The force that marched from the south was at risk because of its greater distance. Though the loss was horrible it proved the point. The City was reluctant to bring nukes into operation. Bolton assured Updike that the blast was a warning. And he insisted nuclear weapons were the least of their problems. A wide variety of conventional weapons could cause as much and more damage.
Whatever the tactical message of the blast, Stoneworthy felt it too deeply to ever pass it off as less than holocaust. As thousands of his brothers were vaporized, a deep pain ripped through him. He had never felt so violated. It seemed that the rest of the force had experienced it—a shared terror as the dead were consumed by nuclear fire. He’d never forget the moments that followed the flash. There was a lull in movement—a palpable loss of all direction. A hush fell over the army as the realization sank in.
Dead eyes had looked desperately around then rose to the heavens. A quiet rustling filled the night that grew in pitch until it fell in upon the listener like an avalanche. A howling sound rose up from thousands of dead throats. Desiccated mouths dropped open, ragged lips drew back, and a deep, horrible cry rose up against the leaden sky. Stoneworthy felt it, shared it with the other dead. The power of its sounding would have torn his heart in two had it been a living organ.
After it, Updike had retreated to his jeep. He sat there, his round face white, his eyes hollow, as though the sound, and the vision of so many thousand dead men and women howling were too much even for his powerful faith. He wore a look of confusion, of frustration that was distorting his thoughts to apocalyptic proportions. His hands were fists.
As the howls’ reverberations died to a terrible background radiation of its own, Stoneworthy had crossed the camp to talk to his friend. Updike was there, holding his hand over his left eye, his skin was gray, his open eye streaked with red. He struggled to smile, produced a crippled grin. The preacher forced himself upright, climbed out of the jeep.
“Captain Updike?” Stoneworthy’s voice echoed in his head. The passing of the howl had left his senses buzzing. “Are you well?”
Updike dropped his hands, smirked and cleared his throat. He brushed his forehead with the back of his sleeve. It came away dark with perspiration. “Yes, Reverend Stoneworthy. I am well.”
Stoneworthy insisted that Updike follow him to the medical tent. The Captain refused. He tried to understand Updike’s refusal. Something was wrong, it was clear, and the condition was getting the better of him. The minister decided to consult the medics on his own. He would suggest they talk to their leader. The army needed Updike’s vitality…
An explosion sounded to the east pulling him from his reverie. Then, repetitive popping sounds. Stoneworthy leapt to his feet. Boot in hand, he hurried through a tangle of grass at the side of the highway. A line of trees in the distance was coming alive with smoke and flashes of light. Cold fog obscured his view. Ambush!
A high-pitched whistling sound was followed by the eruption of a supply truck. It exploded in a ball of fire. The concussion sent a wave of force that flipped a jeep over and tossed soldiers in the air. More snapping sounds. Gunfire!
Another explosion.
Stoneworthy ran across the slippery slope toward Updike’s jeep. He saw the preacher lying in the ditch beside the road. His face was a twist of misery. Stoneworthy laid a hand on his shoulder. The whistling sound of an incoming shell forced them both to bury their faces in the dirt. The earth heaved up and hit Stoneworthy’s face. Another truck was burning.
“The City had to be warned!” Updike screamed, wincing with pain. “To be fair. We had to give them a chance.” He pushed aside his discomfort and doubt for a moment to look around. A soldier was there. “Where’s Bolton?”
The man’s face had been torn by a piece of flying debris. His lower jaw showed bony white.
“He ran along the convoy!” He struggled to push his face back together. “To lead an attack!”
“Oh God!” Updike’s face was gray.
“Captain? You must not doubt. As you told me about this war, the realities are extreme.” Stoneworthy ducked. New snapping, popping sounds rose up from the line of trees. He wanted to look, but his stomach twisted at the notion. “You cannot doubt yourself now.”
He took a quick glance—snapped his head up and over the side of the ditch. In the distance, he saw a long line of dead soldiers moving slowly, methodically toward the line of trees. Their guns were popping now—throwing plumes of smoke at the forest. Angry lead tore at the cover of leaves. A long line of flame lashed out from a copse of cedar and splashed across a section of the advancing force. Soldiers danced like burning puppets.
“You cannot doubt this.” Stoneworthy pressed his dead lips close to Updike’s ear. This is what we came to do. “We must not let anything stand in the way of the Lord!” He clambered to his knees. “By the hand of God are we commanded, and by His word we shall not fail!” Stoneworthy gained his feet. Further down the line another truck burst into flames. He saw that the dead soldiers had risen. Bullets whizzed among them, mangled, dismembered, but they were thousands, many thousands. And bullets no longer wounded, no longer killed.
Stoneworthy raised his arms to the Army of the Dead. “My brothers and sisters.” He pointed toward the line of trees. “There lies the path of Righteousness.” It was two hundred yards to the trees. Stoneworthy marched, and as he marched forty thousand marched with him. The air hissed and buzzed with bullets, a long section of the trees were already a flaming ruin. But they marched. The Army of the Dead was too large to fill so small a section of highway, and as he moved forward, Stoneworthy saw the dead following—hurrying down the road to join in the battle. They limped, scurried and ran.
“For God!” Stoneworthy bellowed. “For God!”
A dead soldier beside him was torn in two by a large round. Stoneworthy was gratified to see the gory remains of the man following, crawling, inching his way toward the battle. “For God!” Stoneworthy ran thirty yards and paused at the remains of another soldier. His body was a cruel twist of ripped tissue and exposed ganglion, but his eyes moved. They looked at the Reverend and over to a rifle gripped in a severed hand in the grass.
“Peace brother.” Stoneworthy whispered.
Picking up the rifle, he fired a shot into the air. “Now, my brothers and sisters!” Those near him smiled and raised their weapons. Even as he spoke an enemy bullet tore the arm off a woman. She picked up her weapon with the other. “Destroy the moneylenders! For God!”
Another howl went up through the army, an echo of the despairing sound of the day before but somehow the opposite. Instead of isolation and pain, it rang with solidarity and vengeance. Holding his own weapon high, Stoneworthy charged with his soldiers into the murderous hailstorm of bullets.
****
PART THREE
****
61 – Nursie
“It’s for Nursie,” Dawn whispered, showing Meg the blank slip of paper with a shrug. They sat side by side on Meg’s bed. The other forever children were milling in groups playing games or off by themselves reading ridiculous children’s books or napping.
“It’s for Nursie,” Meg looked at the paper but wouldn’t touch it. She glanced at the clock over the door. “That note means she’ll be coming…”
“Is she a nurse?” Dawn patted her friend’s shoulder.
“Sort of.” Meg looked back, fear in her eyes. The forever girl shook her head. “She’s like the Principal: different inside.”
“What do you mean?” Dawn whispered.
“Nothing,” Meg said soberly. “She gives checkups and takes temperatures.”
Suddenly the speaker over the door buzzed.
“And so…” said a voice over the loud speaker. It was female by gravelly and huge. “All being dem slechte kinderen for slaap.” The loud speaker let out an electronic shriek and was silent. “Naptime!”
All of the kids ran to their beds.
“It’s her.” Meg pushed Dawn toward her bed and st
arted smoothing out her own covers and sheets. “Do the same!” she cried, and then sat on the edge of the mattress with ankles crossed and hands folded in her lap.
Dawn saw that all the kids were doing the same, straightening their beds and sitting as Meg had done. The dead childcare workers scurried to take up their positions in chairs along the walls.
The dormitory’s double doors banged, and then jiggled on their hinges. Then a massive woman pushed the doors wide, took a step forward and stopped. Her body was so heavy and wide that it wedged firmly into place in the doorframe. The woman frowned bashfully and then set two large hands to either side of the doorframe. She kicked once, twice and heaved herself into the room.
Dawn had never seen a grownup that big before. She even looked taller than Arthur at the Nurserywood and he was a giant.
Nursie wore a huge white uniform—skirt and nurse’s hat. Her wide, fat legs were covered in tight white silk and looked like fat uncooked sausages. Her feet were big and chubby, stuffed into rubber-soled shoes. The buttons running up the front of her dress were close to popping.
“Nightynacht,” she sang in a voice like a female foghorn. She paused inside the door, with palms pressed together, fingers pointed downward, and elbows out with all of her weight on one foot. “Dem good children!”
Nursie had a mop of bleached hair that hung down over her collar in fuzzy strands. This cut across her brow under a red-trimmed nurse’s hat, and over deep-set eyes. Her face was like an ogre’s: splayed nostrils, heavy cheekbones and lopsided chin. Thick rouge festered under her cavernous eye sockets. The eyeliner shone metallic blue in the shadow, and bounced a hint of glimmer on the dark eyes. Her lips were cucumber-sized and stood out from her powdered face like welts. Many layers of gloss traveled two inches past the edges of her lips. The red on her powdered skin looked like blood. Large yellow teeth gnashed in her wide mouth.
“Sugar plums and feen and rest,” she croaked. Nursie clasped her hands under her chin and stepped farther into the room, breath rumbling in her chest. “Sogni dolci.”
The woman then bent over the closest bed and ran a long-fingered hand over the child sitting there. She smiled and chirped something, and patted the little head before moving to the next child. Nursie’s movements were very feminine despite her massive shape. The whole while, Dawn noticed Nursie’s eye kept wandering to her.
When the woman got to Dawn’s bed, she stopped. A large smile spread over the masculine features, and a gleam appeared in her eyes.
Dawn held up the Doctor’s slip.
Nursie peered at it and then gave a massive shake of her head. She drew a foot-long flat box out of a large pocket on the front of her dress. She set it on the bed and flipped it open. There was a white dress, leotards, shoes and veil inside.
“You no need nursing, no,” said Nursie, her enormous lips blurred with lurid red lipstick. “De Prime he say you special girl.” The woman looked Dawn over. She shook her massive head and a light shower of powder rained down. Her carefully waxed eyebrows lurched out of sight under the dirty blonde bang.
“No, little chienne.” Nursie laid a thick-nailed hand on Dawn’s head and ruffled the curly hair. “De Doctor hem say no. Hem say, this one, I no touch...” Nursie brought her face in close. Her sour damp breath made the forever girl’s skin crawl. Nursie pressed her large nose to Dawn’s head and neck and started snuffling like a dog. “Nuff,” she snuffled, and then to Dawn’s utter amazement, the woman licked the back of her neck, starting right at the nape and licking upward, the big wet tongue pushed her hair forward.
“No touch, hem say, for Nursie—no touch!” Nursie shook her head, lips smacking, and then her eyes caught Meg in the next bed. She grabbed for the girl. “Ou les viandes douces…”
Meg let out a squeak and tried to leap out of the way but Nursie lifted her up by the left wrist. The monstrous woman started snuffling and licking Meg under the arm. Then to Dawn’s utter embarrassment, the woman blew Meg’s nightshirt aside with a puff of breath and snuffled at her friend’s legs and crotch, bouncing the girl on her oversized mouth and nose. Then Nursie dropped Meg absentmindedly onto the bed. She turned back to Dawn, licking her lips.
“Nein…” Nurse said; her dark eyes lost in mascara and shadow. “Same. The same. Not First-mother no.” Then a bright gleam entered the woman’s eyes. “Mayhap your scent tells Nursie, why.” The enormous woman shifting her enormous shoulders and head forward to bend forward at the waist. She braced her great weight against her knees. Her nose was snuffling; the nostrils gleamed with mucous. Her gigantic tongue flicked out, smeared her lipstick farther onto her cheeks. She inched forward. “La primera madre?”
Dawn inched toward her headboard, disgust like a tight wire running up her spine. Nursie reached out, but fell forward and caught her weight on the bed. The other kids started chanting Dawn’s name, and were now standing on their beds watching the spectacle. Meg crawled off her bed and stumbled away. Tears covered the forever girl’s cheeks, and the sight filled Dawn with anger.
“To taste,” Nursie moaned, drool hanging from her chin. “First Moeder!”
“Run!” said the grownup voice in Dawn’s head but something stronger held her in place. Instead, she smacked Nursie on her big round nose. The impact sent a fine cloud of powder drifting onto the bed. Nursie froze, amazement on her face and the room went quiet.
Dawn moved away now, slid to the side of her bed and off as the first quiver and tremble ran up the horrible woman’s arms. Her massive shoulders began to shake. Her skin was turning purple. Nursie’s eyes suddenly burned red from beneath the bleached bang and her lips curled away from her teeth.
“Whore!” Nursie hissed. Dawn saw now that something was changing in the woman. The skin on her face began to shift and shimmer, grow thin, and stretch back over bone. And as it did this, Dawn saw the first hint of something under there. Nursie’s enormous breasts, barely covered by the taut fabric of her dress, like the material began to thin, began to shift toward translucent.
“Slut!” the woman bellowed and pushed herself back onto her legs, but Dawn could see that those were changing too. Gone were the thick calves and fat feet jammed into shoes. In their place were gnarled, fingerlike toes on broad muscular paws. The legs were hairless and bowed outward from a long female gash of scarlet flesh. As Nursie’s shape flickered back and forth, Dawn saw glimpses of the long and weasel-like body beneath. The heavy torso sprang up to thin arms with catching claws. Spaced up the front of the long abdomen at intervals were thick purple nipples leaking yellow milk or pus. And flickering back to her barely human over-make-upped face, Nursie shifted again, and the features beneath were monstrous. Long teeth, ravenous red eyes in a head that tapered to a thick neck covered in bright red muscle. She shifted back to human form and back to monster.
The forever children, shocked first into silence, now screamed and leapt off their beds, running and clambering away from Nursie, as the monster-thing took two hesitant steps toward Dawn.
“La primera madre.” The thing swung its head, and Dawn felt saliva and drool fleck her bare legs as she cowered against the wall.
“De First-whore!” Nursie flickered back to her human form and back to monster as she took a slavering step forward. The mammoth tongue dropped out, dribbling saliva and Nursie snapped her long teeth. “Nursie mangia la prostituta!”
And the head coiled back on the long neck and flicked forward like a serpent strike. Dawn barely rolled out of the way in time. She came up under Meg’s bed, and then pushed herself toward the wall. Drool pooled on the tiles as Dawn’s heart pounded in her chest. Nursie’s enormous alien feet stamped toward the bed.
“Hem say Nursie no bother girl!” Nursie’s voice had changed too. It was bestial and her oversized teeth tore the words. “Nursie say much bother!” A long-taloned hand whipped down and seized the side of the bed.
Dawn screamed as it was flung away and Nursie loomed over her. Saliva dribbled down in streams, Dawn shrank from its ho
t touch.
“Nursie take little bite!” the monster said and smiled.
“NURSIE!” a voice shouted over the din of screaming forever children.
The monster turned quickly, already Dawn could see its shape sliding and flickering back to its human form.
The Doctor was storming up the aisle between the beds. He was carrying his black bag and was wearing a blood-spattered medical robe.
“Nursie!” he repeated as he came near. His eyes were wild with terror. “The Prime said the First-mother must not be touched.”
Nursie’s body was shifting and shrinking in size. Her head, now human and hideously make-upped, was bowed. Her long blonde locks fell forward.
“Nursie worried—poor girl,” the large woman whined, gestured to Dawn. The forever girl watched with horror as the woman’s dress knitted up the side, replacing hideous skin with cotton whiteness.
“Do as you’re told!” the Doctor barked, marching up and seizing Dawn’s arm. He yanked her to her feet. She was trembling. Her skin crawled under the man’s touch.
“You,” Nursie hissed, face wrinkling as she spoke. She moved her oversized features close to the Doctor’s face. “You no tell Nursie what she do.” Nursie shook her massive head. “Prime, hem Boss of Nursie.”
And the gigantic woman turned on her heel. She stamped across the room pausing for a moment by a group of cowering children. “Oh!” she exclaimed, looking down at the gathering. They were backed against a wall. “Naughty kids!” she crowed and caught a pair of boys with her large hands. They screamed as she pulled them close. “Bathe de dirty boys.” She snuffled at their chests and licked their faces, then carried them screaming from the room.
“See what you’ve done?” the Doctor scolded shaking Dawn by the arm as the doors closed behind Nursie.
The forever girl’s face was wet with tears. “I didn’t…”
The Forsaken - The Apocalypse Trilogy: Book Two Page 33