Free 2012 by Whitley Strieber Page B

the congregation realized that it was there, silence slowly fell. Became absolute. They watched it coming down, this most terrible weapon that had ever been in the world, and yet so strange, so unexpected.
    As a scientist, Martin tried to use what skills of observation he could muster. It moved like a thick liquid, this light. We had slowed light down, stopped it, reversed it, but had never created anything like this.
    When it began to come in, there was a sigh in the room, just the softest of sighs, no more, and a little girl’s voice piping, “Look at the pretty, Mommy, the pretty is on Jesus!”
    The painted glass with the bearded figure on the cross, the rough rocks, and the praying virgin in her chipped blue glittered with new life as the light ran along them, seemed to pause as if it was looking out across the congregation, evaluating them, scanning them, tasting of them…and then it came on, glaring on their upturned faces.
    “Dad, is this an alien being?” Trevor asked.
    “It’s Lucifer,” Winnie said. “Be quiet or he’ll come after us.”
    Some children began to cry, and a ripple of panic spread. Parents held them.
    Martin saw immediately that the thing moved like something alive-and something that felt no need to be careful, not the way it came surging in the windows, filling the room with its slicing glare. He was fascinated by its motion, he couldn’t help himself. It was a little like the spread of a membrane, he thought. But then it came forward so quickly that there were shrieks of literal agony, the terror was so extreme.
    Old Man Michaels dropped to the floor with a thud. He went gray, and Martin thought he’d probably died. A stench of urine and feces filled the air. Children broke away from their parents and began running toward the doors, in their terror imagining that they could escape. Mamie Leonard dashed after Kevin, but the boy reached the vestry door and threw it open.
    Glare literally gushed in. The boy cried out and jumped back, but the light swept around him. Martin observed only a flicker, and the child went still, standing in the body of it, surrounded by it, his jaw agape. His mother raced to the far side of the nave, and stood there shrieking again and again, sorrowing cries that dominated the room.
    Reg cried out, “‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways,’ says the Lord. ‘As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts.’”
    The light moved and expanded, crossing the sanctuary and flowing down into the nave. People got up on the pews to keep their feet out of it, but Martin knew it was useless, it would do its infamous bloom any second, and then, well he could not imagine it. He just could not.
    There was no sign of any biological material. It was definitely a plasma, he could see that. But it had the stability of a highly organized membrane. He tried to think of any bas-relief, any wall painting, any sculpture anywhere in the world that reminded him of this, and could not.
    This was new, he was pretty sure, to the experience of mankind.
    “Pray now,” Reg said, “pray and hold the children and be ready with the guns.”
    Martin put his arm around Trevor and Lindy picked up Winnie, and Martin felt the pistol in his pocket. He’d loaded it with hollow points. A shot to the head would destroy a child instantly, but Martin did not frankly know if he could do it. God willing, Homeland Security was right about the value of congregating and they would survive.
    “Shoot it,” a voice said. “God help us, shoot it!”
    “Don’t do that!” Bobby shouted. “That spreads it, we all know. That-“
    They were suddenly surrounded by the strangest thing any of them had ever experienced, a flickering mass of colors that hurt and felt good against the skin at the same time…and felt like somebody was watching you, not with malice, but with a sort of evaluative skill that seemed