The Stolen Gospels Read online

  From somewhere, men shouted. In the rear of the vehicle, her mother struggled to call her name, the word barely rising above the din. “Lori . . .”

  “Just hold on, Mom. I’ll get us out of this.”

  But bursts of gunfire sounded and bullets thudded into the front of the van, narrowly missing Dixie Lou. For a moment, Lori lost control of the vehicle. It smashed against a landscape rock and stopped momentarily. Then she corrected the steering, bumped the accelerator and resumed backing up.

  Seeing uniformed men rush onto the driveway behind her, she opened the electric window by her, put her head out and fired at them, pulling the trigger until the clip was empty. She saw two of the assailants fall.

  “Good shooting!” Dixie Lou said as Lori continued to steer in reverse, wildly.

  Lori’s body shook uncontrollably. Tears streamed down her face. She threw the empty gun on the console, next to Dixie Lou. What was going on here? She could not imagine.

  I killed those men! It was the first time she’d ever fired a gun at anyone.

  At high speed, Lori whipped the van onto a private lane that ran behind the houses. She wished she’d been able to get her mother into a safety harness, hoped she wasn’t getting banged around too badly back there. The helicopter and more men could be seen in one direction, so Lori went the opposite way, rocketing past backyards and houses with the vehicle’s headlights off. The lane curved down to a main street and she turned a hard right onto it, with tires screeching as she accelerated. She took several turns and side streets at Dixie Lou’s instruction, and soon the whining, throbbing noise of the helicopter and the gunfire could no longer be heard. Occasional street lights illuminated the way, so she could see well enough without the headlights.

  A siren sounded, and a police car raced by in the opposite direction, blue lights flashing.

  “That was a BOI attack,” Dixie Lou said, holding a cloth on the back of her neck. “Trained killers.” She let loose a torrent of expletives.

  Lori didn’t know what she was talking about, but didn’t care. She only thought about her mother. Now she felt a steeliness in her soul over the men she had shot, and knew she would do it again if she had to.

  Suddenly a car roared down a side street and pulled directly in front of the van, without bothering to pause at the stop sign. Lori slammed on her brakes to avoid a collision.

  “How do I turn on the headlights?” she asked.

  “We can’t use them. We must be extremely careful.”

  The black woman kept craning her neck to look up at the sky. Lori did that too as she drove, and listened for helicopter noises. She didn’t hear any.

  Calling for her mother, she received no response. The breathing remained slow. In a passing street light she glanced back and saw Camilla huddled on the floor, with the stocking tourniquets visible on her legs.

  Her heart jumped when she again heard helicopter rotors throbbing.

  The sound grew louder.

  Following Dixie Lou’s order, Lori pulled the dark van into a driveway, beneath a large tree.

  The aircraft seemed to be directly overhead, and Lori saw the terrifying wash of a searchlight over the streets and houses.

  She prayed.

  The noise grew very loud, then diminished and disappeared.

  Chapter 6

  The gospels of the she-apostles were stolen from all humankind, not just from women.

  —Amy Angkor-Billings, to her biographer, December 11, 2033

  In the shadows of the van, Lori didn’t think it possible that soldiers had attacked a women’s meeting. No legitimate authority would murder unarmed women. Dixie Lou had said they were BOI, but what did that stand for and who were they? Lori couldn’t believe this was happening.

  The van rolled along the freeway now, with Dixie Lou having used the hand-held transmitter to turn on the headlights. The vehicle was in a flow of traffic crossing the Mercer Island Airbridge, going west toward Seattle. Ahead, Lori saw blinking lights in the sky above the city. Big jets circling, waiting to land at Boeing Field and SeaTac Airport. She could also make out the lights of smaller craft. Thankfully she heard no helicopter sounds.

  Following Dixie Lou’s instructions, Lori drove through a tunnel and entered the city, with the irregular shape of what looked like a hospital visible on a high hill just ahead. A helicopter was setting down near the building, maybe a MediVac craft for emergency medical transport.

  “How do we get up to that hospital?” Lori asked, for she didn’t know which exit to take.

  “We don’t,” came the flat response.

  “My mother is badly injured! She needs a doctor!”

  “No time for that. We’re leaving Seattle.”

  “Not with us. I’m taking her to a hospital!”

  “Be quiet!” Dixie Lou snapped. She grabbed the handgun between them, slammed another clip into it and waved it menacingly in the air.

  Lori wondered who this crazy woman was, and thought back to the high-pitched voice of the leader of the raid, with its eerie, androgynous quality. Dixie Lou’s enemy.

  “This isn’t right,” Lori said. “I saved your life back there.”

  “Keep silent,” Dixie Lou responded, “or so help me—” Her eyelids flickered, and Lori thought she was going to pass out. Then the woman did something with the transmitter, and a metallic woman’s voice said over a speaker, “Locking onto signal. You are now within range.”

  Suddenly Lori no longer had control of the vehicle. It kept rolling, accelerating and decelerating in traffic. The steering ball spun freely in her hands without any control over the van. She stepped on the brakes, but they went all the way to the floor without slowing the vehicle.

  “Damn you,” Lori said, as Dixie Lou slumped against the passenger door. Reaching over, Lori grabbed the transmitter, but couldn’t get the gun, which the bleeding Dixie Lou held onto tightly.

  Fumbling with the transmitter, Lori couldn’t get it to do anything now. The code she’d been given earlier no longer worked, having apparently been overridden.

  The van navigated the left lane and merged with traffic onto the I-5 freeway, southbound. A steady stream of red tail lights followed the curve of the highway ahead of them, and approaching on the other side, a river of silver-white headlights.

  Once, her mother whimpered, as if experiencing a nightmare. She didn’t awaken, and Lori soothed her with gentle, loving words.

  She glared at the braided hair on Dixie Lou’s head, wanted to strike out at her and wished she hadn’t lost control of the gun. She tried to grab the weapon again, but Dixie Lou snapped to awareness and wouldn’t release it.

  “Get in the back,” she commanded.

  As odd as it felt to Lori, since she was supposed to be the driver, she climbed back with her mother.

  Locating the dome light, Lori turned it on. She could see that the right side of her mother’s head was covered with blood, matting the light brown hair. Carefully, she parted the hair around the wound, revealing angry red, ragged flesh. Had a bullet entered her brain, or only grazed her? She couldn’t tell, couldn’t bear to look any more. Her mother didn’t seem to be bleeding much around that wound or others on her legs, but Lori worried this might be because her pulse was slow and not pumping blood adequately.

  “Mom,” she said, “can you hear me? Mom!”

  No response. Her mother’s chest moved almost imperceptibly.

  Tears streamed down Lori’s face, and anger mounted within her. She felt like doing something crazy, no matter the consequences. If she didn’t, her mother would die.

  She saw the reflection of Dixie Lou’s dark eyes in the mirror, staring back at her.

  “Give me our ETA,” Dixie Lou said.

  A computer ditty sounded, while green-and-orange lights blinked on the dashboard.

  “Seven minutes,” the system’s metallic voice said. “All is ready.”

  “Will they have a doctor?” Lori asked.

  Dixie Lou didn’t answer.


  “Damn it, I asked you a question. Answer me!” Lori leaned forward and put an arm-lock on Dixie Lou’s neck.

  But the stocky woman hit Lori in the forehead with the handgun, stunning her and causing her to lose her grip. Reaching back, Dixie Lou struck another blow, this one on the temple and even harder.

  Lori fought to remain conscious, but felt it slipping. She wanted to help her mother but could no longer control her muscles. With vision fading, she saw her mother’s face next to hers, as the two of them slumped together.

  “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you,” Lori murmured.

  She tried to envision Dixie Lou’s despised face, but instead an intense darkness consumed her and she passed out.

  * * *

  Dixie Lou was determined to escape.

  She looked around nervously as the van took an exit ramp that wound down to a surface street. At the stoplight it turned left and drove by a row of one-story buildings that were occupied by flying services and aircraft parts suppliers. It turned right, passed between two buildings.

  A guard at a gate waved the vehicle through, and it accelerated onto a road that ran parallel with a private airfield. Small planes were parked on the tarmac, with larger craft visible in pools of light on the opposite side of the field.

  The van came to a stop by a sleek black private jet that was as shiny as the van. No people were in evidence, no waiting doctor or medical technician for any of the injuries, including her own.

  Pointing her hand-held transmitter at the plane, Dixie Lou pressed a button. A wall slid aside on the fuselage, and a staircase slid down, so that the bottom of it was only a few feet from the front of the van. Inside the plane, lights blinked, green and orange.

  She stepped out of the van and was about to leave Lori and her mother behind, but hesitated. On impulse, she opened the rear door and stared hard at the unconscious teenager, who lay on the carpeted floor beside her mother. The girl, while rebellious, had been helpful, driving the vehicle for Dixie Lou when it was out of signal range for some reason. They should have been able to operate on automatic from the beginning, drawn by the aircraft’s homing signal, but that had not been the case, not until they crossed over the bridge.

  Touching the mother’s temple, she felt a pulse—very slow and barely perceptible. Hardly any life there, but the woman might survive if she was hooked up to one of the two life support compartments at the rear of the plane.

  Lori Vale saved my life, so I owe her and her mother something.

  She reached in and lifted the mother out, who was small and relatively easy to carry. Inside the plane, she connected her to one of the life support systems, then went back to the van and pulled Lori out. Though Dixie Lou remained strong despite her own injury, the girl was tall, and weighed more than she’d expected—considerably more than the mother.

  And as she touched the teenager, Dixie Lou felt an odd sensation, a peculiar feeling of déjà vu, that she had known her before. She could not place where, or when, but something told her it was important. With considerable difficulty the dark, stocky woman dragged the girl up the steps into the plane and laid her across a seat that folded back, with a pillow under her head and a blanket over her. She swung a safety strap over her and activated a security restraint mechanism on it.

  The aircraft’s interior was pale gold, with eight black leather passenger seats. On the forward bulkhead was the UWW’s bright green-and-orange sword-cross symbol, which Dixie Lou focused on momentarily to give her some comfort.

  There was no pilot for this aircraft, and no one with whom Dixie Lou had spoken when she called ahead. She’d been talking to the artificial-intelligence core of the plane itself, her commands transmitted via GPS and voice recognition modules to the flight systems.

  The steps clicked back into place against the fuselage, thus sealing the passenger compartment. Dixie Lou heard the faint but shrill sound of jet engines, then distant sirens, which got louder by the moment. Looking through a porthole she saw the blue lights of a police car as it raced along a road parallel to the airfield.

  “They aren’t after us,” Dixie Lou murmured to herself. She watched the car as it kept going.

  Lori sat in a shoulder harness on the seat behind her, injured from being struck with the handgun by Dixie Lou. Blood matted her forehead and temple. Her eyelids twitched, and her mouth turned down in apparent displeasure.

  “It won’t be long,” Dixie Lou promised, though she didn’t think Lori could hear her. “We’re taking the polar route.”

  The jet was rolling ahead, gaining speed. Through the porthole, Dixie Lou saw they were on the runway.

  The injuries on Dixie Lou’s hairline and neck had stopped bleeding, but blood had caked around them. She thought about how disarming her own appearance was, with a gentle, kindly smile and eyes that could exude compassion . . . if she wanted them to. It was all camouflage, concealing her deadly purposes.

  Through a porthole, she watched the lights beside the runway blur as the jet gained speed. She felt a sudden thrust which pressed her against the back of the seat, and an emptiness in her stomach. They were airborne. The jet banked and flew north over Elliott Bay, with the tall, illuminated buildings of Seattle and the Space Needle visible out her window.

  Built of composite materials, the plane incorporated the latest military stealth features into its design, so that it did not absorb or reflect natural light, thus reducing its detectable radar signature. It also emitted very little infrared radiation, noise, or vibration.

  She glanced back at Lori. The girl’s face was turned toward her, and the generous lips, which previously had been downturned in displeasure, now turned up a little, almost in a smile.

  Maybe she knows something I don’t, Dixie Lou thought.

  She looked at her watch. A few minutes after eleven.

  * * *

  Lori dreamed she saw a brilliant point of light approaching her from space, with a dark, barely visible presence behind it . . . following the light. The linked entities drew closer.

  She felt paralyzed, unable to move.

  The girl cried out in terror, but no one heard her.

  * * *

  A while later she woke up, with an intense headache. Events were hazy to her, and nightmarish. Gunfire . . . men in uniforms . . . Had it really happened? She wasn’t sure. Where was her mother?

  She experienced a queasy feeling in her stomach and had the gradual, increasing impression that she was on an airplane. In the low light she thought she confirmed this, making out the outlines of a cabin interior and portholes. But through the nearest window she saw distant stars, and no lights below, only an inky blackness that gave her an odd sensation, as if she were in space, far from earth. That didn’t seem possible. This had to be a jet. She heard the smooth drone of what she thought must be engines.

  “Mom?” she called out. “Are you here?” She struggled to free herself from the safety restraint, but with her muddled thoughts couldn’t figure it out. Touching wounds on her forehead and temple, she winced in pain.

  A noise up front caused her to look that way. A hatch opened in the forward bulkhead, and a dark form emerged. The person turned and opened a cupboard on one side of the aisle. With the forward hatch still open, Lori saw it was Dixie Lou Jackson. Beyond her, through the hatch, a bank of green-and-orange lights blinked, colors like those on the dashboard of the van, like those on the strange sword-cross design on the bulkhead.

  It all happened, Lori thought, as a dismal, sinking realization came over her.

  She searched in the illumination of the forward cabin for signs of movement, of a captain up there, but she detected no one. Her ears strained for the sound of a voice, but she heard none.

  “Where’s my mother?” Lori demanded, raising her voice to make it carry.

  “Welcome back, Killer Girl.” Dixie Lou held up her gun, pointed it at imaginary foes and made the mock noises of a .45 automatic. “ Pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop! . . . Pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-po
p!”

  “Answer me!”

  Lowering the weapon, Dixie Lou said, “Guns, arm-locks, you’re a tough teen, but listen up. I’m tougher.”

  “I asked you about my mother.”

  “She’s in a life support compartment at the rear,” Dixie Lou announced, matter-of-factly. She did something to turn up the cabin lights, then slid back into a seat just ahead of Lori’s, but out of reach.

  Again, the girl struggled unsuccessfully with the safety restraint.

  “I activated the security lock,” Dixie Lou said. “I’ll let you out of it when we land. You may also have one trip to the bathroom.”

  “I want to see my mother!”

  “She must not be disturbed. We’re doing everything possible for her, with automatic medical systems connected all over her body.”

  Body. Lori didn’t like the sound of that word. It didn’t say enough about her mother, about the wonderful person she really was, even if the two of them had their differences. Numbness settled over her.

  “How are her vital signs?” Lori demanded.

  “Improving.” It sounded like a lie, just to shut her up.

  “Where are we going?” Lori asked.

  No answer.

  She stared at the unusual design on the bulkhead, and recalled the Bible in Dixie Lou’s house, and the way this strange woman had displayed a statuette of She-God, whatever in the world that was. There had been black Christian crosses on the uniforms of the attackers, too. The BOI. What did it all mean?

  For some reason Lori thought of occasions when, as a child, she had wanted to attend Catholic churches in the neighborhoods in which they had lived. Her mother, always an agnostic, hadn’t encouraged Lori’s involvement in organized religion. As a result, the girl had only been able to attend church a few times, and always alone.

  Now, with everything that had occurred on this most terrible, horrendous of all nights, the girl was rekindling her interest in spiritual matters. If there truly was a God, she hoped with all the strength and power of her being that the Lord Almighty was a forgiving, loving entity, one that would spare the precious life of her mother.