by The Behrg
“Let’s hope so,” Dugan said.
“Remember, it’s Tepui Beard, on account of this gorgeous specimen.” Rojo stroked his beard.
“It’s only starting here,” Zephyr said. “Who knows where it will end.”
“Or if it will end,” Chupa said. A bright flare of white appeared above his hand.
Dugan lifted his goggles briefly, surprised at how little glow the flame from Chupa’s lighter emitted in this new darkness.
“Good we have these,” the Somalian said, replacing his goggles as he lit a joint.
As they approached the town, the gray landscape appeared alien in nature, Santa Elena covered in a post-apocalyptic gloom. The few blips of light they approached weren’t moving. Animals, men, maybe women, who had already given up.
Had it been the change around them, the suffocating night? Or was it the aftereffects from the earlier light and going blind? Or maybe these were people who had given up long before these dark days were ever summoned.
Dugan wondered at being caught out in this new landscape without their advanced equipment. More than that, he wondered if the very foundations of this world were being broken down, bit by bit, as the Shaman had insinuated. The Glimmers, beings of light, now casting incredible shadows.
Do you really believe all that? That there’s a fabric of Creation?
In days when you could no longer rely upon the sun rising or setting, it was difficult to know what you believed.
They came upon the first of the heat signatures that was clearly human, its form huddled before a low stone wall on the passenger’s side of the vehicle. Most likely a drunk that had gotten lost, whether in the blinding light or abysmal darkness, it didn’t matter.
A window rolled down. Kendall fired only once, the swab of light dropping to the ground.
They couldn’t take any chances.
No words were spoken as they drove deeper into town, each light signature outside quickly eliminated. All but the dogs or other vermin. The distorted features of those men and women they came upon, due to the goggles, made it feel less like murder and more like target practice. Dugan kept a mental note of the locations. If they had a chance he would go back and ask around until he knew their names. If not, it wouldn’t be the first time Man One and Man Two ended up in his notebook.
Oso turned down Main Street, the local grocery store and tavern both deserted. The tires whirred, mud slapping up and coating the sides of the vehicle. Everywhere Dugan looked, the landscape was devoid of color — not a single glow or source of heat or light.
“Through the back,” Dugan said, as they approached the church.
“No one’s gonna put up a fight, Dugan. We can go through the front.”
Zephyr’s words went unchallenged until Rojo finally spoke up. “We break down that door, what’ll they do if the light returns?”
“What’ll they do if it doesn’t?” Zephyr asked.
“We go through the back,” Dugan repeated. “And Zephyr — you stay in the car.”
“Yes, father.” The comment was mumbled in such a low tone it was barely audible. Chupa laughed quietly.
Oso turned down the narrow dirt road before the church. Flashes of light came and went as several loose chickens darted from the road, hiding behind the gutted casing of an old stove in a ditch. Oso killed the engine, three doors opening as the men got out.
Every door but Dugan’s.
“Be quick,” he said.
Just outside the driver’s door, Oso turned back in concern.
Dugan raised a hand. “Go. I’m fine.”
“Freakin’ puppy dog is what we should have called him,” Zephyr said from the rear of the vehicle.
Oso slid one of his blades from a hidden sheath and silently placed it on the driver’s seat, pointing with his lips from Dugan to Zephyr. The message was clear: should you need it, use it.
Rojo led Kendall and Chupa over the wire fence surrounding the property, their boots crunching on the ground. Oso swept past the front of the vehicle to follow.
“Time for another lecture?” Zephyr asked once they were alone.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
“Because I’m injured? Or because you’re afraid you can’t control me?”
“If I thought I could control you, I wouldn’t have hired you.”
Raised voices sounded from the building beside them.
Men at work.
Or men at play.
“My concern,” Dugan continued, “Is whether or not you’ll let me down.”
“When have I ever?”
“You’ve never had … limitations, before.”
“I’m not —”
“Shut up and listen! I can’t have you discovering you’re not up to the task when our lives are on the line. Taking the Shaman won’t be like snatching a priest from a church.”
“You think lying in a bed with wires sprouting out of my arm is going to make me better? I need to feel right now; I need the adrenaline, the rush. To know I’m alive. And I need the Shaman to make me whole again. I won’t live my life like this Dugan — a cripple? He’ll fix me or I swear to god he’ll wish he had. Of everyone here, Doog, I know what’s at stake. And I wouldn’t be here if I weren’t up to the task.”
“I had to make sure,” Dugan said. “You understand. And so you know, we make it out alive — you, me, the Shaman — but without my daughter? I’ll put a bullet through your skull myself.”
“Whatever you say, boss.”
The heavy crunch of footsteps came running toward them, along with the muffled cries of their prize.
“You want him in the back?” Rojo asked.
“Put him up front. Here, he can squeeze in next to me. You won’t be a problem, will you Father Remmy? Or should I say, Romulus?”
The priest kept his head bowed even after Rojo released him, his broken arm hanging in a sling. “No, Dugan. No problem at all.”
Verse XXII.
The scarred land was dotted with the remnants of fallen trees, thin trunks jutting from the earth in a clearing as wide as a lake. Heat signatures low to the ground revealed blind agouti or other rodents searching by smell and touch for their next meal.
Every species on this raised plane is suddenly endangered, Dugan thought. Humans included.
They had driven in relative silence, Remmy speaking only in monosyllabic words when a turn was necessary. Oso drove at a cautious speed. The Jeep managed well across the uneven terrain and brush, though it was by no means a Humvee. Several times they had to backtrack due to dense terrain that their former vehicle would have handled without a hiccup.
“Sure he knows where he’s going?” Kendall asked, from the backseat.
“If I had Alzheimer’s I’d still remember the way back. Trust me. Every step away from that place is ingrained right here.” Remmy pointed to his temple.
“Drug lord turned holy man,” Chupa said. “Some conversion.”
“Not conversion, just a different form of imprisonment.”
“Romulus,” Dugan said with a touch of reverence. “The American drug runner. You were a legend down here. They still tell stories of —”
“Not to be rude,” Remmy said, interrupting, “But I’d prefer not talking about my past.”
“I can’t believe I didn’t see it earlier,” Dugan said. “Father Remmy.”
“How did you find out?”
“Oh, I’m sure it was always in there, floating around in my head. The way you stopped taking our money, the shitty sermons you delivered — opinions of others, mind you. But you never came off as a priest. Too … untrusting. And why would the Vatican send someone to the pit of Venezuela who couldn’t speak Spanish? Though you understand quite a bit, don’t you? How’s your Portuguese?”
“Finos, e seu?”
“Mais de menos,” Dugan answered. “People talk. With enough coercion, they talk a lot. Sometimes they don’t stop talking. We’ve known where you came from, but no one knew why. No one knew who you
really were. I still might not have put it together if not for the legend of the founders of Rome. Remus and Romulus, right?”
“Mythological founders,” Remmy said.
“Suckled by a wolf, if I remember correctly. Didn’t one of the brothers kill the other?”
“Romulus. They fought over where to erect their city, interpreting birds as signs from God. Only each had their own interpretation.”
“Funny how God never makes it clear,” Dugan said.
“You’ve missed the point. It was their pride that destroyed them.”
“In not coming to an agreement?”
“No, in seeking signs.”
“So you chose a new name when you got out?”
“I never got out,” Remmy said, thick with derision. “You don’t escape there. You just graduate to your next level of punishment.”
Rojo interjected, “So what, running a church was your … punishment?”
“Have you ever tried it?” Remmy said.
“How long were you there? In that underground prison?” Dugan asked.
Remmy snorted. “That’s no prison. It’s hell. In all my time there — years, decades — not one person ever left alive.”
“Until you.”
“Until me,” Remmy said, nodding. “Gutierrez wasn’t even around back then, they had another man — El Diablon. The large devil. If you think Gutierrez is bad, you should’ve met this wolf.” He paused, scratching at the back of his head with the arm that wasn’t in a sling. “I swore I’d never come back to this place.”
“Maybe this is the final stage of your redemption. Returning to the place of your rebirth.”
“Men like you and me, Dugan, we don’t get second chances. Not with all we’ve taken.”
“Where’s your faith, Father?” Rojo asked.
On that, Remmy remained silent. Maybe he had no answer.
Oso suddenly slammed on the brakes. Remmy was thrown forward, into the dash. He cried out as he instinctively brought up his broken arm to brace himself, sling and all. Dugan barely had time to keep from a similar end. Behind them, Zephyr groaned in agonizing pain.
“What the hell?” Kendall shouted.
And then Dugan saw it. The edge of the precipice they almost sailed over.
Through the thermal imaging goggles the dead land looked as dark and grey as the sky above them, no line delineating where one ended and the other began.
Falling off this cliff once was enough, Dugan thought.
He opened his door and jumped out. Only by really looking for it could he see the edge of the tepui. That edge was a mere three feet in front of where their vehicle had come to a sloping stop.
“Bring the priest!”
The men crawled out from the vehicle like bugs from a wall cavity, carrying Father Shumway between them.
“To the edge! And grab a flare. Now remove his goggles.”
Rojo ripped the band off from the priest’s head, the motion causing the old man to wince. Chupa must have pulled the flare, a white heat glaring against the dark heavy backdrop. The darkness swarmed against its glow, keeping the light contained, but it was still enough to illuminate the fall before them.
“So you can see. On your way down,” Chupa said, handing the flare to the priest.
Remmy started hyperventilating.
“Did you know?” Dugan asked. “Were you trying to get us killed?”
“How … how would I?” The priest’s head shook in exacerbated denial. “Where did this come from?”
“Not where, when. We’re on an island, Father, which means no one is coming to help. Now how do we get to this secret prison?”
“It must be … da-down … there,” Remmy said.
“This was already here when they took him.”
“Maybe they drove off the cliff?”
Dugan grabbed the priest by his thick robe, thrusting him out and over the edge. Only Remmy’s feet remained on the ground, scraping against the dirt.
“Do you want to find out?”
“No, no! Please!”
Dugan grabbed the man by his shattered arm, leaning him out farther. Remmy’s cries were almost inhuman.
“Think Romulus! The change in light or darkness hadn’t happened when they left with the Shaman last night. They found a way in to that prison and you either know it or you’re useless to me.”
“There … there’s another way, but it’s … agh — dangerous.”
“You can find it?”
“I … I can try.”
Dugan pulled the priest back, the old man breathing in weary gasps. “They’ve taken everything that’s important to me. Everything. I’m the one who’s dangerous, I’m the one you need to fear. Not them.”
He dropped Remmy at the edge, the Priest’s knees striking the hard earth.
“‘Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves. For it is written, vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,’” Remmy quoted.
Dugan backhanded him. Not nearly as hard as he could have, but still Remmy’s whole head spun back with the force of the blow, almost sending him over the edge.
“And here I thought you were just pretending to be a priest,” Dugan said. “When did you lose your way? You were feared. Apotheosized! What happened?”
Remmy squared his shoulders and looked toward Dugan’s voice. The light of the flare shone just beneath his chin. “You think I lost my way doing this?” Remmy pulled at his robes. “I was lost long before they threw these shackles on me! All those years wandering the perimeter of a room the size of your jeep? Imprisoned in a grave that hadn’t yet been filled? Oh, that wasn’t me paying for what I’d done. It was just preparation for the eternity to come. Damnation, Dugan. It’s real. And it stares at me every morning when I wake and haunts me every night in my sleep. No, I was lost the minute I set foot in the América do Sul. The minute I let greed strip me of my humanity! The minute I chose to cover my sins with the foul blanket of rationality.”
He staggered to his feet. “This darkness? It’s all that’s waiting for men like you and me, Dugan. It just found us a little sooner than normal.”
Dugan stared down at the former kingpin, wallowing at the precipice’s edge, and couldn’t help but feel pity for the man. For what he had become. What he had lost.
“I’ll take you to the entrance,” Remmy said, between sniffles. “But finding this witch doctor will do nothing to save your soul.”
“I can see why attendance is so high in your congregation, Father. You’re a beacon of hope.”
The rustle of two small animals sounded from nearby brush, followed by a short lived screech. The rustling stopped. The victor began to eat.
“We should go, Dugan,” Rojo said.
Chupa plucked the flare from Remmy’s hands, hurling it out over the edge. It fell like a comet, illuminating the canyon wall along its descent.
“‘How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning,’” Remmy said.
Dugan clamped his arm around the priest, guiding him back to the vehicle. “Let’s just hope that by tomorrow, morning still exists.”
Verse XXIII.
Kenny was going mad.
One could argue that the noises assailing him were only normal sounds — trees braying, animals chittering, the occasional house groaning and splintering, parts collapsing in a delayed result from the previous day’s earthquake. But in the dark, these noises took on a life of their own.
Claws and talons scratching.
The pangs of innocent animals in the clutches of hideous monsters.
Boulders bringing down houses in explosions of lumber and debris.
At some point along his path, the office chair had lost a wheel. The lead spoke ground straight into the dirt and sent Kenny tumbling over in what amounted to a graceless fall. The side of his face mask had come loose when he hit the ground, confirming what he had feared all along: the light had already reached him. Scorched him.
He was blind.
Even with the sleep mask
and extra layers of duct tape, he had seen a glow behind his eyelids. It hadn’t been painful but it had been persistent, the dull throbbing of a headache that only grows in intensity. When it suddenly cut off as if someone had hit a light switch, Kenny had been too afraid to remove the tape from the sides of his face.
What if the light came back and he wasn’t ready?
What if it never returned?
His fate, he came to realize, was the latter. He had never known just how dark and scary the world could be.
Kenny had attempted to glide the chair forward on the remaining three wheels but gave up when the entire seat he was pushing came free of the base, causing him to go down a second time. Skinned arms and a fat lip weren’t the worst of his injuries. His foot had twisted awkwardly with the second fall, caught in between two rungs of the spinning wheels. Kenny didn’t know the difference between a strain or a sprain, but he knew any pressure he applied shot a sharp spike of pain all the way up through his groin.
Kenny, the hero. Kenny to the rescue.
Kenny, the fool, destined to be forever on the sidelines of life, watching the other players on the field with pitiable envy.
“Please, if anyone’s out there, I need help! Hello?”
His foot throbbed, keeping tempo with his heart.
What did you expect? That you would save the day? Look at you — thirty-eight and still living with your mother; playing your stupid video games and talking big with everyone that you’re some up-and-coming big shot director. Printed business cards online and registered a DBA; is that all it takes to become a producer these days?
“Leave me alone.”
You’re just a pretender. You haven’t accomplished anything real in your life. Even pretending to take care of me all these years when everyone knows I’m the one taking care of you!
“It’s not like that, Mother!”
You’re gonna die out here, in the dark, all alone, and no one will miss you. Not even me.
“Stop it! I’m not a pretender. I’m going to be a credited director. You heard her say it! And Donavon — he knows people. He’s connected!”