Sharon smiled at them. It was a cold, predatory smile. It chilled Joel, all the more because she clearly made no attempt to mask it. "I have given you the visions! I have protected you! And now, I know where the children are! I can lead you there! I can give you what you truly desire! Their blood. Their flesh. Follow me and you shall have them! We will take them from their hiding place and bring them back here! They will scream and you will consume them! As it once was! As it will always be! The strong eat the weak and gain power! You will gain this power! We will show the world true power! We will show the world chaos again!”
She smiled, looking over the flock. “So,” she said, “those who would follow me, prove your loyalty."
Sharon dropped her hands, releasing them. The flock stood there, staring. Silence and shock hung over all of them. It crushed Joel's spirit.
One by one, his flock began dropping to their knees. First just one, then more, then many more in quick succession. All but Joel bowed to Sharon.
Dismay washed over Joel. He had lost.
Then he noticed Sharon's breathing. It was subtle, but there was effort there. Like she'd expended energy and was regrouping. The fact that she grew weary gave Joel his last tiny spark of hope.
"I will never serve another!" he yelled, running for her.
Sharon held up her hand to stop him. He froze in place, the wall of glue returning. She lifted him up, reminding Joel crazily of when his grandfather had carried him as a child. How old and wise the man had seemed then, and so full of knowledge. Of God's Word and of the world around him. Joel had always hoped he'd do him proud. Joel shook the thoughts from his mind and tried to struggle. He could not. He flipped back and over, so that he was prostrate to the floor and hovering above it. He drifted forward, out over the kneeling flock. His kneeling flock. They looked up at him. Joel could no longer read their eyes.
He couldn't see what she was doing behind him. He didn't have to. He felt his bones start to shift. His flesh compressed inward, like huge weights were crushing him from all sides. His bones snapped and his flesh split. It was pain such as he had never experienced. If he could move, he would have screamed like he hadn't since childhood.
He crumpled and broke, his vision blurring. His own blood fell from his hovering body, raining down on his kneeling flock. They looked up at him, his blood pattering on their face.
"Come unto me," said Sharon. Then there was one more agonizing, searing crush of pain.
Then blackness.
Eighteen
Park leaned back in his chair. The kitchen table in front of him held a deck of cards and three piles of pennies. The pile in the center was the largest.
He looked down at the cards in his hands. He was still mad from earlier, but he felt comfortable. As comfortable as he could with armed guards out front and a living room full of magic children. All was quiet for the moment. Angie was up in her room, planning something. Park hoped it was good.
Across from him, Lilly pulled two cards from her hand and set them down. "Give me two," she said. She was sitting on two old rotten books, giving her just enough room to reach the top of the table.
Park pulled two cards from the deck and passed them across the table to her. "Shouldn't you be playing Go Fish or some shit?"
Lilly took the cards and put them into her hand. "Maybe if I was a pussy. Call!"
"Okay, but don't start crying." He put his cards down, spreading them out on the table. "Two pair."
Lilly considered his cards. She set hers down. Park could see the arrangement before she spoke. "Full house!"
He sat back in his chair. "Shit."
She leaned over the table. "Damn right, shit," she said, sliding the pile of pennies over to her.
Park watched, bemused. "Not much to spend money on anymore, you know?"
"You're just jealous of all my pennies, fuckstick," she said, smiling as she arranged her coins.
A shot rang out from upstairs.
* * *
Maylee tromped through thick snow, weaving around frozen trees and picking her way through hidden brush. It was already dark. A beaten flashlight in her hand provided meager light. She wasn't sure where she was going. She was mad at herself for this. It didn't bode well for her to be out on her own with no plan. Maybe she was too reckless. Maybe Mom was right.
Mom.
Anger and hurt made her push the thought down.
She focused on the ground ahead of her, of her boots crunching in the snow and ice. She knew she was headed roughly toward West's place. Maybe she could stop in there for a while. She'd have to be gone by the next time Mom came for supplies, but it would give her some time to collect herself.
Then, she'd move on. She could find supplies. She could find a house and set up there. She'd fought enough corpses and wild animals to know how to take care of herself.
Right?
She wondered if she was being childish. She hated herself for wondering that. She hated herself for it being true. She was being childish. She thought of Carly, of Dalton, of Mom. She was mad at them and missed them at same time. It was a horrible, empty feeling.
She tried to ignore the feeling and pressed on, plodding through the snow.
She knew she didn’t have any real plans to survive. Was she really just heading off to die? Was this her plan? Wander into the woods alone, fall prey to something and finally be able to stop worrying? To stop screaming and fighting?
She pushed that down. It gnawed at her anyway.
She emerged from the trees into an open area. The moon was out, providing fair light. The ground beneath her sloped downward to where she knew a road to be. It was long abandoned and completely covered by unbroken snow. If not for the two dips in the snow on either side, where the snow slumped into ditches, the road would be invisible.
Across the road was an abandoned wooden building. It was small and most of the wood was rotten. A faded sign read Ed's Diner.
Maylee considered the diner. It had once been a popular spot for those heading out of Lakewood and deeper into the woods. There wasn't much chance there were supplies inside, though. Everything within twenty miles had been picked clean long ago. But Maylee couldn't remember the last time they'd looked for things in this area. The unbroken snow certainly spoke to that.
She headed across the road. She knew she didn't need supplies yet. She knew there was likely nothing left in the diner. So why was she going in there?
Something to do, she told herself.
She was not looking for trouble. Not looking for a dark hole to meet a corpse and end herself.
Right?
She ignored these thoughts and stepped the rest of the way to the diner. She ran her gloved hand over the smudged, dirty glass of the front door. She peered inside, into the darkness. Booths sat abandoned, and a counter was stained with blood but it didn't look fresh. Everything looked still, undisturbed.
Maybe there were supplies in there after all.
She pushed the door open, the creak of the hinges louder than the tiny bell at the top of the glass. She glanced quickly around her to make sure no threats where nearby, then stepped inside, the door creaking shut behind her. Everything was quiet, dark. A dead, rotten smell hung in the air, but not a strong one. It was faint, lingering.
Something moved in the dark. A shuffling noise. A soft moan.
Maylee tensed. She pulled the bat from the strap on her back and searched for the source of the noise. She braced herself to fight.
Then realized she didn't have to. She didn't have to fight for anyone anymore. She didn't have to rush into danger anymore. She'd left that behind. She could just leave well enough alone.
She turned to leave.
A corpse stood there, staggering toward her. It was a brown-haired woman with rotten, jagged teeth protruding past her black, twisted lips. Her eyes were a milky yellow and her spine was twisted at a horrible angle. She wore a ruined waitress uninform, an S all that was left of her name tag. The tag bobbed on her breasts as she s
tumbled forward. Maylee stepped back, wondering how she'd let her guard down.
Part of her was relieved. This is it, said a dark hidden part of her mind. Let it happen. Let it dig into you and eat you away. It will hurt, but then nothing ever will again.
The woman reached for her. Maylee stepped back again, finally pulling the bat free. A dead hand closed on her foot. She looked down as she stumbled back. A second corpse—a young man with pus leaking from his ruined eyes—had been under a nearby bench. Maylee stumbled again and fell over backward. The flashlight and bat flew from her grasp, rattling across the floor.
Let it happen.
The woman lurched forward, moaning and working her dead fingers in and out of clawed fists. The young man pulled himself out from under the booth. Maylee rolled over on her stomach. She tried to crawl away.
Then she screamed as the young man's dead, rotten mouth closed on her boot.
* * *
Angie sat on the bed in her room. In her kid's room. The room they'd shared for two years now. Her cane was propped up against the mattress next to her.
Her mind was spinning. Maylee was gone. Angie had lost her. She'd driven her daughter away. The town was falling apart around her, and she'd driven one of her children away.
She struggled to figure out what to do. She had no idea, no plan. She'd always had a plan. Always had a plan without thinking about it. Now, nothing.
For the first time since Jake left her alone with her kids all those years ago, she had no idea what to do.
She heard a noise. Something she couldn't place. A soft, scratching sound. She looked around. There was nothing in the room with her.
The noise came again, and this time she could place it. It came from outside the window. Something scraping on the side of the house.
She leaned forward on the bed, turned toward the window. "Who's there?"
With a loud crack, a gunshot smashed through the window.
* * *
Sharon stood among her flock. The chapel was now a thing of beauty. Pews were smashed. Blasphemy and madness were carved into the wood of the floor. Urine and fecal matter coated the walls and many of the people.
She drank it in, the pure chaos of it. It was wonderful. An old man, still half-wearing his worn suit, was shitting on the pew behind him. His shirt was gone. His jacket was tied around his head like a headband. His pants were down and his pale white rear hung over the wood of the pew. He smiled and cackled as he relived himself, hot and steaming, on the pew. A few rows down from him, an orgy had started. Six, maybe seven people fucking each other like mad. It was too rushed and busy to get an accurate count. Men and women tangled together, every orifice being stuffed and filled with semen, or urine, or blood.
In the back a trio were cutting their arms and smearing the blood on their faces. They looked ecstatic, both at their own pain and the sights around them.
It was like this all around the chapel. A moaning, shrieking rapture of blood and waste and sex. All swirling together, churning in Sharon's ears, eyes and nostrils. She loved it. She reveled in it.
A few people looked on from the sides, shocked at what was going on around them. They looked disgusted and horrified, but too scared to leave. Their presence bothered Sharon a little, but she trusted she could deal with it.
Sharon stepped to the center of the chapel, to the middle of some nonsensical scribbles one of her flock and scraped into the wood. "See, my flock?" she said. "See? This is as the world should be. Enough with rules and patterns! Enough with pretending you are anything other than beasts!"
The people grunted and shouted their assent. They all cut and smeared and fucked. They smashed and carved at the wooden pews and walls.
Sharon grinned. "Would you like to spread this joy, my flock?"
They shouted in agreement, their voices a lawless mass of feral joy.
Sharon stepped closer to them, holding out her arms like the ridiculous god these apes followed. "Then let us go and take the holy children I showed you. I promised you. We will have them. And consume them. Their power will be yours. And then we will break the world!"
They roared their approval. The old man pulled his trousers up. The fuckers gave a few more violent thrusts and stopped. The cutters made a few more slices in their flesh and stopped. They stood ready for her. Sharon stepped through them. They closed ranks behind her. She headed toward the chapel doors. She willed them open, enjoying how the dumb primates wondered at her power. She stepped through. Her flock followed her.
She liked the way they dumbly obeyed her, like the animals they were. She longed for the day she was free of them. She longed to pull their guts from their putrid, fleshy bodies. She hated their bodies. She hated hers. She wished she could kill them now. But, for now, they were useful, only slightly more intelligent than the dead bodies that wandered the earth. That was her doing, but these apes didn't know that. They thought she would protect them from the dead. And she would, until their purpose was served.
She stepped through the foyer, wishing there was time to sully it. There wasn't, so she pressed on.
She stepped outside, into the snow. She knew it was cold outside. She understood that this affected the primates in a way she didn't feel. She was like them but not. This angered her. She looked like them but was much, much better.
She strode across the snow, her flock filing out of the church behind her. She stopped, spreading her arms. The flock stopped and looked around in wonder.
Corpses stood around them, thousands of them, as far as Sharon could see. They filled the field and surrounding woods, packed as close together as they could stand.
They all stood perfectly still, waiting.
"And this," said Sharon, lowering her arms, "would be our reinforcements."
A man's scream rang out. A scream of fury and rage. Sharon turned. A young man with a chubby, earnest face was running toward her. Sharon recognized him as one of the few who hadn't joined in the revelry. He had a shovel in his hand. Sharon recognized it as one the primates used to keep up the grounds around the church. He had it over his head, rushing toward her and screaming in rage.
Sharon held up her hand and the man froze. His limbs twitched. His hand went limp and the shovel fell to the snow behind him. She considered crushing him right there. Instead, she slowly lifted her arm. The man rose into the air. She turned, holding her arm up and out. The man followed her hand through the air, slowly moving with her until his back was to the mob of corpses. The man twitched, trying to move. Sharon held him fast.
Sharon felt the stares of her flock behind her. They grunted and sniffed, like the animals they were. She knew what they wanted.
Sharon willed the man backwards. He moved through the air, toward the corpses. They groaned and reached for him, but stayed in formation.
The man reached the corpses and Sharon stopped his movement. The corpses clutched and tore at him. He tried to move, tried to cry out. Sharon wouldn't let him. The corpses dug their fingers past his clothes, finding flesh. They dug in, their fingers tearing and rupturing his skin. Blood, hot and red, fell down their frozen, rotting arms. The man twitched, tears running from his eyes.
The corpses tore hunks of the man free, pulling out bloody pulp and viscera. They greedily shoved the bloody chunks into their dead mouths and chewed. The man shuddered and bled into the snow. He clenched his jaw. Tears ran freely. Blood seeped from his mouth.
Sharon released his mouth, allowing him to scream. He hung there, screeching into the cold air as meat and organs fell from the gaping wet hole in his abdomen. The corpses ripped and tore. They ate and groaned, shoving meat and ropes of intestines into their mouths. Sharon reveled in them, proud of her handiwork.
The man shuddered one more time and slumped, dead. Sharon released him. He fell into the reaching, dead arms. They nearby corpses fell on him, tearing and eating. The mob surrounding them stayed in formation, staring at Sharon and her flock.
She waited until the corpses had consumed mos
t of the man, then willed them to stand. They did, taking formation with the rest. The man's fresh blood glistened wet and red on their ashen skin. They stood, ready, with the mass of others.
Sharon turned to look at her flock. Their eyes were full of greedy, lustful violence. They'd loved what they'd seen. They wanted more. Sharon planned to give it to them.
She smiled. "Everyone ready?"
* * *
Maylee kicked her boot free of the corpse's mouth. The flashlight lay across the floor, its slanting light casting long, insane shadows. A crack in the leather of her boot confirmed her fear. The young man reached for her, the pus dripping from his eyes and onto the tiled floor. Maylee lifted her leg and slammed her boot heel down on the young man's head. His rotten skull split open, shooting a dark mass of muck across the back of the bench next to her. The young man gurgled out black ooze and slumped to the floor.
She sat up and scooted back on her rear. The brown-haired woman was lumbering toward her from the front. Maylee scrambled backward until she found her bat. She flung it overhand at the woman. The bat flew end over end and thudded into her skull. A nail held it in place, piercing the woman between the eyes. The woman moaned once and fell forward. The bat handle hit the floor. Momentum carried the woman the rest of the way down. The nail pulled her skull open, spilling black gore across the tiles. With nothing to hold it in place, the bat clattered to the floor.
Maylee pushed herself against the far wall. She pulled her boot off, panic gripping her. She wrenched her sock off and studied her foot. Even in the dim light, she could see her skin was unbroken. The corpse had broken through the boot, but not reached her skin.
She leaned back against the wall, her heart pounding. She breathed out in relief.
Then realized she was relieved. Maybe she didn't want to die after all. She breathed in and out once more, looking around the dark diner. It looked clear.
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