At Wells and Lake, Rita collapsed, her strength gone. The shadowy refuge of a diagonal doorway on the corner beckoned and she dragged herself toward it. She shouldn't be out here by herself and in this condition, so close to the subway entrance only a few yards away. But she couldn't go back to the Mart, she couldn't—
They came up the stairs like moist, deadly spiders to drag her down and into the tunnels, a new and private hell.
5
REVELATION 10:9
Take it, and eat it up; and it shall make thy belly bitter,
but it shall be in thy mouth sweet as honey.
REVELATION 18:14
And the fruits that thy soul lusted after are departed from thee.
~ * ~
Try as she might, Anyelet could not drive the beast from her dreams. It wrapped rotting arms around her with a lover's intimacy as she whipped her head from side to side in a vain attempt to escape the fetid kiss of its lips against her neck.
Then it was gone, driven away by that girl, the one with the silken, silver hair whose blood had splattered everyone last night and blistered their flesh like fire, leaving them all screaming and sick. And having this Child-woman in her mind, her gaze burning with holy fever, was far, far worse than the nightbeast who lusted after Anyelet with a Hunger that eclipsed even her own.
~ * ~
She woke in Stephen’s arms, not knowing how he'd found her room or why he would return after so effectively slipping away the night before. The feel of his flesh should have stirred her dark need immediately, and yet . . .
There was no Hunger.
Anyelet tried to sit up and found she couldn't. The hand she brought to her face was wretched and stank of decomposing flesh. She stared at it in horror, then shrank away from Stephen, but he seemed unperturbed by the smell or sight of her. "What's happening?" she croaked. He looked at her in pity and pulled her back against his chest, smoothing her hair and cradling her gently.
"It's time to die, Anyelet."
~ * ~
How strange, Anyelet thought blearily, to lie next to the body of the white-haired girl who had brought destruction down upon them all. Stranger still to be moving and thinking, yet so resemble the girl's quickly disintegrating corpse next to which Stephen had placed her on the Franklin Street Bridge; now he leaned against the railing somewhere off to the side like a silent, ancient sentinel. She could hear the water lapping sweetly below, feel the breeze on her burning skin. The sun, she knew, would find her in the morning.
No matter. She would be dead by then.
Death, a concept she had not considered applying to herself since . . . when? Something else that didn't matter. All that did was now, on the ground with her cracked, oozing lips drawn in pain as her body ate itself away. Not long ago she had stood on the other bridge and laughed at the stars; in the morning the sun would laugh at her. What would its golden rays feel like upon her flesh? She would never know.
She closed her eyes and let the true darkness take her.
IX
March 31
Salvation
REVELATION 17:14
These shall make war with the Lamb,
and the Lamb shall overcome them.
The lake under the morning sun was stunning, an undulating sea of fire stretching to the horizon. Stephen had never been to the southern shoreline before, and he had started this trek hours ago to put distance between himself and the silent bodies of Jo and Anyelet. He would have liked to have buried them, or even spilled their remains into Lake Michigan and let the cleansing waters absorb both good and evil. Instead, he'd had to leave them on the bridge for the scavengers—the birds, the insects, and yes, the rats—and this was not something he wanted to stay and see.
Stephen turned south and began walking, barely noticing the sparrow that flitted around his head and finally ended on his shoulder for a free ride. The weather in the mouth was warmer, the daylight more intense; it was a climate where the smallest things of the earth might flourish that much faster. There were still darker things and frightening times ahead.
But not for long.
X
May 5
Evolution
REVELATION 21:23
And the city had no need of the sun,
neither of the moon, to shine in it;
for the glory of God did lighten it.
REVELATION 21:25
for there shall be no night there.
~ * ~
"Beautiful, isn’t it?"
Calie smiled her agreement as Perlman pulled her into his arms and hugged her. "Yes." She studied him for a moment. “Are you happy now, Bill?"
He glanced at her, then nodded. “As happy as I'll ever be," he said finally. "More than I would've thought possible."
"We are, too," she said. “And it’s because of you and all your work."
Perlman rubbed a thumb along her shoulder. "Not just me," he reminded her.
"But impossible without you." She looked at him seriously. "I always wondered, what really made you so determined to develop that bacteria? Was it Mera? Your son?"
Perlman shook his head. "They were gone months before I got the idea." He smiled dreamily and Calie followed his pointing finger across Michigan Avenue, then up to the sky and its vivid sprinkling of tiny lights.
"I just wanted to see the stars again at midnight."
Epilogue
PROPHECY . . .
REVELATION 20:3
And cast him into the bottomless pit,
and shut him up . . . till the
thousand years should be fulfilled:
and after that he must be
loosed a little season.
REVELATION 20:5
But the rest of the dead lived not
again until the thousand years were finished.
This is the first resurrection.
REVELATION 20:7
And when the thousand years are expired,
Satan shall be loosed out of his prison.
AfterAge Page 33
