I’m gonna come right out and say it: I never trusted Len Vorhees. Not from the first day he arrived in Sannah County. Could talk the talk, all right, but far as I was concerned, that man was all hat and no cattle.

But Reba took to him right away and I guess it saved us driving over to Denham County every Sunday for church. None of us knew what to think when he started saying that those kids were the four horsemen. Reba was loyal to that church, and I wasn’t going to push her. Way I saw it, it was plain that Len was using a dead woman’s last words for his own ends, as a means to get in with those big-time preachers up in Houston. Then he went and mixed Jim Donald up in that. Jim could be as mean as a box of snakes, but Pam’s death hit him hard. Stopped coming into work, wouldn’t talk to his buddies. Len shoulda let him be, let him drink himself to death if that’s what he wanted.

You know who I blame for it all going bad? Not Jim and not even those reporters who spread it all over the newspapers and TV. I blame Dr Lund and that writer guy, Flexible Sandy. They encouraged Len right from the beginning. No one can say they’re not guilty, no matter what slick language they use to deny it.

A week after Jim’s funeral, Stephenie’s cousin Billy had to deliver some lumber to Len’s ranch, and he asked me to ride along with him. Said he didn’t want to go up there on his own, and his regular man was down with that puke virus that was hitting the county. Reba asked me to take along some of her canned peaches. ‘For the children out there.’

It’d been a while since I’d last been to Len’s ranch, must have been near Christmas or thereabouts. I’d seen all those new people of course, driving around in their pick-ups and SUVs with dented sides, and part of me was curious to see what was going on up there. Billy said it made him uneasy being around them. Most were from the state, but others had driven up from as far away as New Orleans.

We got up to the gate, saw that there were a couple of men standing there. One of them was that Monty guy, the one Reba took against. They waved us down, asked us what we wanted, like they were sentries. Billy told them and they stood back, let us go through, but they stared at us real suspicious.

There weren’t as many trailers or tents as I expected, but there were enough. Kids were running everywhere; women huddled in groups. As we drove up, I could sense them watching us. I said to Billy that Grayson Thatcher, who used to work the place before Len came, would’ve near had a heart attack if he’d seen what had happened to his ranch.

Soon as we drew up, Pastor Len came striding out of the ranch-house, this big grin on his face, and a couple of guys appeared from the barn, started unloading the wood.

I greeted him as polite as I could, handed over the peaches Reba had sent.

‘Thank her for me, Lorne,’ he said. ‘She’s a good woman. Tell her I’d be mightily glad to see her out here on Sunday. I was sorry to close the church in town, but God has shown me that my path leads here.’

Course, I had no intention of telling Reba any such thing.

Then, coming from the pasture out back, I heard gunfire. Sounded like automatic weapons, too. ‘What you doing out there, Len? Hunting season’s closed.’

‘We gotta keep sharp, Lorne. God’s work isn’t only about prayers.’

It’s everyone’s God-given right to protect himself. I taught my girls how to shoot, same as me and Reba have been encouraging them to be prepared for any of those solar flares they’re predicting will occur. But this sounded like a whole nother rodeo–like they were fixing for some sort of battle. The more I looked around, the worse I got to feeling. It was clear they were fixing to set up some kind of secure compound. Rolls of barbed wire stacked up next to the old feed barn, and Billy said they were more than likely going to be using that wood to build some kind of fence.

Billy and I got out of there as fast as we could. ‘You think we should tell Sheriff Beaumont ’bout what they’re doing out here?’ Billy asked.

You could see it was going to go bad, you could smell it as if it was two-day-old roadkill.

So we went and saw Manny Beaumont. Asked him if he knew what was going on up at that ranch. Manny said that until the Pamelists broke any laws, there wasn’t nothing he could do about them. Lots of questions were asked later. Why weren’t the FBI monitoring his emails, things like that, like they do with those Islamofascists? Guess they didn’t reckon on a backwater preacher being able to reach out into the wider world and cause the trouble that he did. Or maybe they were worried they’d have another Waco on their hands if they tried to shut him down.