Han didn’t hesitate. He got off his back and started kicking hard, trying to get to the surface. Katie had pulled him under the waves before he’d had a chance to get a full breath of air, and he was seconds away from losing consciousness. Somehow, he’d always known he’d be in that position again someday. Your ghosts make sure your fears come true. Just as it seemed he would pass out, his face broke the surface of the water, and he inhaled as hard as he could.
“There!” Natalie shouted as she pointed to Han for Cipher. When she saw Han only a few meters away, she revved the engine just enough to guide the boat over to their friend.
“Don’t punch me this time,” Cipher said, blood still dripping periodically from his nose as he reached for Han.
“Fair enough,” Han gasped as he grabbed hold of Cipher’s sleeve and let himself be hoisted up again, this time all the way into the boat. He lay on his back for a long moment and stared up at the night sky, drinking in the stars that he’d thought he’d never see again, panting heavily to catch his breath.
“We need to get to Father Hurley. He must think something’s gone wrong,” Natalie said.
“I’m pretty fucking sure he’d be right,” Han retorted.
“I mean he must think we’re not coming. Overall, we’re doing just fine. We have the device and I’ve got you guys, so, a few snags and SNAFUs aside, so far so good,” Natalie asserted.
“I’m afraid not, Natalie,” Cipher said. “Han, how the fuck did Katie find us?”
“Katie?” Natalie asked.
“Han’s dead sister. She’s one of the ghosts God sent down to torment and kill us,” Cipher explained.
“She’s a water ghost, Cipher,” replied Han. “Water ghosts are different than regular ghosts—the world of water is their territory. She must’ve sensed me in the water. There’s a reason why I stay away from the beach.”
“If Katie knows where we are, God knows where we are. That means we are in serious shit,” Cipher said worriedly.
“Why? What does that mean?” Natalie asked over her shoulder as she guided the boat toward the beach.
“It means we’re going to have ghosts up our asses from here on out,” Han said with a an exhausted sigh.
16
Father Hurley sat in his truck and listened quietly to the classic rock station on the radio. He nervously checked his rearview mirrors and jumped every time he saw a police car drive by. So far, no one had come to patrol the lot to see what he was up to. He’d already planned his answer just in case: He’d tell them he just wanted to get some air and be with God. In the past, that angle would’ve worked every time; people didn’t like to mess with men of the cloth and police officers were particularly afraid to disturb religious figures. Now, however, he was a wanted a man, and if an alert officer recognized him, his collar-wearing goose was cooked.
He looked out at the black ocean in front of him. He’d watched the Dominance pass by in the night—it was surreal to think Cipher and Han had been onboard and had stolen the largest weapon known to humankind. It was easy there, in the beat-up, brown leather seat of the pickup truck, to imagine that none of it was really happening.
Suddenly, a dark figure emerged from the beach, not far away. It only took a few moments for Father Hurley’s old eyes to see that the figure was running frantically in his direction. A moment or two later, Father Hurley recognized it as the unmistakable outline of Cipher. There was a brief moment of relief, followed quickly by a moment of concern: Cipher appeared to be alone.
A long minute later, Cipher reached the window of the passenger side of the pickup truck and rapped at it with his knuckle. “Let me in!” he said urgently.
“Where is everyone else?” Father Hurley asked as he leaned over to open the door.
Cipher nearly leapt into the seat. “Change of plans,” he began as his form instantly melted away, replaced by that of Charlie Marlow. “Sucker.”
“Oh no,” Father Hurley gasped, nearly swallowing the words as he jerked backward against his door. He wanted to reach for the door handle to escape, but Charlie’s hand moved at light speed and thrust his gun into his face.
“Oh no is right, Padre, because I’m gonna kill you. Oh no, because you are going to be dead—like me—except it is going to be a lot worse for you than it was for me. You know that right? You know that God knows you’re coming and that he’s got a special place for you?”
“Yes, I know,” Father Hurley replied, nearly hyperventilating but fighting for control.
“You look terrified, but you don’t look terrified enough. Believe me,” Charlie said with a sadistic, vile grin.
“I’ll never know,” Father Hurley began, his heart filling with defiance, “how a good, decent, honest boy like Andrew Marlow could have come from a monster like you.”
Charlie was silent for a moment, seemingly mulling over this observation. “You know, Padre, Andrew sounds like he turned out to be a pretty nice kid—and that was my problem with him, because in this universe, nice guys finish motherfucking last.” Charlie grinned again, and then pulled the trigger of his gun, sending a bullet into the forehead of Father Hurley that smashed the priest’s head back through the glass of the driver side window.
17
“That should be enough,” Natalie said as she pushed the dinghy out into the black water, loaded with several heavy rocks; it quickly deflated.
Han and Cipher were dressing quickly on the beach, having discarded their soaking uniforms in the sinking boat.
“Thank goodness for dry clothes. I’m freezing my ass off,” Han said, shivering.
“Dress fast. God’s on to us now. We don’t have much time,” Cipher said as he pulled on his jeans and leaned on a large log on the beach while he put on his socks and shoes. “I’d say we’ve got five minutes at most before this beach is crawling with cops and who knows what else.”
“Shit. Nothing ever goes smoothly,” Han cursed as he finished pulling on his dry shirt.
He and Cipher pulled their handguns, with UV lights already mounted on top, out of the sack Natalie had brought with her.
“I’m ready. Let’s go,” Han said as he and Cipher each grabbed a side of the backpack that contained the warhead.
The three figures struggled up the beach together, carrying their burden as they made their way to the parking lot where they were supposed to meet Father Hurley, about half a kilometer away. Within just a couple minutes, the pickup was in sight, but it was also clear that something had gone terribly wrong.
“Is that…is that Father Hurley?” Cipher asked.
“Oh no,” Han whispered.
Cipher dropped his side of the burden and sprinted toward the truck. Natalie picked up the side Cipher had released and struggled along after with Han, but each of them kept their gaze firmly fixed on Cipher.
Cipher reached the truck and saw Father Hurley, dead, his head resting on the driver side door, where the window should have been. Smashed glass and blood covered the pavement directly under him, and Cipher carefully sidestepped it as he reached out for Father Hurley’s face. “Father? Father? Are you alive?” Cipher asked, his voice beginning to crack as a lump formed in his throat and painful tears welled in his eyes.
“I’m just fine, thanks,” replied Charlie Marlow, smiling and waving from his perch atop the roof of the truck.
“You asshole motherfucker!” Cipher shouted as he wheeled and let loose with his gun and his UV lights. Charlie was gone before the bullets came close to touching him. He reappeared not far away and fired his own weapon toward Cipher, causing Cipher to drop on the ground as bullets dug into the aluminum side of the truck behind him. Cipher was pinned down, and it was only a matter of seconds before one of Charlie’s shots would cut him in half.
Han entered the fray just in time, causing Charlie to vanish once again. He reappeared further away, in the darkness toward the beach. Cipher was on his feet instantly, overflowing with a lifelong rage, sprinting in pursuit of Charlie, firing his weapon as
he did so.
“No, Cipher! Wait!” Han shouted.
But Cipher didn’t wait. He ran as hard as he could after his apparition of a father, pulling the trigger of his gun repeatedly as his dead dad laughed at him. Han, also sprinting with desperation, lunged and caught Cipher’s ankle, causing him to tumble onto the pavement and slide painfully to a stop. Han sprang to his feet and pinned Cipher so the other man couldn’t get up and begin his pursuit again.
“Calm, Cipher. Stay calm, man! We still gotta set off the bomb,” Han said, trying desperately to calm him. “Father Hurley died for nothing if we fail, Cipher.”
Those words brought Cipher back from the brink. Father Hurley had been the only true father Cipher had ever known, and Charlie had taken that away from him. Charlie and God have to pay. “The cathedral is only a few blocks away,” Cipher said with hate in his voice as he got to his feet. “It’s about time we give these fuckers a receipt.”
Caiaphas pulled his lightweight LG Secret out of his pocket as soon as he felt the tempered glass and carbon fiber vibrating against his thigh. The screen’s bright light made him squint in the darkness of his home theater; he pressed the controls on the armrest of his leather recliner and Pavarotti’s performance of Turandot at Carnegie Hall froze instantly across the surface of Caiaphas’s 108-inch Sharp flat-screen 4K TV.
The message on his phone was sobering: A thermonuclear warhead had been stolen from the USS Dominance, and Cipher and company had been seen in the vicinity. One of God’s phantoms had eliminated Father Hurley but was unable to eliminate the rest. His orders were to stop them using any means necessary, and every authority was now at his disposal.
He dialed an emergency number that was preprogrammed into his phone and placed it to his ear. “This is Caiaphas. Defcon 5.”
18
Han pressed the accelerator to the floorboard of the pickup with Natalie gripping the seat beside him. Cipher was in the back of the truck, kneeling next to the body of Father Hurley, gripping his gun tightly in his hand and clenching his teeth. He was on guard, watching the night sky for Charlie, who he knew was not far away.
“Hey, man, don’t shoot me when I appear, okay?” the businessman phantom said in Cipher’s ear.
“Casper?” Cipher grunted in reply.
“Yep,” the phantom replied as he materialized on the roof of the truck. “I took down that fucked-up little waterlogged bitch for ya. She hightailed it when she saw my mad fighting skills.”
Cipher seethed.
“You’re welcome. Damn, you’re grouchy all of the…” The phantom stopped when he saw the body of Father Hurley in the back of the truck. “Oh…that’s why you’re so pissed. Sorry, man. Damn. People sure want to kill you guys. I guess stealing a nuclear bomb does that.”
“We’re gonna set it off at the Cathedral and kill God.”
“You don’t mean just metaphorically, right?”
“The bomb will open a hole in this dimension and send the explosion into Heaven,” Cipher replied as he continued to watch out for Charlie.
“Again, pardon the pun, but you look spooked. What’s going on?”
“God knows where we are,” Cipher growled.
The phantom’s ghastly, bloated, purplish mouth formed a smile. “The God, knows where you are?”
“He’s sending phantoms after us. That’s what the water ghost was all about,” Cipher then looked down sadly at Father Hurley’s corpse and gestured in its direction with his hand, “and that’s what this is all about too.”
“How?”
“God sent my dead father to kill him.”
“That’s cold. Shit. I had a feeling God was a prick when He left me on that bridge for nineteen years. Look, don’t worry about your pops. I got him covered, man. He won’t be able to touch you, as long as I’m around.” Cipher spun around and regarded the phantom, dumbfounded.
“Don’t ask me why I’m helping you again, okay? Not all ghosts are bad, ya know. Didn’t you know that?”
“No,” Cipher admitted, shaking his head. “My father’s armed.”
“Not a problem,” the phantom replied. “Hand me your gun for a second.” Cipher’s expression suddenly became dubious.
“Trust me, man. Have I let you down so far?”
Against all his instincts, Cipher handed the gun to his new ghostly friend. The phantom took the weapon in his hand and almost as quickly tossed it back to Cipher. “Here,” he said as the gun landed back in Cipher’s hand. Amazingly, an exact replica was still in the phantom’s hand.
“I didn’t know ghosts could do that.”
“There’s all kinds of shit you don’t know,” the phantom said with a smile.
The pickup came to a halt in the parking lot adjacent to the cathedral and Han, Natalie, Cipher, and their ghostly companion, grabbed their duffle bag of weapons and the bag with the warhead and hurried through the front doors, sirens already echoing down the canyon streets of the city.
The inside of the cathedral was lit with candles and was, thankfully, almost deserted.
“Where do we do it?” Han asked Natalie.
Natalie quickly scanned the cavernous inside of the cathedral. “The altar is right below the highest arch. It’s perfect.”
The trio scrambled quickly down the center aisle and up on the altar. “Just set it right up on here,” Natalie said as she patted the solid top of the concrete altar.
“Can you chain the stages together?” Cipher asked her.
Natalie nodded. “I studied the program you downloaded for me. It’s simple actually.”
“How much time do you need?” Cipher asked her.
“About five minutes.”
“I’m thinking we don’t have that long,” Han said as he checked his gun and listened to the ever-increasing wail of police sirens outside.
“We can hold them off,” Cipher replied. “We’ve got Casper, here, to help us with the ghosts, and you and I can hold off a police assault, as long as we can secure those front doors.”
“I think we’d better lose the hobo then,” Han said as he nodded toward the old man huddled under a blanket, napping in the back pew of the church.
Cipher assented. “Hey! Hey, friend, I’m real sorry, but you need to go outside for a little while.”
The hobo didn’t respond.
Cipher walked toward him. “Hey! Friend! Wake up!”
Suddenly, preternaturally fast, the hobo threw off his blanket, revealing machineguns in each hand. Caiaphas looked up from under the brim of the hat he’d been hiding his face under and revealed his perfectly white teeth in a triumphant smile. “I’d say I missed you, but from this range, that seems unlikely,” he said as he opened fire.
19
Cipher dived into the pews as bullets began pulverizing them the way a wood chipper pulverizes Christmas trees in January. Caiaphas was training one gun on Cipher and turning the pews into Swiss cheese while he trained the other on the altar and kept Natalie and Han pinned down, all the while laughing.
“Jesus!” Natalie shouted.
Han shot her a glare.
“Sorry! Force of habit! What are we gonna do?”
“I can’t get a shot. He’s got us pinned down tight! Cipher’s gonna to be mince meat if don’t do something!”
“Oh ye of little faith,” the business phantom replied with a smile before vanishing altogether. He reappeared behind Caiaphas and watched for a moment as Caiaphas stalked Cipher sadistically. “There’s always a bigger fish,” the phantom whispered as he trained his pistol on Caiaphas’s back and unloaded into him.
Caiaphas screamed out in pain and dropped to the ground like a ton of bricks, his machineguns silenced and smoking as he rolled over onto his back. “Who the fuck are you?” he screeched in a voice that was as twisted by agony as it was fury.
“Bet you weren’t expecting that, fucker,” the phantom said with a smile.
Cipher crawled out from under the destroyed pews and brushed the sawdust off of his jack
et. “Thanks. I don’t think I would have lasted another five seconds,” he said to the phantom.
“Hey, you know, no biggie,” the phantom replied with a salute.
“You idiots!” Caiaphas screeched as the blood quickly poured out of his mortally wounded body. “Do you really think that you’re going to accomplish anything by blowing up the city?”
“We’re doing a lot more than that, asshole,” Cipher replied. “We’re setting the bomb so it’ll be big enough to destroy your boss.”
Caiaphas was stunned as he crawled in his own blood, gasping for air before finally resting his back against a pew. “What?”
“That’s right,” Cipher said as he crouched next to the fatally wounded man and removed the machineguns from his limp hands. “The bomb’s gonna punch a whole into Heaven, and all of its force is going to light that motherfucker up once and for all. It’s gonna be a cosmic Independence Day.”
Caiaphas was moments from death, and he knew it; he’d died many times before, but this time was the most unsettling, as there were no guarantees that he’d be coming back. “You think that will change anything? If you kill God, He’ll just be replaced by another of his race. Ask yourself who’s been helping you. Satan? Don’t you think she’ll just slip into God’s place once He’s gone? You arrogant pricks still haven’t figured it out, have you? You’re nothing to the gods—nothing but food. You can’t change your fate.” He was fading fast. “This will mean nothing,” he said before he drew his last breath and slumped to the floor.
There was a long pause after his death, during which no one spoke.
Cipher stood to his feet and went to the door of the cathedral, locking it as police cars arrived outside. He turned and began walking up the center aisle, toward the altar. “Hurry, Natalie! Chain the stages together!” he shouted.
She looked quickly at Han, then turned to the warhead and began to do as she’d been instructed.
The God Killers Page 17
