Carry the Flame (3 page)

As first light grayed the sky, he prayed to God Almighty to deliver him from the burden of temptation. And he took solace in knowing that only he and God had witnessed her bold display, and that nothing—
nothing—
happened that wasn't part of His plan. The Lord Thy God had granted
him,
Hunt, a full second of her naked heathen chest. Not the boy's naked parts—hers.
For a reason. A reason.
God the Father wanted him to desire the woman in the girl's budding body. To draw his eyes to her. His attention—to her. His
needs—
to her
.

She
was
a beauty. Hunt had seen that, been moved by it, too; but he was always wary of the evil that could afflict him in an unguarded moment, when his thoughts turned to nakedness and tantalized him with the lone temptation that above all others must be resisted—the apple of Eden that hung low and hard and heavy on a strong young tree with smooth firm limbs.

A beauty, a beauty, a beauty,
he repeated to himself, as if these fraught words were the blunt instrument of prayer itself.

But even insistence of the most desperate kind couldn't hold off his most disturbing voice, the one that hailed from Satan. It appeared like a boa and swallowed her beauty whole:
But so is the boy. So . . . is . . . the . . . boy.

Hunt's mouth narrowed with thirst. He drank water, as if to wash away his incipient sins. Then he offered God His most hallowed prayer—
Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us—
to no greater effect.

Rueful and unnerved, he unwrapped a Colt .45, a venerable revolver at least a hundred years old. An heirloom long worshipped with gun oil and bore brushes, and prized above all other bequests by ancestors wise to the wickedness of the world. He was delivered of their loins and heavenly beliefs, and gave thanks every day that he hadn't been born to Pagans, Jews, Catholics, Muslims, or any other smutty faith that visited the stains of the father upon the sons—and warred with good men born again of God-given grace.

Generations had handed down the Colt to Hunt, yet it still gleamed in the strange stirrings of the coming day and the last leavings of starlight, catching glimmers of both on a blue steel barrel. Hunt had fired it fourteen times, always at close range, harvesting the sweet fruit of death. The Lord had commanded him so, and he was a vassal of the Almighty, never more than on the day when he'd tracked down the stolen wares of the Alliance, and he would savage two more of the unforgiven. The tank with its big gun had searched for the gas and failed—and was reduced to simple retribution against the compound cursed by Cain—while he, Hunt, with only a motorcycle and the revered Colt, had succeeded. The “Supreme Soul Catcher,” His Piety once called him. And so he was.

He stepped from behind the broad rock, gaining ground silently in the dust that had blown into the ravine. But he didn't head toward the sinners. He retreated about seventy feet to an old wagon road that wound down the gap's widest wall. Grotesque doings back there, the worst that he had ever seen; but he had to attend to the evil—or whatever scourge it might be—as much as he had to unmuzzle his hound for the strict commands of the day.

A beauty. A beauty. A beauty.

So . . . is . . . the—

Hunt refused to reckon with the boy, but the more he fought the arresting allure—hairless face and hidden genitalia—the more he imagined the worst that can befall a man of True Belief.

Breathless even more, he turned and stared at them one more time. Still sleeping. Easy to take unawares. But she'd carried a shotgun—the boy nothing but his raggedy shirt and chopped-off pants, which made Hunt weak to consider. Half his age and burning with sin, a child of heathendom, a child of hate.

Hunt thought of the long line of imperatives stretching from heaven to him. And then he imagined all manner of unraveling. He warned himself that a struggle over their flesh would mean another struggle over his soul, for he had often gleaned what he would do, and begged forgiveness from God—before plunging ahead with foul demands on His most fallen. Alone, then, in the vastness of his pure grieving conscience, he'd punished his seducers with knives and hungry vermin. And as they lay as waste, bound and gnawed and suffering still, how many times had he—of his own accord, no other—dropped to the broiling earth and crawled till his knees bled and his hands boiled with blisters, purging his guilt and giving thanks to the one merciful Lord?

Only to be tested today.

No.
He would spare nothing of himself for these two. He had to take them back to the old military base, to the stone chapel where the iniquitous were baptized with the blood of their confessions, and dangled as ransom when they could utter no more answers.

When the tanker and van were retaken, the last of the unholy herd carefully slain, he would walk the boy and girl to the most sacred killing field. There he would claim his final earthly reward for keeping watch on the path to Cain's children, where fire had burned the accursed—and now drew the murderous plunderers to their pending destruction. Richer rewards still would await him in heaven.

So he swore off the girl's bare chest and the boy's punishing appeal. He would not force them to commit the obscenities that had spared him Wicca disease—and ravaged so many of the sodomites who'd ended their lives in his hands. The righteous had named the virus after the demon females—witches all—who had set the sickness loose on a world full of unsuspecting men. These were good fathers and brothers of faith, though females were the first to fall, as God in His infinite wisdom had so justly decreed. The Lord had granted immunity to only a tiny percentage of men. Most of the others, even believers rich with prayer and constant pleading, were cursed with the plague and seethed with vicious hallucinations—grotesque visions that triggered murderous and suicidal impulses before the stricken killed others, themselves, or perished in the agonizing grip of the disease.

The only way to have sex and appease God Almighty was to wed girls right after menarche. For their first twelve periods, they knew their own immunity—and the only purity of their otherwise damnable lives. Or—and now Hunt breathed audibly and gave himself pause—he could pierce his own soul by having sex with boys, yes,
boys,
who had not known the deadly pulse of penetration, who had kept themselves clean for the likes of him.

No, you won't. Promise me you won't.

Resolve precious and slippery as semen, he hurried the last few steps to the wagon trail and untied a tarp that covered the old Harley 74 and a side car, and a rattly trailer with five gallon gas cans lining the outside like an ammo belt. Rising behind the battered red cans on one side was a faded picture of a fly fisherman defaced by black graffiti.

The trailer's roof had been cut off with a blowtorch, the top of each side sculpted into pikes. The rear was open, the bed almost filled with matching, century-old aluminum and Plexiglas telephone booths laid next to each other.

Hunt had just enough room to edge between the booths. Even with the tarp, thick dust had coated the glass. He swept it away with his hand, feeling contaminated by the nearness of his touch to the twins. They were conscious, but he wasn't sure whether one could be awake and the other asleep.

He reviled the very sight of them. Not just the devil's black skin or the burns on their body. No, he reviled far worse than skin color or scars or identical dark eyes. He reviled a fact so fearsomely present at first glance that he'd known in the same repulsive instant they had to be resurrected from their near death—and the imminence of hell ever after—so he could take them to the base and parade them before His Piety.

Parade what?
He studied them.
The Devil's own seed?

So many mysteries with these two, beginning with their number.

B
liss awoke with an arm wrapped around Jaya, the other resting as peaceably on her shotgun. The storm had forced them to seek cover in a ravine or canyon, visibility horrid by the time they stumbled down there.

A thick layer of dust coated their bodies, but she figured it had kept them safely hidden. Even so, she listened intently before lifting her head and brushing off her face. Carefully opening her eyes, she spied the day's first light, faint and swift, stealing across the sky.

A dun layer draped the boulders that rose around them on three sides, softening their appearance. She realized with a start that they were lucky to have found a trail and not stepped off the edge.

She lifted her shotgun knowing that she didn't dare work the action till she'd blown away every last particle of dust. I'll huff and I'll puff, she smiled, and I'll blow your house in.

Thinking of candles, she counted fingers on her hand and realized it was her birthday.
Fifteen! You made it.
How many times in just the past few weeks had she thought she'd be killed? And here she was—more alive than ever—with a boyfriend.

She eyed Jaya resting under the powdery blanket, prizing him as the most joyous gift of her life. The hard length of him still felt hot in her hand, and his presence lingered from the long glorious minutes when her mouth, full and heavy and rich with want, made her so crazy that she'd almost ripped off their clothes in the dust and dirt and sweat and stones. But Wicca had stopped her as surely as it had shut down procreative sex among the tiny percentage of the world's population that had been spared the pandemic.

Only after she and Jaya had settled last night, satisfied by touch and taste, had she begun to feel watched. So eerie a sensation that she'd stared into the blackness and scolded herself.
No one can see you. You can't see two feet in this.

But the grim feeling returned now. She looked at a rock wall rising right behind them, and knew that anyone could spot them from above. She wasn't thinking of her mom, but Jessie came to mind immediately.

You've got to get back. She'll go nuts if she finds out you're gone.

Gone where?
The question scared Bliss. How long had they stumbled around, oblivious and aroused, seeking a refuge for touch—and her first intimations of love—in a land of blood and fire?

Bliss looked up again, searching for a familiar marker, and saw orange blaze everywhere at once. She sat silent and astonished, an ancient eyeing an eclipse, a child of storms and stony seas.

T
he forbidding sky had come alive with ghosts and spirits and strange colors. Evil doings all. His Piety would know their foul portent, but Hunt rose from the dust, spitting its filthy taste from his lips, already certain that Satan's fiery breath had gripped the air he breathed, like the dark one's madness gripped the soul and twisted it into a raging fist of sin.

Eyes retreating from the sky, he returned to the twins, fearful and clinging to each other, and looked at the dog locked in the booth beside them. The beast's eyes lit up, so ready to do his duty that there could have been two of
him.

The metal muzzle would have to remain on the creature till his bark posed no threat. A “hound of Hades,” His Piety had described the dog. “We have dominion over the beasts, and we rule their animal ways.”

It was true, it was in the Bible, like God Himself, and he knew it was a fool's damnation to think otherwise. To deviate from scripture was to be a
de-vi-ant.
To suffer as one.
Look at the world. Look at it.
There could be no disagreement. True Belief protected him from himself, made him turn from temptation.
Yes, you will. Do not doubt it.

The boy and others no less despicable were the reason for the “Sealing of Sight.” The tainted ones looked right at you, so boldly, so
coldly,
it was like they could read your secret thoughts, making the plucking of eyes essential for the saving of souls.

No less had been claimed for the “Deformation of Faces,” a sacrament conducted on the Risen Day of Easter for all the women who flaunted their beauty by enticing worthy, reverent men from the greater glory of God.

Hunt had long believed it unfair to disfigure only females; surely, from what he'd known, the faces of the boy and his conniving lot deserved far worse for the abominations they caused among God-fearing men. But he'd never spoken of extending the sacrament. Not a word to anyone. Only to God Almighty in the fever clasp of his most private prayers.

He unlocked the booth and gripped Damocles by the muzzle, shaking the hound's long pointy snout, then slipping his finger through the cage to check his teeth, white as right. “Getting excited, boy? Huh? You got a mission, too.”

The sleek leggy beast stood and bristled with pleasure, muscles rippling down his long dark back and flanks. “I'll take this off,” he said, and gave the muzzle another hard tug, “when we've got them good and ready.”

What else are you going to take off?

Shaking off Satan in the day's first sun, he chained the dog to the trailer. From a corner pike he took down a ball of rusty barbed wire and cut a length long enough to bind the boy's hands. He repeated the effort three times, for feet and hands must be bound on both of them, as they were on the twins.

He checked the lengths again, and considered cutting them to give the boy and girl crowns. The twins had worn theirs well, pretend crowns for their pretend Jesus. That's whom they'd been praying to when he'd found them in the smolder. True spawn of the Devil, they'd been hard to burn.

“You have no claim on the Son of God,” he'd bellowed as he'd wrapped wire around the twins' heads, a coronation that did not end until their brows bore the same red streaks as the One True Son. “So you must pray for forgiveness.”

Damocles pulled hard on his chain. The dog wanted to do his duty. His master stared at the telephone booth that had kenneled him, and now waited to be filled.