by Peter Nealen
He uncovered Miguel first. He had been savagely beaten. Both eyes were swollen shut, and his face was a mask of blood. Under the carnage, it actually looked misshapen, as if his skull had been broken by the beating.
He wasn't breathing. Even from where I stood, I could see that. Part of the left side of his face looked caved-in, and his ribcage wasn't right, either. He'd been beaten to death.
Edgar either didn't see it or didn't want to see it. He hauled his twin brother's body out of the press and started trying to wake him up, trying to treat his wounds. Tall Bear and I hauled the bodies off of Brother Barnabas and Brother Milo.
Brother Barnabas was as obviously dead as Miguel. His eyes were gone, and one of his killers' thumbs was still embedded in a socket. His neck was at a strange angle. He had been as thoroughly beaten as Miguel; jagged ends of bones were sticking out of his arms and legs, and his skull was obviously broken.
Brother Milo was still breathing, but from the looks of him, not for long. There was bloody froth on his lips, and he looked like almost every major bone had been broken. One eye was swollen nearly shut; the other was hanging out of its socket. His nose was mashed flat.
He managed to open his intact eye just enough to look at us. Blood bubbled from his mouth and nose. “We tried,” he said, his voice thick with fluid, “but they rushed us. Too many...” He took in a ragged breath, pain locking up his entire body as he did so. For a long moment, he was poised in a rictus of agony. “The Sisters...” His voice trailed off, his breath rattled in his throat, and he was gone.
I did what I could to compose his body. I hadn't liked the little man, but he'd given his life to try to stop The Walker. He might have been annoying, but that had no bearing any longer. Only his sacrifice mattered.
Blake was lying some six feet away, in the direction of the mob. He'd evidently pushed his way forward, trying to keep the zombies off of the Brothers. We found him under the body of a large man with an enormous beer gut, that Blake had gut-shot about four times. The man still had his hands locked around Blake's throat. They were both dead. While the fat man hadn't managed to choke him to death, his throat was flattened, the fat man's fingers crushed, as if another zombie had stomped on it as he lay there, his hands and his gun trapped under the corpse on top of him.
I looked down at him, feeling numb. I could see it play back in my mind's eye, as he fought through the crushing trauma of what he'd been through in Ophir and before, to do his duty and protect the Friars. He'd died a warrior. I hoped he'd found some personal redemption in that fact.
Edgar was still trying to coax some life back into Miguel. It wasn't working. It wasn't ever going to work. The rest of us gathered around them, none of us willing to be the one who shook Edgar into facing the hard truth that his brother was dead.
It was Father Ignacio who finally took the step none of the rest of us had the guts to take. He knelt down beside the brothers and put his hand on Edgar's shoulder. “He's gone, Ed,” he said quietly. “I'm sorry. He's gone.” He reached out and put a hand over Miguel's eyes, at least going through the motions of closing them. They were too swollen to actually do it. Then he made the Sign of the Cross over him and said, “All powerful and merciful God, we commend to You Your servant Miguel. In Your mercy and love, blot out the sins he has committed through human weakness. In this world he has died; let him live forever with You in the next. Amen.”
Edgar had let his brother's corpse fall through his hands. He knelt there, staring down at the broken, bloody clay that had once been his twin, the one person closest to him in the world. He didn't cry, he didn't scream, he didn't even shake. It would have been better if he had. He just stared, blankly, uncomprehendingly. He may as well have been a statue. I knew, even before anyone approached him, that Edgar wasn't ever going to be the man he had been. The Walker had broken him. Miguel might be the one who was dead, but we'd lost both of the Ramirez twins.
He didn't resist as Tyrese pulled him to his feet. He wasn't even looking at anything in particular anymore. His eyes were just unfocused, staring off into nothingness. Tyrese helped him over to one side, where he sank down to sit against a tree, still staring at oblivion, not making a sound.
“I'll stay with him,” Tyrese said quietly. “You'd better find out what happened to the Sisters.”
I hesitated, not terribly willing to leave Tyrese alone with a catatonic Edgar and who knew how many people who might not be dead, but would probably wake up in a very, very bad way. Kolya put his hand on my shoulder. “I'll stay, too,” he said, apparently reading my mind. “We can't haul him around, and we can't leave him alone.”
I nodded, unable to get words past the lump in my throat. This had been one of the worst days in my entire career as a Witch Hunter, and it wasn't over yet. Leaving the two of them with our sole surviving casualty, we turned and continued down the street in search of Sister Margritte and her charges.
Slowly overtaking the shock, grief, and, yes, guilt at what had happened, was a growing ember of rage. What had the Sisters done? Where had they gone? They hadn't answered the radio, and obviously hadn't been in a position to support the attack in any way, since Miguel and the Friars had gone looking for them and obviously had not found them. I didn't think they'd run away; that wasn't their style. I was increasingly suspecting an act of gung-ho Active Stupid, and it was really starting to make me angry. I confess I embraced it a little. Righteous anger was preferable to the crushing grief and temptation to despair that came with thinking about the dead, never mind how badly this entire mission had gone.
It took another half an hour of searching before we found them. By then, the sirens and flashing red lights had already showed up at the other end of town, where we'd first arrived. Tall Bear had hung back with Ian to cover that end; none of us had been terribly comfortable with the idea of just leaving the scene before the paramedics got there.
It looked like they were just as needed here.
The Sisters were holed up in a garage at the end of a short driveway. It was a bloodbath. Four of them were laid out with their veils over their faces, their habits sodden with blood. Two more were being treated by a harried pair who were soaked in nearly as much blood as the dead. The remaining two were on security, their eyes haunted, ARs clutched in white-knuckled hands.
The driveway and part of the garage were littered with flesh golems and a few human bodies, some still showing traces of the bizarre transformations they'd undergone under the influence of the sorcerer's curse. There was no real way of telling if any of the corpses had belonged to The Walker's zombies, but somehow, given where we were, I doubted it. We had stopped seeing the remains of the mob nearly a block behind us.
Sister Margritte was leaning against the edge of the garage door, her finger on her rifle's trigger, staring at us with an expression that wasn't quite all there. Her habit was splashed with blood, and a livid purple bruise was swelling the left side of her jaw. I stopped, holding my hands out to make sure everybody else did, too. If she was far enough gone that she didn't recognize us, this could get uglier than it already was, fast.
“Sister, it's us,” I said, loudly enough to make sure I was heard, but still short of an actual shout, lest it be interpreted as a threat. Some of my previous anger had dissipated a little, having seen the beating they'd taken. No one could look at that scene and not feel some compassion, regardless of how they'd gotten into the mess in the first place. And I still had my suspicions about how this had happened.
My words didn't seem to register at all, at first. Sister Margritte's eyes turned to us, but it was as if she didn't actually see us; she only saw shapes coming toward her, and anything approaching them had so far been hostile. The rifle muzzle began to lift.
Sister Emilia had heard me, though, from where she was tending to one of the wounded, and she looked up to see what was happening. Hastily, but not so much as to startle her superior, she got up and stepped up beside Sister Margritte, gently putting a hand on her rifle and pu
shing the barrel toward the floor before carefully taking it out of her grip. I breathed a little easier at that. She had had her finger on the trigger; it was only a matter of time before a round went somewhere it wasn't supposed to.
Sister Emilia, murmuring softly, guided Sister Margritte down to a seat against the wall inside the garage, then stepped out to meet us. She was haggard and bloodied, but didn't look as banged up as Sister Margritte. She was also considerably more composed.
“Thanks be to God,” she said sincerely. “I was starting to worry that we were the only ones left.”
“What happened?” I asked, as Eryn and Father Ignacio went to help attend to the wounded. Charlie took up Sister Margritte's position on security, though at that point I doubted it would be that necessary. Both The Walker and the sorcerer were gone. We'd missed our chance.
She didn't want to look me in the eye. “We tried to take on the sorcerer,” she confessed. “Sister Margritte was adamant. She said that God would take care of the rest, but that it was our holy duty to take down both targets. That we couldn't turn a blind eye to one evil just because we didn't trust our human strength against both.”
My anger was returning to the fore. Just as I'd feared, Sister Margritte's arrogance, her sheer presumption, had cost us not only our crack at The Walker, but also a lot of lives, including five of her own.
“Really?” I growled. “So you're saying she lied during planning? Or did her presumption lead to changing her mind and throwing the entire plan in the toilet after we were committed?”
There were tears in her eyes as she finally met my angry stare. “I don't know,” she said. “But we certainly paid the price for it.”
I looked over at the bodies. There was no denying that.
“You weren't the only ones,” I said tightly. “Two of the Friars are dead, Blake is dead, one of the Ramirez twins is dead, and his brother might as well be. And who knows how many of these people, a lot of whom were probably innocent until they got dragged into this slugging match not of their making, are dead or insane. And there are going to be more of them in yet another town, because we failed to stop this here.” I looked at her, but she wouldn't look me in the eye again. “You're in charge of your surviving Sisters now. I don't care if Sister Margritte has seniority,” I added as she started to open her mouth to protest. “I didn't especially trust her judgment before, and I've got even less reason to now. She's out. You're it. You've got half an hour, and we're moving out.”
“We can't continue like this!” she protested.
“We don't have a choice,” I snapped. “The Walker's still out there, and unless we can corral it, it's going to lead to a lot more wrecked towns, shredded minds, and dead bodies. As Sister Margritte pointed out,” I added viciously, “we have a duty that we can't shirk.” I somewhat regretted the acid comment as soon as I said it. Sister Emilia reacted as if I'd slapped her across the face. Yes, it was cruel. Unfortunately, it was also true.
Eryn stepped up to me as Sister Emilia turned away, tears streaming down her face. “Jed, we can't just charge after them right away,” she said quietly. “Not after this.”
“We can't just quit, either,” I replied. “This is getting worse.”
“I'm not saying we should quit,” she said sharply. “I'm saying that we need to regroup and get a little bit of rest after this. Nobody's going to be able to keep their head in the game after the losses we've taken otherwise, and if we try to face The Walker while we're strung out and distracted, it's just going to be worse.” I looked down at her. Her green eyes were red-rimmed, and there was a lot of pain there, but she was holding it together for the sake of the rest.
She was also right. I knew it, on some level. But I had visions of what would happen if The Walker had free reign, if we had missed our only chance to stop this rampage. Most people no longer lived in fear of the dark, but if The Walker stalked the night again, that would change. It wouldn't be the end of the world. Contrary to some people's fears or desires, only God gets to pick the time when that happens. But the world would get darker, and fear and madness would grip it a little bit more tightly.
“Jed,” Eryn prompted. I guess I'd gotten a little distant, obsessed with visions of madness and death in the night. “It doesn't have to be for long. Just a few hours.” She cupped my face in her hands and looked into my eyes. Her voice got quieter, meant only for me. “Don't let your anger at what Sister Margritte did cloud your judgment. Don't let it lead you into making the same mistake.”
I nodded, finally, and she hugged me. I returned the embrace, holding her tightly, trying not to think about my dread of what would happen if The Walker managed to take her away from me the way it had taken either of the Ramirez twins.
Tall Bear and Ian, after getting the emergency personnel oriented, managed to slip away in the confusion, and met the rest of us at the edge of town. They'd even managed to get Edgar and the wounded Sisters picked up. We couldn't take them where we were going.
Of course, we weren't one hundred percent certain where we were going. The only criteria we had was our earlier assessment that the sorcerer was looking for small, out of the way towns that wouldn't attract too much attention when he turned a lot of their living and dead into monsters to try to save his hide. The nearest such town was a tiny, shrinking, former railroad town called Yanquinia.
We found a spot to camp on the way, where we could rest and regroup for a few hours. We set a watch, and then almost immediately passed out.
I found myself in the woods. At least, it had been the woods once upon a time. Now the trees were nothing but gray, dead trunks, their twisted, naked branches like grasping bones raised in despair toward the sky. Not a leaf was to be seen. Even the ground was nothing but dust.
The sky was a sullen mass of red flame. It flickered and spat without shedding much light. Down among the dead wastes, there was only a reddish twilight.
I wasn't alone. The Ramirez twins were there, along with Blake, Father Ignacio, Eryn, Tall Bear, Alistair, Kolya, Charlie, Ian, and Tyrese. All ten Sisters were there, along with all three Brothers. So was Dan Weatherby, who'd been in the ground for two years, and several other Hunters whom I'd worked with before they'd been killed.
There were shapes in the trees around us. Goblins, skinnies, imps, goatheads, Stick Indians, and other things I had no names for were dancing and cackling around us. And, deep in the shadows beyond them, a pair of fiery green eyes looked on, glowing in the gloom.
The same insane piping that had drifted through the fog in Bartram filled the air, louder, more strident, more discordant, and much more intrusive. There was no shutting it out. The pressure in my head started to build.
Tall Bear started to twitch. Suddenly he was dancing and capering just like the things out in the trees. One by one, the rest joined him, their eyes rolling back in their heads as the music crept into their skulls. Soon I was the only one standing there, my hands clapped over my ears, trying to shut it out, calling out their names to try to get them to stop.
Ian, grinning like a madman, put his pistol in his mouth and pulled the trigger. Charlie impaled himself on a chainsaw he'd produced from thin air. Father Ignacio clawed his own eyes out. Tall Bear emptied his magazine into his own guts. One by one, each one different, they all killed themselves, until Eryn, her eyes now clear and looking at me, smiled and slit her own throat.
I didn't shout when I woke up, but I was shaking so badly that I couldn't move. Beside me, Eryn was crying hysterically, and from the sounds of it, she wasn't the only one. After what I'd just seen, I reached for her, fumbling for my wife and some physical confirmation that it wasn't true, that she was still alive and here with me. I found her and drew her close. We clung to each other under the blanket in the back of the truck, shaking and sobbing in the aftermath of the dream.
It took some time for everybody to recover enough to crawl out of wherever they'd bedded down and gather together. The shock was pretty bad. It was drizzling, but nobody reall
y wanted to be alone inside a vehicle at that point.
“What just happened?” Tall Bear asked.
“We just got a warning,” I replied, my voice a hoarse croak.
“Indeed,” Brother Ezekiel said. Of all of us, he seemed to be the calmest. In fact, he seemed pretty unmoved by the whole experience. I was starting to revise my earlier impression that he was a new Friar. He was as calm as Brother Barnabas had been. “The Walker just let us know that we have its attention.” He folded his arms and looked down at the fire Ian had built. “It's only going to get harder from here on out.”
Chapter 18
We had to be getting deadened to this stuff by then. When we approached Yanquinia and saw no storm, no fog, no indications of anything amiss, no one even considered the possibility that the place was untouched. We still just geared up like usual and got ready to go in. There was no doubt left that the tranquility of the scene was an illusion.
The town was dominated by the train depot, water tower, and a two-story, white-painted city hall. While there were plenty of trees, they weren't as thick as they had been in Bartram, so we could see the town pretty clearly. There wasn't a single building that stood more than two stories tall. The whole town looked weathered; the paint on city hall was dingy and worn, and the name “Yanquinia” on the water tower was barely legible, so much of the paint had flaked away. Most of the rest of the houses and buildings were similarly run-down, except for the depot and the diner, both of which were brick.
The main drag paralleled the triple line of train tracks before veering around the back of the train depot toward city hall. There were about a dozen older pickups, vans, and sedans parked along the street, and I could see a few people gathered near city hall.
As we walked up the street, we were all looking around, tense, strung out, waiting for the nasty surprise to be sprung, waiting for the fog to spring up or whatever unnatural horror was lying in ambush for us. But nothing happened. Our footfalls seemed to echo down the street and between the buildings.
