M. Banner - Desolation

He turned away from the crowds and stepped down from the makeshift platform, which seemed higher than it was, and walked through the lobby and up to his room.

His exit elicited only a few claps, scattered among them like a light breeze. Then, when the crowd awoke from its collective trance and realized he was done, applause erupted, a giant tornado, an ovation that lifted their praise directly to God himself.

The Teacher offered no guidance to Thomas or to his staff about what they should do with the processionists coming forward; their unsteady gazes fell to the ground rather than to the faces of those people converging on them.

Thomas sprang into action. “John, Peter, and Martha, get three tables set up here.” Thomas pointed to the entry way in front of the lobby doors. “Sam, you and Stan go get paper, pencils or pens and buckets right away and bring them to the tables. Franklin, you and Sandra help people get organized into three lines.

“People,” he declared to the crowds who were already collecting, automatically knowing he was in charge, “those coming west with us need to make three lines here behind this woman.” He grabbed a woman in front of him and pointed to her, his hands making large arcs downward so that everyone could see. “And this man,” he said as he grabbed another follower, “and this man,” grabbing the last one, again with exaggerated motions, indicating the three lines to be formed.

Franklin and Sandra took his lead and moved into the crowd telling people where to line up, while John and Peter set up the tables and Martha the rolling chairs behind each, grabbed from the business center just inside the entrance. Sam and Stan had already brought out the supplies: pens and paper, the hotel stationery, and containers to hold followers’ material offerings.

Thomas instructed John, Peter, and Martha, who were already seated, to make numbered lists, writing down each person’s full names, any distinguishing traits, their gifts or offerings, and their useful skills. If a follower had no skill to speak of, he instructed them to ask if they could repair anything, cook, or shoot a gun.

They all looked up at Thomas when he said the last part.

Thomas stood beside the table and ushered up the first three. “Are you coming with us west tomorrow?” Thomas started the questioning with the woman who was first in line at Martha’s place.

“Yes, I would follow that man anywhere. You know, my mother-in-law says he’s Jesus, come down from heaven a second time,” she hung her head a little, waiting for her next instructions.

Thomas looked at Martha, prompting her to continue.

“Thank you, ma’am,” she said, and waited until the woman looked at her. “What is your name?”

“Susie Carmichael.”

Martha wrote her name, and in the second column wrote “red wire-rimmed glasses.” She leaned over to Thomas, who bent down to ear level, and whispered, “I wrote that she wears red wire-rimmed glasses.” She, like all of the Teacher’s staff, knew that Thomas was illiterate.

Thomas nodded with a smile and then looked at John and Peter at the other tables, who copied Martha’s technique, anxious to perform as Thomas—and therefore the Teacher—wanted.

“What do you bring as a gift offering to the Teacher’s ministry?” Martha continued.

Behind her red glasses Susie looked up and to the right, hoping for inspiration. Then, her face lit up, and she took off her gold watch. “I didn’t bring any money with me, will this do?”

Martha looked up to Thomas, who nodded.

“Are there any family joining you?” Thomas thought to ask at the last minute.

Susie looked behind her, searching, and then back to Thomas and Martha. “No, I think I’m on my own.”

“Write underneath her name ‘no family.’ Do something similar if there are friends or family, by writing their names and their traits,” Thomas instructed Martha, who scribbled away. The others listened carefully and made notes.

“Susie,” Thomas continued the questioning, “what skills do you offer our group?”

“I’m a paramedic—have been for twenty years,” she said with a squaring of her shoulders.

“If you are able, go home and get any medical equipment, one change of clothes, and some food, and make sure you are back here tomorrow morning by sunrise. You got that?” He waited for Susie’s acknowledgement. She agreed, then turned and left presumably to return. He then looked at Martha and said, “Got all that?”

“So we want them to go and come back?” Martha asked.

“Only if they can make it home and then return before sunrise tomorrow.”

“Is that when we leave?” John asked, as he, Peter, and the whole crowd were listening to Thomas’s every word.

“That’s up to the Teacher. He will tell us. We leave when he is ready.”

There was a moment or two of silence, and then the helpers continued with the questioning. Thomas left them to seek out the Teacher and further instruction.

Darla slept so deeply as a child that more than once, to rouse her from her slumber, her parents had had to shake her hard enough to almost cause bruising.

When two intruders broke into the house, Darla and Danny were sleeping so soundly the loud disturbance didn’t even register in their dreams. When her can-alarm sent the empty corn and juice cans crashing at the base of the stairwell, she stirred only slightly, immediately returning to sleep’s embrace. Even the sound of one intruder tripping over the secondary line and crashing down the stairwell didn’t break her torpor. Instead, it was Danny’s tugging her hair that caused her to bolt upright, even as her sleepiness pulled at her.

Panicked, Danny whispered, “There’s someone in the house.”

It wasn’t his alarm that shocked her to life, but his spectral form made pale by the night’s green light. Even as an adult, she hated how the night made everything more terrifying.

Not sure if he really heard anything or not, she chose caution. “Shhh, kiddo,” she whispered back, punctuated with her forefinger in front of her mouth. “Hide under the bed.”

She quietly slipped out of her Wonder Woman sheets, but clung to the spear gun, thankful for the protection it offered both of them.

A creak from the wood landing outside the door confirmed Danny’s warning.

She scurried across the carpeted room, taking cover behind the only dresser, pointing the spear gun at what she guessed would be chest-high, trying her best to mentally calculate for size based on the heavy footsteps she heard.

The bedroom door’s hinges groaned, and even in the murk, a pistol’s unmistakable outline poked in first. The door opened farther, as if by its own power, until it was wide open. The black space was occupied by a beast of a man. He looked right at Danny’s hiding place.

“Come out from under the bed, little boy, or I shoot you,” the throaty voice announced, an Arnold Schwarzenegger without the Austrian accent. He clicked the hammer back on the gun.

Darla’s brain yelled to her brother’s, don’t move - don’t move - don’t move , while she stared at his feet sticking out from under the bed.

“You, behind the dresser,” the voice called to her.

She wasn’t sure if it was her being more startled, or just deciding this wasn’t going to go well; the result was the same. She squeezed the trigger. In that moment, a chunk-flop came from the gun, the sound of the spear firing and then hitting tissue. She looked at the gun tip to confirm the spear had left and then up at the man, who glared at her from one confused eye.

The spear had connected directly with his left eye socket. He hovered, unsteady, saying only “Ah, wha—” and then collapsed forward, his weight pushing the spear through his skull and out the back side. Darla and Danny caught every millisecond of it, wide-eyed. Danny was so terror-stricken, he peed himself and screamed with all the power his lungs could muster.