The Revelation (31 page)

Jim put one foot slowly in front of the other, trying desperately not to make any noise. He glanced from side to side, listening for the sound of movement, prepared to defend himself against whatever might jump out at him. He reached the open door of the cab and cautiously peeked in. Empty. He moved around the front of the truck, still preparing himself for an unexpected attack. From here, he could see the rest of the dump. A reddish orange glow emerged from the smoldering embers of thecumbustible pile in the middle of the cleared area, and he shivered. He scanned the space immediately around him.

Nothing moved. He continued walking around the truck. The canvas strap of the rear door had stopped swinging, and the sheriff realized that there was no breeze. Something must have hit the strap to make it move. His grip tightened on his gun, and he peeked into the back of the truck.

Nothing.

He relaxed. Puzzled, he looked again into the interior of the truck then toward the bright headlights of the two pickups. He shook his head in an exaggerated motion. "Nothing!" he called.

Gordon moved forward and Father Andrews got out of the truck. Both of them approached the gate. "That's Brad's truck," Gordon said. "How did it get here?"

"I don't know," Jim said.

Brother Elias emerged from the cab of the first pickup, clutching his black-bound Bible in his hand. The preacher walked through the open gate of the landfill and moved around to the back of the truck where the others were standing. " "Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so will it be at the close of the age. The Son of man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and throw them into the furnace of fire."

Matthew--"

"--13:40," Father Andrews finished for him. He looked into the preacher's black eyes, and the preacher smiled.

The sheriff glanced around the dump. The sky was becoming progressively lighter. Although the sky to the west was still a dark purple, to the east it was anorangish blue, almost daylight. The tall ponderosas were no longer black silhouettes but were now identifiable as trees.

Brother Elias focused his cold gaze on the sheriff. "Get the pitchforks from the trucks," he ordered. "Get the rope."

"What about the rifles?" Jim asked.

"We do not yet need them."

Jim started for the pickups and Gordon moved to follow him, but Brother Elias clapped a strong hand on his shoulder. "He will get the weapons," the preacher said. "You move the truck. We must have the way clear."

Jim returned with four pitchforks and the coils of rope. Gordon, to his surprise, found the keys still in Brad's ignition, and he moved the vehicle away from the gate. Glancing down at the seat next to him, he saw an empty can of Pepsi, a few wet drops of the beverage visible on the vinyl upholstery, and he thought of his boss.

He shut off the engine and hopped out of the truck. He saw the sheriff run back to his pickup and pull the smaller vehicle through the gate into the dump. Brother Elias waved for him to park in the center of the landfill, near the smoldering woodpile. Jim stopped the truck, turned off the lights and came running over.

Brother Elias picked up the pitchforks and handed one to each of them.

Gordon accepted the implement and hefted it in his hands. It felt heavy, lethal. The shiny steel of the pronged points captured the first rays of the rising sun and reflected them back at him. He wasn't sure exactly what Brother Elias had in mind, but he knew that as a weapon a pitchfork was good for only one thing--stabbing.

The thought did not comfort him.

Jim and Father Andrews accepted their weapons from the preacher.

'"Take care, brethren,"" Brother Elias said softly, '"lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God." Hebrews 3:12." The preacher stared hard at each of them, then picked up his pitchfork. "Let us go forth," he said.

After taking her shower, Marina dried off, slipped on a robe and went back into the bedroom. She sat on the unmade bed and stared at herself in the full-length mirror on the front of the closet door. The house was silent, she thought, too silent. And she wished, not for the first time, that they lived a little closer to town. Outside, it was still dark. The moon had long since set, and the sun was not yet peeking its face above the eastern horizon. The forest outside the window looked ominous and vaguely threatening.

That was nonsense, Marina told herself. It was the same forest that was out there in the daytime, the same trees she walked amongst in the light. She was just spooked because of what Gordon had told her.

She stood up and moved over to the dresser for some underwear. She would get dressed and drive to Phoenix, spend the day shopping in the bright clear heat of the Valley, surrounded by miles of steel and concrete and people and civilization.

She slipped on her panties and stood still for a moment, listen Was that a scratching noise she heard coming from the kitchen?

No, she told herself. But she did not move, dared not breathe. She listened carefully.

Yes.

Something was out in the front of the house. Something small. She pulled her robe closed, then rushed over and slammed shut the bedroom door. Moving quickly, she pushed a chair against it. She put her ear to the door.

All was silent.

Marina moved over to the window. It was dark and she could not see very well, but she thought she detected movement in the underbrush.

Scared now, she inched her way across the room to the phone, still watching the window. She dialed the emergency number. The phone rang five times before someone answered. "Sheriff's office." The voice was tired, harried.

"Hello," Marina whispered into the phone. "My name is Marina Lewis. Is my husband Gordon there?"

"Gordon Lewis? He went someplace with the sheriff. May I take a message?"

"I think there's a prowler in my house," Marina whispered. "I'm in the bedroom, and I barricaded the door. I heard noises out in the kitchen."

"Stay calm, ma'am. We'll have someone out there as soon as possible.

We're a little understaffed right now, so it may be a while before we can get to you. I suggest you call a neighbor and try to find some type of weapon--"

"I need help!"

"I understand that, ma'am." The voice was clearly under stress.

"I'm pregnant!" Marina screamed. She dropped the phone, willing herself not to cry. The house was still silent, but she knew someone--something-was out there. She could feel it. She moved next to the door and crouched down, pressing her ear against the wood. Never before had she been so conscious of the child inside her, never before had her unborn baby seemed so alive, so in need of protection. She felt an unfamiliar predatory instinct flare up inside her--the instinct of a mother prepared to protect her young against all odds.

Something just outside the door gave a small yelp, and Marina jumped.

She pressed against the door with her shoulder, pushing all her weight against it so nothing could get in. With one hand, she held the chair in place. There was the sound of rough gnawing on the wood outside the door.

"Get out of here!" she screamed.

Tiny voices in the hallway laughed, and there was the sound of little feet running away. Marina began sobbing, still pressing her shoulder to the door.

A rock flew through the window, glass shattering on the floor, and she screamed. She threw open the bedroom door, kicking the chair aside, and looked out into the hall.

Nothing.

She ran across the hall into the bathroom and shut the door, locking it. The shutters Gordon had put over the window were securely in place. Whatever was out there was playing with her, she realized. If it had wanted to kill her, it could have done so easily. She sat down on the toilet and bent over, her hands over her head, her head between her knees.

The four men walked slowly across the gravel of the dump in the early morning half-light, toward the spot where The Selways’ bodies had been found, Brother Elias in the lead, Jim bringing up the rear. The harsh white light of the rising sun shone in bar like beams through the branches of the trees. At the far end of the landfill, the side mirror of a large parked bulldozer reflected back the sunlight in a single concentrated flash.

Brother Elias moved toward the large pile of garbage at the edge of the cliff. He stopped, cocking his head, listening. He began walking forward more slowly now, staring at the ground, his pitchfork held out before him.

The other three followed silently.

Suddenly Brother Elias made a harsh stab into the pile of garbage in front of him. There was an ear-piercing squeal, and the preacher lifted his pitchfork.

Stuck to the points, still squirming, was a fetus.

Gordon turned away, feeling nauseous. Even the sheriff flinched.

Father Andrews stood with his eyes closed, leaning heavily on his pitchfork for support, his lips moving in silent prayer. Though all of them had known, deep down, why they had been carrying the pitchforks, though all of them had known what Brother Elias expected of them, none of them had visualized the experience, had realized just how repellent the actual act would be.

What if Brother Elias was wrong? Gordon thought, sickened. What if he had just stabbed a real baby? But what real baby would be crawling through the dump, through the garbage, at six o'clock in the morning?

The preacher turned toward them. "This is what we are up against," he said. He held his pitchfork forward for them to examine the fetus. The thing was still alive, still squirming, though it did not seem to be in agony. Indeed, it appeared to feel no pain at all. Instead, it struggled furiously to free itself, as though the long steel points protruding from its body were nothing more than a harmless restraining belt. Its face was hideously malformed and was twisted into a malevolent grimace of hate. Thick fur grew on the unnaturally short arms. It stared up at them and spat angrily. There were tiny pointed teeth within its too-red mouth.

Brother Elias nodded toward the sheriff. "Get the blood," he said.

Jim ran off toward the truck.

Father Andrews moved forward gingerly. He was tempted to touch the fetus to make sure it was real. "What is it?" he asked. "I mean, is it alive? I thought these were infants who had died before birth.

Shouldn't they be rotted? Or decomposed?"

"I thought they'd be like ghosts," Gordon admitted. "Not real babies."

"They have corporeal form," Brother Elias said. "But they are not real babies."

The sheriff returned, lugging a box filled with the four quart jars of blood. He set the box down in front of the preacher.

Brother Elias nodded to the sheriff. He lifted the pitchfork, the fetus still struggling on the points, and ran it hard into the ground.

The hideous creature screamed, wiggling crazily. The preacher looked at Gordon. "Get the camera," he ordered.

Gordon ran to his truck and returned a moment later with the camera. He snapped a picture of Brother Elias standing next to the impaled fetus.

The

preacher

picked

up

two

jars

of

blood,

muttered

a

short

incomprehensible prayer, and walked across the gravel to the smoldering woodpile. Chanting something in a strangely guttural foreign tongue, the words rising and falling in ritualistic cadences, he began walking in a circle around the pile, sprinkling the blood on the ground as he did so.

"What's he saying?" Jim asked.

Father Andrews shook his head. "It sounds like he's repeating some type of liturgy, but I'm not familiar with the language. It's not Latin, I know. And it doesn't sound either European or Oriental." He listened, cocking his head, and his face turned suddenly pale. "I ...

I don't think it's human," he said.

Brother Elias continued chanting until he had completed his circle around the smoldering woodpile. He knelt on the ground and dribbled the last of the blood on the dirt in a peculiar spiral pattern. He waved his hands over the ground, said something in the alien tongue and looked up into the sky. His fingers traced in the air a cross, a spiral, and an unnaturally angular geometric shape.

The circle of blood erupted immediately into flame. Within the circle, the ashes of the woodpile began to burn again until the flames had become a full-fledged conflagration.

The fetus on the pitchfork was now struggling harder and screaming wildly. From other parts of the landfill, other tiny bodies, other babies, other fetuses, pushed their way up through the wet slimy garbage, crawled out from between sheets of metal, and moved toward them. They moved slowly but surely, like large retarded slugs.

"Jesus," Gordon breathed. "How many of them do you think there are?"

"Hundreds," the sheriff said, and Gordon realized for the first time the enormity of what they were fighting against. He felt weaker, smaller, more impotent than he had ever felt in his life. What were they? A ragtag group of four stupid pitiful men fighting an evil so powerful, so organized, so all-encompassing, that it could animate these hundreds of bodies and will the bodies to do its bid ding. There was no way they could hope to battle anything this large. He stared at the small wiggling forms moving toward them across the dirt. This was all part of a longrange plan, a plan that was coming finally to fruition. Something that could do this, that could capture these babies over a period of years, perhaps decades, and save them, hoard them, until needed, could not be fought. Not by them.