As if on cue, the news reports that the plague and “the mark of the beast” vaccine have spread to isolated spots in Eastern Europe and North Africa. It now hardly matters if the ‘disease’ spreads any farther. Henry has succeeded in scaring the world, and people are gladly lining up for their dose of the vaccine. Reports from Aislin indicate vaccine production has been ramped to the point that there will soon be doses for everyone on the planet, but distribution will continue at the current pace as the Corps works to ensure that only those people who live on the grid receive a dose. Each dose is now being packed in an individual container with the recipient’s name on it, and government personnel watch to make sure you take it yourself. It’s a miracle Amelia secured a dose in Indonesia.
An hour later, I again find myself praying in the blackberry thicket. Only Martha knows about this little retreat; so when I hear soft footsteps approaching, I know it’s her. She allows me to finish my prayer in silence. I’m praying for her and the baby. I’m praying for my family. I’m even praying for Henry. But, more than anything else, I’m praying for God to help me by revealing how to save us all from the plague.
I open my eyes and see instantly that Martha is upset.
“What’s happened?” I ask.
“It’s begun. Zip ordered her attack.”
“And?”
Martha’s jaw tightens, and she simply shakes her head.
When I reach the command center at Bethany, I understand. Martha doesn’t come in with me; she doesn’t want to see it again. The screen is showing a large building exploding in a massive fireball, followed by dozens of smaller explosions in the surrounding area. The cameras zoom in to show that the secondary explosions are missiles being fired from drones, targeting members of Zip’s combat teams. The only one watching is Martha’s cousin, William.
“That was the vaccine facility that exploded,” William says when I join him. “It was hidden in an old building on the edge of Maggie Valley, North Carolina. The whole thing was a deathtrap, even though the official report says it was blown up by Christians. There was even a vaccine production crew working at the time, and they died alongside Zip’s people.”
“Did anyone survive?”
“Nobody inside two hundred meters of the building. If Zip had a reserve force holding back, they might have escaped.”
“What about McIntosh?”
William changes to another feed and I see a live shot from McIntosh.
“Zip got her wish. She massacred hundreds of cult hunters.”
The screen shows lines of dead men and women in Federal uniforms; then jumps to a shot of street fighting between Zip’s teams and Corps people wearing plain clothes. Zip managed to secure a perimeter and is massacring all cult hunters trapped on the inside. The remaining Corps members aren’t even attempting to help their trapped people. Henry wants to show the massacre on the news as much as Zip does.
“Look at this,” William says, and switches to a different feed.
The shot shows a line of crouched believers standing in Lake McIntosh, waiting to be baptized by Michael, who is standing up tall and continuing to baptize - even as stun guns are being fired around him.
There is a man who fully trusts the Lord.
“I’m glad I didn’t go,” William says. “I’m glad I wasn’t a part of Zip’s massacre. I don’t see ‘cult hunters’ in those uniforms anymore. I keep looking at their faces, and I don’t see monsters or demons. All I see are people who never had a chance to know the Lord.”
The shot widens so that I can see the outskirts of McIntosh. I thought it would be bombed and burning, but it looks like a peaceful little town, where nothing out of the ordinary is happening.
“Henry could flatten it, but he hasn’t,” I say. “Has the news said why?”
“You missed his press conference,” William replies. “Henry has declared himself the ‘New Prince of Peace.’”
*****
Like Martha, I choose not to watch the videos and the official government commentary more than once. As Zip said, history books are written by the victors.
I stand in the doorway to the lab, where Cindi and Amelia are continuing to work on the vaccine. Cindi’s movement is unsteady and she knocks a beaker full of some liquid to the floor with a crash. The look on her face tells me that she’s barely keeping herself from shouting some very rude words.
“What was it this time?” Amelia asks.
“Just shut up!”
“Maybe you should take a break,” Amelia says.
“And maybe you should…”
Cindi stops herself when she sees me crossing the room towards her. She just stares at me with those amazing ice blue eyes that remind me of my mother. By the time I reach her, she’s crying, and when I take her into my arms, she begins to sob.
“It’s going to be okay, Cuz,” I whisper into her ear, but it doesn’t stop the sobs.
“I saw what happened to Zip,” she says. “They blew their own vaccine facility to bits; so now it’s all up to me and Amelia. Everyone’s counting on us, but there’s no time. We need a minimum of a month to do the preliminary set up and testing, and another two or three to scale up for production. That, of course, assumes we can get our hands on the equipment we need and the power to run it.”
And then many more months to distribute it secretly to Christians worldwide. I understand Zip’s desire to simply steal vaccine from the government with an armed a strike force; but even that approach was too little, too late.
“I don’t want to be responsible for saving the world,” she says.
Cindi continues to cry; so I hold her away from me and make her look me in the eyes.
“This isn’t your burden, Cindi,” I say. “The Lord may choose to act through you, but saving the world is His job.”
Lord, whatever you have in mind, I hope you do it soon.
*****
I return through the darkened hallways to the room where Martha and I stay, hoping to find her. She isn’t there, but in the beam of my headlamp I notice that my computer pad has been moved from where I usually keep it. I check to see if Martha used it to leave me a message. She hasn’t; so I put it into my pocket, and then search the rest of the house for Martha, without success.
I find her sitting in my secret spot inside the blackberry patch, praying. I don’t want to interrupt her; so I sit down to pray as well. When I do, the computer pad is uncomfortable in my pocket. As I remove it, I notice that it’s been activated by my movement and the screen is showing the scanned images of my father’s notebook. I’ve read them dozens of times and can find no hidden secrets that will tell us how to produce the vaccine faster. In fact, the vaccine isn’t mentioned at all. Still, it’s odd that the pad would activate; so I start to read the page again.
“How many times does that make?” Martha asks.
“I’ve lost count. I tell myself that if there was something important in dad’s notes, then Aunt Jennifer wouldn’t have sent them - but something tells me to keep trying.”
“You said that blinding Bethany House by taking away our technology might help us to see. Have you tried Braille?”
A non-Christian wouldn’t understand the reference. Virtually all types of blindness are correctable through surgery; so the use of Braille died generations ago. When looking for secret ways to communicate, Christians - for a short time - looked into Braille, but ultimately opted for encoding messages instead. I don’t admit it to Martha, but I already had the scans checked for unusual bumps in the paper, and found none.
I look at the screen and wish I had the real notebook instead of scans, so I could feel for Braille myself. Somehow, touching the paper that dad wrote on would help me to feel closer to him compared to just reading it on a screen. I smile as I think about the fact that dad was among the first to switch back to paper in order to keep his thoughts hidden from electronic government eavesdroppers.
“Computer, display the last scanned page from the notebook,” I say.
Since the notebook is small, it was scanned two pages at a time. On the last scan, there’s writing on the left-hand page, but the right-hand facing page is blank. The left-hand page is filled with ideas dad had regarding how to reach people with Christ’s message, along with a crude drawing of some sort of machine parts. There’s no useful information about toxins or vaccines.
Something on the blank page catches my eye for the first time.
“Computer, zoom in on the upper-left hand corner of the right-hand page.”
At the very top, there’s a tiny triangle that’s fuzzy on its lower edge. It’s a small piece of paper that was left behind when someone tore the last page out of the notebook.
Do Aunt Jennifer and Henry have the missing page? Or did dad tear it out? If dad tore it out, did they even notice a page is missing? That’s it! Don’t look for the raised bumps of Braille. Look for indentations left behind when dad pressed down to write on the missing page.
“Computer, scan the right-hand page only, and enhance contrast by fifty percent.”
The page goes bright white, except for a single line about three-quarters of the way down the page. On that line, there are some black dots.
“Computer, focus on the line where the dots appear. Now, extrapolate the effect of a light shining across the page at five degrees, relative to the original surface.”
This time I see what I was hoping for. The low light angle is enhancing the microscopic shadows created by indentations made on the page below when dad pressed his pencil down on the page that’s been torn out.
“Enhance contrast to maximum.”
The words jump out. It’s crude, but I can read “distribute it through the water” in dad’s script.
It takes a moment for the significance to fully sink in. Dad must have torn out the page to remove the evidence, and Henry must have read the indentations like I just did. That’s why Aunt Jennifer said Henry got the idea to put the toxin in drinking water from dad.
But why did he write only on a line three-quarters of the way down the page? I scroll back through earlier pages. Here and there are other pieces of paper that were stuck down into the notebook by tape. The missing page must have had something taped onto it - but what? Whatever it was, it appears that Henry doesn’t have the information either.
I reread dad’s last note: “distribute it through the water.” There it is - in his own words. Dad was part of a conspiracy to commit genocide.
What did you do, dad? Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you leave a ten-year-old puzzle for me to figure out?
I look at Martha. A sunbeam has somehow penetrated into the thicket and is lighting up her hair. It reminds me of how she glowed in the dream where she said I’d already solved the puzzle of the toxin. It was also the day I figured out the toxin was distributed in water supplies.
“The water,” I say.
I’ve already solved the puzzle. A puzzle is completed just as much by the first piece you place as it is by the last piece. The piece that completes the puzzle was placed first. It’s never been a question of what dad did when I was eight-years-old. I’VE been the missing piece all along.