by Mark Lingane
I looked at my hands. They were shaking. I'd been hiding it, but Derek's declaration was good timing.
Derek gently helped Laura to her feet, and led her into the living room with a supporting arm around her waist. He poured us both a drink. He knocked his back. Angelina kicked up a fuss and he poured one for her. I knocked mine back. The burning hit me straightaway, and my nerves calmed down.
I turned to leave, but the room swung violently. I caught my bearings and focused. The door seemed simultaneously a long way off and extremely close.
Angelina was speaking. Words were coming out of her mouth and falling on the floor in a jumbled mess. She reached forward, and then swung away in an arc. I reached out, but my tiny hand couldn't cover the four miles between us. She zoomed in and we crashed together with the speed of glaciers.
Derek was laughing, manic and disturbed.
Everywhere was dark. My head pounded with the ferocity of a chain-gang worker slamming in a thousand spikes. I opened my eyes a crack. It was still dark. My eyes weighed the same as a small elephant. I took a couple of breaths and tried again. I could feel them open this time as my facial muscles went into overdrive. Something was wrong; it was still dark.
I was resting against a wood-paneled wall. I could feel the texture on my fingertips. My head still spun around, the universe twisting in dangerous directions. I tried to step forward. My foot slammed into something and I stayed riveted to the spot. I moved my foot forward slowly, questing for the floor, but there was a dark barrier immediately in front of me. I tried to move my hands, but they wouldn't budge. The swirling started to die down. My body floated down from the heavens, and landed like a leaf after being tossed in a tornado, crumpled and frayed.
It sunk in; I was lying down. My hands were tied behind my back. I shuffled my foot around, feeling for my surroundings. There were walls to my immediate left and right, and one in front. That didn't bode well. I was in a box. There weren't too many wooden boxes specifically designed for the shape of a person.
It began to get warm.
There weren't too many places you could put a person in a box in a warm place.
I kicked the front panel, but it was so close I couldn't put any real force into it. The heat took a big jump, and smoke started to fill the box. I wriggled and squirmed, trying to get some leverage, but the box was too cramped. I slammed my knee into the wood, but it sent stinging jabs of pain down my leg. I levered myself into one corner and pushed into the other with my feet. The diagonal pressure made the wood creak, but that was all.
Smoke was pouring into the box now and the heat on my back was intense. The smoke started to burn my lungs, and I coughed, crashing my head against the wood. I slammed my legs down into the foot of the box. Stars spun in front of my eyes.
It suddenly dawned on me that I had slammed my feet down.
I twisted my legs and drew my knees up. I slammed my feet down again. I had enough room to get some decent power going. I smiled, nearly giddy with the possibility. I smashed down again, a solid thud into the wood. The exertion made me breathe in heavily. The smoke was filling my lungs.
I continued to hammer away with my feet. The board began to weaken. I could hear it cracking. The base finally gave way.
I saw a roaring fire approaching between my feet. The furnace spat out brimstone and heat, and the box began to blacken. I was trapped. There was no way back through the wooden end above me, and a slowly approaching death through the exit between my feet beckoned. A spark flew out of the furnace and landed on my pants. They started to smolder. A small flame flickered into life. The flames started to grow, engulfing my clothes. The box erupted into flames.
My vision started to fade as I fought for air.
There was a loud crack, but distant, in my ears, then an open space to my right. The smoke rolled away and fresh air filled my lungs. I coughed violently. Then I saw the face of an angel. Or an Angelina, which is pretty close.
She grabbed me and heaved her body against the conveyor. The headboard of the coffin closed in and approached the furnace. She was too late. I was inside the furnace. Heat and fire were everywhere and my lungs were burning.
Angelina disappeared and I closed my eyes. My body screamed in pain.
The coffin stopped. There was a loud crack from the headboard and the wood above my head vanished. A long hook descended from the flames and caught under my arm. My body slipped against the slow traction of the conveyor belt as each roller slipped beneath me. The hook slowly pulled me out.
As I emerged from the furnace I saw Angelina bracing herself against the end of the conveyor belt and heaving on the hook. She grabbed me, an arm under each of mine, and rolled me off. We collapsed onto the floor. We lay next to each other, gasping in the clear air. The furnace howled away as it made quick work of the disappearing coffin.
"Do you want the good news or the bad?"
"Tell me." I coughed violently and felt something shift in my throat.
"Well, you were about to die, and I--"
I was sitting by the pond. The man was stroking a baby fawn. I had watched him help the small creature stand, and then it staggered off. The beautiful lady stroked my head, brushing back my hair.
"He's so dull," she said. "All he does is look after the plants and animals. He has no sense of adventure."
"This is paradise," I said. "You don't need anything else."
The lady rolled over in the long grass, her naked body leaving an indentation in the soft vegetation. She rested her chin in her hands and stared at the dark wall that surrounded the parklands.
"What lies outside the wall?" she asked.
"Nothing but pestilence and death. The world is still forming."
"It sounds exciting. Something's actually happening. Why don't we both go and look at it?"
She rolled over and kissed me, and I swallowed.
"--saved you, so that's pretty good news," Angelina said. "Although my body aches like--"
"What happened?" I croaked.
"Where?"
"Here. Just now."
The roof swirled around. It was made from imitation wood. Out of one box and into another.
"I was speaking," Angelina said, "and you, unlike many men I've met, were listening."
"Nothing weird happened?"
"Other than what I just said about you listening? No. You want the bad news? Brace yourself. Derek believes that if he can sacrifice Laura at the right time, he can bring back his daughter."
"From the dead?" The concept was insane and I couldn't believe I was even asking the question.
"Yes, from the dead."
"He's mad."
"You noticed."
Then, in light of recent events, a worrying thought crossed my mind. "Can he actually do it?"
"Of course not, his daughter's dead. No one can come back from the dead. What would she come back to, a half-rotted body?"
"Then why's he doing it?"
"Simple. Like you said, he's mad."
"We gotta go."
She looked sideways at me. "You're a tough man, Mr. Avram."
38
I tried out my legs. Many people had used legs before, so I thought, given the occasion, I'd give mine a go. They shook violently as I stood and rested against the wall. "What happened to us?" I said.
"Nice Mr. Derek had an ulterior motive, it would seem. He drugged us, brought us here, and dumped you in the furnace and me in the icebox."
"Heaven and hell," I muttered.
"I have to admit it's a pretty lousy date."
I held out my hand and helped Angelina up. We leaned against each other and took in our surroundings.
We were in a funeral parlor. There was the distant sound of an organ being played inexpertly. Around us lay several deceased, some with tags around their toes.
"We're in a police morgue," I said. "With him being a cop, he probably has friends on the inside."
"But why is there an organ?"
"Could be private.
Subcontractor, maybe."
We made our way toward the strained strains of an uplifting religious mainstay, unknown to me but Angelina hummed along to its pentatonic melody, probably stolen from the Christmas album of a delta blues legend.
We came to a T-junction. The organ ground away to the right, and to the left was a short corridor. Several wooden boxes were stacked against one wall. At the end of the corridor was the exit sign. I beckoned for Angelina to follow, a task not too difficult as she was clinging to me tightly.
We eased open the door into a graveyard. The golden glow of the setting sun reflected off the various forms of marble. I could hear the efforts of manual labor as a shovel hefted into the ground and was followed by a thud. Something Derek said clicked in the back of my mind.
"Quick detour," I said. I dragged Angelina in the direction of the digging while filling her in on the information Derek had been only too eager to impart.
In the heart of the yard, among the browning grass and wilting lilies, we found a gravedigger toiling away in the warm evening air. I called to him. He paused mid-dig and looked up at us. He frowned at me, but smiled when he saw Angelina. He looked at my charred clothes and bandaged arm, and Angelina's bruises.
"Either you're having the best or the worst date ever."
Angelina waved his comment aside. "Worst. No sex yet. Do you know the grave man up at Berkeley?"
"There are many serious and severe people up at Berkeley," he replied. He tilted his cloth hat forward, concealing his eyes.
"The lady means a cemetery worker," I said.
"I know what she means. There's not a whole lot of fun in this job." He removed his hat and extracted an old checkered handkerchief. He dabbed his brow before replacing the damp cloth back in the hat.
"Sorry," I said. "We're having a bad day."
"Not as bad as this one." He indicated the box beside him, ready to be lowered into the pit. The man's face went vacant for a moment. He nodded glumly. "It was disturbing, what happened up there."
"What's his name? Can we talk to him?"
"That would be a thing. Unless you have special powers then no. He's six feet under, and not for professional reasons."
"What happened?" I said.
He drove the end of the shovel into the soil and leaned on it, staring at us. "The police said Gerald found someone digging up a young lady, not that I'm making any judgments about reasons. Looks like Gerald surprised the desecrator, who killed him dead. One hit, precise and clean, like someone from the forces does."
"Like the army or police?" I said.
He nodded.
Angelina and I looked at each other.
"We've got to stop him," she hissed. "He could destroy the world."
We ran towards the main street to catch a ride. The sun had set and clouds were beginning to roll in. The night was turning sultry.
"How could he destroy the world?" I asked Angelina.
"Okay, this is a little, well, a lot, creepy. You've got the whole angel bit, standing above the two people in union, right?"
I nodded.
"That scenario assumes they're both living." She paused and screwed up her eyes. "If one happens to be dead, then all the dead will be brought back to life, and they'll be under control of the angel who stands above, and if that's Levi ..."
"Union?"
She nodded.
"With the dead?"
She nodded again.
"But it's his daughter."
"Weeeell, I think the whole incest–taboo issue might go out the window once they're deceased, which, by the way, is the worst part. The Bible's full of incest stories. All of Europe is ruled by inbred offspring. It's gross, but not uncommon. Dead, on the other hand, is uncommon and gross."
"It can't work."
She shrugged. "Many of the old religions thought it was a way of communing with the dead. If you, er, do it while you've got the whole angel thing going on, well, the legends say it brings back all the dead."
"Why does he need Laura?"
"His daughter has been dead--no blood. You need the blood of the innocent, and as we're surmising, he's a long way from innocent. An army of zombies."
"We'd better hurry."
Out on the street, Angelina stuck out her leg to attract the passing attention of a wayward motorist, although she really didn't need to. Her outfit was enough to stop all the traffic.
I wrenched open the door of the first car that pulled up and hauled the driver out. We were lucky enough to grab a Diesel Sport 110, and within minutes we were speeding out of the city limits over into the desolate wastelands beyond. The reflections from the cats' eyes defining the road ahead, like seeds of truth, were mirrored in the windscreen as they rolled up the glass, one by one.
"You know," Angelina said, as she stared ahead, "it wouldn't have been that hard to find the place." She pointed ahead.
Clouds were swirling above an ancient church, with sheet lightning lining the clouds like fine linen. The night was crawling in. The headlights didn't provide much warning of the dangers that appeared before us. Metallic debris that was strewn across the barren lands continually tumbled in front of us, crashing off the vehicle. By the time we rolled up to the iron gates of the church the 110 was so battered and dented it could barely move.
There was no other vehicle present.
"How could we have beaten him here?" Angelina said.
"Maybe he's getting his daughter," I guessed. She had to be stored somewhere.
Derek could only be a handful of minutes behind us so we had to move quickly. Lighting stabbed down and destroyed a tree next to us.
"You think that was for us?" Angelina said.
I nodded. "Everything's going to be for us."
"Wait. We need to hide the car. He won't be expecting anyone to be here. If he sees it he'll know something's up."
She was right. Our only advantage was surprise.
We limped the car around the rear of the church and crashed it into a ditch. It was the best we could do. More lightning flashed down. One hit the car. It fizzled, and the electrics went wild for a few seconds. The wipers swished, the headlights flashed, and the horn blasted until it ended in a forlorn blarp. The car wasn't going anywhere.
We were marooned out here, in the heart of mechland with no way out. We could see them stalking around in the distance, the occasional blast of fire expunging the evil from the world.
We made our way through the gates and into the old graveyard. Angelina stopped at various headstones. She gasped. A tear trickled down her face.
"I always wondered where they were buried."
"Who?"
"My parents, grandparents, all the slayers. If I'd only known." She sighed. "What I said about them before wasn't true."
I nodded. "I saw your file."
"They were killed when I was young, then buried by a relative. I was never told who it was. Then I was adopted out."
"Would it change things to know who it was, or where they were buried?"
"Who knows? We grow up to be who we are. Life takes us down a path, and we live the best we can, taking each day as it comes. We can't change it so we might as well make the best of it."
I could hear the doubt in her voice. She didn't believe it. It hurt her and there was no making the best of it. I put my arm around her. She turned into me but looked out to the mechwarriors drifting around the horizon.
"Loss makes you stronger," I said.
"Loss breaks pieces off you every day until you crumble into a broken pile. Loss takes your spirit. Loss drains the color out of your life."
"It comes back."
"But it never replaces the loss. Tell me, Van, you look like a man who's seen a lot. Do you really think it comes back? Because when I look at you and the darkness that floats above your head, it sure doesn't feel like it."
"Come on. Enough with the merrymaking."
I led her through the withering trees, with barren branches that clawed at our skin as we passed by. The
main doors were ajar and we squeezed through the opening into the vaulted main room. The solid doors looked untouched by time. The roof was three stories high, but there was a narrow balcony hugging the walls one story up. Moonlight radiated through the high windows and a large hole in the center of the roof, reflecting off armor and weapons scattered around the room's perimeter.
A large cross hung from a side wall. An old man was nailed to it.
The preacher wasn't long dead. Blood was dripping down the cross and wall in a thin stream, pooling in a red bubble. At the base was a five-pointed star, also sprayed in blood.
We made our way through the chamber, the giant pews spreading out like the ribcage of a Behemoth. Several creepy statues had been placed around the altar, all with evil intent scratched into the stonework.
Angelina ran her hand over one, and then quickly withdrew it. "It's warm."
I felt the stonework. It was smooth like marble, but it hummed with an unknown heat source.
Angelina looked at me. "Maybe there's a furnace below. Surely they can't be here all the time. They'd freak out all the parishioners."
"Depends on who they worship."
There was a scraping sound from the front gate and a distant boom from above.
"And so it begins," Van said.
"Or ends."
"Let's get some height."
We found a set of stairs leading up to the balcony. Several gargoyle-like statues stared down into the pews below. We took refuge behind them. We watched through the window as Derek approached. He was dragging a body bag behind him.
He lumbered slowly into the church, dragging the body down the aisle, apparently unfazed by the sight of the sacrificed priest. He was unaware of us watching him from the balcony.
The sight of the stone statues staring in at the altar was too confrontational. He steered around the strange effigies and approached the altar from the rear. He lifted up the body bag and placed it on the altar. The opening of the zipper echoed through the silence. It sounded like Derek was weeping. He rolled open the sides of the bag, revealing the pale face of a young lady about Laura's age. Her skin had a green tinge and was showing signs of decay. Derek ran his hand over the girl's face and kissed her forehead. He sagged to his knees and sobbed.
