by SD Tanner
“There’s an old submarine base in southern Georgia, and it has an underground store of nuclear missiles.”
“How does that help? I doubt we’ve got any nuclear weapons engineers.”
“But you don’t know for sure, do you?”
Narrowing his eyes contemplatively, Troy replied, “No, but how hard can it be? They didn’t design those weapons to be used by geniuses. But Georgia is on the other side of the country. It’ll take a Crusader Convoy weeks to get there, and then they’ve got to bring them back.”
To date, they’d focused their prison bases across the west coast and maybe that was a mistake, it narrowed their visibility of what was happening in the rest of the country.
“Maybe it’s time we expanded our scope of control. Maybe we shouldn’t just send a Crusader Convoy, but a whole battalion. We could use them to establish a new base.”
“True. We could take over the old submarine base with the nukes. Communications would be an issue.”
He agreed, but was sure it was time they established their authority on the other side of the country. Studying Troy, he said, “If I was confident of the leadership, I wouldn’t need to communicate as regularly.”
Frowning slightly, Troy asked, “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying maybe you should take the battalion. It’s time we spread our authority. We shouldn’t find out there’s another army this way, it means we’re too narrowly focused.”
“True. When do you want me to leave?”
“The sooner you go, the faster we’ll know the size of this problem.”
Chapter Twenty: TL
Slapping Pax on the shoulder, he said jovially, “Got yourself a new army already, Pax. That’s fast even for you.”
He hadn’t seen either Gears or Pax in over three weeks. Travelling with Ip, Jack and Faith, he and Leo visited town after town persuading them to join the Council of Eden. If they hesitated, Ip would take them to hell and it was the first time he realized she could bring hell to earth anytime she wanted. When he questioned her about it, she’d shrugged and told him she was the Horseman of Death and could go wherever the dead were. Gears could summon up an Immortal Army to fight by his side, and Ip could bring the hell to earth. It was an odd superpower and it made him wonder what he could do. Asking Ip hadn’t helped, all she told him was he could talk to anyone, but he already knew that. She also said Pax could bring feast or famine, but she didn’t explain how.
Pax sighed dramatically and said, “They’re freakin’ useless, TL. All Ted and I have got to work with is a bunch of boy scouts with guns. Ya jus’ better hope they ain’t needed for a while. I got ‘em out collectin’ weapons and ammo, but the country is pretty lean on both.”
“I’ve got ammo,” Leo said.
“No, no, no,” Pax said impatiently. “I need millions of rounds. I gotta train these boy scouts to shoot straight.”
“He’s got an ammo factory. Leo’s no ordinary civvie.”
Giving Leo a look of respect, Pax asked, “Whatdaya make?”
While Leo and Pax entered into a detailed discussion about calibers, jackets, primers and trajectories, he surveyed the town with interest. Men and women were dressed in crisp, clean ACUs, the streets were in perfect condition, and the ever-encroaching forest was trimmed tidily, so it didn’t interfere with the roads and houses. If he hadn’t known better, he would have thought he’d travelled back in time to the 1950’s. Having visited twenty towns in the past three weeks, he’d seen many different ways of living, but this wasn’t one of them.
Based on what he learned from the town leaders, there were about two hundred towns and many smaller communities. Towns had formed around delivering some product or service. Leo’s town specialized in manufacturing. In one town, he’d found tens of thousands of abandoned cars and they maintained and supplied vehicles. Leo told him there was another town that pumped and refined oil to produce gas that was delivered in tankers to any town willing to trade with them. One town manufactured windmills used to collect power, and many of the towns he visited had long rows of them, slowly spinning and capturing the energy of the wind. There was a town making solar panels, but sourcing raw materials was a problem, and they were working with other towns to mine silicon to be able to manufacture the photovoltaic cells. In another town he’d found a team of engineers specializing in electricity and water. Without a continuous and ample supply of water, sanitation was impossible and disease had already broken out in the towns that grew too large. The engineers were working with several towns to build dams to capture enough water to allow them to expand. It was the first step to rebuilding the cities.
The one thing he hadn’t found were doctors. It appeared the Lake of Life was limitless, replenishing itself immediately regardless of how much was taken. Every town had a supply of water from the Lake, and it was the one thing they all shared without question. The town leaders would talk about the Lake in hushed tones, saying it was a gift from God and no single man could claim it as theirs. The lack of doctors bothered him, and he wondered what Lydia would make of this new approach to medicine. She’d been their first doctor at the bases, and although he hadn’t fathered the child she was carrying when they got together, Lydia was the one woman he’d always thought of as his wife. Her baby was the replacement Horseman for Pax, and he’d cut baby Bob from Lydia’s dead body. They’d had so little time together as a couple, he still felt cheated by her untimely death. He hadn’t protected her as well as he should have and the burden of guilt lay heavy on him.
Thinking of Lydia, he realized Pax had BD, Gears had Ip, and where he once had Lydia, now he had no one. Well, that’s not entirely true, he thought tiredly. Faith had told him she was too frightened to stay anywhere alone, and insisted on travelling with him. Usually his protective nature would make him want to keep her close, but there was something about Faith that made him question her motives. In many ways, he found her easy company, and every time he saw the scars on her body, he felt angry towards whoever or whatever had hurt her. It wasn’t just Faith that bothered him, it was his brothers. Neither had said a word, but he knew they didn’t think much of her. Lydia had been so important to the success of their bases, he supposed she was a hard act to follow.
Appearing at his side, Pax elbowed him and said, “I need Ip. I’ve got prisoners.”
“So? What’s that got to do with Ip? Are you showing off? ‘Cos I don’t think that’ll impress her.”
“Don’t be stupid, TL. I need her to help me interrogate them. You know, read their minds.”
“Can she still do that?” He asked, having forgotten she could.
“I hope so, ‘cos it saves me a shitload of work.”
While Pax explained how he’d caught the Crusaders attacking the refinery, they walked towards the police station near the center of town. Ip and Faith joined them, and together they entered the small building. At the back of the building were ten cells with bars between each, and inside nine of the cages was a single male occupant. The men were wearing the now familiar black trousers and a shirt with a celtic styled red colored cross. They hadn’t known to question the men who attacked the town in South Dakota, but he’d already learned from the town leaders these men were known as Crusaders, and they were attacking the smaller communities.
He and Pax grabbed chairs from the station desks, and placing them in front of the row of cells, they sat down and contemplated the men with interest. Their ages appeared to range from twenty to fifty, they were in good health, and all of them looked more bored than worried. Pax said they did shoot a number of them, but water from the Lake of Life had healed the injured pretty much immediately.
Pulling Ip into his lap, Pax said, “You see these assholes, Ip? I need you to read their little brains and tell me what they’re playin’ at.”
Surprised by Pax’s tactic, he whispered, “How’s that gonna help? She might be able to read their minds, but you don’t understand anything she says.”
Walking
the line of cages with Ip in tow, Pax declared loudly, “I don’t want any crap from you guys. This one reads minds and if ya’ll lie to me, I’ll know.” Pausing in the middle of the room and glaring at them, he added, “I understand how the water of life works…”
“Lake of Life,” a voice from one of the cells said.
“Yeah, I know, but if ya’ll piss me off, I’ll shoot ya, then heal ya, and keep doin’ that until ya’ll stop pissin’ me off.”
Hiding his smirk, he thought Pax was being quite the showman, but he also knew he wasn’t kidding. He wouldn’t have thought to use the water that way and decided that Pax was getting a bit too creative with something that was only meant to be used for good.
“You don’t have to threaten us. I’m Crusader John and I’ll answer your questions. I’ve no reason to lie. I’m one of God’s chosen.”
“Ya’ll don’t look like much to me.”
He had to agree, they looked like a bunch of ordinary men with a bit too much swagger about them. He couldn’t imagine why they thought they had any special status in the eyes of any man, much less God.
“So, who do ya’ll work for?” Pax asked with a sneer.
“God’s Messenger on Earth,” Crusader John replied calmly.
“That was a guy called Jacob.”
Shaking his head, Crusader John flicked his head towards Ip and said firmly, “No, it’s a man called Cain, and he has tattoos similar to you and that woman.”
“How’d he get those?”
“They are the mark of God.”
“Not God,” Ip said, eyeing the man with disinterest. Smirking, she added, “This one is stupid.”
The tattoos that covered their arms, back and snaked up their necks ending at their left cheekbone had appeared once they became aware they were Horsemen. They were the only outward sign he and his brothers had that they were not really human. It sounded like someone was copying their markings to elevate their position.
Clearly coming to the same conclusion, Pax said, “Our markin’s are the sign of the Horsemen, and there’s only four of us. Me, Ip, TL and Gears. There ain’t no fifth guy called Cain.”
“Cain is the Son of God,” Crusader John replied calmly.
Walking to the front of the cells, he said, “No, Jacob was the Son of God and he’s gone. He died to take the hunters home.”
“So, what does Cain want?” Pax asked contemptuously.
“His mission is to identify the Sinners and punish them. He’s built himself a great army to purge the land of the people who are not worthy of God’s Eden.”
Snorting derisively, Pax asked, “Jus’ how big is this great army?”
Frowning as if confused, Crusader John replied, “I don’t know. We’re all in different battalions in our own barracks. There’s nearly a thousand in our Crusader battalion, but I don’t know about the others.”
“Clever,” he muttered to himself. If they didn’t know anything about one another, then they were operating like independent cells with a central leadership. It would be difficult to assess their strength and capacity, and even harder to attack them.
“So whatdaya do all day in your barracks?”
“We’re Crusaders fulfilling God’s mission, so we’re not there much. We travel the land finding Sinners.”
“And what do you do when you find them?”
“We send them to hell. They’re Sinners and they don’t belong in Eden.”
The man in the cell next to Crusader John said, “Cain shows us the way. He sacrifices the Sinners using a sword like hers.”
He saw the man was pointing at Ip’s sword with the etching that matched her tattoos. Curious about Cain’s ritual, he asked, “How does he kill them?”
Now becoming excited, the man’s eyes lit up and he said, “Cain has a hunter. It infects the Sinner and then he beheads them with a single blow.”
Giving Pax a surprised look, he asked, “All the hunters went home. How can Cain have a hunter?”
Crusader John shrugged and said, “He’s the Son of God. He’s all powerful.”
Suddenly his mind was filled with the image of Lucie, not as a hunter, but as the young, vibrant, redheaded woman she was before the attack on their cruise ship. He’d found Lucie at Lydia’s camp, and when she’d joined their bases she became embroiled in a love triangle with Mackenzie and Benny. It was partly Lucie’s fault that Mackenzie had chosen to become infected. When Ruler’s demon super hunters had infected their cruise ship, Lucie became a hunter. Once Lucie was infected and therefore dead, Ip was able to share her mind telepathically, which had somehow changed her. Unlike the normal hunters, Lucie still knew who she was and had emotions. She’d run away with Benny before the battle, and although he didn’t begrudge her having some chance to live a life, it hadn’t occurred to him she could be used this way.
“Are you seeing Lucie?”
“Yeah,” Pax replied distractedly.
Turning to Ip, he asked, “Does Cain have Lucie?”
The image in his mind dissolved, and he saw a small figure hunched in the corner of a cage. Lying a few feet away was the ripped and torn corpse of what he assumed was once a live human. The tiny form moved, lifted its head and looked at him with naturally bright blue eyes. Whispering softly, he said gently, “Lucie.” Shuffling to her feet, Lucie moved towards him, only to be stopped by the bars of her prison.
Clearly seeing the same vision, Pax asked in a dangerous voice, “Where is she, Ip?”
He already knew Ip didn’t quite live in their world and her understanding of geography was beyond useless. Neither she nor Lucie would be able to give them a location.
“You know she can’t tell us that.” Turning to Ip, he asked, “Does Lucie know where she is?”
Where she is, she cannot tell, but the man she is with is not well.
“Is she safe?”
She has a use she does not want. He makes her harm, it is not her fault.
“What’s he makin’ her do?” Pax asked.
She makes dead of the well, for what reason she cannot tell.
Staring coldly at the Crusader John, Pax said quietly, “The hunter Cain has is a woman called Lucie and she’s one of ours.”
“She belongs to Cain now. He is the will of God.”
Pax was always willing and able to kill when he needed to, but most of the time he had no passion for it and saw it as a necessity of his job. Every so often, he’d seen Pax kill in anger, and watching his brother’s face harden into a cold mask of fury, he decided he needed to end the interrogation. He knew there was a good chance his normally professional brother just might lose his temper and kill all the Crusaders.
Grabbing Pax by the arm, and pulling him swiftly and roughly towards the door, he said grimly, “We need to talk.”
Once outside, Pax pulled away from his grip and asked angrily, “What are ya doin’, TL?”
“You can’t kill them. We need any intel they have.”
“Do ya think I’m stupid?”
“You’re a little bit stupid, Pax, and sometimes your temper gets the better of you.”
“We gotta rescue Lucie. You saw her, they’re hurtin’ her. They’re not treatin’ her right. She ain’t anyone’s prisoner. She belongs with us, we know how to take care of her.”
He agreed with every word Pax said. Lucie had helped save them, and even as a hunter, the world owed her whatever life she could have. Despite their mutual loyalty to one of their own, he was more worried about how she could be used. They knew there were surviving super hunters, but they weren’t a problem without an army of hunters they could telepathically control. If Lucie was able to infect people and turn them into hunters, it wasn’t a small step for the remaining super hunters to take control them.
“What if they’re using Lucie to create hunters? What if the super hunters take control of them?” He asked worriedly.
“No one’s reported seein’ any hunters, TL.”
“Not yet, but it’s a small step. If Cain u
ses Lucie to create hunters, how greater step is it for a super hunter to get control of them?”
Sighing and sounding concerned, Pax replied, “We need to talk to Gears.” Giving him an unhappy look, he added, “There’s somethin’ else you need to know, about Izzie.”
While Pax explained what happened to Izzie, he felt a sinking sensation that was quickly replaced by a deep anger. How could Izzie have died such a long and painful death in a world supposedly God’s heaven on earth? His heart was still with Lydia, and he’d never loved Izzie as a man loves a woman, only as a friend and a companion. She was someone who earned his respect as a leader, and he loved her for being a decent person who was always there for him and anyone else who needed her. Lydia’s death was collateral damage of one of Ruler’s attacks. Back then, dying was easy, but since man was granted Eden, violent deaths should have been a thing of the past. Izzie’s death was cruel and meaningless. A man had killed her for his sick pleasure.
“What kind of world are we in, Pax?”
“Same shit we were always in, TL. Maybe we’re jus’ seein’ man for what he really is.”
Chapter Twenty-One: Faith
While she stayed hidden behind a row of filing cabinets studying the Crusaders thoughtfully, Pax, TL and Ip had left the station house where the nine Crusaders were being held in cells. TL had clearly forgotten she’d followed them into the building, and he’d rushed Pax out of the room after Crusader John talked about a hunter called Lucie. In her view, hunters were disgusting vermin and much like rats, they were rightly purged from the earth.
“Don’t be so harsh, they had some talents.”
Startled by the soft whisper in her ear, she turned to find Ruler sitting on a low stool behind her chair. Wrapping his long muscular arms around her breasts, he idly plucked at the full skirt of her gown. Growing increasingly bored with TL, she sighed contentedly as she leaned against his hard chest, tilting her head and exposing her throat only inches from his fanged teeth.
“I’ve missed you.”
“You’re such a slut.”
