by Stu Jones
“No! No!” Kane clawed feebly at the giant. “You can’t have them! I won’t let you take them from me!”
“Shh…” Courtland whispered, “it’s over, brother. It’s over. You’re safe. You’re alive. It’s me, Courtland. I will protect you.”
Kane became rigid, his body freezing in place amid the thick arms that encircled him as the words began to soak in. A trickle of blood dripped from just below the crease of his elbow where the IV had been yanked from his arm. “Courtland?” Kane whispered.
“Yes, brother, I’m here. I’m with you.”
Kane’s posture drooped, sagging with the weight of his failures. “Courtland,” he moaned, “don’t let them hurt my family anymore. It’s not their fault. Please.” He cried, the tears dribbling from beneath his swollen eyes.
Courtland shook his head as his own tears splashed down across the body of his friend. “I’m sorry, Kane. I’m so sorry I wasn’t there to stop it.”
“My Susan. She’s alright? It was a bad fall, but she’s gonna be alright?”
Courtland clinched his jaw. “No, Kane. She’s gone. She’s with the Lord now.”
Kane began to quake silently, his body shuddering with the tremors as he gasped. “Oh, Susan, I’m so sorry. I was all wrong. If I had just…If I could’ve just held on to you a little longer…” he said, sobbing weakly.
“You did everything you could, brother. There’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
“If I had just listened to you, Court. You were right. I killed my Susan. I killed her just like I killed Molly.”
“Stop.”
“Just like I killed Jacob. Let me die, Courtland.”
“Stop it.”
“Let me die. Let me die, please. I’m no good to God. I’m no good for anyone.”
“No, it’s not true. We all fail. We all fall short.”
“Just let me die, man. Everything I love has been taken from me again. I was so selfish. I caused this to happen, and my family paid the price of my arrogance. What is left for me to go on with?”
“Listen to my words, brother,” Courtland said, composing himself. “Listen to me and hear my words. Your children are alive.”
“They can’t be. They were taken…” His voice cracked. “They were taken by that monster. I can’t bear the thought of what’s happened to them.”
“They’re alive.”
“Why do you keep saying that? Don’t fill me with false hope.”
“It is not false. They are far from safe, but they are still alive.”
“You can’t possibly know that.”
“Just trust me. Your children are alive, but they are held captive by Malak and his Coyotes.”
“Courtland,” Kane mumbled weakly, “and if they are? If this is true…what am I supposed to do? How do we fight against such an evil?”
“We fight it with the power of the almighty God.”
“God has left me to my own devices.”
“No, he never left you. But he did let you suffer the consequences of your choices—your sin.”
Kane lowered his head.
“But that’s in the past now. Now it’s time for you to decide where you’re going to go from here. Are you going to let this destroy you? Are you going to go to your grave beaten and ruined? Or are you going to allow yourself to be redeemed? To take up this mantle and be the man God created you to be? I told you once that God will always take you back, no matter the score. That he’ll never hide his face from you. But the question is—do you believe it?”
Kane nodded weakly.
“No, sir,” Courtland grunted. “I want to hear you say it.”
“I…believe it.”
“Say it with conviction!” Courtland shook Kane.
“I believe it!” Kane cried.
“As well you should. Look how far we’ve come—what we’ve accomplished so far. Our God has saved us from this world, from our very hearts, and this—our story—is not fully written yet. It is far from finished.”
“So, what are you trying to tell me? That we can still save my children? That we can somehow stop Malak?” Kane faltered. “Courtland, you didn’t see…I shot him in the face and then watched the hole mend right before my eyes. How does a flesh-and-blood man destroy something like that?”
“We destroy it with the power of heaven. That is the only weapon that will devour this demon.”
“You seem so sure.”
“Because I am sure. Our God has pursued the darkest corners of our hearts, and he has prevailed there. He has saved us from monsters and demons before, and he will not fail to win the day now. Let’s not forget that you were shot in the face as well—and here you are.” The giant smiled.
Kane touched at his scalp and winced.
“You, Kane, are here to bear this burden. It is you who must see it through. This is your purpose, as it is mine. And together, with the power of the Lord at our backs, we will see this thing through to the end.”
Kane sighed deeply and rested his hand on Courtland’s heavy forearm. His swollen features seemed to relax just a little.
“Thank you, Courtland. Thank you for being here with me. I need you, brother.”
“I won’t leave you again, my friend. Not until this is done. Because now…now it’s time for you to come back home. Now it’s time for us, all of us, to believe again that anything is possible.”
“I believe it.” Kane nodded as one last tear slipped from the corners of his bruised eyes. He sniffed and gave a firm nod of assurance.
“I believe.”
3
MALAK’S FATE WAS sealed. It had been from an early age. There was life, and there was death. And then there was something in between—this place, this strange existence between worlds. It was not a place of comfort or security, as evidenced by the dull aching that rippled across every inch of his hugely muscular body. It was a pain that grew with each passing day. Though uncomfortable, this place was also a place of power. What he’d given up in the human quest for comfort and pleasure he received tenfold in power—unbridled, vicious, life-consuming power. And since comfort and pleasure had always been foreign concepts to him anyway, he had accepted this toxic gift with open arms. All he’d ever really wanted for as long as he could remember was power. As much power as he could possibly entertain—he wanted it all. He wanted to rule and conquer and enslave. He wanted to forget the weakness of the past, the days before the Voice. He wanted to be God.
Malak lowered his head and considered it, this faint memory of the past, and how he’d come into the knowledge of the Voice. It had been anything but a pleasant experience. But it was one, nevertheless, that he would forever remember.
It was a Friday night, and he was strapped to the modified recliner, as usual. It had always been like this, ever since his mom left them when he was just a small boy. His father, a twisted psychopath of a man, had somehow maintained custody of him in the absence of his mother. In truth, Malak lived more like a prisoner than a child, trapped in his own version of hell by a cruel twist of fate. He did not attend school. He did not have friends. He did not play or have hobbies. Chained or strapped to something nearly twenty-four hours a day, his existence was little more than that of an animal, a slave forced to wordlessly grunt and grovel for scraps under his father’s table and then graciously eat them off the floor like a dog when a few bits fell. He was a doomed person, a child who lived in constant fear of retribution and the activities that his father made him watch.
It was the summer of 1990. He was eleven years old. The humid south Texas night drenched him in a fine mist as he sat and watched his father work. The woman on the floor struggled and gagged as his father choked her against the hardwood of their living room.
Malak shifted his eyes down and pulled against the leather, buckled straps his father had fashioned to the chair to hold him there.
God help me.
It was no use. He groaned as he pulled against his prison. The sound stopped his father. The cruel man rel
eased the woman and turned toward him, the dim light of a single bulb in the ceiling behind him lighting his back and the black-and-blue face of the gasping woman on the floor.
“You were trying to get out,” the shadowed face said to him.
“I wasn’t.”
“You were, and now you must be punished.”
“No, I was just uncomfortable. Please—”
His father lunged forward and slapped him hard across the face, grabbing him by the throat and choking him against the strangely soft cushion of the chair. It was always choking. His father loved the dominating power it gave him over others—the gasping, the eyes wild with fear, spittle frothing across the lips as the body fought against the suffocating, panic-inducing position.
His father laughed and released him, giving Malak’s hair a jerk backward as he leaned in toward the boy’s face. The smell of the man’s stale body odor covered him as his father bared his teeth, hissing through them. “Stop being such a weak fucking coward. You’re pathetic. Watch and learn how a man behaves.”
The woman was moving again, rolling onto her stomach and trying to push onto all fours. How many women had it been now? There were so many Malak had lost count. With this one, just like the others, his father had used him, his son, to charm her and make himself seem safe at the local grocery store. Malak’s father had offered to carry her groceries home. She’d seemed unsure. When he insisted, she accepted. On the way there, he stated that he needed to grab a rain jacket for his boy—just in case. She had naturally been courteous and agreed to make a quick stop with them by their house—inadvertently sealing her fate. The young lady had been nice to Malak, earlier inserting a quarter into one of the dusty machines at the front of the store. He had gotten a green gum ball just like he wanted. His father faked a smile and allowed him to chew it, though he could tell by the look in the man’s eyes that the idea of the boy having anything he enjoyed irritated him. A green piece of sugar you could chew now seemed like such a stupid thing to get excited about.
“No. No. Please don’t—” The half-naked woman was drooling blood and mumbling when the man forced her back to the floor by the back of her neck.
“Would you like to go home?” his father asked with a syrupy tone.
“Yes, yes, sir. Please. I just want to go. I won’t say anything to anyone. I swear.” The look of terror in her eyes was tangible. She was so young—probably only ten years older than Malak. A young woman who would have had her whole life to look forward to had she not met them. Had she not been so polite. But Malak didn’t really care about her. He wanted out; he was tired of being controlled, tired of the power this man he called “Father” exerted over him. He wanted to be free. He wanted the power for himself.
God help me. Get me out of here!
“You’re lying,” his father growled. “You’d go straight to the police, and I can’t have those sons of bitches sniffing around here—not now.”
“I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t lie to you,” the young woman babbled.
“But you already have,” the man said as he began to choke the woman again, her feet swimming small flutter kicks against the dark hardwood of the floor.
God, please, I’ ll do anything—
It was then that the Voice spoke to Malak for the very first time.
He doesn’t love you. He’s not listening.
“What?” the boy whispered to himself.
God—he doesn’t love you, but you love you, and I want to help you take the power for yourself.
“Who are you?”
I am your ally, your savior. I am the power that you crave. I can free you from this place, but you must first do one thing for me.
“I’ll do anything.”
Kill him.
Malak shook his head, wincing at the pain in his mind. He looked to the left, pulling his eyes from the woman groaning on the floor as she clawed at the darkened form of his father. The room was empty except for the three of them. Strange—it had sounded so real. Then it spoke again.
Kill him or remain his slave here forever.
Malak swallowed hard and squinted against the stinging of the Voice. “How?” he whispered softly, so his father wouldn’t hear.
I’ ll set you free. You’ ll be free to do as you wish. Kill him, and the power is yours for the taking, boy. That’s what you want, isn’t it?
“Yes.”
Then stand, and kill him.
Malak looked down: the leather straps across his arms lay open before him like a strange magic trick. The woman was still now as he stood from the chair and took two quick steps to retrieve the cleaver from the kitchen counter nearby. He suddenly felt strangely powerful. Malak approached from behind his father, who was still kneeling over the woman. The man turned, a snarl upon his lips as he saw the boy.
“How the fuck did you get loose? Sit your weak ass down in that chair right now, or I’ll beat you fuckin’ stupider than you already are.”
Malak smiled coldly, something dark now hiding behind his eyes as he raised the cleaver.
“What do you think you’re gonna do with that? You don’t have the balls, you stupid bastard kid! You’ll never be anything! You’re—”
Malak brought the cleaver down fast as his father raised his hand to try to stop it. The blade cleaved the man’s hand in half between the fingers and continued through the meat of the forearm. With a sharp gasp, his father stopped, his mouth hanging open as a spray of blood jetted onto the floor. “You cut me, you little bastard! Put that down and help me! Help me!” he shrieked.
Malak raised the cleaver again.
“No, stop! Don’t!”
“How does it feel to be powerless?” the boy whispered with evil glee. With a chunking sound, Malak brought the cleaver down again and again into the skull of his father, the warm blood and bits of bone spraying across his face as the boy began to laugh.
Malak breathed deeply the smell of charred flesh, a smell that wouldn’t be that different from a roasted pig if it weren’t for the aroma of burning human hair. He was very pleased with himself, and though the Voice did sometimes chastise him, he could feel that it was somehow pleased with him as well. He was the crucial piece of the puzzle. He was the true coming of the Voice. He had the power to make it real on this new earth.
For a moment Malak considered his bleak past. Murdering his father had only been the beginning. Untouched by the justice system over the incident that was easily pitched as a terrified child defending himself against a psychopath, he had come away from it more or less free. Well, not exactly free, but free enough. For years he bounced from foster home to foster home, caught between the system and mostly abusive or neglectful foster parents. This had not been a good experience by any stretch, but the reign of terror his father had subjected him to was over. Now it was his turn to hold the power. It was his turn to be the monster. Over the years, the Voice inside him grew, matured, and controlled him. It worked behind the scenes, affecting every decision and influencing every move he made as he grew from boy to man. When the Voice told him to strangle the neighbor’s harmless cat, he did it. When it told him to rape and beat a cheerleader at school so badly that she was comatose, he did that too. There was nothing he wouldn’t do for the Voice and for the power he could feel cultivating inside him.
For Malak, falling in with a gang early on had been a no-brainer, and committing himself to a life of crime seemed like the obvious choice since there was no question that he was easily suited to the nature of criminal efforts. Interestingly, the Voice seemed to protect him from the law as well. Evidence ceased to exist, witnesses turned up dead, and a majority of his cases were dismissed. Somehow, out of all the evil shit he had done, he was convicted only once, in a silly misdemeanor case over a public disturbance. It was laughable. The Voice had chided him, telling him that there was greatness in store for him if he would only heed its words and guidance. Greatness indeed. He had no idea that the events marking the end of civilization would take place the way th
ey did. What he did know was that the Voice clearly had a plan, and he was the focal point of it. Malak knew that, because of the Voice, he had come a long way from those early days of powerlessness—and he would now go much further.
He returned to the present; the pungent odor of cooking flesh was beautifully unmistakable as it wafted across the encampment toward him. His men had been hungry, and he had simply encouraged them to indulge the darkest corners of their deprived nature. This small settlement—he was being generous in considering it such—was a scattering of desperate, dirty, makeshift tents filled with desperate, dirty, makeshift people. They had screamed and cried and begged for their lives. Only a few had chosen to fight—and had thus been murderously slaughtered. The men—his unstoppable, recklessly violent bandits, the Coyotes—had ransacked the area, pillaging and murdering as they went. Then the raping of all who had surrendered began—women, children, and even the surviving men and a few dead bodies. His soldiers had urges, and he intended that they fulfill their basest needs and darkest desires. It’s what the voice had wanted when it had told him, God is dead. Nothing is sacred. Everything is yours if you will only seize it.
No longer did foolish notions of chivalry, honor, or morality fit into the equation. The world was now a depraved place: the law of the land, manifest destiny. If one had the means to seize something, then one was obligated to seize it and do what one wished with it. It was that simple. There were no longer any laws. No more rules. Only the survival of the fittest—it was chaotic and horrific and perfect. It was his world. Nothing could stop him now in his journey west—his quest to find and unite with the last thing that he needed to bring forth the dominion of the Voice, his dominion. The final thing the Voice needed to begin the coming of the Master’s reign.
“Lord Malak.”
The large, cloaked man stirred from his moment of contemplation and spoke with a slight twinge of irritation in his voice. “What?”
“These fucking kids won’t stop crying. Saxon wants permission to do his thing with them an’ then shut ’em up, for good.”