Adrian's Undead Diary (Book 5): Wrath (33 page)
“Oh Gilbert Donohue. Your strength of will shall be her undoing. You will fulfill your role in this, or I shall take her from you. She will suffer. Forever.”
“The hell you will. She isn’t dead yet, and I’ve got plenty to say about you trying to touch her.” Gilbert’s bony old fists knotted up in anger. No one tried him. Not even the Devil.
“Gilbert, allow me to appease your anger, and lay out a single simple task for you. We will build a relationship based on trust. Achieve this simple task, and your wife is safe for some time. Can we agree to this one simple task?”
Gilbert thought about it long and hard. He thought of his wife’s beautiful blue eyes, and how she looked at him in the morning when she woke up. He couldn’t bear the thought of her being in danger. Besides, if anyone could outsmart the Devil, it was him. “Let’s hear it.”
“The end of times will be brought about in a rolling crescendo of death. The first day thousands will die. The second day tens of thousands, and the third day shall see the end of millions. Eventually, you will all perish. Your dead have been chosen as the instrument of justice, and they are crude weapons. I can only control them to a point, and there is good chance one of them will let slip from my leash, and try to kill you and your wife. To prevent this, you must fortify your home, and obtain more resources. Food, ammunition, water, wood, everything to survive the end of the world that you will help bring about. Do this, and I shall spare you and your wife for the foreseeable future.”
“Seems fair. It’s a deal. How long do I have?” Gilbert’s mind slipped into Green Beret mode, thinking, assessing, planning.
“When you awaken, it will be the morning of June 6
th
. The end will begin on June 23
rd
. You must be ready on that day, or you run the risk of being killed by the horde.”
And that’s when Gilbert came to, sweaty, shaking, and wishing his wife hadn’t gone into their warehouse that day for work. He knew instantly the dream wasn’t just a dream. His chin was covered in the phlegm he’d coughed up in the dream, and sitting on his pillow next to his face was a freshly cut flower. A white poppy.
The flower of death.
*****
Gilbert told his wife that evening when she got home from work that the plexiglass he’d just put on the windows was there for insurance purposes. There had been a break in down the street a month ago, and she’d been complaining about how the neighborhood was on the way down. She could understand that rationale. The following day's activities were a bit harder to explain. They were just as hard to rationalize for Gilbert. Was he mad?
Gilbert had no idea what the voice in the dream meant when it said that the dead would be the instruments of justice. He assumed it meant that dead people would rise up from the grave, and the thought of that chilled him to the bone. Gilbert decided that shoring up the porch railing, and building a heavy duty gate at the top of the steps behind the screen door was the way to go. It also looked fairly nondescript, and if this all turned out to him just being crazy, the more he hid it, the better off he and his wife were.
His wife was not impressed by the sudden carpentry work. “Gilly," she asked, "why is there a new sheet of plywood all across the brand new railing we put in last summer?”
“Well dear, you see," Gilbert had said to her, "we’ve had some trouble with raccoons getting up on the porch. This is a temporary fix. I’ll get something better looking up in a few weeks.”
That bought him enough time until it started. The end started. June 23
rd
, 2010, just as The Voice had said in his dream. Gilbert’s wife went to work that day despite his insistence that she stay home. They even had an argument over it, which Gilbert would regret daily until he died. The company warehouse would run itself he’d said, and if the end of the world really did happen that day, then it wouldn’t matter one way or the other anyway. He didn’t tell her that part. Nevertheless, despite his protests, she went in anyway. She was never the type of person that could let go and let others do her work for her. Either she did it herself the right way, or it was certain to be done wrong by someone else. Gilbert watched her leave that morning in her small Volvo, and that was the last time he saw her.
When the early morning news came on, and the pictures of death and destruction from around the world began to roll in nonstop, he knew the end was in his lap. Gilbert tried to call her, but she didn’t pick up her cell phone, and he suspected it was off. She never used the thing.
Rather than leaving to try and find her, he knew he should finish the preparations on the house for her return. He knew she’d be safe. He’d made a deal with the Devil, and he’d held up his part of the bargain.
*****
The funny thing about deals with the Devil is that they’re never quite what they seem. When his wife never came home, or called, or returned his calls that day, he knew he’d been had. Gilbert sat at the window in the living room of his house, his trusty AK-47 in hand, watching the few neighbors that made it out of the city alive frantically loading things into their cars to escape to somewhere else. Many could head north maybe, where it was more rural. Anywhere but here. Gilbert knew it wouldn’t matter in the long run. Hell had released its fury, and the flood would spread until it covered everything.
That night he had another dream, a nightmare really. He felt the voice in the darkness before the cold sank underneath his skin, and he tasted the presence of blood.
“Well done Gilbert Donohue. Your home will survive the onslaught for some time.”
Gilbert was furious, and reached for the AK that had been slung at his side all that day, but it wasn’t in the dream with him. He was full of anger. “Where is my wife? You promised me she would survive.”
“And she did for some time. Sadly, she did not make it out of the city alive. Crude tools occasionally fail at what they are tasked with.”
“You motherfucker! You promised me she’d live!” Gilbert was raging now. He felt the hot tears slide down his cheek, warming the skin in the cold air of the dark space.
“I have no mother to fuck. Gilbert Donohue your time to rest is upon you. You have earned a respite. Remain where you are, and when the time is right, I shall visit you once more.”
“Is my wife dead?” Gilbert trembled with a mixture of rage and heartache. Inside his chest he felt acute stabbing pain. His nerves were burning from the tip of his toes to the top of his head. For the first time in his memory, he felt helpless, and vulnerable.
“She has died. However, I have set her soul aside for safekeeping. It is under my eye, and so long as you continue to do my bidding, she shall remain in a blissful state until this catechism passes. Should you not do my bidding Gilbert Donohue… She shall suffer for eternity.”
*****
It was December when the next dream came. Gilbert had spent the autumn months keeping busy, mostly clearing small trees out of the backyard to use as fuel in the woodstove. The electricity died early, the phones even earlier, and he knew he’d freeze to death over winter without a lot of wood. Of course it takes a tremendous amount of energy for a 70 year old man to chop down a tree with an axe.
It didn’t help either that the dead family down the cul de sac tried to smash their way out of their home every time he went outside. The family had starved to death inside their own house. The wife was convinced a plague was the cause for all the death and destruction. Gilbert wasn’t aware of any disease that caused the dead to rise up and kill the living. She on the other hand forbid even opening the door to take the small offerings of food and advice Gilbert offered to them. It was sad when he saw them scratching fruitlessly at the windows, their now dead fingers trying to break the glass to get at him. In truth, they were the only dead people he’d seen up to that point.
The dream that came to him in December scared Gilbert. He awoke in the cold, dim expanse and immediately shouted to the voice of evil, “Where is my wife? How is she?”
“Patience Gilbert Donohue. All is the same with your beloved. But for this to remain so, you must begin the next phase of your task.”
“How do I know you’re not lying to me like before? Why should I trust you?” Gilbert’s heart ticked rapidly away in his chest like the rattle of a baseball card in the spokes of a bicycle.
“You do not know if I am lying, just that I have been right all along. And I assure you, if you want her soul to remain happy, then you will do what needs to be done.”
Gilbert sighed, and his heartbeat slowed a measure. This fight required a different approach. “What now?”
“You are about to encounter the first of The Trinity. Some call him the Soul. Others call him the Scribe. He is your ultimate task.”
“Ultimate task? I don’t get it. Am I supposed to kill this guy? Will you free my wife if I do? Let her go to Heaven, or wherever it is we go?” He’d cut the nuts off the Pope if it meant saving his wife’s soul. Gilbert’s palms were clammy, even in the chill of the air. The more he thought about what The Voice said, the more uncertainty and fear crept into the back of his mind.
“You are not to kill him. You are to misguide. You are to confuse, confound, and put him into situations that will make him slip, and illuminate why humanity must be eradicated. As he does, so humanity suffers.”
“Illuminate to whom? Who is the judge of all this? God?” Gilbert’s mind was racing now.
“That is as good a name as any.”
No shit Gilbert thought to himself. The Devil and God playing games, and we are the pieces on the board. “Why the game? What is this Trinity?”
“Excellent questions Gilbert Donohue. You are one of my chosen. You serve my purposes where we have agreed not to directly interfere. You act as my proxy. The man you are about to meet serves the power you call ‘God’ unknowingly as part of the catechism. He is part of the test of humanity and whether or not it will be allowed to try again. If he is corrupted, and forced down the path humanity has been on, or worse, then I have won, and existence shall be purged of your kind. If he survives this great test retaining his humanity, and becomes the type of person this world needs to continue, then your kind will receive their second chance, and can continue to ruin creation with your petty, selfish natures.”
“He’s the second coming?”
“Not exactly. Do not muddle purely Christian thought into this. The dogmas of religion have little to do with this. Belief on the other hand, is very much central. He is one of a group of three chosen to serve as the focus of the test.”
“And what if he’s too smart for me? What if I can’t mislead him, confuse him, and send him on the path to misery and ruin? Who are the other two in this Trinity?” Gilbert asked the dark voice.
“You will be able to earn his trust. He will like you. Part of your role in this is that he is likely to bond with you. When given the opportunities, you shall make suggestions, play with his mind, and lead him astray. I will inform you of the best opportunities for this. As for the other two… I highly doubt you will meet them. You will succeed in your task before they arrive, or he will discover your true nature, and you will die your traitor’s death at his hands.”
Gilbert didn’t like this one bit. “What is his name? What does he look like?”
“You will know him as Adrian MacArthur Ring. He is the spitting image of the son you wanted, but never had. He will be smart, strong, and skilled, but his heart is laid low. I have already manipulated events to start the process of breaking him as a man. I have given him great regret. Your task is to ensure he stays on that path to ruination.”
Gilbert thought about the children he and his wife never had. His wife had health concerns in her lady regions, and they were never able to have kids. Gilbert sorely missed the opportunity to be a father. Thinking that this stranger would be the son he never had certainly didn’t make him want to cross the man.
“Think of your wife, and her soul Gilbert Donohue.”
Gilbert nodded, and like the soldier he was, he listened to the orders he was given, and hoped for the best.
*****
Gilbert had been attacked by the undead family on the circle a few days after that dream. He’d been outside cutting down a small pine tree in the snow when he heard the glass in one of their windows break. They’d all fallen out the window like bowling pins, and made their way across the cul de sac as he trotted through the thick snow to try and get inside the house. Of course a seventy year old in the snow doesn’t move all that well, and by the time he reached his porch steps, they were on the walkway, and he had to draw his M1911 and drop them. Making any kind of loud noise horrified him, but getting eaten alive seemed like a much worse proposition. He’d heard from the news that the only way to kill these things was to destroy their head, and once he’d put a round through all three of their skulls, he sat on the porch and caught his breath.
It’d been a long time since he’d pointed a gun at a person and pulled the trigger. It brought back harsh memories of a long time ago, in a humid and dark place he’d spent years trying to forget about. Not long after that event the man The Voice told him about came around.
Gilbert had heard hammering, and saws, and gunfire for months over at the private school down the road. He assumed it was the teachers at work trying to fend off the dead, but as it turned out, it was the man named Adrian. He was securing the school all along as a place to live and start anew. Adrian was preparing to offer sanctuary to strangers.