by Tristan Vick
“Good?!” Rachael balked, her gut churning in revulsion as if it was full of worms. “Campbell was a psychopath and his wife was a sociopathic vampire who fed off of his madness. The only good that came out of all this carnage is the welcome knowledge that those two lunatics will be rotting in hell for an eternity.”
“Silence your wicked tongue, witch! God so help me, I’ll take off your head if it’s the last thing I do in this life.”
So much for her plan of not setting him off, she thought. The fuse was already lit. Hank pulled the trigger and the blast exploded into her chest. Rachael flew backward and landed on her ass. She remained upright, dazed from the brunt of the gunshot. Hank walked up to her and, full of rage, kicked her squarely in the middle of her chest wound with his boot. She fell onto her back and gasped for air. But all that remained of her lungs was a large gaping hole in the center of her chest.
Hank’s beet red face stood over her and his eyes drilled into her with all the hate he could muster. His cheeks shook with rage and the veins in his neck were as taught as tightly strung piano cords. “Though shall not suffer a witch to live,” he said, aiming the gun at her gut. Hank fired off another round. Then another. And another. Rachael’s body jerked violently with each blast until it was practically severed in two. By the time Hank stopped firing only the twine of her vertebrae tethered her torso to her legs.
“Get up from that,” Hank snarled. Still filled with a deep seeded hatred he spat on her mutilated body.
As Hank turned and walked back toward his posse of men he noticed their eyes grow large with a fearful shock.
“What in blazes are you all looking at?”
Hank spun back around in time to see Rachael rise up to her feet. No traces of the gory wound remained. “I don’t believe it.” Hank screamed, raising his shotgun. “Why won’t you fucking die?!”
Shots tore into Rachael’s flesh, shredding it. She cringed, but just as soon as she absorbed the brunt of the blast her body already had begun to heal itself. She concentrated on healing and it seemed to speed up the progress. The harder she concentrated the faster her body mended itself.
“Noooo!” Hank screamed, clicking the trigger of his fully emptied shotgun. He threw the gun at the ground and reached out his hand and demanded a weapon. His men merely looked frightened and confused, and in their uncertainty their superstitious fears prevailed, and several of them backed away in protest. “Cowards!” Hank snapped. “You godless, good for nothing cowards!”
“Give it up,” Rachael said. “You’ve already tortured me. Brutalized me. Humiliated me. You treated me like dirt for no other reason than I didn’t believe share your beliefs. Killing me now won’t save your sorry soul—assuming you even have a soul. But if there is any amount of good left in you, any shred of human decency, I’m begging you—please, do the right thing.”
Hank snatched one of his men’s weapons out of his hands and cocked the gun. “The right thing to do,” retorted Hank, “Is end your miserable existence. You’re an abomination.”
Hank trudged up to Rachael and put the barrel of the gun squarely against hear forehead. She stared at him with a scorn hotter than annealed steel.
“That won’t be necessary,” a deep baritone voice boomed. Suddenly the whole grounds lit up like Wrigley Field. The high beams of a train of car headlights circled around the entire premises blinded the small gathering. With all of Hank’s trigger happy gunfire nobody had heard the vehicles sneak up on them.
Rachael held up her hand to her eyes to block the light enough to try and see who it was. Leaning against a white Chevy Denali, with twenty-two inchers and chrome spinners, was a tall black man.
“I claim jurisdiction in this matter,” his deep masculine voice rattled.
Hank seemed to show the first signs of real trepidation. There were always bigger fish in the sea. And sometimes a shark. Jamal Treslan was a shark. The proof of which ran down Hank’s face in the form of fresh beads of nervous sweat. “This ain’t none of your business, Treslan,” snarled Hank.
“Oh, I think you’ll find it is very much my business. You see, Hank, I was in the neighborhood and I thought I would check on how things were going with you church folk. As it turns out, we heard what sounded like World War III over here, and I felt the least I could do is offer my assistance. You know, it being trying times and all.”
“Like I was saying,” Hank reiterated, “I have everything under control.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt that,” Treslan said as he folded his hands behind his back and calmly walked toward where they stood. “But you see, as we arrived, to come to your aid, I happened to see something quite fascinating. I saw you unload six rounds into that young woman standing over there, and moments later she stood up again, without a scratch on her. Doesn’t that strike you as, how shall I put it, miraculous?”
Wagging his finger at Rachael, Hank shouted, “She’s a goddamn witch! That’s what she is.”
Jamal Treslan stopped and looked right at Hank with a glare so powerful it would have sent a fierce tiger cowering back into the jungle from whence it came. “Now, Hank, you and I both know there are no such things as witches. So you best listen up, because I am only going to say this once. Whatever debt Campbell owed me in the past is now paid in full. I’m wiping the slate clean. But in return, this woman is coming with me.”
“Over my dead body!” Hank protested. Hank waved his hand and his men trained their guns on Treslan. Instantly the surrounding vehicles all clacked with the sound of car doors opening. Men carrying machine guns got out of the vehicles in sets of four and five. Rachael estimated twenty, perhaps more.
“That can be arranged,” Treslan said without the slightest hint of distress.
“I heard they called you the Mad Doctor for a reason, but if you want this godforsaken cunt, then you’re madder than I thought. You’ll bring a curse worse than death upon your people!”
Treslan took off his jacket and approached Rachael. “Death,” laughed Treslan. “What would you know of death? I suspect this young lady, on the other hand, knows quite a lot about death. She even knows how to escape it. And that’s a secret I want to learn.”
Jamal Treslan wrapped his jacket around Rachael’s shoulders and escorted her back to his truck. She gladly went along with him. Besides, it wasn’t as if she exactly had any other choice.
“Just know this isn’t over!” Hank hollered at them. “I swear to Christ that I will get my revenge.”
Rachael spun on her heel and looked Hank straight in the eye, but she said nothing. Instead, she smiled a jeering grin, as if to say he wasn’t worth it. Turning back, she climbed silently into the white Chevy. Treslan shut the door behind her, like a gentleman, and then paused next to the passenger door. He snapped his fingers and all of his men raised their weapons.
Hank knew he was outnumbered two to one. In defiance he spat on the ground and shouted, “I’ll see you in hell, Treslan!”
“I don’t doubt it,” Treslan replied with a suave grin. Treslan turned to get into his truck and his men let loose a volley of unruly fire. The roaring gunfire mercilessly mowed down Hank and his men. Rachael watched with a sense of vindication as the bullets chopped them to smithereens.
A sinister smile broke out across Treslan’s face as he watched Rachael enjoying the show and, brushing off his jacket, said apologetically, “Sorry about that. But I couldn’t have that redneck imbecile make good on his promise to kill you. You’re much too valuable.”
She didn’t care if this Treslan fellow was the Devil himself, she was thankful for the rescue, and nodded in appreciation. She had been through hell and back again. She even had the ashes to prove it.
Once the barrage of fire died down, the convoy of vehicles flicked off their lights, and one after another the small caravan pulled out of the parking area of the church. As they drove into the darkness of night, the church grounds became flooded with the carnivorous moans of the mindless living dead coming from all around. T
reslan looked out the window at the swath of pale creatures lurching toward the church, and chuckled, “Like moths to a flame.”
25
Awakened
ST. MARTIN’S WAS NEWCASTLE CITY’S oldest standing hospital. The building was made of brick architecture circa the mid-1800s. It was one of the first major hospitals in the U.S., alongside Bellevue in downtown Manhattan and the Bayley Seton on Staten Island. The Red Cross had owned it for more than six decades, but when the new city hospital was constructed closer to downtown, and with the Red Cross opening their own establishment on the other side of the city, St. Martin’s became an unfrequented establishment and quickly fell into ruin.
Around that time, Dr. Jamal Treslan stepped up and donated two million dollars to pay for renovations and keep the hospital open. Of course, being the main financial donor meant he had a spot on the board, and his timing couldn’t have been better as the Chief of Medicine soon resigned after management changed. This gave Treslan the opportunity he was looking for and, without any hesitation, he quickly slid into the position of Dean of Medicine for St. Martin’s Hospital. The rest was history.
Treslan led the way as a small army of troopers marched behind him down the corridors of the hospital. Timid eyes peered out of rooms at Rachael Ramirez as she followed close behind the doctor. He led her straight into an ER and marched up to a tightly shut vinyl curtain. He reached up and tugged the drapes back and the curtain rings rattled as they opened. Lying on a metal operating table was a little girl with pitch-black eyes. She snarled and growled at them.
Rachael looked at Treslan with a curious look. “What’s this?”
“This is my daughter.” Walking up to a shelf with medical supplies, he opened a drawer and pulled out a couple of syringes and a blood drawing kit. As he prepared, he motioned toward a swivel stool next to the bed. “Take a seat.”
“What are you planning to do?”
“Your blood has very unusual properties. I think if I give my daughter a blood transfusion using your blood, it may cure her.”
“It might kill her,” Rachael added with a concerned look.
“As you can see, she has been infected. She has no heartbeat, no pulse. For all intents and purposes, she is already dead. She cannot get any more dead than undead, but if I can cure her, if I can bring life back to her…” Treslan’s voice trailed off as he attempted to mask his emotional scars with the bandage of silence.
Rachael held out her arm. “If you believe it’s the right thing, then I won’t stop you.”
Treslan stared at her for a moment and then a sad smile broke across his face. “You have children, don’t you?”
“I have…” Rachael caught herself, “I had a son. But the infection took him.”
“I am sorry for your loss.”
“If this works,” Rachael said, “Will you help me find my son?”
“You have my word.”
An understanding between them, Treslan filled six bags of blood. Then he hooked his black-eyed daughter up to a plasmapheresis machine. Once he collected and filtered Dahlia’s infected blood, he mixed in a packet of Rachael’s virus resistant blood, and with tubes running to the little girl’s arms and legs, he ran it back through his daughter.
Violent spasms overtook her immediately. She moaned so loud that it echoed through the hospital walls. Jerking back and forth the entire table shook as the restrains fought to hold the convulsing girl on the operating table. The leather straps rubbed raw against her skin so that Rachael thought the poor girl’s flesh would tear off from her bony little limbs.
Watching intently, Treslan and Rachael stood mouths open as the girl raised her head and looked at them with human eyes. Looking at them, the child’s attention locked onto her father. “Daddy?”
Treslan’s eyes began to poor tears as he ran to embrace her. “Dahlia!” he cried out. His large powerful hands worked furiously to undo the painful leather straps that bound her. “My Dahlia!”
Once Dahlia was free she put her arms around her dad’s neck and cried into his chest. “Daddy! I was so scared.”
“Hush now,” Treslan said. “Everything is alright now. Daddy is here.”
Looking up at Rachael, Dahlia asked, “Daddy, who’s that lady?”
“She is the nice lady who made you all better,” he replied.
Treslan held his precious Dahlia in his arms and squeezed her with all the warmth he could muster.
“Where is mamma?” Dalia asked.
“You don’t remember?” Treslan asked in a worried voice. He didn’t want to reveal the fact that Dahlia was the way she was because her mom had gotten sick and … Treslan choked up just thinking about it.
He had come home as usual. Entered the house, set his briefcase down by the coat rack, threw his keys in the bowl on the Ikea Besta shelf near the entrance, and hung his jacket up. As he turned the corner and entered the living room he saw his wife mauling their daughter. He recalled the panic that overcame him. Desperate to rescue his daughter from the clutches of what used to be his wife, Treslan picked up the glass vase by the entrance to the living room and smashed it against the back of his wife’s head. She fell to the ground, but immediately started pushing herself back up. Her scalp peeled back off her skull, somehow oblivious to the pain, she stood up and growled at Treslan like a wild animal. Then she lunged at him.
Treslan dodged her attack and slammed her into the wall. She fell back and hit the floor again. Seeing the crying child, she started to crawl toward her, and that’s when Treslan smashed her over the head with the vase again, and again, and he kept on bashing her skull in until it was the consistency of strawberry jam.
Dahlia was screaming wildly, probably more from the pain than anything. Standing there half dazed and confused, his dead wife’s blood spackled on his face and her lifeless corpse at his feet, Treslan didn’t know what to do. Then Dahlia let out a torrent of sobs and in an instant he rushed over to his daughter, picked her up in his arms, and carried her into the bathroom and bandaged her up. Treslan glanced at himself in the mirror and saw that he was crying. If Dahlia didn’t recollect that horrible day, it was probably for the best.
“Mamma is busy at work now,” he lied. But the lie was comforting. The truth would only devastate.
“Can I see mommy soon?”
“Yes, very soon. Don’t you worry about a thing, Dahlia. Daddy is here. I will take care of you.”
“Come,” one of the guards said in a quiet voice, reaching out his hand to guide Rachael toward the exit. “Let the doctor have a moment with his daughter alone.”
“Of course,” Rachael said.
Once they were out in the hallway, the guard addressed her in his regular tone of voice. “We have a room prepared for you. But, as you can imagine, space is limited. I’m afraid you’ll have to share, if that’s not too much of a burden?”
“No, not at all.”
“Your roommate should be no problem, but if you should find her less than amiable, just let us know and we can try to fix you up with some new accommodations.”
“I am fairly easy to get along with,” Rachael said with a smile. “At least I like to think so. Out of curiosity, who is my roommate?”
“A woman we picked up the day before yesterday.”
As they approached the end of the wing which had large day windows on the left which overlooked the grounds, they came to a door, second from the end. The fluorescent light at the end of the hall buzzed and flickered, fighting to stay alive. The large man opened it and pushed open the door. On the bed in the room sat a young woman writing in a purple diary.
Alyssa looked up just in time to see Rachael standing in the doorway staring back at her with equal astonishment. “No way!”
The guard raised an eyebrow. “You two know each other?”
“Yes,” Rachael informed.
Alyssa leapt up and practically pounced on Rachael. The two embraced each other in a long, warm hug. Tears of elation filled their eyes as they
embrace one another and they couldn’t help but start laughing.
“Well,” said the guard, “curfew is at nine. Be in your rooms by then.”
“Thanks,” Rachael replied without looking back. The guard nodded regally, then turned and made his way back down the hall.
“I can’t believe it,” Alyssa said, stepping back to see how Rachael had faired. “It’s really you! I never expected to see you again.”
“I know,” Rachael replied. “Tell me about it.”
Alyssa had on a gray short sleeve shirt and navy blue denim jeans. Staring at Rachael with a contemplative look, Alyssa licked her upper lip and squinted. Rachael’s outfit looked like a sultry prom dress gone feral. A transparent fabric barely masked the fifty-cent sized areolas of her pink nipples. Her bare midriff trailed down to a frilly tutu.
“And what in the world are you wearing?”
Rachael looked down at herself and laughed at the thought of wearing such a hideous outfit. “It’s a long story.”
“It looks like you were mauled by a crazed bear.”
“Actually, it was a bit worse than that.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Just then an electric clunk was heard, as if a breaker was suddenly switched off, and the lights went out in the hall. Shutting the door, Rachael turned back to face Alyssa. Her face had become like stone. “Not really.”
Sensing a hint of hesitation in her voice, Alyssa said, “I sense a but in there, somewhere.”
“But,” Rachael added, “I think I have to, just to maintain an ounce of my sanity.”
Alyssa plopped down on the bed, smoothed the covers out with her hand and patted the space next to her. Rachael cozied up next to Alyssa, and they leaned against the wall and kicked their legs over the edge of the bed. Rachael took a deep breath and began her tale of terror and suspense.
