Evil Origins: A Horror & Dark Fantasy Collection (85 page)

Byron took his share of Afghan women. The
only way to instill fear in the local leadership was through inhuman
celebrations, and Byron studied the ancient masters. He claimed, although the
legitimacy of that claim was in question, lineage from the great Genghis Khan.
Once, the commander captured some Afghan rebels. As they
approached the next village, the prisoners of war, dressed in Soviet fatigues
and with explosives strapped to their chests, would be the first ones sent into
battle.

Once a village had been conquered, Byron salted the
earth.
He instructed his soldiers to round up all men
between the ages of ten and eighty. Byron insisted on a bullet to the
back of each of their heads. Once the women of the village finished watching
the grim spectacle, the commander let loose his soldiers.
After repeated gang rapes, the women pleaded for death. Before
Byron set fire to the village, the heads of all those that had been executed
were stacked in a pyramid on the road leading into it. Byron took deranged
pride in his revival of the Mongol war tactics.

From Afghanistan, the KGB offered Byron
employment. He assassinated sympathizers to Democracy.
Whether it was Granada, the Falklands, or Jerusalem, Byron
eliminated all human targets on his docket.

He blinked again at the scene in front of him. John’s eyes were closed and his head turned as far away from Jana as
possible. Father had devolved into a wild beast, his robes torn and
covered with blood. Two of the four soldiers worked up to the
precipice of violation. The other two, after securing her ankles,
dropped their pants to their ankles and waited for a turn.

Byron lifted his nine millimeter and pulled
the trigger twice. The deafening blast in the confined space of the
basement blew out his right eardrum. The heads of the two men closest to Byron
exploded in a burst of pink flesh. Their bodies fell to the
floor behind Father. Father turned to look at Byron, but his eyes did
not connect the noise with the destruction wrought upon his men.

The man on Jana’s left reached down to grab the pistol off
his belt, now on the floor and tangled in his underwear. The
commander lodged two bullets in his torso, the one to his chest killing him
instantly. The flash of the muzzle and roar of the gun did not faze
Byron. His hand moved in deathly syncopation with the cold steel.

Another shot knocked the man to Jana’s
right against the wall. He slid down to the floor, leaving a meandering
trail of hot blood on the white wall. The man clutched his throat as blood
spurted from the gaping wound below his Adam’s apple. Mists of
red tormented his final exhalations. Byron looked down at the four
bloodied bodies on the floor.

For the first time since Byron fired his
weapon, Father moved. He grabbed the tattered shoulder of his robe and
wiped the blood and gray matter from his face. He looked at
Jana, her head down and sobbing into her chest. Bits of flesh and fluid
covered her naked breasts and pubic area. Jana’s head bounced
up and down with every silent heave. Father spoke first.

“You dirty piece of shit. How dare you?”

“Step away from her,” replied Byron.

“You will hang for this. I will make sure
that you suffer in this life and the next.”

Commander Byron kept his gun aimed at Father’s face while
the priest spoke. Father took measured steps toward Byron until the barrel of
the gun was almost touching his blood-soaked face.

“You are nothing but a charlatan, a fake. You
claim to be a man of God, but you are nothing more than a cold-blooded murderer
like me.”

Father stepped up and pulled the barrel to his mouth.

“Go ahead then, you big coward. Do
it.”

Jana glanced at John, her eyes locking on his. She closed them tight. John turned back to the unfolding standoff
between Father and Commander Byron.

“Where did you stray from your faith, Father? At one time
you were a respected man of God. What happened?”

Father laughed the deep, guttural laugh of a man on the
verge of insanity.

“You know nothing, you piece of garbage. You
have taken so many lives that it makes me sick. What right do you have to
question my motives? This is not God’s will. He did not intend
to have pure evil walking in His Garden. The Holy Covenant came to
purify, to cleanse the palace before the King’s arrival. I’ve spent my entire
life trying to help drug dealers, prostitutes, abusers, and murderers. And you know what, Byron? That’s all over now, because God
prophesized the Final Battle in Revelations. He anointed His
church to destroy the evil that has plagued mankind for centuries. The
Covenant has begun, and there is nothing you can do about it. The
First Cleansing was just that: the first. There will be more until we
have brought the Thousand Year Peace to our Lord. He will sit
upon the Seventh Throne and rule the world of righteousness and holiness.”

“You’re a lunatic,” spat John, interrupting the conversation
between Father and Byron. “No man of God kills innocent people
in his name. You continue to perpetuate the same cycle of religious
fanaticism that has contaminated mankind for two thousand years. You are a sadistic fraud.”

Father stepped away from Byron and picked up his hunting
knife. He had raised it to John’s neck when another blast
shook the room. Plaster and dust fell into John’s face from the hole in
the wall punctured by Byron’s warning shot.

“Back away from him, or the next one shot will be at you.”

Father tossed the knife into the corner,
where it clanged off of the weapons of the dead soldiers. The stench of
burnt hair and feces filled the room. The smoke from the exploding gunpowder
helped to mask the wretched scent.

“I am at Death’s door,” said the commander.
“I have no misconceptions about the price I will have to pay for my time
here on earth.”

Jana opened her eyes, looking at Byron
through a silent waterfall of tears.

“I have made peace with my decisions,” he went on, “and am
willing to face the eternal consequences for them. Have you?”

Father sneered at Byron and spat blood upon the dangling
medallions on his chest.

“I answer to a higher power than you,
Commander Byron. There is nothing more I need to say.”

Byron aimed his weapon.

“Then die, you evil son of a bitch.”

The bullet blew a hole in Father’s abdomen
and tore a ragged handful of flesh from his back on the way out. He fell
to his knees and brought his hands together in an attempt at prayer. Father’s
mouth moved silently as blood poured over his bottom lip. Byron
put the barrel of the gun to the top of Father’s head and pulled the trigger a
second time. Father’s body crumpled to the floor at Jana’s feet.

The ringing in John’s ears prevented him from hearing the
silence. He tasted the fear and relief in the air, and his eyes burned from the
smoke that filled the room.       

Byron stepped over the bodies and toward
Jana. John heard two snapping noises and watched Jana’s hands fall from
the holes and down to her naked breasts. She sat on the floor,
clutching the remnants of her clothes.

“I apologize for the pain I have inflicted upon you. I wish I could take back the pain and suffering I have caused
throughout my life, but I cannot. My body is giving out on me. I only ask that
you let me leave and find my own place to die. But you may kill me if
you wish.”

Jana rubbed her wrists, the broken one so swollen that she
could not bend it. Commander Byron walked over to the corner of the room and
picked up Father’s knife. He wiped it clean on his pant leg
and handed it to Jana.

“I don’t know what your future will be, but it is now in
your hands.”

“What am I supposed to do?” asked Jana.

Byron winced as he stepped over the bodies toward the steps.
His cane would not support his life for much longer.

“What you believe you should do. You
are a creature of the universe and you have Free Will. Exercise
it. Those that surrender their life to ‘faith’ risk the perversion of
it. Your world will no longer be the same, but it is yours to make.”

Commander Byron stopped in front of John. “Your
life is hers. I wash my hands of it.”

Jana and John watched Commander Byron take
each step. His knees buckled and his lungs pulled at the oxygen in the
air. His silhouette disappeared down the driveway as the moon fought through
the heavy clouds.

Neither John nor Jana said a word. Neither
one moved. A single gunshot echoed through the dead neighborhood, rumbling by
the house like a spring thunderstorm.

Chapter
51

“Honey, cut me loose.”

“Why?”

John’s lower jaw fell at the same time his
eyebrows peaked on his forehead.

“More of them may be on their way here right now. We need to get out of this place.”

“Why, John?”

John’s body pleaded to be free from the bindings while his
mouth tried to answer her question. He dropped his head down
with a careless shrug.

“John, do you remember the time we were alone on the lawn of
the Machek Building?”

John looked up again, nodding in confirmation.

“Do you remember what you said to me that
night?”

“No, Jana I don’t. Can’t we discuss this somewhere else?” The fear crept into John’s voice.

“You told me you’d always be faithful, no matter what. You told me you would never be tempted by someone else. You
said you’d leave me first, because that was the honorable thing to do.”

He sighed again, looked back at the steps
leading to the driveway, then finally responded.

“Yeah, hon, I remember something like that. What does it
have to do—”

 “Sarah. The pics. You cheated on me
with your ex-girlfriend.”

John straightened up and looked at the ceiling. He exhaled and shook his head back and forth.

“She drugged me, Jana. It was all part of her plan to be a
spiteful, home-wrecking bitch. And you’re letting her do it.”

Jana slapped John hard across his face and screamed at him.

“Don’t you dare shift the blame to me!”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t fucking sorry me. You should
have known better than to let that whore put you in a compromising position. You should have been smarter than that.”

 “So now what?” he asked.

Jana slapped him again, this time harder.

“You really have no idea?”

Jana began to cry. She set the knife down on an overturned
box and pulled the olive-green coat from one of the dead men on the floor. The sleeves swallowed her arms, so she rolled them up to the elbows.
Jana took a handgun from one of the men and slid it inside the front of
her jeans. She removed the belt from another to help keep her
pants together without the strategic top button.

John twisted in the bindings, his body contorting in an
attempt to break free. Blood flooded his face while beads of perspiration
exploded on his forehead.

“Jana, I’m sorry. I really am. She
slipped me a roofie or some other kind of drug and I don’t remember anything. I
have no idea what she did to me, honest.”

“I don’t care anymore, John. Since all this
shit went down, I’ve wanted nothing more than to see your face again. I
dreamt about what I would do and say to you if I ever got the chance. Honestly, I was convinced I was going to cut your dick off.”

“Jana, don’t do this. We can get through it.”

“No John, we can’t. You made your decisions and now you’ll
have to deal with the consequences.”

John glared at Jana and pulled as hard as
he could on the plastic zip ties keeping his wrists together.

“Let me go, Jana. I’m tired of fighting with you. If you don’t believe me, and think I intentionally set out to cheat
on you, fine. If you think I hooked up with Sarah and deliberately sent
you those pics, there ain’t nothing I can do about it. But I’m telling you
right now that I won’t beg or plead for you, or my life. I’ve
had it with the fucking Holy Covenant and all the bullshit that has gone down
since. I’ve had it with the constant death and destruction.”

Jana picked up an old duffel bag and filled it with useful
items from her own pantry, the one from another time, another universe. She bundled the oversized coat around her waist and checked the
batteries on the flashlight. Jana walked past John on her way to the
steps that led to the driveway.

“Know this,” said John. “Since this
shit went down, I’ve done nothing but search for you. You were
the only thing keeping me alive.”

Jana slid the wedding band off her finger and placed it on
the step. The ring created a tinny vibration as it spun to
rest.

“I’m joining the Holy Covenant, John. There isn’t any other
option. I’m not spending my whole life running, fighting, and
worrying about the future. I want to live. I can bullshit whoever might
be in charge. I did Catholic school for eight years,
remember?”

John sneered.

“Go right ahead and conform yet again. You
call that living, and I call it dying. They’re gonna tell you what to
say, think, and do. What kind of existence is that? I
can’t, and I won’t do it. I’ll die fighting if I have to.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, John.”

Jana started up the next step, but then stopped and came
back down and stood in front of John. She felt his rapid
breathing on her cheek.

“We can build the new society, John. We can
be part of the Covenant, the chosen few to live in the Thousand Year Peace.”

“You tell me we’re over and now you’re asking me to join you
in the Holy fucking Covenant, brainwashed and brain dead? You
should have cut my dick off and made things easier on both of us.”

Jana shook her head and climbed up the stairs, out of the
cellar, and toward the driveway. She stopped at the top and
shouted back down into the darkness.