Hell's Vengeance

by Max Jager

  The smaller corpses were the first to rise. They came in pairs mostly, thirty-five in total, all mutilated and wrecked upon. Gashes, bites, bludgeoned skin and torn muscle. It would have made the Fisherman freeze had he seen them. But he did not, the bodies were far off and away from the Fisherman who kept his side to his reel and whose tired face clocked the time spent with the extra black rings underneath his eyelids. Like a tree stump. He had been at Lake New Hope since five in the morning and had experienced the wasting away of hours since five in the morning. Not a single bite.

  News reports of days in terror had worn him down the past month and he figured this would be the day to relax, on the lake waters. Maybe he wanted to drown into the tepid waters, to wash away the news headlines from his memory, those of kidnap and of murder. But the more he dozed, the more they came back up. Haunted.

  It was ten in the morning. Ten thirty-four to be exact when he got his first bite.

  He awoke. The Fisherman put his legs against the timber of the boat and brought up his heavy, whining reel. His tongue smacked against the roof of his mouth and he could not hold his hat from falling atop the water and float like a brown lily pad. His muscles were strained and he wished he was younger. He added more scars to himself from the metal line and from the boat sides he kept crashing upon. It was a thrill though and he knew it was a thrill because of how wildly his white hairs stuck out through wet skin. Goosebumps.

  He fought against the bubbling water, he fought against the rope and with one final yelp he fought against his strained heart. He collapsed on his back. Something went flying above him and landed in the boat.

  It was a shirt.

  Striped, a polo shirt. Torn to ribbons. His eyes opened and he felt stress wounding him again, a headache was forming and underneath his eyelids, two more rings were chiseled in. His rod rolled away. The embarrassment and anger made him lean back and clasp his face. He was yelling into his hands. Yelling until his voice croaked.

  He looked up, tired, coming out of a haze. His red face felt the cool sting of air. He narrowed his eyes to where he had lost his line and further beyond saw an object floating. It was off in the distance, a bump in his vision that interrupted the blinding morning crimson. He rubbed his eyes as the mist and dew often guttered his vision. When he opened, he saw more bumps. More specks. More black foreign bodies. His heart began to beat wildly. The Fisherman looked down the side of his boat and saw spurts. A collection that grew like cancer and swallowed the hull. Festering, septic almost, as it rattled his boat. He looked beneath the depths of the dark waters. Was he in a cauldron? Spun in circles from the wooden spoon? No. There was no witch or alchemist. It was something worse, it was the vomit of the earth and of the sea.

  Curiosity bit him as much as fear. He stuck his hand in the water. It felt warm, fuzzy. He brought it back inside and saw the pinkish red on his palm. It had a sticky viscosity to it. He stood, walked back and tripped over a cooler. He fumbled back to a seat. The sound was getting more violent, it sounded like an explosion underneath him, he could felt it from his balls to his brains, the trembling roar of the lake. He was going to die. His face lost all color.

  "Goddamnit." He shouted. A geyser came out, a pillar of foaming white. It was erected fifteen, maybe twenty meters high before it shattered into small wet daggers. They struck him. The Fisherman put his hands against the spray and screamed for dear life as his boat rode the high tide down. It jumped, it clapped down and struck water so fast that he could feel the wood break. His boat nearly capsized and he screamed, screamed with every crack and break of the wood. The Fisherman hesitated to stand up but did after a while. He felt bruises and a compression in his head. An eye, swollen. His body, pained all over. He had been thrown like a rag doll in the tempest storm.

  His face was shivering. His body was afraid. And the waters returned to calm prosperity, all the noise and all the movement, dead. He stood at last. His body felt limp. He wiped the water from his face and looked out towards the horizon. His heart stopped, his pulse went faint. The color in his cheeks faded and his eyes turned to humble grey. He lay still, staring westward. What did he see?

  Corpses. Corpses rising from their watery graves. In gentle rhythm. One, two, three, four, up and away towards the rising sun.

  Chapter 1- Episode 1

  Vicars

  July 15th, 2017

  10:04 AM

  The most peculiar thing about the nineteen-ninety-four Volkswagon was not the two demon hunters driving it, Vicars as they're called. Nor was it the zooming eighty miles an hour pace they were working it to. Nor was it the incoming image of Horston that superimposed itself on the front glass, that little gritty town sitting at the top of the little-itty mountain in the eastern parts of rural Colorado (yet somehow maintaining that new age industrial edge). No. The most peculiar thing about that car and about those inhuman men was the laptop sitting atop the passenger, Ajax. More than that, it was the images he scrolled through as he took lazy puffs of Camel gold-band cigarettes.

  They were images of a corpse. What the Horston Report called 'The latest bite of the Vampire of Horston'. Ajax sifted through the images of the corpse, copied them, saved them.

  "Do you really need to do that right now?" Darr said (the driver). He turned sharp, the whole car nearly derailed but Ajax sat, comfortable in the intense cloud of smoke he fumigated the car with. It was hard to believe he could look through the black screen and into the laptop. Darr steadied the car, put his hand in front of him and wafted away smoke. He looked to the passenger, to Ajax, and stared at his eyes. It looked like he (Ajax) hadn't slept for weeks and Darr suspected that perhaps he was the vampire spoken of.

  The car bumped. Both of their tall heads hit the roof of the car.

  "I'm sorry." Darr half-smiled at Ajax.

  "Keep your eye on the road." Ajax exhaled smog. Darr looked forward, gasped, turned his wheel, and made his brake screech as he came around the bend. Ajax didn't flinch.

  "I'm sorry."

  "Don't apologize." He closed his laptop with a ceremonious clap. "We'll be there in thirty minutes."

  "Was that article important?" Darr asked, more out of nervousness than curiosity. He was taking glances at his partner to be, the intense fellow with the dark rings around his eyes and the brown skin and the unyielding gaze.

  "It might be. It might not be. It's just something to read to catch up on the recent history of the city." Ajax said.

  Darr looked ahead, both his arms were straightened out on the wheel. It felt worse now without the cacophony of typing or the buzz of a computer fan to keep the attention away from Darr. Now it felt, at least to Darr, that all the attention was on him. On his driving, or rather, skidding around.

  "So, uh, is this your first mission?" Darr scratched his neck.

  "No, it's not."

  "How long have you been in the game?"

  "Thirteen years."

  "Wow, you were young when you started." Darr said in a tone he reflected might have been too patronizing. He took glances to see if the man took offense. On further inspection, he began to wonder if Ajax was even here, for Ajax was looking elsewhere, maybe to the sky or the smog or at the sun, as his face looked scrunched and wrinkled.

  Darr licked his lips, fidgeted with his hair.

  "A Veron for thirteen years." Darr said. "So you've seen them right? Creatures. Monsters. Demons?"

  "Sure."

  "How was it?" Darr's mouth was slack-jawed now in what looked like child-like curiosity. Well, as child-like as a twenty-two-year-old man could get.

  Ajax looked past Darr to the window, then to the forest that colored the mountain range a drab green like cancerous ocean algae. He looked closer, to the lake and closer still to people he saw on the water surface
, swimming and dunking each other in their wisp-like white clothes.

  "It's frightening." Ajax answered.

  "Oh, I'm sure." Darr said. "How many times have ya fought?"

  "Is this an interrogation?" Ajax drew his sharp eyes to Darr. Darr felt the sweat upon his forehead.

  "I'm sorry." Darr went back into his seat. He waited a bit for the silence to pass. "Right. I get it. It's rude to ask so much of you without introducing myself. Well, my name's Darr and I - "

  "Don't care." Ajax interrupted. "I know everything I want to know about you. You were taken to an orphanage, a Japanese-American from Virginia. Poor and abandoned by your mother from birth. At the age of six, you were indoctrinated and spent the next twelve years training in that lonely hell you'd call the Vatican. You had your operation four years ago and after adjusting to your new existence, well here you are. A real church boy, fresh out the fucking archways in what I assume you assume to be the holiest fucking mission you could ever undertake for the Lord himself."

  Darr felt naked, exposed to a burning sun as it felt.

  "Hey come on. You represent the church as well, don't insult it." Darr said.

  "They give me work. That's it."

  "What does that mean? If you weren't raised there then where'd you get your training from?"

  "Doesn't matter." Ajax said.

  "Everyone has a back story, come on." Darr turned and swore he felt the car drop inches closer to the pavement.

  "A man's origins are important to him and him alone. To strangers? It's just a good way for them to play armchair psychologist. And let me tell you something, that's the worst thing to be, in someone else's small fucking box. I've heard enough of that psycho-babble-injured-child bullshit to know I don't want it or need it." He said with finality. Darr stared, confused as to why he had even bothered asking. That was the end of the conversation in that car. And both of them it seemed had decided unanimously, through wordless agreement, to stay silent for the rest of the ride. Idle silence, a jumping and wobbling idle silence.

  They passed a blemished sign, rust-red. Ajax turned his head to read it. 'Welcome to Horston'.

  They both turned then to the city now sprawling and unfolding itself upon their eyes. It looked like a city about to dissolve into the forest. The road was broken into cracks, black shards of asphalt. The stores were of worn stone and from the crevices and gaps of brick and concrete, you could see the wild grass and weed growing out serpentine-like. There was a pharmacy. A goodwill store. A candy store and all of it was so barren and lifeless as to be mistaken for a photograph of some grim Depression-era stock photo. It had the same wasted palette too, gray, brown, black. Ajax almost confused it for those ghost town tour props, like the walls would fall down after revealing themselves as being cardboard cutouts. But it was real. As they came along the sidewalk and looked out, it was all real; the broken turbulent road, the empty-eyed people wandering about like zombies, an old factory chimney towering over them with its shadow. It looked like a pipeline straight into the heavens, there to deliver the all the obfuscating grime the city had to offer.

  They stopped their car and got out. They stood in front of the pharmacy and looked across the street. There was a parking lot, the children were on the floor pulling out fistfuls of wild grass and driving their toy cars on uneven terrain. The adults were looking up to a man (a loud-mouthed man at that) and suckled on water bottles.

  "Do you think we've been punished without reason?" The man said to a speechless crowd. "That this was some kind of cruel lottery we had the unfortunate pleasure of having won? Don't be a fool! It's all the Lord's design you see. This punishment, this sin. All a test! A test we have failed, I tell you! We have succumbed to that vanity of vanities, just look around yourselves!"

  "Amen." Some old soul said in the background. The younger parents wanted to speak but felt choked to answer.

  "Our debauchery, our gluttony, our worship of these false idols known as money, known as lust, known as man! Known as man! For all worship not of God is not of good faith. So can you see now, why we have earned this punishment? What it is deserved?"

  "Amen." A few more voices said.

  The preacher rose and stood atop a turned over shopping cart. The wheels still spun and they pulled on his dirty vestment, a black robe botched with holes.

  "You weep and moan for the freshly dead that litter the obituaries, I don't! I tell ye. For they had deserved it! They're sinners, sinners I tell ye! And I know! I know because I heard God, in the privacy of my lonely existence, I heard his voice. And what did you know? He reached out to me. To me! And he offered salvation. And it's on discount, I tell ye. It is for sale, clearance! So long as you heed my words and put your faith in God, you will have salvation. It's cheap, it's not easy, but it's cheap." He licked his lips. "And know this. Know this! That this plague of death is His machination and if you listen, you too can avoid it! Let me tell ye!" He was spitting with the excitement. "He sends the trumpeters up and above the mountain, He sends the plague through the rivers! And the horrors, they live beneath us in want and wait like roots, there to tangle and strangle. So heed me, let me deliver you away from this evil. Let me tell ye. Amen!" The Preachers baritone voice seemed to ring with a sweet timbre and finally forced the rest of the crowd to cheer or gawk or leave.

  He fell (the Preacher) back to earth, nearly taking off into orbit with that throttle of blood-rushed screaming. He settled himself next to the shopping cart and began shaking hands, talking privately, mingling as they say and handing out small pamphlets with a pixelated picture of his face on the front and the words in comic sans font that read 'JIMMIES NEW CHURCH OF THE LATTER-DAY SAINTS'. Most people, however, looked afraid and ashamed of being afraid.

  "I don't think that's in the bible." Darr closed the door of the car with a gentle tap. He began to feel cold for a moment before he realized it was sweat and the gust of air.

  "It doesn't matter what's in the bible. It's a brand and he's a smart salesman." Ajax studied the Preacher. "And honestly, if you ask me, that was one hell of a pitch. For idiots, at least. I'm sure those poor fucks think he's the next messiah."d.

  "Don't be so snarky, man."

  "Doesn't make me wrong." Ajax watched as the people helped the preacher through the crowd and started throwing small coins from their light purses inside a fedora sitting on the floor.

  "Look at 'em." Ajax's eyes narrowed. "I never expected to find any rocket scientists in this dump but this shit still leaves a bad taste in my mouth. They're like monkeys."

  "Come on." Darr bemoaned louder.

  "What? They're rejects. The accumulative IQ of this city probably sinks into the single digits." Ajax spat. Darr walked towards him, chest forward. He seemed transformed, completely different than the Darr in the car. Ajax made a mental note, a catalog he named Darr's range of emotions.

  "I don't like bullies like you." Darr frowned, in a dignified kind of way, with his chin up. "A servant of God ought to be kinder, more sensitive to the troubles of the common man."

  "Get your head out of your ass." Ajax looked back to the people still huddling. "I'm not a servant of God, just His child. And one with a good pair of eyes, for I foresee nothing that resembles any kind of future for this shit hole of a city."

  "That's what I mean. They're just misguided and down on their luck is all."

  "Two hundred." Ajax interrupted. "This city has seen two hundred rapes since last year from a measly population of about three thousand four hundred. Wanna know the only thing that outperforms the rapes? The rate at which a motherfucker kills another motherfucker. Five hundred out of three thousand four hundred. Wanna know what outperforms the murderers? The junkies." Darr walked back. He felt trepidation coming onto him like a hot flash across his cheeks. His high pumped chest deflated.

  "All right. All right. I get it." Darr said.

  "Most of these fucks can't even read. Read, Darr, read. Wouldn't be surprised if that Preacher carries around the holy book for s
how." Ajax pointed to the false prophet (or honest one, to some circles) and the cart he drove with earnest excitement, the loose change was coming off him and the baskets sitting on the baby seat of the car. He stopped for a moment. Knelt down and picked up a quarter with shaking hands.. "I've made a fair judgment. These people, they're like Neanderthals. I'm sure they'd worship a fucking tree if you told them it'd help."

  A shoe-less man passed them, hair longer than his arms, who ate from a loose packet of raw hot dog sausages.

  "Look at that? Some of them even look prehistoric. Like they came right out of the fucking wax museum." Ajax laughed.

  "That's enough." Darr looked down at Ajax. Ajax looked up. Darr's shadow was wide across the floor yet looking closer into Darr he could see the innocence in his eyes and it made Ajax calm. He was a child in a man's body, he thought. A bit dafter than one though.

  "These people need our help. With the recent killings, you could be a bit more sympathetic, ya know? Stop judging them. Only He has that right, after all." Darr nodded his head, agreeing with himself.