by Jack Conner
She squeezed him around the middle. "I do. I think you feel the same toward me."
He lit a cigarette and moved to the window, where he looked down on the neon city.
She came to stand beside him, her arm around his waist in a strangely familiar gesture. He offered her the cigarette and she took it, expelling the smoke with a cool smile.
"What do you say to finding a coffee shop?" she asked.
"No.”
“What then?”
"I say we find a bar."
* * *
After the graveyard, Ruegger and Danielle explored the land beyond the airfield. Small hills rose up, covered by stunted-looking shrubs and ugly grass. The night was cool, and the air became fresher the further they got from the mission/hangar.
"I'm hungry," Danielle said.
"Me too. Should've eaten before we left Vegas.”
The vampires made their way up the embankment, becoming slippery in the rain, toward the airfield and past the vacant cemetery. As they were descending the last hill, Ruegger started as lightning flashed. A lone figure stood on the mission's roof. The man seemed tall, but it was hard to tell from here, and he was utterly naked, his face raised to the heavens. He mounted the scaffolding toward the platform on top of the bell tower.
Ruegger gestured, and Danielle looked as another blast of lightning cut down, illuminating the glistening, storm-swept roof, but the figure was gone.
"What is it?" Danielle said.
"I think I saw Laslo, but I don't know. Whoever he was, he was on the roof near the bell tower. Then not. I think he went into the tower." Chills ran up his spine. Had Laslo been watching them? Was he watching now? Did he know that they'd been joined in ungodly union not long ago? Had he seen that?
"Let's go inside,” Ruegger said.
The moment they entered the mission's vestibule, Ruegger was hit by a wretched stench.
"Do you hear something?" Danielle said.
He paused to listen. He could hear a strange, rhythmic noise ... but it was something he'd heard before.
"Let's see what it is," she said, and her voice was a whisper.
They crept down a narrow hall, hearing the noise grow louder, then turned down another, and finally came upon the chapel.
“Fuck,” Ruegger said.
The zombies were here, at least thirty of them, kneeling in the pews, chanting softly, steadily in Latin. They wore ratty gray monk-robes with hoods thrown over their heads, concealing their faces. The leader of the congregation was not Laslo but one of his bloodfinders, a man Ruegger recognized, had even played poker with a few times; Singer, he was called.
A tall man with a scarred face and a severe widow's peak, Singer had been a werewolf who worked for Hauswell before being murdered in a gangland war. Now he was Laslo's right-hand man and, to prove his devotion to God he’d had a cross burned into the smooth flesh of his forehead—smooth because he was an immortal and immortal corpses do not rot easily. In fact, Singer just might still possess the ability to shapeshift.
His eyes were closed, and he was leading the chant. A large cross stood behind Singer, suspended by wires, and a naked man hung where Christ should be, nailed at the hands and feet to the wooden beams, his blood dripping to the floor. Covered in a slick bloody grime, the man was tall and gaunt with salt-and-pepper hair and big glossy black eyes set back in his head, giving them a hooded appearance. His flesh was the color of ash.
"Laslo," whispered Ruegger. Laslo, taking the place of Christ! He must have only just gotten into position, as he’d been at the tower moments ago, Ruegger was sure of it.
Danielle pulled him away. "Why don't we plant some bombs and blow this place up?" she said. "We’re supposed to fight evil where we can, and this ... this is ... "
"Evil?"
She shook her head. "I don't know. But to feed all these bastards they've gotta kill a lot of humans, don't they?"
"That follows." He caught a whiff of something else, more zombies somewhere close by. He set off in that direction, Danielle just behind.
They came upon a large wooden door, set in a little alcove. Half a dozen zombies grouped in front of it like a pack of wolves. One of them was Tommy O'Connel. The zombie smiled when he saw the odd flock and stepped forward, a shotgun in his hands.
"How d'you do, mates?"
"What's going on here?" Ruegger said.
"Nothin' much. We'd all be attendin' th'Midnight Mass if ya'll weren't stayin' with us. But we aren't an' we're here instead. Least we don't haveta don those fool robes."
"Where's this door go?" Danielle asked.
"Oh, that. This here's the door to th'hangar, but don't you be gettin' eager. We're here to prevent you two nice folks from goin' down there an' if you make a fuss I'll call the other brothers in Mass an' you'll git more'n ya bargained fer."
"What's down there?"
"If you were to know, we wouldn't be guardin' th'door, now would we?" With a quick snap, he chambered a round. "Now clear out 'fore I git meself worked into a tither."
"How do we get to the roof from here?" Ruegger said.
"Ya don't."
"We're going to the roof."
"Can't have that, now. An' if ya try for the door to it, you'll find some more brothers waitin' for ya. Now ya'll go on, say yer prayers an' retire. Feel restless an' ya might wanna try out th'library on the third floor." He leveled the shotgun at them. "Ya'll go now, an' God bless."
The odd flock moved away, down a series of stark rat-tunnels. Danielle paused, studying a large round bulge in the wall.
"What do you bet this is the bell tower shaft?" she said.
"Probably is."
"Why does it run straight through the building like this?"
"I guess Hauswell thought it would be more aesthetically pleasing if the tower was located in the center of the mission, and he always did like his secret passages. But the way I remember the mission, there was access to the bell tower on every floor and stairs that ran in a spiral along the inside wall leading up to the bell from the first story. It looks as if Laslo had the entrance to it on this floor walled up. Probably did the same for the other floors."
"Baby, I think it leads to the hangar. I bet if we broke through this wall we'd find it goes straight down. Why don't we? It'll get this mystery over with."
"Let's wait till sunrise when most of the zombies'll be out fetching blood for Laslo."
"But the sun—"
"Don't worry. All the windows have iron shutters, which they close during the day so that Laslo can walk around."
"What about the bell tower itself? It's open at the top and the sun can come right in."
His frown deepened. "Then we wait for first dark."
"I want to go now."
He debated. Really, there was no point in putting it off, other than his reluctance to endanger Danielle. Then again, every moment they were here was one of danger.
“Fine,” he said. “Let’s do it.”
As quietly as possible, they began to break through the stone, setting the pieces on the floor so they could replace them later. The repair wouldn't pass an inspection, but that was the chance they took. Once they'd removed enough stones to create a hole big enough to slip through, Ruegger stuck his head into the bell tower and was immediately assaulted by a terrible reek. He knew that smell, knew it very well.
“You sure you want to do this?” he said.
“I’m sure.”
He began to crawl into the bell tower head-first, looking for the staircase he remembered, but it had been removed. In fact, there was nothing here—no bell, no floors, just an empty hole above where the roof should be (and where a half-moon now hung instead, partially obscured by clouds that flung rain down on him) and a bottomless pit below. A pit that stunk horribly. Something down there glistened …
Hands seized his leg.
“What the—?”
They yanked him back out of the hole. For a moment, he thought it had been Danielle pulling him out for so
me reason, but, then he saw Tommy and a dozen other zombies standing over him, their weapons drawn. Ruegger lowered his hands and stood slowly.
“Sorry, babe,” Danielle said. Two zombies held her. “They came up on me too fast.”
Tommy smiled, revealing corroded teeth. "Thought ya might be up to somethin'. An' here ya are, causin' trouble an' makin' me in my condition comb these damn halls an' wear meself out. A shame and a sin, neither of which're likely to go unpunished 'round here. Now come peaceably an' mebbe the Lord'll be gentle with ye."
"Mind if I have a smoke?" Ruegger said.
"Be quick about it, man. I ain't overbrimmin' with patience, y'know."
Ruegger thrust his hands into his jacket and came up with two enormous Colt .45s, which he fired directly into the zombies. Tommy's head exploded.
Danielle broke free of her captors and fired, too.
The zombies surged forward. Several flung Ruegger back against the wall, but still he kept shooting. One fell, then another, their rotting bodies unable to keep up the pretense of life.
They were overwhelming Danielle.
“Go!” he said. “Into the hole!”
“I can’t leave you!”
“Go! I’ll be right after you.”
She resisted another moment, but they were all over her. She leapt into the hole and was gone.
When he ran out of bullets, he turned to the opening, gritted his teeth and flung himself in. A few dry hands scraped at his feet, but not fast enough. He plunged down, and down, and he had enough time to register a light patter of rain on his face and the vile stench of whatever he was approaching coming up fast. He passed through the spot where the lowest floor should be—but was not—and next he was flying through the empty space of the hangar ...
He landed with a gruesome plop. For a moment he thought he was drowning. Fighting his way through the wretched liquid substance he'd fallen into, he clawed past a forest of dismembered body parts floating in the goo. A severed arm, a decomposing head, there the remains of some poor man's torso, the putrid flesh and the bones underneath, a free-floating liver ...
Ruegger broke the surface, gasping, not for breath but in shock. He realized he was covered by a slick, bloody grime, the same grime that Laslo had been covered with. The zombie overlord had gone for a swim before crucifying himself. Ruegger reached for purchase, found the edge of the basin and hoisted himself up out of the pool, then fell to the cement floor of the hangar. It was a good drop, and he winced in pain as he cracked the cement.
Danielle, spitting and cursing, helped him up. She’d already emerged from the slime.
“Fucking great,” she said, shaking her gore-coated hands.
He fumbled for his guns but couldn’t find them. Shit. He’d lost them in the pit, and he wasn't going back in there, not for all the mushrooms in Morocco. He patted himself down, finding the weapons that hadn’t been dislodged and examining them. The goop in the pool had clogged most of them up. Snarling, he hurled the pistols to the floor.
“What now?” Danielle said.
“The bell tower must have been cleared so Laslo can jump through it to this pool,” Ruegger said. “The platform on top’s nothing more than a diving board.”
“Jesus.”
Backing into something in his effort to distance himself from the pool, he knocked an object over with a metallic bang. Turning, he noticed a cluster of metal barrels. The one he'd turned over was leaking some oily substance—an anticoagulant for the pool so the blood there wouldn't clot. Damn, but Laslo was a sick bastard. And, if Ruegger had his way, a very dead one.
“Holy God,” Danielle said, and such was the horror in her voice that Ruegger felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck.
He turned, and suddenly he saw it all, the whole hangar ...
Hastily, the walls rose in his head, putting distance between himself and the reality of the situation. Despite that, he sank to his knees and retched.
The pale moonlight shooting down the bell tower cast the scene in an appropriately gray hue. Giant chains hung from the ceiling, hooks on the end of them that, one and all, were pierced through the Achilles tendons of humans, most of which looked dead and all of which were naked. Wall to wall corpses, and along the walls life-size crosses. Occupied crosses.
Ruegger and Danielle approached a woman who hung upside-down from a hooked chain and saw that she was in fact still alive … in a manner of speaking. Most of the bodies seemed decayed, some no more than skeletons with a little skin left, but horribly, some of them were moving, though surely most of their brains were so rotted that they weren't really human anymore—
Get a grip, old son. You've seen worse. WHERE, for gods' sakes? No, this is just about as bad as it gets. I knew he was insane, but even so how can Laslo justify this?
"Come … here …" the woman wheezed.
Cautiously, Ruegger and Danielle obeyed. As he drew nearer, he could see that the woman was past death, along with the rest of the hangar's occupants, but she was perhaps the freshest one.
"Hang on," he said, grimacing at the choice of words.
He leapt up for purchase on the chain, finding that his hands were so greasy they almost didn't stay on. As delicately as he could, he removed the hook from the woman's tendon, grabbed her ankle and hopped to the floor. He eased her to the ground, where she lay panting.
“Poor thing,” Danielle said.
Ruegger removed his grime-coated jacket and laid it over the woman’s wasted frame. She coughed her thanks, and he nodded, trying not to show his horror.
Laslo and the zombies would be on them soon. While the woman recovered, Ruegger scanned the room. There were the stairs that led up to the door that Tommy O'Connel and his gang must have been guarding. Ruegger knew it would burst open any moment.
Where was Hauswell?
The woman smiled weakly, but she was obviously scared, probably frightened that Ruegger would hurt her or that she would have to return to the hook, like living meat in a meat freezer.
"Laslo did this to you?" he asked.
"They call him the Lord ..." Her voice filled with mocking rage. "He calls himself the Son of God."
"How did you get here?"
For a long moment he didn't think she would answer. Then, in a creaking and painful voice, she told her story:
"My husband and I were taking our son to Vegas for his birthday … and we stopped for a hitchhiker, oh we were so stupid. He tore us up—he killed my boy, he was dead!—and nearly killed me. I passed out … woke up hanging in this … place. They left me to rot, my husband was gone, and then I was dead, no water no nothing, and I woke up and was still here … and the Son of God was standing over me ... he can make the dead rise, just like a god, but he's no god he's the devil and he or his demons killed everyone here and he keeps them alive so he can ... he can ... he can cut holes in them and put his ... and put his ..." She couldn't go on.
Ruegger didn’t need her to.
“Sick fuck,” said Danielle.
“But why?” Ruegger asked the woman.
"He says he must cleanse our sin … through the fire of his seed. Sometimes he'll let one of us die and tear his victim apart afterwards … just to raise them again and watch them struggle to move … and he laughs. Oh, he laughs ..." She looked up at Ruegger and her eyes were wide; she’d felt his strength. "Oh, my God! You're one of them!" She screamed and struggled out of his grasp, scrambling backwards, but not far.
"No," he said. "I'm here to help you." But she was no longer listening. She was shaking her head and muttering, transported into a wave of terror.
The zombies would be here any second, Ruegger knew. Where was Hauswell?
His eyes were drawn upwards to the ceiling, where he saw a cross hanging high in the air, and on that cross was the headless body of a sixtiesh white male …
Danielle followed his gaze. “I’m so sorry, honey.”
“No,” he said. “Wait. I don’t think … ”
“What?”
He breathed out in a sudden rush of relief. “That body’s decomposing.”
The door burst open. A horde of zombies—the whole congregation—swarmed down, blades and guns in their hands. Ruegger reached for a long knife, really more of a dagger.
“Give ‘em hell,” Danielle said, pulling out a blade of her own.
They zombies flew at them. Ruegger tore into the creatures with teeth and knife. He jammed the blade into his attackers until one of them sunk to the floor, the knife in its skull. Too far away for him to reach. He fought on with teeth and fist. A splash of corpseblood sprayed his mouth, and he nearly retched.
They surged all around him and Danielle. Ruegger swiveled, turned, punched, kicked. He hard his enemies’ bones breaking. Soaked with blood from head to toe, he fought on.
“Danielle,” he gasped. “Danielle!”
He could no longer see her.
“Ruegger … ”
There were too many of them. Escape was impossible.
He heard growls approach. Singer. In beast form. As the werewolf joined the fight, Ruegger realized his time had come.
A voice, Laslo’s: “Come to God, my son.”
Ruegger tried to answer, but one of the deaders rammed a dagger through his throat, and blackness overcame him.
Chapter 19
When Sophia woke up in the morning, sunlight streamed in through the window and she glanced at the clock on the bedside counter. Nine-thirty. Early enough.
She sat up in bed—Jean-Pierre's bed—and noticed him still asleep beside her. He was such an angelic sleeper. This was the first time in a long time she’d woken up next to a man that 1) she hadn’t had sex with and 2) she had no plans to destroy. Oddly self-conscious, she ran her hand through his pale blond hair.
Last night had been good. Healthy, in its own twisted way. They’d danced and gotten drunk together. Even talked. She had let her guard down, and wasn’t sorry about it.
She even felt a little guilty about her attempt to seduce him. It was her natural instinct, though, maybe the natural instinct of all ghensivs; when she saw a weakness in a man, she honed in on it and used it to her best advantage, or what she thought would be her best advantage at the time. Sometimes she was wrong.