A block further on a couple of men moved in the way, holding improvised clubs. They looked at him and especially at Sarah with hungry expressions. Jude shifted Sarah a bit and made sure they saw his pistol. One look and they backed away, then took off running down the street, looking for other prey.
Screams and shouts filled the night. Some Jude could recognize as angry people yelling at each other. Others were the death screams of people who ran into Shadows. He wondered if the police or army would be able to get control of the situation, and thought that control would only come with the dawn. Something exploded off in the distance, a loud low crump like artillery, and blue fire shot into the sky for a few moments. He thought it might be a magical cell in the grid overloading from the red energy the little man had pumped into the system. He looked down at Sarah, whose eyes were closed, but whose chest continued to rise and fall. Maybe a little heavier than normal he thought, the sign of blood loss affecting oxygen dispersal to her system.
With lithe suddenness a Leonine form stepped in front of Jude, its totally black, maned head looking at him with an eyeless face. Jude looked for a place he could set Sarah down quickly, planning his moves so he could use his gun against the creature. Before he could move the Shadow cat sniffed the air, let out a low rumble, and slinked away into the night. Jude let out a breath of air, took a look at Sarah, which shook him as much as the Shadow Lion had, and hurried down the street.
The church loomed up from the darkness, its plain spire reaching to the star speckled sky. Smoke blew across the front from a building burning on the other side of the street. He could see light shining through the stained glass window above the door, and figured that the church had to be occupied.
“We’re almost there, girl,” he said to Sarah, carrying her to the front door and kicking at it with his foot. He waited a moment, then kicked it again, cursing under his breath. Someone finally came and the door swung open just a bit while a face looked out. The pale skinned man wore the black robes and white collar of a priest.
“Father Matthews?” asked Jude, looking at the man’s surprised eyes.
“Yes,” said the Priest, looking at the woman in Jude’s arms, reaching out a hand and touching her face, turning it slightly and looking closely. “Is that Sarah? Sarah Stranger? What happened to her?”
“She been shot,” said Jude, feeling his eyes tear up again. “Can you help us?”
“Come in,” said the Priest, pushing the door open wide and moving out of the way. “We’re not a hospital, but we can try to give you both aid and comfort.”
Jude walked into the church, holding Sarah in a gentle grip. Candles burned in the sconces and chandeliers of the church, giving the inside of the building a warm glow unlike the magical lights Jude was used to. Many people, of all ages, sat in the pews, or knelt in prayer, taking refuge in the church from the terrors of the dark. Jude followed the Priest to the back of the church. As they walked the floor shook from something large moving in the street outside. People cried out, or frantically whispered prayers.
“Do not fear, my children,” said the Priest, stopping for a moment and addressing the congregation. “This is sanctified ground, and the Good God will not allow the darkness to enter.”
I hope that’s true, thought Jude, glancing back at the double doors which shook from the giant Shadow’s tread. Deciding there was nothing he could do about it, he followed the Priest past the altar to the back of the church. They went through a short hall. Father Williams showed Jude into a small room with a bed. Jude laid Sarah gently on the bed and arranged her in a comfortable position. The Priest left for a moment and returned with an attractive middle aged woman who looked as frightened and tired as everyone else Jude had seen this night. She carried a small case with a medical logo on it.
“Helen here is a trained nurse,” said the Priest, and the woman hustled to the bed and began stripping the bandages. “She’s as good as some doctors, I think.”
Helen looked at the wound and began to clean it with some liquids she tipped from bottles onto cotton balls. That done, she probed the wound with some bright metal forceps.
“The bullet has gone deep,” said the woman in a tired voice. “She will need an operation to get at it. All I can do is dress the wound and hope for the best. And give her some plasma.”
The Priest nodded his head, and the woman bandaged the wound and hung a bottle of plasma. Jude could just stare, praying silently that Sarah would hold on through the night. There was no question of trying to get her through the dark to a hospital. She would bleed to death during the ordeal, or something would come out of the night to get them. And the hospital might be overloaded, if it was even working at all with no power in the magical grid.
“Thank you Helen,” said the Priest to the woman as she finished up and started to leave.
I’ll be back to check on her in a bit,” she told Jude, putting a hand on his arm. “I have some badly burned children in the meeting hall I need to see to.”
Jude nodded to the woman as she left, then turned an expectant look on the Priest.
“All I can do is pray for her, my son,” said the holy man, putting his hand on Jude’s shoulder. “My wife will come by with some refreshment for you. I assume you would want to wait with Sarah.”
“That would be best,” said Jude in a choking voice. “And maybe I should learn to pray too. Maybe I can get good enough fast enough for your God to listen.”
“He is everyone’s God, my son,” said the Priest with conviction in his voice. “And he listens to anyone who approaches him with sincerity.”
“I’m not sure how sincere I am, father,” said Jude, pulling the room's one chair up to the bed and sitting down, putting a hand on Sarah’s brow. “I’m new to your religion. Or just coming back. I’m still a baby to this stuff.”
“That’s OK, my son. The Good God will love you through the beginning steps. And he will listen.”
The Priest turned and left the room, leaving Jude alone with his thoughts, and the unconscious woman he loved. He looked down on her face, streaked with sweat, pale from loss of blood, and thought she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. And he prayed for all his worth that she would see the dawn. That she would live to spend a long life with him, and not die on this dreadful night that civilization fell.
The hours passed, people coming and going to check on him or on Sarah as promised. Explosions rumbled, large creatures moved, and the city remained a battlefield through the night as the Shadows of a destroyed world got their revenge. The sky was starting to lighten outside when Sarah choked a strangled breath, and her breathing rhythm turned into a rattle. Jude knew the sign, and was on his feet in a second, yelling for help. He knelt down by the bed and grabbed her hand.
“Please don’t die,” he gasped as Helen and Father Williams came running into the room. Helen put a hand to Sarah’s throat, feeling for a pulse. She felt around, digging deeper into the flesh with her fingers.
“Don’t die,” said Jude over and over again, begging, pleading with the woman. “Please don’t die.”
Father Williams stood praying at the bedside while the nurse continued to attempt to find a pulse. With a final shrug she gave up, looking up at the Priest and shaking her head.
“She’s gone,” said Helen to Jude, putting an arm around his shoulders.
“No,” he cried, tears flowing down his cheeks. “She can’t be dead. We made it out of the Daemon Building. Through the dark and to this sanctuary. She can’t have made it that far just to die.”
“I am sorry my son,” said Williams, kneeling on the other side of Jude and grasping him in a hug. “I truly am sorry.”
The sun was rising over the horizon outside, the darkness receding. Shouting and crying came from the Nave area, and Father Williams looked up, then stood and ran into the worship area.
Jude did not see the sky lightening through the darkness in his heart, and did not see the miracles that were occurring outside. The so
unds of people moving outside, their shouts of surprise and joy, fell on deaf ears. After a few minutes the Priest came back to his room and talked to him, but Jude did not pay attention, lying over the woman he loved, tears falling from his eyes.
Chapter Thirty
The last he remembered Gerald Stranger was coughing out his life on the floor of a room in the basement of the Daemon Building. He thought he was destined to see his God. All he had seen was darkness, until now. He opened his eyes to see the round globe of the sun rising above the desert sands to the east. He lay on the side of a mountain overlooking the sea of sand, within sight of the incongruous river that flowed to the sea. There was some scrub foliage on the mountainside, and he lay among it.
Stranger pushed himself to his feet, noticing that he was as naked as a newborn. He felt his side, where he had been pierced by metal, and couldn’t find a wound. His hand reached toward his head, where he had felt something slam into him before consciousness left, his fingers questing for a wound and finding none. He was a bit thirsty. Otherwise he was as healthy as he had ever felt. Looking up at the mountain he thought he recognized it, and if it was as he thought, he was only an hour’s walk from the mission.
Gerald’s thoughts were swept aside by the screeching of a bird overhead. He looked up to see a raptor circling, then another. One of the raptors fell from the sky, and Gerald followed it with his eye, sucking in a breath of amazement as it swept through a large column of birds that flew through the pass between the mountains. More birds than Gerald had seen in his entire life. The raptor swept through and below the swarm, a bird clutched in its talons. The swarm flew on over the desert as if nothing had occurred, and Gerald realized that to a mass of birds that large a single raptor strike was but a pinprick.
Then Gerald looked out over the desert. Something was shimmering on the horizon. It had a green tint under the light of the rising sun, like something alive. Gerald shaded his eyes from the glare and tried to focus his vision. As the green got closer he thought he could make out things rising into the air at the edge. It came closer and closer, and he could finally make out what it was.
“My God,” said the man as he watched the trees sprouting from the brown loam that was forming a hundred yards ahead of the sprouting forest. Pines and oaks and maples and elms, and other trees he could not recognize in the distance. The forest flowed along the stream a little faster than in the open, and he exclaimed again as he saw a dozen deer run from the forest to the river, dipping their heads to drink from the running water.
It took maybe ten minutes from the time he first sighted the green wave rolling his way. The forest rolled to the base of the mountain, then continued up. Trees rocketed from the ground around Gerald, none close enough to endanger him, but close enough for him to see the glory of the miraculous generation. Trees grew upward, a foot a second, their trunks widening as branches spread in all directions. Leaves sprouted from branches, and moss formed on trunks and on the ground. Birds and squirrels appeared from nowhere, and sang from the trees, or ran through the branches in their multitudes. It’s happened, thought Gerald, a wide smile splitting his face. Magic has fallen, and the Good God is back with us on this world.
Gerald heard a snuffling sound and turned to see a black bear walking through the woods behind him. The bear looked at him, and Gerald had a feeling of safety and wellbeing flow through him. He knew that he had been put here as a witness to Gods rejuvenation. There was no danger from the large predator, not at this place and time. The bear looked at him and let out a moan, then turned and walked until it was out of sight.
Gerald looked to the south, figuring how he was going to get back to the mission with the good news. He glanced down at his naked body and smiled. They would just have to deal with it when he got there. He wasn’t about to change anything God had wrought at this moment.
* * *
The cruiser Altoona had been fighting all night, ever since the magical systems went out in the gloom of darkness. She still had her steam engines, and the ability to generate electricity, so she had been able to light up her surroundings, not nearly sufficient enough. And she had been able to use her guns.
Captain Jeffrey Samples looked through his glasses at the city ahead. Smoke rose from a hundred points, indicating the fires that had burned throughout the city during the night. The most noticeable change was the stub of the Daemon Building, the skyscraper that was a symbol for the city, and the source of magical power. He didn’t know what had destroyed the super skyscraper, but whatever it was had done a thorough job.
“We have the final casualty figures sir,” said a Senior Chief, saluting his Captain and standing at ease.
“What was the butcher’s bill,” said Samples with a resigned sigh.
“Forty-one known dead,” said the Chief, trying to keep his voice steady, and failing. “Seventy-three injured to the point of not being fit for duty. And sixty-two missing.”
“Shit,” said the Officer, looking away from the Chief at the expanse of the large bay they were entering. The ship had started the last night with a compliment of five hundred and fifty-two. Only three seventy-six fit for duty, and he figured that those missing men were actually dead. They just had to pass the bureaucratic time frame to make it official.
“That’s still enough to fight the ship, sir,” said the Chief, running a hand over his burn marked cheek. “Just barely.”
“Not if we have to go through another night like last,” said the Captain, thinking about the four merchant ships and the liner that had been separated from them in the Shadow haunted dark.
“What’s that over there?” asked a young ensign who was on helm watch, sweeping his glasses to the far shore.
Samples brought his own glasses to his eyes and swept the shore, grunting in surprise as he did so. The formally dead land was full of trees, thousands of them, of all kinds. As he watched a deer came out of the woods and walked over to the water, looking at the ship. With a bound it turned and jumped back into the woods.
“Look there, sir,” said the helmsman, and Samples lowered his glasses to look ahead.
Silver-gray humps rose in the water, attached to large dorsal fins. Twenty of the objects headed for the ship, bringing a moment of dread to the Captain until he recognized them for what they were. Recognized them from books, for he couldn’t think of a living man who had ever seen a dolphin. The pod turned at the bow of the ship and played tag, keeping ahead of the ship as it sped into the harbor.
Screeching and squealing sounded from above. Samples walked from the bridge to the right side walk, looking up into the bright sky. Scores of gulls swirled through the air around the ship. A pair dropped into the water behind the ship, where the vessel was stirring up the water. Both rose moments later with fish in their beaks, while another pair rotated into place and struck at other fish.
“You know sir,” said the Chief, who had followed the Officer out onto the walk. “I don’t think we have to worry about tonight.”
“I believe you are correct, Chief,” said Captain Samples, watching a flock of birds flying over the bay, heading for the city. “I don’t know why, but the world has changed. For the better.”
* * *
Jude lay with his head on Sarah’s chest, crying, his mind reeling from her death. Why did you have to die, he thought. It had taken him years to get over the death of his wife, along with the death of the child she carried. He had found someone, after what seemed like forever. He had hidden in a bottle, and Sarah had dragged him out of the alcohol induced stupor he was living in. He had regained his self-respect, and started feeling human. Now he thought of the bottle again, the escape it would give him from this horrible world where everyone he loved left him.
“Oh God,” he said in a choked voice. “I would give anything to have her back. I would give my life for hers, if that’s what you wanted. Please, give her back to me.”
Sarah sucked in a breath with a gasp. Jude sat up, looking down at her as her chest
began to rise and fall, his own mouth falling open in shock. Her eyes fluttered open, and her gaze moved to his face. A smile spread across that face he found so lovely, and he noticed that it looked like she had just stepped from a bath, not like she had been through the hell he knew she had gone through.
“You’re alive,” said Jude, dumbfounded. He reached over and took her hand, marveling at the warmth of it. He smiled as tears flowed, mumbling a prayer of thanks to the being who had just proved his existence again.
“What happened?” she said, her hand touching her stomach. She pulled her other hand away from Jude, then tugged at the bandages, almost frantically, while Jude kept staring at her face. Sarah let out a gasp as she pulled the bandages away. Jude looked down, at the unsurprising wonder of her unharmed, unscarred abdomen.
“Your God was good to us,” said Jude, nodding his head.
“Our God,” said Sarah, smiling, then leaning over and throwing her arms around Jude. They hugged for several minutes, both crying their gratitude. Some more noise, shouts of glee and praise, came from outside. Both looked toward the window, then at each other.
“Shall we see what other wonders await,” said Sarah, pushing her legs off the bed and sitting up. Jude nodded, grabbed her hand, and helped her to her feet. They walked hand in hand through the empty church and toward the open doors, catching glimpses of people outside as the bright sun shone down.
The first thing Jude noticed was the smell of smoke in the air, both the odor of burnt wood and the sickly sweet smell of burnt flesh. There were several nearby buildings that were burned out shells of their former selves. People were talking, and Father Williams was making a speech about the glory of God. Jude kept hearing the word restoration, and he wondered just what the Priest was talking about. Then he heard the songs of the birds, the chirping and tweeting coming from above. He looked up and saw birds all over the eaves of buildings, on light poles, everywhere.
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