by J. Thorn
“Ease off, boys!” Sully ordered.
The Keepers pointed their weapons to the ground, but neither turned away nor backed up.
John saw an older man appear behind the soldier, and an orange circle glowing in the dark of his living room. He recognized the smell of a cigar, even in the wicked blizzard. The old man backed slightly away, as did the soldier. The two Keepers of the Wormwood locked eyes with Sully, who motioned them forward.
Sully, the rest of the Keepers, and John filed into the living room. John looked around, trying to recognize his former life.
A meaty fist grabbed John by the collar and tossed him into his dining room. The hand pushed him down by the shoulder until John’s tailbone smacked hard off the floor. John looked up and saw Sully facing the old man with the cigar.
“Commander Byron, you ancient piece of shit.”
Byron smiled. Yellowed teeth accompanied a single, black eye patch and dust-covered beret.
“Sully, and his Worms,” the old man replied.
Ignoring the jab, Sully said, “Where’s the girl?”
“You do not think I am so stupid as to have her here, do you?”
John wondered to himself if Jana was “the girl”, but kept quiet as he saw the blood rush to Sully’s face. The man’s eyes twitched and narrowed.
“Don’t fuck with me, old man.”
Byron shifted his weight to one leg, the side with his cane. “Or what, you baboon? He is worthless without the girl. Father needs both.”
Byron waited and watched for a response from Sully, whose mouth sat open and silent.
“When will he be here?” asked Sully.
Byron exhaled and grinned.
“In an hour. We have half of that time to determine how we are going to deal with him when he arrives.”
Sully turned toward one of the Keepers of the Wormwood. The man unwrapped the scarf from his head, revealing a scarred face.
“If he moves, shoot him. If Byron’s little bitch moves, shoot him.”
The man nodded to Sully from where he stood sentinel, just above John, who was struggling to figure a way to turn the armed men against one another. Byron’s soldier stood on the opposite wall, his weapon confiscated by another one of Sully’s personal army.
Sully followed Byron out of the dining room and into the remains of the kitchen. The refrigerator door stood open, revealing shattered bottles and moldy, black streaks. Byron removed a bottle from one of the cabinets and used an opener on it. He handed the beer to Sully and then took one down for himself. The two men stood in silence, drinking their brew, staring each other down.
“Let’s get this straight right now. I need him dead, but I don’t trust you as far as I can throw ya,” said Sully.
“And I feel the same like you,” replied Byron in his mangled English.
“Then we need to decide how we’re going to do this, and fast. He’s going to bring a shitload of men, and you know he intends to destroy whatever is left of this place, including the people inside it.”
“I haven’t served for decades in special ops not to understand the nature of a prisoner exchange, now have I?”
“I sure hope not, old man. I hope not.”
Chapter 39
Father hustled through the corridors of the rectory. The building housed generations of nuns throughout St. Michael’s storied history. But now, bureaucrats from all levels of the Holy Covenant staked their claim on a room or efficiency. The structure tucked up next to the church, providing easy movement from one building to the next.
As he passed other priests, nuns, and of course soldiers, Father thought about his visit from Brother Cyrus and wondered if the man took residence in his parish. Father’s robes blew out in each direction as his legs moved toward the rectory’s main office. The Second Cleansing was about to be launched, bringing a spastic vibration to the men and women of the Covenant working there. If he did not come into possession of John the Revelator in the next couple of hours, his superiors would kill the mission, and Father would have to answer to God. Father’s worry only exacerbated his fevered state of mind and propelled him even faster toward the church basement.
Father barked orders to soldiers sitting at a table. They played cards and made a futile attempt to hide the coins from him.
Gamblers in the House of God, Father thought.
“Suit up, Warriors of Christ. We must deploy a division to South Euclid immediately. I will need four vehicles and at least twenty men.”
A burly soldier stood up and turned toward Father. He held his seven cards in his hand, looked down at them, and discarded two.
“Call,” he said.
“I’m sure you’re aware that the Internal Order was here and that any soldier not upholding the Holy Covenant will be sent to face it.” The other soldier in the hand displayed his straight-to-the-ten.
“Trip jacks. Shit,” the burly soldier said. He turned to stare at Father, who stomped toward the soldier with a red face and spittle amassing on his upper lip. He ripped the cards out of the man’s oversized mitt, and threw them to the floor. The other soldiers jumped up, knocking chairs to the ground.
“If you do not obey my command, you will answer to the Lord.”
With a look of disgust, the burly soldier bent down and picked up his cards. He placed them on the card table and turned to stare again into Father’s eyes.
“Brother Cyrus has spoken to us,” he said with indifference. “He told us that if you tried to coordinate any unauthorized sortie, that we were to contact him immediately.”
Father’s face went from red to deep amber. He had difficulty forming words and speaking them at a conversational level.
“Unauthorized? You think that I do not have the power to send a useless gang of gambling heathens out to do God’s bidding?”
The men sat back down at the card table. The burly soldier was the last to take a seat. He shuffled the cards and turned his back to Father.
“You will feel Hell’s fury,” said Father.
He turned away from the men and started in another direction. He stumbled upon a group of seven soldiers smoking cigarettes outside the back door of the church basement. Father had sent three of them to guard the entrance after Brother Cyrus left. The oldest amongst them was no more than eighteen.
“Gather your weapons and meet me outside in one hour.”
There was a protracted pause, then one soldier stepped forward.
“Sir, we have gotten strict orders from the Holy Covenant to remain here and fortify St. Michael’s.”
“I am the Holy Covenant!” he said.
The soldiers backed away as Father caught his breath. He gasped and then blasted the young men again.
“You will do as I say or you will suffer eternal damnation at the hands of Lucifer. Meet me outside at the APC in one hour!”
The men clutched their weapons and scrambled in different directions. Father collapsed into a chair and looked up toward the ceiling, but with closed eyes. John the Revelator consumed all of his blind vision.
Chapter 40
“So where is she?”
Sully glared at Byron. The red beard pulsed on his heaving chest while his finger tapped the safety of the machine gun.
“She is safe.”
“Fuck you and the girl. I don’t need her to get to him. The man is on his way, and I’ve got the bait on the hook. The girl would seal it, but I don’t need her, and I don’t need you.”
Commander Byron grinned and stood up. He placed a hand on Sully’s shoulder and lowered his tone.
“You are right. You don’t need the girl, which is why I’ve already shot her. She got under my skin. Her body is rotting in a park roughly two miles from here. Send your Worms out there to retrieve it if you like.”
Sully removed Byron’s hand from his shoulder, and looked the older man up and down. A smile took root under his tangle of weedy beard.
“Oh, you piece-of-shit foreigner. You really think I’d believe that.�
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Sully fought back laughter, trying to maintain his composure while lifting the barrel of his gun to the commander’s temple. He pressed the weapon into the old man’s skull.
Byron’s face slackened, and he dropped his head as he spoke.
“She is in the basement.”
Chapter 41
From his seat on the dining-room floor, John had followed the kitchen conversation, and a shock reverberated through his muscles when he heard Byron’s last sentence. During the course of the palaver, the distracted Keepers of the Wormwood, who’d piled their firearms in the living room once the house was secured, did not notice the blood lubricating his wrists, allowing John to pull them from the hastily fastened zip ties. The bikers also didn’t spy the strap of a machine gun sitting barely a foot from John, or see him slide his foot through the strap until it was inches from his hands.
John’s hearing faded, replaced by an accelerated heartbeat. In the next room, he saw a tuft of Sully’s hair glide to rest on the collar of his vest. For John, time wound down until it risked dying all together. In his mind, it took John several minutes to get his hands around the weapon, and even longer for his finger to slide under the cool, smooth trigger.
The first bullet from John’s gun spiraled from the end of the barrel and slammed into Commander Byron’s soldier. The puff of red mist levitated above the man’s chest as the force of the impact yanked him backward into the wall. John saw the man’s head penetrate the dry wall, leaving a cloud of white dust and a crescent-shaped hole. The second, third, and fourth bullets hit the man’s chest in rhythmic purity. Before the corpse of Byron’s soldier could slide down the wall, John had already turned to face Sully’s troops.
Time lurched back into reality as the stench of blood and smoke infiltrated John’s senses. His ears rang, and he heard shouts as if he stood in a deep cave. John swung his weapon toward several stunned Keepers of the Wormwood. The gun responded to John’s gentle finger with another barrage of burning death as John ran for the living room. The last of the outlaw bikers were still scrambling for their weapons as John dropped them to the carpet.
The only survivors in the house, Sully and Byron, stumbled toward the open door leading from the kitchen to the driveway. They stumbled over each other, terrified by the pitched fever of John’s assault. Sully shoved the old man to the floor and lunged out the door. John fired at the patch on the back of Sully’s vest and when the smoke cleared, the leader of the Keeper of the Wormwood was gone. Commander Byron sat up to stare down the barrel of John’s machine gun.
“Where is she?” John asked.
“I am already dead. So fuck you,” Byron replied.
John grabbed the man by the shoulder and dragged him down the steps and onto the driveway. John slammed the butt end of the gun into Byron’s head. After the commander passed out, John pulled exposed wire from an electric receptacle in his kitchen. He cut the wire with a knife and secured Byron’s wrists to his ankles.
Meanwhile, Sully, who’d run down the driveway and returned through the front door, picked up an assault rifle from one of his fallen brothers and threw the stock up to his shoulder.
Before John could decide what to do, he heard Sully’s voice calling out from the living room.
“Listen to me, John. You both will not make it out of this fucking house alive unless you drop that gun. Got that? You’d better hope you go first. I don’t think you’d want to hear what I’d do to your little sweetheart before I cut her throat.”
“Father is going to be here. You don’t have time to make those threats. I suggest you run now while you still have a chance.”
“Fuck you, John. I’ll put a bullet in him and you.”
From his outpost in the kitchen, John felt the minutes sliding away, dropping over a cliff into nowhere.
“I’m going downstairs to see if Jana is in here or whether Byron was lying.”
There was no answer from Sully.
John bolted down the steps, shutting a door behind him. He pushed through the chairs and debris accumulated at the bottom and opened the door into the furnace room. Darkness devoured the tight space and John did not have a flashlight. He began to scream.
“Jana!”
There was no answer.
Sully stood on the landing and yelled down to John.
“That son of a bitch Father is here. As soon as he finds out his men are dead, this place is going to go up flames. Last chance to come up here and surrender to me.”
“Best of luck getting past Father and his goons, Sully. See you in hell.”
John heard the pounding of Sully’s feet climbing the short flight of steps, crossing the kitchen, and exiting out the door. John felt in the dark and found the slide bolt on the storage room that used to lead to the coal chute, hoping the flashlight he left on the furnace was still there. His hand landed on it as muffled voices approached the house. He slid the button on the flashlight and shone the beam around the room while his eyes fought to adjust to the changing light. He pushed the coal-room slide bolt over and pulled the door open.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” he said.
Chapter 42
Crystal wiped Alex’s head with a cool towel and then put a thermometer in his mouth. Several minutes later, Alex’s eyebrows bunched up, reminding Crystal that it was still under his tongue. She shook her head and then removed the thermometer.
“Looks normal so far. If you can make it through the first night without spiking, I think you’ll be fine.”
Alex smiled. He reached for a bottle of water near his cot and froze. The pain radiated throughout his entire body.
“I owe you everything.”
Crystal smiled and kissed his forehead.
“Rest up.”
Alex fell back into a solemn sleep.
Chapter 43
The ride through the decimated city did not shake Father. He considered the Holy Covenant a rebirth, a new beginning from a violent end. They drove down crooked streets filled with the shells of automobiles and the vestiges of lives past.
The young men in the APC did not say a word. They looked into each other’s eyes like souls facing the Styx. The eldest of the group, the driver, communicated with Father. He asked for clarification several times, but managed to navigate Mayfield into South Euclid without too much assistance.
Father stopped the vehicle at the intersection of Mayfield and Plainfield. The men emptied the transport and checked their gear. The snow subsided for the moment, although renegade flakes still danced from roof to roof. Father studied the pristine snow on the road, the unbroken seal on a new winter.
He led his group down the middle of Plainfield Road, concentrating on John’s aura. As they pulled up to the house, Father inhaled the mystic scent until his eyes locked onto an irregularity in the blanket of snow.
Pink and lavender splotches mottled the ground near the house. Broken glass lay on top of the accumulation, not under it. Father saw the front and side door swinging, hammered at the mercy of the southwest wind.
“Secure the place. Something is wrong.”
The young soldiers fanned out and took up positions. Numerous sets of footprints circled the house and scattered in various directions.
Father remained in the truck, lit a cigar, and gave the men time to secure the structure. He heard shouts of “clear” as each man rummaged through the various rooms. Father exhaled the smoke and watched it float toward the barren trees. The driver exited the house first and delivered the status to Father.
“Father, the place is empty.”
Father continued chewing on the end of his cigar while the lit end flickered. He motioned for the man to continue with his explanation.
“There are at least twelve bodies in there. We found Commander Byron. He is unconscious and bound, lying on the kitchen floor. All the others are dead.”
The man waited for Father’s response with clenched fists and a furrowed brow.
“Have the men make Byron comfortable
, and get him whatever medical attention we have here. I wish to speak with him as soon as he is lucid. Is there any sign of John the Revelator or the woman?”
“No, sir, we have not found either.”
“I would like to see it with my own eyes,” replied Father.
The soldier locked his weapon and led Father through the living-room door.
The place reeked of gunpowder and burnt flesh. Evil, black eyes stared at Father from where bullets penetrated the drywall. Father’s troops cataloged the dead bodies. They took pictures, detailed the numbers, and stole anything of use.
Father cast a sideways glance at the bodies of his soldiers. He walked past corpses wearing the vest of the Keepers of the Wormwood. Two of the soldiers carried Commander Byron out the back door as Father stepped into the kitchen.
“You have cleared every room, every closet, everything?” he asked his escort.
“Yes, Father.”
“I can feel him. He is here.”
Father turned and climbed the steps to the second floor. The furniture in each bedroom had been tossed multiple times, every closet door open or ripped from the hinges. He proceeded up the steps and into the attic. A couch sat against the right wall, and a desk fit under a window looking out upon Plainfield. Father moved the computer monitor out of the way and stared into the dead neighborhood. He saw the roof of the nearest neighbor and the freezing mix of snow and leaves in the gutters.
He pulled the couch from the wall and pushed open an access door, which gave way to a crawlspace – too narrow for adults to hide. The cold air rushed in, along with brown leaves and balls of dust.
Father returned to the main floor, where the men stood in a circle. They’d secured the place, tagged the bodies, and waited for their spiritual leader to give them the next command.
He stopped and looked at them, and then continued down the steps into the basement. The darkness consumed everything. Father shouted for a flashlight, and one of the men brought it to his side. He swung the beam around the basement to get a closer look at more damage. Father stepped into an empty laundry-room area and a workroom. He opened the door into a pantry. The garlic from the broken jars of tomato sauce caused his stomach to rumble.