The Forsaken - The Apocalypse Trilogy: Book Two (50 page)

Dawn fought and struggled against the
monster’s powerful hands—the milk sprayed toward her face and she
strained to keep her mouth away.

And then a voice cut the scene:
“Lillake!”

Nursie’s eyes burned fiercely, and her long
neck swept up like a serpent’s.

“Let her go!” the voice continued, and Dawn’s
heart leapt because she knew it was Mr. Jay! She knew the voice so
well, had been praying to hear it for so long.

Nursie roared and lurched to her full height,
claws embedded in the fabric of her nest. She clutched Dawn to her
reeking chest. “Nein. It Nursie’s time!” The monster held Dawn up
and shook her. “È tempo di Lillake!”

The forever girl was surprised to feel a
quickening of the creature’s pulse and a quiver develop in her
limbs.

“It is not my job to do this, Lillake,” Mr.
Jay said. He was standing about forty feet away at the edge of the
large woven platform. “I have resisted.” His voice was tinged with
irony or sadness. “But in this case, you make the exception a
pleasure.” He raised a hand.

Nursie bellowed, her teeth clashing in the
air, and charged Mr. Jay, swinging Dawn like a hammer. The forever
girl screamed as blood rushed to her head, as she swept toward the
magician.

Mr. Jay spoke a word and Nursie screamed.

Suddenly Dawn was tumbling across the woven
floor toward a dark opening in the fabric and a long drop into
shadow. But then small hands were on her, warm hands and strong,
caught her before she fell. They pulled her up. A pair of
brown-haired boys stood there—identical to look upon—beside them
was the little boy with the helmet and deadly hand she’d first seen
at the hideout. But fear and tension made liars of their
bravery—and their eyes kept returning to the scene.

Mr. Jay confronted Nursie—he held his walking
stick high and it gave off a clean white flame that blinded the
monster. She halted her charge to throw sharp claws up to hide her
eyes.

In the clean new light Nursie was grotesque
and pitiful despite her killing power. The veins pulsed under her
thin and leprous skin, and the tumorous muscle slid underneath it
like serpents.

“No Mago!” she bellowed, her voice weakening.
“È tempo di Lillake.”

“It’s not your time,” the magician said, and
the monster charged. “It’s over for all of us.”

He easily dodged her slashing jaws, stepping
in to slap her forehead.

“Get out!” he commanded and the monster
screamed.

Nursie suddenly glowed with a harsh hot inner
light that etched the shape of her guts and bones. She took two
steps back, but there was a harsh cracking sound as her burning
spine and thighbones snapped. The power within her ignited—and
Nursie burst into a pillar of flame.

Mr. Jay turned from it as the fire spread
outward and started to consume the platform under them. It roared
up the fabrics and burned toward the structure’s moorings on the
walls—the monstrous fibers flashing to cinders.

Mr. Jay ran to Dawn. She jumped into his
arms. Her heart shivered as he pulled her close, and then he
laughed.

“No time for reunions,” he chuckled and
kissed her cheek. He looked back at the burning webbing and bones
and then he turned to the forever children. Without a word, they
ran, scrambling and scurrying down the burning fibrous ladders and
platforms and left the roaring fire to consume the monstrous
evidence.

69 – Army of God

“Children of God!” Gabriel was perched atop a
tortured pillar of granite. The army was hurrying forward, grouping
in the grassy clearing at its base. “Remember that though death has
taken you it has not claimed your souls for the Lord God has need
of you. Though thy spirit be willing, thy flesh is weak—yet, there
is a great strength you should gain from the Lord’s choice of thee.
Remember the words of God to Samuel. When in his judgment he did
not choose the mighty Eliab, son of Jesse to be King of Israel—‘do
not look at his appearance or at the height of his stature, because
I have refused him.’

“For the Lord does not see as a man sees; man
looks at outward beauty, but the Lord looks at the heart. Just so.
Do not look at your own state and say: Why would my God choose me
to stand in his army? I am dead. How can my dead hands do for him
what the living would find difficult?” Gabriel spread his wings
slightly, folded them. Updike noticed his shield-bearer do the
same. “The Lord your God has chosen you—not for the strength of
your arms, but for the strength of your faith.”

Updike watched the Angels. The creatures
radiated power. When he first arrived, Gabriel had looked at him. A
smile leapt across his beautiful face. Updike felt warmth—the pain
in his head buzzed and went mute with the smile, before returning
with a vengeance, leaving him with the incongruous afterimage of
the word “eavesdropper” in his memory. The Angel greeted
Stoneworthy with a similar smile.

Was this the Angel he had listened to for so
long? The Angel’s grand appearance attested to Updike’s sanity. All
those years of doubt washed away. He was not crazy at all. Angels
were real. He had been called to do the Lord’s work. The last
nagging doubts began to leave him. The Army of the Dead was without
fault, moving decisively for God.

“As Commander of the Army of God,” Gabriel
continued, “it is my duty to lead you into battle. The skirmish you
have just survived was a test of your faith and your strength.
Where this army goes shall test it further still. For the Devil
commands the Defenders of the City, and they are prepared to bring
about Hellish calamity for you—destruction awaits at the hands of
Infernal powers.

“But the Lord has foreseen this, and sent me
to ward over you in the coming battle. Only the power of God can
deflect the dark forces that are set against you, and I have great
knowledge in that way. Fear not. The Lord has sent you a legion of
his Angels. They do not come among you now, so great and awesome is
their power that to witness it would incapacitate.

“They shall watch and ward you from the
skies, and at the crucial moment, join you in battle!” A great
cheer rose up from the Army. Updike’s spirits climbed. The pain in
his face and head were unwelcome memories in Gabriel’s company.
With a legion of Angels to help make war on the City, their cause
could not fail!

A flutter of the Angel’s wings silenced the
gathering. Gabriel surveyed the cheering army. His expression was
unreadable as he continued:

“And yet, the battle shall test us all. For
the journey to salvation is a long and arduous one. The Defenders
of the City, who hoard wealth as they do life, will be hard-pressed
to give it up. It is all they have, for their faith left them with
the Change. So covetous are they with it that they have cavorted
with the Infernal forces of Lucifer. They have fornicated with
Demons. The City must Fall!” Updike looked over to Able
Stoneworthy. The minister’s dead features dropped and then rose
glimmering with internal righteousness and vigor.

The struggle was plain. For the City to
fall—
his
Tower must fall. Stoneworthy had spent a century
building it and creating its deeper mandate. Yet Updike saw the
disappointment wash from the minister’s face, replaced by Divine
purpose. Truly, Stoneworthy possessed enormous capacities for faith
and sacrifice. Updike—weakened by his prolonged exposure to
pain—had come to hesitate and question his own. To see the
minister’s face as a determined bulwark of Divine inspiration
encouraged him and set his own passion for service aflame.

The Archangel said, “You do this because you
are in service to the Lord your God, and he commands it! You do
this because God’s will is truth. It is the word in action, the
word in form. And yet, we are God’s children. We are his beloved.
He sacrificed his son for your sins, and now he asks you to
sacrifice yourselves for him. But there is more!

“As we stoke the fires that shall set the
blaze of Apocalypse, we must remember his love for us. We must
remember that through our sacrifice we assist him in his work. And
what is his work?” The Archangel paused after the rhetorical
question, as if to study the resolve and restraint of the Army. “As
you have risen once from your graves, so the Lord plans to call you
up again; but not as soldiers in the pivotal war of earth. He shall
call you up again and make you new. He wishes your return to Eden.
God wants his children to come home where he can care for them.
Where they can share the wisdom of the ages!”

The Army cried approval. Too long had they
spent in their dead bodies to restrain themselves! They wailed and
wept. Eden was theirs, re-grown, to share with their comrades in
arms, the Eden of Genesis. Updike joined in the exuberant cry!

Oliver Purdue wrapped his arms around him.
Stoneworthy straightened where he stood—a ramrod of purpose for a
spine. Atop the granite column—Gabriel watched and waited, his
shield-bearer standing at his side. They had taken on the
sharp-edged silhouettes of eagles—their wings, hard knife strokes
against the moonlit sky. A glow appeared around the Angels’ heads,
a warm corona of light that spilled over their shoulders like gold
leaf. Growing in intensity, the show of power brought a swelling
cry from the Army.

“We shall come when the battle is hot upon
you. Be steady—be good of heart—we shall come. Your faith will be
rewarded.” He surveyed the army from his perch, chin lifted
skyward—his eyes focused on some distant and unseen force. “Behold
Lucifer! Behold! You see here the Army of God! Let its
righteousness strike fear in your Infernal heart. Let its faith
send quivers through the chains that bind you to this prison earth.
Judgment Day is near—and this Army of God puts you on notice. Your
reign is over!” The Archangel set his horn to his lips and blew a
great blast. The sound vibrated through every cell in Updike’s
body—touched deep in the center of his brain.

He screamed: “
Triumphant Lord
!”

“Your Reign is Over!” Gabriel shouted and he
blew another great blast—this one smote Updike’s ears like
thunder—caused adrenaline to pound in his heart, his head to throb.
“Your Reign is Over!”

Gabriel bellowed this like the final verse of
incantation and then flew upward with his shield-bearer. He set his
horn a final time and blew a triumphant blast toward the City.
Suddenly, their power burst forth and glowing white-hot the Angels
rocketed into the sky like stars. They tore through the hole they
had opened around the moon, and were gone.

The Army of God cheered, embracing each other
chanting and wailing of hope and faith. Updike hugged Oliver,
grabbed Stoneworthy and pulled him into their combined embrace.

“Peace brothers!” he wept. “His reign will
end by our hands.” As his comrade’s dead bodies shook with
happiness, Updike watched the moon. The clouds around it began to
close. Its rays illuminated the Army—the world—a moment longer, and
were gone.

“God is Love!” Stoneworthy pulled back from
Updike, slapped the Captain on the shoulder. The impact traced
along the man’s nerves—up his neck and into his skull. A dull throb
splashed his brain like molten steel. Worse than before, each
ringing ache that followed was more painful than the last. Before
the pain could draw a curtain over his joy he croaked, “
His
Reign is Over
!”

70 – On the Run

Dawn could barely contain herself. She knew
they were still in great danger but to have Mr. Jay with her—to
have her fingers entwined with his after everything that had
happened, everything she wanted desperately to forget. She just
wanted to run and never stop. She felt the presence of her grownup
voice quietly approving of the action and accessing the situation.
The forever child had to get away from the darkness of the
Tower.

The Nightcare fighters moved with military
precision—ran and operated as a precise machine for killing and
defense. A weapon honed over many decades, they formed a protective
wedge around Mr. Jay and Dawn. The Quinlan boys covered the left
and right flank with their swords in hand. Their light machine guns
swung from their shoulders, ready for use. They kept in contact
crossing the distance with sassy comments from Pearface to
Jughead.

Liz took the lead with the young Conan boy
running along in the rear, his tireless legs flashing.

Dawn had already noticed and asked about the
willowy girl of nine or so dressed in black lace dress, theatrical
mask and shoes. She ran rather dramatically, where she wanted, but
as apparently the property of Conan, whose attention rarely left
her. She was just slightly taller than Dawn. The girl’s long legs
made her look older. She was waiting for them outside Nursie’s
room.

Mr. Jay said it was Sophie but Dawn could not
understand what she contributed to the group. After a few times
catching Mr. Jay’s amused look, Dawn could not keep her eyes off
the girl who moved like a swan or stork, all long flapping legs and
arms. But Mr. Jay reassured Dawn that Sophie had been a great help
getting them into the Tower, and the strange girl had once called
this place home. Her friend’s insistence that she was good and
helpful even though she was dead got Dawn’s blood boiling more. She
tried to trust Mr. Jay anyway, even though he had a soft spot for
girls.

When she caught herself looking angrily at
Sophie, Dawn was startled by her own jealousy. The dead girl was
not a soldier, barely more than a scavenger. But this obsession
soon had Dawn feeling angry with herself for being unfair. But, she
couldn’t shake the feeling that the girl was a threat and the
notion had her chewing her lips in irritation.

The little crew hurried along the hallway
past several rooms that had the double doors characteristic of
Dawn’s Dormitory Five. This got the forever girl thinking of Meg,
her little friend. How could she leave her behind to the
depravities of the Tower?