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  KADDISH

  WHITLEY STRIEBER

  THE MORNING SKY was dull orange, the air sharp with the smell of the refineries that crowded banks of the Houston Ship Channel. On summer mornings when the sea breeze swept up from the Gulf of Mexico, you could smell them even this far north. Maybe all the way to Arkansas. The smell of prosperity.

  Hal had been out on the back porch with his Bible, preparing for his day as he always did, by letting the book fall open in his hands. God’s hand was there in the chance of it, he felt sure. He looked down—and this time was truly amazed at the verse he saw. “Thank you, Lord,” he murmured, “for caring for this unworthy servant.”

  After he finished, he closed the book with the Great Seal of the State of Texas on its cover and went inside. Maddie was just laying out breakfast, and the kitchen smelled of bacon and coffee. Morning sun slanted in the windows, past the yellow-checked curtains they’d put up together when they bought the house. The air was cool from the air conditioning, the house filled with the quiet energy of morning. Upstairs, showers hissed and there were faint thuds as the kids hurried to be ready at the required time.

  “James spoke,” he said. “Spoke just to me when I opened the Good Book. Listen, Maddie. ‘Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.’ ”

  “Husband, that is a blessing, truly.”

  A glance at the kitchen clock told him that they had only a few seconds alone. He went to her and took her in his arms. He kissed her forehead. “We are blessed, Wife,” he said. Then she had to break away, take the handbell from its place at the end of the kitchen pass-through counter, and ring it.

  As the familiar sound pealed through the house, the children came downstairs in line, eldest first. Paul was fourteen, correctly dressed and neatly groomed for his day as a high school freshman. The other children, all younger, wore the regulation uniforms of Texas public school students; Ruth and Mary in blue jumpers and white oxfords, Mark in his khakis with his ROTC cap folded neatly in his belt.

  Hal had reason to be proud of this family of his. For one thing, his children wanted to be as they were. They were not like the children of liberals and heretics, dressing the part just so they could receive a state-sponsored education, then going home to learn ridiculous lies like evolution from their Christ-hating parents.

  They’d be most welcome in the Russell Unit, all of them.

  He took his place at the head of the table. The children stood behind their chairs. He said grace, then took his seat. The boys followed him to their seats while the girls helped their mother serve him and his sons.

  When all the plates were ready, the women took their seats. Bacon and eggs and strawberry Toaster Strudel. Coffee for himself and Maddie, milk for the kids. “Maddie,” he said, “girls, thanks for this food and service, praise be.”

  “Praise be, Father,” Ruth replied.

  “Thanks,” Paul and Mark both murmured. “Praise be.”

  After the meal, Hal asked, “Has anyone anything to ask, or any announcements?”

  The children sat silent, heads bowed. Mary giggled. Maddie shook her head, short and sharp.

  “No, I know what everybody’s burning to ask. Go ahead, love,” he said to Mary. “It’s very much allowed.”

  “Daddy, will you really talk to Vice President Duke today?”

  “Yes, Mary, the vice president is scheduled to telephone me at the unit at ten-twenty.”

  All eyes were on him. Wide, expectant. He could not conceal his delight. So much for the gravity of the Christian father. “What will you say?” Mark asked.

  “We do not interrogate our father,” Maddie cautioned him.

  “No, my dear, we do not. Your mother is entirely correct. And I cannot tell you what I will say because I will answer his questions. If he should by the grace of God see fit to encourage me, I will thank him for it.”

  “David King says you’re in danger.”

  The word hung there. It was true enough, in this strange, fallen world of ours, that there could be danger to him on this day. “That’s in God’s hands,” he said to his oldest boy. He’d heard the fear trembling in Paul’s voice. “But the state protects us pretty well out at the Russell, so I don’t expect that any trouble will develop.”

  “He said that Sweden is going to file a charge against you in the International Criminal Court. What’s the International Criminal Court?”

  “An illegal organization in a faraway country that has nothing to do with us.” He did not add that it meant that their planned vacation to see the churches of Spain next summer would have to be canceled. He did not add that, because of the duty he would perform this day, he would become a wanted man across most of the world. “Any more questions or comments?”

  “Husband, our meal is concluded.”

  The children rose.

  “Very well, then, as you know, God has graciously given me a trial to face today. Will you pray with me now?” He stood, also, then bowed his head and closed his eyes, and asked God to bless his efforts this day in support of the will of the legislature and governor of the State of Texas.

  “God,” Ruth said, “please do your will on our daddy today.”

  “God bless you all,” he said. “Ruthie, thank you for that special help.”

  The children came in line, and each kissed him good-bye. At the kitchen door, Maddie embraced him in her comfortable arms. “God be with you,” she said.

  “And with you,” he replied. He looked at Mark, gave him a wink.

  Mark smiled.

  “Jesus protect the Luther Middle School football team,” Hal said, “and give the tight end the ball when it counts.”

  “Thank you, Father. Praise Jesus.”

  “Dad,” Paul said, “Coach says we aren’t supposed to pray to win. Coach says that Jesus will favor us according to His will.”

  “Coach is right,” Hal said, “but here at home, among ourselves, there’s no reason not to give Jesus a little hint.”

  “Dad,” Mark asked, “why the tight end?”

  “Aren’t you the tight end?”

  “I’m tailback.”

  “Ah. Then, Lord, I revise my prayer. Give the ball to the tailback when it counts.”

  He straightened his tie in the hall mirror and put on his jacket. It was a hot February day, so there was no need for his old overcoat. He put his hat on, though. Nowadays, he felt naked without his hat. He remembered the times before, when men had strolled around in open T-shirts, gone to work without ties, let alone hats.

  He got in his Buick and headed off toward the highway. His sons had been hinting of late that the family might stop by the dealership and look at the new Roadmaster, but he didn’t consider a car bought in 2003 any sort of a candidate for trade-in. Still, he had to admit that 118,000 miles was a fair amount, and, in fact, since the company had forced the old dealer to sell to a Christian, he might at least go in and take a look.

  As he passed the Wal-Mart, he saw a new banner, “Now Certified All Christian, Praise the Lord.” He could not resist calling out “Praise Jesus”—it made him feel so wonderful to see that.

  The Religion in Life Act of 2010 was having a very good effect on America, and those who had struggled for its passage had reason to be proud. Companies had gone through a great deal of trouble Christianizing, given all the antidiscrimination lawsuits by liberals and heretics.

  He pulled out into traffic and turned on NPR for the morning sermon. It was the Reverend Gates Hughes out of Atlanta, his subject, “Suffer the heretic to bum.” Hal listened with half an ear. He knew who had inspired the sermon: He had. What he would do today had the whole nation talking. Most were raising their voices in praise and thanks, of course, but the liberals and heretics were still out there. They weren’t open about it anymore, of course, but if you looked at the Intern
et on some unfiltered search engine from abroad, you’d find plenty of disagreement.

  He would see plenty of that today. Normally, it was illegal for members of the press even to speak to state officials, let alone question them. Of course, the rules were bent for friendly American press. As far as unfriendly press from abroad was concerned, they were strictly enforced. More than one reporter from Mexico or England or some other heretic nation had done time for questioning state officials. Deservedly so. He’d like to have one end up on his unit, to see how real prisoners were treated. The pasty bastard would find out what punishment really meant, then.

  He sighed. The press could not be kept out, by order of the State Supreme Court. If the execution was to be public, as the legislature had mandated, then he was going to have to answer questions. Of course, the U.S. reporters would be fine. The whole media, from radio to television to newspapers to the Internet—all of it—was united behind the government. America had been blessed by God that he had not been in Washington on Obliteration Day.

  He had brought his strong heart, his loving kindness, and his brilliance to the job of acting president, and for the last eleven years, he had never failed in the exercise of loving firmness and Christian principle. In his deepest heart, even a thirty-second call from the president would have meant more to Hal than the allotted six minutes with Vice President Duke. The vice president was a fine man, of course, but the president was the savior of the nation.

  “Lord, forgive me my selfishness,” Hal said aloud. He should be grateful for the incredible honor of a call from the vice president. “I thank you and I praise your name,” he said.

  He thought about that business of the International Criminal Court. He’d been indicted last week, along with three thousand other federal and state officials, for all manner of crimes against humanity. Crimes against secular humanism, more like. Of course, he could tell his family nothing about that. That was all classified. You had to be able to reach Web sites outside of the country to find that out. His indictment had been an ugly one: 7,110 counts of murder, one for every prisoner executed at the Russell Unit under retroactive laws.

  The EU had sent commandos to Mississippi to get Wade Cole, the head of the Federal New Towns Program that was relocating the Negroes. Wade Cole was in jail in Norway or somewhere. It was the foreigners that were the problem. They were a bunch of zoo animals, in his opinion, humble before God. Frogs, Wogs, Eyties, Russkies, Polacks, Micks, Brits, Canucks, you name it. Their reporters would be there today, all of them would be there screaming out their rat-shit questions.

  “God be with me,” he said, “may it please you for me to represent the State of Texas in a manner satisfactory to you.”

  Traffic on the 55 was unusually heavy. His car was stifling, the air conditioning broken and Freon embargoed. Thanks again, EU.

  He switched to the all-news feed off the satellite. “Over four thousand registered heretics in New York City were banned from use of the Internet for illegal surfing of extra-U.S. Web sites,” NPR reporter Gareth Harrington intoned. Hal would like to get them in the unit, too. They’d learn something pretty darned serious about being a heretic in a godly country.

  Finally, the traffic report: “Police activity on the 55 North has slowed traffic to a crawl …”

  He said aloud, “Phone. Office.” An instant later the car responded, “Office ringing.”

  “Jenny,” he said, “it’s me. Yes, praise His name. I’m on the slow side of an arrest on the 55. I’m going to be about fifteen minutes late. No, don’t back up anything, and the call is still on, of course. If you have to patch it through to the car, be ready to do that. And get Elaine to start that scout troop on its tour and I’ll catch up with them if I can. And listen, I want a meeting with that structural engineer, Williams—what’s his name? That guy. I am looking at full three-foot cells in the new wing. I think we’ve got that human confinement study, it was saying, I think, twenty-eight inches would work on width. That’s gonna give us a nice increase in density. I want it redrawn—you tell him that. Redrawn before he sees the board of governors. Yeah, and tell him to thank me for saving his job, Jesus be praised.”

  As traffic began to pick up, he told the phone to hang up. Over his six years at the Russell Unit, they had gone from 18,000 prisoners to 41,000. This new wing would take them up to 62,000 and an extension into Sam Houston County was already being eminent domained. Unfortunately, every darned farmer in the county was a certified Christian more than five years faithful with church records to prove it, so the land had to be paid for.

  He passed the scene of the arrest. A Mex was being hauled up. Of course, who else? The police had put an official “Shot for Running” sign on the guy, who bled and kicked while a blood-covered woman screamed into a cell phone and tried to raise him on her shoulders. She was no dummy. She knew a less-than-healthy man would suffocate during a dangle.

  The law required that felons who ran be suspended to immobilize them. Until a doctor declared him unfit for this procedure, he would remain there. And the county ambulance that contained the doctor was unlikely to be in a hurry. Why should Texas pay to keep some foreigner behind bars? Mexican speeders, no U.S. ID, no rights. Oldest story in the book. Probably had a car full of liquor.

  The traffic cleared out on the far side of the dangle, and he got back up to seventy. The rest of the journey to the unit went just fine. Soon he was turning onto Freedom Road, the way into the unit from the 55. Lining it were foreigners, each holding a protest sign and an open passport. They were really Americans, every traitorous one of them, who escaped to the EU and came back as European citizens under diplomatic protection. Hal knew that the secret Compulsory Renationalization Act was just about to be signed into law by the president. As soon as that happened, all of this scum would get renationalized and charged with treason. He was driving past hate-filled faces that would, he knew, in a few months be looking at him just a bit differently in the execution chamber.

  As he pulled up to the gate, the warning bell jangled and the siren gave the three short bursts that meant the warden was arriving. Guards saluted as he drove in. Prisoners in their orange uniforms turned, stood at attention, and bowed their shaved heads.

  Russell was a small unit in a state with a prison population of over a million. The new Sandler Huntsville Prison Extension was the largest single unit, with 81,000 serving mostly light sentences. Ten-to-twenty-year felons, Internet violators ranging from arrogant liberals who’d bypassed federal filters and gone on illegal offshore Web sites, to people whose computers had turned up in automated porn sweeps. S-H inmates had it easy compared to Hal’s charges. They got phone privileges and access to their own lawyers if they had the money for such. There was a prison hospital.

  Russell was 80 percent lifers and 20 percent death-row prisoners. With the new twelve-week appeal rule now in force, that group was finally turning over at a reasonable speed. Gone were the days when a man could live to a ripe old age on death row. The scum and their scum lawyers who’d kicked America in the teeth with their traitorous appeals were learning a fine lesson just now.

  If a jury of your peers says you have to die, that ought to be it. DNA tests, all of that mumbo jumbo—that junk should not be given validity over the opinion of sworn American Christians. And fortunately, the Supreme Court had finally agreed. God said, “Thou shalt not suffer a sorcerer to live,” and that went for all of them, the whole damn “scientific community,” as they called themselves, and all their ideas and junk discoveries and all that garbage. DNA was a Satanist plot and they were all heretics, atheists, and Marxists, every one of them. The Word was clear, the Holy Bible was the law … or would be, as soon as the president, the Congress, and the state legislatures finished the work of the Lord.

  He went into the blessed cool of the administration building and down the long tiled hall to his office. Except for administrative areas, the state prison system had required that all air conditioning be permanently discontinued in or
der to comply with cost-per-prisoner legislated mandates. The only exception was prison hospitals when the interior temperature reached 93 degrees. As Russell had only an infirmary for work-related injuries, that was not an issue here.

  “Good morning, sweetheart,” he said to Jenny as he walked in. He paused, smiled slightly at her, then sailed his hat toward the hat rack. It soared in an arc, rose a little, then dropped as softly as a leaf on the rack.

  “Praise Jesus,” she cried.

  Hal laughed. He knew that there was a monthly pool on his hits or misses, and he knew that Jenny was on the “hits outnumber misses 2-1” line, which was currently at 18-1 odds.

  Wise place to be, even so. Nobody realized that he could control his tosses perfectly. He’d gone close to the line for the express purpose of juicing her chances. He was an efficient tennis player and as good a golfer as old President Bush, with whom he had been privileged to play one day three years ago, at the Houston Country Club. Along with the other five big unit wardens, he had been the invited guest of Senator DeLay.

  Jenny came in with the day’s con, as his schedule was called.

  “You have the vice president in eight minutes, then the press for ten minutes, then the execution, then lunch with Minister Apple—”

  “When did that come up?”

  “He called just now. Your wife told him you were free.”

  What in the world would Clay Apple want with lunch in the middle of the week? “I’m obviously not free, not right after this execution.”

  “Then a two o’clock with the Sam Houston County planning commission, then an intake meeting on fifteen c.m.s, then that Red Cross thing has come back.”

  “Scratch that.”

  “I, uh, are you sure? He’s in the prison.”

  “He’s here? Now? Where?”

  “We’re not supposed to escort him.”

  “I’m not going to be talking to the Red Cross. What goes on in this prison is not the business of the Red Cross. No matter what he thinks he’s found.”