Apocalypse Crucible (41 page)

And where would he have gone? He didn’t know. Getting here had been his only mission.

He didn’t know when he’d fallen asleep, just as he didn’t know what had awakened him now. The fecund stink of rotting vegetation filled the small, enclosed area of the makeshift tent he’d made from his rain slicker.

After he’d made his decision not to open Terrence’s grave, he’d remained awake as long as he could and awaited the thing’s return. He had no doubt that it would put in another appearance. The creature was bound to him; it wouldn’t go away until it got what it came for.

And Chaplain Delroy Harte was very certain that what the thing was after was his soul. As trite as that sounded, he believed that with every fiber of his being.

You can fear and believe in a hellish creature that torments and persecutes,
he berated himself,
and you can’t let yourself believe in God’s mercy. That didn’t seem possible, but there it was.

At the moment, though, Delroy felt there had been little in the way of God’s mercy to believe in. Unfinished business had drawn Delroy from his ship during the fiercest trouble the crew had ever known, and had left him up to his thighs in his son’s open grave.

God, help me to understand,
he prayed,
because I can’t see the mercy in that.

During the time before he’d fallen asleep under the slicker, Delroy had admitted that maybe he hadn’t returned home at God’s behest. He was more convinced now that in his weakness Satan, not God, had drawn him here. For a time, thinking like that had helped. If he could believe that Satan had led him here, that Satan could take an interest in his life, wasn’t it possible to believe that God did, too?

In the end, he’d had to admit that line of thinking was arrogant and decidedly wrong. He wasn’t Job for God and the devil to fightover. And it was horrible to contemplate that the only way he could believe in God was to first believe that some devilish
thing
was out to get him.

High-intensity white light blazed onto the ground around Delroy. The light cut into the darkness under the slicker.

Cautiously, Delroy raised his head, exposing his face to the muddy rain that spattered against the ground beyond the slicker’s edge. He felt certain the creature had finally gotten over its vanishing act and come back to torture him more. Despite what it said, Delroy knew he wasn’t going to open his son’s grave. Whatever was in that casket, whatever wasn’t in that casket, Terrence wasn’t here anymore.

A pair of black rubber rain boots with yellow piping followed the light. The light reflected against the shiny black surfaces.

“Hey,” a deep voice said. “Come on up outta that mud.”

Delroy didn’t want to push up from the mud, though. When he’d first lain on the ground, the cold had seeped into his flesh. Now it felt like his body had made peace with the mud, and they shared his warmth between them.

“Get up outta there,” the voice said again. “You’re gonna catch your death laying there like that.”

Delroy ignored the man, thankful that it wasn’t the creature, and closed his eyes. He didn’t know why he’d woken up. There was no reason to. And catching his death in the cemetery? It was a perfect place for it.

The light shifted; someone grabbed Delroy’s left arm and flipped him over, exposing him to the cold rain. Only then did he realize how numb his body was. His teeth started chattering almost at once. His arms shook as he reached for the edges of the slicker to draw it around him again. After one try, he discovered that he was too weak to roll back over.

“C’mon. Get up outta there. Get on your feet.”

Delroy squinted his eyes tight against the harsh light but still felt it stabbing into his brain.

The man holding the halogen light nudged Delroy with one of the rubber boots. “Can you get up?”

“I don’t think so.” Delroy struggled to stop his chattering teeth but couldn’t.

The man sighed in tired frustration. “I’m gonna give you a hand.”

“No.” Resentment at the man’s intrusion bubbled inside Delroy. He’d placed his life in God’s hands by lying here on the cold ground. If there was a God, if He was really interested in saving Chaplain Delroy Harte, then let Him do it. That wasn’t for some stranger to do.

“You lay here much longer, you ain’t gonna be here come morning,” the man promised.

Suits me fine,
Delroy thought, but he immediately felt guilty for thinking that.

The light shifted again, dragging up the man’s thickset body. It settled on a badge revealed when the man lifted his raincoat out of the way.

“I’m a sheriff’s deputy, mister,” he said in a flat, no-nonsense tone. “You’re getting up offa that ground. Whether you do it under your own steam or I hook onto you with a set of handcuffs and drag you feetfirst, you’re coming with me.”

“It would be easier to leave me here,” Delroy said, trying to point out the unwise investment. “I’m not worth your trouble.”

“Say, are you drunk?” the deputy demanded.

Delroy had to work to answer. He was so cold and numb his body didn’t want to respond, and his head felt so thick and full that he could hardly think. “No. Not drunk.”
Just bereft of belief. Abandoned by God. Punished because I wasn’t perfect.

“Well, I can’t leave you here.” The deputy squatted, grabbed Delroy by the back of his shirt and slicker, and muscled Delroy to his feet in an amazing display of strength. “Man, you are a big ‘un, aren’t you?”

Delroy didn’t say anything. He felt like he was in a dream—
no, a nightmare
—and couldn’t get out.

Once he had Delroy standing, the deputy tried to get him moving. Only Delroy’s legs were too numb to work. He keeled over.

“Whoops,” the deputy said, moving around quickly to catch Delroy across his shoulder so he folded at the waist. Even from that brief moment of being vertical, Delroy knew that he was a head taller than the deputy, but the man was broad and hefty, with shoulders an axe handle wide.

With surprising strength, the deputy shifted Delroy’s considerable weight across his shoulders, then stood again and started walking. His rain boots sank deeply into the mud and made sucking noises when they lifted as he carried Delroy through the graveyard.

A car with a light bar and a whip antenna was parked a short distance away. The lights speared into the darkness, turning the rain gray and showing the downpour. SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT stood out on the door over a seal that Delroy couldn’t make out.

The deputy put his long-handled flashlight on top of the car, opened the door, and levered Delroy onto the rear seat. Delroy sprawled across it. The heat from the car’s heater blew over him, waking throbbing needles of pain all over his body where the cold had soaked in bone deep.

Standing in the doorway of the car with the interior light showing on him, the deputy peered down at Delroy with irritation written on his beefy face. He was in his late fifties, a solid, husky man used to hard work. He had big hands and a neatly clipped mustache and round-lensed glasses.

“Haul your feet in,” the deputy said.

Delroy did, but the effort lacked strength because now that he was out of the cold he was shaking all over.

“Get outta that slicker. I got a blanket in the back.”

At first, Delroy didn’t move.

“Get it off,” the deputy said in a rougher, louder voice. “I come in there and have to skin you myself, I’m not gonna be happy about it.”

Too tired to argue or resist anymore, Delroy starting shrugging out of the slicker.

The deputy stepped to the rear of the car as Delroy forced himself into a sitting position and continued pulling the slicker off. He couldn’t get it off himself, but the deputy helped him when he returned with an olive army blanket.

“I’m going to get you to the hospital, get you checked out,” the deputy said.

“I’m fine,” Delroy said, shivering beneath the blanket.

“Mister, you laying out in a cemetery in a March rainstorm in the middle of the night, why if you check out fine physically, I’m gonna have your head examined, too.” The deputy closed the door.

Seated now, letting the cushions take his weight, Delroy looked back at Terrence’s grave. A mild burst of lightning strobed the sky and lit the grounds briefly. The fresh mound of earth that covered his son’s grave stood out in stark relief. He’d covered the grave site back up before giving into the soul-draining fatigue that filled him.

The deputy slid in behind the steering wheel and knocked the mud off his boots before pulling his feet inside. A wire mesh screen separated the back of the car from the front. Switching on the overhead light, the deputy opened Delroy’s wallet and flipped through it.

Delroy hadn’t even noticed when the deputy had taken his wallet. Now, he didn’t care.

A look of surprise showed on the deputy’s face as he glanced over his shoulder through the wire mesh. “You a navy man?”

“Aye.”

“What are doing here?”

Delroy didn’t want to answer, just wanted to be alone. But he couldn’t find it in himself to be rude to the man. “My son’s buried in this graveyard. My father before him.”

The deputy studied him. His eyes were pale blue and quick as a fox’s. “That grave I found you by. Somebody dug that up.”

“I did.”

“Why?”

“Because I felt I needed to.”

“Terrence Harte. That would be your son?”

Delroy knew then that the man had an eye for detail if he read the gravestones while getting him to his feet. “Aye.”

The deputy hesitated, peering over his glasses with a steely gaze that softened a little. “How long since your boy passed?”

“Five years.”

“It’s a hard thing, losing a son,” the deputy said.

Delroy didn’t say anything.

“Lost one of my boys nine years ago.” The deputy folded Delroy’s wallet back up and dropped it onto the passenger seat beside him. “Was a drunk driver killed him. Crossed the white line. My boy never had a chance. Laid in a coma for seven months till we finally give up hope, and the hospital pulled the plug.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” The words came automatically, but the emotion behind them was distant. Somewhere inside his dead heart, Delroy felt certain he did feel sympathetic about the man’s pain and loss.

The deputy nodded. His eyes remained hard, but they were a little less suspicious now. “I gotta ask you something.”

Delroy looked at him.

“You take anything out of that grave?” The deputy held up a hand. “Don’t you bother lying to me either, because when I get you to the hospital, I’m gonna search your clothes. You took something, I’m gonna find it.”

“No,” Delroy said. “I didn’t take anything.”

“Good.” The deputy let out a sigh. “You didn’t take anything. That’ll make things a little easier.” He turned his attention back to the two-way radio and called in to dispatch, letting that person know he was en route to the hospital.

Delroy lay back in the rear seat of the cruiser and felt helpless. He hadn’t lain out in the cold to die, as the deputy seemed to think, but he wouldn’t have minded if that had happened either. He just hadn’t figured out what he was supposed to do next.

A moment later, the deputy put the transmission in drive and headed toward the cemetery’s entrance. Mud slung from the tires thumped against the undercarriage as the cruiser rocked over the uneven ground. Before the vehicle reached the highway, Delroy fell into a yawning black pit and slept.

OneWorld NewsNet Corporate Offices
Bucharest, Romania
Local Time 1124 Hours

When Danielle Vinchenzo’s call came through, Radu Stolojan stood at the silver tea service in his office preparing a cup. He gazed out over Bucharest with a feeling of contentment. The world was in turmoil, and that was exactly as it should be at the moment. Everything was going according to plan.

He returned to his desk and punched the speaker function. Few people had his personal number.

“Stolojan,” he said.

“It’s Danielle Vinchenzo.”

Stolojan sat at his immense desk and tried to put a brighter note in his voice. “Yes, Danielle. You are well, I take it?”

“So far,” the woman answered. “Things here are still hectic.”