Where the Dead Men Lie (11 page)

"Why did one of your men hit me?" I added.

"I apologize for the rough treatment. Really, from the bottom of my heart, I am sorry. But I assure you, it was all necessary. It was for your protection and for safety of the group."

"Protection? Hitting me was for my protection?"

"Yes," he answered calmly. "The dead have risen. Judgment day is upon us. The forces of evil, the forces of hell, they are relentless. They will hunt you down. They will not stop. You must understand, your voice, your scent, your very soul is what attracts them. That is why we hide underground. That is why we only ever go outside when it is absolutely necessary."

I was looking at everyone else to gauge their reactions. Judgment day? Forces of hell? Surely the priest was just being dramatic, right?

"We’re not stupid," Kenji said. "We know what we’re doing. We wouldn’t have made it this far otherwise."

"That may very well be the case. But we are barely surviving. We could not allow you to compromise what we have here. It’s not much but it is our home now. I am responsible for these people. They look to me for answers. We must stay vigilant."

"So you’re in charge here?" Daniel asked.

"No. I am not in charge. I am a guide, a shepherd. The Lord is in charge. He has a plan for us all."

The stranger chuckled. "Amen," he said.

The weird thing was, when the stranger laughed, the guards flinched, as though they were scared of him. Which, I guess they probably were.

"I also want to apologize for leaving you down here in the vault for so long," the priest continued. "But we had to make sure none of you were infected."

"You could’ve just asked." Jack said.

"We could’ve. But people tend to lie. And when people lie, it puts the whole group in danger. The only real test, the only real guarantee is time."

"We’re not infected," I reassured him. "Far from it."

"Good."

The priest was all smiles. But there was something about him I didn’t like. For example, if he was so concerned about us being infected, why the hell would he lock us up with the corpse of someone who had been infected?

"Why did you bring her down here?" I asked, pointing to the dreadlocked woman.

"Again, I apologize for that. I understand that being in the same room as the deceased can be uncomfortable for some people."

Especially someone who is missing half of their face, I thought.

"But we had to lock her up down here," he continued. "We have no electricity, no refrigeration system. This is the coolest place."

"You could have just buried her," I said. "You could have left her where she was."

"The way I see it," Daniel said. "You put the group in danger by bringing her down here. She’d been bitten. Doesn’t seem very safe."

"The Lord has other plans for her. Her death will not be in vain."

"What do you mean by that?"

Before the priest could answer Daniel, another man entered the vault. He also had various injuries to his face. A black eye. A fat lip. He sported an old school handle-bar moustache. It was hard to tell in the darkness of the vault, but his moustache appeared to be caked in blood. He spoke to the priest quickly. He was anxious, jittery. "Excuse me, Father," he said quickly and quietly. "The others have finally made it back. They’ve found another survivor."

"Alive?"

"Barely. She’s lost a lot of blood."

"Excellent. Our prayers have been answered."

"It's not all good news. They’re being tracked."

The guy had a walkie-talkie clipped on to his belt. The voice on the other end said, "Ed? Ed, are you there? We’re coming in hot."

Ed spoke into the radio. He looked even more terrified. "Radio silence, goddamnit."

He then looked at the priest and apologized for swearing. "Sorry, Father."

"Just breathe my son. Stay calm. What is the situation?"

"The big one," he said, his voice wavering. "The one that got Michaels. It’s here."

"Very well. Get the others. We need to do this now."

Two of the men grabbed the woman’s body and took it away.

"Big one?" I asked. "You mean like… wait, shouldn’t we stay down here? Shouldn’t we all stay down here?"

The stranger stood up from the pallet of cash. The priest backed away slightly, and the other two men both pointed their rifles directly at his chest. "Where are you taking her?" The stranger asked.

"We are taking her outside," the priest answered. "Now you will see what we are dealing with here. Ed, take their shoes. And bring them up to the bell tower."

"What’s going on?" Daniel asked.

The priest ignored him. "Can I trust you to behave?" he asked the stranger. "Do we need to handcuff you?"

"I’ll behave as long as you tell me where you are taking her."

"You will see for yourself. You have my word."

The stranger nodded.

"Good," the priest said. "I trust the rest of you will follow the example set by Benjamin."

Benjamin, I thought. So the big guy has a name. Somehow this made him less intimidating.

Daniel reassured the priest that we would fully cooperate. Not that we had much of a choice.

The priest left with three of the men. Ed and the bald guy remained. They told us to take our shoes off. Put them in the far corner. We reluctantly agreed. I guess they didn’t want us running off. And there’s no way you’d run off into the desert with no shoes.

Even big Ben did as he was told.

Once our shoes were off, Ed motioned for us to move out of the vault.

We were told to keep quiet. No sudden movements.

If we talked, if we tried to run, if we tried anything, they wouldn’t hesitate to kill us.

CHAPTER 17

We were led out of the bank in a single file to the church next door. I remember my dad once told me that churches were always built on top of a hill or in the best real estate in town, or right next to a bank.

We began climbing up the stairs to the top of the bell tower. The stairwell was extremely narrow and extremely steep. A feeling of claustrophobia combined with vertigo took hold in my chest. Each step, each flight I kept looking back over my shoulder. I still couldn’t shake the feeling that maybe we should’ve stayed hidden in the bank vault.

About half way up, Ed’s walkie-talkie came to life again with two fearful and panicked voices.

"Hurry up! It’s coming. You gotta get out of there!"

"We’re going as fast as we can!" a voice replied.

Ed unclipped his walkie-talkie. "What do you think radio silence means? Get off the damn airways!"

I looked at Daniel to see if he knew what was going. But he just shrugged his shoulders and shook his head.

Ed turned to the bald man. "Stevens is losing it, man. He’s freakin losing it."

"Can you blame him?" baldy replied. "He’s been through a lot."

"We’ve all been through a lot."

We climbed up one more flight of stairs and arrived at the top of the bell tower. It was a large, square room, with the bell hanging in the middle. Open arched windows on each side provided us with panoramic views of the whole town.

We must’ve been locked up in the bank vault for longer than I realized because at that moment the sun was slowly and lazily falling below the western horizon. This meant that we’d been locked up all day. I had completely lost track of time.

Towards the east, a huge full moon hovered low in the sky. It had taken on this weird reddish, orange color. It was a breathtaking view. The town looked so peaceful. Picturesque. Bathed in a soft orange light of the sunset.

I had one last look over my shoulder, still desperately wanting to hide. But the bald man motioned us forward with the barrel of his gun. There was no turning back.

The other men and the priest were already there. They were kneeling down, staying hidden below the arched windows of the tower. All of the men had a pale, grim, look on their face.

The priest was saying a prayer, asking for forgiveness again, asking for strength and courage. He had his finger up to his lips, urging us to be quiet. "We initially chose to stay here in the town of Hope because it is isolated," he whispered. "The town was evacuated early on and as a result the Oz virus never made it here. In the weeks since the nationwide quarantine, since the television and radio and emergency broadcasts were silenced, we’ve only ever had one or two lone infected persons stumble into our town at any one time. Fortunately, we were able to eliminate them quickly and quietly. But then everything changed. The gates of hell were opened. The earth, the sky turned the color of blood."

He motioned for us to take a look outside, he pointed towards the edge of town.

And that’s when I saw what he was so afraid of.

"It’s not the virus," he said as the sun disappeared. "It’s not infected people."

No, I thought. It was something much, much worse.

"The knights of hell," the priest said quietly. "The spawn of Satan has been released upon this world."

The sun completely fell below the western horizon and something moved in the moon light. Something big.

It was something that I’d only ever seen depicted in comic books and b-grade Japanese horror flicks that Kenji had made we watch. Something I’d only ever seen in my nightmares.

The thing was huge.

It was a giant. An ogre.

It was a monster.

It kind of looked like a man in that it had two arms and two legs. But it was taller, bigger than a man, bigger than most of the houses in town. It moved hunched over, walking and crawling on all fours. Its skin was rough and scaly like a snake and it seemed to shimmer and change color in the moon light.

I looked back at Daniel and Kenji, for some sign of what to do. But they were both in shock.

The thing was crouched down, watching the horizon. Its eyes were scanning back and forth like a hunter, like a predator. It was sniffing the air.

I knew in my right mind we should run or hide. We shouldn’t be out in the open like this. Even if we were high up, in a bell tower and the men were heavily armed. I did not feel safe. Not one bit. Not after what happened to Daniel’s team in the middle of Sydney. They were the best of the best. But when that thing ambushed them they never stood a chance. They were torn apart in matter of minutes.

I wanted to run fast and far. But I couldn’t move. The voice of reason inside my head was telling me to hide, screaming for me to get away. But nothing happened. I was too scared to move. Too scared to breathe. The others were frozen as well. Their attention completely focused on the monster as it continued to sniff the air. And just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, that things couldn’t possibly get any more messed up than they already were. They did.

The monster snapped its head in the direction of the town square. A split second later a scream pierced through the night sky. A woman’s cry for help filled the small town and echoed off into the desert.

I suddenly remembered what Ed had told the priest.

They had found another survivor.

She’d lost a lot of blood.

Our prayers have been answered, the priest said.

My mind was racing, trying to figure out what the hell was going on.

And then I couldn’t help myself. "What the hell is going on?" I asked. "Who is that? Is someone down there?"

"Shh. No talking," the bald guy whispered angrily.

I followed the scream. It had come from the town square.

No, I thought to myself. No way. They wouldn’t. They couldn’t.

Two bodies were hanging up by their feet in the town square. Two women. One of them was the dreadlocked woman. Her lifeless corpse was hanging from the street light, swaying gently in the breeze.

But the other woman? She was alive.

Alive and screaming.

She was hanging upside down from the streetlight as well. She was desperately trying to untie the rope around her feet, trying to get free.

After a frantic few seconds she would exhaust herself and fall back down, her hands grazing the road. Half her body was covered in blood.

She screamed again.

It was a scream of anger. Fear. Determination.

She tried again, pulling herself up, grabbing the rope around her feet with one hand, trying to untie it with the other.

Failing.

Falling.

Screaming.

The monster began slowly making its way towards the town square, towards the screaming woman.

Its walk was slow yet purposeful.

Maria then stood up. She couldn’t take it. She had seen enough. "No. No. You can’t."

"Stay down," the priest said. "Please!"

Jack pulled Maria down, held her tight in his arms.

The woman screamed again. And again, the monster moved its head as it listened and zeroed in on the noise.