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

by Peter Meredith

  The man gave them a sharp look—it turned dismissive when he saw how ill-fitting their outfits were. “That’s restricted access. No one can go up there.”

  “We can,” Cyn said, showing him the 9MM. The other passengers squinched away, suddenly finding the tops of their shoes of great interest. “Why don’t you hit the next floor so everyone can get out.”

  “Maybe not everyone,” Jack said. “What kind of doctor are you?”

  The man in white swallowed loudly and pointed at himself. “Me? I-I I’m not a doctor. I’m a nurse.” Jack lifted his chin to indicate the man’s name tag, which read: Jason Moore, M.D. “Oh, right. Sorry the guns make me nervous.”

  The elevator dinged and when the door opened, the other passengers slid out in a sideways crab-like motion. The doctor looked as though he wanted to edge out with them and Cyn stopped him.

  “You were going to tell us what sort of doctor you were?” she asked.

  “I’m a cardiologist.”

  Cyn looked over at Jack with her trademark smirk set under her teary eyes. “I think there might really be a God, and better yet, he might be on our side.”

  Chapter 25

  Manhattan, New York City

  They pushed out of the elevator, Jack in the back and Dr. Moore in front with Cyn keeping close, the 9MM partially hidden next to her side. With the helicopter’s blades turning, it was surprisingly warm huddled under the downwash of the whipping blades.

  “What’s this?” a paramedic who was nearby, yelled. “We’re filled already. We can’t take any more.” Cyn’s gun came up and Jack fumbled his shotgun from his back. The paramedic shot his hands above his head and began backing away, only to trip on a pile of bodies wrapped in sheets that had been hauled to the side of the helicopter pad.

  “Get up!” Cyn yelled over the noise of the engine which sounded as though it was throttling up.

  Jack raced forward and pointed the shotgun at the windshield until the pilot took his hands off the stick. Once he did, Jack turned to the paramedic. “I need you to make room for us four. No! Don’t shake your head. Clear us some room or I will!” He was altogether bluffing, or so he told himself, and yet he was keyed up and his finger was all over the trigger.

  He remained at the ready until the two people who were on the verge of dying were pulled off. Jack took a look at their wounds—both bore the marks of being scratched by the walking corpses. The flesh around the wounds was black and dribbled grey pus that made his stomach turn upside down.

  As Richards was being loaded, he yelled to the paramedic: “Get these two downstairs right away. Have them see Father Paul. Father Paul, do you hear me?”

  Instead of answering, the paramedic glanced once at Jack’s shotgun, which he had allowed to dip, and it couldn’t have been more obvious that the man was thinking about grabbing it. “Don’t!” Jack screamed and jumped back. “I’m not playing. Get these people downstairs, right now! Go!”

  With his chance gone, the paramedic moved in a stooped cringe as he began hauling away the first of the dying patients.

  “Jack!” He caught his name as if hearing it from a mile away. The rotors were speeding up and the engine was kicking into high gear. He glanced up and saw Cyn yell his name; he couldn’t hear it, but he could read her lips.

  They were ready to go. Jack made sure to keep the shotgun positioned better this time so that no one would get any ideas about trying to take it from him. It wasn’t easy. The helicopter was almost entirely taken up by the stretcher and the mass of medical equipment that was normally a part of the aircraft.

  Jack and Cyn sat at the back of the helicopter, facing across Richards’ body toward Dr. Moore and another of the paramedics. They were both handed helmets and the second Jack had his, on the pilot asked over the built-in headpiece: “So where are you making us go?” His voice was sharp and angry.

  “Huh?” Jack was momentarily at a loss, confused at the sudden voice in the helmet. “Oh, right. You’re our hostages. Where were you going to go?”

  There was a click and a scratch of static and then the pilot answered: “Princeton Surgery Center.”

  “Then go there. Oh, and pilot? I know that you can call people without me hearing, but I really suggest that you don’t. Let us go our way and you go yours so no one gets killed. Got it?”

  Another click and a scratch was followed by: “Roger that.”

  “I don’t believe him,” Cyn said through her mike.

  Neither did Jack and yet, what choice did they have? He didn’t see any other options open to them except to perhaps divert the chopper at the last second to land in some field or park. But what would happen to Richards? “Hey, Dr. Moore, can you hook my friend up to a heart monitor or something? He’s had two of those little nitro pills. The first one seemed to help, but the second didn’t.”

  The bird started to lift just as the doctor climbed out of his seat. He looked unsteady and a little green. “Let me get that,” the paramedic said. “We don’t need you getting sick all over the patient.”

  As the leads were being attached, Jack went on: “It’s very important that you save him, doctor. He knows what’s happening and how all of this started. In fact, if anything happens to him or to us, like if we get shot or something, you’re going to have to talk to the FBI or the police or the army. You need to tell them that the man who started this is Robert Montgomery the Seventh. He’s English.”

  “British, actually,” Cyn said. “Really the family is from Scotland and the original name was Mac Gumaraid. But, I guess that doesn’t matter much now does it? For legal purposes, we’re British.” She seemed pale and soft as talc; the gun in her hand pretty much forgotten as she looked out the window as the hospital seemed to fall away. Jack glanced out as well and saw that she was looking at the three lonely corpses.

  “I never got to say goodbye,” she said in a whisper, probably speaking to herself but accidentally announcing it to everyone. Jack thought she was going to cry again and took her hand in his; she squeezed his hand, hard, and didn’t let go.

  The chopper was loud but empty of conversation as they flew southeast over the Hudson River and New York Harbor. From their height, the world was serene. Jack thought about Cyn’s mother and how he had screwed up. He couldn’t get her wizened face out of his mind and nor could he get past the fact that the demon had made her into one of them.

  That shouldn’t have been possible. None of the others who had been killed by the creatures had returned from the dead—they just died, either by physical trauma or by the dead disease as he thought of it. Those three corpses that had been stacked up by the helicopter pad weren’t going to suddenly spring to “life” at the next full moon. They needed a soul to enter their bodies for that to happen.

  So how did the demon manage it?

  There was no way to know, at least not without capturing it and torturing it for information. Then, at least Cyn could say goodbye to her mother, he thought. This little empathetic reflection on his part suddenly triggered a much greater thought.

  Jack suddenly knew where he needed to go next.

  He opened his mouth but then he saw that Dr. Moore had been checking on Richards; he looked especially grave when he scanned Richards’ EKG readout. “Is he going to live?” Jack asked.

  “Maybe,” the doctor answered. He pulled off his helmet and stuck his stethoscope in his ears and started to listen to Richards’ chest. As he did, his lips were fine lines of worry.

  A voice suddenly spoke into his ear: “You know how this started?”

  Jack jumped and looked around, trying to see who was speaking to him. It was the paramedic. “Yeah, I do, but you won’t believe me, not until it’s too late, not until one of them is crawling up into your helicopter.”

  “You don’t know what I believe,” the paramedic answered, his blue eyes going flinty. “Our radios get all sorts of signals from all sorts of places. We know something is happening out in Queens and Brooklyn. They say it’s a terrorist at
tack, but none of us think it is. All of these patients are practically crazy and the necrotizing fasciitis isn’t natural. Ronald, the other paramedic, thinks that it’s an alien disease that’s taking over people’s minds.”

  “It is and it isn’t,” Cyn said. “It’s actually...” she paused and laughed. It wasn’t a normal chuckle by any stretch; the laugh was the sound of a woman who was tight-roping along the edge of insanity and knew it. “It’s the undead,” she finished.

  The blue eyes were no longer flinty, they were crinkled with laugh lines. “Zombies? Ok, lady, sure.”

  Cyn was suddenly furious. She pulled out her phone and showed the paramedic some of the pictures she had taken at the Museum of Modern Art. “Look at what happened to that guard. The guy who did this cut that man open and used his body as an inkwell. Do you see the glyphs in his blood? Those are a proto-hieroglyph, Sumerian cuneiform mixture that indeed raised the dead. Do you see the sarcophagus? The empty sarcophagus? You see what I’m getting at here?”

  The paramedic blinked at what he was seeing and then nodded slowly.

  She went on: “Those same glyphs and another body just like this one, can be found on the third floor of the Brooklyn Museum in an exhibition called the Mummy Chamber. More of those same glyphs can be found at a home in Lindenhurst along with two dead police officers. So go ahead and laugh at the idea, but like Jack said, you’ll only believe when it’s too late for you.”

  The helicopter was quiet for a good, long time. They rocked back and forth as the chopper hit odd pockets of air and they were well over New Jersey before the pilot came on: “Part of their story checks out,” he said and was no longer angry sounding. “I radioed a friend in the NYPD Aviation Unit and it took him a few minutes but there are...I guess it’s now there were active investigations going on at those museums and in Lindenhurst.”

  “Well, I guess it’s good that someone believes us,” Jack remarked to Cyn. She gave him a smile; it was a tired smile and full of worry, but it was genuine.

  “I didn’t say I believed you,” the pilot said. “Nor did I say I trusted you. There is an arrest warrant out for two people who match your descriptions.”

  Cyn’s smile disappeared. “An arrest warrant? For what?”

  “Murder and kidnapping,” the pilot answered.

  Jack thought that he would go on but there was only the lulling drone of the engines in his ear pieces. “Well they got the kidnapping part, correct,” Jack said. “You guys are exhibit A, but the truth is we didn’t kill anyone.”

  “Maybe,” the pilot said. “That’s not really up to me, though your story doesn’t sound so good with you guys carting around that fella. You say his name is Richards? That’s who you are supposed to have kidnapped.”

  “That’s preposterous,” Cyn said. “He is the one who detained us, and later, he came of his own free will. He’s probably regretting it now.”

  Again the chopper was quiet as Jack and Cyn stared down at Richards. A few minutes later the doctor said: “I think I believe them. This guy, Richards hasn’t been handcuffed or anything. He’s not been hurt or knocked out. He even has a gun in an ankle holster. If he was kidnapped, why didn’t he use it?”

  Cyn shared a look with Jack and then lifted up the 9MM. “Maybe I should have the gun, what do you say? I don’t want anyone getting twitchy.”

  “Sure, I don’t want it,” the doctor said.

  “I just know what they tell me,” the pilot remarked as Cyn took a very small black pistol from Richards’ hidden holster. “And I believe my own eyes. When someone points a gun at an air-ambulance and pulls dying patients off it, I don’t need the police to tell me they’re the bad guys.”

  Cyn opened her mouth to retort, but shut it again. It was hard to argue with those sorts of facts. Jack saw it differently. “We probably saved their lives,” he said, not adding: For the moment. He didn’t think the two dying patients would live once the wave of creatures engulfed the hospital. “Call the hospital or radio them, I mean. Find out what’s happening down in the Emergency Room. They’re going to say something about a miracle I’m betting. A friend of ours, a priest, stayed behind.”

  Again a pause and then the pilot came on. “This...this is crazy. He’s not lying. They said that there’s a priest curing people left and right.”

  “Holy crap,” the paramedic said. His face was slack and his eyes kept wandering back and forth between Jack and Cyn as if looking for something miraculous about them as well. Abruptly the look changed to suspicion. “If this priest could heal people, why didn’t he heal your friend?”

  Jack shrugged. “My guess is because Richards’ heart attack was natural. Yes, it was caused by the madness given off by the undead, but it was his own heart that gave out. Those people at the hospital are dying from something evil. It’s some sort of magical poison and it’s horrible, but thankfully a priest can cure it.”

  “This is crazy,” the paramedic said a second time.

  “Yeah,” Jack agreed.

  No one spoke until the hospital was in sight and the copter was settling down on the pad on its roof. There was crackle of the pilot’s mike: “I didn’t say anything,” he admitted. “No one will bother you if you leave, but...but, I have to ask: what are you going to do? You know, about all of this? You know things. You know who did it and why. You should tell somebody, like the FBI or the army, like you wanted us to do.”

  “I’d like to,” Jack said, “but we’re wanted criminals. They’re more likely going to believe someone like you or Dr. Moore.”

  “You want me to go to the FBI?” the pilot asked as if the idea was ludicrous.

  Jack began nodding, but then remembered that the pilot was up front and couldn’t see him. “Yes, I do. You have a way to fly over the creatures and get pictures, and you can go back to the hospital and video the priest curing people, and you can tell them my story.”

  The paramedic raised a hand. “Hey, why don’t you come with us and tell your own story? With us as your, you know, your witnesses, they probably won’t arrest you.”

  “I can’t take that chance,” Jack said. “There’s something more important I have to do.” Cyn gave him a curious look and mouthed the words: Like what? Jack pulled off his helmet and when she did as well he spoke into her ear: “I have to raise the dead.”

  Chapter 26

  Princeton, New Jersey

  “You can’t,” Cyn hissed as they skipped the elevator ride with Richards and Dr. Moore and headed for the stairs.

  She had kissed Richards’ cool cheek; Jack had squeezed his hand and whispered “Goodbye,” and had missed the man the moment they stepped away. Richards had been steadfast, strong and levelheaded—he probably would have talked Jack out of his crazy idea.

  “I can, and I don’t really have any choice. We need information that only the dead can provide.”

  Jack began to speed down the stairs, knowing exactly what Cyn was going to say next. He was almost running, his boots clocking on each step, sending an odd echo bouncing along the cement walls. “And where do you think you’re going to get the blood?” she demanded, exactly echoing his very thoughts. “You can’t take it from me, because that could be construed as a gift.”

  He wanted to say: I don’t know; only he did know. He was going to get the blood from the same place he was going to get the car that they needed to get them further west.

  She knew it as well and repeated: “You can’t, Jack. I know you think you’re being all noble, but you’re not. You’re being a bloody git. The road to hell, Jack is not going to be paved in good intentions; it’s going to be paved in the blood you steal...and the lives. This won’t end with you taking a little blood from someone. You’re going...”

  He rounded on her, coming up short so that they almost crashed into each other. “I won’t go that far, Cyn. No one is going to die, ok? Trust me on this.”

  “I don’t trust you, Jack. You’ve taken blood twice now, both times from me. And I have to say it wasn
’t good. You may not want to hear this, but it felt awful. Maybe not to you, but for me it was horrible and disgusting, and...and draining a might bit. It made me feel sick when I was drawing those symbols.”

  “I’m sorry, I really am, but if you know a different way for us to find out what’s going on, I’m all ears. There could be millions of people dying out there right now and that’s partly my fault, Cyn. And it’s partly yours.”

  She shoved him away and then pushed past, heading down the stairs at an even faster clip than he had been going. Over her shoulder, she hissed: “You don’t need to remind me that I screwed up.” They were at the bottom floor and standing in a busy corridor before Jack could apologize; she didn’t listen when he did. She only pointed at the early morning crowd: the old, the sick, the hospital personnel going about their business.

  “Who’s it going to be? Who’s your victim?” She was being loud and a number of people glanced over at them.

  Jack glared. “Maybe you should go.”

  Cyn looked all ready to storm off, but then deflated and Jack knew why. Where could she go? To whom could she turn? She was wanted by the police. Her mother was either dead or in a state worse than death and her only relatives were sadistic killers, or Jack, and she seemed afraid of Jack.

  “I mean it,” Jack told her. “I don’t want to be harsh, but there’s no time for niceties or hurt feelings or...or worrying about some spilt blood. So far we’ve gotten by with just taking blood. There’s no saying in any of this that someone has to die.”

  “And what about your soul? I never was big on religion but after Father Paul and what he was able to do, I don’t know anymore.”

  He was right there with her in the land of spiritual confusion. He’d been so gung-ho about God at first, but then it seemed he had proven disappointingly weak. God wasn’t the all-powerful badass that he had expected him to be and what did that mean for his soul? Was it up for grabs when he died? Was he destroying it by taking the blood of innocents?