Where the Dead Men Lie (15 page)

The wine was strong. Way strong. Burned my lips and my tongue and my throat.

He offered me some water to wash it down. It was then I remembered the words of the old woman. I can’t even remember her name.

She said don’t drink the water.

I told Father Damon I didn’t want any water.

March 16th

More and more people are disappearing on the scavenger hunts and the food runs. When we wake up in the morning, someone will be missing.

Women and children.

I don’t know exactly what’s going on. But I’ve got a really bad feeling in my gut. I’m scared. Dad has changed so much in the past week. I don’t know who he is anymore. Mum is gone. She’s dead. I know she is.

I’m scared. I don’t want to be here anymore.

I need to get out. I need to get myself and Hannah as far away from here as possible.

So that’s what we’re doing. I’ve made my mind up.

Is it the right decision? I have no idea. The only thing I know for certain is I don’t want to stay here anymore.

We packed a little bit of food. I’m too scared to take any water. Hopefully we will find some in the next town over. Maybe in Hunter. If we make it that far.

We have to get out of here...

The diary ended suddenly with a few scribbled lines.

I tried to flip through the pages to see if there were any more entries, but my fingers were slow and clumsy and I dropped the notebook.

My eyes were heavy.

I looked at Maria; she was still sitting on the floor against the wall. Her head was tilted forward, resting on her chest. She was breathing heavily, deeply.

I struggled to focus my eyes, struggled to keep them open.

Maria drooped over to one side, completely passing out, spilling the water on the concrete floor.

I looked at the water as it slowly and rhythmically spilled out of the bottle.

The water tasted funny.

My eyes became heavier.

"Maria," I said, slurring her name. "Maria, we need to get out of here."

But Maria was sound asleep.

And there was nothing I could do.

"Don’t drink the water," I whispered to no one, to myself.

I tried to stand on legs that were made of jelly and custard and other things that aren’t very solid. The concrete floor of the church basement seemed to be made of quick sand. I fell to my knees.

I remember watching a documentary on alcohol addiction once. I remember a lot of alcoholics talk about how at some point in their lives they have a moment of clarity, even whilst being extremely intoxicated.

I never really believed in the whole moment of clarity thing until then, in the church basement.

I had a moment of clarity.

We had been drugged.

"Come on, Rebecca. Get up! You need to get Maria out of here. Get up!"

I crawled over to the one and only door of the basement and lifted a heavy, heavy arm up to the handle. I tried to open it. I don’t know why, I tried. I knew it was locked. But I couldn’t think of anything else to do. My mind was a complete haze.

Smoke. Black Smoke.

Impossible to see through.

I threw all my weight against the door but it didn’t budge. I sat down against it and at that moment I realized we were going to be sacrificed next.

It was clear now.

And it was too late.

We were going to be strung up by our feet in the town square.

We were food for the monster.

As I fell into a black hole of unconsciousness, the words of the priest echoed around in my mind. "If we feed them; we live."

CHAPTER 23

Everything went dark. I had entered a nightmare and there was no escaping.

My mind showed me things that I never, ever want to see again.

My father’s death. Deep behind enemy lines, taken as prisoner, beheaded on camera.

My mother. Torn apart by a horde of infected.

My friends. Sacrificed.

Maria. Gone.

My mind flashed forward to the future. The very possible end game of this pandemic.

The entire world overrun by the Oz virus. The extinction of the human race.

All of a sudden I was standing in the corner of the church basement. The basement was lined with military style cots, crammed with people.

The smell was overpowering. Children were crying.

And then, in the very middle of the night, the priest entered, his black robe flowing behind him, exposing giant vampire bat wings that had grown out of his back.

His skin was black and scaly, like a snake.

He looked at me. Held his index finger up to his lips.

He tip toed between the cots. To the opposite side of the room.

I followed him, as he slowly slithered and stalked towards his prey.

I saw the girl, Sarah Mackenzie. Her sister, Hannah.

Their father, Ed. His ridiculous moustache.

An empty cot next to him where his wife once slept.

The priest moved past them. Kept moving to the far side of the room where there were two small children.

A girl.

A boy.

A hand reached out for them. But it was not a human hand. It was black and scaly. It had razor sharp claws and talons instead of fingers.

They gripped around the children’s legs and the priest dragged them out of the room as they slept.

As everyone slept.

The priest looked over his shoulder, back at me. He held my gaze and then smiled. He winked at me and then left.

I saw a column of light shining into the basement. I dived for it. My head throbbed. Pulsed.

When I finally woke, I was confused as all hell.

It took me a few seconds to realize I was hanging upside down. Fingers scraping against the black, bitumen road. I was in the town square. Maria was hanging up next to me about ten feet away.

I could feel myself, swinging and swaying back and forth. The movement was making me nauseas. Then again it could’ve been whatever we had been drugged with that was making me feel sick. Or you know, the fact that I was hanging upside down.

The town square had a roundabout, traffic circle thing in the middle of the road. I guess it was more of a town circle then a town square. Anyway, in the middle of the roundabout was a bronze statue of a soldier. His head was lowered. He had rifle in his hands.

At the feet of the soldier was a big block of white marble. Carved into the marble was a long list of names. I don’t know why, but I was trying to read the names, even though I was upside down and everything was blurry and I really should’ve been concentrating on getting out of this predicament instead of trying to read the names.

I could see the sun hanging low in the sky. I had no idea what time it was, but it had to have been late in the afternoon. This meant that Maria and I had been unconscious all day.

I come to the realization that I had woken from a nightmare and entered a real life one.

Now, there really was no escaping.

Someone was speaking in a hushed whisper.

"God our Father, your power brings us to birth. Your providence guides our lives. And by your command we return to dust."

It was the priest. His black robe was flowing as the hot desert wind blew through the town. In my mind he looked huge, like a giant, all powerful demon.

"Lord, those who die still live in your presence, their lives change but do not end," he continued. "I pray in hope for my family, relatives and friends. And for all the dead known to you alone. In company with Christ, who died and now lives, may they rejoice in your kingdom, where all our tears are wiped away. Unite us together again in one family, to sing your praise forever and ever. Amen."

Another voice spoke. "At first I was mad. I wanted to…" the voice broke down, choked up.

"It's OK," the priest reassured him.

It took me a few seconds to realize that the voice was talking to me. It was Ed. He was telling me his story. Trying to justify the horrible things he had done.

"At first I wanted to kill the Father for sacrificing my wife. But I came to the realization it was for the greater good. She is in heaven now. With God. She is safe. And our group is stronger for her sacrifice. She gave her life for us, to save us. She is a hero."

I shook my head and everything went blurry. "Are you crazy? You plan on sacrificing us?"

"I am doing God’s work," the priest answered. "To refuse is to condemn yourself to eternal damnation."

"You're all sick. You're insane."

"We make choices," he said as he made the symbol of the cross over me. "We make sacrifices."

I tried bargaining with him. I told him that Maria was immune to the Oz virus and that she could be the savior of the entire human race.

But the priest did not care.

He told me that nothing could save us. Nothing.

The priest then turned and walked away, his robe flowing in the wind. Ed followed him like a lap dog, still refusing to look at me.

As soon as they left I began struggling to get out, trying to free myself, trying to wake Maria up. I was suddenly very aware that the priest's men were watching me from up in the bell tower. Just like we had watched that poor dying woman the day before. I wondered if that meant one of those monsters was now making its way into town.

I did not want to end up like that woman.

So I kept struggling. It was then I heard a howling moan. Somewhere off in the distance. And something different. A roar. Something bigger.

Coming closer.

I began to panic. I couldn’t think straight. I couldn’t stop thinking about how any second now I was about to be fed to a freakin monster.

A voice spoke to me. A voice that was so clear and so loud. I looked around, expecting to see someone standing there, talking to me. But there was no one else in the town square besides Maria. And she was out cold.

The voice spoke to me again. It was the voice of self doubt and fear. It kept getting louder and louder. The voice told me that this was it. This was the end of it all.

It kept saying, "You screwed up. You’re as good as dead."

I looked up at my feet. I could barely feel them. The rope had cut off the circulation.

"There’s no getting out of this. You came all this way for nothing."

I shut my eyes as tight as I could. My head throbbed with each pulsing beat of my heart. I had to try and think.

Think.

I had been drugged. I was hallucinating. Imagining the priest as vampire and a demon. Hearing voices.

I had to fight it. Concentrate.

Focus.

Maria needs me.

Come on Rebecca! Maria needs you.

She was hanging up by her feet from the next street light over. I called out to her but she didn’t respond. She was definitely out cold.

"Yeah or maybe she’s already dead."

"Shut up," I said to the voice in my head.

Focus. I can do this.

"Sure you can. You know, this is exactly like that time Luke Skywalker was captured by that snow monster and taken to its lair at the start of ‘The Empire Strikes Back’. He was hanging up by his feet and everything. This is kinda like that. Except you’re not on the frozen planet of Hoth. You’re in a desert. And you don’t possess the Force. And you don’t have a light saber. So there’s really no way you’re getting out of this."

The voice was getting louder. Stronger. More convincing with each passing second. I had screwed up. There was no doubt about it. I should’ve been more careful. Jack was right. We should’ve made a stand back at the farm house. We should not have given up our guns so easily.

Now it was too late. Now there was no getting out of this. The voice was right; I did not have a light saber.

A howling moan echoed through the streets. I looked back down the main road. At the far end of the street was a lone figure. It possessed the familiar gait of someone infected with the Oz virus. It was stumbling towards us. Slow yet relentless. I knew that at any second it would start sprinting for us. And when it got here, it would tear me apart. It would rip Maria, limb from limb. It would eat us. It would not stop.

Not until someone put a bullet in its brain. Or an axe. Or a knife.

I guess I should’ve been thankful that it was only one infected person that was coming for us and not an entire horde. And not something else.

What a lousy thing to be thankful for.

"You should be thankful. Grateful. You still have your freedom."

 
Another voice. A deep booming voice. The kind of voice you would expect to belong to God, or Father Time or someone who had been around for awhile.

It was the bronze statue of the soldier.