by Gary Sapp
weary legs along with it.
The guards did seem to notice him, but as they glanced in his general direction to see what all those noise was all about—the young woman used their lack of attention to her to sprint past them and disappeared inside.
“Noooooooooo.”
And then there was a loud explosion—and a portion of the gymnasium’s roof blew away from its holding.
Dr. Seth Dupree could not say how long it took him to even remotely begin to recover from the effects of the explosion. He was bleeding from the nose…from his ear…from what felt like everywhere. The Gray Man’s hearing was suspect and he could taste blood in his mouth. Dozens of smaller fires were popping up where he’d fallen.
And the two men who were watching the entrance and been blown into several pieces of men on the hill around him well.
Dr. Seth Dupree wept as hard as he ever had.
He cried. He screamed. He pounded the ground around him until his knuckles matched the bleeding that his ears, nose and mouth had done.
Roxanne Sanchez had been right about him after all.
It was no way in the hell, he had survived it all. He would surely wake from his next slumber a dead man. No one could have witnessed what he had tonight and survived it, no one.
He cried and pounded the ground for a time longer—
And then the ground seemed to pound back for nearly 30 seconds after.
He stopped crying with a suddenness that frightened him. He lifted his head from the ground thinking that another suicide pretty teenaged suicide bomber had fulfilled her destiny…but as quickly realized yet one more bout of madness had returned to the Atlanta area just in time to make an already difficult situation now impossible.
Weary and distraught Seth lay himself down on the hard canvas.
He prayed.
And then Dr. Seth Dupree wondered who in the city had survived the earthquake.
Thomas
The dying man spoke.
He told Thomas Pepper a story more horrifying than any sane man would ever wish to hear and keep his sanity intact. It was a tale filled with words of machetes and precision and overwhelming numbers and stealth and butchery.
Thomas had arrived at the downtown hotel ten minutes ago. He’d ventured the rest of the way over here over the loud and persistent protest of the Black minister who’d begged him not to return to the streets—at least until after sunrise. Thomas had convinced the man that he would be fine and promised to return when he’d finished doing what he had felt he needed to do. He never got into specifics but the other man easily could see the guilt and the unease in his eyes. Finally, the minister had been resigned to nodding his bald head and said that no matter whatever sin that he’d committed, he was sure that God would be with him.
And then he sent Thomas Pepper back out into the Atlanta night from which he came.
He’d alternated between running and walking and had made it nearly six blocks to the base of the hotel without further incident. He’d seen troubling acts all along the way but had left the manner to those involved and left well enough alone.
The desk manger—the dying man—was the first person living person Thomas had come across inside the hotel’s lobby.
If anyone dared calling a man lying in a pool of his own blood with his throat partially cut and the top knuckle of each finger snatched from the rest of his hand living. But when Thomas could stand to glance around his perimeter, all of the dead and broken bodies told him more about what had happened here than any story this man could tell him.
And yet, he struggled on trying to share with Thomas what he’d seen. The dying man told him that some young punks had crashed through the front entrance with an automobile for God’s sake. The Zero Hour had only been minutes old when they entered the premises. They robbed the hotel’s register and everyone who had been unfortunately caught here in the wrong place and certainly at the wrong time.
Thomas could feel a frown growing on his face, especially when he glanced at the carnage in this lobby. Do you mean that some deranged kids did this—?
The dying man found the strength from somewhere to shake his head once and again with an emphatic no.
The punks’ self-proclaimed victory was short lived and the territory that they’d claimed as their very own was snatched from them within minutes. The Peacekeepers made quick work of the overmatched thugs. Thomas could see that they’d taken the time to gut a couple of the young men and used their blood to paint V’s all over the previously all white walls.
The Peacekeepers weren’t done however.
The dying man told Thomas that the vigilantes turned their attention to the employees of the hotel and any civilian who dared to get in their way. They asked only one question and they asked it again and again and again until someone provided the information that they needed to accomplish what they’d come for.
The question of the night was: Where is Lucy Burgess?
Thomas swallowed then and found that his breathing was becoming more difficult.
The dying man told him how brave and courageous that his manger had been. He told him how that man refused to allow anyone to invade the privacy of anyone staying at one of his hotel.
The dying man told Thomas Pepper that after they’d beheaded his boss that he was not nearly brave or courageous. He explained that he’d lost his top knuckle on each finger for them wrongly thinking that he was stalling when in actuality, his nerves would not allow him to thumb through the computer database any faster.
The slash across the throat only served as a parting gift when he’d told whoever their leader was to go to hell when he provided them Lucy’s hotel room number at last.
Thomas laid the dying man as gently as he could must on the floor and for the second time in an hour or so had promised a complete stranger that he would return. He carefully made his way through the hallway to the elevator. The Peacekeepers had left an easy trail of blood and dead bodies for Thomas Pepper to follow. Were these poor saps just unlucky bystanders or did they hear the exchange at the front desk and made a valiant but ultimately futile stand to right a wrong?
The elevator was out of service to his mild annoyance. Thomas searched around and quickly found the stairs. He took a deep breath, still trying to recover from his long dangerous trek to this hotel from his own one.
He saw more blood.
He saw a handful of more mutilated bodies.
He saw more blood paintings of the letter V. Is that for your vision, Xavier or for your victory?
This hotel had been classy enough, probably too nice for what Thomas Pepper patronized hotels for. He wouldn’t take any of his flames to one this nice or expensive even if he’d done a weekend getaway.
He and Lucy had never spent a night in a place like this one.
Thomas Pepper was nearly out of breath again when he finally reached the floor where Lucy’s room would be located. He felt his heart rate quickening and he was pouring sweat. Two bodies of hotel personnel were lying of the carpet near the closest room. They’d looked as if they’d been shot in the head. A third person, dressed in a maid’s outfit, had her throat opened from ear to ear.
A door opened when he walked by.
He cursed and slid his large frame along the wall and tried and failed to make himself small.
It was just one of the hotel’s guests who had peeked out—and quickly slammed the door shut before he could open his mouth to ask a question.
Two or three other doors opened and the traumatized guests nervously watched as he passed. What have you poor bastards heard in these halls tonight? What have you people seen?
Thomas produced Lucy’s key unnecessarily as he stood in the shadow of her already opened door.
He made himself as small as he could again, but he had already made up his mind before he entered that there was only one person on the premises. A House in Chains had come and likely had gotten what they’d been promised. There was no need to leave anyone of their people behind with
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The room was dark as they’d doused all of the artificial lighting—but there was a smell of candles, yes that was what the smell exactly was, coming from just around the first corner of the suite. He nearly tripped over something… a broken lamp or perhaps it was a vase. They’d trashed the place for sure. No, her suite had been destroyed. The Peacekeepers had left nothing unmolested from their fury.
Thomas got down on all floors, trying not to panic completely. He inched forward towards the candle light and the candle smell. He came across a woman’s blouse and then a pair of pants. They’d both been cut to shreds with something very sharp. And then he turned another corner and felt something cool and moist on his elbows and on the back of his arms. He stopped long enough to smell it and realized it was blood.
If Thomas Pepper had any hope of finding Lucy alive that hope was crushed with the blood sighting. He wanted to weep. He wanted to turn back and crawl back out of the door and exit the hotel from which he can.
He didn’t want to look up but he did.
He didn’t want to see the silhouette of a female’s figure that the candle light provided him.
He stood up and flicked on the nearest light switch so he would have no further doubt of what he’d seen and what he was seeing and the nightmares that would rule his nights during the Hour of the Wolf for the rest of his natural life.
He saw a nude Lucy Burgess hanging by her extremities on an X in a makeshift poses as if she’d been crucified.
“Lucy,” Thomas said in a voice far calmer than
