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that were covered with drapes not unlike the ones that guarded the entrance to the small room where he had awakened. Bedillia explained that these were all living quarters of those who dwelled in the Refuge. Closed drapes should be treated as a locked door. The people of this small community had little privacy, but what they did have should be respected.
    Along the way, he noticed an occasional small creature fly past him that looked like an overgrown insect. He had also seen them on the day of his deliverance. He still didn’t know exactly what they were, and Bedillia declined to talk about them beyond saying that they were sentries of a sort,guarding the tunnels and inhabitants of the Refuge from those who would violate it.
    He also encountered people mostly dressed in clothes made of the same brown fabric. Some carried bundles of what appeared to be sticks, others had earthen jars, while still others carried nothing. Many offered a friendly smile and a hello as they went about their tasks, whatever those tasks might be.
    The demographics of this place were unusual. It seemed to lack senior citizens and children. In reality, Tom couldn’t bear the thought of children in a place like this. He was thankful that he saw none. Unlike the old rock song, Hell apparently wasn’t for children.
    He passed through a large cavern room filled with crude stone tables and chairs. Bedillia called it a community meeting room. He passed by another cavern room that contained looms and spinning wheels, the place where the simple clothing of these people was woven. There were even vast caverns where the stone floors had been ground up into a sort of rocky soil. Here, there were gardens filled with many varieties of fruits and vegetables. Some were familiar, others were not. The gardens were illuminated by brilliantly glowing crystals in the ceiling and irrigated from pools of water that found their source in the rocks around them.
    Food was not a commodity vital for the survival of the bodies of those people who existed in this realm beyond death. But it served to placate their purely psychological need for sustenance in much the same way the consuming of water relieved their thirst. They were phantasmal sensations, realities that Tom’s mind had problems wrapping itself around. It just didn’t make sense. If you couldn’t die of hunger or thirst in this place, why would one’s body crave them? It wouldn’t, but it did. And now, in the absence of the pain that had been a constant reality on the altar, his mind was forced to confront this enigma.
    But these gardens scattered throughout the caverns produced more than food. They also produced a tough stringy plant that yielded fibers that could be weaved into the brown fabric that formed the base material for all of the clothing worn here.
    Tom’s mind returned to the tunnel before him. The entire complex was illuminated by huge crystal lights that seemed to grow out of the ceiling. Along the way, he was forming opinions about this place based on what he had seen. So far, he was not impressed. Bedillia spoke with confidence of their eventual overthrow of Satan. How? Who were they kidding? These people were, essentially, hiding under a rock hoping that Satan or his minions didn’t turn it over.
    He’d tried to engage Bedillia in conversation along the way, but she was evasive about this place. Was she delusional? Perhaps all of these people were. Maybe it was the only thing that could prop up their crumbling sanity. Without some sort of hope, some vision, real or imagined, people perish. That was in the Bible, wasn’t it? He directed more specific questions at her. “You’ve rescued about 1,100 people over the last six years or so, right?”
    “I’ve been involved in the rescue of some of them,” replied Bedillia. “Abaddon, is the real hero. He has personally rescued more people than anyone else.”
    “But there has to be a plan,” said Tom. “I mean, what kinds of people do