Six Sacred Stones Part 33

Less wellknown however is the plight of thesurvivors of the genocide: the many Tutsis who were not killed had their arms cut off by the machetewielding Hutus. Today it is not uncommon to see halfarmed or onearmed locals quietly going about their daily farmwork.

Desperately poor, decimated by an unprecedented bloodletting, and with nothing to sell that the world wants, Rwanda has been cast aside as an ugly example of the worst of human nature.

In an already dark continent, it is a black hole.

That night the Freelander stood parked behind an abandoned church in the south of Kibuye Province, covered in branches and a filthy tarp.

The church near it was a frightening sight.

Bullet holes and dried blood covered its walls. In the decade since 1994, no one had even bothered to clean it.

Zoe stood at the back of the building, peering out into the darkness, gripping an MP5.

Wizard and the kids sat inside the church.

"During the genocide, the Tutsis fled to churches like this," Wizard explained. "But often the local priests were in league with the Hutus and their churches became cages into which the villagers willingly ran. The priests would keep the Tutsis inside with promises of safety, while at the same time notifying the dreaded Hutu patrols. A patrol would show up and kill all the Tutsis."

The kids stared at the b.l.o.o.d.y bullet holes in the walls around them, imagining the horrors that had happened in this very room.

"I don't like this place," Lily said, s.h.i.+vering.

"So, Wizard," Zoe said from the doorway, deliberately changing the subject. "Tell me something. What does all this really mean? When all the Pillars and sacred stones and underground vertices are stripped away, what's this mission about?"

"What's it all about?" Wizard said. "The Apocalypse, Judgment Day, the end of the world. Every religion has an apocalypse myth. Whether it's the coming of the four hors.e.m.e.n or a great day on which everyone is judged, ever since humans have walked this planet, they have had the idea that one day it will all end badly.

"And yet-somehow-we have been provided with this test, this test of tests, this system of vertices built by some advanced civilization in the distant past that will allow us to avert this terrible end,if we are up to the challenge. Which reminds me: Lily, can you have a look at this, please?"

Wizard grabbed Zoe's digital camera and clicked through to a photograph she'd taken at the First Vertex, one of the golden plaque they'd seen on the main wall there: "Can you translate those lines?" he asked Lily.

"Sure," Lily said. "Looks like a list, a list of...do you have a pen and paper?"

Scanning the image of the plaque, she quickly jotted down a translation. When she was done, it read: 1st Vertex -The Great Viewing Hall 2nd Vertex -The City of Bridges 3rd Vertex -The Fire Maze 4th Vertex -The City of Waterfalls 5th Vertex -The Realm of the Sealords 6th Vertex -The Greatest Shrine of All "It's a description of all six vertices..." Zoe said.

Wizard said, "And thus perhaps the clearest description of the immense challenge we face."

"A city of bridges? A fire maze?" Alby whispered." What's a fire maze? Geez..."

It got Wizard thinking, too. "Lily, can you grab the Pillar, please, the one that was charged at Abu Simbel?"

Lily extracted the Pillar from its rucksack.

It still looked extraordinary-no longer cloudy but clear, with its luminescent central liquid and the mysterious white writing on its gla.s.slike exterior.

"Do you recognize the writing?" Wizard asked her.

Lily peered at the Pillar closely...and her eyes widened.

She spun to face Wizard.

"It's a variety of the Word of Thoth," she said. "A very advanced variety, but it's Thoth for sure." She scanned the white writing closely.

After a minute she said, "It seems to be a mix of instructions, diagrams, and symbols grouped into formulas."

"Knowledge..." Alby said.

"Exactly," Wizard said. "The reward for successfully placing the First Pillar in the First Vertex. The other rewards areheat, sight, life, death, andpower. Those formulae you see on this charged Pillar are some kind of secret knowledge being handed down to us from the builders of the Machine."

Lily grabbed another sheet of paper, started copying down the writing on the Pillar. Then, joined by Alby, she began translating it.

Zoe came beside Wizard and nodded at the two children: "They're holding up well."

"Yes. It's important to keep their spirits up, because this is going to get scary."

"Scarier than the Rwandan genocide stories you've been telling them?"

Wizard went red. "Oh. Yes. Mmmm."

"Doesn't matter. Listen, I got something else that's bothering me," Zoe said.

"What?"

"You."

"Me? What about me?" Wizard asked, confused.

Zoe was looking at him in a strange almost amused way. Then in answer she held up a toiletry bag, and extracted from it some scissors and a razor.

"Oh, no, Zoe..." Wizard protested weakly. "No..."

Ten minutes later, Wizard again sat with the children, only now he was beardless and his usually long shock of white hair had been shaved bald.

He looked completely different thinner, more gangly.

"You look like a shorn sheep," Lily giggled.

"I liked my beard," he said sadly.

Lily t.i.ttered again.

"All right, Lily," Zoe said, holding up the scissors. "Take a seat in the barber's chair.

Your turn."

"Myturn?" Lily's face went white.

Five minutes later, she sat beside Wizard, head also bowed, with her own hair cut dramatically short, the pink tips long gone.

Now Wizard chuckled.

Alby did, too. "Lily, you look like a boy..."

"Shut up, Alby," Lily grumbled.

"Sorry I had to do that, little one," Zoe said, reaching around to grab her own hair.

"Wanna cut mine for me?"

Lily did so, sadly snipping off the pink end tips from Zoe's shoulderlength blond hair- undoing the work they had performed together in happier times. When she was done, Zoe looked like a shorthaired punk rocker.

"Come on, it's time we all got some sleep," Zoe said. "Wizard, you have the first watch.

I'll take the late s.h.i.+ft."

With that they each found a s.p.a.ce on the floor, and with Wizard standing guard at the back door, curled up to sleep inside the isolated Rwandan church, a place that stank of death.

LILY WOKE with a startled gasp to find a hand smothering her mouth.

It was Zoe.

"Stay still, we're in trouble."

With frightened eyes, Lily peered around her. They were still in the abandoned church.

Near her, Alby was crouched on the floor, not daring to make a sound. Wizard was nowhere in sight. Through a dirty cracked window, Lily saw the dim blue glow of predawn- A figure crossed the window.

A black man wearing camouflage fatigues, a helmet, and carrying a machete.

"They arrived a few minutes ago," Zoe whispered.

Wizard arrived at Zoe's side, staying low. "There are four of them and they have a technical parked at the side of the building."

A technical was the name of a truck common in Africa, a large pickup with a machine gun mounted on its open rear tray.

Wizard said, "Their uniforms are old. Probably exArmy soldiers that the government couldn't afford to pay, now a rape gang."

In the wasteland that Rwanda now was, rape gangs prowled-human predators looking for women and children in isolated farmhouses and villages. They were known to terrorize whole towns, sometimes for a week at a time.

Zoe pursed her lips, then said: "You take the kids and wait by the back door. Get ready to make a run for that technical."

"The technical?"

"Yes." Zoe stood, her eyes fixed and focused. "We need a new car anyway."

Several minutes later, the leader of the rape gang rounded the front corner of the church.

Skinny but muscled, he was dressed in ragged Army fatigues with his s.h.i.+rt open at the front. His helmet, however, was not standard military-it was a vivid skyblue helmet with "UN" written in large white letters on it a gruesome prize that was highly regarded by the thugs of Rwanda: at some time, this man had killed a UN peacekeeper.

The lead rapist crept onto the wooden porch of the church, gripping a machete in his fist- "Looking for something?"

He spun, to see Zoe standing in the front doorway of the derelict church.

At first, the man was stunned at what he saw: a woman, awhite woman. Then his eyes narrowed with evil intent. He called to his comrades in Kinyarwanda.

The other three came running from their truck and when they saw Zoe, they formed a loose ring around her.

Zoe tapped her foot on the floorboard-the signal for Wizard and the kids to leave via the back door-and then stepped forward, into the middle of the ring of rapists.

What happened next happened very fast.

The leader of the gang lunged at Zoe-just as Zoe, moving with lightning speed, punched him hard in the throat.

The leader dropped to his knees, gagging, at which point, the other three attacked-but in a flurry of moves, Zoe kicked one in the midsection, snapping his ribs, broke another's nose with a vicious elbow, and hit another, baseballbat style, with the second man's machete, square in the groin. He screamed wildly as he fell.

It was all over in seconds, and when it was done, the four Rwandans lay writhing on the ground beneath the standing figure of Zoe.

"You got off lightly," she said as the technical skidded to a halt nearby, now driven by Wizard with the kids in the back.

She took the gang's machetes and their leader's Army s.h.i.+rt-plus his UN helmet-then she leaped aboard the technical and it roared away into the dawn.

LATER THAT MORNING, Zoe and the others sped into the province of Cyangugu in their stolen technical.

Zoe drove, now wearing the Army s.h.i.+rt she had taken from the rape gang leader, while beside her, Wizard sat tall wearing the UN helmet, giving them the appearance of a senior UN official being driven around the country by his female driver.

The carca.s.ses of militia jeeps lay beside the road, their wheels and tires long since stripped. A distressing number of onearmed women cooked outside their homes.

Children splashed in open sewers. Local men lay pa.s.sed out on doorsteps, drunk before noon.

One such fellow, Zoe noticed, had a dirty cell phone clipped to his belt.

The untraceable phone was quickly acquired and as they neared the town of Kamembe, Lily tried Jack's cell phone number. Putting the call on speakerphone, the others listened, too.

The phone rang once...

Click.

"h.e.l.lo...?"It sounded like Jack.

"Daddy!" Lily exclaimed.

"No, this is not your daddy, Lily. But it's a pleasure to meet you at long last. I'm your grandfather, Jonathan West Sr. and I regret to inform you that I killed your daddy two days ago. Thank you for calling, though. Now my people can triangulate your position."

Lily jammed down on theEND CALL b.u.t.ton, her face white with shock.

Zoe exchanged a look with Wizard. "They killed Jack..."

She grabbed the phone from Lily and tried Pooh Bear's and Stretch's numbers, but both calls went straight to voice mail-for whatever reason, their phones were off.

"Jonathan West Sr...." Wizard breathed. "The Wolf. Good G.o.d, he' sin charge. And now he knows where we are...which means he'll figure out we're going after the Neetha."