Jeremiah loathes human-on-human violence of any sort, but these are times that call for good Christian soldiers to follow Ecclesiastes’s imperative that there is a time for peace and a time for war, and it is now a time to battle anyone who would try to stop the blessed deliverance scheduled for later this day.
At last, a shrill, crumbly voice issues from behind the boarded windows of the brownstone, so unsteady and shaky it sounds almost feral. “WE HEAR YOU!” Pause. “WE UNDERSTAND YOU’RE NOT THE ENEMY!” Pause again. “BUT WE ALSO KNOW EXACTLY WHAT YOU’RE PLANNING FOR TONIGHT!”
Another slight pause here, which makes Jeremiah go still, his stomach clenching as he looks off at each flank, each church member raising his weapon, ready to fire.
The voice continues: “I’M TELLING YOU RIGHT NOW THIS ISN’T GONNA HAPPEN!”
“LILLY, LISTEN TO ME!” The preacher applies his most convivial tone here. “WE HEARD GUNFIRE! WE DON’T KNOW IF ANYBODY’S BEEN SHOT OR IF YOU PLAN ON DOING ANY MORE SHOOTING, BUT THERE’S NO REASON FOR ANYONE TO GET HURT! WE CAN WORK THIS OUT—”
“ARE YOU KIDDING ME?” The voice from the brownstone hardens, sharpens like a knife. “NOBODY NEEDS TO GET HURT? DO YOU THINK WE’RE IDIOTS? YOU WERE GOING TO TAKE EVERY LIVING THING DOWN TONIGHT! YOU WERE GOING TO POISON US WITHOUT GIVING IT A SECOND THOUGHT!”
“LILLY, IT’S NOT WHAT YOU THINK! IT’S STILL A FREE COUNTRY, EVERYBODY’S GOT A VOTE HERE! NOBODY HAS TO DO ANYTHING THEY DON’T WANT TO!” The preacher licks his lips. He’s lying, of course. At this point, the wheels are in motion, and nobody is going to stop the machine. Plus, they can’t risk someone gumming up the works, swaying the consensus, or weakening resolve.
Glancing over his shoulder, the reverend sees a few of the original residents about a block away—the Sterns, the woman named Gloria—coming out of their buildings and heading toward the commotion. The clock is ticking. Jeremiah knows he has to act quickly and decisively. As his daddy always said, best way to deal with a mischievous child is quick, harsh, but fair punishment.
Right now.
Jeremiah motions to Mark Arbogast, the lanky former bricklayer now standing guard on the east corner of the building. “Brother Mark! C’mere!”
Arbogast obediently leaves his post and trots over to the preacher.
“Change of plans, Brother,” Jeremiah says, keeping his voice low as he motions to other men. “Everybody! Over here! Quickly! C’mon!”
The others appear around the far side of the building, their faces tense and twitchy as they rush over to where the preacher is standing.
Jeremiah nods toward the other townspeople now heading this way—the Stern couple, Gloria, and Ben Buchholz—about a block away and closing the distance. “We gotta contain this right now before it gets out of hand.” Jeremiah looks at Arbogast. “Brother Mark, I need you to keep these townspeople back, keep them away from the building, tell them … tell them we’re dealing with somebody who turned and broke into my place. You got that?”
Mark nods and then whirls toward the oncoming clutch of people.
Jeremiah turns to the other men, and he speaks very quickly and very clearly, explaining exactly what they’re going to do and emphasizing the importance of speed.
* * *
Lilly hears a voice calling out for her from the rear of the brownstone and in her panic misidentifies it as the voice of her father. Everett Caul used to stand on the porch of their Marietta house and bellow his daughter’s full name as though beckoning a family pet: LILLLLLLLEEEEEEEEEE CAAAAAAUUUUULLL! Lilly remembers playing hide-and-seek with the neighborhood kids and hearing that clarion call echoing over the tops of oak trees, rich with the portents of a hot dinner, bedtime stories, and maybe a TV show or two before lights-out. But just as quickly as she found herself reveling in a flickering memory of her daddy, she now finds herself wrenched back into the here and now—the cluttered living room of a rundown brownstone in Woodbury, the sound of the preacher’s voice cutting through the silence.
“LILLY?”
Both Lilly and Bob spin toward the sound of the voice—now coming from the back of the place in a disorienting game of Whac-A-Mole—as Tommy Dupree jerks off the armchair and springs to his feet. “What are they—? Why did—?” he babbles.
Outside the rear of the brownstone: “LILLY, CAN YOU HEAR ME?”
Lilly scoops her gun off the floor—the gun used by Tommy to kill Calvin—ejecting the Ruger’s magazine and checking it. The clip is full. She sees Bob out of the corner of her eye spinning the Magnum’s cylinder, peering out into the kitchen. Lilly goes over to Tommy and speaks very softly, “I’m going to need you to stay right behind me. Can you do that? Can you stay right behind me no matter what?”
He nods.
Outside, in the back courtyard, the baritone voice calls out again: “LILLY, I’M SO SORRY TO DO THIS TO YOU, BUT I’M GONNA NEED YOU TO GO AHEAD AND COME OUT THE BACK DOOR NOW.”
Bob jerks his hand up, motioning for Lilly and Tommy to stay put, stay there for a second. He goes into the kitchen, his gun now gripped with both hands, Weaver stance, Israeli commando technique he learned in Basic at Fort Benning. Lilly watches from the living room. Bob’s boots make crackling noises on the old linoleum as he shuffles over to the window, his gun poised and ready to rock. He peers through a crack in the boards nailed up across the broken pane, gazing out into the rear courtyard. He lets out a pained sigh.
“I’M REAL SORRY, LILLY,” the voice calls out, “BUT Y’ALL GOT ONE MINUTE TO COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS AND GUNS WHERE WE CAN SEE THEM!”
Lilly raises her .22 and nods at Tommy. “Stay close.”
She scuttles across the room with her gun raised, through the kitchen doorway, and over to where Bob stands by the window. Tommy shuffles along behind her, holding on to the belt loop on the back of her jeans. His heavy, nervous breathing is audible in the silent kitchen. Lilly looks at Bob and starts to say something.
Outside: “THIRTY SECONDS … AND THEN WE’RE GONNA HAVE TO GO AHEAD AND COME ON IN.”
Lilly whispers to Bob, “I got six rounds in the mag, I say we make a break for it.”
Bob shakes his head, lowering his gun. “It ain’t worth it, Lilly. They’re gonna come at us from all sides, and they got them Bushmasters.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“Lilly—”
“You still got that speed loader, we can hold ’em off and make a mad dash for the wall. Regroup in the woods, take them down one at a time.”
“Lilly, come on—”
The voice: “FIFTEEN SECONDS, LILLY!”
Lilly feels the moist, tight, terrified grip of the child against her tailbone. She hisses her words, the rage clenching her guts. “Bob, I’m telling you, the element of surprise will get us across that courtyard—”
Bob shakes his head. “No, trust me, we gotta throw in the towel.”
“TEN SECONDS!”
Lilly looks at Bob. “I’m not gonna give up, I’m not going down without a fight.”
Bob looks into her eyes, and for just an instant something resembling a smile crosses his deeply lined features. “I didn’t say anything about giving up.”
“FIVE SECONDS!”
Bob turns toward the back door, thumbs the hammer down on his gun, holds the .357 over his head, and calls out, raising his voice loud enough to be heard by the gunmen on either side of the building’s rear windows: “Okay, you win! We’re coming out! Don’t shoot!”
* * *
Hours later, Jeremiah is philosophical about the whole incident. The momentary rebellion turns out to be a minor hiccup—a tempest in a teapot, as Jeremiah’s grandmother used to call family squabbles—despite the fact that one of the faithful has fallen. Jeremiah is devastated that Calvin Dupree has given up his life prematurely. But in a way, it’s a fitting tribute to the man’s faith and bravery. He will enter paradise a few hours early.
By noon, the preacher has managed to contain the crisis, get the program back on track
, and move closer to the final stages of the ritual.
Wade Pilcher returns from the hills and forests with good news. The remote devices have been set and tested, and the superherd has been located (the telltale dust cloud a mile east of Elkins Creek indicating its current position). Wade assures the reverend that the summoning will be ready when the time comes. According to the former cop’s calculations, it will take the herd—once the signal finds them—approximately three hours to change course and cross the five miles of wetlands before reaching Woodbury.
That afternoon, at one P.M. Eastern Standard Time, a moment that will be memorialized later as a milestone in the epochal series of events that follow, the Reverend Jeremiah Garlitz returns to his brownstone, retrieves the heavy duffel bags from under his bed, carries the precious cargo across town to the racetrack arena, and descends the service stairs to the sublevels.
In the infirmary, the preacher finds Reese, Stephen, and Mark huddling in a pool of emergency halogen light in the corner of the room, drinking coffee from paper cups, softly chuckling at some joke. Next to them, the sacraments are boxed and stacked on stainless steel tables.
“Hey!”
The sharpness of Jeremiah’s voice as he enters the sick bay startles the men. They look up from their coffee, their smiles lingering. “Brother Jeremiah,” Reese says, his boyish face still full of good humor. “I thought you were coming down at three o’clock.”
Jeremiah walks up to them, carefully sets down the duffel bags with a dull clank, and glowers at them with the utmost gravity on his handsome features. “There will be no joking around on this day, gentlemen. I don’t want to hear any chuckling or giggling from anyone.”
The men look stung, their smiles fading, their faces turning downward. Reese stares at the floor. “Sorry, Brother … you’re right.”
“This is a solemn day.” The preacher scans their downcast faces. “Yes, it’s also a joyous occasion, I admit that. But the time of laughter and telling jokes has come to an end, my brothers.”
Reese is nodding. “Amen, Brother … amen.”
“I want everybody to complete his tasks to the letter, we owe that much to the good people of Woodbury. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Nods from all three men. Then Mark, the lanky former bricklayer from Tallahassee, speaks up. “Do you want all three of us in the service bays with you when you … you … deal with the traitors?”
“They’re not traitors, Brother.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean nothing by it.”
Jeremiah offers a paternal smile. “I know you didn’t mean any harm by your question. But the truth is, they’re just doing what any of us would do if we thought somebody was threatening our loved ones.”
Mark glances at the others, then back at the preacher. “Not sure I understand what you mean, Brother.”
The preacher pats the younger man on the shoulder. “They’re not bad people, they’re not our enemy. They just don’t realize the gift we’re all about to receive. They don’t see the wondrous glory in it.”
Mark is nodding, his eyes already moistening. “You’re right, Brother … you’re so right.”
Jeremiah kneels by the duffels, unzips the first one, and starts pulling out beakers. “And to answer your original query, Brother, yes, I want y’all to back me up in there.” He puts one of the large glass containers on the stainless steel gurney against the wall next to the sacraments. He pulls rubber gloves from his suit pocket and puts them on. “The best way to put down an innocent animal is humanely and quickly. I want y’all to follow my directions exactly as I give them. Do you understand?”
Nods from the men.
Jeremiah points at the closest carton of freshly baked unleavened bread. “All right, it’s time. Somebody hand me a small bite-sized piece of that host, and somebody else pour me about two fingers of this liquid into one of them paper cups y’all are drinking from.”
TWENTY-THREE
The huge, battered garage-style door shrieks up its rusty castors, and they enter the first vestibule—a grease-stained former service bay directly underneath the deserted concession stands. They flip on the battery-powered camping light sitting on a stack of spare tires by the door, and a dull yellow glow illuminates two hundred square feet of leprous, oil-spotted cement floor, a single figure bound and gagged to a folding chair in the center of the musty-smelling, airless chamber.
Jeremiah approaches first, a purple liturgical scarf thrown around the shoulder pads of his dusty suit. The other three men follow on his heels with deferential, shell-shocked expressions, holding the sacramental items in their arms like courtesans in some royal harem. “‘Wash me thoroughly from my wickedness,’” Jeremiah recites as he approaches the subject. “‘And cleanse me from my sin.’”
Lilly moans under her duct-taped gag, her eyes bugging out in terror when she sees the paper plate on which the piece of bread and cup of poisoned liquid sit. She starts tugging at her restraints, shuddering in the chair, making a horrible keening noise that’s muffled by the tape, her sweat-soaked top stretched taut by the plastic shackle binding her wrists behind her back. She burns her gaze into the preacher and shrieks something inaudible behind the gag.
Jeremiah turns to his minions and softly yet quickly and firmly says, “Have the host and the blood of Christ ready on my signal, and pay no attention to what our beloved sister might say when the tape comes off, because it will be Satan talking at that point, and Mark, you move behind her, and on my signal bend her head back just like we practiced on the dummy back in Jacksonville.”
The other men get into position behind Lilly’s chair as Lilly wriggles and strains and convulses against the bondage and screams garbled profanities beneath the gag. The chair squeaks and shimmies across the floor with her powerful convulsions and writhing movements.
“‘Make me a clean heart, O God,” Jeremiah intones as he nods at Reese, the plate holder, to hand over the sacraments. “‘Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, and my tongue shall sing of Thy righteousness!’”
Another nod to Mark, as he moves around behind Lilly’s chair, and a nod to Stephen, and a final entreaty to the Good Lord: “Accept this young sister into your fold, O God, and deliver her to heaven!”
Mark, the strongest of the three, moves in behind Lilly and wraps his hands around the bottom of her chin and yanks, as Stephen rips the tape from her mouth.
“OKAY, LISTEN TO ME! PLEASE! I’M BEGGING YOU! YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO THIS! GIVE ME ONE CHANCE TO MAKE MY CASE! I RESPECT WHAT YOU’RE DOING! DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT I’M SAYING? DON’T DO THIS TO ME! PLEASE! WAIT—!”
In that terrible instant before Jeremiah stuffs a half-dollar-sized piece of soda cracker into her mouth, she realizes that she is going to die and it’s all over and it will come at the hand of this insane zealot, and how ironic, how fucking ironic, that it comes not at the hands of the walkers but a man supposedly of God, and she realizes instantly that she doesn’t give a fuck about irony, she just wants to live, and her voice suddenly tumbles into a cascade of ululating cries, deteriorating quickly into a garbled sob.
“P-PLEASE! OH PLEASE! OH PLEASE! PLEASE! PLEEEEEEEE—!”
They lodge the host in her mouth, the strong, unyielding grip of the bricklayer behind her wrenching her jaws open and shut around the morsel, violently massaging it down her throat. She chokes and coughs and tries to gag it up, but the peristalsis of the human digestive system, starting with the throat and moving down the esophagus, will involuntarily—as the church members have learned in their research—accept the food in this situation and digest it no matter how much the subject consciously fights it.
The strong barbiturate has been added to the dough before baking.
The clear, odorless liquid comes next. Lilly wretches and writhes in the chair, trying to expel the host, as Jeremiah takes the paper cup off the plate. “‘According to the multitude of Thy mercies,’” he prays aloud as he leans down and quickly tips the liquid into her mouth, wh
ich is again forced open and shut by the bricklayer. “‘And do away with all mine offenses, forever and ever … amen.’”
Lilly coughs and sputters and jerks, and Jeremiah stands there, waiting patiently, until he is certain enough of the cyanide has gotten into her system. She finally collapses in the chair—either from exhaustion or from the fast-acting toxin—her muscles going slack, her head lolling forward.
Jeremiah hears something very faint—almost like a death rattle—coming from her throat.
He leans down and whispers, “Don’t fight it, Sister.” He strokes her cheek with great tenderness. “You’ll be with God soon … and you can tell Him all about it.”
He nods at the others, and they follow him out. Before slamming down the garage-style door, the preacher sticks his head back in the cell.
“We’re right behind you, Sister.”
The door bangs shut.
* * *
Minutes later, it doesn’t occur to Lilly that she should be dead already.
She lolls forward in the chair, unaware of how much time has passed, a drying crust of something on her lips, the room spinning. Did she throw up? She peers down into her lap and sees no traces of vomit. The crotch of her jeans looks damp. Did she wet herself?
She sits back in the chair, her wrists burning from the plastic restraints. Her gag lies on the cement floor in front of her—a wadded, crumpled piece of duct tape. She blinks. She feels dizzy, nauseous, chilled … but alive. What the hell is going on? She tries to wrench her hands free when she hears the muffled cries of Tommy Dupree coming from the service bay next to hers.
The walls are eighteen inches of mortar, rebar, and reinforced cement, so the sounds coming from next door are very faint and completely dampened by the infrastructure. Lilly has to concentrate on the noises, straining her ears, in order to make out what’s happening.
She can hear two voices, one of them the high-pitched shouting of the boy. The sounds of a struggle come next. Lilly hears the squeak of a metal folding chair, the droning voice of the preacher, and then silence. Footsteps moving across the room.
The Walking Dead: Descent Page 25
