The 1000 Souls (Book 1): Apocalypse Revolution (37 page)

Now the crowd fell silent, breathless.

Erics voice softened and he sounded apologetic. "So that my soul portion does not dissipate to all the hosts of the Dormant Hero, it must be a sudden and violent and painful transfer. Our soul-portions must flee to your three bodies." He gave a pained smile. "This will be difficult for all of us."

Bertrand adjusted the 12 gauge in his hands, taking a hold of the pistol grip with his right and the slide with his left. "You're right, Jeff." Bertrand's voice carried far in the silence. "We need to get out of here. Let's just back up slowly."

Erics smiled again, and for a moment Bertrand saw a reflection of his fear, his chest pain. What was the nutbar doing? Now Bertrand was sure this man was a lunatic. Before he could back up, Erics and his eleven followers suddenly bent over and picked up their red canisters of gasoline.

"The 1000 live on!" called Erics, his voice booming over the crowd.

He upended the container and fluid gushed over him, soaking his suit and plastering his beard to his face and his chest—flattening his long white hair. The container wasn't even half-full, so this only took a few seconds.

"The 1000 live on!" shouted the other eleven, upending their plastic containers and soaking themselves. The stench of gasoline wafted through the air.

The eleven disciples blinked and wiped the gas from the eyes, but kept their focus on the infinity symbol in the center of the intersection. Erics, however, carefully drew a long barbecue lighter from his jacket pocket as if merely producing a fine cigar for a smoke. He looked straight across the circle to Bertrand. "Prepare yourself. I am coming to you now."

Bertrand's heart clenched, a tetanic contraction that could only be a heart attack. It robbed him of words, of actions and of hope.

Erics snapped the lighter. The fumes did the rest, bringing the tiny flame from the lighter to Erics's clothing and hair. A whoosh pushed heat across the circle in Bertrand's direction.

But while Erics cried out, his actions were controlled and prepared. He raised his flaming arms to form a T, the fingers extended to point to each of his disciples on either side. All eleven now raised their arms into the same T formation with military precision, as if they were graduates of some bizarre training. The flames at the end of Erics's fingertips leapt to the follower on either side, rushing around the circle to ignite all eleven followers until the circle of twelve burning humans was complete. It held for a full, prolonged heartbeat before it broke as people fell to twist and scream and burn. Only Erics still stood, and keeping his arms still stretched out, he brought his palms together in front, his fingertips now pointing straight at Bertrand.

Bertrand's heart let go, giving a heavy beat and another. He could breath and move. And Erics was dying a horrible death. There were no burn units or paramedics that could save him or his followers. Bertrand suddenly knew that all he could do to help was to bring about a faster end to Erics's life.

He raised the Winchester and fired across the circle, hitting Erics in the chest and dropping him to the ground. Rage and fear and anger now flamed in Bertrand's chest. How dare this man put him in this position, make him a killer of humans? Bertrand stepped toward the circle, firing at the flailing and ruined people. Jeff's Ruger shot on his left and Joyce's Uzi fired three round bursts on his right as they advanced, the reek of burning flesh and hair now choking the square.

Brains and blood splattered the pavement, and part of the canvas awning above melted and fell, dangling over the street and twisting as the flames from Erics licked at the white material.

Bertrand stopped shooting and backed up in case more of the awning caught the flames, but it was over. The twelve lay dead, charred bundles and twisted lumps of flame scattered roughly in a circle on a pavement.

Someone in the crowd started shouting, "One thousand. One thousand."

Others picked up the chant until the whole crowd shouted it to the sky.

"We've got to get out of here!" shouted Jeff.

But it was too late. The crowd charged.

Bobs flew off the bus like an avenging angel—a dark angel—her AR-15 firing three round bursts at the crowd, dropping the people closest to Bertrand. Terry and Emile followed close behind, but just as they opened fire, a pudgy man who had been running at Bertrand with an outstretched hand shouted, "Stop! Stop! We love you!"

Screams and shouts of horror that the crowd had not expressed at the death of Erics and his disciples now sounded, and within seconds the tide turned, the crowd retreating, some helping wounded or dead friends, others like the pudgy man begging them to stop shooting.

"Hold your fire!" shouted Bertrand at the top of his lungs, pointing his shotgun into the air.

But with the crowd in full retreat, their backs to the shooters, the order was redundant. Bobs kept the rifle leveled at the pudgy man, but she held her fire, instead marching to put her barrel right in his face.

"What the fuck is wrong with you people!" she shouted.

"It's a misunderstanding," said the man, his voice high and squeaky, his hands raised in surrender. "People just wanted to touch you, to feel your souls getting denser. Listen, I'm the mayor of Billings—was the mayor of Billings. We just want to help any way we can."

"This is help!" shouted Bertrand, pointing with his shotgun at the burning corpses. He counted the other bodies, the people from the crowd shot by Bobs and Terry and Jeff and Joyce—and himself. Seven more dead.

"It's all right," said the mayor. "The 1000 live on."

Rage and fear are a dangerous mix. Bertrand wanted to shoot him. "Get. On. The. Bus," he said instead, pointing with the shotgun.

Barry and Martin joined them on the front bus. They put the mayor in the first seat back and surrounded him so that they could all hear. His name was Ted Grimes, but in spite of the gritty name, he was effeminate for a balding, middle-aged man.

"Billings was lost months ago. I think the rippers raided into small cities like this before they hit you guys in Chicago, because all the news made it seem like everything was normal except for the real estate crash and the stock market. A lot of us hid out in the hills, and some tried to go over the mountains to the coast, but they came back saying there were roadblocks—border crossing type roadblocks right here in the U. S. of A. You couldn't go on unless you donated a pint of blood and signed a contract agreeing to do it every month."

"Every month?" said Joyce. "That can't be healthy. I get three months between donations."

The little man nodded. "Just when I'd decided to try heading for Grand Forks or Dakota, or maybe even Canada, Erics came with thousands of his people. They said they were making the way clear for you. That was just a couple of days ago. In one day they went basement to basement and pulled the rippers out into the sun, most of them shot dead first. It was glorious. They retook Billings, but there aren't many of us from the town left. There's a field to the east, and I seen the bodies: they're piled for acres, dumped there by dump trucks. They killed so many and they took so many away—west—I saw the trucks, people packed into them like cattle going to—"

Grimes broke down and sobbed.

"Pull it together, asshole," said Bobs. "I buried my parents and I'm not weeping every day."

"I lost my wife, three children and one grandchild," sobbed Grimes, looking up at Bobs in disbelief.

"Whoa! Whoa!" shouted Bertrand. "We'll add up the dead relative score later. Bobs, give the guy a break. Mr. Grimes, I'm sorry for your loss but you've got to bury your grief so that we can end this apocalypse now and begin to rebuild. So where are you with these Erics fanatics? Will they listen to you?"

"Yes. Erics said I contained a portion of the Jolly Leader and that they should trust me, but he said you and he are the same soul, so instructions and teachings from you are also from him. They believe you're him now. I kinda believe myself. Look what they've accomplished in Billings in just a couple of days. If only I'd known what was going on three months ago when people started disappearing, I could have got our own police to do something like go basement to basement, but by the time I became a believer the cops were all either rippers or dead."

"They go for the government and the cops first," Bertrand said. "It's not your fault, and I'm impressed they didn't get you."

"I spent the summer in the mountains camping." Grimes radiated shame. "I wasn't here for them, for my town, for my family. My wife and I ... since the kids left home things haven't worked out so well, see? She asked me to move out, so I went to our cabin out near Wind Mountain."

"Is that anywhere near Cave Mountain?"

Grimes looked up, surprised. "It's just up the road."

Bertrand turned to Joyce, who stood beside Bobs in the aisle. "We should aim to get to Grand Forks just before dawn in case the rippers own the town. Bobs, try and get a call through to Colonel Webb and ask him if we'll get any protection from Malmstrom."

"You won't." Grimes' voice had risen to a squeak. "The rippers took Grand Forks before they even took Billings. I found out the hard way trying to come back and barely got out of there alive, and only because I've got a four-wheel drive and I got the heck off the roads. I ended up coming through Helena, south of the Lewis and Clark Forest. It takes a couple of hours longer but it's a lot safer. Malmstrom's totally cut off and fighting with the rippers every night. During the day there's like this volunteer ripper army of cops and college kids and stuff that keep them bottled up. At first it didn't work so well, but I heard they're running out of jet fuel."

Jeff called from the driver's seat where he'd been keeping watch. "Bert, people are coming back."

Bertrand yanked Grimes to his feet. "You go out there and tell them that I'll speak to them soon, but in the meantime they're to keep the hell back from my buses."

Grimes hurried out of the bus and Jeff closed the door.

"So we camp here for the night?" he asked, not looking like he thought it was a good idea.

Bertrand shook his head. "We can't keep this a surprise if we take too long to form. We should drive on asap, taking as many of the Erics people with us as we can, and get to the mountain before dawn. They won't expect us to arrive during the middle of the night."

"The Erics people?" Bobs looked outraged. "You still want to hook up with these lunatics after what that freakazoid just did?"

"Yes, yes, yes." Bertrand fought his frustration with the arguments. "You're the one who said we need to encircle an entire mountain. That means numbers, right?"

Bobs nodded. "Okay, you got me there."

Joyce spoke up. "But if we arrive in the middle of the night, rippers will be out and can see us coming. Buses are loud and we're going to need headlights."

"You just heard him: they've got daytime help. Once we start driving up that isolated mountain road—what's it called again?"

"Teton Canyon Road," said Jeff. "They could ambush us in the mountains and rain fire down on the buses. I don't like this."

"I thought it was open prairie until the last few miles." Bertrand turned so he could see Jeff. "Didn't you Google terrain it before we left?"

"I did, and it is. Wide open ground until the last few miles."

"Good, then we drive through the night and hold up a few miles back in open ground. At the crack of dawn we start up and drive in."

"How do we get the Erics people there?" asked Joyce.

"They got here just a couple of days ago, so they must have rides of some kind, maybe buses like ours to move that many people. We've got our generators and pumps, so we'll help them get fuel from gas stations on the way."

Joyce looked pensive. "Bert, what if we suck all the gas stations dry? How are we going to get back?"

"We'll worry about that tomorrow night."

Joyce nodded and pursed her lips together, and the bus went silent, because the unspoken hung in the air:
if there was a tomorrow night
.

The Erics people did have buses, and vans, and SUVs. Joyce organized them into a convoy, with Bertrand's buses following a dozen SUVs, followed by the buses of the Erics army, followed last by more SUVs that could run information to the front of the column if necessary.

Jeff drove the bus, relying on the GPS and going by Grimes's southern route that took them far from Grand Forks and Malmstrom Airbase. Emile squeezed up and down the bus making sure people had properly cleaned their firearms. No one slept.

Bertrand and Grimes sat together, and Joyce and Bobs knelt on the seats in front of them so that they could face back and plan.

"There's only one entrance to the old mine and it's pretty hard to find," said Grimes. He'd initially begged them to stay overnight in Billings, apparently afraid of the highway after sunset. Then he'd suggested he drive his own van, but Bobs had insisted he ride with them and Bertrand had agreed. Having someone who knew the mountain was better than he could have imagined.

"How did you find this mine if it's so hidden?" As Bobs spoke, her friend Terry stood behind her, busily clipping away at her long hair. Bobs wanted short hair for the fight so that enemies would have less to grab if they got close.

"I was hunting up that way last year," said Grimes. "Lucky thing is it's not a shaft you can fall in but a drift. They found a vein of copper and they just followed it into the mountain, winding down and up and anywhere it took them. There's no railroad tracks or anything like that, because they just hauled the rock back with wagons and mules."

"So you've been in there." Bertrand could hardly contain his excitement. "How far in does it run? Are there caverns?"

Grimes shuddered and his voice rose an octave. "I didn't go far in there. It's real spooky, even with a good flashlight. Stuff got left behind, tools and stuff, and every corner I turned I expected to run into a body or something."

"But it's just got one entrance." Bobs said this with a tension that caused Bertrand to look over at her. Bobs's eyes had that ferocious look—that attack look Bertrand had come to know. What was she on about?