The Forsaken - The Apocalypse Trilogy: Book Two (49 page)

Felon dragged himself to the flames. He knew
that if the Swimmers wanted him dead, he would be dead. So he put
aside his thoughts of killing, drew near the flames instead. The
heat scorched his frozen skin, but it burned until it won
acknowledgement of life. Shivers took him. He shuddered on a deep
breath. He gritted his teeth until his jaws ached. Felon had to
know more. Anger twisted his lips—he grunted something, and
struggled out of his coat and jacket. To do so, he had to set the
gun aside by sheer force of will. His fingers resisted, unclenched
painfully. Keeping a wary eye on the Swimmers, he laid out his
clothing on the tiles. He needed time to think. The Swimmers hadn’t
moved.

Inwardly he cursed.

“We are unaffected by cold.” The Swimmer
pulled Felon from his thoughts.

The assassin stared into the Swimmer’s eyes.
They were black. Unblinking, they might have looked ridiculous in
different circumstances.

“We have watched for you.” The Swimmer’s
voice echoed. “Like the Watchers.” The thing’s voice bubbled. “But
we listen underground, ear to plumbing pipes and nose to grates.
Vibrations say much.”

“Why?” Felon urged himself to speak. He would
have to communicate to gather weapons for survival.

“
They
spoke your name.
They
spoke of your coming.” The Swimmer dunked his head under the
water—resurfaced.

“Who?” Felon worked his fingers. They were
numb and cold, the skin prune-like.

“Those who use you.” The Swimmer drooled
water as he spoke. His brethren bobbed behind him.

“Who?”

“We listened. Through the hull of his ship,
we listened to the Councils of Balg.” Water streamed from the
creature’s face.

“So?” Felon wanted to retreat into
silence.

“He met with Angels. They will destroy the
living. They will conquer.”

Scenarios played out in Felon’s head. He
didn’t trust any of the creatures involved any more than he
believed the Swimmer.

“They met in secret. They bargain for the
souls of the dead. They bargain for dominion over the living. They
seek the destruction of the world.” The Swimmer’s glazed and milky
eyes held Felon’s. “You are their tool.”

“So.” Felon felt no jibe in what the Swimmer
said. As long as he was paid, the situation was fine. Had he become
a liability to his employers?

“Balg forged an alliance with the Firstborn,
Gabriel.” The Swimmer coughed spraying water from his lungs. He
submerged briefly then returned drooling water. “They did not agree
with
the book
.”

“Book?” Felon wrung his hands.

“That book which built the Tower. That book
that threatens the world.” A hint of emotion wandered across the
Swimmer’s face. “The book that foretells the end.”

Felon wanted a cigarette. Immediately he dug
the package from his coat. He laid the wet tobacco by the fire.

“That book that speaks of the Judgment.”
Something like life entered the Swimmer’s tone, and was gone.

Felon’s hands were tingling. He pondered the
idea of removing his boots—dismissed it. His eyes were adjusting to
the darkness. He watched the Swimmer shift his weight from hand to
hand.

“God works through His servants. They do His
bidding.” The Swimmer licked nacreous teeth. “Who would institute
the deeds foretold in Revelations?”

“Christ carried a scroll.” Felon’s mind
whirled around the thought.

“And as the seals are broken they are law.”
Dead hands smoothed water into algae colored hair. “And great
perils fall on the earth.”

“War. Plagues, earthquakes,” Felon said the
words without purpose. His body was shaking with returning vigor.
“The Horsemen.”

“And the Angels enact these changes.” The
Swimmer kicked his feet in the water. “You see now?”

“Change doesn’t fit.” The assassin knew his
fingers could pull a trigger. The knowledge put new vigor in
him.

“True.” The Swimmer snarled or smiled. “The
Change is not that which was revealed.”

“So?” Felon’s nerves had steadied. His legs
still felt like wet sand, but his shoulders and arms itched for
murder.

“You
see
what Balg spoke about.”
Anticipation filled the Swimmer’s dead face. “What we heard in the
darkness. Why we brought you here.”

“Betrayal.” The assassin’s face flushed with
feeling. He saw some sticks of driftwood, put them on the fire.

“Balg spoke to them.” The Swimmer smiled.
“But brave Michael guarded the way as before. He is God’s arm and
sword.”

Felon searched his memory. There was
something.

“…the Principalities shall be as one,” the
swimmer said, and coughed. “Man shall be set beside God, equal to
Angels.”

“Gabriel didn’t like that,” Felon finished.
“Balg wants?”

“He who judges will cast Balg out when the
seals are broken.” The Swimmer smiled to himself.

“Judgment Day…” Felon dropped his gaze. His
fingers tingled, but their color had returned. “Who judges?”

“The Shepherd. The Lamb of Seven Horns.” The
Swimmer sank beneath the water, resurfaced.

“I kill Michael, so the seals won’t be
broken.” Felon thought of the walking dead and the Change. “Gabriel
is the Angel of Death.” The assassin identified one of his enemies.
Uriel guarded the gates of Eden. “Raphael?” Felon remembered the
other Archangel’s name.

“None know.” The Swimmer submerged again—came
up hair pasted to his head.

“Their own Apocalypse.” Felon looked
mournfully at his cigarettes.

“Just so. You are as we expected.” The
Swimmer gestured to his sunken comrades. “We knew this.”

“What do you want?” Felon crouched over the
flames now.

“We brought you here so that you could act.”
The other corpses floated forward. Their unblinking eyes gleamed
with firelight.

“Act?” Felon’s stomach rumbled. He had not
eaten at Lucky’s.

“As you must.” The Swimmer crawled out of the
water toward him. “As you were made.”

“How did you find me?” Felon cast an eye to
the doorway behind him. He could see the first step in a series
that led upward.

“We watch. We listen.” The Swimmer’s body
grated against the sand. “
They
spoke of you.
We
heard
it. We know the waterways beneath the City. We are many. We
waited.” The Swimmer paused. “Those who spoke of you
saw
your companions.”

“Who?” The assassin coiled for action. The
Swimmer’s shoulders were powerful—his skin like marble.

“Your enemies.” The Swimmer looked back to
his companions. “Those who set you on this path.”

“Riddles!” With returning vigor, his ire
flared.

“There is no riddle.” The corpse moved
closer. “There is nothing that will happen that you do not expect.
That
we
do not expect.”

Felon grabbed his gun, got to his feet.

The Swimmer gazed at him. Its face softened.
“There are some among us, that have nothing. They float. They are
dead, and not dead. We care for them. But they scream.”

“So.” Felon had nothing for the Swimmer.

“So do what you were created to do. Do what
you want to do. Do what you are expected to do.” The Swimmer’s eyes
warmed a moment. Something resembling life filled them. “Kill them,
as you desire. Vengeance is thine. That is what we want. That is no
riddle.”

The assassin picked up his sodden coat and
jacket.

“We wish to die.” The Swimmer looked to his
companions. “There is but one way.”

Felon hated the piteous looks that hung on
the Swimmers’ dead faces. One by one, they floated free of the
water.

“Kill,” the Swimmer said and raised a hand
toward the doorway. “Stairs lead up to a street that will take you
to the harbor. A boat is there that will return to the Sunken City.
If you miss it, you will take another.” The creature turned,
slithered toward the water and the waiting Swimmers.

Felon’s shoulders clenched against a chill.
The gun trembled in his grip. He turned away from the Swimmers and
hurried up the steps as quickly as his numb legs would allow.

68 – Redeemer

Dawn wept as Nursie carried her down a
corridor that ran at right angles to the main hall. The monster
accessed the passage through a doorway that was set in the wall a
short distance from the room of experiments. It was invisible until
a couple of points on the wall responded to slight pressure from
the monster’s fingertips.

Nursie was wearing her human skin again,
slipping it on after sucking the Doctor’s body clean of fluids. Now
she hummed worriedly to herself as though her recent excesses with
the Doctor and the First-mother had gone far beyond rules she was
previously forced to observe.

“No angry, yah!” she said through the
monstrous music and throaty rumbling that came from deep within her
chest. “Sad baby child!”

Dawn wished Nursie would stop pretending to
be human because it just croaked up the smell of blood and death.
When she wept, the monster’s maternal instincts came closer to the
surface.

“She no cry now,” said Nursie shortly after
re-growing her skin. “Ist sad kid, no?” And the thing pulled Dawn
up into the crook of her neck cooing and rubbing her back with an
oversized hand while she swayed rhythmically and hummed a long
forgotten song.

Impossibly, Dawn smelled a floral perfume in
amongst the stench of body odor, rotten milk and blood. It reminded
her of an expression Mr. Jay used when they came upon a group of
old dead women masking their condition with lots of cosmetics. “An
overabundance of toiletries,” he said, pinching his nose impishly
after they passed. “Heavy on the toilet!” The thought of him
brought a tortured smile to her lips and more tears. That only
encouraged more consolation from Nursie.

“Nursie hates to see she sad—First-mother
child weeps,” the monster consoled, pausing at a wide iron door and
working a heavy handle to open it. The rusted plate slid back to
reveal a dark opening from which a foul stench wafted. It was rot
and feces—damp and mildew—and only made Dawn think of dark things
and death.

The forever girl broke from her sorrow long
enough to notice that Nursie had shed her human skin once again,
and was proceeding with a powerful shuffling gait; her claw-like
feet gripping the floor. As they entered the new darkness an orange
illumination came up like lit shadows and gave Dawn an unwelcome
look at her captor’s blood-slicked cheeks and a shadowy first
vision of her new confines.

The room was enormous but narrow, like it was
wedged in the gargantuan cleft or valley between two mountainous
stone walls. The floor was made of fibrous webbing that gave a
jouncing platform for the monster to cross.

“Home and the heart,” chortled Nursie as she
held Dawn close to her neck with one hand and started to climb long
woven sheets of fibrous material into the upper shadows. “Casa e
cuore.”

She hummed and chuckled as she gained greater
height and Dawn was sickened by the need to cling tightly to
Nursie’s ugly neck.

“Poor bambino, fussing,” Nursie croaked as
she climbed pausing at intervals to check on her burden and give a
reassuring pat. “First madre loves Nursie, sì?”

Against the pitch black, Dawn could see the
gigantic cavern was a patchwork of fibers and woven platforms. The
whole construction swayed and rocked under Nursie’s weight. The
action caused much movement and swaying, and it was then that the
dim light glinted on something that made Dawn cry out.

Glistening shapes were woven into the
structure for support, for handgrips and foot rungs, small things
easily overlooked at first. Except that the webbing bound some
together, and articulated them, gave them the semblance of life.
Bones, and parts of skeletons bound together by fabric and
fiber—small, all children, were bound up in the webbing, the flesh
missing—in places dried and wriggling with the Change’s weird
reanimation.

Dawn wept anew and pressed her eyes into
Nursie’s neck. There were thousands of bones all around, hanging
and dangling throughout the structures. Beneath them far below,
Dawn chanced a look and saw a wriggling mat of the yellowed bones
and skeletonized bodies, twitching and moving from wall to wall in
a nightmarish scene.

“Der, there,” consoled Nursie. “Erste Mutter
need milk, yah?” And the monster surmounted a broad platform. She
muttered something and from a couple of points in the air over
them, a red illumination grew to give light.

“She-em der cold?” Nursie asked, holding Dawn
out—swinging her by the armpits. “Or ist she-em hunger—yah? She
hungry!”

Nursie’s monstrous eyes looked down at her
long, slick chest and one claw-like hand ran over the nipples
there—ugly yellow milk sprayed from each gorged teat it
touched.

Dawn followed the gesture and her stomach
turned at the sight of the apple-sized spigots of flesh.

“Or she needs slaap?” Nursie whispered,
gesturing down and to her left, “Sleep like ragazzi.”

Dawn followed the look and screamed when she
saw the boys Nursie took from the Dormitory. Both were asleep—or
drugged—and tangled or bound in the fibrous cord that comprised
Nursie’s home. Their bondage did not horrify Dawn so much as their
condition. One of the boy’s legs had been chewed down to the bone.
Living muscle, naked, curled and flexed as the boy slept. The
other’s stomach was distended and moved like it was full of giant
worms.

“No!” she screamed, and started pushing and
slapping at the monstrosity that held her. Her little fists beat
quietly against the massive face and chest. But the action only
excited the monster, as murky milk started spurting from the
monstrous nipples.

“Fussy! Fussy mother…” Nursie cooed and
chuckled. “Special ragazza, this girl.” And she squatted then
reclined against the fibrous material. She rolled on her side. The
dribbling nipples sprayed the dank air. “Drink! Drink!” With a
powerful hand, she grabbed Dawn and turned her face toward the
teats. “Den slaap and dream. She-em eat?”