The Afterblight Chronicles: Death Got No Mercy

by Al Ewing

  The nature of shit was to stink. There was a lesson in there somewhere.

  This was a similar situation. Cade had lived around Muir Beach, with its corpses and old bones, for a good couple of years. He'd smelt some sweet air in the Pastor's territory, but now it was like heading back into that damn monkey house. Only this time the smell that was hitting him wasn't monkey shit.

  It was dead folks.

  Rotting dead folks.

  Cade had a feeling he should start the killing there and then. But when the doors swung open and he saw what the Pastor kept on those courts, he figured he'd hang on a little longer. He figured anything that fucked up had a hell of a story in it.

  The Pastor smiled, breathing out his words in a soft hiss, like air escaping from a balloon. This time the smile touched his eyes, and they shone.

  "Oh hear, sinner man, oh hear... oh hear the word of the Lord! Oh, behold, sinner, let thine eyes feast on His word and His work! Sinner man, can you not see it? Can you not see the glory of the Lord your God?" He laughed, and the laugh was a rustle of pages in an undertaker's book.

  Cade could see a hell of a lot. He could smell a hell of a lot, too.

  He maybe wouldn't call it glory, mind.

  Set up in the basketball court were about a hundred wooden crosses, and nailed to each cross was a rotting skeleton. Once, there'd been people on those crosses - living people - with nails pounded through their wrists and ankles for who the hell knew what. And they'd been left there until they'd died, one by one. After that, the putrefaction had set in - the writhing maggots that still coiled and squirmed over the last scraps of a long-vanished face, the seeping, blackened mire that clung to thighbones and scraps of mouldering cloth. A couple of the ribcages were homes to rats, that skittered and gnawed on the bones, giving the cadavers a kind of twitching motion, a parody of life that stilled the heart and sickened the gut.

  Cade knew for a certainty that the Pastor came in here every chance he could, to watch it happen, day by slow day. And he knew for a certainty that - while his men might have helped hold them still and keep them in place - it was the Pastor his own self who'd nailed every one of those souls up onto their crosses with his own withered hands.

  He heard the sound of a breeze rushing through a graveyard. The Pastor was breathing it in. Savouring it. His brittle body shook like a leaf in a storm. Cade had seen folks taking their first hit from a needle who didn't look half so transported as the Pastor did in the presence of his works.

  Cade wasn't a blushing virgin in the ways of death, and he figured he knew a thing or two about horror. He'd seen a hell of a lot and done a hell of a lot too. He'd figured he had a pretty good idea of how bad the world could be when it had a mind to be.

  Now he knew he'd been a damn fool all the while.

  He turned to the Pastor and nodded, once.

  "It's something at that." His voice was steady, and level, and his eyes were boulders. Cade wasn't a man who got mad exactly, but those few who knew him as well as any could would have said he was as close as he could get to it.

  An eyebrow twitched. Questioning. The voice dropped, just a shade quieter than before and cold as stone. The question was almost under Cade's breath, but there wasn't a body in that room who didn't hear it.

  "How come?"

  The Pastor was still smiling that weird cracked-skin smile of his, eyes still sparking for joy. When it came, his voice was just as quiet and just as focussed. "Perversion. Men laying with men and women with women. Godlessness and atheism. The worship of drugs that steal the soul from the body, a terrible affront to the Lord... but that wasn't the question, was it? No, no, it wasn't the question at all..." Another chuckle, like a trickle of cut glass along a knife blade. "You're not concerned about their crimes. You want to know why I chose this path. Why the Lord chose it... well, sinner man, you will hear it. Hear now the word of the Lord..." He closed his eyes, reverentially.

  Cade marked the positions of the Pastor's men again. Then he listened. He figured he'd more than bought his ticket. He ought to get the whole show.

  The Pastor walked between the crosses, occasionally putting his hand on the bones, breathing in deep. "When I was a young man, I decided to serve as a chaplain in Vietnam, to bring the word of the good Lord to the men fighting there for freedom from the seeping coils of communism..." He turned, and gave Cade another of those cracked-face smiles. "I was young, you understand. Naïve. I did not heed the Lord, nor did I understand his word, nor his glory. I knew very little."

  His smile was wide as a cat's. His eyes were like two rivets nailed in his face.

  Cade had a feeling he knew where this was going.

  "The firebase I was stationed at had been long abandoned by command, and the men there were now fully under the power of demons, oh yes... I saw it with my own eyes, oh Lord, the debasement of the spirit in that dank and lonely place! You say hell is not real, sinner? I saw it! The degradation, the fall -" His voice rose, calling out like he was giving a firebrand sermon from a pulpit. "I say to you, the very fall of man! And there were times, oh yes, sinner, there were times when I could no longer feel the hand of the Lord upon me! When I could not hear his foot treading in the shadow of my own, when instead - instead I heard a hoof! A cloven hoof!"

  His nostrils were flaring, and his shock of white hair was plastered up on his head. The eyes were bloodshot, where before they'd been clear. Cade wondered if the man was working himself up to a stroke.

  Might save him the trouble.

  "I felt the most alone I've ever felt in that place, with those men who were destroying themselves faster than the Viet Cong could do it, those men who had been abandoned and who had abandoned themselves and their souls in turn. Oh Lord! Didn't I tell them, Lord? Didn't I warn them what was coming? But I could not teach them! For I could not teach what I did not know, and sinner, I did not truly know my God! I did not hear his word! Not then!"

  The Pastor hissed the words, eyes narrowing.

  "Not until those devils came for me!"

  He whirled, stabbing his fingers at the guards, who dropped to their knees, faces transported in joy.

  "Charlie rose against us, rose up, I say, and murdered every man in that camp, whether he fought against them or lay in stupor! The ground ran red with blood, I tell you, red with the blood of sinners! And in that fire and fury I felt you rise, oh Lord! I felt your hand upon me! I felt you working in the fire and in the blood! In the screaming and in the dying! I felt you, Lord, and your name was death! And Hell came with you to that place! And I prayed, Lord, oh I prayed! I prayed for you to enlighten me! To show me the way! To bestow upon me the reason! I prayed for a sign, oh Lord, and a sign came, oh yes, oh, my Lord, my God... a sign did come!"

  Cade blinked. He got the impression the Pastor had kind of forgotten he was there, and to tell the truth he could see how that might be. Cade had lost himself for a second in the fire and fury of the man. He could figure how other folk might end up losing themselves for good.

  "I was the only one to survive. They saw me praying, saw me kneeling, and the spirit of the Lord moved in them. And they took me, oh Lord! They dragged me under the earth! To their tunnels! They beat me with sticks and with stones! They cut me with knives! They broke my legs again and again until I begged to be killed! I spent three years in a bamboo cage, three feet by three, oh Lord! I faced torments! Torments of Hell itself!"

  The Pastor gulped air, steadying himself on one of the crosses. Cade wondered how a man could breathe in gulps of that rotting air without passing out - the stench of the corpses was still in his nostrils with every breath he took, and his stomach did a slow, lazy roll every couple of minutes. The smell of a body that's been dead a long time was a hell of a thing to put up with, even for Cade.

  Eventually, the thin man spoke again. He seemed to acknowledge that he was speaking to Cade now - the fever in him had passed. "The good Lord spoke to me. For three years... the Lord, the good Lord, was my helper through those terribl
e days and nights. He spoke of his plan for the world to me, you see. That one day, one day, there would come a terrible scourge upon the Earth... and those of purest heart would be saved for the final task, oh Lord, the most sacred task... the culling of the last sinners from the Earth." He chuckled, sweat beading on his brow. "You've a great power in you, boy, a great power. The Lord hath placed a terrible judgement in your hands..."

  Cade narrowed his eyes. This was starting to get a mite personal. He turned towards the door. "Got things need doing." Cade never had believed in wasting words.

  The Pastor smiled.

  "You've a great power in you, and I have great power in me, son. I have scores of pure souls in my flock, all waiting to do the word of the Lord and work for his glory, Now correct me if I'm wrong, but the kind of things a man like you might want to get done... well, they could need that great abundance. Many hands make light work, they say. And you have set yourself a great task..."

  Cade stopped, and turned his head.

  "Oh, I can tell just by looking. You have the look of a man on whom the Lord has placed his hand. A man with a mission." He chuckled. This time is was like the shattering of a test tube containing some deadly bacillus. "I will help you, if you will help me, my brother. Place your hand in mine and I will place the hand of the Lord in yours, and He will guide you in your works and bring you aid from every corner of this great city. Only aid me when the time comes. Help me in my time of need, my brother." The Pastor smiled his crack-faced smile, and ran a hand over a thighbone, caressing it. His eyes glittered. "Help the Lord in his righteous work."

  Cade took a look around the room - at the skeletons hanging from the crosses. There were men there, and women too. A couple of kids. He could see one skeleton at the back, rotted down to bones, and it was no bigger than a chicken's might be, held to the cross with a single nail.

  A baby.

  Cade took a deep breath of the air in that room. The heavy, sick-sweet, rotted air.

  Then he gave his answer.

  "Deal."

  Chapter Eight

  The Flock

  It was a lie, of course, but it seemed to be good enough for the Pastor.

  Cade was glad to get out of that room. The same air in the corridors that'd seemed tainted when he walked in now seemed sweet on his tongue, and he took a long breath of it. Then he turned to the Pastor, shuffling along next to him with his cobra walk.

  "You did the sign?"

  The Pastor narrowed his eyes, confused. Cade almost sighed. If there was one thing he hated, it was using a bunch of words when a couple would do.

  "Sign on the bridge. Figured someone had a problem with hippies. Figured it was you." Cade didn't elaborate any further than that. Either the Pastor'd know what he was talking about or he wouldn't, and that'd be an answer in itself.

  The Pastor chuckled his little dry-bone laugh. "Yes it was, my friend, indeed it was. Or rather, it was the work of my people, performing a public service for the glory of the Lord. The goodly in this city, the saved, feel it best to warn off them that'd spread their sin and wickedness, their pestilence, to our beautiful city..."

  "Huh." Cade grunted, cutting the Pastor off before he got started. Cade wasn't in the mood for a big speech. He had things to find out. "You burn Sausalito?"

  The Pastor chuckled softly. "No, my son, no. When the Lord visits the terrible necessity of taking life upon us, it is with purpose, yes it is, a great purpose, the cleansing of sin from the community... so that the chosen people of the Lord might go about their works without its taint amongst them. Now what you speak of there is a thing of chaos, my friend, of chaos and dam-nation, a serpent, I say, let loose upon the earth, a terrible beast of rage and flame, yes indeed..." He stopped, suddenly, his whole body shaking like a leaf in a breeze. Then he tilted his neck and turned those cold grey eyes on Cade, seeming for a moment to look deep into him. He hissed out the words, spitting them like venom. "The Devil's work!"

  Cade stared for a moment, then nodded slowly.

  "So who did?"

  The Pastor frowned sternly, drawing himself up, the snake-walk quickening in pace. "You should learn to heed my words, sinner man, heed them well, for they come from the Lord, yes indeed, from the very mouth of the Lord on high! Didn't I say it was the Devil? Didn't I say we were fighting those that spread their sin? Did you not believe, oh sinner?"

  Cade figured he'd caused some offence with the question. Hell with it. He knew who the Pastor was getting at. "The hippies."

  The Pastor grinned, and the grin didn't touch his eyes. "The hippies. The godless. Satan's own. They burn and they destroy, yes they do, enact the Devil's commandments and bring the Devil's punishment down onto all that stand in their way. It's the truth I bring you, brother, the truth of the Lord. Do not doubt." He chuckled, a high, snickering sound, like a rat skittering in a ribcage. A ribcage of glass. "I speak the word of the Lord!"

  Cade nodded, but what the Pastor had to say didn't seem right. He'd been down the Haight-Ashbury a couple of times back before the bad times, and while it wasn't the Summer of Love anymore by any stretch, most of the folks he'd seen there were peaceable enough folk, and the man walking next to him definitely wasn't that.

  Still, Cade knew how the bad times could change a body. Wasn't nothing quite like losing everyone you ever knew to make you crazy. He figured he'd reserve judgement until he knew the score a little better, but he was going to need to head east pretty soon and check on Haight-Ashbury for himself.

  Right now he had other problems.

  He heard the sound of the crowd through the front doors before he saw it. Somewhere between a hundred and a hundred and fifty people were choking the street outside - men at the front, the biggest first. At the back, Cade could see the womenfolk, huddled, not looking up. That made some sense, at least. Maybe Cade could be charitable and say that the Pastor didn't want the womenfolk hurt, but he was building a new society for himself that nailed people to crosses for reasons provided for him by a voice in his head claiming to be an Old Testament God of death and pain and damnation. Traditionally there wasn't a big role for womenfolk in a system like that.

  A couple of the women were pregnant, and Cade figured probably more of them were than showed. Breeding the new generation of the saved.

  Cade looked around the crowd, and frowned. There were a hell of a lot of them, and though he wouldn't put it past the Pastor to baptise him into the faith in front of an audience, it was a lot more likely that he'd brought these people around because he figured even Cade couldn't kill a hundred people.

  And Cade couldn't. Not these hundred, anyhow.

  It wasn't just the women. Cade had never killed a woman - though he'd been accused of it - but he wouldn't have a problem if the circumstances came up. It wasn't the numbers, either. Cade didn't have a problem with dying, and he'd take as many of these sons of bitches with him before he went. The ten or so that finally did for him would know they'd been in a fight, that was for sure. Neither of those reasons would have been enough to stop Cade going to work right there.

  It was the children.

  Little faces with big eyes, peeking between the women's skirts. Maybe eight or nine. Ready to hide if things got bloody, but brought out to see something. A show. A lesson, maybe. Their mommas had brought them to see the sinner.

  Cade drew the line at killing kids. As weak spots went, that was one he could about live with.

  Cade looked at the Pastor. He didn't bother saying anything. He was a little curious how the Pastor'd got the word out - maybe one of his guards had passed a signal while Cade had been watching the Pastor froth at the mouth in there - but beyond that things were pretty clear.

  The Pastor smiled back, and stepped into the crowd. Not a word was said as they swallowed him up. Just an eerie silence, like they were all waiting for Cade to speak. He didn't bother.

  "The children of the Lord," came the Pastor's voice from inside the throng. "They who have heard the word, the good word of
the Lord in their ears. You want to join my flock? A sinner? A killer of goodly men? Your sins are black, I tell you black, inside your soul!" The voice rose, an edge of hysteria creeping in. "You call yourself my brother, with your hands steeped in your black and evil sins! If you touch me, you defile me! Your sins are black as pitch! You must be shrieved, oh sinner, you must be purged, your sin must be driven from you..."

  Cade frowned, taking a step forward. The crowd took a step forward too.

  As one.

  "Hell with it." he muttered.

  The Pastor's voice laughed, his bone-rattle laugh. Cade cast his eyes through the crowd and couldn't see a sign of him. It was as though he'd simply melted into the mass of people. "Oh, sinner. Oh, sinner... your sins have found you out!"

  The crowd surged.

  Cade had a couple of choices at this point. He'd left his good chain back at the bar, but his best knife was in his belt and he could get his knuckledusters on quick, maybe pop a chain from his bicep, then wade in. Swing the chain in a wide arc, slash the knife with the other hand, cutting through a swathe of people - the ones he didn't blind with the chain would find their guts hanging on the floor. Then he could advance into the mob, slashing, cutting, keeping a wide circle around him, and then...

  What?

  Cade had fought big groups of folks before, but it'd take a lot of doing to fight a crowd this size. Most likely he'd tire, or leave an opening sometime - with that number it'd only take one. That was when they were going to drag him under. If most of them were dead on the ground, that'd just make the rest more likely to kill him. And even if he killed a good hundred men - and he figured that he probably could, given time and a hell of a good dose of luck - then what? Start on the women?