Scavengers. Part 1

SCAVENGERS.

by Christopher Fulbright.

Angeline Hawkes.

PROLOGUE.

Clad in a gossamer white gown, the squalling baby was pa.s.sed overhead like a crowd surfer upon hundreds of pustule-ridden hands that groped the infant's pink flesh. Gangrene fingers pulled at the satin ties of her bonnet, yanking the frilly bit of fabric from her downy head. The child's shrill cries rose above the din of moans and anguished wails as bony, flesh-beribboned hands pulled her down into the mob.

The baby disappeared amidst the horde. Snapping jaws, elongated from wasting faces and rotting skulls, bit savagely at one another in jealous rage. The crowd erupted into a ma.s.s of writhing bodies slick with pus and mucus. They fought to possess the child.

From out of the fray, the baby crawled, white gown stained with crimson and smeared with putrid stains of infection and decay. As the flailing hands touched the hem of her garment, all who touched her were healed...

Dejah sat bolt upright in bed, sweat sticking her t-s.h.i.+rt to her flesh.

Her husband Thomas lay beside her in the midnight darkness, snoring. This struck her as odd and she blinked to rea.s.sure herself she had not slipped from one dream into another. He hardly ever slept in their bed anymore.

Everything slips away, she thought.

Her heart still hammered in the aftermath of terror. Her breath came back to her in short gasps, her chest now released from the vise of fear. She ran hands through her long hair, matted from restless sleep.

The baby.

Selah.

She slipped out of bed and made her way to her daughter's crib. The child's breathing was even, rhythmic. A light touch on Selah's chubby cheek a.s.sured Dejah that her baby was really here, really okay.

She padded into the master bathroom, closed the door and flipped on the light, still quaking from the memory of the dream. A dream? Thank G.o.d, but it felt so real. The fresh memory of it raised the hair on her arms and tingled over her flesh.

Dejah turned on the tap and splashed cold water over her face. Standing there in the too-bright light, staring at herself in the mirror, she took a deep breath. It was Sunday, she realized. Several hours from now, they would return to the church in which they had not stepped foot in months for Selah's christening.

"You okay?" Thomas whispered from the bedroom.

The sound of his voice startled her. She marveled again at how strange it seemed to have him in here with her overnight. How quickly she'd become accustomed to the growing distance between them.

"Yeah." She flipped off the light. "Just a bad dream."

She slid into bed, pulling the damp sheet over her shoulders. She lay with her back to him. He reached for her, gently touched her shoulder in darkness. She did not pull away, nor did she move any nearer to him.

A moment went by, and his hand went away. It left a cool impression behind.

She closed her eyes and tried to sleep.

The church parking lot was packed. In addition to Selah's christening, it was Easter Sunday, which Dejah felt would make this even more special, but now that they were here she realized it served only to fill her with a greater sense of apprehension.

She told herself her anxiety grew out of their extended absence from the church*having to see Reverend Forbes, who'd been so kind to them even as he'd fallen ill late last year, and everyone else they knew after being gone for so long. When things started getting rough between her and Thomas, their attendance dropped off. Thomas became angry at the mere mention of church, and she hadn't felt compelled to argue the need for it.

The parking lot was almost full. To her relief, they made it to the front doors without seeing anyone they recognized and were swept inside in a lazy river of humanity. The service started on time, announcements were made, and the music proceeded, backed by the choir. As people raised their hands in supplication to the Lord, Dejah was reminded of the diseased hands in her dream, clots of rotting flesh clinging to bones as they carried her baby.

She could sense their gnawing hunger, and yet, how they wors.h.i.+pped Selah. How the baby seemed somehow holy to them.

She tried to shake it off. The image of her daughter in the gown, cradled here in Thomas's arms, triggered the memory. She forced a smile for Selah, refusing to believe the dream meant anything significant, but too uneasy to not believe in ill omens.

When Reverend Forbes came to the pulpit, Dejah was overwhelmed with emotion at his emaciated appearance. It hadn't been that long since they'd last seen him, but the change in him was shocking. He moved feebly, as if afraid he'd snap. His hair was thin, his skin colorless, his eyes sunken and watery as they looked out over his congregation. The cancer had taken a dramatic and significant toll.

Reverend Forbes expelled a rattling cough, serving as a painful reminder that soon he'd no longer be with them. His prayers were delivered with humility and sincerity. Dejah didn't know another man who deserved to die less than Reverend Forbes. And then, he called their little family to the front of the sanctuary.

The congregation applauded as Thomas and Dejah made their way through the aisle with Selah babbling happily, eliciting "awwww-ing" sounds from the crowd. As they approached the pulpit, Dejah's heart beat faster. Closer to him, she could see the wrinkles and deep lines in Reverend Forbes's gaunt face, a map of his life's joys and sorrows. Sometimes when he breathed, a heavy sigh sounded, a wheeze along with each breath.

They shared a knowing look. Dejah felt the impending loss of his life like a pa.s.senger on a plane that sinks in turbulence...an awful drop and tightness in her guts that didn't go away.

Thomas held Selah out for Reverend Forbes, supporting her from beneath as the pastor laid hands on her forehead. Forbes closed his eyes in a pained expression. Baby Selah placed her hand on the pastor's cheek. It was a sweet moment and the congregation laughed, but it soon became apparent that something else was happening.

Selah grew quiet. The pastor was still.

Two of the musicians set down their instruments in time to see Reverend Forbes drop to his knees. His eyes rolled into his head. He collapsed to the floor at the foot of the pulpit.

"Thomas!" Dejah called. Thomas did his best to hang onto Selah, who transformed from an animated, happy baby to appearing limp and dazed. Dejah pulled Selah into her arms.

The musicians came forward, tending to the pastor. The congregation was astir with concern. One of the deacons approached. "Everyone take it easy. We're calling an ambulance. Let's pray...." His voice trailed away.

Dejah and Thomas were ushered into the first row of pews. A few people gave the baby a strange, almost accusatory eye. Dejah couldn't explain it, but it was like a powerful force had pa.s.sed from the infant to the reverend.

After a few minutes, the murmur of discussion was a muted din across the sanctuary. Reverend Forbes stirred, but those around him encouraged him to remain still. Before they left, Dejah looked at the reverend near the pulpit on the raised dais; he was staring at Selah.

The following weekend, Dejah entered the kitchen, lured by the scent of fresh coffee. Thomas had just finished a phone conversation as she entered the room. There was a grave look on his face as he switched off his phone. He stood there; thumb lingering over the End Call b.u.t.ton.

My G.o.d, what now? She thought.

Thomas looked at her. "That was Rosie, from church."

"Okay."

"Reverend Forbes, he's-"

Dead. He's dead, and now they're going to blame my baby because she touched him.

"-healed."

"What?"

"He showed up at church energetic, happier than ever, and said his cancer was in full remission. His doctors can't explain it."

So why are you afraid? Dejah wanted to ask, because she could see fear on his face.

"He's asking about Selah," Thomas said.

Dejah didn't respond. The nightmare of infection and decay still lingered in her waking thoughts, and crept around the edges of her dreams. She couldn't shake the twisted feeling that somehow this and her nightmare were related. That somehow what happened with Selah and Reverend Forbes was not just an Easter miracle, but a portent of things to come.

CHAPTER 1.

9 years later.

On a Friday night in the middle of a mild October, h.e.l.l rained down in a blaze from the night skies over Greenville, Texas. A school bus full of Millward Christian High School Students returning to Dallas from a football game against Greenville Christian Academy were among the first to see it. After sundown, the temperature dropped to a balmy 80 degrees and because the bus reeked with the stench of a locker room, they opened the windows as they crossed a small gulley bridge. The bus dipped into a deep pothole, as a sudden flash in the darkness pushed a wave of heat across the land. Sound followed a split-second later: an explosion so powerful it nudged the bus and made the kids inside catch their breath as their hearts kicked into high gear. They felt the heat and impact of the explosion like a mortar blast and scrambled to the windows to gawk. It looked like an airplane exploded in the sky.

"Holy s.h.i.+t!" said Collin Davis. "Cool!"

"Hey man," said another kid, "that airplane just f.u.c.king exploded!" This was followed by a whole cacophony of cheers, curses and shouts.

"Watch your language, son!" the coach hollered above the terror-filled frenzy, but no one paid any attention. It seemed the team as a collective let loose with enough profanities to put a s.h.i.+p full of navy men to shame.

Shaun Huntington forgot about his unspoken vow to spend the ride home sulking about the colossal unfairness of life. With that one burst of flame he forgot how Jana Cooper dumped him to get back together with Rhett Pollard, the team's star running back. But he'd spent plenty of time until that moment wallowing in the sorrow of his existence.

Shaun was just a minnow in the big football pond. He was only on special teams. Girls wanted to be able to say their boyfriends were quarterbacks or running backs or defensive backs. They didn't want to have to follow their explanation of "my boyfriend's on the football team" with "yeah, he plays special teams." Like he was on the r.e.t.a.r.d squad or something. Like "special teams" should ride the short bus to the game and be happy their parents have a few seconds to snap a photo every time a ball gets kicked-off. He was barely a step up from trainer-that dreaded position of unfortunates who didn't even get to warm a bench.

Seriously though, could Jana have possibly been any more of a b.i.t.c.h? Granted, she and Shaun weren't getting married or anything, but they'd gone out a couple times, and while the words "going steady" never crossed either of their lips, he figured it was implied. They'd made out a couple times, been to dinner and a movie. h.e.l.l, he'd even felt her t.i.ts under the bleachers as she writhed in supposed delight while pressing a hot kiss to his lips, inserting her probing tongue. He'd been stupid enough to delude himself into believing that she'd done something special for him, letting him touch those t.i.ts. Now he knew that her phone number scratched into the rusty metal of the s.h.i.+tter stall with the phrase "for a good blow" etched under it was probably true. d.a.m.n it if he didn't get to stick around long enough to find out.

d.a.m.n you, Rhett.

He guessed, even after all that, he was surprised to see her show up for the game tonight. She drove all the way to Greenville to see them play. He pretended not to see her, because he was intense like that. Shaun was painfully aware every time Rhett made a big play and the stands exploded into applause, that on special teams, opportunities to get cheered were few and far between. The occasional run-back can stir up the crowd, but you're seldom making the big play. Still, every time there was a kick off, Shaun jogged out with the rest of the special teams squad, carrying himself like a proud stallion, hoping, G.o.d, hoping, he'd catch the big one and run it all the way in. It never happened, but she was still out there, and he didn't do anything stupid like trip over his shoelaces and eat dirt, so that counted for something. Their team, the Millward Christian Saints, won by a margin of fourteen points for a respectable win.

After the game was over, Shaun continued his charade about not being too excited that she was there. He took a moment on the bench, stalled while grabbing his helmet, and chatted with a teammate. Then he was going to walk onto the field and say h.e.l.lo to her, to Jana, and he turned just in time to see her run to Rhett Pollard, throw her arms around his shoulders, and kiss him long and deep. Rhett moved a hand to cup her little a.s.s, lifting her off the ground as he did so. Shaun stood there, stunned, watching Jana's perfectly curved leg fold behind her as they kissed, and then she took Rhett's hand and they went to her car and beyond, presumably, to have all the s.e.x Shaun only dreamed of.

Now, riding the bus in a daze, listening to his mp3 player, staring out at the night, all of that suddenly-thankfully-went away when the airplane exploded in a fiery blast above the bus.

Maybe some shrapnel would fly through a window and take out Rhett, he thought. Divine justice and all. But probably not. He'd never been that lucky.

Shaun pushed his way to a window, climbing up behind Collin and another kid, Juice Hayman. He looked out, catching the tail end of the explosion, roiling clouds of orange and black s.h.i.+ning like the morphing face of a demonic Jack-O-Lantern in all the glowing colors of Halloween.

A secondary blast, smaller than the first, but nearly as brilliant, lit the night again. One part of the plane continued its deadly flight, while two other pieces went off in their own directions. The team watched the flaming airplane break completely apart and fall in a scatter of flaming wreckage. The bus turned a corner headed over a short road taking them to I-30 and then home. The entire bus tipped dangerously. All the kids howled.

"Hey, sit in your seats, guys, c'mon!" the driver shouted over the excitement.

Coach Middy started barking at the guys to sit and to simmer down. Meanwhile the driver got on the radio, nervously recounting for dispatch the details of the explosion. Shaun heard the dispatcher reply with a squawked promise to call the police. Didn't really matter though, not for whoever was in that airplane. That metal bird was toast and so was anyone unlucky enough to have taken that flight to h.e.l.l. Shaun bit his bottom lip as he made his way through the bus aisle, sliding into his seat, all thoughts of Jana and his own piddly existence fading quickly in light of the night's developments.

CHAPTER 2.

Darkness fell across the parking lot of the North Star Motel and Truck Stop on Interstate 30 just outside of Greenville, Texas. The streetlights from the frontage road cast an orange glow over the scene. Aside from the thumping of the occasional big rig speeding by, the night was quiet.

The motel section of the North Star Motel and Truck Stop was a two-level building in the shape of a U with twenty units. In the center of the U was a swimming pool that had fallen into disrepair, the once bright tiles and lawn chairs faded by the sun, the concrete deck broken with weeds, ant hills rising from the cracks. The pool shone a sickly green, the rippled water reflecting in the scant illumination of the few outside lights. Asphalt around the parking lot was broken, ashen from years of dry, hot summers without a re-surface, potholes and fissures making an uneven, multi-leveled web of the ground. Three patrol cars parked in a V in front of room number five. Two more cars arrived for backup, thus exhausting the city's supply of Sheriff's deputies. The lights atop their vehicles strobed red and blue across the grime of the motel's exterior walls.

Officers rushed from their cars toward the door of the hotel room, one of the larger men taking the lead. When they reached the threshold, the lead deputy, Sergeant Groves, lifted a handheld battering ram, slamming it into the cheap metal door handle, splintering everything in the general vicinity. The door burst inward. Three of the cops ran inside, yelling, "Hands up! Police!" and "Freeze!" Dogs barked in the distance amidst the crackle of police radios requesting updates on the situation.

The hotel room was old; worn wood paneling on the inside dated the decor back to the late 1970's or early 80's. The carpet was brown and filthy. The single bed was slept in but half-heartedly re-made. The backsplash for the nearby sink was cracked, hanging an inch and a half away from the wall, pipes exposed beneath, topped with a few travel-size toiletries. The faucet dripped, water tinkling down the rusted drain.

At first they thought the room was empty. There was a lot of shadow, and the darkness seemed to move at once.

"What the-"

A second deputy joined in. "I saw that."

The shadows s.h.i.+fted, as if the darkness in the room was not only fluid, but an ent.i.ty. The black in each corner grew deeper, while everything at the edge of the shadow seemed tense, ready to lash out.

"Step out of the shadows," Groves shouted. "Now!"

They tensed, somehow expecting several men to materialize from the pools of invisibility, where only one appeared: their quarry, Bal Shem.

Bal Shem was dressed as if he were going to a business meeting with the devil himself: double-breasted suit, high dollar, not one of those cheap warehouse specials that came with a thin, free s.h.i.+rt. The red satin of his crisp tie glowed brighter as the red of the police lights cut through the dark of the room and washed over him in a burst of color. He stood, calmly and silently.

"Get out here where we can see you," Groves commanded.

Bal Shem walked toward the light of the door, between the officers who parted like a biblical sea to let him pa.s.s.

"Where should I stand, gentlemen?" Bal Shem asked in a velvet voice, thick with the accent of the Middle East, tooled with the inflection of a London university. His polished Western appearance gave no hint of his primitive, cave-dwelling upbringing, nor did he appear the terroristic zealot who regularly relied on forced human s.h.i.+elds to protect him from the bullets of his foe.

"Stop where you are!"

Bal Shem did as told, dropping his arms to his sides, not making any sudden movements that would give the deputies cause to fill him full of Texas lead. Groves muttered into his radio that the prisoner was secured. Bal Shem smiled a thin, tight grin.

"Check him out, Digger," Groves said to the deputy on his right. Groves's gun was leveled and held steady a few feet from Bal Shem's forehead. He didn't trust himself to not accidentally trip and separate Bal Shem from one of his toes with a stray bullet. The more Groves looked at this child-killing b.a.s.t.a.r.d, the more he wanted to wring his suave neck with his bare hands. An image of his own hands wrapped around Bal Shem's throat, interspersed with flickering footage from news broadcasts of sprawled children, gutted and swollen in the dusty streets of some rural village, flashed through Groves's mind. Nothing the U.S. government would do to this stinking b.a.s.t.a.r.d would be punishment enough for the atrocities Bal Shem had committed in the name of his G.o.d.

Digger, who looked eighteen if he looked a day, sidled alongside Bal Shem and quickly patted him down.

"He's clean." Digger gave Bal Shem another uneasy once-over with his eyes and stepped aside with an eagerness to be as far away from the prisoner as possible. Bal Shem stood motionless, just waiting.

"Of course, I'm clean, Mr. Digger. Only a moron would stand before-" he looked around as if counting the officers present, "several men of the law waving guns in my general area with a weapon on his person." His lips smacked a little when he talked, dryly as if he needed a drink of water.