A Guardian of Innocents

by Jeff Orton

  “If you’re gonna impersonate someone that I lived with for four years, then you might wanna get your DETAILS straight!”

  Both Desiree and Godwin vanished, their bodies having all the substance of pixie dust, evaporating as though dispersed by a light breeze.

  Louis’ voice spoke again behind me, “Well, I didn’t think there was much of a chance of this little ruse panning out, so...”

  I turned to find my adoptive father, Jack, standing before me. I slipped and fell on my ass as I tripped over my own feet in shock. His left eye was blown out, blood gushing from the empty socket.

  “Oooh, careful there, bucko!” he squealed.

  “I’m not buying this shit, Louis! You’re not real! Fuck you! I killed you eight years ago!” I wheezed as I scrambled back to my feet.

  “Betteh start clicken’ yeh heels, Dorothy,” a new voice said from my right. Galen was waddling towards me with his pants around his ankles. I looked upward from his scrunched jeans and saw his two smashed testes dangling from the vas deferens tubes just above his knees. I doubt in real life they would have stretched that far, but there they were.

  “Repeat after me!” he said, “There’s no place like home!”

  Jack began to chant the familiar adage in unison with Galen, and I screamed.

  As if answering my call, I heard another scream far off in the factory. At first, it seemed to be an echo, but then I heard the same cry again as I took off running back the way I’d come. It was Agent Collins. He was hurt.

  “We’re getting this party started right!” Jack bellowed.

  “One down, two to go! Yeahhhh, baby!!!” Galen whooped with joy.

  From the distance in their voices growing longer, I knew they weren’t pursuing me. I was racing in the dark, secretly hating myself for running away from two hallucinations and being too scared to go back for my flashlight.

  “Aaron, where are you?” I called out, as loud as my already winded lungs would permit. I was scared, really scared now. Scared shitless as Bo would have put it. I was becoming more cognizant with every passing second that the three of us were destined to die here at the hands of a devil worshipping madman.

  (((don’t shoot until I give the signal)))

  That voice. It whispered inside my ear. It was weak, feminine.

  “What?” I panted as I stopped and looked around to get a better bearing on where I was in the factory. No response.

  “Jeshua!” I heard Aaron cry.

  I took off running again towards the sound of his voice.

  “I’m almost there!” I responded.

  After some searching, I found Aaron kneeling beside his father. He’d taken off his jacket and had it wadded up in a blood-drenched ball over Richard’s stomach.

  “Fuckin’ came outta nowhere!” he cursed, “He’s got two swords. He stabbed him. He only got to him because I got too far away!”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “For some reason Louis can’t come near me. All of his mind trick shit doesn’t work on me.”

  The darkness was suddenly eradicated as the entire plant came to life with flashing lights. It seemed Godwin was playing with the building’s electrical system. He was flipping all the lights on and off, creating a disorienting strobe effect. And then, utilizing the speakers of the facility’s PA system, the song Meet the Creeper by Rob Zombie started to play.

  “This is fucking FUN to him!” Aaron roared.

  With a new resolve that this mission had to be aborted, I turned to Aaron and said, “Look, your dad’s not gonna be alive too much longer if we don’t get’m to a hospital.”

  “No!” Richard croaked from beneath us, “Find Tessa! She can fix this!”

  “What?” I asked, “Fix what?”

  “Jeshua!” Aaron yelled over the din of the heavy metal music, “I need you to keep pressure on his wound! I’m going to get Tessa! I’m the only one that can get to her! The only one that’s able to!”

  “What?” I cried indignantly, “Aaron, your father’s gonna die!!!”

  He grabbed my hand and placed it over the blood-soaked jacket and bounded off into the darkness. In his thoughts I heard, C’mon, Peach. Gimme a signal. Show me where you are...

  “You two are both fuckin’ crazy,” I muttered.

  “Tessa’s healed wounds worse than this,” Richard said through teeth clenched in pain, “Hospital probably wouldn’t be able to save me anyways. This is our only shot. There won’t be any way to get her back after this.”

  I sighed in frustration. We sat in silence for a few minutes after the Rob Zombie song had played itself out. I was amazed Godwin (or one of his projections) hadn’t shown up yet to finish us off. Then a horrid thought struck me. He’s probably going after Aaron, maybe killing him now as we sit here. I had no faith in whatever divine force-field Aaron believed his God had cast over him. If Louis couldn’t approach him, I imagined it most likely had something to do with Aaron’s status as a ‘recovering’ vampire.

  I heard a scraping, whispering sound to my left. Agent Collins’ black police issue Remington was sitting on the floor next to us. It was slowly turning clockwise, aiming itself at the fallen FBI agent.

  I sprang upon it in pure reflex, snatching it off the floor and turning it away from Richard. But invisible hands were resisting my efforts. The shotgun kept wanting to turn back to him, as though its gaping mouth were magnetized to his body. I struggled to keep the barrel pointed away from us, but I was losing.

  “Pull the trigger!” Richard shouted, “It’s only got one round left!”

  Quick to react, I squeezed the trigger and stumbled back from the kick. The Remington fell to the floor, now lifeless. A tuning fork rang in my ears from the report.

  But as the tiny sound died away, I heard Godwin’s laughter echoing through it. “Why do you fight me, Jeshua? Do you care so much for these men that you would die to protect them?”

  bbbzzzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZ

  “I’m doing this for Tessa, you bastard. The one you kept me from saving!” I screamed as I turned towards the sound of his approaching footfalls.

  “Ah, yes, and how did I go about that?”

  An unseen force seized my hand and made it pull the gun out of my pocket. My entire body stood paralyzed. I was helpless as my jaw was opened and the nozzle of the 9mm was inserted. I could feel my index finger stroking the trigger, though I couldn’t move my eyes to see it.

  All I could think was, This is it?

  “Are we so ready to die, Jeshua? I can taste your fear. You know, I think even if I hadn’t shown up that night, you wouldn’t have jumped. I think you would have pussied out. You fear death just as any other mortal man does, despite your claims to the contrary.”

  “Fuck you,” I tried to say, though it sounded closer to “Uck-gooh.”

  “Sounds like you have a jaw full of Novocain,” Godwin commented with a smile.

  My body was released then. My elbow popped when I yanked the gun out of my mouth and audaciously held it before his face, only inches away from his forehead. Okay, Tessa, where’s my signal?

  “Go ahead,” he goaded, “Take your shot. See if you can hit me.”

  The low resonating vibrations in my head told me what stood before me was not just another projection. Godwin was before me now, in the flesh. I wanted to shoot, but instinct instructed me not to.

  “Doubtful? Would you shoot if I finished off Mr. Collins with one of my blades?”

  He unsheathed his swords and let them hang in front of his legs, making an X out of them, “He doesn’t look like he has too much longer to live, anyways, so why don’t I just put him out of his misery.”

  “Step a lil closuh enh see what I do tuh yuh!” Richard challenged him, reverting back to his accent from the old neighborhood.

  Louis threw his head back in laughter, “Already I can feel Death approaching as your blood drains away, Dick. Can’t you feel His presence? It’s time for you to go, I’m afraid.”

  As he
lunged towards Collins, I squeezed off a shot, knowing it was futile, but unwilling to quietly stand by as Aaron’s father was butchered.

  Godwin vanished, but I felt the breeze he generated as he flew past me. Whatever poltergeist he commanded seized me once more and I was thrown against the white sheet metal wall behind me.

  I opened my eyes and Louis’ face was only a foot away from mine, “That was a bad move, Jeshua... I’d hoped so much that we could work together, pool our resources for the good of this planet, but you just don’t seem—“

  (((I’M IN HERE! AARON I’M IN HERE!!!)))

  Tessa’s voice exploded into my head. Up above somewhere, far off in the factory I heard a crash, like several large, tightly packed boxes collapsing like dominoes.

  Godwin looked away towards something I couldn’t see and roared, “You bitch!”

  (((now)))

  Her voice whispered as though right outside my eardrum.

  The spirit released me as Louis’ concentration failed and, I raised my 9mm and leveled it at the side of his turned head.

  And just as I was pulling the trigger, he turned back to face me. It all seemed to move in slow motion. The gun kicked in my sweaty hand as I struggled to hold it steady. I could almost see the bullet zip out of the nozzle and rupture Godwin’s left eye. As the round exited the back of his head in a dark burst of burgundy, Louis fell backwards, slack-jawed with a dull vestige of shock in his one remaining eye.

  And with a hellacious sense of déjà vu, I noticed his legs landed crossed in a figure-4. The lights still flickered at random, increasing the sense of slo-mo.

  “Hell yeah!” Richard coughed, “Take that, yoosumbitch.”

  I fell to my knees, not quite believing what I saw before me: Louis’ dying body, twitching.

  “Just like Jack,” I wheezed. I was breathing as though I’d just sprinted a few miles, “Gotcha.”

  I could hear jogging footsteps on a metal staircase nearby. Aaron called out, “Dad, I’ve got her!”

  Louis’ twin swords lay by his feet, glimmering faintly in the moonlight. His left hand was clutching and groping handfuls of empty air. How long is this shit supposed to last, I wondered. I hadn’t stayed near Jack long enough to find out. The sporadic flicker of the lighting system stopped, throwing us back into the darkness.

  I raised the gun again. A superstitious nagging in the back of my head told me I should probably plug a few more holes in him, just to make certain he doesn’t magically come back to life. But then the twitching stopped... and the buzzing sound in my head subsided. He was gone. I was glad, because Tessa came running past me, lifting my bangs from my eyes as she blew by and knelt beside her mortally wounded father.

  “Honey,” Collins gasped, “It’s so good to see you...”

  “Shhh,” she hushed him, “Hold still, Dad.”

  She laid her hands gently upon his stomach and began whispering an unintelligible language. Her back was to me, so I couldn’t read her lips. I could only catch a few phrases. She was praying.

  “Injeeznay, injeezusname, Jesus name...”

  She rocked back and forth on her knees, lost in the throes of whatever internal healing power she was tapping into.

  Richard moaned as his body arched upward. I could make out a soft white light escaping his mouth and nostrils. His cheeks glowed red like a kid with the business end of a flashlight in his mouth.

  But the light faded almost as quickly as it arrived, then Tessa fell silent. I sat where I was, feeling as though I should be astonished by the whole display.

  Aaron touched my shoulder, “Are you okay?” He still had the AK-47, with his right hand resting on the stock, letting the weight of it hang on his shoulder.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” I replied, looking over at Godwin’s dead body.

  “Don’t move just yet, Dad. You need to rest a moment,” Tessa said, but Richard was rising to his feet regardless. He lifted up his shirt and examined his abdomen, rubbing it with his hands. There was still a lot of blood there, but the severed flesh was gone.

  “Not only did you get rid of the wound,” he said, cracking a grin, “I think you sucked out some of the beer belly too.”

  “Ugh,” Aaron said, rolling his eyes.

  I felt a pang in my own gut as I watched the newly reunited family embrace each other.

  “What do we do with him?” I asked, nodding towards the fallen man in black.

  Richard looked at him in disgust, “Leave him. We have what we came for.”

  A flash of panic hit me. Tessa felt it too.

  “Police are here!” I said, “Someone heard the gunshots!”

  “Alright,” Agent Collins stated, “I’ve got my badge. I’ll deal with them. You three go hide and do NOT turn on your flashlights. And keep quiet.”

  “Dad, let me go with you. I know how to make them go away,” Tessa said.

  “Honey, I can handle city cops. Now go with Aaron.”

  “Dad, something bad’s gonna happen if you talk to them!”

  He paused for a second, considering. “You sure of that?”

  Vigorously, she nodded her head up and down, eyes full of fear.

  “Alright, c’mon,” he said. After they started walking towards the door, he added, “Now that I think about it, they’ve probably already run Aaron’s plates. Shit!”

  “Never mind that. I forgot to tell you, I swapped plates with an old junker before we left.” Aaron said to his father, then to me, “Let’s get up high. I want to be able to see that door.”

  “And what’re you gonna do from there?” I whispered, following him up the metal mesh steps, “Pick off the cops like a sniper?”

  “Be quiet,” he whispered back to me, “Tessa can make most people think whatever she wants them to think. But if that doesn’t work, I might have no other choice but to... I wouldn’t kill them, just kneecap ‘em at the most. But only if I had to.”

  “That’s comforting,” I replied.

  We found a catwalk high up into the darkness of the factory that connected some second floor offices to another section of the plant we had yet to visit. Almost as soon as we got there, a loud thunderclap exploded over the roof of the building. All of the flickering lights simultaneously died. The rolling boom echoed through the old bread factory like a cannonade.

  “Power outage,” Aaron said, “Strange stroke of luck.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed, feeling uneasy and not really sure why. The cops? Sure, maybe. I had just killed a guy after all. But shit, that wasn’t anything compared to the twelve I killed in Mansfield.

  I reached out with my mind, initiating a broad scan. The two cops were searching outside for an unlocked door, and had so far found none thanks to Richard’s quick thinking. He’d locked the door from the inside, before the cops had gotten close enough to hear the click.

  Tessa was in a near trance as she stood facing the wall next to the door with her eyes closed like a child who’s been told to take a time-out. Inside her head, she was busily talking to the subconscious of both police officers.

  (((get away from here)))

  she kept telling them,

  (((there is nothing wrong here)))

  It had apparently already worked on one cop who was bitching at his partner, saying the woman who called in the gunshots probably just heard the thunder and got scared, like some of the old biddies who live around here tend to do.

  “How do you explain the lightshow that was going on earlier? The flashes we saw before the juice got zapped?” the other officer countered. There were some large windows lining the upper half of the factory where they had witnessed Louis’ strobe light spectacle.

  “I’m not gonna go around chasing ghosts all night. You heard the call that just came in. Ellis has got an unruly drunk pulled over on Empire Central. We can be there in three minutes... C’mon, Brad. He’s out there by himself. Veteran or not, that’s never good.”

  Officer Brad sighed, “Yeah, we better go. We can come back later. It’ll give
dispatch some more time to run those New York plates.”

  I could feel Tessa’s sigh of relief flowing through her.

  “They’re leaving,” I told Aaron.

  “Thank God,” he said as he bounced back down the stairs into the pitch blackness of the factory below.

  “Hey, wait up,” I said, “Some of us don’t have vampire night vision.”

  “Jeshua?” Aaron called back. There was an edge to his voice.

  Rather than take the time to verbally discuss the situation, I scanned him and, through his eyes, saw what he was looking at.

  All I could make out were two bloody patches on the floor. I didn’t understand his apprehension until it dawned on me one of the pools of congealing blood had belonged to Aaron’s father, and the other...

  A gurgling voice addressed me from just behind my neck, “Jeshuaaaa-ah. . .”

  Not even bothering to look behind me, I leapt out into the black void, feeling for the stairs. Outside, the thunderstorm snapped a brief sliver of light into the building which illuminated the staircase for just about a third of a second.

  But then a hand clamped its grip upon the collar of my jacket and pulled me down hard onto the metal grating of the catwalk.

  Aaron’s footfalls clanged on the steps as he raced back up the stairway, but then I heard something awful. I didn’t need any light to show me what was happening. The staircase popped and screeched like a choir of outraged banshees as it was wrenched free of the catwalk, as though pried loose by a cyclone.

  With a series of lightning strikes outside I was able to glimpse a few succinct images of the metal stairway being wrung like a wet rag, then bent into an arch until the top platform touched the floor thirty or forty yards away from the base.

  Furious, Aaron howled as he realized he was pinned inside. Whether he had vampiric strength still left within him or not, freeing himself was impossible. His arms were bound to his sides, with his legs given little room to move. The butt of his AK was pressing intrusively into his stomach.

  I’m not going out like this, I told myself as I leapt to my feet, swinging my fists wildly in the dark at a man who seemed to be composed of nothing but silhouettes. My punches were as useless as ever. Godwin stood as rigid and impervious as on the night of 9/11.