The Anchorites: Chapter 1

“All these things are just the beginning of sorrows.” Matthew 24:8

1

Havel

“The eldest among you remember watching the explosions on television. The way they expanded, and then sucked back in on themselves.” The stranger's hands were shaking.

Havel dared not move. One moment he had been doing his nightly tasks on the water tower, the next, someone he couldn't see grabbed him and pressed the blade of a knife to his throat. The stranger was using Havel as a human shield and shouting down to a gathering crowd.

“That was God! All that chaos had been predicted thousands of years before. ‘Unless the Lord intervened, no life on earth would be left.’ We saw the way the mushroom clouds stopped and then reversed. We didn't care if we blew each other up, but it’s not His intention to rule a scorched earth! Then came the satellites, falling like stars, burning comets. The smoke and dust was so thick that it made the night sky look like a rolled-up scroll.” The stranger’s rant was interrupted by a fit of ragged coughing. After gaining composure he continued.

“The scriptures said that after all that noise, God would remake the world! Gold streets, clear as glass, full of good, God-fearing people. Pillars of jewels would hold up that celestial city, and the King of the world would be God himself.”

Crickets chirped and kerosene lamps sputtered.

“What is all this? Who the hell are you people?” The stranger's head turned from side to side. Havel could feel the man's sweat soaking into his shirt. “I see that some of you even have the mark. What are you still doing here? The world belongs to people like me! You should have been judged by now!” The stranger's breath smelled like SPAM as he spat that last denunciation past Havel’s ear. His captor spoke Universal, but with an accent he did not recognize. Havel tried not to swallow too hard, as the knife's point pricked his Adam’s apple.

A tall, dark-skinned man emerged from the crowd. Marius, Havel recognized the community leader moving toward the tower, a bullhorn in his hand.

“Let Havel go and we can explain,” said Marius’s amplified voice from below. “You look like you have been hiding for a while now. Are you thirsty? We are not a people of violence—”

“Revelation 18:2 ‘Babylon has fallen!” interrupted the stranger, “‘and now she is a home to demons! She is a hideout for every foul spirit, the vulture and every fell beast.’” Are you demons?”

The stranger’s voice was raspy and thin, his shouting laborious. Havel guessed he was an older man. Casting a strained and sidelong glance at his captor, he could make out a hawkish profile, worn rough with age.

“Please, sir, calm down,” Marius’s voice grew stern. “We have plenty of religiously-minded folk to help you make sense of this. You must be tired, and dehydrated.” The stranger lifted his left hand to his face, shielding his eyes from the brightness of the floodlights. Marius let the bullhorn drop to his side and wiped the sweat from his bald head, allowing the stranger to clear his throat. Havel could see the older man’s stringy forearm tighten as he readjusted the blade, and felt a similar tightness in his stomach. This could be it, he thought. One false move and I could bleed out, dead before I could really live.

The stranger kept smacking his dry lips, and with a deep inhale, Havel guessed the stranger was about to speak, but Marius cut him off with a squawk from the bullhorn. “Sir, if you won’t stop, we'll have to stop you. We are all humans here. We could help each other.”

The point of the knife pricked Havel’s neck and he could feel a warmth trickle down and pool just above his collarbone. His hands trembled as the knot of fear in his stomach melted, turning his guts to liquid.

“Liars! You live in the rubble of pagan cities! You are nothing but jackals. I can see the mark on this young man's neck. That's all the proof I need of his guilt.”

The knife menaced the curves of Havel’s throat and settled on the small black tattoo under his right ear. His captor inhaled, readying a new salvo of imprecations.

“If you give me clean water and any firearms you have, I’ll leave.” As if to show the crowd he was serious, the stranger jerked the point of the blade under Havel’s right eye. He could feel the coolness of the blade as it pressed against his cheek. “If you don't, this boy —”

Three things happened at once: Havel saw something whiz in from the side, felt the man’s chest jerk, and heard a meaty “thunk.”

A scream pierced the night air. Havel recoiled as an arrow bloomed from the stranger’s side, where the shoulder meets the breast. The stranger dropped the knife and staggard into the floodlight. For a moment, Havel thought he looked like a tragic clown. Then — taking advantage of the moment — Havel shoved the man up and over the guardrails of the makeshift water tower. The stranger seemed to fall in slow motion before landing in a heap on the hard-packed dirt.

After the crowd’s initial gasps subsided into murmurs, community leaders filtered to the front of those left watching.

“Take him to the infirmary,” commanded Marius, “and make sure he is secure for the night.” They bound the unconscious old man and took him away.

Boy? Havel spat from the side of the tower. Pacing the walkway, he felt jittery with residual fear. The floodlights snapped off, leaving him bathed in the guttering light of the border torches. Havel stopped, gripped the railing, and closed his eyes, letting instinct channel fear into a more controllable emotion, anger.

That crazy bastard called me a boy, he thought. Havel heard someone making their way up the ladder. Opening his eyes and turning toward the sound, Havel felt a wash of relief, It’s Jema. He recognized the stained trucker hat rising from the opening. Lifting herself on the platform, she walked over to stand next to Havel. She was half a head taller than him, surefooted on the platform, everything about her exuded confidence.

“You should sit before the adrenaline wears off and ya fall the same as that madman.” Stepping closer, she wiped a speckle of blood from under his eyes, black in the torchlight. Havel could see how scared he still looked in the reflection of her green eyes, and at that moment—for reasons he couldn’t explain—he had to suppress a spike of anger toward her.

“They shot this one pretty early. It startled me, is all,” Havel mumbled, breaking eye contact. “It’s typical for the community heads to negotiate a bit longer before they resort to violence.”

She moved to the edge and looked down. “They don’t mess around when it comes to outsiders demanding water. We’ve seen stragglers have a pretty rough adjustment, but I reckon this one was on something.” She turned to look out over the small torch-lit town.

“Yeah.” Havel rubbed under his chin where the knife broke the skin. They both sat down, dangling their legs over the edge.

“Why are all the old ones always so obsessed with heaven?” asked Jema. “If the Watchers aren't proof that people don’t go to heaven, I don't know what is,” she readjusted the zipper of her baggy jacket.

“Abraheem never said that heaven doesn't exist,” Havel said, regaining some composure. “Just that he didn't see it when he died.” Havel felt a soft pulse of embarrassment as he realized his heart was still beating fast.

“Okay, Havel, but if you believe his story about dying and coming back to life, why didn’t he just go to heaven? — you know — and stay there.”

Havel opened his mouth to answer and then closed it. They sat in silence for a moment.

“What do you think they’ll do with the old man?” she asked.

“I don’t know, maybe if he’s well enough to travel, they’ll send him to the hospital in Cairo.” Their conversation stalled as they watched the people of the commune complete their nightly tasks.

“That old fart called you “boy,” Jema laughed. “You have to start bulking up, string bean.” Havel brushed dark hair away from his eyes, gave her a mock frown, and then flexed a Herculean pose with both arms. She cracked a smile. He did too. Their laughter floated up into the starless sky like sparks from a campfire.