Unholy Night (25 page)

H
erod never expected he would live to see such a thing. A Roman legion, laid to waste. Licking their wounds in the desert of Judea. And not from the work of Gauls or Visigoths, either, but from insects. It was impossible, of course. Yet if you believed the accounts, that’s exactly what had happened.

And why wouldn’t you believe them? Who would lie about such a thing? Who would admit to being vanquished by a swarm of bugs?

Herod watched through the curtains of his lectica, his slaves bearing its burden on their shoulders fore and aft. He’d traveled all day and half the night, trying to catch up with the Romans he’d set loose like dogs in his own kingdom. The Romans who’d proven no more effective than his own troops had. He realized that he’d been a fool to involve Rome. Yes, there was the benefit of flattering Augustus Caesar. Of giving Rome the credit for victory. But Herod hadn’t considered the alternative: that they might fail. And if that happened, the blame would rest squarely on his shoulders.

The fires of the camp burned on either side of him, filtered through the curtains of his traveling chair. Roman camps were usually filled with energy and music and conversation. With the camaraderie of rested, wine-soaked soldiers. But this camp was like a graveyard. The men sat quietly around the flames, frightened. Clearly they were beginning to realize what Herod already had:
We’re dealing with more than a thief and a baby here.
They were coming to terms with the fact that the Hebrew God had taken sides. That he was mocking them. And even though it was only the Hebrew God, being the enemy of
any
deity was a tactical disadvantage, to say the least.

Herod, however, was used to this feeling. The Hebrew God had been mocking him for years now. Belittling him with every drop of blood that dripped from his open sores. With the painful, yellow discharge seeping from places he’d rather it didn’t. And this mockery was getting stronger with time, his body growing weaker. Herod knew it, though he preferred to push these thoughts to the shadows.
You’ve lived this long, and it hasn’t killed you yet. Nothing will.
Sometimes he wondered whether this God had it in him at all.

Can a man be bigger than a god?

Herod’s lectica was gently lowered to the ground and its curtains opened by courtesans. They helped their frail king to his feet and pulled politely at his robes, removing the wrinkles of a day’s travel, then led him toward the unremarkable tent in the center of the camp—its flap guarded by a pair of Roman soldiers in full armor and flanked by torches on tall posts. And though Herod didn’t see them, one particular pair of wounded men went to great lengths to make themselves scarce as he approached.

Gaspar and Melchyor peered around the corner of Pilate’s tent, both of them nursing wounds from the tiny jaws of locusts.

Pilate’s tent was a simple affair. More Spartan than Roman, in Herod’s opinion—a few chairs for holding court with his officers; a bed that looked unused; and a polished helmet and breastplate neatly laid out on a dressing table, with a sword beside them. A few hanging oil lamps cast dancing shadows around the interior. But there were none of the usual comforts Herod demanded during his own travels: no rugs or pillows, no couches to recline on. More importantly, no young girls to recline on them with.

This was no way to go to war.

Pilate stood ready in his formal lavender robes, their seams adorned with patterned leaves in gold thread. He greeted the puppet king of Judea with a deep bow, taking care not to let his eyes linger too long. He’d heard reports of Herod’s sickly appearance, but when confronted with the real thing—with the rotted flesh and blackened teeth, the yellowed eyes and sores—Pilate was quietly shocked. Breaking with protocol, he decided against kissing Herod’s extended hand and instead touched his lowered forehead to it—a rarely used but acceptable alternative.

“I have come to help you,” said Herod.

“I’m honored,” said Pilate, rising to his full height. “And may I ask what it is Your Highness has come to help us with?”

“With the thing you were brought here to do. To capture a common thief and an infant.”

“If I may,” said Pilate, “there’s nothing ‘common’ about him.”

Herod showed a bit of those blackened teeth. “No,” he said. “I suppose there isn’t.”

Pilate motioned for the king to sit, and he did. The wooden chair creaked beneath him, and for a fraction of a second he thought it might break and send him to the dirt floor. His arms shot out to his sides on their own, and he felt the rush of adrenaline that accompanies a near fall, followed almost immediately by relief and the fervent hope that Pilate had missed this brief show of weakness.

“Do you find it strange, Your Highness?” asked Pilate, who’d seen the king’s momentary panic but showed no sign of it.

“Find what strange?”

“Well…the Antioch Ghost or ‘Balthazar’ or whatever you prefer. He’s known to be a heartless murderer, as you say—a man who places no value on life, who prefers to work alone.”

“So?”

“So…do you not find it strange that such a man has cast his lot with a pair of Jews and their baby?”

“A man like that thinks only of himself. He travels with them only because there is some advantage in it—I guarantee you. But I’m not concerned with the Antioch Ghost, Commander. I’m concerned with your inability to catch him.”

“With all due respect, Your Highness, we’ve been battling forces beyond our control.”

“With all due respect, your men were just beaten by a creature that I could crush in my fingers.”

Pilate was too political to say the words that sizzled on his tongue. Too professional to give Herod the slightest hint of a telling expression. Herod stood, determined to make his point while looking down at the young officer.

“In thirty years of ruling over Jews, I’ve come to believe in one very simple truth,” said Herod. “That their time on this earth is almost at an end. All they have are old stories. Old traditions. All they have are tales of ancient leaders and kings, ancient magic, and a messiah who keeps promising to arrive but never does. Everything about them is old. Everything about them is the past.

“I’m interested in new traditions. New empires. I build new things, and they protest. I pass new laws, and they protest. But I don’t listen to them, because I’m the future. And I certainly don’t fear them, or their God. Because the time of Moses and David has passed to dust. The world belongs to Caesar now. To men. And I’m here to makes sure it stays that way.”

“All the same, Your Highness, my men are frightened. They fear the wrath of this power. This God.”

“If I were them, I would fear the wrath of Augustus more.”

Vision. It was the most important quality a leader possessed. It’s why Herod had reigned as long and successfully as he had. He’d already summed up this young officer. This “Pilate.” He was a leader, sure. Aggressive and thorough. Cautious enough to avoid kissing a diseased hand but clever enough to find a suitable alternative in a fraction of a second. But he lacked imagination. He lacked vision. And this would keep him from achieving the heights his cleverness made him aspire to. As always, it would be up to Herod to make sure things ran smoothly from here on.

“They’re headed south, yes?” asked Herod.

“Yes. To Egypt.”

“And the fastest way to Egypt is through the Kadesh Valley.…”
Vision, boy. I’ll show you the meaning of it.
“I understand you have a shaman traveling with you,” said Herod. “Some kind of…seer.”

“The magus.”

“I’d very much like to talk with him.”

W
hat is it, an earthquake?” asked Joseph.

Balthazar remembered hearing a similar sound as a boy in Antioch. A low rumble. The slow groan of the earth moving beneath your feet. But these rumbles were usually accompanied by violent shaking, followed almost immediately by the screams of a panicked citizenry. Neither followed in this case. Yet that slow, low complaint of rock moving over rock persisted. And the five fugitives found themselves looking for the source of the growing noise, which seemed now to be coming from all around them.

“What is it?” Joseph repeated.

The desert had funneled them into the Kadesh Valley—a long, lifeless passage between two mountains. Long ago, a river had snaked over the dry ground they now walked upon, and the early Egyptians—believers in the power of water to carry souls into the afterlife—had buried their dead on both sides of its banks in tombs of all sizes and lavishness. There were still remnants of those long-forgotten tombs all around them, some chiseled into the rock of the ravine, others made of piled stones, their riches long since taken by grave robbers.

After looking for the source of the rumbling, Balthazar’s eyes at last found the culprit:

The tombs.

The first one he spotted was nearly 200 yards behind them. It was one of the bigger tombs, chiseled into the side of the hill to their left and adorned with carvings that had been worn away by the desert winds. The tomb’s large stone slab was sliding open, revealing the long-suffering darkness within and producing the low groan of rock moving over rock, not unlike the rumbling of an earthquake. And Balthazar now saw the whole, stupid truth of the matter:

They were being ambushed.

Knowing they were headed to Egypt, the Romans had overtaken them—
again
. They’d lain in wait—
again
. And here they were, popping out of their hiding places—
again
—with their swords and arrows, utterly pleased with themselves for pulling off such a clever ruse.

Enough already.       

It was exhausting. Balthazar was sick and tired of being surprised, and somewhat surprised that he was surprised at all.

Of course they’re ambushing us. That’s all they’ve done. Why don’t they just attack us head-on and save everyone the trouble?

Sure enough, one of the Romans stuck his head out from behind the open door and began moving quickly but awkwardly toward them, moving over the rocks of the ravine like an oversized insect. But on closer inspection, Balthazar once again found himself awash in doubt. For the being that was crawling toward them—
too fast…it’s moving too fast—
wasn’t a Roman. It wasn’t a soldier. It wasn’t even a man.

It was a corpse.

More groans joined the first as slabs were pushed open all around them. The dead emerged from the shadowy depths of tomb after tomb. Dozens of them. The mummified remains of men, women, and children stepping into the long-lost sunlight, finally free from the prison of sleep, and moving toward the fugitives with unusual speed, crawling insectlike across the ravine.

Their bodies were in varying states of decay, but they all had the brittle, leathery look that comes with centuries of decomposition, their eyes and brains rotted out of their skulls. Skin stretched tightly over their faces and teeth exposed in sickly grimaces. They moved deliberately, forming ranks and closing in, as if controlled by a single, unseen mind, just as the locusts had been. But unlike the locusts, the fugitives sensed this swarm was very interested in doing them harm, and it was less than 150 yards away.

“Balthazar?” asked Joseph.

“I know.”

“What do we do?”

“Give me a minute…”

“But they’re getting clo—”

“I said give me a minute.”

He had to focus himself, had to pull his mind back from the edge of panic and come up with a plan. But all he could do was watch as a wave of resurrected beings crept closer, and fear washed over him. All he could do was watch the horde moving toward them, faster than nature intended most men to move.
Too fast for the others to outrun.
Their dry sinew cracking with every movement, loud enough to be heard clear across the ravine.

Balthazar had been wandering through his own mind a lot in recent days, trying to sift through his doubts. Trying to reconcile what his beliefs told him with what his eyes and ears had been telling him in recent days. It had been a rambling walk. Aimless. Inconclusive. But now he’d reached a fork in the road.

Either he had to accept that he was dead or dreaming, in which case nothing mattered and there were no consequences, or he had to accept that what he was looking at was real. In which case, everything he believed was wrong, and he was probably cursed to spend eternity in the flames of hell. But eternity would have to wait. It was decision time.

Better to pretend it’s real and be wrong, right? Plus, I’m sure something miraculous will happen when all hope seems lost. I’m sure we’ll make another last-second escape. Isn’t that how it’s been lately? Maybe it’ll be a flood this time. A wall of water from nowhere crashing through the valley, washing these things away but somehow sparing us. In fact, I’m sure that’s what it’ll be. A flood.

Balthazar turned to the others.

“Run,” he said.

But they didn’t. Joseph and Mary were paralyzed with fear, watching the dead stagger ever closer—inside 100 yards now. Sela seemed frozen, too, until she lunged toward Balthazar and pulled a dagger from his belt. She did this so suddenly, so violently, that at first he wasn’t sure what her intentions were.
Maybe this is the opportunity she’s been waiting for,
he thought.
Her chance to kill me for abandoning her.
But Sela had no intention of stabbing him. She stepped closer and pointed at the horde.

“I’ll stay with you,” she said. “Help you fight them off.”

Balthazar grabbed her hand. “No.” He pointed to Joseph, Mary, and the baby. “Without you, they’re as good as dead.”

“Without me, you’re dead!”

“You know how to fight, Sela, how to survive. Get them to Egypt.”

“There’s no way you can—”

“Shut up!”

He grabbed her arm, hard. Seventy yards…

“Run, now, while you still have a head start. Don’t stop; just keep going. I’ll buy you a little time.”

He pushed her away. Sela turned back toward the frightened carpenter. Toward the little girl and the sleeping baby. She knew Balthazar was right. They were as good as dead without her.

“Sela,” he said.

She looked back at him, frightened but still so beautiful it wasn’t fair, and for a moment, they were back in the waters of the Orontes, all golden and forever. Balthazar had a sudden urge to grab her, to kiss her one last time just for the hell of it. What did he have to lose? He was probably moments away from a grisly death, and besides, something about the look on her face told him she was thinking of doing the same thing. But before he could work up the nerve to do it, the wail of the approaching dead shook the past away and summoned Balthazar’s eyes to the urgent now.

“GO!” he yelled. And they did.

With the others making their hasty retreat south behind him, Balthazar turned back to the mass of hideous rotted flesh. There were about forty of them, he guessed, less than fifty yards away. He saw one corpse dragging itself along the ground with long yellowed fingernails, having lost its legs in life or death. Another’s torso had been horribly twisted, forcing it to move backward—which didn’t really matter, since it didn’t have eyes anyway.

They don’t need to see
, thought Balthazar.
Something else is doing the seeing for them.

Sela was right, of course. He was as good as dead. If for no other reason than he had no idea how to kill what he was about to fight. For all he knew, his blade would bounce off these creatures like they were made of stone. For all he knew, he would burst into flames the moment his skin met theirs. Nothing would surprise him. Nothing could anymore. But it didn’t matter. Even if it meant the most painful, hideous death a human being had ever experienced, they weren’t getting the baby, and they weren’t getting her. Twenty yards…

He gripped the handle of his sword tightly…breathed deep of the desert air.

Okay, Balthazar…let’s die.

He charged. And as he neared them, and their faces came into crystal focus, Balthazar saw just how wretched they were: pockets of embalming fluid trapped under their hardened skin, the black rot of their teeth, the patches of hair clinging to their scalps in grays and blacks and browns.

Upon meeting the leading edge of the swarm, he was greeted with good and bad news: the bad news was, these creatures were faster and stronger than they looked from a distance. The good news was, his sword seemed to work just fine.

He went to work, chopping away at limbs and necks. Hacking away at the leathery skin and hardened sinew that held them together and trying not to focus on the terrible, chemical smell of the long and leathery dead—at the demons grabbing at him with their dry fingers. Their bones cracking, their skin ripping as they moved.

He was suddenly twelve again. Back in the shallow Roman graves, digging up the freshly slain bodies. Looting them. Fighting off the fear, the terrifying, almost real visions of the bodies coming to life. Visions of the dead grabbing at his clothes and hair. Pulling him down into the graves with them. But those had only been visions. The monsters were real now. They moved without blood in their veins, without hearts in their chests. They had no lungs or vocal cords, yet they each emitted a strange sound. A wheezing, guttural moan that sounded to Balthazar like an endless last gasp. Together, they created a chilling chorus.

There’s something about that baby.

Maybe he would find out what it was on the other side of death. Something waiting for him. And what of the dreams he’d had when he lay dying from a stab wound? What of those strange visions of old men in pink and purple rooms? And what of the Man With Wings? The man whose face had made Balthazar weep at the sight of it?

Abdi’s face.

That’s who it’d been, hadn’t it? Abdi, the grown man he never got to be? A man with wings, holding on to his big brother and soaring over the desert of Judea? Guiding him through an ocean of time and space? Balthazar had thought of them as visions. Nothing but the vivid dreams of a dying mind. But now, staring death both literally and figuratively in the face, he accepted that they might have been something more. In fact, he hoped they were.

Balthazar slashed and kicked and pushed at the corpses, but they were massing around him faster than he could fight them off. One terrible face after another. One brittle set of mummified fingers after the next—their ancient fingernails scratching at him. Grabbing at his clothes.
If I only had a torch, I could set them alight. They’re so dry that they’d go up like a sun-baked grass roof.
But all he had was a sword and a pair of quickly tiring arms to wield it with.

They’re winning.

There was no doubt about it. And as they swarmed over him, Balthazar screamed. Not from any fear but from knowing that this was his moment—his last chance to make his presence known on this earth. He screamed until he could taste blood in the back of this throat as the swarm of dead fully enveloped him.

Peace at last…

And as he screamed, the dead suddenly and uniformly dropped to the ground, as if the strings holding their limbs aloft were cut in one swoop. And with a dull, dusty thud, they were nothing but sinew and bone again. Silent. Balthazar stood there, breathing heavily. In awe of the sight. Somewhat in awe of himself.

He’d won.

By some miracle, he’d been spared. Just as he’d predicted, some unseen force had smiled down on him at the last possible moment. If the Jews called it God, so be it. Whether it was God, or luck, or something else, it didn’t matter. What mattered were the others. He could catch up to them now. Take them the rest of the way to Egypt and be done with this.
Thank God. Or whatever.

But just as he was allowing himself one little victory, one little moment of open-mindedness, another sort of rumbling shook the optimism right out of him. Balthazar looked around, sure that he was about to catch sight of a second wave of rotting beings emerging from their tombs. But there was nothing. Nothing except the rumbling.
A different kind of rumbling, now that I think about it. A much more…familiar…kind of—

It was the beating of hooves against the desert floor.

Balthazar looked past the lifeless bodies on the ground before him—up, up—until he saw what seemed like a thousand horses riding at him down the center of the narrow valley from the north. He couldn’t see the faces of the men on those horses, but he imagined most of them bore the smug, self-satisfied look of men who’d pulled off another clever ruse.

The Romans were coming.

The small horde of dead had been replaced with a gigantic horde of the living. It wasn’t an improvement—not numerically, anyway. But at least Balthazar knew how to kill the things riding toward him. Once again, he raised his sword and readied himself for a reckless, suicidal charge, all in the name of buying his friends—
now there’s a word that just popped in there and I didn’t expect but seems fitting—
a little time.

Let’s die…

He was done running. He’d spent so much time moving from place to place—searching for the pendant, stealing to survive, killing to live. It was good to die. If his death could buy his friends a little time, then so be it.
You deserve to die, after all the things you’ve done. After all the lives you’ve taken. After all the things you’ve stolen—the objects, the futures.

He would meet them head-on, take as many of them as he could. For the second time in as many minutes, Balthazar charged toward certain death, his sword held high. Screaming. For the second time in as many minutes, he crashed headlong and hopelessly into a tidal wave of bodies. Into the blinding wall of flailing limbs and clanging armor.