Letters from the Apocalypse (Book 1)

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Letters from the Apocalypse (Book 1) Page 8

by Blake Pitcher


  “Tomorrow we will remember the Alamo – not as hero-fied corpses but as revered liberators. And what can stop us then?” The White Texan raises his rifle and brandishes it. “I asked you, WHAT CAN STOP US THEN?”

  “NOTHING!” The camp shouts back. “NOTHING!”

  After the cheering subsides, the White Texan continues. “Tomorrow morning, in three prongs, we will cut up through the Southside neighborhood and over the 410 loop. And we will proceed until we reach the heart of the city. That which cannot be consumed, carried or protected will be destroyed, for else it will be put to use by the enemy—an enemy who forms the tentacles of the devil seeking to make his imprint on a newly renewed world.

  Chapter 14: Approaching

  Creep, creep, slash and drain. The tires are tired and sag in the heat, and by the end of the day so will everyone, but as morning slips away, they are energized. Roger and his linked companions move as if they have been tied together for a lifetime. The ropes are long, but the freedom the length provides is a constant hassle of snagging on shrubs and dragging through the dirt. But Roger and his companions are a well-oiled, four-headed hydra, taking up slack and communicating with movements of the head. Units of new Penitents stumble over the terrain like bumbling misfits, holding back curses and sweating like hot pigs.

  Roger kneels along a pick-up truck parked in a driveway and presses his tapered metal punch against a tire. The woman, who is next in the line, confirms all is clear, and he drives it in with his hammer. The tire whooshes and sags, and Roger continues with the next. The woman moves up and slides under the vehicle, tapping a hole in the gas tank and letting the precious liquid spill out. She carries a gas can, but it is already full.

  “We’re not burning it?” The youth, Mason, is next in the chain gang, and calls ahead in what he thinks is a quiet voice. The woman looks back and makes a cutting motion across her neck.

  “There’s no one here,” the kid says breathily as he approaches at a half crouch. “There’s no one anywhere.”

  The woman turns on and knocks him onto his back, pressing a length of the rope over his neck and pushing down with her wiry arms.

  “Are you a fucking newbie? The last asshole that thought no one was around got potted while he was gabbing it up. So shut up and pay attention. You get me?”

  Mason’s face turns blue under the weight of the rope as he struggles in futility against the woman who is much stronger and more ruthless than her thin frame suggests.

  “Blink if you understand,” she says.

  Mason blinks, and the woman eases off. He sputters and breathes in deep huffs.

  “Next time you yell out like that, she’ll finish the job.” Saul brings up the rear and puts his hand on the kid’s shoulder. “But we’ll all feel horrible about it.”

  “Let’s keep moving.” Roger looks back at Mason. “We’re not burning anything because we don’t want to announce ourselves miles in advance. May not seem like it, but there’s a few million people ahead of us.”

  And it doesn’t seem like it. The group continues their careful approach, slashing tires and draining tanks, but no sign of life is to be seen outside. The walk from the lake has been uneventful.

  A sharp whistle heralds from behind. Roger’s group waits as Enlisted ride up and check the cleared vicinity. The White Texan is among them, Zulé on the back of his horse, as usual.

  “These homes look abandoned.” Dyne looks to Maddox. “Check them out?” Maddox nods, and Dyne waves Enlisted ahead to check the buildings. “You’ve got it easy today,” Dyne says, looking down at Roger.

  The report comes back that the nearby homes are empty.

  “I wonder if our other wings are having such a quiet time,” Dyne muses. “Or if it’s just us. Move ahead, wretches.”

  The modest neighborhood of shady trees and front fenced yards opens to an old stone wall that wraps around a large park-like area with brown signs denoting historic significance. A large, stone chapel stands among smaller stone structures in a sprawling mission. Next to the chapel is row of single-story arches opening into individual rooms from the outside, reminding Roger of the Palace Motel back in Brownsville. The group checks the rooms first, saving the larger chapel for last.

  The rooms come up empty and here is the chapel. Roger listens against its thick, wooden door as his unit stands in the shadow cast by the tall façade of the building. Above the arch of the doors weathered stone and bricks rise up to two arched windows, side by side, bells hanging inside, back-dropped by blue sky. Centered above the two windows is another window, with its own bell. Above all, an ornate cross made of curving iron tops the structure.

  Roger presses against the door, when he hears moaning from inside. The guttural sound pauses him.

  “What is it,” asks the woman. “You hear something?”

  Roger nods, and pushes the door open just enough to slip his body through. He steps inside, the cool, damp air raising bumps on his skin.

  The moans fill the chapel from the Spanish tiles of the floor to the dark wood rafters above. At the front of the chapel, beneath the altar, a woman stretches in despair over a bloated body.

  Roger proceeds up the aisle between rows of wooden pews and kneel-stands wrapped in colorful Mexican fabric, ignoring the warning tugs from the woman behind. Dust gleams in rays of light filtering through large, lonely windows on each side.

  To the woman on the floor, he is a non-entity, another spirit floating within the ancient walls. Her moan is a terrible song, dark and weepingly melodic.

  “You’re worse than the kid,” says the woman in his unit, approaching.

  Roger kneels next to the distraught woman. She clings to the body, once a young boy, but now a corpse covered in sores. “My boy, my boy,” she wails, one hand on a small pistol and the other supporting his head.

  “It smells like death in here,” says the woman behind him. “Oh.” She eyes the gun.

  “What’s going on?” Mason has come up just close enough to leave rope for Saul to stand wait by the door.

  “How far back are Dyne and the others?” Roger watches the gun. “Wait at the door with Saul and signal if you see them coming.”

  Roger hesitates to touch the mourning woman. “It’s alright,” he says to her.

  “We’ve got seconds, not minutes.” The cropped-haired woman licks her lips.

  “It’s alright,” Roger repeats, putting his hand over the grieving woman’s hand. “We’re not going to hurt you.”

  The woman relaxes her grip on the gun and lets Roger slip it away. “Shoot me,” she says, without looking up from the body.

  “Now what?” Roger asks.

  “They’re coming— one minute, you’ve got one minute,” Mason whispers from the front.

  “This isn’t the place. They’d massacre us, one little gun,” says Roger.

  “Give it to me. I can hide it in my shirt,” says the cropped-haired woman.

  “Shoot me,” the woman on the floor cries. “Send me to my son.”

  “I’d love to, darling,” says the cropped-haired woman. “But we need the bullets.”

  “What if she tells Dyne we have it?” Roger watches her slip the gun into her shirt.

  “Damned if I know.”

  “In here,” Saul calls out the doorway. “We’ve got a woman in here.”

  Dyne squirrels through the door, looking up at the rafters, the single large window on each side, and the large crucifix above the altar. The space presses down on his shoulders, assaults his being. His fingers clutch at the shotgun in his hands, tense, almost shaking, as if needing to use the device after an entire morning without killing.

  The barrel of the gun lifts up just high enough for a dismissive shot, Dyne’s earmark, but the muzzle dips back down at the cry of “shoot me.”

  Dyne wrestles against his impulse to kill and orders a fresh-faced recruit by his side to fetch Maddox. “Better not waste our time,” he mutters to the oblivious woman.

  Maddox enters w
ith a deliberate pace, and solemnly removes his hat from over his white hair. Dyne observes, and begrudgingly imitates the act of respect.

  “Your son is gone, ma’am. He’s escaped this world of pain and filth.”

  The woman’s sobs and wails have dried up, leaving her a wilted stalk draped over her son’s body. Roger wonders if she will respond, if she will mention the gun. The outline of the handle is ever so slightly visible under the cropped-haired woman’s shirt. To Roger, it screams for attention.

  “Tell me what happened here.” Maddox stands in calm patience.

  “He is gone, my son is gone. Everyone’s gone.”

  “Everyone?”

  “The city of death. I am dead, and you are ghosts that torment me.” The woman pulls at her hair, dark strands floating down to rest on the floor. “The day after everything stopped working, the coughing began. The soldiers fled with foam on their lips and blisters on their bodies. And then it was everyone: coughing, bleeding, dying. You can’t walk down the streets without tripping over them. People ran if they could; we did. Then he took with the cough.

  “So I brought him here. Not out of superstition, but what else is left? He died like everyone else. At least the air was clean and cool.” The last words are a struggle, and her voice trembles. “What else is left?”

  Maddox holds his hat in two hands, looking into it. “The prophecy,” he says in a low, steady voice.

  Dyne and the Enlisted stand in waiting, unsure of themselves and everything else. Hearing prophecy was one thing; seeing it unfold was another.

  “Leave her be,” Maddox orders.

  Outside the chapel he sets his hat back on his head and swings himself up and over his horse, pulling the waiting Zulé after him. “Onward.”

  “What about the disease, if this woman is right?” asks Dyne. “If it laid waste to the entire city…”

  “She is right,” says Maddox. “And we’re proceeding onward.”

  “Yes, sir.” Dyne hesitates. “We will be safe… according to your prophecy?”

  “I will be safe,” says Maddox. “If it worries you, have the men tie strips of cloth over their faces to breathe through.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Chapter 15: Opportunity

  “You call this a river?” Roger slogs through the shallow brown-green water and up the opposite bank.

  “They could’ve at least let us walk down to the bridge,” Mason says.

  “This river is our ticket out of here,” Saul says, ankle-deep in muck. “I know for sure where we are.” He uses the rope tying them together to hoist himself up the bank. “The gun is secure?”

  “Yeah.” The woman feels it against her chest. “It’s there.”

  “If we follow this river it’ll take us right into the heart of the city. Lots of places to disappear into. Best to avoid the streets.”

  “What about the disease? What if we catch it?”

  “The woman was insane. I say we take our chances. Besides, we’re going into the city one way or another. I’d rather do it on my own. I’ve got family in Austin. We could walk there in two, maybe three days. Maybe saner heads have prevailed over there. It’s a chance. The whole world can’t be totally screwed. It’s got to be okay somewhere.”

  “The whole word is under that bastard,” says the woman looking up at the sun. “There’s a chance everywhere is screwed. Still, I don’t have a better idea.”

  “If we keep moving north, I’m in,” Roger says. “And there’s strength in numbers. Austin sounds as good as anything.”

  “Listen, our chance is going to happen. I can feel it,” Saul says. “We just don’t know when or how. We might get split up. If so, follow the river north into the city. Hell, we’ll go straight to the Alamo. Why not? Easy to find. And why would they look for us there? We’ll wait up to one day, if we can. If not, well, we all know how it is. But if we can, we wait. Then to Austin.”

  The horses of the Freedom Republic carry their riders through the river and up the embankment after the Penitents.

  “Heads down and eyes open,” says Roger. He wonders how the moment of escape would come.

  {}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}

  “I’m thinking that woman at the mission wasn’t crazy.” The cropped-haired woman surveys the road ahead under a street sign that reads “Villamain.” A smattering of immobile vehicles dot the dusty road, but scores of bloated bodies are sprinkled about them, positioned in terrible acts of suffering, hands clutching abdomens and faces contorted in pain.

  “They were fleeing,” Saul says.

  “It’s going to get worse,” Roger says.

  Mason convulses. “The smell.”

  “I’ll give you that,” says the woman. “It’s rank.”

  Even the cavalry of Enlisted who trail the Penitents to the roadside are put off by the scene and the smells. “Can we catch this?” one wonders aloud, taking shallow breaths through the bandana tied around his face.

  “I don’t know about this,” says another. “It looks like it gets even thicker up the road. “How will we get through… without touching all these bodies?”

  “What’s the holdup?” Dyne rides up to the front, and struts back and forth. “Bunch of pussies, scared of a few dead bodies.”

  Dyne curbs a string of curses as Maddox arrives. He alone, with the Penitents, rides with his face uncovered. Even Zulé, arms wrapped around his waist, has her own pink bandana fastened over her nose and mouth.

  “What do we do?” Dyne asks the leader quietly, but is heard by all.

  “Burn it.”

  “The bodies? The cars?”

  “Burn it all.”

  Groups of Penitents take up the rear and splash gasoline on bodies, lighting them as they move down Villamain. Roger’s group along with a few others are in the lead, dragging bodies aside as necessary to allow the cavalcade to proceed. Roger almost feels the breath of the White Texan’s horse breathing down his neck, he is so close.

  Roger brushes up against an old Volkswagen on his right. The clip-clop of the White Texan’s horse backs him. He drags a body with the help of Mason to the left, and shudders at the thought of the ones strewn thicker and thicker ahead. Escape is a dream. Suffocation is reality. Death through the nose. Boxed in by steel, flesh earth and sky. North to Austin, a fool’s hope. The others feel the hopelessness. Everything is too close, too condensed. The gun is visible in the cropped woman’s shirt. It will be seen, and they will be shot. Perhaps it will be a relief. The day was getting hotter. If escape happens, let it happen before it gets any hotter, Roger thinks. Or maybe the woman would snap, under the stress of the situation. Take out her gun and start shooting. Take one or two Enlisted out before she was gunned down with automatic fire. Aim at Dyne first, the bastard deserves it. She brushes it with her hand, it’s pushed up against her breast. Do it. Fuck it.

  A cool breeze caresses Roger’s neck and for a fleeting moment, escorts the heat and the death away. He hears a child’s voice, but not Zulé, who sits mute. The voice makes a sound that is not laughing nor crying, or any word that Roger has heard put to tongue.

  The Volkswagen creaks, then rolls forward, impossible but real—the balding tires move up the slightest incline, rolling over bodies with ghostly speed.

  The White Texan’s horse rears and snorts, and in an improbable instant Zulé is on the ground, stunned and scraped. Roger shies under the pummeling hooves before taking one in the jaw. In a blurring, slumping haze he sees the cropped woman at Zulé’s side, pulling her out, her savior… and her captor. The gun is in her hand. The card is played. The nasty end is pressed against the little head, and the woman’s eyes shine animalistic; she will bite and she will kill.

  “I’ll blow her head off if you move,” she screams.

  Everyone pauses, from the lowliest Penitent to Maddox himself. He calculates. But the fact he hasn’t drawn his gun and blasted away is proof of his weakness for the girl. Dyne itches at his handle, but is met with a reproving glance. The woman can feel
the tide swelling. So can Saul, who demands that they be cut free.

  “Do it,” the White Texan commands.

  Dyne grits his teeth and cuts the rope tethering the woman, Saul, Mason and an unconscious Roger.

  “If you follow us, I’ll shoot her in the gut,” the woman declares. She backs away, dragging Zulé in her freshly torn and bloodied jeans. Saul is at her side. Mason hesitates, looks at Roger slumped on the ground, at Dyne, but not the White Texan.

  “C’mon kid,” Saul says. “You’re as good as dead if you stay.”

  Chapter 16: Riverwalk

  The White Texan sits silent on his horse as the Enlisted look on, wavering in their previously steadfast faith in the manifest destiny of their cause, sharing whispers of disease and ghostly cars. Dyne flushes red, blood rushing with nowhere to go but boil in frustration.

  “I’ll kill her. The whore. Scum!” Dyne seethes and writhes in his saddle. “All three of them. We’ll hunt them down and string them up by their own insides.”

  “No,” says Maddox. “We will not.”

  “Is this part of your prophecy? To have three Penitents escape for fear of putting a scratch on the little half-breed?”

  The shot that knocks Dyne off his horse and puts a hole in his head reverberates. Maddox holsters his gun, indifferent to the now dead toady whose brains mix with the roadside sand. He looks down at the groggy Roger.

  “You, the Yank.”

  “Yes?”

  “You will find your conspirators and bring back Zulé, unharmed.”

  Roger squints up at Maddox, head pounding and seeing double from the kick to the head. “I will?”

  “You will.” Maddox motions to Dyne’s crumpled body. “Take his side-arm, but not his rifle. When you return with Zulé, you will be forgiven of all your transgressions and accepted as one of the Enlisted.”

 

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