The rock slammed a shoulder blade. Hammond screamed and twisted away, one hand grabbing at her broken bone, the other trying furiously to peel the bag from her head. Dredd reached down, came up with a stone in each hand. “If there be found among you one that hath gone and served other gods, and worshipped them … Then shalt thou stone them with stones till they die …” The first stone slammed the woman’s side and she screamed wildly, waving her hands against blows she couldn’t hope to fend. The second stone hit her upper back, knocking her into the wall. She spun, crouched, screaming NO NO NO as Dredd grabbed two more rocks. “For he is the servant of God,” Dredd hissed. “An avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer …”
The first stone struck Hammond in the mouth and knocked her backwards into the wall and she fell to hands and knees, spitting blood and teeth into the bag covering her head. The second struck behind an ear and she collapsed to the floor, her body twitching as her brain began to misfire.
Frisco Dredd kept reaching into the bag.
22
The plane that came for Nautilus and the Owsleys was a Beech King 350 turboprop with a haloed golden crown on the fuselage encircled by the words Crown of Glory. It seemed a typical business-style plane save for bibles in the seat-back pouches. Nautilus hoped it wasn’t a comment on the pilot’s skills.
“You said we’re going to Lakeland, Mrs Owsley,” Nautilus asked, strapping in. Lakeland was in Central Florida.
“That’s where the airport is,” she said, holding a pocket mirror and picking at her hair. “We’re staying fifteen minutes away, by Hallelujah Jubilee, the Christian park. There’s an ark and everything.”
Nautilus had driven past Hallelujah Jubilee a couple times, hard to miss with the huge cross at the entrance. “I’ve always wanted to see the place,” he lied, then figured it might be interesting. Nautilus turned in his seat, Rebecca hunkered down in the last row, chewing gum and tapping at her phone. “How about you, Rebecca? You going to check out the park?”
The kid cracked her bubblegum and went back to ticking on the phone. Seconds after the plane had set down, Nautilus saw Richard Owsley crossing the tarmac, hand waving, white teeth flashing like landing lights. He directed them toward a waiting limo, workers transferring luggage. Nautilus watched Owsley close the door on the limousine, then walk his way, pulling a set of keys from his pocket.
“A black Hummer’s in the front row of the lot. My family and I have a suite at the Radisson. The people at Hallelujah Jubilee secured you lodging at their Jacob’s Ladder motel, the most comfortable of their choices.”
“I’m sure it will be fine,” Nautilus said, thinking of living from a suitcase and again repeating his mantra: two hundred dollars a day.
Nautilus found the motel a half-mile short of the looming cross designating the Hallelujah Jubilee entrance, two hundred feet of burnished steel glowing in the day’s hard sun. His lodging resembled most semi-upscale motels, brick and glass surrounded by an asphalt parking lot. Only instead of Holiday Inn or Marriott, the sign proclaimed Jacob’s Ladder. He recalled the original ladder as a dream the biblical patriarch Jacob had of a stairway to heaven. This Jacob’s Ladder went up four stories. Nautilus shook his head at dwindled expectations and went to check in.
“We’ve been expecting you, Mr Nautilus,” the teen male clerk said. Nautilus turned to see his luggage whisked away by a young bellhop dressed like it was Vegas in the 1950s.
“There’s a message for you, sir,” the clerk said, handing over a folded note.
Nautilus followed his suitcases upstairs. The room was suite-style, a small living room and TV viewing area, a short hall holding closet and refrigerator on one side, bathroom on the other, with the bedroom area in the rear. He was pleased to see a sliding door that led out to a balcony. When the bellhop had departed, Nautilus opened the note.
Please call me was the message. “Tawnya” was the sender. Nautilus dialed, heard a voice that split the difference between chirpy and sultry. “I’m Tawnya, Mr Nautilus, with Hallelujah Jubilee. I’m making sure everyone in Pastor Owsley’s party has a wonderful time. I wanted you to know you can tour the park anytime and I’ll be your personal guide. Everyone should see Hallelujah Jubilee.”
Nautilus thought a moment. This might be his sole chance to see what lay in the shadow of the huge cross.
“Now a good time?” Nautilus asked.
“It’s always a perfect time at Hallelujah Jubilee,” Tawnya gushed.
The entrance to the park was a four-minute drive. Instructed to park in the VIP lot beside the office, he passed the rank-and-file lot, acres of shining vehicles. Next was the bus lot, at least two dozen of them, some emblazoned with the names of churches from as far afield as Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Oshkosh, Wisconsin.
Nautilus pulled into a VIP slot and had one foot from the vehicle when he heard his name and looked up to see a twentyish woman in a blue skirt and white blouse striding his way and waving. She was slender and shapely, full breasted, long legged. Though the day was already warm, the young woman wore full-length sleeves, buttoned at the cuffs.
“Tawnya?” he guessed.
“I’m so pleased you could visit, Mr Nautilus,” she purred, the voice husky. Her bright smile dazzled, her coiled blonde curls bounced on her shoulders.
“Last name?”
“We go by first names, sir. Are you with Reverend Owsley’s ministry?”
“I suppose so,” Nautilus said, following the woman through the entrance, a wide opening in a rock wall meant to resemble biblical-era construction. There were a half-dozen ticket booths along the corridor; Nautilus noted that an adult single-day pass was forty-seven bucks. Youths and children got in for twenty-five. But if you were lucky enough to be under age four, you could take it all in for free.
Tawnya took Nautilus to the side as visitors streamed past, taking a photo with her phone and sending it somewhere.
“I’ll be right back, Mr Nautilus. Three minutes.”
Tawnya entered a door and was back in two fifty-eight to hand Nautilus a clip-on square of laminated paper with his photo.
“What’s this?”
“A special pass to the park, Mr Nautilus. It’s good for your entire stay.”
Nautilus stared at the laminated card. “What’s the big J mean?”
“You’ve been designated a Joshua-level visitor, the highest. Everyone with Pastor Owsley is Joshua level. Everything is free, so you can take your meals here, enjoy the sights, anything.” Tawnya’s smile seemed to reach an even greater height of buoyancy as she bounced the golden curls. “Ready for the tour, Mr Nautilus?”
Nautilus turned to see a bearded young man in a rough-woven gray robe holding a shepherd’s crook as a crowd of visitors took snapshots. This was getting weird.
“Let’s hop and bop, Tawnya.”
The pair climbed into a golf cart with a Hallelujah Jubilee logo, Tawnya moving expertly through milling visitors strung with cameras – “Excuse me, coming through … bless you!” – passing through another clay-resembling wall into a large opening surrounded by mangers fronted with counters and signs touting food and drink in pseudo-Hebraic lettering.
“The food court, Mr Nautilus.”
Nautilus deciphered the goofy typeface. “Pizza, burgers, pasta, oriental … you’ve got the bases covered.”
“These are fast-food choices. Over there are two sit-down restaurants where you can have the full dining experience. One seats two hundred guests at a time, the other seats over four hundred. Plus there are five coffee and snack shops throughout the park.”
“How many guests visit annually?”
Tawnya didn’t seem to hear and buzzed Nautilus through a miniature Holy Land, the streets cobbled, the walls of stone and clay. Throngs of awed visitors clicked cameras and phones as folks knelt to pray. There were dozens of actors in period costume: a young man riding a burro, the Magi, a Joseph and pregnant Mary, a muscled youth Nautilus took to be Samson, the hair phase. The actors were a big draw for photo ops, probably not a bad gig if you could deal with people hanging off you all day long.