"No thank you, ma'am. I'm fine."
She gave him a stern look. "You have to cut me some slack with that ma'am, Coy. Makes me feel old."
"I'll try, ma… How should I refer to you?"
"Why, as Kayla, of course."
"Okay. Tell me this, ma'am." Coy shook his head and smiled. "I'm sorry. Tell me this, Kayla. What am I doing here?"
She fixed him with a serious expression for the first time. "Coy, you are going to save your people from a terrible tragedy and prevent dozens, maybe hundreds of needless deaths. After all, we've all seen enough death and suffering to last us a hundred lifetimes. Just think- you’ll be the one to keep your little group from being completely wiped off the map."
If that shook the boy, she couldn’t tell. His expression didn't change, save for an almost imperceptible hardening of his eyes. It looked as though her source was correct; an extraordinary young man stood in front of her.
She made a mental note to spend time later pondering a way to win him over to her side. It would no doubt be difficult, especially when you took into account what she would hit him with later tonight. But she specialized in making the impossible possible when he came to men. Besides, with the way he held himself in reserve and his careful self-control, the odds were he would be a wildcat if she could get him in her bedroom. She noticed his long lashes and dimpled cheeks first as she crossed the room, followed by his taut, wiry frame. And she'd bet half her territory that he hid a six-pack under his shirt. She was so tired of men with lumpy biceps and flabby stomachs; just the thought of what he might look like naked made her wet.
He looked at her with an odd expression and his head tilted to one side. With a start, she realized she had zoned out. Flustered, she cleared her throat and smoothed her skirt with both hands.
He crossed his arms over his chest. "You were talking about wiping my group off the map."
She put on her most winsome smile and walked to his side. Even in her high heels, he had a couple of inches on her; she placed herself so that, looking down to meet her gaze, he'd have no choice but to take in her decolletage.
"I was, but as I also said, you will save your group from that end."
"How will I do that?"
"Let's save the serious talk for this evening. Right now, allow me to be a good hostess and show you around our facility." She offered him her arm, secure in the belief he wouldn't do anything so rude as refuse it. He proved her correct when he slipped his arm inside hers.
“Don’t you want to put my hood on before we go out there?”
Kayla winked at him. “Don’t be silly. This time I want you to see what I’ve created.” She gave him a broad smile and led him to the door.
Sixty-Seven
* * *
Kayla guided Coy out of her office and by a striking Asian woman working at a regular-sized desk in a small outer office. She escorted him past two guards posted outside her office door and down a long hallway. Both guards stood at stiff attention as Kayla and Coy walked by, but they kept their heads bowed and their eyes on their feet. Two more guards stood in front a set of thick Plexiglas panels at the end of the hallway. The panels ran from wall-to-wall and floor to ceiling, with a four-foot gap between them. Like the first guards, these two cast their eyes on the floor in Kayla's presence. One of them pulled open a door cut into the first panel and motioned Coy and Kayla through. Once the guard closed and locked the door behind them, one on the other side unlocked and opened a matching door in the second panel and let them out. Through it all, Kayla wore a calm, collected smile.
On the other side of the Plexiglas an elevator waited for them, along with two more guards and a man sitting at an ornate and shiny desk. The man rose from his seat and bowed his head like everyone else. But after a moment, he looked up and made eye contact with Kayla. "Are you going to the first floor, ma'am?"
Kayla gazed through a smoky pane of glass, taking in the church floor below. "Yes, Jack," she answered without looking at him.
The elevator bell dinged and the door opened. Kayla let him through to the back of the car and Jack reached in and pushed the number one on the floor selector. The elevator lurched, causing Coy’s stomach to flip, and began its descent.
He looked at her out of the corner of his eye. "Jack called you ma'am."
"Jack works for me. You are my treasured guest."
He did his best to ignore Kayla’s raw sexuality for the rest of the ride. When he was fourteen, he’d gone with his Dad to a livestock auction in Dallas. Once the bidding was over, a friend of his Dad's took them to Perry’s Steakhouse for ‘the best steak in Texas’. They had finished their appetizers and were waiting on the main course. Coy looked around, agog at the opulence- he had never been in such a place. He was admiring the deep recess of expensive looking liquor bottles arrayed above the nearby bar when a woman unlike any he had seen entered the aisle that ran by his table.
She was tall, at least six feet, and her impossibly long legs were tanned and sculpted. She wore stiletto heels and a shimmery piece of cloth that covered her from her upper thigh to just above her nipples. A pair of mountainous breasts jutted straight out, creating cleavage he would never forget. Her soft blonde hair spilled over her shoulders in layers and her face defined the word beauty. As she passed, he caught just a hint of an exotic scent. She saw him staring and her glossy red lips parted in a seductive smile. And then she was gone.
The grown men laughed. His Dad chucked him on the shoulder, a twinkle in his eye. "You’re drawing flies, son."
Coy closed his mouth with a snap. For the remainder of the meal he kept one eye on the doorway she disappeared through, hoping she’d reappear. He daydreamed of terrorist attacks and elaborate restaurant heists, all putting the blonde in peril. In his dreams he saved her every time, earning her lifelong love and devotion with his daring, heroism, and all-around manliness. But alas, he never saw her again.
Kayla was an older, more refined version of the woman in the steakhouse long ago. Everything from the clothes she wore, to the words she chose, to the way she moved and positioned her body invited thoughts of sex. She used the promise of it, or the hope of it, or the act itself to get what she wanted. He had no idea why they brought him here. But he felt sure, based on Magnus’ abducting him and Kayla's poorly disguised threats, it wasn't for anything good. He needed to walk a careful line and ignore her sexuality without offending her for as long as they kept him here.
Sixty-Eight
* * *
The elevator came to a stop. The bell made its ding sound again and the door slid open on the ground floor of a large sanctuary. Coy sniffed the air and for the second time the smell of flowers, old perfume, and sweat assailed him. He caught Kayla’s eye. “It smells like they still have service in here.”
"Oh, we do, my dear. Every Sunday, plus a Wednesday night prayer service. We have Sunday school for the children, a youth service, and 'X-Plosion', for the teens."
"And you're the preacher?"
"Pastor. Similar, but a pastor does more than rail at the flock. She tends to their needs, spiritual and physical, throughout the week. I prefer that title."
He stopped walking and stared at her, struck dumb.
"Close your mouth, dear. Is my preaching the word so shocking?"
"Um… let me think." He grasped his chin in his thumb and index finger and closed his eyes, pretending to give the question great consideration. "I've got it- YES! Your people won't even look you in the eye. They look at the ground when you walk by. How can you lead a church service that way?"
She studied him, her eyes sparkling with mirth. "When I walk the grounds or work in my headquarters, I am their leader, due their respect and obedience. When I stand at the pulpit, or counsel in the church offices (which is something I hate to do, between you and I) I am their pastor, and we are on a more equal footing."
You people are insane, he thought. Out loud he asked, "Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why do you hate to c
ounsel them?"
She gave a theatrical sigh. "Their problems are so… trivial." She pointed up at the bank of offices. "Up there, I work eighteen and twenty hour days expanding my territory, keeping my people safe and fed, and dealing with threats, among a myriad of other issues. Down here, as a counselor, I officiate petty squabbles, listen to endless sad tales about lost loved ones, endure complaints about the amount of food or the quality of the blankets. There are times I'd like to stand up and say, 'you have food, clothes, and safety, in exchange for a day's labor. There are souls outside my territory who would kill for a scrap of meat and haven’t known a safe night for over a year. You people really don't know what problems are.' But of course, I don't."
"I'd hope not."
They resumed their walk through the sanctuary; he was struck by the difference between this room and the third floor. In Kayla's enormous office and the surrounding hallways, everything he saw looked expensive. The carpet was thick and luxurious and the furniture made of heavy, expensive-looking wood. Artwork that looked costly to his inexperienced eye covered the walls. The curtains and tapestries were splendid and plush and the knickknacks looked as if they belonged in a Fifth Avenue penthouse before the outbreak.
Down here, it was the opposite. The carpeting was thin, the furniture threadbare. Everything was clean and cared for, but the entire sanctuary looked as if it could use a good remodeling.
Another set of guards monitored the door to the sanctuary. Kayla's heels clicked on the tile floor as they walked down a short hallway, and then they were at the church entrance. Two pairs of guards, one on each side of the doorway, opened the smoked-glass doors and ushered them outside.
A team of six men dressed in the same garb as the guards inside waited to meet them. They didn't meet Kayla’s gaze, either; but instead of casting their eyes downward, they scanned her surroundings and kept a stern eye on people nearby. They were well armed — each carried a pistol and an assault rifle — and fell into a diamond-shaped phalanx around Kayla and Coy.
As they walked, he cast her a sideways glance. "Your personal guard?"
"Some of it, yes."
"Can these guys look you in the eye? Say there was a threat; could they look at you to protect you?" Before she could answer, he continued. "What about that guy Magnus? Can he look you in the eye? Could I, if I were part of your group?"
She stopped walking abruptly. "You're making too big of a deal of the eye thing, Coy. It's a sign of respect that the people here choose to bestow upon me. I've never asked for it, and would never punish someone for not looking down in my presence. And of course, the people close to me look at me when we speak. It would be ridiculous if they didn’t."
"I understand. It just seems weird. I mean, my people respect my Dad, but they don't stare at the ground when he walks by."
"I believe you'll learn I have a different relationship with my people than your father has with his."
"Okay." he let the matter drop because something else had grabbed his attention. Everywhere he looked, he saw people hard at work.
To the west, twenty or so people labored on a crowded agricultural operation. They tended to pens that held cows, pigs, and chickens. An assortment of outbuildings loomed beyond the pens. A forty-foot-high pole barn protected a big supply hay bales from the weather; next to it, four squat grain bins sat in a row. Further out, a trio of equipment sheds sat amid a blizzard of dirt roads that ran every which way, connecting each building to all of the others. The shed doors were closed, but he assumed they held an assortment of tractors and implements. South of the church was a large shed that looked like a holding area for canned goods. Racks like those in the warehouses back at the Underground, though much smaller, lined the walls and a team of people unloaded a pickup truck filled with cans and put them in their proper places on the rack. A dirt work operation was underway to the east. They were too far away for Coy to make out what they were doing, but several bulldozers and backhoes bustled about, belching black smoke into the sky. A long line of men with picks and shovels stood near the dirt-movers. They looked like a chain gang on an old-time movie as their picks rose and fell and their shovels flung dirt. A chain-link fence surrounded the church grounds. It was six foot tall, topped with razor wire, and supported with lengths of telephone poles spaced ten yards apart. The poles ran at a ninety-degree angle from the top of the fence to the ground and a two-person team armed with long metal stakes stood at every third one. When the bustle inside the fence attracted a creeper, the team manning the closest pole sprang into action. One person distracted the creeper while the other ran a stake into its head. The entire operation was risk-free for the workers. They put down two of the creatures while Coy watched. A few minutes later, a truck buzzed around the corner outside the fence. It sat on enormous seventy-two-inch tires and bounced through the grass, coming to a stop next to a downed creeper. A hydraulic liftgate on the back of the truck lowered to the ground. Two men in armored suits rode the gate down and three others jumped from the cab. Each man carried a metal stake like the fence guards used. The men from the cab stood guard while the two from the liftgate hefted the downed creeper on to the lift. The truck jounced to the other creeper and repeated the process. The guards scurried back to the cab as soon as their macabre load was secure. The other two shared the lift with the dead as it rose up into place.
Coy and Kayla hadn’t spoken since their little disagreement. Her guards maintained a hostile silence; if he looked in their direction they returned hard, reproachful stares. He was sure they waited with anticipation for him to make a hostile move so all six could jump on him and pummel him out of existence. For the first time since he met her, Kayla was quiet for more than a few seconds, seeming content to let him take in the surroundings. After they'd wandered fifty yards or so from the church, she broke the silence.
"What you think of our little operation?"
"You have a lot going on."
"This is but a small part." She pointed off into the distance. "Do you see those roofs to the east?"
He squinted in that direction and could make out the tops of several blocks of houses. "I do."
"That's our housing. We have room for twelve hundred people there, and room for another few hundred scattered around different places in the territory. We have five-man teams scouring the local towns for food, clothes, fuel… I'm sure you're familiar with searches like that."
"Sure. We call it scavenging." He almost added that his group stayed in the country and avoided towns, but thought better of it. He still didn't know why he was here. And while there it been no malevolent behavior since they took him, the less he said about his group, the better.
As they talked and walked, they approached an odd sight. They had doubled back toward the church and then swung to the left. In front of them, a group of four more guards stood on duty. Four five-foot high sign posts rose from the ground twelve feet apart. Old-fashioned yellow crime scene tape was wrapped around them to form a square. As they grew closer, Coy saw a large hole in the square’s center. He jerked a thumb at the display as they passed. "What's that?"
Kayla stopped beside the hole and gestured at it as if she were a game show hostess. "That, my dear, is one of my best ideas. Inside is a ladder; if you climb ten feet down, you’d find yourself in a tunnel big enough to stand in with comfort."
He blinked his eyes, nonplussed. "Why would you want to do that?"
She laughed, a delightful sound that tinkled in the autumn air. “That's how we get from one place to another. The church, the housing, and other important parts of my territory cover more than ten square miles. There's no practical way to keep the demons — what you mistakenly referred to as creepers — out of a place that big. Even if we fenced the entire territory, we wouldn't have the manpower to police the perimeter and eventually the demons would get in.” She moved closer to him, put a hand on his arm, and favored him with her biggest smile. "That, my dear, is the reason you are here."
Sixty-Nine
* * *
Several hours later Coy sat at one end of a small, intimate dinner table; Kayla smiled at him from the other side.
A few minutes after they left the weird hole dug into the church grounds, a second set of six guards marched to meet them.
Kayla took his hand and held it in both of hers. "This is where I leave you for a bit. These gentlemen will take you anywhere you want to go and protect your life with theirs. I'll see you back inside after your done."
For two hours, Coy toured the grounds with his six mute bodyguards in tow. They frustrated him, not only because they wouldn’t engage him in conversation; they also ignored his attempts to speak to them. His questions went unanswered and his comments drew no replies; after a time, he quit trying to converse with them.
They indicated he was trying to go somewhere off-limits twice- not by telling him so, but by blocking his path. The first time was when he tried to enter a cattle pen. He nodded to the men working with the livestock as he walked up and had a brief conversation with one of them. But when he reached for the latch that opened the gate, two of the guards squeezed in front of him and shook their heads.
The second time occurred when he tried to walk to the housing complex. An outer road ran along the north end of the grounds and into the subdivision where Kayla's people lived. As with the cattle pen, when he tried to step onto the road, the two guards walking in front of him stopped, turned, and blocked his path.
Coy’s anger flared, and he stepped to the larger of the two guards and bumped him in the chest. "What the fuck, dude? Can't you just say don't go there?"
The guard stared past Coy, his face impassive.
"Did you assholes hear Kayla say to take me anywhere wanted to go?"
Again, there was no reaction. Red-faced with anger, he was on the edge of shoving the man aside. Realizing that nothing good would come of that, he stepped back and drew a breath.
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