The Dark Rift: The Supernatural Grail Quest Zombie Apocalypse (The Last Artifact Trilogy Book 1) (19 page)

Rome, Italy.

The rain was pummeling the tarmac,
sending water shooting upwards in great splashing torrents. In all of his years in Rome, the Bishop had never seen a time when it had rained with such profuse density. It seemed an almost tropical storm, an anomaly in keeping with the strange, and often catastrophic, weather conditions that had been battering the planet of late. On this particular night there was not a breath of wind to be had, only a slight breeze being stirred up by the rain itself.

“How can we possibly fly in this?” muttered the old Bishop to no one in particular.

They were making their way out onto a runway that looked more like a fast moving river. Up ahead, the Bishop could vaguely discern the shape of a parked plane materializing through the downpour. It looked to be an old twin prop, its engines already running.

“Please, come along!”

It was the deep boom of Bahadur that called out to them. He was guiding them forward through the downpour, their umbrellas heavy under the falling water.

“We are almost there!”

Through a wall of rain the Bishop saw a staircase appear. He moved aside to allow Suora to pass first. Bahadur stepped up to help her, taking her umbrella and making sure she did not slip on the wet steel.

“Thank you, my son,” she said as they made their way up. “God bless you.”

Fra Bartolomeo followed, with the old Bishop slogging his way up last. The aircraft looked to be a relic of the early seventies; a silver cargo plane built like a tank. The interior was no different. Single rows of seats lined a wide cabin, leaving a broad cargo area running down the centre of the fuselage. It was hardly luxurious, but it offered a welcome shelter from the rain. The Bishop took a seat behind Fra, strapping on his seat belt and settling back into his chair.

Bahadur had just finished assisting Suora on the other side of the fuselage when the plane began to move. The Bishop watched him swing his massive body into the seat behind her, strapping on his belt and turning to look out the window with bruised eyes. The pounding rain, combined with the roaring engines, was making for a very noisy take off, but in the matter of a minute they were airborne, the plane rising sharply and banking to the right.

Outside the night was black under the dense rain, only to ignite into a flashing landscape of cloud when the lightning struck. The frequent claps of thunder sent shuddering quakes through the fuselage. Crossing himself, the old Bishop joined his friends in their well earned slumber. He had long ago given his life to God, and he feared death no more than one might fear a future dentist’s appointment. That is to say, without looking forward to it, but accepting that the time would come when he would find himself sitting in that chair with a bib tied around his neck.

* * * * * *

Gibraltar.

Amir hung up the phone and then picked it up again, dialing a new number. He had just arranged hotel accommodations for the Bishop and Brother, and had also, at the nun’s request, phoned ahead to the convent to let them know to expect her. He was now in the process of calling an old friend; one of Gibraltar’s most infamous smugglers. He could hear the phone ringing but there appeared to be no one home. He was about to hang up when a voice sounded on the other end of the line.

“Yeah, yeah! Alright for Christ’s sake!”

It was gruff from too much smoking, and aggressive; the voice of a Gibraltarian pirate, its British accent rounded by its marriage with the Andalusian dialect.

“I’ll get the bloody phone, don’t you move a leg darling! Hello!” 

“Scotty,” said Amir in his steady tenor. “Sorry to be calling so late.”

“Amir!” came the reply. “Late? The night’s just beginning, mate! Bloody hell! The wife’s had me locked up in here with her all day, and it’s bloody tiring! I’m bloody well knackered from it!”

Amir smiled.

“Your wife keeps you out of trouble.”

Robert’s reply was being directed at someone other than Amir.

“Well if she don’t shut up, I’m gonna lock her fat ass in the closet again, the bloody WITCH!” and then in a friendly tone, “What can I do for you, mate?”

Amir’s dreadlocks shifted as he shook his head in disapproval, smiling despite himself.

“We’re in trouble, Scotty. Could you help us?”

“Of course, mate. What’s the problem?”

“Nasrallah’s putting the screws to Bahadur. He’s taken our family hostage. He’s even got granny.”

“That bloody bastard,” said Roberts, genuinely shocked. “That’s heavy shit, man. How can I help?”

“Bahadur is flying in from Rome tonight. He’s talking about taking Nasrallah down, and busting our family out. They’re being held in Nasrallah’s digs.”

“Bloody hell, mate,” said Roberts, a little shaky. “That’s a bloody fortress. I’d love to see it happen, but that’s a bleeding war you’re talking about.”

“Listen, Scotty,” said Amir, frowning with concern. “A few of us are getting together at Dickey’s shop down in the marina; sometime around sunrise. I know it’s early but do you think you could make it?”

Amir could hear the smuggler screaming at his wife in the background, the rubbing sound of his hand on the phone’s mouth piece doing little to mute the dialogue.

“Shut up, you bloody whore!” he bellowed. “Can’t you see I’m on the bleeding phone! …What’s that? Well I don’t give a bloody shit what you think, so you can shut your bloody mouth is what you can do!”

“Amir, my mate,” said Roberts returning to his good natured self again. “For you, anything. I’ll be there. And don’t you worry. We’ll find a way to get them out.”

Amir nodded.

“Thanks, Scotty.”

Amir could hear the screaming continue for a few seconds until the line went dead. He shook his head and smiled. Some people never changed.

Los Picos de Europa, Northern Spain.

Isaac dragged the bloated
corpse of his son onto the rocks of the island, the air entering and leaving his lungs in great gasps. His feet slipped in the soft clay, his bleeding toes curling into the yielding earth in an attempt to find traction. Over the course of the crossing, the cadaver’s weight had almost doubled, the water having found its way in through the decomposing rib cage, leaving it waterlogged, and wretched beyond belief. Isaac strained to heave it onto the rocks.

Above him a thick tangle of trunks and boughs were dissolving into the grainy depths of the island. Somewhere outside of that cursed mountain range the sun would be rising, but it was invisible to him. He was in a low valley, the sky above dimmed by a somber mass of cloud that churned and boiled forebodingly.

“To the Portal of Ahreimanius!”
came the icy hiss yet again, but this time with an insistence that was almost crippling.

“To the Portal!”

A muffled cry escaped Isaac’s tightened lips. The demons within him were frantic, and the corpse of his son had begun to lurch and contort again, its limbs thrashing violently in great uncoordinated jerks. The stench of it was outlandish. Clotted masses of maggots, excrement, and vitriol were being pumped from the broken carcass with every freakish contortion.

“To the Portal!”
it hissed voicelessly, the fiendish words stabbing like needles into his brain.

With a desperate and frantic tug, Isaac dislodged the corpse from the rocky depression where it lay, and proceeded in haste to drag it to the place of its incestuous conception. The rocks were slippery with the blood that left his feet, the incline steep and treacherous. Nevertheless, Isaac did as he was compelled to do, so that after an agonizing trial, he had arrived at the clearing, the skin on his hands and knees broken and torn, and his breath coming to him in choking grunts.

The circle of standing stones was better lit than the tangled path he had followed. Whereas the dense trunks had blotted out almost all of the predawn light, the clearing itself offered a dead glow of filtered illumination. It fell over the place like a pall. The central monolith seemed to call out to him. It lay there heavy and massive, its weathered top flat, and ready to accept what had burdened him for so long.

With his last ounce of strength, Isaac heaved the corpse onto its surface, a chorus of icy whispers driving away the last remnants of sanity from his mind. Around him, spread out in a perfect circle, were the fourteen standing stones, as tall as men, and disfigured as though they had been subjected to tremendous heat.

Isaac produced a shard of metal and proceeded to disrobe the jerking body. Black shadows had appeared on its skin, showing him where to cut. Without a word he began to butcher the undead flesh, all the while gagging and vomiting from the stench of it. No sooner had the corpse come into contact with the central stone than it had begun to tremble. It was as if each piece of the grisly carnage were somehow alive; quivering and contracting as the crude blade divided it up; the fingers gripping; the toes curling and uncurling. A tortured voice in Isaac’s soul cried out helplessly.

Dear
Father in heaven. Deliver me from this hell.

With the corpse now divided, Isaac proceeded to take up the fourteen butchered sections, placing each one at the base of a different standing stone. Overhead, a mass of heavy black cloud rolled in under the boiling sky, and a great clap of thunder shook the island.

With the grisly sections at last distributed, Isaac stood motionlessly at the centre of the ring, looking down at the top of the stone where he had done his butchering. It was crawling with the maggots that had been left behind, and beneath them he could see the image of a labyrinth carved into its surface; the crude figure of a man standing at its entrance.

“What horrors have you been forced to commit, Isaac,”
came a voice of such cunningness that he was instantly lured into its spell.
“Where is your loving God? How could he have allowed this to befall you?”

Isaac teetered as though on the edge of an abyss. He was suddenly back in the hospital room, the demonically possessed body of his son in the bed before him. To his right and left he could see the stiffened corpses of the two priests, hanging by their necks in the cold blue light.

“I am Ahreimanius,”
hissed his son from the bed suddenly, and Isaac looked down to find a pair of wicked eyes looking up at him.
“Your blessed Father has deserted you, Isaac, but I can give you powers beyond your comprehension. Come with me, and I will make you more powerful than God.”

Isaac’s soul groaned in agony. Ahreimanius was right. Throughout his tribulations, Isaac had never once felt the presence of God. On the contrary, he had felt as though God had abandoned him when he needed him the most. A great temptation to accept the offer arose in Isaac, and as he considered it, a vision of himself on high appeared before him. No sooner had he contemplated these things, however, than a voice within him cried out against the insidious offer.

“Never!” he exclaimed with all his will, and just then he was back on the island, released from the demons who had forced him to butcher the body of his son.

“You and your stupid little Cube!”
hissed the voice of Ahreimanius in fury.
“Did you really think that I would ever allow you to do anything but serve my purposes? You will never assist the Two in their endeavors! You will die here tonight, and your pathetic life will have served no purpose but mine!”

Isaac staggered backwards, looking around in shock. He could suddenly think clearly. He struggled to understand.

“What have I done?” he gasped, bringing his bleeding hands to his face. “Lord Jesus, what treacherous sin have I committed?”

Like the world returning to one who has awoken from a long slumber, so was the unholy scene revealed to Isaac. Forgotten now by the demons that had possessed him, he found himself stumbling to the edge of the circle, cowering in the dense undergrowth but unable to look away from the centre of the clearing.

Whereas each of the standing stones had begun to sink into the ground, the central monolith appeared to be rising ever so slightly into the air, its bulking mass levitating until it hung there weightlessly. Countless worms and other lightless insects scurried around beneath it.

Quite suddenly, in the depression where the monolith had rested, there appeared a rapidly growing pit of fire and ice, and the surrounding circle of stones were sucked into it, along with their grisly charges. A great chorus of wicked cries was issuing forth now, and from the black pit there arose fourteen great demons, like dense clouds of earth and dust. These were the Fourteen Emissaries of Ahreimanius, and their forms were horrendous. One by one they rose, churning in the air like blackened masses of cinder smoke; one by one screaming in hatred before shooting upwards into the boiling sky.

Only then did the floating stone fall, its ancient bulk fracturing suddenly into countless shards before being swallowed by the gaping portal as well. Isaac trembled with fear. Deafening claps of thunder were assaulting him from above now; an incessant barrage of lightning crackling down around him and setting the island alight. The demonic chorus grew louder and louder until it seemed to Isaac that the entire world would be consumed by it.

“What have I done?” he moaned, his hands covering his ears. “What have I caused to happen?”

Before him he could see that a conflagration had begun, and that the twisted trunks around the clearing were fully ablaze. Stunned and exhausted, Isaac stumbled wearily through the thickets to the water’s edge, throwing himself into the black lake so that his death might come by drowning, rather than by fire.

“Forgive me for what I have done, Father,” he said, his somber face lit by the flames of the burning island. “Save my soul.”