The 1000 Souls (Book 1): Apocalypse Revolution (29 page)

The rippers came at them, some shooting wildly and other just running. Bertrand pulled the trigger, the pistol grip slamming his hand and the barrel leaping into the air, causing him to pump a new round into the chamber, just like it had during his practice shots. He fired again at the hopeless onslaught. If the Erics people didn't attack now he would die, but not without a fight.

Shooting—a lot of it—erupted from the street where Bertrand had cut a path through the rippers. The crowd of rippers slowed, several looking back to see what was going on now. They could see what Bertrand could: muzzle flashes light up the square like bolts of lightning. Murray and his company had used the confusion and the path cut by the truck to charge into the rippers.

"It all has to be close quarters or we'll kill one another," Joyce had said when they were planning. "You have to see who you're shooting. Like Emile always says, it can't just be spray and pray."

Well, this was close. Elation, fear and relief, they all washed through Bertrand, freeing him from convention, from years of early childhood learning that had conditioned him to never kill. He pulled the trigger and a college student with a bloody mouth and a red knife fell. Bertrand pumped the gun and ran forward a few steps to the back of the truck, checking his white arm band to make sure it was obvious. Please don't let one of Erics's guys shoot him by mistake. He fired at a middle-aged man who could have been out taking his dog for a walk in this neighborhood if he didn't look so crazed and angry.

Bertrand was supercharged. He was invincible. He was a hero.

Muzzle flashes came from the church's bell tower and from near the roof—snipers that Bobs or Father Alvarez had somehow placed in the upper windows. Had they broken any of the stained glass in order to shoot? Did it matter?

Cops dropped their riot shields and ran, not making any attempt now to pretend they had more authority than the mob. Some of the cops even turned on their fellows with knives, bringing them down to drink blood. Bertrand put his shotgun to one rogue cop, 'passing lead,' as Bobs would call it, through the riot helmet and the brain. The cop underneath him had clamped a hand against his own throat, staunching the wound, but Bertrand could see it hadn't cut a major artery, because there wasn't enough blood spewing everywhere.

Bertrand bent over and shouted, "Do you really want to be with them? Your buddy just tried to cut your throat!"

Wild eyes met Bertrand's, the cop taking shallow, frightened breaths. He shook his head.

"Then stay down until this is over!"

"Bert! Over here!"

Joyce had moved from the back of the truck, like Bertrand seeking out and shooting anyone who came near her, but now she turned. Bertrand ran to join her and look in the same direction, back toward the mobile command center. A heavyset man kicked at the windshield from inside the vehicle, unable to open the door because of the damage caused by the five-ton. He jumped out with more agility than Bertrand had expected, given the man's weight, but when he turned their way, the explanation became obvious. Blood coated his puffy cheeks, and a knife flashed in one hand. He had a uniform on, a white shirt with military embellishments and dress pants.

"Ripper!" shouted Bertrand.

The man shouted back—an incoherent roar—and charged. He took the hits to his chest from both the shotgun and the machine pistol, yet still he came at them, forcing Joyce and Bertrand to skip back several steps. Bertrand pumped the shotgun and fired another round, taking the officer in the face and blowing brains out the back of his skull.

The man's momentum carried him until he fell flat onto his face in between them, both stepping aside and tracking him down to the ground with their weapons.

"What the fuck?" said Joyce, panting for breath. "That was totally superhuman. I didn't see any of the others take hits like that and keep moving. Quick, let's finish off that command post."

They ran to the windshield of the mobile command center, but tear gas had turned the inside of the vehicle into a gray cloud. No one emerged coughing, in fact no one sounded like they were reacting to the tear gas at all. It was as silent inside as a tomb.

"Can't go in there now!" shouted Bertrand, the excitement still coursing through him. He turned back to the parking lot and the street, but the crowd of rippers had vanished, leaving behind dark lumps on the pavement, some of which crawled or cried, giving the pavement a rippling look, as if a restless sea. People with white armbands now patrolled the corpses and occasionally discharged a firearm at point-blank to end one of the rippers forever.

"Sir, please!" shouted the cop that Bertrand had saved. He still lay on the ground, wisely not rising to attract the attentions of the Erics patrols. "Can I surrender to you? I'm begging you. I've a wife and kids." Clearly he saw that no one was taking prisoners.

Bertrand wanted to move deeper into the parking lot and the street to kill more of the rippers who had so torn apart his world, but he forced his breathing to calm, his heartbeat to slow. He must think clearly.

"Help me with this guy," he said to Joyce. "A ripper cop cut him, but I think we can save him."

"Should we?"

"For Mike Sinclair. I'll save him in memory of Mike."

The chant—more like a repetitive shout—that greeted Bertrand at the entrance to the church at sunrise was deafening. Crowds jammed the pews and the side-aisles, leaving only the main aisle free for Bertrand's passage to the front of the church.

"Bertrand! Bertrand!"

He turned to the others, not wanting to enter the church. "What the fuck? I didn't save them. I was just one guy. If they should be shouting for anyone it should be for Joyce, who planned it, or Erics, who gave us the numbers to make it work, or hey, what about Mike Sinclair, who died trying to save them single-handed without firing a shot?"

Father Alvarez stood with him on the steps, his cassock disturbed by a cold wind that promised to bring more than drizzle. "You must understand," he said. "Roberta told many about how you were the only one brave enough to go hunting in the dark for rippers, about how you saved her even when she was surrounded."

He took Bertrand's hand in his, enveloping it. "People were very afraid last night. Many gave themselves up to God and even some of those who were not Catholic begged for confession, but the hope that spread throughout the church was that you would come. Many watched the your videos exhorting people to fight, watched the video of your rescue of Roberta and Terry. Many in the church were rescued by your raiders. Many prayed that you would have the strength, and here you are, their hero."

It was Jeff, however, who convinced Bertrand to go in. "Dude," he said as he climbed the steps to stand before Bertrand. Jeff had blood on his face from a scrap on his forehead, his jacket had stuffing protruding form under his right arm from a near miss by a bullet.

"Timetracks, how can I make your day easier?" said Bertrand, repeating their usual call script.

Jeff began to laugh, weariness falling aside, and to Bertrand's surprise—maybe to Jeff's too—they embraced, pounding each other on the back.

"Oh dude," said Bertrand when they stood awkwardly apart. "I so thought we were toast that time. I guess all those years playing Call of Duty weren't a total waste."

They both laughed, because the video game had done nothing to prepare them for real combat. Bertrand had to suppress memories that flashed before him, the startled face of the first man he ran down with the truck; shooting the ripper cop several times to kill him; finding Mike Sinclair's body and listening to his last words as he bled out: "Had to try. Sorry—failed. Glad you're here. Like to see sunrise." The only other person Bertrand had seen who had looked so pale was the first ripper victim he and Joyce had found three months ago.

Mike Sinclair's body now lay beside the statue of St. Michael, the weak sun ensuring that he wasn't infected with the parasites. He would not be a ripper.

"Bert," said Jeff when their laughter had chopped short, perhaps because Bertrand had looked back at Mike's body. "You gotta go in. They were promised a hero last night and they got more than they know how to thank. Even the Erics people can't stop talking about you, and some of them are in the church too."

"But I'm not the only hero here."

"No, but your face warning people in McDonalds is the face that went viral; you're the face that people have watched over the last couple of weeks urging them to fight, and right now they need the simplicity of a hero. Go in. Give them a short speech like you did in McDonalds, or like you do in those vids that Terry's always posting, and then lets have a drink to celebrate the living and remember the dead." It was Jeff's turn to look down the stairs and back to Mike's bloodied body.

"We've got a lot of work to do." Bertrand shook his head.

"Then that's what you tell them."

Father Alvarez led Bertrand up the aisle, Joyce and Jeff not far behind. At the front of the church Bobs and Terry waited like a groom and his best man, but Bobs wore a sweat-stained white T-shirt and had an AR-15 slung over her shoulder. The church, despite the cold outside, was quite hot, the huge crowds now making up for the boiler's stops and starts caused by the power fluctuations.

"Thanks for coming and bringing an army," Bobs shouted so that Bertrand could hear her over the crowd. Bertrand resisted the urge to pat her on the head. Could this little elfin waif really be so violent? Father Alvarez had said that it was Bobs who had organized and led the snipers, and when Bertrand had attacked, Bobs had led her little army in a sortie out of the church to join the slaughter and help rout the rippers. Bobs yelled something else, and Bertrand bent his ear close to her lips so that she could repeat it.

"Talk them down. Then we got to get raiding. A lot of them must've gone into basements in our hood to beat the sun." She waved to the pulpit.

Bertrand climbed the stairs more afraid than he had been all night. What to say? There must be a thousand people, chanting as if he were a rock star. Yet a calmness rose up, a strength that he'd have thought impossible even just yesterday. It was almost as if a little voice had whispered, "Be the rock star."

He raised both fists, arms out from his sides at forty-five degree angles.

They cheered! A roaring cheer that only an amplified microphone could silence, but still Bertrand had to shout into it to be heard.

"Last night!" More cheering. "Last night we took back Old Town!"

The crowd screamed, and Bertrand took a moment to take in the sea of faces, all races, all ages, all hopeful.

"But our work has just begun. The rippers are everywhere."

That settled the crowd a bit, because that was not news to cheer.

"The rippers are in Washington, in Springfield, in our own city hall." He put out his hands again to quell the shouts of agreement, the anger at the government. "It is time to take back our city, our state and our country."

The crowd exploded in cheers, but Bertrand again held out his hands to quiet.

"This will not be an easy task, but it is the task that our generation has been called upon to perform. Some ... some will lament that we see these evil days, but I say thank God that we can take on this task and spare our children from this burden. I say thank God that we have been entrusted with so important a mission, so important a war that in generations to come they will look back on this day and wish they had been here in this church at this moment, will hope that they would have been brave enough and strong enough to do what we must now do. They will call us a great generation!"

Again the cheers were deafening, and Bertrand remembered Bobs's words:
Talk them down.

"But now we are here, and the road ahead will not be an easy one. It is a road that is fraught with danger, that will bring disasters as well as triumphs, that will bring tears and pain as well as joy and victory. We must travel this road now, and I promise you that we will lose friends and family members on this journey, but we will save millions. Our blood will be spilled, but not to feed the rippers!"

The crowd still cheered.

"Today," said Bertrand. "Today we must work and fight so that tonight we will not fear. Today we continue the struggle, and when you are downhearted and hungry and tired and afraid, remember this day. Remember that we were victorious. We saved this church. We saved the people of Old Town, and we will save our city, our state and our country."

The crowd again roared—even louder.

But Bobs had asked him to talk them down, and that sounded wise.

"So today we must begin. I know you're all tired, but now we must act. Old Town now has many rippers hiding in basements because they can't bear the light. Today we must drag them out into the light!"

More cheers proved that he didn't know how to calm them.

"Today we must insure that the corrupt government of our city can't send police to arrest us and hand us over to the rippers like they did with Detective Mike Sinclair!"

Bertrand couldn't help himself. He couldn't think of anything to say that was calming, that would really allow them to go to work. A movement caught his peripheral vision, and he turned to see Father Alvarez moving to the stairs to the pulpit. Bertrand seized the chance, hurrying down the stairs and waving Alvarez up to the pulpit.

"Now," said Alvarez, his manner calm and practiced, the pulpit his home. "Now we must give thanks for the miracle of last night, for our rescue. In the name of the father, and the son and the holy spirit."

Bertrand stood beside Joyce, his hands clasped together and his head bowed, but rather than prayer his thoughts were with Joyce. Would she ever consider standing at an altar with him for a happier purpose? Would she marry him? For last night, as she'd leapt from her side of the truck, he knew he wanted not to just get laid, but to be with her, to have children with her. Out of the corner of his eye he watched her pray, memorizing every curve, the blood smudged on her cheek, every imperfection that made her beautiful—that made her Joyce.