Glenn Beck - The Eye of Moloch

“How are we still seeing this?” Noah asked. “I thought the Internet was down.”

“Not this,” Lana said. “I don’t think this thing ever goes down.”

Another blast shook the room, this one nearer still, and it snapped him back to the situation at hand. “Let’s move,” he said, and as Lana gathered her things he went over to Molly and knelt beside her.

“Honey, we really have to go now.”

She shook her head. “I changed my mind,” she said. “Lana told me what she found. I have to show them—”

“It’s too late, Molly. We’re too late to show them anything. We have to try to get out of here, and then we can think of what to do next once you’re safe.”

She didn’t answer, but at his gentle urging she let herself be lifted up and led along. He held on to Molly’s hand as the three of them ran back along the path to where the others were waiting.

Hollis was visibly worse by then and fading fast. Noah and Tyler shared some of his weight as they all set off on the winding path toward an exit they weren’t even sure was there.

The rough corridor gradually narrowed until up ahead they saw the last door between the modern construction and the older passages of the mine. They’d just dragged themselves through this portal when another explosion rocked the place. This time the tremors seemed to spread and multiply as though a deep fault in the mountain had been disturbed. The earth heaved and everyone was thrown from their feet.

When it was quiet again, Noah reached out to find her hand again, but Molly was gone.

The door behind them slammed shut and he heard the bolt on the other side slide home.

“No,” he whispered.

Noah clawed his way to the door and threw his fists against it, calling out to her. Through the small glass window he could see her in there feeling her way back along the route they’d come. He grabbed the handle and strained against it with everything he had but it held fast. Desperate, he took the flashlight and ran ahead to look for another way around, but the tunnel only constricted further. From that point on there was no other way back.

His companions cleared the path as he returned to the sealed door. Through its cloudy window he could just see the security monitor mounted high on the other side. The wide screen still showed the multi-inset view that Lana had wired together before.

And soon there she was, in the middle of the screen. Molly had found the chair they’d set up for her in the computer room and was seated there. She leaned forward and felt for the microphone, touched the button on its base that would activate it, faced the nearby camera, and began to speak.

On the upper corner of the monitor he saw the fortified entrance at the front of the place being pushed inward and the truck they’d left to block the way skidding aside like a toy. The gigantic blade of a bulldozer pulled back through the opening and then a squad of men rushed in.

Noah pounded again on the door, harder and harder until he felt the bones in his hands nearly break against the unyielding metal. When there was no more will in him he pressed his ear to the thick glass. He could just barely hear what she was saying over the intercom speakers inside.

“I came here to tell you the whole truth,” Molly said, “and then I got here and realized that’s been tried before. These people who want to run the world, all their secret knowledge is here, but you don’t really need those secrets to see what they’re about. All you have to do is look around you, and really listen. They’ve already told you exactly what they’ve got in mind for you.

“It’s not their own secrets they’re so interested in keeping anymore. It’s your secrets they want. They’re building this vast, all-seeing eye, I’m sitting here in the midst of it, and I know you’ve heard about pieces of what they’re doing, but do you realize why they’re doing it? They’re trying to see into your heart, people, into every corner of your mind, and believe me, it isn’t so they can answer your prayers. It’s a power they want because it belongs to God. Most of us have only sat by and watched as they stole everything that’s ours. Now they’re trying to take what’s His, as well.

“It won’t be me that continues this fight to restore what’s been lost; it’s got to be you. All of you, anyone who hears this, it’s up to you now. I’m not asking you to all be the same, to all think the same; it’s your precious differences that once made this country great, and can still make it great again. All I’m asking you to do is remember what it means to be an American.

“I’ve talked enough; I’m not going to say any more. No more talk about the past. I’m going to let your enemies show you who they are, and the evil that you good people are up against in this battle that never ends. Let them show you what’s always at the end of this one-way, progressive road they’re building toward your future. And then it’s up to you to choose whose side you’re on.”

There was a clatter in the background and Molly raised her empty hands in surrender. There were tears in her pretty eyes, not because she was afraid, he imagined, but rather because there was so much she’d left undone.

A man in full body armor walked up beside her, put the muzzle of his pistol against her temple, turned briefly to share this moment of triumph with his gathered colleagues, and then shot Molly Ross in the head.

Chapter 65

His mind was struck numb with shock and sorrow, and Noah was still moving only for the sake of the others.

Had he been alone he would have waited to be found and then gladly died fighting them with his raw and bleeding hands, just so he could feel in some small way that he was beside her again. But he wasn’t alone, and so they ran.

The tunnel shrank to barely shoulder-width as the path continued to ascend. They were exhausted, arms and legs worn out from the long climb, dragging their wounded and barely able to keep their footing on the slick stone. The climb only got harder but still they pressed on.

Noah was in the lead when he smelled fresh air and soon after he saw the metal grate at the end of the line. He braced himself against the drag of the slope and kicked hard into this final barrier, and again, and again until it began to weaken at the rusty frame and finally gave way.

He pulled himself from the tunnel and emerged into a small clearing; there wasn’t any visible sign of civilization on this side of the mountain. Tyler Merrick was next. The two of them together helped the others out and onto the cold, wet ground and when that was done there was no strength left to stand.

No one arose from where they lay. Whether it was fatigue alone, or that plus all the sadness and defeat of what they’d just endured, they all stayed right where they were, motionless but finally breathing freedom.

“All of you, hold it right there.”

The firm, cold voice had come from a shadow near the trees.

Hollis was lying motionless beside him and Noah reached over for the gun in his belt, but before he could touch it a boot came down hard on his injured hand and pressed it to the turf. The blinding glare of a flashlight hit his face.

“Who are you?” the man asked.

If this was to be the end, Noah thought, then he should answer as Molly might have done.

He was worn out and winded, his chest still ached from the strain of the run and from the loss of her, but he brought himself up to an elbow and looked the man above him in the eyes. Noah formed his words carefully, giving a breath to each of them so at least one by one they’d be as strong as she would have wanted them to be.