The Dying of the Light (Book 3): Beginning

by Jason Kristopher

  The light faded as fast as Wright’s strength. Who had closed the window? Or was it sunset already?

  “Not yet, Major,” Grey said as he stepped up beside the infidel. His voice was more than a little pained, and he winced as he moved. He looked down at Wright, on his knees and about to pass out. “We need him.”

  “Who the fuck are you?” Mancuso asked as he continued to pull on the chains. They clinked and ground together. “Why aren’t you helping him?”

  “Clearance code Zeta Three Seven Niner. Daycode One Charlie Five.”

  Wright could see Mancuso’s eyes widen and glance toward Harper Grey in surprise, but his grip on the chain didn’t falter. If anything, it got stronger. Why didn’t Grey stop the infidel? Could he not see the danger? What did Grey need him for? What was a daycode?

  Now someone had turned off the lamp. That was the only explanation for how dark it was. I don’t understand why it’s so dark, the reverend thought. He felt light, as though detached from his body. Was it time to join the Heavenly Father? He still had so much to do…

  Suddenly, the world crashed back in on him, and he collapsed. He coughed and spluttered as the infidel let him go. Wright could do nothing but gasp huge lungfuls of air in as he clawed at the carpet, the sumptuous carpet, and fought back from the brink. He coughed, and then again, then his breathing gradually eased. He had no strength to raise himself from the floor and leaned back against the desk, looking at the two men before him.

  Grey had walked over to the double doors of the office, and now that his vision had cleared somewhat, Wright could see him lock the doors. He was far more worried about the man who squatted in front of him, though. The chains pooled beneath him, removed and impotent. Wright noticed the bright key that had fallen next to them.

  The infidel was staring at the reverend. Mancuso’s head tilted from one side to the other in the manner of a bird. At that moment, Wright felt like a worm.

  “For what?” Mancuso asked, and Wright knew he wasn’t the one being asked.

  “We can’t make him a martyr,” Grey said as he rejoined the other men, taking a seat in one of the chairs on the visitor side of the desk. Grey leaned down and thumped Wright on the forehead.

  The pain didn’t register, not when compared to his throat. But the act itself was so out of character, so blasphemous…

  “Who…” He coughed and started again. “Who…”

  “Me?” Grey asked, and his shark’s smile returned as he stood and kicked the chair out behind him. “Who am I? Is that what you want to know, Reverend? ‘Your Grace’? Is that what you’re trying to ask through your ruined throat that I would as soon slit as look at?”

  Wright knew he wouldn’t be able to get the words out, not now. So he settled for a nod. Who was this man? Clearly not Harper Grey. How could he have been so wrong?

  Grey squatted down beside Mancuso and leaned close to Wright. “I’m your worst nightmare,” he said.

  Mancuso snorted, and Grey grinned once more.

  “I’ve always wanted to say that.”

  He stopped grinning, and somehow, Wright thought that was worse.

  “You’re going to die today, so I suppose there’s no harm in telling you,” he said with a glance at Mancuso as he stood up once more. “Either of you, actually. My name is Barnes.”

  Wright’s brow furrowed as he thought. He knew that name. It rang a bell, however dim. How did he know that name? Barnes, Barnes…

  “Major Jonathan Barnes, to be precise. You might be more familiar with my sister Kimberly and her husband David. David Blake.”

  Wright surged up from the floor as fury overtook him, but it was short lived. A swift punch to the gut from Mancuso had him back on the floor, gasping for air and cursing everyone and everything.

  “Goddamn him,” Wright coughed out. “Goddamn him and all his filthy cohorts in sin and you! You traitor! You infidel! I will see you—”

  Another punch, and he cried out in pain and collapsed. He couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything but curse them in his mind and try to breathe.

  “Nice to meet you, Major,” Mancuso said as he stood. The two shook hands. “I wasn’t expecting to make contact with you here.”

  “I was waiting for you, true,” Barnes said as he looked at the other man.

  Wright could feel the coldness in that look from the floor where he lay spent.

  Barnes continued. “I was waiting to see if you would follow through on your orders or betray us again.”

  Mancuso looked down and scrubbed his hands together. “I just want this all to be over now. They gave me a chance, and I took it. I won’t let you down.”

  Barnes tilted his head to one side as he considered the smaller man. “I know you won’t, because my orders are to take you out if you do. Just so we’re clear.”

  “Fair enough, sir,” Mancuso said. “We got a way out?”

  “Yeah, we’ve got an exfil window, but it’s closing rapidly.”

  “How long have you been undercover?”

  “Almost two years now,” Barnes said. “Two long, long years working for this piece of shit.”

  Barnes’s foot lashed out, and Wright cried out again as the kick landed square in his crotch. The pain was tremendous. Wright could only follow snatches of the conversation after that.

  “—done some horrible stuff, then,” Mancuso said.

  “Not as much as you’d think, really. It’s mostly about intimidation and what they think you’ve done.” Barnes stepped forward and squatted down to speak to Wright once more.

  “You’ll be interested to know—or maybe not, I guess—that all those people you’ve had me kill in the name of God and your church are safe and sound, spirited away to refuge in the bunkers.”

  Wright groaned and closed his eyes as he thought of all the infidels that he’d ordered this man to eliminate. All the souls he thought he’d saved, only to find out now that this man had damned them all to Hell’s eternal fire. He wanted to weep for the poor people, but he had no tears to spare.

  “I’ve never killed anyone other than Church members. Those monsters that brought the major here? The ones that extracted him? They’re all dead. To a man. Or they will be soon enough. Nicodemus and his whole army, exterminated by the Angel Flight on your order. If I remember correctly, they were ‘seditious unbelievers who needed to be put to the flame once they had outlived their usefulness.’”

  Wright just groaned, knowing there would be more for the infidel to gloat over. He wasn’t sure there would be any way to bring his own soul into the afterlife, not with a failure this monumental on its ledger.

  “What do we do now?” Mancuso asked. “You’ve been here the longest. My orders were to kill him and exfil if possible. What’s your plan?”

  “If possible?” Barnes said as he glanced at the other man.

  Mancuso shrugged. “They told me it might be a one-way trip. And since no one had heard from you…”

  Barnes nodded. “Too hot here to make contact.” He looked over at Wright again. “He’ll die, but it has to look like an inside job. That’s the only way it’ll all crumble.”

  “Let’s get to it, then,” Mancuso said, and the last thing Wright saw was the heel of the man’s boot as it came flying toward his face.

  Des Moines International Airport

  “I’ve never seen anything like it, sir,” said Masters’s co-opted assistant, a grizzled and scarred sergeant who looked as though his best days were long, long behind him. Which, in all honesty, was Masters’s preference for sergeants.

  They were both scanning the skies in a full circle around the airport from the best vantage point around, the air traffic control tower. Masters had to agree with the sergeant, for he’d never seen anything like it either.

  He watched as another pair of Huey helicopters dove and attacked a group of retreating Church men and vehicles. Where the Church had gotten the aging aircraft and how they had trained pilots to use them were excellent questions for another
time. Right now, the question was why they were attacking their own men and not the AEGIS forces.

  It was a good question but not one he was eager to have answered, since it meant that his men would live instead of being overwhelmed and killed, or worse, by zealots.

  A runner ran up and delivered a hand-written message. The sergeant took the message as the runner took off once more, read it, and grunted. He handed it to Masters with a shrug. “No idea who it’s from, but I guess we know why now.”

  Masters looked down at the scrap of paper. “Radio message rec’d from unknown source. Reads: ‘AEGIS COMMAND: HELOS ORDERED TO DESTROY CHURCH. LET THEM GO AFTER. YOU’RE WELCOME. –JB’”

  Masters grinned. With those initials and that level of command of the church, it could only have been one person. “Fucking Johnny Barnes,” he said with a laugh and turned to the sergeant. “Get me some transpo here, now! We’re heading over to the terminal.”

  The sergeant spoke into his mic as they both trudged down the long stairwell. As Masters exited, he glanced around at the sound of an approaching Humvee, then got out of the way as it slid to an abrupt halt a few feet away. One of the many corpsmen that the relief force had brought with them jumped out and ran up to Masters. “There you are! We’ve been looking for you everywhere. Captain, sir, you need to come with me right now.”

  “You’ve been looking for me? That’s what radios—”

  Masters looked over at his shoulder mic and saw only jagged plastic. He recalled for a moment that he’d had a close call earlier in a firefight with a zealot, but he hadn’t realized it was quite that close.

  “It’s Major Reynolds, sir,” the corpsman said. “He’s been injured.” She took a deep breath before continuing. “It’s… It’s pretty bad, sir. We don’t know if he’s going to make it.”

  “Then why the fuck are we still standing here?” Masters yelled. “Move!”

  Headquarters

  First Church of the Divine Judgment

  Brother Osiah glanced at the doors leading into the archbishop’s office as he had several times since being asked to leave by that bastard Harper Grey. To talk to anyone that way, especially the personal guard of the archbishop himself… The man would see the business end of his weapon, and soon.

  “Is it true what they say about him?” the other guard asked, a new brother whose name Osiah had yet to learn. “That he eats infidels for breakfast and has personally created hundreds of the Cleansed?”

  “You’re not very bright, are you, Brother?” Osiah asked. The other man huffed and looked away, and Osiah counted that as a win. But something still bugged him about what was going on in the office. Even with his reputation and supposed skill, why wouldn’t Grey want some backup with the infidel? Something didn’t sit right about this whole situation.

  The click of the lock from the door was the first sound he’d heard from the office for ten minutes, but he welcomed it. He spun around as the door opened.

  Harper Grey looked out, first at the other guard, then at Osiah. “Osiah, isn’t it?” Grey asked.

  “Yes, sir,” he said. “What can I do for you, Brother Grey?”

  “His Grace requests your presence inside. Only you,” he clarified, as the other guard started to move as well.

  Osiah nodded and held up a hand at the oaf he’d been assigned with. “Stay here. Guard the door with your life, or by God, I’ll take it from you.”

  He didn’t wait for the man’s reaction but instead followed Grey into the room. He saw the infidel sitting to one side of Wright’s desk, curled in on himself. He smiled with the thought of what tortures awaited the blasphemer, then focused and stood in front of the desk at attention.

  “Your Grace, Brother Osiah reporting as ordered.”

  Wright looked a little worse for wear. Sweat beaded on his brow, there was a cut and a bruise forming on his face, and he wore a scarf around his neck. Osiah had never seen him wear a scarf before. Ever.

  His eyes narrowed as he took in these details, and Osiah knew that something was wrong. Something had happened in here, and he was going to find out what. He glanced over at Grey, who was standing over the infidel, obviously guarding him. At least the man was good for something.

  “I can see you’re noticing my new wardrobe choice, Brother,” Wright said. “Probably also noticed the new decoration on my face.”

  Osiah nodded and turned his attention back to the reverend. “Yes, Your Grace. I had noticed. What happened, if I may ask?”

  “You may not,” Wright said and slammed his palm onto the desk. “You are a guard, Brother Osiah, not one of my advisors. Do not forget your place.”

  Osiah swallowed and felt a little sweat of his own start. He wasn’t scared per se, just cognizant of the things this man had done to people for far less.

  Wright’s expression softened, and he smiled. “Still, it is well that I have such observant guards to protect me, so I will answer you this once. I was attempting to minister to the infidel when… Well, let us just say that I got too close and put too much faith in my words instead of my guards.”

  Osiah reddened and tensed, taking a half-step in the direction of the infidel. “I will cut out his beastly tongue! I will disembowel him while he watches and feed him his own entrails! I will—”

  “You will do nothing!” Wright’s voice was powerful, and it broke over Osiah like a boulder rolling down a mountain. “I made the mistake, and I would not see anyone else suffer for that.”

  Osiah looked over at the man he’d followed for twenty years. “But Your Grace, he’s an infidel! They’re beyond saving! You’ve said it yourself many times…”

  “I was wrong,” Wright said softly.

  Osiah could see it was hard for him to say those words. It was hard to hear them, coming from the voice of the man without trepidation, without remorse, without fear. The man who had known exactly what was right and had led his followers to their destiny as saviors of the world with that faith and steadfastness.

  “You…” he said, shaking his head in disbelief.

  “I was wrong,” Wright repeated. “About many things. I’ve had some time to reflect on our mission and how we’ve gone about it. I’ve prayed on it for some time now, and I have come to a realization. We have committed grave sins in the eyes of our Lord, and it is only through His patience and divine judgement that we have been spared His wrath thus far. We must stop the killing. We must stop the questioning and the turning of our flock into the Cleansed. We have been so, so wrong about it all, Brother Osiah. And now, now we must change our ways.”

  “With respect, Your Grace, the infidel is playing on your mind! He’s twisting you—”

  “Has the infidel said a single word in my presence, Brother Grey?”

  Osiah looked to the scariest man he’d ever met for confirmation that the archbishop had been tricked, but his face fell when the man only shook his head.

  “He has not. Not a single word, Your Grace.”

  “But how, then?” Osiah asked. “How has he turned you from the light? Brought our beacon of hope into darkness?”

  Wright stood up from the desk and came around to perch on the front edge again, with a glance at Grey, who had tensed up. Osiah could see some message pass between them, but he had no idea what it might have been.

  Wright’s bodyguard had always been cagey, but as long as he stayed over there, Osiah was fine with it. Someone needed to guard the infidel.

  “Have a seat, Brother,” Wright said and waited to continue until Osiah had complied. “I understand you have some questions, and as one of my most faithful brothers, I wanted you to be the first to know my mind.”

  “I… I’m honored,” Osiah said. His heart beat fast. To be brought into the archbishop’s confidence was something he’d never expected. Even if the man seemed a bit off today. He resolved to at least give him an opportunity to explain. “Please, Your Grace, enlighten me.”

  “As I ministered to this man, attempting yet again to cleanse the soul
of an infidel, I thought back on all the times I had been in such a situation, on all the times that we had faced such dire trials among the infidels. I thought back to our Lord’s teachings in the Good Book, and I wondered how many more must die.” Wright sighed and sat in the other visitor’s chair, wincing as he leaned forward. “How long have you followed me, Brother Osiah?”

  “More than half my life, Your Grace. Twenty-some years.”

  “And in that time, how many infidels have you sent to Hell?”

  Osiah beamed. “Hundreds, Your Grace.”

  Wright didn’t return the smile. “And how many for the church as a whole, do you think? I know you can’t give me specific numbers. Just a general guess will do.”

  Osiah paused and thought about the operations he’d been a part of and the others he knew about, then thought about those being done all over the country. “Tens of thousands? A hundred thousand?”

  Wright nodded. “More than that, Brother. Many, many more. And knowing that, let me ask you this: What has changed in those twenty-some years? How is life different now than it was?”

  “You mean aside from those infidels now residing in Hell where they belong?”

  “Yes, aside from that.”

  Osiah thought, puzzled, but realized he had no answer. “I can’t say, Your Grace. It seems much as it was, at least once the cities fell.”

  Wright nodded again. “Good. Twenty-some years of clearing infidels, spreading the message, tending the Cleansed. And where has it gotten us?” Wright gestured to the infidel against the wall. “Nowhere. The infidels hide in their holes in the ground or in sheltered camps above or among us, secret and loathsome. But they still exist. And there are fewer and fewer Cleansed every day.”

  “Yes, but… huh,” Osiah said. “I hadn’t thought of it that way, Your Grace.”

  “I thought not. Are you familiar with the writings of the learned man Einstein?”