Project Lazarus (32 page)

“I know, the soldier made you.  Sinterley is coming this way.”

“I got it but….” Natalie trailed off.

“Just let me go.  You don’t have to take me with you.”

An older woman alone in the compound was as good as an older dead woman in the room.  Grady softened she didn’t stand a chance either way. 

“Fine.”

He ran over to Millicent and took off her handcuffs.

She beamed gratefully at her good fortune, “There is a God,” she told Natalie.

“Yes,’ she agreed.

“A God?  Didn’t you know the truth about God….everyone is too busy playing God to acknowledge there is one,” Grady clarified.

The two women soaked up the words.  He was right indeed.  But if was not a God sent to save them, perhaps a guardian angel?

“Here’s the deal  Millicent,” Grady warned, “we leave and you count to a hundred. Not ninety nine. One hundred. You got it?”

“Yes,” she promised, “I count to one hundred.  Then what?”

“You run like hell.”

“What now?  What about us?” Natalie asked satisfied Millicent had a fighting chance.

“Now,” he glanced at her knowingly, “we run like hell.”

He grabbed her hand and in a whisk they were through the door running like hell.  Neither one of them looked back until Natalie who had been counting reached ninety nine.  It was a foolish thing.  They were much too deep into the depths of the compound to see Millicent run through that door now.

The dead made their plans.  They were successful.  They took over much of Cotter and proceeded to take as many people as they could in their preparation to return to hell.

What was so powerful about hell that the damned desired to return?  Could it be the testing ground we call earth, this life we live, they failed at so miserably they succeeded and found hell more satisfying than their debauchery here on earth?

It didn’t matter.  These were things the normal folk of Cotter used to contemplate on starry nights.  What was the meaning of life?  Why did it end? Surely there was a higher power?  A higher place?  A lower place?  Somewhere?

We had to move on.  We had to keep on living despite the questions and answers.  That was the simple conclusion.  It was necessary.  If we didn’t move on, we didn’t mean much to the universe.  That was the solitary determination.  Our ego wouldn’t let us believe anything else.

The living dead wanted to find their way back to hell.  Some longed for heaven but like on earth, the good were easily destroyed, deterred and defiled.  They would fight to save their souls but it was a lonely fight.

Faced with the simple situation of their own creation, the living now had to fight the dead.  How does the living compete against an unknown force they can only ponder?  Did the living dead have the advantage or could anyone compete on the playing field?

The military planes circled Cotter, Arkansas.  The lines were drawn.  There would be no survivors.  War was like that.  Kill or be killed.  Except this time, war games and war secrets collided in a combustible mix where innocent people had to be killed.

Military planes had circled Cotter many times before.  On those occasions, it was the dead of night.  The pilots of those planes were searching for fields of marijuana out in the grass fields.  Neighbors wondered about the strange flights with the planes.  They speculated the drug theories.  They were right.

But tonight in these lonely skies, they weren’t searching for potential wanted criminals. They were people in the wrong place.  Not by their own fault but the greed and power that lure most men to the spotlight like a moth to flame, created an inevitable death trap.  The important men and women of the world couldn’t resist the overwhelming urge to control anything beyond their own power.  They made decisions we know nothing about because in their minds we are nothing but mere ants scurrying across the landscape of life, easily stomped.

To stomp out the entire town was brutal, cruel even, but a necessary evil when it came to the mess the government had made of Cotter.

Project Lazarus was successful.  They duplicated a miracle of God, a miracle of the Bible.  These powerful men and women in the government managed to find a gem in what they might have otherwise considered a useless group of people in the backwoods of another world, the Amazon.

These people, the indigenous tribe in the Amazon, humans without technology and so many modern necessities of man managed to do what a more educated group of people couldn’t imagine.  Their tribe leader was able to raise a man or woman from the dead.  This power was something a higher intelligence than man, like an alien from outer space, was willing to steal by any means necessary.

They easily took the man.  He had no defense or none he chose to use at the time.  As unlikely as it seemed, he would wait to pull out all his defenses.  Now, they saw the outfall and how powerful he truly was in the scheme of the universe.

Once they had him they only wished to exploit his powers.  Although, the Amazon man might not admit it, he was accustomed to such behavior.  He was revered amongst his people much like humans foolishly revere powerful politicians and financiers and worship celebrities and sports heroes. The Amazon man knew what he was dealing with when it comes to the government.  He knew what they wanted.

But unlike the men without conscience, the Amazon man was enlightened.  He knew the importance and spirituality, the humbleness of the man who serves but can’t raise the dead. He knew the man without stature who helps his fellow man, who is willing to lay down his life for his fellow man is far more revered in the next world although hardly noticed in this world.

He had his own defenses and he waited.

The Amazon man was nothing short of betrayed by a world he could understand but not imagine. In his mind, we have gone too far and we aren’t worthy.

He used his powers to raise all the dead in Cotter and watched as the wealthy and powerful scramble.

The government possessed the fastest planes.  They circled their prey from above now.

“Fifty Two come in,”

‘Fifty two here.”

“Can you see them?”

“Circling in on the concentrated area over the peak.”

The peak the man on the speaker referred to was the highest point in Cotter.  It was a very tall mountain that encircled the most beautiful lake in Cotter.  The majority of the living dead, those fighting to go back to hell, were congregating on their journey out of the town.

Things were becoming perilous.  They were trying to cross the border of the town.  They had many different factions.  They were highly organized.  The Amazon man was orchestrating their behavior by communicating to them.  He wanted them to succeed.  The uprising was his own creation and he felt very much in control.

Other factions of the group terrorized the town’s people and tried to kill them to take over the town and continue their journey to hell. 

Fifty two and Fifty three, as their code names were known, were the beginning of the end of Cotter.  Two men were on a mission.  Two men were now entering war.

“How do you want to proceed? Fifty three?”

Fifty two paused, the air weighed heavy, he sighed, knowing the answer was nothing short of death. The death of too many people.

“Bring in the others,” Fifty two commanded.

This was a command to someone on the ground.

Fifty three sighed heavy as well.  They were about to kill the entire town.  No one saw it coming.

The government was busy commanding the pilots.  There would be over 200 hundred of them coming in to do the job.

The plan centered around the edges and borders of the town. They wanted to bomb the town so it was literally a ring of fire on the borders.  No one could get in.  No one could get out.

There was a central command center set up in the bordering town of Mountain Home, Arkansas.  Like the compound in Cotter, it was heavily armed, well concealed and brutally remedial.  There were no computers or digital technology at this command center.  Everything was old school.  Rolled out paper maps were strewn across tables with discriminatory men hovering over them, with thick glasses and cold demeanors whispering of the plans.

The dark haired man, sitting at the center of the table, was known only as Samuel.  He was in control of the mass destruction.

The other men waited for his cue.  He was a mixed bag.  Former CIA, current FBI, government bureaucrat, he covered the broad spectrum of the powers that be.

“The planes come in all at once and bomb all along the perimeter.  I want the whole damn town lit up,” he barked.

The other men around the table were sweating.  Behaving like mini water sprinklers the human sweat literally poured down their backs, the perspiration permeating their crisp cotton oxfords.

“When?”

“23 hours.”

Everyone at the table knew that was 11 pm in military time.

“Stealth planes.  Dark.  Don’t want them to see it coming,” Samuel said thinking aloud.

One man, a fairly well dressed blonde in a navy suit whispered his question, afraid of appearing weak, “And the innocent people in Cotter?  Are you going to give them warning?  Let them leave?”

“The borders were closed by the military long ago,” one man reminded him.

Samuel studied the bold man’s face, the man who asked the question.

“And some of our guys have been run over by cars.  I’d say most of the intelligent moles have gotten out by now,” another much younger man in the group recalled.

Samuel remained silent, but not for carefully tossing his words in his mind, those he threw out like a sack of garbage, “Have you seen what those monsters can do?”

“Yes,” the blonde haired man answered cautiously.

“They’d damn well kill you then give you a second chance and as for me I agree.  Get the hell out of here,” he commanded.

“You can’t be serious?” The man stammered.

He pulled out a gun and rose to his feet, “Deadly.”

The other men sat silent, watching the drama unfold.

“You can’t do this…I’ll….I’ll be killed.”

Samuel put his finger on the trigger, “I’m sorry but we can’t have any questions.  I’m in charge here.”

“Okay…okay,” the blonde man said scurrying away out of the room. 

Samuel got on a two way radio, whose frequency had been blocked, “Blonde hair, about 6 foot 2, light blue oxford, coming your way in approximately twenty seconds.  Shoot to kill.”

He dropped the two way radio on the table, calmly put down the gun on the table and sat back down.

The men waited.  Twenty seconds passed.

Boom.  Boom.  Boom.  It took three shots to put him down.

Samuel looked around the table, “Anyone else?”

Silence.

In Samuel’s mind, there was no room for sympathy.  He witnessed firsthand what the living dead were capable of.  He was highly intelligent and experienced in every field of human behavior and beyond, he dabbled in aliens and teleportation.  He knew the end game of the living dead.  He couldn‘t risk the hell factor as a possible outcome for Cotter or the entire world.  They could take everyone and everything with them.  Samuel was used to dealing with the unknown and he was the kind of man no one wanted to talk to until there was a problem.

This was the first problem he was called in on.  Samuel pondered the fates of the innocent lives in Cotter.  He reasoned every way to get them out.  Now, when he couldn‘t find an answer, he knew the only thing left was to kill them.  Better they be killed than endure the fate that awaited them from the living dead.

He was cold and calculating, as the old cliché goes.   But Samuel knew the disastrous situation could become catastrophic, his fantastic ego came into play.  Only he could solve the problem.

“Let’s proceed.  At 23 hundred hours over 200 planes will cover the entire circumference of Cotter.  They will bomb accordingly.”

“Drop rate?”

“Until fire.  I need a burning ring of fire around the town.  That way we enclose the town.”