The Edge of Hell: Gods of the Undead A Post-Apocalyptic Epic

by Peter Meredith

  He had been angry at the loss of both of his parents and, in petulant irony, he had blamed the very God he claimed not to believe in.

  That was then. Lying in the hospital with what could only be true evil spreading through his veins was an entirely different story. The evil in him was pure and raw, and for the first time he was physically aware of his soul. It made the idea of being an atheist foolish.

  Which gave him an idea.

  He motioned to Cyn, pantomiming writing on his hand. “A pen? Sure,” she answered. She never got him a pen. Within two seconds of searching for one, she was caught out of bed and forcefully relocated back to her gurney.

  Growing desperate, Jack thumbed the button that called a nurse. The nurse was a new one to Jack: she had a wide, pleasant face over a thick frame. “What do you need, hun?” she asked, sounding so much more like a waitress than a nurse. “Do you need something for the pain?” Jack answered by sketching out a quick and slightly inaccurate sign of the cross. “You want to talk to a priest?” the nurse asked.

  Jack nodded with enthusiasm, although in truth he didn’t care what sort of clergyman they had available. Right then he would’ve tried his luck with any sort of minister or rabbi, or hell, even a Jehovah’s Witness would have sufficed. He was far too desperate to be picky.

  Chapter 14

  Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York

  It was after eleven and the town of Lindenhurst wasn’t exactly a hotpot for excitement, especially not priestly excitement. Still, it was a Catholic hospital and, somewhat like a doctor, there was always a priest on call. Generally...really exclusively, when a priest received a call after dark, he came prepared to administer Last Rites.

  Jack had no idea what these rites entailed. In fact, he knew far more about the dead religions of ancient Egypt than he did about the any modern day theism, but he was more than willing to give Christianity a shot if it would save his soul. He knew that wasn’t much of a foundation for belief, but he didn’t need or want “faith.”

  He needed facts; hard, very true and very real facts.

  Hell had proven itself to be real, now his life depended on heaven stepping up and coming through for him. He was ready to believe—really, he was halfway there already; however, if the priest came with only a bunch of empty promises of happy sky-fairies ruling the clouds, but only in some sort of mythical afterlife, Jack knew he was screwed.

  The priest, a portly middle-aged man with the dark complexion and sing-song accent of someone from India, took thirty-four agonizing minutes to get to the hospital. Jack was in the ICU at that point. His respirations were down to six a minute and his heart was beginning to shudder and misfire like an old, rusted-out Ford Pinto.

  He fought to stay conscious, afraid that if he drifted into the yawning black chasm of his mind, he’d never come back again, regardless of what sort of magic the priest had at his beck and call.

  And yes, despite his scientific upbringing, or perhaps because of it, he was hoping and praying for the priest to bring some good old fashioned white magic to the table. Jack even envisioned a light show, complete with golden auras and cherubs playing long, brass-beaked trumpets and celestial choirs, ringing through the halls of the hospital and the priest casting out the evil invading his body with a voice like thunder.

  Instead he got Father Paul, whose only nod to the miraculous side of things was in his eyes—he had deep brown eyes and they were utterly compassionate and gentle. Other than that he was a small, soft man with jowls folding over his unyielding priestly collar, and he had a quiet, cheerless way of talking as if he was expecting only sadness and death.

  All in all, he was a bit of a disappointment to Jack, who had been hoping for more of a fire and brimstone sort of priest. Perhaps a half-drunk Irishman would’ve been better, Jack thought, unkindly.

  “I am Father Paul Nalikar. Do I have your permission to administer Last Rites?”

  If Jack could have screamed in frustration and pain, he would have. He knew very little about religion, but he had seen enough movies to know that there was no coming back once a priest laid some of those old fashioned Last Rites on you. Once they broke out the rosary beads everyone knew that it was time to roll credits. It meant that Jack was done for, and everyone, including God knew it.

  Reluctantly, he nodded. His body was dying, but there was still his soul to worry about. He could feel it slowly being eaten even before his body had breathed its last.

  Father Paul wasted no time. Speaking rapidly as though he was afraid Jack would expire before he could finish, he machine-gunned the words out: “God the Father of mercies, through the death and resurrection of his Son, has reconciled the world to himself and sent the Holy Spirit among us for the forgiveness of sins; through the ministry of the Church may God give you pardon and peace, and I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

  The priest crossed himself and kissed a purple stole that lay across his shoulders. He began speaking again and his lilting, accented voice was a drone that lulled Jack into a stupor. He heard something about saints, “the Blessed Virgin Mary,” and the salvation of his eternal soul—and then he was gone; not unconscious and not dead. He simply fell asleep. The pain radiating from his chest had become loose and somewhat disconnected and the fear that had gripped him lost its hold and the exhaustion of his mind and body became too great and out he went.

  He was zonked for two straight hours and only another, painfully realistic dream woke him: He found himself in the deepest dark of his life. It was like being in the blackest storm cloud and yet his feet were on the ground. He stood in finely trimmed grass—manicured, he thought. Within the rolling blackness, there were chiseled stones as though he was in a rock garden. He wanted…no, he needed to look around, but his eyes fell on Robert Montgomery. His cousin was kneeling in front of another man who was cold and naked, spread eagle just like the guard back at the museum. Robert, with the delicate touch of a surgeon, was sacrificing another victim.

  Jack knew the man.

  “Dr. Loret,” Jack said in a gravely whisper, as he came awake. Immediately, he grabbed his throat. It was mighty sore, as if he’d just had his tonsils removed by someone using a rusty pair of kitchen scissors. When he swallowed, it was a bit like swallowing hot sand.

  There was a woman sitting by his bedside in what Jack took at first to be blue pajamas. It was a moment before he realized that they were hospital scrubs and it was another second before he recognized where he was.

  “You’re awake,” she stated and then left the room, making sure that she didn’t break eye contact with him until she was out the door.

  “Yeah, I am,” he said to himself. He was completely puzzled and at the same time completely relieved…well almost completely. There was a heavy sense of dread gripping his heart. Robert was not done with whatever crazy scheme he was up to. It meant more danger and more death and it meant that Jack’s soul wasn’t necessarily as saved as he wished it could be.

  The anxiety grew to become so all-consuming that he couldn’t just lie there doing nothing. He needed to get out of the bed and find out what had happened to Cyn and Richards. He had to find his clothes and his boots and his sword, but he still had an IV in his arm, nine EKG leads attached to various parts of his body and a tube sticking out of the end of his penis. When he pulled back the covers and saw this last tube, he whispered: “Whoa,” wondering how the tube got there and if it was going to hurt coming out.

  Likely so, he figured. He might have been rested and, somehow alive, but he was still in pain. His throat—very much so, his penis—moderately so, though most of that might have been all in his head, and his chest—a throbbing ache that was a thousand times better than it had been not long before.

  He was still staring at the tube coming out of his penis when the door to his room came open and Father Paul came in followed by Cyn and a doctor that wasn’t familiar until he smiled, and then Jack remembered the crinkling e
yes of the ER doctor. Jack dropped the sheet down, quickly, with an odd sensation of guilt as if he had done something wrong by noticing the tube.

  “Hi there,” the doctor said. He had the looks of an actor, and the easy bedside manner he affected was so warm that it felt rehearsed. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Jack’s paranoia began its familiar warning rumble. “I’m Dr. Rayman. You gave us quite a scare last night. You went downhill so quickly that we were afraid that we were going to lose you.”

  As he spoke, he pulled the sheet down and glanced under the bandage on Jack’s chest. It was a quick peek, like a man checking his hole cards in a game of Texas Hold’em. “Hmm,” he said. “Healing nicely. It’s almost as if you hadn’t been on death’s door not so long ago. Your case is very intriguing, sort of like a puzzle that’s missing some pieces.”

  He gave Jack an open, interested look as though he thought it would be polite for Jack to fill in some of those missing puzzle pieces. Before Jack could begin to think of something to say, Cyn shook her head the tiniest bit; warning him to remain quiet. She stood close to the priest, practically touching him. It was clear to Jack that she had been healed as well; she was back to her “old” self: utterly beautiful, composed, and, as always, there was a secret brewing behind her eyes.

  When Jack failed to voluntarily give up the answers the doctor was looking for, he became more direct: “So, would you care to explain how you were injured?”

  “No, I-I don’t know if I can,” Jack said, fumbling once again with the beginnings of a lie. It didn’t help that there was a priest three feet from him, a priest with either magical powers or a direct link to God. Either way it didn’t seem like a smart idea to start lying with him in hearing distance.

  “Like I told you earlier, Dr. Rayman,” Cyn said, before Jack could say anything too stupid. “There’s an ongoing investigation into all of this. You’ll need to speak to Detective Richards if you want answers because we’re not at liberty to speak openly. I have his number if you need it.”

  The doctor grimaced as though pained by the answer. “You want to know something ugly?” The word ugly had been unexpected and Cyn and Jack shared a nervous look. “People lie to me every single day. No, I wasn’t drinking when I ran into the back of that parked garbage truck. No, my husband never touched me, I fell down the stairs. Sorry, Doc, I don’t know how that wine bottle got wedged up my butt. I must have slipped and fallen on it. People come in here every single day and lie their heads off, mainly because they’re embarrassed. I can tell that you two are definitely lying, but not because you’re embarrassed and that’s what worries me. You’re lying because you’re in deep trouble. Yes, I’ve seen those lies, too…only I’ve never seen them when a cop’s involved. That makes me nervous.”

  Cyn shrugged, but it was a lie as well, and not a very good one. “Well, it…it shouldn’t make you nervous. Detective Richards is not actually involved, per say. He is heading up a criminal investigation and he has the situation well in hand.”

  “Really?” Dr. Rayman asked. “And the two bodies that are being brought in to the morgue, is that part of the situation that he has so well in hand? We don’t get murdered cops in Lindenhurst every day.”

  This almost derailed Cyn, who could only repeat: “Like I said, we’re not at liberty to discuss the case.”

  “And we really need to be going,” Jack said, catching Cyn’s eye. The dream was still fresh in his mind and with it was an echo of fear running along his nerves. “There are things we have to attend to,” he went on, “so, if I can get these tubes out, I’d really like to get going.”

  Rayman’s face turned stony. “You two don’t seem to understand my situation. If you were smuggling dope or were two-bit hoodlums who had robbed a 7-11, I wouldn’t care what you were you up to. In fact, I’d want you out of here as soon as I could honestly release you, but that’s not what’s happening, is it?”

  Again, Jack glanced to Cyn, who was thin-lipped; the calculations behind her eyes were so obvious that Rayman gave her a tired look and said: “Just don’t. Before you come up with some stupid lie, let me tell you that I can detain you if I wish. I can put both of you on an infectious disease hold for three days. Those wounds you came in with had all the hallmarks of necrotizing fasciitis. That’s a flesh-eating bacterium that will eat you from the inside out and only a three-week long regimen of some heavy-duty antibiotics has any chance of stopping it, and that’s under the best of circumstances.”

  A third time, Jack shifted his eyes toward his cousin, hoping that she’d be able to come up with something to counter the doctor. Her cheek started to quiver and her mouth started to work as though it was on the verge of speech, but nothing came out.

  “Really?” Dr. Rayman asked in amazement. “I tell you that an almost incurable flesh-eating disease is ravaging you and neither of you is willing to talk? You’re leaving me no choice here. I can’t take the risk of spreading whatever pathogen it was that you were carrying.”

  Father Paul put up a brown hand; it was as soft and gentle appearing as the rest of him. “Maybe they’ll talk to me. Would you allow that?”

  The doctor shifted his eyes towards Jack’s monitor, which beeped softly every few seconds; the numbers were all within the proper parameters. He shrugged and said: “Sure, Father. I’m not trying to be the bad guy here, I’m just trying to keep the public safe and what I saw tonight...well I guess I don’t really know what I saw, and that scares me.”

  When the doctor left, Father Paul gave them a very white-toothed smile; he then began to beam and seemed almost giddy. “He trusts me,” he said about Dr. Rayman. “But I don’t think he trusts God, which is a shame, especially after what occurred here tonight. It was a miracle! I really believe that. I walked into your room, Mister Jack, expecting to go through the regular routine of catering to the dying or the dead. I don’t mean to be blasé about Last Rites, but I am only the intermediary between the Lord and the person lying in the bed. It can be disheartening at times to be called on like this night after night. But tonight...”

  He laughed, a quick happy sound and his teeth flashed again, brighter now that he was speaking of the miracle.

  “You were basically dead, Mister Jack. That is a fact that cannot be denied. I come to this hospital five, six times a week and sometimes two or three times a night, so I know what it means when the alarms are turned off on the monitor and there is nothing but the blinking lights and all the numbers are gradually winding down to zero. It means you are almost dead.”

  The huge grin splitting his face while he was saying this was rather jolting to Jack, who felt the need to answer it back with one of his own. He was too anxious to do a smile proper justice and it stayed on his lips for only a brief flash. Father Paul didn’t notice, he had begun pacing in his excitement, his hands held up near his face as though suspended by invisible wires.

  “I began the rites with the imparting of absolution,” Father Paul went on, staring at the stark, white wall. “At first you just laid there and then, so quickly, your heart rate began to climb! I saw it with my own eyes. It started at around thirty and then just climbed and climbed. The more I spoke the further it went up...and your respirations did as well, and then when I anointed you with the sacramental oil...oh! You jerked and there was a strong smell. It was like the smell from a cesspool or a mass grave. It was there and so strong that my eyes watered, but then it was gone and I smelled honey and olives and the air was clean. And that was when you groaned, Mister Jack and raised your hand.”

  “I did?”

  “Of course you did,” the priest said, his grin was now so wide his laugh-lines bent to touch both ears. “You raised your hand to God! It was miraculous. It was a real miracle, one that I long wished for. That is a weakness and a sin, I know, but I’ve so longed to feel the hand of God and to feel his presence and his power.”

  Despite the impending doom hanging over his head, Jack smiled as well. Father Paul’s obvious joy was infectious and Ja
ck stuck out his hand. “I’m so sorry; I haven’t even thanked you for saving my life. If it wasn’t for you, I’d...”

  “No, do not thank me, you should thank God!” Father Paul cried. “It was His intercession that saved you. I did nothing. I was only the conduit. I was the servant. One does not thank the servant, one thanks the master.”

  Father Paul waited, eyeing Jack with expectation until Jack said: “Thank you, God.” It was a clumsy attempt at gratitude mainly because the room felt empty as though God had already moved on, if he had even been there at all. Jack had slept through his miracle healing and already the suspicious, paranoid doubter in his mind was back.

  It might have been the antibiotics that Dr. Rayman had you on, an inner voice remarked. Jack glanced up at the IV running into the crook of his arm, and saw that piggybacked to a bag of normal saline, was an antibiotic with a name fourteen letters long that he wasn’t going to begin trying to pronounce. He only knew it was an antibiotic because the word: Antibiotic was written under the fourteen-letter word.

  Jack ignored the voice in his head, but he couldn’t ignore the sudden fear that suddenly swept him. It was a huge feeling; it was a tidal wave of terror. It gripped him around the heart and squeezed, making his monitor ring out in a long strident tone.

  It went on and on until Dr. Rayman rushed in. “What the hell?” he cried as he fell straight over Cyn, who had fainted dead away.

  The word hell caught in Jack’s mind. Robert has done it again, he thought. That was the only explanation he could think of to both his and Cyn’s simultaneous reaction. Robert was using the spells once more, and something very big was demanding to come through, something monstrous.

  Chapter 15

  Calvary Cemetery, Queens, New York

  Jack’s heart was a bounding mess. He sat in the back seat of Richards’ Ford Taurus with one hand on his chest, feeling the organ inside skitter and throb. Sitting next to him, her face just as white as a snow bank, was Cyn. She alternated between staring out the window at the passing city and staring at Jack.