by Dan Kemp
"This is our town, Black Creek. Built around the Deep Creek hydroelectric dam in western Maryland. Our generators are shot, and our power is out. This is the closest dam of a similar capacity. We have strong walls. We have homes. Other children, now. We have a doctor, farmers, fighters. You can see all of this for yourself."
The man was quite intent as he pored over the images.
Kristof went on. "Let me be very blunt with you, Bruce. I came here for that generator. I've got six men outside, a forklift and a flatbed. I'm taking it back to our town. The only question is whether you're coming with us or not."
The man looked up at Kristof, down at the camera again, at his daughters, then back at Kristof.
"I'll go."
Dorian
"Still not too late to back out."
Dorian lowered the binoculars and looked at James, who let a slight smirk cut through his otherwise grim face.
"Yeah, my ass." Dorian snorted and put the lenses back to his eyes. From their perch atop a high hill, hidden among some rough brush, he could see the entirety of the Church's compound. It was much bigger than he’d expected, but still fit squarely within the small valley. Tall walls ran along all four sides of the square complex. They were impressive enough, but paled in comparison to the ones he had built.
A handful of guards patrolled behind the gates and along the walls. The grounds were otherwise deserted at this early hour.
"You sure? Probably a lot of fighters down there," James said.
"You won't let them hurt me," Dorian said with a laugh, getting to his feet and pocketing the binoculars. “No risk.”
James shook his head. "This isn't a slaughter. Don't kill anyone who surrenders. I want to at least give them a chance to leave this path they're on."
"I'm not sure I would count on it," Skye said, the first words Dorian had heard from her since they had arrived.
"I hate to agree with this one," Dorian said.
"Still," James replied. "By the way. If Martin shows up, both of you should run. I can't promise to protect you then."
"Alright," Dorian said, his blood running cold at the mention of that. "So what's the plan? In through the front gates?"
James nodded. "The plan doesn't matter. Nothing they do will stop me."
"At this time, most of them will be in the main hall," Skye said, pointing to the largest building, which sat in the dead center of the compound. "Martin's cave is that way, at the bottom of the cliff."
Following her finger, Dorian could see a spot where the ground dropped away. Below, he glimpsed the edge of a small lake where it met the sheer rock wall on the far side.
James nodded and, with that, he was off down the hill. His momentum carried him into a jog and then a run. Dorian scooped up his rifle from the ground and sprinted behind. He couldn’t keep pace with James, who was moving faster by the second.
As James bounded toward the gates, the ground beneath him began to shudder. The shaking quickly became violent, nearly sending Dorian tumbling down the hill, and then the ground was torn asunder. Chunks of clay and rock jutted upward as a wave of energy rippled and rolled forward in a straight line. The wave hit the gates, which immediately cracked and fell backward, crushing several men beneath them.
Dorian watched in awe as the shockwave split at the gates and ran along the wall in both directions, reducing everything to rubble as it went. Dorian, back at full speed now, picked his footing carefully over the broken ground until he passed the gates.
There was a long moment of silence as James, Dorian, and Skye stood just inside the demolished walls, no one in sight, and then the gunfire began. The air shimmered briefly, then bullets coming from all directions fell harmlessly to the ground in front of their feet. Cultists took up positions on the roofs, peeked out of windows and doors, and scrambled out of their buildings to take cover behind whatever they could find.
James set off at a run, straight into the heart of the compound. Gunfire followed him, but the bullets continued to be deflected by some invisible force, as did those coming the way of Dorian and Skye. With a shout, Dorian raised his rifle. Part of him resented the lack of challenge, though the other, more rational, part of his mind told him he wouldn't stand a chance otherwise. Nonetheless, Dorian began firing at every target he saw.
He took a tentative step forward, past where the shimmering barrier had been, hoping it would follow. It did, and the bullets continued to bounce away from him as he and Skye advanced forward, each firing in constant bursts. Dorian dropped empty magazines where he stood and kept moving ahead, leaving dozens of armed cultists dead in their wake.
Dorian tried to stay focused, but his eyes were drawn forward, after James. His friend sprinted forward, leaping headlong through a line of riflemen blocking the road. Body parts went flying in all directions, and James spun as he flew, sending fireballs in multiple directions which blew cultists off rooftops.
A pickup truck emerged suddenly from a side alley, nearly plowing into James’s side, but the man soared effortlessly away. James landed with his feet planted on the side of a building, then launched himself forward once again, impacting the truck with a fiery explosion.
Dorian heard a scream, then Skye's voice. "Move!" she yelled.
Dorian spun in place, just in time to avoid a man leaping toward him. A metal pipe whistled through the air where his head had just been. The cultist, wearing crimson rags, was carried by the momentum of his failed attack and fell to the ground in front of Dorian.
"No!" the man cried, terror in his eyes as he tried to crawl backward and scramble to his feet.
Dorian planted a foot on his chest, and a point blank shot left only a gory, deflated lump atop the man's shoulders.
The last of the cultists were falling back now, and before long Dorian and Skye caught up with James.
The metal doors of the main hall, where Skye said most of the cult members would be, were red hot and freshly fused down the middle. From inside Dorian could hear shouting and banging on the other side of the thick doors.
"They aren't going anywhere for now," James said. "Show me Martin's hideout. Though I doubt he’s here. If he were, he'd have shown himself by now."
Skye led the two men across the other side of the Church's compound, which was now as barren as the rest of it. At the bottom of a set of natural rock stairs they found the cave, which sat on the shore of the little lake Dorian had seen before.
Dorian paused at the mouth of the cave, a cool wind blowing from within. James didn’t hesitate to set foot inside, and after a moment Dorian followed.
He was startled by the sudden drop in temperature as they found themselves in a dank, narrow passage. The light steadily faded, and Dorian felt his way along the rough, moist rock wall.
After several turns of the twisting passage they were suddenly plunged into complete darkness.
Dorian stopped short momentarily, and did his best to hide his shivering as he edged his way forward.
The path was just as quickly illuminated once again as a swirling sphere of flame winked into existence, hovering above James's palm.
This passage finally opened into a small room, which felt surprisingly cozy despite its cold wetness. A thick rug lay over the dirt floor, and a fireplace sat alongside a table and a pair of bookshelves. Another passage curled off from this room, deeper into the cliff. Its destination was shrouded in darkness.
"This is where I met him," Skye said.
"No surprise that he isn't here," James replied, examining some of the books on the shelves.
"Fucking coward," Dorian said, though he felt decidedly less than brave himself at the moment. He hovered rather close to James as they combed the room and entered the next hallway.
"Martin is many things, but a coward is not one of them. He has nothing at all to fear, or at least he thinks he hasn't. It’s probably sheer chance that he isn’t here."
This path was shorter, making only a few turns before feeding into another room. As they a
pproached, they heard the sound of running water.
Here the floor was a lush bed of grass and flowers, and light shone down from a hole in the rock high above. Water splashed and gurgled from a spring in one corner and trickled along a narrow trench before disappearing into a gap in the wall.
"The hell is this?" Dorian asked.
"If Martin is anything like me, a place for meditation is often needed. My mind can be hard to tame."
The final path was warmer, and the orange glow of torchlight grew brighter with each turn. The soft murmuring of voices told them they were not, in fact, alone. James eyed Dorian and Skye in a way which suggested the two of them better stay behind. Reluctantly, Dorian did, as James disappeared around the corner.
Several long moments passed in silence. What had James found? Surely it couldn't be Martin, or else a fight would have broken out. Dorian turned the corner, and stopped dead in his tracks.
This was Martin's bedroom, clearly. From its decoration, one wouldn’t know it was located in a cave deep in the side of a cliff. A couch and several chairs lined one wall, and carpet covered the entire floor. On the back wall, a small bathroom branched off. In the middle of this room was a very large bed. On it, three women huddled together, terrified. Their swollen bellies betrayed their advanced pregnancy.
Though Dorian, and now Skye, stood dumbfounded in the doorway, the women's eyes were fixed on James, who sat hunched over on the couch across from them, head buried in his hands. After a moment he looked up, first at Dorian and then at the women.
"The man," he said to them. "Did he have eyes like mine?"
One nodded hesitantly. James grimaced and rubbed his forehead with both palms, pulling at his hair slightly in frustration.
The implications were immediately clear enough to Dorian. Martin must have finally decided having his own children might be worth a try, if only for the chance of an ally against James. Frankly, knowing what he did now, Dorian was surprised he hadn’t tried before. His immediate realization that he wasn't entirely sure Martin hadn't done so before disturbed him most of all.
Dorian could see the anguish playing out across his friend's face. The children could not be allowed to live. Yet James didn't have the stomach for the task.
"I'll do it," Dorian offered. James looked at him, at once understanding exactly what he meant. He shook his head and stood, his face a pale specter of grim resignation.
"No. This mistake is mine to correct. I'm sorry," he said to the women on the bed, who were looking increasingly anxious. "Just go."
Dorian turned and left the room, reaching beyond to drag Skye, who was frozen in place, along with him. As they left the cave, the women's echoing screams floating after them, and Skye sniffled and squeezed his arm tight.
When James emerged a few minutes later, his face drawn and his eyes tinged pink, he found Dorian and Skye sitting on the rough sand by the lake.
Dorian stood up, starting to speak, when the women emerged from the cave behind James. Their formerly protruding abdomens were now somehow completely flat. Two of them were crying, the face of the third completely impassive. Without hesitation they passed James and disappeared up the stairs.
They didn’t speak of it any further; together, the three of them took the stairs back up to the main compound, where everything was quiet and still.
Whoever had been locked inside the main hall had given up trying to escape, and no sound now came from inside. With just a twist of his hand James tore the metal doors from their hinges and tossed them aside. A new hail of gunfire soared their way, and just as before, the bullets fell in useless heaps before them as James stalked forward into the hall.
His footsteps echoed loudly and seemed to shake the entire building. The dozens of cultists inside were cowering in fear, and most of those among them who had guns tossed them aside. A powerful silence hung over the hall.
These are people, Dorian thought, for whom the supernatural is not a foreign concept.
Everyone who sat at the tables on the floor wore crimson rags, aside from a few among them who wore gray. On long raised platforms around the room sat more tables, filled mostly with men and women wearing chains on their wrists, with a handful of crimson-robed men mixed among them. Higher up, catwalks ran around the perimeter of the room with hallways branching off every dozen feet or so. All these doors slammed shut at once, and Dorian wasn’t sure if this was the work of the cultists or of James.
All inside were silent as James walked forward, then leapt atop one of the high platforms. He upended the table in front of him, sending the table, all the dishes and food atop it, and the men seated there tumbling to the ground. His green eyes seemed to pulse with seething rage as he stared all around him.
"I’m James," he announced, his voice carrying to every corner of the room. "I’m the one your Church claims to follow. I’ve seen all that you've done. I denounce it, all of it. All of you." There was anxious murmuring amongst the crowd. "You’ve been fooled. Your leader is not me. It is another, who calls himself Martin, an evil man who manipulated you for his own purposes." At this name, the murmuring became shouting.
"Lies!" one robed man screamed, standing and pointing at James.
The uproar spread across the room like a wave. Arguments began to break out, the sound of shouting intermixed with the thumping of chairs and clattering of dishes falling to the floor. There were howls and groans as men and women began to fight. Dorian watched as the scene devolved into utter chaos in a matter of seconds. Even from this distance he could see the sadness on his friend's face.
Dorian waded forward into the fray, hauling people apart, his shouts for quiet drowned out by the noise of the violent throng. He struck a man in the back of the head and threw him to the ground, swept the legs out from underneath one woman who was kicking another, dragged a howling-mad man away from a crying woman by his long hair.
"ENOUGH!"
The ceiling shook from James's shout, and bits of plaster and tile rained down from above. The floor shuddered so terribly that many fell to the ground.
"You’ve been deceived," James called out. "Brainwashed. You’ve seen the truth of who I am, with your own eyes. All those who believe me, who wish to leave, go. Leave now. You will not be harmed."
There was some movement, twenty or so men and women picking their way through the bloodied crowd. Dorian watched as the group, almost entirely made up of men in robes and people in gray rags, disappeared out the front doors. A few dozen more still remained, including all those who wore chains and the greater part of the crimson-ragged cohort.
James's voice was strained. "The rest of you. There’s nothing I can do to convince you, then?"
"James warned us against you, impostor!" a woman, somewhere, shouted. There were other voices of agreement.
"So be it," James said, and his eyes flicked over to Dorian.
The hall erupted with gunfire and the screams of the dying, until it was done.
"Where do they keep the prisoners?" James asked Skye, who was reloading her weapon.
"Mostly at other sites. The rest of this building is dorms and training rooms. We should check the Robes' quarters upstairs, though. Some of the leaders may have hidden there."
"Don't worry about the other sites," Dorian said, slapping a fresh magazine into his own rifle. "My men and I can handle those easily enough." He rested a hand on James's shoulder, which sagged beneath it.
"I know," James answered.
“Hey, you tried, man.”
“Yeah. Thanks,” James said.
They combed through the basement, which was mostly empty, as Skye had suggested. In one locked cellar, they did find a half dozen starved-looking men and women. Dorian waited by the door as James and Skye knelt and spoke to the prisoners.
"We have somewhere safe to take you," he heard James say. Dorian began to interrupt, but stopped himself.
Fuck it.
Skye led them upstairs, through the closed doors on the catwalk and to one big l
ocked door at the end of a hallway. "This is the Robes’ private residence," she said.
"What's inside?" Dorian tried to peek under the gap at the floor with little success.
"No idea," she said. "I wasn't one of them."
James easily knocked the locked door to the ground, and again they were met with a round of bullets, this time from pistols. Five men knelt behind several couches, taking cover from the doorway. James stepped forward and sent a shockwave from his hand, knocking the men backward to the floor. At Dorian and Skye's gunpoint, they tossed their weapons aside and remained on their knees.
The room they now found themselves in was a rather lavish lounge, with thick red carpet, several couches and recliners, and a gurgling fountain in one corner. It was lit by an electric chandelier, and Dorian realized this was the only electric light he had seen here. A large screen TV hung on one wall. Two hallways branched away from either end of the room. A quick glimpse told Dorian the halls were lined with bedrooms, and they appeared to be empty.