Project Lazarus (2 page)

“Millie…Millie…Millie are you there?” The man’s voice called out in the darkness.

Fifty four year old Millicent Dempster was sitting on the couch with a drink in her hand.  Hard liquor, she had given up the champagne dreams long ago.

“Millicent?” The man’s voice, now more authoritative, woke her from her alternate state of mind, the one she preferred.

“Charlie?” She answered back.

The lights flickered on.

“For God’s sake Millie why must you sit here in the dark night after night?”

“I’m waiting for you,” she responded blankly.

She stared at him, the man she married when they were both in their early twenties.  That job had killed him, sucked the life out of him and out of her.  Just like the town Cotter.  Small towns could be cruel like that.

His graying hair matched hers, like their thinning gold wedding bands.

Charlie was frazzled, moving about the room in a hurried frenzy.

She squinted through her alcohol eyes.  Charlie was in a big hurry.  No, Charlie was terrified.

He picked up the duffel bag. 

The duffel bag.

Her heart almost stopped.  Her hands went cold.  Her body numb.

That duffel bag was a lifeline.  So was the camping tent out back in the shed.  Then there were the canned goods, the gun, the medicine, the supplies, everything required for survival in the wilderness.

Where the wilderness would be, they never determined.  They always prayed it would never come to that.

She stared at the cross on the wall.  Good God was it possible?  Had it really happened?  She thought it would take longer.  Maybe a few more years.  But how much more of this life could she and Charlie take anyway?

“Come on,” he shouted, having pulled himself together, “we’ve got to get going.”

Shocked, her trembled hands, reached her face, in time to catch the tears that now meant the miserable life she knew was about to end.  Yes, it had been miserable for the both of them.  But it had been theirs.

Now their life belonged to no one but their God.  And they had betrayed him long ago.  Charlie in his work.  Her in her silence.

She got up from the old brown couch in one quick motion.  Unsteady, everything was spinning about her.  Yet, everything around her moved in slow motion, like a bad movie.

That had only happened to her one other time on an icy road, she watched the car spin back and forth for control until it did a full 360, leaving her in the ditch watching the smoke from the exhaust pipe finally catch up to her in whiz of color that passed her front window.  She thought she might die that day, in those few moments that seemed to last forever.

Now, she knew she had been given a pass back then.  But that day had come.

She watched Charlie, ill in health, tired and stressed, worked to the bone worn out, gain a second wind.  Charlie Dempster was a man on a mission- to get the hell out of Cotter, Arkansas.

She ran to him, grabbed his hands, from the folders he was desperately grabbing out of the file cabinet and throwing randomly into a big black garbage bag.  She knew that too would be part of their survival.  The truth.

“Charlie,” she said softly, trying to calm herself more than him.

“It happened,” he answered to the question she dared not ask.

“No,” she screamed.

He grabbed her by the shoulders.

“Something went wrong?” She asked.  “Is that why we have to leave Charlie?  Something went wrong?”

“No, my love, it went horribly right.”

With that answer, she began working with him, in military precision now, gathering supplies, moving files and preparing for the unknown.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, as she passed into the kitchen to retrieve the gold rings in the hidden panel of the cabinet.  They had collected about 150 14kt gold rings to use for bartering.  They couldn’t use cash.  They couldn’t use credit.  The world wasn’t over.  It was simply time for them to go under the world.

For as long as Millicent had known Charlie, his intelligence marveled her.  It was the kind of intelligence that allowed a human to quickly adapt, to think on their feet, to master many languages, to understand the laws of physics, the universe and beyond.

This intelligence mixed with Charlie’s favorite high, curiosity, proved a lethal combination in the end.  It led him to his current job.  It led him to the project. Worst of all, it led him to a terrible secret, a wrong doing he couldn’t correct. His deed had caught up with him. He would pay now.

There are some things a person just can’t keep secret.  Even though they’re supposed to.  Even though they know could put another life at risk just by telling them.  It’s simply human nature to tell secrets, even the scariest ones.  The thing is you only tell the one’s you trust.  And a secret only remains a secret if everyone else is dead.

This was not the case.  As Charlie’s wife, Millicent became a walking human confessional.  Charlie’s work was the topic they avoided.  But they couldn’t.  It was the secret to overbearing, too filled with nightmares, the impossible Charlie obsessed over the impossible filled with possibilities and an unpredictable outcome.  The secret, the job, and the project he had traveled to far away continents to make happen.  It was a mystery wrapped up in a neat little bow and with his quest for knowledge; Charlie couldn’t wait to be a part of its unraveling.

It was the only topic they preferred to discuss in the dark.  When they thought no one else but the God above could hear the truth and the lies.  Somehow the darkness made it easier. 

“Do I have time to call Audrey?” Millicent asked, referring to her sister living in Maine.

Charlie shook his head sadly and in a moment of defiance threw his brand new fancy cell phone to the ground and stomped on it until it broke.

“Charlie,” she gasped, her heart breaking along with the phone.

But she knew he was right.  They’d have to find a payphone along the way.  Those were marked on the map, the tattered one.  Ever since Charlie had taken on that project at the government base in the woods of Cotter, he had been marking the map with payphones all across the country during his spare hours on the weekend.  It was an odd habit but it allowed for them to remain anonymous.

An hour flew by and then another, Charlie kept counting them, because they would be coming for him soon.  He only had a few hours.  A small window of time.

“What about Dylan?” Millicent asked. She was afraid of this question and she was more afraid of the silence that followed.

There would be no answers. There were never answers regarding their young son, Dylan. He was cancer free now. But the price had cost them.

She didn’t ask again. Love had boundaries for a father and son. She let it go. She had too.

“Fifteen minutes,” he glanced at Millicent nervously.

“Are you almost done?”

“Yeah,” he said, shredding the last of the documents through a specialized shredder that didn’t just single shred or even cross shred.  Contrary to the popular public, he knew better.  Anything shredded in a regular machine could be reconstructed.

With his shredder, black ink mixed, with shredding into bits and finally an incinerator that worked at lightning speed, leaving nothing but ash.

He stared at the soot in the bin and took the last notebook, the red one, the one he never left home without, the one he slept with under his pillow, the one he requested be buried in his coffin and stuffed it into his backpack.

“Five minutes,” He warned Millicent who had returned from loading the tent and supplies from the shed into the van, the one with hidden compartments, specially built into it.  The van they, acquired fake plates on.  The van they had constructed from scratch last July when it almost happened.

“Two minutes, we’d better go,” Charlie said, eyes peering for the door.

Their synchronized watches allowed them to go through this escape routine every Thursday evening at six o’clock just for practice.  This time it was for real.

“Before we go Charlie.  Tell me,” she paused, afraid to ask, “How many?”

He paused, to look at his watch, an back up at her, eyes he couldn’t refuse to answer, “Just one,” he murmured, lowering his eyes, to the ground, then lifting them wildly in amazement at the feat, “He raised one from the dead.”

Millicent’s eyes widened.

They stared at each other for a moment.

Knocking at the door.

“Damn,” Charlie muttered and grabbed Millicent’s hand; they could still make it out the escape door in the back closet.  But it was too late.

The intruders threw a burlap sack over Millicent and Charlie’s heads and everything turned to black.

“One by one. Soul by soul.  You’re on the run.  No place to go,” the voice bellowed surrounded by the rushing water leading out to the main river.

Watching the water go by, the eyes now followed. 

The owner of the voice smiled, faceless, the voice knew with certainty; there was truth to those words. 

Laughing wildly now, the voice extended a hand dipping into the cool water, it hadn’t touched for years.

This was a vision.  Like being let out of some magnificent prison.  This was a strange dream; lucid indeed, it was impossible. 

The wicked laughing began again, here the perfect plan unfolded.

Breath sucked in as air.  Although it didn’t feel much like living.  Not when fire readily burns up oxygen.  Hell had that effect on a soul.  On the soul of a human being. 

This breathing without difficulty was foreign and new.  It wouldn’t be easy to shake.

“Damnation is no friend.  Finding others is now an end.  For I know which way the wind of the damned does fly.   Damn them to hell- I’ll carve out their eyes.”

The water slowed enough for a reflection but the voice didn’t bother to look.  Intent upon what it came back for.  The plan.

“Are you there?” Another voice, faceless, without emotion or soul, questioned.

“I’m here,” the first voice screamed, without a care for who might hear.

“Shhhh,” the second voice urged, more cautious.

“Why?”  The voice spun around, dizzy with the delirium of it all.  It was intoxicating.  Not life.  Not coming back to it.  But the reason behind the return.  It was all too exhilarating to ignore.

“Ahhhhhhh,” the first voice screamed in rage.

“Shhhh,” the second voice warned again, pausing, “we can’t let them know we’re here.”

“I want to run across this water and drag them all under it.  I want to bring them back with us.”

“Slow down,” calmed the second voice.

The owner of the second voice wandered to the side of the famous White River shoreline in Cotter, Arkansas known for its trout fishing.  The voice scanned the river for living things.  It forgot humans don’t swim unless they choose to.  Fish had to swim for survival.  This river was their survival.  If they wanted humans, they would have to fish elsewhere.

“How was your transition?” Asked the second voice.

“I want back.”

“Then you know what we have to do.”

“I want to go back to hell,” repeated the first voice in a cold tone that almost resembled a melody you played once and never repeated.

“The burning.  The torture?”

“Are you intent on taunting me, I told you I want to go back to hell,” sinister, evil, the first voice was pure evil.  This was a soul that could never be turned back.

Darkness consumed the night.  Their souls matched the sky above them.  Like two fish out of water, they didn’t know how to behave like humans anymore.  That was going to be a problem.

“You know why they sent us?” Asked the second voice, more of a reminder than a question.

“What are you my keeper?  Damn it, yes, I know why I’m here and what I’ve got to do.  I’ll do anything to get back to hell.”

Cold eyes stared from the first voice.  The anger was building.  What was the hold up from the second voice the first one was stuck with?

Was the second voice happy to be back from hell?  How could that be possible?  This earth was no home for their souls anymore.  They had earned their place, their right.  What was the stranger?  Was it one of them?  Or an imposter?

Cold hands found their way gripping the new reborn life out of the second voice.

“I’ll do whatever I have to,” screamed the first, “you won’t stop me.”

The hands tightened around the second voice’s neck.

A fight pursued and they wrestled to the ground, rolling dangerously close to the river.  Could they kill each other?  Could they die again?  And what would happen if they did?

“Stop,” hollered the second voice.

The second voice had been quiet and steady since their encounter.  Now, something in that voice sounded familiar, the pain and rage, it found homage in the first voice and the fighting ceased instantly.

The two voices sat there.  A silent truce.  An understanding of sorts. 

They had come to kill the living.  Not each other.

And the familiar refrain, a nursery rhyme of sorts, called to them.

“Death be slow,” said the first.

“Death be quick,” continued the second.

“It’s them or us.”

“And we’re full of tricks,” finished the second.

This is the way they liked to talk.  In rhyme.  Scary words that made no sense to the living but sounded like poetry to them.  And when they weren’t rhyming; the two dead voices now part of the living, were planning.

“What do we do now?” Asked the first, finally deeming the second as some type of leader, but always filled with greed, the first voice was ready to take that leadership role.

“We wait for the others,” replied the second.

“Do they know where to find us?”

The second voice had been occupied in the last few minutes taking a branch and meticulously carving it down to a point with the help of its claw like fingernail.  The second voice stabbed the new weapon into the arm that created it and waited for the blood to rush out.

The second voice began spreading the blood like ink on a fine quill tip pen.

The first voice joined in, creating a similar tool and spreading the blood, until the X was so large it covered the size of an entire football field.

When they finished nine hours later, the loss of blood was tremendous.  Yet, they were still living.  It seemed these two couldn’t be killed.  Was that true for all of them?  Or just the damned?

The second voice started up the steep hill and the rocks that followed.  The first voice followed.

The journey was an unexpected toll after the loss of so much blood and they stopped often.

Too often.  They were impatient to see their first deed since their awakening from the dead.

They were in a hurry.  They wanted to finish their mission.  They had come to kill the living or force the living to want to kill themselves, so they could drag them back to hell with them.

And once, they had them outnumbered they could kill the rest one by one.

They could then take over Cotter.  They could claim it as their own. 

One small part of earth.  One small corner as their own, free to travel back and forth to hell as they pleased.

They climbed higher and higher reaching the jagged rocks that jutted out, one missed step would be a tragic death for a human.  That didn’t concern them.  Good luck trying to kill them now that the dead had been woken up.

Reaching the summit, they stared.  A perfect aerial view.  A gigantic X in blood that could be seen from miles away.

“Now, they know where to find us,” the second voice announced, “and so we wait.”

The first voice smiled somewhere inside where evil grew.

“We wait,” the first voice agreed.

The dead.  The damned dead had waited a long time to kill the living.  These two had been chosen to lead the others.  And so they sat back.  They would wait.