Chapter 255
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On Sunday July 29th Eve was working at Wilkins' home while he was at church with his family. One of the sector guards insisted on watching reverand Walker's televangelist show. Eve didn't like Walker even when she was christian. He was believed to have gotten his start at sunday morning tent revivals, attracting much of the same crowd as the saturday night bawd shows. Walker was somewhat charismatic, became in political causes, mostly conservative, even a sometimes spiritual advisor to president Rubio. After Rubio was defeated by George Mason Walker got his own show on the Trinity Broadcasting Network. Today Walker was talking about religious conflict. He claimed that pagans were resorting to human sacrifices in a desperate attempt to stop ELE. Walker talked about the conflict in Japan, how buddhist pirates stole oil meant for christian shelters. Eve believed that most of these pirates had been buddhist before 2/4, as had most of Japan. Today, who knew? As much as Eve disagreed with reverand Jenkins, at least he was putting his life on the line to save innocent people. Walker seemed to be doing this simply for fame and power.
Eve had been having sporadic ightmares for two and a haf years now. Even if she survived impact, death would eventually find her. After that, Eve feared Hell. She thought about what reverand Jenkins said. What if he was right? If even children couldn't get into Heaven without being saved? All those children that Eve saw die at St Patrick's, could they really be burning in Hell? And what about Eve? She'd helped Karen abort her own little brother or sister. Was that baby in Hell? Eve had helped Amy get "saved" despite being muslim herself. And she'd helped Tara accept islam before her execution. If either christianity or islam was the one true religion, than Eve had helped damn a good friend to Hell. Either way, Eve feared what God's judgement might be.
On August 1st Eve was at Jenkins' church, giving some food to the refugees. There was talk that the governor was about to institute mandatory tattoos. They would brand sector citizens in case they tried to escape. In Eve's case, it would be a special tattoo branding her as a convicted murderer. These tattoos would become neccessary to get ration points, or to buy and sell within the sector. Some in the church feared this was the dreaded "mark of the beast" which would damn them for eternity. Jenkins assured them that the decision to accept satan's mark, and reject Jesus Christ, had to be a knowing decision. God would not damn them for getting into the wrong line. Jenkins also tried to talk to Eve about accepting Christ as her personal savior. Eve understood why he was doing this, he cared about her. He'd already lost his parents to sin, and his brother seemed unlikely to become christian. It would be a shame if Eve were sent to Hell after risking her life for these refugees. While at the church Eve heard a disturbing rumor. Sharon Mason was being accussed of having an illicit relationship with her own son. As much as Eve hated the Mason family, she didn't feel the need to exxagerate their evil perversions like this. What Eve couldn't deny was that child-molestation had been on the rise since 2/4. Before this some pedophiles had controlled their urges, either for moral reasons, or simply not wanting to go to prison. With 354 days until impact, they saw little reson for even this restraint. It seemed that even this perversion was becoming accepted these days.