The Travelling Man (29 page)

“I know that you’re all angry and with every right to be so,” she started, “but we have to remember who we are. We are not some rampaging angry mob which is prepared to throw every ounce of decency out of the window when faced with adversity. We are a community, we are friends, we stand together when times are tough and hard times only make us stronger.”

“Try telling that to those maniacs up at the church!” a man bellowed to muted applause.

“They tried to kill us,” a woman yelled angrily to a louder round of clapping.

“And we will deal with those responsible in the right way,” Cassie responded, her voice rising. “We have to place our faith in the law and know that we will be rescued soon. It’s only a matter of time.”

“Nobody’s coming,” a woman wailed. “We’ve been abandoned for whatever sins we’ve committed.

Kravis did not like her tone one bit; it was the sort of rhetoric that belonged at the church, not here.

“I can assure you that help is on the way,” Cassie lied. “We have been struck by a natural disaster, the quake was not a judgment from God and we will not fall apart, I can promise you that!”

Kravis felt the room’s mood veer uncomfortably as people’s thoughts and fears battled against the Sheriff’s strength of will. He hoped and prayed that she would win out as right now he could easily imagine this group breaking forth from the Town Hall and charging the hill towards the church, seeking bloody vengeance. Slowly, ever so slowly, the mood seemed to settle and the people with it.

Kravis let his breath go in a long relieved sigh and he smiled at Cassie as he caught her eye. The moment was gone and the crisis was averted, but just then the doors burst open and the male reporter from the small town paper burst in. His face was a twisted mask of anguish. His shirt was smeared with dark stains and as he held up his hands, Kravis could see that they were red and sticky.

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Lesnar snuck his way back through the remains of the town. The streets were empty of people as the two separate groups had retired to their respective bases.

His body still thrummed with excitement and his muscles ached with spent energy. The little reporter had put up a fight and his face paid testament to her courage, as vicious scratch marks lined his soft skin. He had played and toyed with her, enjoying every inch of her tender body before snuffing the life from her eyes, watching the light die in her gaze. This was the power that he demanded, that he deserved, that he was going to taste on a daily basis.

He had waited until the woman had been discovered and he had been doubly pleased to see the agony in the man’s eyes. The pain in his expression had tasted like sweet nectar to Lesnar and it was a taste that he knew he was going to get used to.

He stuck to the shadows as he picked his way through the town square, avoiding the Town Hall and detection. Grange may well be on his last legs, but the man was still in full contact with everything around him. Lesnar knew that the one thing he was going to have to work on the most was the subtlety that Grange exhibited. The man moved his pieces across the board with grace and expertise allowing choices to be made, but in reality every choice was one that Grange had predetermined.

Lesnar had been waiting in the shadows when his mind had suddenly been filled with Grange’s next assignment for him, one that the man had promised would be the last. Lesnar was to head up to the church and move the last piece into place before the ball not only starting rolling, but fell off the edge of a very high cliff.

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Father Luther waited patiently in his private office for the Broker brothers to return. He had sent them to cut the head off the serpent and end the leadership of The Fallen before the heathens ran amok and finished the job that their blasphemous ways had brought about.

He sat back in his chair and let his eyes drift around the room. His mind was full of his next sermon, of God’s wrath and thunder that he intended to throw at them in waves, when his eye caught a framed photograph on the wall.

The picture had been taken at a picnic event a few months ago. There were several smiling rosy red faces all enjoying themselves immensely. Mouths were smeared with ketchup and mustard as hotdogs and burgers were consumed on the church’s grounds beneath a large marquee. He remembered that the event had been to raise money for little Ellie Wheeler, the Sheriff’s daughter, who was battling cancer. The poor mite’s medical bills were sky high and the picnic had barely put a dent in the cost, but for a brief moment they had all shared a pleasant afternoon warmed by Granton’s community spirit.

His face crinkled with confusion as he stared down at his hands, hands that had taken the life of Redfern Warrick. He looked down at his leg where the self-inflicted wound ached and itched under the bandage. He was a man of God and he had murdered a man in cold blood to further an agenda. He had whipped his congregation into a frenzy that had brought them to the edge of murder.

His hands trembled and he thought that he could see the invisible blood indelibly staining the pink digits; guilt would follow him into the afterlife and assure his banishment from the kingdom of heaven. His whole body started to shake with realisation about what he had done and it crashed down hard upon his shoulders.

He had been tainted by the apple, the serpent had tempted him and he had succumbed. The man with the accent and the smart suit, he was the whisper in Luther’s ear and, God help him, Luther had listened intently to every word.

The fog started to lift from around his mind and he could almost begin to think clearly again. He started to weep with remorse and could only pray that it wasn’t too late to undo the damage that he had caused.

He steeled himself for the most important sermon of his life. He had to find the words to turn back the tide of fury and bring the light into his congregation’s hearts. He had to save them from the darkness that he had brought down upon them and he had to do it fast.

He didn’t hear the rear door open and he didn’t feel the man slip inside; neither did he feel the blade until it bit deeply across his throat. One minute he had been sat at his desk, pondering the vagaries of his existence, and the next his life’s blood was spraying out in front of him as he clasped uselessly at his torn throat.

Lesnar stepped back to avoid splashing himself with the priest’s crimson spurting. If this, along with the rape and mutilation of the library woman, didn’t set the two groups against each other he didn’t know what would.

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Cassie stared at Will Daniels at the back of the hall. Her first instinct had been that he had been grievously injured in some way, but the more that she looked at him the more that she was sure that it wasn’t his blood.

“
Mr. Daniels,” she said, stepping down off the stage, walking through the crowd who had all turned to look at Will. “Please wait there.”

“They killed her,” he snarled with a voice that Cassie had rarely heard before and one that she could have never imagined coming from him. “Those monsters raped and butchered her in the name of their god, GOD!” he screamed.

Cassie could see the sheer madness in his eyes and she could feel the rest of the room responding to it. She had barely been able to hang onto them and now they were all staring at Will and the sense of hysteria was taking over again.

“
Mr. Daniels, Will, please, let’s talk about this privately,” she tried again, wanting to take him out of the group.

“Talk? TALK! SHE WAS TORN APART, SHERIFF,” Will wept. “Raped and ripped open. You can talk all you like. Me? I’m going to do something about it.”

His sentiments were met with several murmurs of agreement and she knew that the rest of them were about to break.

Will suddenly turned and headed towards the kitchen and Cassie had a very bad feeling. She tried to follow. By now, several people had risen from their chairs and were blocking her path as they turned to follow Will. Shoulders and elbows barred her way and she started to roughly shove them aside.

Her worst fears were confirmed when the air was split by a bone-shaking screeching sound as Will dragged the chair from the kitchen that held the man from the church’s group. Will pulled the chair out into the main hall and stood behind the terrified man secured to it. She could see the eagerness in the eyes of several men and woman who surrounded him. A handgun was pressed into his palm and he took the weapon willingly. He pulled back the hammer and pressed it against the bound man’s head.

“
Mr. Daniels, stop this,” she ordered, but his eyes were glazed. “Please, Mr. Daniels. I know that you don’t believe in this; this is not your way.”

“I’m not a religious man, Sheriff,” Will said in a quiet voice. “I couldn’t recite much in the way of scripture, but one thing that I do remember is an eye for an eye.”

The gunshot was thunderous in the high-ceilinged hall. Cassie could only watch on helplessly as the man on the chair’s head exploded, showering an excited man and woman standing next to him. Their faces lit up as blood splattered across their pale flesh and their eyes blazed with exhilaration.

“Stop this!” she tried to yell, but her voice was drowned out by resounding cheers.

Somebody shoved her hard in the back in their eagerness to reach the corpse in celebration. Her temper broke then and she spun around and hit the guy hard in the stomach. Someone else grabbed her arm from behind and she reached around and took the woman’s wrist in a vice like grip, bending it back almost to the point of breaking. Her hand reached instinctively to the butt of her gun and she decided that these scumbags could all go to hell as far as she was concerned. She had fought against the tide for long enough; if they wanted to act like mindless animals then she would put them all down.

Two men took an arm each and dragged her backwards as the crowd started chanting about death and vengeance. At that point, all she wanted to do was to dish out some of her own.

“Let me go, LET ME GO!” she roared as she was hauled backwards. Hands and fists flew at her from every angle as the crowd rioted. She glimpsed through the throng of bodies and just caught the briefest glimpse, mercifully, of the church man being torn limb from bloody limb by the mob.

Suddenly, she was in the clear and could see that it was a one-armed Kevin and a weak looking Kravis pulling her away. At that point, she didn’t care how big Kevin was or how injured Kravis was, she would beat them to death with her bare hands. Spittle flew from her mouth and tendons strained as she struggled against their strong grip. Kravis’ hand slipped from her arm and Kevin shoved her backwards with his one good arm.

She landed heavily on her backside and her hand reached for her gun. She drew the weapon and aimed it at the two men standing before her as her thirst for violence reached boiling point, and then Ellie was standing in front of her.

Her daughter’s eyes were full of fear and tears, and the spell broke. She reached out and grabbed Ellie in a fierce hug, clasping her tightly to her chest.

“We have to go,” Kravis said, tugging at her arm.

Cassie stood and lifted Ellie effortlessly up into her arms as Kevin led the way towards the side door which Jeanne was holding open.

They broke out into the fading daylight as the crowd roared behind them, lost in their madness, and Cassie knew that they were just five now.

CHAPTER
19

close to the edge of madness

Gilbert Grange tried hard to focus his attention on maintaining his core’s stability. The world around him now was flushed with a rainbow of colours and bright flashing lights. He struggled to see what was real anymore and what were only the death cries of his mortal form. It had been a shock to find just how quickly his very essence was in danger of completely evaporating into nothingness. He didn’t know what lay behind this veil for him but he wasn’t all that eager to find out. He had lived for eons and now, as the end drew close, he wasn’t ready to leave. He had suddenly realised that he had expected some kind of last minute save, some miracle play to reach down at the last minute and rescue him from his inexorable fate. It also dawned on him that there was no such salvage operation on the way.

He opened his eyes and found himself deep in the desert. He had wandered out here alone and far from prying eyes. He looked around and saw that the shifting sands glowed a strange
mesmerizing lilac for his eyes only. Pieces of reality drifted on the wind as tiny corners tore free and swept past his vision, leaving only sparkling gaping black holes behind. The sight of what lay behind reality was oddly hypnotic and he had to fight the compulsion to walk towards the dizzying blackness.

He closed his eyes again and wrapped tight, imaginary bandages across his very spirit to hold it in place a little while longer yet. He was not done and his work was not finished.

The crow flew on the winds again, stretching out over what remained of the small town. Despite his failing condition, he could feel their boiling rage and their desperation. What remained of his abilities and influence was stretched paper thin across the town and its people. He was barely holding onto his coherence and he was starting to worry that he had left himself too much to do in what little time remained.

He sat down cross-legged on the desert floor and wished that he could find a rodent of some kind, anything with warm pumping blood to offer a little sustenance, but there was nothing close. Before, he could summon animals at will, but now his mind had limits; any creatures within distance shrank away.

He tried to rise up off the ground but now there was no juice left and he merely sat there on the red sandy floor. He fought against his fears of impotence and barely won the fight. It had been such a long time since he felt fear that at first he didn’t even recognise the feeling. It was strange and alien to him and he immediately despised the emotion, wishing that he could rip off its head with his teeth and feel it pop in his mouth, but it constantly danced out of reach.

The end of Granton was close now, but so was his own. The clock was running down fast and the sands of time were slipping past at an alarming rate. He took hold of the fear with a huge mental effort and reached out again, looking for the last piece to set the whole party off with a bang.

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Glenn Jordan had never been a religious man by nature; sure, he’d attend services from time to time and sing the occasional hymn, but it was all mainly for appearances’ sake. He was a man living in a small town that took its church very seriously and if any businessman wanted to get ahead in Granton, then you played the game.

The people were growing restless for leadership and Father Luther had been in his office for some time. There were those in the group who demanded action and were more than prepared to use the stolen arsenal to seek it. Word of The Fallen had soon raced around the congregation and tempers were running high. The Father had sent two of their biggest assets in the Broker brothers down into town and neither had returned yet. They were all scared and pissed and they needed their leader.

Glenn had once seen himself as a leading light in Granton, an important man of business and the community and now he saw that there was a need for him to step up again. He was no Father Luther; he didn’t have the natural air of authority of the priest or indeed the man’s powerful rhetoric. What he did have was an ability to win the hearts and minds of the right people in quiet whispers.

He had woken from his nap with a new sense of purpose and direction. In his dream, he had been walking in the desert, much as Jesus had done before him. He had been wandering lost and lonely when a voice had reached out to him from the darkness. At first, he had been unsure if he had been truly dreaming or not. The wind had been warm on his face and the sands salty on his tongue. A voice had drifted out of the wilderness and into his mind without speaking aloud. He had started to wonder, not only if this was real, but also if the voice had spoken to him mistakenly. He wondered if perhaps he had accidently wandered into a dreamscape meant for Father Luther, if these blessed words were meant for the ears of another and not for the likes of him. But his fears had soon been quashed as the voice spoke his name and his only. He had listened intently to his instructions and felt the warm rush of God’s loving embrace. He was special, after all, and here was the proof to show him the error of his ways and to help him regain his place in heaven.

When he had opened his eyes, he had seen the world around him with fresh eyes and felt reborn and
baptized into God’s service. He was now a soldier. No, more than a soldier - he was now a General sent to lead his forces against The Fallen and save the righteous.

He rushed to the Father’s private office to share the wondrous news, but upon opening the unguarded door his senses had been assaulted with the stench of death. Father Luther had been lying splayed across the floor with his blood soaking into the carpet beneath his body. He closed the door quickly behind him as he didn’t want the congregation to have their minds clouded by animalistic rage at the sight of the dead priest, or at least not until he had instilled his own sense of control.

He did a quick headcount. In all, there were 18 of them: men and women, with a few kids tucked away in a makeshift crèche at the back. He started out by speaking to a few of the larger, more aggressive, men in the group. He knew that he would need to garner physical strength to do his bidding.

He soon found that they were all in desperate need of answers and direction. They were stuck in some kind of collective dystopian nightmare where there was no order and no man-made law, only the word of God. Glenn knew now that he had been blind, his vision obscured by the modern trappings of life that had rendered him so lost and bereft. He knew now that his life had been leading up to this moment; this had been his calling all along and every turn in the road had led him here.

His newly found aura of confidence and assurance seemed to lull those around him. They hung on his whispers and nodded heads in agreement with his sentiments. It took less than two hours for him to assume a position of authority within the group and only then was he confident enough to lead the discovery of Father Luther.

The outcry had been as large as it was predictable and heads had turned to him amidst the wailing and gnashing of teeth. He moved to the front of the church and stood behind the pulpit, his arms open wide as he accepted the position as their new
savior. Father Luther had been a great man; he had been a man of love and compassion, charged with saving the souls of his flock. But Glenn knew that he had been chosen to lead in a different time. He was a wartime General and he would lead his troops into battle.

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Matt Kravis felt like his ribs were on fire. Every movement caused him pain but Cassie and her large deputy (despite his own injuries) did not allow them to rest for even a minute. They had left the Town Hall as the mob had broken out into a wild frenzy and he knew that Grange’s influence ran deep like rotten twisted roots, strangling all reason and sense from what would have once been ordinary and good people. He now knew that this was Gilbert Grange’s death song and it was to be a monstrous and ugly tune that was going to drown them all.

Ellie took his hand and helped to lead him through the broken streets. It was strange to be aided by a small child who had her own health problems that dwarfed his own. She was quite possibly the strongest person that he had met and she was only 11 years old. Her courage put him to shame and he gritted his teeth and kept moving forwards towards safety.

“It’ll be okay, Matt,” Ellie whispered in a small quiet voice to his ears only.

He looked down and saw with concern that she seemed paler than before. At first, he had assumed that she was under stress from the spreading violence, but now he could see that her skin was ivory and it gleamed with a cold sweat. He gave her small hand a soft squeeze and smiled reassuringly down at her gentle face. It had been a long time since he had been a big brother and when Grange had taken Cerys from him, his life had become a constant long monologue of hate and vengeance. He’d had no time for relationships of any kind in his life; it had been a lonely road, and now the end was finally in sight. He had no idea just what the end would be or just who would be left standing, but he didn’t care as long as Grange finally paid for his sins.

They hiked their way beyond the sight of the Town Hall and the maniacs running wild inside it. He had seen them tearing the church man apart with sickening delight and now he wanted to be as far away from them as possible. The Sheriff led the way with Kevin; both had their weapons drawn and swept their path with professional skill. Kravis felt his hardwired instincts playing at his ego as he followed behind with Jeanne and holding the hand of a small girl who was offering him words of comfort while Cassie led them to safety. He had no training in either physical combat or firearms and the absurdity of his mission to find the man who had taken his sister now seemed clear. He knew that he should have some grand plan or at least some understanding of what Granton faced, but in reality he had nothing but the hate in his heart. There were no books to study this man, if Grange was really a man at all. This wasn’t the movies and there was no convenient library of ancient witchcraft and demons for him to draw upon to slay the monster.

Cassie held up a clenched fist and everyone stopped in their tracks. He pulled Ellie into the doorway of what looked like it used to be a furniture store. The windows were all blown out but the roof, although slanting dangerously, still held onto its moorings.

He desperately wished that they’d had time to take some supplies from the Town Hall, but they’d left in a hurry with nothing but the clothes they were wearing and the contents of their pockets.

The store was dark inside, but he obeyed as Cassie motioned for him to go inside. He moved into the shadows, dragging a nervous Ellie with him. Jeanne stepped in alongside him and the three of them cowered out of sight.

Cassie and Kevin nodded to each other with a silent signal and Kravis felt barely more than useless as he hid with a child and the anxious dispatcher.

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Cassie felt the approaching presence and motioned for Kravis to take Ellie and Jeanne into the furniture store. She was glad that he was with them and felt comfortable with him looking after Ellie. She wouldn’t have trusted many people with her daughter, but he had a strong reassurance about him.

With Kravis looking after Ellie and Jeanne, she motioned for Kevin to duck behind a burnt out station wagon and she took a position on the other side of the ruined street behind a collapsed building that was now a large mound of rubble and glass. Her heart ached at the sight of the once busy and prosperous street now lying in ruins. The quake had devastated the town but there seemed to be more intentionally inflicted damage from the hands of her once friends and
neighbors. She could understand taking food and supplies from the stores - she had organised several runs herself - but now she could see that other useless items had been taken. Electronic stores had been ransacked, stripped free of consumables despite the fact that there was no electricity. Cash registers had been emptied as some people had taken advantage of the situation, instead of helping. Most disconcerting was the pet store a few blocks back.

She had made sure to lead the group in a wide arc away from the scene that she had come across when walking ahead. The stench of death had been thick on the air and one quick look inside the building had been more than enough. The bloody carcasses of small animals had been thrown about the place in an orgy of violence that sickened her to her very core. There had been severe pleasure and cruelty in equal measure and she had flipped the safety off of her revolver at the grotesque sight.

Her concern at the approaching presence now was that the person might be the same one that had perpetrated such sick barbarism on small, defenseless animals and may very well be hunting for bigger game.

The footsteps grew closer as they moved carefully and lightly through the rubble. The person didn’t sound large but Cassie wasn’t going to take anything for granted, certainly not where her daughter’s safety was concerned.

She slipped around an upturned pickup truck as the soft footsteps drew near and she instinctively knew that Kevin was doing the same from the opposite side in a pincer movement.

A silhouette passed by and Cassie stepped out from her hiding spot. “Don’t move,” she ordered, holding the revolver up and pointed at what could now clearly be seen to be an elderly woman’s head.

The woman froze instantly and Cassie downgraded the threat level but not enough to lower the weapon.

“I can assure you that I’m no threat, Sheriff,” Delores Fiorentino replied without turning around.