Fires Rising (29 page)

A sudden, deafening roar tore through the silence: the howl of a lion with its leg snared in the steel jaws of a trap. It struck Pilazzo's ears like daggers, hot and stabbing. His teeth vibrated in their gum-sockets. His face went numb and his skull ached. And with these sensations, his lucidity seeped back into him. He saw his arm extended out before him, the rosary dangling listlessly from his trembling fingers, the smoky air parting to reveal the true terror of the scene before him. Nausea beset him, resulting not of the present horrors, but of his sheer foolishness, of his near-willingness to hand over the fate of the world in a moment of lost perception.

He hurriedly pulled the rosary down and shoved it into his pocket…and at the same harried moment the minions echoed the evil roar emanating from somewhere deep within the pit with high-pitched screeches of their own. White eyes rolling, they rose up from their crouches and began advancing toward the priest in mad herky-jerk staggers, some of them awkwardly pursuing the bloody halo around the hole as if it were a trail of breadcrumbs, others hiking up out of the subway car, arms and legs pistoning with quick, shocking thrusts. Two of the men dragged a dead vagrant with them.

Marcus.

Oh God no…

Without warning, agitated hands and fingers grasped his ankles. Pilazzo startled and screamed. The hands dug his feet out of the peculiar hold of rubble, thin arms defying their apparent weakness and dragging him away from the immediate threat that was seconds away from pouncing.

He tripped back and landed on his rear. The air in his lungs fled with a painful rush. He flailed only slightly, focusing his efforts toward protecting the rosary, one hand pressed tightly against the writhing lump in his pocket.

The hellish screams filling the room were deafening, the horrid image of the men coming at him with their arms outstretched and their red mouths gaping, their tattered denims and construction vests spattered in blood truly startling: a pent-up slaughter making every desperate attempt to reign him in.

He felt himself moving backwards, not of his own doing, but that of the men who aimed to protect him: the homeless and one sole altar boy who got caught up in the mix. He saw himself being dragged out of the rec room, the anxious hands that held him immediately slamming the doors closed.

He gazed up at the doors, terror ripping through his body like a tangible force. He shoved a hand into his pocket and yanked the rosary out; it dangled in his hand, the tiny cross and two of its stars glowing red. Gazing at it, he prayed for assistance. The charm grew warm, then hot. He heard a loud popping sound, and could see the golden glimmer of the deadbolt's bar locking the minions inside the rec room.

From behind the doors a wicked chorus of howls ensued, heavy poundings now exploding against the polished wood, dust raining down from the ceiling.
They will break through in moments
, Pilazzo thought. He shoved the rosary back into his pocket and yanked his hand away from the burning hot beads. The stench of cooking flesh and blood stung his nose, wrenching his gut. The strength in his body waned, seeping out of him like water in a sieve. In the gloom he saw Timothy staring down at him.

God's power is in you,
Timothy had said.
He works in mysterious ways.

Heart pounding, Pilazzo closed his eyes and listened to the incessant banging of the workers against the twin doors of the rec room.

Indeed he does…

L
ike a drill sergeant, Jyro shouted for everyone to arm themselves. Pilazzo struggled to his feet, watching the six vagrants taking up arms with their meager arsenal of screwdrivers, hammers, and awls. Wrath, Seymour, and Dallas stood poised by the twin doors, while Jyro, Rollo, and Wilson moved in alongside the priest.

Brothers in arms.

"Come Father," Timothy shouted, pulling him by the arm. Holding a flashlight in his left hand, the boy led Pilazzo into the lobby, where they paused for a moment to gather their wits. A sick quiver tickled Pilazzo's stomach and sent a hot spray into his throat as he jerked his gaze back and forth between the pounding door and group of homeless men fixing to protect him.

He looked at Timothy. The boy's face looked even more battered and bruised, pale white and greasy above the dim beam of the flashlight.

"You are badly hurt."

"The world outside is badly hurt—
it
is what you must seek to protect." There was something eerily detached about his voice, as if he wasn't actually 'all there'.

Pilazzo nodded slightly with a sickly kind of resignation, squeezing his eyes shut like a child struggling to block out a particularly scary scene in a movie. "Dear God…how can I defeat such a threat?"

"The beast…it must have a weakness."

"Perhaps, yes." The rosary shifted in Pilazzo's pocket as if reaffirming Timothy's sudden revelation. "An Achilles heel…"

The boy stood unmoving. Unanswering. His eyes seemed to stare
through
the priest.

"But how do we find out what it is?"

"Ask God," Timothy replied. "He will tell you."
God told me…

In this instant, shadows shifted, as did the rosary in his pocket…and then the men closest to them began to scream. Pilazzo saw Jyro leap sideways and grab Timothy and then he latched onto the priest, but with no success.

Something else had him: the same cold dead grasp that had seized Rollo and Wilson and had them screaming for their lives. Wilson's mangy dreadlocks flew up like flags and then he went down, the unforgiving grasp of Weston's dead-fish hands burrowing deeply into his neck.

Before Pilazzo came to the horrible realization that the larger of the two dead men lying against the wall had somehow come back to life, something else lunged out of the gloom, impossible to believe but clearly real: the once-crucified albino, also back from the dead, and on an urgent quest for murder.

Pilazzo screamed. He grabbed at the first thing he saw: the flexing wrist of the albino. The pale, dead man latched his raw-boned fingers onto the priest's billowing robe and wrenched it violently. In the sudden chaos and jerking beam of Timothy's flashlight, Pilazzo could see Weston's hulking body falling down on top of Wilson, his burly hands (one of them burnt into a charcoal crisp) tearing into the hippie's throat. Blood spurted onto the floor from the gaping wound. A terrible wheeze emerged that seized Pilazzo's nerves like nails on a chalkboard.

The albino met Pilazzo face-on, eyes reddish-purple, oozing yellow stuff. He kept a weak hold on Pilazzo, from which the priest was able to break away with a single powerful jerk. Having lost his first pick, the albino settled for second-best and honed in on Rollo, who was flailing his fat arms and shouting verses from the Old Testament, despite having dropped his bible.

"Get back!" Jyro shouted, a hand on Timothy's bicep. Pilazzo complied and backpedaled into Jyro's waiting grasp, the rosary painfully hot in his pocket. They pressed themselves against the wall. Dallas, Seymour, and Wrath, under the earsplitting assault of hammers by the rec room doors—leaped into the fray with their tools raised high.

Wrath was the first to strike. Apparently realizing there would be no saving Wilson (the bottom half of his dreadlocks and beard were saturated with blood), he raised the hammer in his hand as calmly as a man on a driving course and buried the claw deep into the back of the albino's skull, producing a sharp cracking sound like a bat on a baseball.

Proving itself vulnerable to physical attack, the albino released Rollo, bellowed a great scream, and fell sideways to the floor into a twisted, motionless knot.

The Weston-ghoul, having finished his business with Wilson, lurched up and made a move for the now unarmed Wrath. The big black man's face, running with sweat, screamed something unintelligible,
"Gah!"
, and threw his arms up in a defensive twist. The Weston ghoul—face painted green, a runner of black-sticky blood purling from his yawning mouth—made a play for Wrath's throat. They tussled harshly and went bumping into the bloodstained wall where the crucified albino first came to be. Wrath leaned a beefy shoulder against the ghoul and heaved it back. It tripped over its own legs and tumbled down into the puddle of thick blood oozing from the albino's punctured skull.

This gave the waiting vagrants a window of opportunity: both Dallas and Seymour, each respectively armed with an awl and chisel, bounded forward and impaled the Weston-ghoul. Seymour punched the chisel through its sternum, and Dallas the awl into its forehead. There was a striking one-two
pop
and then black blood burst from the wounds. The ghoul made a terrible growling sound, so loud and deep it could be felt more than heard. It thrashed about frantically, its struggle ensuing into a convulsing dance of death, filmy eyes marking the priest in its final seconds.

Pilazzo remained against the wall, held there by Jyro's clenching grasp. Terrified faces looked back at him. He tore his sights from the living and fixed them on the two dead souls. His head quivered with terror, the truth of the situation grasping his nervous system like poison: with Wilson now dead, there were only five vagrants left, plus Timothy. And himself.

Wrath leaned against the wall, huge chest heaving. His shirt was glued to his muscles, doused with sweat. Seymour stood panting, glasses gone and crushed on the floor, while Dallas—who may have just committed his very first murder—paced in a sprawling circle, the spattered blood on his face glistening wetly.

Rollo, trembling madly, located his tattered bible and whispered a quiet prayer, and it was here that Pilazzo realized the workers behind the rec room doors had stopped slamming into it.

Terrible, eerie silence filled the room.

He stepped away from Jyro—footsteps crunching loudly and clearly as they had in the church—and peered down the dark rec-room hallway.

Timothy stepped in alongside him. Soon all the men were huddled together, clearly wondering the same thing.

"What happened to them?" Dallas whispered hoarsely.

From behind came a low, metallic screech. The men startled and spun, tools drawn despite the subtleness of the sound.

The hallway door leading into the church was now wide open.

Tentatively and quietly, Pilazzo stepped toward it. He peered down the dark hall. He could see the dim outline of the exit at the other end of the hall, but that was it.

The church beyond lay in darkness.

He whispered, "I don't see any—"

An explosion ripped through the rectory. The twin doors of the rec room burst outward into the hallway, adding to the piles of debris already there. Screams erupted, from both the homeless men and the marauding workers who'd apparently set off the explosion. A rush of smoky air filled the hallway and rectory. Pilazzo and Timothy spun away from it.

Into the church hallway.

"How…" Pilazzo cried out, staring into the darkness ahead. A chorus of agony-filled screams saturated the rectory behind them. Thin clouds of dust filled the threshold. They turned and saw a smokescreen billowing through the rectory…and then the quick flash of an orange vest spattered with dripping-wet blood. Gray shadows moved in the white smoke. Horrible thumping noises spilled out. Slashing noises. Tearing noises.

In one terror-provoking moment, the smoke parted and from within its clamoring murk Jyro appeared, his face strangely composed despite the horrors suddenly taking place. He stretched his arm out toward Pilazzo and Timothy, fist clenched but opening slightly to reveal something to them…but then something behind him seemed to move, a dark shadow in all the gray smoke. Jyro grimaced and closed his fist tightly as a pair of bloody hands grabbed him by the shoulders and jerked him back into the billowing smoke.

Pilazzo remained frozen, frowning, his mind telling him,
He had something to show you. Something…good.

"God is showing you the way!" Timothy shouted, jerking on Pilazzo's arm. The boy pointed the flashlight toward the dark church. "Let's go!"

T
hey staggered into the church, the priest's body seeming to pitch forward as though guided by some unseen force. With no warning, the hallway door slammed shut, closing them in darkness. Timothy aimed the flashlight back toward the door, fixing the beam on the doorknob. Behind the door, shrieks of murder and death ensued.

Pilazzo grabbed the boy's trembling wrist, and motioned toward the pitch-black church.

Slowly they turned to face the sea of darkness. The air was frigid; frozen plumes fled their lungs. Pilazzo shivered, from both cold and fear.

He took a step forward.

Like a blast of air from a furnace, the smell hit him: wet, organic, reeking of blood, feces, and burnt flesh. It filled all his senses, dulling the piercing sounds of bloodshed taking place not fifty feet behind them. Pilazzo continued forward, slowly, feeling the fluid remains of the man they'd called Larry beneath his pressing footsteps.

In the wandering beam of Timothy's flashlight, he could make out the hideous contents of the fallen Mary statue—what had become of Larry, he suddenly knew—tiding out before him, black and glistening, peppered with shards of porcelain.