Black Order (4 page)

Blood.

A pair of slack naked legs stuck out of a doorway halfway down the hall…resting in a black pool. Ang Gelu motioned her back into the temple. She shook her head and moved past him. She didn’t expect to save whoever lay there. It was plain he must already be dead. But instinct drew her forward. In five strides, she was at the body.

In a heartbeat, she took in the scene and fell back.

Legs. That’s all there was left of the man. Only a pair of chopped limbs, cleaved midthigh. She stared deeper into the room—into the slaughterhouse. Arms and legs lay stacked like cords of firewood in the center of the room.

And then there were the severed heads, neatly aligned along one wall, staring inward, eyes wide with the horror of it all.

Ang Gelu was at her side. He stiffened at the sight and mumbled something that sounded like half prayer, half curse.

As if hearing him, something stirred in the room. It rose from the far side of the pile of limbs. A naked figure, shaven-headed, drenched in blood like a newborn. It was one of the temple’s monks.

A guttural hiss rose from the figure. Madness shone damply. Eyes caught the meager light and reflected back, like a wolf at night.

It lumbered toward them, dragging a three-foot-long sickle across the planks. Lisa fled several steps down the hall. Ang Gelu spoke softly, palms raised in supplication, plainly trying to placate the ravening creature.

“Relu Na,” he said. “Relu Na.”

Lisa realized Ang Gelu recognized the madman, someone he knew from an earlier visit to the monastery. The simple act of giving the man a name both humanized him and made the awfulness all that more horrific.

With a grating cry, the monk leaped at his fellow brother. Ang Gelu easily ducked the sickle. The figure’s coordination had deteriorated along with his mind. Ang Gelu bear-hugged the other, grappling him, pinning him to one side of the doorframe.

Lisa acted quickly. She dropped her pack, tugged down a zipper, and removed a metal case. She popped it open with her thumb.

Inside lay a row of plastic syringes, secured and preloaded with various emergency drugs: morphine for pain, epinephrine for anaphylaxis, Lasix for pulmonary edema. Though each syringe was labeled, she had their positions memorized. In an emergency, every second counted. She plucked out the last syringe.

Midazolam. Injectable sedative. Mania and hallucinations were not uncommon at severe altitudes, requiring chemical restraint at times.

Using her teeth, she uncapped the needle and hurried forward.

Ang Gelu had the man still trapped, but the monk thrashed and bucked in his grip. Ang Gelu’s lip was split. He had gouges along one side of his neck.

“Hold him still!” Lisa yelled.

Ang Gelu tried his best—but at that moment, perhaps sensing the doctor’s intent, the madman lashed forward and bit deep into Ang Gelu’s cheek.

The monk screamed as his flesh was torn to bone.

But he still held tight.

Lisa rushed to his aid and jammed the needle into the madman’s neck. She slammed the plunger home. “Let him go!”

Ang Gelu shoved the man hard against the frame, cracking the monk’s skull against the wood. They backed away.

“The sedative will hit him in less than a minute.” She would have preferred an intravenous stick, but there was no way to manage that with the man’s wild thrashings. The deep intramuscular injection would have to suffice. Once quieted, she would be able to finesse her care, perhaps glean some answers.

The naked monk groaned, pawing at his neck. The sedative stung. He lurched again in their direction, reaching down again for his abandoned sickle. He straightened.

Lisa tugged Ang Gelu back. “Just wait—”

—
crack
—

The rifle blast deafened in the narrow hall. The monk’s head exploded in a shower of blood and bone. His body fell back with the impact, crumpling under him.

Lisa and Ang Gelu stared aghast at the shooter.

The Nepalese soldier held his weapon on his shoulder. He slowly lowered it. Ang Gelu began berating him in his native tongue, all but taking the weapon from the soldier.

Lisa crossed to the body and checked for a pulse. None. She stared at his body, trying to determine some answer. It would take a morgue with modern forensic facilities to ascertain the cause for the madness. From the messenger’s story, whatever had occurred here hadn’t affected just the one man. Others must have been afflicted to varying degrees.

But by what? Had they been exposed to some heavy metal in the water, a subterranean leak of poisonous gas, or some toxic mold in old grain? Could it be something viral, like Ebola? Or even a new form of mad cow disease? She tried to remember if yaks were susceptible. She pictured the bloated carcass in the courtyard. She didn’t know.

Ang Gelu returned to her side. His cheek was a bloody ruin, but he seemed oblivious to his injury. All his pain was focused on the body beside her.

“His name was Relu Na Havarshi.”

“You knew him.”

A nod. “He was my sister’s husband’s cousin. From a small rural village in Raise. He had fallen under the sway of the Maoist rebels, but their escalating savagery was not in his nature. He fled. For the rebels, it was a death sentence to do so. To hide him, I secured him a position at the monastery…where his former comrades would never find him. Here, he found a serene place to heal…or so I had prayed. Now he will have to find his own path to that peace.”

“I’m sorry.”

Lisa stood. She pictured the pile of limbs in the neighboring room. Had the madness triggered some post-traumatic shock, causing him to act out what horrified him the most?

Overhead another popping creak sounded.

All eyes turned upward.

She had forgotten what had drawn them all back here. Ang Gelu pointed to a steep narrow stair beside the draped doorway to the temple. She had missed it. It was more a ladder than a stair.

“I will go,” he said.

“We all stick together,” she argued. She crossed to her bag and preloaded another syringe of sedative. She kept it in her hand. “Just make sure Quick Draw McGraw over there keeps his finger off the trigger.”

The soldier went up the ladder first. He scouted the immediate vicinity and waved them up. Lisa climbed and discovered an empty room. Stacks of thin pillows were piled in one corner. The room smelled of resin and the waft of incense from the temple room below.

The soldier had his weapon trained on a wooden door on the far side. Flickering light leaked under the jam. Before anyone could move closer, a shadow passed across the bar of light.

Someone was in there.

Ang Gelu stepped forward and knocked.

The creaking halted.

He called through the door. Lisa didn’t understand his words, but someone else did. A scrape of wood sounded. A latch was lifted. The door teetered slightly open—but no farther.

Ang Gelu put his palm on the door.

“Be careful,” Lisa whispered, tightening her grip on her syringe, her only weapon.

Beside her, the soldier did the same with his rifle.

Ang Gelu pushed the door the rest of the way open. The room beyond was no larger than a walk-in closet. A soiled bed stood in the corner. A small side table supported an oil lamp. The air was ripe with the fetid tang of urine and feces from an open chamber pot at the foot of the bed. Whoever had holed up here had not ventured out in days.

In a corner, an old man stood with his back to them. He wore the same red robe as Ang Gelu, but his clothes were ragged and stained. The owner had tied the lower folds around his upper thighs, exposing his bare legs. He worked on a project, writing on the wall. Fingerpainting, in fact.

With his own blood.

More madness.

He carried a short dagger in his other hand. His bared legs were striped with deep cuts, the source of his ink. He continued to work, even as Ang Gelu entered.

“Lama Khemsar,” Ang Gelu said, concern and wariness in his voice.

Lisa entered behind him, syringe ready in her fingers. She nodded to Ang Gelu when he looked back at her. She also waved the soldier back. She didn’t want a repeat of what had happened below.

Lama Khemsar turned. His face was slack, and his eyes appeared glassy and slightly milky, but the candlelight reflected brightly, too brightly, fever-bright.

“Ang Gelu,” the old monk muttered, staring in a daze at the hundreds of lines of script painted across all four walls. A bloody finger raised, ready to continue the work.

Ang Gelu stepped toward him, plainly relieved. The man, master of the monastery, was not too far gone yet. Perhaps answers could be obtained. Ang Gelu spoke in their native tongue.

Lama Khemsar nodded, though he refused to be drawn from his opus in blood. Lisa studied the wall as Ang Gelu coaxed the old monk. Though she was not familiar with the script, she saw the work was merely the same grouping of symbols repeated over and over again.

Sensing there must be some meaning here, Lisa reached to her bag and freed her camera with one hand. She aimed it at the wall from her hip and snapped a picture. She forgot about the flash.

The room burst with brilliance.

The old man cried out. He swung around, dagger in hand. He swiped through the air. Ang Gelu, startled, fell back. But Ang Gelu had not been the target. Lama Khemsar cried out a smattering of words in abject fear and drew the blade’s edge across his own throat. A line of crimson became a pulsing downpour. The cut sliced deep into the trachea. Blood bubbled with the old monk’s last breaths.

Ang Gelu lunged and knocked aside the blade. He caught Lama Khemsar and lowered him to the floor, cradling him. Blood soaked the robe and across Ang Gelu’s arms and lap.

Lisa dropped her camera and bag and hurried forward. Ang Gelu tried to put pressure on the wound, but it was futile.

“Help me get him to the floor,” Lisa said. “I have to secure an airway…”

Ang Gelu shook his head. He knew it was hopeless. He simply rocked the old lama. The man’s breathing, marked by the bubbling from the slash, had already stopped. Age, blood loss, and dehydration had already debilitated Lama Khemsar.

“I’m sorry,” Lisa said. “I thought…” She waved an arm at the walls. “I thought it might be important.”

Ang Gelu shook his head. “It’s gibberish. A madman’s scribblings.”

Not knowing what else to do, Lisa freed her stethoscope and slipped it under the edge of the man’s robe. She sought to mask her guilt with busywork. She listened in vain. No heartbeat. But she discovered odd scabbing across the man’s ribs. Gently she peeled back the soaked front of his robe and bared the monk’s chest.

Ang Gelu stared down and exhaled sharply.

It seemed the walls were not the only medium upon which Lama Khemsar chose to work. A final symbol had been carved into the monk’s chest, sliced by the same dagger, by the same hand most likely. Unlike the strange symbols on the walls, the twisted cross could not be mistaken.

A swastika.

Before they could react, the first explosion rocked the building.

9:55
A.M
.

He woke in a panic.

The rumble of thunder shook him out of a feverish darkness. Not thunder. An explosion. Plaster dusted down from the low ceiling. He sat up, disoriented, struggling to fix himself in time and place. The room spun a bit around him. He searched down, throwing back a soiled woolen blanket. He lay in a strange cot, wearing nothing but a linen breechclout. He lifted an arm. It trembled. His mouth tasted of warm paste, and though the room was shuttered against the light, his eyes ached. A paroxysmal bout of shivering shook through him.

He had no idea where or even
when
he was.

Shifting his legs off the cot, he attempted to stand. Bad idea. The world went black again. He slumped and would have slipped into oblivion, but a spat of gunfire centered him. Automatic fire. Close. The short burst died away.

He tried again, more determined. Memory returned as he lurched toward the only door, struck it, held himself up by his arms, and tried the knob.

Locked.