I may have shattered mine, but I’m still holding a jagged, three-foot branch, and it’ll do the job just fine. I raise my spear in the direction of the Reverend’s beam, which overwhelms the bunker with blinding white. “We’re leaving, sir,” I bark. “Step back and let us through.”

“What are you going to do, Connor, kill us?” the Reverend asks, brittle and snide. “People will find out you butchered a defenseless Christian mission. There’ll be nowhere to go. Not for you. Not your friends outside. Not even those children. I can already see the headlines: Queers slaughter the righteous—people with families!”

“People with families? Like Karaoke Bill Hannigan?”

The bunker falls into stillness. A cold laughter breaks. “Mr. Major, you really are making me sorry I ever brought you to Nightlight. Hats off. Karaoke Bill Hannigan. I’m happy you brought him up because that’s just what I came to talk about.”

With a deafening slam, the Reverend shuts his floodlight, sinking the bunker into an even blacker darkness than before. As multicolored globules swim past my vision, the stout, raven-like outline of the Reverend appears under the lamp above the exit. Somewhere ahead, Darcy and Marcos linger close to him, too close for my comfort. With one good heave, Marcos could impale the Reverend right through his shriveled heart, and we’d be free.

But how would it look? Could we convince anyone this was self-defense? If this were a TV show, I’d say, “Of course people will believe us!” But after what I’ve been through today, I wouldn’t trust my mom to believe I was in danger if I came home in a body bag.

“So, what do you want?” I ask.

“I want five minutes,” the Reverend says, descending the remaining steps to us. Through the shadows, Marcos raises his spear, but halfheartedly; he’s done the same math I have. The Reverend approaches Marcos with a long, flat box in his free hand. “Mr. Carrillo, thank you for not disemboweling me and congrats on your new courage.”

“Why do you need five minutes?” I demand, refusing to drop my spear.

“Because that’s how long my tape runs.”

The Reverend’s box opens like a briefcase. Two steps closer, the overhead light reveals a cassette player in his hand. Its open slot is empty, but once the Reverend drops his floodlight, he retrieves a tape from his shirt pocket. His gleeful smile never fades. He’s savoring this. Whatever Bill did, the Reverend is the puppeteer. He enjoys dangling us on strings—me, my mom, the campers, Briggs, Ricky…maybe even Bill himself.