“I don’t,” came the reply. “But I figured we wouldn’t have a chance if we tried anywhere else.”
An arm emerged from the wall in front of him. As Chambers watched, the fingers fused into a point and the forearm streamlined itself into a spike. Before any more of the figure could emerge, he grabbed the arm and pulled on it with all his force. The limb came away at the elbow with a sickening crack.
“My God, what did you do that for?” Karen was looking at him in horror.
“I didn’t fancy it swiping at us with this,” he said, brandishing it before him. “Besides, for the first time since we arrived here, we now have a weapon.”
Fortunately, they didn’t seem to need it. Despite the sounds from behind, the way ahead remained clear, and soon they were ascending a short, steep staircase.
When they reached the top, they were back in the crypt.
“I never thought we’d see this place again.” Karen looked nervously over her shoulder at the open portal. “Is there any way we can close that thing?”
“Any suggestions would be appreciated.” Chambers blinked as he tried to see in the dim light. “For now, I think we’d better just keep going.”
He took two steps forward and collided with something.
The church of glass.
“Maybe this will stop a few of them.” Karen was beside him now as Chambers nursed a bruised finger. “Hopefully they’ll bump into it like you did.”
“Perhaps.” Chambers was staring at it.
“What’s the matter?”
“Something Moreby said, as we were leaving the Sea of Darkness. ‘Not even Verney’s constructs will be able to save you now.’ Do you think he meant this?”
“Well he said ‘constructs,’ plural, so perhaps he meant all of them.”
That was a good point. “Maybe he did. But what? What might there be about these things that could save us?”
There was a grating sound from behind them.
“Well, whatever it is, you’d better think of it quickly.” Karen was looking back toward the portal again. “They’re nearly here.”
“What?” Chambers almost screamed the word as he raked his scalp in frustration. “What the hell am I supposed to do with them?”
A gray claw appeared around the edge of the portal.
“I don’t know! We know Verney was some sort of servant of Moreby’s. Perhaps he put these models here because, without them, you can’t get down into Hell. Who knows? Maybe he sacrificed children and buried their hearts in the middle of these things so they’d cause the portal to appear all these years later? Who cares what he did?” She clenched her fists as the first of the undead shambled into the crypt. “Smash the fucking thing.”
“My pleasure.” Chambers raised the heavy stone spike high, and brought it down with all his might on the exquisite sculpture.
The sound it made as it shattered was deafening.
Chambers brought the stone bludgeon down twice more for good measure. It was only after the third blow that he registered how loudly Karen was screaming, and what she was screaming at.
She had been almost right. It wasn’t a child’s heart that had been set at the center of the glass sculpture. It was a monstrous flea, the size of a Rottweiler and almost as black. Of course, that might have been an effect of the preserving fluid that had been used to prevent decay. The stink of ancient and fetid alcohol was almost overpowering.
“Watch out!”
Chambers ducked as a stone zombie lunged at him. It missed, but its momentum carried it forward, causing it to fall into the remains of the glass cathedral and sending shards skittering across the flagstones.
“Come on!”
Chambers was grabbing at Karen’s hand again, but she shook it off. “Don’t worry about me, worry more about finding all the other models!”
The crypt was bathed in the eerie blue glow that was now emanating from the portal to Limbo, making it easier for them to find the other models, as well as avoid the living dead. The second of Verney’s constructs they came to was the church of glazed clay. It took two hammer-blows to destroy it, and this time they had to dodge out of the way of its preserved flea-creature as it slid from its earthenware prison.
“Did it move?” Karen’s voice was almost a whisper.
Chambers resisted the urge to kick the monstrosity. “I don’t think so,” he said. “But let’s not hang around to find out.”
Next was the church of coal. The black rock splintered and crumbled as Chambers dealt it a series of savage blows with the spiked end of his weapon. Once again, he had to step aside as the fluid-soaked body of a misshapen monster slid from where it must have been carefully placed within.
The church of steel posed more of a problem.
“You’re going to have to leave it.” Karen was looking around her nervously, and Chambers could understand why. The flickering shadows in the corners of the crypt were moving a little too purposefully to be mere plays of light on stone.
He had delivered five heavy blows to the smooth structure, and succeeded only in breaking several chips of stone from his weapon. He ran his finger over the spire he had been trying to dislodge. There was not even a scratch. He hated to leave it, but the shadows were drawing closer.
“Let’s hope six out of seven will be enough,” he said, as they came upon the cathedral of black marble. It was harder to smash than the model made of coal, but fortunately the marble used was fragile and the model itself very fine. Another creature in the Anarch’s own image flopped to the floor.
The church of wood splintered easily, which just left the church of granite.
Which didn’t want to break at all.
“We’ll have to leave this one too.” The undead were emerging from the shadows now, and it was obvious the crypt was filled with them. Karen pulled at Chambers’s sleeve. “Come on, we’ve got to leave it!”
“We can’t!” Surely she knew that as well as he did? Chambers hit the granite model again. “We’ve smashed five of these things, and nothing has changed.” He dealt it another blow. “If we don’t destroy this, then we may as well not have bothered.” He struck it again, and again. “Don’t just stand there, help me!”
Karen didn’t know what to do. Chambers watched as she reached into her pocket and eventually produced her apartment keys. She held them in a fist with the longest and heaviest pointing downward, and hit the interlocking granite blocks as hard as she could.
A crack opened up where she had struck it.
Chambers looked at her in astonishment. “My God, what did you hit it with?”
Karen hit it again. “Just these,” she said, holding the keys up as the crack widened, allowing Chambers to force the end of his stone weapon into the rent. He levered with all his might as, with a deep cracking sound, half of the cathedral of granite was prized away. The flea was there, still embedded in the other half.
Chambers crouched down on one knee. “Do you think we have to remove it?”
Karen looked up to see the undead nearly upon them. “If you’re going to, you’d better hurry up,” she said.
He didn’t want to. Oh God, he didn’t want to touch it, but the cracking of the cathedral of granite still hadn’t effected any change, or none that he could see at any rate.
He reached in, and, with both hands, took hold of the creature.
The sensation was like nothing he had ever experienced. His fingers touched a gritty carapace matted with hairs that presumably would have bristled stiffly outward when the thing was alive, but which now lay flat against its bulbous body. The fluid it had been preserved in burned his fingers, his nostrils, and his eyes as he drew the creature toward him. It was still firmly lodged within the granite, and Chambers had to pull hard before it finally moved. Then it came free with a jerk, sliding onto the floor amid a pool of preserving fluid and its own body juices.
“Let’s hope that’s done it.” Chambers got to his feet, shaking his hands dry.
“Not a
moment too soon,” said Karen. “Here they come!”
There was a deep, ominous rumble from below, dislodging the pile of rubble that was blocking the exit to the undercroft.
“Let’s go,” said Chambers. “While there’s still time.”
THIRTY-FIVE
Friday, December 23, 1994. 7:02 A.M.
THE UNDERCROFT WAS EMPTY.
Chambers breathed a sigh of relief. Presumably Traynor and Chesney were still behind them somewhere, part of the undead army that was pouring into the crypt. He looked around him. After everything they had been through, it was strange to see normal everyday things like a kettle and a fridge.
The fridge.
“Give me a hand.” As Chambers unplugged it, the ground shook again.
“To do what?”
“Block up that hole in the wall. It won’t take them long to get through, but it’s better than nothing.”
Together they heaved the heavy white refrigerator across to the rent in the wall that led to the crypt. There was another rumble, and dust trickled from the ceiling.
“It doesn’t look as if it’s going to need to stay there long,” said Karen. “It feels as if things are building to an earthquake.”
“You’ve been in one before?” Chambers was heading for the stairs.
“Just the once,” she replied. “And the enemy chasing me was alive rather than . . . than like those things back there.”
The steps shook as they ascended. As had happened in the undercroft, Chambers felt a curious sweep of nostalgia as they entered All Hallows Church once more. It had markedly changed, however. The image of the Anarch on the wall of the north aisle was now depicted in such bright and vivid colors that it looked almost like the real thing. Something even larger and more monstrous was rising up behind it, while the tiny figures beneath it had changed as well. Now there were many more, swarming beneath the creature, a constant flow both toward and away from it. And it would be impossible to mistake those hairline streaks of white striking the figures for cracks in the masonry.
“There must be millions of them,” Chambers breathed.
“What?” Karen was still looking around her, on the alert.
“There must be millions of them,” he repeated. “All wanting to walk the Earth. We’ve got to stop it.”
The rumbling was getting louder now.
“Well, let’s hope we already have,” she said. “I don’t know what else we can do.” She looked over to the door. “By the way, how are we going to get out?”
Chambers had to shout over the noise. “We can’t leave, not until we know we’ve stopped them.” He pointed to the church exit. “Otherwise that door will be the only barrier between the world and the Apocalypse!”
“So we just wait and see?”
Chambers didn’t know what else to do, so he nodded.
The entire building was beginning to shake. To the left of them, a pillar collapsed. From downstairs there was the sound of metal scraping against stone.
“Sounds as if they’ve gotten through.” Chambers looked around for a weapon, and remembered he was still holding the stone spear.
Muffled scraping sounds were coming from the direction of the undercroft steps.
“You know, I didn’t think anything else could possibly scare me,” Karen was backing against the wall. “But I’ve never been so terrified in my life as I am right now.”
There was a horrible grating noise, and a crack appeared in the wall of the south aisle opposite. It quickly spread from the ground up, creating a rent that snaked its way to the ceiling.
“We may not live long enough to have to worry about them.” Chambers backed away to the north transept, where Paul Hale’s cot was still lying.
And where what was left of Ronnie was waiting for him.
There was so little of her she was easy to miss, crouching in a corner, her graying flesh almost one with the stone. Withered fingers clutched the wall as the rotted face turned to hiss at him. Chambers kept his distance, until he saw her lower limbs were gone, along with her left arm. It was all she could do to remain upright.
“I’m so sorry,” was all he could whisper.
The floor was shaking as the first of the undead appeared from the undercroft. A shambling thing with a skull of wrinkled purplish skin that resembled a beetroot left too long out in the sun, it staggered forward to make way for those that followed it.
“What do we do now?”
Chambers had no idea what to tell Karen. They could run for one of the apsidals, or the vestry, but it would make no difference. The dead would catch up with them eventually.
“I don’t think there’s much else we can do,” he said, as he pulled her to him and the undead of the Nine Circles of Hell began to fill the church.
The zombies were almost upon them when the floor exploded.
The rumbling had become thunder which, accompanied by a loud series of cracks, had heralded the lifting up of the floor of the nave. Pews flew into the air and a shower of flagstones followed, falling back to earth with a loud crash. The shock threw the walking corpses to the floor with such force that some of them broke limbs, and others shattered completely. Karen and Chambers merely stared in horror.
Out of the debris, something was rising.
Two things.
Two enormously long, bristling, powerful-looking things.
Two tree-trunk-thick, segmented, insectoid front limbs of the thing they had left behind in the Sea of Darkness.
The Anarch.
And between the gnarled and pointed tips of those two front limbs, clasped with infinite delicateness so as not to crush it, was lifted high above them the tiny figure of a human being.
Thomas Moreby.
The limbs held him close to the ceiling as his eyes scanned the scene of desolation beneath him. When he spotted the two humans whom he had last seen many levels beneath the earth, he glowered.
“You may think that you have defeated me,” he said. “You may think that you have put an end to all my plans, but you have not. This is only the beginning. The steel church was always intended to remain, its secret left undisturbed for now, just as the others were meant to be destroyed. You have merely done exactly as I wished.”
The dead that were able to were rising to their feet now, and still more piled into the church.
“Why?” Chambers shouted. “Why such a complex plan? And to what end?”
“Would you really expect the attainment of eternal life to be easy?” Moreby sneered from on high. “Do you really think that you just sign your name in a book, agree to sell your soul, or promise to sacrifice a few virgins, and that is all? Such a complex and precious gift comes at a great price. But now that you have released my pets, that price has very nearly been paid.”
“The undead, you mean?” Chambers was sweating, despite the deathly chill that had descended.
“No, my dear sir, I do not mean these poor reanimated souls.” Moreby gave him a horrible smile. “The arrival of the walking dead on this plane of reality was merely the first part of my goal. The second is about to come through that door.”
Chambers turned to see the dead that were still clamoring to enter the church from the undercroft being pushed aside by heavy dark shapes, close to the ground and covered in bristling hairs. They did not so much walk as hop horribly, and with a chill realization he understood what he had released.
“The Servants of the Anarch!” Moreby screamed with glee as the huge flea creatures leapt into the church. Almost immediately they began to feed, consuming the pieces of fallen undead that lay scattered among the rubble, before turning their jaws to those that were walking.
“What the hell is going on?” Karen asked.
Chambers had no idea. “We should take cover,” he said.
But it was impossible. The flea-things were bounding around the church, chewing and then sucking up anything they could find. One came down with a thud close to Chambers and Karen. It ignored them both, but sprayed w
hat remained of Ronnie with a corrosive fluid, sucking up the resultant fleshy broth with a curled proboscis that retracted when it had finished. Chambers fought the urge to vomit, and kept his arms tight around Karen. He waited for the creature’s digestive acid to hit him, for his body to burn and melt, but the sensation never came. The flea-thing continued to ignore them, and moved on.
With six of the ravenous creatures moving so quickly, the church was soon emptied of the undead that had strayed into it, as well as the creatures gathered at the doorway to the undercroft, climbing on top of each other in their desperate urge to eat the zombies that came up from down below.
The noise that came from the doorway, the terrible groans of the undead, the crunching and slurping of the flea-beasts, seemed to last forever. Then, eventually, one of the creatures broke away from the group.
It seemed to have tripled in size, its heaving bulk now bloated like that of an overfed leech. Gone was the skittish movement of its fellows. This one was moving heavily now, still light on its feet but obviously weighed down by the meal it had consumed.
It turned to its left, hopped with some difficulty onto the outstretched limb of the Anarch, still holding Moreby aloft where he was surveying the scene of horror. Then it ran up the limb toward the architect himself.
Rather than look horrified, Moreby seemed to welcome the bloated creature.
“The first,” he cackled as the flea-thing scuttled up to him. For an instant they were face to face, the human monster opposite the inhuman one.
Then the creature extended its tube-like proboscis.
Moreby responded by opening his mouth.
The monster’s body juddering with the force that it put into the effort, the flea-beast squirted what looked like an endless stream of tiny red particles straight down Moreby’s throat.
No, thought Chambers, not particles.
Fleas.
Actual, normal-sized fleas. Just like the ones that had caused the outbreaks of the Black Death in the 1300s and the Great Plague of 1665.
Hundreds of them, thousands, being poured down the eager throat of a man believed dead for nearly two hundred years.
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