False Gods

by W. Glenn Duncan Jr.

  A silver tray on a small table near the head of the bed held two cups, the faint dregs of a black liquid staining the bottom. Candles flickered and incense burned.

  I gave Dariell another look that said I would shoot him if he so much as farted, reached out to grab a blanket and draped it over Kimberly.

  “It’s okay. It’s over now. Put that around you, we’re going home.”

  She oozed to the edge of the bed and sat looking at the floor. Tugged at the blanket around her shoulders.

  “Did Mom send you?” Her voice was so soft I barely heard it. “I prayed hard that she would send someone.”

  Movement in my peripheral vision.

  I swung back to wrap both hands around the gun and used my thumb to cock it. When Dariell looked up I had the sight centered between his eyes.

  He froze, one arm stretched toward the bed, eyes focused on the black hole of the muzzle.

  “How badly do you want to meet your God? ’Cause I can organize that, no problem.”

  “… sheet …”

  I flicked the gun. “Slowly,” I said. “One-handed.”

  He pulled a sheet from the top of the bed and wound it awkwardly around himself.

  “Okay,” I said. “This is how it works. You …” I nodded at him. “… are going to walk in front of me, hands out from under the sheet so I can see them. We’re going to the front door to meet a friend of mine. If I tell you to stop or slow down, you do it. If you don’t, I’ll do it for you.

  “Kimberly,” I said. She raised her eyebrows but didn’t lift her gaze from the floor. “Can you walk?”

  She nodded.

  Slowly. Submissively.

  “You walk beside me. Go at your own pace. We’ll stop if you need to.”

  She nodded again. Blinked a few times.

  “Let’s go.” Dariell took a step forward. “Not yet hotshot. Kimberly first.”

  I backed out of the door while keeping the gun trained on his chest. Kimberly stood up, swayed a little. I thought she was going to hit the floor but she tucked her chin in, blinked again and stood still. She shuffled through the doorway, blocking Dariell for a second—and nearly giving me heart failure—then she was clear and he was still standing in the room. I swept her around behind me with an arm and motioned at him.

  “Alright then, big man. Lead the way.”

  Our awkward caravan shuffled across the rug and around the circle of columns. Kimberly swayed again and put one hand on a column for support. I was about to shout to Dariell to stop, but she shook her head and stepped forward again.

  We reached the double doors.

  Dariell pushed open the left hand door and found himself staring at the wrong end of a loaded shotgun.

  “This lil’ runt?” Cowboy said. “Thas what all this fuss is about?” He tipped his hat up on his head. “Sheeit, we shoulda let Mimi handle the whole thang by herself.”

  Cowboy pushed Dariell to the floor and ground a knee into his back. The sheet fell open to expose his pasty white backside.

  “Dang! You ain’t payin’ me enough to see the shit I seen tonight, boss-man. We gonna have to renegotiate my pay.”

  “Take it up with my rep at the Federated Thugs and Gumshoes Guild,” I said. “They’re always looking for feedback.”

  Cowboy reached into his hat and pulled out two cable ties. He wound them around Dariell’s wrists and drew them tight. They clamped his hands together with a quick zipping sound. Cowboy pulled him to his feet and tied the sheet around his waist.

  “I don’ care if yore nekkid, but I don’t want to have to look atcha,” Cowboy said.

  “What’s going on out there?” I nodded towards the front door.

  “I dropped one of those guys when he came prowlin’ up on the porch. That sent the other two a-runnin’,” Cowboy said, sneaking a glance towards the door. “There’s still heroes down by the tunnel playing with their dicks and their machine guns. Each time they start up, Mimi lets a coupla rounds go and they shush down right quick.”

  “Alright. Let’s head back to the truck and see if we can’t get the fuck out of here,” I said.

  “Sounds like a plan to me.” He grabbed the shotgun in one hand and Dariell’s bound wrists in the other.

  I reached out to guide Kimberly towards the door and she shrank away.

  I let my arm drop.

  “It’s okay. We’re going home now.”

  She stared at the floor and nodded slowly.

  One step at a time.

  Chapter 40

  We were outside and stepping off the porch when the shots came screaming out of the night.

  The first whistled past me from the right and disappeared across the compound.

  The sound of gunfire rolled over us a split second later, in case we needed any more incentive to get our collective asses in gear.

  I was into motion, grabbing Kimberly by the arm and dragging her with me, turning us both away from the direction of the shots. She tugged against my grip but it was no time for social niceties.

  I twisted my right arm as far as it would go behind me and pulled off three shots from the Colt. I knew there was no chance of hitting anything but it might give us an extra second or so.

  I saw Cowboy push Dariell forward and turn around to aim the shotgun past my right shoulder. It boomed as I ran past and the hearing in my right ear faded. I cut left to seek shelter from the edge of the porch we’d stepped off. A bullet slammed into the porch post near my head tearing away chunks of paint and wood and I knew we couldn’t stay there.

  “The church,” Cowboy yelled from far away.

  I pushed Dariell in the right direction then grabbed Kimberly around the waist and picked her up with my left arm. I fired two more shots right and behind and took off at a run towards the back wall of the church, where I could see a small porch and door.

  Dariell was about three steps in front of me when he got shot.

  He was running, well enough for a guy with his hands cuffed behind him and a sheet wrapped around his waist. Then his mid-section shuddered and blood spurted from his abdomen. He staggered and started to go down.

  I kept my speed up and thrust my arm forward, gun and all, driving it between his left elbow and rib cage. He howled.

  The shotgun boomed behind me again and I heard Cowboy say, with a rising voice, “Get that door open Rafferty or we’re gonna need someone to give us all last rites.”

  Carrying the weight of two people slowed me down, but there’s not a lot like being shot at for motivation. I closed the distance to the back wall of the church in another five steps, while the shotgun boomed and bullets sizzled through the air. Dariell grunted and sagged as I reached the back wall of the church.

  I didn’t break stride.

  Threw the combined weight of all three of us against the door and, mercifully, it gave way. I kept going, careful to leave enough space for Cowboy to get in and shut the door. The room we burst into was dark, with the only light leaking in through the broken doorway.

  That light dimmed behind us and the shotgun boomed again twice. Loud and close. I heard Cowboy slam the door but we weren’t safe yet. We needed to get further inside.

  Cowboy pushed past me—I wasn’t going to drop Dariell or Kimberly yet—and his fingers scrabbled in the darkness for a door handle.

  A soft click and rectangle of light cut through the gloom.

  The echo of the shotgun faded and was replaced by a chorus of singing voices.

  Nearer my God to Thee?

  Cowboy grabbed Dariell from me and hustled him through the inside doorway. I stepped through and placed Kimberly back on her feet. She shrank away from me and sat on the floor, arms wrapped around her knees. She mumbled and murmured to herself.

  We’d entered the kitchen.

  Two fridges that had seen better days slumped against the end wall. Open shelving held a garage-sale assortment of cooking pots, pans and storage containers. Scuffed linoleum flowed underneath timber-framed, Formica-clad
countertops. Cowboy swept his free arm across the nearest one, scattering an assortment of dirty buckets and a couple of empty, brown plastic bottles to the floor.

  He dumped Dariell on top and Dariell screamed then, but found an even higher register when Cowboy produced a gleaming hunting knife from his boot.

  “Hush now. I wanted to kill you, you’d already be dead.” He rolled Dariell up on his side and with a single flick of his wrist, sliced the cable ties away. “Now that yore shot, I figure you’re not much for runnin’. Put your hands over that and push hard, while I find sumpin to wrap you with.”

  That was the bullet wound in Dariell’s left side. It was leaking blood but not enough to be life-threatening. Not inside the next hour anyway, and this thing was gonna be over long before that.

  He should have been thankful that Steve’s guys weren’t loaded with hollow points.

  Dariell lay on the bench, pale, slick with sweat, and put both his palms over the bloody groove, wincing as he laced his fingers together and pulled his hands into his body.

  Gunfire rattled outside.

  Cowboy had smashed open a nearby cupboard and was still talking.

  “We don’t want you dyin’ on us. Not ’til Rafferty says.”

  Dariell looked at me wide-eyed.

  The choir continued in the background.

  Cowboy pulled a long white cloth from a shelf and moved back to the bench. “Get those hands out of the w—”

  That’s all I heard as I looked into the open cupboard.

  I wasn’t sure what I expected to be stored in the kitchen of a religious organization. That being said, most of the items on the shelves were pretty standard fare. White cloths, candles, bibles. A whole section of stationery: pads, pencils and so on. A few big jugs of purified water from Safeway. Not-yet-holy water, I guessed. Some of the usual staples; cleaners, disinfectants, a few bottles of Drano. Even a couple of jars of coffee, tea bags, and a pyramid of cracked and stained mugs.

  As I said, I wouldn’t know the first thing about what should have been there, but the stacks of cardboard trays with gleaming vials of clear liquid and labels reading Ketamine HCI looked out of place.

  Cowboy had finished wrapping Dariell’s stomach and the makeshift white bandage was blossoming red. Dariell lay on his back, holding his hands, slick and shiny with his own blood, in front of his face.

  He was pale and sweat beaded all over his body and he looked triumphant.

  That can’t be right, I thought, but it’s what it looked like.

  “It’ll help,” Cowboy said. “He gonna slow us down, but I assume you don’t wanna leave him behind.”

  “You assume right. More to the point, do you have any assumptions on how we’re gonna get out of here,” I said. “I’m going to bet those guys have the backdoor covered.”

  “Safe bet,” Cowboy said.

  Kimberly keened in the corner, a poignant harmony to the muffled choir and counterpoint to the gun battle outside.

  Steve’s guys must be down in the compound by now, I thought.

  “I’ve only got the Colt and two clips. You’ve got the shotgun, some shells and that cannon you call a handgun.”

  “Got a couple throwing knives, too.” Cowboy grinned wickedly. “Don’t forget those.”

  “Oh gee, why didn’t you say so. I was hoping to stay a bit further away from the men with the big guns, but be my guest.”

  “Har de har har, boss-man. Way I sees it, all we got to do is get to a space where Mimi can see the bad guys. Then her and Mother Mary can hep us out.”

  “Mother Mary?”

  “Yep.” He smiled. “Thas what she calls the Barrett.”

  I shook my head.

  Who names their gun?

  But at that point I didn’t care if she called it Puff the Magic Dragon, if it helped get our asses out of there.

  It became irrelevant though, because Dariell chose that moment to stand up and walk out of the room.

  Chapter 41

  The singing choir got louder and I registered movement behind me.

  By the time I got turned around, flickering light and song were flooding the kitchen.

  I hadn’t seen it before; another door concealed in the kitchen’s corner. Through the opening I could see Dariell shuffling to the centre of a raised stage where a crude wooden altar rested under a white sheet.

  He held his head up, smiled and spread his arms, fingers pointed at the floor, palms out. I could see the corner of a row of seating off to the right.

  The faithful, lined up to worship.

  Like cattle to the slaughter.

  I leaned forward to start out the door. Cowboy laid a hand on my arm.

  “Slow down there a second, boss-man. We’re not shore where all the bad guys are. Let’s see how this thang plays out.”

  I looked past Dariell and realized there was another person on the stage.

  A woman. Blonde. Pretty. Wearing bright purple robes.

  She sat in a chair on the opposite side of the stage to our concealed doorway, hands folded in her lap and a beatific smile on her face. Dariell’s movement caught her eye and she turned to him as she rose. She seemed to stop for a moment then, halfway out of her seat. Her smile faltered, as if she realized Dariell didn’t look quite right, to be replaced a split second later with a hungry grin.

  Animalistic. Carnivorous.

  It was like watching a person’s body split open and their true, terrible, inner being crawl out.

  Dariell moved to center stage. I wasn’t sure he even knew where he was any more.

  The singing died out as the congregation’s voices dropped away one by one, presumably at the sight of their beloved leader, injured by the opposing forces of the non-believing. Far away gunfire could still be heard.

  “Father!” trilled the blonde woman, as she strode across the stage to meet Dariell in the middle. “Father has returned from The Temple!”

  A chorus of “Amens” fluttered through the crowd.

  “He has returned to You,” she continued, her voice edging higher and louder. “Returned after spending his time in the sanctuary of The Temple, taking communion with Our Lord.”

  I wondered whether I would be accurate enough with the Colt over the twenty-five yards to take Dariell out.

  The woman kept orating.

  “And Father has been Chosen to show You the mark of the Risen Christ in bodily form.”

  The woman was almost chanting by now, and I was struck with another bout of deja vu. The dreams. The blonde woman on the throne.

  Get fucked, Rafferty. There’s no way you could have seen this woman in your dreams. That shit doesn’t happen.

  “The Lord has anointed Father with the marks of the suffering of His own Son.” She guided Dariell to face the unseen audience. Another round of Amens followed and I imagined that many crosses were being made and breasts beaten.

  The woman began to roar.

  “The marks of the suffering His Son endured at the hands of the cursed.” She pronounced it curse-edd. “He has marked Father, as A Sign! A Sign of the End Times!”

  I looked at Dariell. The woman had grabbed the back of his bandage and was using it to hold him upright. He winced with the movement and his eyelids fluttered, but I’d bet everything I had that no-one was looking at his face.

  He was still standing in that pose of supplication. For how much longer, it was impossible to tell. The sweat was dripping off him as he stood, shirtless, with a dirty sheet wrapped around his waist, a ragged and oozing wound in his side, his palms and forehead shiny with blood.

  “A Sign that You are the Chosen Ones, anointed by Our Lord. Just as he has anointed Father.

  “A Sign that You are the True Faithful. The faithless have turned their backs. They abandoned You by remaining in their earth-bound domiciles. From where they will never find The New World.

  “A Sign of His Knowing the persecution You face from the Evil Forces.”

  She was raving now, spittle flying fr
om her lips, spray sparkling in the candlelight.

  “Hear their Weapons of Evil as They seek to destroy You. To destroy Your Peace and Communion with Our Lord!”

  As if in answer to her twisted prayers, gunfire rattled through the walls of the church.

  Mother Mary cracked again, making her own profound statement.

  “The forces of Evil will not Stop. They will Never seek to Understand. As You have sought to Understand.”

  Dariell started to sway. His eyes looked very white.

  The woman grabbed him harder around the waist.

  “You have been Chosen. Chosen to move to the Higher Place, where the faithless and evil are not welcome. Our Lord has Chosen with his bodily anointment of Father to show You the Way to the New Jerusalem! He has called and You must follow the Way and the Truth!”

  Another low murmur of “Amen” rolled throughout the church.

  The gunfire continued outside.

  Something bumped my arm and I turned to see Kimberly trying to squeeze her way between Cowboy and I. We both reached for her, and she swung her arm at me.

  “Ana says we must follow the way,” she said in a monotone.

  That’s Ana?

  I put my arm out to block her path to the doorway. She feebly hit my arm, but made no move to duck under or try to get around me.

  I looked back to the church.

  Ana had walked, with her hand still around Dariell’s waist, helping him to the altar in the middle of the stage.

  “Put your hands up and let them see your palms, you useless bastard,” she hissed.

  Dariell complied, leaning his good side against the altar.

  Automatic fire chugged away outside. The Barrett barked again.

  “You have been called to follow the Way and come home to the Lord. And You must follow the Way.”

  A rustle swept through the congregation. “We will Follow the Way,” they said as one.

  “We must follow the way,” Kimberly said and beat on my arm again.

  Ana reached past Dariell to grab something from the altar.