Vigil

Copyright © Craig Saunders 2012

All rights pertaining to this work retained by Craig Saunders and Craig R. Saunders Publications.

Any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

Vigil

by

C. R.
Saunders

*Note: This novel also contains bonus material - a sneak preview of Richard Rhys Jones' The Division of the Damned*

Also by Craig Saunders:

Novels

The Estate

A Home by the Sea

Rain

The Noose and Gibbet

A Stranger's Grave

The Love of the Dead

Spiggot

The Seven Point Star

The Gold Ring

Novellas

Deadlift

Scarecrow – Scarecrow by Craig Saunders and The Madness by Robert Essig

The Walls of Madness

The Dead Boy: A Dead Days Novella (# 1)

Short Story Collections

Dead in the Trunk

The Black and White Box

Dark Words and Black Deeds

Writing as C. R. Saunders:

The Evolution War

Vigil

Writing as Craig R. Saunders:

The Outlaw King (The Line of Kings Trilogy Book One)

The Thief King (The Line of Kings Trilogy Book Two)

The Queen of Thieves (The Line of Kings Trilogy Book Three)

Rythe Awakes (The Rythe Trilogy Book One)

The Tides of Rythe (The Rythe Trilogy Book Two)

Coming Soon:

The Setting Sky

Masters of Blood and Bone

Bloodeye

Flesh and Coin

731

Rythe Falls (Rythe Trilogy Book Three/Part I. and Part II.)

Praise for Craig Saunders:

[A Home by the Sea] 'Brutal and Poetic' - Bill Hussey, Author of Through a Glass, Darkly and The Absence

[Rain] 'I'd say it's the best book I've read in a year.' - The Horror Zine

'Saunders brings the unthinkable to life with pure visual perfection.' Emma Audsley, the Horrifically Horrifying Horror Blog

'Stephen King with a touch of Cardiff dirt and a lot of London grime.' - Richard Rhys Jones, author of 'The Division of the Damned'.

[Spiggot]
'Incredibly tasteless, shamelessly lowbrow, and very, very funny!' - Jeff Strand, author of Lost Homicidal Maniac (Answers to "Shirley")

"With A Stranger's Grave, Saunders has written a truly dark, atmospheric and character driven tale, packed with page-turning mystery, sorrow, and a jaw-dropping reveal that will leave readers haunted long after they've gone to bed." --David Bernstein, author of Machines of the Dead and Amongst the Dead

'A talent to keep an eye on.' - Eric S Brown, author of Bigfoot War

"A top-notch, thrilling read. Craig Saunders is a master of the genre." Iain Rob Wright author of Animal Kingdom and Final Winter

'An awesome talent!' - Ian Woodhead: Author of Shades of Green and Infected Bodies

“The Love of the Dead starts out like the type of horror novel you think you’ve read before, then whacks you over the head and goes in a direction you didn’t see coming—think chainsaws at a daycare center. Saunders’ writing will creep into your spine and paralyze you with dread.”  —David Bernstein, author of Amongst the Dead and Tears of No Return

[The Love of the Dead] 'Craig Saunders' unique chiller kept my eyes glued to the pages in anticipation.' - Kenneth W. Cain, author of These Tresspasses

Acknowledgment

First of all, I'd like to note that I have taken huge, towering liberties with history
, science, culture...well, everything, throughout this novel. It is entirely intentional, and nobody's fault but mine.

Secondly, as always, this is for Sim.

He who will drink from my mouth will become as I am.

The Gospel of Thomas

The Parisian Countryside

2025 A.D.

Year Zero: Apocalypse

A cold wind blows in from the west. It blows from the
English Channel, across ploughed fields and through the city. It carries the sea and a feel of the French countryside, fragrant brown earth and bitter stones. It brings with it all the tastes and smells and textures of the world that was. But also, in that gusting, chill wind, a taste of things to come.

Fi
re and blood and black rain.

A chateau stands in the last gasp of sunset. It sprawls across the landscape. Two floors of white walls. Leaded windows in dark wood frames. The first floor is hidden behind a long expanse of wall, as white as the house. The outside of the wall has been cleared of brush and grass and trees. The surrounding countryside is flat and bare.

In the distance behind the house the lights of the closest village brighten against the rising night.

A man, dishevelled, stands before the gates. His head is poised, his
legs slightly bent, like he’s prepared to run. He turns his head toward the night that rises from the east. The chateau’s white walls take on the fading glow of the setting sun, the colour of sullied gold then the illusion passes and the man is left standing before gates held fast only by a ghostly wall rising from the black earth. Nothing gold remains.

The man’s face is a map of scars, each line a road drawn from pain. His features are still clear despite the scarring. His nose is long and noble. His cheeks are just slashes of bone, pushing against pale skin. He looks as though he has never eaten, and if he did, it was so long ago that his body has forgotten the taste of food.

A fierce light burns in his dark eyes. They twinkle and darkle as the light laces through their deep shadowy sockets.

He doesn’t feel the
bitter cold seeping from the earth. His feet are muddy, leading to pale white flesh of an unclad ankle, scars visible even there, ghostly in the dusk’s late light. His trousers are torn.

He takes a deep breath
, like a man getting ready for a hard and dirty task. Favouring his left leg noticeably, the limp doesn’t stop him leaping to the top of the wall and balancing there like a bird perched on a telephone wire.

He listens
to heavy-booted footfalls and an accompanying clack-clack-clack of a dog’s nails on the paving surrounding the chateau. The last of the light fades outside the walls, but inside the artificial glow of security lights set around the chateau light every dark corner in their unforgiving glare. But this section of the wall is in darkness. It is a long time since he was last here, but he remembers it well enough.

Silently, the man pulls his long coat around him to stop it flapping in the cold wind.

A guard and a dog on a leash round the corner, walking calmly. The guard wears a stab vest, blue in the hard lights. He carries a baton but the dog is the only weapon he needs.

The guard is
ignorant of the intruder. Then the man drops on him from above. With a hand held like a claw and power unhinted at in his narrow shoulders, he swipes the guard’s throat and tears through the windpipe. The guard’s scream whistles, the sound blanketed with blood.

Before the man can silence the dog in the same way, it snarls and takes a lump of flesh from his arm along with some of the threadbare coat. The man in the dark coat drops to one knee, bringing the dog down with him, and sinks his teeth into the dog’s neck. He rips fur and spine free with his teeth and spits. It is the first sound he has made. The grimace he makes is for the taste of the dog, not the pain.

The dog’s grip does not slacken. The man pries the dead jaws from his forearm without complaint.

Now the risk of discovery is greater. He is bathed in light.

Time began with that first impotent cry from the guard’s burbling throat. The man in the coat breaks into a run, limp barely evident now, and lowers his shoulder. He crashes through the door to the guard house. The second guard, far too slow, leaps from his seat and tries to reach a gun by his side, but the scarred man is faster. Much faster.

Time is still running down, but slower now. Both guards are dead and silent. Two nurses and the housekeeper wait inside the house. No alarm has been sounded.

He punches a hole in the front door, two inches of hard wood, reaches through and turns the latch.

Too m
uch noise. Move. Faster. There’s an alarm in the kitchen, and one in the master bedroom.

But it’s quiet, and he’s close enough.
He runs.

The hallway is empty. A twin staircase leads
to the second floor. Nothing’s changed. Of course not. How could it?

The nurses would be staying on the second floor, but the housekeeper would be on the first floor.

The house is large but the intruder’s hearing is astounding. He hears the flush of a toilet down a long corridor and turns toward it at a flat run. He should make a sound. There should be a slapping with a hint of squeak. The floor is slate, his feet bare, but he’s silent, a ghost. Eerily, on soundless feet, his loping gait takes him down the corridor. As he runs his limp is gone and suddenly he is in perfect balance, strength evident in every stride. Still, some sense makes the housekeeper turn toward him as he flies toward her, but without a cry she falls.

Upstairs the nurses are in conversation. It doesn’t matter now. There is no one left to hear them scream, no alarm in this lounge on the landing of the second floor. The chance of failure has passed. Time slows yet again.

The second nurse has time to plead but it’s too late by then.

Then there were just two left in the chateau.

He walks along the hall. The bedroom is at the end. Hissing breath comes from behind the door, punctuated by a gentle beep, beating out time with a heart. The heart he can almost hear from within the room.

He pushes the door open and walks into the room.

A man lies on the bed. He’s old, perhaps as old as time. His skin is paper-thin. Waxy. A thin sheen of sweat stands out on a febrile brow. Wisps of hair float in the breeze coming through an open window. Liver spots stand proud on his forehead and scalp. His eyes are closed, but the man in the long coat imagines they will be cold and calculating, rivers of red capillaries running through them. Intelligent eyes, if rheumy.

The man in the coat turns and looks toward the far wall. There is a picture of a woman there in a gilded frame. He approaches it, the man behind him forgotten.

He stares at the picture for a long time. He remembers.

He checks the clock in his head and turns to the west facing window.

The machine beeps.

The sky brightens suddenly, impossibly bright, and he has to shield his eyes for a moment. When he opens them again the white light is gone, replaced by a glow that is as beautiful as a sunrise. The sunrise of a new dawn. A new age.

Beep.

Tick.

A fierce wind blows hard and hot even this far from Paris. When it finally stills the digital clock on the nightstand bleeps once and dies. The heart monitor fails, too, but the old man’s chest continues to rise and fall.

In the depths of this darkest winter, 2025, true night arrives. There are no lights burning between the chateau and
Paris. The only light is the raging, nuclear fire.

The ashes of mankind’s reign on earth begin to fall, and by the light of that distant fire the vigil begins.

*