"Skype calls still go through, right?" Bertrand turned back to face Jeff and noted that despite his weariness, there was a light in Jeff's eyes. "You on something?"
"Uppers. Don't worry, Emile says I'll crash about noon and I'll be able to sleep till sunset. I was up all day yesterday with all this stuff and then I was up all night with the shooting. Hey, how'd you guys do here last night? Any action in this hood?"
Bertrand's ears and cheeks burned, and Joyce suddenly looked very hard at her mug of coffee, her cheeks as red as Bertrand's felt. Jeff didn't notice the awkwardness for a moment as he called up another website from his cache, but when neither of them replied, he looked up.
"Oh!" he said, looking from Bertrand to Joyce. "Oh, my bad. Wrong question. I get it. Congratulations maybe? Right? Okay let's move on. No gunfire here anyway. So like Skype's still good when the power's up. I tell you they got the same problem we do when the power's down: communication. They need their cell phones and their Skype and stuff as much as we do. Problem is, I think even they're having trouble keeping the power up when they want it. I can't find anything from the east coast that's been updated in the last two weeks, which makes me think they lost power and never got it up again in, like, New York or D.C."
"I need to get a hold of Erics." Bertrand craved information and Erics had a wide network. "The next time the power comes back up I'll e-mail and Skype him, because I don't even know where he lives."
"One of his captains is at the church sometimes—Marvin, Martin—something like. Father Alvarez isn't above taking their help, but he's not too keen on the Erics people being at his meetings and stuff. Maybe he thinks they're competition. But on that topic, you should see this: the pope has issued a fatwa on your ass."
"A fatwa?"
Jeff pulled up the website for the Vatican. "He doesn't call it that but he might as well. You've been excommunicated as a heretic, and he says you've started a cult to encourage people to drink blood."
"That liar!"
"That's the first thing people do when they're doing bad things: they publicly declare that you're doing whatever it is they're doing. But it gets better, or worse I guess I mean. He's declared the entire Archdiocese of Chicago apostate and excommunicated basically all of Illinois. He's also asking people to pray for the president—who like I said nobody seems to have heard from in the last couple of weeks—and to donate blood to help soldiers fighting insurrections all over the world."
Bertrand sat heavily. "Even the Vatican has been taken over by rippers?"
"As far as I can tell, it was taken over months ago and we just didn't know it. Europe's way ahead on all of this, and I think it's actually falling apart faster there because of it. From what I can glean from the few bloggers who still post, Europe's been without power for a month except for here and there."
"And I'm a heretic. Christ, I'm not even Catholic."
"Doesn't matter anymore. This just got a whole lot worse."
Bertrand looked from Joyce to Jeff. "We have to hunt down Mr. Anti-Christ. He's the head of all this, at least here in Chicago. We kill him and it'll be like chopping the head off the snake."
"Yeah." Joyce didn't look convinced. "That worked so well with bin Laden."
Twenty-Eight - The Apocalypse Scenario
They reached the roadblock just west of the corner of Eugenie and Meyer, although Bertrand had trouble recognizing the neighborhood. The roadblock consisted of concrete road barriers, the kind that can only be moved with heavy equipment, so they abandoned Jeff's Xterra to walk the rest of the way. A half a dozen men and women with rifles and shotguns patrolled the barrier, but they waved Bertrand, Jeff and Joyce along with smiles, nods and one young man, barely out of his teens, even saluted.
The parking lot on the north side where Bertrand had smashed the command post had been emptied of the wreckage, although the three Greyhound buses now lined up ready for a convoy. The south side of Eugenie east of Meyer was completely unrecognizable from yesterday morning. The nineteenth-century retail building—the ground floor windows bricked in with concrete blocks—still guarded the corner, but all the wooden post–Great Fire houses that had densely filled the block between Meyer and Cleveland were gone. Only chewed earth and some debris such as drywall or a few boards flattened to the ground remained to testify that, for over a century and a half, people had lived there. As a result, St. Michael's—on the east side of Cleveland—now had a clear field of fire to the west, and Bertrand now had a view of the church complex that hadn't existed since the Great Chicago Fire.
The lower windows to the church had been bricked in weeks ago, but now plywood covered the stained glass windows up to twice the height of a human. Two men on a cherry-picker worked to cover the windows higher up.
"Holy crap." Joyce stopped to take in the sight. "Barry doesn't kid around."
"Yeah." Jeff wiped his face with his hand, a weary look indicating that the uppers were wearing off. "He told me he had like four of those big excavators, some bulldozers, all kinds of front end loaders and a dozen or so big dump trucks going until sunset."
"Where did you say they took all the crap?" asked Bertrand.
Jeff pointed south. "It's piled on North Ave, to the west and the east, completely blocking the street and making it hell for anyone to get here, even on foot. It's like a mountain and it's treacherous to climb 'cause it's such a mess. They also piled it on most of the north–south streets, and he's still at it on the east side. Hear it?"
A thud reverberated through the earth, indicating that a machine with hydraulics hammered at a building, but the church blocked their view. Barry St. John himself, a white hardhat on his bald head, came around the corner of the church, heading for the stairs and the front door, when he saw them and changed direction.
"Bert, good to see you." He held out his hand to shake.
"You've been busy." Bertrand gestured to the empty ground to the west of the church. "Weren't the owners a bit pissed?"
Barry shook his head. "The ones that are still alive live in the church now, and we let them into their houses first to get out any food or clothes. That was only about five families. The rest of the houses were cleared by volunteers. Listen, I've been in touch with my people in Canada. Guess what? No one's manning the border during the day anymore. The gates are smashed and everything, so there's nothing stopping us from heading out except the highways, and I'm taking a bulldozer along for that. Word came back that the daytime police roadblocks are gone." He pointed to the buses.
"You're leaving." Bertrand couldn't help making it sound like an accusation.
"Yeah, about forty of us. We're going to pick up Martin's family along the way."
"I'll be sorry to see him go," said Joyce.
Bertrand wondered if she was disappointed to lose the top guys from her raiders. She didn't show it.
"Here's the thing," said Barry. "We were wondering if you guys wanted to come along."
"I can't just leave Chicago like that," said Bertrand, recalling the invitation from Vlad to abandon the city. "There're people in that church that need defending, and there's a real chance we'll see the National Guard coming at us or something like that. I mean, look at what we're doing!" He waved at the empty expanse where the houses used to stand. "We don't have a permit for that, and I suspect the police department's still a bit sore at us for shooting up their guys and all."
"Oh Bert." Barry removed his hardhat and waved in the direction of the Sears Tower to the far south. "Where were you last night? Didn't you see the fires? I think about a quarter of the city burned. They've got a lot of angry neighborhoods to get through before they could ever get at us. People are congregating at churches all over the city."
"It's true, Bert," Jeff said. "There's just as big a crowd at St. James over near your old hood. They're bulldozing houses too."
"They bulldozed my house!" Bertrand resisted the urge to turn and run for Bissell Street. He'd always had it in his head that when things had settled down he wou
ld go back there and secure the house, maybe collect some photos of his parents to keep close.
"Relax, relax," said Jeff. "They didn't get that far down and they're working the east side of the church now, so you're okay for a couple of days."
"Point is," said Barry, "anyone who's still alive is going straight for the churches, the synagogues, the mosques—you name it—and they're setting themselves up as little defensive enclaves. It's funny how vampires start walking the streets and suddenly everybody finds the religion that they lost a generation ago. We've actually got quite a population problem here." He gestured with his hardhat back at the church. "Father Alvarez has had to turn away hundreds, sending them on to Holy Name and Mount Carmel; there's even a group setting up shop at the archbishop's residence over on State."
Bertrand was about to push past Barry to head for the church, but he stopped. "Is the archbishop there?"
Barry shook his head. "Nope. Father Alvarez and about a dozen nuns went over to rescue what stuff they could, regalia, I don't know, but I think Alvarez figures he's going to have to find a new archbishop, maybe a new pope. You hear what's going on in Rome?"
"Jeff was telling me that I'm a heretic."
Barry laughed, a short bark without humor. "We all are. We're all wanted by the police, the feds, the pope—you name it—yet no one seems to be able to come and get us. Bert, it's completely falling apart. Think of my place up in Canada as a fall-back position. If things get too hot here, come and join me. No one knows it's there. It's not on any maps and there's only two roads in, and one of them goes over a bridge that would be easy to blow. It can hold about a thousand people and I've only got a couple of hundred so far." He pointed at the five tons. "We're going in a convoy at dawn tomorrow, gonna drive all day and cross at International Falls. We'd be happy to have you guys along, and don't forget I've got power. You can keep making speeches from there as long as the internet holds together."
Jeff yawned. "At this rate that'll be about two days. Look guys, I'm going to catch some rest in that block house." He pointed to a building just across the street from the church. "Keep me posted. Remember, we three should stick together, just like we have from the beginning."
Joyce stopped him with a call as he turned away. "Jeff, what do you think we should do?"
Jeff turned around, walking backwards now, one hand on the butt of his holstered Ruger. "I think Bert's right. I think we need to hunt down Mr. Anti-Christ and pass some lead through his brain, a lot of lead. I'm just out of ideas as to how find him."
Barry pointed at the buses. "Fall back with me if you need to, Bert."
Bertrand stood looking from the buses to the church. What to do? He was disoriented from his interrupted sleep, from the crazy pace of the last few weeks. Joyce answered for him.
"Draw us a map."
*
The inside of St. Mike's looked more like a refugee camp. While there weren't many people in the church now, their sleeping bags, stacks of luggage and hanging laundry all testified to the crowds that would return before nightfall. Bobs and Father Alvarez stood near the altar, looking to the right at the stained glass windows as more plywood went up, blocking out more light. The gloom of the church weighed on Bertrand's soul, as if all the light in the world were going out.
"There he is." Bobs pointed their way and headed down the aisle ahead of the priest. "Bert, we're gonna need you to do another broadcast tonight. We think they'll get the power up just after sunset so they can do their Twitter flash mob things, so we want to sneak the word in there while we can."
"Okay, sure. I want computer time then too, though, so that I can contact Erics."
Father Alvarez joined them. "We must be careful of this man, this Erics. I'm concerned that we know very little of him other than that he has started his own religion. False prophets can be very dangerous."
"True enough, but we need all the information we can get right now."
Bobs nodded agreement. "I've got good news there. One of my dad's old Illinois National Guard buddies is the colonel, and he's coming to meet us today, and guess what, he's a believer too. When the governor called up the guard last month he took them over to the Rock Island Arsenal and took it over. At first they thought the army would send regulars at them, but then everything fell apart, and it looks like the army's too busy fighting everywhere else."
"That's great news I guess. It means things aren't as organized at the top as I thought." Bertrand looked from one to the other, his hope welling. If they had the Illinois National Guard on their side, then everything changed.
"Good and bad." Bobs crossed her arms. "It's hard to kill an unorganized movement—just look at Afghanistan—Russians then us and still the fanatics are there."
"True, but when do we get to meet this colonel?"
"This afternoon. You're invited." She only pointed at Bertrand.
*
Colonel Webb of the Illinois National Guard looked as if he'd seen a few battles over the years. His gray hair was brush-cut short, his face weathered by sun and wind and yet he was as trim as a marathoner. His whole manner was that of a military man, but he also had the thoughtful frown of a scholar when listening to others, and a tendency to nod his head in understanding before they'd finished speaking.
He'd arrived at midday, dressed in camouflage and a flak jacket, riding with a convoy of five Stryker Assault Vehicles. Bobs had practically drooled over the eight-wheeled armored personnel carriers: "We could drive the rippers right out of Chicago with a dozen of those and take the Loop.
Bobs was obsessed with taking the Loop.
"Think about it," she had said to Bertrand. "We only need a wall on the south side, everywhere else we just pull up the draw bridges at night and the rippers would have to swim or use boats to get at us. Troops in water are an easy target."
Father Alvarez set them up in his conference room, but there was a glaring change: the painting of the current pope was gone, replaced with a painting of Cardinal George, the previous head of the Archdiocese of Chicago.
Bertrand had managed to get Joyce admitted to the meeting, and Barry Barry was there, but many of the others belonged to Father Alvarez's new command structure, and most of them seemed to follow Bobs's lead. Even her friend Terry was in attendance, but there wasn't a single white arm-band of the 1000 Souls.
Colonel Webb, after his introduction by Bobs, spoke with precision. "Let me start by saying what a fantastic accomplishment you have all achieved here." His voice had a slight southern drawl to it. "To have cleansed this neighborhood and fortified your position to withstand assault in such a short time is remarkable, and unlike anything I have seen elsewhere in the state. I will be recommending to all the people I will be speaking to in small towns and cities to do as you have done: find a focal point, shelter in it and fortify it."
"That's great." Bertrand fought to restrain his impatience. "It was really Bobs's doing, but of course we have a lot of concerns. First, can you give us some support if the Chicago P.D. comes after us again with arrest warrants."
The colonel was already nodding. "The Chicago P.D. is no longer an effective force, as you proved the other night, so you have nothing to fear on that front. Their human numbers are far too devastated and have been plunging through desertions or conversions. As far as we can tell, city hall as a government simply no longer exists, because in the past three days there has been a seismic shift in this war. The most important one is that the rippers seem to be running out of food. The attack on your position last night was evidence of that and was by no means an isolated incident."
"Well that's good news." Yet Bertrand was uneasy. This colonel didn't sound like a man delivering good news.
"Yes, but we've taken prisoners during the last few weeks and held them for observation at Rock Island, and it looks like the parasites have a hibernation mode. The rippers can go weeks without feeding and still function before they slip into this comatose mode and appear all but dead, until they sense a human near
them, which brings them abruptly out of hibernation. I have regular doctors studying this, not scientists, so don't ask me how long they can stay in hibernation."
Bertrand's heart did sink now. "It could be years to hunt them all down and kill them."
The colonel nodded. "But the next two weeks are going to be the worst. That's why there's been so much wanton burning to find victims: they're desperate. I think the reason the Chicago P.D. is in crisis is that the ripper cops have been feeding against orders on their daytime brethren, whether they're part of the so-called Daylight Brigade or not. You folks are going to face a lot more fights like last night."
Bertrand couldn't contain himself. "Well are you going to send us help, then? Surely you're not going to just abandon us to this fight."
The colonel met Bertrand's gaze across the table. "Sir, you've done great work getting the word out to people. But a very new danger has arisen. I still have access to several satellite surveillance systems, and it is with a heavy heart that I must tell you that a great catastrophe took place two days ago: Guangzhou in China, that's not far from Hong Kong, was hit by several nuclear weapons."
"Holy shit!" Joyce's expletive was only heard by Bertrand because the others around the table had exploded with their own expressions of consternation.
Father Alvarez rose and held up his hands, palms out, to quiet the room. "Colonel Webb has little time, so we will pray for the dead later. Right now, please, continue." He sat.
"Thank you, padre." Colonel Webb looked around the room as he spoke. "Before you ask, no it wasn't one of ours and we don't know who did it, although our biggest concern is that it might have been the Chinese themselves in an attempt to destroy a region totally overrun with rippers. We just don't know. Now I know this will be a disappointment to you, but my first concern must be to secure America's stockpile of nuclear weapons."
"Can you even do that?" asked Bertrand. "Do you even know where they are?"
The 1000 Souls (Book 1): Apocalypse Revolution Page 26