by Stu Jones
“You cowardly fool!” Abaddon raged as he raised his sword again. “You do not deserve the wings of heaven!”
With a shriek of pain, Raziel felt the blade strike down again as his beautiful golden wings cleaved free from his body. He and Abaddon spun, twisting like broken marionettes as they fell down, farther into the earth’s atmosphere.
“You will not stop me from seizing it!” Abaddon grabbed Raziel by the throat and raised his dark blade one final time. “You will die knowing that you have failed! The Machine is mine!”
Spinning, catching his foe by surprise, Raziel drew the Blaze and pivoted upward, sinking it to the hilt into the chest of the fearsome beast. Enraged, the monster struck Raziel across the neck with a crushing blow from the back side of his blade, knocking him away and sending the Machine flying into the dark.
They dropped through the earth’s atmosphere, their bodies catching fire and streaking across the night sky like falling stars. Raziel gasped, his strength draining from him as he watched the Machine and Abaddon fall with him down into the earthly realm. He knew his chances of surviving the fall without his wings were nonexistent. All he could do now was pray; his final whispered hymn was one he knew well, the words spilling out as his consciousness slowly faded from him: “Holy father, guard your secrets from the hands of the wicked—for it is you alone who can protect them.”
Part 1
Ashes and Dust
The light shines through the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it.
—John 1:5
When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, I went after it, struck it, and rescued the sheep from its mouth. When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it. The Lord delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear.
—1 Samuel 17:34–35, 37
1
UNDER A DESOLATE charcoal sky, the motley caravan of dust-covered vehicles led by the fuel-tanker truck with “American Oil Products” in faded script along its length slowed and shuddered to a halt along a deserted and dusty stretch of South Carolina’s Highway 45. Before them, a small army of bandits blocked the road, some with knowingly bloodthirsty smiles on their faces. Behind the convoy lay the remains of the Francis Marion National Forest, now blackened by fire, the trees but burned stalks stretching eagerly upward toward the darkened, cloud-covered sky.
With a long squeal of hydraulic pressure releasing, the large tanker truck loaded with precious unleaded fuel rocked from side to side and became still. Time seemed to slow, and it became unclear whether the occupants, due to some fear or uncertainty, planned to exit the vehicles at all.
“Well?” Malak, the leader of the Coyotes, stepped forward from the barricade, his hugely muscular body quivering with a powerful, inhuman dark energy. “Apparently you want to make me wait all fucking day.”
As the driver of the tanker exited, a gusty coastal wind whipped up the sand and dust at his feet with bits of trash and created a scene not unlike a long-forgotten western showdown. Slowly, hesitantly, he clicked the cab of the truck shut and stepped to the ground. Following his lead, the doors to the vehicles behind him simultaneously opened, their occupants emerging into the dark day. As he reached the ground, the truck driver brought his hands together and began to rub them nervously.
“We ran into a few snags…”
“Is that supposed to mean something to me?”
The man swallowed hard. “Uh…we assaulted the radio station according to plan, and…uh…we did pretty good. Got the tanker like you wanted.” The man motioned at the mostly full tanker of unleaded fuel behind him.
“And?” Malak questioned.
“Raith took that woman he had his eye on. Tied her up. We burned the rest of them inside the station. Children too, just like you sa—”
“Where are the rest of my men?” Malak growled.
The man wrung his hands together. “They…uh…That giant hit our group just as we left with the tanker. The guys that were still there—they tried to fight him, but he tore them apart. Some of the guys say he’s invincible. That he’s a warrior sent from God—”
Without warning, Malak launched through the air with a snarl, his body crashing through the sound barrier and crossing the space in a flash. The unsuspecting man didn’t get a chance to scream before the ferocious bandit leader slammed into him. In an instant, his body was eviscerated, muscle separated from bone, fluid from vessel, as his corpse came apart in a pink mist under the force of the cloaked man. The explosive sound of a thunderclap followed.
All of the men behind the obliterated truck driver fell on their faces, moaning in dismay as chunks of meat and clothing rained down around them. The goons stationed at the roadblock let fly a wild, slur-filled cheer. The cloaked man stood motionless as bits of blood and bone continued to drip from his garments.
“Beg me for mercy,” he intoned.
A myriad of voices called out from the shuddering, bowed figures before him: “Please! Please! You are a god! We worship you!”
“Let it be known,” Malak yelled, as the men behind him fell silent, “that the next one of you that mentions the name of God will share the fate of this worm. God is dead. His warrior Kane and the others are dead. I killed them. There is nothing left but this wasteland and the darkness of despair that inhabits it. Do I make myself clear?”
The bandits behind him, his Coyotes, gave a resounding “Yes, my lord!”
Malak gazed upon the men prostrate before him. “You,” he said, pointing a heavy finger toward one of the closest bowed men, “continue the narrative.”
The man tried to stand, his legs wobbling beneath him like a newborn fawn’s. He knelt back down, mumbling something about being sorry. The goons along the barricade laughed and made lewd gestures. Malak motioned to his second, a rough man with a painted blue face and a long, braided ponytail.
“Saxon, stand this gutless piece of shit up.”
Saxon stepped forward and seized the man by his collar. “Stand and give account to your lord!”
The man weakly stood, and the front of his pants blossomed with a dark stain as he began to urinate.
The bandits laughed again. Saxon swore, “You nasty son of a bitch, give account or lose your life!”
“W…W…W…” the man stuttered and licked his dry lips, “We thought we were good, my lord. We burned the radio station to the ground. Did it with everyone inside. Even the children.”
“And?” Malak brooded.
“Raith took the woman he wanted. Had her tied up and everything. But as we were leaving out of there, the giant returned. He was pissed about what we had done. Killed a bunch of our guys.”
For the first time, Malak raised his head and allowed the bloodied hood to fall away from his bald head. Breathing in deeply through his nose, he surveyed the darkened sky. He had known the giant would be a problem again. A constant thorn in his side, he was the only member of this pitiful resistance that had a chance of standing against him and his Coyotes.
His day will come soon enough.
“Continue,” Malak growled.
“We left outa there. Raith and some guys were behind us, but we lost them.” The man gave an involuntary shudder, expecting the violence that didn’t come.
Malak stared on expressionlessly, his eyes formless, like black holes in his face.
“We doubled back,” the man continued, “found the truck… found Raith and the others—they were all dead. The woman was gone too. Looked like an ambush.”
Malak paused, mulling this information over. Raith had gotten himself killed over that woman. Fucking idiot. He had been an obsessed, incompetent loner—something Malak didn’t need. It was just as well.
Turning to survey his gang of murderous bandits, he worked it over in his mind. Could it have been some other outlaw group? Mutants? No. Something was wrong here. It was one of the Christians, the giant or another one of them who had survived. He took a deep breath and allowed the dar
kness to soothe him.
Like a miserable rash, they just won’t go away.
“What about the woman I sent against Kane’s group? She was captured from their group. Shana, was it?”
The man shook his head unknowingly. “I don’t know of her. We came straight back here.”
Malak curled his lip in disgust.
“Please spare us, Lord Malak! We are forever loyal!” the bandit moaned.
The thought of partial success irritated Malak terribly. Most of the true Christians he encountered wouldn’t or couldn’t fight. They would be slayed as they clung to the hopes they placed in an unsympathetic and vain God. But this group was different. They had been willing to test his claim to power, and they demonstrated this by a significant show of force. Just a handful of these initially insignificant Christians had been capable of untold damage to his cause. It had been an expensive lesson for him—now only to find out that two, maybe three, had survived his retaliation. He had intended to wipe out this stubborn enclave once and for all, but it would seem fate had different plans.
“Lord Malak,” Saxon said, “is this going to be a problem?”
“No.” The brutish warlord rolled his shoulders. “I will proceed as planned. This changes nothing. The Christians are dead. Kane is dead. He died knowing that his children, his legacy, have been taken as my slaves.” He motioned to the two children, Michael and Rachael, who sat in the back of a nearby truck tied to each other with deepening looks of terror written across their little faces. “My only real opposition—those stubborn fools at the radio station—has been wiped out. This is what’s important. The fact that the giant and the woman live is inconsequential. Alone they are nothing. They can’t stop me now.”
“And them?” Saxon motioned toward the cowering group of men who had failed to fully succeed in their mission.
Malak gave a deep sigh, as though decisions of this kind were below him. “The men need an example, and I cannot abide weakness. Cut out the eyes and tongue of the worm who gave his account. Leave him along the road with some symbol of our passing.”
Saxon nodded with a smile and gave a flick of his wrist. The man began to moan hysterically as he was dragged away by two murderous goons.
“Reinstate the other men. Until my plan is complete, I will need as many soldiers as I can get.”
“Yes, my lord, and where are we headed?”
“Up to I-40. We’ll head west from there.”
“And may I ask what’s west, Lord Malak?”
Malak smiled wickedly as he turned away from Saxon and moved toward the convoy. “Blasphemy,” he whispered, the word slipping away into the whipping of a dusty wind.
In the darkened room, cluttered and ransacked, a man stirred, moaning quietly as he lay alone on a single cot. As he moved, his bandages and the sutures beneath them began to pull. A fresh grimace flashed across his face, and a cold sweat beaded across his brow as he unconsciously wrestled with the pain and anguish that now plagued his dreams.
In the shade of a nearby corner, a shadow shifted as the great form of Courtland Thompson raised his face from his hands. Below him, the chair creaked in protest under the weight of his massive bulk. Every inch of the aging former professional athlete’s eight-foot, five-hundred-pound frame sat unnaturally still. His earnest brown eyes surveyed the man without a word from where he sat enveloped in thought and the darkness of the quiet room.
So much had happened. The world as they knew it had ended. It had been fast and furious, drowning the planet in plague and fire. Few had survived. And yet still, God had been there, preserving Kane and Courtland and uniting them with the others that God had chosen. They had felt the presence of God, as it directed them, but none of them had known the magnitude of what they were starting when this all began—what it would do to them. From the beginning he had known it wasn’t going to be easy, but this had truly tested his faith.
He had done everything he could; he’d fought for the lives of the innocent and tried to protect his friends. For what? For the enemies of God to come in and murderously slay them anyway? So many had been lost, and now only he and a few others remained. It was almost too much. He knew he shouldn’t allow the thought in. He knew he shouldn’t, but he just couldn’t stop it.
How could a just God allow this?
He rubbed at his face and eyed the now-still form on the table for a moment longer before standing, ending his time of introspective meditation. Rising, he moved to his friend’s side and pulled an old wool blanket up over the shivering body of Kane Lorusso as he began to whisper a few ancient words to his friend.
“I have many enemies, Lord. Many fight against me and say, ‘The Lord will not rescue you!’ But you are my shield, and you give me victory and great honor. Though ten thousand enemies attack from every side, I am not afraid.”
The man stirred, his face twisting in agony.
“Yes, that’s right, brother. You fight it. You have to fight. We need you.”
“Any changes, Courtland?” Jenna whispered as she pushed halfway through the doors of the examination room. “I heard someone talking.”
“It’s just me, Jenna. I felt like he should hear my voice.”
She turned her gaze upon the unconscious, defeated form of Kane Lorusso, lying on the dingy cot. “What happened? How did this happen, Courtland?”
Courtland took a moment to collect his thoughts; there was so much. “The Coyotes happened. Malak happened. You know firsthand what that man is capable of. All he’s ever wanted was to ruin Kane—to ruin all of us. All that we went through in the past few weeks—every bit of it was done to divide us. It was an ambush. They used Kane’s family to bait him.”
“Oh…”
“They made him choose, Jenna.” Courtland looked up at her, his deep brown eyes full of sorrow. “He had to let his wife die so he could try to save his children, only for them to be enslaved by the Coyotes. They took everything from him, and then, they meant to murder him.”
“I…I didn’t realize…” Jenna lowered her head.
“Whatever his previous shortcomings, whatever our personal divisions, we have to stand together now.”
Jenna gave an earnest bob of her head. “Of course.”
Courtland looked his friend over. “He’s shaking pretty badly.” The giant glanced at her with genuine concern. “Is that normal?”
“For a man who came as close to death as he did…yes. His body is trying to fight off the infection.” She stepped fully into the room and crossed to the side of the beaten, disheveled-looking man, who lay shivering on the cot. “He’s going to have to ride it out. Hopefully he’s strong enough to beat it.”
“How bad are his wounds?”
“They look worse than they are, though that’s not to say he’s not badly injured. The vest he was wearing stopped two rounds to the chest. The third hit the edge of the Kevlar and only had about an inch of penetration into his abdomen. That’s the main infection site. The head wound looks bad but is just a flesh wound. To take a bullet in the skull at pointblank range and for it to not penetrate…he must be hardheaded.”
“We’ve known that,” Courtland said and smirked good-naturedly.
“That’s about it: a couple of decent lacerations and contusions due to fighting and his fall from the cliff.”
“So, what do you need from me?”
She shook her head and pushed her hair out of her face. “Supplies—more clean or bottled water for hydration and wound irrigation. I need more to cover him at least for the next few days. That makeshift IV has worked well enough.” She motioned to a suspended, overturned plastic liter-size water bottle with a length of rubber hose running from it to the needle in his arm. “I’ve been able to introduce some fluids and a solid initial dose of Keflex to help him fight the infection. I could use more though. I don’t know if it will be enough. Either way, it’s going to be a struggle for him.”
The giant smiled softly and patted the quaking body of his friend. “If there�
��s anything Kane knows how to do, it’s struggle. The rest is up to God.”
Jenna turned her attention toward the giant, her thin frame almost childlike before his great athletic bulk. “What about you?” she said, patting his arm. “Have you slept at all?”
“I’m alright.”
“Courtland,” she said, giving him a scolding look, “you need to rest. You don’t do us any favors if you’re exhausted too.”
“I know, but I can’t leave him, Jenna. I left him once. I won’t do it again. He’s lost so much…I want him to know he’s not alone.”
“He knows.”
They stood in the silence of the dim, cluttered room for a moment before Courtland spoke.
“We’d be lost without you to patch everyone up, Jenna.”
“Thank God instead. It was sheer providence that you found this clinic. Even though it’s been picked over and ransacked, I still found enough usable stuff to stabilize him.”
“And you? How are you holding up?”
“I’m fine; a little sore and banged up from the past few weeks of fighting mutants and getting kidnapped—again. But you know—it’s no big deal.” She flashed a small smile at Courtland, a gesture he returned warmly.
“And Dagen?”
Her countenance darkened slightly. “He’ll be alright. Surprisingly, the stab wound in his leg is clean.”
Courtland shook his head. “I have no idea how he did what he did, coming after you and all.”
Jenna nodded. “Well, that makes two of us.”
“I believe God is working in him, Jenna. That man must care about you immensely.”
Jenna quickly changed the subject. “Look, Courtland, I’ve been thinking: I’d really like to go back to the sta—”
“Jenna, we talked about this,” Courtland interrupted gently, his demeanor growing serious. “I don’t think you should be going back there. There’s nothing left of the radio station. No one would have survived what I saw. Going there is just going to break your heart… The children…everyone that wasn’t killed in the mutant siege was burned alive when the Coyotes raided. I don’t know what we have to gain by going back.”
