“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” he said, for the first time raising his voice to a level where I could hear him. “Tonight, my children, we sleep. Everything we’ve learned, everything we’ve sacrificed was for this moment, this night. The new resurrection is coming, the true kingdom is born!”
The crowd cheered maniacally, praising him and reeling in ecstasy.
As frightening a scenario as it was, there was something sadly typical in all this madness. If Martin really was what he claimed to be, it was a microcosm of the degree to which our civilization had become slaves to mediocrity. This was the den of the antichrist? This was how such a supposedly weighty moment in human existence would unfurl, with a ragtag bunch of cultists hopping around a Mexican desert in their bare feet? This was how the greatest evil the world had ever known would rise? And I was the one to stop this somehow? I was the hero in all this, a failed writer, a failed husband, a pathetic drunk? It hardly seemed right, and yet there was a shroud of darkness here, one with a depth and consistency I’d never before experienced, because it wasn’t about fires or carnage or frailties or even Martin. It was more personal than that. This was a darkness that spoke not to ghouls or demons, ghosts or evil messiahs, but to the very nature of the human heart. It was a darkness we all knew, one deep inside where light rarely found its way, as profoundly a part of us as the good we hoped defined us instead.
I ran to the side of the ridge and crouched in darkness, out of breath and out of time. The sword slipped in my sweaty grip. I hung on for dear life.
* * *
The strange thing about killing someone is that when you do it you don’t really think about it. While the kill takes place you’re in the moment, your mind a blank, focused only on the task. Not what the actual task is—the results, complications or consequences—just the mechanics of it. There’s cold insanity to it, an emotional shutdown that’s probably instinctual unless you’re a psychopath enjoying the ride. Otherwise there’s something wholly inhuman and detached about it, something better left to the realm of machines and tools, thoughtless things incapable of feeling or understanding. And when it’s over, it’s like waking from a dream where it takes you a few seconds to get your bearings and to remember what matters and what doesn’t. Only when you wake up you haven’t escaped. You’re numb at first, but then you realize the person’s still dead, and you’re still a killer. The blood is real. The terror is real. Lost in a moment of horror and uncertainty, you feel a sudden desire to run, to rid yourself of this, to somehow wash yourself clean and put it behind you. But there’s no way out. It’s a trap. It always has been, and you’ve walked right into it, no longer the one in power you thought you were but instead a wild and frightened animal confined in a cage of bone and blood, bathed in the stink of death, a stain that never comes clean. You can taste the sin in the back of your throat. And you believe it then. Even if you never believed in any of it before, you believe it all in the blink of an eye. You believe in God and the angels and the saints and every bit of religion anyone ever taught you or you ever knew about, regardless of denomination. You believe with ferocity, as the most devoted zealot believes. And it’s absolutely terrifying, because you know you’ll never be safe again.
* * *
But for the crackling fires, the compound was quiet. Nude bodies lay scattered about, sleeping and draped one across the next. I’d watched for more than an hour as everything slowed down, as they drank and danced and celebrated their deaths and imminent resurrections.
At the cave opening, I watched flames lick the walls. Inside, shadows danced and flickered about. Two candles on the desk had been lit. They provided just enough light for me to find my way.
Martin was lying on the mattress, stretched out on his back, an arm bent over his face. His hair was gone, his bald head nicked and bleeding in places like the rest of them. I couldn’t yet see his face but could tell the beard was gone as well. He wore just a small sheet wrapped around his waist and secured beneath his crotch. His skin was pale and pasty. Only his face, neck, hands and feet were tanned, like a piece of ivory, the tips dipped in bronze.
“You’ll never get there, you know.”
The sound of his voice made me shiver. I gripped the sword tighter.
“Heaven. Neither of us will. But the angel showed me its home once. I touched it and it showed me. Magnificent, really, and yet the only thing in all that glory I could count on was never being able to grasp it myself, and never truly knowing why.”
Heart racing, I stepped closer, so close that had he moved his arm he could’ve seen me breach the shadows as the candle flames crossed my face.
“Have you ever wondered why God created us as human beings and then punishes us for being human?”
For a moment I thought I was looking at the same frightened teenager he’d been on that horrible night, trying to save and protect us by covering up what we’d done. But when he spoke again, his sickness crept closer, reminding me of his damnation, and my own.
“I dream of fire, skies devoured by it…burning… dying…purified by flames. I dream of the dead.” Still largely concealed in shadow, Martin dropped his arm and let it fall to the dirt floor. “I dream of you.” Raising his head to meet the flicker of candlelight, he looked right at me. “Did you know they have storms there? Storms. In Heaven.”
I swung the blade down. It sunk deep into his upper chest, splitting the skin with a sickening sound. He didn’t scream, he just looked at me, mouth open and eyes tearing, hands raised before him not in defense, but in welcome.
“They’re all going to die out here,” he gasped through a hideous smile. “Kill them all, Phil. Kill them all.”
Pulling free, I staggered back, raised the sword high above my head and brought it down again and again, slamming it through him effortlessly, his body easily giving way beneath the power of the angel’s sword. The blade crashed into his shoulders and arms and stomach, the gore flying free with each strike, spraying the cave and both of us in a bloody rain.
“Tell me your dreams,” he said, gagging, his body bucking as blood poured from him. “Tell me your nightmares…your horror…and mine…”
I dropped the book, gripped the sword with both hands and swung it down then back, slashing his face, neck, and finally, his throat.
He finally tried to move, attempting to roll off the mattress and stand, but he was already dying and collapsed down onto his side instead.
Mouth open and chest heaving, I watched as he took his last gurgling breath.
He died at my feet in a pool of blood, dirt and scraps of flesh.
I retrieved the book, saving it from the creeping puddle, Martin’s blood still alive and all over me, running and sticking and seeping into my pores. I blinked it from my eyes, and wiped a coat of it from my lips with a surprisingly steady hand.
Cleanse him with blood. He can only be cleansed in blood.
I tried to look away from what I’d done but couldn’t.
Save him. Save us.
I didn’t feel like a savior. I felt…human.
Maybe that was precisely the horror Martin wanted me to see all along.
* * *
The air was warm and choking with humidity. Sweat mixed with the blood, wetting me down as I stood numb and dead inside, the sword still in my hand and the book back beneath my arm.
A faint breeze blew up from deep within the cave, along the passageway and across my face. I stepped toward the opening but could see nothing, the darkness within too thick. Taking the candle next to the mattress, I stepped over Martin’s body and moved into the passageway. The floor slanted, leading down, deeper into the earth. The light bent along the curved cave walls, offering limited visibility and casting numerous shadows.
Several feet away, I saw a shifting in the darkness and the faint sound of something heavy dragging across the ground. I stopped, swallowed nervously and watched.
The darkness took form, and something moved closer. A pair of eyes emerged, blinking slowl
y. Beautiful blue eyes I’d seen once before and ever since in my dreams.
I began to shake. It didn’t only exist in Martin’s ruined mind, it was real.
“It wasn’t you I was sent for,” a voice said.
Just go. Don’t bother waiting on them.
“It was never you.”
Some bad things happened in town tonight, and there’s worse coming.
It moved closer, and the dragging sound followed it. Chains, I could just make them out, shackled to its legs and wrists.
Go home.
I aimed the candle lower, parting the darkness until I could see its bare feet. They were not touching the ground.
A very faint glow emanated from the being.
“Were they true?” I asked. “The things he said, were they true? Is he what he claimed to be?”
“That’s not for my kind to decide.”
“What is your kind? What are you?”
Its piercing blue eyes slowly slid shut. “I’m a soldier.”
I dropped the book at its feet, laid the bloody sword between us then blew out the candle.
Darkness took everything else.
* * *
I emerged from the cave to find fires still burning everywhere around camp, and the followers gathered nearby in a crowd, nude and dirty and staring at me with equal parts hope and awe.
They saw the blood on me, Martin’s blood, and they knew.
“It’s done,” someone said.
I nodded.
In unison, they dropped to their knees before me, and I felt an immediate rush of power, violence and domination. In all the madness, blood and evil, it seemed a short distance to divinity.
Holly Quinn was suddenly standing next to me, fiddling nervously with her camcorder, tears running along her cheeks. “It’s all so clear now, isn’t it? Isn’t it all so clear now? You’re the father, do you see? Through his death, rebirth, right? Time for me to scoot! It all begins here! Here, at the end!”
She hurried off, running mindlessly toward the open desert and certain death like she planned to catch a waiting bus.
Someone suddenly bolted from the crowd and charged toward me with a machete. Thompson.
Trying to sidestep the attack, I lost my balance out of sheer exhaustion and fell, crashing onto my back. He stood over me, and I braced myself, the blade already on its way down.
A loud crack shattered the night, and Thompson’s bare chest exploded. With a grunt, he toppled over and collapsed into the dirt next to me. I rolled away, managed to get to my knees and looked up through the wisp of smoke drifting past.
A face donned in blood. Like war paint. Party Boy.
He moved through the crowd, his revolver still smoking, and reached a hand out for me. I took it and he pulled me to my feet.
From within the cave came a strange rumbling, as an enormous crackle of lightning split the night sky.
The followers began screaming and attacking one another, some slashing their own wrists or throats, laughing maniacally as they did so, others throwing themselves into the fires, running headlong into the afterlife on the heels of their master.
And in the desert, it began to rain. Lightly at first then stronger and accompanied by a vicious wind, growls of thunder and enormous forks of lightning stabbing the horizon.
From the cave, a powerful bright light erupted, shooting skyward.
Still looking stoned, Party Boy gazed at the storm in amazement, and in a thickly accented but surprisingly melodious voice said, “Haul ass.”
Together, we ran for it, through the sea of madness toward the ridge, the frenzied bloodbath continuing behind us as the storm grew worse, more violent and otherworldly.
I scrambled up the side of the ridge, Party Boy a few feet ahead of me, both of us drenched by a rain so fierce it had become painful on contact. I slipped near the top, stones and mud sliding out from beneath my feet as I launched myself over the top and crashed down onto the far slope.
Looking back, I could see only night sky. Despite the rain, somehow the fires below had become stronger, voiding the darkness until for as far as the eye could see, it looked like the sky itself was in flames, like the whole world was burning down.
Even in sleep eternal, Martin dreamed.
TWENTY-THREE
It all blurred, one moment, day and week into the next, and for that I was grateful. I felt like Ol’ Man River, tired of livin’ and scared of dyin’.
We briefly returned to Tijuana in the hopes of leaving our nightmares back in that awful desert. I tried to find Jamie but he was no longer living at the same address and no one had any idea where he was. The only information I could get was that one night he’d slipped away. I didn’t know if he was alive or dead. I still don’t. But I think of him often, and I always will.
Heading south, this time Party Boy and I stuck close to the coast and finally settled in a small, quiet beach village on the North Pacific. Much as I wanted my life back, much as I wanted another crack at it, I just wasn’t ready to live it yet. I couldn’t go home. I missed my daughter, but I couldn’t face her or the life waiting for me there, so Party Boy and I lived like outlaws, without responsibility or care, our days spent resting and healing in the sun, sand and water, our nights drinking ourselves into oblivion, smoking weed, swallowing the right pills or curling up with the wrong women, anything to dull the pain and ease our restless souls.
In the following weeks I tried to forget and convince myself that most of it had been a drug trip or fevered hallucination that never really happened. But people had died, were dead, I’d murdered Martin in cold blood, and that was no dream. The world took no notice, and with each breathtaking sunrise and sunset I drunkenly witnessed from the warm sandy beach, the more I came to realize we were minor annoyances on this planet, an itch on the back of a dog indifferently scratched away. The sun still came and the waves still crashed whether we were along for the ride or not.
Still, one thing Martin had said continued to haunt me.
Have you ever wondered why God created us as human beings and then punishes us for being human?
I’d lived in constant fear from the time I was a kid, always masking it with something else, pretending it wasn’t there so no one would know my sins. I’d never had the luxury of not looking over my shoulder for what might be bearing down on me next. And in all that chaos I missed a lot. God didn’t punish us for being human at all. We punished ourselves. The rules, consequences and confines had been laid down and written by Man, our religions and organizations and doctrines edited and molded to fit the best interests not of the masses, but those who sought to control them. God had made us what we were, and men seeking to control His creations had altered the rules from the very beginning, taking their own laws, disguising them in piety and passing them off as His. When push came to shove, evil as Martin was, he was right again, the only game in town was the consolidation of power. We bound and cannibalized ourselves for being human—ourselves and each other—all in the name of one who had nothing to do with any of it.
Chaos belonged not to the universe but to us and us alone.
I hid from what I had to do for a little over three months before finally deciding it was time to go. Party Boy stayed behind, content with his new surroundings. I owed him my life, and we’d become close, but I couldn’t stay.
After sharing one last drink together, I left him at a beachside bar. As I crossed the sand to the bus that would take me to Tijuana, I turned and looked back, hoping to capture an agreeable memory of him to take with me. But even in such beauty, all I could see was his face painted red with Rudy Bosco’s blood.
I never saw him again, except in nightmares.
Rather than returning to Massachusetts to give Mrs. Doyle the news, I first went back to upstate New York. I needed to see Gillian. I needed to know that after all I’d been through there was still someone in this world that made it all worth it. Once I was back in town I took a cab over to Trish’s, had the driver park acros
s the street and just watched the house awhile. I wanted to go in but something was holding me back. Maybe fear, maybe something more. I couldn’t be sure.
When Gillian finally appeared, walking along the street toward the house with a small bag of groceries in hand, my heart began to race and my emotions nearly let loose. My little girl had become a young woman, and for the first time in my life I was able to face that. Before I knew it she’d be an adult, off on her own in a frightening world that gave birth to people like Martin, people like me.
I watched her climb the steps, so young and full of life and promise, and though I clutched the door release with such intensity my hand ached, I couldn’t bring myself to get out of the car.
“You want me to keep the meter running or what?” the cabbie asked.
“Just go,” I told him. “Get me out of here.”
I didn’t go home, but spent a week in a cheap motel downtown, staying out of sight as best I could. I wanted to resume my life but just couldn’t seem to get a handle on it. I felt like a soldier home from war, returned to a world where I no longer fit and where nothing felt right or comfortable anymore. Whenever I slept, I dreamed of Mexico, the Corridor of Demons, and the unearthly storm that fell on that final night in the desert. I dreamed of Rudy with that obscene spear protruding from his chest, his face frozen in shock…Quid, skinned, his body raw and red as he crawled about in dark churches, calling my name…and Martin, eating handfuls of crushed and broken glass scattered before his blasphemous altar, blood running from his wounds and trickling from his gashed lips and tongue as I slashed at him again and again, the blade slicing and spraying us both with all the horrible things that lived inside him...and the scarred man, the martyr angel, shackled in chains not of this world but the next, its feet floating above the ground and its feathered wings soaked in blood as black as ink as it drifted free of a dark and horrifying cave steeped in sickness and death…
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