The Last Rite

by Chad Morgan

  “It’s not going to happen,” he said. “I’m not going to let it happen. You and I are still alive, we’re still normal. That’s proof there’s a chance.”

  “How many times did you have to tell yourself that before you convinced yourself?” Lisa asked.

  Daniel cupped Lisa’s hands in his. She looked into his eyes as he said, “I cannot, will not, give up on my daughter. Nothing is going to change that. I will find my daughter.”

  17

  His partner refused to feed the child now. The business suit man didn’t think his partner was getting soft. No, she was trying to prove some kind of point, making him deal with the girl and . . . what? Make him feel bad the girl was going to die? He wasn’t going to balk from his assignment any more than his partner was, but while his partner might see her death as a regrettable necessity, for him the child was going to be just another corpse.

  It wasn’t that long ago that he was working for the Russians, helping to prop up some middle-eastern regime. Back in those days, they were all on fire, and it was easy to find work. Rebels fighting for ideals didn’t pay, but the dictators or kings on whatever that particular head of government called themselves had all the money and everything to lose. They had all the weapons and were so scared of losing power that they were willing to use any of them, and they had some very effective if nasty weapons. Dropping a tank of sarin gas from an old Huey helicopter in the middle of a rebel stronghold was a quick way to eliminate the threat if you didn’t mind the collateral damage. Once in a while, the news media would show pictures of dead children and the Americans or the Brits or someone else would blow up an airfield, but most of the time the rest of the world couldn’t be bothered. Occasionally the dictator would feel ill over what he allowed to happen in his name, but they would never stop him. Not when their power was in jeopardy. That was years before his name was changed to John Smith and he went to work for BEC.

  The business suit man, his real name long gone, entered the dirty office and knelt by the girl, still bound and blindfolded. There was a dim light coming from a kerosene lamp, his partner’s insistence. He thought it was silly to light a room for a girl who was blindfolded, but she had made a strong - if transparent - argument for lighting the room for security reasons. He had a pre-packaged sandwich that he dropped to the girl’s side. She jumped when the plastic container hit the floor.

  “You hungry,” he asked, but the girl sat frozen in place. “There’s no reason to starve yourself. What’s going to happen will happen, no matter what you do. It’s nothing personal, just business.”

  “Go away,” she said. “Leave me alone.”

  “Suit yourself,” he said. “Makes no difference to me if you’re hungry or not.”

  He didn’t care if she was uncomfortable, didn’t care if she was hungry, but she did have to be alive. For now. He doubted the child had enough will power to refuse food long enough to become a medical emergency, also doubted that the metaphysical forces at play would allow her to die, but he would shove a nasogastric tube and feed her that way if it got to that. He doubted he would need too, but he didn’t live this long without having redundant backup plans for when the shit hit the fan.

  The business suit man started to leave when the girl said, “Daniel will save me.”

  He froze. “Sorry, what was that?”

  The child clamped her jaw shut. The business suit man knelt back down and leaned over so his lips were next to her ear. “You think your dad is going to come rescue you? The man you met for the first time two days ago? That person?”

  Bethany tried to turn away, but in her bindings, there was only so far she could move. He shifted over to keep his deep growl right in her ear.

  “This town has a way of changing people,” he said. “Chances are if he’s not dead already, he’s one of those things roaming the town. He sees you again, he’ll probably eat you. Face it, you’re alone, and no one is coming for you.”

  He got up and left the office. Outside the office door he waited, and soon he heard the young girl starting to cry. He smiled to himself and walked out to the larger workspace he and his partner were using as a base of operations. His partner stood off to the side, her arms folded over her chest and looking at him in disgust.

  “Do you need to torment the child like that?” she spat.

  He sat down at a desk and began field-stripping his automatic pistol. “You’re not getting soft on me, are you?” he taunted.

  His partner stomped over, her heels clicking against the worn hardwood floor, and leaned over the desk at him. Fire burned in her eyes, and he smiled even wider. The difference between passion and hate was a knife’s edge, and there was nothing better than a hate-filled fuck. He wondered if he could push her over that edge, then over the desk. She had a hard, stern face, but damn those legs could kill.

  “I’ve done everything I’ve been asked to do, and I’ve never, never hesitated.” She was on the verge of screaming, and he was on the verge of an erection. “But you . . . you’re enjoying this! What is wrong with you?”

  “If you no longer have the stomach for what needs to be done,” he said in his deep baritone voice, “you can leave.”

  His partner stood up, and he realized he blew his chance at grudge sex, at least for now. She gave him a cold stare and said, “I have a job to do, and I will get it done. But no one ever said I needed to like it.”

  His partner stormed off. The business suit man watched her go, eyeing her long legs and smiled. He’d have to adjust his tactics for the next time.

  The monsters were more active at night, and now that the sun had set Daniel could see them roaming the streets from the second-floor window of Lisa’s apartment. He peered out through the improvised barricade, and while he doubted it would actually stop something from getting inside, it did act as an effective duck blind. He didn’t see any of the other monsters, the ones that looked grown rather than mutated. From where he was he could see skirmishes, many over eating the corpses of the child-like creatures that Daniel killed at the fence, but none of the epic battles from the previous night. He wondered where the other monsters had gotten too. Had they been killed off? He hoped not. He wasn’t sure if one race of monster was better than another, but the plant and rock variety had yet to try to kill him, so in the lack of other data they were preferable.

  Daniel looked at the ground below and wondered how he could get down without breaking his leg. He was only one floor up, but it would be a hard landing. It was possible to land without serious injury, but even if a minor injury could be deadly if it slowed him down and he attracted any of the monster’s attention.

  “There’s got to be a way out of here,” he said aloud to himself.

  The abominations fighting for scraps of the young corpses stood upright and all looked the same direction, then scurried away like mice from an approaching cat. Daniel shifted his position, trying to peer out at a different angle to see what was approaching to scare off the others. He thought of the king monster from last night, the one that towered over the other creatures and killed anything in its path, regardless on which side, but what he saw chilled him even more. Walking down the street was a large gray wolf, but deep down inside Daniel knew it was the same wolf. It walked up to the fence and stopped, then looked up at him. He was sure of it, it looked right up at him.

  “Daniel?” Lisa called out to him.

  Daniel turned away from the window to see Lisa standing in the hallway between her room and the bathroom, a blanket wrapped around her. Daniel looked back to the wolf, but it was gone. He searched his limited field of view, but there was no sign on the wolf.

  Daniel turned back to Lisa. “Yeah?”

  “I was wondering,” she stammered, “I mean if you wanted to . . . I was thinking you didn’t need to be alone if you don’t want to . . .”

  Daniel cocked his head to the side, trying to figure out what she was talking about when she let the blanket drop to the floor. She was wearing a red satin nightgo
wn, the fabric’s sheen catching the dancing candlelight. Daniel noticed she had cleaned herself up, probably sacrificing some of their limited bottled water supplies to wash with. She stood awkwardly, and in spite the revealing negligée she made Daniel think of how Bethany stood when they first met. Even in the low light of the candles, Daniel can see the goosebumps over her shivering arms, though if from the cold or from nerves there was no way to tell.

  “Lisa, I . . .” he started to say.

  “You can have me,” she blurted out as if trying to get the words out before losing her nerve. “You know if you want. It’s fine.”

  Daniel walked over to where Lisa stood shaking. Her eyes went wide, but it could have been either eagerness or trepidation, it was impossible to tell. Daniel knelt and picked up the blanket. He wrapped it back around her shoulders. “You don’t . . . no, c’mon, you must be freezing.”

  Lisa tried to push the blanket off her and run her hands over his chest. “No, it’s okay, I don’t mind. I . . . I want you to be with me.”

  Daniel took Lisa’s hands in his. “You don’t mean that. You don’t even know me.”

  “Does it matter?” she asked. “We’re the only two people left in the world . . .”

  Daniel shook his head. “This isn’t happening to the whole world, just this town,”

  “For now,” she said. “And even if it didn’t, we can’t leave. For us, this is the whole world. I promise I’ll try hard to make you happy . . . “

  She slipped her hands out of Daniels and slid them over his chest. She leaned in, her lips reaching for his, but Daniel felt all the affection of actress playing a part. He held her back by her shoulders. “Lisa? What is this about? Really?”

  Lisa stood there in silence, then she melted against Daniel’s chest. He held her, feeling her chilled skin against him through his thermal shirt when she said, “I just can’t sleep alone. I can’t stand it anymore, Daniel.” She looked up at him with teary eyes. “Please, you can have anything you want, I don’t care, just don’t let me sleep alone. I can’t stand lying there all alone, in the dark, listening to those things outside, knowing what they really are . . .”

  Her words dissolved into tears, but even as they ran down her cheeks she leaned up and tried to kiss him like an over-affectionate puppy. Daniel held her back just out of reach of her lips.

  “You don’t have to do this, Lisa” he said. “I know, it’s scary at night, but you don’t need to do this to have me keep you company.”

  Lisa looked into Daniel’s face, her eyes red and swollen. Daniel wrapped his arms around her and held her tight.

  A few hours later, as the lit candles melted into her nightstands and dresser, Lisa was curled up against Daniel’s chest. Even though he kept his clothes on, he felt warm under the blankets. She kept the thin nightie on in case he changed his mind, but he never did. He just held her until he fell asleep. She could still hear the spider things crawling in the apartment above her and in the one next door, even occasionally watch their shadows crawl across the window from the outside, but she would squeeze Daniel until the monsters moved on.

  It took the apocalypse to find a true gentleman, it occurred to her. Lisa believed he meant it when Daniel said she didn’t have to make love to him to keep him in her bed, but she hadn’t thought he’d be able to keep that promise. When she was in high school, her boyfriend at the time made a similar promise. He meant it, she believed, but lying next to each other was too much for her boyfriend’s young hormones to abide by. It went from snuggling to harmless kissing, then his hands grew braver and braver until she surrendered her virginity to him. She didn’t regret it. She had young teenage hormones as well, after all, but it taught her something about the worth of promises boys, and then men, would make.

  But Daniel kept his. He held her less like a lover and more like a guardian, making her feel safe. His hands caressed her back, but never the curves of her body that her late boyfriend could never resist. In another time, she might wonder why Daniel wouldn’t touch her or kiss her, if she was ugly or something, but in this world of family members turning into monsters, it was enough to not be alone. She looked up into Daniel’s candle-lit face.

  “Daniel, are you asleep?” she asked. When he didn’t answer, she propped herself up on one arm and looked into his closed eyelids. “I’m so sorry about your daughter, Daniel. I really am. If I thought there was any chance she was alive . . .”

  She thought about how her mother had died and choked up. She had told Daniel her boyfriend had attacked her, and that was true, he did attack all of them, but he wasn’t what infected her mother. No, it was a monster with the face of a child that savagely attacked her mother. The blood, her mother’s blood, was everywhere, all the while that cherub face smiling at them. She could see Daniel falling for the same fate if one of those things had his daughter’s face.

  “But I’ll try to make you happy here,” she continued. “We’ll be together until the end. We’ll face it together, and I won’t have to die alone.”

  She leaned over and kissed Daniel on the cheek. He stirred, and Lisa froze until he settled down, then she laid her head on his strong chest. She lay there and listened to Daniel breathing and ran her hand over his trunk.

  “I’ve never been so happy,” she said.

  As Lisa ran her hand over him, she felt something odd over his abdomen. It was cold and wet, uneven ridges circling the area. She sat up slowly, looking at Daniel to make sure he didn’t wake and pulled the sheets back. When Daniel didn’t move, she pulled up the bottom of his shirt.

  There was a black puncture wound in his abdomen, familiar dark tendrils radiating out under his skin. Lisa jerked her hand back and jumped out of the bed. She landed on the floor hard, but she swallowed the yelp of pain. She didn’t want to wake Daniel. Not now. He was bitten. He was infected. He was one of them now.

  Lisa scuttled on her hands and feet until she backed into a wall, never taking her eyes off Daniel. She cowered there, balled up into a fetal position. She had let him in! And now she was stuck in the apartment with him, with nowhere to run! She clutched her hands to her ears and silently screamed. Now that she was again alone, the monsters outside were louder and closer, as if Daniel was calling them. She knew what would happen next. Daniel would turn like his sister and mother did, and then the thing that used to be Daniel would attack her.

  Unless she did something first.

  18

  Bethany slept, or got as close to sleep as she could in the cold saw mill office they kept her in. It was uncomfortable to sleep with her hands bound together with duct tape, and sometimes she’d find herself stuck and unable to move. She would try to roll over, but with her hands tied she couldn’t push herself up and the immobility would drive her nearly to panic. Once in a while, the woman would come in and right her. Bethany finally got into a somewhat comfortable position slumped in a corner and was dozing off when the craziness broke out around her.

  Bethany didn’t know what was happening. She was blindfolded, and what her ears told her didn’t make much sense. There were growls and scrapping, the business suit people shouting, and even gun shots. Bethany cried, more out of frustration than fear. Like any child, she was afraid of dying, but to sit there like a sacrificial lamb and wait for it to happen was maddening. She heard the office door slam open, and a bright light pierced through her blindfold.

  “No!” she screamed. “Please, no!”

  Instead of a death blow, she was yanked off the floor and thrown onto . . . what? It felt like she was thrown over the back of a wicker chair. Whatever she was on, it soared into the night air, running in a rhythmic pattern like a horse. The icy air ripped through her, but other than the horrible cold she was unharmed. The thing that was carrying her ran on and on until all the growls and gun shots faded into the background, then her mount settled to a kind of trot. She felt the things shoulder blades pump up and down, left and right, under her weird wooden saddle. Then it came to a rest, and very huma
n hands pulled her from the things back.

  “Easy, kid,” a man said. “You’re all right.”

  She felt the duct tape binding her hands being unraveled. When it got down to her skin she winced, but it was a small price to pay to be free. She reached up to remove the blindfold, but the hands of the man were already pulling it off. Bethany blinked against the breaking morning sun, her vision coming into focus. Kneeling in front of her was the man from the social service office, from outside of Ms. Garcia’s office, the man who told Ms. Garcia that Bethany could go with Daniel. He smiled down at her with that same infectious smile of his. She smiled back at him.

  Then she saw the creatures move behind them. She had mistaken them for bushes, but when they stalked behind the man she saw the plants were in the shape of saber-tooth tigers. Bethany screamed and scrambled back, only to find herself in a cul-de-sac of trees, boulders, and bushes. She screamed again.

  “Whoa! Easy!” the man called out. “It’s okay. They’re with me. You’re safe.”

  Bethany stopped screaming and scrambling away, but her eyes stayed wide open and on the tiger-looking monsters. “What are they?”

  The man looked over his shoulder at them. “You know, that’s a good question. I’m not really sure.” He looked back at Bethany. “I just know they bite the other monsters, and they don’t bite us. You want to pet them?”

  Bethany shook her head. She pulled her hands to her chest as if the idea would pull her hands out against her will.

  “I know, the whole thing’s a bit freaky,” the man said, nodding understandingly.