The Remnant (5 page)

She stared into his eyes, wondering for the
thousandth time what it would have been like to know him in his
youth. That was one thing she had always envied Clara for, the life
the two of them had shared. Even now the old man’s back was
straight and stiff as a gun barrel, and his broad hands-calloused
and scarred by a thousand hard climbs in his mountaineering
past-gripped the back of the pew like the talons of predatory bird
without the slightest trace of a quiver.

"I’m not going to argue with any of you
whether or not Angels are in the valley," he said, in a booming
voice that carried their past with it like a tidal wave of
memories, "or just about to be. And you can sit here all night if
you like and discuss whether or not Ashley’s having some kind of
hallucinations. All I have to say is this. We need to stay
prepared. I don’t like the fact that you all put so much faith in
me. I’ve done everything I can, and I go to bed every night hoping
that it’s enough. But you need to stay ready."

"Amen," Ralph muttered, and people stared at
him as though he had blasphemed.

Paulie nodded, smiling ruefully. "I’ve been
afraid for five years that what we lived through-the
Killing-
wasn’t going to be the last of it. You want to
convince yourselves what Ashley saw tonight was just a delusion,
well, that’s fine, I guess. But I ask all of you now, what are you
gonna do if the Angels do come in? You think this pitiful little
band is going to stand against them even for all Stan’s training?
You think they haven’t spent the past five years planning our final
demise? You think we’re going to hold them at bay forever with the
threat of exposure after we’re gone?"

The building was silent as a crypt for long
minutes. Ashley could hear Paulie’s rasping breath as he glared at
Ralph and then slowly around the entire room.

"What more would you have us do, Brother
Paulie?" asked Ralph, completely unaware that he had used the old
manner of speaking. "You’re the one who set up the system we have
in place. If there is something else we should be doing then tell
us."

Paulie shrugged slowly. "I don’t know," he
said, sadly, sinking to the pew again. "That’s the problem. I just
don’t know."

No one but Ashley heard him whisper. "As God
is my witness I just don’t know."

Marie hugged him again.

"We’re all gonna do the best we can,"
whispered Marie.

Marie-lost in thought-rode home along the
valley road sitting in the passenger seat of Ashley’s Subaru. The
gloomy forest on either side rolled past in a hypnotic flicker of
shadows, but Marie was convinced she saw a thousand eyes within
their depths. The woods exhibited an eerie watchfulness, as though
every creature within awaited some terrible event that they all
knew was coming even if their human neighbors refused to recognize
it. Ashley was also silent, scrunched uncomfortably in the shell of
her own concern, oblivious to the vigilant woods all around, but
Marie was certain that her own inner turmoil was unique.

She had been only nine years old when the
Killing
occurred
,
and so her understanding of what
happened was more a result of the infrequent remark by Ashley or
one of the others, and her own strange admixture of half-recalled
visions, sounds, and smells... Were they a child’s distorted
memory? Were they an amalgam of real events or things that could
not possibly have happened the way she recalled? Whenever she tried
to discuss the
Killing
with anyone in the valley she was
shushed into silence
.

Marie understood that part of the others’
reluctance was because-as adults-they felt that they had lived the
horrors much fuller than she had, but she was the only surviving
child of the time before the
Killing.
So they could not
understand her need to know, to make sense of what had come before
so that she could reconcile it with her life after. Prior to the
Killing
she recalled sitting with her parents in the
straight-backed pews of the meeting house in Mexico, listening to
Paulie reciting strange verses, many of which made no sense to her,
of shouted amens from the crowd, and the nodding of adult heads.
The
Killing
had changed all that. Most of the people alive
then-and all of the children except herself-were gone.

She peered out into the darkness now, trying
to stare
through
this frightening world and back into that
terrifying other of her memory, to separate real from imagination.
Angels had come, and they had killed-her own parents and her only
brother had died in the massacre. But even worse than that they had
stolen something so precious that Marie wished there were some
judgement, some punishment that could be meted out that was as
horrible as their crime. Death was not enough, and did Angels die,
anyway?

Ashley turned to glance at her, and frowned.
"You look tired."

Marie shook her head. "Estoy bien."

Even after five years of living with Ashley,
Marie occasionally fell back into her father’s native tongue. From
him she had inherited her latin complexion and her predilection to
brood. Her mother, on the other hand, had had a lightning temper,
but there had been a time when she was just as quick to
smile
.
Her mother’s blue eyes-matching Marie’s own-had been
soft and loving, and every day Marie missed seeing seeing them,
missed hearing her mother’s soft voice.

"I’m all right," Marie repeated, as Ashley
finally turned away before staring back out into the night.

When Ashley parked the car in the drive
beside the house Marie climbed out, breathing deeply of the clean
smell of pine woods then followed Ashley inside.

"It’s very late, Querida. Go to bed," said
Ashley, kissing her lightly on the cheek. "And don’t worry. Stan is
probably right about me seeing things."

Marie didn’t argue, but she didn’t think
Ashley was mistaken. Although the idea was seldom mentioned in her
presence Marie knew that the Angels were only waiting for the right
moment to finish what they had begun with the
Killing
. The
only thing stopping them was the secret Paulie kept. The simple
fact was that-regardless of how hard Ashley tried to shield her
from the truth-the Angels were a part of their lives and likely
would be a part of all their deaths. They all lived in a hideaway
that was known to their enemies and therefore no hideaway at all,
and every breath was at that enemy’s behest.

The surrounding peaks and the crossroads at
the mouth of the valley were the boundaries of the Brethren’s
world. Once monthly a small group traveled together into the
nearest town for supplies, always armed, always on the lookout for
Angels. Whenever they spotted any the group gave them a wide berth,
like a flock of geese slinking around a crouching fox. Other than
that, no one was allowed to leave. The valley was an armed camp.
But Mexachuli had been an armed camp, too, and not many Brethren
had survived.

Marie climbed into bed, but her mind
continued to churn. She recalled before the
Killing
kneeling
in her family’s sweltering cabana, saying her prayers, asking God
to watch over her family and herself. She had always felt better
after that, as though an invisible blanket of protection had been
draped over the tiny home that no evil could ever pierce.

Only it had, and Marie had questioned God
ever since. How could he have allowed such a thing to happen? She
had prayed long and hard, and there were times when she felt as
though she almost had the answer.

Ever since she was a small child there had
been occasions when Marie felt uncertain whether she was truly
awake, or viewing the world through some strange hallucination. The
world around her, the people-even her parents-sometimes took on an
ethereal sense, as though she might pass right through them as if
they were mist. And amid the odd unreality of her waking dreams she
had learned to discern a substance, a truth, that she could not
quite understand and was never quite able to explain. But she knew
that somewhere between the gentle light of her visions and the
threatening darkness of her nightmares lay those answers that she
needed desperately to find.

There was no fighting one of her spells for
long, but at least when they did come, they came with forewarning,
especially her more somber visions. She felt it now, a tingling all
over, a dull sense of gloom shrouding the room. Then, as suddenly
as the blinding stroke of a lightning flash she was cloaked in
darkness. Searching for light she rolled onto her side and stared
out the window across the garden where Ashley had recently plowed
the corn under. Moonlight cloud shadows rolled across the furrows
like swooping vultures. Beyond lay the forest, darker even than the
sky between the stars.

She felt herself drifting... out into those
forbidding woods, and she began to perceive a glow there, like the
beam of a single lantern. She tensed, wondering if the mysterious
visitor Ashley had seen was out there at that very moment, but
instead of swinging as though it was carried in a hiker’s hand the
light seemed to float, and Marie’s eyes watered as the gleam
widened, glistening through her tears. She blinked and the light
brightened still more, drawing closer to the forest’s verge,
expanding to illumine the treetops, pulsing as though with a heart
of its own.

For weeks now she had been troubled by
visions more frightening than most. Knowing it was a mistake to do
so she had tried to tell Ashley about them, but Ashley had only
hugged her and told her that they had all been through terrible,
frightening times and that it was no wonder she had bad dreams.

But these dreams were different.

It wasn’t dreams of those lost in Mexachuli
in her visions. Instead the dead were all around her, but they were
people that were living in the valley today. She’d tried to explain
that to Ashley, but her foster mother had only held her tighter,
and when she finally walked away Marie noticed that she was
sniffling and wiping at her eyes.

Marie hated those visions, but she could not
deny them.

Another of the visions that returned more and
more frequently now was one of a great battle, strange,
alien-looking fields literally littered with the dead, but the war
seemed to have nothing to do with the Brethren or the Angels. In
fact she wasn’t even certain that those she saw fighting it were
even men. The worst of the dreams, though, had nothing to do with
death. She was in a dark room surrounded by more tiny, bright red,
evil eyes. She could not see what kind of creatures they were that
watched her, but she could tell that they were predatory and
dangerous. She shivered at the recollection, staring out into the
forest that had gone dark again, praying that the light would
return.

A centurion on patrol, solemn in his duty and
erect of stance, Maxie followed Ashley obediently from room to room
as she checked all the door locks and window latches in the small,
one bedroom farmhouse. Kissing Marie goodnight, she drew every
blind and closed every curtain. Regardless of Maxie’s display of
martial zeal she was well aware of who was the real protector of
the house, and at that moment the dog’s unwavering faith in her
seemed a weight almost more than she could bear.

"You’re supposed to be guarding
us,"
she reminded him, stroking the animal’s head.

Maxie hadn’t been the pick of the litter. At
four weeks he’d been the biggest puppy by far, but rather than the
aggressive nature for which German Shepherds were famous, Maxie
exhibited an unusual shyness. He might easily have dominated his
kennel mates. Instead he waited until they were finished eating to
find a vacant teat. At eight weeks he lay dormant while his
brothers and sisters gnawed on his ears and tail, and rather than
growling in fierce puppy fury when his head was ruffled, his eyes
glistened, and he grinned happily at the attention. Still, Ashley
could no more have chosen another pup that morning four years ago
than she could have stopped the beating of her heart, and Marie had
concurred in the decision. In that instant when their eyes first
met Ashley and Maxie were bonded in some way that she would never
fully understand.

"You don’t want that one," Paulie had told
her, shaking his head. "He’s always gonna be a girley-dog."

Most of the Brethren owned one or more of
Paulie’s shepherds, and most of the dogs had been brought back to
him at six months for their training. The old man was a wonder.
Ashley had watched him often, working with the super-intelligent
canines, talking to them as though they were human, offering them
treats from his pocket, hardly ever scolding. Paulie dogs-as they
were known around the valley-were obedient, loyal, trustworthy,
but-at a word-they could instantly turn into roaring, toothsome
terrors.

All except Maxie. Paulie had been right. At
six months Maxie was still a girley-dog. No amount of coaxing would
convince him to bite Paulie’s leather-clad hand, even when it
threatened Ashley or Marie with a knife or gun.

"He knows you won’t hurt us," she
suggested.

Paulie shook his head, sadly. "He just
doesn’t have the instinct in him. Why not pick another? I’ll take
him back."

But Ashley knew what would happen to Maxie.
The dog’s gentle nature could not be allowed to pass on to future
generations, and as kind hearted as Paulie was he wouldn’t take the
chance that Maxie’s instincts might infect his kennel mates.

She had considered getting another dog as a
companion for Maxie, one that would watch over both of them, but
she was afraid that would make Maxie self-conscious. He thought he
was doing his job. Having another dog in the house he’d know he
hadn’t been up to snuff. Ashley just couldn’t do that to him.