The Circle

A story very loosely based on Daniel Eleven

By Bob Freye

 

The deafening growl of diesel engines rattled windows on either side of the narrow street as the tanks rolled slowly forward, their treads clapping on the pavement in a ponderous and dangerous rhythm. In windows above the street, faces appeared for an instant, and then vanished when they recognized the all too familiar sight.

In a small apartment at the end of the street, the Circle was gathered. They had no other name. Nothing more descriptive. Nothing that might attract attention. Just the Circle. Anything else would have been unpatriotic.

Dr. Tobias Wisler stood in the window, watching the tanks approach.

“We chased them out last time,” Gus Penchin fumed behind him. “What are they doing back so soon?”

“There is no end to war, Gus,” Ada told him. Ada Garshak would know about war. She had lost her husband in the last conflict. It was called a civil action, but it was war, just the same.

“Where are the planes?” Gus asked. He looked up at the ceiling, as if he expected an air raid to burst through the apartment roof to drive back the menacing tanks.

“I think we should keep working,” Siler Toff suggested in a deliberately calm and quiet voice. “We cannot change things out in the street.”

Ada agreed. “But not to study,” she said, putting her Bible down on a table near her chair. “We should pray.”

The rest of the group seemed to follow her lead, shifting in their chairs, putting down books and paper. It served nicely as a mild distraction for Dr. Wisler, who inconspicuously raised his hand and held it close to the glass.

A young man in the group stood up suddenly and lurched toward the window. Grabbing Dr. Wisler by the shoulders, he spun the older man around. Wisler stood there, stupidly, caught in the light of the room. His hand held a tiny flashlight, very bright, and very easy to hide.

“He was signaling!” the young man shouted.

“What are you doing?” Gus asked.

“He was signaling the soldiers,” the young man repeated. “They are coming for us, and he has betrayed you all!”

Dr. Wisler held out his hands as if to plead his innocence, but said nothing, caught so shamefully with the beam of the laser still shining through the tiny apartment.

The young man reached back and retrieved a pistol from his belt, where it had been tucked out of sight under his sweater.

Bang!     

The shot was deafening in the small space. Dr. Wisler fell back, shot in the chest. He took two more bullets and slumped down, his shirt stained with blood and burnt cloth.

When the ringing of gunshots died away, the young man turned to the group and waved the gun in their direction.

“You make me sick!” he screamed. “You sit and pray, as if you could change things. But none of you will bother to look for a traitor in our midst. None of you can see the real battle, when it is right in front of your noses.”

“This will not help, Mitchell,” Ada warned. “They will come for us now.”

“They are coming for us already,” Mitchell snarled back at her. “Why do you think the tanks have come to this street? They are looking for this group, and thanks to Wisler, they have found us. In a moment, they will open fire. And if you are smart, you will pick up a gun and begin shooting back!”

“And what would that change?”

The young man softened in the face of her quiet assurance.

“Maybe not everything,” he said, “but I can certainly change something. But not by sitting and praying.”

“No, we can’t take up guns,” Siler protested. “It is all a game, something children play. First we invade, and then someone invades us, and all to own a piece of this rocky soil. Is that what you want?”

Mitchell pulled himself up to stand straight and tall. “I want to be a man,” he said.

“He’s right about one thing,” Gus said. “We can’t stay here.”

As if to prove his point, the bright beam of a searchlight suddenly shot through the window, casting gruesome silhouettes against the far wall.

“Everyone out!” someone shouted, and the Circle dissolved into a rush of bodies, all propelled out the apartment door. Siler waited until the doorway was clear, then looked back for the young man who stood squarely in the window, bathed in the glare of the searchlight.

“Go on—“ Mitchell started to say, but his next words vanished in a storm of bullets that crashed through the window and riddled the wall. They cut the young man in half, throwing his body in two directions.

Siler pushed himself out of the apartment and ran. He hunched low, as if he might avoid the next fusillade by making himself as small as possible. The picture of Mitchell’s body was fused into his memory. He tried to shake it loose, but it was there, everywhere he looked.

He made it to the end of the hall, where the rest of the group was hurrying down the stairs. Behind him, a tank shell crashed through a window on the first floor and exploded, devastating the apartment where it struck. The blast heaved the floor of the hallway upward, and then sent everything crashing down into the rooms below.

Siler looked back at the gaping hole where he had just been, mere seconds before. Another image burned itself into his brain.   

Gus Penchin grabbed his shirt and pulled him into the stairwell. He hurried down the steps and out into the alley. Maybe half the Circle was waiting there. The others had gone.

There was no time for questions, no time to tell what happened to Mitchell or how close they had come to death in the hallway. They scurried along the edge of the buildings like rats, navigating their way away from the sound of diesels and gunfire. Three block away they stopped and huddled, dead tired, under an awning in front of a deserted church. Of course, it wasn’t a church anymore. A coffee shop, maybe, or a flea market. Those would be more patriotic, these days.

“Where do we go?” Gus sobbed. “And what will we do?”

“We will go wherever we can,” Ada said between desperate gasps of breath.

“And we will do what we are called to do,” Siler Toff assured them. “We will search the scriptures, and we will pray.”

He looked around at the faces of the Circle, now reduced to five people, all of them exhausted and terrified.

“Did anyone bring a Bible?” Siler asked.

No, they had not thought to grab a Bible on their way out of the apartment.

“What do we do now?” Gus repeated.

And this time, Siler Toff didn’t have an answer.

“The Lord is my shepherd,” Ada said quietly.

The group looked at her, and then they repeated the words. “The Lord is my shepherd.”

“I shall not want,” Ada recited.

And they said it with her. All of it. As easy as conversation. As comfortable as breathing. They said the entire psalm, and then the Lord’s prayer. And then a few other verses that they had learned, sometimes one voice, sometimes all together.

A huge explosion in the distance snatched their attention for a moment. They all looked, and as they looked, they prayed, silently. 

Ada announced, “I have a question, about Daniel eleven.”

Siler Toff groaned. What was the use? They couldn’t say the chapter from memory. And to find a Bible in this town would involve great risk. He was about to ask Ada to hold her question for later, or never. But she spoke anyway.

“The contemptible king, the one who does away with the worship of God in the Temple,” she began, “was he someone in history, or is he for our day?” 

[-] © 2006