Evil Origins: A Horror & Dark Fantasy Collection (82 page)

“And I feel the same like you,” replied Byron in his mangled
English.

“Then we need to decide how we’re going to
do this, and fast. He’s going to bring a shitload of men, and you know
he intends to destroy whatever is left of this place, including the people
inside it.”

“I haven’t served for decades in special
ops not to understand the nature of a prisoner exchange, now have I?”

“I sure hope not, old man. I hope not.”

Chapter
39

Father hustled through the corridors of the rectory. The building housed generations of nuns throughout St. Michael’s
storied history. But now, bureaucrats from all levels of the Holy
Covenant staked their claim on a room or efficiency. The structure tucked up
next to the church, providing easy movement from one building to the next.

As he passed other priests, nuns, and of
course soldiers, Father thought about his visit from Brother Cyrus and wondered
if the man took residence in his parish. Father’s robes blew out in each
direction as his legs moved toward the rectory’s main office. The
Second Cleansing was about to be launched, bringing a spastic vibration to the
men and women of the Covenant working there. If he did not come into
possession of John the Revelator in the next couple of hours, his superiors
would kill the mission, and Father would have to answer to God. Father’s worry only exacerbated his fevered state of mind and
propelled him even faster toward the church basement.

Father barked orders to soldiers sitting at a table. They played cards and made a futile attempt to hide the coins from
him.

Gamblers in the House of God
, Father thought.

“Suit up, Warriors of Christ. We
must deploy a division to South Euclid immediately. I will need four vehicles
and at least twenty men.”

A burly soldier stood up and turned toward
Father. He held his seven cards in his hand, looked down at them, and
discarded two.

“Call,” he said.

“I’m sure you’re aware that the Internal Order was here and
that any soldier not upholding the Holy Covenant will be sent to face it.” The other soldier in the hand displayed his straight-to-the-ten.

“Trip jacks. Shit,” the burly soldier said. He turned to
stare at Father, who stomped toward the soldier with a red face and spittle
amassing on his upper lip. He ripped the cards out of the
man’s oversized mitt, and threw them to the floor. The other soldiers
jumped up, knocking chairs to the ground.

“If you do not obey my command, you will
answer to the Lord.”

With a look of disgust, the burly soldier bent down and
picked up his cards. He placed them on the card table and
turned to stare again into Father’s eyes.

“Brother Cyrus has spoken to us,” he said with indifference.
“He told us that if you tried to coordinate any unauthorized sortie, that we were
to contact him immediately.”

Father’s face went from red to deep amber. He
had difficulty forming words and speaking them at a conversational level.

“Unauthorized? You think that I do
not have the power to send a useless gang of gambling heathens out to do God’s
bidding?”

The men sat back down at the card table. The
burly soldier was the last to take a seat. He shuffled the
cards and turned his back to Father.

“You will feel Hell’s fury,” said Father.

He turned away from the men and started in another direction.
He stumbled upon a group of seven soldiers smoking cigarettes
outside the back door of the church basement. Father had sent three of
them to guard the entrance after Brother Cyrus left. The
oldest amongst them was no more than eighteen.

“Gather your weapons and meet me outside in one hour.”

There was a protracted pause, then one
soldier stepped forward.

“Sir, we have gotten strict orders from the Holy Covenant to
remain here and fortify St. Michael’s.”

“I am the Holy Covenant!” he said.

The soldiers backed away as Father caught his breath. He gasped and then blasted the young men again.

“You will do as I say or you will suffer eternal damnation
at the hands of Lucifer. Meet me outside at the APC in one hour!”

The men clutched their weapons and scrambled in different
directions. Father collapsed into a chair and looked up toward
the ceiling, but with closed eyes. John the Revelator consumed all of
his blind vision.

Chapter
40

“So where is she?”

Sully glared at Byron. The red beard pulsed on his heaving
chest while his finger tapped the safety of the machine gun.

“She is safe.”

“Fuck you and the girl. I don’t need her to
get to him. The man is on his way, and I’ve got the bait on the hook. The
girl would seal it, but I don’t
need
her, and I don’t need you.”

Commander Byron grinned and stood up. He
placed a hand on Sully’s shoulder and lowered his tone.

“You are right. You don’t need the
girl, which is why I’ve already shot her. She got under my
skin. Her body is rotting in a park roughly two miles from here. Send your Worms out there to retrieve it if you like.”

Sully removed Byron’s hand from his shoulder, and looked the
older man up and down. A smile took root under his tangle of
weedy beard.

“Oh, you piece-of-shit foreigner. You really think I’d believe
that.”

Sully fought back laughter, trying to
maintain his composure while lifting the barrel of his gun to the commander’s
temple. He pressed the weapon into the old man’s skull.

Byron’s face slackened, and he dropped his head as he spoke.

“She is in the basement.”

Chapter
41

From his seat on the dining-room floor,
John had followed the kitchen conversation, and a shock reverberated through
his muscles when he heard Byron’s last sentence. During the course of
the palaver, the distracted Keepers of the Wormwood, who’d piled their firearms
in the living room once the house was secured, did not notice the blood
lubricating his wrists, allowing John to pull them from the hastily fastened
zip ties. The bikers also didn’t spy the strap of a machine gun sitting barely
a foot from John, or see him slide his foot through the strap until it was
inches from his hands.

John’s hearing faded, replaced by an
accelerated heartbeat. In the next room, he saw a tuft of Sully’s hair
glide to rest on the collar of his vest. For John, time wound
down until it risked dying all together. In his mind, it took John
several minutes to get his hands around the weapon, and even longer for his
finger to slide under the cool, smooth trigger.

The first bullet from John’s gun spiraled from the end of
the barrel and slammed into Commander Byron’s soldier. The
puff of red mist levitated above the man’s chest as the force of the impact
yanked him backward into the wall. John saw the man’s head penetrate the
dry wall, leaving a cloud of white dust and a crescent-shaped hole. The second, third, and fourth bullets hit the man’s chest in
rhythmic purity. Before the corpse of Byron’s soldier could slide down
the wall, John had already turned to face Sully’s troops.

Time lurched back into reality as the stench of blood and
smoke infiltrated John’s senses. His ears rang, and he heard
shouts as if he stood in a deep cave. John swung his weapon toward
several stunned Keepers of the Wormwood. The gun responded to John’s gentle
finger with another barrage of burning death as John ran for the living room. The last of the outlaw bikers were still scrambling for their
weapons as John dropped them to the carpet.

The only survivors in the house, Sully and Byron, stumbled
toward the open door leading from the kitchen to the driveway. They stumbled over each other, terrified by the pitched fever of
John’s assault. Sully shoved the old man to the floor and lunged out the
door. John fired at the patch on the back of Sully’s vest and when the smoke
cleared, the leader of the Keeper of the Wormwood was gone. Commander
Byron sat up to stare down the barrel of John’s machine gun.

“Where is she?” John asked.

“I am already dead. So fuck you,” Byron replied.

John grabbed the man by the shoulder and dragged him down the
steps and onto the driveway. John slammed the butt end of the
gun into Byron’s head. After the commander passed out, John pulled
exposed wire from an electric receptacle in his kitchen. He cut the wire with a
knife and secured Byron’s wrists to his ankles.

Meanwhile, Sully, who’d run down the
driveway and returned through the front door, picked up an assault rifle from
one of his fallen brothers and threw the stock up to his shoulder.

Before John could decide what to do, he heard Sully’s voice
calling out from the living room.

“Listen to me, John. You both will
not make it out of this fucking house alive unless you drop that gun. Got that? You’d better hope you go first. I don’t think you’d
want to hear what I’d do to your little sweetheart before I cut her throat.”

“Father is going to be here. You
don’t have time to make those threats. I suggest you run now
while you still have a chance.”

“Fuck you, John. I’ll put a bullet in him and you.”

From his outpost in the kitchen, John felt the minutes
sliding away, dropping over a cliff into nowhere.

“I’m going downstairs to see if Jana is in
here or whether Byron was lying.”

There was no answer from Sully.

John bolted down the steps, shutting a door
behind him. He pushed through the chairs and debris accumulated at the
bottom and opened the door into the furnace room. Darkness
devoured the tight space and John did not have a flashlight. He began to
scream.

“Jana!”

There was no answer.

Sully stood on the landing and yelled down to John.

“That son of a bitch Father is here. As
soon as he finds out his men are dead, this place is going to go up flames. Last
chance to come up here and surrender to me.”

“Best of luck getting past Father and his
goons, Sully. See you in hell.”

John heard the pounding of Sully’s feet climbing the short
flight of steps, crossing the kitchen, and exiting out the door. John felt in
the dark and found the slide bolt on the storage room that used to lead to the
coal chute, hoping the flashlight he left on the furnace was still there. His
hand landed on it as muffled voices approached the house. He
slid the button on the flashlight and shone the beam around the room while his
eyes fought to adjust to the changing light. He pushed the coal-room
slide bolt over and pulled the door open.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” he said.

Chapter
42

Crystal wiped Alex’s head with a cool towel
and then put a thermometer in his mouth. Several minutes later, Alex’s
eyebrows bunched up, reminding Crystal that it was still under his tongue. She
shook her head and then removed the thermometer.

“Looks normal so far. If you can make it
through the first night without spiking, I think you’ll be fine.”

Alex smiled. He reached for a bottle of water near his cot
and froze. The pain radiated throughout his entire body.

“I owe you everything.”

Crystal smiled and kissed his forehead.

“Rest up.”

Alex fell back into a solemn sleep.

Chapter
43

The ride through the decimated city did not
shake Father. He considered the Holy Covenant a rebirth, a new beginning
from a violent end. They drove down crooked streets filled with the shells of
automobiles and the vestiges of lives past.

The young men in the APC did not say a word. They looked into each other’s eyes like souls facing the Styx. The
eldest of the group, the driver, communicated with Father. He
asked for clarification several times, but managed to navigate Mayfield into
South Euclid without too much assistance.

Father stopped the vehicle at the intersection of Mayfield
and Plainfield. The men emptied the transport and checked
their gear. The snow subsided for the moment, although renegade flakes still
danced from roof to roof. Father studied the pristine snow on the road,
the unbroken seal on a new winter.

He led his group down the middle of Plainfield Road,
concentrating on John’s aura. As they pulled up to the house,
Father inhaled the mystic scent until his eyes locked onto an irregularity in
the blanket of snow.

Pink and lavender splotches mottled the ground near the
house. Broken glass lay on top of the accumulation, not under it. Father saw the front and side door swinging, hammered at the mercy
of the southwest wind.

“Secure the place. Something is wrong.”

The young soldiers fanned out and took up
positions. Numerous sets of footprints circled the house and scattered
in various directions.

Father remained in the truck, lit a cigar,
and gave the men time to secure the structure. He heard shouts of
“clear” as each man rummaged through the various rooms. Father
exhaled the smoke and watched it float toward the barren trees. The driver
exited the house first and delivered the status to Father.

“Father, the place is empty.”

Father continued chewing on the end of his cigar while the
lit end flickered. He motioned for the man to continue with
his explanation.

“There are at least twelve bodies in there. We found Commander Byron. He is unconscious and bound, lying
on the kitchen floor. All the others are dead.”

The man waited for Father’s response with clenched fists and
a furrowed brow.

“Have the men make Byron comfortable, and get him whatever
medical attention we have here. I wish to speak with him as
soon as he is lucid. Is there any sign of John the Revelator or the
woman?”

“No, sir, we have not found either.”

“I would like to see it with my own eyes,” replied Father.

The soldier locked his weapon and led Father through the
living-room door.