by Nick Cole
He paused.
“Walk away.” He dropped his cigar and stubbed it out with his loafer. “You will never ever be able to forget what I’m about to show you. The world will never look the same for you, my son.”
“Then let’s get it over with,” growled Frank. He didn’t like Andrea. He was sure of that. If nothing else. He was tired of these games. Tired of the spooky suspense.
“This was your last chance not to know. And knowing is something you can never walk away from. But no one ever listens to the old. No matter how many times we tell them to walk away. I did not.”
Frank saw the gleam of white teeth smiling in the darkness.
“Okay, lead on,” replied Andrea after a moment, indicating that the monks should light their way. They turned, each holding their tiny single candle lantern aloft as though it were some sacred chore that must be done in a prescribed manner for no reason anyone could remember, and moved deeper into the silent city beyond the walls.
“And this is how it begins,” spoke Andrea in the night’s cloak, its darkness somehow wrapping everything in a heavy silence. They passed wide marble steps leading to quiet fortresses and towers that jutted away into the night sky. But it was not those places they were going. Frank was sure of that from the start. It was the massive temple at the end of the street.
It was that, and Frank knew it without knowing why. It was that place.
As though it had always been such.
“What if I were to tell you, my son,” continued Andrea, his cane tapping softly as they made their way up the empty street. “What if I were to tell you the world has been ending for quite some time? Longer than you might imagine.”
Andrea did not wait for a reply but continued on.
“And what if I were to tell you that King Arthur was real and that the Black Death and all the other plagues that destroyed Europe time and again, including the Spanish flu just over fifty years ago, were not the work of nature, and not even of man, though he helped a little, but of a mysterious force from the outer dark? What if I told you that? What might you think? That I was crazy? Of course you would, my son. And yet, I am not.”
They passed a building, also like some ancient temple. It appeared to contain no doors. Beyond the portico all was open, and there was a deep darkness beyond and within save a lone guttering flame amid its interior blackness.
Frank could hear a low chanting coming from inside.
“In 619 A.D. there was actually a King Arthur. He was probably nothing like what our modern storytellers, or even Chaucer, knew of him. In fact, from our archives and records, much of what is considered “known” is in actuality, lies repeated by the willfully ignorant. The truth is far more shocking. At that time, at the time of his Camelot, and there never was such a place in England, that too was a lie told by us, the order... there was a terrible plague. A disease that turned men into beasts. The sky was dark, boiling with black clouds, and the sun refused to shine for upwards of two months. The dead walked the earth. Some, at the time, thought night had fallen permanently, so eternal was the feeling of this darkness. And Arthur, a minor west country bandit king really, led an expedition into the very heart of a Europe descending into madness. He stopped the evil and the sun returned. Shocking, eh?”
Andrea turned. They were at the foot of the ancient hexagonal temple walls. Torches along the wall guttered in the still night air. Without hesitation, the monks began to ascend the steps.
“The truth of what happened at the Citadel of Montmartre... The old castle, not the one that was built to protect the lie, was also hidden. Here. A long time ago it was hidden here.”
Andrea turned and began to climb the steps. For a moment Frank waited, hearing once more that offer from a few minutes prior. The offer to leave and know nothing. The offer of blissful ignorance. Because what had seemed like some creepy, yet camp, warning, was beginning to feel like an actual can’t-quite-put-your-finger-on-it warning one should heed. Somewhere at the back of the skull. Where the hairs on your neck can occasionally begin to rise. For no particular reason.
“Are you coming along, my son?” asked Andrea with a grin. A mischievous smile. A devil’s warning about the fun you’re going to have, costing you all, never mind the fine print. Andrea was playing his part. But there was something altogether different in his eyes. A seriousness... and yes, even a hope.
Frank took the first step and his foot felt like a rocket trying to pull free of mortal gravity. Harder and slower than he’d ever thought it might be. But yes, he’d taken the next step. And the next one was easier. As it always is.
It’s easier going down, he thought strangely. Which was odd... because he was going up. Up the steps.
At the top, before brass-bound iron doors, Andrea paused, the monks remained silent.
“The histories, and the fairytales of Arthur, all have one thing in common. Or rather,” he chuckled. “They all don’t have one thing in common. Saint George. And of course, it is not the Saint George you may have heard of, and then again, it very much is. But as I explained, we’ve told a lot of lies to cover over everything quite nicely. This George, Arthur’s George, was a minor knight. Old Roman family. But he was the best in arms and the most faithful, and that should have made him very famous. As famous as the traitor du Lac who many think good thoughts of and if they knew the truth, well, they would see things much differently. As we do. So yes, I know all this seems quite cryptic, but you shall see. I promise. You shall see. Anyway...”
He turned toward the monks and nodded.
One inserted an ancient black key and the doors were unlocked with a series of heavy ka-clicks.
“This George,” continued Andrea as the massive doors were pushed inward and he moved through them. A gong was struck. And struck again. Its sound echoed out into some deep and unseen space again and again as it was struck several more times.
“When the evil had been defeated, it was George who was entrusted with hiding the oracle that told of what had happened... and what would happen. He brought her here. To this place. To the Island. And hid her. Come, now I will show you...” He seemed to want to say more, but then his eyes indicated that words would soon fail. That what must be seen, must actually be witnessed.
They entered the hexagonal interior of the building. High stained-glass windows ringed the vaulted capitol. The floor was a terrazzo mosaic, but covered in tables upon which large books, ancient and new, rested, some open and waiting. Many, many others were closed and stacked. Monks moved about the shadows and tables in hushed silence. Busy at task.
It was some sort of ancient library.
And at its center was a sarcophagi. Plain. Gray. Sealed.
But none of those things mattered. What mattered, what overwhelmed, was what was on the walls.
The paint was ancient. The walls even older. That much was clear. But past the scenes of men made into beasts and castles falling... there was Hitler in one section. Standing on a platform in front of the remains of the Statue of Liberty. As though it were straight out of a black and white newsreel made color and alive.
“Ah...” sighed Andrea. “Everyone always stares at the Hitler first. That was painted in 1676 by Vermeer.”
New York was in orange flames. Gray German bombers like giant batwings crossed the sky like flights of dark satanic gulls. Shadows. Bats. Skulls.
Frank was suddenly aware that his mouth was hanging open. A moment later, he saw another picture that captured his attention. At first it was nothing striking. The man’s piercing coal-dark eyes conveyed some otherworldly depthlessness that drew the gaze. He was wearing armor. Polished. The light of the armor seemed to capture the faces of the crowd that must be all around him. A kind of stadium all surrounding him. And even... worshipping... him. Except it wasn’t a stadium. It was the Coliseum in Rome. Over the armor, the man wore a purple toga embroidered with a crescent and star. On
his head was a grass crown.
“Vladicus Imperator Rex,” said Andrea. “The New Roman Emperor of the year seventeen hundred that might have been, had the order not driven a stake through his heart. The book tells us of a Europe vastly different than anything we would ever know. A new Roman Empire rising out of the ashes of an Age of Enlightenment that never was. Vlad the Impaler had sided with the Turks. That was painted in 1670 by Rembrandt during the summer after his “death.” And keep in mind, Vlad doesn’t look a day over thirty. And yet he was three hundred years old. Imagine a world ruled by a vampiric Julius Caesar.”
“How...” was all Frank could manage as his eyes found the Michelangelo.
“Ah, In time... yes, everyone goes to the Michelangelo. Shocking, isn’t it?” murmured Andrea.
Clearly it was George Washington. Clearly. Or at least the head in the basket was once him. The body still seemed to shake and twitch, even though it was a painting, as though the guillotine had only just fallen. Ben Franklin hangs from a tree in the background. His face is swollen purple, his neck broken, black tongue lolling, crows about ready to feast. Other stockinged and waistcoated men, sans wigs, are lined up against a wall. Each one wears a look of fear. None of these were ever founding fathers of freedom in a reality that never should have been.
And finally, Mount Rushmore. Except it was none of the presidents that should be there. These were all hard men. Proud looks, hawkish noses, cruel faces. One even had a patch over an eye and a huge gash down one cheek. He was the most prominent. The most cruel. The most hateful. The granite in the paint was alive with his sense of malice. All wore some type of military uniform.
“Da Vinci. An America that almost was.”
“How,” asked Frank again as the quiet monks went about their tasks without heed. None seemed stunned by what was portrayed on the walls all around. A history of many other horrors.
“Did you ever watch that American TV series... the Star Trek?” asked Andrea. His Italian accent made the name almost comic in light of the depicted terrors, bloodshed and murder along the walls.
“Yeah,” whispered Frank, unable to tear his eyes away from what looked like Dante’s Inferno near a small set of steps that led down to a door set below the far wall. Where a crypt might wait in other cathedrals and churches Frank had been to. Men in business suits were being carried away by demons and tortured beneath the smoldering ruins of the just-completed Twin Towers in New York City. Except everyone in the picture was wearing clothes that looked like what you might see in New York today, in 1974. Except, different. One man was holding a Star Trek communicator up to his ear and screaming as half his face melted. As Frank studied the picture more closely, in the background he could see a rising mushroom cloud. Arrayed in purple.
“The episode where they discover the mirror universe,” continued Andrea. “That has exact duplicates of themselves... did you ever see that one? Their doppelgangers are angry, aggressive, and basically evil versions of themselves. Did you ever see that one, my son?”
“I... can’t...” Frank drifted off. He was going to say remember. There were so many other horrors along the walls. Murals of other times and places and countries that Frank couldn’t understand because he was an American. It was mainly the American images that drew him into their depicted apocalypses. But there were so many other pictures. There were Asian men before not just piles of skulls, but mountains, and a city burned. Peasants, Europeans maybe, feasted on the corpse of a man in armor, a crown on his head. His yellow beard was soaked in his own blood as the greedy, almost demonic peasants, their eyes wild, tore him and his horse to shreds.
“But,” continued Andrea. “Here it’s not different realties. There is no other “you”... maybe there is, I don’t know... but it’s as if there are other possibilities. And these, these paintings on the walls show those possible outcomes of history. The ones we have stopped. The ones we hope to stop. And the few that got through. Andrea pointed toward a group of peasants being trampled by Cossacks. Others were being raped and murdered. They were Jews. The Cossacks were demons, their white hands like claws... and... on each...
“Raphael in 1621. The pogroms of the Czars and all the horrors that followed. Europe a massive feudal system that would eventually be consumed by Islam. Ten thousand years of blind slavery and oppression before something so dark even the oracle could not name it, would happen. Her only words were... They come from across the void and they are locusts. It was... insane. Except... it was the truth that would someday be real.”
“What’s through that door?” asked Frank, pointing toward the Dante’s inferno and the future that showed the Twin Towers being nuked while demons consumed men’s souls.
“Ah...” hummed Andrea. “You are very perceptive. That is the way of the future. We’re almost there now, according to what we’ve been able to make of the oracle’s prophecies. But only a few may know what lies beyond those doors. I will just say that Caravaggio never disappeared as the world searched in vain for him. He spent his last years down there. Painting the end of the world.”
Frank turned and took it all in. It was more than could be fathomed and each revolution about the room revealed more, and made it feel as though there was nothing to ever be gained.
“You feel hopeless, my son?” murmured Andrea.
“... Yes,” whispered Frank.
“That is as it is expected to be, my son. That is always the first feeling upon seeing the revelation. But you see... these paintings are a form of hope. The hope that we may avoid these things on the wall. That is why the oracle told us to copy everything down. Verbatim. Religiously. Everything she said. And to mark it down in these books and these paintings so that we may prepare to fight against these possible futures. These Terrible Horribles. That is what I call them. The Terrible Horribles. My whole life... everything... has been to avoid these Terrible Horribles and the others that are written in the books.” He paused, sighing to himself as he stared at some new atrocity he’d probably seen a million times. Then, “That... is why a man makes a whore of his daughter,” he whispered. “To save the future. To save the world. And now, you must decide if you want to avoid what is on the walls. If you will kill to stop what was written down. And then painted. We are the Order of Iluminación. We fight against the Black Hand and their masters who would make these Terrible Horribles real.”
And that was what Frank had been seeing in every fresco. Behind Hitler. Behind Valdicus Imperator Rex. Behind the Cruel Presidents. The not Founding Fathers. He seen in each and every one the man in the cloak behind the peasants feasting on the blood-soaked king and his horse. In each painting there was a man with a small tattoo on his left hand. A tiny Black Hand tattoo. Just like the mobster he’d shot in the room three nights ago. The mobster who’d been with Jordana, naked in his bed. Distracted by her incredible beauty as a killer with a silencer crept close.
I’m the killer, thought Frank.
In the dark corner of one mural, a small girl peered out from the wall. She was alone in the ruins of a city. Alone. And Frank had the feeling there was no one else alive in that possible world that might have been. No one but her. And that she was real. And that she needed help. And that there was none.
This is why a man makes a whore of his daughter, thought Frank. Because of what’s at stake.
That line from A Tale of Two Cities. He’d read it in high school.
The needs of the many...
When he looked over at Andrea, he saw the man was made even older by the torchlight as his sad eyes gazed upon all the Terrible Horribles. Then slowly Andrea turned and looked up at Frank.
Outweigh the needs of the few.
“Exactly,” murmured Andrea.
Exactly.
Chapter Thirty-One
The convoy sped down the highway at close to sixty, the rattling battle-damaged Hummers trying to keep up with Steele in the lead vehicle a
s the sun began its long slow fall into the west. Most of the highway was clear along the westbound lanes leading into the more populated areas near the coast. The eastbound lanes were clogged with traffic that would wait forever, turning into so much rust and warped sun-faded plastic in whatever reality was to follow all of this destruction.
Zekes wandered between the cars, never quite catching the convoy as they lunged after its gusty, grit-filled passage.
Sitting up high in the MRAP, Braddock had a better view of what lay ahead than the rest of the convoy. Smoke and haze obscured much of the road and the distant dying towns alongside it. Braddock could see zekes swarming the crowded urban sprawls of gas stations and outlet store clusters. In other places, whole neighborhoods had burnt to the ground. He heard sporadic volleys of gunfire, and it reminded him of all the years he’d spent on military rifle ranges.
As though this were all just some big training exercise. In a week to two it would be over, and everything could be cleaned up and turned in. Two week’s leave would follow.
Get your mind off that, Braddock ordered himself. This is as real as it gets. This is for all the marbles.
And more so now, he thought, reflecting on Steele’s threat to burn the world. And then those other words he’d spoken about things Braddock didn’t want to even think of.
About other realities...
About the Sisters and the Ancient Hunter...
And...
The Football still in play.
That other stuff, besides the Football, was so crazy it made no sense. Like something you’d hear a homeless guy mutter on the street as you passed him by, trying to ignore his lunatic ravings.
But the Nuclear Football and the fact that Steele was using it as leverage to get to the objective... that spoke volumes to Braddock.
That was pure intel.
It meant that most likely Steele had a way to hack into some kind of surviving internet. Also, Steele didn’t have actual possession of the Nuclear Football. Because to do that would mean he had possession of the President and that the President was still alive. Otherwise the Football didn’t work.