Ghost of the Gods - 02 (14 page)

In mid-step, Mark’s rage inexplicably vanished, leaving confusion in its vacuum. He then spotted Sarah heading toward the alcove from a different angle.  Somehow he knew she was acting out his violent impulses for him. That was where his rage had gone. He had infused her with it—or she had taken it from him? She was walking fast with her Beretta pointed down and against her side. She was a short distance away when Paul saw Sarah and then Mark. His mouth dropped open and his eyes grew wide in fear. He was clearly more shocked to see Mark than a woman advancing on him with a handgun.

“You’re dead,” blurted Paul. “I killed you!”

“Police,” yelled Sarah. “Do not move.”

Paul reached inside his jacket, going for a gun that was now visible in a shoulder holster. Sarah fired twice without hesitation; once in the chest and once in the head. The mechanical clattering sounds of the Beretta’s slide ejecting copper casings and the suppressed sound from the bullets all echoed in the vast hall in a terrible chaos of soft, deadly mechanical whispers. Mark saw a medical assist projected over Paul like a shroud. The superimposed display showed vital signs flatlining. The priest had edged as far away from the dead man as possible. He stood with his back pressed into the alcove. Next to him was a wrought iron stand filled with rows of votive candles in glass cups. His expression remained composed as the candlelight played over his features. The man emitted no stray thoughts.

“Have you come to kill me too?” said the priest.

“We didn’t come to kill anyone,” said Mark.

“Oh, really? Then I suppose you expect God to forgive you for this slaying? Since when do police use silencers?”

“Stop right there,” snapped Mark. “This man tried to kill me and you’re involved. We watched an illegal exchange three days ago. You gave this man an envelope and he gave you a stolen device.”

Sarah called Ralph and the huge dog came bounding to her side. A low, aggressive rumbling came from him as he glared at the priest. The killing and smell of blood had clearly agitated the dog. He looked ready to tear the priest apart. Impossibly, the priest seemed to grow even more stoic and enigmatic. Mark received memory capsules of radiated emotions Sarah was picking up. The priest was truly not afraid of them. His composure was not an act. This was so extraordinary and unexpected that Mark was left without a plan. He studied the priest’s face up close for the first time. He recognized it from the daydream memory he’d gleaned from this priest days ago. It was not surprising the priest appeared in his own daydream. He and three others had been standing off to one side as the required witness of the clerical inquisitors, the wise men deciding which things should remain hidden for all time. There had to be some way Mark could use this information to pry open this turtled-up man.

“I know you from somewhere,” said Mark.

“And I know you,” said the priest. “You’re agents of the Family, their trained animals of war.”

Mark had no idea what to do with that piece of information—the
Family
?
At least it was a crack in the man’s shell. Mark looked around the church and wondered if that candlelit room paneled in wood and ringed with tall bookcases was here. The smell of incense was the same as the daydream memory. He decided to do a little fishing.

“You have no right to decide what should be hidden for all time and what should be allowed into the sunlight,” intoned Mark as if announcing a death sentence.

Small drops of sweat glistened on the priest’s brow. Mark realized the man was using some meditation technique to suppress his thoughts and was rapidly tiring. Apparently, it took a great deal of mental concentration for this turtle to hold his mind shut. Mark’s intuition was telling him what was going on here was even more byzantine than he could imagine. Suddenly he captured a stray thought from the priest. The man was exhausted. That first subconscious leakage revealed the priest no longer viewed his adversaries as mental threats. The cerebral floodgates eased open. His name was Father Enrique. He thought of himself as a solider of god. He had some kind of mental training, a meditation that turned off his subconscious neurological interface to the god-machine. Mark knew this was not at all how the priest understood it. Enrique believed it was a meditation that marshaled divine protection. He had acquired what he called a relic from Paul
.
The priest’s brotherhood dictated that they collect these relic
s
and destroy them in a carefully prescribed ancient ritual. He had a great deal of caution and respect for these relic
s
. They were shards of evil. If only a tiny piece of dust remained after destruction, the relic was said to be able to reconstitute. Though no one in recent history had witnessed a return, his fear of them was palpable.

“Father Enrique,” said Mark. “What gives your brotherhood the right to destroy these relic
s
that are not yours?”

“What give us the right!” shouted Enrique. “God commands and we follow. When the Family was nothing more than a vague plot in the minds of a few greedy barbarians, there was the
Antinostrum
. Once the Family has returned to the sewer from which it first crawled, there will still be the
Antinostrum
. I ask you, assassin. What gives you the right to interfere with us?”

Mark was filtering and capturing stray thoughts using all his skill. There was too much. The priest abruptly stopped talking. He now had a strange expression of fear. The leakage of stray thoughts was quickly abating. Mark knew the priest had begun the meditation for protection anew in silent urgency.

“You’re not Family,” said Enrique. His voice was shrill. “I see what you are. Abominations! You tricked me. Get out of my mind. Get out!”

Enrique crossed himself while clenching his jaw shut. In a sweeping motion, the priest grabbed the stand of votive candles and capsized it while hurling it at Mark and Sarah. Fire, glass, and spilled wax flew everywhere. The priest bolted in the opposite direction and through a door. Within seconds of the door closing, Sarah had reached it and kicked it solidly. The door held. Mark knew the priest had to be going for a phone to call for help. Sarah kicked the door again. There was a faint splintering sound but the door held.

“Together,” yelled Mark.

They kicked as one. The door gave with a loud cracking sound as wood from the frame splintered explosively inward all over the floor. The priest spun around with an angry expression. He was dialing a cell phone. Sarah smacked the phone from his hands. As it clattered across the floor, she shot it with her silenced Berretta. The phone exploded into pieces. The priest jump back and stumbled. The once inscrutable man was now sprawled on the floor.

“Shit,” wheezed Sarah. “You stupid fuck!”

“We need to go,” said Mark.

“The sooner the better,” said Sarah. “I am sick of this prison city.”

“Oh my god,” said Mark. “Can you feel that?”

Sarah looked at him with confusion. Then awareness reshaped her expression. Mark could see pure amazement on her face.

“There’s another singularity,” she said. “It’s far away, but I can feel it.”

“I was blind. All along there was more than one,” said Mark. “Those phantom singularities that led us in wrong directions were real, not decoys. There’s at least two more out there.”

“What do we do with him?” said Sarah.

The priest was looking at Mark and Sarah with curiosity. He’d heard too much already. While Mark could not pick up any stray thoughts from the man, he could see treacherous wheels turning in that head.

“I have an unpleasant idea,” said Mark.

Minutes later, they walked from the church looking as calm as possible for the surveillance cameras. The steady foot traffic on the sidewalks had been reduced to a scattering of people.

“
Antinostrum?
” said Sarah. “Family…Turn over a rock and what do you find?”

“A bunch of puzzle pieces that don’t fit,” said Mark. “Hybrids murdering each other and religious fanatics conducting witch hunts for ancient technology.”

Mark thought about what they left behind in that church and sensed the law was closing in on them. They were headed straight to the closest protectorate exit portal. The priest was bound and locked in a supply closet. Sarah had left her Beretta behind with the priest’s fingerprints all over it, gunpowder residue on the priest’s hands, and a dead body. They smashed the priest’s RFID bracelet and took it with them. It was an instant trip to the work camps if an Enforcer found you without a bracelet. Mark knew it would take hours or even days for the priest to explain himself once he was found. All he and Sarah needed was less than an hour to get through the portal. The lines leaving were much shorter than those entering.

As they boarded an elevated train that serviced the portal, Mark was awash with chaotic feelings. He was alternately excited, agitated, and scared. There were more singularities, which was amazing, but the excitement was tempered with stress. At any moment their false identities could be wanted for questioning in a murder. Enforcers could be waiting at the next stop. The train they were on was almost empty. No one turned to look at them.

“Do you think anyone survived?” asked Sarah. “I mean the hybrids at the townhouse.”

“Maybe they staged the explosion to hide what they were doing and left long before the fireworks.”

“Could be,” she said. “But I have a feeling at least some of them were in that house when it went up.”

“Maybe it was a USAG hit?” said Mark. “A predator drone could have done that. A month ago the odds of finding even a few hybrids was a long shot. Now we have multiple singularities and very likely pockets of hybrids with each singularity. How can you explain so many hybrids?”

“Maybe we’re not such a new thing?” said Sarah.

Prisoners

The Preacher – Carlyle, Texas – January 17, 0002 A.P.

In southeast Texas the winter sky was an angry battleground of thunderheads and wind. The Preacher briskly walked toward his clapboard church with its shattered steeple. The wind tugged at his clothing as he stared up at the belfry. He recalled vividly that it had been used as a sniper’s nest by a misguided citizen when a military squad had passed through town several months ago. The soldiers had stayed long enough to kill a few townsfolk with a missile aimed at the steeple and another at what had been the Carlyle Diner. The military had soon moved on. This rural town of a few thousand souls had been spared the plague. It was not big enough to be worth their government’s lasting attention either, at least not for now. The soldiers had bigger flocks to pacify in cities far from here.

The weather had grown worse. For hours the Preacher been healing folks, but still a line of people extended from him to the chapel’s door. Flashes of lightning and cold rain were lashing the windows. Fat drops of water from a roof leak plunked into a metal pail near his feet.

He’d been frozen in place like a cheap storefront mannequin. How long had he been in the trance? He glanced around at some of the faces. No one appeared to have noticed his lapse. He’d been reliving the explosion. The terrible experience always came without warning and took him with a vengeance. It was his clearest early memory. He knew he’d been reborn out of that supernova flash of expanding light and pain. It was his baptism. What his life had been before that flash of light was blank except for a single, blurry memory. In that memory he led an attack on the traitors who had brought this plague to mankind. He could recall nothing of the attack, only that he suffered a terrible defeat and all the blood spilled that day was somehow on his hands. Just before triggering the cataclysmic starburst that was to become his accidental baptism, he could remember sheltering in a trench, planning his escape. He would deceive the traitors into believing he was committing suicide. With a little providence, the traitors
would be drawn too close to the flame and incinerated along with the bodies of his fallen soldiers of god.

The Preacher had told no one about the blurry memory. He could not be sure it was anything more than the figment of a badly traumatized brain. Total amnesia was what Sue believed. She’d been a nurse and the closest thing to a doctor he’d seen during this short two years of accumulating memories he could claim as his new life. Judging by appearance, he estimated himself to be in his early thirties. Sue had given up what she called “real medicine” after witnessing what the Preacher could do. She now helped him as the lord saw fit.

A five year old boy was next in line. The Preacher didn’t understand how he did the miracle or why he’d been chosen. Some people he touched were healed, others received nothing. Many of those he touched were healed within hours. He had no control over the gift. About half were healed and half continued suffering. Desperation kept the line stoked with more troubled souls than he could ever absolve in a lifetime. Folks came from miles in every direction. Those he failed to help haunted his dreams. It had to be God’s will acting though him. This was his fervent hope and every night he prayed it was so. At times he feared Satan was working false miracles through him for some darker purpose unknowable by an unclean preacher such as him.

The gift seemed to work both ways. Every day he felt younger and stronger than the day before. His body had become a wiry, powerfully muscled work of God. The terrible burn scares that had covered his flesh had faded. His glowing health caused him endless guilt while so many who came for his help continued to suffer.

This angelic healing had been going on for almost a year now. The changes in him had slowed but not stopped. Sometimes God whispered to him. Maybe God would have explained more if the Preacher was a better servant. He was unclean and unworthy and could not stop himself from sinning. He’d slept with Sue and so many others, sometimes even the ones he’d healed. Women were drawn to him and he was spreading his seed like a dog in heat. He despised himself for it, but he could no more stop himself than he could keep himself from eating or urinating. He knew of two women who were pregnant by him. An odd part of the gift was that he could sense when one of the unborn was his seed. There was a kind of primitive connection with the growing fetus. Some kind of link through which his experiences passed into them and what they felt was sent back in turn. The first one would be born in a month’s time. What would that be like, meeting a newborn who might recognize you on sight?

There was a murmur from the line of people waiting for him. The air was thick with a scent of fear and hope. He wondered if this sickly little boy who stood in front of him would live or die.

“Come here,” said the Preacher.

“Mommy, I don’t want to!” cried the boy.

“Don’t you want to feel better?” asked the Preacher.

The mother urged her child closer. The Preacher laid his hand on the boy’s neck. He could feel the throbbing of the jugular vein. He could see all that was inside the child. It was as if a three dimensional colored X-ray had been projected over the small body. The mother had told the Preacher leukemia, but even if she’d never uttered a syllable, he would have known. He could see the pestilence inside the boy like an unnatural, glowing heat in his blood and bones. Displayed over the X-ray view was some kind of angelic writing that the Preacher could not understand. Yet it was unmistakable that without God’s intervention this one would be traveling to heaven very soon. The Preacher began whispering the short prayer under his breath, repeating it again and again.

“God, I pray to you, heal thy servant….”

The Preacher felt disorientation as if dizzy from loss of breath. An icy something slithered from his touch into the child’s neck and veins. The absolution was complete. The child’s eyes fluttered as he keeled backward into his mother’s waiting arms. The Preacher realized this one would live. He could see the heat in the blood already cooling to lighter hues in the spot where he’d perform his laying on of hands.

“This one is healing,” mumbled the Preacher more to himself than anyone present. The exhaustion had come as it always did without warning. The Preacher stood to leave. He felt faint and held onto the chair back to steady himself. He heard the mother crying. Her voice seemed so far away. He picked up the basket of offerings left by grateful folks. He knew what was in it without looking. There was some money, IOUs, a promise of a meal, and some offers of a more earthy nature. The mother’s appreciative cries were filling the small chapel with hope. Every eye in the congregation was on him. He wanted to help more, but all he could think of was food and sleep. He’d been working the will of God for hours. As always, it took its pound of flesh from his confused soul.

The Preacher – Highway Route 10, Louisiana – January 21, 0002 A.P.

The Preacher slowly became aware of himself in the passenger seat of a train. It was like waking without a memory of having fallen asleep. He had no idea where he was or how he had arrived in this seat. A middle aged woman was asleep in the spot next to him. His hand was on her leg. A half-eaten candy bar in a torn wrapper was in the process of slowly escaping her fingers. Craning, he looked around. As best he could tell, the rest of the car was nearly empty. The train was the best way to travel in these troubled times. The car rocked and thumped to the rhythm of the tracks. The new world had no shortage of gas or autos. Anyone could have the car of their dreams, free for the taking. Abandoned autos were scattered all over the land like the carapaces of bugs that had moved on. With so few people there was also no longer a gas crisis. He’d read somewhere that the current supply of gasoline in the United States could last decades, but still, very few people drove. The roadways were prowled by evil men who would slit the throat of a traveler for the joy of it.

The military did not patrol the roads, but every train was heavily guarded and safe. Even if the roads were free of villainy, the Preacher would not have driven. He could not bring himself to try. He suspected a terrible memory of driving was lurking just below the surface of his memories. He stared out the window at blurry shapes of a nighttime world moving past. He saw neon signs glowing on distant streets. He saw fires in fifty-five gallon drums burning orange and lighting the faces of tattered people standing around them. Islands of light came into view and then faded. Some of the islands contained people while others were empty and had the aura of looking back in time at a ghost town. In an approaching yellowish glow, not 50 feet from the tracks, he watched in growing alarm as a man with a handgun executed a kneeling prisoner. There was a flash of light and the prisoner was no more. A small group forming a semicircle was standing witness. The Preacher’s eyes meet those of the killer’s as the man glanced at the passing train. The Preacher felt an otherworldly sense. None of this was real. The soldiers on the train did not react. The train did not speed up or slow. The Preacher knew deep in his heart on the other side of that thin pane of glass was a biblical hell. Judgment had finally been visited on a deservingly sinful world. This was truly the end of days.

Shaken by what he’d seen, the Preacher switched on a reading light, which washed out most of the nighttime view. He stared at his reflection in the window as blurry shapes of a nocturnal hell rolled behind his likeness. His face was a blank slate. He had all the features a man should have—nothing was missing—but nothing showed any lineage or ethnicity except maybe his eyes. They were blue with a slight almond shape to them, which hinted at a drop of Asian ancestry, or so he wondered. The rest of his face was as generic as if it had been broken into a million pieces and then remolded by God into a homogenized image of every race on Earth. His face was completely unfamiliar. Often he did not recognize his own reflection. After two years, he still could not recall his name. He suspected that one day he’d awake from a blackout and discover his identity. He’d find his name written in his own hand on a receipt or be in the company of someone who’d known him.

Close to a year after the plague ended, he had arrived on foot in Carlyle, Texas. Dressed in a long black suit with a Roman collar, he was carrying a Bible and a small satchel of clothes. He didn’t let on he had no idea from where he’d come. The town’s people were accustomed to men of God passing through and invited him to a potluck dinner. They’d asked him his name, to which he’d replied, “My name is a vanity I relinquished in service to the Lord.” He had no idea if that was true or not. He had even less idea where those words had come from. He’d stayed in Carlyle and soon began his healing work. He was not sure if he’d performed healings before. God whispered to him and told him what to do.

The train made a metallic scraping noise as it banked around a turn. The Preacher felt something crumpled in his fist. He opened his fingers and saw a train ticket from Hammond, Louisiana, to Longview, Texas. The date on the ticket unnerved him. Several days had passed since his last memory in Carlyle. A breath caught in his throat as he spotted flakes of dried blood on the ticket. He nervously examined his palms and saw what looked like healed wounds from nail holes in both of them. It was the marks of crucifixion. This was not the first time. As he stared at the wounds, he could swear he saw them growing ever so fainter. It took all his will to not run screaming from the moving train into the arms of a hell that was waiting for him just outside the safety of his railcar.

The Preacher – New Orleans, Louisiana – February 5, 0002 A.P.

Two weeks had passed in Carlyle, Texas, before he’d set out again. The hotel bedroom was cold. The Preacher opened his eyes as the Messiah, the dominant personality of his damaged brain. In dreams mixed with reality he saw the apocalypse all around him in lurid detail. In this recurring premonition, death came as a plague, which soon cleansed the world of all men and women who were not God’s chosen. The scenes were deeply troubling for a religious soul, but the Messiah knew he had to be strong. As the vision faded he cautiously glanced around the seedy hotel room. Neon lights from dens of ill repute flickered against the drawn window shades. New Orleans was truly the devil’s playground. The Messiah had not walked into this hotel room or traveled to New Orleans; the Preacher had done that bodily function for him. The Messiah recognized the room and remembered the train ride that brought his vessel of flesh to this place. His memory was far more complete than that of the Preacher but still contained huge holes. The Preacher was such a sorry fool he didn’t even know his real name. He played at being a healer for earthly reasons and had no idea how or why it worked. He had no idea that healing particles were in his blood. He aped what he had stolen from somehow spying on the Messiah. His healings lacked depth. There were many souls the Preacher could not heal.

The Messiah was the true spirit who inhabited this vessel. There was no one that God could not heal. The Preacher was a bodily intruder of some indeterminant kind. Though useful, he also defiled the vessel with adulterous sex and worse. The Preacher thought the explosion from his vision was a transformation he lived through by some miracle. The Messiah knew that the birth explosion was not a traumatic event that one lived
through
. The explosion was in fact the birth pains of his actual arrival into this world. There were no memories before the explosion because this life had not existed before the explosion.

The Messiah looked at the girl of maybe nineteen who was lying naked next to him in the bed. Another plaything the Preacher had seduced. He had memories of the child injecting narcotics before engaging in sexual intercourse. The Messiah felt no physical attraction to this fallen one. He could empathically sense she was unconscious in some narcotic stupor.

The Messiah donned his black suit with a Roman collar, then hung the vestment stole around his neck, leaving it uncrossed. The vestment was sacred. The Preacher carried it with him on every journey but never knew or saw it in his bag. It was a gift from God to the Messiah alone.

The Messiah walked into the bathroom and turned on the sink faucets. After some deep grumbling, what could almost pass for water flowed from the tap. He washed his face and hands following the ancient cleansing ceremony. He stared at his face in the mirror, meditating on the image. His eyes were Asian shaped, yet blue. His nose was Middle Eastern in shape but the skin color was northern European. God had told him he was the symbol of everyman. He continued meditating and soon all thought had stopped as he approached enlightenment. He could tell by the tingling in his hands and feet that the miracle was about to happen. God would again anoint him with blood just as he had his messengers from long ago.

The Messiah squeezed his hands into tightly balled fists. He squeezed until his forearms ached and then squeezed more. It seemed like it would never come but finally he felt a warm trickle forming in each hand. He uncurled his fists in anticipation and stared. In the center of each palm was a nail hole from a past life when he was crucified. As he stared, blood continued to ooze up and then stopped. He dipped his right finger into his left palm and drew the sign of the
ichthys
onto his forehead in his own blood. He was ready. God was ready. He could hear the soft whispers of God telling him to go forth and save the innocent and punish the wicked. The Messiah walked up to the side of the bed and stared at the naked girl. Could innocence be restored? He dipped his left finger into his right hand and drew the sign of the cross on her forehead as a sacrament in healing blood. Tonight she would be saved by God. He saw the stigmas in his palms closing. Soon there would be nothing more than faint scars as signs of the miracle.