Deadrise (47 page)

"Colonel, with General Parker dead that makes you the highest ranking officer in the militia. I suggest you, Dr. Cooper and the three civilians evacuate to a more secure area and debrief while me and my team clean up down here." Jenkins was still chewing over the first part of the sentence, the part about him being the ranking officer in the militia.

"What about me?" Number Three asked?

"You're with me." Jenkins said. Everyone looked at him. "I want you there in the debriefing. You saw that thing in action, up close and personal."

"I’m staying below to oversee the cleanup." Dr. Cooper said.

"Excuse me?" Jenkins asked irritably.

"This was my project, Colonel. My responsibility. I want to be down here to see that the remains are disposed of properly." Jenkins considered ordering the doctor to the debriefing but he was more useful down here. Besides, Jenkins had seen enough of his bug-eyed face for a little while.

"I want you to report to me,
in person,
as soon as you are finished here."

"Of course Colonel. I should only be a few hours at most." Jenkins nodded his approval. That would give him time to try and sort out the burden of command that had just been thrust upon his shoulders…

Chapter 49

Tuesday, June 26, 2001

Rainbow Lake, UT

3:23 PM

His name was Mordecai Necrotura. He was not human. Oh he looked human all right. He ate, drank, slept, sweat, and excreted like a human. He had all the same organs, pipes and pumps, and if cut he would bleed as red as any man. But that was where the similarities between he and humanity ended. For one of the defining characteristic of humanity was their capacity for love, and there existed no such thing in the twisted, black sewer of filth and corruption that was his soul. Inside that black vault existed only hatred and pain, and the sadistic need to inflict both on all those around him. But that had not always been the case, just as his name had not always been Mordecai Necrotura. As he turned away from his sacrificial table, the slab of butchered meat that moments ago had been a living breathing young woman was pushed from his mind and he let his thought’s ride the current of euphoric enlightenment coursing through him, recalling how he had risen from his humble beginnings to the incarnation of inhuman evil that he had become…

He was born Walther Jennings, in the town of Kittewa Utah, October 20, 1930. He was the youngest of six children, with three brothers and two sisters before him. He was tall and gangly, and even at birth the doctor had commented on his strange green eyes. The Jennings had been dairy farmers, but by age seven it had been determined that Walther possessed genius level intelligence and the life of a dairy farmer was far too mundane for his superior intellect. While other Kittewa boys his age were learning the basic of milking cows and sewing fields, Walther was doing home studies at the twelfth grade level.

There was one aspect of the dairy farmer’s life that did appeal to Walther and appeal to him greatly: the slaughtering of the animals. The night before the slaughtering was done Walther would find he was unable to sleep, his mind filled with images and coppery scent of the blood as the cattle’s throat was sliced, or the piles of steaming entrails that would spill from their bodies when they were gutted. Perhaps the most satisfying was the bleating, helpless cries of the animals as they sensed inescapable death about to take them. He found the sights and smells and sounds of the slaughterhouse intoxicating. When puberty hit, he would wander out into the fields after the slaughtering was done, his groin aching with the intensity of his erection, and find small field animals and insects to torture and mutilate while he masturbated again and again, losing all track of time until the fall of darkness would finally break his trance and he would return home, spent.

It was also at that time that he began to hear the Voices. Oh he had always heard voices, but these ones were different. They weren’t just voices, they were Voices! And they spoke to and enlightened him in a way that no others had. While the others helped him to burn the quiet times away lost in a fantasy world these new Voices gave him insights and observations into the many aspects of human nature; Love, Hate, Vanity, Lust, Pride, Envy, Compassion, Faith, Aggression. They also taught him to recognize and even predict patterns of probability in the chaos of the universe, and helped him master the art of body language, and how to modulate his tone and inflection when speaking to command attention and take control. During middle and high school he could have had any girl in town he wanted in his bed, but not because of his tall, thin, awkward frame with arms and legs that seemed to long for his body but rather the magnetism of his personality and the hypnotic intensity of his emerald green eyes. But he desired none of them. The thought of having sex gave him an icy chill in his stomach, a foul ball of tension that festered and boiled and could only be relieved by the comforting release of the slaughterhouse and his Communion of Death and masturbation out in the fields.

The voices also taught him how to listen in on the thoughts of others. At first, it was faint whispers, as if he were listening through a thin wall or doorway, and he had trouble discerning them from the smaller, background voices that had always been there in his head. But with practice and concentration he found he was able to tune into the mental patterns of others with the ease of adjusting the dial on a radio, and their thoughts became as clear and audible as they would were they speaking to him directly.

Once done with high school he had no time for college. WW2 was over and 1948 America was booming. The Dairy business was doing very well and his father had given each of his children a $5000 dollar stake in the farm upon their eighteenth birthday. Walther opted for $1000 dollars cash, left Kittewa and dairy farming to his family. With his heightened awareness and intuition he took great notice in the booming stock market and found it laughably easy to predict the fluctuations and patterns. Within thirty days had turned his $1000 dollars cash into $50,000 dollars worth of commodities stock. Within sixty days it was 10 times that, and within a year, Walther Jennings was a multi-millionaire, the Voices guiding him every step of the way.

For that first year he made his fortune on Wall Street and avoided the Communion, focusing all of his energy and concentration on making money. But now that he had it, he found his old appetite had returned, and returned with a hunger never before seen. As soon as he entertained the thought of Communion he found himself thinking not of the slaughterhouse and small field animals, but the soft, nubile bodies of the young women he had denied himself all these years.

That night he found himself walking the streets through a neighborhood known for its high crime, drugs and prostitutes. He’d dressed for the occasion, leaving his expensive jewelry and fine, tailor made clothes back at his Park Avenue penthouse, opting for a faded pair of jeans, a blue pullover, a dark windbreaker and sneakers. He passed several street walkers until he spotted one that made the Voices sing. She was small and petite, no older than 20, with long brunette hair, a pale complexion and large, sad blue eyes. When he first stepped up he could see her cringe from the intense, almost hostile look in his eyes, his telepathy could hear the caution in her thoughts, but when she saw the $50 dollar bill in his hands the frown of apprehension quickly turned to a grin of easy money. He could read her thoughts, and he knew $50 was five times the normal amount she charged. She was already wondering if this high paying sucker would become a regular customer? She took the money and without a word he grabbed her by the arm and led her into the nearest alley, far back among the heaps of trash.

Although he knew what was to come, he found himself amazingly calm. The girl sat on a garbage can and pulled a condom from her purse. He took off his jacket and tossed it aside then dropped his jeans and slipped the condom over his erection with a small giggle of excitement. She then lie back across the trashcan and spread her legs. He stepped between her thighs and could see that she wore no panties under her red skirt. His heart suddenly began to hammer in his chest and the Voices filled his head.

Do it!

He looked at the girls face, her eyes were closed and she bit her bottom lip and moaned softly.

Do it now! The Voices commanded.

Walther slipped his right hand up the left sleeve and came out with a long, thin, double-edged knife. He ran his free hand up her stomach slowly, lovingly cupping a breast through her blouse before his hand clamped viciously on her throat. He eyes came open and she tried to scream, but because of his grip it came out a choking grasp. She tried to pull his hand away but he tightened his grip. Her eyes looked into his, wide with fear, her thoughts throbbing with the need to breathe. He held the knife up for her to see, the Voices sighing with pleasure as her thoughts now turned to icy terror. She began to struggle harder, full of desperation, but he only squeezed her throat tighter, holding her down on the garbage can. With a snarl he thrust the knife into her abdomen, right through her blouse just above the navel. She let out another choking gasp, spittle and mucous flew from her lips and nostrils and he pushed the knife deeper into her stomach, all the way to the hilt. She began to buck underneath him and he choked her tighter, feeling his orgasm nearing. He began to make small sawing motions with the knife, cutting up the length of her belly. Blood was flowing hot and free from her wound, splashing across his hand and down onto his legs. He continued to saw up her torso, feeling the edge of the blade slice through organs, pipes and flesh. When he felt the blade strike against her sternum he pulled it free and tossed it aside. The girl’s struggles had become faint convulsions as the life was quickly slipping from her. But Walther was not yet done. He slipped his free hand into the wound, feeling her ruined entrails pressing in around his arm, pushing his hand deeper into her eviscerated torso, further…Deeper…Stopping only when he felt his fingers close around her faintly beating heart. He squeezed it with all of his strength, feeling the girl's body convulse one final time. He reached orgasm just as the girl’s heart stopped beating in his hand, the condom catching his seed. The Voices slowly receded and he could hear her final frantic thoughts slip away to the afterlife as he stepped away from her. He pulled his pants up, covering his blood soaked legs. He didn’t bother to remove the condom; he would dispose of that back at his apartment. He pulled his jacket back on and slipped the knife back up his sleeve.

Without a backwards glance he left the alley and returned home. Once there he stuffed the bloody clothes and condom in a paper sack, walked down the hall and dumped them all down the chute to the buildings incinerator. Then he went back to his apartment, took a long, scalding hot shower, climbed naked into bed and slept soundly. The body of the woman was found the next morning, but the radio reported the police had no leads save for a single witness who had seen the girl enter the alley with a tall man in a dark jacket. There were no other physical descriptions and with a smile Walther knew he had gotten away with it.

And so Walther Jennings began to lead a dual life, a successful Wall Street broker by day and a serial murderer at night. But he was smart, preying only on prostitutes and young homeless girls. And he never penetrated them sexually, always killing hem just before the act. And the Voices guided him all along. The frequency of his Communion varied. Sometimes he would go a month between Communions, other times he would do several in a week. Once he had taken Communion 3 times in a single night, and the longest he ever went between sessions was a whole year. And the Communion itself evolved, going from murder and disemboweling to now include cannibalism. He found the brains and hearts of his victims especially tantalizing and was also fond of drinking their blood.

By 1960 Walther Jennings had a net worth of one billion dollars and had grown as odd and eccentric as he was rich and powerful. He used his vast wealth to fund obscure archaeological digs and bizarre monster, treasure, and artifact hunts of little or no scholarly value but heavily steeped in the arcane and occult. Over the years Walther had asked the Voices who they were and where they came from and all he had ever gotten for an answer was a scolding laugh and told he was not yet ready for such knowledge but one day, all would be revealed to him. But until that time he was to continue his study of the occult and practice of ESP.

And what an experience that was. By now he had mastered his Telepathy so well that not only could he read other peoples minds, but project his own thoughts into theirs, thereby controlling them. Once in their minds he found he was also able to affect their neurological stimuli as well, causing them to feel pain or pleasure, make them fall asleep or bring them to hyper-alertness, to laugh uncontrollably or scream hysterically. He was even able to kill a person if he pushed hard enough, but it was both painful and extremely taxing, leaving him incapacitated with a pounding migraine and fatigued for days. He could look at a person and read their bio-field or Aura, sensing their approximate age and general health including minor sickness, infection and terminal illness. He could also sense sickness and disease in himself and purge his body at the cellular level, making him effectively immune to sickness, disease, poisons and toxins. He could sense the presence of others around him, their bioelectric fields registering in his mind like a blip on a radar screen. He could also control his own neurological stimuli, ignoring hunger, thirst, fatigue and pain.

Walther traveled constantly, seeking new adventures and experiences, living either on his private jet or one of the many luxury yachts he kept moored in various ports around the world. He quickly learned that ESP and psychic abilities were not rare in human beings, the ability registering brightly in their aura. But at the same time he found it amusing that the vast majority of ESPer’s were young children and the mentally ill. He visited several psychiatric wards and hospitals and found them overflowing with ESPer’s, driven insane by their powers and their inability to control them.