The Remnant (26 page)

When Ashley passed the monocular to Trace and
pointed he caught a glimpse of a single figure, leaning way out
over the precipice. Then whoever it was disappeared back into the
shadows. Ashley’s face hardened, and her shoulders stiffened.

Trace’s finger tested the diamond engraved
surface of the wide shotgun trigger. As Ashley let the alder branch
fall back into place Trace fell in behind her again.

But his shoulders still tingled with the
feeling of being watched.

The Angels did their work well. Rendt had
promised them that the guards and security would all be
neutralized, and so far not one Angel had suffered so much as a
scratch. He had to admit that-as much as he loathed the man-Stan
incapacitating the security system, taking out the crossing guards,
and assuring that all the other Brethren would huddle in their
houses was making things incredibly simple. Rendt stood on the
bluff staring up and down the length of the narrow valley at the
tiny rooflines and the slender artery of road below.

There was to be no excessive cruelty, of
course. God would punish. It was simply the Angels’ mission to rid
this world of these sinners, not torture them. Each Angel had
orders to kill as quickly and efficiently as possible, and to make
sure with a final head shot. Then-as each house was secured-a
designated member of the team aimed a laser toward the bluff. Rendt
ticked them off in turn. Two homes remained. So far no one had
escaped to sound an alarm or run to the Meeting House. Had they,
they would have discovered more Angels awaiting them there.

But it troubled him that the very last house
where signals were yet to appear was the one where his men had
orders to bring out survivors.

"When do I get my money?" asked Stan,
appearing beside him again on the bluff.

Rendt sighed. Just being so close to the
Judas made him feel unclean. He had a plan for the man, though, and
it was Biblical in its concept.

"Do you think I carry it on me?" he asked,
irritably, glassing the entire valley again.

"You wouldn’t be thinking about double
crossing me, would you?" asked Stan with a note of warning in his
voice.

Rendt let the glasses fall. "Not at all. You
earned your thirty pieces of silver. You shall receive them."

"A hell of a lot more than thirty."

"I was speaking metaphorically."

"Screw you and your metaphors."

Rendt turned to face the bigger man. Glancing
down he noticed that neither of them stood farther than a half pace
from the cliff edge.

"I have always been curious," said Rendt,
"why you went to the Brethren. You were never truly a
believer."

Stan shrugged. "It served my purposes."

Rendt nodded. "Because they allowed you to
remain anonymous. They respected your training without delving into
how you got it."

"I told the Brethren how I got it."

"But did you tell them the truth? You were
never Delta Force."

Stan’s frown turned hard and maybe dangerous.
Rendt wondered just how far he could push the man.

"I’m a trained operative-"

"Of the Wells River branch of the South
Dakota White Militia. You are wanted in three states for bank
robbery and in two for murder."

Stan’s face was a granite mask. "If you know
all this, why bring it up now? Why didn’t you just blackmail me
instead of offering me cash?"

Rendt shrugged. "Blackmail isn’t always the
tool it’s cracked up to be, and the money means nothing to me. For
all I knew the Brethren might just have chosen to forgive your past
indiscretions in return for your training. It all worked out in the
end. That you would sell your
friends
for filthy lucre was a
foregone conclusion. A leopard does not change its spots."

"I don’t have to stand here and be insulted
by you."

"You do if you wish to be remunerated."

Rendt turned to survey the valley once more,
frowning at the one homesite that still troubled him.

"What’s the matter?" asked Stan.

Rendt pointed. "Why is it that the two people
I am most interested in are not yet in my control?"

Stan stared past him down over the cliff.
"The teams should be done by now."

"Exactly. Go find out."

"We’ll know soon."

"If either of those women escapes you will
receive half pay."

"Now wait a minute."

There ensued a brief staring match that Stan
lost.

"Shit," he huffed, snagging his rifle from
beside thick spruce and disappearing into the brush.

Rendt turned back to the dark valley
below.

Sparkie climbed the steep deer trail with
surprisingly sure hooves. Occasionally Marie heard the hoot of an
owl questioning who she was and what she was doing out here at this
hour. Otherwise the mountain exhibited an uneasy silence without
even the scurrying of a mouse to disturb their soft, plodding
advance.

Ever since entering the woods she had had a
premonition of doom, as though the pitch black sky beyond the trees
was about to come crashing down upon them. She felt it as a real
pressure upon her shoulders, and in the thick air all around,
noticed it in the way Sparkie kept his ears pinned back.

When they reached a fork in the trail half
way up the mountainside Sparkie chose the wrong path and on
impulse-but something
beyond
impulse as well-she allowed him
to continue on up toward the ridge instead of heading directly for
Raven’s Head. For just an instant she was certain she saw the glow
ahead again through the trees, but they were still far from cliff.
The odd thing was that she could see the gleam behind her closed
eyes. She could feel it, pulling her.

Suddenly Sparkie stumbled to a halt, and she
caught herself against his broad neck, the course coat burning her
cheek. An owl hooted again, and she felt a brush of wind, glancing
up just in time to see the bird’s wide, sweeping wings flapping
past through the trees. The pressure on her shoulders grew
stronger, until she was forced right off the horse’s back and onto
the ground. She stood there for a moment as the pressure eased. The
very forest about her, the ground beneath her feet, the sky above,
felt like one entity. It was as though she could feel the very
earth breathing, sense its rampaging pulse like a river through a
gorge.

When a bright white light exploded inside her
skull she gasped.

Suddenly she felt both a powerful peace and
at the same time a terrible sadness. She knew things in that
instant that she shouldn’t know, that she didn’t want to know. She
felt as though she was catapulted from girlhood to adulthood in the
blink of an eye, and she sensed that the light was aware of her
pain and empathized. But none of the experience was anything that
she could ever have put into words. It was just
knowing
.

A tear flowed down her cheek, and then
another, and there was nothing the inner peace could do to still
them. She might be a woman, and not a girl. She might understand
that there were things she would never understand, and she might
know as others could only believe that there were reasons beyond
that understanding. But she could still feel sad for the things
that used to be, for the things that might have been, for the
things she knew she had lost in that one brief instant of time and
even for things she was soon to lose. A sob escaped her, then
another until finally she buried her face in the horse’s rough,
sweet-smelling hide and cried herself out.

Finally, wiping away the last of her tears,
she glanced back down the trail realizing that everything back
there was history now even though some of what she had seen had not
happened yet. She had slipped out on an adventurous midnight ride
and had found herself propelled into a future she had never
expected, her past falling away like dead leaves.

The horse shifted, and she calmed him with a
light stroke along his flank. She knew that there was even more
danger and maybe hurt ahead, up the trail, but she could not turn
aside from it now. There was nowhere else for her to go.

As she stood there, gazing far back down the
trail to the narrow gloomy fork a tall shadowy figure stalked past,
and she shivered. But the man never glanced in her direction, and
in an instant he was gone as though he had never been.

Death inhabited the land in a very real way
now. All the others in the valley were dead or soon to be, and
there was nothing she could do to save them. Nothing at all. What
she had to do was ahead. Up the mountain.

And even beyond.

Pete awakened to the sound of a low growl cut
short.

Something had disturbed the dog in the
hallway. The fact that the sound stopped so suddenly was doubly
troubling. The normal pattern was a rumble deep in the animal’s
throat, then, when the danger was past, a low woof or a grunt. Then
there would be the sound of the dog plopping itself back onto the
floor. None of that had happened.

He reached for the pistol on the bedside
table but even as he did so he felt a breeze.

There was a door or a window open.

A shiver raced up his spine as lifted the
gun, but even with fear coursing through him Pete couldn’t help but
recall an old joke about a man who kept hearing burglars in his
house. The man would get up, search the place, kick the dog for
waking him, then go back to bed. It was a corker, but for the life
of him, at the moment he couldn’t recall the punchline.

He strode silently over to the door in his
shorts, listening, praying for a sound that would tell him this was
nothing but a shared nightmare, that all was well. Perhaps the back
door had somehow gotten unlocked and blown ajar. But then something
crashed in the kitchen, and he knew for certain he was not alone.
The sudden image of intruders in the house shattered the fragile
veneer of imagined security.

The punchline had something to do with the
dog hearing something. That’s what it was.

He strode out into the hall and instantly
experienced a terrible burning sensation below his diaphragm. His
hands went limp, and he heard his pistol clatter to the floor.
There was a dark figure standing there in front of him, nose to
nose. Where had this man come from?

Weak. I feel so weak. And what’s that
pain?

His teeth locked, and it was impossible to
breathe as a burning sensation spiraled upward from his toes to his
chest, racing out to his fingertips. A gloved hand slapped over his
mouth before he could so much as gasp.

More liquid fire poured out of his belly, and
he watched as the knife that had been thrust there was withdrawn.
He felt himself falling forward, into the man’s arms, then the
floor slowly rose to meet him. There was a strange prickling heat
around his throat, and he felt his own exhalation striking him
warmly under the chin. Wasn’t that odd? And how dark it all was
now. From a vast distance he heard someone reciting his name.
Another voice said
check.

When the man farted again the dog kicked him
back, wrinkled his nose, and said, I just wanted to let you know
you pooped your pajamas.

Pete managed one last pain-wracked
chuckle.

Then silence settled over him and darkness
reigned.

Ashley knelt in front of Trace, one hand
gripping her pistol, the other locked in Maxie’s raised hackles.
She shook the dog, but nothing was going to stop him this time from
growling under his breath.

"
Now
you get brave," she
whispered.

Trace could barely make out the narrow trail
past Ashley’s shoulders, but the dog assured them of danger ahead,
and Trace’s sixth sense still warned of the danger behind. It was
too much like his nightmare to be just a coincidence, and just when
he needed to keep his head the clearest he couldn’t dislodge the
image of himself lying at the foot of the attic stairs that day.
The idea of the Angels rampaging through the valley resonated
all-too perfectly with the memory of the rats swarming over his
body.

The rodents had swamped him, biting, clawing,
scratching, twitching, eeping in rage and frustration because they
couldn’t
all
get to him at once. He was buried beneath their
dark, furry, piss-smelling, disgusting weight, catching the little
vermin in his fists and fingers, pinching, crushing, but there were
thousands of them.

Suddenly beacons of light shone through the
swarming mass, and his father’s rumbling voice echoed over his
mother’s wild shrieks for God’s mercy.

"What the fuck?"

The eeping grew ever more furious, but there
was an edge of surprise and terror to it.

"Oh, shit!" screamed his father, then.
"Trace! Are you in there? Get away you little cocksuckers! Get
back!"

Something heavy struck the stairs, then the
wall beside Trace, as a furry wave of rats splashed back along his
legs to recede up the steps. Then his arm was caught, and he was
dragged out into the hall and finally clutched in his father’s
great arms, staring up into the old man’s face. Trace had never
seen fear in his father’s eyes before, never seen the concern that
he read there at that moment. When his father looked him up and
down Trace saw something else as well, revulsion and fear. And when
he lifted his head to peer in terror at his own torso he saw why.
The rats had chewed his clothes to shreds. The bloody mess of cloth
and skin and blood interwove into one fleshy, sanguine textile that
oozed and flowed, soaking his father’s cotton shirt. He also
noticed then that there were scratches and bites on his father’s
face and hands as well.

"We’ve got to get to the hospital," said the
old man, rushing down the entry stairs so fast that Trace was
certain they’d both end up dead on the landing.