Project Lazarus (44 page)

“I don’t feel so lucky,” she told him.

“There are very few orders which don’t begin with the words shoot to kill.  Again, you’re lucky to be alive,” he reaffirmed.

“Time to move out men,” he ordered.

They were taken by the twined up wrists and walked until they were shoved into a car.

“It’ll be okay Millie,” Charlie told his wife.

“Worth more dead than alive,” she responded, “for how long.”

“The secrets I could tell even you don’t know,” he confided.

Millicent didn’t reply.  .

“Thank you,” she whispered.  She was captured but thanks to her husband, she was still alive.

It was an easy task.  Aside from the madness in his mind, Charlie lived for Millicent.  She kept him grounded and took away his crazy world which was ruling the world in one way or another.  The real truth was his world would crash without her.  His mind was already working on a plan to keep her safe.

She had to be there in the morning and she would be, Charlie thought even though they were captured Millicent was still by his side.  And he knew she loved him. 

“I love you,” he whispered hoping only she might hear him.

She would be there in the morning and so would he.  They wouldn’t be welcome strangers in a new world.  But they would be welcome in the only world they knew together, Charlie’s world.

Project Lazarus was a success.  Insiders were pleased with the results.  They raised a man from the dead, the Lazarus man. 

For outsiders looking in, Project Lazarus was a failure for powerful men and women that desired to cover it up.  It was a nightmare for the residents of Cotter.  No one envisioned what toll it might take on the dead who were raised in the town.  After all, life after death was the ultimate mystery and would remain so.

The Lazarus man was on the loose.  Why he didn’t die with the others when God intervened was another mystery to be solved.  As the hunt by the military who invaded Cotter by foot ensued, killing citizens one after another, in cold blood carried on.  It was possible the Lazarus man might perish.  He wasn’t visibly familiar to the men aiming the guns.

Project Lazarus was a resurrection of another sort for Commander Archibald Henrid.  It was the complete rebirth of defeat.  He hated the son as much as the father.  He wasn’t to be meddled with, his mind was made up he would kill the boy with his own hands and he was getting closer to finding him.

An expert tracker, his hunt began the minute Dylan Dempster escaped the knife he held to his throat.  He replayed that moment.  A Supreme God let him go.  Why?

What purpose did this boy serve?  He was a dead human trap sizing around the earth.  He was no good.  Dylan Dempster, he reasoned, was a portal.  He was a link between the dead and the living.  He was more dangerous that his father.  Charlie Dempster was the mastermind of Dylan’s resurrection but Dylan was untouchable now.

Others would debate for years what happened to Dylan Dempster.  Some would say he was good personified.  Some would determine him evil.  Despite, the spectacle of it all, Commander Henrid made up his mind.  Dylan was evil.  If he possessed any power at all it was to command the dead.  Henrid was convinced the Amazon man could have handed him that power easily when he surrendered to God, without knowing his deed, Dylan might have the power to open a door that could never be closed.  Knowing he was the son of Charlie, made it clear, unless Dylan was stopped he had and would use his miracle as a portal for evil.  Power abused was human nature, inevitable. 

Henrid was clearly awake now.  Charlie Dempster had done that to him. He was aware of the dangers that lurked in the hearts and minds of men, especially the unassuming men with no apparent agenda.  Charlie had never fooled him back in the Amazon but he had succeeded at deceiving him.

The charade continued on.  Commander Henrid thought he was in control.  Humans always think they’re in control.  People sleep better that way.  They wake up in the morning with a purpose, thinking nothing will change.  They certainly don’t expect harm, defeat or tribulation.  To those that encounter such cruel fates, life seems selfish, like it drains everything away.  Commander Henrid knew these feelings well.  He didn’t label it depression.  He felt it was more a vacuum that sucked the life out of him until there was nothing left.  Someone once told him that his quest in Cotter would suck the life out of him.  But it wasn’t Cotter or his quest that took his life gradually away, it was the cynicism of the person that spoke those words. It took over fifteen years for him to find his way back and now that he did, he only found another cruel God ready to defeat him again.  He determined to get back up.  Time passed too often to let it stand still.

Dylan Dempster had to be stopped.  Little did Commander Henrid know there was a Priest that might face the challenge of killing him one day.  A killing Priest, he could never imagine.  Would there be an ultimate showdown between good and evil?  There were always others forces at work. 

Commander Henrid had no place in this war anymore.  But people get caught up in the past, trying to finish it or win it back, and either way it’s always gone.  With only today, these distorted views can get lost in a cluttered mind and the obsession begins.  Commander Henrid was the type of man that thought he was sacrificing his life, without realizing he was already dead.  It was his thinking, this all or nothing mentality, that was the death of him.  He had overcome the cynicism and negativity of the past and attempted to rebuild his military career but those careless words can become a reality.  This quest would suck the life out of him.  His sanity was on the line.

With so much at stake, Commander Henrid stepped up to the challenge.  There were beautiful lakes all over Cotter.  But it wasn’t the beauty of nature and its many mysteries he sought.  He spent several days and nights tracking Dylan to the water.

By the time he reached the Lake of the Ozarks, he was delirious.  Deprived of food, shelter, water and sleep, he knew the boy was close by.  He wasn’t there to make amends.  He was there to finish what he started.  He wanted to kill Dylan Dempster.

He neared the lake, amazed at the pontoon and speed boats, still in pristine condition.   Only this part of the world hadn’t changed.  With a clean heart, he approached the dock and stumbled across to the clear cool water.

He looked down into the water, it was so crystal clear he could see the fish swimming about.   He skimmed the water with his hands.  He lapped it up, scooping it best he could, to refresh his face.  Then he drank it.  It was a communion with nature.  For a moment there was peace.

The bombs drowned out.  Commander Henrid couldn’t fall asleep with a television on but for him bombs were nothing but white noise.  He paid no attention.  Nature was healing and it was trying to heal the wounds on the inside not the outside.

He turned quickly, his thick girth objecting.  He had lost several pounds from stress and sheer exhaustion.  His body rested but his senses continued tracking the boy.  There was a noise behind him.

He checked it out, his eyes scanning the lake and surrounding land.  Nothing.  He returned his attention to the water.  His reflection stared back at him in rippling waters.  The fish beneath would make a pleasant meal later, perhaps trout or bass.  They ruffled amongst the glistening blue until the water calmed and he saw a man, a man he no longer recognized.

Had he aged that much?  The wrinkles on his forehead, lightly covering his worries, shames and distress, the lonely existence that was his life showed through.  He pondered what he was doing there.

The image began to change and he saw a boy, much younger than he.  Was he seeing things?

He drew back quickly.  God, it was Dylan.  Or was it?  He got back down on all fours and nearly drowned himself staring at the image and still he saw his face.  He retreated slowly, easing his body back into a comfortable and quiet position, ready to attack. 

Commander Henrid had him.  Right there in the water.  How could he stay under that long without breathing?  Was the boy already dead?

He drew his knife out of his jacket pocket.  He leapt forward like a wild animal stabbing at the water wildly.  It rippled and grew rough like a storm.  It remained clear.  No blood would be drawn.  Dylan Dempster was a mirage.  He stabbed and stabbed at the image, he swore was real until his mind told him it was wrong.  There was no one there.  The water settled and the calmness set back in.

The noise in the distance rattled him again.  Frightened by his actions and the noise, he knew the boy was close.  He got up and ran out to the end of the dock.

Dylan Dempster stood a few feet from him. 

The laughing from the boy began.  He stood there laughing at him with abandon.

Commander Henrid wasted no time.  He lunged at him with the knife in hand and stabbed him.  He could feel the blade hit the flesh.  There was a sweet satisfaction in knowing he tracked down his prey.  But his prey had come to him.  What did that mean?  Was this a death wish?

The thoughts clouded his head, as he stabbed at him, feeling the cut to the chest, to the torso, to the hands that never rose up in defense.  He hit him seventeen times before realizing Dylan Dempster should hit the floor but was still standing.

Dylan began laughing again.  The baffled Commander Henrid took a step back.  There was something terribly wrong here.  There was no blood.

“I am alive,” Dylan declared, his wicked laughing tearing at the Commander like the knife he attempted to put through the boy’s flesh.

“You will feel everything now,” he warned him, “follow me not.”

He stared at the ghost.  Or was it a ghost?  Dylan Dempster was very much alive indeed.  He remained to laugh at him and to warn him.

The Commander tried to stab him again, hitting the boy in the gut.

It was Commander Henrid that hurled over and fell to the ground.

Dylan laughed.

Commander Henrid clawed at his shoes stabbing his feet.  Instead the pain seared in his own feet to the extent he couldn’t stand.  Commander Henrid shuffled to his feet only to fall, he couldn’t stand on the bloodied stumps.

“You’re not real.  You’re a ghost,” Commander Henrid yelled at the boy he couldn’t kill.

“I’m very much alive.”

“But I can’t kill you,” Commander Henrid screamed in terror.

“You want to kill me.  You tried once.  You tried again.  I don’t think you can kill me.  I don’t think anyone can.  It’s time for you to stop following me old boy.”

It took every bit of strength for Commander Henrid to scrabble to his feet, the pain in his body, tormenting and unimaginable.

“I will kill you,” he screamed violently.

The boy ran at a pace not humanly possible.  Good God what was he?

Commander Henrid followed the ghost that now haunted him forever, dead or alive, he would find Dylan Dempster and he would deliver him to any man that could kill him.

It was clear he would never give up.  His life would be strewn with revenge and any good he could have achieved was destroyed in that moment.  Dylan Dempster took any dream of a life for Commander Henrid away.

Archibald Henrid vowed, “I will kill the son and then the father.  If not in that order.  It is my mission.”

As humans, vengeance is not ours to have.  The Bible tells us so.  Yet, so many waste their lives thinking revenge is the answer.  Perhaps, moving on is the best revenge whether you’re successful or not.  It is your life and the minute you devote it to someone else for the purpose of revenge that person owns you.

They’re a ghost but they still own you.

If Commander Henrid made it out of Cotter alive, he would choose a life not his own.  He would hunt down Dylan and Charlie. 

His ethics correct, perhaps even moral in his mind, we’re terribly skewed.  He didn’t know about The Fixer and the plans for the Priest to kill Dylan.  If he knew, he would doubt the Priest could kill him.  Could a Priest commit the ultimate sin?

Dylan Dempster was becoming more than a symbol of the failed Project Lazarus.  He was the ultimate test of faith and redemption.