At the end of the passage they entered a room with a high vaulted ceiling the candlelight could not reach. Against one wall stood several life-size statues, and against the opposite wall was the stone effigy of a man in robes, stretched out on his death bed.
“This is the northern Sacristy of the palace,” Kane explained in a thief’s whisper. He pointed to the stone effigy. “That is the tomb of Philippe d’Alencon. He was vicar-general to Pope Urban VI. And that,” he pointed across the room, “is the statue of Emperor Charles IV,” Kane’s voice was hushed with reverence and awe. He felt exalted in the presence of so much papal history. The Palace of the Popes had been an earthly conduit to God through the middle ages. He felt worthy; as though he belonged in such a revered place.
Through an arched doorway on his right he could hear his followers in the next room. They were moving furniture. He could hear their soft stifled grunts as they made their preparations.
Kane set the candle down and drew Mary close to him.
“You remember all I have told you?”
“Yes, preacher,” the young girl said softly with dark solemn eyes.
“You understand your role, and you remember what you must say?”
“Yes,” she said.
Kane nodded. He opened the box and took out a bottle of wine and a tall crystal glass. He filled it to the brim and handed it to the girl.
“This will sooth your nerves,” he said.
She sipped at the wine. It was bitter on her tongue. She took another sip then coughed. Kane stroked her hair while he lulled her with his voice.
“You have been chosen as the sacred vessel…”
“It is your duty to God to be willing and wanting…”
“Your place in Heaven will be assured after tonight…”
A wondrous warm glow began to spread through Mary’s body, tingling in her fingertips and blurring the sharp edges of her anxiety. She felt suddenly sleepy and her eyes became heavy. Kane set down the glass.
“Take off your clothes,” he instructed.
Mary lifted the hem of her dress over her head and stood naked in the candlelight. Her body was slim, her skin smooth and flawless. Kane groaned aloud. He dropped his eyes, letting them roam over her body with intimate lingering appreciation, and then with gentle authority he began to fondle the girl until he saw her lips part and heard her breath quicken.
“Go into the other room and sit on the end of the altar,” Kane’s voice was tight and thick with his lust.
Mary went through the archway, guided by the glowing candles of the assembled followers. The rush of her own breathing sounded loud in her ears. The room was vast; she could not see the walls or the high ceiling. Kane’s followers were standing gathered in circle around a long wooden table. They were wearing dark robes, and monk’s cowls of the same dark cloth enveloped their heads. The candlelights they held seemed to float suspended in the black empty air.
Mary reached the fringe of the circle and the dark shapes parted for her. She stepped to the edge of the table, naked, yet unashamed. Her chin was lifted, her eyes focused on some gloomy space over the heads of the gathering.
From out of the dark a man suddenly began reciting passages from the Old Testament. He had a deep serious voice and the sound in the huge room was like the rumble of far away thunder rolling across the sky.
Mary waited until she saw Kane appear in the sacristy doorway, holding the candle in his hand. The light lit his face with an eerie glow, accenting the wolfish glitter in his eyes.
“I am the sacred vessel,” she announced in a clear firm voice, reciting the words exactly as preacher Kane had taught her. She lifted her arms over her head as if she might reach to Heaven. “I am the cup that holds the secret to the Almighty. Drink from me.”
She let her arms fall to her side and slid her bottom onto the edge of the table. The polished wooden surface felt cool and smooth against the naked skin of her buttocks. She lay back with her hands clenched tight at her sides, aware of the unfamiliar tingling sensations of anticipation and fear that spread through her body. She felt she might suffocate, for her breathing choked tight in her chest.
Kane broke through the circle of followers and saw Mary laying on her back with her hair fanned out across the tabletop and her knees drawn up, her legs lewdly wide open.
Like a man in the grips of a trance, Kane moved towards her. The recitation from the bible stopped, replaced instead by soft chanting. The words where mumbled and unintelligible, becoming a hypnotic rhythm of sound that seemed to match the beat of his pounding heart.
Kane slipped his robes and stood naked in the flickering light. His gut hung heavy, his skin pale and pasty, his chest and back covered in thick pelts of whorling black hair. His voice rasped in his throat.
“I am God’s messenger on earth,” Kane intoned and the chanting became louder, the tempo more urgent. “I am the only one worthy to drink from the Lord’s vessel and to hear His words.”
* * *
“Oh, my God!” Paulette moaned. “You are like an animal, my darling; a great hammering beast between my legs. Yes! Yes! More!” she gasped theatrically, tossing her head from side to side on the pillow and keeping a watchful eye on the time. It was almost eleven o’clock, and the young soldier rutting on top of her was hopelessly inexperienced.
She lay perfectly still and stifled a yawn, listening to the squeak of the bed. The soldier did not notice. His breath rasped in great foul belches of garlic, and his face turned swollen and coarse. In frustration and disgust, Paulette wrapped her arms around his waist and rolled him over.
“Let me,” she said delicately, still carefully swooning her smile. She put the young man on his back and knelt over him, working skillfully with cunning touches of her hands, trying to curb her impatience. The soldier grunted, then sucked in a sharp breath.
Paulette hoped the young soldier was good with a gun, because he had no idea how to –
The gendarme grunted suddenly and made a sound in his throat like he was being strangled. A moment later it was over, and he lay gasping on the sweat-damp sheets like a runner at the end of a marathon.
Relieved, Paulette smiled coquettishly and kissed the soldier on the cheek. She dressed quickly.
Ten minutes later Paulette was scurrying through the backstreets of Avignon with a black coat wrapped around her shoulders and her heels clutched in her hand to move quietly through the night. She felt breathless – not from exertion, but from tingling anticipation. While the young soldier had been losing his virginity in her bed, Paulette’s mind had been a whirl of dark bestial fantasies that were so obscene and perverse, they startled even her weary soul.
The ancient city was dark and silent, and somehow broodingly hostile. She saw no burning candles through shuttered windows and heard no voices. Avignon was battened down for the night as if in dread the next day.
Paulette turned left, then right, then left again, pausing in the shadows of the final corner as a police car cruised through the intersection with its headlights on high beam and its blue lights flashing. There were two policemen in the vehicle, their faces lit by the pale ghostly glow of the dashboard and instruments. Paulette pressed her back to the brick wall of a building and waited until the car went past. She ran the rest of the way with her heart beating wildly in her chest and her breath fluttering in her throat.
“Jacques?” she whispered hoarsely when she reached a narrow laneway shadowed by the western wall. There were apartment buildings on the opposite side of the road with ornate second-floor balconies and iron grills over their windows.
Jacques Lejeune stepped out from the dark mouth of the gateway and signaled her with a brief flash of torchlight.
“I am here,” he whispered, relieved that she had appeared.
Paulette crept like a teenager stealing from her parent’s home in the dead of night. Jacques lit a cigarette, cupping his hand around the lighter to shield the small flame. Paulette used the glimmer of its glow to find him in
the oppressive darkness.
“Do you have your gun?” Paulette stood close to Jacques, her eyes glittering like hard chips of diamond.
“Yes,” Jacques said softly. Then his voice faltered with nerves. “But I have been thinking…” He stopped again, wrestling with the words and glad that he could not see the expression on the woman’s face. “Perhaps this is too dangerous…”
Paulette crushed her finger to his mouth and the excuses died on Jacques’ lips. With her other hand she ran skilled fingers down his body until she cupped his crotch. The resistance shriveled in Jacques throat as he surrendered himself to the tantalizing delight of her touch.
“This is not the time to think, lover,” she enticed him breathlessly, crooning in his ear like a witch casting a spell. “This is the time for a brave man of action to win his woman’s heart with a single heroic deed.”
“But Paulette…” he wheedled.
“One shot, Jacques. Kill one infected ghoul. And in exchange for demonstrating your bravery, you can have as much of me as you can handle.”
She crushed herself hard against him, flattening her jutting breasts and the secret hollows of her pelvis to his lanky, angular body. Jacques heard himself gasp. The ache for her was fierce. He gulped down a breath, his senses overwhelmed in a haze of cheap perfume and soft, intoxicating flesh.
“Very well,” he abdicated. “If you want me to stand unflinching in the face of death to prove my love for you, then that is what I shall do,” he said with valiant heroics to mask his trembling terror.
Jacques unlocked the door.
* * *
“I’ve got an idea,” Tremaine burst into Colonel LeCat’s office. The door was open and the main barracks building deserted, although there were lights burning throughout the rest of the gendarmerie compound, powered by generators.
The French commander stood at his window in the soldier’s stance with his shoulders squared, balanced on the balls of his feet, and both his hands clasped behind his back. He stared out through the office window at an uninspiring view of the base. Down on the parade ground, two mechanics in fatigues were working late into the night to repair one of the APC’s.
LeCat turned. The white light through the window cast his face in a ghostly glow.
“Monsieur?”
“The people stranded in the Grande Hotel. I have an idea how we can rescue them.”
LeCat looked weary. The strain of the past twenty-four hours showed in the deeply etched lines that anxiety and tension had chiseled into the flesh around his mouth and eyes.
“I have told you, professor,” an edge of irritation came into the Frenchman’s voice, “that I will not risk the lives of my men to save them. That includes Camille Pelletier.”
“You don’t have to,” Tremaine’s expression brimmed full of energy and agitation. “I have another idea.”
LeCat sighed and regarded the American professor the same way weary parents indulge pestering children. He turned from the window and gave Tremaine his attention. “What is this idea?”
Tremaine stopped in front of the Colonel’s desk and leaned forward with his hands on the polished wood. A two-way radio lying on a pile of reports squawked with static and garbled voices. Tremaine ignored the distraction. “Grappling hooks,” he said.
LeCat frowned. “You mean a grapnel?”
Tremaine shrugged irritably. The definition of the term didn’t seem relevant. What mattered was the idea.
“Whatever you want to call it,” he said dismissively, and then went on in a rush, the words bubbling up in a tide of enthusiasm. He was like an En plein air artist, working quickly to sketch the broad picture while it remained fresh in his mind. The relevant experts, he supposed, could thrash out the details, later.
“We fire grappling hooks from the wall or one of the gatehouses, and aim for the roof of the hotel. Maybe we can rig some kind of harness… I don’t know… but the point is that the hotel is six stories high. The stranded people just need to hook something onto the line and hang on. Gravity will bring them across the road, and keep them out of reach of the infected.”
LeCat sat perfectly still for long moments, like he had been carved from stone. He stared fixedly at Tremaine, but there was an opaque glaze over his eyes, as though his attention lay elsewhere. At last he drew a deep breath.
“World War Two,” the Frenchman said softly.
Tremaine frowned, and wondered if he had misheard. “Excuse me?”
“During the Second World War, elite commando troops fired grapnel hooks from two-inch mortars,” LeCat explained. “They used the idea to overcome difficult defenses, and during the D-Day landings…”
“Then it will work, right?”
LeCat said nothing. Tremaine’s face became tortured in the fraught silence. He could smell his own stale body odor. He ran the palm of his hand over his jaw and it rasped with stubble.
“Will it work?” he tried again, his eyes boring into LeCat’s.
“We have some small mortars,” LeCat conceded carefully. “And we have plenty of grapnel hooks and rope…”
“Then it will work!” Tremaine enthused.
LeCat held up his hand. “Not so fast,” he pushed himself out of the chair. First I must speak to my engineers and discover more… and second, we must wait until daybreak, professor. This cannot be attempted in the middle of the night. If there are still survivors in the hotel at dawn… we may be able to mount a rescue attempt.”
* * *
Kane stepped between Mary’s splayed open legs and closed his eyes. He was trembling. Adrenalin coursed thick in his blood. The rapture of sexual and spiritual anticipation left his mind swirling and his body shaking. He thrust himself forward and savored the glorious ecstasy.
“Speak to me, Almighty God!” Kane threw back his head and lifted his eyes to the high ceiling. “Let your divine guidance be heard. Show us the path we must follow to exalt you.”
Mary felt the press of him and she held her breath and arched her back off the table. She could smell him; the sweat of an unwashed body mingled with stale garlic and cheap wine. She bit down on her lip and then her eyes flew wide open and a gasp like a groan was torn from her throat.
She heard Kane sigh and then felt the weight of him as he came over her. Mary whimpered and stifled a shuddering sob. A strange sense of sanctity overwhelmed her. She felt like a sacrifice spread out on an altar; an offering to God for mankind’s salvation.
When it was over and Kane lay heavy upon her, his breath roaring in her ear and his heart beating like a drum, Mary stayed very still, breathing deeply.
The chanting from the circle of followers undulated around the vast empty space, the sound rising and falling as they waited expectantly to see what would happen next. The darkness settled over the chapel like a funeral pall. The silence became so intense and complete that it seemed to crush down on their voices with a physical weight until they were barely whispering.
At last Kane stood and straightened. He seemed somehow deflated; as if all the energy and vitality that made him such a towering, powerful presence had been drawn from him, leaving just a husk. His eyes were sad and blank, and on his face was an unfathomable expression that could have been remorse or regret… or guilt. He looked vaguely grotesque; an overweight middle-aged man standing naked and shriveled.
“I have seen the face of God,” he spread his hands and pronounced solemnly, “and I have heard the Almighty’s words.”
There was an audible superstitious gasp from the dark circle of followers, and they craned forward, fearful of missing a single word from the preacher’s mouth.
“He has spoken to me and told me again that I am His divine messenger.”
“Did God tell you what we should do?” a voice asked.
“Yes,” Kane said gravely, in a tone befitting someone who bore the heavy burden of mankind’s survival on his shoulders. “God told me that His true believers are safe from the infection. We are shielded by His love. He told me
that only by serving Him would we be assured our places in Heaven.” In the flickering light his eyes suddenly glowed with the religious fanaticism of a zealot.
“Then we should leave the city and go amongst the infected to heal and tend to them?”
“Yes,” Kane nodded. “And I shall lead you, just as Moses led his people out of the wilderness, so shall I walk with you amongst the sick to salve their disease.”
There was a ripple of hushed excited murmurs around the circle.
Kane held up his hands in an appeal for silence.
“Tomorrow,” he declared. “Tomorrow is the day we must save mankind with our love. Leave this place now and spend the rest of this night in prayer.”
“But how do we get out of the city?” a woman asked, her voice brittle with anxiety. “The soldiers will not let us leave. They are soulless. They do not care for God’s plan.”
“Violence,” Kane declared. “Through one act of violence we can nourish the entire world with love.”
The answer seemed vague and cryptic. The followers lapsed into awkward confused hush, unsure whether the order to use violence was God’s message or Kane’s suggestion.
“How?” someone asked meekly.
There was a long troubled silence before suddenly – from out of the oppressive darkness – a new voice spoke, high-pitched and somehow disembodied.
“You must capture one of the blue tank cars that the soldiers drive and ram the steel gate at the university.”
Stretched out on the table, legs splayed and her eyes closed, Mary hadn’t even realized she had spoken.
* * *
Chuck Gudinski lay panting and shaken beneath the chassis of a Renault, and cursed bitterly.
He had crawled with infinite patience across four lanes of abandoned vehicles, worming forward inch by painstaking inch in the darkness until he had reached the far side of the road… and now he could go no further.
His face was a tight grimace of aching agony; his fingers were bare broken stumps of bloody flesh, and he felt lightheaded with blood loss. His arms and shoulders ached from the torture of clawing his bodyweight forward across the hard tarmac, and his chest and lungs burned with exertion.
Last Stand For Man Page 19