I packed it in.
“Probably late this morning,” he said. It was a little after 2pm by this time. “That vehicle’s mostly just smouldering now.”
“They don’t fuck about do they?” I observed. “A few civilians with a couple of guns between them, and they come blasting in here with three vehicles and probably ten guns. Talk about overkill,” I added, sifting my foot through the pile of 9mm and 5.56 brass lying about. “This time they came with automatic rifles.”
“Why kill them though? They were going to take Dean and Sarah off to their sanctuary before we intervened. Why just kill a bunch of civilians?”
“Maybe they insulted their First Disciple or beliefs,” I shrugged. “You can’t reason with that kind of zealous crazy. You’ve only got to say one thing that they decide is offensive to their glorious leader and bang bang, you’re a heretic of their crazy religion and must be purged.”
“One man is delusional, and they call it insanity,” muttered Nate. “Yet when the delusional are many, they call it religion.”
Detective and philosopher. Nate’s peeling back all the layers today.
“It’s a bit out of the way don’t you think?” I mused. “You know, to just come here. If you’re right in what you say and they came first, talked, then went off to get reinforcements to assault, then they can’t be that far away.”
Nate raised an eyebrow at that. “You might be on to something.”
And then, as if solely to validate my statement, we heard the radio crackle into life in the Humvee for the first time.
Like we’d had rockets shoved up our butts, we all shared an excited, “Holy shit!” glance with each other, then all cheesed it to the Humvee and leaped in, crowding close to the radio to hear what was said.
It wasn’t overly exciting at first, just a standard call-out from a patrol saying they were returning and were about five minutes out. But then they said something really odd.
“We’ll need one of the Triumvirate to open the Dead Gate before we arrive.”
The Triumvirate? As in three leaders? Do they have three disciples, and it’s just the first that gets the glory? And what the hell is the Dead Gate? I capitalised that as it sounded special.
A voice came back with confirmation and that someone called Tyler would “see the dead were parted.”
Freya, I do not like the sound of that shit at all. These people give me the ass clamps. Though we do have one name now. Tyler seems to be one of the ominously named Triumvirate, but I’ve no idea if that’s a first or last name.
“Well, I’d say we’re getting closer,” said Nate. “This area feels a bit too hot for the moment though. Let’s head back home and regroup. Now we know what area we’re working in we can plan a bit more.”
“I have no fucking clue where we are,” I admitted.
Nate sighed, started up the Humvee and drove us back here. He still didn’t tell me where we were. I think he did it just to teach me a lesson as punishment for my sly sarcasm on the whole “sir” thing.
Well, it’s taken the best part of a week of crawling around, sleeping rough, and seeing yet more dead children, but we’re edging closer to them. I’d call it a win, but I’m thoroughly sick of seeing more humans that could have allied with us get killed for fuck all by a bunch of selfish asshole pricks.
These Resurrectionists need an atomic wedgie filled with razor blades, then salt poured into those butt-slicing underpants. Colourful? Yes.
But I really don’t like them.
NOVEMBER 23rd, 2010
ASCENSION
We found them. Turns out this place they call Ascension was only about three miles from the gated community they butchered.
And it’s massive.
By massive, I mean it’s like a proper settlement. The central part of it is basically a small village of about thirty custom-built houses, all constructed around what looks like a renovated late nineteenth century mansion, but there are other buildings like look like prefab residential homes all over the place in little clusters. They have working farms all around it with cattle, sheep, chickens, pigs, tilled fields that I imagine were full of crops before they were harvested, fruit orchards for things like apples, plums, peaches, and pears, silos for storing milled grain, and even a working windmill to grind those crops.
They have a security force that must reach into a hundred, as we saw armed guards everywhere around their main centre, patrolling the walls – yes, they have walls that have actual bloody ramparts and towers dotted along it – and even a guard or two at each of the farms we could see. The whole settlement must cover miles if you count the size of the fields on the outlying farmsteads. The centre though is like a fortress, with that community protected by more custom walls, which we could tell were custom as the brick was very new and matched the newly fabricated homes. They had properly laid asphalt roads within the compound, an industrial area for cutting and treating lumber, a machine shop with lathes and mills for working metal, and we’re pretty sure they have a building which looks like a small hospital or infirmary.
Basically, it’s a perfect place to restart humanity in a post-apocalyptic world, apart from one minor detail. We found out what the Dead Gate and “parting the dead” meant.
Freya, outside their front gate is an immobile wall of docile undead, around three hundred in number. Just standing there, facing outwards, and not pushing against the big wood and iron gate. No aimless shamble, just a legion of inert undead sentries with vacant eyes facing out at anyone who might approach the gate, which sits at the end of a road about four hundred yards in length.
We don’t even know how to process this. I’m reminded of the wall of undead across the
