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

by Peter Meredith

  “Well, now we fix that cut of yours,” Jack told her. He had a tiny vial of Holy Oil. It smelled like a cross between cedar and roses. They both drank in the scent and then smiled at each other. He touched her wounds with the oil and she sagged into him, limp with relief from the pain. He didn’t let go.

  “So you couldn’t kill me,” she said wearing her trademark smirk. “What’s that about?” He shrugged and felt his ears begin to go red. “I couldn’t kill you either,” she added. “I thought about it, you know. The spells have been calling to me all day; promising things. It was scary. It’s like there’s something out there demanding that we cast these spells.”

  For a time, Jack was silent, thinking. Eventually, he answered: “I agree. Something does want us to unleash hell on earth and who or whatever it is, is trying to make it easy. My first thought when I saw the spells was that they just seemed so simple. You would think that the ritual to open a gate into hell would be more intricate, that it would take much more time and effort, that it would take much more power than one sacrificed life.”

  “Well, it also took a working knowledge of a dead language that no one has been able to read for the last five-thousand years.” She grinned at this and he grinned back, but slowly, his smile faded. They were trapped. It was hard to get beyond that.

  He looked around; most of the flares were under tons of debris and the one closest was dying; the darkness was gradually folding in on them. “I think it’s time we start praying.”

  She smiled. “You are all on board believing in God, then?”

  “After everything that’s happened, how could I not be? I completely believe in him. It’s not even a matter of faith. I’m just afraid of what he thinks of me after everything I’ve done.”

  “What was the last thing that Pastor John said before he died? God loves you. I believe it. Look how his followers sacrificed themselves for you, over and over. And, if you ask me there is a reason you couldn’t kill me. I think you love me. And love is greater than any evil.”

  “Light drives away darkness,” he said, feeling as though an even greater idea was just outside of his reach.

  There was a new rumble, not far away. The fiend was out there in the dark, doing only God knew what. “So...do you even know how to pray?” she asked. “Father Paul and Pastor John both knew scripture. I don’t know any.”

  “Neither do I,” Jack said. “I guess you just ask God for stuff and promise to be good?” She shrugged and so they both assumed what they hoped were subservient positions: heads bowed, hands clasped. “I’m praying that he sends angels,” Jack said. “That’s something I’d like to see. A big battle royale.” They were both silent for a minute, praying and then Jack looked up—the dark was unchanged. The heavens hadn’t opened and a host of angels hadn’t come bursting forth with shining brass swords and white feathered wings.

  “I don’t think it’s working,” Cyn said. “Maybe we’re doing it wrong. Or...or maybe there is something to all that sacrificing. Jesus died for our sins. Maybe we have to sacrifice, or give something up?”

  The strange near-idea was back. So close to the surface. Jack squeezed her hand. “I’d give up my life for you. If that’s what it takes to get you out of here safe and sound...and I want to defeat Robert, of course,” he added quickly, looking up.

  “And I’d give my life for you,” she said in a whisper.

  He suddenly felt ridiculously happy, even though he had no right to feel happy—he was surrounded by death and blood and outrageous evil, and yet there was a bubbly feeling in his chest. He’d been alone for so long that he couldn’t even put a name to the feeling.

  Around a smile, he said: “Let’s hope God doesn’t answer both of our prayers. We can’t both die for the other. What good would that do us?” She smiled, her teeth bare glints in the dark. He smiled back and could only hope that she saw. “No,” he said, going on, “we both can’t die for each other and since I thought of it first, I will die for you.” A gift freely given is greater than any that is stolen—was that the idea that had been just skimming the horizon of his mind. And if so, what did it mean?

  Her smirk twerked in confusion. “What? What do you mean? You’re not thinking of going out there, are you? Because that’s not dying for me, that’s just dying. That’s suicide.”

  “No, I’m not going out there,” he whispered, suddenly catching on. “The spell. I’m going to do the spell. It’ll be different this time, I hope,” he said, thinking on the fly and letting his mind and his tongue run: “It has to be different. Before, I envisioned my own army of undead. I envisioned myself ruling the world—for everyone’s own good, of course. That’s how I justified myself, but it was all a lie. Evil to beget evil. But I think there may be a better way. A life to save lives!”

  Cyn held up a hand. “You can’t save lives if you’re dead.”

  He ignored her. It felt as though his mind was running down a steep slope, going faster and faster. “Do you remember what Dr. Loret said?”

  He didn’t wait for her to answer: “He said that no one goes back to hell willingly. They have to be forced. And he also said that he was going to go find Robert and drag him down to hell. What if that’s a real thing? I get the feeling that it is.”

  “Maybe it is, but you can’t raise an undead army using your own life. It won’t work, Jack. You can’t sacrifice your own self. The blood has to be taken, remember? The life has to be stolen. All you’re going to do is make a bloody big mess.”

  What if she was wrong? What if there really was great power in self-sacrifice? The spell read: Take this sacrifice... But what if he changed it to: Take my sacrifice...? The only question was: did he have to die to open the portal? So far they had been working under the concept that a life had to be taken, but nowhere was the word “life” found in the spell.

  It was a soul that was the ultimate sacrifice, the ultimate power. When he had done the simpler protective spells, he had felt something drain from him—that had been his soul’s power being drained. It had been an ugly feeling and yet he had recovered. So the question was: What if he could open the portal and still live?

  There was no way to know.

  “And only one way to find out,” he said, talking to himself again. “And if this works I can atone for what I’ve done and save her at the same time.” He wasn’t quiet enough and Cyn opened her mouth to sputter out an argument, but Jack threw caution to the wind and ran the blessed sword across his left arm, drawing blood. “Scootch back, I need all the room I can get.”

  He began to draw the first symbol—the arch—linking this spell with the others he had drawn and there was an immediate surge within him, a running of power through his innards, racing along his bones and out through his hands and down the brush. It felt electric. “Huh,” he said, his mouth hanging open as he looked down at his palms.

  “Huh, what?” she asked. “What’s happening?”

  Jack didn’t answer her—her words had zipped right past his ears. He stabbed the brush into his wound a second time and went on, feeling the power in the brush grow with each symbol he drew.

  “Strange,” he whispered. It was indeed a bizarre feeling, and, after the first thrumming of power, not a good one. He began to feel weak and thin, sort of drawn out like a watery soup. After a breath, he started again.

  “Stop,” Cyn said, taking his hand.

  He pulled it back. “No. It’s working. I need light.” He had a last flare stuck down in his armored vest but the buckles were too difficult for his trembling hands to undo.

  “Whatever you’re doing, is not working,” she insisted. “I don’t feel anything. And you’re doing it wrong. It’s all wrong. I have to take the blood from you. And I don’t think I can. I can’t kill you like that. I don’t think I could even cut you.”

  “Light, please,” he whispered, moving onto the next glyph, his hands shaking and beginning to slip into claws. Pain was coming along with the electric surge of power. He was doing too much t
oo early. This was not an entry level spell. “There’s a flare in m-my v-vest. And m-maybe you won’t have to do anything.”

  Finally, she got close and peered in at his face. “What’s wrong? Why are you sweating?”

  “I’m sweating?” He touched his forehead and felt the fever cooking in him. “It’s the spell. It’s strong.”

  Cyn backed to the edge of the circle she had drawn, her back to the wall of darkness. “Can you control it? Jack, please. I’d rather starve to death then have you turn into a monster like our cousin.”

  “This is different,” he said, swallowing loudly and then forcing himself back to the task of drawing the portal spell. The glyphs were getting blurry as sweat began dripping into his eyes. “This isn’t the same power. It’s not evil and...and it’s not Godly, excatly. It’s coming from me. I’m using something inside and it doesn’t feel good at all. I can stop, but th-then w-where would we be? So please, get me the l-light.”

  She unbuckled the heavy vest, pulled it off his torso and set it aside. He immediately felt better. He felt lighter, less constrained. Gulping down air, he went back to work. The blood from his arm flowed easily and in the red glare it looked odd, as if there was a shimmer of white to it.

  When he finished with the second spell, Jack fainted. He thought he was just going to take a breather before starting on the final spell, but the next thing he knew, he felt a hand shaking him. “Jack? Hey, wake up. You’re almost done.”

  “What happened?” he asked, blearily. Cyn was just a hazy figure and the flare was no brighter than a candle on a birthday cake.

  “You were acting completely trolleyed and I wanted to let you rest as long as possible only the torch is burning down.”

  “Trolleyed?” he asked.

  She grinned: “What you yanks call getting hammered. You know, drunk? Now come on. If the light goes out...” She didn’t need to finish. There’d be no drawing the spell and there would be no getting out of there.

  The short breather had done him a world of good and he had enough energy to last him through half the remaining glyphs. According to Dr Loret, the third spell was to be painted on the person who would control the demons—Jack painted them on his chest and no longer was his hand guided like before. Whatever force wanted the gate into hell opened, didn’t want it opened in this manner.

  Jack, with Cyn’s help steadying his hand, drew the first six glyphs readily enough, but the last six were intricate and not just exhausting, they were depleting. The brush went into his wound easily; however it became a nightmare pulling it back out again. It felt as though the brush became snagged on something vital, something he couldn’t live without and there was always less and less of this substance until at last, he felt the well was dry.

  He shook and swayed and his eyes kept opening and closing. He was on fire, but at the same time his limbs were like ice.

  “One more, Jack,” Cyn said. “You can do it.”

  “I don’t think I can,” he said in a whisper. “It’s too much.” It was way too much. He knew it now. He was a beginner. Perhaps if he had only tried one spell he might have been able to pull it off, two spells might have put him in the hospital. Three spells were going to kill him. He felt himself fading in and out, just on the brink of consciousness, and what lay on the other side? Who knew?

  Cyn kissed him awake. His eyes fluttered and he could barely make out her smirk. “It’s now or never, Jack,” she said, and for the life of him, he didn’t know what she meant by that. She pulled him back into a kneeling position, picked up his hand and stuck the brush into the wound.

  That was just fine. There was a little discomfort, but nothing one wouldn’t expect—then she pulled the brush out. Jack screamed. It was a long sound that ended in a croak and smack on the face. “Come on, Jack!” Cyn yelled. “The hard part’s done. The brush is out, now paint!”

  Jack drew the intricate glyph and there was a tolling bell inside his head and in his hollow chest. He mumbled the words to the spell and then all hell broke loose.

  The cement within the twin circles went suddenly jet black, looking wet and deep, so deep that the mind couldn’t comprehend. It was a hole that was a thousand years deep. Jack could fall into that hole and drop for a hundred lifetimes and never see what was at the core and he was sure he never wanted to.

  It was a hole of such evil that the individual spirits and demons that came rushing out of it looked like light particles compared. There was no wait this time. Jack had been preparing this spell for the better part of the afternoon and literally millions of spirits shot out the second that he uttered the final word of the spell.

  They blasted straight up, but not straight out.

  Cyn’s protective spell worked both ways and now there was a roiling column above them that went for miles and miles. More would have come from the gate into hell; however something big was heading toward the opening. It was greater than the fiend and darker, impossibly dark. And it was larger; physically it was an order of magnitude so vast that Jack’s mind couldn’t comprehend.

  It was one of the Gods of the Undead. It could be nothing else. Only one of these fell creatures could affect both worlds as it did. The gate expanded going from the size of a manhole cover to the size of a Buick in seconds, while the cement courtyard beneath them mounded and swelled like a tremendous pustule ready to spew venom that would poison the entire planet.

  The flat courtyard drew itself into a hill that was fifty-feet tall and the cement was being held together by bonds that were unearthly. Cyn somehow found a way to tear her eyes from the sight. Jack could not. The beast of beasts came at the gate with its mouth wide, a mouth that was pure insanity and from which came the screams of the damned.

  Jack would have stared until his heart exploded and his mind turned to water and washed right out of his ears, but thankfully, Cyn managed to retain some part of her. She saw the vial of Holy Oil that Jack had set aside and threw it into the gate.

  For one second, everything was pandemonium and chaos. For one second, the world teetered. For one second mankind was on the brink of extinction. And then the second passed and then the gate snapped shut with a last withering blast of cold evil.

  Jack fainted again and when he came to, he found himself staring up at the countless spirits he had released from hell. In his chest his heart stuttered and lurched like an engine on its last legs, drinking gas that was three parts water and two parts rust. His vision went in and out and if he had fingers he didn’t know. It felt as though his arms ended at his elbows.

  He was dying. His soul was a smokey wisp that any stray breeze or simple breath could whisk away—and then he’d be done. Above him the host of the damned waited to see if he would die. If he died they would be free on earth to do as they pleased. If he died his cousin would win.

  It was hard to care.

  “Jack!” Cyn screamed into his face. “Stay awake, Jack. I need you.” Staying awake wasn’t the issue, Jack thought. Connecting each breath to what was left of his soul was the issue. If he couldn’t do that then the breaths would become only a whistling, useless sound and he would fade straight away.

  “Jack!” Cyn screamed again, growing desperate. “Hold this, Jack. Feel it. Can you feel it?” It was the Holy Sword. It had been a fancy, piece of show-off three days before. Now it was a real weapon, one with God’s stamp of approval on it. There was a warmth to it both metaphorically and physically.

  It burned Jack—not his flesh—it burned his sins and there were many and they were nasty and they went deep like a rotten tooth. He could only stand the feeling so much before he thrust the sword away.

  “That’s enough,” he said. It wasn’t, not really. His sins were so great that he should have been forced to hold the sword, burning into him for years. But he had other things he needed to do.

  He needed to save the world.

  Epilogue

  Manhattan, New York

  As much as his body wished to die, Jack wouldn’t let it.
He struggled into a sitting position, only just then realizing that he had been lying in Cyn’s lap. He had a vague recollection of tears on his face and her hand in his hair, but had thought it had been a dream.

  He wished he could focus on those soft hands and what those tears meant; however, he had crippled his soul for a reason and now it was time to make every sacrifice that had been made on his behalf worthwhile.

  “Go,” he said to the millions of spirits above him. “Find the nearest uninhabited corpse and report back to me.” He dared touching the blessed sword once more. The pains of his sins made him wince, but he ignored the truth of the pain and drew the sword across the circle of glyphs that Cyn had drawn, breaking the spell.

  There was a rush of air and a stench that had Jack swooning a second time as the spirits and the demons sped to do his bidding. They were strangely eager. Crossing through Jack’s gate had put them under his unconditional control. It was a contract that they could not break under any circumstances and, as much as they wanted to turn on Jack, who was weak as a kitten and lacked the spiritual strength to light even a candle, they carried out his orders to the best of their ability.

  The Navy Seals were reanimated first, standing slowly, their frozen bodies creaking, and then came the hundreds of thousands of corpses of the people who had tried to flee by way of the Staten Island ferry. One by one they stood and came to Jack. And then came the millions of people who had come streaming out of Queens and Brooklyn and who had been trapped and slaughtered on their way through Manhattan when the bridges and tunnels had been closed.

  In no time, Jack had his army. Manhattan had been layered five deep with corpses and now Jack’s army overmatched Robert’s by sheer numbers. As well, his corpses were fresher, made of actual flesh and meat instead of riddled bone and ancient tendons. His army was better in every way, including the strength and numbers of demons Jack had under his control.

  He didn’t know it, but among the undead he held the title of Vahl Necron—Demon Slayer. He had killed the copper-eyed demon in direct, hand-to-hand combat, a feat that hadn’t been accomplished in a millennium. It meant something to the undead and so when he commanded his legions to: “Drag them back to hell,” they surged forward under his victorious banner.