The R.E.M. Project: A Thriller (The Ocula Series, Book 2) Read online

  THE R.E.M. PROJECT

  J.M. LANHAM

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Please do not participate or encourage piracy of copyright materials in violation of the author’s rights.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  The R.E.M. Project

  Kindle Edition, March 2018

  Copyright © 2018 by J.M. Lanham. All rights reserved.

  ISBN-10: 0-9973460-5-1

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9973460-5-3

  Cover design by 2Faced Design

  Keep up with the latest J.M. Lanham news and releases by visiting www.jmlanham.com.

  For Hollis.

  Some cures are worse than the dangers they combat.

  –Seneca the Younger

  Table of Contents

  Prologue: Bringing in the Sheaves

  Chapter 1: Pill Run

  Chapter 2: From Bunker to Bungalow

  Chapter 3: The Fugitive

  Chapter 4: Running Down a Dream

  Chapter 5: End of the Line

  Chapter 6: Cloak and Dagger

  Chapter 7: Dissolution

  Chapter 8: Kerry’s Restaurant

  Chapter 9: Bajos, Part Two

  Chapter 10: Crisis of Faith

  Chapter 11: Tough Choices

  Chapter 12: Bruma

  Chapter 13: The Morning After

  Chapter 14: Back on the Bottle

  Chapter 15: Dos Jefes

  Chapter 16: Premonition

  Chapter 17: Southern Hospitality

  Chapter 18: The Kovic Connection

  Chapter 19: A Cabin in the Woods

  Chapter 20: The Run-In

  Chapter 21: A Woman Scorned

  Chapter 22: Come See Savannah

  Chapter 23: Dangerous Liaisons

  Chapter 24: Voices

  Chapter 25: Turncoats

  Chapter 26: Take Me to the River

  Chapter 27: Done

  Chapter 28: Junk Food

  Chapter 29: Preparations

  Chapter 30: A Walk in the Woods

  Chapter 31: Arrival

  Chapter 32: Behind Enemy Lines

  Chapter 33: Headlines

  Chapter 34: Hail Mary

  Chapter 35: Damage Control

  Chapter 36: Disconnected

  Chapter 37: Voodoo

  Chapter 38: Assets

  Chapter 39: The Call

  Resources

  Prologue:

  Bringing in the Sheaves

  It was Sunday morning at 11 a.m., and already the parking lot of Fruit of the Faithful Ministries was at full capacity, the ferocious wave of late-summer humidity doing little to stave off the determined congregation of the Reverend Jonas Perch. The aging preacher stood at the entrance to his newly-formed church and watched the heat rise and twist from the asphalt like cobras called from their charm baskets, giving him just enough time to entertain a daydream or two before the incoming hoard of parishioners broke the spell.

  He quickly donned a grin that stretched from ear to ear, greeting the churchgoers with two big rows of bright-white veneers and an enthusiasm he hadn’t felt in almost three decades. His once jet-black hair was now a slicked-back silvery shade of gray, and his timeworn face had earned him a hefty number of crevices, but on this Sunday morning, age was just a number. Perch was back at the top of his game, and with a faithful congregation to prove it.

  The reverend’s first summertime revival in almost thirty years was set to wrap up an exceptionally hot August. Droves of churchgoers filled the parking lot of the rundown strip mall in Spring Hill, Georgia, their cars overflowing into spaces reserved for nearby businesses that usually didn’t open up until noon on Sundays. Men searched for a place to park while women deployed vanity mirrors to put the finishing touches on their makeup. Once parked, the faithful hurried from their cars to the narrow cinder-block cathedral on the corner. The sound of high heels and hard soles clacking across the radiating asphalt parking lot was music to Perch’s ears. He emphatically greeted every member of the freshman congregation with humble nods and handshakes before ushering them inside, out of the heat and into the shade.

  The space Perch had leased just two months earlier had seen better days. The glossy vinyl letters on the outer glass, advertising the chapel was now open to all, jockeyed for real estate over the faded letters of the previous print shop that had occupied the space before going out of business. Chipped paint on the interior walls revealed a layer cake of colors from the countless other endeavors that had come and gone over the years. The fluorescent lighting was glaring and bright, revealing every stain in the ceiling and every rip in the gray-carpeted floor. Even the AC struggled to keep the mercury below eighty, but compared to the triple-digit temps outside, the church was an icebox.

  Seating was another setback. Rows of folding metal chairs were packed tightly together, with barely enough room for five chairs on each side of the cramped aisle that parted the congregation right up the middle. The seats filled up quickly as tardy churchgoers squeezed into the last of the empty spaces along the walls where additional chairs had been set up last minute, right by the entrance

  It was a dingy, intimate setting, with attendees standing shoulder to shoulder as they waited for the good reverend to close the doors of the church and make his way up to the wooden podium at the front. The packed house had easily raised the temperature inside another ten degrees, and was likely in violation of at least a dozen fire ordinances. But the heat was something Perch had grown accustomed to over the years, and legal violations had never been much of a concern for the 56-year-old to begin with.

  For the last thirty years, Jonas Perch, arguably the most profitable televangelist during the 1990s, had disappeared into obscurity, the result of a few inquisitive journalists shedding light on his deceptive late-night television program. For almost a decade, Perch’s Power Hour of Prayer had reeled in thousands of vulnerable, disheartened souls tuned in to the late-night program, selling the susceptible a faux path to a better life through the doctrine of seed faith. By convincing thousands of elderly, disabled, and working-poor viewers that forking over every last penny was a leap of faith that wouldn’t go unnoticed by the Almighty, Perch effectively got rich off the backs of the needy—while driving countless believers to bankruptcy in the process.

  The once-youthful and dapper Reverend Perch had brandished a porcelain smile and a silver tongue built to deceive countless faithful devotees for almost ten years, but like all surreptitious late-night scams, it was only a matter of time before he ripped off the wrong person. When the chairman of Action News Atlanta discovered his cancer-stricken mother had given up on chemotherapy at the recommendation of “that nice young man on television,” the career newsman decided to use his position to take decisive action. A few months of investigative reporting and one hard-hitting prime-time special later, and the good Reverend Perch was finished, banished from the public eye and forced into hiding by his victims’ furious family members, out for blood.

  Anyone familiar with Perch’s days of preaching for profit would have thought the scam artist had gone the way of the dodo, but from the looks of the standing-room-only crowd packed into the tiny space at the Spring Hill Mall that Sunday morning, it appeared the prophe
cy of Perch’s foretold extinction had been a little premature.

  He flipped his wrist and checked his watch, then greeted the last of the stragglers.

  “Good to see the family this morning, Robert. Ma’am.”

  Together, “You, too, pastor.”

  “Did the Dixons bring something to sow this morning?”

  Robert patted his pocket. “Got mine right here, pastor.” His wife raised her pocketbook, smiling with affirmation.

  “Wonderful. Looks like everyone’s prepared to receive His blessings. Absolutely wonderful.” Perch knelt down to speak to their six-year-old, Katie. “And did my favorite little girl bring her singing voice with her this morning?”

  “Sure did, pastor,” the girl replied.

  “That’s my girl.” Perch stood. “Y’all find you a seat inside and we’ll get started.”

  The new digs—along with the congregation—were a fraction of the size the pastor had been used to preaching to in his heyday, but he wasn’t complaining. In a little over four months, Perch had crawled from the trenches of the forgotten back into the limelight. And his followers were as faithful as ever.

  Salty beads of sweat covered the reverend’s face and moistened his collar, a result of the half-hour spent greeting parishioners in the August sun. He pulled a handkerchief from his suit pocket and dabbed his forehead, scanning the parking lot once more for late arrivals. No one else coming—the sheep were safely in. He shut the doors of the church and walked inside.

  The room was noisy, filled with the sounds of chatterboxes and whispered voices talking amongst themselves in pitches that would rival a high school lunchroom. The loud ones stayed on innocent topics: work, sports, whose kid just got married, whose kid was sick. The quiet ones, on the other hand, murmured seedier stories. Who got caught drinking at work. Who was about to lose his house. Who was cheating on his wife with his secretary. The lower the tones, the lewder the tales.

  Perch gestured to a young man at the front to hit the music, and in an instant the voices faded into the sounds of gospel hymns playing from the loudspeakers up front. He began the slow and purposeful walk toward the podium, arms crossed behind his back, smiling at random faces on both sides of the aisle while singing along.

  Sowing in the morning, sowing seeds of kindness,

  Sowing in the noontide and the dewy eve;

  Waiting for the harvest, and the time of reaping,

  We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.

  The pastor bounced a fist with the tempo as he stepped up to the podium. The singing continued.

  Sowing in the sunshine, sowing in the shadows,

  Fearing neither clouds nor winter’s chilling breeze;

  By and by the harvest, and the labor ended,

  We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.

  Perch nodded a cue to his young assistant and the music stopped. All eyes were on him, every face in the room eager to hear his message. A Bible lay open on the podium, the golden pages turned to some random spot in the middle. The presentation looked good. He clenched both sides of the lectern as he spoke.

  “Nothing like an old-fashioned gospel song to ring in a service, is there?”

  The congregation muttered a collective “Mm-hmm.” Faces were blank, but attentive. No nap-takers or songbook flippers or seat squirmers were present. The pastor spoke, and the people listened.

  “There’s a lot of wisdom in that song,” Perch said. “I want you all to take a moment and ponder on the lyrics. The meaning behind them. What do you think the writer was trying to say when he said, ‘fearing neither clouds nor winter’s chilling breeze?’”

  Silence.

  “Was he trying to say we should only sow our seeds when the weather is nice?”

  Faintly, “No.”

  Perch explored the space behind the podium. “Was the writer saying, ‘Boy, it sure looks scary out there! Maybe we should wait till things clear up a bit’? Is that the message here?”

  Louder, “Nuh-uh.”

  “Did the writer think it was okay to sow some of the time, or does a good Christian sow all of the time?”

  “All the time, pastor.”

  “That’s right!” Perch hollered, punching the air in front of him. The audience was getting riled up now, responding with a combination of boastful amens and bless-him-Lords.

  “He that observeth the wind shall not sow, and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap. Ecclesiastes 11:4. Doesn’t matter whether the winds a-blowing or the clouds are a-thundering. Whether times are good, or whether times are bad. We don’t get to pick and choose when the best time to sow is, because the best time to sow is all the time. Can ya say amen?”

  “Amen.”

  Perch lowered his tone. “Now, most everyone here already knows how important it is for us to be sowing. But there are some of those among you”—he tossed his hand like a man feeding the birds—“who believe a little sowing here and a little sowing there is all it takes to earn favor with the Lord. Brothers and sisters, how can you expect a bountiful harvest when you’re not even sowing enough to draw interest from the fowls in the air? Pretty bad when you’re sowing seeds and can’t even get a bird to bat an eye, ain’t it?”

  The audience chuckled as Perch walked back to the podium. Well, most of them anyway. A stone-face in overalls sat near the back and caught Perch’s eye, but only for a second. Perch had never seen him before, but that wasn’t much cause for concern. His congregation was growing every week. He ignored the look and moved on, flipping toward the back of his Bible. “Just listen to what Paul told the Corinthians some 2000 years ago: He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully.” He closed the book and paused. Then he said, “The word of God is everlasting.”

  The congregation agreed.

  “God’s word never changes,” Perch said. “It’s the same now as it was two thousand years ago, and it’ll be the same two thousand years from now.” He pointed to the front row. “Tell me, Catherine. Do you want to reap a bountiful harvest?”

  “I do, reverend.”

  Perch looked over. “What about you, Evelyn? You expect to gain something from heaven by sowing a little here, sowing a little there?”

  “Course not, reverend.”

  “That’s right!” Perch said, slapping his knee. The ebb and flow of the sermon was predictable. A song stanza or Bible verse was cherry-picked to make a point, followed by two or three rhetorical questions to raise excitement in the crowd. Once the melodramatic tide reached the high-water mark, the pastor let his staged spirit flow with a boisterous round of hoops, hollers, knee slaps, and fist pumps. Then it was back to solemn tones and soothing anecdotes, letting the tide roll out while taking a moment to catch his breath.

  Softly, “I want to share with you all a story about a woman I met some thirty years ago,” Perch said. “Name of Annie. When I first met Annie, she was in bad shape. Her husband had passed away, her health was failing, and the IRS was after her for several years of unpaid taxes. Couldn’t really blame Annie for falling on hard times. ‘After all,’ she told me, ‘my husband used to take care of all the bills.’ That sound familiar to anybody?”

  The women nodded.

  “Annie needed help, and a friend had told her about my ministry,” he said, lips curling into a smile. “Annie sought, and boy, did she find. I remember the first time I sat down with her to give her counsel after one of our services. I let her tell her story for the better part of an hour. Didn’t interrupt—just listened. When she was finished, she said, ‘Well, reverend, I’ve told you just about everything I know to tell. Is there anything you want to ask me?’”

  Perch held a finger up. “I had just one question for poor Mrs. Annie. I said, ‘I didn’t hear anything about sowing, just a whole lot about how you’ve been reaping a pretty dismal crop over the years. Tell me, sister. Do you tithe?’” He mocked Annie, raising his voice an octave. “She goes, ‘Well,
I used to, but not for a long time now.’”

  The congregation murmured disapprovingly—all except for that one solemn face in the overalls. He stayed quiet, arms crossed, bottom lip full of what must have been chewing tobacco.

  “Now, I could stand up here all day and go on about how wrong Annie was to think the good Lord was gonna bring the blessings when she didn’t bring the tithe. But I’m not gonna do that, because that’s not the story of God’s desire to redeem each and every one of His believers from the most wicked of curses: the curse of lack. You see, just moments after me and Annie met, Annie chose to sow a seed as a covenant between her and God.”

  “Praise the Lord,” a man shouted from the back.

  “Amen,” said another.

  “And let me tell you something: God did not disappoint. Just like Isaac sowed his seed in Gerar, receiving a hundredfold return that same year, so did little Mrs. Annie, just a few weeks into her new life as a sower and a tither. About a month or so after our first meeting, Annie got another notice in the mail from the IRS. But instead of threats of property leans and jail time, this letter came with an apology. Turned out the IRS had made a terrible mistake and actually owed Annie over $5,000.”

  Perch took off his suit jacket and tossed it behind the podium as a chorus of hallelujahs and applause filled the cramped church hall. “Now, some of you may be a-wondering,” he said, rolling up his starched white sleeves, “Just how much little Mrs. Annie tithed that day. Well, let me just put it this way. Annie hadn’t tithed in years, so she had a little catching up to do.

  “What would have happened if Annie had only given the bare minimum that day? Really no way of knowing, is there? But know this, brothers and sisters: the more you give, the more you shall receive.” He pointed toward the crowd. “Don’t you want to receive all the blessings the good Lord wants to give you?”