The sun pushed through in earnest as the cloud cover scattered and the temperature climbed noticeably. Deb's final resting place was in the sun, as she had requested, but he thought it looked sad and plain compared to the greening spread of the surrounding park and the eternal beauty of the woman it held. Alex tossed the shovel aside and thought of the tiny white daisies that Deb had so cherished.
He knew just where to get seeds.
3
REVELATION 22:5
And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle,
neither light of the sun.
"We'll have quite a few babies around here within a year," Perlman told McDole. “At least two of those women are pregnant, maybe more."
"Not enough to repopulate the world, Bill," McDole pointed out with a wry grin.
"No." The doctor shrugged. "But it's a start. Besides, once it's obvious that the vampires are gone, I bet we find a lot more people than even you realized."
McDole sat back. "You really believe in that V-BAC."
"Without a doubt."
McDole stared out the window morosely. "Too bad it didn't come last month, or last winter. Then maybe—"
"Don't." Perlman placed a hand on McDole's shoulder. "There're too many 'what ifs' that we could torture ourselves with, and too many of those would've changed anyway."
McDole's forehead creased. "Where did Stephen go? He's disappeared already."
"He's one of those 'what ifs,'" Perlman said. He turned and grinned as Calie reached past him and shoved a squirming bundle into McDole's hands.
"Don't look so glum, boss," she said cheerily as McDole gaped at the tiny red face of Evelyn's son. He couldn't help smiling as the baby squinted and waved a miniature fist. Calie folded her arms. "That's better. You wouldn't want your namesake to actually look like you, would you?"
"It's hard, isn't it?"
Perlman glanced up as Calie sat beside him on the curb just outside the open door to Water Tower Place, little Beau snuggled in her arms. The late afternoon sky had turned cloudy and dull, but the temperature was a prelude to warmer weather. It was a sign of faith that McDole had left the doors to Water Tower Place wide open. Perlman grimaced. "I beg your pardon?"
"Don't pull that polite baloney on me, Doc." She gave him a sidelong look. "You're forgetting the most important thing you've said today."
"What's that?"
"You're forgetting to forget the 'what ifs.'" She scratched Beau's ears. "You're moping and feeling sorry for yourself, thinking about your wife and son, C.J. and Louise, and Deb, too." When he didn't answer, she continued. "She's the worst, isn't she? Because you never expected to think of one of those monsters as a human being."
He sighed, then frowned. "I don't recall telling you I was married," he said, "or that I had a son." He turned to face her.
Calie smiled. "It's time to start looking forward instead of backward, Bill. Time for a new life." She stood, then bent and kissed him briefly on the lips, her brown eyes twinkling. "Remember, there is life after death."
4
REVELATION 19:2
For he hath judged that which did corrupt the earth …
and hath avenged the blood of his servants at her hand.
There were sounds of dying in the Mart tonight.
Rita didn't want to hear them. She couldn't find Anyelet and guessed that the Mistress hadn't woken yet; lately it was safer to let Anyelet alone than disturb her anyway. She put her hands to her face and they came away covered with gray-green globs of melting flesh, and Rita frowned at the mess dripping from her fingers and shook it off. Why did she have such a headache? Was it even possible for her to be sick? Everything about her hurt—her face since the gunshot wound, her arms since that weird teenager had burned her last night and been gutted for her punishment, leaving the hand that had wielded the knife blackened and peeling. There was a smell in this place, too, the smell of tainted meat left too long in the warm air. Beneath the baggy sleeves of the stained copper robe, her skin itched ferociously, as though it were alive with a million invisible insects. She stumbled past the currency exchange in the first-floor ball and thought longingly of plumbing and hot water; the was so dirty and—
She tripped over something on the floor and sprawled facefirst. Was Howard's body still here? She tried to stand, but her bones and muscles hurt horribly, and finally Rita just sat next to the body, ignoring the smell and squinting in the darkness, her vision gone the way of her beauty but not so much that she didn't detect traces of life within the smelly, blackened pile next to her. She leered at it curiously, couldn't stop her finger from giving it a tentative poke.
It groaned, then raised a head in which the only recognizable things were the leaking, reddened eyes belonging to Gabriel. A few seconds later he hauled himself up and grabbed the doorframe, his body making sucking, liquid noises when the flesh pulled away from the floor. A hole that might have once been his mouth opened and he gurgled.
Rita screamed and fled, the skin of her own arms sloughing away beneath her clothing. In her haste she toppled against the opposite wall, then backed away in revulsion when she realized the viscous mass slipping down its surface was part of her own skin. She careened out the front doors and fell, the sidewalk's rough surface shaving away most of her palms and fingers, leaving exposed bone to gleam in the wan moonglow. Shrieking, she scrambled up and ran, into the darker streets of downtown and away from the Mart and its infestation of death.
At Wells and Lake, Rita collapsed, her strength gone. The shadowy refuge of a diagonal doorway on the corner beckoned and she dragged herself toward it. She shouldn't be out here by herself and in this condition, so close to the subway entrance only a few yards away. But she couldn't go back to the Mart, she couldn't—
They came up the stairs like moist, deadly spiders to drag her down and into the tunnels, a new and private hell.
5
REVELATION 10:9
Take it, and eat it up; and it shall make thy belly bitter,
but it shall be in thy mouth sweet as honey.
REVELATION 18:14
And the fruits that thy soul lusted after are departed from thee.
Try as she might, Anyelet could not drive the beast from her dreams. It wrapped rotting arms around her with a lover's intimacy as she whipped her head from side to side in a vain attempt to escape the fetid kiss of its lips against her neck.
Then it was gone, driven away by that girl, the one with the silken, silver hair whose blood had splattered everyone last night and blistered their flesh like fire, leaving them all screaming and sick. And having this Child-woman in her mind, her gaze burning with holy fever, was far, far worse than the nightbeast who lusted after Anyelet with a Hunger that eclipsed even her own.
She woke in Stephen’s arms, not knowing how he'd found her room or why he would return after so effectively slipping away the night before. The feel of his flesh should have stirred her dark need immediately, and yet …
There was no Hunger.
Anyelet tried to sit up and found she couldn't. The hand she brought to her face was wretched and stank of decomposing flesh. She stared at it in horror, then shrank away from Stephen, but he seemed unperturbed by the smell or sight of her. "What's happening?" she croaked. He looked at her in pity and pulled her back against his chest, smoothing her hair and cradling her gently.
"It's time to die, Anyelet."
How strange, Anyelet thought blearily, to lie next to the body of the white-haired girl who had brought destruction down upon them all. Stranger still to be moving and thinking, yet so resemble the girl's quickly disintegrating corpse next to which Stephen had placed her on the Franklin Street Bridge; now he leaned against the railing somewhere off to the side like a silent, ancient sentinel. She could hear the water lapping sweetly below, feel the breeze on her burning skin. The sun, she knew, would find her in the morning.
No matter. She would be dead by then.
Death, a concept she had not cons
idered applying to herself since … when? Something else that didn't matter. All that did was now, on the ground with her cracked, oozing lips drawn in pain as her body ate itself away. Not long ago she had stood on the other bridge and laughed at the stars; in the morning the sun would laugh at her. What would its golden rays feel like upon her flesh? She would never know.
She closed her eyes and let the true darkness take her.
IX
March 31
Salvation
REVELATION 17:14
These shall make war with the Lamb,
and the Lamb shall overcome them.
The lake under the morning sun was stunning, an undulating sea of fire stretching to the horizon. Stephen had never been to the southern shoreline before, and he had started this trek hours ago to put distance between himself and the silent bodies of Jo and Anyelet. He would have liked to have buried them, or even spilled their remains into Lake Michigan and let the cleansing waters absorb both good and evil. Instead, he'd had to leave them on the bridge for the scavengers—the birds, the insects, and yes, the rats—and this was not something he wanted to stay and see.
Stephen turned south and began walking, barely noticing the sparrow that flitted around his head and finally ended on his shoulder for a free ride. The weather in the mouth was warmer, the daylight more intense; it was a climate where the smallest things of the earth might flourish that much faster. There were still darker things and frightening times ahead.
But not for long.
X
May 5
Evolution
REVELATION 21:23
And the city had no need of the sun,
neither of the moon, to shine in it;
for the glory of God did lighten it.
REVELATION 21:25
for there shall be no night there.
"Beautiful, isn’t it?"
Calie smiled her agreement as Perlman pulled her into his arms and hugged her. "Yes." She studied him for a moment. “Are you happy now, Bill?"
He glanced at her, then nodded. “As happy as I'll ever be," he said finally. "More than I would've thought possible."
"We are, too," she said. “And it’s because of you and all your work."
Perlman rubbed a thumb along her shoulder. "Not just me," he reminded her.
"But impossible without you." She looked at him seriously. "I always wondered, what really made you so determined to develop that bacteria? Was it Mera? Your son?"
Perlman shook his head. "They were gone months before I got the idea." He smiled dreamily and Calie followed his pointing finger across Michigan Avenue, then up to the sky and its vivid sprinkling of tiny lights.
"I just wanted to see the stars again at midnight."
EPILOGUE:
PROPHECY …
REVELATION 20:3
And cast him into the bottomless pit,
and shut him up … till the
thousand years should be fulfilled:
and after that he must be
loosed a little season.
REVELATION 20:5
But the rest of the dead lived not
again until the thousand years were finished.
This is the first resurrection.
REVELATION 20:7
And when the thousand years are expired,
Satan shall be loosed out of his prison.
ANCIENT EYES
By David Niall Wilson
ONE
They streamed out from the trees, in groups, singly, in pairs, turned onto the trail and moved deeper into the woods. They were silent, though their combined motion created a single voice. Whispered hints of words trailed after them in the scrape of booted feet and the rustle of cotton and linen skirts. Moonlight filtered through the trees and dappled the shadows with dancing lights.
Each had left behind the warmth of hearth and home without a backward glance. On their doors, already fading, his mark trailed down and joined with the grain of the wood. The mist of early morning would absorb it, and the bright light of the sun would melt it away. It was enough that they had seen it, that they had run their fingers down the coiling length of it, not quite brushing the design.
Some had journals, or Bibles, left to them by their fathers, mothers, grandfathers or uncles tucked away in the recesses of their bedrooms, or wrapped carefully and buried with their other memories in dusty attics and musty barns. Sometimes his symbol could be found scrawled in those pages, and at other times it was painstakingly etched and so minutely detailed that even a magnifying glass seemed inadequate to bring out the exquisite darkness of the image. The journals were seldom read, and if a page that bore his symbol was encountered, the book was closed. Nothing was said. Ever.
None of them carried a light into the woods. There was fire ahead, deep in among the trees, and they shuffled in a dazed procession toward that distant light. Though not a word was spoken, there was a voice on the wind. Deep, sonorous tones echoed from branch to branch and vibrated through the hills. He had marked them, and now he called. As their father's fathers had done, they answered, filing dead-limbed into the ripening night.
Sarah watched from her porch, her shawl drawn tightly around thin shoulders. She was old, but her eyes pierced the gloom like those of a predatory night bird. When shadows shifted, she unbound them and gave them the form of her neighbors marching into the woods, and despite the shawl, she shivered. Behind her, etched into the wood of her door, the ancient ward stood out in stark relief, carefully carved so many years before. Chanted over and tempered by fire, charred and pitted by…
She turned away, but not before the fire, deep in the woods, flared briefly. Through the trees, filtering into bare patches and etching itself along lines that should not be there, the red-orange brilliance outlined great, glaring eyes. Their gaze burned into her back as she opened her door and slipped inside, closing it slowly and firmly behind her. The eyes wavered, lingering as long as the image strobed her shocked night vision, then faded into rustling leaves and branches waving cold empty fingers at the moon.
Sarah strode purposefully to the mantel over her fireplace and opened the hinged wooden lid of the box that rested there. Inside was a small leather pouch, and she drew it out carefully. She didn't open it at first. Instead she ran her fingers over the leather. It had survived the years so much better than her own skin, which was wrinkled and stretched tighter over her bones with each passing year. The bag was soft and supple, and burned into its side was the same symbol etched into her door. The symbol was a cross, but that was like saying that the sky was blue and ignoring the variations in hue, the dance of the clouds, and the birds wheeling overhead.
Her heels pressed into the wooden floor, and she felt his voice. The Earth breathed, and he spoke through her throat. The wind caught the words and the hills shook the sound from the sky. Sarah pulled the bag and its symbol close to her heart, bowed her head, and prayed.
At first there was no effect. Then, slowly, she felt his influence flow down and away, receding like the tide. Before it could shift, wash up and over her and drag her into the line of those disappearing into the trees, she opened the pouch, poured a small handful of powder into her hand, and stepped to the mantel.
The wall she faced was north, and she took a pinch of the powder in her free hand. She tossed it into the air in the direction of that wall, whispering to herself as she worked. Gabriel. Michael. Azrael. Rafael. Uriel. Charon. She called upon each in turn and made a slow circuit of the room, consecrating each wall, and each doorway, neglecting neither window nor chimney. Each time she tossed the powder into the air, something eased in her heart. The oppressive weight that had settled onto her shoulders lifted.
When she reached Charon, archangel of death, she blew the last of the powder off her fingers and rubbed her palms together in cleansing. He was gone.
She did not step to her window to watch the last of them disappear into the forest, she went instead to her desk, lit a single candle, and sat down to write.
She wasted no words, because there was no reason. In the morning, when the sun had banished all but the bleakest memory of the night's blasphemy, she would take it down the mountain to the mail drop. Beneath her few words, she scrawled his symbol so there could be no mistaking her message.
In that instant, her candle dimmed. She hurriedly surrounded it with the circle, and banished it with the equal-armed strength of her cross. The candle flickered brightly, and Sarah sealed her missive with a dollop of wax. When it had dried, she traced a small symbol into the still malleable surface to speed it on its way, and she laid the envelope on her desk.
Then, as the late hour crept up on her, and her waning strength failed, she rose shakily and made her way to her bed. The cottage had only two rooms, and the bed did double duty as a couch. She had few needs now that her son, had gone into the world. She had no daughters, and few close neighbors. She closed her eyes and was asleep within moments, consciously fighting a dream of glowing eyes and deep resonant chants.
On the edge of the forest, Irma Creed glanced over her shoulder as she crossed the tree line and entered the woods. For just a moment, she stopped and stared. Sarah Carlson's cottage shimmered in the moonlight, and it looked as if it were coated in silver. Then his voice cut through her reverie, and she tore her gaze away. In moments the woods had swallowed her whole.
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