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| Choices Chapter One |
"Do you believe me?" the man asked, and Carter could not stop himself - he
did believe him; and at the same time could hardly believe that this was
happening, that the grinning, ever friendly McKenna was holding a knife to his
daughters throat. “I want to see how much of a fanatic you are, Carter,” the
man said, and touched the dull looking, razor sharp blade to Bianca’s smooth
skin. The blade did not gleam at all; it looked like it would not be sharp at all
either, but Carter already knew better than that.
“What do you mean?”
“Renounce your god, that is what I mean. The new order is here. You will serve
it, before you die, by renouncing your God. If you do not do this, I will kill your
family before I kill you. You decide your wife’s fate as well, though she is not
here to see it.” The knife pressed harder, creasing the flesh of Bianca’s fine
skinned throat. Her eyes were huge, more blue than green at the moment
though that was liable to change, and her lower lip trembled - but she made not
a sound. Carter thought he could imagine the slightest glimpse of red beneath
the blade.
She was a good girl - but there was always the but . . .
Bianca’s blue green eyes stared into his, her face pale and splotchy beneath
the summer tan. She was 13; her hair was the color of late summer corn husk,
and you could almost see the woman she would become, even now.
The devil McKenna - the man was actually smiling at him, that . . . curses
flooded Carter’s mind, and he prayed forgiveness automatically. Curses could
be forgiven - forsaking the name of God could not.
Carter throttled himself back. He had been taken - he had inflicted some
damage, but not enough. He could not get away, and they had obviously
targeted him for some reason.
He knew what he was risking
The other men in the room looked on impassively, their eyes dark and
forbidding, their weapons cradled easily. “What about my brother?”
“Your brother has the same choice, Carter.”
“Why don’t you call me by my first name, Ed?” Carter asked, knowing the
answer but trying to buy time. His mind was racing with the implications that it
held. The trouble was, he believed McKenna - if he renounced his God, he had
no doubt McKenna would allow Bianca and Bethany to live.
He just had to decide if that was a good enough reason for himself to go to hell.
McKenna’s smile was frosty - “I wonder if both brothers will choose the same
thing, Carter - that is what I wonder. You both got kids. Ya gotta wonder if they
are saved as well.”
McKenna shook his head and pursed his lips. At first Carter thought the man
was making fun of him; then he realized that the man was actually trying to put
himself in Carter’s shoes. But McKenna’s eyes were hard when he looked up,
and he did not look away from Carter’s eyes.
“Make your choice, Carter, and make it good. You can save your daughter - all
you have to do is sacrifice your soul. But I won’t make it easy on you. I am
going to give you twenty four hours to choose.”
“You might fail in that time.”
“We won’t - you and your brother are amongst the last of them, Carter. We
know exactly who you are, you see. We did not come here by accident.”
McKenna gazed at Carter impassively, the small smile still pasted to his mouth.
It had seemed like such a friendly smile in the past. Now it looked ghastly.
McKenna handed the girl off to one of the gunmen, and in seconds the room
was empty but for Carter.
What would his brother decide? He must not think of that. From what he knew,
his brother’s children were saved. If their lives were sacrificed, they would still
be assured the bounty of God. Bianca was not saved (or at least had not been
three days ago, straight from her mouth to his ears), but if she had more time
she might become thus; she might yet attain the grace which Jesus offered.
She had all the knowledge, that was for sure - and Carter had no doubt that that
knowledge would be suppressed in the future. That must be the purpose of
this coupe, to stamp out Christianity and all it’s powerful influence.
But Bianca, even though she was not saved, was an excellent scholar of the
Bible, knowing many more verses through and through than Carter could even
begin to claim. She was an expert as well at using those verses to confound
him, with interpretations that simply were not Godly.
He shook his head. He could not honestly be thinking of rebuking God simply
to give his daughter more time to become folded into His Grace. He knew what
his brother would say - that she was old enough, and that each person had to
make their decision before the throne of God.
It would be so much easier, Carter prayed, if I did not believe McKenna when he
says he will let her live, and let her go. It would be so much easier if I believed
he would simply kill them anyway.
But he did not. There was no question that evil did not just reside in McKenna -
McKenna was evil itself. He had to be a demon, and this had to be the coming
of the final days. No one had said it would be easy, Carter thought to himself.
No one said it would be easy, nor did they say that the devil would keep his
word. He did not know if it was divine providence that informed him, or the holy
spirit or the voice of God himself, but he had no doubt that McKenna would do
as he said. There might be strings attached, unseen by Carter, but the simple
fact was that Bianca would have more time to choose the way of God - and that,
even if it was one chance in five that she would become saved, that would be
enough.
No man was without sin, and no man had served God higher - Carter would
never have said so himself, but he had lived an exemplary life both in the
church and mission and in his normal life as well. He was a deacon at a mid-
sized church; he worked hard in the ministry, and he realized with sudden
fatality that they must have worked down a very long list indeed to get to him.
There would be no rescue; there would be succor from the security forces.
There would be nothing from the outside, unless the voice of God spoke to him
with the same strength it did when he believed McKenna was telling the truth
about letting his family live. He was not really concerned about his wife; if this
was the end days, then she would be gathered soon enough, and he thought
he would see her an instant after he himself was dead.
His daughter was what had his mind in a twist, and as he tried to think of
another way around the problem, he found himself thinking only of her eyes,
and the way her fingers would still grab ahold of his index finger and squeeze.
She had been young then, but she still grabbed his finger and squeezed on
occasion, even now - even with their differences.
No one had said life would be easy. He had been resigned to that. But the
afterlife was supposed to be easy. You did the best you could for the Lord, and
in the end everything would be alright. But it wasn’t. Nothing was alright, and
he didn’t know why.
No one had said life would be easy, and now he knew at least one more truth -
he would sacrifice anything to save his little girl, including his soul. And that
meant that the afterlife would not be easy either.
He did not care if his little girl did not agree with him right now; he did not care
about the things she thought that were so offensive to him, that were against
the Lord. Small things, and what seemed to her the most innocent were to him
the most shocking.
He thought of her eyes, wide and swimming with the sheer wonder of it the first
time she had seen a waterfall; the first time a butterfly had landed on her arm;
the first time she had spoken a real sentence, the first time . . . . the first of
everything; he would make sure that that was not her only first. He uttered a
prayer, and reached out and picked up the handset of the old fashioned black
phone.
“What do you want?” the voice asked.
“I renounce God and Jesus - tell him I don’t need to wait.”
He hung up the phone, and as it turned out he did not have to wait long at all.
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