Fires Rising (18 page)

The men needed to hear no more. They knew. There would be no chance for escape without it.

Jyro stared at Timothy for a moment, then working against his fear, motioned down the dark hallway toward the rec room. "Let's go see if the chalice is still there."

T
he subway station lay silent and desolate. Like the street outside the Church of Holy Innocents, not a soul gathered. The main overhead lights were out, but all the emergency beacons still glowed, bathing the wide area in sickly yellow light.

Pilazzo passed the attendant booth and saw with dismay that someone had smashed the plexi casement and looted what cash they could find inside. A sunburst of blood was painted over the subway system map inside. Pilazzo guessed that on the floor below, amid the shards of inch-thick Plexiglas he'd always presumed to be shatterproof, the body of the attendant lay in a dead heap.

He stooped beneath the turnstile and walked briskly down the steps to the platform.

A subway train sat on the tracks, its doors open, interior lights flickering; he could hear the electric charge of them buzzing, a stench of ozone and urine saturating the air.

He turned around, and with both fear and an odd sense of comfort, saw that he was alone.

Seeing no place to sit, he leaned against the closest support column and began to cry. It was just a few sobs at first but soon the floodgates opened and the wails spilled from his mouth ungoverned, joining the warm tears streaking down his face. After a time, he stopped and gazed up the stairs that led to the outside world…and then, to the train that continued to sit motionless amid a thin wisp of acrid smoke and sputtering lights.

The open door beckoned him.

He was afraid…but wasn't
terrified
as he felt he should be, and couldn't fathom as to why. There were murders being committed on the streets, chaos erupting into what might be riotous proportions…and yet inexplicably he still maintained his composure—his
will
to press forward and move on with his mission.

Your church awaits…

He took a step toward the open train door.

From behind him came a voice, a mocking call:
Uh-boo-hoo-hooooo…"
It was the type of feigned blubber a schoolyard bully might make after shoving a nerdy nemesis into a mud puddle.

Pilazzo froze, abrupt fear whizzing up and down his spine. He peered over his shoulder and saw not just one man but four men standing perhaps twenty feet away. They were huddled alongside one another, staring at him, eyes feral beneath the dim lighting.

One of the men, taller than the rest, called out with derision and sarcasm,
"Time to play, priest. Time to plaaaayyyy!"
His head jerked back and forth, shoulder length hair brushing in and out of his face.
 

The men moved forward as a group, gaits hideous and unnatural, jerking and wrenching as if manipulated by intermittent surges of power. Pilazzo could see none of them boasting any kind of construction gear. But he knew: they were workers. They had muscles. They were tanned, with soiled jeans and red tee-shirts emblazoned with graphic logos.

They were
afraid
of him.

Like the others, they fear me. Here I stand, utterly defenseless, in a place where they could murder me as they did Thomas, and that hobo. But, they do not because…because they cannot. I do not know how I know this, but it is perfectly clear in my head, perfectly lucid.

It is the Goodness that protects you, Antonio…

Through the splay of watery light and hazy smoke, he could see a large wrench clutched in the hand of one worker. The worker grinned and gnashed his teeth, slamming the tool into his palm in an intimidating I'm-going-to-club-you gesture.

Pilazzo took a step back, icy breath suddenly misting from his mouth.

The tall worker's laughs persisted without restraint. Pilazzo could see his eyes rolling up into their sockets, showing slick whites.

In his head, a whispering voice:
Rosary…rosary…rosary…

NO!!!

The worker mocked, "Come plaaayyyy with us, priest!" His wicked laughs continued, polluting the deadly silence with insane evil.
 

A brutal welling of emotions beset Pilazzo, intense fear coupled with pure disgust and anger. Part of him wanted to shout out and defy the evil that was toying with him, attempting to lure him into its bizarre trap, but he followed his heart and the will of the message sent to him by this evil's adversary, and staggered into the train.

As soon as he stepped inside, the doors closed. The lights continued flickering, leaving him countering intervals of light and darkness. He grasped onto the closest pole, palm slick against the silvery surface. Dizziness rolled over him. He closed his eyes tightly, praying.

With a sudden
smack
, the hands of the workers struck the dirty windows. He startled, stomach hurling bitter acids into his throat, watching as blood smeared the clear plastic. They peered into the train, only the whites of their eyes clearly visible, fingernails scratching harshly against the hard surface.

The worker with the wrench thrashed it forward and drove it right through the window, and it was only now upon witnessing this man's supernatural strength that Pilazzo understood how the token booth had been smashed. The worker bucked and thrashed outside the train, trying to batter his way through, shoving his face forward and cackling like a monster in a dark-ride attraction. His eyes were turned inward so much that the veins and tendons were visible, red and blue and fit to rupture.

"
NO!"
Pilazzo screamed. He backed up against the opposite door…but couldn't pull his tortured eyes away from the men with their twisted faces and bloodied hands bludgeoning through the shattered window. The lights continued to buzz and flicker and then the train started moving forward, and Pilazzo knew that if he raced through to the front of the train he wouldn't find a motorman at the helm.

The four workers kept pace with the train as it moved, whipping their heads back and forth like Dobermans gnawing at a steel cage. The worker with the wrench reached farther inside and the flesh of his forearm tore open on an exposed shard of plastic. Blood gushed, painting the seat below.

Pilazzo's mind ran like mad:
If they are afraid of me, then why come after me now, with a barrier between us? Is it their mission to simply scare me? Weaken me?

The train picked up speed, too quickly for the workers to keep up now, and they abruptly fell away. All of them except the worker with the wrench. His arm was still snagged on the shard of plastic. Sprinting, the worker roared like an injured wildebeest as he tried like crazy to yank his arm free. Blood burst from his wound.

His derision morphed into utter distress as he lost his footing and fell. Now the speeding train was dragging him.

Crunch!

Pilazzo flinched as the worker disappeared and the darkness of the subway tunnel enclosed the windows. The lights in the train buzzed out at that instant, and in a quick flash of blue volts from inside the tunnel, Pilazzo could see the worker's severed arm thump onto the bloody seat across from him, the hand open, the wrench it held clanging to the floor. An abrupt spatter of warmth hit his face, and he knew as the lights flickered back on that he'd been sprayed with the worker's blood. He wiped his eyes in a panic and watched with sick horror as the fingers shriveled into the severed hand like the appendages of a spider beneath a shot of insecticide.

The train moved at a rapid clip, passing the next station without a hint of slowing down. The station he regularly got off at was four stops away. He wondered if the train would stop there at all.

Somehow, he felt it would.

He quickly recalled what Thomas Sanchez had said to him, the Monsignor's final words:
We are being summoned. Follow the message that God delivers to you. Heed His word and do your part to bring down the evil that promises man the end of days…

And in his mind:
Your church awaits…

"Priest…" This voice, low and gravely.

He shot a startled glance down the length of the car.

Seated at the opposite end was a vagrant, the same homeless man that had touched his shoulder upon returning to Holy Innocents yesterday afternoon.

In his mind's eye, the vision returned, as clear as a television transmission:
blackened skies and an army of tattered men facing a great evil rising up before a wall of raging fires and billowing smoke…

His breath escaped him. He felt his lungs grasping for air. Dizziness shrouded his ability to see, and he had to close his eyes. A stench of smoke filled his nose and he felt himself edging very close to death: an accumulation of fear and uncertainty slowly murdering him.

He heard the vagrant speak: "
Your church awaits, priest…"

Grasping the seat's handrail, he opened his eyes.

The vagrant stood now only ten feet away, staring at him, eyes wide and mournful, sheened with gummy tears. The homeless man extended a callused hand, displaying what appeared to be a thick wrinkle of crimson scars around his ring finger.

Pilazzo gasped. The lights in the train flashed, and in the transcendent darkness saw his mother standing there, just as she did in his dream, garbed in a black billowing robe, a single finger pressed across her lips. In his mind he heard her utter one word:
Antonio…

Oh my God…

The lights flashed back on.

His mother's image was gone.

So was the vagrant.

Pilazzo shot a glance about the train, hands groping the handrail as he looked under the seats. He saw no sign of the vagrant. He stood up, peered under his own seat. Nothing.

The train pulled into a station. The brakes squealed, sending up an odor of burning metal. He wobbled as the train slowed, grabbed hold of the support pole, and peered out the blood-smeared window. The signs indicated he was at the 78
^th
Street station.

I'm here. My church awaits…

The train stopped. The doors opened.

He looked, hesitated, tried to swallow but couldn't. Listening, he heard nothing. Saw no movement.

The train planned to travel no further.

Mumbling a prayer, he exited onto the platform, staggered away from the train and leaned up against the closest support column.

Here, he gazed up the steps leading to the streets of Manhattan.

One block away from the Church of St Peter.

T
he men moved as a loose group, Jyro leading the way. He held a lighter out before him, the faint hiss audible in the tense silence. Jyro could see the pile of debris at the end of the hall, flickering like a restless ghost. But that was all. The wall beyond lay entirely in darkness.

Weston moved in alongside Jyro, head bobbing in a rhythm, holding a small plank of wood with both hands, ready to swing it should the need arise.
 
Following close behind were Seymour and Dallas, then Wilson, Timothy, Marcus and Rollo, with Wrath anchoring the procession. They passed the lunchroom and then the lockers, all of them peering ahead to the doors leading into the rec room. Just inside the entrance, a white light blared, much brighter than the emergency beacons in the lobby, enabling them to see the hole in the floor as they went inside.

Putting aside the big hole, nothing seemed out of the ordinary in the room. There were no floating chalices. No fires or wind. And no fountaining streams of blood.

From the back of the line, Wrath called out, "What do you see?"

Jyro stepped forward, panting nervously at the mere sight of the hole. His feet crunched on bits of debris, some of it wet, but most of it not. Weston and the others shuffled in close behind him.

"Nothin' but a big hole," he said. A cold chill traced its way up his back.

"Plenty of light here." Jyro turned and saw Dallas peering up at the beacon, bloodshot eyes gazing woefully at the exposed bulbs jutting from the wall. He raised a tattooed arm and pointed to the lightbulbs
 
"They replaced the hazards with a pair of halogens. See? They're pointed down into the hole." He grinned thinly and added, "Used to be an electrician, in my former life."

The group stopped and stared, and Jyro realized that seeing this hole had confirmed to the others the incredible story they'd heard from him and Timothy—a story they did not want to believe.

Jyro separated himself from the group and stepped to the edge of the hole. He peered down into it and gasped at what he saw—at what he
felt
: a sudden dislocation of his psyche from reality, forcing him to sense much more than the inanimate existence of the hole's depth and exposed skeletons (many now shattered in consequence to the ruthless strides of the workers' boots) coring its dark bottom.

A rush of nearly painful tingles enveloped Jyro's body—this was how he felt last night upon first investigating the hole. There'd been an unmistakable presence looking down on him then,
touching
him, making certain that he moved and acted exactly as it wanted him too. He shuddered. The presence was still here. It came on to him and he could feel it. And it wanted him to peer into the hole.