The Forsaken - The Apocalypse Trilogy: Book Two (47 page)

A stainless steel room appeared around Dawn.
Glossy and glaring on her eyes at first, she saw cages built into
one wall. Forever children tugged at the bars. Some were bandaged;
others were missing limbs or eyes. All bore scars and injury on
scalps and naked bodies. There were two steps down from the door to
a tile floor.

In the center of the room was a low steel
table with a pair of forever boys lying on top—wrists and ankles
bound and apparently asleep. Dawn was still reeling from the caged
kids when she realized the horror of it. Someone had sutured the
boys together torso to torso, and their arms and legs at the joints
were sewn and bandaged. The skin color varied too, giving the
impression of many donors, made them look like poorly made rag
dolls.

A silent scream burned in the forever girl’s
chest.

“I just thought…” the Doctor said, turning to
her, “it would be better if I treated you.”

Dawn screamed and jumped back, her action
catching the Doctor off guard. She stumbled against the counter,
knocking her head and making her ears ring.

“See whatever I do,” the Doctor chuckled,
hurrying toward her. “It will be better than what the Prime plans.”
And he leapt for her. Dawn rolled aside, barely avoiding his heavy
hands and came up by the door. She jumped for the handle, but it
opened.

Nursie stood there, backlit and grotesque
without her skin.

“Nein!” the monster shrieked, slapping Dawn
on the face. She rolled across the room into the steel cupboards.
Nursie turned to the Doctor who froze in his tracks, his lips
working to form an excuse or a command, his brow wriggling
feverishly. Nursie’s oversized teeth ripped the air as she
spoke.

“Der Doctor lie.” She shook her head and gobs
of spittle splattered all around Dawn. “Der Prime, hem say, Nursie,
NO!” The monster stepped forward—thick, foul fluids poured from her
many nipples, left a slick trail on the floor between her legs.
“But hem say no Doctor touch girl too. Nein!”

And Nursie grabbed the doctor by the neck.
His muffled scream was silenced as she pulled his head and face
close to hers. His eyes were wide and disbelieving as she bit down
on his face. Her foot-long incisors dug into the Doctor’s forehead
and tore up under his chin. The action sheared the man’s face off
and exposed his brain in a single bite. The Doctor’s gory body
kicked and struggled blindly.

Dawn looked away as blood and fluid sprayed
down the monster’s long chest. Nursie chuckled over the spatter of
blood, and there was another horrific crunch, and then a vile
sucking sound. After a moment, something hit the floor with a bony
thump. Dawn tried to shut it out. The forever children in the cages
were crying out in fear, and others in encouragement. And Dawn was
running so deep into herself that she barely understood that the
kids were telling her to run away.

She flipped over and got her hands under her,
but Nursie was already standing there; thick red blood poured from
her mouth.

“Der his doctor time no more,” the monster’s
spittle rained down like sick dew. “Hem and Der Prime soon, no
more.
Kaput
!” The thing reached down for her with long bony
arms. “It Nursie time now. Es ist meine Zeit!”

Dawn screamed with terror as Nursie’s long
fingers slipped around her waist.

65 –Karen’s Love

A change came on Karen during all the
violence. It insulated her from it, and so the Marquis’ murder
happened in a muffled world at an extreme distance. At first she
feared it was the result of the many blows she’d received to the
head—or the “spell” that the Marquis and the thin man claimed to
have put upon her. She theorized it might even be an effect of the
drugs that the movie men slipped into her drink—how long ago did
that happen? But she realized, after a few hours of waking that she
was able to see things she was blind to before. Certainly no one
else in the party was witnessing anything unusual.
I rushed
about wildly searching for You like some monster loose in Your
beautiful world
…

Sister Karen had a mission. While the others
bickered and menaced their way through events and maintained their
malevolent harmony, she had slipped into what she at first believed
to be catatonia. As the gunman, Tiny, manhandled her in the car,
the sensation of his fingers on her slipped away—the pressure took
on muted qualities separate from her awareness. The catatonia was
not so much a falling away from awareness, as it was a redirection,
a sharpening of her perceptions. She had read stories about people
who could read auras. She could
see
them now.
You sent my
blindness reeling
.

Since her abduction, she had been entirely at
the mercy of others. Despite her best efforts to bolster her
courage, she knew that she lived and died by the wishes of the men
who held her. This new perception allowed her to see past their
boisterous personas to the emotional men beneath. This challenged
her, because it was easier to hate them when she evaluated them on
their actions alone.

Grant that the sick Thou hast placed in my
care may be abundantly blessed
…

She knew judging them was wrong. They were
God’s children and deserving of compassion until He judged them.
Murderers obviously, and worse, but they were no different from her
in the eyes of God.

She corrected herself. These men, though they
might be God’s children, had too much power for their own good. And
until their power was taken away, they would be dangerous. They’d
never learn while they controlled—while they were closed. Seeing
their emotional underbellies might give her an edge. She corrected
herself.
Grant me the required insight and wisdom to thoroughly
digest Your mysteries
…

If it were God’s plan to allow her to see her
enemy’s humanity, then she would have to learn to use the gift. And
Karen quickly understood that it was a powerful gift because it
acted as catalyst to reviving her faith. These men needed love.
They needed compassion. They’d missed it on the road to adulthood
and that brought them to these evil ends. Felon had murdered Able,
but Able would have found a way to love him. That was his job as a
shepherd and teacher—and hers: to see past the humanity and love
the soul.

So Karen used this gift from God, this new
vision, to teach herself to love them too. Wasn’t this the reason
for her self-hatred? The reason she behaved like a self-destructive
harlot? If she believed she did not deserve love, how could she
love God? And how could anyone love her? How could she teach these
men to love themselves? Perhaps that was the reason for this gift
of sight. With it she could learn to love herself in her enemies,
and free God’s love to flow through her to heal them.

I love my neighbor as myself for the love
of You. I forgive all who have injured me and I ask pardon of all
whom I have injured
.

She realized now that she had closed her
heart to the world and made herself vulnerable. She saw that if she
chose to open herself, be vulnerable, she would have control. She
wouldn’t feel overrun by life. Instead, by opening herself to it,
she could see the avenues open to her. She was not a plaything of
life; she was its voice. Only when she resisted her connection with
it, did she feel overwhelmed and want to hide. Karen realized she
had powers yet. And that seemed to be the instinctive key to her
vision. She had love to give and she wanted it.

She opened herself to Driver and saw his
competition with Tiny and Felon. But it was not a green with envy
that she saw. She simply recognized or deciphered what had been
hidden by actions. She saw Driver “flare” at Tiny. The “flare’ she
read was rebellion—a light blue flame flickered over his body,
undulating around his movements. The color didn’t tell her more
than the feeling that went with it. It was antipathy. With Felon,
Driver “flared” envy, but there was coldness, and youthful
enthusiasm. She knew that Driver cared for Tiny but didn’t want to
be like him, and he disliked Felon but wished to be him. Karen
realized she was reading two perspectives of the ambiguous emotion
of love.

Tiny, on the other hand, had an overpowering
flare of his own. It was red, pulsing at its perimeter with tongues
like flame. It was dangerous. It flickered out menacingly between
his companions and back upon himself. Tiny’s flare was that of
ambition. He was ruthless—and capable of anything. And something
else came to her that she had only guessed at before: Tiny rarely
said what he felt. She could see the colors of his manipulations.
Tiny specially colored or “coded” his words for each individual he
spoke to. His ambition was reckless.

Her study of Bloody revealed a mystery. He
behaved in an aloof but menacing manner, yet his aura was a pulsing
orange envelope—it hugged his form like a second skin. He was
wrapped in his own self-pity. And by its feral self-destructive
movements, she knew he would go to extremes to extirpate it.
Incline, O Lord, Thine ear to our prayers, in which we humbly
beseech Thy mercy
…

The Angel had no aura—even when he died, she
saw nothing. He was beyond her perceptions. At times he would turn
his old man’s face to her catatonic eyes and smile—as though he
understood her new sight and thought it quite a joke. He was an
Angel, but he was empty.

Felon, on the other hand, had an aura that
would have made her scream if she had not decided to love him. It
appeared in many ways—and disappeared as often as it changed forms.
She watched his aura burst upward like magma—murderous and hot as
flame—watched it boil down around his skull like volcanic ash. As
Felon moved, it changed shape and consistency. At other times—it
took on near solid form—scaled—emerald like the back of a snake. It
was monstrous, this man’s aura. It was powerful, and dangerous. And
it was ancient.
Your own Son was delivered into the hands of the
wicked, yet He prayed for His persecutors and overcame hatred with
the blood of the Cross
.

And she remembered waiting in the car with
her newfound vision, while Felon left to speak to Lucifer in the
sewers. She closed her eyes and watched through the bricks and
imagined the scene anew. She saw them standing by a group of
derelicts. A fire burned in a drum. The Marquis fanned his face and
blushed. Felon’s aura burned white hot. And one of the derelicts
around the fire broke free of the grouping. He was like the Marquis
and empty to her eyes. And then the distance was gone, and he stood
by the car and met her gaze. A voice inside her head said, “Go to
the Tower.” She could only see his outline, nothing more. It was a
man’s shape. His features were obscured. “Love will free you all.”
Neither Driver or Bloody reacted, so she assumed only she could see
the man—the
vision
.
Let me be a holy sacrifice and unite
with God in the sacrament of His greatest love
.

But to the Tower? Sacrifice? Was it her turn?
Was that why she’d been given the new sight? Why her heart had been
opened? She knew that great powers were loose upon the earth—it was
plain. Whatever had happened the morning Able died had started a
fire that threatened to consume the world. One look at Felon told
her that. Great Power had a claim upon him.

And now he was gone. The last time she saw
him he had killed an Angel. Then ugly shapes overpowered him; their
bodies were bloated and pale against the streetlight. Their auras
were orange like Bloody’s—self-destruction dripped from them too.
Felon had fired one vicious glance at her before going down beneath
the glistening, grappling arms. He would not ask for help. He would
bring about his own destruction.

At first, Karen felt a loss. With Felon gone,
so too was her primary threat—but also her only connection to her
former life. Any thought of escape was lost before it was formed
when Driver, Tiny and Bloody ran out of the diner.

Felon was gone. And as she let her
perceptions flow outward she tried to love him, but found she
ached
for him. His power was formidable and his extremity
attractive. Everything about him was concentrated, heavy hatred.
And that was just a negative form of love. She could find a way
past it.
You who are so worthy of my love
…

The men talked briefly after Felon
disappeared. They returned to the car. The doors were opened and
they looked in. Their auras were a rainbow of emotion. She found it
in herself to smile.

“I have keys to the Tower,” she said. “I’ll
help you.” She had kept a passkey on a chain around her neck.
O
Sacred Heart of Jesus, I fly, I come to Thee, throwing myself into
the arms of Thy tender mercy
.

“See,” Tiny patted the dashboard and looked
at Driver. “
That’s
what I’m talking about!”

66 – Hope

“One man of you shall chase a thousand, for
the Lord your God is He who fights for you. Therefore take heed to
yourselves, that you love the Lord your God.” Stoneworthy meditated
on these words as he marched. After the battle, the army reformed
and started moving east. The minister took the time to move
forward, to think.

Truly, he had fought as more than a man—was
made capable of inhuman feats by the Change. Since he could no
longer suffer the afflictions of the living, he was able to fight
past human limitations. Ironically, he had found a sort of
immortality in death—
justification
. He needed better reasons
to go on killing. He had read every passage; in fact the Bible was
full of such incidents where God released his wrath upon his
children. The Lord in heaven would kill fifty thousand at a stroke,
or turn the tide for Israel against the Philistines—only to turn on
the Israelites in punishment. You do not question God. Noah
didn’t.

But Stoneworthy was full of questions. He was
a minister and teacher not a soldier. He tried to console himself
with thoughts of the Crusades, but they had made a bloody work of
converting the heathens, taking the Lord’s word too literally.
Heathens are people, too.