The Shores Of The Dead: Omnibus Edition

by Josh Hilden

  “Yeah I’m alive, thank God you are.” Arn said, and then launched into a full explanation of what had gone down in White Harbor since the dead had begun to rise.

  “I was already starting to think that things might be a bit safer out in your neck of the woods.” James said. Then he paused as if thinking things over before continuing. “I have a few things to deal with here in Marquette, but when I’ve finished me and the other Razors will be out your way. When we’re done we’ll be running that place, and anyone who doesn’t like it we can feed to the fucking Dead!” He laughed after he said that.

  Arn felt relieved, he’d been initiated into the Razor’s two years ago and was considered one of James Cooper’s most important advisors.

  “Just let me know when Boss and I’ll have things as ready here as I can.” He said and joined his leader’s laughter.

  “I know you will little brother, I never worry about you doing what you say you’ll do. Just don’t get dead or I’m gonna be pissed.” James hung up after that.

  Arn heard the love in those words and wanted to dance around the room. Soon they would either own this town or burn it to cinders.

  Chapter Six

  1

  City of Detroit, Lower Michigan

  October 18, 2012 AD (Day One)

  7:30pm EST

  In the early 1990’s, the now defunct ABC news magazine “Primetime Live” ran a segment entitled “Detroit is Burning”. It was an expose about the uniquely South East Michigan tradition of the mass torching of abandoned buildings and drug houses on the night before Halloween, also known on the Peninsula as “Devil’s Night”. This story so enraged the citizens of Detroit, that the City Council passed a resolution condemning the story and demanding an apology from the network, which after much foot dragging was unwillingly given. If the same story were to be run right now though it would be completely apt. Detroit, Michigan was indeed burning.

  The fires started on the abandoned docks along the Detroit River and quickly spread to the city itself. The Firefighters and the Police Officers of Detroit were so thoroughly engaged in the life and death struggle with the exponentially growing hordes of the Risen Dead, that by the time somebody realized the true threat of the fires it was too late. At 6:25 the Mayor and city council, those that were still among the living, ordered the abandoning of the city. If the exodus had been considered and planned in the least, things might have been different, and the nearly one million residents of the “Motor City” might have had a fighting chance.

  The refusal of the leadership to allocate any personnel to help direct the evacuation guaranteed that every point of entrance and exit into and out of the city proper was rendered thoroughly impassable within 15 minutes of the order. It would be safe to estimate that less than 100 thousand people managed to escape the inferno that quickly grew in the heart of the once great city.

  At least while they were alive.

  Rudolph “Rudy” Clarke didn’t care about the fire and the death that surrounded him as walked through the heart of Downtown Detroit. The Renaissance Center and Hart Plaza flanked him as he marched through the madness revealing in the chaos.

  Rudy knew that he’d finally found the purpose of his life and the calling of his heart. That he was forgiven his past sins. The angel told him that this was his time to rise and be seen, to be heard by the masses. The angel spoke with the voice of his dearly departed mother and shown with a light so bright that he was unable to see through or into it. Around it soared a great white bird of unimaginable size and beauty. The voice spoke a language that Rudy had never heard before but he was made to understand it and it was the most lovely thing that Rudy had ever been privileged enough to hear. The angel told him it was the language of the Lord.

  Rudy was running from the scenes of horror in the rundown city park when the angel appeared to him. He watched as a group of people began attacking the homeless camp that Rudy regularly visited to pass out bologna sandwiches and speak the word of god. He’d just been launching into his routine when the moaning started. Then seven badly injured people stumbled into the clearing.

  At first he was ready to welcome them and offer them a sandwich and healthy dose of the lord. Then one of them attacked and bit one of his parishioners. Then all of them attacked and the sixty odd people that called the camp home began to panic. They ran and screamed and then there were gunshots and the sounds of altercations.

  He turned and fled.

  He was almost to the street and hoping he would find a policeman there. That was a desire he would have sworn he would never have again until all of this started, when one of those people stepped out of the foliage next to him. He screamed and fell flat on his fat ass, his long stringy grey and brown hair obscuring his vision. The person reached for him moaning, and when its fecund hands were inches from his face it stopped and the angel appeared.

  “Rudolph, I know you and I love you.” It said, and Rudy understood the odd language. “I forgive you your crimes. The Lord forgives you your transgressions. You are needed here and now Rudolph.” The monstrous person was completely obscured by the light as the angel spoke. “The enemies of the Lord have barred the gateways between the worlds. His light and love is trapped on the other side you, Rudolph, are needed to help free the Lord from this bondage. It is the loss of the Lord’s love and light that has allowed the dead to rise and devour the weak and the innocent. The Lord needs you Rudolph.”

  The musical voice of his mother soothed him and filled Rudy with the light and the glory of doing God’s work once more. Ten years ago he’d been Father Rudy, the junior parish priest of St. Theresa’s Church in Royale Oak. He’d been happy there and doing god’s work when the accusations began flying. He’d touched this child, he’d touched that child. It was part of the frenzied hysteria of the day. No one cared that his actual guilt could not be proven. That there were no witness who could attest that he had touched any children didn’t matter.

  He’d been defrocked and spent six years locked up. When he was released, he’d attempted to continue doing god’s work by ministering to the homeless of Detroit. The willingness of some homeless parents to trade time with their children for food and drugs didn’t hurt. But never in his time on the streets did he feel god within him.

  Until now.

  “PLEASE, tell me what to do to serve God!” the now weeping Rudy cried out at the angel.

  “The world is going to burn. The weak and the powerless will be devoured Rudolph. Only the chosen will be safe from the Dead, the Risen Dead who can no longer serve the will of the Lord.” The angel reached out a hand, and Rudy thought for a moment that what he saw was not a hand but a wickedly sharp talon, and touched his forehead. There was an incredible lancing of heat and pain and then his forehead was numb. “I have given you the mark of the lord. You will now be safe from the Dead who are cleaning the world of those who are good and righteous. The Risen Dead are the creations of the wicked and sinful blasphemers who seek to block the Lord from ever shining his love again on the people of the Earth. Any who you chose to brand with this same mark will also be safe as long as they serve the lord, but if they betray him they will fall dead and rise to feed. You and only you will be able to command the Dead, you will be the Lord’s general and they your army. You have been given the power to bind and to loose, use this power and raise an army of the Living and the Risen Dead to do the Lord’s will and bring his glory to the face of the Earth.”

  Rudy’s mind was filled with a vision. He stood on a hilltop overlooking a great city in flames. He was thin and strong for the first time since he was released from man’s prison, his hair once again blond and full. He saw the mark of God branded in silver metal on his bare forehead, a series of lines and squiggles interlaced in a vaguely spherical pattern. Around him were heavily armed black clad individuals, the mark of God emblazoned on their makeshift uniforms. Surrounding this knot of living people was a vast ocean of the Dead, all his to command.

  “As long as
you serve the Lord you will have power, strength, and long life. But you must obey. You must do the will of the Lord for all eternity.”

  “Yes angel, oh yes! Give me my mission, tell me what to do and it will be done.” A smile radiated on his tear streaked face, and a charge that was not entirely sexual ran through his body.

  “There is a woman, a daughter of the enemy though she knows it not. Locked within her is the ability to keep the Lord sealed away for 10 thousand years. She alone possesses the ability to deny the Earth his light and love.”

  Rage flowed through Rudy, “Who is this bitch? I will cut off her head in the name of God!” He was screaming now, his ears filled with the roar of the language of god.

  “I know her not for her identity is shielded from me, but you will feel her in your mind and you will be able to follow her. She must be brought before the book, made to speak the words of unbinding, and sacrificed Rudolph. Or the Lord will never be able to reign on the Earth. Her very existence holds him in check. Her existence has allowed the forces of primal darkness to cause the dead to rise and devour the living. The Lord’s power has been checked by these agents of evil. He is powerless to protect those who even now beg for his help.”

  The inconsistencies of the Angel’s words never occurred to Rudy, he was overcome with love for god. He knew that he would serve at the right hand of God, that he would have power and glory, “Thank you Angel!” He cried out in rapturous joy.

  “Serve the Lord well Rudolph and all that you survey will be yours, serve the Lord well and you will be King of the Earth. You and those that follow you will be given a free hand across the Earth, all things you and those that follow you do will be sanctioned by the Lord. All sins that you and those that follow you commit in pursuing the will of the Lord will be forgiven.”

  The angel then reached out its hand and touched Rudy’s forehead. Pain again lanced through his head, and he felt as if his mind was ripped asunder and then reassembled into a new and stronger version of what it had been before. His body was wrecked with pain as it was resculpted. Fat that had coated him for years was replaced with taut lean muscle, his hair was thickened and restored to its original color, and eyes that needed corrective lenses for the majority of his life needed them no more. On his forehead a channel in the shape of his new Lord’s sigil was formed and then filled with liquid silver that would never be hardened and would never spill. Then it was over and the new Rudolph Clarke, First Speaker and Right Hand of the Lord rose and stood like a man for the first time in his life.

  Then the angel disappeared in a flash of red and silver light. Rudy felt something heavy in his hands. He looked down and saw he was holding a branding iron. The brand on the end was the mark of god.

  Rudy started to laugh as the homeless denizens of the park died around him. They had tolerated him in life. Now they would serve him in death. There was a lot of work to do and he was the man to do it.

  And Rudy also knew a secret that would have scared the mind of any other man. The angel had told him that he was special, that his mind above all others could handle it. He knew the real name of the One True God. The angel had whispered it into his ear before departing.

  “… Ast-Murath …”

  2

  Saint Theresa’s Catholic Church

  Royal Oak, Lower Michigan (North West of Detroit)

  9:45pm EST

  They all thought that the 19th century Catholic Church was the perfect place to establish a Safe Zone in the city of Royal Oak. It would have been, if any of the National Guardsmen and the weapons they were bringing had shown up. Now all that remained were a few Police Officers who no longer had a chain of command to fall back on and some determined but poorly armed civilians.

  The makeshift defenses of police barricades and overturned cars around the church were crumbling under wave after wave assault of the Risen Dead that were mindlessly plowing into the slackening gunfire. A thick berm of corpses was being built up around the “wall”. Soon the advancing hoards would be able to walk right over.

  Sergeant Adam Baker was the highest ranking officer left on the inside of the perimeter. Also inside of the defenses were 16 other cops, their families, and 32 other civilian defenders and their families. Baker looked down at the box next to him and realized that he had less than one hundred rounds left for his handgun. He was sure that he was better off than anyone else for ammunition.

  Inside of the church people were using the time that was being bought for them by the defenders outside to reinforce the doors and windows of the grand old Cathedral. None of them believed that anything that they did would do more than forestall the end.

  They’d seen too much that day.

  “We are going to have to pull back into the Church.” Sergeant Baker yelled out to the men and women he’d been leading all day. In some ways he felt like he was back in the Marines, a Major, performing Force Recon duties in the deserts of Iraq. Except that in Iraq if you shot a man in the chest, he didn’t get back up and try to eat you.

  A woman with binoculars slapping on a strap around her neck, her name was Amanda and she had been a sales girl in a flower shop before all of this madness had started, ran toward him.

  “Sarge” she yelled as she ran, “Something really fucking weird is happening.” She was panting as she came to a halt in front of him. Her shirt was covered in dried brown blood, and the skin on her face was blistered from the fires they had fled downtown.

  “What’s going on Amanda?” He asked. He never took his eyes off the next wave of the Risen Dead who were now about two hundred yards away and closing.

  “The stenches north of us have stopped moving.” She reached for the bottle of water that was hanging from her hip and took a big drink.

  He was about to ask what the hell she was talking about, when he noticed that the wall of corpses facing him had also stopped moving. They just stood there moaning. He got on the radio and called the others on the line and learned that all of the Dead had stopped advancing.

  “Is it over Sarge?” Amanda asked, she sounded unwillingly hopeful at the thought.

  “I don’t know but …” he never got to finish because just then a voice called to him from “Dead Side” of the defenses.

  “Major Adam Baker, are you there Major Baker? I would very much like to talk to you Major.” A strong voice called out.

  “Don’t answer him Sarge!” Amanda hissed.

  Baker looked at the people that were following him. They looked tired and shocked. They’d seen things in the last 12 hours that would be with them for the rest of their lives no matter how long or short that might be. He knew what he had to do.

  He stood up and spoke using the same voice that had at one time been heard across the battlefields of a desert half a world away. “How do you know my name?” He asked the voice.

  As he spoke a man dressed all in black came walking out of the lake of the Risen Dead. His black hat, trench coat, shirt, pants, gloves, and boots made it hard for Adam’s eyes to focus on him. As he got closer Adam saw that he was tall and fair, with longish blond hair and piercing gray eyes. The one unsettling thing was the symbol on his forehead, a strange mix of squiggles, lines, and circles that seemed to be made of flowing liquid silver.

  “Major Baker,” he said as he reached the barricade. His presence was strong and Adam felt the ridiculous urge to salute the man. It was an urge that he had to force down before he spoke.

  “Do I know you?” Adam asked coldly.

  “Not yet Major, but you will. There is great work for you to do, work that has been assigned you by the Lord our God.” Excitement leeched into his voice when he mentioned the Lord.

  “How the hell did you get those corpses to stop attacking us?” Adam asked.

  “Oh Major, there are things that I have been made aware of that would drive the sanity from your skull like a fire driving deer through a forest.” He paused and looked around at the smoke filled sky and the fine layer of ash that covered every exposed su
rface and then continued, “Or people from a city.” He laughed and stepped up onto the barricade and began to climb over.

  “Stop right there mother fucker or I’ll put two in your brain pan for good measure.” Adam said drawing his sidearm and raising it toward the man in black.

  “But Major, if you kill me then my followers will revert to their more primal nature, and complete the task of overrunning your little island of safety here and feast on your bones.” He chuckled and never paused in his climb. Adam slowly lowered his weapon, and the man joined him on the other side.