The Last Rite

by Chad Morgan

  “How often do you go out for more food?” Daniel called out.

  Lisa came scuttling back into the living room, a finger crossing her lips as she shushed Daniel. “Shhhhhhh! Don’t shout!” She looked up at the ceiling. “They’ll hear you.”

  Lisa cowered by Daniel like a scared child, and it dawned on him that Bethany wasn’t as afraid when she was with him. Her head snapped to the windows, to the door, and to the ceiling. In the silence of Lisa’s apartment, Daniel could hear footsteps from the room on the other side of the living room wall, as well as the apartment above, but not human footsteps. They may have been humans once, but now they have the wood-piercing thumps of the spider things. Daniel got up from the couch, ignoring Lisa grabbing for him, and reached for his tire iron. He followed the sound, ready to strike the moment one of those things appear, but after a heartbeat that lasted a millennium the spider things settled back down. The footsteps faded away and died off.

  “Sorry,” Daniel whispered.

  Lisa stood up, and for a moment Daniel wasn’t sure which way her mood was going to swing. Her eyes began to swell, and Daniel thought she was about to lean against his chest and cry, but then Lisa punched him in the chest. It didn’t hurt much, it was more of the shock that stopped Daniel, but then came the next punch, and the next. Soon a flurry of punches pounded against his chest. Daniel reached up and wrapped his arms around her, holding Lisa tight against him and pinning her arms against him. Lisa struggled against Daniel’s embrace until her energy was sapped, then she surrendered against Daniel’s chest and began to cry.

  “I’m, sorry,” she sobbed. “I’m sorry.”

  Daniel caressed her head. Her curly wild hair felt surprisingly soft, though several weeks without access to a shower did taint the otherwise sweet smell. “It’s okay. You’re scared, I get it.”

  “Everyone’s dead,” she cried. “I watched them kill themselves, turn into those things! I’ve been so alone, and they’re always right outside. I hear them, those things, sniffing at the door. All the time.”

  Gently, Daniel pushed Lisa back so he can see her face, sinking into his shoulders to try to meet her at eye level. “How do you get out? How do you get more food?”

  Lisa shook her head. “You don’t go out, you can’t go out. We’re here until they go away, or we die, and they’re . . . and they’re not going away. They’re never going away.”

  “Lisa, my daughter is out there somewhere,” Daniel said. “I have to get out of here and find her.”

  “There’s no way out. They’re all over, Daniel. All over the building, all over the town. There’s nowhere you can go, nothing you can do,” Daniel felt her hands against his chest, kneading him like a cat. “I’m sorry, Daniel. I’m so sorry, but you can’t help your daughter. There’s nothing you can do. I’m really, really sorry, but you’re trapped here. With me.”

  Lisa slid her arms around his chest and hugged Daniel tight, laying her head against his chest. Daniel hugged her back, trying to comfort her, but his mind was miles away. He had to figure a safe way out of the apartment, a way that didn’t compromise Lisa’s safety, though he wondered how safe he was in here with her. She was suffering from some kind of post-traumatic stress. He sympathized. He still had flashbacks to when that boy had him cornered, a bullet in his gut and a gun aimed at his face. He knew from experience that you could hide from the monsters outside, but not from the ones within. Daniel wanted to help her but wasn’t sure if he could.

  With Lisa’s head against Daniel’s chest, he couldn’t see her smiling through her tears.

  It took Charlie Lightfoot a good couple of hours to hike back from his spy mission at the mill, though Professor Lightfoot thought he’d have made better time if he had hiking boots instead of patent leather shoes. The nature monsters, the ones on his side, escorted him back to the graveyard and scared off the abominations that served the business suit people. Either that or they just got lucky and didn’t run into any. The first thing Charlie did getting to the caretaker’s cottage in the graveyard where Professor Lightfoot waited was to sit down, take off his shoes, and open a beer. Professor Lightfoot waited without speaking a word as his grandson rubbed his sore feet and sipped his beer. After a few moments and a few swigs of beer, Charlie looked back at his direction, the same look on his face from when he was twelve and knew his grandfather was waiting to talk to him. Charlie sighed and got to his aching feet.

  Charlie filled him in on what happened at the mill, never asking how his grandfather knew to look for Bethany and the scroll at the mill. With the town full of monsters and the earth itself coming to life, his grandson was taking things on faith by now. That was good. It would make what needed to happen next a lot easier if Charlie wasn’t questioning him.

  “. . . and some of the creatures are standing guard here, but nothing out guys can’t handle,” Charlie said, pointing out the locations he was mentioning on a map they unrolled on the table. Professor Lightfoot felt a rush of warmth when his grandson had referred to the avatars as “our guys”. Charlie had been so rebellious in his youth, turning his back on their traditions and moving to the city, he had been afraid if this day ever came his grandson would be on the other side of this war. Charlie finished, “I run in, snatch the kid, grab the scroll, and we come back here.”

  “Are you sure they have the scroll with them at the sawmill?” the Professor asked.

  Charlie shook his head. “I haven’t seen it, no, but I can’t imagine they’d leave it laying around the town somewhere waiting for someone to find it.”

  “I would agree, except . . .”

  Charlie’s brows raised in anticipation. “Except what?”

  “Just a feeling,” the professor said. “Like we can’t be that lucky.”

  Truth was, it was more than a feeling, but he had to be careful with Charlie. Carolyn had been the believer, the one that could have joined the Order. Charlie needed to be handled with more tact.

  “Even if the scroll isn’t there, the girl is,” Charlie said. “They need both to complete the last rite.”

  “So do we,” the professor said.

  “I’ll get them, don’t worry,” Charlie said. He turned to leave, reaching for the bow.

  “Charlie, wait,” the professor called out. Charlie stopped at the door frame and looked back when the professor said, “Please be careful. I couldn’t bear to lose you too.”

  Charlie smiled. “Don’t worry, I’ll be fine. Besides, I’m a lawyer, right? I’m used to hanging around with inhuman monsters. It’s like taking my bar exam all over again.”

  Charlie left the caretakers cottage, the bow in hand. The bow had been handed down father-to-son for generations. Charlie’s father had died before receiving the bow, so the professor held onto the bow. For years, he wondered if it the bow would stay with him, maybe winding up at a museum after his death. Seeing Charlie with the bow made his old heart warm.

  The story of the bow, also handed down from father to son, was that it was a gift to the first chief from the All-Father, the creator of everything that was good. It was the first bow, and all other bows were built from its example, but this bow was meant to defend the tribe from the abominations of his evil brother. The arrows were blessed by the All-Father, and they were deadly to the evil things his brother let loose on the world.

  The professor felt her presence. Without looking behind him, he asked, “How long have you been there?”

  “I’m always here,” the old woman said behind him.

  He turned to face her. She stood in the corner, draped in her ragged and worn robes. “There a reason? We’re doing everything you told us to do. We’re going after the key, we’re going after the scroll . . .”

  “You need to go after the father,” she said. “Only he can do what must be done.”

  He had faith in the old woman, but he didn’t like this plan. The father wasn’t a believer, wasn’t part of the Order. The old woman was putting a lot of faith in this person, more than the p
rofessor thought was reasonable to expect. “You think he’d going to go along with this?”

  “He has little choice in the matter.”

  The professor heard the avatars walking outside. He watched them walk by and thought of the other creatures, the ones not of this earth, the abominations. “He was bitten. What are we supposed to do about that?”

  There was no answer. When the professor turned back, she was gone. The answer, to him, was clear – it was his problem to figure out.

  16

  They left the girl tied up and blindfolded in the back office of the old saw mill. The business suit woman thought the blindfold might be considered a mercy given the dust and cobwebs covering the small room. BEC had bought the mill but had done nothing with it. The town was happy in the beginning when the troubled mill was purchased by one of the largest conglomerates in the world, but that didn’t last long. With no warning, the mill was shut down, stacks of logs waiting to be processed. The company announced that, after some restructuring and improvements, the mill would reopen and not only hire back everyone let go but even more. The lie pacified the town, and now there were none left to see the purchase of the mill for what it really was – an act of pre-meditated murder.

  Stray rays of light from the setting sun pierced through the holes of the grime on the windows. With the eternal fog, even the sunlight was cold and damp, but her partner thought providing her with a light was a waste considering she was blindfolded. She argued, but her partner had said something about not making a pet out of a sacrificial lamb. The business suit woman wasn’t ignorant about what they needed to do, but she didn’t see the need to torture the child. She walked into the office with a bag of pre-made sandwiches from the supplies they brought with them and kneeled in front of the young girl.

  “Are you hungry?” she asked. “I brought you some food.”

  “I want to go home,” she said. The girl was sad, but her words were dry. The girl had run out tears a while ago.

  “I’m sorry, hun,” the business suit woman replied. “Maybe when this is over . . .”

  “This isn’t going to be over, is it?” the girl asked.

  The business suit woman looked away. No, she had to be strong. She knew the child was dead one way or another. She didn’t have to be heartless like her partner, but she did have to be strong. It was regrettable, but it had to be done. She looked back to the girl and said in a determined voice, “No, hun. I’m sorry. I really am.”

  “If you were really sorry, you’d let me go,” the girl said.

  “I can’t do that,” the business suit woman said.

  “You can,” the girl said, “but you won’t.”

  “My partner, the man in the other room?” the woman said. “He’s mean. He won’t let me.”

  “You’re mean too,” the girl said. “You just hide it.”

  She glared at the child, who of course couldn’t look back at her through the blindfold. She didn’t need to defend herself to this child. This kid had no idea what pressure she was under, what she was asked to do, what she still needed to do, but she did it because it was her job. She had an assignment and she was going to carry it out. To the child, she said, “Sometimes when you’re an adult, you have to do things you don’t want too.”

  “I’m never going to find that out, am I?” the child replied flatly.

  The business suit woman said nothing. She got up and walked out of the disheveled office, leaving the girl alone to cry. She closed the door behind her and leaned against it, listening to the girl sniffle, but when the tear rolled down her cheek she realized it wasn’t the girl who was crying. She wiped the tears away and gathered herself. She was going to be strong. She wasn’t going to break. She was given this assignment because she could handle it, and she wasn’t going to fail.

  Her partner walked by, and the business suit woman straightened herself and buried her emotions, especially her fear and contempt. It was hazardous to question herself when she had a job to do but to show any weakness in front of her partner was outright suicidal. She did a background search on her partner, learned all she could on him. It wasn’t what she found that frightened her, it was what she didn’t. Officially, his name was John Smith, and while she uncovered various gun-for-hire missions and redacted black-ops missions, there was another history and a real name buried under that where even she couldn’t find. With a past so dark and ugly, she could only guess how much darker the parts that were buried could be.

  The two of them eyed each other, predators sizing each other up, each thinking themselves the alpha. The business suit man asked, “How’s the girl?”

  “As well as can be expected,” she replied.

  “You might want to keep your distance from the girl,” he said. “It’s not a good idea to get close to the cattle just before they’re going to slaughter.”

  She glared at him, then turned away. She didn’t see her partner smile as she left.

  The sun had set, and Lisa’s apartment was covered in a dim glow of candlelight. Lisa was specific as to how many candles could be lit in any one room, giving the optimal balance of light to see by versus the risk of attracting the monsters that roamed the apartment. Daniel gathered a couple of candles by him on the kitchen counter so he could read Anna’s diary. Her hectic words were hard to read even in the best light, but Daniel strained his eyes and read very slow.

  “What are you reading?” Lisa asked him.

  Daniel glanced over at her. She was curled up in a corner, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. Her eyes would dart to the windows like someone else would blink, flittering back and forth every few seconds.

  “Anna’s diary,” he said.

  He was about to turn back to the diary when he heard her ask, “Anna?”

  It took Daniel a second to orient he thoughts. “Huh? Oh, sorry, Bethany’s mother. The old woman said it was supposed to tell me what to do somehow.”

  “Old woman?” she asked. “What old woman?”

  “Yeah, I was following her up here when you found me,” he explained. “I met her at the pool and saw her again downstairs.”

  She cocked her head at him, and the irony that she was questioning the soundness of his mind didn’t escape him. “Daniel, no one is alive out there.”

  He smiled at her. “I was.”

  She opened her mouth, but her counter-argument stuck in her throat. Defeated, she closed her mouth, and Daniel went back to reading Anna’s diary, but then Lisa asked, “So why do you need to read it?”

  Daniel looked away from the diary again. “Like I said, the old woman . . .”

  “I know that,’ she said. “I mean, why do you need to read about it? Weren’t you there?”

  Daniel shifted his weight and averted his gaze. “We were separated.”

  “’Kay,” she said. “Did you two not talk a lot? She never mentioned anything?”

  Daniel shook his head. “No. We weren’t talking for a while. Sorry, it’s kind of complicated.”

  “’Kay,” she said again. Daniel turned back to the diary. After an all-to-brief silence, Lisa asked, “So, are you learning anything?”

  Daniel flipped through the pages. “Nothing helpful. Not yet anyway. But if I can find anything to give me an edge when I go look for Bethany . . .”

  Lisa’s voice dripped with pity, and Daniel wondered if she was mimicking his tone from earlier. It was the tone one took when trying to convince a delusional person to see reason. “You can’t help her, Daniel. You can’t help yourself. We’re stuck here. There’s nothing out there but death.”

  Daniel slammed the diary shut and turned to Lisa. “Come on, Lisa! I have to do something. I have to try, damn it! Don’t you have family or friends here? Anyone you care about who might still be alive out there?”

  Lisa sat there, looking at her knees as she spoke. “The monsters weren’t the first thing that happened. First, there was just weird stuff, like strange bumps in the night, whispers in the room when you knew you were al
one. Then people started to act strange. Not all of them, and it was subtle at first. Things you could explain away like they’re having a bad day or PMSing or something. Eventually, you couldn’t explain it anymore. They had changed. They were, like, possessed or something, they went nuts, killing people.”

  She sniffled and wiped her nose on the back of her sleeve. Daniel leaned forward, entranced in her tale as she continued, “They weren’t themselves anymore by then. They were whatever had infected them. Then they mutated into those things you see now. My boyfriend attacked me, tried to eat me like something out of a zombie movie.” Her words came out in short breaths now. “I saw new arms grow out of his back, his mouth rip open. And that was after he had hurt my sister and my mother. Then they turned. I . . . I . . . “

  She couldn’t finish her sentence. Daniel finished it for her. “You killed them.”

  Lisa began to sob. She kept looking at her knees, but she was really staring out into the past, back when her family became the enemy, back when she had to choose between living and the people she used to love. Daniel walked over and sat by her, putting his arm around her shoulder.

  “You didn’t have a choice,” he said. “Whatever is happening out there, whoever’s causing it, that’s what’s to blame. Not you.”

  Lisa leaned over and poured her tears and heartache into Daniel’s shoulder. “I killed my sister! I killed my mother!”

  “They weren’t your family anymore,” Daniel said. “They were those things out there.”

  “I keep telling myself that, but no matter how many times I do, I still can’t convince myself.” Lisa looked up at Daniel, her eyes red and puffy. “So, if your daughter is one of those things now, what will you do? Will you be able to kill her? Or will you just lay there and let her kill you?”

  Daniel thought about the last time he was forced to make that choice. He hesitated, and he got a hole in his gut because of it, but when the gun was pointed to his head he chose to preserve his own life. Would he be able to pull the trigger if it was Bethany instead? He glanced down at his arm and wondered, not for the first time, if he would last long enough to find her.