Strong at the Break by Jon Land

Author:Jon Land
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

54

MIDLAND, TEXAS; THE PRESENT

The four girls who’d been held in the complex’s Intake Center were finally cleared by mid-afternoon. Found to be healthy, disease free, of good blood counts, proper height and weight on page one of the report, and something even more important on page two.

Arno had taken a long, slow walk across the grounds on his way to the Intake Center, passing the various one-, two-, and three-story structures that contained the Patriot Sun’s adult residences, which also included children up to the age of seven. After that, as had been the case at the Church of the Redeemer, children were segregated by gender in separate dormitory-style housing divided by age in two-year increments. Malcolm Arno agreed with his father that a communal living situation apart from their parents made it easier to indoctrinate children into the true ways of God and His plans for them. Contact with parents was regular but limited so as not to confuse or deter the instilling of values meant to return the country to its purified roots. Since the children enjoyed virtually no contact with the outside world as it was, no distractions were offered that could demean their training meant to build a love for country and community.

Arno lingered longer before the final outlying building. Its contents held the most important feature of the Patriot Sun’s future, left over from his father’s thinking but updated to appease a more modern sensibility. The world had judged the Church of the Redeemer through a prism of its own contradictory values and misplaced morals. The damn Texas Rangers storming the place like Nazi storm troopers, oppressors riding in under the guise of justice. They had stood in judgment of his father and his teachings to fight the increasing intrusions of government into every facet of life both private and personal.

What a visionary Maxwell Arno had been! He’d seen the erosions of freedom and the gradual growth of government long before others had jumped on a convenient bandwagon. It was sometimes hard to tell, even for his most ardent of followers, what the great man had done to make a point or make a world. Malcolm realizing just before the Rangers had come, that they were the very same thing.

Showered and wearing freshly laundered clothes, Arno finally entered the Intake Center to inspect the latest wares brought up from Mexico, now that they’d been cleared for what was to follow as part of his grand plan. Did that make him a sinner? A saint? More likely something in between, and Arno did not bother judging his own morality. He had become what God wanted in order to fulfill a grander purpose in a bigger scheme. That belief gave him comfort, even when his thoughts stirred up the old memories of growing up literally by his father’s side.…

* * *

Young Malcolm Arno could be invisible when he wanted, a sight so common in a suit and tie normally matching his father’s that those on the hallowed

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