Harker exhaled smoke from his corncob pipe. "A long time."
Bruner nodded. "Okay—so we burn the bodies. What then?"
Exhaling smoke, "I need to go in there." He gestured to the entrance of the ruined temples, the dark hole between the black scratched marble columns.
The soldiers followed his shaking withered hand.
"I had a feeling as much," Bruner said, standing. He nodded at a group of his squad. "Foster, Boone, Davies, and Rawls—start piling the bodies, use the diesel from the fuel jugs and...burn the bodies. Olemaun, Kitka, you're with me and Mr. Harker."
The soldiers began to disperse, all but the two picked from the squad to join Harker in the fallen temple, nodding approvingly, some with prayer and signs of the cross, a few lighting cigarettes.
Taking a final puff from his pipe, Harker stood, shaking a bit on the knees. Exhaling, he tapped the remaining ash against his cane.
"You going to be okay down there?" Bruner asked.
Ben glared at the entrance, feeling the pull of gravity—juxtaposed with the awe of discovery and horror, wondering just what truth if any waited for him. This was the cusp, the last intelligence before the final move on the board. There were no other spaces on the calendar of time—his time was dwindling all too short. He could feel it coming, every day, the bastard Reaper sucking on the few meager breaths of life he had left before finally stepping off its stoop to take its aged meal. And if not death, his mind would be gone surely not too far before. He trembled at the thought.
"Mr. Harker?" Bruner was asking again, his face wrinkled in concern.
Taking his cane, Ben started for the entrance. "Let's get this done," he said in a grunt, while the others shrugged and followed.
* * *
Down into the abyss they went, led by the bright blow of Private Olemaun's sure-fire flashlight. The stone steps were wide and the depth narrow. The air here was stale and bitter like iron. Ben Harker was glad for the downward momentum as it caused him less exertion. A small reprieve from the gloominess of the place. The farther they went, the more rancorous the air became. As if a thousand things had died and been buried within the stone walls—or worse, imprisoned alive until suffocation or starvation or madness or all the above took its due.
Sergeant Burner followed behind Harker, who followed Private Olemaun, while Specialist Kitka covered the rear as they filed down. At the bottom they had room to spread out, following a wide hallway. As they walked farther, pictograms appeared on the walls, illuminated by the glow of the light. The images reminded the old man of his time in Egypt with...
Who was it? His name? He was a teacher, why can't I remember? Ben struggled with the memory until it finally jarred loose.
"Professor Helwing," Harker whispered.
"What was that?" Bruner asked.
Gesturing at the images on the walls with his cane, Harker said, "These remind me of an expedition I had taken with a teacher of mine to Egypt. His name was Georg Van Helwing. He was a good man. Taught me much of what I know."
Farther and farther along the images began to change into script.
"These," Ben continued, "Are called cuneiform—used throughout the Mesopotamian world as their written language."
Bruner nodded, glancing at the walls while keeping his focus ahead of them.
"Mesopotamia is where Professor Helwing believed the vampyre began, why or how I do not know, nor did he. He told me once he had travelled here—it had just been christened Iraq following the fall of the Ottoman Empire, he searched for what he called the Temple of Lamashtu." Ben continued talking, allowing Bruner to lead him now as he gazed upon the etched script on the stone walls, wishing internally he could decipher the meaning.
"Did he ever find it, this temple?" Burner asked.
"No. He never did."
"How did you know about this place, its location I mean?"
"The news—and knowing how to recognize the signs."
"Signs?"
"Once you've allowed yourself a peek through the looking glass, the normal things of the world are no longer painted with the same brush. You begin picking up on clues, you begin noticing the unnoticed." Harker took his attention from the walls, his mind drawn by the gaping opening ahead. A room, he assumed. But to where?
"And you watched the news and found signs?" the Sergeant asked.
"More or less, I saw the ruins which had been discovered here, and I knew of the text and the lore—described by the Professor. He had sought this place to find something," Harker nearly whispered. His attention pulled like a vacuum into that gapping void.
"And what was that?"
"Truth."
Private Olemaun stopped at the edge of the entrance. The rest huddled close as he peered into the darkness. Using his flashlight, he scanned the room. Turning to them, he nodded and stepped inside.
What Ben witnessed was a large chamber. High walls surrounded them, each one elaborated with images and depictions of a civilization he could only assume to be Mesopotamian. The etched pictures were strangely similar to the hieroglyphs of Egypt. Except instead of tall crowns and smooth faces, the characters shown here were bearded and winged.
"Mr. Harker," Bruner called.
Ben shook his head to clear his thoughts of what he was seeing. Turning, he found his party had naturally spread out throughout the room. Bruner was standing near the center in front of a large rectangular object.
"Is this—?" the Sergeant began to say.
"—a coffin," Ben interjected, swallowing hard. "I would say, yes, it certainly is one." He stood back, marvelling at the construction. The coffin was a large narrow rectangular stone box, the lid of which lay ajar showing the contents to be absent of any corpse or otherwise. "This was hers," he hissed lowly.
Bruner glanced at him, "Her?"
"The one I've hunted all my life—the Countess Lamashtu," Ben answered, reaching out to touch the cold shaped stone.
"So, this Lamashtu is real? This is her temple?"
"Indeed."
"And you've come here to—"
"Learn how to kill her, and not maim or injure, but to truly, utterly destroy her."
Bruner again looked at the old man with an expression Harker had expected, the look he had seen many times before on the face of countless other companions. The look of hard acceptance layered by doubt
"Sergeant, Mr. Harker," Private Olemaun, shining his sure-fire on a spot on the wall, "you may want to see this."
Bruner and Harker came beside Olemaun, gazing up at an image etched in the wall, the entire wall, the largest carving in the temple.
"Gentlemen," Harker said, "I give you the Countess."
Specialist Kitka joined them as they stared upward at the image of a woman sitting on a throne. Her head was bald with skull-like hollow cheeks. The artist had given her two large front teeth. And below, covering the lower half of the large wall was an orgy of suffering common people, both robed and naked, conjoined by broken bone and peeled flesh.
They traced the etching as it told a story of sorts, a story of an uprising—a revolt against the vampyre goddess. Or so Ben hoped that her fearful subjects had hanged her and broke her and pressed her and crucified her and impaled her and even burned her—all for naught. Nothing, it would seem, could they do to kill her.
"They couldn't destroy her, so they entombed her," Harker said.
Bruner turned back to the opened stone coffin. "When do you think she escaped?"
Ben shrugged. "Hard to say, if it had worked at all, no one's around to say otherwise." He walked away, back toward the coffin, glaring at it, sneering. "Nothing. Nothing here but dust and empty legend. Nothing useful. It was all for nothing. Another trick. Another lure. Another waste of time."
"Calm down, Mr. Harker, it'll be alright." Bruner tried to reassure.
Ben waved him off, leaning on his cane, exhausted. "What do you know."
Bruner frowned, he looked away, thinking, and then turned back to Ben. "I know this Count
ess of yours, she didn't leave this place abandoned. She had those things up there...like...like guard dogs. If she's got guards, then—"
"There must be something she wants to remain hidden," Ben finished. His spirit rekindled.
From across the room Olemaun called, "Man, look at this! They put silver rocks in the wall. Look at how the light from the sure-fire reflects off of it, kinda looks like a bonfire, right?"
Ben frowned, "Silver?" He turned and went to stand next to the Private. He looked up at what the soldier was talking about, his eyes widening with each second. The image jarred a memory of a picture buried in the books in Professor Helwing's library, a mirror image of what stood before him, massive silver flames—and at the epicentre, a seemingly howling dying vampyre. "That's it," he whispered.
"What's this?" Sergeant Bruner asked, coming up beside him, staring at the large carving in the wall.
Harker turned to the young NCO. "Do you have charges?" he asked, his eyes wide and manic. Sweat beading along his forehead.
Bruner frowned. "Charges?"
"Explosives?"
"Explosives? No—why are you asking about that?"
"What do you have?"
"Mr. Harker, listen. I've had just about—"
"No, you listen. This place, she mustn't know that I know. Do you understand? She must think I learned nothing here—to set my trap, the last move I can make. Do you understand?"
Bruner hesitated, wanting to say something but unsure of the right words to use.
Harker, exhaling, struggled to keep himself calm. He closed his eyes and opened them. "Listen, I know how difficult this will be, to explain to your superiors. I tell you now, this must happen. She must not know that I know how to kill her—not entomb her, but to finally righteously end her unclean, evil life. To cleanse the world of her kind, once and for all. Do you understand?"
The NCO looked back up at the large carving on the stone wall. "How do you know this Countess lady, doesn't already know? Maybe I was wrong, maybe those vampires outside were spies or something."
Ben smiled wickedly. "Maybe they were—but I think you were right the first time, those vampyre were likely sent to guard the temple. And now they are dead. But there could be more coming, yes. No doubt she'll send more to find out what happened to the others. This temple is her only true home—James, take this away, and what does she have left to claim in this world but blood and sand and dirt?"
Bruner stared at the old man. "You want her to come to you. You want her to come for you, but you don't want her to know you know how to kill her, that it?"
Ben nodded, "Precisely."
Bruner looked to the stone floor, thinking, weighing the options. And to Ben's great surprise, he nodded and said, "Okay."
"Okay?"
"Why not, I don't know what I believe, Mr. Harker, but I do believe you've been doing this for a long time and I for one would like to live in a world without the fear of knowing these things are out there. We'll Charlie Mike from here, get to a safe distance, and level the damn place with the 50 Cals. Sound good?"
Inhaling and exhaling loudly, Ben said, "Sounds great."
Final Interlude
2044
"We passed upon the stair
We spoke of was and when
Although I wasn't there
He said I was his friend
Which came as a surprise
I spoke into his eyes
I thought you died alone
A long long time ago
Oh no, not me
We never lost control
You're face to face
With the man who sold the world
I laughed and shook his hand
And made my way back home
I searched for form and land
For years and years I roamed
I gazed a gazeless stare
We walked a million hills
I must have died alone
A long, long time ago"
—The Man Who Sold the World, Nirvana.
"If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori."
— Wilfred Owen, excerpt from Dulce Et Decorum Est.
Chapter 41
The record scratched over and over—the song long ended. Clyde Burner gazed at the ancient man sitting across from him in the recliner, Ben's eyes were closed; it looked as if it hurt him to even breathe. Hearing his Pepaw's story from this other perspective brought warm memories of bedtime stories to his mind's eye. He regretted some of his feelings towards Mr. Harker. Had he lived through what this man had, would he have done anything any different? To live through nightmarish life events and to always survive. Though how could any person forgive another for inviting genocide?
Clyde stood and turned off the Victrola. The large glowing bulb dimmed. Without looking back, he said, "I'm sorry, Mr. Harker. I've been harsh, I believe, judging you as if I knew any better. How could you had known? If it means anything at all, I forgive you." He looked at the wall behind the cabinet record player, again he spotted black and red wires. Tracing them he walled by to the center of the living room. They were everywhere, his eyes couldn't avoid them.
"Mr. Harker? Do you mind, I must know, what are these wires for?" Clyde asked, his gaze on the ceiling. A large circular path of them led to the ceiling fan, burrowing into the attic—or so he guessed.
Ben opened his eyes. Much of the light seemed to have faded from them. He looked at Clyde. "Young Bruner, I believe our time has come to an end. I do not have any more stories to share, I'm afraid, nor would I have the strength to share them if I had any more to tell." He coughed and spat.
Clyde snapped his attention back to Harker, sitting slowly more out of a reflexive denial, knowing what you've heard but your body refuses to go along with the plan. "No—I still need to know how to kill her...What did the carvings in the temple mean?" he whispered.
Ben smiled, it was a fatherly smile, a knowing kind of expression. "Young Bruner, you have everything you need. After the Countess has been removed from the board, the pawns will fall quickly. But you must pursue them. Do not be too careless. The future is still yours, come what may, the future is still yours."
Shaking his head now, "But what of the Countless?" Clyde pressed.
Ben looked at him silently.
"Mr. Harker?"
Nothing.
Clyde's eyes froze wide and unblinking. His mouth opened, but no words came out. Realization burned deep. The movements on the chess board. "You know she's coming for you."
Ben watched Clyde, uttering not a word.
"You wanted her to come—that's why you destroyed her temple in Iraq." Clyde's gaze shot upwards at the hundreds of red and black wires tracing the path of the walls and roof and floor. "You've rigged the house—with what?"
At this Harker finally answered. "Incendiary created with a chemical compound of phosphorus and silver. Your grandfather, Sergeant Bruner procured for me what I needed to construct the trap. Though," he coughed painfully, "I did not know it would take this long for her to come or that it would have been this destructive. I knew taking her temple away from her, her ancestral home, would provoke retaliation. I had hoped...it would have been immediate. I did not want this, Young Bruner, you must believe me."
Clyde stood. The weight of genocide again spun around his head. The weight of what Harker had just confessed with his own words. He had not wanted to believe this—thi
s revelation. Everything he had been through to get here to talk to this one broken man, all those people, Pepaw, gone...dead, a majority no doubt baptised into the undead and all for what? Revenge? Yes. But more than that—it was about her, the Countess. This was the only way, the only play that could be made. Benjamin Harker risked gambling world on the off chance of being able to finally obliterate the vampire race.
He stood, eyes closed, fist trembling. "Will it work?" he asked.
"Yes," Ben hissed, a measure of the old grit returning to his voice.
"How do you know?"
"How can I? This was written on the wall of a tomb in the temple of that vermin hag."
"You risked our very world, Ben. Millions have died already. You better have something better to go on than a gut feeling."
Ben exhaled—too tired to argue. "After everything I've seen and lived through, this I know is the worst of all. To sacrifice so many—its unimaginable, yet utterly necessary. And besides this was her play, not mine."
"You enticed her."
"She must die!"
"Will she?"
"Yes, I've seen how silver works on her, remember? When I faced her that second time, and she bested me, the silver blade burnt her flesh. It didn't mortally wound her—it wasn't enough. Just as the depictions in the temple, the silver needs to impact every molecule, the very air she breathes, bathed in fire. It'll work, young Bruner, it'll work."
Clyde relented. "What choice do we have."
Ben nodded. He gestured at the door. "You must go—she'll be arriving soon, tonight. I can feel it in the air, an electric charge, that dread of anticipation. Take the Chevy out in the barn. James had bought the damn thing without telling me about it, traded in my truck for this new model. Not sure when though, while I was in Vietnam I think. It still runs well. I use it every now and then when I need supplies from town. I don't think I'll be having much need for it anymore."
Picking up his digital recorder, Clyde pressed stop on the device. He glanced down at the old man and despite knowing what he knew now—how many lives, some of which were those he loved and cared for, snuffed out just to get at the Countess, despite all that, he sympathized with Harker. He was willingly throwing himself into the lion's den, or more accurately, inviting the lion inside. There was no exit strategy. There was only death, one way or another. Death, who had waited for so long to take this man, arrives at the last play, the last chapter, the last verse. Did Harker really know that the Countess would have done as she had, spreading through America? No. He doubted the old man would have done what he did if he had known the outcome. We all take risks. Some small. Some unimaginably big.
The Last Hellfighter Page 24
