The reporter, getting the scoop of a lifetime, could only watch is shocked silence as the Jesus lifted his head and spoke those four words that Peter and the other monks had already heard: “Look for my return.”
THE EVENT HAD led to several minutes of chaos in the newsroom. Even though it had only lasted for a few seconds, that was long enough for a dozen people to witness it and certainly long enough for it to be recorded by the camera.
There had been a brief meeting by the news service’s upper management, and at the end of it, they decided that they would release the footage before word of it was leaked and their exclusive was jeopardized. The reaction among the public was explosive. Within minutes, the film had made its way around the globe, setting off a panic amongst the faithful and a flurry of concerned discussion amongst the skeptics.
There were charges that the image had been faked by the news service as a ratings ploy; even Brother Peter was accused of somehow setting it up. Even so, the very next day Peter was granted the audience with Pius XV that he had been waiting for.
He was led into the Pope’s study, and before he knew what to do, he was kneeling and kissing the Pontiff’s ring. The Pope smiled and invited him to sit. Peter glanced around the study. There was not a single vestige of the modern century to be seen: no computer terminal, no electronic photo frames, no television. One wall was completely lined with bookcases in dark wood. The facing wall featured portraits of past popes, those the current resident apparently admired.
Peter did not know much about the Pope, but he had read that he was something of an anachronism. He preferred to read print books and wrote his letters and sermons longhand using, of all things, a fountain pen. A glance at the Pope’s desk revealed a pen holder with several of the implements jutting out from it. A stack of writing paper identical to the sheet Peter’s invitation to the Vatican had arrived on sat at one corner. A large, well-worn and ancient-looking Bible dominated the center of the desk. The window at the end of the study, Peter knew from his brief tour the day before, looked out over Saint Peter’s Square and was the window from which the Pope blessed the crowds who congregated there on Sundays. Peter turned his attention back to the Pope.
“Brother Peter,” Pius said, smiling, “I am so sorry I have kept you waiting all this time. But due to yesterday’s event, I cleared my schedule to meet with you.”
“I appreciate that, Your Holiness,” Peter said.
Pius shifted in his chair. “Will you tell me everything that has happened, from the beginning?”
“Of course.” Peter went through the entire sequence of events from his first vision in his room at the monastery up through the last in the television studio. “Your Holiness, why do you think I was chosen as the first one to see these visions?”
“We cannot ever hope to understand the mind of God,” Pius said. “But I believe that God has chosen you for a special purpose. There is something you must do.”
“What?”
Pius shook his head. “In times like these, I find that the best thing to do is pray. Will you pray with me?”
“Of course.” Peter bowed his head.
“Heavenly Father, your wisdom is beyond us, your humble servants. Brother Peter needs your guidance, as do I. If these are, indeed, the end times, let us be prepared for your return. And let both Brother Peter and myself know how we may prepare the faithful. Amen.”
“Amen,” said Peter.
“How long will you stay in Rome?”
“I’m not sure, Your Holiness. I had hoped to see more of the sights, but perhaps I should focus on other things now.”
Pius shook his head. “No, you must see this beautiful city if you wish to. God will let you know when it is time to turn to more important things. And if you receive guidance from God or have another vision, notify one of my staff, and I will see you as soon as I can.”
Pius stood, and Peter followed his example. It was clear that his audience had come to an end.
“Thank you, Your Holiness,” Peter said, once again kneeling to kiss the ring.
The Pope departed, and a moment later Peter was led out from the study and back to his hotel. Immediately he went down on his knees by the side of the bed and began to pray for illumination.
36
THE SUN WAS beginning to set. Sullivan turned to Captain Quinn, who was taking a sip of water from his canteen. “I think we should find a secure place to stop for the night,” he said.
“I agree,” said Quinn. He looked around. They were away from the trenches, and a few small copses of woods remained despite the heavy shelling that the area had seen during the war. “We can fortify those trees,” he said, pointing.
“Good,” said Sullivan. “There are a fair number of tree trunks here. Looks like they were cut down to clear a road.”
“A supply corridor,” said Quinn. He turned to his men. “Get these trunks over to those trees and set up a perimeter. Sullivan, Allen and I are going to reconnoiter the area, make sure there aren’t any surprises waiting for us just over the hill.”
Sullivan and Allen followed him as he walked off in the direction they had been heading. Quinn took out a cigarette and lit it. “There’s a large pile of rubbish over there,” he said. “Looks like several wrecked vehicles. One is a supply truck.”
“You want to search it for supplies or for those creatures?” asked Allen.
“Both,” said Quinn. “But the creatures aren’t the type to hide once they see someone coming. They attack almost immediately. Even so.”
“Better safe than sorry,” said Allen.
“Right.”
The three men approached the wrecked vehicles with their weapons drawn. As they got closer, they could see what had happened. The German soldiers in the convoy had been attacked. The vehicle in front had overturned and the other two, unable to stop, had hit it.
Sullivan studied the body of the supply truck’s driver. The face and much of the torso had been eaten away. “Do they eat dead bodies?” he asked Quinn.
“They do, but they seem to prefer fresh kills. They’ll only scavenge when nothing else is available.”
“That’s another thing that makes them such good shock troops,” said Allen. “They won’t linger, eating dead bodies for days. They’ll go after fresh meat if they can.”
Quinn went around to the back of the supply truck. It was hanging open. “Looks like someone else already got to whatever supplies were in here,” he said. Quinn climbed up on the bed of the truck and sat looking out and smoking. Sullivan and Allen joined him after checking the other vehicles.
“How long have you been in the army, Captain?” Allen asked.
“Two years. From the very beginning of the war.”
“I’m sorry all this has happened.”
Quinn shook his head. “At least when we were fighting the Huns we knew that they could think, could feel. These other devils don’t seem to do either.”
“We have a theory,” said Sullivan, “that there’s another intelligence behind these creatures. These are essentially trained attack dogs. They don’t seem to have the capacity to plan or organize.”
“They’ve just been sent here to test your weapons and spread panic,” said Allen.
“If that’s true,” said Quinn, “I’d hate to see who holds the leash.”
Sullivan nodded. “I’m afraid we can’t give you any information about that. That’s why it’s crucial we get to that wormhole. If they start sending their elite troops through, I don’t think this world would have a chance.”
“I don’t know that the Earth of our universe would have a chance,” said Allen. “They can create wormholes. We’ve never even come close to having technology like that. What kind of weapons must they have?”
“Probably quite formidable weapons,” said Sullivan. “Liz indicated that they have been fighting a war for some time.”
“Who is this Liz you keep mentioning?” asked Quinn.
Sullivan glanced at Allen. Allen spo
ke before Sullivan could. “She’s a friend. She helped us get here.”
Quinn puffed at his cigarette. “Fair enough.”
“I’m sorry,” said Allen. “I suppose you have a lot of questions. Unfortunately, most of them we can’t really answer in a way that would make much sense. Trying to do so would just lead to more questions, and we’d be here for days.”
“I do have one that you can answer: what kind of a world do you come from that has weapons like these energy rifles?”
“Well,” said Allen, “our world is actually dozens of worlds. Where we come from, humans have spread out to many different planets.”
Quinn laughed. “It’s like something from H.G. Wells.”
“Who?” Allen asked.
“He’s a writer. He writes about Martians attacking and time travel and the like.”
“Oh, right. He wrote The Time Machine?”
“Yes.”
“Well, we don’t have time travel. Although I suppose this is a kind of time travel.”
“How’s that?”
“Captain, our Earth also fought this war. But that was hundreds of years ago. As far as I can tell—although my knowledge about this time period is very sketchy—your 1916 is very similar to our 1916, only we were never attacked by aliens.”
“When did your war end?”
“Hold on.” Allen took out his tablet. He no longer had access to the Stellar Assembly Database, but his tablet did store a very basic encyclopedia. “The eleventh of November, 1918.”
“Who won?”
“You did.”
Quinn nodded. “But what happens now? Even if we can close that… wormhole… where do we go from here? Do we start fighting the Huns again as soon as the aliens are gone?”
“That’s not for us to decide,” said Allen. “But I think—I hope—that the people of your Earth will now recognize how similar they are to one another rather than how different. The writer you talked about, Wells? His stories are what we call science fiction. And science fiction is filled with stories about humanity coming together once they know that they are not alone in the universe, once they know there are threats out there that can destroy them all and won’t make any distinctions between British, French, or German. I don’t know if that’s how people will really react when faced with an external threat, and I suppose this attack on your planet is too recent to see how things develop. But you can always hope.”
“On all those planets you say you live on, you’ve not encountered any aliens?”
“Not technologically advanced aliens. As far as we know, we are the only ones in our part of the universe who have mastered space travel.”
Quinn looked up at the darkening sky. “You came in a space ship, I suppose. Where is it?”
“Still up there,” Allen said, gesturing skyward. “I have a remote—a device that can call it back to us when we need it.”
“Blimey.”
“I’d show you the ship, but I don’t want to attract any unnecessary attention.”
Quinn slid down off the bed of the truck. “We’d better get back before nightfall so my men don’t shoot us.”
“Captain?” said Sullivan, putting his hand on Quinn’s shoulder. “I know this is a lot to process, but you’re handling it remarkably well. And I’m sorry you’ve had to go through all of this.”
“Well,” said Quinn, “it’s worse than fighting the Huns… but not by much.”
THE NEXT MORNING they trudged on. They were moving as quietly as possible. Sullivan had told Quinn that the closer they got to the wormhole, the more likely they were to encounter the aliens.
As they passed a handful of destroyed buildings—it looked to have been a small farming community—Quinn stopped. He gave the signal to take cover, and they all scrambled to the side of one of the buildings.
A second later, they heard footsteps approaching from around the side of the structure. Sullivan raised his energy rifle and pointed it toward the sound. A German soldier stepped into view, froze when he saw them then dived back around the side of the building.
Sullivan caught sight of movement in one of the other buildings. The Germans were taking cover inside. A moment later, gunfire erupted.
Quinn’s men scrambled to take cover. They returned fire, but the Germans were well-protected by the building.
“Use the energy rifles!” Sullivan yelled.
Half a dozen flashes of light were sent toward the German position. They struck the already damaged wall behind which the Germans were crouching. The side of the building began to give way, and the enemy soldiers scrambled out from their cover as the wooden beams holding up the second story of the building came down on them.
Quinn and several other men rushed toward them, yelling in German. Sullivan ran past them and poked through the ruins of the building to make sure no one else was inside. When he came out, the Germans were on their knees, their hands on the backs of their heads.
“I thought you said there was a truce,” he said to Quinn.
“There is. Unofficially. But some of these bastards haven’t gotten the message.”
Sullivan looked down at the Germans. “They were confused and frightened. They probably thought we were going to kill them.”
Quinn reached out to the German in front of him and took the pack of cigarettes from the soldier’s breast pocket. He lit a cigarette then put the pack in his own pocket. “They’re damned lucky none of my men were hit.”
“What do we do with them?”
“Disarm them and make sure they don’t follow us when we leave.”
“You’ll leave them unarmed, unable to defend themselves from the creatures?”
“What else can we do? None of us speak German well enough to know their intentions.”
“Hold on,” said Sullivan. He took out his tablet and tapped on it for a few seconds. “This is a translator,” he said.
“Dies ist ein Übersetzer,” said the tablet in a soothing female voice. The Germans looked up upon hearing their language.
Sullivan crouched down near one of the Germans. “Why did you fire at us?”
The German listened to the translation then began speaking. “We thought you were going to attack us. You came upon us so suddenly we thought you were trying to ambush us.”
“We were moving quietly because of the creatures. We didn’t want to draw their attention.”
“Yes! So were we! Please, we do not want to die. Our quarrel with you is over.”
“When did you last encounter the creatures?”
“This morning.”
“Where?”
The German pointed. It was in the direction of the wormhole.
“Are there many of them in that direction?” Sullivan asked.
“Yes. We tried heading east, back to Germany, but there are too many of them. So we came west instead.”
“Were you at the front when the creatures overran your line?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me what happened.”
The German soldier paled slightly. “They came from behind us. We never heard a thing until they were leaping into the trenches. They moved so fast. Half the men around me were dead before a single shot was fired. Then there was gunfire everywhere. Men were firing blindly. I saw several men shot down accidentally. And everyone was screaming.
“We thought the Allies had unleashed this horror upon us until the creatures, seemingly bored with hunting down the few scattered men that remained in our part of the trench, jumped back out and headed away from us, across no man’s land. We watched as they leapt into the British trenches, and we knew from the gunfire that they were being attacked, too.”
“Have you seen anything else unusual? Any other kind of creature? Anything that looks more like a soldier, only not human?”
The German shook his head.
Sullivan nodded. He pressed the hold button on the tablet and turned to Quinn. “Hopefully that means that the creatures are the only things that have come thro
ugh the wormhole so far. As bad as they are, I don’t want to see what else the aliens can throw at us.” He looked back at the German soldier. “Quinn, I don’t think we have anything to fear from them.”
“You want us to give them their weapons back?”
Sullivan rubbed his chin. He turned the translator back on. “If we give you back your weapons, do you promise you’ll go your own way and leave us alone?”
The German nodded vigorously. “Please. We only want to get away from the creatures.”
“You won’t have much luck with that. But you have the right to defend yourselves.”
He got up and walked over to Quinn. “Look, I can get to the top of one of these buildings. This is pretty flat terrain here. With the telescopic sight on my rifle, I can watch them for at least two kilometers.”
Quinn began to protest, but Sullivan held up his hand. “Captain,” he said, “I understand that you want to keep your men safe. So you all go ahead with Allen. I can move faster by myself, so I’ll be able to catch up to you. That’ll put four kilometers between us and them. And I really don’t think they want to head in that direction anyway.”
“You’ll watch them as long as you can?”
“Yes.”
Captain Quinn frowned. “Very well.” He withdrew a couple of cigarettes from the pack in his pocket and handed them to the soldier he’d taken them from. “Unload their weapons,” he called to his men. He turned back to Sullivan. “Tell them to walk in two groups, fifty meters apart, for at least a kilometer. One group will have the weapons, the other group the ammunition.”
Sullivan relayed the instructions to the Germans then climbed up to the top of the most stable building. He watched Quinn send the Germans away. After they had been walking for a few minutes, he called up to Sullivan.
“You’ll be able to find us?”
“Yes,” said Sullivan. “Without difficulty.”
Allen walked up beside Quinn and waved. Sullivan waved back then turned his attention back to the Germans. They were still in their two groups.
Sullivan turned around and quickly scanned the road Quinn and Allen were walking down. It was clear. He’d watch them as far as he could, but eventually they’d be on their own. Sullivan turned back to the Germans. They had been lucky. If Sullivan had seen anything but fright and confusion in their eyes, he would have killed them himself.
Sullivan Saga 2: Sullivan's Wrath Page 14