Congregations of the Dead

by Moore, James A. ; Rutledge, Charles R. ;

  “Guess those stories about you were true,” Fry said. “Nobody ever gave me an ass whipping like that before.”

  “Happens to everyone sooner or later,” Griffin said.

  Fry spat again. “Won’t do you no good, Hoss. Reverend Cotton will take care of you tonight.”

  “Maybe. But you won’t be there to see it.”

  “Going to call your sheriff pal and have me arrested? Don’t matter. I’ll get some time for assault, but I’ll be back out before you know it and you’ll still be dead.”

  “Why don’t you tell me where Cotton sleeps in the daytime, Fry?”

  “No can do, Compadre. Nothing you can do to me will be worse than what the Reverend will do if I sell him out. Hell, he ain’t going to be happy about me doing this.”

  “Then I guess I’ll call the sheriff.”

  “You do that. Like I said, I’ll be out in no time. You’ll be dead and that sweet little girl of yours will be all alone.”

  Griffin shook his head. Fry was right. If Cotton managed to kill him, Fry would still be around. Even Griffin’s sniper pal couldn’t watch Charon all the time. Griffin blew out a long breath, then took a sudden step forward and kicked Fry in the face, knocking the back of Fry’s head against the Corvette. This time Fry was out cold.

  Griffin opened the door of the Corvette and looked inside. Fry hadn’t been kidding. There was a LAWS rocket in the back seat. Griffin pulled the anti-tank weapon out and set it on the ground. There was also an army green canvas bag in the back. Griffin opened this and found six Thermite incendiary grenades. Good. That would make things easier. He took the LAWS and the bag and put them in his truck. He removed one of the grenades and went back to the Corvette.

  Griffin got Fry off the ground and shoved him inside the car. He closed the door, popped the pin on the grenade and dropped it through the open window. Then he moved away fast. Incendiaries weren’t meant to be thrown, so they had shorter fuses than other types of grenades. Griffin felt a wave of heat at his back as the grenade raised the temperature inside the ’Vette to 3,992 degrees. The windows were blown out but the grenade was more about heat than concussive force. It would burn hot but fast and that would be that. No body for Carl or anyone else to worry about and not enough of the car left to identify.

  Griffin got into his truck and headed for home. He was trying hard to be a better man, but sometimes the old ways were best.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Carl and Wade got up to Mooney’s Bluff well before the sun set. And then they got to work. There were things that had to be done, an assortment of surprises they might or might not ever get to use, but they would have them as ready as they could just the same.

  They were just finishing with what they hoped would be a proper concealment of their special surprises when Carl looked over at Wade and cleared his throat.

  “So, seems like somebody put a car near your place to the torch. I mean seriously to the torch.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Sort of fire I figure might be made with one of those little grenades you were nice enough to share out.”

  “Weird how that could happen.”

  “Yeah. I was just gonna recommend being on the lookout for the sort of maniac that would burn a car into slag.”

  “No worries, Carl. I tend to keep my eyes peeled for that sort of thing.”

  “I thought you might, what with being a detective and all that.”

  Griffin looked around the area instead of answering. Carl did likewise. There were trees but no real shade, and it was hotter than Hell. To their left was a very large pit in the ground, carved out years ago by the Mayhew Granite Company. These days the abandoned quarry was half-filled with water in some of the lower areas, and back in their teen years both of them had gone skinny-dipping there a few times with the appropriate female companions.

  Carl looked away for a second as he thought on Tammy back in the day. Best not to think about that. Not to think about her. “Goddamned ghosts are everywhere these days.”

  “What’s that, Carl?”

  “Nothing.” He shrugged and looked around the area in the other direction. Hills and dirt and kudzu. Everywhere with the damned kudzu. If they weren’t careful that vine really would swallow the entire southeast. He had no doubt of it. “You think they picked this spot for a reason?”

  “I think they want their privacy. Want to do this without witnesses.”

  “I don’t know, man.” Carl’s lips pressed together. “What was that shit about buried on their native soil? Lots of areas around here where they could put people down if they wanted to start all over again.”

  Wade looked toward him for a moment and then did a slow stretch to keep his muscles limber. “Maybe. I won’t go that way.”

  “Not on my plans, either. Don’t worry, if they get you and I get away, I’m coming back to take your head off.”

  Wade nodded. “Good. I’ll do the same.”

  “I’d expect no less. Hell, I figure to keep one of the grenades with me. They go too far with the feeding I’ll pull the pin.”

  “You’re getting too damned defeatist, Carl.”

  “No. Realistic.”

  “Same difference. I intend to walk away from this shit. I don’t intend to leave you behind, either.”

  Carl spit. “Not on my plans either, Wade. I’m just thinking out loud.”

  “No, you’re giving up.”

  “If I was giving up I’d have put a fucking bullet through my head by now, Wade!” His voice was louder than he planned as he looked toward his friend. “I feel particularly like doing myself in, I’ll do it when I have the spare fucking time. Right now I’m a bit too fucking busy.”

  Wade shook his head and a slow grin ran across his face for a moment. “Now, see, anger is okay. Just don’t go getting whiny.”

  “We’ll see about whiny when this is done. We both walk out of this I’m gonna kick your ass for calling me whiny.”

  “I’m not calling you whiny. Just suggesting that you might be heading into that particular neighborhood.”

  “I’m having a very bad week, Wade.”

  “Aren’t we all?”

  “You bury your wife this week?”

  “Ex-wife. And no.”

  “Well make sure you don’t. It’s not exactly a good time.”

  “Save it for the vampires, Carl. Take it out on them.”

  “I intend to. And when we’re done I’m still gonna kick your ass for calling me whiny.”

  “I got a really big ax, Carl.”

  “Ass ain’t looking that small these days either.”

  “I really don’t need to have you looking at my ass, Carl. Charon’s a bit on the jealous side.”

  Carl looked away and chuckled. He couldn’t keep angry with Wade. Not when he knew his friend was merely telling him the truth of the matter. “I don’t think this is going to end well.”

  “It’ll end one way or another.”

  “No. I mean this whole thing. I’m not sure if I’m gonna be the sheriff much longer. This shit is getting too messy.”

  “It’s a job, Carl.”

  “I kind of like the pension plan.”

  “Well, I don’t suppose a good 401k would suck.”

  “That’s what I’m saying. I really don’t much feel like losing my job.”

  “So I guess you better start campaigning.”

  “Well, there’s good news on that front.”

  “Yeah? How so?”

  “Pretty much isn’t anyone else wants to inherit my shit. So far there’s no one making big plans for running against me.”

  “See? There’s always a bright side.”

  “Wade Griffin, Optimist. It doesn’t have a very good ring to it.” Carl thought about it for a second. “Must be Charon rubbing off on you.”
r />   “Might be.”

  “That or your exciting new eau de Garlic cologne.”

  “It is a bit smelly,” he agreed.

  Carl wandered back to the sack of goodies he’d brought along. There were a dozen or more road flares. He also brought along two sets of night vision goggles. They were still trying to decide if those would be a wise choice when one considered everything else they’d brought along.

  Time would tell.

  Instead of bothering with those just yet, he reached into the sack and pulled out two bottles of water that hadn’t quite made it to lukewarm yet.

  There was a while to wait yet, and killing monsters was thirsty work.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The sun crept down to the edge of the mountains, and as it did the dead began to rise. Lazarus Cotton moved from his resting place and made the journey at a speed that would have terrified his enemies if they knew how very quickly he could move. Likely they would find out soon enough.

  He met with his Deacons at the base of a tree that looked like a man in agony. Twin limbs rose in supplication and a collection of knots in the wood looked for all the world like a wretched face twisted into a mask of pain. Jesus suffered. It seemed somehow fitting to know that the very trees sometimes remembered His pain.

  “I take no pleasure in what we must do, my brethren. The men we are up against feel that they are in the right and they are ignorant of the desires of our Lord, and of the blessings He has bestowed upon us. I do not believe they are malignant, but merely misguided. That said, it is time to put an end to their foolish and wicked interruptions.”

  He looked to his children and felt their love, their adoration. They were blessings in his life.

  “They seek to destroy us. We will surely seek the same. I might even offer some of them the blessings of the Lord, but not their wizard. We have called for them to meet us, and I have no doubt the sorcerous imp who crippled our young before will be there. I shall do my best to seek him out. It is best if I handle the one who has been so close to the devil’s black heart.”

  The Deacons nodded, fully aware of the wisdom of his words. They were strong. He was stronger. It was exactly that simple.

  He recited the Lord’s Prayer and the Deacons spoke the words with him. There was no fear in their hearts. They were the blessed of the Lord. The unbelievers would fall.

  All would be right with the world. Amen.

  And when the prayer was done, the Reverend Lazarus Cotton reached out to his wounded children, those who would not last much longer, and offered them the first chance to work as the instruments of God’s vengeance.

  And from deep within the waters at the bottom of the quarry, where the sun could not reach them even at the height of the brightest day, the wounded rose toward the night above, and their last chance at redemption in the eyes of the Lord.

  Say Amen.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Griffin smelled them before he saw them. A hot, moist breeze came blowing across the quarry, and with it came a deep, cloying stench of death. He looked down the gentle slope toward the water and saw figures breaking the surface of the man-made lake in the failing light.

  “Carl,” Griffin said.

  Carl turned and looked to where Griffin was pointing. “Jesus.”

  Decamp had said the vampires, deprived of their native soil, would fall literally apart, and he hadn’t been wrong. Griffin counted just over a dozen of them – all that was left of Cotton’s congregation – and not a one of them was whole. Some were missing limbs. One was just an upper torso, dragging itself along on rotting arms. All of them had turned dark and discolored, and their flesh seemed to sag on their bones like wax running from a candle.

  And in the front of the line walked what had once been Paul Traylor. Most of the flesh was gone from his face, and his fangs stood out from the naked white bone of his skull. He spotted Griffin and snarled.

  “You did this to me, Griffin,” Traylor said. His voice sounded as if his tongue had mostly rotted away too. “You let them take me.”

  “You didn’t hire me as a bodyguard, Traylor,” Griffin said. Why the hell was he arguing with this thing? He had to keep in mind that while these creatures might look like something from a George Romero nightmare, they weren’t slow-motion zombies. They were vampires. Still fast. Still strong.

  Traylor proved this a second later by rushing up the slope at Griffin, wasted hands extended like claws. Hell, they were claws since they were mostly bone. Griffin swept the ax up in a backhanded arc and those claws went flying. Decamp had been telling the truth about that too. The ax could not only kill these things. It could damage them as well. Griffin’s return swing struck Traylor in the neck and his head went flying, disintegrating as it rolled back down the slope.

  “Daddy! Daddy!” a shrill voice screeched.

  Oh no. Jesus Christ, no. But he made himself look at the misshapen figure that was lurching up the slope. Lynn Traylor. One of her feet was gone and it was slowing her down some but she was still scrabbling toward Griffin like a rabid animal. Her pale, gaunt face was coming apart but her deep-set eyes burned with a feral light.

  Griffin gritted his teeth and lunged forward. He had failed the child but he wouldn’t fail her here. He swung the ax in a long arc, aimed at Lynn’s neck but she darted to one side and lunged at him, knocking him from his feet. How could anything that small be that fast and that strong?

  He had lost the ax, but it wouldn’t do him any good at close quarters like this anyway. Lynn Traylor had her bony fingers at his throat and her mouth opened wide, baring her long, sharp teeth. Griffin fumbled at his belt for the iron spike Decamp had given him. He had wrapped the end with leather cord to give it a better grip, and he was glad that he had, since he doubted he could have wielded the spike with his sweat-slicked hand. Wield it he did though, pulling it free of its makeshift sheath and driving it into the damaged girl’s chest. The pressure on his throat went away as the child’s body crumbled to dust.

  Griffin rolled to his feet, snatching up the ax as he did so.

  That was well and good, because two more of the rotting undead were almost on top of him. Griffin swung low, taking the legs out from under the closest. As it toppled he leaped high and brought the ax straight down on the head of the other, splitting its skull. He swung again and the shattered head flew away. He spun to the one he had dismembered. The vampire, who in life might have been someone’s grandmother, was trying to get up. Griffin brought the ax down on the old woman’s neck.

  He looked around for Carl, saw him several yards away driving the tip of the iron sword through the chest of a vampire in a ragged three-piece suit. Carl had popped two of the flares and the vampires, wary of fire, were circling and looking for an opening. The one he had stabbed crumbled away and Carl looked around for his next attacker. Griffin started toward him but another vampire lurched into his path. It was going to be a long night.

  * * *

  He was supposed to be terrified, and he knew it, but Carl saw the dead things and every nervous twitch in his body simply faded away. “Time to dance.”

  Wade swung that oversized axe of his like it was a toy. Carl stepped out of his range and saw some of the dead things coming at him. The fact that they were rotting actually made it easier for him. It was less like dealing with people and more like stepping into a nightmare. Just lately that made life easier to handle.

  Or maybe he was going a little crazy.

  The first of them came toward him, shrieking. He struck a flare and threw it toward the soggy thing. It flinched back just a bit as the road flare struck it in the chest and rolled toward the ground. While it was distracted, Carl swung the blade he’d been loaned and cleaved its dead heart in half.

  That trick was going to work exactly once, so when the next one came for him he scrambled backward and defended himself hastily. He was feeling
a little on the dark side, but that didn’t mean he was much in the mood to die. He dodged, and the thing that had been a teenaged girl once upon a time jumped for him. She cleared the flare, the thing that was falling to pieces where he’d dealt it a death blow, and the remaining distance between them as if ready to embrace him.

  “Hell no!” He shivered at the thought of it touching him, and whipped the sword through the air, cutting an arc through the creature as he dodged under it. Wet and dark things spilled across his back as he cleared the spot the she-corpse had been aiming for. The cut had wounded but not killed, and the thing’s torso and spindly arms came for him, clawing trenches in the dirt. The ruined face snarled as it gnashed the impossibly wide mouth in his direction. It took two more swings to finally chop the head away from the thrashing body.

  By then three more were coming. He tried the flare trick again, this time just to stop them from flanking him, and it worked. They were afraid of the fire.

  He kicked the first flare in the direction of one of the things and parried a swing with the sword as the other one reached for him. An arm fell away. The other arm managed to catch his shirt and would have pulled him in close if he hadn’t cut it down on the backswing.

  He was moving for the next one when something came from behind and slammed into him. He knew it wasn’t a car, but damn it felt like one. Carl stumbled and flailed and rolled, bouncing as he pulled himself into a fetal position.

  When he came to rest he was staring at the sky and wondering exactly what the hell had just happened. He was nearly twenty feet away from where he’d been a second before. Worse, the sword was around the halfway mark between point a and point b.

  The thing that came for him was fast, impossibly fast, but it stopped long enough for him to see it pick up the weapon he’d been given, the damned near miraculous weapon that had already proven worth its weight in gold.

  The flares backlit his enemy, letting him see only the silhouette as it came closer, testing the weight of the weapon.