Apocalypticon (22 page)

“Sorry. Was I shouting? Did I wake you?”

“It’s all right,” the reverend said, a queer look of concern on his face. “Friend Patrick, I have to tell you; nightmares are one of the tools of the devil.”

Patrick rubbed at his eyes. “I think you have nightmares confused with FOX News.”

The reverend did not laugh. “I’m as serious as the grave, son. The devil works in many ways, all of them terrible. One of those ways is through our dreams. Our nightmares. A soul burdened with nighttime terrors is a soul in the grasp of Satan.”

“Uhm--I think I maybe just had a bad root last night or something. Could be the deer. I’ve never really had venison. I’m not sure how my body reacts to it.” He thumped his chest and belched. “’Scuse me.”

The preacher took Patrick’s hand in his own and squeezed it gently. “The only way to be bathed in His light, to shut out the Darkness, is to be saved. Do you want to be saved, Patrick?”

Ooooh boy
, he thought.
Here we go
. “Do
you
think I should be saved?” he asked, trying his hand at diplomacy.

“I think those among us who are not saved are doomed to an eternity in the fires of Hell.”

“So that’s a yes, then.” Patrick examined his current options and discerned the path of least resistance. He decided that the simplest road was the sidewalk to salvation. Besides, Madame Siquo’s list made him uneasy, and one more layer of protection against the devil couldn’t hurt. “Okay. Then saved I shall be. Do we do this in the morning, or...?”

Maccabee shook his hand in excitement. “Once you decide to be saved, there’s not a second to lose! We must bring about your salvation. The devil may enter you at any time.” Patrick fought harder than that very same devil to keep at least six inappropriate jokes from escaping his mouth. Now just wasn’t the time. “If you’re ready, we’ll do it right now.”

Patrick shrugged. “Sure. What about Ben? Should we wake him up? We should probably save him too. He’s got all
kinds
of blights of the soul.”

The reverend glanced over at the sleeping figure. “Your friend is untroubled in his sleep. No signs of Satan have been made manifest to me. The New Herald Christian Church believes a pure soul is already saved and needs not the cleansing.”

“Oh, trust me, that soul’s not pure. The devil’s been entering that one for years. Let’s wake ‘im up.” Patrick tapped Ben on the crown of his head. “Hey! Wake up! We’re gonna get you baptized!”

The trio stumbled out of the tent, eyes bleary with sleep. Reverend Maccabee approached the three night guards and explained the situation. Two of them broke off and began waking up the congregation in their tents. “You really don’t have to wake everyone up,” Patrick said.

“Oh, just me?” Ben sneered with a yawn.

“Salvation is a joyous occasion, brothers!” the reverend said with a broad smile. “Your brothers and sisters shall witness your cleansing and be heralds of the Lord’s joy.”

In ten minutes, the whole party was assembled. The members of the church seemed tired, but happy. They swayed and clapped in the night as the old would-be administrator led them in an uplifting hymn. Reverend Maccabee threw on a purple cloak over his black pants and shirt, then mounted the wooden altar and motioned for Patrick and Ben to do the same. “I hate you,” Ben whispered as they climbed the stairs. “I just want you to know that.”

“Those are the devil’s words coming through you, Ben. Soon, you won’t mean them anymore.”

Two of the men from the watch climbed the steps after them; the altar was plenty spacious for the entire group. Reverend Maccabee held up his hands, and the people below fell silent. “Brothers and sisters!” he boomed. “Tonight, we have in our midst two poor sinners. Two decent human beings, two good-hearted boys, who have found themselves plunged into the devil’s well. These two young men, like so many others, crave the forgiveness of the Lord. And, brothers and sisters, the Lord is good.” Cries of
Yes he is!
and
Amen!
peppered the crowd. “Our God in Heaven is a kind God. He is a
merciful
God! He is a
forgiving
God! He is the Way, the Truth, and the Light, and it is through our God that
we shall be saved!
”
Amen!
“And so it is with great joy that we, His pure flock, offer salvation to the lost. It is with humility and awe that we are able to cleanse these young men here tonight.” He turned and stepped over to Patrick and placed his open palm on the sinner’s forehead. “Son of our Lord Jesus Christ, brother to all men and women, do you reject Satan and all his evil works?”

“All of them. Even the little ones,” Patrick said.

“Is it your wish to accept the Lord Jesus Christ into your heart, and to purge the demon from your soul, to free your worldly body and eternal spirit from his clutches?”

“That is my wish, yes.”

“Do you cry out for forgiveness from our Heavenly Father and beg him for his mercy?”

“I do. I do cry out.” He leaned forward and whispered, “Should I cry out now, or...?” But Maccabee continued.

“Is it your wish to be saved?”

“Yes, being saved is a priority,” Patrick nodded.

“Then. By your own admission and acceptance, you ask us, the holy flock, to cleanse you of your desire to do evil.” Patrick opened his mouth to say that he never really desired to do evil but decided not to embarrass the minister. He seemed to be having such a big moment. “The Lord God asks us to be cleansed in three ways, just as He is the three spirits in one God. We cleanse with prayer.” He made the sign of the cross over Patrick’s head and mumbled a quiet prayer. When he was done, he placed his hand once again on Patrick’s head. “We cleanse with water.” He motioned to one of his two assistants. The young man stepped forward and handed him a halved geode full of water. The preacher poured the water on Patrick’s head and let it spill down his face and neck. Patrick cried out in shock from the cold, but the assistant knew to expect this. He took Patrick’s hand and squeezed it in support. Maccabee handed the cup to the second assistant, who went to refill it for Ben’s salvation. The reverend turned back to Patrick. “And we cleanse by sacrifice.” He nodded to the assistant. The young man pulled Patrick’s hand up and back behind him, securing it, palm out, against the trunk of the large tree next to the platform. Maccabee reached into his robes and pulled out a hammer and a thick, iron spike. “What--wait, what are you doing?” Patrick asked, suddenly alarmed. He squirmed and struggled to break free, but the assistant held his hand firmly in place. Maccabee put the point of the spike to Patrick’s palm and, with one strong, smooth stroke, drove it right through his flesh and into the tree.

Patrick’s scream filled the entire forest. Ben gaped in sheer terror. “Jesus fuck!” he yelled. He ran forward and drove a shoulder into the assistant’s chest, knocking him off the platform. The reverend looked at him with surprise that quickly turned to anger. He swung the hammer at Ben’s head, but Ben ducked just in time. The force of the swing carried the preacher off balance for a split second. It was just long enough for Ben to grip the spike protruding from Patrick’s bloody hand. “I’m really sorry, Pat; I think this is gonna hurt like a bitch,” he said quickly. He hauled at the spike with a loud grunt and pulled it out of the tree, back through the hole in Patrick’s palm. Patrick screamed again and doubled over, clutching his injured hand against his chest. Ben hefted the spike and turned just in time to see the hammer swinging back down toward his face. He dodged to the side just as the hammer caught his chin. A red explosion of pain clouded his vision for a second. He blinked hard and shook his head. The preacher took the hammer in both hands, raised it high over his head, and growled as he swung down again, hard. Ben sidestepped the third blow and jammed the iron spike up into the preacher’s ribcage. He could actually
feel
a lung pop against the metal point. Maccabee’s eyes grew wide. He dropped the hammer and clutched at his wound. Ben yanked the spike back out. A steaming line of blood spurted out from the hole. The preacher fell to the platform, gasping for air, his own blood pooling around him. His fingers scrabbled in the sticky red puddle, but his eyes grew heavy, and his irises rolled up into his head. His feet gave one last fluttering kick, and he passed on to the other side.

Ben looked down at the congregation. They stared back up at him in shock. No one spoke. From somewhere in the night, Ben literally heard a cricket chirp. “Patrick,” he muttered out of the side of his mouth. “Can you run?”

Patrick was whimpering against the tree. He looked up at Ben, tears of pain and frustration pouring down his face, and nodded.

“Okay. ‘Cause we’re gonna do that. Right now.”

“What about our stuff?”

“Shit. Right. Okay, I’ll meet you in the woods.” Patrick opened his mouth to say something, but Ben leapt from the platform and sprinted over to the tent. The congregation exploded in cries of outrage. They ran after him, the entire mob crashing through the maze of tents. Ben looked back over his shoulder just long enough to see Patrick hobbling down off the platform and heading out into the forest.

Ben dove into the tent and slung his pack over his shoulders. He hefted Patrick’s bag and machete in one hand.
I hope you packed everything before bed
, he thought miserably. One of the young men from the mob pushed through the flap into the tent. Ben whirled around and smashed him in the face with the side of the iron spike. The man stumbled back out through the opening, knocking over the line of angry zealots behind him. Ben threw the spike through the opening as hard as he could and heard it clang off someone’s head. He grabbed his bat, did a quick spot check, and found the tent otherwise empty. Then he dove out the rear flaps just as a middle-aged woman came around the corner of the tent swinging a tree branch. He jabbed the bat in her stomach. She doubled over, and the woman running behind her tripped over her collapsed form and splayed onto the dead earth. Ben took off into the woods and disappeared into the darkness.

When he was sure they’d stopped chasing him, he slowed and circled back, giving the campfire a wide berth. After a few minutes of cautious stalking, he heard a loud hiss off to his right. He turned to find Patrick waving at him from behind a tree. Ben jogged over, helped Patrick to his feet, and together they plunged back through the woods to the highway.

8.

“I need to be honest, here, Pat. I did
not
see that coming.”

Patrick held his hand up to the sky. He could see the yellow disc of the sun perfectly through the hole in his palm. “It looks worse in daylight,” he winced.

“Come here, let’s clean it again.”

Patrick got up and crossed to the hood of the Mazda where Ben sat with the supplies. Ben twisted the cap off a fresh bottle of water and handed it to Patrick, who took in a sharp breath as he poured a little stream over and through the wound in his hand.

“If you’d just use the dirty creek water like a real man, we could save on the drinking water,” Ben pointed out.

“Stop trying to give me sepsis,” Patrick said through gritted teeth. He’d somehow gotten a blade of grass stuck to the hole in his hand, and he plucked it out with a little whimper of pain.

“Clean?” Ben asked.

“Cleanish.”

“Disinfectant time!”

“You don’t have to sound so cheerful about it,” Patrick glowered. “This is an awful waste of good whiskey.”

Ben looked at the bottle of Canadian Mist they’d gotten from Horace. “This is a good waste of awful whiskey,” he said. “Really, we should be grateful Reverend Crazyass gave you a wound to dump it on.” He took Patrick’s injured hand and held it firmly in place. “You ready?”

“No.”

“You want a drink?”

“No.” But he grabbed the bottle and took a quick shot anyway. It burned like kerosene on his tongue. He struggled to swallow it. “
Blugh
. It tastes like scorpion venom and swamp water.”

“And only $11.99 a bottle.” Ben took a slug himself, made an appropriately pained face, then dumped a few ounces on Patrick’s open wound.

By the time he was done screaming, Patrick’s throat was raw.

Ben ripped off a fresh, cleanish strip of blanket and wrapped it around the hand. Patrick whimpered as he pulled it tight and tied it off. “Next time the world ends, let’s make sure we’re stocked up on peroxide and bandages,” Ben said.

Patrick glowered at the first aid kit, which lay open on the hood. Its contents included, and were extremely limited to, six Band-Aids, four cotton swabs, a bottle of Tylenol, some nail polish remover, a packet of Midol, a travel box of Clorox Handi Wipes, and a roll of Tums. “Who packed that thing?” Ben asked. “Pee Wee Herman?”

“The really scary part is, that’s the kit we had in a house with a five-year-old. Criminy. We’re lucky 20 fold-up accordion snakes didn’t pop out when we opened the lid.” He picked up the Tylenol with his good hand and struggled with the lid for a while before turning it over to Ben. “Help. It’s childproof.”

He couldn’t tell if he really had a fever, or it if was a phantom sickness, but he wasn’t taking any chances. The most benign injury could turn fatal without basic medical supplies. And a half-inch hole through the hand was not a benign injury. If the alcohol didn’t kill the infection, he’d lose his hand. That’s a surgery he didn’t want to think about undergoing with full sedation, much less in the backwoods of Mississippi while buzzed on a bottle of Canadian Mist with Ben as his surgeon. He checked the bandage and made sure it was tight. The wound seemed to have stopped bleeding, at least, though he seemed to have lost feeling in his three middle fingers. He didn’t take that for a good sign. “We need real medical supplies,” he said. “Because I am not letting you cut off my hand.”

“What’s the point of even
having
a machete if we’re not gonna use it?” Ben complained.

They rooted through the abandoned vehicles on their stretch of highway in search of an emergency kit. After fourteen cars, all they’d come up with was a box of Kleenex and three road flares.
Man
, Ben thought,
people were so unprepared for the apocalypse
.

“Did you ever watch The Walking Dead?” Patrick asked, popping open the glove compartment of a Ford Ranger.

“Uh, I don’t know, was it about zombies?”

“Yeah.”

“Then, yeah, obviously I watched it, idiot. What about it?”

“There was this one episode, I think it was season 2, when they needed medical supplies, so they dug through all the abandoned cars on the highway. Just like we’re doing. Except you know what they found?”

“Zombies.”

“Well. Yes. But you know what else they found?
Everything
. They found everything they needed. Pain pills, food, guns, one guy even picked up a
completely customized
bladed tool kit. It was like a box o’ weapons made specifically to fight zombies that this dead guy just happened to have had made sometime
before
the zombie apocalypse. They got
everything
. And me? I got this bag of plastic toothpicks,” he said, holding it up.

Ben shrugged. “Fiction is bullshit. What can you do?”

“My addiction to movies and television has left me entirely unprepared for the harsh realities of post-apocalyptic life.”

“Which is strange, considering just how many popular stories took place in post-apocalyptic times.”

“Yeah. You’d think somebody would’ve gotten it right.”

They made a decision to stay on the highway in an effort to mitigate run-ins with “backwoods crazyasses,” as Ben put it. It was a decision that served them well all morning and into the afternoon, as they trudged deeper into Mississippi along Highway 78. The plan took a turn, though, when they found themselves on the far side of a town called Holly Springs.

“Umm...what happened to the road?” Patrick asked, peering down over the jagged edge of an overpass.

“There’s some down there,” Ben said, pointing to a pile of asphalt and metal rods on the surface road below. “And some more over there, and some there. Man. What is it with idiots blowing up bridges?”

“Looks like this one died of natural causes,” Patrick said, inspecting the edge. The overpass showed no signs of being blown to bits; it had just collapsed.

“Your tax dollars at work,” Ben said.

They could just barely see the far end of the overpass through the yellow cloud. It seemed to be intact. They slid down the embankment and crossed over to the lower highway to the other side. They climbed up the hill and once again stopped dead in their tracks. “Okay, now
this
...
this
is the work of explosives.” The entire stretch of 78, as far as the eye could see, was pitted with massive craters in both lanes. Each crater had to have been between 50 and 100 feet in diameter, with a new crater starting every 10 or 20 feet. Dark shadows through the fog indicated similar holes stretching to the horizon.

“Now, what’s the point of that? Seriously. Who would do that?”

“Crazy Harry,” Patrick suggested.

Ben sighed. “All right, I’ll bite. Who’s Crazy Harry?”

“You know. That wild-eyed Muppet with crazy hair that goes around blowing everything to kingdom come.”

“How do you know that?”

“You’d be amazed at what I know about Muppets.
Amazed
.”

“What do we do now?”

Patrick sighed. The highway cut through what looked like a national park or a forest reserve. The destroyed road was flanked on both sides by dense forest. He pulled the baton from his pocket and flicked it open. “Now we go back into the woods.”

Despite the explosions on the highway, the forest here seemed largely untouched. Only a very few leaves clung to the branches, but the trunks stood tall and strong, and, more importantly, they were free of broken bodies. They walked parallel to the highway, or at least as close to parallel as the rough underbrush would allow.

“So, do you want to talk about what happened last night?” Patrick asked tentatively.

Ben shot him a sideways glance. “Do
you
?”

“I just mean that...well, you know...you kind of...killed a guy. Having never killed a person myself, I just don’t know if it’s the kind of thing one needs to talk about or not.”

Ben thought for a few moments. It sounded stupid, but he hadn’t really considered it murder. “That guy straight up murdered, like, 300 people. And he got a third of the way to killing you. He was probably the textbook definition of a homicidal maniac. I’m pretty sure that rates him in the ‘monster’ category, not the ‘real human being’ category.”

“Hey, you’ll get no arguments from me,” Patrick said, raising his hands defensively. “It was easily the most intense thing anyone’s ever done for me. And I say that knowing that my mother was in labor for 23 hours. I just want you to know that if you feel the need to talk about it, you know, we can talk about it. That’s all.”

“Well, thank you, Maury, I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Also, I want to make sure you’re not addicted to murder now.”

“Yes, Patrick, I have the bloodlust.”

“Well!” Patrick exclaimed. “I don’t know how it works! You get the taste for blood, who knows what you’re liable to do?”

“Are you being serious right now?” Ben asked.

“It happens in the movies,” Patrick pointed out.

“I am not addicted to murder,” Ben insisted.

“You know who else didn’t think he was addicted to murder? You know who? Jeffrey Dahmer. You could be the next Jeffrey Dahmer.”

“You know, now that you mention it, I
do
sort of feel like committing a murder.” He slugged Patrick on the arm with the bat.

“I knew it! Bloodlust!” he cried, spinning away from the bat. “There’s only one way to cure you. You’ll need to rub poison oak on your nethers and put a live bumblebee in your mouth. That’s the only cure for the bloodlust. My imagination has made it so. I’ll be happy to find you some poison oak, but I’m not applying it.”

But Ben wasn’t listening. He had stopped short and was now looking around the forest in alarm. “Shh,” he whispered. Patrick grew still, and the two men listened. “Do you hear that?”

Patrick listened harder. He heard only the occasional rustle of leaves above. “I don’t hear anything,” he said, shaking his head. “What do you--“ But then he
did
hear something. The rustling wasn’t coming from above, it was coming from somewhere behind them. “What is that?” he asked.

“It sounds like footsteps. Someone running.” Someone, or
something
. Whatever it was, it was sprinting through the woods, coming in fast.

“Do you see anything?” Patrick asked, craning his neck to see around the trees.

Ben squinted into the mist. “I can’t see a damn thing in this fog.”

“It’s definitely coming this way.” Patrick tightened his grip on the baton. Ben did the same with the bat.

“Get out the machete,” he hissed. “Just in case.”

Patrick shook his head. “I can’t swing it well one-handed, especially not left-handed. I can control my left hand about as well as I can control a Slinky. I’m less likely to put more holes in myself with the baton.”

They stood there, facing west, listening to the rapid crunching grow louder and louder. And then they could hear another sound, the wet, gasping snarl of a feral animal.
Cripes, it’s a wolf
, thought Patrick, and he severely wished he had a gun. He didn’t generally go in for firearms, as a rule, but he heard they did wonders against wild animals. He and Ben both started backing away instinctively, not lifting their eyes from the western horizon for an instant. The sounds grew louder, echoing all around them in the fog. And then, suddenly, there it was.

It was no more than a shadow at first, a dark silhouette against the curtain of yellow mist. It materialized as if the fog itself had formed it; one second it was a shadow, the very next, it was a wild-eyed man, bursting from the yellow mist and running at a full sprint. He was skinny,
incredibly
skinny, even compared to Patrick. His denim overalls hung loosely from his gaunt frame. A long, shaggy bird’s nest of hair flowed behind him as he ran, teeth bared, a string of saliva dripping from his lips.

He was running directly at them.

“What’s he running from?” Ben asked, panicked.

“What’s he running
to
?” Patrick countered. Then he gasped. “The running man.” And then, faster than they could believe, the rabid man was on them. He leapt through the air and slammed headfirst into Ben’s chest. The bat fell from his hands, and they hit the dirt and rolled, the man snarling and snapping his teeth. Ben punched and kicked wildly. He landed a blow to the man’s face, but the attacker didn’t flinch. He wrestled Ben’s arms to the ground with surprising strength. He opened his mouth and lurched in to bite, but Ben got his feet planted firmly on the man’s chest and pushed off with all his power. The man stumbled backward. Ben threw a kick at his face. The man caught Ben’s shoe and attacked it with his teeth, tearing frantically into the leather.

Patrick ran up behind him and swung the baton as hard as his left arm would allow. It glanced off the running man’s shoulder blade. “Dammit!” Patrick spat. “Stupid left hand!” Ben tried to kick free, but the man had a firm grasp on his shoe and was ripping through the sole. Patrick tossed the baton away and picked up Ben’s bat. He took the bat in both hands, ignoring the screaming pain in his right palm, took a running leap, and swung the bat directly into the back of the man’s head. It connected with a sickening
CRACK
! The bat snapped in two, and the man dropped Ben’s shoe and stumbled forward, falling face first into a tree trunk. He tottered on his knees, stunned for a second, long enough for Ben to reach into his knapsack and pull out the wrench. He brought it down hard on the crown of the man’s head, again and again, but the man didn’t fall. Instead, he pushed off the tree and dove at Patrick, who ducked and rolled just in the nick of time.

“Holy shit!” Ben said. “Who
is
this guy?”

The running man screamed savagely. He lunged again. Patrick pulled out his hammer and slammed it against the man’s kneecap as they toppled to the ground. He might as well have been swinging a feather. The man clawed at Patrick’s face, teeth gnashing. Ben surged forward and drove his shoulder into the man, sending him flailing to his back. Ben cried out in pain. “I think I just broke my shoulder,” he said, bewildered.