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

by Peter Meredith

  There was no way to know, he only knew that he was already so ate up with guilt that it made him sick, and if Robert’s undead army kept going, and kept killing at the rate they were and Jack didn’t do everything he could to stop it, his soul would be worthless.

  “I think I have to keep going if I want to save my soul. I haven’t crossed the line yet...I don’t think, and what we’re planning shouldn’t put me over the edge.”

  “What we’re planning?” she demanded with wide eyes. “This is all you. And before you ask, I’ll come and I’ll help you if I can, but I won’t kill anyone.”

  “What about kidnapping someone?” he asked under his breath. “Will you help with that?”

  They needed a car and they needed blood. Jack adjusted the heavy helmet on his head, slung the shotgun and tried to walk through the crowd without arousing suspicion. Cyn followed and people stared openly at the two of them—mostly at their guns; Cyn didn’t have a holster for hers and had to tuck it down the front of her jeans. They also stared at Jack’s sword. It made no sense.

  Some people asked them questions in low, conspiratorial tones: “What’s happening in New York? What’s going on? What’s with the army? Are we under attack? Is it true there are zombies in New York?”

  Jack refused to speak and kept his eyes down until they were outside, where the sun was shining but the air was sharp with an edge of frost. He gazed around at the parking lot, feeling his stomach knot up; what he was planning was odious, immoral and highly illegal.

  A woman thick and dour walked by, glanced at them and then headed for the parking lot. Jack would have taken her, but she had a child with her. A middle-aged man came next. He was dressed in a suit and tie; he seemed in a hurry to be somewhere. Probably important, Jack thought and let him go.

  A young woman came through the doors next. She took one look at Jack and Cyn in their odd ill-fitting gear and walked a wide circle around them. She paused forty feet down the sidewalk to light a cigarette. “What are you waiting for?” Cyn asked. “You’ve ignored everyone who’s walked by and they’ve all been perfect candidates, seeing as they all have blood and she,” Cyn gestured at the smoker, “wouldn’t give us too much trouble if you ask me.”

  “She’s engaged,” Jack said. “She had a ring and, I don’t know, it doesn’t seem right.”

  “You can’t use her to save the world because she’s in love?” Cyn asked, and finally her pert little smirk was back, if only for a second. “You’re not very good at kidnapping, which I suppose is a good thing.”

  Jack wanted to glare at her; however, his stomach was too knotted up and instead he just sort of looked “ill” at her. He thought again about going after the woman and then second guessed himself and ended up letting her go—just as he let the next five people go.

  He would raise his gun, open his mouth, let it hang there open and useless until they were too far away and then he would sag. Cyn couldn’t help but laugh at him and she was still laughing when an older man came up and asked: “You guys don’t look like cops.”

  The man, greying and wrinkled with straying hair and a few days’ worth of stubble on his thin cheeks, was alone and wore no rings. He wasn’t particularly big and his voice had the rasp of a career smoker—he probably couldn’t scream very loud, Jack thought. There couldn’t be a better candidate.

  “No, we’re not,” Jack answered in a high voice. His right hand slipped up the stock of the gun, fumbling for the trigger guard and somehow not finding it. When he did, he stuck his middle finger in it and quickly pulled it out again. He looked as though he was strumming the gun like a guitar.

  Jack thought his nervousness couldn’t be more obvious and yet the man seemed at his ease. He gave Jack a wink, leaned in close and asked: “So, you’re what? CIA? Delta?” He jabbed a thumb at his own chest. “I was a Seal back in the day.”

  “A seal?” Jack asked, at a loss for what the man was talking about. Next to him, Cyn was jerking her head sideways, suggesting by the move that Jack was to stop messing around and get the old guy to the parking lot.

  “Yeah, back in the seventies,” the man said. “Lots of black ops. Lots of covert stuff that I can’t talk about. Assassinations and coups. We done a lot of coups back in the day.” He leaned even closer, whispering: “You don’t want to know all the crap we done, all the illegal stuff we were into.”

  Suddenly, it clicked what the man meant. “Oh, you’re a Navy Seal. Did you hear that, Cyn, he was a Navy Seal?” He gave her a knowing look that was also a warning look, suggesting that they should look elsewhere for their victim. “They are tough guys. No one messes with Navy seals.”

  “I just need to know if the Navy Seal has a car,” she answered. “A lot of them don’t from what I hear.”

  “Where’d you hear that?” the man asked. “Maybe the Seals in England don’t have cars but in America we do. That’s my ride right over there.” He pointed down a line of cars in the front row of the lot, at a silver Honda Civic with a cracked windshield and rust eating up the under carriage. It was parked in the furthest handicapped spot, although the man seemed perfectly capable of walking.

  Cyn gave it a long look. “Does it run proper?”

  “Proper enough,” the man admitted after slipping a suspicious look at Cyn. “Why do you ask? Who are you guys with? You with the government? I know my rights, young lady. I know my American rights.”

  She began walking toward the car, her hand on the butt of the pistol. The old man followed, as did Jack, who asked: “Cyn? What are you doing? He is a Navy Seal. Like I said, you don’t mess with Seals, even ex-Seals.”

  “If you’re going to do this, now’s the time. We can’t stand outside a hospital armed to the teeth or people will get nervous. Remember what you said: there’s no time for niceties.” She stopped in front of the car, looked inside and said: “Tolerable. Ok, Jack, let’s get the show on the road.” The 9MM was now in her hand.

  “What she doing with that gun?” the man asked, stepping back into Jack.

  Jack gave him a nudge forward with the shotgun. “We’re, uh, commandeering your vehicle. You were right, we are with the government and because of...because of what’s happening in the city, we have to take your car. Sorry. It’s the law and uh, here’s my badge. We’re with the police.”

  He held out Richards’ police badge. His hand shook, making the badge rattle. The old man didn’t seem to notice. “I have rights,” he stated, angry but also, uncertain. “You just can’t take my car away. That ain’t right.”

  “We won’t leave you stranded,” Cyn said. “You can come with us. Now, come on. Let’s see those keys.”

  They found out his name was Carl and that he hadn’t ever been a Navy Seal. He hadn’t even been in the Navy. Carl had been a postal worker. “Of course he wasn’t one of your Seals,” Cyn said from the back seat. “You know how many blokes like to tell me they are SAS? I hear it all the time. They go on and on about their ‘secret’ missions. That’s how you know they’re fake. Real secret agents tend to be secretive. Your problem, Jack, is that you’re too gullible.”

  “And your problem is that you’re a pain in the butt,” he replied.

  She snorted at this. “So I’ve been told before.”

  “Uh, can one of you tell me where we’re going?” Carl asked. He sat in the passenger seat with his knees clenched tight together and his head held perfectly still. They were heading west along with a few hundred thousand other cars; they putted along doing about thirty on average.

  Everyone, it seemed, was heading west; the east bound traffic consisted of a steady parade of ambulances, fire trucks, police cruisers and military vehicles; Humvees and green trucks mostly, but there were also a number of boxy infantry carriers and a few tanks. Most of these were being carted on flatbed semis, but a few went roaring by, their treads adding to the pothole woes of the New Jersey road system.

  “We’re going to New Holland,” Jack answered.

  Carl began to splutter:
“But...but wait. New Holland, isn’t that in Pennsylvania? I can’t go to Pennsylvania.”

  “Actually you can,” Cyn told him. “It’s right next door to New Jersey, if I can remember my geography of this bloody complicated country. You’re practically neighbors.”

  The old man muttered under his breath until Jack snapped at him to be quiet. Jack was getting nervous. It was one thing to paint a protection ward on the ground; it was another thing altogether to raise the dead. There was no telling what would happen, especially without Robert’s spell.

  Both Jack and Cyn were operating under the assumption that there had to be a third spell, which Jack guessed was used to control the soul that came back. But that was only a guess. Not knowing made the entire idea of raising the dead very dicey.

  Carl remained quiet right up until they entered Pennsylvania and then he began to mutter again. Jack ignored him until they were nearing New Holland. “We’re going to need to lay low until night,” he said. “I’m sure there will be some complaints if we’re caught digging up a you know what.”

  “But I can go, right?” Carl asked. “You guys can trust me not to say anything. I know you’re not cops, but that’s ok. I never liked cops, so it’s like we’re on the same side.”

  That was pretty much the opposite of what Jack wanted to hear. He pulled the car off the road and down a side street. Finding a secluded and wooded area, he stopped the car and turned to Carl. “We are not on the same side and never think otherwise. In fact, turn around and face the door.” Carl began to shake. The shakes swept right up his body and yet he turned but kept his eyes on Jack so that his head was spun almost all the way around on his shoulders.

  Jack pulled out the cuffs he had taken from Richards. “Just a precaution, Carl,” he said as he locked Carl’s hands behind his back. “Now, I’d like to get some sleep, so no more mumbling or I’ll put you in the trunk. Do you want that?”

  Carl gave a quick head shake. He kept his word and remained silent unless spoken to. The three of them spent a long afternoon in the car. For the most part, they slept, even Carl slept as he had nothing better to do.

  As evening approached, Jack allowed Carl to walk around and stretch. They then went into town, hitting a McDonalds for dinner. They ate while listening to the confusion of news reports—no one seemed to know precisely what was happening. Travel into the city was long ago restricted and now it was New Jersey’s turn. People in city after city were being urged to “relocate” but no one was told where they should go.

  The reports did nothing for Jack’s guilt but they did steady his resolve. He sent Cyn into a hardware store for fine paint brushes, flashlights, a pry bar and two shovels. Then they went to a grocery store for bandages. Carl had big eyes for everything, but nothing more so than the shovels.

  “I’m on your side, remember.”

  “One more word and I’ll gag you, Carl,” Jack warned and meant it. He had a strange antipathy for the old man. He disliked Carl almost to the point of hating him, and for Jack that was something. He wasn’t a person who hated easily or at all. Other than his cousin, Robert and now Carl, Jack couldn’t remember ever hating anyone.

  The strange feeling made him nervous and he had to fight the urge to try to reassure Carl. Carl had to be against him or the blood offering wouldn’t work and they would have to kidnap someone else.

  Full dark was on them soon after, still Jack held them back. He knew the town of New Holland well. By nine the streets would be empty save for a few teenagers, none of whom would be messing around in a graveyard on that cold of a night.

  The moment the clock on the dash flicked over to nine, Jack put the Honda in gear and drove to the town’s only cemetery. He didn’t need the flashlights to find the tombstone he wanted, but when he found it, he couldn’t stop himself and shined the light and read the familiar inscription: Jonathan Dreyden—Beloved Father and Husband. It always gave him a queer sensation seeing his own name carved in the granite headstone.

  Chapter 27

  New Holland, Pennsylvania

  Although they had bought two shovels, only one was used. Jack didn’t trust Carl not to run off if his hands were uncuffed and Cyn had to keep a gun pointed at the old man practically the entire time. The moment they entered the cemetery grounds, Carl became a whiney, jittery mess and when Jack started digging up the remains of his father, Carl broke down in tears.

  Blubbering, he begged them not to kill him.

  “We’re not going to kill you,” Jack hissed into his face, “unless you keep making noise, that is.”

  Cyn, who had been extremely quiet once the sun had set, finally spoke up: “We should gag him. He’s going to make noise. The uh, procedure is uncomfortable, if you know what I mean.”

  Jack knew or he guessed he knew. Carl would have to be sliced open; deep enough to bleed at least a quart of blood and, worse, he would have to have the wound constantly “dabbed” with the brush. It was going to be painful and frightening.

  “Yeah. Gag him.” Carl looked on the verge of a stroke and again, words of assurance sprang to the tip of Jack’s tongue, but he bit them back; they were words that would waste the pain and blood Carl was going to give them.

  Cyn found a shirt in the Honda that she ripped into two pieces; one to ball into his mouth, the other to tie it in place. Carl resisted the gag, until she brought out the 9MM and threatened him.

  Feeling sick, Jack began digging. The first foot of earth was frozen, so that the shovel bit his hands and blisters began to form. After that, the dirt became easier to cut into. “Easier” was a relative term.

  It took almost an hour of digging to uncover the casket.

  When it was uncovered and Cyn shone the light down on it, Jack was so racked by shivers that his knees buckled, but he didn’t allow himself to fall onto the lid. That would have been disrespectful and disgusting, squatting on the bones of his father. He fell against the side of the grave and let the cold earth hold him up until he could get his strength back.

  Then came the arduous chore of getting his father out of the hole. In the movies these little things were never an issue. The camera cut away and voila the casket would be sitting right out where they needed it to be. Reality was far more difficult.

  The casket alone weighed a hundred and fifty pounds, while Jack’s father went into the dirt at over a hundred and eighty. There was no way that Jack could get the expensive, only to be seen once, box out of the ground by himself. Cyn was fashionably slim and relatively weak, while Carl was a shaking blubbering mess.

  Jack’s solution was to use the jumper cables in Carl’s car to drag the casket out and into the night. There was a good deal of noise, but nothing compared to the high screech that occurred when they dragged the box along a sidewalk to the parking lot, which had a smooth enough surface to allow Jack to draw the symbols properly.

  He got out of the car and stood, sweat freezing on his back, listening, certain that he would hear the wail of sirens coming their way. They had been both too loud and too obvious; someone had to have heard them or had seen them dragging the casket, but no one had.

  Deep inside, Jack was disappointed. A part of him had wanted to be caught and now that he hadn’t been, he had no good excuse to abandon the dreadful course he had set himself on.

  A shaky breath left him as Cyn caught his eye. Her mouth opened and then closed and her lips twitched. “I guess it’s time,” she finally said.

  “Yeah.” He turned to Carl, whose eyes were just as big as could be; they bulged in their sockets and he was making a mumbly pleading noise. Jack pulled him forward and then pushed him to his knees next to the casket—the noise continued, grating on Jack’s nerves.

  “Shut up,” Jack snapped, holding up a blade. “Unless you want me to make this harder on you.” When he had pulled the knife, Jack didn’t know, but it was suddenly in his hand and pointed at Carl’s right eye. That eye was brimming with tears. They were the tears of the weak and they made Jack even more angry
and disgusted.

  The knife inched closer to the eye and might have kept going to puncture it had not Cyn put her hand on Jack’s. “What’s wrong with you?” she asked him.

  “I don’t know. I-I don’t feel like myself.”

  “Then let’s not do this. There’s got to be a better way.”

  “Please, tell me one,” he said and was a shocked at how scared and childish he sounded. “We have no idea how to destroy the creatures. Robert may not even know. Hell, for all we know they can’t be destroyed. We need information and trust me, I don’t want to do this anymore than you, but we’re out of choices.”

  She dropped her hand and then her eyes. “I know. I...I just don’t want to see anything happen to you. Without you, I’m pretty much alone.”

  “Then it’ll be your job to keep me alive,” he said, offering a smile. The smile felt good. It felt human and normal. “Ok, Carl, let’s do this.” He pulled up one of Carl’s sleeves, exposing his forearm as the man suddenly bucked in fear. Jack grabbed him by the hair and shoved him back down. “I’m just getting a little blood, Carl. I’m not going to kill you. Now, hold still and I’ll make this quick.”

  Jack intended to slice open Carl’s arm in one quick motion; he botched it. The two times he had cut Cyn, he had been in desperate situations; there in the cemetery he had too much time to think, too much time to worry about the pain he was causing. This caused him to cut too shallow.

  The cut was an inch and a half long and a fraction of an inch deep; Carl acted as though he had just been sawn in half. “Shut the hell up!” Jack seethed, the angry feeling coming back with a vengeance. He pushed Carl onto his belly and then knelt on his back.

  “Careful, Jack,” Cyn warned. “You’re getting weird again.”

  “Maybe if he would just hold still.” It was a pathetic excuse to be hurting Carl unnecessarily. Jack knew it and it made him feel greasy and ugly inside, but he didn’t shift his weight off. What he was doing, stealing the blood of another person and opening a portal into hell itself was evil—why shouldn’t he feel evil while doing it? Why shouldn’t he be evil while doing it?