Redemption of the Dead (14 page)

Shoving the mistake aside, she dodged
again when the giant zombie reached down.

There’d be
no way she could take the monster down by herself, and if she
emerged out of the other side of the alley, she’d run into the
horde that she’d originally escaped. It’d be all over.

“Thinkthinkthink,” she said. She glanced up and backward at
the enormous creature chasing her. It bent down, its hand crashing
into her back, sending her flying forward across the pavement. She
dropped the cleaver out of instinct so she could use her hands to
guard herself when she landed face first and skidded along the
pavement on her forearms.

Getting to
her feet as fast as possible, and choosing to ignore the fire of
severely-scraped forearms, she ran. She was thankful the creature
had thrown her as it bought her some distance. It wouldn’t last
long, however, so she’d have to gamble. She ran out of the alley
and sharply turned left, hugging up against where the building met
the sidewalk. The giant zombie rounded the corner. The smaller ones
were about a block away. She dared not go any further lest they see
her and come after her. The giant zombie reached down, curling its
fingers around her. Before it could clamp them shut, she hoisted
herself over one of its fingers, landed on the other side, then
sprinted back into the alley, aiming straight for the dumpster. The
second she reached it, she climbed up and over and slammed the lid
down on herself in a thundering metallic boom.

Sitting in the rot in the dark, Tracy
hoped that her sudden change in movement was enough to let her slip
from the giant’s vision while it had to maneuver to change its
course.

The dumpster
shook with each thundering footfall of the undead giant beyond its
walls. The monster bellowed a ghastly moan, clearly furious at its
prey. She hoped it didn’t know where she was. The terrible smell in
the dumpster was so thick she could scarcely breathe even with her
face in her hands covering her mouth and nose. She shuddered to
think what kinds of bacteria were living in this dumpster just
looking for a new warm and wet place to procreate and build an
empire.

The dumpster
rocked and shook so bad she thought maybe the monster had picked it
up and was shaking it like a rattle, the thundering booms enough to
throw her in a disorienting loop.

She didn’t
know how much time passed until the booming footsteps began to fade
and the dumpster finally stopped rocking. Wanting to sigh in
relief, she threw up in her hands instead, the smell too much. She
couldn’t breathe. Scrambling to her feet, she pushed against the
lid, fell back down thanks to the soft garbage bags giving way
beneath her shoes, then got herself up and gasped for air. She
yacked over the edge of the dumpster, decorating the pavement with
mushy, partly-digested chickpeas.

“Never again,” she said through
spit-gobbed lips. “No way, no how.”

* * * *

One year ago . .
.

“
It is magnificent,”
Bethrez said.

“That may be,” said
Vingros, “but does it work?”

“I have done all that I
can. All seems to be in order.”

“How do you turn it
on?”

“Oh,” Bethrez said, “only
the master shall do that.”

“And I shall.” Lucifer
emerged from the legions of demons, his white-glowing form
partially hidden behind a veil of thick, gray smoke.

All went to their knees at the sound of his voice, Vingros
and Bethrez among them.

“Rise,” he said to them as
he walked past.

The host of others remained
on their knees, while Vingros and Bethrez stood and joined their
master at the portal.

“All is ready, M
aster,” Vingros said.

“And Nathaniel?”

“His whereabouts are
accounted for.”

Lucifer inspected the
portal. “At last we will learn his secret and gain control of the
course of history.” He motioned for the two demons to come closer.
To Bethrez, he said, “Turn it on.”

Bethrez, bowed. “As you
wish.”

Vingros remained at Lucifer’s side as his master stood
before his congregation and raised his hands. All demons before him
got to their scaly feet. Some were more reptilian than others. Many
had long bulbous spider-like bodies covered in dark green and black
scales, with long, thin muscular arms and legs. Black leather wings
with lead-like spikes at their tips draped over their shoulders
like capes.

“The time has come, finally come,” the devil said. “This is
the gateway to our freedom and absolute power. It should have been
mine since the beginning and now, because of your loyalty, it will
be at last. Enter through the gate and we will be as we should have
been: omnipresent over the race of men, the cherished people of the
One we fight. In a moment, you will all be transformed and will
hover over the Earth to capture it as we had before in Eden, and
which we lost at Calvary. No longer will we be denied our claim to
what is rightfully ours. We were all there on that day we were sent
here. Now today will be a new day where we shall decide our
destiny, even more so, the destiny of His inheritance.”

Vingros heard the hum as
the portal was activated. He glanced over his shoulder and watched
as Bethrez took a step back and admired his handiwork. The outer
edges of the portal glowed a ghostly red, the crimson light growing
brighter the closer it got to the center of the portal itself.
Inside, brilliant orange and yellow spider webs of crackling light
burst forth, highlighting the smoky vortex they would soon all
enter.

Lucifer raised his hands
even higher and the host before him raised theirs. “Today we show
Heaven how powerful we really are. Come now, my followers, and
continue with me as you did at the first. Let us prove our exile
was not in vain, and let’s once and for all conquer the Earth in
the name of all spirits, in the name of utter power, in the name of
Hell!”

The demons roared and all spread their bat-like wings as
they rose off the rocky ground and flew toward the portal. Vingros
came by Bethrez’s side and nudged him away as the demon seemed too
lost in his achievement to acknowledge the swarm of his brethren
flying toward him. Bethrez’s request to enter first was denied.
Time for testing was over, he was told. It was time for
action.

Crowd upon crowd of the
demons entered the portal, disappearing into the vortex.

“They will enter,” Bethrez said, “and as they rise to the
heights of the heavens, they will transform into death-giving water
and fall upon the inhabitants of the Earth. Many will succumb
quickly. Others, over time. Those who have died before will rise
and become one with us. Once complete, a reminder will remain over
the Earth of our presence in the form of gray clouds, brown sky. No
longer will the colors of creation remain and no longer the memory
of the One who made it.”

“Will you enter as well?”
Vingros asked. “It will be a chance to aid in the greatest cause
since Time began.”

“I have aided. This is my
creation, my method. It might not be my power that runs it, but it
is mine.”

“And never forget that it
is my power that operates it,” Lucifer said, coming up beside
him.

“Of course not, Master, of
course not.”

The three watched as
legions of demons transferred from the realm of Hell into the realm
of the Earth.

It was
beautiful.

It was glorious.

“Yes,” Lucifer said,
“finally. Glory.”

* * * *

13

Rock Bottom
Heartache

N
o matter how
many times Joe wiped the blood from
his face with his sleeves, he couldn’t stop his eyes from watering,
their instinctive ability to flush out debris constantly on the
go.

He checked
his arms and hands, pulled out the bits of glass from his skin.
Most of the cuts were superficial, but there was one chunk of glass
that got into his forearm pretty deep and he had to wipe his
fingers of the other hand several times against his pants because
the blood made the glass so slippery. He yanked it out, a high
spurt of blood following right after. It kept gushing so he stuck
his fingers in the hole in his shirt around the wound, stretched
the fabric until it tore, then ripped off the lower part of his
sleeve. He wound it around and just above the wound like a
tourniquet, hoping it’d be enough to stop the blood flow until he
could properly clean it.

Joe got to
his feet, his hands and wrists aching anew. The window sill and the
wall beneath it looked like they belonged in a slaughter house
rather than in an apartment, smeared blood streaking from the sill
almost all the way down to the floor. Steps slow, Joe looked over
the bedroom and was relieved to see no signs of looting. The bed
wasn’t made, but that was as far as it went in terms of
mess.

Maybe she had locked up before leaving and anyone who came
didn’t want to fuss with the door and went after easier
targets?
he
thought.

The room’s
walls were bare, the bed a queen, covered in a white quilt with
matching sheets, the pillowcase white with a plethora of mini pink
roses on it. Beside it was a playpen. The dresser was a light gray
with a mirror attachment on top, enough to see oneself from the
waist up. Despite all the rot and decay outside, the room actually
smelled nice, but didn’t carry the Strawberry-Vanilla smell April
had, not that he expected the scent to linger an entire year.
Still, to breathe in that soothing scent after so long . .
.

There was a
bookshelf with some James Patterson and Danielle Steel. Actually,
Joe noticed, the entire shelf was full of bestsellers, every name
recognizable. Were readers really that susceptible to sticking with
brand name authors and ignoring everything else, missing out on so
much quality literature by those whose names didn’t end with
“King,” or “Grisham,” or “Rowling”?

Doesn’t matter. The book industry is as dead in this place
as the undead roaming outside.
He suppressed his old self once more and went out into the
hallway. At the other end was the kitchen and front room. Behind
him was the bathroom. He went in it and looked beneath the sink for
a towel, ignoring the mirror above it, not wanting to analyze the
grisly visage he caught a glimpse of in the mirror in the bedroom.
Taking a towel, he covered his face and patted away the blood,
doing the same over his body through his shirt. He double upped the
towel and pressed it to his forearm. As he went down the hallway,
he picked a few more bits of glass out of his skin and emerged in
the front room.

This wasn’t
the living room he remembered when he went and found April the day
of the Rain. Not that he trusted his memory to capture every vivid
detail as everything happened so fast, but the brown microfiber
couch and chair seemed out of character for her, same with the
large plasma TV mounted on the wall. Joe looked over the walls and
saw pictures.

None of them had April. They showed a
black family: two young parents and a cute little girl with
tightly-wound braided pigtails.

This was the wrong suite.

No, can’t be,
he
thought. He revisited his trek up the stairs in his head, the walk
down the hallway, the ransacked suite at the end, the windows.
“This
is
the right one. Has to be.”

Joe went to the door, unlocked it and checked the hallway.
He
had
climbed into the right suite. This
was
the right floor.

He
was in the
right
place.

And April was not here. Was never
here.

The harsh
realization that she might never have existed in this reality made
him tremble inside and sent his heart rate through the
roof.

He went searching for a phonebook,
found it.

“Maybe . . .
no, wait,
I don’t know her last name, she never gave it. I never asked,” he
said.
Didn’t think hanging
around with her would be so brief. Thought there was time for that
kind of thing.
“So much for
that idea.”

How different is this place
? Would the timeline change at that point in the past at
the bank, or is something else happening or happened that I don’t
know about?

April.

With a growl, Joe threw the phonebook
across the room. Its thick, heavy spine hit the wall, cracking the
drywall. He didn’t care.

“What a waste of time,” he said.
“Shoot!”

His eyes watered up, this time not
from the blood.

* * * *

Joe left
April’s apartment, spirit broken. Not only was she not here, he now
had to make his trek back to Tracy and face her wrath.

Maybe I shouldn’t even bother,
he thought.
She’s probably better off without me anyway.
He sniffled.
As if that’s true. You need her as much as she needs
you to survive.
He chose to
stop thinking about her for the time being and instead wracked his
brain, trying to think of any other possible way to track down
April. Without phones or Internet, he was pretty much out of
options as to a starting point.