by Vic Kerry
Smalls crossed himself then rubbed the edges of his forehead. His eyes burned with tears for his friends. Both men stood a long time in silence. The cool February air whipped around them with every breeze.
“What now?” Smalls asked.
“I want you to stay here at the church. The monsignor has made provisions for you in one of the classrooms.” The archbishop reached into his pocket and brought out a cell phone. He handed it to Smalls. “I assumed that yours has been lost or destroyed.”
“That would be correct.”
“I made arrangements for this one to have your old number, just in case Cybil or Dr. Shrove try to contact you. Be safe, Father Smalls.”
Archbishop Harrington patted Smalls on the shoulder and walked off. Smalls stood under the tree a little bit longer. The wind chilled his skin, but the thought of Ashe and Cybil being at whereabouts unknown chilled him to the bone.
Traffic Camera: Intersection of St. Ann and Government Streets, Mobile, AL, 9:34 p.m. CST
A black Lincoln Continental idles behind a white van with the windows covered over from the inside by canvas material. The van’s right turn signal blinks, but the vehicle remains stopped. The Lincoln flashes its lights at the van. Three large men lumber from the back of the van. One steps in front of the car. Another hurries to the rear passenger side. The Lincoln lurches and tries to shift to the left to get around the van. The third man runs to driver’s door and tries to open it. When he fails, he rams his elbow into the window, shattering it. A black-clad arm fights against the third man as he paws inside the car. The third man grabs hold of the driver’s arm and pulls him through the window. The driver falls to the road as the Continental rolls slowly into the rear of the van.
The third man stomps his foot down on the head of the driver until a pool of dark blood forms around the head. As this happens, the second man pulls the rear door open. He drags Archbishop Harrington from the vehicle. The first man helps the second to secure the archbishop. They carry him back to the van. The third man finishes crushing the driver’s head into the pavement then joins the other men. The van turns right onto Government Street. The Lincoln rolls through the intersection leaving the dead driver bleeding on Ann Street.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Ashe’s eyes burned, and his back ached. He’d been hunched over a worktable for he didn’t know how long, but it felt like years. Czernobog had stuck him in a room fitted out better than any university electronics or engineering lab he’d ever seen. Several of the undead heretics milled around the room as well. The Devil assigned them to shadow what he did so that they would be able to make more of the recorders in the amount of time needed. Cybil stayed trapped somewhere in the warehouse. The thought of her slowed Ashe down as he worked. He wanted her to be safe, and Czernobog promised it would be so if he kept working. Ashe couldn’t help but wonder how much he could trust the Devil.
“Dr. Shrove.” The sound of the voice so heavily accented twisted into Ashe’s spine.
He turned to see Czernobog standing behind him. A small smile was on the Devil’s face. He looked almost pleasant and welcoming.
“Yes.”
“I think that you can stop for the evening. I don’t want you to get exhausted and make an inferior product. My whole plan relies on these things working as effectively as possible.”
Ashe rubbed his eyes and stood up. The muscles in his back and neck thanked him for letting them stretch. He reached over his head, bouncing on his tiptoes. “Thank you. I felt like I might snap.”
“I may be the Devil, but when I have a deal I try to take care of my investment.” The smile remained the same while he spoke. “I have made arrangements for you to have a small place to sleep here at the warehouse.”
“Is it with Cybil?” Ashe asked.
“I am afraid not. I cannot allow you two to stay with each other. You might come up with a scheme for escape.”
“Can I at least see her before you cloister me away?”
Czernobog laughed. It fell flat in the room, a joyless sound. “You make it sound like you are monk, Dr. Shrove. You also make it sound like I am forcing you to do this.”
“Aren’t you?”
“No. You agreed to do this, and you can walk away at any time you want. Just remember that we have a verbal agreement and breaking it would result in me keeping to my promise.”
Ashe’s mouth ran dry like a drainage ditch in August. The other man’s eyes did not have an ounce of dishonesty in them when he spoke those words. He realized that he could trust the Devil, that he might be the only thing in the whole universe he could trust to keep his word one way or the other.
“So can I at least see her?”
“I am afraid she has already been moved to my other facility. I promise that she is safe though and that Dr. Rogers is far, far away from her.” The creepy smile still crossed his lips. “I have him on another mission tonight.”
Czernobog put his hand on Ashe’s arm and started moving him toward the door. The undead engineers still worked at their engram machines. They moved slowly and with stiff motions. He wondered if they were nimble enough to make the precise connections and manipulations to work on such sensitive instruments. Ashe allowed himself to be pushed through the door of the lab and back into the cavernous work area of the warehouse where a float was being constructed. Czernobog followed him, closing the door behind him.
They walked past the float as other undead heretics attached decoration to it. The float looked like nothing Ashe had seen at the parades he’d been to. The colors were dark. The whole of the body of the float appeared to be black velvet and a bloodred moon hung over all.
“It’s the final float,” Czernobog said. “That’s when your invention gets to come into its own. It will be glorious.”
The Devil sounded like a madman at the moment. Ashe found it a little funny. He choked back a laugh. Czernobog stared at him. His eyes flashed with hellfire.
“I need something from my office at the university,” Ashe said.
“I don’t think so.”
“If you want these things to work right, then you’ll reconsider.”
“Tell me what it is; I am sure my people can find it with no problem.”
“I don’t think so. It’s on my computer and saved behind lots of security.”
“I am the Devil, and you think a series of passwords can confound me.”
“Actually, yes I do.”
Czernobog’s visage changed. The lines in his face became deep and dark as if coal dust had settled in them. The whiskers of his beard ruffled. “Who do you think you are? How dare you say such to me?”
Ashe saw that the other man’s teeth had sharpened to points, and his tongue appeared forked. “You know I’m right. You told me that you were no engineer. If you could manage technology, you wouldn’t need any of this.”
The Devil wrapped his fingers around Ashe’s neck and squeezed. He felt the power in the Devil’s grasp. His windpipe clamped off, and no air seeped into his lungs. The other man stared at him.
“What makes you think I cannot?” Czernobog asked and let his grip go.
Ashe reached up and touched his own throat. He rubbed it where the crushing grip hand been the tightest. It took a few moments for the air to fill his lungs up enough for him to speak. His mind already had his answer back to the Devil.
“Because you let me go.”
Czernobog quivered. “I will take you there myself. Any trickery and I let Rogers have her and make you watch. After Rogers rapes her, you can watch every male I have under my control do the same thing until she dies. I am Satan, Prince of Darkness. I will not be mocked.”
Every inch of the large room smelled of sulfur, and yellow smoke floated in the air. At that moment, Czernobog looked more like a demon than a man. Ashe understood that the Devil meant what he said, but he needed access to his c
omputer because if he didn’t get the algorithms he needed, the engram machines wouldn’t work. The Devil would kill them all anyway.
“I have no tricks in mind. Without my algorithms, this won’t work. They are far too complicated for me to memorize.”
Smalls lay on his very uncomfortable cot. A poster with a cartoon Noah looked down at him. A mobile of the days of Creation twirled above his head. Light from the street shone straight in his face, but the small size of the classroom that had been set up as his bedroom made moving his cot to a different position just about impossible. His new cell phone lay on his chest. The priest willed it to buzz or beep and let him know what had become of Ashe and Cybil. Then it did.
The small mechanism’s vibration tickled down deep into his chest. He snatched it up and looked at the LED screen. The deep green letters scrawled there said he had an email. Smalls pressed the okay button, and the message popped up. He scanned it quickly, looking for the sender. It was from Ashe. He quickly read it.
Smalls,
Cybil and I have been kidnapped. I don’t have time to detail what has happened. Send me back some religious incantation that wards off demons. Do it now. I won’t have another chance to check my email.
Smalls jumped up from his cot, but drew a blank on anything to reply with. Any other time, he would have seven or eight such incantations on the tip of tongue. He wondered why Ashe needed something like that and what was happening. If the message was truthful and his friend might not have another opportunity to check his email, he didn’t want to waste it with a question instead of the information that was requested.
Like a bolt of lightning, one of the incantations came to him. Smalls flipped out the keyboard on his phone and started spelling out the words. It was a rough translation of a Buddhist mantra, but it was all he had right then. After a quick check to make sure autocorrect hadn’t fixed anything, he finished the email with where are you. Green letters scrawled across the screen that said the email had been sent. Smalls stood staring at the little cell phone screen like a kid watching some great toy commercial during Saturday morning cartoons. It seemed as if an eternity passed. The screen remained dim, and so did Smalls’ hope of a response. He tucked the phone into his pocket and sat back down on his cot.
In times of great doubt and distress there were few things better for a priest to do than pray. So he did. As soon as he crossed himself after uttering amen softly to himself, the phone vibrated. He slipped his hand into his pocket and brought the phone out.
I don’t know, but I think it’s the warehouse where the Mystics of Mayhem are building their floats. I think that Detective Semmes knew about it.
Smalls read the email and knew what he had to do whether he wanted to or not. He would have to contact the Mobile police and find out what they knew about Semmes’ investigation. It probably meant they would think he was crazy. He got up and put his shoes on because he figured there was no better time than the present to get things started.
Ashe sat in the back seat of a Jeep Cherokee. The windows were darkly tinted. Next to him, Czernobog drummed his fingers together. One of the undead heretics drove them back down Michigan Avenue toward the warehouse. It felt strange that with all he had experienced in the last few hours the proximity of the warehouse to the university was what bothered him the most. He thought the feeling might be what it’s like to realize you were being stalked after the person was caught.
“How much of a problem do you think it will be to get those devices up and running before Mardi Gras night with those algorithms?” Czernobog asked.
“Not much. The algorithms are the linchpin in the whole recording engram formula. I’ll just have to make a few adjustments so that the matrix holds up when you reverse them en masse.”
“And you can do that, easily?”
“With all the equipment set up back at the warehouse, very easily.”
The Devil smiled his confident smile. He drummed his fingers together harder. Ashe could see the cogs turning in the demon’s mind. Something big was in the works. He wished that he could jump out of the car and make a run for it, but knew that wasn’t going to happen. Czernobog assured him that the doors would only open from the outside and that the windows were locked.
Cogs turned in Ashe’s mind as well. Smalls had given him an incantation that should ward off demons. He would have a little trick up his sleeve for the Devil, and now that he was positive that Czernobog couldn’t read minds, he wasn’t afraid of doing it. Ashe almost wanted to drum his fingers together like the Devil, but instead he watched the very dim lights of the city pass by as they rode on toward the warehouse.
Security Camera: Morgue Room 1, Singing River Hospital, Pascagoula, MS, 12:59 a.m. CST
A doctor and his assistant stand over the body of a small African-American woman. A slender microphone headset rests on the doctor’s head. He speaks into the microphone.
“Beginning autopsy of Debra Henry, identified only by the driver’s license in her purse. Person, who wished to remain anonymous, brought patient into this hospital’s emergency department, DOA. Claimed he found her in a parking lot off of Highway 98. Cause of death unknown and thus the reason for the autopsy. Dr. Simon K. Folds is dictating and performing the autopsy at 12:59 a.m.”
The doctor reaches for a large sawlike instrument on the tray table beside him. The assistant removes the white sheet covering the corpse’s torso. The sound of a metal door slamming open is picked up by the microphone. The doctor and his assistant look toward the far wall. Two large men lumber into the room. Erik Rogers follows them.
“What are you doing here?” the doctor asks. “No unauthorized persons are allowed in this room.”
One of the large men advances on the doctor. He knocks the autopsy instrument to the floor and snaps the doctor’s neck in one move. The assistant looks from the doctor crumpled on the floor to the men and runs away.
“Don’t worry about him.” Rogers’ voice is faint and sounds like it is spoken from one end of a cavern. “Stand guard outside and make sure no one else comes in.”
Both men lumber out the way they came. Rogers walks to the woman. He takes a small box from his pocket. Electrode pads dangle from wires attached to the device. He places the pads on the woman’s head in selected areas. After Rogers presses a button on the mechanism twice, the woman sits up on the table and removes the pads from her head. She stands, and Rogers motions for her to leave the room. He winds the wires around the small device and shoves it back into his pocket. Kneeling down beside the dead doctor, he removes the microphone headset and straightens.
“Testing: one, two, three.” His voice is loud and breathy sounding from the proximity to the dictation microphone. “Just to let whoever finds this tape know.” He points to the camera then waves. “I killed this woman about half an hour before I brought her into the ER, and now, she’s walking out a new woman. Try and catch me.”
Rogers cackles and drops the microphone. Feedback squeals out when it hits the hard floor. He smiles at the camera and blows a kiss toward it before walking out of the autopsy room.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Smalls hadn’t slept. All he could do was pace around the classroom that had been made his temporary quarters. After he rushed to the police station downtown, the sergeant on duty told him that no one was there at that time of night that could help him, but he could check back in the daylight. The problem was it took daylight forever to get there, and worse, it was a Saturday morning. The detective he needed to speak to wouldn’t be there, but as soon at his watch told him it was 8 a.m., he lit out for the police station again.
It took him about half an hour to walk from St. Joan of Arc Church to the police station. Cold rain drizzled on his way there, which made him walk faster. When he stepped into the police station, the officer who had told him to come back in the morning was still on duty.
“Father,” he said. “I
’m glad you came back.”
“I told you that I would. It’s imperative that I speak to Detective Cooper.”
“It’s imperative I speak to you.” Cooper came from behind a cubicle partition. “I called the number we had for you, and St. Mary’s-by-the-Bay.”
“What is it? Have you found Ashe or Cybil?”
“I don’t really want to talk about this in the open. Come to my office.”
Smalls followed Cooper into the bowels of the police station. Her office was unkempt with Styrofoam coffee cups sitting all over her desk. Papers of different sizes and colors spilled from piles. She sat behind her desk. The area in front of her was the only area devoid of clutter. Smalls sat across from her.
“I’m glad to see that you are well,” Cooper said.
“That’s surprising since the last time we saw each other I was sure you wanted me nailed to the wall by my scrotum.”
“I did, but that was before I found out you were innocent.”
“I’m glad to know that the police are impartial, but what about Ashe and Cybil?”
Cooper flipped open a tan manila folder that lay on a precarious pile of forms. She took out three pieces of paper and handed them to him. “I was hoping you could tell me. Those are pictures from a motel room up in Saraland. I left Dr. Shrove there yesterday evening with express instructions to stay put and only answer calls from me. When he didn’t answer his phone, I sent a patrol to check on him. That’s what they found.”
Smalls examined the pictures. They showed a motel room badly in need of updating. All the colors and fabrics looked like they had stepped out of a 1970s porno. The bed was made. One bedside lamp glowed from under the orange shade. It appeared no one had been in the room.
“I don’t see anything wrong. Am I overlooking something?” he asked.
“Yeah, Dr. Shrove. That room doesn’t look like anyone has been in it, although I dropped him off there myself.”
“He contacted me late last night and said that he’d been kidnapped. Probably by the same people that broke into his house and left me on Dauphin Island. He said that he was sure they had him in the warehouse that Detective Semmes checked out on Michigan Avenue that belonged to that parading society.”
