The Forsaken - The Apocalypse Trilogy: Book Two

by G. Wells Taylor

  Today was a little different. This was their first full day in the City of Light. He wouldn’t tell her why they had come to the City, but he assured her that the money would be good if they could get the prime locations. Mr. Jay had already scouted out locations to work.

  “And I might even find some old friends,” he said cheerfully.

  Dawn didn’t care about any old friends as she struggled into her costume. She had already seen enough of the City. True, the size of it was awesome as you approached it, but when you were in it, the levels above weighed heavily and the only breezes blew off cars and buses or came up from sewers. There was a constant feeling of crowding.

  She could not shake the nagging sense that her run in with Yellow-skin and the thin men was just a shadow of worse things to come. And the streets in the City were so big and numerous, and there were so many people, there were just too many places a forever child could get lost. She knew she’d be worried about losing Mr. Jay the whole time.

  “Come along, Dawn. You wrinkle that forehead of yours any more and you’ll look like a road map.” Mr. Jay chuckled and twisted her nose. He looked her over. “And how are you today Mojo?” That was the name of the midget she played.

  She patted her forehead with the back of her hand nonplussed.

  The action made Mr. Jay laugh out loud. “Forever child or not, Dawn. There’s a woman in there somewhere.”

  “Stop it!” she scolded, hoping to end the teasing right away.

  “Yes, of course.” He smiled and regarded her with such a loving gaze that she immediately cheered up. “Now, will you be warm enough? These February winds can chill you through and through. A Winter rain’s expected…”

  “Of course I’ll be warm enough.” She almost stamped a foot but remembered that Mr. Jay only said those things out of habit. “But thank you anyway.”

  Mr. Jay picked up his walking stick, and shouldered his bag of props. He always carried extra things with him—packs of cards, bottles and string and cups—anything he might use in one of his tricks. And he always had some packets of mixed nuts and a stick of bread that never seemed to run out. “We’ll have to hurry. I found an excellent corner last night but it’s quite a distance uptown.”

  They made their way out of the hideout and then along a rickety stair that took them to the exit of the abandoned building. A dirty mist hung in the air over the street. “I hope you don’t mind, but we may have to ride a bus to get there while the pickings are still good.” She looked up at his face as he talked, but its expression was hidden by the gloom. “We want to catch the workers at their first coffee break—and there’s a good collection of hotels and office buildings nearby that we can work until they’re back on the streets at lunch.” The fog blew into Dawn’s face and left droplets in her beard. She shrugged at her friend’s face.

  A mixture of excitement and apprehension ran through her as they made their way to the bus stop. Other shadowy shapes joined them on the dark sidewalks: heads down, collars pulled up, with shock on their faces when Dawn stepped out of the gloom. The idea of performing in front of a whole new bunch of people was as exciting as it was frightening. She gripped the first two fingers of Mr. Jay’s right hand. As long as she kept her hold on him, she would be all right.

  9 – Nun

  Able Stoneworthy’s footsteps receded. Sister Karen Cawood waited on her knees, sliding each rosary bead over the plump flesh of her lower lip—her mouth unconsciously forming words that were not uttered. Jesus, whom thou didst joyfully conceive. Her shoulder still bore the warm impress of Able’s hand where he had gripped her reassuringly as she dropped to her knees in prayer. His voice had grown thick before he hurried from the room. The minister, her friend of many decades, respected her privacy more than she did. Jesus, whom thou didst joyfully carry to Elizabeth. At the sound of the outer office door latching, she climbed slowly to her feet, knees aching.

  She muttered, “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.” She pinched her thumb where the crucifix in her grip had bitten into it. Moving to her desk she dropped into her seat with a fragile sigh then pushed her coif back to rub her temples. Sometimes she wished they still wore the elaborate, heavily starched head covering that was once synonymous with nuns. It would have been better for hiding her bleary bloodshot eyes and pale skin than the modern headband and small veil that was now in use.

  It was too early in the morning for Able’s earnest nature, too early for a woman who had consumed as many shooters as she had the night before. She couldn’t even remember leaving the bar she’d staggered out of, Casey’s or Carson’s on Level Four or Five, her wounded memory let the information go. Dragging herself in to work had required Olympian effort, and when she had looked up over her hot black coffee to see Able Stoneworthy standing there, fear disintegrated the last veils of her morning-after numbness.

  Mortal. Venial. The difference in sins was a few thousand years in purgatory give or take. That was nothing. True purgatory was having a job that wouldn’t let her recognize her own G-spot. A guilty grin appeared on her face but was wiped away by a painful throb in her temples.

  Then Able started in about an Angel visiting him. Smiling idiotically about it had come easily to her. That was the worst part of loving him; the lies were coming so easily to her. The irony was his trust hurt her more than his discovering the truth ever would. She set her rosary and crucifix aside, then leaned back in her chair pressing the backs of her hands to her aching eyes. “Oh, Able.” O kind and good Mother, whose own soul was pierced by the sword of sorrow, look upon us while, in our sickness...

  The deceit had not been so easy when Able first brought her into his mission. Then, she had been deep in the cups of her own penance, and his religious fervor had been an easy crutch to grab onto.

  She had traveled from South Africa to the New York on her 23rd birthday for a United Nations New Millennium conference on feeding the poor in developing countries. All so long ago now, but she had special interest in the topic since her country had been in dire need of such assistance. The new regimes that followed Apartheid were behaving no better than the worst of Africa’s despots. That on top of years of inequity had left her country grossly out of balance. Most of her black countrymen remained poor and were now being joined by thousands of whites. Competition for oil company revenues fueled the pirate governments and the distance between rich and poor had grown to almost insurmountable proportions.

  How young she had been then, how idealistic. Then she said aloud: “How naïve.” Everyone involved was naïve. When the news hit about the pedophiles in the church and Rome’s complicity in their crimes there had been a mass exodus among parishioners. And Cawood’s faith had started to die.

  An unnerving thunderstorm en route to New York City had filled her with dread. The pilot announced over the intercom that their landing might be delayed. Rainwater flew from the wings in spraying torrents as they landed at JFK International. She waited an hour for the ride she had been promised, and finally hired a taxi to take her into the city.

  She could still remember the vehemence with which the rain fell, how it tore at the pavement around the car. Its froth formed a violent film on the windows reducing the entire world to a flat gray wall. Pedestrians moved past like shadows, flitting from blurred doorway to blurred doorway.

  The Change came while she was wrestling her bags through the door of the Venture Inn. The television in the lobby asked people to standby for a report from the U.S. Department of Defense. A crowd of guests and New Yorkers sheltering from the rain gathered on the snowy blue rug in front of it. Cawood joined them, watching. The screen flickered from gray, to snow, to black and then projected the image of a news anchorman. He fixed his steady gaze on the viewers.

  “A weather system is forming at a speed and magnitude unprecedented in recorded history.” The newscaster seemed anxious. “The Department of Defense and the National Weather Service have issued this joint release: ‘
All citizens of the continental United States are advised to remain indoors pending further notification.’” Electric tension jumped through the people around Cawood. The statement was punctuated with satellite pictures of the earth’s surface covered with whirling tempests of black and white and gray. It had all begun three hours before, the report said. Military and civilian satellites recorded the phenomena. What at first appeared to be several hurricane formations had taken on a more destructive tone.

  Global weather stations confirmed the growth of a contiguous worldwide atmospheric disturbance. The picture of the growing cloud cover intensified during the broadcast, with a time-lapse effect, until the once blue globe darkened to a uniform shadow. Soon after, the satellite picture broke up and was lost. The news anchor’s image returned, flickered and was gone forever.

  Cawood paused in her reverie.

  Beads of sweat stood out on her pallid forehead as the moment returned to her in full. The lights in the lobby died. A man bellowed repeatedly into his cell phone until he charged out of the building screaming his children’s names. A woman shrieked, then apologized in embarrassment. The crowd hurried across the lobby to the desk, to a line of dead pay phones on one wall. There was a loud harsh clap of thunder, and the Change had arrived.

  “Damn!” she cursed. All this was behind her, but Able had a way of stirring things up. Coming into her office so early in the day babbling about Angels and salvation and a new mission. “There’s no fucking mission,” she said to the empty room.

  The first days of the Change were crisp in her memory. The group at the Venture Inn had dispersed quickly: huddled, cautious shapes going into a hissing gray nothing that smelled like autumn. Cawood was taken to a room by a busboy with a flashlight: taste of salt from the back of her hand as tears came upon her in the dark. She slept uncomfortably listening to sirens and awoke next day to the rain: smell of cleansers, the dry reconditioned air on her tongue. Cloud cover kept New York in perpetual twilight: searching for her underwear on the floor, the dusty curtain made her sneeze.

  Rain thundered down for weeks without end. The riots started in week two, close on the heels of the looting. There was a slow realization setting in that things had changed permanently. As communications returned at the end of the first week—radio and television signals were inconsistent and distorted—digital signals were lost, replaced by analog. American meteorologists blamed the ozone and greenhouse gases, European scientists suggested an undetected meteorite impact. Few ocean-going vessels returned from the wild maelstroms the seas had become. The melting ice caps threatened to drown coastal cities. Estimates had 85% of all aircraft aloft at the time of the Change were crashed or missing.

  Electrical systems went wild, city lights and telephones flickered and died, computers crashed and subways ground to a terrifying halt deep in their dark black burrows. Factories fell silent and millions died. No one was unaffected. Presidents and Prime Ministers made reassuring statements that could not hide their ignorance. Leaders religious and political wanted calm.

  Calm. The absurdity still provoked a sarcastic smile in her. Their world was dying and they asked for calm.

  Her first steps off the high road came when she sought her sisters and brothers in the rapidly sinking city. They had nothing for her. There were riddles in the text and that’s all they had: the text. The Revelation of St. John had been a long contested part of the Testament, but this Change was different. And the Bishop was missing. No one had heard word from the Vatican. It was silent, but most had grown used to its methodical responses to crises in the past. From her search for guidance she came away confused.

  And there was the water to worry about. It was rising every day, and New York City was so big. Twice she was drafted into the ranks of millions who built dykes against the flood. She worked beside strangers with the rain pooling about her ankles. A slight increase in wind pushed the waves up and over, collapsing the hastily constructed barriers, flooding neighborhoods. Pull back; build new dykes.

  The military was brought in to build dykes but became a police force and fire brigade. The world had Changed. On the radio all reports were the same. Coastal cities the world over were drowning. There was a Federal state of emergency instituted as panic set in. Buildings were burning throughout New York, the sound of gunshots and explosions rolled up every street. And as the rain continued, people left the city.

  Cawood heard about the Vatican while riding on an army transport moving refugees to the mainland. Dying witnesses swore they had seen a mushroom cloud. That pushed her into a general trance of terror and disbelief. It wasn’t until later that she found out about the nuclear exchanges in the Middle East, India and Pakistan, China and Russia. To her a simple question: if the Vatican could be vaporized, then what value the cities of man and where was God?

  Science, the last refuge of the faithful, could not answer many questions. Meteorologists were baffled by the worldwide weather system that set in and stayed. Some theorized that whatever had caused the new weather patterns was so catastrophic that the atmosphere reacted by creating a suspension—an equilibrium of itself—seemingly sucking up the moisture as the North and South Poles melted. Scientists at MIT announced their initial findings: the majority of species of bacteria had died off in a mass extinction of unprecedented proportions.

  Lost for a time, Cawood felt no urge to pray. It was as though heaven itself had been destroyed with St. Peter’s. Still, she could hang onto something, the basic lessons of Catholicism. Yet even as she rallied, another blow fell as the second month passed. All pregnant mammals spontaneously aborted their fetuses. And it proved in the years that followed that humanity could not conceive again. The voice of childhood had been silenced. Cawood almost joined the suicides she tended though events soon made death a crueler fate than life. No sooner was science trying to explain the great stillbirth than the dead rose up from their graves.

  Raise them up to live forever with all Your saints in the glory of the Resurrection.

  Each country claimed to have had the first to rise. Clambering out of mortuary drawers, coffins and medical research facilities the dead came awake, but they were not alive. Bodies continued to dehydrate, but with the extinction of most bacteria, they did not rot. And this new revivifying affect, whatever gave them life, was not for whole bodies alone, severed parts were charged with some atrocious nervous activity, mindless, but lifelike. The dead retained the characters of the people they had been in life, so long as some portion of their brain remained.

  Karen swiveled her chair around to gaze out the window at the cloud tops. She never felt guilty for having Sunsight offices high up in Archangel Tower. Never regretted a single sunset she got to watch while the populace below muddled through endless days of rain. She’d helped build it after all.

  10 – Dealing with the Devil

  Felon sat on his bed at the Coastview Hotel. He had set his guns on a rubber sheet: the rebuilt M-16, his Smith & Wesson .9 mm automatic, a .44 Magnum Colt Anaconda, and a Ranger .45 Colt Derringer. He started disassembling, cleaning and oiling the weapons one by one. In his business the machinery had to work perfectly. One misfire and the wrath of Heaven or Hell would be on him. Throughout the operation, he kept a loaded Taurus .38 close at hand.

  He had dropped Azokal’s check in a Level Two Branch of the First City Bank then caught a cab to the hotel. Felon usually demanded cash or valuables up front, but his reputation was growing and he knew the Demon feared his gifts too much to chance insufficient funds.

  Felon knew that the old adage, “never deal with the Devil” was absolutely true. Fallen Angels claimed to be the wealthiest deities of Hell, but were an untrustworthy lot so the assassin took their boasting with a grain of salt. Typically, they were compulsively organized—like psychopathic lawyers inextricably bound to unfathomable laws of self-protection and a celestial legal system that ruled them.

  Every deal was suspect the moment bloody quill was set to parchment. It was their nature to wa
nt to get the upper hand. They thought it was their right so Felon knew he could take nothing for granted. If something was missing from a contract, they knew it. Rarely, did any of them talk about bartering souls. If they had that power Felon had never seen evidence of it. Apparently, souls were a commodity that had depreciated over the last thousand years.

  As Fallen they strove to emulate the Divine order in Heaven with a system of their own. Their hierarchy awarded advancement to those who won advantage over humans or over others of their own kind. Felon was never given a clear description of how it worked. And he didn’t care enough to pursue it.

  He preferred dealing with Demons. They were more dangerous, but their contracts more lucrative. Almost indistinguishable from Fallen in human folklore and religion, Felon had learned that they were a completely different species. This had prompted him to make a study of each. Ignorance was lethal in his business.

  Fallen had only contempt for Demons and their parallel Infernal system. Comparisons prompted indignation if not outrage. Demons were unimpressed by their own hierarchy—Felon learned it was a chaotic system of feudal anarchy. Instead the majority expended enormous wealth and power in the advancement of their own passions. Demons were ruled by revenge. They were prodigal with their riches, and most seemed willing to part with a fortune to entertain some petty personal vendetta. The money was good and the employment steady—though at times a messy and degenerate affair.

  Demons hated goodness far more than their Fallen counterparts. Fallen viewed the human graces as weaknesses to be exploited. Otherwise, they worked with or around goodness, as an intrinsic matter of business. Without it, they would have no more purpose than the madness of the Demon horde.

  The Demons who had contracted Felon over the years appeared to resent goodness. He chalked that up to a feeling of inadequacy born of being shut out of Fallen Hierarchy; and the envy that must have caused, combined with the precipitous drop their position took in relation to the Divine Ranks in Heaven. They hated the Angelic host just slightly more than they did Fallen.