Billy wanted to scream, to have at least the ability to turn his head, work his jaw; bite the fucking monkeys before they bit him. Then the church doors opened, bathing the commons in a long square of light. As four of the largest Chosen stepped outside with two humans in tow, the monkey’s screeched and ran back up the tree.
Dean watched as Alice Pike and Bishop walked under their own power to two of the new crosses and laid down on them spreading their arms on the horizontal bar and crossing their legs on the vertical. Hammers and spikes were produced by the pucks and without a word from them or a peep from the two sailors, the spikes were driven through their wrists and through the tops of their feet. Dean violently protested in his mind as the hammer blows fell, his impotency rammed home with each strike. Then the crosses were lifted and placed into two of the fresh holes, the holes filled and packed, his friends and shipmates left to hang in silence, crucified and quite alive.
Hansel said aloud, “The medicine that you gave them, Mother, was not good enough. They found the part that still hides in their brains, all of your brains but Brandy’s. For Alice and Bishop, it has been released.”
For the first time in days, Gallagher became acutely aware of his own body odor. From the moment that they had left their train, his and every one of his companion’s, personal hygiene had become an afterthought. Finding the destroyer with fresh uniforms and hot showers had been heavenly. As he listened in total darkness to the sound of the pucks sniffing the air, he was reminded that he hadn’t had a chance to shower again or find a change of clothes since they’d arrived on this shore. The things seemed to be moving about without bumping into anything. It was terribly disconcerting. But for the glow of a handful of systems LEDs, he knew the room was mostly dark. Then he heard the inflatable boat next to his being torn away from the wall. He hadn’t even drawn his new pistol, fearing the sound it would make, but now he grabbed it and fumbled in the tight rubber space that surrounded him to get it pointed right. Certain that muzzle flash would blind him, he kept his waning night vision off. He crouched and heard the sound of a hand pulling at the strapping that held the boat in place. Wishing he could block his ears, he fired in the direction he thought was best. Despite the ringing he was rewarded with the sound of a very human sounding scream. He flicked on his nigh vision and squeezed out from behind the boat just in time to see one devil writhing on the floor and two more charging right at him. Every first person shooter instinct that he had kicked in as he put the devils down and finished off the first with a quick shot to the head. The battery warning light in his helmet flashed full red and then his vision went black again. He unbuckled the helmet and lifted it off his sweaty head. The glow of the LEDs gave the room just enough definition so as not to be solid black. Then he felt a sensation of something floating into his mind, which turned into extraordinary pain in his guts; a feeling that he was gravely wounded. But nothing had touched him. He heard a groan, saw movement on the floor, tasted blood that wasn’t there in his mouth. He fired his gun again. The body stopped moving and the otherness withdrew, the pain fading away. The bloody taste vanished, but not before Gallagher got a glimpse of death’s infinity. He sat down, stunned. He had never killed anything physically up close before. Killing via the Sentinel and a heads-up display didn’t include the smell of gunpowder and blood. And one of the things had shit the floor. Then there was death itself. He’d seen the other side, or at least the edge of what that might be. The notion of it was stunning and he felt hot tears roll down his face.
Billy sat facing East in his forced catatonia. As his lips became more parched and his stomach twisted with the effort to reach out for any kind of sustenance, he could vaguely see clouds, underlit by a fading moon, take on a new hue as the world put its Central American face toward the sun. The doors to the church opened again and this time the three clergy were escorted outside. As he had seen many times when people were summoned to be live meals for The Five, the men seemed to walk as if in a state of bliss. They wore robes in the fashion of Christ, his disciples, and the saints that adorned the church’s stained glass windows. The commons began to fill with other groups of Chosen five; all of them uniquely adorned with bits of priestly garb. His father and his people were released from their paralysis and they very stiffly lifted their heads as best they could. The first thing Dean did was turn to check on him, to make eye contact. He risked calling out, “Son. Can you speak?” The boy struggled pointlessly against his paralysis.
Dean turned to Hansel and Gretel who had been free to move as best they could during the night. Gretel spoke to his mind, Your son remains in their hold. He is not afraid now.
What is happening? He looked at Alice and Bishop who remained nailed to crosses. Their faces were contorted as prodigious sweat poured off their bodies, but they remained immobile.
Hansel said, These others that are coming are leaders from other areas. Some of them from very far away. They have been traveling for some time in anticipation of our arrival.
Sanders entered the mental conversation. What are you saying? How could they know we were coming?
Gretel said, They have been waiting since before we left Los Angeles.
It was a stunning statement: That this had all been anticipated and planned for. They watched in horror and dread as Vicar Wentworth and Deacons Jones and Hoeg lay down on three of the remaining five crosses, the vicar’s place in the center. Again, big muscle-bound pucks hammered spikes through flesh. The crosses were tipped into holes, raised, and the dirt packed down. A rope under the arms was required for the vicar, his girth threatening to cause the spikes to pull through his delicate tendons and bones. As the big man settled into what looked like an agonizing stretch, with gravity pulling him against his anchors, he looked up and focused on the people tied to the poles. With remarkably clear speech he said, “Fret not. We are without pain. We have been wandering on the borders of Heaven and finally shall gain our seat at the side of the Lord.” He looked out at the dozens of pucks in priestly garb and said, “You have so much to learn of the way of the Lamb. Your understanding is merely that of the ignorant child. You waste the opportunity to let us evangelize you, but we understand your experiment. And so that you may know His Word, God’s grace be upon you. May our deaths give you a better understanding of His love. Shalom.” Then his head dropped to his chest.
A collective mental blast filled the human’s minds. YOU DON’T KNOW THE LAMB. WE ARE OF THE LAMB. THE FATHER, HIS MESSENGER ARTHUR, THE CHOSEN. YOU ARE A HERETIC.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Infinity
Gallagher had locked the door and spent the rest of the night gathering his wits, trying to come up with a plan. Ultimately, he recognized that he had to leave. The special ops room was stocked with its own food and gear and he could probably make it last for a long time - like living in a bunker of sorts - but to what end, and how long before he was attacked with success? He settled on getting out. He would gear up one of the remaining inflatables and try his luck shooting the rest of the canal. The notion of getting back home was daunting in its scope, but really, his options were limited to just that. Maybe he would luck out and find some population of humans along the way. He wasn’t at all sleepy, but he forced himself to lie down. Before he could count back from one hundred to fifty he was out cold.
He woke again at 3:00 AM. The shadows were giving him the creeps. Though his eyes had fully adjusted to the dim light offered by the myriad of LEDs that the special ops room offered, he chose to put his helmet back on. The ship’s wiring was rather confounding: while he couldn’t turn on a light, he was able to lay his helmet in a universal charging pad and make the thing fully operational again. The independent element of the space also fed him pretty well. He remained fascinated with and grateful for canned food stamped with long expired dates that nevertheless filled his stomach with no noticeable bad effect. He fully inflated one of the boats and gathered as much water and food as he thought he could fill the thing with withou
t sinking it. He considered towing another boat, but decided on the speed and maneuverability of one. The top surfaces of the boat along with most of the engine cowling were made of flexible solar paneling. He could only guess how much of a charge he would get in a day, but he had to assume that battery use would outpace charging to a large degree. He would need to do his sleeping during the day. He considered the various weapons that were available to him and finally settled on a couple of FN SCAR17s, one with an attached grenade launcher. The Northerners had left him with one of their rifles that tied into the helmet’s sighting system, but that would mean having to go back up to Command. The notion of going back through the ship was simply a non-starter. With the weapons and the added ammo in the boat, he stood and stared at the load. The boat would be slowed down considerably. He figured he could eject some of it if he got into a jam. Deciding to take the tijme to be more organized, he pulled everything back out and separated it into six backpacks of equal distributions of food, water, and ammo. A single pack held a small stove, meds and a portable shelter, a lighter, food bars and socks in case he had to bug out and leave the rest.
The boat sat on a launch ramp that pointed toward the drawbridge type door built into the stern of the destroyer. The switches that operated the devices were aglow with LED lights. He assumed that this meant that it was all operational. Somehow, the door would drop, the ramp would angle down and the boat would roll forward, launching out the door. The one hitch was that the controls were located on a wall ten feet from the boat, meaning that a separate operator was intended to do the launching while the assault team sat in the boat. Gallagher would have to lower the hatch and run for the boat as it was rolling down the ramp. He checked his gear one more time, psyched himself up and stepped over to the controls. He counted to three and hit the hatch button - nothing. He tried it again... and again, holding the button rather than just pushing it. He tried a combination of pushing both the ramp and hatch button. Ramp button first - nothing. “Who the fuck designed this ship! Who the fuck makes this fucking space independent and then makes it fucking impossible to open the door! FUCK!” A part of him noted that he had lost his Shoreman cadence and speech patterns and his subconscious admitted that The Shore was a construct based on an alternate reality.
His heart interfered with his hearing as it pounded blood past his ears. It was a bit awkward holding the SCAR and opening the hatch that led back into the ship. He decided that the best approach was to heave the door aside and jump back so he could bring the weapon to bear. His helmet penetrated the void beyond, offering relief that no razor-toothed freaks were standing in wait. He took a deep frustration-laced breath and stepped forward. The path back seemed shorter than the one heading out, and he reminded himself, like a fox on the run, how much time he had spent skittering from place to place. This time, he focused on his gaming skills and imagined himself in a virtual 3D environment. The trick slowed the pace of the blood rushing around his body and steadied his breathing.
He wasn’t prepared for the sight he received as he stepped back into the command room. The remains of an open carcass (really just an eyeless head and an exposed rib cage) lay on a table. The skull had been cut open as well and the brains removed. He threw up immediately, even before seeing Hanson’s remains, which had been hung upside down like a slaughtered pig with the bulk of the musculature removed. “Fuck. Need this I don’t,” he said as his subconscious admonished him for the bullshit phraseology. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then wiped his hand on his pants. He spotted the Northerner’s assault weapon and threw the strap over his shoulder, discarding the SCAR. He tried to ignore the horrific smell of death in the room and returned to the ship’s computer where he had been sitting when they had been boarded. He booted up and was immediately reminded of what he was going to do. Captain Dean had asked him to drop a missile (or many) on his position. Not sure which power system covered his planned escape and not caring about power use anymore, he brought all systems back on line. He had previously linked the missile guidance system to Dean’s helmet and so it was just a matter of executing the command. Firing the missiles required a command key; something that had obliged his fellow Shoremen to drill out the lock on a safe in the captain’s and first officer’s quarters; which they had done when they first took command of the ship. “I hope this helps.” He turned the keys and watched the launch sequence begin on the monitor. As an afterthought, he tapped his chin on the helmet comlink and said, “Dean.” An image came up that was confusing at first. He expected to see a view of the crew strapped to the poles or maybe the church or another landmark that he had observed as the crew was marched into the devil’s lair. Instead he saw what looked like the gray deck of a military vessel. Then three trap doors slammed open on that deck and bright fire poured out of them. The puzzle came together too late. His jaw dropped as he watched three missiles shoot out into the dark early morning sky. Dean’s helmet was on the deck of the Lyndon Johnson.
The priests were finally dying, their individual minds succumbing to the appalling abuse that was this extreme crucifixion. Billy experienced intense vertigo as he shared their last moments, witnessing in awe as their impossibly mixed points of view filled his senses. Adding to the confusion and terror, the two infected humans had run through their fevers, letting Billy bear horrible witness to the devolution of their minds - all of it blending with the Chosen and his father and his father’s companions. Once the infection had its due, what had been Alice and Bishop were now what was commonly referred to as Fiends. They suddenly looked up from their nailed-in-place perches and looked out at the people chained to the poles with unabashed desire, hissing, howling and yanking against their pinnings, their focus ultimately settling on the young girl. The Fiend that had been Alice ripped her wrist through the spike that held it to the cross. Five of the biggest Chosen stepped forward with sharp sticks and stabbed the three priests and two Fiends in their hearts. One moment Billy was firmly sitting on the ground and in the next it was like a bubble burst and he saw all around himself and everywhere in blackness that was also light and his father and the other people were there ... and Chosen, The Five and the other groups of five, and the handlers and the watchers and so very many others, not flesh and blood things; everyone and everything tied together in the light. Light so pure and penetrating that it filled the void including him. There were other energy beings there: Essences filled with light and love, and Billy almost wasn’t Billy anymore. He was something greater; so great that the person who was Billy was but a blip in an infinity of experience; the being that he was, an amalgamation of life throughout the universe, universes. He wasn’t thinking anymore, just being: a sense of knowing and love so vast that it was uncontainable. The essence that was his father was there as his equal, a friend that he had always known, but who had been absent for so much longer than the handful of Earth years that had been the person Billy’s life so far. There was no accusation, forgiveness, or recrimination; just love. The one who was Eliza had such wisdom that he was in awe of the memory of it. She or it held him and his father both in a way that felt like a heart fairly bursting with joy. Then the ones who had been the vicar and the deacons and Alice and Bishop, were shepherded away. The essence that included less than a blink in time that was Billy watched the light shift briefly as the shepherds collected the sheep and the blackness that was also light faded to gray. A voice, but not a voice, offered loving guidance to turn away, that the thousands of beings, human and Chosen, who had patched into all of this did not belong. He felt a great weight, as though the gray was made from some dense gelatin, and the sensation of infinity began to fade and the gray began to fade, suddenly rushing away in a blink to a mere pinprick before winking out. Like waking and instantly forgetting a dream, the entire experience melted away like frost on a sun-dappled window.
The Earth, and being on it, felt impossibly heavy for Dean. He rapidly became aware that he was in hell again, only slightly cognizant of the place he had
just been, the wisps of nirvana still clinging to his being. The dozens of priestly pucks were looking at them, their arms stretched out in exultation. A thought filled his mind: AND NOW WE SHALL KNOW OF THE CHOSEN AS WE PASS OVER. Hansel and Gretel spoke aloud as one. “Mother, the other two crosses are for Hansel and Gretel.”
Eliza didn’t need to be told. The intent was quite clear. She yelled at the priestly pucks, “No! This must stop! Have you children learned nothing?”
Hansel spoke. “When they are finished experiencing this gift that is our dying” Gretel continued, “they will burn all of you.” She turned her head toward Billy who was being escorted toward them. “Your son also, Stewart Dean.” This was punctuated by three streaks of fire and the sound of triplicate roars that came in low over the trees and then disappeared over the mountain horizon.
Gallagher, bouncing off of sharp edges, hatchways and rails, covered himself with small lacerations and bruises as he ran like a speeding pinball through the ship. He threw open the door to the Special Ops room and continued counting off the seconds to impact. It was a pure guess, but he figured that after the roughly 10 seconds of solid fuel booster rocket needed to eject the missiles, he had about 30 seconds for the Tomahawks to reach cruising speed and altitude; 20 seconds of arming their warheads and turning, and another 30 to come back. Counting down from eighty, he barked out, “Seventy-nine, Seventy-eight,” and kept counting as he hit the rear hatch button and felt his heart leap as it began to slowly open. At 15 seconds he hit the button for the boat launch ramp to drop. He dove for the inflatable as it began to roll on the bearings below. The boat hit the water with a stealthy splash and he dropped the engine down from its stowed position. “Six, Five.” The engine quietly roared to life and churned the water behind him as he slammed the shift selector into forward. As he counted to one and held his breath for impact; nothing happened. Then suddenly, three low flying subsonic missiles came over the Eastern horizon, shot over his head and slammed three, two, one into the Lyndon Johnson’s rear deck.
Children Of Fiends: Book 2 of the Of Sudden Origin saga Page 30
