The Last Rite

by Chad Morgan

  “Yes,” Bethany said

  “You have nothing to fear from me, child.” The old woman knelt in front of her, and the way she looked at Bethany, she could believe that the old woman was a great-grandmother. “Did Professor Lightfoot explain what needs to be done, child?”

  Bethany looked at her feet. “Yes.”

  Bethany felt the old woman’s hand lay gently on her shoulder. It was light, nothing but bone and loose-hanging wrinkled skin, but there was something warm and comforting about it. “You understand, we cannot make you do this. It must be your choice.”

  She told herself she wasn’t going to cry, but the tears escaped her. “I know. I understand.”

  “You are a very brave little girl,” the old woman said, “but then I had little doubt that you would be. Your mother was brave too.”

  Bethany shook her head. When she talked, it came out as a whine. “No, she wasn’t. She killed herself. She left me.”

  “But she had been brave for so very long,” the old woman said in a kind, grandmotherly tone. “No one can be brave for forever.”

  “What if I can’t stay brave?” Bethany asked through the tears.

  “You only have to be brave for a little while longer,” the old woman said.

  Bethany looked up at the grandmother, her eyes wide with hope and filled with tears. She surrendered to them, and they poured down her face freely. “Will I see Mommy again?”

  “I don’t know, dear,” she replied. “I know a lot of things, but what happens after death is as much a mystery to you as it is to me. But I hope you do. You and your mother deserve peace.”

  “Will I see Daniel before . . .” Bethany couldn’t bring herself to say it. “You know, it happens?”

  She smiled and nodded. “If all goes according to plan, then yes, you will see your father again. Do you care about your father?”

  Shrugging, she wiped the tears away. “I don’t know. I guess. I mean, I don’t really know him, but he seemed nice. I just hoped he’s okay.”

  The old woman smiled. “I’m sure your father will be just fine.”

  27

  Daniel opened his eyes to see the wolf’s sideways face in front of his. He was laying on the ground. He didn’t know this so much as deduced it, seeing the floor under their heads. With his backpack full of supplies from the convenient store still strapped to his back, he was laying on his side. The wolf sat there, staring at him, waiting. Daniel thought back, rewinding the past events, and trying to remember what had happened. They were running from the large monster, the three of them. They barred the door, then the pain . . .

  Daniel sat up. The wolf raised its head, her ears perking up and paying attention as Daniel looked at his wounds. The infection had been growing and fast, he remembered now. It had felt like someone was shoving sharpened pencils under his skin, but now there was only a dull ache. The spreading was gone. They still didn’t look healthy, the infection had spread further than when he last looked at his wounds in Lisa’s bedroom, but it didn’t envelop his entire arm. Something caused the infection to regress. He had more time.

  He looked around the back room of the camping store. Lisa was gone. She was probably in the main part of the store. Daniel fumbled through the darkness, making his way out of the back room. He watched the wolf pull herself to her feet and walk after her. She looked tired, and Daniel wondered what the wolf could have been doing in the confined space to exhaust herself.

  There was very little light in the camping store, sunlight coming in through the windows in between the gaps in the shutters. The center of the room had four circular racks of clothes, all of them durable and warm, jackets and thermal shirts and the like. Sleeping bags hung on one wall, backpacks on the other. The back wall had a counter or display case of some kind, but much of it was behind the hallway he entered from.

  “Lisa?” he called out.

  A shot rang out. The wood on the door frame by his head splintered. Even as Daniel ducked, he knew he was trying to dodge a bullet that was no longer in the air, but reflex commanded him to the floor. The wolf growled beside him.

  “Lisa! Stop!” he yelled. “I’m okay!”

  “Daniel?” she called out.

  “Yeah, I’m still me,” he yelled. “Don’t shoot!”

  Daniel followed Lisa’s voice to the corner of the store. She sat on the floor, a small gun held in front of her with both hands. She pushed herself up the wall, holding the gun out with one hand, much like she had with the knife back in her apartment. She pointed with her chin and said, “Let me see.”

  Slowly, Daniel pulled his shirt up to show the wound on his abdomen, then held up his left arm to show her how the wound’s infections had receded. Lisa walked up to him, the gun up but her eyes growing wide as they locked on his wounds. “It’s . . . it’s better. It actually got better!”

  Compared to what it was before he passed out, he agreed, but he thought it was worse than it was when they were in her apartment last night. Before he could say so, though, Lisa rushed at him. Daniel raised his arms to block her, but Lisa wrapped her arms around him and hugged him close to her. Daniel slid his arms out from where they were pinned between them and wrapped them around Lisa as she rested her head on his chest.

  “I thought you left me alone,” she said. “Don’t ever leave me alone.”

  Daniel squeezed her tight, but when Lisa winced he remembered her own run-in with the spider monsters in her apartment. Gently, he pushed her back and asked, “How’s your wound?”

  Lisa turned and unbuttoned her shirt. For a brief moment, Daniel’s heart fluttered, and his id and ego battled in his mind over what to do about this apparent display of intimacy. Lisa peeled her shirt, then her bra strap, off of one shoulder, and Daniel’s mouth went dry, but that’s when Lisa stopped and turned halfway back to him.

  “How does it look?” Lisa asked, showing Daniel the wound he dressed in the abandoned convenience store.

  Daniel tried to hide his embarrassment. Of course, she was only showing him her wound. He had just asked about it. He chalked it up to his recent disorientation and loss of consciousness, then slipped back into the professional mannerisms he learned as a cop. Daniel peeled back the tape from the dressing and peered at the wound, guiding Lisa into a stray beam of sunlight.

  “Looks red,” he said. “Might be getting infected.”

  “Red?” she asked. She sounded happy over the thought that her shoulder was infected. “Not black like yours?”

  Daniel shook his head and smiled. “No, just a good old fashion staph infection. Let’s look around for something to clean this up with.”

  He turned away from Lisa, but he couldn’t ignore the part of him that was hoping for a glimpse of more as Lisa redressed. Pushing that thought aside, he wasn’t paying attention when he thought he heard something in the store. He had been so preoccupied he wasn’t even sure he heard anything, let alone what it might have been. He looked to Lisa, who had her back to him and was buttoning her shirt. As paranoid as she was, if she heard anything, it would show, but Lisa buttoned up her shirt and started scanning the dark camping store for supplies. Daniel shrugged. If Lisa hadn’t heard anything, then he must have imagined it.

  Or Lisa was distracted too. And that thought sent his mind spinning in a whole new direction.

  A clean business suit, nearly identical to her dirty and torn one, lay on the clean bed as she showered. The woman let the warm water wash over her. It wasn’t as hot as in her apartment in the real world, but the gas-powered portable equipment they brought with them was only capable of so much. It was warm enough, especially compared to the cold outside.

  The woman not only washed away the crushed brick and black monster blood from her body and hair, she tried to wash away her doubts, though those were a bit harder. Lightfoot’s words kept ringing in her ears.

  “You’re asked to bring on the Apocalypse,” he had said in the bank, “and you never asked why?”

  Lightfoot was right about
one thing. She never asked why. She was ordered to go to Shellington Heights, ordered to perform the rites and rituals that suck the town into some dark dimension, and hunted down the girl they needed to finish it, and never once questioned her orders. She assumed there was a reason, assumed these sacrifices served some greater good.

  “You’re asked to bring on the apocalypse, and you never asked why?”

  All this pain, all this death, and for what? To create even more pain and death on a global scale? What would be the point? She wasn’t a member of some cult, she was an executive in one of the largest conglomerates in the world. Where was the profit in all of this?

  The water splashed over the raw skin on her left shoulder where the tattoo was drawn a few days before coming to Shellington Heights. The tattoo was painful, though never having one before she had nothing to compare it too. Still, it took two artists working in shifts to draw on all the details, a triangle pointing down inside a circle, with Babylonian script lining the inner triangle as well as the encompassing circle. The lukewarm water rolling over it felt good. It looked fresh and new, but now it made her feel tainted and dirty.

  She turned off the water, the steam hanging in the air. She pulled back her curtain and reached for her towel when someone handed it to her. It took a split second for it to register that she wasn’t alone, and for another second she thought it was her partner. She’d caught him leering at her from time to time, and figured it was a matter of time before he made a move of some kind, but it wasn’t her partner standing in the steam. She stifled a small scream as she ripped the towel from Charlie Lightfoot’s hand and covered herself with it.

  Lightfoot pulled his empty hand back, holding his bow in the other. He looked around the steam-filled bathroom in mock admiration, though she noticed his eyes dart back to her. “Running water. Impressive. I haven’t seen running water since . . . well, since you turned this place into hell.”

  The woman, who very badly wanted to be in her customary business suit at that moment, wrapped the towel around herself, all the while keeping her eyes on Lightfoot. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  Charlie nodded to the tattoo on her arm and asked, “That how you’re protecting yourself from the nasties out there?”

  She sneered at him. “Well, necklaces can fall off, can’t they?”

  That wiped the smile from his smug face. Lightfoot pulled his bow tight and aimed it right at her face, but she folded her arms over her chest, holding her towel in place. His eyes went to the tattoo on her shoulder. “Ink looks fresh. Let me guess, you got that ink about two days before coming here? You bring your own water and power? You knew this was going to happen, and you did it anyway?”

  She took a deep breath. “I was given an assignment. I followed the directions I was given, I had no idea what would happen.”

  “But you saw what you were doing,” he said. “You saw what you were doing and you didn’t stop!”

  “And have them turn on me too?” she asked, choking back a laugh. “What was I supposed to do?”

  “How about the right thing?” Lightfoot asked.

  She swallowed her self-doubt. There was time for that later, but not in front of Lightfoot, especially with an arrow pointing to her head. She didn’t think he’d let the arrow fly, but there was no tactical advantage in pushing that theory. Instead, she deflected the conversation. “Where’s the scroll?”

  “You think I’m stupid enough to bring it back to you?” he said. “You have any clue what you’re going to unleash if you perform the last rite?”

  She shifted her weight. “What are you talking about? We perform the last rite, it’s over, and I go back to my office.”

  “You think this is going to be over?” Charlie asked, his voice heavy with incredulity, and even though she stood tall and defiant, inside she felt herself cringe in shame. “You think whoever sent you here is going to kill off a town just for kicks? That there isn’t a bigger game plan . . .”

  Whatever he was going to say next was cut off by the bullets ripping through the bathroom walls. Her partner had the neighboring room. He must have heard them arguing and took the opportunity to eliminate Lightfoot without giving a shit if he hit her as well. She dropped to the floor, and to her surprise, she felt Lightfoot’s body landing on top of hers. She looked up to see Lightfoot shielding her, covering his own head as glass fell on them from the window shattering. When the shots died down, Lightfoot jumped to his feet and bolted for the broken window. He leaped through it, grabbing the curtain on the way out, sliding down to the ground before the curtain rod gave and fell out of the window after him. From the ground outside she could hear his shoes landing hard on the concrete sidewalk, followed by cursing as the curtain rod thudded on his head.

  She got out of the bathroom as her partner burst into the room. He was stripped to the waist, apparently in mid-dress from his own shower. A fresh bandage wrapped around his left hand where the crazy bastard had stabbed himself, and an automatic pistol in his other. She saw the tattoo on his shoulder, much like hers but with the triangle pointing up, a spear to her chalice. He surveyed the room, then ran to the open window and aimed his gun outside, never once asking if she was alright. No shots were fired. Lightfoot got away.

  Her partner pulled back from the window and looked at her. She stood there in only a towel, but for once her partner didn’t look at her with lustful eyes. His gaze burned into her. “What did he say to you?”

  She stood tall and defiant, though making sure her towel was in place. “Why? Is there something you know that I don’t?”

  He walked by her and headed straight for the door. “Get dressed. We need to complete this job now.”

  He slammed the door behind him, leaving her alone. She looked to the smashed window and wondered, not for the first time, what she was doing in this god-forsaken town.

  28

  Daniel found several propane lanterns on the shelves, pristine in their boxes, though it took some more effort to find propane tanks to fit them, then matches to light them. Of course, once the lanterns were lit and the room was bathed in light, finding everything became much easier. The back wall was an armory. Daniel had expected hunting rifles, but the shotguns were almost scary. Worse, it appeared these were the lowest-end weapons, the more appealing items like automatic rifles were already gone, a price tag on a blank spot on the shelf the only sign they were ever there. From the remaining weapons, they grabbed one of each, a hunting rifle for distance and a shotgun for close quarters.

  Finding medical supplies was more challenging. Apparently, Buck was more into putting holes into things than patching them up, but they found an emergency kit on one of the shelves, the plastic case wrapped in cellophane. He sat on the floor with Lisa, dropped his backpack to his side, cracked open the aid kit, and dug out a small bottle of alcohol. Lisa exposed her shoulder to him, and Daniel pulled off the old dressing before pouring the alcohol onto it. Lisa hissed.

  “Easy, that’s the worst of it,” Daniel said. “Let me get a fresh dressing on that.”

  Daniel fished out the fresh gauze in their sterile packs. As he opened the paper packages and placed the gauze on Lisa’s wound, she asked, “So we’re immune?”

  Daniel shrugged as he taped the gauze into place. “One of us, anyway.”

  “But your wound, it got better” she said. “Maybe it’s like a cold, you developed antibodies.”

  As much as Daniel wished he could believe that, it felt too convenient to be true. He didn’t know why his wounds reversed their infection. He supposed it was possible. Like a fever breaking, maybe he had gotten through the worst of it. The safest assumption, however, was that the infection would reassert itself. He looked to Lisa. “And if I’m not? Look, Lisa, if I start going all Stephen King on you, you have a gun . . .”

  “Daniel . . .” Lisa turned away, but with a gentle finger on her skin, he led her gaze back to him.

  “No, I mean it,” he said, his voice stern but gentle. “Yo
u have a gun now, I want you to defend yourself if it comes to that. Just promise me one thing. If you have to shoot me, please find my daughter.”

  “I . . . I don’t . . .” Lisa stammered.

  Daniel knew this would be a hard sell. Lisa’s sole motivating force was self-preservation. To ask her to go out and find a complete stranger, to face danger to save someone she hadn’t met yet, was a lot, but if he fell, there was no other option. “You’re the only one left, Lisa. Please. I don’t want to die, but I’d die easier if I knew Bethany would be okay. Promise me.”

  Daniel could see her mind wrestling with the commitment he was asking her to make, then she nodded. “Okay, I promise.”

  Lisa got up and walked off, the burden she accepted weighing on her. It couldn’t be helped. It was only the two of them left. He figured he’d give her some space and let her work out how to burden this new responsibility he placed on her. Daniel pulled one of the propane lamps closer to him and turned it up. He fished out Anna’s diary from his backpack. Before he started reading, he saw a box of energy bars on one of the store shelves. He reached up and pulled the box down to him, ripped it open, and pulled out one of the energy bars. It was tough and gummy, but he ripped off a piece with his teeth and started chewing. He settled down to start to read when he saw the wolf lying in front of him, staring at him, licking its chops. Daniel ripped off a piece of the energy bar and tossed it to the wolf. It landed in front of her muzzle. She sniffed it, then deciding it was edible, licked it off the floor and chomped it down. The wolf looked at Daniel as if to ask if that was the best he could offer. Daniel shrugged and turned back to the diary.

  Daniel didn’t get past one page when he heard the banging from the other side of the store. The wolf looked up, her ears up like radar dishes, they immediately pulled them back and growled. Daniel jumped to his feet and grabbed the shotgun. Chambering a round, he ran to the noise, only to find Lisa banging the butt of her pistol against the lock of a soda machine.