The Men Who Killed God (Sinner of the Infinite Book 1)

by J Alex McCarthy

  He was sure that all of his ribs were broken, with an added bonus of ruptured organs. At the very least, none of the fragments from the grenade hit him.

  He looked up. In front of him was the overturned stone table with his pistol in front of it.

  Behind the table was Brookes, with half of his face and body charred, his pupils eyeing the gun. Brookes didn’t want to fight anymore. He wanted to end it.

  “Shit,” Kevan said.

  They both jumped to their feet and ran for the gun. A shock ran through Kevan’s body as his injuries worked against him.

  Brookes moved fast as Kevan gritted his teeth through the pain. Kevan wasn’t going to make it in time.

  Brookes’ feet skidded to a halt as he picked up the gun and pointed it at Kevan.

  Before he could fire, Kevan screamed and leaped legs first over Brookes and grabbed his head and dropped down over the stone table.

  Kevan’s back slammed hard onto the hardwood floors as a sickening crack snapped off behind him.

  Kevan rolled over to his side. “Fuck.” He was hurt, badly.

  He heard crying from one of the doors in front of him. He forced himself to his feet. His family needed him.

  He looked back at Brookes. Kevan had snapped Brookes’ neck over the edge of the table. Brookes’ eyes stared up at him.

  “Fucker,” Kevan spat. He walked to the door and opened it. It was a small dark room. There was dried blood on the floor and his kids in a baby carrier. His wife was nowhere to be seen.

  “The faithless have two choices when they’re captured.” Kevan looked back at Brookes. His fucking head was talking. He wasn’t dead.

  “Why won’t you die?” Kevan said.

  Brookes continued, “To either become enlightened, or to die. Your wife chose death. But that choice wasn’t really hers.”

  “What did you do with her!?” Kevan yelled.

  “When our captives don’t give up so easily, we transport them to somewhere where they will. Where we have methods of turning people.” Brookes head bobbled around, as if he was trying to get up. But he failed. The nerves to his lower body were cut. “Once she becomes enlightened, there’s no turning her back. We do something to people’s heads, we change them. And their only escape from it is death. Once we’re done with her, she’ll never be the one you fell in love with again.”

  “Where is she?” Kevan picked up a wood shard and clutched it in his hand.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

  “Tell me!”

  “You’ll never get anything from me. One last fuck you. I’ve accepted death a long time ago. You—”

  Kevan shoved the shard into Brookes’ eye and his voice silenced. His smirk was permanently left on his face.

  Kevan backed onto the wall and slid down. His wife was gone. His kids’ wailed as he stared at Brookes’ last crooked smile.

  …

  Silence was in the air. August was sure that the guards were dead. He waved his hand in the last hallway. Nobody fired back. He stood to his feet and walked into the hall. The remains of the guards were splattered on the walls and ceiling. He couldn’t believe that had worked. But there was no time to worry about that.

  He took a deep breath. Right in front of him was a choice he was avoiding. In a few short steps, his destiny would change forever.

  What would he do when he’d met the love that betrayed him? Betrayed everything they’d worked for?

  He took a step forward and remembered back to the day his father had uttered his last breath. August remembered wailing on his caved-in face. Remembering his father’s pleas as he begged him to stop.

  He didn’t, but once the red had left his eyes, he stared at what he had done. At his father’s eyes losing their life. They stared past August, past the ceiling as if they were staring at someone looking over them.

  He’d remembered the smile on his father’s face. The “thank you” that left his lips as the life went from his breath and the light left him.

  Then he remembered back to when he was younger. When his father was towering over him as his fist raised and lowered into him. While he cowered in a corner, crying for forgiveness that was never going to come. As his father laid one last kick to knock the breath out of him.

  As he was left alone in the corner the entire night. Not moving. Barely breathing. With nobody checking up on him. It was that father that said “thank you.” It was that father that had smiled when August was killing him. Not the one who claimed to have changed. To become enlightened.

  The gods changed him into something he wasn’t. And death was the only escape.

  After those days, August had always looked up from his corner, hoping for something to carry him up from the hell that surrounded him. From the hell his father brought, from the disinterest of his mother. And when he grew older, somebody finally saved him.

  Sara. August raised his hand to her and she carried him up. Raised him from his darkness. And when he met her, he grew into a man. He learned to feel something more than hate. Something more than pain.

  He reveled in her love, in her joy. She was the light in his empty sky. Whenever they kissed, it felt like they were lost in each other for an everlasting eternity.

  As August took his final step toward the door in the hall, he remembered back to a time when Sara and he were driving down the coast. The sun shining in their eyes. The wind blowing through their hair. Talking about nonsense, about nothing really.

  But then the conversation took a turn. August had seen a story on the news about an older married couple with the husband in a coma. They didn’t believe he would wake up and the wife was given a choice to either let them pull the plug or not. She allowed them to.

  August said, “When we eventually do get married, if something happened to one of us, our lives would be in the other’s hands. What would you do if I were to go into a coma? If the doctors say I’ll never wake?”

  “When we eventually get married?” Sara laughed.

  “I’m saving up for the ring now.”

  “You need to have a job to do that.”

  “Come on, answer the question.” They had that discussion before. Their love was eternal. Unfortunately, money and job stability weren’t.

  “I don’t know what I would do, really. I think you’d have to tell me what you want first.”

  “But I asked you first.”

  “And I gave you a non-answer.”

  “Okay. I’ll go first...” He paused. He already had put a lot of thought into it. But he didn’t want Sara to think that he didn’t take long to make big decisions. “I would want you to pull the plug.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, really. I would be dead already. If I were to never wake then what would I be? I’d like to think that the Wavering Radiant is real and I’d be granted entry.”

  “But there could be a chance that you could wake.”

  “Still, it would be better for everyone if they could move on with their lives, if they wouldn’t have to worry about keeping me alive for years. Plus, what if I was to wake and I became a vegetable? I believe there wouldn’t be a lower hell to live in. It’d be a mercy to kill me.”

  “So grim.”

  “So, tell me your answer.”

  Sara paused for a few seconds and then looked at August.

  “I…I’m not sure what I would want to happen. I’ll leave the decision to you, to decide what’s best for me. If you’re providing a mercy or not.”

  She smiled as August looked at her.

  August’s feet stopped in front of the door. He held his pistol in his hand. Gripping it tight enough to hurt. This was it.

  He kicked open the door. A guard was huddled crying in the corner. August forcibly relieved him from his duty with bullets.

  August looked around. Sara was laying on the floor against the wall with her eyes closed.

  “Sara?”

  Her eyes opened. She jumped to her feet. “August!” She ran and tried to jump on h
im. But August pushed back and she fell to the ground.

  August stared at the ground, his gun shaking.

  “August…What’s wrong?”

  He pointed his pistol at her.

  “August…” she looked surprised. She got back to her feet and tried to get closer to him. “What are you doing?”

  “Stop,” he said. She stopped.

  “Put—”

  “Why?”

  “You have to—”

  “Why did you do it? Why did you tell them where we were? You put our lives in danger!”

  “You have to trust me, August. If we submit, then He will save all of us. Everything can be the same again.”

  “You know that nothing will ever be the same again.” He kept his gun trained on her. He needed to fire. He needed to kill her. He needed to stop hesitating.

  He needed to give her mercy.

  But as he looked at her, he remembered all the good times they had together. He remembered everything they’d been through. He couldn’t do it.

  He lowered his gun.

  “That’s what my mother first thought, too, but Ifor told me she was doing fine.”

  “What? What did you do?”

  “I told them where my mother was. They told me she joined Ifor on her own will. He was right. They can save us!”

  August raised his gun again.

  “He will save us. He was always watching over us,” Sara repeated. Tears entered her eyes.

  How could she? She got her own mother killed. The very woman who cared for Sara for most of her life. Sara loved her. And now, Sara would do the same to him.

  She had to be put down. To prevent her from hurting anyone else. His father wanted it. And Sara would want the same.

  “He spoke to me, he told me how to fix everything.” She smiled as she spoke, she was lost. Her tears slicked her face. There was no turning back.

  At least, he could see her smile for one last time.

  His finger squeezed the trigger.

  “Please come with me,” Sara asked.

  “No.”

  “But I love you.”

  In a single bang, a resonance forever shook in August’s mind, body and his very core of existence. Sara’s body collapsed to the floor.

  9

  Godkiller

  The sky was the bluest it’d been all year. Cascading mountains filled the cloudy horizon. Queen sat naked on the edge of her pool. Brookes leaned back between her legs, the water covering his nude body.

  Queen’s fingers massaged his scalp as she washed his hair. He stared into the sky, while Queen hummed an eccentric tune. It was something she had heard hundreds of years ago. She forgot from where. But it stuck with her.

  “Close your eyes,” Queen said. Brookes closed his eyes on her command and Queen dunked him into the water and pulled him back up. She continued to move her fingers through his hair.

  She adored touching him. She didn’t know why. Was it a curiosity in what made the humans so different than the gods, when they looked exactly the same? Or was it something more?

  Later in the day, Queen lay on top of him, riding him with her hips. Brookes stared into her eyes. His eyes needed her, they lusted for her. And she needed him too.

  She kissed up and down his neck and then paused. Usually at this point, Brookes’ instinct would take over and he would attempt to ravish her and she would ravish back.

  But his arms lay by his side. She looked into his eyes but they were looking past her. Was her charm gone? Had she given him so much that she no longer excited him?

  “Why me?” Brookes said.

  “What?”

  “Why choose me? Why a human? When you’re so far above me?”

  She stared into his eyes. She usually wouldn’t have allowed him to question her. But she hesitated. She didn’t know how to answer him. Why him?

  She was so far above that she was below. To have sex with a human. The other gods were disgusted with her dirty habits. But she needed him.

  The feeling he gave her. To her, their lust was like a sickness, a sickness she didn’t want cured. He was different than her other suitors, there was a feeling she felt for him.

  Queen stared at Brookes. “It’s because I lov—”

  Queen jumped up. Her sheets slid off of her sweaty naked skin. The blue from the sky reflected into her room. She rubbed her eyes; they were wet.

  “What?”

  Why were they wet? She had never cried before.

  Yesterday, she had felt a certain soul pass. Brookes. He was gone. And there was no way she could save him from the abyss. She tried with all her might, but as the god of death, she knew that passing souls only went one way. To the Wavering Radiant. She lied to herself, telling herself that she’d felt nothing.

  She had many human suitors in the past. So many humans she’d casted aside on a whim. So, why did she feel this warmth for the latest?

  Her chest felt hollow, her stomach turned. She started to breathe in deeply.

  Why was she feeling this way? Feeling this way for a human? A freaking monkey? She was sick. She hit the top of her head with her hand.

  “I’m sick. I’m sick. I’m sick,” she kept repeating to herself.

  There was a thought in the back of her head that she felt coming up. That she was trying to run away from. Tears started to fall onto her chest.

  “Stop,” she sobbed. “Stop crying!” She tried to will the tears away.

  Then the realization hit. She loved him. Brookes’. A human man. The only love she ever had. The only person that understood her. She screamed out, the tears pouring out.

  Brookes couldn’t be dead. She was the god of death, she could bring him back. She couldn’t feel for a human man. She was a god, she had the power to rule over them, rule over humanity! But at the end of the day, none of that mattered.

  Brookes was gone forever and she couldn’t ask He to bring him back. The only love she ever had was gone. Kevan was going to pay for what he’d done. She would kill him with her own hands.

  She howled out, crying her feelings away.

  …

  August lay in the grass staring up into the setting day. Sara cuddled on top of him.

  “I never understood how people could paint sunsets. The pictures never do it justice,” Sara said.

  “Yeah, well, it’s just a memory of the beauty they saw. When they look at the painting again, the brain fills in the gaps. So they could remember what it truly looked like,” August said.

  “A reminder?”

  “Yeah, a reminder. Sometimes people need a reminder of the better things, so they don’t forget a better time.”

  “Well, I would never want to have something to remind me of a better time. I’d hope that the better times would last forever. Then, I would never need to have any reminders about anything. Because I’d be living in the moment forever.”

  “I wish this could last forever.”

  “So, you won’t have to get a job and I’ll have to take care of you forever?”

  “Your choice.”

  Sara laughed. They stared into the sky.

  “Then… you shouldn’t have killed me.”

  August looked at her.

  …

  “August!”

  August snapped out of his stupor. He stood in front of a table with a map of a building on it, in the rebel’s hideout, a warehouse. Nine other rebels stood around the table. Right across from him was Ezekiel.

  Ezekiel said, “You alright?”

  August looked around. It was a daydream.Don't think, August thought. In thinking, there was hesitation and in hesitation, there was regret. And in those regrets, were the memories he wanted to escape. “Yes.”

  “Cause if you’re scared, you can leave. But I need you to be one hundred and ten percent.”

  “I’m not scared, get on with it.”

  “Then pay the hell attention.”

  August looked at the table; they were about to do some serious shit. The map was o
f a theatre or a church. August couldn’t tell. Today, they were going to kill a god.

  Ezekiel passed around a picture. “This is the god of medicine. Originally, he was the god of healing, but he had an in with the Queen bitch and got promoted.”

  August got his picture. The god looked huge. How did Ezekiel plan to kill him?

  Ezekiel continued, “Now, you’re asking, ‘Ezekiel, why exactly did he get promoted?’ And I’ll tell y’all that he got promoted because he works under Queen’s rehabilitation program. Or at least he did. I don’t know what he does now. But I do know he did in the recent past.”

  Ezekiel looked around the room. All the rebels listened to him with an attentive ear.

  All but August, who stared at Juraj’s picture. There was no way they could kill a god. Maybe they could capture him, or something.

  “He was the notorious torturer for Queen. Whenever anyone of us got captured. He was the one who was tasked with getting the information out of us using any means necessary. You can use your imagination about what he did. No matter that he is now trying to escape what he’d done in the past. He’s a major god now and a target.”

  “We’re going to capture a major god?” August asked.

  “No. We’re going to kill him.”

  August stared at Ezekiel dumbfounded as he continued. “According to our intel, Juraj is attending an opera performance tonight in LA. At a large historic church. It was originally a theatre but was bought out by Ifor and turned into a church. They still have performances there to entertain and provide money for Ifor. Let’s just say the Finale will be spectacular. He’ll be surrounded by Touched and other guards. Does anybody have any problems killing innocents working under the gods?”

  Ezekiel stared at August. It was a question for him.

  “No,” August said.

  “Good, next—”

  “How in the hell are you planning on killing a god?”

  Ezekiel threw up his hands. “About time somebody asked me. It seems like everyone just follows me blindly everywhere I go and are just as suicidal. That’s why I like you, August.”

  “Answer the question.”