Where Angels Fear to Tread (28 page)

No longer having Deryn to guide them, they thought they might have some problems, but the big man picked up on Delilah's scent without any problem.

"Think we should pull over here," Samson said from the front seat of the SUV, moving his shaggy head around. "The bitch's stink is pretty strong right here."

From the backseat, Remy turned around to see that the other vehicles were pulling over as well, their army climbing from the trucks, weapons in hand.

He was still carrying the Colt 45, and unnecessarily checked the clip to make sure it was still loaded with its special bullets. Everything as expected, he slipped the gun back into the holster he wore beneath his arm.

"You want something bigger?" Marko asked him.

"No, this should be fine," Remy told him.

"Think I might have an extra shotgun, or Mac 10 if you—"

"No, this'll be fine," he told the man again.

"Suit yourself," Marko said, climbing from the car to retrieve his own weapons in the back of the vehicle, pushing aside some of the dead they carried to get at them.

Samson still sat in the passenger seat, his sightless eyes gazing out at the West Virginian night.

"Are you ready for this?" Remy asked, placing a hand upon the big man's shoulder.

"I've been ready for this for . . ." He thought for a moment but then gave up on the specifics. "Let's just say for a long fucking time."

Curiosity got the better of Remy, and he found the question slipping out before he could think better of it.

"And then what?" Remy asked him.

"What do you mean?"

"After this . . . Delilah will most likely be dead, and your purpose, your special task will be done. What then?"

Samson said nothing but fished in his shirt pocket to remove his crumpled pack of cigarettes. He remained silent as he fished one out, returned the pack to where he'd found it, and then lit up.

"I've lived a very long time, Remy," he said, tilting his head back to make sure Remy could hear him. "And even with the mission, I've done some pretty amazing things while I've been here." He puffed on his smoke. "Have done some pretty fucking stupid things too, but everybody does that despite what they say."

"I hear you," Remy agreed.

"Think I might call it a day," the strongman said.

"Really?" Remy asked, surprised by the answer.

"Yeah, it's been a good run, but the bitch . . . Delilah was my fuel," he explained. "My passion. With her gone, I just wouldn't be angry enough anymore to keep the furnaces stoked . . . to keep the machine going."

"Interesting," Remy said.

"Yeah, but remember, this is all based on the fact that she's going to bite it," Samson explained. "But I happen to know she's got more fucking lives than a cat with multiple personalities."

"There's that," Remy said as he remembered Delilah's explanation, her passionate plea as she explained that she wanted to die.

He remembered the odd statement she'd made in the car before the attack—that soon she'd be holding her own again.

"Did she ever have any children?" Remy asked.

"Who? Delilah?" Samson responded, a bit surprised.

"Yeah, I was just thinking about something she said earlier tonight that confused me."

"Yeah," Samson said. "She's been around as long as I have. . . . She had lots of kids . . . husbands. The whole package."

He paused. Remy could sense there was more.

"Didn't work out well for any of them though," the big man said, finishing up his cigarette.

"How so?"

"God would only allow her temporary happiness, before He took it all away."

"Sounds like Him," Remy grumbled.

"Yeah, but remember, she was cursed. So she'd think she was doing okay, let her guard down, and then the Big Guy would do something to show her how fucked she still was—disease, natural disasters, birth defects. Hell, even my kids and I found her living happily ever after a few times over the centuries."

"But she got away."

"Yeah, she did," Samson said.

"And her family?"

Samson didn't answer the question before he opened the SUV door.

"Think we should get this party started," the big man said, a somber chill now in his voice.

"A party," Remy said, climbing from the vehicle as well. "Yeah, right."

They were all standing around outside their vehicles, weapons drawn and ready for war.

Is that what this is?
Remy thought, staring at them all, the soulless as well as the children of a near immortal. He guessed that was the case, but usually in war, there was at least a unified reason as to why the battle must be fought. In this case, there were multiple sides, each of them fighting for something different. Only the battlefield was the same.

Remy knew why he was fighting, and whom he was fighting for, and that was all that really mattered at this stage of the game.

Samson was giving a sort of pep talk to the troops. He could see the large man's children listening to every word, while Delilah's people just stared ahead blankly, murder in their gazes. They did what Delilah had instructed them to do, and that was pretty much it. But as long as they weren't fighting one another at the moment, things were working out all right.

It was hot and extremely humid in West Virginia, the nighttime life all singing one cacophonous song composed of buzzing, chirping, shrieking, and croaking.

That all went quiet as the warriors started into the woods.

Samson and his kids led the way, with Delilah's minions backing up the rear. One of Samson's youngest, somebody they called Little Shit, had run on ahead, moving from tree to tree, shadow to shadow, before being swallowed up by the woods.

It wasn't too long before he was back with his intel.

"Straight ahead, up the hill and down," the youngster explained in a whisper. "Looks like they plant their own crops and shit. We can make it right onto the compound property by cutting through the cornfields."

"Then that's what we'll do," Samson said, directing another of his kids to go back and tell the others what their plan was.

"Do you think the kid's all right?" Samson asked, sensing that Remy had come to stand beside him.

"Don't know," Remy said, fearing the worst. "Hope so."

"Me too," Samson answered before cracking the knuckles on both large hands. "I'd like to at least see something good come out of the mess that I think is about to go down."

Little Shit led them now, bringing them up the hill, halting them with an upheld fist, as he scanned the area down below.

"All right, it's clear," he said, gesturing for them to follow him.

They came down the incline into the crops, spreading out to walk between the rows. The corn still hung upon the tall stalks, large ears waiting to be harvested.

Moving between the rows, doing their best to remain as silent as possible, Remy hadn't noticed that the nighttime life had grown accustomed to their presence, and had resumed its songs.

Until it went silent again.

He felt it almost immediately, a shift in the atmosphere telling him that something unnatural was about to happen. Remy almost cried out a warning, but it was already too late.

The corn ignited with an eerie blue flame.

All the stalks exploded into a smokeless fire, burning down to the ground in a matter of seconds and leaving them all completely exposed.

And then it was as if the sun had suddenly risen in the sky as the entire area became bathed in an eerie yellow light.

"It's times like these when I'm glad I can't see," Samson said over to his left.

Remy shielded his eyes from the blazing light to see figures now standing up ahead.

"There you are," the lead figure said with a growling chuckle.

Remy had no doubt that he was in the presence of the ancient god Dagon. He wasn't sure what it was exactly, but it was either the golden, scaled skin, or the horns sprouting from his head that gave it away.

The warriors, now exposed, prepared to fight, the sounds of multiple weapons being readied to fire filling the night air. Remy looked around to see that the guns were all pointed straight ahead at their targets.

"Oh really," Dagon said, bemused.

"Is he naked?" Samson asked.

Distracted, Remy looked over to the big man. "What?"

"Is the guy doing all the talking naked?"

"Yeah," Remy said, "but I don't think now's the time to . . ."

"Can never take somebody who's naked seriously," Samson grumbled with a shake of his head, before issuing his command.

"Take 'em down!" Samson screamed, and his children, as well as Delilah's soulless soldiers, opened fire.

Startled by the sudden violence, Remy ducked down, staring ahead to see the extent of the damage. The air was filled with the billowing smoke of the weapons' discharge, but as it began to clear, he was met with the most disturbing of sights.

Those who had been attacking were down, their bodies bloodied by gunfire, but the god . . .

The god was untouched.

"How'd we do?" Samson asked.

"Not too bad, unless we were trying to take out Dagon."

"Ah shit," the strongman said, kicking the dirt. "Why can't anything be easy?"

Dagon first looked to the left, then to the right, studying the corpses of his acolytes.

His body seemed to glow all the brighter as he started to walk toward them. He walked about three feet before coming to a stop. The god then seemed to survey his surroundings, studying the dark earth now void of vegetation.

Some of Delilah's followers had started to shoot again, but the bullets had zero effect, and the ancient deity seemed not to notice.

"Give me the bad news," Samson requested.

"I really don't know," Remy said.

The god knelt upon one knee and brought one of his large hands forward, pushing his fingers down into the dirt.

"He's touching the dirt," Remy reported.

"What's he doing that for?" Samson asked.

Remy remained silent, continuing to watch as a flash of divine energy was emitted from the god's hand, the entire ground suddenly illuminated in a white-hot flash.

"Answer me, Remy. What's going on?" Samson demanded to know.

Remy wasn't sure how to answer, but the first of the screams to pierce the night was enough to tell them all that it wasn't good.

Remy looked toward the sound to see a group of Delilah's soldiers spinning around, searching for something, their guns at the ready. One of the men was suddenly gone, yanked down beneath the ground before he could cry out. It was repeated again, and again, one soldier after the next being pulled down beneath the ground by something unseen.

Dagon had risen to his full height, staring out across the empty field. The ground around him began to bubble and churn as if it were liquid.

And one after another, corpses in various stages of disrepair began to emerge, pulling themselves up out of the earth.

"I'm not going to ask you again, Chandler," Samson said. He began to lumber toward the sounds of the sickly moans as the dead crawled up from the dirt.

"It's times like these you should be glad you can't see," Remy said, pulling the Colt 45 from the holster beneath his arm and chambering a round into the weapon.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

T
he first question that popped into Remy's head as he watched with abject fascination as the corpses shambled toward them was why there were so many bodies buried beneath a cornfield.

They were surrounded by the reanimated dead; even Dagon's followers, just cut down in the hail of bullets, were struggling to their feet to stand with their leader.

Samson sniffed the air as he turned in a circle.

"Dead guys, right?" he asked Remy.

"Lots of them."

"Wonder if they're fast or slow," the strongman asked, just before the corpses attacked.

The reanimated screamed their rage as they charged, a wave of rotted flesh and anger coming at them from all sides.

"Fast," Remy said, firing into the first of the moving corpses to reach him. He looked to be a slightly overweight teen, dressed in a ripped T-shirt and baggy jeans. His throat had been torn out, but it didn't appear he had been dead all that long.

The Colt fired an enhanced bullet into the dead kid's face, stopping him almost immediately in his tracks. Punching through the thick skull, the bullet lodged in the decaying brain, working its magick on the unnatural power that made the body mobile. But it was only the first.

The dead were like a swarm of ants, rushing at them even through a hail of gunfire.

"Form a circle!" Samson bellowed over the roars and moans of the reanimated. His kids obeyed to the best of their ability, shooting off their pistols and rifles in an attempt to reach their siblings and father.

Some made it; others . . .

Delilah's people were less inclined to listen, choosing instead to hold their ground.

Remy saw they weren't doing all that well; every corpse to fall was quickly replaced by three or four others. He did the best he could, firing his enhanced weaponry and taking down their attackers one at a time.

But it wasn't enough.

"Any tricks up your sleeves would be greatly appreciated," Samson said as the corpse of a legless woman scrambled between them, biting into the thigh of the big man with jagged yellow teeth.

Samson bellowed, reaching down to tear the woman from her hold. He broke the corpse, snapping and folding it as if getting ready to throw a cardboard box in the trash.

"Holy Hand Grenade, a one-time divine-intervention phone call," he said, tossing aside the pulverized body. "Anything, anything at all."

Remy glanced over to see Dagon standing there, his arms spread to the Heavens, a divine power crackling from his hands.

This was the power that Delilah had been seeking; the power of creation, the power of life over death.

This was the power that had to be shut off if they were going to survive this, but was that possible?

Remy knew this power; he had felt it exude from That which was his Creator. This was the power that had made the universe . . . the power that had made him . . . the power that had made them all.