Plague (Gone 4)

“We have to take him,” Brittney said. “It’s the only way. The Lord wills it.”

“No,” a voice said.

“Astrid!” Orc said. “I was . . . looking for you.”

Astrid barely looked at him. “I ran away. But I’m back.”

“Astrid, God has said He needs Little Pete,” Brittney said complacently. “It’s the only way.”

“I know you think you talk to God—”

“No, Astrid, He talked to me. I saw Him. I touched Him. He’s a dark God, a God of deep places.”

“If He’s a God, why does He need Little Pete? I thought God didn’t need anything.”

Brittney got a crafty look. “Jesus needed John the Baptist to announce His coming. He needed Judas to betray Him, and Pilate and the Pharisees to crucify Him so that He might redeem us. And the Father needed the Son to pay the price of sin.”

Astrid felt weary. There was a time in her life when Astrid would have welcomed an opportunity for a theological discussion. It wasn’t as if Sam had sat around with her, debating. He was completely indifferent to religion.

But this was not the time. The sad creature that was Brittney was just a tool of the malevolent creature she had confused with God.

In any case, why was Astrid defending Little Pete? She’d been ready to see him die if it meant an end to the suffering.

“God doesn’t ask for human sacrifices,” Astrid said.

“Doesn’t He?” Brittney smirked. “What am I, Astrid? What are any of us? And what was Jesus? A sacrifice to appease a vengeful God, Astrid.”

Astrid had nothing to say. She knew all the right answers. But the will was gone. Did she herself even believe in God anymore? Why argue over a phantom? They were two fools arguing over lies.

But Astrid still had her pride. And she could not remain silent and let Brittney have the final word.

“Brittney, do you really want to kill a little boy? No matter what your so-called God tells you, isn’t it wrong? When your beliefs tell you to murder, doesn’t a voice inside you tell you it is wrong?”

Brittney frowned. “God’s will . . .”

“Even if it is, Brittney, even if that mutant monster in a cave really is God, and even if you’ve understood Him perfectly, and you’re doing His will, and He wants you to kill, to deliver a little boy to Him so that He can kill, isn’t it wrong? Isn’t it just plain wrong?”

“God decides right and wrong.”

“No,” Astrid said. And now, despite everything, despite her own exhaustion, despite her fear, despite her self-loathing and contempt, she realized she was going to say something she had never accepted before. “Brittney, it was wrong to murder even before Moses brought down the commandments. Right and wrong doesn’t come from God. It’s inside us. And we know it. And even if God appears right in front of us, and tells us to our faces to murder, it’s still wrong.”

It was that simple in the end, Astrid realized. That simple. She didn’t need the voice of God to tell her not to kill Little Pete. Just her own voice.

“Anyway, Brittney,” Astrid said. “If you want to get to Petey, you have to go through me.”

She smiled then for what felt like the first time in a long time.

Brittney, too, smiled, but sadly. “I won’t, Astrid. But Drake will. You know he will. The bugs are all around this building, waiting. And when Drake comes, he will take Little Pete and kill you.”

The two girls had almost forgotten the swaying, bleary-eyed Orc.

He moved now with surprising speed. He grabbed Brittney by the neck and waist and threw her from the window.

“I don’t like her,” he said.

Astrid ran to the window and saw Brittney lying flat on the ground.

The bugs turned their blue eyes upward.