Page 110 of At Midnight Comes the Cry
He swiped to another page.WE ARE STRIKING A BLOW AGAINST THE JEWS’ CONTROL! WHEN 1,000 NEW MEMBERS SUBSCRIBE…
The header was followed with a gif of a bomb exploding again and again and again.
Kevin seemed as stupefied as she was. Finally he said, “I’ll send this to Commander Patten. Maybe somebody can, I don’t know, find the host server and get them to shut it down.”
“Yeah. Yeah, that sounds”like it will take way too long“good.” She paused. “Russ needs to see this as well. He was wondering what the militia was waiting for. Now we know. The countdown ends when four hundred and thirteen more members sign on.”
Kevin saved the screenshots and forwarded the email he’d gotten to Patten, then switched his phone to airplane mode. “Okay, let’s go.”
When the doors opened to the corridor and they brushed past the makeshift curtain, Hadley was crouched facing the elevator, ready to fire.
“What the hell!” Kevin stepped in front of Clare, a sweet but unnecessary gesture, from the way Hadley dropped her gun and slid to the floor.
“You two were gone so long, I thought the militia had taken you!”
Kevin held out a hand to help her to her feet. “I called Patten, and we found out something when my phone was on. We need to find the chief.”
The next assemblage of eight were already lined up in the corridor with the two synagogue security guards. Johnson gestured down the hall. “Anything we need to know?”
Clare’s mind stuttered to a stop, confronting everything she’d just found out.Focus.They just needed to get these people to safety and return unharmed. “One at a time past the curtain, hug the wall. The group we took headed for the third block down.” Clare smiled in what she hoped was a reassuring way at the civilians before hurrying to catch up with Kevin and Hadley.
They found Russ conferring with the doctor, the pair of them weighing whether it was better to take Paul out with the elderly or wait until the last group when they could safely call for emergencyresponse. The ranger looked pale and damp; clutching Yíxin’s hand but not responding to the voices around him.
“I’d rather wait,” the doctor said. “Being outside in below-freezing weather isn’t going to do him any good, and it’ll be better to move him from here into the ambulance rather than tote him however far in a tablecloth.”
“Pardon me.” Clare touched Russ’s arm. “We’ve got something you need to see.” She tilted her head toward Kevin and Hadley, who were standing against one of the exhibit cases.
Russ made his excuses to the doctor. Yíxin detached herself from Paul’s side and joined the little group.
Kevin passed around his phone. Russ took his time with the photos, then looked at Kevin. “Did you know about this?”
“No. I knew they had a site, but no one was updating it when we were camping in the mountains.”
“I followed it during the investigation.” Yíxin scrubbed her face, as if washing away the violence she’d witnessed. “It’s usually just trashy news stories and crazy essays about sovereign citizenship and the evils of race mixing. The streaming video is new.”
Russ frowned. “They’re almost up to six hundred in this photo. If this has been going all day, that’s not overly alarming.”
Clare checked her battered old Seiko. “We entered the building at four thirty or so, and the crane they’re filming from was down. Even if they erected it right after, it’s still been a little less than two hours.”
“That doesn’t mean they didn’t have some sort of pregame show,” Yíxin pointed out. “They could have streamed footage of them making the bombs, trying them out, wrapping the goddamn bows…”
“It was moving fast.” Kevin’s normally cheerful voice was grim. “Reverend Clare and I watched it for maybe fifteen seconds before I started taking screenshots, and in that time they added three new members.”
Hadley spoke for the first time. “Keep in mind those numbers might be faked. If you want to generate excitement and FOMO—fear of missing out—having that sense that everyone is hopping on the bandwagon helps.”
“Fake or not, when that reaches one thousand, it’s over. They don’t need to wait for TV cameras.” Russ looked at the people clustering together, talking quietly, holding hands, embracing. “Clare, can we fit more in the elevator?”
“If we have one guide instead of two we can automatically add a ninth civilian. For the, um, thinner folks, I think we can get up to ten.”
“Paul and whoever carries him out will lower that number.” Yíxin sounded much more like her calm, attorney-like self.
“We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.” Russ pointed to Clare. “I want you to take people out. Knox, Kevin, you and the guards and I are going to prioritize moving those bombs as far away from here as we can.”
“Russ.” Clare tried to keep her voice steady. “You’re the one who said that wasn’t possible.”
“I said it wasn’t desirable. If the militia is meeting its goal at the rate of one member every five seconds, we’re going to run out of time before we have a chance to move all these civilians out of harm’s way.”
“What about the shooter in the corridor?”
