Chapter 18

“Here they come, the bastards. Let’s get ‘em,” I chuckled as Pastor Milan Wilcox and his followers broke through the barrier and entered the mall.

I heard someone fire off some kind of shotgun, which thankfully made a lot of noise and allowed me to see the flash. Wilcox and his crew clearly never heard of fire discipline, thankfully for our cause. I instantly aimed and then fired my Atomizer, disintegrating whoever just popped off in such darkness. Clearly, their approach was to “spray and pray,” for lack of a better phrase. I laughed as I heard a brief scream and the sound of yet another Atomizer being fired at the foe.

“That ray gun of yours ... super impressive, but for me, I’m more used to this,” Tova declared as she began mowing the enemy down with an Uzi.

Yeah, I had kept her knowledge of small arms as part of her personality. That would have been too useful to remove, of course. I heard another loud pop as someone let off an AR-15. I really couldn’t tell which side they were on, but it didn’t matter. I kept zapping folks with my Atomizer and hearing more people scream as they watched their comrades vanish into atoms. They couldn’t see the molecules being shredded, but they knew that their friends and brethren or whatever were dead and gone, beyond any hope of rescue.

The battle continued in almost total darkness for at least a dozen minutes before one of them waved a flashlight and put down his weapon, a Thompson submachine gun. More of them laid down their arms, obviously shaken up by their imminent defeat. None of them stood a chance against such advanced weaponry and they knew it. Several of them pissed their pants, much to my amusement.

“Hand me your flashlight, buddy. Nice and slow. There we go. Now, you have two choices. You can be converted with the Converter here. Or you can be Atomized with this. Your choice. I really don’t want to have to clean up any more remains, so those are your options. Choose wisely, my friends,” I instructed the mere twenty or thirty odd survivors of the assault.

“I ... will be converted,” Jessamine Wilcox, Milan’s elder daughter, agreed.

“Jess ... no ... don’t! It’s the Mark of the Beast. You’ll never come back from that!” Milan warned his daughter.

“Daddy, we don’t have a choice. It’s time to submit. I don’t want us to die ... I don’t want you to die!” Cassidy Wilcox, Milan’s younger daughter now pleaded with her father.

“Never! I will not let you mark me, Antichrist!” Milan changed his mind about surrender now that he knew the price.

“Listen to your daughters, my friend. It’s for the best,” I tried to convince Milan, but he shook his head in the negative.

“Honey, face facts. We’ve lost. This is better than execution. We tried to murder them and now their leader is being gracious enough to spare our lives. Surely, that means something to you! If you don’t do it for yourself, do it for us!” Melody Wilcox begged her husband.

“NO! This wasn’t murder! It was justice! It was divine judgment! These abominations, these sinners deserve to die! Deus vult! God wills it! God told me to build a new shining city on a hill once these sinners were slain! This was the chance to build a new Christian society,” Milan insisted, being unwilling to listen to the heartfelt, tearful cries and pleas of his wife and two daughters.