The Seventh Seal (18 page)

“C’mon, man, we gotta go.”

Sully stood over John, holding a green military jacket and double-barreled
shotgun. 

John struggled to meet the day.  He swam through the fading
current of a dream that refused to be summoned by his conscious thoughts.  For
some reason, John recalled the gaze of the biker chick from the night before.

Sully bent down and helped John to his feet.  The massive
biker threw the jacket over John’s shoulders and held the weapon six inches
from his face.

“Snow is picking up.  You’re going to want to wear this.”

John pulled the coat around and felt a sticky substance on
the right shoulder.  Cold blood soaked the coat.  He fought the urge to vomit
and put his arm into the left shoulder as well.

“How’s Alex?” John asked.  His voice sounded distant and
faded.

“Still healing.  He’s gonna need to stay here.”

“Okay then,” John said.  “I think I’m ready.”

John pulled his thoughts together and went through the back
door of the stage.  The swirling wall of snow blinded him and stung like a
thousand bees.  The inviting warmth and darkness of the Keeper’s lair became a fleeting
memory.  Confronted by a sudden urge, John relieved himself on the carcass of
an old Camry as several bikers emerged from the back door.  Sully stood in
front of them all.

“If we move and don’t stop to eat the yellow snow, we should
be at your place by nightfall.  Word from brothers in the field is that there’s
someone in your old house.  Don’t know who or how many, but it could be your
old lady.”

John straightened fully up, and shook the remaining wisps of
the night from his head.

Sully led the renegade group down a snow-covered street. 
Without the city services of plows and salt trucks, the entire landscape glared
like a blank canvas.  Each member of the Keepers of the Wormwood wore their
leather vest on top of whatever else they could find.  Most of the men wrapped
scarves around their neck and face, giving them the look of Muslim extremists.

John slipped into the middle of the group.  They hemmed him
in on all sides like a squad of police cars bringing a chase to a peaceful and
manageable end.  John heard Sully’s loud laugh or curse when he twisted an
ankle on a covered curb.

They wound their way through dead and cursed neighborhoods. 
The blood-red Sign painted on many doors and walls stuck out, intensified by
the power of the pure snow.  John put his head down and watched the tip of his
boots strike the powder with every step.

For hours they marched, through empty streets and deserted
parking lots, past graveyards, gas stations, and churches. Suddenly John
recognized a block of Mayfield near Belvoir, where the downward spiral had
begun for him.  The party at Reggie’s now felt like a past life, like someone
else’s life.  He pushed the memory of Sarah, of his betrayal, from his mind. 
John thought of his Camaro, loud guitars, and flicking a lit cigarette out the
car window on a sultry summer evening.  He caught glimpses of his beautiful,
naked Jana underneath him.  He could almost smell her hair.

John rejoined the group, and on they went, block after
block, but his mind remained elsewhere the entire time; John was oblivious to
the cold, to sights, sounds, everything.

“Ain’t this it?” Sully asked.

In John’s daydreaming state, he did not notice that they’d
stopped and that Sully addressed him directly.

“Yeah.  Plainfield Road.”

“What’s the number?”

“Don’t matter, they painted or tore down most of them. 
Follow the road until it bends left.  Then I’ll point it out.”

Sully turned his back to John.  He moved a closed hand to
his ear.  Sully’s head bobbed up and down, followed by an audible click.

“The lighthouse is pulling us into the harbor.  Let’s go.”

The Keepers of the Wormwood surrounded John and helped him
toward his house like a rushing creek carrying a lone leaf over the falls.

The pain bit through Jana’s fragile state of mind.  She
looked up at Byron through shimmering tears and blue smoke... until his boot
slammed into the side of her head and brought darkness.

Commander Byron lost a man in the fight, but his small force
had managed to eliminate all of Father’s other soldiers.  Hidden daggers had
allowed Byron and his men to cut the zip ties, pull handguns from strategic
holsters, and open fire on Father’s unprepared men.

The surviving guard gathered the automatic weapons and
placed them inside a closet at the bottom of the stairs.  For better or worse,
the cache would be theirs.  He pulled bodies to the side of the house, and
placed them behind the drooping evergreens.

Byron dragged Jana by the heels, pausing on the mudroom
floor to make sure her slack arms did not snag on the bullnose of the steps. 
Her head created a dull thud as it slid further down toward the basement.  The
Commander yanked hard on her leg as his breathing labored, his heart pounding
through the exertion.

At the bottom, she murmured, low and incoherent.  A closet
door sat open to his left.  Byron switched on the rifle-mounted flashlight, and
the beam showed a heating unit complete with shiny ductwork.  Behind that he
saw another door, much older, composed of unpainted, wooden planks.  Judging
from the fireplace chute in the wall, Byron guessed the door led into the coal
room.

The coal room spanned four feet by ten feet, brick on all
sides, with floorboards above.  The frigid air nipped at his nose but was not
quite as cold as the bitter snow squall outside.  Remnants of mold and
abandoned spiderwebs caused Byron to cover his mouth.  He tasted the dust of
ages on his dry, cracked lips.    

Byron pulled Jana through the first closet, past the
furnace, and into the brick room he thought of as “the dungeon”.  He grabbed
zip ties from his pocket and secured her ankles together.  Using rusted S hooks
lodged in the mortar, he fastened each wrist to one, struggling to get one zip tie
around Jana’s swollen wrist.  Byron stood back and looked at his work.  Jana’s
legs shot out perpendicular to the wall, sealed shut at the ankles.  Her head
lolled to one side, resting on her chest, with each arm raised at a forty-five-degree
angle and secured at the wrists on the S hooks.  Before he backed out of the
room, brushing decades of cobwebs from his face, Byron spotted a roll of duct
tape on top of the furnace.  He tore a strip from the brittle roll and spread
it across Jana’s mouth.

He shut the old door and slid cardboard boxes in front of
it.  It would not fool a military team searching the place, but it would keep
her concealed from the untrained eye.

Byron hobbled back up the steps and sat down in the kitchen
on a wooden chair.  Shattered spindles provided no back relief, and one chair
leg hung a half an inch from the ground, in a weak attempt to support the other
three.  His remaining guard handed him the phone the dead sergeant had used to
communicate with Father.  Byron scrolled through a menu and determined that the
number had received no calls after the sergeant made his fateful final one.

The commander tossed it on the kitchen counter.  A moment
later, he felt a vibrating ring, and pulled another phone from his vest.  He
pressed it tight to his ear.

“Yes?”

“Do you have her secure?”

“Yes.  Are you bringing him?”

“Yes.  We’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

The line clicked and delivered silence.

Byron shut the phone and put it back in his vest.

“Watch the front door and make sure the asshole doesn’t try
anything stupid.  If he does, shoot him right in the face.”

The soldier nodded to Commander Byron and stood sentry by
the front door.

They marched to within four houses of John’s, and yet the
blasting snow made it difficult to see it.  White, bony branches bobbed up and
down, albino scarecrows taunting him.  The slate clouds held the sky close,
suffocating the warm visions of seasons past.

“You won’t need this anymore,” said Sully.

He yanked the shotgun from John’s hand and tossed it to
another faceless biker, the Keepers of the Wormwood hidden beneath the scarves.

John replayed the one-sided telephone conversation in his
mind.  He looked at Sully, who lost the bounce in his step.

“Why not?” John asked.

“C’mon dude.  You tellin’ me you haven’t figured it out
yet?”

John shook his head and brushed the accumulating snow from
his face.

“Which one is it?” asked Sully.

Too confused to lie, John pointed just down the street, to a
house on the right.  The group saw a vague outline through the swirling
whiteout.  Snow accumulated on the ground, covering most distinguishable
landmarks.

As they turned up the driveway, John saw himself mowing the
lawn.  He saw Jana in her white tank top and jean shorts, weeding the flower
beds.  Other memories surfaced and collided, morphed and separated, like broken
seashells tossed by the surf.  Tears stung his face, brought to fruition by his
recollections and the driving snow.

The Sign stood out from the falling white wall.  It glared
red, accusing and menacing.  Sully stood back as the others aimed their
weapons.  After a second, the door swung open and the soldier appeared,
pointing his weapon back at them.

“Ease off, boys!” Sully ordered.

The Keepers pointed their weapons to the ground, but neither
turned away nor backed up.

John saw an older man appear behind the soldier, and an
orange circle glowing in the dark of his living room.  He recognized the smell
of a cigar, even in the wicked blizzard.  The old man backed slightly away, as
did the soldier.  The two Keepers of the Wormwood locked eyes with Sully, who
motioned them forward.

Sully, the rest of the Keepers, and the befuddled John filed
into the living room.  John looked around, trying to recognize his former
life.  The phone that caressed Jana’s smooth cheek sat in the cradle on the
wall, the LED display dark-green and dead.  The intricate ironwork of the fireplace
screen stood in front of shattered porcelain “firewood” and a frayed, yellow
gas line.  The vision of Valentine’s Day spent naked on the floor with Jana,
warmed by the fire, lay in pieces by the logs.

A meaty fist grabbed John by the collar and tossed him into
his dining room.  The hand pushed him down by the shoulder until John’s
tailbone smacked hard off the floor.  John looked up and saw Sully facing the
old man with the cigar.

“Commander Byron, you ancient piece of shit.”

Byron smiled.  Yellowed teeth accompanied a single, black
eye patch and dust-covered beret.

“Sully, and his Worms,” the old man replied.

Ignoring the jab, Sully said, “Where’s the girl?”

“You do not think I am so stupid as to have her here, do
you?”

John wondered to himself if Jana was “the girl”, but kept
quiet as he saw the blood rush to Sully’s face.  The man-mountain’s eyes
twitched and narrowed.

“Don’t fuck with me, old man.”

Byron shifted his weight to one leg, the side with his
cane.  “Or what, you baboon?  He is worthless without the girl.  Father needs
both.”

Byron waited and watched for a response from Sully, whose
mouth sat open and silent.

“When will he be here?” asked Sully finally.

Byron exhaled and wore the grin of the spider approaching
its catch.

“In an hour.  We have half of that time to determine how we
are going to deal with him when he arrives.”

Sully turned toward one of the Keepers of the Wormwood.  The
man unwrapped the scarf from his head, revealing a scarred face. 

“If he moves, shoot him.  If Byron’s little bitch moves,
shoot him.”

The man nodded to Sully from where he stood sentinel, just
above John, who was struggling to figure a way to turn the armed men against
one another.  Byron’s soldier stood on the opposite wall, his weapon
confiscated by another one of Sully’s personal army.

Sully followed Byron out of the dining room and into the
remains of the kitchen.  The refrigerator door stood open, revealing shattered
bottles and moldy, black streaks.  Byron removed a bottle from one of the
cabinets and used an opener on it.  He handed the beer to Sully and then took
one down for himself.  The two men stood in silence, drinking their brew,
staring each other down.

“Let’s get this straight right now.  I need him dead, but I
don’t trust you as far as I can throw ya,” said Sully.

“And I feel the same like you,” replied Byron in his mangled
English.

“Then we need to decide how we’re going to do this, and
fast.  He’s going to bring a shitload of men, and you know he intends to
destroy whatever is left of this place, including the people inside it.”

“I haven’t served for decades in special ops not to
understand the nature of a prisoner exchange, now have I?”

“I sure hope not, old man.  I hope not.”

Father hustled through the corridors of the rectory.  The
building housed generations of nuns throughout St. Michael’s storied history. 
But now, bureaucrats from all levels of the Holy Covenant staked their claim on
a room or efficiency.  The structure tucked up next to the church, providing
easy movement from one building to the next.

As he passed other priests, nuns, and of course soldiers,
Father thought about his visit from Brother Cyrus and wondered if the man took
residence in his parish.  Father’s robes blew out in each direction as his legs
moved toward the rectory’s main office.  The Second Cleansing was about to be
launched, bringing a spastic vibration to the men and women of the Covenant
working there.  If he did not come into possession of John the Revelator in the
next couple of hours, his superiors would kill the mission, and Father would
have to answer to God.  Father’s worry only exacerbated his fevered state of
mind and propelled him even faster toward the church basement.

Father barked orders to soldiers sitting at a basement
table.  They played cards and made a futile attempt to hide the coins from him.

Gamblers in the House of God
, Father thought.

“Suit up, Warriors of Christ.  We must deploy a division to
South Euclid immediately.  I will need four vehicles and at least twenty men.”

A burly soldier stood up and turned toward Father.  He held
his seven cards in his hand, looked down at them, and discarded two.

“Call,” he said.

“I’m sure you’re aware that the Internal Order was here and
that any soldier not upholding the Holy Covenant will be sent to face it.”  The
other soldier in the hand displayed his straight-to-the-ten.

“Trip jacks.  Shit,” the burly soldier said.  He turned to
stare at Father, who stomped toward the soldier with a red face and spittle
amassing on his upper lip.  He ripped the cards out of the man’s oversized
mitt, and threw them to the floor.  The other soldiers jumped up, knocking
chairs to the ground.

“If you do not obey my command, you will answer to the
Lord.”

With a look of disgust, the burly soldier bent down and picked
up his cards.  He placed them on the card table and turned to stare again into
Father’s eyes.

“Brother Cyrus has spoken to us,” he said with
indifference.  “He told us that if you tried to coordinate any unauthorized
sortie, that we were to contact him immediately.”

Father’s face went from red to deep amber.  He had
difficulty forming words and speaking them at a conversational level.

“Unauthorized?  You think that I do not have the power to
send a useless gang of gambling heathens out to do God’s bidding?”

The men sat back down at the card table.  The burly soldier
was the last to take a seat.  He shuffled the cards and turned his back to
Father.

“You will feel Hell’s fury,” said Father.

He turned away from the men and started in another
direction.  He stumbled upon a group of seven soldiers smoking cigarettes
outside the back door of the church basement.  Father had sent three of them to
guard the entrance after Brother Cyrus left.  The oldest amongst them was no
more than eighteen.

“Gather your weapons and meet me outside in one hour.”

There was a protracted pause, then one soldier stepped
forward.

“Sir, we have gotten strict orders from the Holy Covenant to
remain here and fortify St. Michael’s.”

“I am the Holy Covenant!” he said.

The soldiers backed away as Father caught his breath.  He
gasped and then blasted the young men again.

“You will do as I say or you will suffer eternal damnation
at the hands of Lucifer.  Meet me outside at the troop transport in one hour!”

The men clutched their weapons and scrambled in different
directions.  Father collapsed into a chair and looked up toward the ceiling,
but with closed eyes.  John the Revelator consumed all of his blind vision.