The Forsaken - The Apocalypse Trilogy: Book Two (45 page)

And the head coiled back on the long neck and
flicked forward like a serpent strike. Dawn barely rolled out of
the way in time. She came up under Meg’s bed, and then pushed
herself toward the wall. Drool pooled on the tiles as Dawn’s heart
pounded in her chest. Nursie’s enormous alien feet stamped toward
the bed.

“Hem say Nursie no bother girl!” Nursie’s
voice had changed too. It was bestial and her oversized teeth tore
the words. “Nursie say much bother!” A long-taloned hand whipped
down and seized the side of the bed.

Dawn screamed as it was flung away and Nursie
loomed over her. Saliva dribbled down in streams, Dawn shrank from
its hot touch.

“Nursie take little bite!” the monster said
and smiled.

“NURSIE!” a voice shouted over the din of
screaming forever children.

The monster turned quickly, already Dawn
could see its shape sliding and flickering back to its human
form.

The Doctor was storming up the aisle between
the beds. He was carrying his black bag and was wearing a
blood-spattered medical robe.

“Nursie!” he repeated as he came near. His
eyes were wild with terror. “The Prime said the First-mother must
not be touched.”

Nursie’s body was shifting and shrinking in
size. Her head, now human and hideously make-upped, was bowed. Her
long blonde locks fell forward.

“Nursie worried—poor girl,” the large woman
whined, gestured to Dawn. The forever girl watched with horror as
the woman’s dress knitted up the side, replacing hideous skin with
cotton whiteness.

“Do as you’re told!” the Doctor barked,
marching up and seizing Dawn’s arm. He yanked her to her feet. She
was trembling. Her skin crawled under the man’s touch.

“You,” Nursie hissed, face wrinkling as she
spoke. She moved her oversized features close to the Doctor’s face.
“You no tell Nursie what she do.” Nursie shook her massive head.
“Prime, hem Boss of Nursie.”

And the gigantic woman turned on her heel.
She stamped across the room pausing for a moment by a group of
cowering children. “Oh!” she exclaimed, looking down at the
gathering. They were backed against a wall. “Naughty kids!” she
crowed and caught a pair of boys with her large hands. They
screamed as she pulled them close. “Bathe de dirty boys.” She
snuffled at their chests and licked their faces, then carried them
screaming from the room.

“See what you’ve done?” the Doctor scolded
shaking Dawn by the arm as the doors closed behind Nursie.

The forever girl’s face was wet with tears.
“I didn’t…”

“You did!” The Doctor bent over and glared
into her face. “You were lucky this time! Those boys
weren’t
. Forget them!” He squeezed until her arm throbbed
around his fingertips. “Nursie was too curious about you!”

Dawn tried to pull free of the man. She saw
the other children were shaking off their terror and moving away
from the tight groups they’d formed. When the Doctor let go Dawn
ran to her bed. She threw herself on it sobbing.

He yelled something and stormed out. Two dead
workers started straightening up Nursie’s mess with mop and
pail.

There was a tug at her sleeve. She looked up
to see Meg’s tear-stained face. The little girl climbed into bed
with her and hugged her.

“Don’t worry,” Meg whispered, “it wasn’t your
fault.”

62 - Aftermath

Stoneworthy looked at his hands.
Christ
went to Hell for us, cannot I
? They were numb from shock and
concussion. They were red with blood. He stumbled on a ragged limb,
a leg. He couldn’t react. His face had already frozen into a mask
of horror. All around him bodies laid, those who were dead before
the battle maintained a semblance of life. Moving, twitching shapes
intertwined with contortions of pain that transcended the physical.
He had thrown his gun away. It ran out of bullets by the time the
armies met. The minister was forced to use it as a club. He jerked
free of a tangle of clutching body parts. Moaning filled the air.
His own mouth quivered with broken words. The new death he had
experienced did not spare him the smell of burnt flesh.

…
man is very far gone from original
righteousness, and is of his own nature inclined to evil, so that
the flesh lusts always contrary to the Spirit
…

He slapped at his clothing, tried to tear a
swatch of fabric from his coat to tie over his nose; but his hands
did not have the strength or dexterity. Stoneworthy’s eyes were
heavy, but his tears were spent. He looked to the Heavens, raised a
fist at the growing gloom. The battle had lasted to nightfall.
The Laws of the Realm may punish Christian men with death, for
heinous and grievous offences
.

“Father!” he growled, his lips too dry for
speech. “God!” His feet slipped on blood-spattered grass, tipping
him down a slope. Stoneworthy rolled until a thicket of young apple
trees stopped him. On his back, the minister glared at the sky.
Anger clenched his heart like a vice. His dead lungs crackled and
burned. “I call upon you, Father!” The horror of his zeal tried to
drag him back into the abyss of fury. He threw an arm over his eyes
to push the feeling away. No more. “
I cannot turn and prepare
myself, by my own natural strength and good works
…”

He remembered a living young man, a defender
of the City—perhaps pre-Change twenty. Stoneworthy knew that the
Change made the truth of it a mystery. But he
looked
so
young, so frightened, when the Army of the Dead clambered through
the burning hail of bullets. The dead overwhelmed him. His machine
gun hung in his hands, a useless thing—as horror paralyzed him. He
screamed when he saw Stoneworthy’s lifeless rage, screamed when
Stoneworthy beat him with his rifle. Screamed when he died.

“It’s not me!” the minister wept to the
Heavens. “I cannot do this!” But he knew that was a lie, and it
dragged him down.

…
the Devil doth thrust them either into
desperation, or into wretchedness of most unclean living, no less
perilous than desperation
.

Hours later they found Stoneworthy. A special
detachment of soldiers had been assigned to check through the
bodies for him. He was just regaining consciousness when they
stumbled upon him. The relieved men took him to the command center
set up in the shadow of Updike’s transport.

The Army of the Dead had won the battle.
There were considerable losses for both sides, and the ranks of the
untested troops had broken down in the end, and become despairing
mobs—weeping as they killed. General Bolton was busy reforming his
troops into effective fighting units. Captain Updike still walked
among the survivors holding his temple. Pain constricted his
features and made them smaller, less extravagant—less believable.
There was a fire burning to the north. That was where the
casualties had gone, those that had been dismembered or pulverized
and could no longer find it in themselves to go on. Watching the
gray smear of smoke rising, Stoneworthy prayed for the souls as the
bodies were consumed. Did Heaven or Hell await them? The Change had
altered everything. He was an example of that.

By the grace of God we may arise again,
and amend our lives
…

Medics that checked him over found six
bullets lodged in his chest and abdomen. The wounds were oozing a
dark fluid; but he felt no discomfort, and once the medics patched
him up, he moved without any disability whatsoever. Others had not
been so lucky. A woman, whose body was in excellent condition for
the antiquity she claimed, had had her head blown away by mortar
fire. Another, a man who had died in a fall while painting his
home, had been torn asunder by machine gun fire. There was not
enough of his body remaining to reattach his head. Updike himself
had committed his ravaged skull to the fire.

The battle forced him to accept such shame
but the minister could not waste time on the past. Perhaps, like
the building of the Tower he was predestined for these stains? He
was dead, and he had risen with the others to take part in a war
that would define God’s purpose.
I killed those men
! But it
was the Lord’s will, and he a vessel for that purpose. He had
killed, had created others like himself. But this was a Holy
War.

The Angel who had come to him had set him on
this path to righteousness.
What will I be when this is
over
? He had to help clean the world of such repugnance. The
burning bags by the Dumpster had ordained it. He would persevere to
work the Lord’s will. That was why he was given this opportunity
after death. The Army had just won its first victory. It was
victory!

Even now, his comrades were going through the
fallen on both sides. Those City Defenders who had died in the
battle were coming out of Blacktime and he could hear their
wailing. They were reborn, and like babes needed comfort—now to
help them see the light of the Trinity. Stoneworthy began to see
how winning the war was inevitable. Every battle they won or lost
swelled their ranks. Fatalities would be rejected by their old
living comrades and be welcomed by the dead.

If we say we have no sin, we deceive
ourselves, and the truth is not in us
.

63 – Lucky’s Diner

Driver knew Lucky’s Diner from near about
twenty years before. He and the boys frequented the place when they
ran drugs for a pair of gangsters called the Smith brothers. They
were big time drug dealers who used to get their product from
container ships at the City docks before dispersing them along the
coast. The Smith brothers went down in a hail of bullets about a
decade past for cheating a resident gangster up in Greasetown.
Driver liked Lucky’s for two reasons.

First of all it was on Zero right near the
docks. Inland walls were easy to patrol, and Authority did just
that—arresting anyone who hadn’t thought ahead to give them a piece
of the action. But the seaside of the City was impossible to
police, and there were fewer reasons to do so. The Eastern Sea
after the Change was an inhospitable place at the best of times,
and it tended to weed out the amateurs when it came to contraband
and smuggling. And the professionals always gave Authority a
cut.

The second reason Driver frequented Lucky’s
was that they made great hamburgers grilled straight through with a
special Texas hot sauce lathered on like horse sweat. They were
fishburgers
actually. Since the Change, animals like people
didn’t have babies anymore and with dead flesh slithering off the
plate,
real
meat was a delicacy that few could afford or
stomach. Instead, food companies made meat substitutes out of
little bitty fish from the ocean. Didn’t taste the same, but the
hot sauce overshadowed everything, anyhow.

Driver had a passion for hot sauces. He liked
it when it hurt. In his old life before he joined up with Bloody
and Tiny he had briefly bucked around the idea of starting his own
burritos and beer place. He was a real hand in the kitchen, and
growing up on his own had put him in charge of all his meals.
Driver liked eating, and he hated repetition.

He sat in a booth across from Bloody and
Tiny. The salesman had suggested Lucky’s after Felon mentioned
food. Tiny still hadn’t told them what happened with Lucifer and
Driver was fit to be hogtied. Bloody was his usual blank self.

The diner was almost empty: a couple dead
prostitutes and some old black guy eating mushy peas. The waitress
was dead and no looker.

They had a few surprises on the way over,
passing a long line of military transports at one moment, and then
furiously preparing for a gunfight as an Authority cruiser came up
on them with flashing lights. Nothing had come of it. The cruiser
took a turnoff heading west.

The Texan clicked his tongue. It was already
burning, numb mostly, from eating an inch-thick fishburger with an
extra helping of Lucky’s Death Valley sauce. He was just thinking
about having a cigarette with his beer. Bloody hadn’t eaten
anything as usual, though he had purchased a bottle of Canadian
Club and was gulping it down in greedy mouthfuls. Tiny always ate
slowly. He picked at his plate like a bird, though Driver had
pointed out that the amount he ate would make the bird an ostrich.
Bloody slammed the bottle down.

“Tell me, brother,” Driver asked the dead
man. “Does that give you anythin’ anymore? You drink it down like
water, but you don’t change like you did in the old days.” The
Texan was referring to Bloody’s blackout states, where he would
talk and walk normally, but would be afflicted with an expression
and eyes that looked like murder.

“Water,” the dead man said.

“It’s like a preservative to dead people,”
Tiny said while nibbling fish meat shaped like a chicken wing.
“Don’t you remember me telling you about those Pickled Punks me and
Killer and Cherry saw up in the north? Well, what do you think
those dead babies were floating in?”

“I didn’t reckon it was Canadian Club
whisky.” Driver lit up a cigarette. “Weren’t that
formaldehyde?”

“Well, almost the same thing.” Tiny sipped at
his beer. “I’ve heard that dead guys soak in the stuff.”

“Well, I’ve heard that, but it ain’t why
Bloody’s drinkin’.” Driver puffed a couple of smoke rings, wiped
grease from his beard onto his hands.

“Taste,” Bloody said, his facial expressions
unmoving.

Driver and Tiny broke into guffaws. “Yeah,
that’s
all
you ever drank it for!” Tiny bummed a cigarette
from Driver, lit it. Then he squinted his eyes, stared past his
reflection in the window. He watched for a minute.

“Is he still out there?” Driver turned in his
seat.

“Yep.” Tiny took a slow drag from his
cigarette. “Him and the nun and the Marquis. Quite a crew.”

“You think the nun’s safe with him?” Driver
saw his own reflection in the glass. His hair and beard had grown
wild. He needed a trim.