Crosses to Bear (Vatican Knights Book 6)

by Rick Jones

  “Give me Kimball, and the tube is yours.”

  “You have no intentions of surrendering that virus. Do you seriously think I’m that stupid?”

  Ezekiel lashed out in rage, hitting Leviticus in the face three times. “Where is he?”

  When Leviticus regained himself his world continued to spin, but marginally. The blows he took from Ezekiel made everything around him seemed to move with a glacial crawl. Even Ezekiel appeared highly disproportionate in a funhouse sort of way with an odd-shaped head, dollar-sized eyes, and a long and serpentine torso with blunted limbs—the vision stemming from the effects of a concussion.

  Ezekiel stood and held the tube up. It now read 48°F. He then clicked a combination of small nibs, which freed the cap and exposed a screen top that looked like a filter. “Inside this tube is a vial containing the Omega Strain. You know that. What you don’t know is that on the bottom of this tube is a small charge strong enough to break the vial once detonated. The strain,” he pointed at the top of the screened end of the tube, “will find its way out. And they”—He pointed upward, signifying the people in the square—“will cease to exist.”

  “Why?”

  “Why am I doing this?”

  Leviticus nodded.

  “Because I can,” he simply said. “I wasn’t abused or molested or bullied as a kid to make me the way I am. I do it because I want to. I do it because I like to. And I do it with the vision knowing that Kimball will blame himself for this. And for the rest of his miserable life, he will wish that he had been lying in that coffin instead of it being empty.”

  “You’re sick, Ezekiel. You need help.” His words were becoming thick as he began to fade away.

  “Kimball gave me all the help he possibly could give anyone. But there’s no way of mending fences on this one, Leviticus. This church, this way of life, was never me. I held no honor in being a Vatican Knight. Never. I could have cared less.”

  “That’s obvious.”

  Ezekiel hunkered down once more, this time getting to a bended knee beside Leviticus. “I came here with the intent to use this strain to bring Kimball out to the open without a fight—proposing the safety of the Vatican over the life of Kimball Hayden. And being as noble as Kimball believes himself to be, I believe he would have chosen the latter.”

  “You would’ve used the vial anyway.”

  Ezekiel got to his feet. “Of course I would have. Killing Kimball and everything that reminded me of him, would have brought me peace.” He held up the tube. “And it still will.”

  “You need to let it go,” stated Leviticus.

  Ezekiel could see that the Vatican Knight was beginning to fade. “What? My anger? It’s all in this bottle,” he said, referring to the tube. “But not for long.”

  Ezekiel then set the timing to the charger to twenty minutes.

  He showed Leviticus the clock’s tiny faceplate.

  . . . 19:57 . . .

  . . . 19:56 . . .

  . . . 19:55 . . .

  “I like you, Leviticus,” he said. “I also like him.” He pointed to Isaiah, who lay in the same unmoving position after being struck by the stone. “But I am what I am. I’m not a Vatican Knight. And I’m not a savior. I’m just a man with a personal agenda and self-fulfilling needs.”

  He held the tube toward Leviticus once again.

  And smiled.

  He began to backpedal his way into the shadows.

  But Leviticus could clearly see the red numbers. But his mind failed to interpret their meaning as he began to slip into a semi-unconscious state.

  . . . 19:43 . . .

  . . . 19:42 . . .

  . . . 19:41 . . .

  #

  Kimball stood inside the SIV Room watching the exchange between Ezekiel and Leviticus at the Tombs from a hidden camera. Although the picture was grainy and dim, Kimball could clearly see the tube within Ezekiel’s hand. More so, he could see that Isaiah was down and unmoving, a cause for great concern.

  On the wall monitor Ezekiel got to his knee beside Leviticus, and though there was no audio, could see that questions were being asked, an interrogation involving pain and torture, with Leviticus crying out in pain.

  Kimball issued an immediate order for SIV Director Auciello to get security to the Tombs, and quickly.

  “But you have no weapons,” Auciello commented, watching Kimball head for the door with purpose in his stride.

  Kimball raised his hands. “I have these,” he said. “They’re all I need.”

  And then he was gone.

  #

  Kimball sprinted towards the Tombs beneath the Basilica, taking tunnels barely lit by feeble bulbs sitting along thin cords. He knew the corridors well. But he knew the Tombs even better after laying many Vatican Knights there to rest.

  After taking multiple twists through narrow hallways with low-lying ceilings, Kimball finally came to an odd-shaped room with hard, dirt-packed walls. To the left was the archway leading into the area of the Tombs.

  The moment he entered the room he saw Isaiah laying on the ground, unmoving, a pool of blood beginning to fan out underneath him. Leviticus was against the wall with his head to the side and his eyes closed. Ezekiel was nowhere in sight, which put Kimball on alert.

  He slowly entered the chamber with his head turning from one side to the next, making sure that Ezekiel was not behind one of the Roman sarcophagi.

  “Kimball.” Leviticus’s voice sounded weak and strained as he lifted a hand in Kimball’s direction.

  Kimball went to his aid, got to a knee, grabbed Leviticus lightly by the shoulders, and repositioned him so that his back was flush against the wall. “Are you all right?” he asked him.

  Leviticus reached out and laid an open hand against Kimball’s forearm. “We were told you were back,” he said, grinning lightly.

  It appeared to Kimball that the act of smiling took Leviticus a lot of effort, the man growing weaker by the moment. “How badly are you hurt?”

  “I’m glad you’re back, Kimball.”

  “Leviticus, how bad?”

  “Concussion . . . I think.”

  “Stay with me, OK?”

  Leviticus nodded.

  “Ezekiel. Where is he? Where did he go?”

  Leviticus raised his hand feebly in the direction of the tunnel that once led to the armory. But since the excavation beneath the Basilica, the corridors were rearranged with a series of detours. “He went off towards the armory. But the wall was closed due to the excavation. He’s running to nowhere.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You can’t get to the armory that way anymore. Excavations teams have been unearthing small villages that predate the time of the Roman Empire. A pagan society.” When his eyes started to wander, Kimball brought him back by shaking him gently. Leviticus was not in a good state. “Stay with me,” he told him.

  Leviticus shook it off, his eyes refocusing. “He’s running himself into a corner,” he finally said. “The only way out is the only way in.”

  That meant to Kimball that Ezekiel would have to backtrack if he wanted to escape.

  “The vial,” said Kimball. “He has the strain, yes?”

  Leviticus nodded. Then: “He engaged a timer to set off a charge that would release the pathogen.”

  “What?”

  “You have less than twenty minutes,” he told him weakly.

  Kimball patted Leviticus on the shoulder and got to his feet. “Help’s coming. Hang in there.”

  “Isaiah?”

  Kimball checked his carotid for a pulse. It was there, but barely. “He’ll be fine,” he said, not knowing if he would be or not. What concerned Kimball most was Isaiah’s shallow breathing. His chest hardly lifted and fell.

  “Kimball.” Leviticus’s tongue was becoming quite thick. “Be careful. There are ancient wells all over the place, pitfalls. Some are believed to be burial holes filled with pagan relics. Others are actually filled with water. But they’re deep, Kimball. S
ome thirty, maybe forty feet. Some are capped and some are not.”

  “How far, Leviticus?”

  He pointed. “Two hundred meters maybe.” His arm flopped down by his side.

  “Just stay with it, ok? Help is coming.”

  “Kimball!” When Leviticus called out he did so with urgency. “Be careful,” he told him. “Ezekiel took us out easily. He’s quicker and faster. Much more so than I remember.”

  “I created him, so he’s my cross to bear. I’ll take care of it.”

  Kimball quickly made his way to the excavation site.

  #

  Nothing looked familiar to Ezekiel at all. Where tunnels used to be were now walls. And where walls used to be were now tunnels. But they seemed to be leading toward the same venue, whatever that was.

  He looked at the timer on the tube:

  . . . 16:47 . . .

  . . . 16:46 . . .

  . . . 16:45 . . .

  And his heart began to race.

  His original intention was to go to the armory, grab a few armaments, and then go topside and lay the tube in a discreet location, like behind a row of hedges. And then he would be gone long before the tube’s inner discharge.

  But now he was like a rat in a maze.

  Walls were hard-packed with dirt, not the ancient brick he had remembered. And the armory, he was sure, was more to the northwest and not the direction he was running in.

  . . . 16: 28 . . .

  . . . 16:27 . . .

  . . . 16:26 . . .

  At the end of a wending curve, Ezekiel entered a massive chamber filled with light stalks whose cable lines were connected to generators roughly the size of the Roman sarcophagi. The whole area was greatly lit. And in the center of the room laying on large stretches of canvas, were obvious relics of another time.

  Ezekiel stepped inside and absorbed his surroundings.

  . . . 16:13 . . .

  . . . 16:12 . . .

  . . . 16:11 . . .

  Scattered about were what appeared to be foxholes arranged in circular patterns that were far from random, but most likely a pattern with religious or astronomical connotations to them. But they weren’t foxholes at all. Some were burial chambers with some so deep that they appeared bottomless. Others were capped and sealed, hiding the secrets within.

  Ezekiel had no idea where he was.

  And the minutes were running thin.

  Then he realized that he would never have the time required to get out of the pathogen’s way. So he tried to disable the timing mechanism and failed. Tried again. Failed again.

  . . . 15:56 . . .

  . . . 15:55 . . .

  . . . 15:54 . . .

  “Problems?”

  Ezekiel immediately recognized the voice and the tone of its inflection.

  He turned to face Kimball with the tube in his hands. “You do have a nasty habit of rising from the dead,” he told him.

  Kimball stepped forward, then stopped. He was standing between two wells, the circular walls created by fieldstones that stood about three-feet high. “Yeah, well, what can I say? Neither heaven or hell wants anything to do with me.”

  “You’re not funny.”

  “Not trying to be.”

  Ezekiel began a slow movement to his left, so Kimball stepped away from the wells and moved to his right, making sure the distance between them remained the same. “I don’t suppose that’s a cigar you’re holding,” he finally said.

  Ezekiel showed Kimball the clock side.

  . . . 15:27 . . .

  . . . 15:26 . . .

  . . . 15:25 . . .

  “You know what that is?” he told him. “That’s the countdown to the end of your pathetic life. You always wondered about the afterlife, didn’t you? Always considered it to be a mystery. Well, it’s about to be a mystery no more. In about fifteen minutes you’ll know the truth.”

  Kimball pointed to the tube. “You’ll be just as dead.”

  “Not if I cripple you first, then leave you behind.”

  “Wow,” said Kimball. “I don’t know if you’re cocky beyond belief, or maybe you’re just stupid. We both know that neither of us has the time to outrun what’s inside that tube. Not now, anyway.”

  Ezekiel countered with a flash of a smile. Touché. Then: “No. You’re right. You’re absolutely right. But what I can do is cripple you like I said, and then stand by and watch the Omega Strain tear you down to nothing. All I ask is a moment or two to see this done before it finally takes me.”

  “There’s another way.”

  “Yeah. And what’s that?”

  “Look around you. There’re are wells all over the place. Some quite deep.”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head lightly. “I’m tired of three things,” he said. “I’m tired of chasing you. I’m tired of running from you. And I’m tired of this piss pot of a life I have. I’m just tired, Kimball. And if I see you die on the moment of my last breath, then it was all worth it.”

  Kimball searched the area around him. There were holes everywhere.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Ezekiel said. “You’re thinking you can pitch this tube down some hole and solve all your problems. Problem is, you’d have to take it away from me first. And that’s not going to happen.”

  “Are you sure?’

  “I’ll tell you what.” Ezekiel placed the tube gently on top of a ring of fieldstones that surrounded a burial hole. “If you can get through me, then you can have the tube. How’s that sound?”

  Kimball’s response was to edge closer.

  “So the man wants to challenge me,” Ezekiel said, smiling cockily. “You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting for this.”

  “I think I do.” He moved closer until he was within seven feet.

  On the tube, time ticked away.

  . . . 14:32 . . .

  . . . 14:31 . . .

  . . . 14:30 . . .

  Then: “Are you just going to stand there?” Ezekiel asked him.

  “Absolutely not.”

  Kimball charged him with a series of hand strikes and straight-on kicks, driving Ezekiel back. But Ezekiel appeared to be toying with him by swatting off his blows with the same ease of shooing away a fly.

  Kimball could tell that Ezekiel had become far more confident in his skills, more deadly.

  And then Ezekiel interrupted Kimball’s designed pattern of attack and took command. He immediately struck Kimball with a flurry of blows to the abdomen, the chest and face, landing hard punches that knocked Kimball off his stance, then off his feet.

  Kimball took to the ground, hard, then rolled to his right, got to his feet, and took a fighter’s stance.

  “What do you think?” asked Ezekiel, smiling arrogantly. “Not bad, huh?”

  Kimball didn’t answer him. Instead, he shifted his stance by grinding his feet against the dirt floor.

  “Shall we have another go?” said Ezekiel.

  “Yeah. I think we shall.”

  The men converged on one another throwing blows and kicks. Defending and deflecting. Within two minutes Kimball had studied enough of Ezekiel’s new-found skills to finally take control.

  But the problem of studying one’s techniques was time consuming. And when time was not a luxury, then matters needed to be expedited.

  In an instant Kimball came around with a side kick that connected with Ezekiel’s shoulder so hard, that it sent Ezekiel off his feet. When Ezekiel tried to regain his balance, Kimball spun around with a reverse wheel kick and planted his foot against Ezekiel’s chest, knocking the man’s breath free.

  When Ezekiel went to a knee Kimball came back with a straight kick to Ezekiel’s face, planting his foot squarely and breaking Ezekiel’s nose. A blood gout suddenly erupted from Ezekiel’s nostrils as his head whipped around.

  When Kimball went over to finish off Ezekiel, who now lay on the ground but was able raised himself onto his elbows, Ezekiel turned at the last moment and cast dirt into Kimball’s eyes. Blin
ding him.

  Kimball staggered back, his hands reaching up to claw away the sting of the dirt. When he opened his eyes the world was a blur, as if he was viewing it through a veil of running water. Ezekiel was nothing but a shape of comingled hues from the wide and colorful blends of his clothing. His face, however, remained a muddled distortion. Worse, he did not see the blows coming.

  Ezekiel went after him screaming in rage, yelling insults and profanity.

  Falling back and unable to defend himself against Ezekiel’s punches that continued to rain down on him, Kimball bent low, swung his leg around, and undercut Ezekiel’s legs out from under him, sending the former Knight up and over until he landed on the back of his head, dazing him.

  Kimball reached out, grabbed him, and dragged him to the edge of a well. His vision was still blurry, so he couldn’t tell how deep it was. As Ezekiel was beginning to gather himself, Kimball hoisted the man to his feet, and then pitched him over the side and into the hole.

  Right where you belong . . . Right where you’ve always belonged.

  Less than a second later he heard the splash of water. He had tossed Ezekiel into a well.

  Stumbling to the ring of stones where Ezekiel had placed the tube, he grabbed it and brought it close to his eyes. Though the numbers were blurry, he could still make them out, but barely.

  . . . 11:17 . . .

  . . . 11:16 . . .

  . . . 11:15 . . .

  He went over the well he tossed Ezekiel in and looked into its depths.

  Ezekiel was standing in waist-deep water about ten feet down, and was looking up at Kimball. “You’re a dead man, Hayden.”

  “If you say so.”

  “How much time do you have left, huh?”

  “The same as you.” He looked at the timer: 10:53.

  Ezekiel began to laugh.

  Kimball gripped the tube tightly.

  From deep inside the well Ezekiel spoke with his voice sounding hollow and tinny. But Kimball didn’t pay any attention to what he was saying. Instead, his mind raced.

  . . . 10:12 . . .

  Since going topside was out of the question, Kimball searched many holes for the next several minutes, finding the wells no deeper than thirty feet. So Leviticus had been mistaken. There were no deep or bottomless wells, and thirty feet was not deep enough. Not by a long shot. And the water wells were no different after constructing a makeshift measuring tape using a length of rope and a stone. After tying the stone to the rope’s end, he then dropped the line. In all the water wells the stone dropped maybe ten to fifteen feet.