Empty Bodies 3: Deliverance (Empty Bodies Series Book 3) (14 page)

“Get this piece of shit to his feet and back to the barn,” he commanded them. “And leave her there. Mr. Ellis is right. Maybe if he sees her become a demon, he won’t let it happen again.”

“Help me!” the girl cried. Dylan could just make out the muffled words.

Tears ran down the girl’s face, and Dylan wanted so badly to go to her and at least cover her arm. Bugs had already begun to surround it. He wanted to press the wound so it could stop bleeding. She looked to him one more time, her eyes even redder than before, and he finally had to turn away.

“Come on,” Cindy said, and she grabbed Dylan’s arm again and turned him around.

The dying girl mumbled, and the preacher cried out as the toothless woman led Dylan back to the house.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

David

After the failed experiment with the preacher and the young girl, Clint led David back into the house. Cindy followed, guiding the kidnapped boy back up the stairs. David took one glance at the child, then continued to follow Clint into a room on the other side of the kitchen.

“Come on in,” Clint told David, holding a door open for him.

David walked inside the small space and took a seat in a chair against the wall. An unmade bed sat against the wall next to him, the sheets looking like they hadn’t been changed in a long time. They carried a musty smell with them as proof. A few beer cans had been tossed on the floor near a trash can, but not in it. Against the opposite wall sat a desk. On top of it, an old CB radio. Clint took a seat in the chair in front of the desk. He pulled out a cigarette and lit it, offering one to David, who declined. He was disgusted that the man smoked in the house, especially in such a small room. But not wanting to stir any nerves, he kept the matter to himself.

Clint pointed toward the door with his cigarette in hand and asked, “You think they’ll come looking for that boy?”

David nodded. “Not sure they’ll have a shot in hell of actually finding us, but yeah, I think they could try. I still don’t understand why you don’t just wanna go to the hospital and get them. They’ll be like sitting ducks. We have all their weapons.”

Clint laughed. “Trust me, bud, I do. But this here shit with the preacher is important. I think he has answers. Besides, let them sweat it out a little bit at the hospital. They have to know we’ll come for ‘em eventually since they killed two of our people.”

On the inside, David smiled, but he didn’t show it on his face. He still had the redneck thinking that the two men he’d shot, Trent and Cody, had actually been killed by someone in Will’s group. Truth be told, it had felt good to kill the two men.

Clint narrowed his eyes and pointed his cigarette toward David, the smoke floating toward him.

“You said, the nigger who shot Trent and Cody, his name was Marcus?”

David nodded.

“Well, when we do finally go pay that hospital a visit, I’m gonna hang that spook right in front of everyone before I put a bullet in each of ‘em.”

“As long as you give me Will, I’ll be satisfied.” A smile formed in David’s mind about the fact that he would finally be ready to kill Will the next time he saw him. That he would be broken, and suffer.

Clint smiled. “Ya know, I’m glad I didn’t shoot you when I found you hanging with that stupid darky that we killed. You’re all right, Mr. Ellis.”

“Tell me then,” David said. “What is it with the preacher?”

Clint’s cigarette was almost down to the filter, and he smashed it into an ash tray on the table. He clasped his hands, his elbows on his knees, and looked at David.

“I think he knows how to reverse what’s going on with those monsters.”

David furrowed his brow. “Really? How do you figure?”

“‘Cause I think they’re demons and that he has the power to exorcise them.”

After taking a moment to stare at Clint to see if he was joking, David laughed when he realized the man was being serious. “What the fuck is so funny?” Clint asked.

Getting his laughter to calm, David said, “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, but demons aren’t real. You’ve got a better chance of bangin’ Kate Upton than you do of seeing some little red guy come up out of that girl out there.”

“It ain’t gonna be like that,” Clint replied. “That’s not how they look. In fact, I doubt we’d ever even see them, but they’re there.”

In his mind, David continued to laugh. The fact that the redneck actually thought all these people had been possessed by demons, as opposed to infected with something viral, was silly. A fairytale.

“Okay, so let’s say these things
are
possessed. Where did you even get that idea in the first place, and what do you think that preacher can do to ‘heal’ them? Because, let me tell you, there’s nothing in Revelation that says Lucifer will turn half the human race into flesh-eating monsters to roam the earth and hunt the last of us. That’s silly.””

“The Bible has been passed down for thousands of years, and there are many lost books. Many believe that one of the lost books of the New Testament had a different translation of the apocalypse than the one we’ve come to know from Revelation. One that says demons will infect the world and spread out amongst the living until the human race is vanished, and all that remains are the spirits of the Dark Lord. I know it’s hard to believe, Mr. Ellis. I’ve been going to church my whole life, a proud Southern Baptist, and this shit seems just as out there to me as it does to you. But I think it’s real. And I think Samuel can prove it.”

“Well, he sure didn’t prove shit out there other than the fact he knows how to pray,” David said. “And if he does indeed know how to ‘cure’ everyone, he’s sure willing to let an innocent girl die to hide it. And let’s pretend for a moment that all this is real... what makes you think he can stop it?”

“Trent, one of the men who took you to the hospital, in case you don’t remember, has known Samuel for a long time. Not friends, but the preacher grew up with Trent’s wife. Trent said that the preacher has been talking about this shit for years. He even overheard him a few days before all this shit happened. Samuel was down the street at the truck stop goin’ on and on about the end of the world and the ‘demons’. So, when all this stuff happened, one of the first things we did was go find Samuel.”

Clint smiled. “In time, David. You’ll see. We have plenty more sacrifices in line. Eventually, his guilt will get to him, and he will at least
try
to perform an exorcism.”

“And what if it doesn’t work?”

Clint shrugged. “Then I guess we won’t need the preacher anymore.” He looked down at his watch. “In thirty minutes, we’ll go get him. The bitch should be turned by then. We’ll see how he feels once he sees what he’s done.”

***

Dylan

The door swung open and Cindy almost literally tossed Dylan into his room. He was small, but he was still surprised by the woman’s strength, her being able to nearly throw a squirming eleven year old boy.

As he lay on his stomach, gripping the carpet, the door slammed behind him and he heard the deadbolt turn into the lock from the outside. Cindy’s feet stomped across the floor, but then his ears turned to something else. It was a noise inside the room. Shuddering and heavy breathing. Dylan got up onto his knees and looked over to the wall, and his eyes widened.

“Mary Beth.”

The girl was curled up in the corner of the room on her bed. Dylan rose to his feet and hurried over to her. When he got closer, he could see that she was shaking, almost as if she were cold. He moved onto the center of the bed on his knees and reached out toward her.

“Mary Beth, are you—”

“Don’t touch me!”

Dylan jumped back. Her tone was sharp and demanding. It threw him off-guard. He moved to the edge of the bed, clasping his hands together.

“M-Mary Beth, what’s wrong?”

“They’re going to kill me.”

Dylan narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean? Who’s going to kill you?”

“Them,” Mary Beth replied. She was nearly inarticulate through her crying. “The bad people downstairs.”

“What? Why do you think they’re gonna kill you?”

“They’re gonna turn me into one of
them
.”

“Them what?” Dylan didn’t understand.

A gunshot rang from outside, startling both of the children. Dylan looked over toward the window, then back down at Mary Beth. She was now pointing at the window.

“One of them.”

Dylan hopped off the bed and hurried over to the window.

A man in a hat with long hair pumped a shotgun. Dylan recognized him as Danny as he hollered, and then he aimed the gun in front of him. The branches of a tree hid what he was aiming at. Another shot went off, and Dylan saw a body fall out from the shadow of the trees. It was an Empty. Dylan looked back over toward Mary Beth.

“You think they’re gonna turn you into an Empty?”

Mary Beth finally looked up from hugging herself. “A what?”

“Sorry. That’s what we called those monsters in the group I was with before. Empties.”

“Oh,” she replied, wiping tears from her eyes. “Those two little boys who are here in the house, they told me that the bad people were going to take me out there and turn me into one of those things. They said something about a table and how they have one of the creatures—an Empty, you called
 
it—locked up.”

Dylan had to look away from the girl. He thought about everything he’d just witnessed outside and knew he wouldn’t be able to keep what he’d seen to himself if she started asking questions. He’d never been one to successfully keep a secret. Any time one of his friends or classmates told him a secret, the kid wouldn’t even have to have their back turned before Dylan was already telling someone else. But in this case, he didn’t want the girl to be anymore frightened than she already was.

“I don’t want them to bite me, Dylan. I don’t want them to hurt me.”

Dylan went back to the bed. He thought back to when Holly had been upset and how Will had wrapped his arm around her to try and comfort her.
Worth a shot.

The young boy reluctantly put his arm around the frightened girl, and she nestled into his chest. It was strange. He’d never held a girl before who wasn’t his mom.

“Please, Dylan. Don’t let them hurt me.”

“I won’t.”

Now Dylan just had to figure out how he could keep that promise if someone did come to grab her.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

David

For the past twenty minutes, David had been flipping through the Book of Revelation in a New King James Bible that he’d found in the drawer of the table next to his bed. Even though Clint had claimed that it was a lost book that prophesied demons would come to Earth and possess the human race, he scanned each verse, looking for any kind of hint that any of this could be true. Even if that proclamation was in a lost book, he thought there might still be a chance that some of the story could be tied into Revelation. After a time searching the text for clues, he closed the book and put it down.

“This is bullshit.”

A knock came at the door.

“Come in.”

The large burly man known as Horace stepped into the doorway. Under the bright light in the room, the man was even uglier than David had thought, as he hadn’t really looked at him carefully until now. Horace nodded his head toward the front door.