“Jesus,” said Belden. “What’s that?”
The Rider silently prayed Kabede would find the shooter, though it sounded as if they had ridden out into a storm of gunfire.
Something grabbed the Rider’s shoeless foot and he glanced down to see one of the severed hands closing and opening on the top of his foot, trying to grip the cuff of his pants. With an involuntary shiver he swiftly kicked, and sent the spidery thing off into the crowd, still gripping his stocking.
There was a cracking sound as the weight of the pressing undead mob broke the top fence rail and the zombies tumbled into the stable and began to crawl at them, only to be stomped down by their fellows behind. It was like the stampede all over again.
“Come on!” he shouted, and continued toward the far end of the stable.
There were still dozens of horses there, and Belden paused long enough to throw open a few stall gates, freeing the excited animals, putting them between themselves and their pursuers.
As they reached the end of the row, the Rider found his onager. He stopped and swung open its gate, rushing into the pen and rifling through its pack.
“What the hell are you doing?” Belden nearly shrieked, watching the panicked horses rearing, kicking down the zombies and being pulled down and overpowered themselves. One zombie clung to a horse’s powerful neck only to be thrashed through the wooden wall.
The roof groaned and shifted dangerously.
Between the stomping hooves of the horses, a bare, detached leg came toward them, knee bending, foot slapping the earth, like some blind caterpillar inching along a branch. Belden took aim and blasted it back into the tangle of horses and zombies.
The Rider took the scroll case off the onager’s cantle and opened a parfleche hanging from its side. He worked swiftly, then tied the parfleche shut, shrugged through the carrying loop of the scroll case and patted the animal’s neck.
“Good luck, old friend,” he murmured in its scarred ear. Then he went to the fence.
He and Belden leapt over the top rail and hit the ground running, the downward slope of the trail granting them momentum.
Behind them, one of the support struts snapped and the stable roof partly collapsed with a tremendous sound. That would detain their pursuers a bit, but not for long.
The Rider gripped Belden’s arm, slowing him.
“Wait, Dick. I want you to tell me about the nightmare you had.”
Belden answered in a low, breathless whisper, “Is this the right time for that?”
“You said it was about bugs, and then those things came. We can’t ignore anything and we might not get another chance. Tell me. Quick.”
“Uh…well, that Polack that died. I saw his grave. It was open and full of fire, and he was layin’ all burned up in his coffin. There were bugs spilling out. Running from the fire I guess. And there was…a lady.”
“What kind of a lady?”
“Pale. Real pale, and young. She had eyes almost like a bird’s. She was…there was a light in her. This is gonna sound strange but, she wasn’t the kind of woman you’d try to…well, she was like a mother, or a sister. No…”
The Rider had seen a woman very much like this. One of the angels of the Lord. He had spoken to her in a hotel in Delirium Tremens, when the Lord had been poised to destroy the Molech worshipers there. He had seen her even before that, when he’d attempted to ascend into the Seventh Heaven and been cast out.
“What did the lady in the dream do?”
“Nothing. She stood over the Polack’s grave, and the bugs went around her, like they wouldn’t come near her. Then she pointed.”
“At what?”
“At the grave, or…”
“Or?”
“At the Polack’s mouth.”
“Then what happened?”
“Then the Polack opened his mouth and the blade of a saber shot straight up out of it, like somebody below had stuck it in the back of his head. That’s when I woke up.”
They cleared the boundaries of the post and slipped down the curving path to the post cemetery, a small collection of plank markers squared off by a low border of stacked stones.
A single figure, all in black, was there, apparently digging.
What did Belden’s dream mean? No doubt the angel had been trying to tell him something, but what?
The Rider dared a look over his shoulder, and saw a mass of zombies, twelve or more shambling after them. The rest were either freeing themselves from the stable or converging on the horsemen.
Belden raised his pistol to fire back at them, but the Rider pushed his arm down.
“Don’t waste it. Come on.”
They ran down the rest of the steep path, distancing themselves from the mob, and fell against the plank markers panting.
The figure in the graveyard turned towards them. He was dressed in an embroidered black vest, a wine red shirt and black pants, high black boots and a black hat. A double breasted frock coat lay draped over one of the grave markers. He wore a pair of black leather gauntlets, fanciful beaded Mexican-style calaveras with sparkling eyes adorning the cuffs. A silver pistol glinted across his stomach, and there were silvery medallions adorning his neck. Like Jacobi, he was bald, without eyebrows, and very pale. He planted the spade he’d been toiling with into the earth and leaned on it. He smiled tightly at them. His eyes appeared as black as his clothes. There was something protruding from the corner of his mouth, small and white, a stick, like a cigarette, or a root.
From the looks of it, he had been unearthing one of the graves. He stood beside it. It yawned, a black mouth. Something pale lay within, the early evening shadows obscuring it.
“Hello there,” he said around the stick, in a clipped Dutch accent. “I hoped you at least would come this far. I’ve been drawing your bath, Rider,” he said, gesturing to the open grave with a grin.
“DeKorte,” said the Rider, standing. “Known as Het Bot. Betrayer of the Amsterdam Enclave.”
DeKorte frowned slightly.
“Have we met, Rider?”
“No. But I know your name, moser.”
“How did you learn that, I wonder?” His expression darkened. “The bones of the dead of all the enclaves said nothing of you knowing our names. But you know mine.”
“As I knew Jacobi of Berlin. As I know Gans of Owernah, up on the ridge back there.”
DeKorte cocked his head, animal-like. “Who is that zwarte you picked up in Escopeta?”
“Never mind,” said the Rider quickly. “Why’d you want me here so badly?”
DeKorte regained his earlier superior smile.
A driving hail of bullets had met their desperate horse charge, breaking it almost before the last man got five feet from the stable. The first four men in the advance fell in the initial stunning volley. The sniper had evidently switched rifles. He fired with less precision, but made up for it in volume. Zombies, horses, and men alike stopped the shooter’s bullets.
The planned assault on the ridge proved impossible. The undead swarmed tightly together, and of the thirteen riders who burst from the stable, very swiftly only six remained.
Six men on bleeding, screaming horses, fighting to keep from being thrown by their animals as the crowd all around them reached out and bit or tore their hides away beneath them, bit their legs, tried to pull them from the saddle.
The shooter paused, either reloading his incredible rifle or simply admiring the chaos from his hidden vantage point.
Kabede watched as one man fought with a severed woman’s arm that curled around his neck, choking him.
Hale, the first man out of the stable hadn’t gone more than a few yards when the sharpshooter on the ridge shot his mount out from under him. He’d run into the guardhouse to take cover.
Kabede had it easiest. Wherever the Rod of Aaron touched a zombie, they fell inert. But there were too many, and he’d already suffered cuts and bites to his legs, bloodying his white robes. His horse was shuddering beneath him. Finally he
slid from the saddle and spinning the staff in his hands before him, much as his brother had taught him as a boy, he lashed his way through the creatures until a clear path lay to the guardhouse. He made for it, a black Moses parting the lunging undead like a torrid sea.
A downpour of bullets came at him, kicking up the dirt all around so that he had to shield his eyes with his hand as he ran.
He ducked into the guardhouse just as one of the bullets tore off the heel of his boot.
Hale lay on his elbows, bleeding, firing out the door.
“Watch out!” he yelled as Kabede pushed himself up.
Hale’s gun barked and the head of a leering, bearded old man which had been clinging to Kabede’s robes by its teeth blew back out the door, trailing its red and ragged vertebrae like a tail. They pushed the door shut and heard it beating itself against the wood.
“They’re killin’ us,” Hale panted. “We can’t get up that ridge.”
“No,” Kabede agreed.
He looked about furtively, and saw the back wall where the Rider had sat earlier, the drops of his blood still in the dirt.
“Lend me your pistol, and lock yourself in that empty cell there.”
Hale stared at him.
“You’re serious?”
“Yes. Trust me,” he said.
Hale shrugged and handed over his Remington.
“Whatever happens,” said Kabede, checking the loads, “don’t come out. Don’t try anything.”
Hale nodded and rushed into the first cell. Kabede kicked the door closed with a clang and stalked to the back of the guardhouse. He passed the cell where Manx had died, where the thing that had burst from him crouched beneath the cot. He dragged his foot across the Elder Sign the Rider had drawn in the dusty floor and putting his back to the wall, he sat down.
He drew his dagger and held it up to the directions, intoning the names of the archangels, then drove the tip into the floor and began to hastily describe a Solomonic seal.
“Joe,” Belden whispered anxiously.
The Rider looked to his friend. He’d almost forgotten he was here. Belden was looking back at the steadily approaching figures behind them.
The Rider turned back to DeKorte and raised his eyebrows.
“Are they going to be a problem?”
“Not at all,” DeKorte said. “Stop.”
He gestured at them, offhandedly, and the twelve undead marchers ceased moving. “Let’s keep it interesting for them. Come my friends, gather around.”
He waved his fingers in a way that the Rider saw was meant to look casual. What was he using to control them? The Rider couldn’t tell. He looked for rings on DeKorte’s fingers, a ward or fetish clutched in his hand— anything.
The twelve creatures that had been men, women, and children spread out in perfect unison and stepped around the perimeter of the little graveyard until they surrounded it, evenly spaced. Then they simply stood staring, close-mouthed, milky eyes staring impassively.
The sun was sinking and the graveyard was washed in blood.
Belden still had his pistol in his hand, and he raised it, cocked it, and aimed at DeKorte.
“If you’re responsible for these things, you’d best put a stop to it right now, mister.”
“Kill me and they will tear you both to pieces,” DeKorte said, unconcerned, even grinning around the root in his mouth in the face of Belden’s gun.
Belden slowly lowered the pistol.
“Good choice, Dick,” the Rider said. “I think he meant it.”
DeKorte nodded.
“You were going to tell me how the zwarte knows all our names, Rider.”
The Rider said nothing, but clenched his eyes when DeKorte’s smile widened.
“So he does know our names. Who is he, Rider? How did a black savage come to know about us?”
The Rider glared, but said nothing still.
“It doesn’t really matter,” DeKorte sighed. “Soon he’ll be dead.”
“So what if you know their names?” Belden whispered to the Rider.
“Names have power,” DeKorte answered for him. “Power over life and death. Name a thing, and you control that thing. That’s why the members of our Order took on nom de plumes, you see.”
Belden glanced at the Rider.
“Aliases,” the Rider said.
Belden nodded.
“Manasseh’s here,” said DeKorte, “his was the Rider.”
“Manasseh?” Belden repeated querulously, looking at the Rider again. In spite of everything, his lip curled into a grin. “That’s your Christian-er, your given name?”
The Rider shook his head.
“Yes. The Rider. The greatest Merkabah Rider of the Sons of the Essenes,” DeKorte sneered. “Do you know the origin of my name, Rider?”
Of course he did. But he said nothing.
“Het Bot. The Bone.”
“The Bone?” Belden smirked. “I don’t know which one’s worse, Manasseh or ‘The Bone.’”
DeKorte did not smile.
“Oh, wait.” Belden grinned after a bit, meeting DeKorte’s stare unflinchingly. “Yes, I do.”
“You are useless here, tatelah,” DeKorte said, “so you may as well make an appreciative audience. Interrupt again with your inanities and I’ll order my friends to bite out your tongue. The Bone refers to the legend of the luz. The one indestructible, incorruptible bone in the human body. When we die, all else crumbles to dust but for our luz, and on the Day of Judgment, the dew of resurrection will rain down from the Seventh Heaven of Araboth, and the bodies of the dead will sprout from this anew. All the sins of a man, all his deeds and failings, are written upon the luz.”
Then he did smile. He took from his coat pocket something white and blocky, about the size of his palm, and held it up. It was a human vertebra.
“This one had an interesting story to tell, for instance. It told me of a young man’s trust, and a yearning for a father he had never really known, but for a single memory; a memory of a blessing, a dedication to God.”
The Rider’s eyes widened, and the pit of his stomach yawned. His heart dropped deep down somewhere and was lost. It couldn’t be.
“A dentist, I am told, may read the eating habits of a dead man upon his teeth, whether he was a lover of tobacco or not.” DeKorte turned the bone over in his hand, then held it to his ear. “This bone tells me this boy did not touch strong drink. He did not cut his hair. He believed himself a Samson, a modern day Nazirite.”
“You fucking bastard!” the Rider spat, unable to control his outrage.
DeKorte smiled.
“He trusted you, Rider. Died dreaming of a life of belonging. A life he saw with you. A new life with a new father.”
The Rider’s fists bunched at his sides and he trembled so hard where he stood that he fell against a grave marker and went to his knees. His hat fell away, and he put his forehead to the ground and pulled at his payos so hard the pain squeezed the brimming tears from his eyes.
Belden stooped to help him up.
DeKorte pulled the spade out of the dirt and drove it into the grave like a spear. They heard the crackle of splintering coffin wood.
“What’s the matter?” Belden hissed. “That grave…that’s the man they brought with them. The friend they buried.”
“No friend of ours,” DeKorte said with mock innocence. “An old friend of the Rider’s. Say hello to my masterwork, Rider. Say hello to Gershom.”
A huge, bulky form rose from the grave, the broken boards of the shattered coffin sliding from its broad shoulders.
The Rider began to wail, then to snarl like a beast.
Alain Gans, Le Bouclier, last living member of the Owernah Enclave, sighted another goy soldier, and with a gentle pull, blew his skull apart with a .41 caliber bullet from his Guycot Rifle. He had lain aside his Remington after the soldiers had taken cover in the stable, and gotten out the 80-shot chain rifle to surprise them from his high position in the rocks. He was really no grea
t shot, but with the Vernier rear peep sight, and the Lyman and Beech front sight he’d had fitted to the Guycot, he would have to have been blind to miss. It was like shooting dumb animals. High among the rocks overlooking the post, no one could even get to him. With his position and eighty rounds of ammunition loaded, one man could hold off an army, which was what he was doing.
He toyed with them dispassionately like a cat, blowing the limbs off the undead just to alleviate his own growing boredom. He tittered to see the detached limbs spring and scurry up the screaming men.
The nègre worried him though. Whatever weapon he was using to strike the undead, it was putting them down, and according to Het Bot, that should not have been possible. Who was he? He had thought to peer through the Yenne Velt to observe him, but then he had taken cover inside the guardhouse.
Still, the situation was easily in hand. By now Het Bot was giving the Rider his surprise, and soon they would be picking the scroll from his corpse and taking them both to Adon. In a few mere months, they would be masters of the earth.
Then he felt something.
LeBouclier, The Buckler, was the name Gans had taken among the Sons of the Essenes. It was because he had always shown a marked talent for protective magic. Of course, the Sons never called it magic back then, but it was what it was. He had always been a cautious fellow. His teachers had derided him some for it. A Merkabah Rider needed boldness too. Of what use was constant preparation without venture?
So they had told him.
But they were dead.
Now, something crossed the seal he had placed around himself, and was causing the ward on his chest to resonate. He had never cared much for entering the Yenne Velt, but he did so instantly, his body slumping over his rifle as his astral form whirled and prepared to unload his mystic revolver on the threat, whatever it was. Had the Rider somehow gotten past Het Bot and taken the fight to him as he had with Lilith’s stupid shedim at Varruga Tanks?
It was not the Rider.
The black man with the staff stood before him.
In the Yenne Velt, the staff was emitting a ghastly light. The shifting colors were awesome, almost too much to look upon. So stunning to his etheric eyes, he neglected to draw his mystic weapon, but actually threw up his arms in a panic. The brilliance seemed to wither him. He felt his spirit shudder, threatening to break apart, just as if he were a bumbling learner braving the astral winds for the first time again.
Merkabah Rider: Have Glyphs Will Travel Page 10
