2013: Beyond Armageddon (39 page)

Its lid was closed. Leah opened it and the foul smell Zeke had noticed earlier came billowing out. “Oh God,” she said, and retched.

Excrement had been smeared all over the crucifixes.

Leah struggled not to vomit. The waste smelled human.

Price had done this.

As she scanned the horror, eager to look away, she saw several crucifixes where the foulness completely covered the face of Jesus.

Unable to look any longer, she slammed the lid shut.

“What the matter?” Zeke said.

“He smeared them with feces.”

Laughter from the Pit of Hell spewed forth from the Satanic thing that lay happily writhing on the floor.

“Rinse them off and bring me some.
Fast
.”

It took all her strength to drag the chest into the bathroom. Unable to lift it into the tub, she scooped handfuls of the befouled crucifixes into the tub and turned the shower on full force. A minute later she turned with a towel full of clean crucifixes. She held one out to Zeke. He released one of Price’s wrists to grab it.

Price lurched violently and threw Zeke off, getting to his feet with impossible speed. By the time Zeke recovered, Price had Leah in a chokehold. She clawed at his arm. He grabbed a handful of hair and yanked her head back. She shrieked in pain. Zeke snatched a bottle of holy water and yanked the cap off with his teeth. Bottle in one hand and crucifix in the other, he furiously shook the water onto Price. An animal groan rumbled as he flung Leah aside and lunged at Zeke.

He sidestepped. Price stumbled past. Zeke bent to pick up the broken scepter. As he straightened Price threw a vicious punch at his face. Zeke leaned and the blow glanced his cheek. He brought the scepter down on Price’s head as hard as he could. His knees buckled, but he stayed on his feet.

Zeke brought the scepter down again. Leah flung more holy water onto him.

Price fell to his knees. Zeke kicked him in the face. He fell over backwards, dazed. Zeke jammed the crucifix into the waistband of Price’s pants, ripping his shirt aside so that the body of Jesus pressed directly against his flesh. Lightning exploded in the silver relic. A bestial roar erupted from Price.

Zeke pressed another crucifix against his heart. He bucked but Zeke held the crucifix fast.

Malignant cackles seeped from the Price-thing’s mouth and crawled across Zeke’s flesh like roaches. “Before you get too full of yourself and your Christ, tough guy, you might want to check on Father or Brother or whatever he is. In the closet.”

What?

Was it a trick to get free? Or could someone actually be in there? Had Unger heard Price and tried to intervene?

He had to check it out.

“Cover his chest with crucifixes,” Zeke said. Price’s only reaction as Leah pressed them against him was a low animal groaning that oozed from the depths of his throat.

Fighting off the jackhammer in his chest, Zeke went to the closet as if walking to his execution.

He opened the door.

Unger hung from the rod, dead eyes staring toward Heaven. The cincture from his waist was tied around his neck. In a mockery of the crucifixion, his arms had been spread and hands nailed to the wall behind him. Two of St. Peter’s crucifixes had been used as the nails. The sight of Unger’s blood on the crucifixes, the blood of a man who believed deeply in their power, seared into Zeke’s soul. Christ’s head, hung in despair, burned the feeling even deeper.

His Father had again forsaken Him. And his servant John.

As Zeke stared at the corpse, a numbing guilt immobilized him. Another innocent person had died on his watch.

Leah came up behind him and let out a wail. She held a crucifix in her hand.

No trace of Price’s voice was left in the burst of hellish laughter. “That crucifix thing doesn’t always work. Oh well. You win some, you lose some.”

Voices came through the open door. Mordecai and Hassan, Joe Dayagi behind them. “We heard screams,” Mordecai said.

Leah had slumped against the wall. Mordecai followed her gaze into the closet.

“Oh no,” he moaned.
“No.”

“Price is a Satan worshiper,” Zeke explained before storming into the bathroom.

Mordecai grabbed Price by the hair and slammed his head against the floor. “You vile piece of shit!”

Zeke returned with the chest of crucifixes that had been left under the running shower. “Hold him tight,” he barked. “I want to get more of these on him.”

The men pinioned him to the floor. Only his eyes moved as he watched what was being done to him, pupils glowing like red coals from the hatred seething within. Christ’s burial shroud, still fastened over his shoulders like a cape, had gotten rumpled and twisted beneath him. Zeke roughly jostled Price until he had pulled it free and smoothed it out like wings. Price put up no resistance as Zeke covered his bare torso with crucifixes, then wrapped the cloth tightly around him to press them deeper into his flesh. In a controlled frenzy he pressed more crucifixes onto the shroud to weight it down and hold it in place.

This time they brought no outcry.

Flashes of miniature lightning exploded inside the crucifixes like a raging storm.

Price lay utterly still and silent. Zeke leaned close to stare into the demonic eyes of the man who had tormented him for so many years. His words sprayed out like venom.

“The crucifix thing is working now, you son of a bitch.”

One last evil whisper came from the soulless shell that had once been Michael Price.

“It is not over for you and I, Ezekiel. This has been a mere parlor game for my amusement. This vomit from his mother’s womb called Michael Price is mine now. As you soon will be. I am waiting.”

Even though the window was closed, a gust of chill wind whisked across the room, loudly rustling the curtains. Then all was still.

Price, eyes staring blankly from his hate-etched face, was dead.

Zeke looked at the impaled figures of Jesus strewn across the shroud He had been buried in. The lightning inside them had ceased.

Had Jesus just won or lost?

Zeke’s gaze went to the pentagram on Price’s forehead. A wave of self-loathing washed over him.

Two more deaths. Evil closing in all around them. An enemy looming that had just vowed that not only Zeke would die, he would spend eternity as the vassal of Satan in Hell.

Not just an enemy. The Archenemy. A power strong enough to make Price brutally murder a man he barely knew—a hapless soul named Anthony Unger, who believed he was John the Baptist, and had dedicated the last ten years of his life to God and mankind’s salvation.

On a sudden reflex Zeke defiantly made the sign of the cross.

Leah stared numbly into space. Nothing he could say would do any good, so he merely put his arm around her. The others hovered silently at a discreet distance.

Zeke kept trying not to look at any of it. He’d already seen enough horror to last several lifetimes, and yet he felt he was going to see a lot more. He struggled to keep countless ominous thoughts at bay which, once loose, would thunder through his head like the boulders of an avalanche.

“Leave everything the way it is,” he was finally able to say. “We’ve got to notify the police. Cancel the dig for today.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Mordecai said.

“Looks like Joe is a part of the Hell Squad now. Fill him in on what this is all about.”

Mordecai nodded.

Zeke’s eyes were drawn back to Price. Memory flashed like muzzle fire of the night he’d gunned down the Vietnamese family. Now this. The Deceiver had deceived him—again.

A few feet away, Anthony Unger hung crucified by the very things that were supposed to protect him. Fighting a crushing guilt, Zeke shoved his mind past that disturbing irony and vowed that Unger’s death would not be in vain. His stomach clenched at the brutal, unnecessary murder that eliminated any possibility that Anthony Unger might have been chosen as the Forerunner.

It had come down to Zeke.

Only him now. Him alone.

Responding silently in the dead of night, the police were happy to keep the story from the media. No one wanted to do anything that might keep the discovery of Sodom and Gomorrah from becoming a desperately needed tourist attraction. The police dutifully interviewed everyone to account for their whereabouts, but Mordecai’s reputation was such that his bizarre story of a Satan worshipper going insane was never seriously questioned.

After being the first to be interviewed, Zeke and Leah stayed in the lounge a while to make sure everyone was comfortable. Just before dawn they finally reached their room and went straight to the balcony. They leaned on the railing and watched the new day begin, alone with their thoughts.

The first hint of daybreak began to soften the gloom. Scattered silvery reflections from the stars glittered on the undulating Dead Sea like alien eyes, opening and closing, watching them.

Zeke had come to hate the Sea.

Part of him sorely wished he’d never gotten involved in this—but he was in too deep. Too much had been sacrificed. And yet he couldn’t let anyone else die for a cause that was ultimately his alone. Others had a stake, of sorts, but none as big as his. It all started and ended with him.

He and Mordecai had agreed to meet in an hour to discuss the plan for going the rest of the way down into that tunnel. The logistics would be complicated, and until today Zeke didn’t have a battle plan for coming face-to-face with Satan. Now he did.

At first the idea had seemed crazy to him. But as he’d watched dedicated members of his dig—most of whom were strangers to him—justifying themselves to the police, growing anger had hardened his shaky plan into granite resolve. The hardest part would be breaking it to Leah.

He slid his hand around her waist and gently turned her to faced him.

“I’m going the rest of the way alone.”

“What? No. You have people to help you. Me. Mordecai and Hassan. Joe. I can call Reese—”

“No. This is not negotiable. I refuse to put anyone else at risk.”

Her face crumpled and she buried it against his shoulder.

Zeke tried to console her. “Sweetheart, one way or another, we knew this moment might come.”

She lifted her head to look at him, fighting to quell the tremors of emotion erupting on her face. “I know that,” she rasped, “but I can’t help how I feel. Why does everything always have to be so complicated? Why us? Why kill this man, who had apparently found God? Why wouldn’t God save him? Why? Why?
Why?
”

“Why, indeed.”

He kissed her gently on the forehead. They stood with their faces only inches apart. In the faint morning light, their eyes locked in the tender, searching stare of soulmates, that rare moment when life’s protective shell is cast aside, when only pure childlike innocence shines through. Everything ceased to exist except what they felt for each other. Raw emotion shimmered in their eyes.

Finally, Leah spoke.

“We still have to call Reese.”

“Why?”

“Because we promised. He said if anything serious started, somebody better call him.”

“Yeah, but I also made it clear that he’s not getting in this fight. There’s nothing he can do from over there except worry.”

“So then let’s bring him over here.”

“What for?”

“For moral support if nothing else. I know I’d feel better having him around. Zeke, he’s your best friend. Mine too, for that matter. He deserves to be a part of this.”

“He doesn’t deserve to die.”

“He won’t die.”

“Can you guarantee that? After everything we’ve been through? Look how letting Price onto the dig just blew up in my face.”

“Yeah, but Price was evil. Reese is good. And there are no guarantees in life. You know that.” She watched Zeke struggling to make up his mind. “Would you put your life on the line for him?”

“In a heartbeat.” He closed his eyes for a second, exhaled loudly, then reopened his eyes. “All right. He can come over and
observe
.”

She gave his arm a reassuring squeeze. “We don’t even know what his schedule is like. He may not even be able to come over.”

“Let’s hope so.”

“I’ll call him, then.”

“No,” Zeke said. “I will. I want to make absolutely sure him and me are clear on what is and ain’t gonna happen.”

“And what is gonna happen is you going down alone.”

“That’s right. I started this. I’ve got to finish it. I’ll take every possible precaution, but I’m going to see where that tunnel leads. If it’s nowhere, then you and I are done here and we can get on with our lives. Mordecai and Israel can have Sodom and Gomorrah.”

“And if the tunnel leads somewhere? Like…where we talked about?”

“Then Satan gets an ass-whipping.”

Anguish squeezed the joy from her short laugh. “Zeke, come on now. You’re big and strong, but…by yourself? How? To put it another way: you and what army?”

“That’s the thing. I’ve realized that the
number
of people doesn’t matter. It’s the
weaponry
you have. Think about it. If Satan is this superhuman entity that we’ve been led to believe—with his own army of demonic minions—no amount of people can defeat him. More people would just mean more deaths to add to the body count. But if the arsenal I’m taking with me has the power I’m hoping it has, that should be enough.

“I’ll be taking as many of those relics as I can carry. An army of Christs, if you will. And let’s not forget what I saw in that mirror. Jesus Himself looked me right in the face and told me He’d be there when the time came. So I’m not really going down there alone.”

She looked up at the brightening sky. “I’m counting on you, Lord.”

He took her hands in his. “After I meet with Mordecai I’m getting with Joe Dayagi. He’s an expert in munitions. Helped design some things for the Israeli military. He and I are going to figure out how to turn those relics into one big can of whupass.”

Mordecai was alone in the War Room when Zeke walked in a little before six. He looked up from the notepad he’d been studying and raised his coffee cup in salute. Zeke fixed himself a cup and joined him at the long worktable in the center of the room. After exchanging pleasantries, he announced his intention to go the rest of the way alone.