Where Angels Fear to Tread

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

The 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.

It made him feel sick to see it being used in such a tawdry fashion. And he didn’t want to even think about how this creature had acquired it.

More and more of Remy’s comrades were falling, and as they fell and were torn apart by the vicious dead, they too rose to join the legions of the reanimated against their brethren. The dead were relentless in their attack.

Remy ejected an empty clip from his Colt, quickly snapping in the next in one fluid movement. He took down an old woman in a flowered nightgown, her white hair already speckled with blood and brains, even before two of the special bullets were unloaded into what remained of her face.

Their own number had dwindled by half, most of Delilah’s followers having already been taken to join the ranks of their attackers.

Automatic gunfire blared like staccato blasts of thunder as those who had managed to hold their own continued their struggle. Samson, his clothes torn and bloody, continuously lashed out, powerful blows falling upon the dead with the force to pulverize.

And still they kept coming.

Remy knew what he had to do, and though it was excruciating to admit, little else would suffice.

Reaching down beneath his human facade, he found the power of Heaven waiting, and he extended his hand.

I have need of you, Remy called, urging the power to come forth. And as it surged upward, his body flushing with the power of God, he felt it recede as quickly as it had arrived.

Remy was shaken, his body filled with the agony of his true nature repressed. He looked toward the ancient god whose gaze had fallen directly upon him.

“I know what you are,” the deity roared inside Remy’s head. “And you are not wanted here, warrior of Heaven.”

By now the dead were at him, so close, and so many, that his weapon could do little. The dead had him, dragging him down to the ground, the sickening stench of blood and decay flooding his nostrils enough to suffocate him. .

As the dead made great efforts to make him one of their own.

Delilah held the metal bowl against herself, moving the electric mixer around through the golden cake batter until all lumps had disappeared.

Satisfied, she turned the mixer off, ejecting the beaters onto a waiting paper towel from which she picked up one of them, hungrily licking the batter from the blades.

Perfect, she thought, enjoying the taste of the cake batter she had made from scratch. She spooned the thick contents of the bowl into the cake pan. Completely content in her actions—indeed, in her life—Delilah hummed a song, the name of which she did not know.

Right then she experienced a moment of perfect bliss. She couldn’t imagine life being any better.

Smoothing out the batter with a spatula, she opened the preheated oven and slid the cake inside to bake. Setting the timer, she prepared to clean up, and then get the dining room decorated for the party.

It was her youngest’s birthday. David was going to be six years old. He would be starting school this year, and she experienced a pang of sadness, which quickly went away when she felt the stirring of life in her protruding belly.

Five months pregnant, she thought with a smile as she laid her hands upon the material of her flowered maternity dress. She and her husband had assumed they were done with babies.

This thought made her laugh as she strolled from the kitchen toward the dining room. She could hear the kids going wild outside with their father, and she strolled over to the sliding glass door