The Prime halted when the little girl stopped some five feet outside the elevator. Her head was tilted forward, the veil a cloud of white over her pale face. She had both hands behind her back and was rising up and down on her toes.
“What’s with you?” the Prime grumbled. He threw Karen onto the floor then stalked over to the girl like a black mountain about to fall on her.
The girl looked away sheepishly.
“What?” the Prime asked, bending over and squinting through the veil. “You smell nice. Let’s see your pretty face.” He reached out and snatched the veil up. Long black hair hung around a white harlequin’s mask.
“Peek-a-boo?” the Prime chuckled and looked over at Karen. “Kinky!” He put a fingernail under the mask and flipped it up. The face beneath had only one eye. There was a lower jaw, with teeth lined up in a little white row. The rest of the face was a purple-black mass of scar tissue.
“YOU!” the Prime shouted, but reacted too late.
The dead girl’s hands whipped around from behind her back and slashed a long knife across the leader of Westprime’s throat. He made a garbled sound and staggered back, and then collapsed against the wall. His hands were slick, pressing at his throat as he watched the dead girl approach. Blood decorated her dress in a scarlet sash as she moved with the same swaying dance toward the Prime.
He bubbled and coughed as she climbed onto his lap and brought the knife up. A rough cutting noise followed-then a ripping gristly sound.
Karen screamed and got to her feet; she ran! Clear white fluorescent light gleamed along the length of the sterile hall ahead giving everything a surreal, institutional quality.
Karen ran. She had no options left. She sped away from the grisly scene. Overrun by terror she sprinted toward the blue door. Her torn clothing gaped, her shoes clattered on the tiles.
There were symbols marked on the floor. Ancient glyphs she half-recognized in her fear. And from each grew a colored flame, a power source that curled upward mist-like, and wove into the colors emanating from the other symbols to form a fog of undulating hues.
The blue door began to gleam as she ran toward it. Its edges glowed white and glared with an intensity that she thought would blind her. Then pain tore her abdomen and wrenched her body like a thousand knives had struck her.
86 – Betrayal
Captain Jack Updike was confused. He had seen terrible things during his service as an army chaplain in Iraq, and horrors since he had taken up his Holy mission as humanity’s chief resurrectionist. But the battle raging around him was without precedent. The Army of God, comprised of desperate dead men and women was terrible to behold. Its constituents could sustain terrific damage before being forced to the ground, and even then they could fight on with torn legs, severed torsos and mangled skulls. Updike watched a man-his skull exposed from the bridge of his nose down-swinging an axe while City Defenders peppered him with bullets.
The dead man was wearing a helmet so the bullets rang off it as he rattled forward, axe whirling. With each step his body was eaten away by invisible hail. The City Defenders had thought through the task of fighting a dead army to its obvious conclusion. And so bullets were aimed at heads and upper torsos, anything to undermine the soldier’s ability to think or carry a weapon. Mines, claymores, buckshot any device that could sever, mangle or otherwise incapacitate the dead was employed. The battlefield was already littered with twitching severed limbs, and corpses walked without purpose, their skulls shot away.
City Defenders were all over the field of battle, dug into gun emplacements, moving by stealth through a system of trenches. They’d adopted the horrific policy of severing the heads of their own fallen comrades to rob the Army of God of soldiers after Blacktime. The thought was hideous!
Updike reflexively made the sign of the cross-he didn’t consider himself Catholic any more, but the action gave him focus. When the Angels had joined the battle, his head had pounded for the better part of an hour. He was privy to the cries and howls that came from the Divine throats. Then, the pain diminished.
As the army advanced, the pounding in his head became an uncomfortable throb, and as the battle increased in intensity, it became a tearing anguish. He could barely see when General Bolton gave him a bone-handled. 45 revolver.
“It was my grandfather’s,” the dead man said, before returning to the radio and his communications officer to choreograph the dance of death around him.
Updike looked at the weapon, and pushed it into his belt. He had never been much of a soldier, and he was not about to become one at the end of the world. It was not a case of scruples either. His soul was built to inspire, not to kill. Although he was prepared to do what he had to, survival would not come at the price of such a compromise. This war was not about that. This war was a reaction to compromise. No more deals. No more practical agreements. Submit to God’s will!
Overhead he watched an Angel battle a Demon. The Angel used a flaming sword, his halo was argent, and his breastplate gleamed. The Demon was a distorted monster, part buffalo, part swan; it gave off a harsh red glow, its enormous white wings pushing the heavy, muscular body aloft. Its horns were curved and iron-plated. Its tail was like a scorpion’s. The Angel met the beast fearlessly.
Concussions shook the ground. A bolt of lightning shot to the earth from where they joined. The Angel chopped a limb from the Demon, whose bovine mouth parted around a howl; but the creature whipped its muscular tail with such ferocity that the Angel narrowly deflected it. The Demon bellowed before the Angel could act, and liquid fire shot from its mouth and nostrils. The Angel cried out, blinded. Pain shot through Updike’s mind. The Demon caught the Angel between his horns and rammed him into a pile of rocks that detonated on impact.
The bull-creature hammered the Angel with its hooves-sparks and fire flew from its victim with each blow. Then Gabriel’s horn sounded and crushed the Demon against the ground. Disoriented, the beast was chopped to quivering pieces by two slashes of the Archangel’s burning sword. Gabriel watched his fallen comrade’s body turning to smoke. He screamed in rage, and launched himself into the sky on his long gray wings.
Oliver Purdue ran over to Updike, panic on his face. “The Defenders guns are destroying us!” Sorrow filled his dead features. “And there are mines! Bolton called them Bouncing Betties. They explode waist high. The wounded are unable to walk.”
“General Bolton told me to watch for them. We can’t use our cannon! The fighting’s too close.” Updike knew the emplacements couldn’t fire into the throng without destroying their own.
“The Defenders will try to inflict as many casualties on us as they can,” he continued. “But the Angels have upset the balance. They have almost destroyed the Westprime Air Defense, and their tanks are useless against them. The City has no will to fight.” He paused. “Why else would their Demons come?”
Updike laid a hand on Oliver’s shoulder. “We may not have to worry about the Defenders much longer. They have fallen back once all ready. Though we are taking great damage, we are unstoppable. Some of our troops got past the defenses. Fires are burning on the City walls.” Oliver’s eyes widened, he pulled Updike to the ground. A burning dead man ran past, the fire that consumed him flared like wings.
“Ugh!” Oliver spat. “This sickens me. I fear that though the Angels are an asset, they have changed our plans as well. Our forces battle as individuals. It is a free for all!” Oliver’s eyes were frail. “We must end this!”
“That will turn to our advantage. They’re fighting for themselves now. Individuals throwing their faith at the enemy.” Updike pointed to the east. “Look! The gates of the City.” He climbed to his knees. “One more push and we will be at the wall. We’ll bring our cannons closer and take it down. Then, we will begin to win this war. In close quarters, between the buildings, in the narrow streets and alleys, we cannot be stopped.”
“As you say.” Purdue had an old cavalry sword in a scabbard at his hip. He was an uncomfortable soldier too. “But I begin to doubt.”
“How can you doubt the mission?” Updike yelled, then ducked as a bullet whizzed overhead. “Look.” He gestured to the battle in the sky. “The City is defended by Demons. Truly, the evil of the moneylenders is proven. They must be stopped!”
The ground lifted in a cloud of earth ten yards from them. Updike was smashed against the ground by unseen hands. His wind gone, the Captain fought for breath. Sparks flew in front of his eyes. A wide pit had been opened on
