The Church - Episode 6

After we had anesthetized our assailant we proceeded to carry him into the forest and laid him there. We knew that if he woke he would proceed to hunt us once more so we stripped him of all of his weapons and gear and removed his shoes. This would make following us much more difficult and could change his mind as to whether his pursuit was worth the effort. We abandoned him and headed back through the woods on our way. After a few hundred yards of reaching our previous walking path we decided to divert ourselves in a different direction. We headed straight west from the rail path. Traversing the brush was difficult for a while but just before nightfall we came upon a clearing and we could see smoke ahead of us. I strained my eyes to distinguish the source of the smoke and observed a small farm only a mile or so ahead of us. Lou and I felt encouraged by the sight and we laid down in the forest to sleep until night was fully upon us. At about nine o’clock I woke up from a dreamless sleep, which was something I seldom had and was extremely grateful for. After only a few months of being hunted I had started to have nightmares. My explanation for such was that it must have been caused by the safeguards my mind had to build to feel secure. I had to hone my mind to look for anything out of the ordinary and had to heighten my senses to always trust that feeling of fear and act upon it. I believe that this caused my mind great agony when it was not being protected by these safeguards and so it would run amok with wild ideas and terrifying images. My latest nightmare that I have mentioned earlier was a horrific dream involving the coaster train and the events that took place there. My dream vividly depicted our assailant there catching me by the leg with his greasy hands and pulling me from the rails at the peak of the ascent and hurtling me towards the ground. I awoke when I hit the ground in the dream. Some of my dreams were not nearly as mild as this one but I prefer not to speak about the evil which they contained. Dreaming in such a manner as to wake me with such fervor was enough to help keep me thin as my heart seemed to always race, burning any energy I could have stored through sleep; thusly I always woke up hungry. Lou and I packed our gear from the forest and headed toward the farm. The moon was not visible this night as the clouds that had showered us earlier that day had not yet vacated this area. We needed little cover as it was devilishly hard to see without a lantern. Our eyes were only mildly adept at seeing in the dark, since that is when we traveled the most. Had we been doing this longer I am sure my eyes may have become better trained for it, but I feel we traversed the darkness better than most. After crossing several fields we came upon a barn just to the northwest of the farmhouse. I eyed the farm to look for security vulnerabilities and an escape route should we find friendly people there. Lou on the other hand turned her gaze elsewhere and began to move around the side of the barn to get a better glimpse. She motioned quietly for me to come to her. I proceeded to move towards the edge to see what she had seen. It was the lights of a small town. We typically found asylum in churches at night and a small steeple cutting through the night air at the edge of the town was a very welcome sight indeed. We headed straight for it, making very little attempt to stay hidden as the church was the one place where we felt any amount of safety. It took us about two hours to reach the church as it was quite a distance from the barn. We reached the door of the church around eleven, and hoped that we would be able to rouse its tenant. We concealed ourselves as much as possible as we tried with as little noise as possible to knock on the door. We received no answer and were beginning to fear our exposure so we tried the door to see if it was locked. To our relief it was unlocked and we let ourselves in, turning only once back toward the street to assure we were not being followed. As we came into the church we let out a faint hello but garnered no reply. We sat down in a pew and rested mostly in mental rather than in physical form. Our bags lay beside us in the aisle and I began to lay my head in my hands when my periphery caught a glimpse of a shadow stretching forward cast by the candles behind us in the foyer. I immediately turned my head to see what was causing the shadow and beheld a sight I was not expecting; a man of the cloth brandishing an old wooden chair above his head with a look on his face of sheer terror. I slowly stood as his actions had abruptly halted because of my reaction. Lou immediately stood up and grabbed my left arm as I began to step toward the aisle. “We will leave if we are not welcome here” I said as I moved. His demeanor changed from the terror he felt in his heart to sympathy as he lowered the chair and muttered, “I couldn’t do it”. I immediately questioned back, “Who put you up to this?” He looked directly at the floor and turned to set the chair back in its rightful location. He spoke as he walked, “They threatened me… and my family. But being a man of God I could not…” His voice broke as he began to softly cry. I walked toward him as Lou’s hands slipped their grip from my arm and I placed my left hand on his right shoulder in comfort. “We can help you and your family escape” I stated. He slowly turned back toward me, “You can’t escape them” he sobbed. “Who” I said? “I can’t say… they’re listening” he said in retort. This statement alone bore the greatest amount of weight and fear in my mind. If someone was listening then that meant they had access to technology that was banned. And if they had access to such technology in churches and knew that was what we frequented, then that meant that churches were no longer safe. It also meant that our nights provisioning locale was soon to be descended upon and we had to move immediately…