The Hell Season (20 page)

Once everyone else had passed through the entranceway, Thomas let himself in then went over toward the sporting goods section. After a few minutes he returned to the front of the store, stood just outside the doors, lifted a pair of binoculars to his eyes and trained them on the crowd of demons. The creatures were slowly walking through the worm’s drying fluids, back to the deflated carcass of the worm itself, the place from which they had so recently emerged.

“What the hell?” muttered Thomas.

When the demons reached the desiccated corpse, they began tearing at its thick hide as if searching for something hidden within.

“What are they doing?” It was Patricia who had spoken from beside him, eyes wide with alarm, her Bible held tightly to her chest.

Thomas said nothing and went back to watching the demons. They were working at removing the spine from the worm’s fleshy confines. After they had freed a long section of it—a good sixty or seventy feet, Thomas figured—they began unraveling the ropy, intestine-like organ wrapped around it. Then it was broken into smaller sections about five feet in length, repeatedly bent and twisted until it eventually separated between two vertebrae. When each demon had its own piece of the spine, they all knelt down and rolled the lengths of bone in the thick, tarry substance that coated the road.

Enlightenment dawned on Thomas. “I think they’re making weapons.”

When they were done with this process, the demons slowly crossed over toward the grassy area at the edge of the parking lot once more and stood there staring in Thomas’s direction. He looked back, the binoculars pressed to his face. There the demons stood for a long while, the sound of their guttural laughter drifting across the still, hot air of the lot accompanied by an occasional, grating howl.

“What are they waiting for?” asked Patricia after several minutes had passed.

By then, Thomas had seen enough. He lowered the binoculars and looked at her and said, “Your guess is as good as mine.” Then he led Patricia back into the building trying to figure out what he should do, what he
could
do. He felt lost without Ron there, was caught a little bit off guard by how much he had come to rely on his friend’s decisiveness and leadership. He went in search of Gerald and Dana and Tanya.
Tanya
, he thought with a sinking feeling. He could only imagine what she was feeling right now.

More than likely Ron will be back
, he found himself thinking. Whether or not the idea pleased him he wasn’t sure.

He needed to have his friends—or the closest things he had to them in this strange new world—around him. He needed their support and their advice. And hopefully, with their aid, he might be able to come up with some course of action. Because right now he had nothing. Should they stay? Barricade themselves in and hope that they could keep this new threat at bay? It seemed like a dubious strategy at best. Or should they go, just like Ron had wanted them to? Should they just grab what supplies they could and head out one of the building’s back exits, hope that the demons remained unaware of their departure until they were away? But where would they go? Where could they hide? One of the other stores he and Ron had recently scouted? Eventually, inevitably, they would be discovered. There was only so far they could go; the invisible barricade surrounding the town saw to that. But staying would be worse, wouldn’t it?

His head spinning, he made his way over toward the area where the previously comatose patients had been cared for, were still mostly being cared for by Angie and her helpers who gave so freely of their time, doing what they could to nurse those in need back to health. That’s where he found them, the people he needed right then: Gerald, Dana, and Tanya, standing there in silence, Dana with her arm around Tanya’s shoulders, obviously comforting her.

“She saw?” asked Thomas.

Gerald pursed his lips and nodded his head. “We all did. A terrible thing. But as I was only just reminding Tanya, death is not necessarily the end anymore.”

Thomas gave Dana a look prompting her to lead Tanya a short distance away. Satisfied that the women were out of earshot, he told Gerald, “We have to get out of here.”

“Oh?” The look on Gerald’s face seemed to be one of genuine surprise. “Where do you suggest we go?”

“I… I’m not sure. I was hoping you might be able to help me with that. Somewhere more easily defended. The police station, maybe.”

“And why would we want to do that?”

“Isn’t it obvious? To prevent those…
things
… outside from doing to us what they did to Ron.”

“They did Ron a favor.”

Thomas could only stare at Gerald in mute astonishment.

“As I tried to explain to Tanya… Now he can be reborn. Now he can be remade, his body fresh and whole, as full of life as the day he first came into the world. Now he can live forever.”

“Forever?”

“Yes. Why else were we brought back? Why were we made young again? The other night it was made clear to me. I saw it all in a dream. Not only were we healed, made whole again, we were
immortalized
. It’s all part of the plan. The world, so full of sin… It needed remade. A fresh start was in order. So here we are. The chosen. Given new bodies, new flesh. Never growing old. The perfect humans. The inheritors of the Earth. We will repopulate the planet, design it as we see fit. It will be a wonderful, glorious place, an everlasting paradise, a return to the Garden of Eden.” The smile on Gerald’s face was beginning to worry Thomas.

“And the bloodstorm? The swarm of insects? The snakes? The worm and the demons? What of all that?”

“Nothing worth having is ever easily taken, Thomas. This is all a test, nothing more.”

“A test?” Thomas noticed that they were drawing a crowd. The other Reborn were gathering behind Gerald. It seemed that he had taken on some sort of revered status among them. The messiahs, the men with the answers, or the ones who at least said the things that people wanted to hear, usually did, Thomas figured.

“A test of our faith, our commitment, our desire to persevere and claim what is being offered to us. You will see. Soon, all of this will pass. The great time of judgment will come to an end. And we will go forth and create a Heaven where there is only emptiness in the world beyond the barricade.”

Thomas had heard enough. Gerald and his fellow Reborn had lost touch with reality. Not that Thomas could really blame them, considering what they had been through. But he had a strange feeling where this kind of zeal, this level of mania led. Nowhere good. He started to walk over toward where Dana and Tanya were standing a short distance away. All he could think of right then was getting them out of there, the three of them leaving as quickly as possible. He still wasn’t sure where they would go. The police station seemed like his best option, all things considered. The place was stocked with weapons. It had to be the most fortified building in town. They could scavenge supplies, ride things out for a while, see what happened. It was as good a plan as any. Whatever got him away from the group of lunatics currently staring at him a bit too intently for his liking.

“Running away solves nothing, Thomas,” Gerald said. “Until you join us, until you become one of us, you will always be running.”

So Ron was correct all along
.

It was the last thought Thomas had before the sound of booted footsteps came up behind him and then something hit him, hard, across the back of the head.

Darkness descended...

*

I can recall being knocked unconscious on only two occasions in all the days leading up to the morning that my family disappeared. Both events occurred in my youth. How careless we are as children, running about like little maniacs, all but unaware of the dangers inherent in such behavior. When I look back upon my childhood and think about half of the ridiculous stunts my friends and I pulled, I have to wonder how I ever made it to adulthood at all let alone in one piece.

Once—I believe I was in the fourth or fifth grade—I was spending the weekend with a cousin who lived about twenty minutes away in one of the myriad Pittsburgh suburbs. My cousin, one of his friends and I were out riding our bikes. We all had BMX’s and envisioned ourselves as professional BMX riders when we grew older. Mine was a chrome and blue Diamondback. God, how I loved that bike. I can still remember the day I took it home from the shop, sitting in the passenger seat of the family car, my mother driving, smiling in response to the big smile that refused to leave my face. I kept looking into the back seat where we had just managed to fit the bike inside the car, how shiny and new and sleek and just plain awesome it looked. Visions of ramp jumping and curb endos danced through my head…

Six months later, there I was, riding along with my cousin and his friend. We were crossing a school parking lot. I had fallen a little behind. We weren’t going all that fast, kind of coasting along. I looked away from where we were going over toward the street that ran alongside the parking lot. Don’t really recall why. Maybe someone had shouted or beeped their horn. I didn’t see my fellow riders duck and pass just beneath the length of metal cable that had been run between a couple sets of Bob’s Barricades, placed there to mark the edge of a section of the lot that had been recently paved. I didn’t notice the wire at all until it caught me across the top of my chest and pulled me right off the back of my bike. I landed flat on my back, my head striking the pavement. I was only out for a few minutes. Once I had regained consciousness I had to walk, pushing my bike for a few blocks until I felt steady enough to mount the pedals and ride once more.

Ah, the resiliency of youth.

The other time was only a year or so later. I was with some friends at a local playground. It was summer and there were quite a few people there riding the swings, playing basketball on the courts, kicking a soccer ball out on the field. A rather spirited game of “tag” was underway and I found myself running from the person who was “it”. Sprinting all out, I looked back over my shoulder—it seemed I had not learned from the incident on the bike—to locate my pursuer and ran into a set of monkey bars which gave me a solid shot to the side of the head. When I came to there was a group of children standing in a circle around me, two adults I didn’t know kneeling beside me asking if I was alright. As I was helped into a sitting position and then eventually to my feet, I assured everyone that I was fine. Then I made my way home, feeling a bit dizzy and nauseous for the remainder of the evening. After seeing the angry bruise forming below my hairline, my parents called a doctor friend of theirs who came by the house and looked me over “just in case.” It turned out to be nothing too serious. “Mild concussion” was the diagnosis.

Fortunately, I had no further accidents resulting in loss of consciousness. Nothing similar would happen again until I was quite a bit older—my college years—and then it would have more to do with drinking to excess than any form of blunt force trauma to the head. But that, as they say, is a story for another time
.

*

When Thomas awoke he was convinced his head had been cracked open like a piñata at a children’s birthday party. He hadn’t felt this kind of pain rattling around inside his skull since one or two of the more epic benders he’d survived back in his college days. When he opened his eyes, the light made him moan and quickly close them again. He was hot, too, could feel the sweat soaking his skin beneath his clothes. And thirsty. God, was he thirsty. He needed water. And painkillers. A cold bath seemed like a wonderful idea too. When he tried to move one other rather important little detail came to his attention: He’d been bound at the wrist and ankles and around the waist, too. He wasn’t going anywhere. And that’s when the fear and the confusion overrode the pain and the discomfort afflicting him. He opened his eyes again, blinked against the light and the stab of agony that lanced into his head like a railroad spike being pounded into his skull. Gritting his teeth, he forced his eyes to stay open, to take in his surroundings, to see exactly where the hell he was and what had been done to him.

His assailants had been busy while he was unconscious. Or maybe some of the work had already been done before he’d been attacked. Maybe they’d been doing more than just visiting the pit during the night. Maybe they’d already built the cross to which he was now tied and they’d only had to erect it once the time came for them to put it to use. But, then again, it was quite possible it had been built while he was under for he had no idea how much time had passed. The sun was still out, sitting high in the sky. So it was sometime around noon. Noon of the same day? No way more than twenty-four hours had passed. He would have been much hungrier, for starters. The joints of his shoulders would have ached much more terribly than they presently did, even with the small section of wood that had been attached to the front of the cross for him to stand upon, greatly alleviating the stress placed upon that part of his body. How thoughtful. But why this small mercy? To prolong his ordeal? Hard to understand the mindset of those who had put him there. As of right now the pain wasn’t too bad so he reasoned that he couldn’t have been up there for long.

His feet were elevated about three feet off the ground. Ankles, wrists, and waist were bound tightly to the thick beams of wood that supported him. He took some comfort in the fact that they hadn’t
nailed
him to the damned thing. God was it hot. The red sky and the deeper scarlet of the sun felt to Thomas as though they were slowly sucking the life out of him and the world around him.

The cross had been planted in the section of grass between the parking lot and the stretch of SR 60 where the great worm had died. Almost exactly upon the spot where Ron had been killed. Ron’s body was gone. Had it dried up and blown away? Or had the demons done something with it?
The demons
. When would they come to torment him as he hung there, suspended and defenseless, a perfect victim for them to torture? And just like that, it became obvious what the intentions of his assailants had been. They did not want his blood on their hands, no matter how much they believed in the process of rebirth. He was being offered up for the demons to kill. Undoubtedly, it was the reason the hellish creatures had been sent here in the first place. To torture and maim and eventually destroy, send those that remained in this world to the Hell that Thomas had seen in his bug-induced hallucination. In spite of himself, he laughed, if only a little. What had been done to him, all that he’d been through... The more he thought about it, the funnier it became. It was just so ridiculous: bloodstorms and mutant bugs, snakes and haunted reflections and zombies, for Christ’s sake! And now this… Hung upon a cross like some ancient Roman criminal or some wannabe messiah’s co-conspirator. It was all too much. The physical and mental and emotional toll of it all. He laughed harder, right there, bound and waiting for God knew what torments to befall him. But he didn’t laugh for long because the outburst caused the pain inside his head to flair and the motion of it caused the sockets of his shoulders considerable discomfort.