The Forsaken - The Apocalypse Trilogy: Book Two (60 page)

The Prime smiled, madness glimmered in his
eyes. “
First-mother
? ” He clapped his hands and looked
wickedly at Karen. “She didn’t get away?” He reached out and slid a
hand over the girl’s lacey shoulder, as if to see if she was
real.

“Oh,” the Prime said shuddering. He looked
back at Karen. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” He looked back
at the girl. The doors slid closed behind her, and the elevator
started to descend. “Of course, the prophecy
has
to come
true. That’s the way prophecy works. I get the God-wife and the
First-mother.” He chortled. “I’m thinking three-way.”

Karen had pulled her clothing around her as
the door opened. She levered herself to her feet. The nun studied
the girl. The willowy little thing was swaying on her feet, as
though silent music played for her. Karen studied her aura, a
distinctive orange.

“Soon,” the Prime said, reaching into his
pants to adjust himself. “I’m going to
know
you both black
and blue.”

“You heap evil on yourself to justify
self-hatred,” Karen said, as the girl swayed. “More sin will not
change God’s judgment.” The aura that burned from the Prime was
hideous, and searing. How she wished her love could smother it.
“Neither will your hate affect God’s love.”

“Save it for Sunday.” He smiled grimly,
glancing at his watch. “There’s a new god in town, and you’re
looking at him.”

“God will win! By the Holy Virgin I swear He
will win…” Karen held her arms open to the man. “Accept
His
love now.” The man’s aura was whirling chaos. Evil faces leering
from red fire appeared around him.

“I’ll make you eat those words,” the Prime
said as the elevator stopped. The doors slid open. He pulled her
out by the collar. “After a bit of floor-play!”

The forever girl breezed out of the elevator
after them. The Prime saw her too and chuckled lustily.

A short hall led to a doorway. Past it was a
gray-tiled floor. On the far side of that was a big blue door.

The Prime halted when the little girl stopped
some five feet outside the elevator. Her head was tilted forward,
the veil a cloud of white over her pale face. She had both hands
behind her back and was rising up and down on her toes.

“What’s with you?” the Prime grumbled. He
threw Karen onto the floor then stalked over to the girl like a
black mountain about to fall on her.

The girl looked away sheepishly.

“What?” the Prime asked, bending over and
squinting through the veil. “You smell nice. Let’s see your pretty
face.” He reached out and snatched the veil up. Long black hair
hung around a white harlequin’s mask.

“Peek-a-boo?” the Prime chuckled and looked
over at Karen. “Kinky!” He put a fingernail under the mask and
flipped it up. The face beneath had only one eye. There was a lower
jaw, with teeth lined up in a little white row. The rest of the
face was a purple-black mass of scar tissue.

“YOU!” the Prime shouted, but reacted too
late.

The dead girl’s hands whipped around from
behind her back and slashed a long knife across the leader of
Westprime’s throat. He made a garbled sound and staggered back, and
then collapsed against the wall. His hands were slick, pressing at
his throat as he watched the dead girl approach. Blood decorated
her dress in a scarlet sash as she moved with the same swaying
dance toward the Prime.

He bubbled and coughed as she climbed onto
his lap and brought the knife up. A rough cutting noise
followed—then a ripping gristly sound.

Karen screamed and got to her feet; she ran!
Clear white fluorescent light gleamed along the length of the
sterile hall ahead giving everything a surreal, institutional
quality.

Karen ran. She had no options left. She sped
away from the grisly scene. Overrun by terror she sprinted toward
the blue door. Her torn clothing gaped, her shoes clattered on the
tiles.

There were symbols marked on the floor.
Ancient glyphs she half-recognized in her fear. And from each grew
a colored flame, a power source that curled upward mist-like, and
wove into the colors emanating from the other symbols to form a fog
of undulating hues.

The blue door began to gleam as she ran
toward it. Its edges glowed white and glared with an intensity that
she thought would blind her. Then pain tore her abdomen and
wrenched her body like a thousand knives had struck her.

86 – Betrayal

Captain Jack Updike was confused. He had seen
terrible things during his service as an army chaplain in Iraq, and
horrors since he had taken up his Holy mission as humanity’s chief
resurrectionist. But the battle raging around him was without
precedent. The Army of God, comprised of desperate dead men and
women was terrible to behold. Its constituents could sustain
terrific damage before being forced to the ground, and even then
they could fight on with torn legs, severed torsos and mangled
skulls. Updike watched a man—his skull exposed from the bridge of
his nose down—swinging an axe while City Defenders peppered him
with bullets.

The dead man was wearing a helmet so the
bullets rang off it as he rattled forward, axe whirling. With each
step his body was eaten away by invisible hail. The City Defenders
had thought through the task of fighting a dead army to its obvious
conclusion. And so bullets were aimed at heads and upper torsos,
anything to undermine the soldier’s ability to think or carry a
weapon. Mines, claymores, buckshot any device that could sever,
mangle or otherwise incapacitate the dead was employed. The
battlefield was already littered with twitching severed limbs, and
corpses walked without purpose, their skulls shot away.

City Defenders were all over the field of
battle, dug into gun emplacements, moving by stealth through a
system of trenches. They’d adopted the horrific policy of severing
the heads of their own fallen comrades to rob the Army of God of
soldiers after Blacktime. The thought was hideous!

Updike reflexively made the sign of the
cross—he didn’t consider himself Catholic any more, but the action
gave him focus. When the Angels had joined the battle, his head had
pounded for the better part of an hour. He was privy to the cries
and howls that came from the Divine throats. Then, the pain
diminished.

As the army advanced, the pounding in his
head became an uncomfortable throb, and as the battle increased in
intensity, it became a tearing anguish. He could barely see when
General Bolton gave him a bone-handled .45 revolver.

“It was my grandfather’s,” the dead man said,
before returning to the radio and his communications officer to
choreograph the dance of death around him.

Updike looked at the weapon, and pushed it
into his belt. He had never been much of a soldier, and he was not
about to become one at the end of the world. It was not a case of
scruples either. His soul was built to inspire, not to kill.
Although he was prepared to do what he had to, survival would not
come at the price of such a compromise. This war was not about
that. This war was a reaction to compromise. No more deals. No more
practical agreements. Submit to God’s will!

Overhead he watched an Angel battle a Demon.
The Angel used a flaming sword, his halo was argent, and his
breastplate gleamed. The Demon was a distorted monster, part
buffalo, part swan; it gave off a harsh red glow, its enormous
white wings pushing the heavy, muscular body aloft. Its horns were
curved and iron-plated. Its tail was like a scorpion’s. The Angel
met the beast fearlessly.

Concussions shook the ground. A bolt of
lightning shot to the earth from where they joined. The Angel
chopped a limb from the Demon, whose bovine mouth parted around a
howl; but the creature whipped its muscular tail with such ferocity
that the Angel narrowly deflected it. The Demon bellowed before the
Angel could act, and liquid fire shot from its mouth and nostrils.
The Angel cried out, blinded. Pain shot through Updike’s mind. The
Demon caught the Angel between his horns and rammed him into a pile
of rocks that detonated on impact.

The bull-creature hammered the Angel with its
hooves—sparks and fire flew from its victim with each blow. Then
Gabriel’s horn sounded and crushed the Demon against the ground.
Disoriented, the beast was chopped to quivering pieces by two
slashes of the Archangel’s burning sword. Gabriel watched his
fallen comrade’s body turning to smoke. He screamed in rage, and
launched himself into the sky on his long gray wings.

Oliver Purdue ran over to Updike, panic on
his face. “The Defenders guns are destroying us!” Sorrow filled his
dead features. “And there are mines! Bolton called them Bouncing
Betties. They explode waist high. The wounded are unable to
walk.”

“General Bolton told me to watch for them. We
can’t use our cannon! The fighting’s too close.” Updike knew the
emplacements couldn’t fire into the throng without destroying their
own.

“The Defenders will try to inflict as many
casualties on us as they can,” he continued. “But the Angels have
upset the balance. They have almost destroyed the Westprime Air
Defense, and their tanks are useless against them. The City has no
will to fight.” He paused. “Why else would their Demons come?”

Updike laid a hand on Oliver’s shoulder. “We
may not have to worry about the Defenders much longer. They have
fallen back once all ready. Though we are taking great damage, we
are unstoppable. Some of our troops got past the defenses. Fires
are burning on the City walls.” Oliver’s eyes widened, he pulled
Updike to the ground. A burning dead man ran past, the fire that
consumed him flared like wings.

“Ugh!” Oliver spat. “This sickens me. I fear
that though the Angels are an asset, they have changed our plans as
well. Our forces battle as individuals. It is a free for all!”
Oliver’s eyes were frail. “We must end this!”

“That will turn to our advantage. They’re
fighting for themselves now. Individuals throwing their faith at
the enemy.” Updike pointed to the east. “Look! The gates of the
City.” He climbed to his knees. “One more push and we will be at
the wall. We’ll bring our cannons closer and take it down. Then, we
will begin to win this war. In close quarters, between the
buildings, in the narrow streets and alleys, we cannot be
stopped.”

“As you say.” Purdue had an old cavalry sword
in a scabbard at his hip. He was an uncomfortable soldier too. “But
I begin to doubt.”

“How can you doubt the mission?” Updike
yelled, then ducked as a bullet whizzed overhead. “Look.” He
gestured to the battle in the sky. “The City is defended by Demons.
Truly, the evil of the moneylenders is proven. They must be
stopped!”

The ground lifted in a cloud of earth ten
yards from them. Updike was smashed against the ground by unseen
hands. His wind gone, the Captain fought for breath. Sparks flew in
front of his eyes. A wide pit had been opened on impact, and in it
two powerful beings struggled. Gabriel, his robe in tatters, fought
barehanded with a Demon.

The creature dwarfed the Archangel, stood
eight yards tall. Its body had the head of a wolf, huge slavering
teeth snapped at the Gabriel’s face. The creature had three
muscular arms. Two of them ended in long bony spikes. The third in
the middle had a sinewy hand with oversized fingers. It tried to
pull the Angel close while it skewered his sides with the spikes.
Gabriel beat his wings, halo pulsing as bright as the sun, and
lifted himself outside the monster’s reach; but a wild stroke of a
stabbing arm caught the Angel at the waist and cast him to the
ground with an explosion of breaking rocks.

Oliver ran the short distance to the
struggle, throwing himself in front of the stunned Angel. The Demon
was on him in an instant, its spiky arms tore Oliver’s body to
pieces.

Updike cried out. But it was all too late.
The wolf’s head devoured his friend’s torso before he could call
again. His mind ablaze, he drew Bolton’s revolver and fired at the
Demon’s slavering jaws. It howled as tufts of fur flew from it. The
Demon’s powerful legs carried it swiftly toward him.

Updike fired until the gun was empty, and
then turned it like a club. A howl like the torment of Hell shook
the ground as the Demon crossed the distance in two bounds.

Gabriel leapt on the monster’s hairy back,
fierce fire blasting from his eyes. Updike, overwhelmed, lurched
away, stumbled beneath the creature’s bulk. But the Angel used his
mighty arms to bind the Demon. Hands that looked too delicate to
master such a beast wrapped around its hairy throat. The Demon
arched its back—struggled.

A hot white arc of power flew from the
Heavens, lit the Angel’s form like argent. A powerful flap of his
wings and Gabriel pulled the Demon’s head off. The body, unaware of
its own death stabbed the ground blindly around Updike. Then it
lurched back spraying black slime, shook and moved no more.

“So dies Farbauti.” Gabriel alighted as
Updike struggled to his feet. “He will not have his Ragnarok.” The
Angel looked down at Updike, his power burning around him like a
corona.

“Oliver,” Updike wept.

“You weep?” The Angel’s tone was harsh. “You
weep for a friend who was already dead.”

“I weep for a friend who died bravely.”
Updike’s mind was swimming in sorrow. “He is gone.”

“He threw away what he had grown tired of.”
Gabriel’s eyes were wolfish. “That is not bravery.”

“But it is...” Updike’s ire was transmuted
into awe. The Angel’s wings spread over him.

“What is a human life but the wink of an
eye?” Gabriel’s expression was reckless. “So brief and futile it
barely warrants tears. Weep for the immortals that strive on the
field. Weep for those who have eternity to lose. Weep for
Farbauti…” He stabbed a finger at the corpse.

“Every life is sacred. Every soul...” Updike
stood up, wiping at his eyes. Gabriel walked to where he had
crashed into the earth. He picked up his sword and searched, then
found the horn. He leapt into the air, landed in front of
Updike.