The Didymus Contingency (32 page)

The thick foam dangling from Spencer’s mouth was enough to make Sally back away, but what concerned her most was that he was pursuing her. Sally’s face revealed she had never seen something so horrible, so evil. Her normally controlled expression had vanished, replaced by a furrowed brow, crinkled nose and a bit lip brought on by the freshly experienced terror.

After pushing himself onto his hands and knees, Tom heard the clunk of metal hitting cement. He knew what it was. He knew he had it from the beginning, but he wanted to beat the beast into the ground with his bare fists. He wanted to feel the blood of Megan’s murderer on his tender knuckles. But Tom knew he could never win a fistfight with this supernatural creature.

He wrapped his hand around the gun and placed his finger firmly against the trigger. He stood to his feet. “Legion!”

Spencer stopped, his crushing hand only inches from Sally’s throat. He looked at Tom, holding the gun, and grinned. “Kill us again, Tom. Yes, kill us! Kill like you did the Zambian men who murdered your wife.”

“I’m planning to,” Tom said as he walked forward, gun raised.

Spencer craned his neck like a thinking dog. “Do you remember Samuel, disciple?”

Tom pulled the gun’s hammer back with a click.

“When we first met and Jesus sent us into the herd of swine? The pigs. We don’t like pigs. Do you remember Samuel after we left his body?”

Tom paused, he remembered Samuel. He remembered thinking he was a different man. He remembered Samuel couldn’t recall anything that had happened.

“We took him, Tom. He didn’t willingly accept our presence. Nobody ever says yes if we ask them. Never. He didn’t willingly do the wonderful things we made him do. He was innocent—by earthly standards anyway.”

Tom’s eyes widened slightly.

“And you remember the men in Africa. The men you killed. You killed us! We loved it when you did that!”

“Shut up.”

“They were innocent of your wife’s murder, just like Samuel.”

“Shut up!”

“And you killed them! Are you going to kill Spencer too?”

Mounting pressure filled Tom’s skull so that his face felt swollen and red with heat. He hadn’t felt the desire to kill a man since Megan had been murdered, and here was the being responsible for her death, and he could kill it again. Or could he? Tom aimed the gun and fired twice. Spencer’s body spun and fell to the floor in a heap.

Spencer looked up, smiling, “A futile effort.”

“I disagree,” Tom said as he looked down at Spencer, who now had a bloody bullet wound in each thigh.

Tom looked back at Sally, whose petrified eyes were locked on Spencer. “Sally... Sally!”

Sally snapped her attention to Tom.

“Get the device,” Tom urged.

Sally nodded quickly and hustled toward the opposite side of the room, where Spencer had placed the device.

“You think this body is affected by pain while I control it?” the voices of fifty men said.

Tom whipped his attention back to Spencer, who was already on his feet and winding up. “Sally, look—”

Whump!
Tom crumpled onto the floor, gasping for air.

Froth flew through the room as Spencer turned to look at Sally and growled. He jumped across the room like a gazelle. Sally stopped and slipped backwards onto her hands as Spencer landed between her and the device. She crawled away as he stormed toward her.

“How much does this woman mean to you, disciple?” Spencer said reaching out for Sally’s struggling feet.

Tom pulled himself up, struggling to shout, but there was no air in his lungs to create the sound. He couldn’t let David experience the same loss he did. He couldn’t let David feel that pain. But he couldn’t do anything to stop it. Tom fell back to the floor. His ribs were on fire and his legs were temporarily useless.

Spencer took hold of Sally’s ankle and pulled her toward him. Her squirming did nothing to loosen his merciless grip.

“Please...please...” Tom said.

Spencer held Sally up in the air by her ankle. He looked at Tom.

“Take me instead. Kill me,” Tom pleaded.

“All you Christians are the same. Kill me. Take me. Martyr me. We hate Christians! So do we! We would much rather kill this woman and have you live to be tortured again and again. Ad infinitum! Forever!”

Tom took a deep breath. “I’m not a Christian!”

Spencer bit his smiling bottom lip until it bled. “That’s right! We nearly forgot! How could all of us forget that? If we kill you now, you’ll be ours to torture for all eternity!”

After dropping Sally to the hard floor, Spencer leapt into the air and landed on top of a computer console in front of Tom, crushing the equipment below his feet as though he weighed five hundred pounds. Tom pushed away, but found his back against the cold concrete wall of the control center.

“I have bad news for you... You can’t kill me,” Tom said, attempting to act as confident as possible.

Spencer hopped off the mangled computer console and onto the floor. “And why is that?”

“The time-travel equipment... I sent it here...from the future. If I died now, how could I send it back in time?”

“Let’s see, maybe if David sent it back in time without your help? He is a smart one after all, that David. We hate that name! Stop saying it then!”

Tom had no reply. He hadn’t considered that.

“News flash, Didymus, we’ve been to the future, and you weren’t there! He wasn’t! We didn’t see him. Neither did we!”

“You’re lying,” Tom said, as he squinted his eyes in an effort to mask his surprise.

“Are we? We suppose we’re about to find out.”

Spencer reached out for Tom’s throat with his right hand, while his left twitched with excitement. Spencer paused an inch from Tom’s throat like he heard something or sensed a presence. But his reaction would be too slow.

Whack!
Spencer fell to the side and slid across the floor. He shook his head and looked up; above him stood a tower of a man with sledgehammer fists.

Lazarus cracked his knuckles and motioned for Spencer to stand up.

—TWENTY THREE—

Resolve

2005

7:45 A.M.

Arizona

Tom held his chest and grunted as he attempted to stand. As David hurried into the room, he could see Tom was hurt, but he couldn’t imagine Spencer capable of inflicting it. Whatever the case, things would come to an end with Lazarus standing between Tom and Spencer, fists clenched tightly, muscles burning with energy.

David hurried to Tom and grabbed his shoulder, causing Tom to flinch away. “Tom, it’s me.”

“David, thank God.”

“What’s going on? Why was Spencer attacking you?”

“He’s blocked the functionality of the watches with some kind of device he got from the future.”

“The future?” David knew his own watch wasn’t working, so what Tom told him made sense, but why would Spencer go to all this trouble?

“We need to destroy it.”

“Where?” David asked, pushing aside any doubts to Tom’s story.

“Sally…”

David stood up straight and scanned the room He saw Sally lying on the floor, clutching a small device that looked like a pixilated sphere. David looked back at Tom. “Are you all right?”

“Just need to catch my breath,” Tom said.

Without glancing to see how Lazarus was fairing with Spencer, David ran across the room. “Sally!”

Sally looked up from the sphere and saw David approaching. “We need to destroy this thing. I’ve been smashing it on the floor, but haven’t made a dent.”

“Let me see.”

Sally handed the round device to David, who carefully inspected every nook and cranny, looking for an opening, a chink in the armor. He found nothing. “When all else fails...” David said with a hint of a smirk.

David lifted the device above his head and hurled it at the floor. The device hit the floor and rolled to a stop next to a computer console. It wasn’t even scratched. David stared at the device with squinty eyes, as though it offended him. He bent down and took the sphere in his hand.

Crash!
David jumped back as Lazarus landed on the console in front of him, shattering the expensive computer components beneath his dense body.

David stood up quickly. “Lazarus!”

After rolling off the computer console onto his feet, Lazarus looked at David with a dazed expression. “I’ll live.”

“What happened?” David asked.

Lazarus rolled his neck and looked at Spencer, who was walking steadily toward them. “He is stronger than any man I have encountered.”

David looked at Spencer, gangly and small. “Spencer?”

“It’s not Spencer,” Sally said. “It’s something else.”

“What do you mean?” David asked quickly, as Spencer closed in.

“I don’t know. He refers to himself as ‘we’.” Sally’s eyes bounced back and forth, searching for a memory. “Tom... Tom called him Legion.”

David’s heart pulsated beneath his ribs like a child squeezing a water balloon. Legion. His palms grew moist. Legion. His eyes stung with sweat. “Legion!”

Spencer stopped and focused his attention on David. “Ahh! The gang’s all here! David, so nice of you to join us! We were just telling Tom how nice it was to see him after all this time... It’s been so long since Zambia... As we recall, you were there too... He was there! We saw him too! We always wondered how you came and went so quickly! But now we know! You were breaking the rules! All of them! Time travel!”

David’s knuckles turned white as he squeezed them. “Be quiet, demon!”

“You don’t want to hear the rest? I don’t think he does. Tell him. You tell him. Let’s ask! About how we killed Tom’s wife? And what a nice surprise it was to meet you there. We nearly killed you. We wanted to, so badly.”

“You killed Tom’s wife?”

Spencer giggled as he spoke. “Indeed! It was us! All of us!”

Tom sprinted toward Spencer. “Bastard!”

David reached out his hand. “Tom, no!”

Tom tackled Spencer from the side with amazing speed and force. Both men toppled to the ground. Less then a second passed before Tom shot into the air, kicked off by Spencer. Lazarus reached out his long, strong arms and caught Tom, only inches before his head crashed into the corner of a desk.

David knew this had to end now, before Legion killed anyone. He knew he was the only one that could stop what was happening. David rounded the computer console and headed toward Spencer, who was floating up into a standing position, as though someone were pushing him up from behind.

“David, don’t!” Sally yelled.

“He can’t hurt me,” David replied.

“We’ll see about that. Yes we will. Yes!” Spencer hissed.

Spencer strode toward David, fingernails growing and mouth dripping foam with each step. Spencer raised a hand in the air, ready to slash David’s throat with his sharp nails.

David stood his ground, raised an open palm at Spencer and said, “Stop demon, in the name of Jesus Christ.”

Spencer gasped like someone punched him in the gut. “Quiet, human! We are more powerful than even Him. More powerful! We will kill you!”

David’s muscles relaxed. He was in control. “I speak in the name and with the authority of Jesus Christ.”

“No! No! Stop!” Spencer pleaded as he fell to his knees.

Like a drunken man whose body was caught in an invisible centrifuge, Spencer began spinning himself on the floor, pushing his body with his knees. His eyes were wide and his entire face was convulsing with emotions. His torso began to shake and his teeth chattered loudly. Blood poured from his legs as he dug into them and held on tight. “We will not let go! He is ours! We will kill you!”

“Leave his body, in the name of Jesus Christ!” David shouted. “Leave this room, in the name of Jesus Christ!”

Spencer writhed on the floor and froth spat from his mouth as he spoke. “This is not over! Not over! We will find you again! All of us! We will—”

“Leave this place now!”

The sound of fifty wailing voices shot from Spencer’s mouth as he arched his back violently. David shuddered at the sound.

When it was over, Spencer’s body flopped onto the floor and lay motionless. David closed his eyes and rubbed them with his hand. It was over. He opened his eyes again and looked at Tom, Sally and Lazarus. All three were staring at him as though he were an alien.

Sally opened her mouth to say something.

“I’ll explain later,” David said. “Right now we have to figure out how to destroy that device.”

Tom took the device from the floor and looked it over. He handed it to Lazarus and asked in Aramaic, “Can you destroy this?”

Lazarus looked at the device. “I will try.”

The softball-sized contraption looked the size of a tennis ball in Lazarus’s hand. He gripped the sphere tightly, wound up and flung it at the concrete wall, putting every muscle in his body behind it. It whistled through the air like a cannon ball and hit the wall traveling over eighty miles per hour. It shattered into peanut sized shards that rained down across the room.

Seconds after the device was destroyed, the receiving area filled with a brilliant blue flashing light.
Boom!
The room exploded with illumination as its entire contents flashed out of the present and into the future. Only the soft glow of fluttering sparkles remained afterwards.

David smiled, but then noticed Spencer had yet to move. Legion was gone, but Spencer had not returned. David knelt down next to Spencer and placed his hand on Spencer’s throat. After a moment, he shook his head, clearly disappointed by the results. David looked up, his eyes wet.

Tom sighed. “He’s—?”

David nodded.

“Damnit! Why? Too many people are dying over this! It needs to stop! When will it stop, David?”

David looked at the floor, buying time to find an answer that Tom might accept. He didn’t find one. “I don’t think you want to hear my answer.”

“If you say it has anything to do with Jesus or God’s will...”

“It has everything to do with Jesus.”

“David, Jesus is dead! We saw him die, just like Spencer, and just like Spencer, Jesus is not coming back!”

“Maybe we should go back and find out?”