The Forsaken - The Apocalypse Trilogy: Book Two (44 page)

“Captain Updike?” Stoneworthy’s voice echoed
in his head. The passing of the howl had left his senses buzzing.
“Are you well?”

Updike dropped his hands, smirked and cleared
his throat. He brushed his forehead with the back of his sleeve. It
came away dark with perspiration. “Yes, Reverend Stoneworthy. I am
well.”

Stoneworthy insisted that Updike follow him
to the medical tent. The Captain refused. He tried to understand
Updike’s refusal. Something was wrong, it was clear, and the
condition was getting the better of him. The minister decided to
consult the medics on his own. He would suggest they talk to their
leader. The army needed Updike’s vitality…

An explosion sounded to the east pulling him
from his reverie. Then, repetitive popping sounds. Stoneworthy
leapt to his feet. Boot in hand, he hurried through a tangle of
grass at the side of the highway. A line of trees in the distance
was coming alive with smoke and flashes of light. Cold fog obscured
his view. Ambush!

A high-pitched whistling sound was followed
by the eruption of a supply truck. It exploded in a ball of fire.
The concussion sent a wave of force that flipped a jeep over and
tossed soldiers in the air. More snapping sounds. Gunfire!

Another explosion.

Stoneworthy ran across the slippery slope
toward Updike’s jeep. He saw the preacher lying in the ditch beside
the road. His face was a twist of misery. Stoneworthy laid a hand
on his shoulder. The whistling sound of an incoming shell forced
them both to bury their faces in the dirt. The earth heaved up and
hit Stoneworthy’s face. Another truck was burning.

“The City had to be warned!” Updike screamed,
wincing with pain. “To be fair. We had to give them a chance.” He
pushed aside his discomfort and doubt for a moment to look around.
A soldier was there. “Where’s Bolton?”

The man’s face had been torn by a piece of
flying debris. His lower jaw showed bony white.

“He ran along the convoy!” He struggled to
push his face back together. “To lead an attack!”

“Oh God!” Updike’s face was gray.

“Captain? You must not doubt. As you told me
about this war, the realities are extreme.” Stoneworthy ducked. New
snapping, popping sounds rose up from the line of trees. He wanted
to look, but his stomach twisted at the notion. “You cannot doubt
yourself now.”

He took a quick glance—snapped his head up
and over the side of the ditch. In the distance, he saw a long line
of dead soldiers moving slowly, methodically toward the line of
trees. Their guns were popping now—throwing plumes of smoke at the
forest. Angry lead tore at the cover of leaves. A long line of
flame lashed out from a copse of cedar and splashed across a
section of the advancing force. Soldiers danced like burning
puppets.

“You cannot doubt this.” Stoneworthy pressed
his dead lips close to Updike’s ear.
This is what we came to
do
. “We must not let anything stand in the way of the Lord!” He
clambered to his knees. “By the hand of God are we commanded, and
by His word we shall not fail!” Stoneworthy gained his feet.
Further down the line another truck burst into flames. He saw that
the dead soldiers had risen. Bullets whizzed among them, mangled,
dismembered, but they were thousands, many thousands. And bullets
no longer wounded, no longer killed.

Stoneworthy raised his arms to the Army of
the Dead. “My brothers and sisters.” He pointed toward the line of
trees. “There lies the path of Righteousness.” It was two hundred
yards to the trees. Stoneworthy marched, and as he marched forty
thousand marched with him. The air hissed and buzzed with bullets,
a long section of the trees were already a flaming ruin. But they
marched. The Army of the Dead was too large to fill so small a
section of highway, and as he moved forward, Stoneworthy saw the
dead following—hurrying down the road to join in the battle. They
limped, scurried and ran.

“For God!” Stoneworthy bellowed. “For
God!”

A dead soldier beside him was torn in two by
a large round. Stoneworthy was gratified to see the gory remains of
the man following, crawling, inching his way toward the battle.
“For God!” Stoneworthy ran thirty yards and paused at the remains
of another soldier. His body was a cruel twist of ripped tissue and
exposed ganglion, but his eyes moved. They looked at the Reverend
and over to a rifle gripped in a severed hand in the grass.

“Peace brother.” Stoneworthy whispered.

Picking up the rifle, he fired a shot into
the air. “Now, my brothers and sisters!” Those near him smiled and
raised their weapons. Even as he spoke an enemy bullet tore the arm
off a woman. She picked up her weapon with the other. “Destroy the
moneylenders! For God!”

Another howl went up through the army, an
echo of the despairing sound of the day before but somehow the
opposite. Instead of isolation and pain, it rang with solidarity
and vengeance. Holding his own weapon high, Stoneworthy charged
with his soldiers into the murderous hailstorm of bullets.

****

PART THREE

****

61 – Nursie

“It’s for Nursie,” Dawn whispered, showing
Meg the blank slip of paper with a shrug. They sat side by side on
Meg’s bed. The other forever children were milling in groups
playing games or off by themselves reading ridiculous children’s
books or napping.

“It’s for Nursie,” Meg looked at the paper
but wouldn’t touch it. She glanced at the clock over the door.
“That note means she’ll be coming…”

“Is she a nurse?” Dawn patted her friend’s
shoulder.

“Sort of.” Meg looked back, fear in her eyes.
The forever girl shook her head. “She’s like the Principal:
different inside.”

“What do you mean?” Dawn whispered.

“Nothing,” Meg said soberly. “She gives
checkups and takes temperatures.”

Suddenly the speaker over the door
buzzed.

“And so…” said a voice over the loud speaker.
It was female by gravelly and huge. “All being dem slechte kinderen
for slaap.” The loud speaker let out an electronic shriek and was
silent. “Naptime!”

All of the kids ran to their beds.

“It’s her.” Meg pushed Dawn toward her bed
and started smoothing out her own covers and sheets. “Do the same!”
she cried, and then sat on the edge of the mattress with ankles
crossed and hands folded in her lap.

Dawn saw that all the kids were doing the
same, straightening their beds and sitting as Meg had done. The
dead childcare workers scurried to take up their positions in
chairs along the walls.

The dormitory’s double doors banged, and then
jiggled on their hinges. Then a massive woman pushed the doors
wide, took a step forward and stopped. Her body was so heavy and
wide that it wedged firmly into place in the doorframe. The woman
frowned bashfully and then set two large hands to either side of
the doorframe. She kicked once, twice and heaved herself into the
room.

Dawn had never seen a grownup that big
before. She even looked taller than Arthur at the Nurserywood and
he
was a giant.

Nursie wore a huge white uniform—skirt and
nurse’s hat. Her wide, fat legs were covered in tight white silk
and looked like fat uncooked sausages. Her feet were big and
chubby, stuffed into rubber-soled shoes. The buttons running up the
front of her dress were close to popping.

“Nightynacht,” she sang in a voice like a
female foghorn. She paused inside the door, with palms pressed
together, fingers pointed downward, and elbows out with all of her
weight on one foot. “Dem good children!”

Nursie had a mop of bleached hair that hung
down over her collar in fuzzy strands. This cut across her brow
under a red-trimmed nurse’s hat, and over deep-set eyes. Her face
was like an ogre’s: splayed nostrils, heavy cheekbones and lopsided
chin. Thick rouge festered under her cavernous eye sockets. The
eyeliner shone metallic blue in the shadow, and bounced a hint of
glimmer on the dark eyes. Her lips were cucumber-sized and stood
out from her powdered face like welts. Many layers of gloss
traveled two inches past the edges of her lips. The red on her
powdered skin looked like blood. Large yellow teeth gnashed in her
wide mouth.

“Sugar plums and feen and rest,” she croaked.
Nursie clasped her hands under her chin and stepped farther into
the room, breath rumbling in her chest. “Sogni dolci.”

The woman then bent over the closest bed and
ran a long-fingered hand over the child sitting there. She smiled
and chirped something, and patted the little head before moving to
the next child. Nursie’s movements were very feminine despite her
massive shape. The whole while, Dawn noticed Nursie’s eye kept
wandering to her.

When the woman got to Dawn’s bed, she
stopped. A large smile spread over the masculine features, and a
gleam appeared in her eyes.

Dawn held up the Doctor’s slip.

Nursie peered at it and then gave a massive
shake of her head. She drew a foot-long flat box out of a large
pocket on the front of her dress. She set it on the bed and flipped
it open. There was a white dress, leotards, shoes and veil
inside.

“You no need nursing, no,” said Nursie, her
enormous lips blurred with lurid red lipstick. “De Prime he say you
special girl.” The woman looked Dawn over. She shook her massive
head and a light shower of powder rained down. Her carefully waxed
eyebrows lurched out of sight under the dirty blonde bang.

“No, little chienne.” Nursie laid a
thick-nailed hand on Dawn’s head and ruffled the curly hair. “De
Doctor hem say no. Hem say, this one, I no touch...” Nursie brought
her face in close. Her sour damp breath made the forever girl’s
skin crawl. Nursie pressed her large nose to Dawn’s head and neck
and started snuffling like a dog. “Nuff,” she snuffled, and then to
Dawn’s utter amazement, the woman licked the back of her neck,
starting right at the nape and licking upward, the big wet tongue
pushed her hair forward.

“No touch, hem say, for Nursie—no touch!”
Nursie shook her head, lips smacking, and then her eyes caught Meg
in the next bed. She grabbed for the girl. “Ou les viandes
douces…”

Meg let out a squeak and tried to leap out of
the way but Nursie lifted her up by the left wrist. The monstrous
woman started snuffling and licking Meg under the arm. Then to
Dawn’s utter embarrassment, the woman blew Meg’s nightshirt aside
with a puff of breath and snuffled at her friend’s legs and crotch,
bouncing the girl on her oversized mouth and nose. Then Nursie
dropped Meg absentmindedly onto the bed. She turned back to Dawn,
licking her lips.

“Nein…” Nurse said; her dark eyes lost in
mascara and shadow. “Same. The same. Not First-mother no.” Then a
bright gleam entered the woman’s eyes. “Mayhap
your
scent
tells Nursie, why.” The enormous woman shifting her enormous
shoulders and head forward to bend forward at the waist. She braced
her great weight against her knees. Her nose was snuffling; the
nostrils gleamed with mucous. Her gigantic tongue flicked out,
smeared her lipstick farther onto her cheeks. She inched forward.
“La primera madre?”

Dawn inched toward her headboard, disgust
like a tight wire running up her spine. Nursie reached out, but
fell forward and caught her weight on the bed. The other kids
started chanting Dawn’s name, and were now standing on their beds
watching the spectacle. Meg crawled off her bed and stumbled away.
Tears covered the forever girl’s cheeks, and the sight filled Dawn
with anger.

“To taste,” Nursie moaned, drool hanging from
her chin. “First Moeder!”

“
Run
!” said the grownup voice in
Dawn’s head but something stronger held her in place. Instead, she
smacked Nursie on her big round nose. The impact sent a fine cloud
of powder drifting onto the bed. Nursie froze, amazement on her
face and the room went quiet.

Dawn moved away now, slid to the side of her
bed and off as the first quiver and tremble ran up the horrible
woman’s arms. Her massive shoulders began to shake. Her skin was
turning purple. Nursie’s eyes suddenly burned red from beneath the
bleached bang and her lips curled away from her teeth.

“Whore!” Nursie hissed. Dawn saw now that
something was changing in the woman. The skin on her face began to
shift and shimmer, grow thin, and stretch back over bone. And as it
did this, Dawn saw the first hint of something under there.
Nursie’s enormous breasts, barely covered by the taut fabric of her
dress, like the material began to thin, began to shift toward
translucent.

“Slut!” the woman bellowed and pushed herself
back onto her legs, but Dawn could see that those were changing
too. Gone were the thick calves and fat feet jammed into shoes. In
their place were gnarled, fingerlike toes on broad muscular paws.
The legs were hairless and bowed outward from a long female gash of
scarlet flesh. As Nursie’s shape flickered back and forth, Dawn saw
glimpses of the long and weasel-like body beneath. The heavy torso
sprang up to thin arms with catching claws. Spaced up the front of
the long abdomen at intervals were thick purple nipples leaking
yellow milk or pus. And flickering back to her barely human
over-make-upped face, Nursie shifted again, and the features
beneath were monstrous. Long teeth, ravenous red eyes in a head
that tapered to a thick neck covered in bright red muscle. She
shifted back to human form and back to monster.

The forever children, shocked first into
silence, now screamed and leapt off their beds, running and
clambering away from Nursie, as the monster-thing took two hesitant
steps toward Dawn.

“La primera madre.” The thing swung its head,
and Dawn felt saliva and drool fleck her bare legs as she cowered
against the wall.

“De First-whore!” Nursie flickered back to
her human form and back to monster as she took a slavering step
forward. The mammoth tongue dropped out, dribbling saliva and
Nursie snapped her long teeth. “Nursie mangia la prostituta!”