He was so relieved not to be going into the hell of New York City alone that he almost wept. Instead, he grinned five feet from the corpse of the man he had just killed. It had been such a terrible, topsy-turvy few days that he didn’t see that the smile was horribly inappropriate and neither did Cyn, apparently, as she returned it with a weak one of her own.
The demon’s bones began to reform and so they hurried to the Humvee. Jack had just opened his door when Pastor John, suddenly rushed up and jumped in the back seat. In one hand, he held the monsignor’s crucifix—there was blood splashed across Christ’s face—and in the other he still held the shining brass bucket of Holy Water. He was grim and angry.
“If the demon is going to follow you, you’re going to need me as well,” Pastor John said. “The parishioners will be fine. The church is on sacred ground, which seems to stop the lesser...uh, what are they?”
Jack shrugged. “Ghouls maybe?” he answered and then felt around for the ignition button. Just as the Humvee’s engine roared to life, the other back door opened, making them all scramble for their weapons and in Pastor John’s case, the large crucifix which he brandished.
It wasn’t a demon; it was the fellow in the bib-overalls who’d been just outside the monsignor’s door. He had wide blue eyes that refused to blink and he had large hands that held onto the chair in front of him fiercely as though he was afraid they were going to try and kick him out of the vehicle.
“I’m goin’ wit you guys,” he said in a thick Jersey accent.
Jack’s first inclination was to point his M4 at the man and order him out of the Humvee, but then he realized that here was exactly what he needed in order to complete the spell to resurrect Dr. Loret. It was almost a gift from God.
“Sure,” Jack said, hating himself.
Next to him, Cyn’s eyes widened and her mouth began to open. Before she could say anything, Jack hammered down on the gas and the Humvee leapt away. “Jack…” she hissed, glancing back at the man.
Purposely, he hit a curb leaving the parking lot. “Hold on,” he yelled as she was thrown against her door. After that, there were too many ghouls around them for anyone to think about anything but survival. The living corpses converged on the Humvee, tearing at the reinforced windows with their bony claws or stepping in front of the roaring machine.
They were engulfed in darkness and swept with the maddening fear until the man in the back began raving. “Do something, Pastor,” Jack ordered. He was white-knuckling the steering wheel again, but other than that was holding it together better than the others.
“The L-Lord is m-my shepherd,” Pastor John said in a voice struggling like a sputtering engine. “He-he maketh m-me lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters...” Gradually, his voice found strength and quickly their hearts were lightened as they broke through the ring of undead, leaving behind parts and pieces of the creatures; stuck to the grill was a black flap of cloth that flicked the remnants of grave dirt at them.
Cyn ginned at their escape and the man in the bib overalls, whose name they were to find out was Connor Randall, actually laughed and clapped his hands. Even Pastor John breathed a sigh of relief. Only Jack’s heart wasn’t lightened. He felt the shadow in it grow when he glanced back at Connor, remembering the horror of killing Carl.
“What happened back there with the Monsignor?” Jack asked, his voice a surprisingly angry growl. There was no getting around the fact that he felt profound disappointment; the task of stopping Robert had once again fallen to him and he was not happy about it. “What happened to the power of God and all that? Or was it again a failing of man?”
“Yeah, what about that?” Connor asked, turning aggressively on Pastor John. “I thought that old priest was supposed to be all powerful and then he gets laid out, just like that, and what were we supposed to do without him, sing all them monsters back into their graves?”
Pastor John’s brown eyes blazed. “Do not talk ill of the dead, especially of the Monsignor. He was a good man and a courageous man. He went out and faced that beast alone.”
“But how did he fail?” Cyn asked. “There was so much power in him. I felt it. It made me stronger. You don’t understand, Jack. You couldn’t feel it, but when the fear came, I could tell it was the worst yet, but I was barely fazed. And I was so sure that he would prevail…but he didn’t…and I don’t understand why.”
“You have to remember, Cyn,” Pastor John said, “the power wasn’t the Monsignor’s. It came from the Lord, so, yes Jack; the failing had to have been with the Monsignor.”
There was a sharp accusation to the pastor’s words as if he was daring Jack to say something concerning the dead man. Jack kept silent and regretted his earlier outburst.
He drove slowly through a street littered with vehicles and next to him he could feel Cyn growing antsy. She frequently glanced back at Connor, who started talking about himself and didn’t stop until the planes streaked overhead to release their ordinance.
Connor’s bib overalls weren’t farm related as Jack had originally thought. He was a welder out of Hoboken and had been on the run from the flood of creatures since midday when they swept over the National Guard units trying to hold the approaches into New Jersey.
Everything had gone from: Remain calm; we have the situation in hand, to Get out now! “Then the shi…I mean the, uh crap had hit the fan, sorry, Father.”
“It’s Pastor actually, and as a military chaplain, I hear worse on a daily basis, or at least I…used…to…”
Just then the sky shook and there was a fantastic boom that caused everyone to crane their necks to see through the short windows of the Humvee. A second flight of jets shot overhead; in the dark, it was impossible to guess their type or their number.
Jack could only follow them once they went to afterburner and banked on a curve that would carry them out to sea in seconds, but before they got there, the northern skyline erupted in a string of fireballs each twenty stories in height. Nothing could have lived through it.
Nothing but the dead, Jack thought.
After the jets came attack helicopters which buzzed by in the hundreds. They spent an hour swooping in and out of the clouds of flames and smoke. And then the jets swept back and the earth rumbled. Jack had parked the Humvee on an approach to a bridge that offered a great view of the violence, including a bombing strike on the bridge itself. It went up in a cataclysmic blast that staggered the air and made them gasp.
The four of them were mesmerized by the fantastic destructive power of the U.S military and, after half an hour when the planes and choppers were gone, the dead reformed and marched on, completely undeterred.
In the flames of a nearby burning Jersey city, Jack saw a bridge across the unknown river before them and took it much to Connor’s amazement. “Why are we going this way? Huh? This doesn’t make any sense.”
They were driving just as fast as Jack could go; he was in fear of both the return of the military and what he would find when he got across the river—so far the sight in front of him was bodies upon bodies. They weren’t the undead; they were the corpses of the people who had been ripped apart by the first wave of ghouls and demons.
From the height of the bridge, he could see the bodies, looking like discarded trash, as far as the eye could see, tens of thousands of bodies.
“No, none of this makes sense,” Jack said, “but if we can do something to stop this, then we will…except you, Connor. I want you to fight it tooth and nail.”
“Jack!” Cyn cried, glaring.
He glared right back. “If anyone has any better ideas give them to me now. And that includes you, Pastor.”
“I don’t know,” Pastor John said in a whisper. They were down on the other side of the bridge and now Jack was blazing through the town, regardless of the bodies. His jaw was gritted so tight he was sure that he was cracking his teeth. Ahead of them was a great throng of walking dead.
The pastor stared at them and seemed
unable to form complex thoughts. By rote, he said: “God loves us and is the ultimate power in the universe.”
Jack heard a glaring “but” in the simple statement and asked it: “But what, Pastor? He’s the ultimate power, but what?” There was a level of hysteria in his voice that was unacceptable as well as unavoidable. No man alive, not the bravest or the strongest could see what they were seeing and not be shaken to the core.
Even the pastor, a man of God with power flowing through his veins, was hesitant as he answered: “God is the ultimate source of power, but he leaves man in charge of man. He’s given us our gifts and demands that we govern ourselves. Fortunately, he sent his one begotten son to guide us.”
Cyn glanced back at the pastor, waiting for him to go on, to add something, anything that might help them and when he didn’t she blew out a long breath. “I guess you keep driving, Jack. It may be the only way. If Pastor John is right, then I guess God has left this in our hands and we may have to get them dirty.”
“It’ll be me,” Jack said. “My hands are already as dirty as they can get. You just keep the bad guys off of me, and Father, you get us through this mess. Your prayers work against the fear and the darkness, and the poison. We can’t forget the poison.” He laughed a miserable laugh as they banged over the bodies of the actual dead.
Most were cruelly contorted either through their death agonies or the rigor mortis that was setting in. They were also beginning to freeze, becoming hard as logs, and it felt as though the Humvee was coming apart with all the jolting and bouncing as Jack drove over them.
It was horrible and Jack felt that his mind was coming apart as well.
“Turn around!” Connor suddenly demanded. They were clear of the great majority of the actually dead while in front of them were the corpses that were “alive.” Connor’s eyes were just huge. He hammered on Cyn's chair and screamed: “Turn around, damn it!”
There would be no turning around, now. The silence by the others was tacit admission that they were out of ideas. They had tried the source of ultimate goodness and had failed. They now could only go down the road that would lead to hell…the road to Jack’s hell. He knew that he was doing his damnedest to do the right thing; unfortunately he could only do the right thing by doing the most evil thing he could imagine.
“Just relax, Connor,” Jack said as he revved the Humvee’s engine and aimed it square into the mass. “I get the feeling we’ll get through this with no problem.”
Hell itself could not have been more terrifying.
This was the second wave of Robert’s creatures. There were ghouls by the tens of thousands before them and fire and fear and there were demons lurking in clouds of darkness of their own making, but Jack wasn’t worried. He had God on his side in the form of Pastor John and, what was more, he got the feeling that the devil was on his side as well, rooting for Jack to get through so that he could gut Connor and sacrifice him…so Jack could forever damn his own soul.
Chapter 34
New York, New York
Robert’s second spell had awakened corpses that numbered in the low millions. They swarmed up out of their graves and swept over the city in a wave, bent on ferreting out anyone who still lived.
Jack could feel the creatures like a blight on his mind.
New York City was littered with bodies from end to end, and now the creatures were streaming into New Jersey. The military was unequipped to stop them; however, they could turn the “Garden State” into an American hell.
Jack drove through a landscape that was unrecognizable: the land had been tortured by thousand pound bombs, guided missiles, and cluster munitions that rained down hundreds of smaller anti-personnel “bomblets.” Napalm and white phosphorus had been used so that half the state was on fire.
And Jack was sure that even then nukes were being discussed in some comfortable, air-conditioned bunker, hidden deep beneath the White House. He prayed to a God that he was sure was disgusted in him that the nukes wouldn’t be used—they would be just as useless as all the rest of the bombs had been. The military was slowing the creatures, but not stopping them.
Above them the screech of jets returned and Jack cringed as the ground shook. In front of them the world went a brilliant white as hundreds of ghouls were evaporated in a single explosion—and then the Humvee was in the smoke and flames...and the bodies. The bodies were everywhere.
Too many were still moving.
The Humvee pounded into the next line of undead with a great jolt and their momentum was checked, first by the ghouls and then by a tremendous crater that sat square across the highway. Heedless of the danger, Jack gunned the vehicle right into it. Everything was smoke and dust and swirling ash. He couldn’t see a thing until they were shooting up the other side and then they were back on the highway and a scream ripped from Connor’s throat.
They were rushing through the black smoke of a chemical fire. The stench and the darkness were heavily laced with the demon fear. Jack and Cyn were veterans by now and shrugged it off, while Pastor John was practically shouting the Gospel of Mark at the top of his lungs. It was Connor who was bug-eyed and going crazy. He threw off his seat belt just as the land dropped straight out from beneath them.
A highway overpass had fallen in. They dropped ten feet, landed on the remains of a concrete span, and then skidded down onto another road, this one heading west. Jack kept the wheels turning as fast as he dared, looking for the first chance to get back to the highway.
A minute later there was a bent over sign and an on-ramp chugged full of the undead.
He spun the Humvee, that magnificent charger, straight into them, not daring to slow for even a second. They blasted corpses left and right, and in too many cases right over the top of the vehicle. With ghouls clinging to the sides of the Humvee, they roared right back up onto the highway and into the darkest cloud yet.
“More payers!” Jack yelled as he sensed the source of the darkness: a demon of great power straight in their path.
The ride had jarred the breath out of the pastor and it was with a hitching voice that he began: “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name...”
Quiet as they were, the words were of comfort to Jack. His mind had been edging closer to the gulf of insanity and he went to the brink of it when he saw the demon. It seemed composed of equal parts straw, bone and stray twigs; its eye sockets were clogged with graveyard dirt and when it opened its mouth, black dirt fell and splattered wet on the highway.
Out of its mouth came a blizzard of white which swept the Humvee, finally causing it to falter. The engine coughed like an old man, weak and dying, and the interior lights grew dim. Slower and slower they went.
“...Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven...” Pastor John said, his voice seemed to be gaining the strength that was draining from the Humvee. In seconds, the engine was dead and he was booming out the prayer: “Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil, amen.”
By the time he had finished the prayer, the Humvee’s momentum had carried them far past the demon and onto a stretch of open road. “Do you have a prayer for dead engines?” Jack asked. He could feel the demon coming.
“The Lord will provide,” Pastor John said...and it seemed he did, either that or the heat from the engine block had unfrozen the gas lines. Jack tried over and over, hitting the ignition button and finally the Humvee started up, hesitant at first, then with growing power.
Close behind them was the demon hurrying to catch them and ahead of them were more ghouls. They were a raggedy bunch even compared to the usual ones and Jack guessed that they were the lesser creatures, those whose personal power barely allowed them to hold their borrowed bodies together.
Jack floored the Humvee and with a cry, blasted through, leaving the demon and all the miserable creatures in their dust.
He grinned at Cyn who g
rinned back. She clicked on the defrost to clear the windshield and then cocked her head to see through the side view mirror. “They’re not following us,” she said, her grin even wider than before. She began to laugh as she said: “Pastor John was right; God provided a way to get out of there. I really didn’t think we would make it.”
“Yes, trust in the Lord,” Pastor John said, nodding and gulping air. He seemed giddy and his grin was even larger than Cyn’s.
Jack had grinned, but he couldn’t bring himself to smile. He didn’t see their escape as a sign from God. The way in front was relatively clear and in fact it might as well have been paved in gold. He knew for a fact that they would make it into the city because once again he was bound to a path of damnation.
He was even “fortunate” in his choice of victim. Connor was splayed out in the back; he had been knocked unconscious when the Humvee had taken the plunge off the highway. “Don’t touch him!” Jack snapped as Pastor John reached out to check to see if he was ok. “He’ll be fine,” Jack said and had the sinking feeling that he would be.
The pastor’s grin dipped. “You don’t know what the future holds, Jack. Your path is not set.”
It was like the pastor had held his thoughts up to a mirror—right was left, good was bad, impossible was possible. If it was only that easy, Jack thought. His path was locked in iron and it seemed as though there was no changing it.
He drove through Northern Jersey as the night drew on. The lanes heading east were largely clear and before he knew it, they were at the George Washington Bridge—only then was their way finally blocked. Not only were the roads completely packed with cars, the bridge itself had been bombed into rubble.
Jack literally wept with relief. He had come through fire and death to stop his cousin and he would have committed a sin against God to end the war, but it seemed as though he wouldn’t have to after all.
The Edge of Hell: Gods of the Undead A Post-Apocalyptic Epic Page 31
