“Identify yourself,” Denise said.
“I am what you see,” the priest replied. “I’m watching Christ’s tears fall with the rain. I am one voice among millions who kill each other to live.”
“Father,” Keefe said, “you alright?”
“God bless you,” he said. “I feel lost. I’ve tried prayer, but I fear my words have been drowned out by screams.”
It was odd to hear something like that from a priest. His eyes seemed like dark orbs, and he stared at them like a patient puppy.
“You both look tired,” the priest said. “Surviving is hard, isn’t it? I find myself thinking a lot of Edgar Allan Poe; so many of his nightmares featured a man waiting to die, a man whose death would come like it does for any other man, but the knowledge of its certainty, the long minutes where you wait for that moment and you’re lost in the horror…”
“You okay?” Keefe asked. “You need help, Father?”
“I don’t know how to live anymore,” the priest replied. “I need you to show me, to help me. I’ve lost myself in the blood. The rain can’t wash it all away. I’ve tried to bless the rain, but it’s been no use.”
Jack looked over his shoulder and saw that Ed was standing in the entryway with Alexis beside him.
“They call me Father Jim,” the priest announced.
“I’m Denise, and this is…”
“Jack,” he said.
“Look, we’re getting out of here,” Denise said. “The Guardsmen either took off or died. There’s a couple thousand people wasted on the tarmac right now. I don’t know if people are still trying to get in… look, we’re heading out. Come with us.”
Father Jim tilted his head. “I fail to believe we’ve been left behind. We must have faith in our country, and in our savior. I’ve seen people running for Base Operations. At least, that’s the only place they could be going. Soldiers, too. Do you think people are still pouring through the gates? People still think they can be saved. Maybe I can save them.”
Something wasn’t right about the priest. There seemed to be a hint of sarcasm behind his words that Jack recognized from all the shitty things Jerry used to say to women.
“Base Operations?” Denise asked. “Heard that place was fried.”
“Here or there, it makes no difference,” Father Jim stared at the field. “Maybe you can run far away, hide from the sight of man. Maybe run up north to the U.P. Hide in a log cabin. Watch the leaves fall and the snow bury the dead. Everyone knows about the top of the mountain; it’s always been there, waiting, and the mad race for the peak has begun.”
“Father…” Keefe said, her guard dropping, her revolver pointed at the concrete. Jack watched her body language; her shoulders had loosened up and her brow furrowed. The priest’s words caught her off guard, and the concern on her face made it easy to predict that she was going to take another step toward him.
“Why would you help a stranger?” the priest looked at her with his cold glare.
Keefe licked her lips.
“Who’s worth saving?” Father Jim continued. “How do you decide who to help? Who has the most value? Do you picture some kind of Utopia full of chirping birds and sunflowers where the human race can begin anew? Are you waiting for the planes to return with some kind of gas that would reverse what’s happened?”
“Forgive me, Father, but I don’t have time for this bullshit,” Keefe said. “I’m too busy trying to keep my ass from getting chewed, than to sit here and think about the meaning of life. You want to be alone with your thoughts and your moping, go right ahead. I won’t feel guilty about leaving you behind if that’s what you want. Time’s wasting. You see those things… They’re not stopping for a sermon.”
Father Jim smirked. “We feel the urgency to live when it’s too late—predictable and boring. Would you mind if I showed you what it truly means to live? A cathartic experience, I’m sure you’ll agree.”
“Base Operations,” Denise tested the idea. She looked back to Ed and Alexis. “You guys sure you’re not coming?”
“Be careful,” Ed closed the door and sealed himself inside the plane with his daughter.
Denise sighed. “I’m okay with the idea. We’ll pick up anyone we find along the way.” She looked to Jack and said, “I think I’d feel better if I stayed to help. I’ve got some acres in Richmond, a little barn with chickens and goats. It’s a few miles from here, but we can make it. There won’t be too many of those things out that way.”
It sounded like a great idea. Jack could picture himself living on a farm and watching for corpses to step across an empty field. He imagined being at peace, accepting what happened and doing his best to empty the poison his brother had poured into his soul.
“I want to help as many as we can, Officer,” Jim nodded. “God bless you and everything you do.”
Jack noticed the tiny smirk on the man’s mouth.
***
Traffic control towers smoked after being reduced to burning pillars during the initial battle. The majority of the active aircraft was gone, leaving the base looking like nothing more than a large golf course littered with bullets and corpses.
Where all the planes had been, there were only puddles and piles of dead bodies where flies gathered. The sky looked like cranberry Kool-Aid; flame, smoke, and rain over the battered airfield reflected the bloody puddles through which the corpses walked. The concrete looked like the floor of a pig farm, with random tidbits of flesh and clothing splattered all over the pavement. Only a few corpses lingered on the well-manicured, rain-damp lawn.
The runways, like the hangars, were empty. The Air National Guard had taken off. Why were thousands of people abandoned by the soldiers who swore to protect them? Hundreds of men and women had made their last stand, but even more had fled. Was the whole state a lost cause? Did the armed forces pull out only to live to fight another day, or defend a position that was more important?
As Jack jogged behind Denise, the loneliness and desolation he felt when he looked over the airfield nearly froze his limbs. Nobody wanted to save these people, but there was Keefe and the cowboy, and the priest; there was still goodness left. There was humanity, and Jack only wished that he were just as courageous as they were.
And there was no home to go back to.
There were no more screams; only the sound of the falling rain and the silence the dead trailed. Twisted ankles dragged across the runways, body armor splattered with blood, the proud men and women who gave their lives to defend the base at all costs. He knew his underwear was soiled, and his wet shirt clung to his bulging belly, but none of that mattered.
The trio paused beneath a long parking structure where planes were worked on during the day. A lone Thunderbolt jet was parked, and Jack leaned against one of the wheels to catch his breath. Father Jim didn’t seem to be breathing heavily at all.
“How long do you think you’ll survive?” The priest asked them, his hands on his hips while he surveyed the airfield.
The question was odd. Denise glanced over at him and they let the words hang in the damp air until the priest turned around.
“It’s an existential question,” he explained. “How many hours, minutes, or seconds do you have left?”
Denise crouched with the gun hanging from her hand. “Shit, Father. You’ve been spooked. There’s no time to think about things like that.”
“No… time,” Father Jim’s brow furrowed. “Heaven and Hell are real, so time ultimately means nothing if mortality itself has no value. But we’re all slaves to imagination. We picture orchards full of lilacs where mansions or castles are perched beside endless oceans. We are princes and princesses. We’re going to be rewarded for experiencing life. For suffering it. We believe life is a test so we can be rewarded with eternal peace, so we battle the beast within, or demons, or each other for that chance at paradise.”
“A sermon?” Denise asked, gathering her breath. “Father, I think we should just get you somewhere safe. You’ve seen a lot. Hell, we all have. I need you to keep it together for me.”
Father Jim stared at her for a long moment. Slow, shambling corpses had spotted them and were making their way toward the parking structure; in their eagerness, a couple of them tripped over their own feet and fell onto the lawn. The dead were spread apart, but if they waited too long, the zombies would cluster together and become more dangerous.
“I think we should go,” Jack said.
Father Jim sighed. “We will, yes, we’ll go. To the undiscovered country, from which no man returns.”
Denise stood and approached the priest. “You can help a lot of people, people who want to see you, to know you’re okay. I think we need you more than you think.”
“Of course,” the priest said. “They want me to share my vision of hope, and I will. I’ll kill everyone to free them of their curse.”
Denise’s mouth was still open when Father Jim grabbed and twisted her wrist; he used his momentum to swing her around so he could duck beneath her arm and elbow her in the ribs—a loud
crack
was enough for Jack to know her ribs were broken. The gun went off before it flew out of the officer’s hand and skittered across the cement. The magnum’s shot produced an ear-ringing echo. Jack blinked, and in that motion of eyelids, Denise was cuffed to one of the corner posts that held up the parking structure above their heads.
Before Jack could process what was happening, the priest kicked him hard in the stomach. He doubled over, clutching his gut. Pain exploded throughout his stomach, causing him to gasp while his vision blurred.
The priest was calm. Denise hung limply from the post, her wrist twisted in the cuffs, her head bowed while she coughed up blood.
The dead were still approaching.
“How inconvenient,” the priest remarked while looking at his shin; the magnum’s bullet had grazed his leg, cutting through fabric, blood running down into his black shoe.
Once again, Jack had proven to be useless. He groaned as something inside his stomach twisted and churned. His bowels evacuated whatever was left.
“Cocksucker,” Denise spat, trying to lift her head to look at the priest.
“The inevitable vulgarities,” Father Jim said. “I always wonder what goes on in someone’s head when they know the end’s coming. How does a cancer patient make peace with life, when they’ve been told they have months or weeks left?” He turned to Jack. “I need your shirt, friend. I can’t kill everyone on a bum leg. Besides, at least I’ve given you a few more hours. You don’t have to be eaten. Let the internal bleeding kill you. It’ll hurt for a bit, but you should feel good that you helped the man who put the world out of its misery.”
Jack’s limbs wouldn’t respond as the agony spread through his chest and arms. The priest ripped his shirt off and turned his body over on the cement; the shirt he’d had since he was a freshman in high school was wrapped around the mad priest’s leg to stop the bleeding.
“Nothing else to say?” Father Jim frowned at Denise. “Where’s the confession? The epiphany? This is my favorite part.”
“Not from me,” Denise said. “Made my peace a long time ago. It could’ve happened yesterday, a year ago. It’s all the same.”
“Send my regards to the Devil,” the priest said as he walked into the rain.
Jack still couldn’t process what was happening. A cruel twist of fate, a beacon of hope and humanity in the thunderstorm betraying whatever restoration in the human spirit he seemed to observe. Jerry would be laughing if he saw this happening. Jerry would be happy; he would’ve loved the crazy priest.
After surviving the massacre in the hangar, he was going to die, anyway.
He crawled toward Denise, whose attention was focused on the dead black woman who staggered forward; her head hung over her chest and rolled between both shoulders, her arms hanging at her sides, her soaked tank top and shorts indicating this woman had been enjoying an uneventful summer day when a hungry corpse bit into the back of her neck. There were four others trailing behind her. One of them wore the gear of a Canadian Forces soldier.
“Do they think I’m gonna cry?” Denise croaked.
He had to get to his feet. He had to find a way to save her. This was his time to be strong.
“Forget the gun,” she said. “Last round, nothing left.”
How could this happen? How could this woman die trying to protect him?
You fat piece of shit! You deserve to suffer! You deserve to watch her die because it’s your fault anyway.
Jerry again, reminding him who he was.
Shirtless, his pale, flabby flesh smacked against the ground while he inched forward. He did all he could to ignore the pain and his brother’s mocking voice. If he was going to die, he wouldn’t abandon her. They weren’t going to die alone.
He could make this choice for himself, and his fearful mind didn’t imagine what it would feel like to have teeth rip his skin apart, hands digging through his innards. He didn’t want to be a part of this shitty world anymore, and if the priest had dealt him a mortal blow, then he would die beside a hero.
Jack reached up and grabbed hold of her neck. He buried his face into her shoulder and surrendered. “I’m sorry… so… fucking sorry. You did all you could…”
He wept because he wanted to. She was a stranger, but these were the tears Jerry wouldn’t let him shed, the pain he wasn’t allowed to feel.