove behind it, taking the corners fast and stomping alternately on the gas and the brake so that the tires squealed and chirped. He didn't stop to remove the chain or open the gate to the warehouse where they'd slept the night before, he simply rammed it with the van and skidded to a stop in front of the rolling doors, which still stood open from their departure earlier.

He stepped out of the van and stopped for a moment, his hand moving to his stomach, the tension in his shoulders seeming to falter for a moment as he dipped his head and swallowed hard. The burning sensation reached up from his stomach, through his chest, and into his throat. His mouth watered, threatening vomit, but he forced it down again. The burning subsided to a dull ache in his gut.

He growled and straightened himself back up, then proceeded to the back of the van. He pulled open the doors and looked at the sack of flesh laying before him. The man looked back and found no comfort in LaRouche's eyes, just a cold indifference. And maybe a hint of regret that was more frightening than anything LaRouche could have said.

LaRouche reached in and grabbed the man, pulled him out of the van and onto his feet. He noticed for the first time that the man's wrists were bound with one of their rifle straps-either Jim's or Wilson's. He took hold of the man's arm and walked him briskly into the warehouse. In the center of the s.p.a.ce, he looked up at the rafters and I-beams overhead and stopped.

He kicked the man in the back of the knee, sprawling him on the concrete floor. He pointed at him. "Don't move," he said.

He took a few steps away to a pile of rope on the floor. It looked to be a suitable length. He dragged it over to his prisoner, looped one end under his armpits and around his chest, then cinched a knot behind his back.

The man watched him work, his face blank. "What are you doing?"

LaRouche shook his head, avoiding eye contact with the man. His emotions were like sediment that time and pressure had turned into a brick, and now it lodged in his chest, hard, and dull, and uncomfortable. Something that needed to be purged from him.

He took the opposite end of the long rope and slung it high above his head where it looped over one of the rafters. He fed the rope upwards until the end dangled down low enough for him to grab, and then he yanked up the slack.

"Get up," he ordered.

The man complied, not really showing any true fear anymore, as though he had resigned himself to what was coming. LaRouche yanked the rope until the man stood up straight as a board, then tied it to the loop around the chest so that if the man were to lift his feet he would simply dangle from the rafters like a crude ornament.

"You can't hurt me," the man closed his eyes. "G.o.d is my strength."

LaRouche walked to the front of the man, hands on his hips and looked at him until he opened his eyes again. They were feral eyes. Ignorant and wanton.

"What's your name?"

The man's nostrils flared and he looked around as though hoping for something that would show him a way out of the situation he was in.

"What's your name?" LaRouche repeated.

His eyes shifted back to LaRouche. "Willie."

"Well, Willie," LaRouche scratched his cheek. "You can call me 'Sarge,' and how about we start this relationship off with a little bit of honesty. How's that sound?"

Willie swallowed. "Okay."

"Yeah, okay." LaRouche folded his arms. "I'm gonna hurt you, Willie. I'm gonna hurt you bad. Until the sun goes down in about seven hours. And then I'm gonna kill you. But before that, I'm gonna try a bunch of different stuff. Find out what you can't handle. Maybe it's being burned. Maybe it's having your toes crushed. Maybe it's..." LaRouche made cutting motions with his index finger. "...having the skin on the soles of your feet flayed off. Make you walk around on the gravel out there."

The man closed his eyes and began to murmur something unintelligible.

"You prayin'?" LaRouche leaned forward and raised his voice. "Oh, you'll have hours to talk to G.o.d, my friend. Listen to me for a minute of the precious seven hours that remain of your life."

The man's mouth stopped moving, but his eyes wouldn't open.

LaRouche sidled closer to the man. "Open your eyes, Willie. Take a good look around. Because the second you can't see the sun anymore, you get a bullet in the brain. However, if at any point in time you want me to cut you down and leave you alone, all you have to do is tell me every d.a.m.n thing you know about The Followers. Do you understand how this works?"

Willie opened his eyes. "G.o.d will avenge me."

LaRouche nodded. "I know He will."

He found the convoy where he'd left them. As the brown pa.s.senger van rolled around the corner, turrets swung in his direction and rifles poked out menacingly from the windows. He slowed and stopped behind the column of vehicles and put the van in park.

A few of the people still stared suspiciously at the van, but from the front of the column, Wilson and Jim appeared, walking side by side. Wilson's rifle hung from its sling, relaxed. Jim carried his rifle by hand, the muzzle pointed into the ground. It must've been his rifle strap that they'd used to secure Willie's hands behind his back.

LaRouche sat in the van, watching the two men approach. They hollered to the members of the convoy, though LaRouche couldn't hear what they said. He could see their placating gestures, and watched the rifle barrels disappear back into the vehicles, and the big .50-caliber guns lifted and turned away.

The acid in his stomach felt like it was creeping up his esophagus again. He could picture it hissing and bubbling as it ate away his insides into nothing, creating that ache, sometimes dull, sometimes hot. He touched the bottom of his throat, pressed in with his fingers as though he could stop the advance of the sensation, pinch it off before it consumed his tongue.

As Jim and Wilson rounded the last vehicle, he forced himself to move, reached up and pulled the door latch, popping it and swinging it open. Exhaustion-mental, physical, and emotional-hung on him like a wet coat, chafing and weighing him down. With effort, he slid out of the driver's seat and stood up, hand still on the door, trying not to appear like he was leaning on it.

Jim and Wilson looked at his face with concern, but when he exited the vehicle, their eyes dropped to his shirt, the dirty old white t-shirt he wore under his jacket, and the concern left them, replaced with horror.

"Holy s.h.i.t," Wilson said quietly.

Jim was more reserved, gathering his words for a moment while LaRouche reached back into the car and retrieved his jacket, his chest rig, and his rifle. Finally, Jim took a step closer. "LaRouche, what the heck happened?"

LaRouche just reached out, handed Jim his rifle strap back.

Jim took it, stared at it, then back up at LaRouche's clothing.

LaRouche pulled his jacket on. He looked down at his shirt as he fumbled with the zipper. The dingy white was splattered and dotted with blood-the kind of spatter that comes from being very close to a b.l.o.o.d.y ma.s.s when it is severely beaten. He zipped up his jacket, indifferent to the blood he wore.

He swung his rifle and his chest rig onto his shoulder. "We've got some things to talk about."

"Where's the guy we captured?" Jim asked, his voice a point blank shot aimed at stopping LaRouche in his tracks.

LaRouche looked at Jim, stood face-to-face with him, perhaps a little closer than necessary. "Why do you care? What difference does it make to you?"

"Because I wanna know that you didn't kill him."

LaRouche's eyes flickered around Jim's face, as though searching for a weakness. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but then closed it again. He turned away from the ex-priest and began walking. "We can talk about it later."

Wilson and Jim exchanged a glance, but followed.

"I...uh..." LaRouche's hand went to the bottom of his throat again. "I got some information on The Followers. Stuff like..." he swallowed a couple times. "...like..." Finally his pace faltered at the back of one of the LMTVs and he put a hand out, gripping the cold metal of the back end.

"You alright?" Wilson put a hand on his shoulder.

LaRouche waved him off. "Yeah...I'm fine."

Then he doubled over and heaved, thin, yellow vomit streaming out of his mouth and splashing onto the pale asphalt. The burn had travelled all the way up his throat now and invaded his mouth and his sinuses. He could feel the wetness of the vomit under his nose, still clinging to his mustache. A tendril of it swung from his lips and finally fell into the small puddle he'd created.

He stared down at it. There wasn't much to it-just stomach acid, really. But in the fluid were ribbons and clots of red that stood out against the pale concrete.

"Jesus," Wilson whispered. "Is that blood?"

LaRouche hauled himself upright again, wiped at his mouth with his sleeve. "Don't worry about it," he growled and began walking again.

"LaRouche," Jim spoke evenly. "If there's something wrong with you, don't ignore it."

"There's nothing wrong with me." He looked back at the other two. "Just a little heartburn or whatever. Just drop it. We've got bigger things to worry about. Can we focus on those for right now?"

They relented, following him to the lead Humvee and gathering at the hood where LaRouche leaned tiredly on the brush guard and the others stood around him in a tight circle. LaRouche hocked and spat. "Any infected?"

Wilson looked out towards the surrounding countryside. "Not really. We've been hearing them calling to each other out in the woods, but haven't seen any yet. They don't seem to be getting too close."

"How's the little girl?"

Jim shrugged. "You know..."

LaRouche didn't, really. But he said nothing. He shucked the rifle and chest rig off his shoulder and onto the hood. He looked off, momentarily, eyes hazy and unfocused for a moment. He took a deep breath and sharpened up again. "This problem with The Followers is worse than we thought."

"How so?" Jim asked.

LaRouche began pulling his map out of his chest rig and unfolding it. "This isn't just a crazy-a.s.s group of religious radicals out randomly hitting targets. These guys look like they know what they're doing, and it looks like they're not going to settle for just pillaging the eastern half of North Carolina. They're intentionally expanding." LaRouche laid out the map on the hood of the Humvee and looked up at Jim and Wilson. "And they're doing it quickly and strategically."

He put a hand in the center of the map to keep it from blowing away. "Our guy-Willie-wasn't an ideal candidate for...questioning. He was only a soldier. Former drug addict, petty criminal, general s.h.i.t-bag. His information was limited, but I guess it's better than nothing. I know more than I did. Probably more than I wanted."

"Any reason he would be exaggerating?"

LaRouche shrugged but didn't answer immediately. Finally, he simply said, "He was telling the truth." He gathered himself again and pointed to a little dot on the map labeled in almost unreadable lettering. "This little town right here, Vanceboro, it was a settlement of survivors for the last few months, but just recently got busted by The Followers. They've set up a base camp there, and that's where our guy was working out of."

Jim lifted his head. "How many?"

LaRouche tapped his finger. "Only about a hundred there."

"That doesn't sound too bad," Wilson said, his voice pleasantly surprised.

"Key word was 'there'," LaRouche spread his palms across the map. "There are four other bases, each approximately the same size as Vanceboro, but Willie didn't know where they were."

"s.h.i.t." Wilson rubbed his chin. "That's five hundred people."

"Probably more," LaRouche pointed to another city, this one on the coast, at the point of one of the inlets that jagged into North Carolina. "All of this s.h.i.t started in New Bern. According to Willie, that used to be their headquarters, but with the expansion west, they've established a new headquarters further inland. He couldn't tell me where and swore he'd never been there. But he says they're constantly shipping whatever they capture back there."

Wilson frowned. "Why move the headquarters?"

LaRouche rubbed the back of his head. No answer.

Wilson continued. "I'm just saying...if you have a secure headquarters, you don't move it. Unless your supply lines to the front are becoming compromised. But even then, you just set up a FOB. You don't move your f.u.c.king headquarters."

LaRouche shrugged. "Well, their boss is a preacher, not a soldier. And maybe he's got a good reason to move the headquarters inland. Maybe he's having trouble along the coast."

"So what's this guy's name?" Wilson folded his arms over themselves. "The guy that came up with all of this s.h.i.t?"

"Marty Wiscoe," Jim said, his expression souring. "I heard of him before all this. Actually watched a few of his televangelist programs because he was creating quite the stir. Very controversial. He and his congregation made it a habit of showing up to protest soldiers' funerals. Something about gays in the military-he was violently anti-gay. His entire talking point was about how evil the United States had become, and how the evil had to be purged." Jim sniffed. "A lot of talk of killing wh.o.r.es and gays to purify the nation. Very Old Testament stuff."

LaRouche nodded. "Well, it doesn't sound like much has changed. That's pretty much the load of s.h.i.t I got from Willie. But Willie was no true believer. He was just a henchmen taking advantage of the situation-drinking the Kool-Aid so he could get a piece of the spoils."

"I'm afraid to ask what the spoils are," Jim sighed.

LaRouche cleared his throat. "It's exactly what you think it is. Their whole f.u.c.king philosophy is that this plague is a curse from G.o.d, and the only way to get things back to normal is to purify the country. Part of that is reproducing and creating a 'holy society'. The women from all the settlements they take over are forced into some sort of..." LaRouche struggled to find the right word. "...Harem, I guess. They rotate through until they're pregnant, and then they're removed." LaRouche rubbed a bit of dried blood from his hand. "Apparently up until that point, they're starved, beaten, treated like s.h.i.t, not to mention being raped every G.o.dd.a.m.ned night. But when they get pregnant, they're treated like royalty. Little extra incentive for them to create the holy society, I guess."

"Jesus, that is so f.u.c.ked up," Wilson shook his head.

LaRouche couldn't get the blood off completely and buried his hand in his pocket as though to hide it there. "Yeah. It is."

Jim took a breath as though preparing to speak, but a howl in the distance made all three of their heads snap to the north. They stood there, unmoving, unbreathing, for a long moment, just staring into the gray woods across the road from them. It had not been close, but it had been startling enough.

Wilson broke the silence with a nervous chuckle. "They've been doing that all day."

"Is it getting any closer?" LaRouche asked.

Wilson looked at Jim, who shrugged. "Dunno," Wilson admitted. "Can't really tell."

Jim refocused the conversation. "So what the heck were they doing when we interrupted them?"

LaRouche shifted his weight. "That would be their initiation, if you want to call it that. When The Followers come knocking, they round everybody up in the center of the settlement. The head honcho leading that raiding party stands up and tells everyone that they have to purify the nation. Then they take all the women and children away. The men are given the choice to join or die. Those that join are forced to crucify those that refuse." LaRouche sneered. "Same thing warlords in Africa do. You force a man to commit an atrocity that bad, he starts to think no place else will be able to look past his sins. He starts to think there's no place else to go. And then you get yourself a loyal soldier, willing to kill and rape and pillage whenever you tell him to, as long as you tell him it's okay."

Jim stood with his arms overlapped, one hand up, holding tightly to his face as though to help contain himself. He removed his hand and his lips were pale and thin underneath. "What are we going to do about this?"

"What are we gonna do?" LaRouche looked at him like he'd just asked if the sky was blue. "We're gonna do our G.o.dd.a.m.ned best to skirt around these f.u.c.kers. The less contact we have with them, the better." He threw a sharp glance in Wilson's direction. "We got lucky this time, but don't expect it to stay that way. These guys have been ruling the roost for the past few months, and they let their guard down a little bit. It ain't gonna happen again."

Jim looked surprised. "So we're just gonna let this continue to happen? Turn a blind eye?"