The Dead Road

by Seth Patrick

  He had to move, now. Outside the fence, two soldiers lay dead beside their jeep. He lifted Annabel in his arms and carefully walked over the fallen section of fence, then across to the vehicle, lifting her inside. The only other military personnel nearby were at least two hundred yards away, and they seemed utterly bound up in the sight of the Beast’s struggle.

  The Ellipse itself was virtually empty now, the dead and dying all that remained. He thought of them, and of the people in the other enclosures, but he knew he could do nothing. Indeed, the entity that had been in Annabel had told him as much: protect Annabel and yourself, at all costs.

  He got behind the wheel and started the engine, taking one last look at the screaming Beast above. It was bound from shoulder to knee in thick black living rope; its wings, too, were trapped. Behind it, a black outline was rising up, more vast tentacles spreading in the air as if underwater. This was what Annabel had carried here, a pure blackness that looked like it had come straight from a nightmare even more primal than the Beast, a nightmare of ancient evils dredged up from the deepest ocean.

  Yet this was their champion.

  He could see the difference in colouration more clearly than ever. The Beast had always seemed black to him, but he knew it was formed of the same shadow-flesh that the smaller creatures had, grey and diseased and glistening; the other entity was pure black. It was void, and nothing but.

  He drove north past the White House, slowly through the running throngs still fleeing the Ellipse. There was no military presence here, but perhaps that wasn’t surprising. They’d had their perimeter, and none of the Beast’s acolytes would have wanted to miss their Lord blessing his flock. Now, they were getting an altogether different spectacle.

  He reached Logan Circle, maybe a mile from the river. Jonah looked in his rear-view mirror and slammed on his brakes.

  The Beast was engulfed; silenced, the dark mass began to sink lower. As it sank, a bright pinprick lit up within it. The pinprick grew in size and intensity, until he had to look away – a ball of white fire consuming everything, the heat from it overwhelming, even at this distance.

  A new Sun, its life brief. The light faded. The Beast was gone.

  He glanced at Annabel, and felt a lurching within him.

  She wasn’t breathing. He felt for a pulse.

  ‘Oh God,’ he said. ‘Oh God.’

  Her heart had stopped.

  24

  He jumped from the vehicle and pulled Annabel out onto the road, ready to start CPR, the way Philip had shown him: one hundred compressions a minute, each compression going down two inches. He focused and began. Breathing for her wasn’t important now – the flow of blood was the critical factor, and pausing that flow could do more harm than good, at least to begin with.

  ‘Annabel,’ he said. ‘Come on.’

  He tried to keep count, but he was in pieces now. They’d come through all this, they’d reopened Pandora’s box and brought hope . . .

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Please. Please.’

  Hope.

  He continued the compressions, hardly noticing his own tears as they fell. He looked at Annabel’s face, cursing himself. This was all his doing. If she’d never met him, she wouldn’t be here now; if he’d never performed that first ill-fated live revival, the events that had led to her father’s death would not have started. The Beast would not have returned.

  Annabel would not be dead.

  He tried to keep count as he kept up the compressions, and as he counted he couldn’t stop himself thinking back to his mother’s death. They’d been on the way to the airport, he and his mother, with his hated stepfather driving, overtaking where it wasn’t safe, careering off the road to avoid an oncoming bus.

  And hadn’t it been Jonah who had caused that? Hadn’t he been needling his stepfather on purpose, looking forward to the time he and his mom would share, once the man had left on his business trip? He’d been unable to resist, and in doing so he’d wound the man up into a tight ball of irritability. The crash was his own fault. Jonah had killed his mother.

  Then he’d taken her dead hand, unwilling to admit that she was gone, unwilling to even think it, and he’d pleaded with her to come back to him. Please don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me.

  And she had come back, but in a terrible way, a way that revealed what Jonah really was, and how Jonah would spend the rest of his life.

  She’d taken that deep, howling breath, her dead eyes still blank, and she had spoken: Jonah, please. Please let me go.

  His first revival. An accident. And by then, people had come to help. His stepfather, injured in the crash but able to walk, had appeared beside him, staring. Appalled, he’d torn Jonah away from his mother: ripping them apart, just as he’d been doing since the moment he met her. Jonah had been left lying in the mud, alone in the world and despairing.

  And now he looked at Annabel, and all he could think was: Please don’t leave me.

  Her mouth opened suddenly. She drew in a lungful of air and Jonah stared, horrified. Not again. Not again.

  She breathed out.

  And then she started to cough.

  She opened her eyes, unable to focus on him. ‘Jonah . . . ?’ she said.

  He felt her wrist. Her pulse, weak as it was, had returned.

  ‘I’m here,’ he said, smiling through his tears. ‘I’m with you. I’ll always be with you.’

  She managed to smile, but the smile turned to fear: ‘Is it time . . . ?’ she said. ‘Is it time?’

  He knew why she was so frightened – terrified that she would become that first wall in the new prison, and spend an eternity in the darkness keeping the nightmares at bay.

  ‘It’s over,’ he said. ‘The Beast is gone.’

  Protect Annabel, the entity had said to him. Protect yourself. At all costs. You’ll be needed.

  When he’d heard those words, he had assumed the worst: after the entity’s talk of sacrifice, and the questions of his willingness to take his part in the prison, he’d known very well what he and Annabel were needed for. Or he’d thought he knew.

  But then there had been that other statement: For how can you call on another to sacrifice themselves, if you would not do it in their place?

  Just before the entity emerged from its human host, he had seen something in Annabel’s eyes, and an idea had formed. Perhaps it was similar to the way she had been able to tell what he was thinking, on the way to the city. Perhaps that ability had gone both ways, in part.

  He had seen deep within her, and had seen her reluctance. Her dread of what she was about to do.

  Gods die too, she had said. And they fear it just as much.

  He had dared to hope, and she had nodded to confirm it.

  He and Annabel would be needed, but not to build the prison for the Beast. The entity, whatever it truly was, had decided to sacrifice itself instead, and spare them both. Spare them all.

  ‘We’re safe, Annabel,’ he said. ‘We’ve played our part. There’s no need to be scared any more.’

  *

  He helped her back into the jeep and they drove. Above, the black veins in the sky had grown thin and unstable. The aurora itself was beginning to fail, dimming gradually.

  He looked at Annabel.

  ‘It’s time to go home,’ he said.

  They had done so much; they had been through so much. Surely they deserved to rest at last. He would get them to safety.

  After all, they would be needed. Although that was something he didn’t yet understand.

  What would they be needed for?

  EPILOGUE

  Jake had been busy that morning.

  He’d set his alarm early, and it hadn’t been easy to focus, because he’d been tired. He still didn’t sleep much, but that wasn’t exactly a rare problem these days. It had been seven months since his dad had driven them to DC for the supposed victory celebration, and Jake had stood with his parents outside the Capitol building while the world seemed to be ending.r />
  At least the bed wetting had stopped, for now. Eleven years old, and wetting the bed. He remembered his gramma talking to his mom, way back when he was, what? Six? Must have been about then, since his gramma died when he was seven.

  ‘You should shame him,’ he’d overheard her say. ‘Talk about it in front of his friends at school. Make him damn well grow up!’

  And his mom, timid with Gramma as always but on his side all the same: ‘He’ll grow out of it.’

  ‘Bullshit he will.’

  Gramma was his dad’s mom, and Jake didn’t think even his dad liked her much.

  He wondered what Gramma would have said about it now.

  His dad had gone to DC the day after the power failed, because he worked for the power company and wanted to know what the hell they were supposed to do. He’d come back the next day with what his mom had called a bee up his ass. And he’d hit her. Just like that.

  And then – just like that – he’d told them the problems were over, and they had to go into the city to celebrate. Jake’s mom had talked to their neighbours, but nobody had heard anything. Everyone was staying put, scared of the rumours that had been popping up, but it turned out his dad was right. There were leaflets and everything.

  The party had been huge. They’d said there would be fireworks. Jake supposed that was true, in a way. When the thing that still haunted his nightmares appeared, he’d been pushed over in the panic and got knocked out cold. He’d missed some of what happened next, which was a blessing. But not all.

  And right now he was sitting in a seat in the kitchen, and a stranger was looking at him while his mom sat in the corner, and his dad loomed above him. Behind the stranger stood a young woman. She looked wary, he thought.

  ‘When will the priest come?’ said his dad.

  ‘The priest?’ said the stranger.

  ‘The fella who does this. The exorcist.’

  ‘I can’t be sure,’ said the stranger. ‘Soon enough. Then he’ll be able to tell us if that’s what your kid’s problem is.’

  ‘Oh it’s his problem, I guarantee it,’ said Jake’s dad. ‘He ain’t been right, not since it happened. The things he saw would change any kid, I know, but he ain’t been right. Shelly? Tell him, Shelly.’

  Jake’s mother, over in the corner, nodded her head. ‘It affected us all, Nate. I don’t know if . . .’ She fell silent, and Jake knew his dad was giving her a look. He’d had that look often enough lately. To a stranger it’d seem like a smile, but there was no smile in the eyes. His mom had been hit more than once when that look was on his dad’s face.

  There was a knock at the door, and another man came in. He was a little older than the first stranger.

  ‘Hello,’ he said. He sounded Irish. He smiled at Jake, and he certainly didn’t have the problem with the smile not reaching his eyes. Jake smiled back, even though he felt real uneasy. ‘Uh, things are progressing. We can get started.’

  ‘Do you have it?’ asked the first man, and the Irish guy nodded. ‘Good. I think you get the honours, OK?’

  ‘OK.’ He pulled a syringe from his pocket and knelt beside Jake. ‘Right then.’

  ‘I don’t like this,’ said Jake. He wriggled his arm out of the grip of the first stranger, who turned to his father.

  ‘Could you hold his arm for me?’ said the first stranger. ‘Hold it securely.’

  Jake’s dad was more than happy to do it, but as he held Jake’s arm, the Irishman plunged the needle into him. ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ said his dad, standing up and backing away. Jake felt himself flinch, as he tended to do now when he heard his dad swear. ‘What the fuck are you people doing?’

  Jake’s dad was a stubborn man, though. Always had been, even before he changed. He stumbled across the room and reached down in the corner, into a cupboard. The shotgun came up surprisingly fast, but the woman was even faster. She had the gun out of his hands before Jake’s dad had even noticed her move, and then she had his arm up behind his back and threw him to the floor.

  ‘Don’t hurt him!’ cried Jake. ‘The gun’s not loaded!’

  ‘It feels loaded,’ she said. She cracked it open and took out the two shell casings Jake had doctored. He’d emptied them, and filled them with sticky tack for the weight.

  ‘Was that you?’ said the woman.

  He nodded. ‘Uh huh,’ he said. ‘He could’ve noticed if it was light.’

  That’s what had kept Jake busy that morning. He’d seen his dad the night before, stashing the gun in the cupboard.

  ‘Smart kid,’ said the woman.

  Jake looked at his father, lying unconscious on the floor. He went to his mom and hugged her, proud that he’d done what he needed to do.

  ‘You did good,’ said his mom. And for the first time in months, Jake felt safe.

  *

  Jonah nodded to Sly. ‘Much appreciated,’ he said. ‘That could have turned nasty.’

  ‘We need to be even more careful than we have been,’ said Sly. ‘They’re getting more astute.’

  She was right. In the months following the Beast’s defeat, people had sought him out for help. Cathy had been the one to bring them to him, and he’d known he needed to be cautious. Sly, naturally, had been best placed to organize how they did things.

  Jake’s mother had come to them the usual way – a friend of a friend of a friend. Her husband had let her seek help and bring them to the house, thinking she trusted him, thinking she believed Jake needed the help. Thinking he could do his duty to the shadow he carried, and kill Jonah.

  For most of the world, things were getting back to normal. Some of the sabotage that the Beast’s followers had managed to achieve turned out to be breathtaking in its audacity, but the level of damage to electricity grids across the globe had been particularly effective. Critical elements in the supply chain had been destroyed, knowing that the numbers of replacement parts, and the capacity to manufacture more, was severely limited. The full restoration of power supplies had taken months, and chaos had threatened to overwhelm all attempts at recovery.

  Yet the old theory proved true: give people a shared enemy, and they will come together. The deaths of an estimated thirty-eight million had focused the minds of all who heard it on the re-established radio broadcasts.

  For Jonah and his friends, normal hadn’t been a meaningful idea for years.

  All the cities that had been prepared for the Beast’s revelry fell soon after the Beast vanished. Just as in DC, military groups had contained some who were uninfected, uneasily following dubious orders; they had borne witness as most of their infected colleagues either fell dead or became themselves once more.

  There were stragglers, though. The shadows didn’t all perish. Weakened, barely able to survive, yet somehow hanging on. It took some time to confirm, but Jonah soon saw the harm they did, to those around them – those they loved, those who loved them back. The shadows changed a person, weighed them down and made it impossible for them to choose to deny the dark. Freeing them was a triumph. To see their lives transformed for the better was worth the risk.

  And here was their latest example.

  Jonah and Never carried Jake’s father out to the front of the property, where their modified van waited. Annabel and Sly stood by the rear doors and opened them as they approached.

  They laid the man down on the van floor. Annabel and Jonah went in with him, leaving Sly and Never outside.

  Jonah took off the man’s shirt.

  ‘How does it look?’ asked Annabel.

  Jonah appraised what they were dealing with.

  The shadow was – like most of them now – a withered, pitiful thing. This one sat on the man’s chest, above his heart. It looked almost desiccated, the grey-black flesh pocked with white in places, like ulcers.

  Sick as it was, it was holding on. The creatures had been defiant at first, difficult to remove. The ploy he had used with Never and Annabel to tempt the creature off its host had been required, dangerous as it was. Soo
n, though, they had shown further signs of weakening, so much so that after the first four months, Jonah had felt a degree of confidence that they would all simply die, in time. Sadly, this weakening seemed to stop, but Jonah had found a way to work loose the tether between parasite and host. With the tether threatened, the creatures were forced to attack.

  That’s what he did now: he placed his fingers on the man’s chest, where he could see the shadow. It was hard, of course – to him it looked like his fingers were disappearing into the dark mass, and within moments he could feel it attempt to take on solidity, the thing nipping at his skin. Since gloves stopped Jonah’s fingers from grasping the tether, he just had to suffer. He suspected his hands would be bandaged, to some degree or other, for the rest of his life.

  He usually located the tether quickly, but this time he struggled a little. He pulled back and waited for the shadow to fade again, as he knew it would. When he made another attempt, it was quicker off the mark and drew blood almost at once, but this time he had it.

  ‘There,’ he said. He tugged, drawing the tether out until it caught. Blood was dripping from his index finger, the gouge deeper than normal because it had torn a scab from an injury he’d got at his last outing.

  The creature started to detach, because it had no alternative. Jonah watched it, and readied himself to grab it once it was loose enough. It was almost routine, now. As the last of its corpse-fingers came free, he snatched the creature up before it even had a chance to throw itself at him. It was a sorry thing, really – it tried to squirm in his grip, but it didn’t stand a chance.

  ‘OK,’ said Jonah, and Annabel banged at the side of the van; outside, Sly and Never were waiting. They pulled the tarp from the roof, and sunlight poured through the transparent plastic they’d used to replace most of the roof ’s metal.

  It only took a few seconds for the creature to boil away in the glare. The tether shrivelled to nothing, but the unconscious man barely moved.

  It was done. Some cases were still difficult, of course, but once the subject was unconscious most of them were straightforward.