Arize (Book 1): Resurrection
Page 27
Those he’d allowed entry earlier had taken chairs near the front, surrounded by the food Hayes’s men had distributed. They’d been the first to receive their tattoos, inked by Big Jones and his ethereal assistant with the blue hair. Jones had trained several of them so they, too, could help mark the faithful. They were given extra rations and blankets for their service, so Big Jones already had another dozen volunteers eager to join his artistic crew.
Ingram gave a sweeping motion of his arms, as if lifting a great weight, and commanded, “Open up!”
The soldiers threw back the deadbolts and unlocked the hasp barring the double doors, and the crowd pushed through. Ingram ordered them to hold up their hands as they entered, so their marks might be seen. In the confusion, some nonbelievers probably slipped in, but they would soon be found out. They flooded down the aisles and soon filled up the seats in the middle portion of the church. Others dragged their meager possessions and bundles into the corners of the sanctuary to establish temporary camps.
Ingram heard prayers and snatches of hymn and more than a few hallelujahs. A number of congregants shouted his name, which pleased him. They recognized he was not just a servant of the Lord, he was a vessel. After all, hadn’t God given him this power?
Someone near the front pointed to a man sitting slumped in the seat beside him and said, “He’s sick! He doesn’t have the mark!”
Ingram motioned to two of the soldiers behind him. They ran down the steps leading from the pulpit and dragged the sick man toward an emergency exit. The man kicked and screamed and proclaimed his devotion to God, but the devil’s sign was upon his flesh. They had him nearly to the door when he went into convulsions.
“Wait!” Ingram said into the microphone, and the frantic din died to a low rumble of mutters and whispers as all eyes fell on Ingram. An infant wailed its irritation, and its mother shushed it by covering it with a shawl. The soldiers in the balcony swept their rifles from side to side, alert for another outbreak of deaders among the refugees.
Ingram calmly walked over to the sick man, carrying the microphone so all might hear. “How have you sinned, stranger?”
The man, swaying back and forth, eyes burning with fever, said, “All I did was come here to survive,” he said, his voice quivering. “My family’s dead.”
“Your will to survive is strong, but your faith is weak,” Ingram said. “You’re more concerned with this world than the next.”
“Not true,” the man said, trying to break free from the soldiers but too dissipated to do more than collapse in their arms. “I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t ask for this.”
“So you think you know the Lord’s will better than I do?” Ingram said.
The man lapsed into a seizure, limbs flailing wildly.
“Behold the demons entering his flesh,” Ingram said to the rapt congregation. “His spirit’s not strong enough to reject the devil!”
The soldiers drew back from the man, but Ingram moved closer so the infected man’s raspy breath came over the microphone. Moments later, the breath faded and the man grew still, his body hanging limp in the soldiers’ grip.
“Is he dead?” Ingram asked one of the soldiers.
The soldier felt for a pulse, then checked the man for breath, careful to keep his fingers away from the slack mouth. The soldier nodded in the affirmative.
“Stab him in the chest just to make sure,” Ingram ordered.
The other soldier drew his knife and seemed hesitant to use it. Ingram reminded him the man didn’t accept the mark. “He’s not one of us.”
The soldier complied, thrusting the knife into the man’s rib cage, working the blade so that it penetrated his heart. Blood soaked his shirt. The congregation grew louder, restless and frenzied. Ingram motioned for the soldiers to release the man, and the body rolled to the pulpit floor.
Many in the audience had likely seen or heard of Ingram’s televised healing of a zombie. Now they would bear witness to another miracle. A murmur rolled through the crowd as the tension mounted. Ingram engaged in a repetition of his earlier sermons to vie for time.
Within minutes, the infected man began twitching, drawing a gasp from the crowd.
Ingram stood over the corpse. “Rise and walk, demon of Satan.”
The trembling corpse squirmed forward, rising on its hands and knees. Ingram urged it forward, inciting the crowd. A woman screamed, and several children wailed in anguish. Then the deader found its footing and stood unsteadily, its mottled skin already growing more corrupted. The deader shuffled forward, struggling to keep its balance, but the microphone picked up its raspy hiss.
“This is our enemy,” Ingram said to the congregation. “This is how Satan hopes to attack the faithful. But we can stand strong and fear no evil.”
The zombie shambled another three steps closer, but Ingram stood his ground. The two soldiers backed away, their weapons at the ready.
“For the Lord is with us,” Ingram said as the zombie reached for him.
The congregation was simultaneously horrified and transfixed. Their cries echoed back to them through the speakers: “Reverend!” “Lord, have mercy!” “Zombie!” “Kill it!”
The zombie fell on Ingram and he put up his arm to let the creature bite him. The thing’s eyes were as bright as the flames of hell, mouth gaping open as it dug into his wrist. He let it draw blood—the pain was agonizing but he wanted the theatrical effect of carnage—and then pushed it away. The zombie licked its red-soaked lips and lurched forward for another taste, growling with hunger.
“Kill the demon,” Ingram said to the soldiers, and the soldier with the dripping knife ran forward and drove it into the deader’s temple. It dropped to the floor with a thud.
“God gave His only begotten son so that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish,” Ingram said, holding his wounded hand high so that all could see it. The earlier bite scar, which resembled the eye and the numeral three that he’d chosen as his mark, was visible to those in the closest seats.
“And I shall not perish,” Ingram said. “Because on this Easter Sunday, this most blessed day of triumph over the grave, the Lord has chosen me to rise again.”
He paced back and forth across the pulpit for several minutes, delivering his most powerful sermon, reciting his favorite scripture, and convincing the congregation that all bore witness to a miracle.
Ingram smiled. Word of this wonder would spread, first among the troops, and then to the other shelters and outposts the government had established. The president had granted Ingram authority over all of them, and all needed to hear the message.
“Trust your soul to me, and I will keep you safe,” Ingram said. “For I am a servant of the Lord.”
He expected some consternation and confusion and resistance, but all he received was a smattering of applause from those unsure how to react. Then a woman stood and said, “I will follow you!” and she dropped to her knees and bowed her head toward him. Others mimicked her, kneeling in supplication, and soon most of the people in the sanctuary were kneeling, even the soldiers. Ingram took care to note which of the officers resisted.
“For I am your new savior,” Ingram said.
He hadn’t asked for this power. But God had given it to him anyway.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
They were outside the gates fifteen minutes later, bundling themselves against the rain that now fell in a steady drizzle
The wind pushed the steam of dampened bonfires across the landscape, the cloying stench clinging to their clothes. Although the military had opened a route east toward the capitol district wide enough for trucks and Humvees, the group was headed west toward Research Triangle Park.
Meg could easily find the BioGenix lab traveling the main highways, but Sonia’s map showed a more direct route that would shave a day or two from their journey on foot.
But first Meg and Jacob wanted to stop by Ramona’s grave to say a final farewell before they set off. There was no argument from th
e rest of the group, and the stop was only a little out of the way.
Hannah rolled ahead on her motorcycle, picking through the debris so she didn’t puncture a tire. Occasionally she would radio back to warn of a zombie or other hazard, and the group would detour to the next block. They came upon a wide, twisting path where a tornado had carved its way through the buildings, and they followed it several hundred yards until it veered from their course.
Sonia consulted the map Col. Hayes had given her, using a flashlight Rocky had secured from the shelter’s quartermaster. Rocky had been unable to get an extra rifle, but his squad mate Grabowski had given him a revolver and two extra magazines for his M16. Arjun and Sydney had pretended they were going to join the line for tattoos and then slipped into FEMA’s food distribution center and begged for a dozen meals and a twelve-pack of bottled water, which they’d divvied up into Hannah’s and Rocky’s packs.
At first the group didn’t believe Meg when she described the reverend’s performance as she’d witnessed from outside the sanctuary doors. But the others had heard the broadcast over the speakers, and her visual description matched what Ingram’s monologue had implied.
“One sick son of a bitch,” Sonia said.
“I think the people are even sicker,” Meg said. “Falling for that.”
“Do you think he was faking it, like those faith healers with their audience plants who roll onto the stage in wheelchairs and suddenly are able to walk after a laying on of hands?”
“I don’t think so,” Meg said, and Jacob seconded this. “That blood looked real.”
“But how do you explain Ingram surviving the bite?” Arjun asked Meg.
“I’m not sure. I suspect he has some level of immunity we haven’t isolated yet, just like I was immune to the original Klondike Flu.”
“But you’re not going to go around sticking your hand in a deader’s mouth, are you?” Sydney asked.
“Not anytime soon,” Meg said.
“The correct answer is ‘Never,’ Mom,” Jacob said.
“Hopefully we’ll find some answers when we get you to your lab,” Rocky said. “But first we’ll need to find a safe place to spend the night. The storm’s picking up just like the colonel said it would.”
“Not as many deaders as there were yesterday,” Arjun noted.
“Because the army’s been out this way,” Rocky said. “And a lot of them probably got buried in the debris. I wouldn’t count on it staying that way. After all, they’re making more by the hour.”
“But there aren’t as many people, either,” Sonia said. “They must be holed up because of the weather.”
“This storm’s keeping down the scavengers,” Arjun said. “That means more for us, when we’re ready to stock up on supplies.”
As they approached the graveyard, they came to the place where Arjun, Sydney, and Sonia had put down the three zombies. The bodies were gone, and all that remained was a little clotted brown blood mixed in the mud.
Hannah, who’d diverted down a side road upon spying a convenience store, came roaring toward them, the Kawasaki’s headlight bouncing up and down as it illuminated the falling rain. She pulled up beside them and idled.
“Scored some Bic lighters, batteries, a couple of flashlights, ponchos, work gloves, toothbrushes, and some bungee cords,” she said. “And this.”
She pulled a big black .32 revolver from her pack. “Clerk left it under the counter by the cash register. Lots of money in the register, but that’s no good to us now.”
“Did you get any candy?” Jacob said, peering up at his mother as if expecting a scolding. The sorrow of his sister’s loss was still etched in his features.
Hannah grinned. “Snickers satisfies!”
“After we’re safe tonight,” Meg said to Jacob. “And after you finish your dinner.”
“Let’s go see Ramona,” the boy said.
The group crossed the bridge where the water level was now two feet higher than the day before. Rocky trailed behind with his rifle at the ready, while Arjun and Meg carried the two semiautomatic pistols. Hannah killed her engine and parked her motorcycle at the bridge.
The graveyard lay ahead in the gloom. With the darkening sky and the wall of rain, it looked dismal and sinister instead of the peaceful meadow it had seemed previously. The marble and granite markers were only faintly visible, alabaster smudges against a wash of charcoal.
Meg’s rib cage clenched in anticipation. Despite the numbness inside her, razors of new hurt sliced at her heart. She couldn’t tell the tears from the rain.
They were nearly at the cemetery entrance, passing the Greenlawn sign, when she realized something was wrong. The ground was damaged from the storm, but some perceptible disruption had taken place here.
She didn’t believe what her eyes were telling her.
The spot where they’d buried Ramona was a great gash of wet soil, muddy water trailing down into the hole.
Meg dropped to her knees, clawing through the mud, but it was obvious that Ramona’s body was gone.
Jacob clutched the soggy, dirty teddy bear that lay beside the disturbance, crying in anguish.
“All of them,” Sydney said. “They’re all dug up.”
Meg saw Sydney was right—the ground in front of every marker was ripped and torn, brown water sluicing through the mud and flooding the holes.
“Not dug,” Rocky said. “The dirt looks like it was pushed up.”
“From underneath,” Hannah said.
It was true.
Whatever had been buried here was now out there somewhere, in the darkness around them.
Meg didn’t think science had an answer for this perversion of fundamental laws.
And she didn’t want to think of Ramona walking alone and lost in the night, unable to stay dead, deader, or deadest.
“Happy Easter,” Arjun said, and no one responded.
The rain fell on.
THE END
Arize #2: Revelation
In the midst of a zombie outbreak, Dr. Meg Perriman and a group of survivors head for the BioGenix research lab to work on a cure.
But the journey won’t be easy. The military has fallen under the spell of the enigmatic Rev. Cameron Ingram, who sees the outbreak as a sign of the Biblical apocalypse. Storms, earthquakes, and devastating floods appear to support the preacher’s doomsday message. Worse, the dead are rising from their graves, and Meg isn’t sure science has an explanation for these sinister mysteries.
But before she can help solve the puzzle, she and the others must fend off a growing army of the living dead. And her husband is missing and her daughter is among the infected.
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About the author:
Scott Nicholson is the international bestselling author of more than 30 thrillers, including the After and Next post-apocalyptic thriller series. Other thrillers include The Home, McFall, Disintegration, The Gorge, Speed Dating with the Dead, and Soft Robots. His books have appeared in the Kindle Top 100 more than a dozen times in five different countries. Visit his website at www.AuthorScottNicholson.com or his Amazon Author Central page
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Thanks to editor Gari Strawn, proofreader Frank Pero, and technical advisor Steve Lowe, SSRG (R).
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