Under the Beetle's Cellar Read online

  Thelma pulled a small red notebook out of her bag, looked up the number, and gave it to Molly along with her own phone number. “Call me when you get back.”

  Molly walked her to the door and, on an impulse, hugged her. Thelma was an armful, an earth mother, solid. “I’ll be thinking about you, Thelma. I don’t pray, but if I did, I’d pray for you and Kim.”

  “I appreciate that. If you have any more ideas, call me, Molly.”

  Molly watched her walk down the hall, her left shoulder weighted down by the heavy bag. She sighed. Ideas—yes, she thought she just might have an idea coming up. It was just a whisper in her ear, a cold tingling in the back of her brain, nothing she could put into words yet, just that restless old feeling of an idea forming.

  CHAPTER

  FOUR

  “And I saw an angel coming down out of heaven, having the key to the Abyss and holding in his hand a great chain. He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent who is the devil, or Satan, and bound him for a thousand years.”

  REVELATION 20:1–2

  The sound of the Bible slamming shut jarred Walter Demming back from planting geraniums in the huge terra-cotta pots on Theodora Shea’s south-facing terrace. The sun had been beating down on his bare back and his fingers were sunk deep in the damp, cool earth. He returned reluctantly and found himself sweating in the stinking air of a buried bus, with eleven hungry, frightened children, listening to a madman.

  “You heard it here!” Samuel Mordecai shouted. “We’re on a collision course with destiny!” In the enclosed prison of the bus his voice reverberated. He glistened with sweat; it had soaked through his shirt and darkened his hair, which curled around his face in wet ringlets. “It’s clear that all this speedup of computer technology, this so-called progress—rapidation, I call it—is really a machine out of control, spinning us faster and faster—it’s the final sign we’ve been waiting on.

  “I know y’all was raised playing them computer games, Lambs. They got computers at y’all’s school and they teach you to write book reports on them, and lots of you have one sitting on your desks at home. Looks pretty innocent, don’t it? Like a toaster. But it’s all part of the grand scheme, clearing the way for the Antichrist. All you have to do is look at the faces in one of them arcades where the crackle and flashing lights of so-called computer games turn young folks like yourselves into robots for the Beast. Y’all remember the prophecy from the Book of Revelation and I don’t even have to open the book for this one: ‘And he had power to give life unto the image of the Beast, that the image of the Beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the Beast should be killed.’ It’s no wonder you young ones have fallen for this false prophet. Unless someone told you, like I’m doing now, how would you know that the innocent little home computer is the way the Antichrist will control human life? And, Lambs, it was all prophesied in the Bible.”

  He tossed his head, flicking sweat around him. “Remember: Earth’s probation terminates in five days. Ignore or disbelieve it at your own peril. Now, you can’t say gosh I wish I’da known. Them that has heard and don’t take heed will get stamped on the soul with the bar code that glows blue and marks them, every one, for the angel Gabriel and his avenger band to find them and make them into blood statues to rot for all eternity. Amen!”

  Walter Demming checked his watch. Only two hours and ten minutes. They were getting off easy today.

  Samuel Mordecai’s lips curved upward in a beneficent smile, and he raised his hands in benediction, the Bible clutched in his right hand—a gesture so sanctimonious it made Walter want to leap out of his seat and attack the man, drag him to the ground and smash the expression off his face. As nutty and as incoherent as Mordecai’s message was, Walter didn’t question the sincerity of it. But he loathed the drama with which it was delivered.

  Walter stifled the urge to attack. He got up quickly, put on his supplicant posture, and went to beseech—one more time. “Mr. Mordecai, may I have a word? Please.” Walter turned away from the children and lowered his voice in the hope they wouldn’t hear. “It’s about Josh. He’s getting sicker every day. He had an attack during the night. It almost killed him. He needs to be in a hospital. This is a matter of life and death.”

  Walter tried to look him in the eye, but Samuel Mordecai turned and took a step toward the door.

  “Please.” Walter reached out and took hold of his arm. “At the very least, send out for medication. Here”—he pulled Josh’s empty inhaler out of his pocket—“this is what he needs.” He pointed at the label. “See? Albuterol. Two refills left. Please.” He tried to hand him the inhaler but Mordecai kept both hands behind his back. “And he should have another medication that he didn’t have with him—a steroid inhaler, he says.” Walter bent closer and whispered, “I’m afraid he’ll die down here. We have no way to help him when he has these attacks. Please let him go home.” He found himself hoping Josh would suffer an attack right now so this man could see how fearsome it was.

  With a saccharine smile, Samuel Mordecai said, “Inhalers? Life and death? Mr. Bus Driver, can’t you hear how foolish you sound? Here we stand at the very brink, the end of time. Stars are whirling and seas turning to blood. Listen to yourself. Forces of momentous power and glory are heaving in the heavens and you’re fussing about inhalers. Aren’t you listening?” He gestured around to include the bus and all of them. “We are gathered here to advance God’s purpose, not to worry about runny noses.” He turned away again.

  But Walter held on to his arm. “Wait—this is no runny nose. It’s a child’s life and it does matter. Regardless of what is going on. You’re going to come down here tomorrow and find this little boy dead and you’ll be responsible for that. Then there’s no turning back.”

  “Turning back?” Mordecai threw his head back and laughed, showing off his dimples and his even white teeth. “You think we could turn back now? I fear for you, Mr. Bus Driver. You aren’t listening. Young as they are, I believe the Lambs are getting the message better than you are.” He put his head so close that Walter could feel his breath. “Time. Is. Ending. Get ready.”

  “Okay,” Walter argued, talking as fast as he could, “we’re getting ready, but why can’t we have some way to make hot water and steam? That would help. And we could wash in it, too. We just need a hot plate, or one of those coil things that heat water. And some instant coffee. Josh says that helps ease an attack, and citrus—a few lemons or oranges. Those aren’t difficult to get. While we wait. Please. It wouldn’t interfere with our … purification. And the children are hungry. Cereal isn’t enough. They’re losing weight. Some of them have diarrhea and stomachaches. We need some real food down here, food that kids will eat.”

  Mordecai tugged his arm from Walter’s grip. “You figure as the world is ending we should send out to McDonald’s for burgers and fries?”

  The mention of burgers made Walter’s mouth fill with saliva. He could feel the smooth fat beading on his tongue. “Yes, I do think so. And they keep asking how much longer we’re going to be here in the bus. It’s hot and stuffy and unhealthy. They need to move around, get sun and fresh air. A couple are getting real depressed and the rest are fighting all the time. Can’t we just come out and stay as we are but be aboveground?”

  “You’re in the process of purification, Mr. Bus Driver, even if you can’t feel it. We are Hearth Jezreelites—a name given to me in a living vision, a rapture, where I was taken to God and He called me by name and the name He called me by was Prophet Mordecai. Hearth is earth with an H for heaven, heaven in earth. Fifty days it takes to make you ready. God will purify y’all through the earth.” He had been speaking into empty space. Now he turned to look at Walter. “Also, you’re down here for your own safety. When the federal government attacks us”—he slapped his Bible against the driver’s seat—“and, believe me, they will attack us, we want you to be out of harm’s way. Trust me, this is best for you and the Lambs.”

  �
��But how much longer?”

  Samuel Mordecai reached behind him and from the back pocket of his jeans he pulled an X-acto knife and held it up for Walter to see. “You ask how much longer? You know the answer to that, Mr. Bus Driver. I tell you every day.” With exaggerated fanfare, he turned and stepped to the front of the bus. “You have the record right here in front of you.”

  He leaned over the grimy window and scraped off one of the five Band-Aids stuck there. They were flesh-colored with Ninja Turtles on them. On the first day, when Samuel Mordecai had descended to welcome them, he had stuck the Band-Aids carefully to the glass, one by one, in neat rows, talking nonstop as he pressed each one on. There had been fifty of them, one for each day of what he called Earth’s final Pentecost, the countdown to Apocalypse. That first day, he’d given them what he called the daily Bible study of the Lambs—the first of the grueling daily harangues. When he had finally finished talking, after three solid hours, he scraped one of the Band-Aids off the window with a flourish.

  He’d done that every day, and now there were four left. He turned to Walter with a smile. “Four more days is the answer, Mr. Bus Driver. Until Friday, which is Passover and Good Friday. Very good Friday.”

  Samuel Mordecai pushed Walter aside. He was six inches taller and his long arms rippled with muscles. Walter resolved to double his daily push-ups.

  Mordecai addressed himself to the children. “Now, Lambs, I want y’all to sit around and talk, discuss what I just told you about the final signs and prophecies. Mr. Demming is going to lead you in discussion and prayer. When you’ve done that, Martin will come to hear what you talked about. Then he’ll bring you a meal to nourish your bodies in preparation for your glorious day.”

  He waved his Bible. Then he stepped out of the bus into the pit. He reached his arms up the hole, and with one quick motion, he hoisted himself up. His legs undulated upward. A shower of black earth sprinkled down long after the black boots had disappeared. Then came the grating sound: the wooden platform they used to cover the hole being dragged into place.

  As if all twelve had agreed on the need for total silence, no one spoke or moved. Walter sat down and closed his eyes. He’d struck out again. He was useless. He had accomplished nothing, not one thing. Each day they got closer to death—he had no doubt death was what was waiting for them on Friday—and he was unable to do a thing to change that. He couldn’t even do anything to ease the kids’ misery while they waited to die. He needed to figure out something else. Maybe if he got another chance to talk on the phone, he could send a message of some sort.…

  He heard the raspy bark of Josh’s cough. He opened his eyes.

  “I’m so hungry,” Sandra whined. “Mr. Demming, I’m hungry.”

  “Martin will bring us something to eat after we talk about what he said and after we tell Martin about it. Then we can eat.”

  “But I’m so hungry I don’t know if I can wait,” Sandra said.

  Walter looked at the little girl in the front seat. She was a tall, skinny eight-year-old with thick glasses, mocha-colored skin, and an Afro haircut that had, in the past six weeks, grown into a tangled bush of kinky curls. The shape of her hair in the back reminded him of the shaggy crest of the roadrunners he saw in the field behind his house. And with her long legs and tendency to tilt forward when she walked, Sandra really did look like a roadrunner. He felt the urge to sketch her and wished he had paper and pencils, but they had run out of paper six days ago, except for his emergency supply.

  “I want to eat now,” Sandra insisted. The earpiece of her glasses had broken off in a fight with Heather and afterward Walter had managed to hold it together with the discarded Band-Aids Mordecai dropped on the floor after scraping them off the window. Walter had molded several to form a large lump at the corner of her glasses. “I’m hungry, too, honey,” Walter told her. “It sure feels bad, but maybe we need to do something to take our minds off it until Martin comes.”

  “Mr. Demming,” Hector said, kneeling on his seat, “I was thinking. Last night when Jacksonville got caught by the Barbecue Tongs, why didn’t he just fly away? You know, before they grabbed him. He saw them and all, so he could have just split.”

  Walter stood and turned around to face the kids. He leaned against the seat and did a head count. Eleven. The faces appeared as small pale blobs in the dimness. He took one long deep breath and let it out slowly. “Well, Hector, remember that when the Barbecue Tongs surprised him, Jacksonville was in a narrow alley. Now, you have to picture this: Jacksonville is a full-grown adult turkey vulture and when he spreads his wings out”—Walter stretched his arms out wide—“they measure six feet across. To give you an idea of how long six feet is, I am five foot nine inches tall, so Jacksonville’s wingspread is three inches longer than the whole length of my body. Now, the alley he was in—you remember he got trapped in an alley in the village of Moo Goo Gai Pan—well, this alley measured only five and a half feet across. In order to fly he has to stretch his wings wide and flap them, but the alley was too narrow. And it was bricked off at one end. And of course at the other end that whole company of Tongs—three hundred of them—were waving their long iron forks and those whippy spatulas they use. So he couldn’t fly or run. And of course he was outnumbered three hundred to one.”

  “To two,” said Heather.

  “No, to one, dummy.” Hector reached over the seat back and gave her blond head a shove. “You never get it right, Heather-head. Lopez wasn’t with him.”

  Walter looked at Heather to see if the shove, or the words, had got her hackles up. The child was usually quick to take offense and fight with anyone, but now she was sitting peacefully, sideways with her back against the window, legs stretched out on the seat. Walter watched her face as he spoke. “Remember, honey, Lopez was sleeping in a burrow in the jungle and couldn’t wake up to go into the village with Jacksonville. He’d been eating those slumber bugs again, and they made him sleepy all the time. Now, that was a good thing—not that he was eating slumber bugs, that’s bad, having a habit that dulls the senses like slumber bugs do—but it’s good that he didn’t get captured, too.”

  Heather nodded. Walter was relieved that she was not going to fight over this; he hated it when they fought and he didn’t have a clue how to deal with it. He wanted them to cooperate so when the time came for them to put their emergency plan into action, they would work together effectively. He knew from his experience in Vietnam that the military was right about one thing—an effective fighting unit had to cooperate to get the job done. So he wanted desperately for them to live and work together harmoniously. Lately, when they squabbled, he felt his nerves vibrating like a high-voltage wire.

  Lucy raised her hand to talk, a habit she couldn’t get over, even though Walter kept telling her she didn’t need to. “What happens,” she asked, “after they put Jacksonville in that little cage? What was the fire for?” She was hugging her knees in to her chest, resting her chin on her knees. There was a smear of dirt on her cheek.

  “Oh, well, I’ll tell you all that in good time,” Walter said. “But first we need to talk about what we’re going to say to Martin.” He paused, hoping the kids would come up with something because he hated feeding them lies; it was better, somehow, if they invented their own.

  Conrad Pease, ten years old, raised his hand. He came from a devout Baptist family. His daddy was a part-time preacher, and Conrad could pray fluently at the drop of a hat. “We could just say we talked about how amazing it is that Bible prophecies made so long ago are coming true in our time and that it’s amazing they predicted all the bad stuff that would happen with computers way before they were even invented. And we could say we really hope he’ll tell us more about it in future lessons.”

  Hector Ramirez groaned. “Don’t say we want him to teach us nothing more. I can’t stand no more of his talking and shit.”

  “He’s gonna do it anyways,” Conrad snapped back. “No matter what we say.”

  “You shouldn’
t say that, Hector,” Lucy said. “Bad word.”

  Brandon Betts in the last row raised his hand. His face was dark with anger. “We ought to really talk about it. People who get a chance to hear and don’t listen are the ones who will get made into blood statues.” His voice got higher and angrier. “We shouldn’t be telling stories when we’re supposed to be talking about God and all. I don’t want that to happen to me, what he said about the laser knife and everything.”

  Everyone was quiet. Walter Demming looked at Lucy, who had pressed her hands over her ears. It was all so difficult. He had made a judgment call on the first day: to talk honestly to the kids about what he thought of Samuel Mordecai and how they should behave. They would all pretend attention and respect to him because he had power over their bodies. But his message was wrong and they would resist it. To retain their sanity. But some of the kids were breaking down under what amounted to brainwashing. Especially Brandon Betts and Sue Ellen McGregor.

  “Well,” Walter said, in the lowest, calmest voice he could muster, “there are two things I feel sure about, Brandon. First, the world is not going to end in four days. I promise that. It’s not going to happen, so don’t worry about it. The second thing I’m sure about is that none of us is going to hell. Not no way. And there’s no such thing as blood statues. Now, you may be right, Brandon, that we shouldn’t lie and say we’ve been talking about something when we haven’t, but it seems to me we need some time off from this stuff. But let’s discuss it. What do the rest of you think? Should we talk about what Mr. Mordecai was saying?”

  There were several groans. “No. We heard enough,” Hector said. “I hate that shit. I want to hear about Lopez and Jacksonville. Go on, Mr. Demming. Conrad will tell them—you know, what he just said, and the rest of us will all say uh-huh, that’s right. Yeah. Amen.”