Disaster piled upon disaster.
The Eyes' SUVs with their emergency lights had just been removed from out front of Ardua Hall 24 hours earlier. Now they were back. Aunt Helena, Vidala and I set up at the big window of Schlafly Café, now the whole room was in the dark, with the rising Sun slowly increasing the light. Everyone except the four of us were confined to their rooms. Lydia had promised to be right back, "I'll only be ten minutes with Commander Judd." That had been forty-five minutes ago.
So far, no Eyes had come into the building. It was a good sign, but then again they were probably here to make sure important things did not leave the building or its grounds.
The Café door at the far end opened, and in strode Aunt Lydia. She came over, surveyed the scene outside and then sat. To no one in particular she said, "I'm getting too old for this."
The three of us had long since learned that it was useless to quiz her. Even Vidala had given up. Vidala had to come up with other ways to erode Lydia's authority. So we simply waited for what was next. We were all exhausted and needed sleep.
Aunt Lydia said she'd just got off the phone with the D.C. Red Centre, and their chief Founder. Lydia expressed surprise that the call was even allowed to go through, but cut to the chase, "whatever it is that's happening, it is only us. This District." So, there was no Gilead-wide upheaval. She then said, "I'm not even sure that the Commanders or the Chancery know that. According to Judd, they've not even communicated across Districts." It was hard to fathom that we Aunts may be able to accumulate information even better than the men.
She took a breath and continued. "Whatever it is that is happening, the Eyes of God and Guardians are just chasing things. A wife in Lexington raised an alarm at her house. Her martha had, apparently, drugged her. When the wife woke, the martha and their daughter were missing. As Eyes and Guardians were going house to house, they were discovering that something else was happening. Some other marthas and some other children are missing."
Lydia continued by saying that as a precaution, Commander Putnam had called a meeting for the Chancery - one that, coincidentally, Commander Lawrence had also called. At that meeting, they discovered that Commander Calhoun had been murdered. His martha and child were gone.
Lydia said, "So it is, once again - hurry up and wait. Commander Judd this time used the 'c' word. He got hysterical. Said that if this was, indeed, a coup, then it was probably already underway."
THEY KIDNAP CHILDREN, DON'T THEY
It hadn't been a coup. The Eyes were blaming Mayday.
The long and the short of it: at midnight in the hours before Aunt Helena, Aunt Vidala and me had held our all-night vigil in Schlafly Café, a cargojet flew from Boston airport to Toronto laden with 86 of Gilead's children, plus some marthas.
As incredible as that sounds. Those children - stolen children of Gilead - were now in Canada, and a few traitorous Marthas were on Canadian television talking about 'escaping' our country. Not sure what else there is to say. How can anyone claim that Canada, the exiled USA government, or the international community itself is not at war with our country? How can anyone claim that those countries are morally superior to us?
They kidnap children, and harbour traitors and child traffickers. Nothing could be clearer.
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