APOCALYCIOUS: Satire of the Dead (64 page)

             
                                                       
Chapter 77 – Epilogue

Graylocke Castle,

Plane of the
Ark

              They dined in the Hall of Heroes where four new paintings hung in places of honor. King Regeliel stood and raised his goblet of wine. “A toast!” he roared affably. His Nephilim guard rose to their feet and raised their chalices. “To our new friends and welcome guests; may they live the lives of kings, with the hearts of saints.”

             
Bodie and Daniel began to rise from their seats, but Regeliel raised his free hand and stilled them, “Nay, my friends you have already stood for us, now we raise ourselves and our goblets to you.”

             
Regeliel’s queen, Mariel stood, as did her attendants.

             
Regeliel continued “To Daniel Tyson, our Lupine brother…” Regeliel said, “You will be known as Otsoa; it means
The
Wolf,” he motioned to an attendant by the door and as the doors swung open he continued, “I present to you…Otsana.” A woman entered the hall in a flowing black gown, she wore her black hair down and the shiny waves cascaded over her shoulders. Her eyes caught the light of the candlelit chandelier and glinted like faceted topaz. She walked to the table with deliberate grace and stood beside Daniel. She lowered her head, in a bow, but never took her golden eyes from his. He was staggered by her beauty. Regeliel’s voice shook him from his trance. “She rules the Clans of the Northern Wolf and has requested to dine in the presence of the wolf that faithfully protected her king.”

             
Daniel continued to stare, but although she was exquisite to look upon, it was scent that held him enthralled. It was a scent he knew, not from experience, but of instinct.

             
Bodie, who sat between two female dwarves that fed him fruit from a bowl, elbowed his friend. “Snap out of it, baby.”

             
Daniel had no response, but nodded and stammered. “Uh…do you want to sit down?” he asked and motioned to the empty chair to his left.

             
She smiled slyly, giving a new meaning to an old word,
Foxy
, he thought,
that’s what she looks like.
He saw her elongated canines and thought that it was a hungry smile as she sat in the proffered chair. Daniel could not resist sniffing her hair; it smelled like night and his olfactory triggered something in his brain that made him shudder in delight.

             
“Otsana…” he said dreamily, “What does it mean?”

             
She turned to face him and locked her golden orbs on his. “You will see when we run with Luna,” she promised then turned to look upon her king again.

             
Daniel had heard little of the name of Luna, but he knew the pull of her gravity none-the-less.
The moon was never full…
he thought.

             
“It only hungers.” Otsana finished for him and he stared at her with his golden eyes wide in disbelief. She turned back to him knowingly then pointed to the number 48 tattooed on his forehead. “What does that mean?” she asked frowning.

             
Daniel shook his head. “It doesn’t mean anything anymore.”

             
She leaned close to him and inhaled his scent deeply with approval.

             
Regeliel observed all this with amusement and roared, “To Otsoa and Otsana!” He drank deeply from his goblet and the table guests followed suit. An attendant quickly refilled their goblets and Regeliel raised it again.

             
“To Bodie bin Barnes, the brave and strong!”

             
Bodie looked around the table and a goofy grin stretched beneath his beard and braided mustache. He saw his two dwarven women begin to stand. “My middle name isn’t Ben, man, it’s Lucas.”

             
The women giggled at either side of him and the one on the left whispered in his ear, “It means ‘son of’.”

             
“Oh,” he said and Shariel, his favorite to his right giggled again and smoothed his hair from his tattooed forehead affectionately.

             
“I see you have found favor with the Queen’s Lady-in-waiting. Does she please you, Sir Bodie?”

             
Bodie looked at Shariel. “Whadaya think, Mama? You think you can handle all this?” he asked as he motioned down his short length. Shariel blushed and nodded shyly.

             
Bodie leaned toward Daniel and whispered conspiratorially, “She’s already handled this, if you know what I mean.”

             
Daniel shook his head at his friend. “Yeah, that's real subtle,” Daniel said sarcastically and then looked apologetically at Otsana.

             
“Does this kingdom suit you, my friends?” Regeliel asked of 47 and 48.

             
Daniel raised his glass and closed his eyes as he basked in the scent of Otsana. 

“You weren’t lyin’ about the babes, brother, this suits me just fine,” Bodie growled contentedly.

              The Nephilim roared their approval.

             
They would rebuild The Ark upon the cairns of the fallen and the bones of the past as its foundation for the future. But Regeliel remembered the words of the Son of the Morning and shivered.

                                                     
Chapter 78 – Epilogue 2

One year after infection

Shadyside
, Iowa 

             
The plains were cold and covered in eight inches of fresh powdery snow. Fat, heavy flakes fell straight down and muffled the sound of the HMMWV’s diesel engine that idled in the distance. If it hadn’t been for the poor visibility they could have seen the horizon stretch for hundreds of miles, and if it had not been night they would be able to see any of the dead approaching with ample time to put them down.

             
A camp fire burned, casting sweet fumes of burning corn stalks and feed corn. The flames illuminated the four bodies that lay motionless before it.

             
Ronald Givens, Kyle Greer, Luke Mason and Steve Dawson lay in sub-zero mummy bags with eyes frozen in terror and shock. Their blood steamed as its warmth contacted the cold, night air and the snow that it pooled into, creating a red lacework upon the packed snow beneath their bodies. Each man had a single gunshot wound between their eyes; the contents of their skulls had filled the padded hoods of the sleeping bags. The crows would eat their fill tomorrow.

             
Shere Howard rubbed her hands vigorously over the crackling flames. She tilted her head back and looked upward as the snow cascaded down upon her. “It’s so beautiful, isn’t it Hito?”

             
“Cold, though,” Hito added as he jockeyed his weight from one foot to the other. His black hair had grown even longer and hung further over his eye and he brushed it back with a gloved hand.

             
She walked around the fire to him and wrapped her arms around his waist. The weight of vengeance had been removed from her soul and she felt lighter and more at peace than any other time in her life. “So what do we do now?”

             
Hito looked into Shere’s eyes and looked long into their depths. “I don’t care, as long as it’s with you.”

             
She glanced at the four dead men; they seemed so tranquil and it seemed odd that she would be shocked at the dead being so still. “Maybe we have a purpose in all this death, Hito.”

             
Hito pulled her close. “You know…some people had turned abandoned missile silos into fortified homes back in the day.”

             
“That
does
sound nice and homey,” she said.

             
Hito took her by the hand, “Come on, let’s get out of the cold,” he said leading her back to where the Hummer idled in its diesel sputter.

             
She followed, but looked at the dead men again and saw that they were being buried, slowly by the snow. “I don’t feel so cold anymore.”

             
He opened the door for her. “Me neither.” He would have told her that it was because of her that he had changed, but she already knew that. She settled into the shotgun seat and he closed the door and jogged around the front of the vehicle; the headlights illuminating him and casting shadows behind.

             
She felt illuminated herself; her shadows were behind her now. The light of ‘purpose’ shined brightly before them regardless of what the past tried to convince them.

                                                            
Chapter 79 – Epilogue 3

Easter Island
 

              Moai stood as silent sentinels guarding the beaches from the occasional dead that trudged on shore, where sentries immediately shot the straggler then incinerated the corpse where it lay.

             
Although small, Easter Island was still better than any of the survivors had hoped. It was developed with homes already built. Because of its hearty tourist trade, it had plenty of scooters, dirt bikes, golf carts and even cars and heavy construction machinery. Due to necessity, because it lay so far from any continent it didn’t have traditional power and that was for the best; they were off the grid with solar panels and wind turbines. The settlers were, however, forced to travel the choppy seas to main land South America to resupply at least once a month.

             
In four days, when Christmas arrived, four hundred people would exchange gifts and celebrate upon their island home.

Every month the population grew as
Arlington, Juanita and Laptu would bring one or two more to their new home aboard their yacht. Eventually the group of survivors would outgrow the island and pioneers would depart to find new places to call their own. For now, it would suffice.

             
Death had given up that moniker and had resumed the use of his real name Tony Pena. He wasn’t interested in death anymore, he had seen his fill. He reclined beside his wife Nan in a rattan chaise. Her mixed race looked like she could have been raised on the Polynesian Island. They watched the new sons of the island wrestling and running on the sandy beach of the northern part of the island. The island again heard the giggles and screams of delight from children beneath the watchful eyes of the Moai from their perches that dotted the perimeter of the island.

             
Mia had become somewhat of a matriarch of the island. The new inhabitants thought of her as a savior and she was. Mia still had a tendency to become distant at times, and during these moments she tended to talk to Mick as if he were beside her.  Nan had wanted her sister to think about forming a new relationship with one of the men on Easter Island, but Mia had refused. Mia would move on when she was ready. Until that time, Mia would raise her son in a community of survivors that she could trust. In some ways, Mia thought that this was an almost perfect environment to raise Mickey Jr. If only her husband could have been here to witness the peace that they had found. He would have liked that.

             
Arlington, Juanita, and Laptu had found several other suitable locations for survivors to rebuild, but they kept the information a secret from the other havens.  Mostly, Laptu stayed on Easter Island where he could play with the children, occasionally he went aboard the ship with Arlington and Juanita, but he really didn’t like being enclosed in a floating tin can and he often got sea-sick from the constant motion. Besides, Laptu had found a perfect environment where everyone liked him and he didn’t have to hide.

             
An expansive fleet of yachts were moored in the Island’s docks as part of Nan’s idea of needing a last resort. The largest of these was Diego Dos Santos’ tanker, ‘The Croatoan’.