Chapter Eight

   THE Mustang reached the lower end of the valley without meeting further obstruction and wound its way into a low-lying range of hills. Topping a rise, it began the gradual descent into a sandy stretch. The character of the landscape changed again, this time to desert. The road became little more than an Indian track meandering amid sparse clumps of sage and mesquite. Apart from the desert vegetation and an occasional high-flying buzzard, signs of life were absent. Peculiar rock formations appeared and disappeared in the distance. The temperature rose until it seemed to Chris it could not possibly get any hotter. Treacherous sandy shoulders threatened to trap him the moment he became unwary at the wheel.

   Stopping the car, Chris reached into the lunchbasket and poured some cool lemonade from a thermos. He then switched on the radio to get his mind off the heat and the pain in his arm. Nothing happened. Then he remembered the broken aerial and, getting out, dug a small transistor radio from his suitcase. A newscaster was saying,

". . . and the first atomic warhead is expected to be

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fired within hours from an ICBM complex near Swatow. The United States anti-ballistic missile system has been activated and the Strategic Air Command has been placed on red alert by direct order of the President. National Guard troops are being assembled in metropolitan staging areas, in anticipation of a Congressional declaration of martial law. A Soviet delegation is flying to the United Nations. On the local scene, a flash flood racing out on the Diablo Range last night turned Eschaton Creek into a river of death that claimed the lives of an estimated sixteen persons staying at the Lot's Wife Motel. According to Weather Bureau officials, four inches of rain fell within sixty minutes between nine and ten p.m. By midnight the creek overflowed its banks. Flood waters smashed into the twelve-unit motel and turned the buildings into matchwood. Rescue workers are continuing to hunt for bodies amid the debris, but because of continuing flood conditions it is expected to be days before the count is completed. The one survivor of the disaster, Mrs. Arlowene Jackson, told a WEAL reporter she had been warned by God the day before to "get out" of the motel. She said that last night when her ride failed to show up in the rain, she began walking to get away from the site, and had reached a point two miles downstream known as Ebenezer Hill when the creek waters began to rise. She took refuge in an abandoned hot dog stand. At the time she was picked up by a helicopter rescue team, it was learned,

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Mrs. Jackson was carrying the only thing left of the motel, a Gideon Bible she said she had taken from one of the rooms. . . ."

   A car was approaching in the distance. Chris started the Mustang and began looking for a section of the road where it would not be dangerous to pass. He found a stretch near a clump of cactus that seemed harder than the rest and eased the wheels on to the shoulder. The oncoming vehicle proved to be a battered convertible containing two persons. A twisted frame and a caved-in hood gave it the appearance of zig-zagging down the road. As it drew abreast Chris flagged down the driver.

   "What happened to you?" he asked.

   The driver peered at him through sunglasses. "We've had it," he said, working his mouth.

   "Where're you heading?"

   "Back."

   "What do you mean, back?"

   "He means," said the passenger, who appeared younger and had a deeply sunburned face," "that we're not goin' the way you're goin'."

   "We been there," agreed the driver. Apparently it was a nose itch that caused the mouth to work.

   "What's ahead?" Chris asked.

   "If we told you,'' said the sunburned one, "you wouldn't believe it."

   "Isn't that the way to Life City?" Chris persisted.

   "They told us it was," said the driver, "but we

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decided we ain't goin.' We'll settle for something else."

   "Uncle Al's right," said the young man. "It's not worth it."

   The driver took off his sunglasses and peered at Chris. "Who messed you up?" he asked.

   Chris looked down at his limp arm. "Our friend back there," he said.

   "On the bulldozer?"

   "Yup."

   "That was Belial," nodded the driver, twitching his nose. "He gave us some trouble, too. But we're gonna go back and try to make a deal with him."

   "You just might," said Chris, wondering whether the bulldozer was still in the ditch. "How far do you think you'll get today?"

   "We figure to make Lot's Wife Motel by tonight," was the reply. "My cousin Tim there'll put us up and we can get this frame straightened out."

   "Hey, how'd you lose your aerial?" the nephew wanted to know.

   "I didn't." Chris lifted it from the seat beside him and held it up to view. Then he added, "If I were you I wouldn't try to reach the motel by tonight."

   "Why not?" The driver put on his sunglasses.

   "Well, because it's— "Chris swallowed, wondered how much he should say. "And stay away from Belial," he went on. "Look, I—I don't know how to talk about God—I feel like a fool—but you fellows are sure heading in the wrong direction. I mean,

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won't you turn around and go on with me? We'll make out. I'm sure we will."

   The nose jerked. So did the convertible. "It's all yours," said the driver as he pulled ahead. The young man waved as they went swaying down the road in a cloud of sandy dust.

   Discouraged by this fresh evidence of his lack of persuasive powers, Chris drove on, wondering if it meant he could no longer sell computers. He speculated on the kind of treatment that could twist a new car frame so badly out of line. The Mustang had progressed two or three miles when he came to a queer rock formation that projected out of the desert floor some three or four hundred feet. Parked in the shade of the rock he discerned a familiar object: a dusty black Chevelle. And sitting alongside, clad in sports shirt and shorts and listening to a short-wave radio, was none other than E. Van Gelst.

   "Ernie!" cried Chris, getting out and going up to him with outstretched hand. "Isn't this a little off your run?"

   Van Gelst half rose to his feet for the greeting, then sank back and continued munching a lettuce sandwich. "No place is off my run," he said.

   "Well, this time you found me on the right road, anyway."

   Van Gelst nodded. "How's your arm?" he asked.

   "Not very good. The shoulder bruise seems to be better, but I think that Belial snapped a bone above the elbow."

   Van Gelst continued to eat. After he had finished

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his sandwich and had taken a drink of iced tea from his lunch box, he stood up and felt Chris's arm. "Take off your shirt," he said. Then, "I don't think it's a bone. Feels more like a pulled tendon." Walking over to his car, he took a small bottle from the glove compartment.

   "What's that?" Chris inquired dubiously.

   "Some ointment the wife cooks up. Myrtle leaves. I think she calls it Twenty-two-two."

   "How come?" Chris wanted to know, as Van Gelst rubbed his upper arm gently.

   "I don't know. Something in Revelation, I guess." He finished and screwed the cap back on the bottle.

   "You see that sign on the rock?"

   Chris walked around a point of the rock formation in the direction Van Gelst was pointing. A sign had been daubed on a flat surface, VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH.

   "That what they call it?" Chris asked, thinking about the smashed convertible.

   Van Gelst nodded. "Why don't you relax now and eat your lunch while I explain some things to you." They settled against the rock face and the man took a notebook from his hip pocket. "You see, you're about to drive through a magnetic field that extends roughly for the next fifty miles. Terrainwise, it won't seem any different from what you're now in, except that you'll pick up a paved road down here; but for an hour or more you'll be exposed to a different kind of attack. In this one the target will not be your body, but your mind."

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   "My mind is in worse shape than my body is," reflected Chris. "I haven't read a book in eighteen months."

   "Well, this is a kind of psychological—or perhaps I should say metaphysical—exposure," said Van Gelst. "It'll come through your car radio."

   "Oh, no, it won't," said Chris, "I broke the aerial."

   Van Gelst shook his head. "That won't stop it," he said. "Neither will your switch. I told you this was a metaphysical attack. It's being launched from a communication control centre by the prince of the power of the air."

   "Suppose I just turn up my transistor and drown him out."

   "It won't work. In this magnetic field he'll come right through your transistor. In fact, there is only one weapon that will stop him."'

   "What's that?"

   "A Scriptural verse."

   "Huh?"

   Van Gelst took from his side pocket a small object. "This is a memory verse packet," he said, tossing it in his hand. "You'll find Bible verses lined up in a particular sequence. Now here's what to do. Set this packet on top of your dashboard, and every time you get a message on the radio, turn to the next verse and read it aloud. Read it twice. Get it in your head."

   "You're not serious, Ernie."

   "You'll find out how serious I am."

   "But this is Sunday School stuff. 'Now I lay me

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down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep."

   "That's not a Bible verse."

   "Do I get a gold star anyway?"

   Van Gelst leaned so close that Chris edged away from his eyeballs. "Anders," he said, "I've been informed there's a bulldozer back down the line heading this way. It has already pushed that convertible into a ditch. Now do you want this packet or don't you?"

   Chris took the packet.

   While he finished eating he asked Van Gelst to fill him in on a number of matters that had occupied his mind during his travels. He learned, first of all, that his own family was surviving well; that the boys were digging a fall-out shelter in the back yard; that his wife Eileen was convinced he was dead and had gone to a séance hoping to establish some kind of contact with him but had been disappointed. He learned further that O.B. Stennett had to give up golf and was under a doctor's care for overstrain, and that Warren Clay had seemed rather depressed since he returned from Struck Creek. Guy Wise had been placed in a nursing home with liver and pancreas ailments. Colonel Goodall had been rotated back to Life City from the transmitter, and his place had been taken by Major Putter. The three hikers Chris had met on Gordon's Calvary Van Gelst believed had been transferred to  a helicopter rescue mission detail. As for the two hitchhikers, one, the hippie, was being held in the Carnapolis jail for robbery, while the other had disappeared. The men at the Lazy 3 Ranch were, as

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far as he knew, still playing cards and still chained.

   "I got the word about Tim O'Rowse's motel on the radio," said Chris. "I was real sorry about that. I sort of liked old Tim."

   "I know you spoke to Tim about coming with you," said Van Gelst. ''I tried to reach him many times. Something must have happened way back to turn to him against the Lord. His heart was shut tight."

   "They said there was a woman who got out," said Chris. "A maid. I think I knew her."

   "I should say you did. You gave her the word that saved her life."

   "What do you mean?"

   "I mean she's on her way back to Life City right now. Staying with the girls at the Manor House I, believe."

   "You've got to be kidding."

   "I never kid anyone, Anders. She has a story to tell and she's telling it."

   A remote but ominous clanking noise began to be heard on the road. Chris jumped to his feet in alarm.

   "Is that guy going to trail me the rest of my life?" he demanded.

   Van Gelst shook his head. "Belial won't enter the magnetic field if he can avoid it," he said. "It belongs to another Principality, and they're usually not very friendly toward each other. Evil, as you know, is divisive. But perhaps you'd better get going."

   Chris held up the packet in his left hand. "This little light o' mine," he sang, "I'm gonna let it shine."

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   "Your arm feel better now?" asked Van Gelst.

   Chris stopped in the middle of the note, his mouth open, and felt the spot above his elbow. The pain had disappeared. "Hey," he said. But Van Gelst was already getting into his car. Chris ran over to him, words of gratitude tumbling over each other as he tried to speak. The other man said nothing, but pointed at a dark object far down the road. Chris hurried back to the Mustang and started it; but before he put it into gear he took time to look up Revelation 22:2 in his Bible: "Also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations."

   Chris sailed down the road and into the next Principality.

Chapter Nine  ||  Table of Contents