“No, this town held more people than that.” But that didn’t mean she had a clue where they’d gone. Carver had her men take up defensive positions on the doors and got on her radio to contact Captain Quinn. She got nothing but static. Weird. “This place is giving me a bad vibe.”
Carver turned around and nearly jumped out of her skin when she saw a little Mexican boy sitting on the altar. Sensing her reaction, her men spun around, lifting their weapons.
“Hold on!” she shouted before fingers could reach the triggers. “It’s just a kid.” He was probably only seven or eight years old, barefoot and wearing a T-shirt and shorts. “Whose section was that? Damn it, Corvus! Why didn’t you clear that?”
“I did, LT. He wasn’t there a second ago.”
It didn’t matter now. They’d found somebody. Carver swung her carbine around behind her back and let it dangle by the sling. She lifted both hands to show they were empty. “Hola.” She spoke three languages fluently, but Spanish wasn’t among them. Sandbag was fluent, though. “Tell him we’re friends.”
Sandbag started talking. He was a big, scary dude, but he kept his voice nice and soothing. Only the little boy kept staring at her instead. She found it odd that he was sitting cross-legged on the altar. She wasn’t religious, but that seemed really disrespectful. “Ask him what’s going on.”
Sandbag did. The boy smirked as he answered.
“He says he just got up from a long nap.”
“Huh? Where?”
“In the ground, I think. No. A tomb.” Sandbag shrugged. “He’s not making a lot of sense, LT.”
“Ask him where everybody is.”
The little boy finally looked at Sandbag and rattled off a dismissive answer. Sandbag seemed really confused by it.
“He says that he forced them to walk across the desert.”
“Who did?”
“Him.” Sandbag nodded at the kid. “He’s talking about himself. He said he did it.”
The little boy had an annoyed expression on his face. He said something else, as if he were correcting the translator. He spoke for a long time. Sandbag’s eyes kept getting wide.
“He says he made them take their shoes off so their feet would bleed on the rocks and thorns, and to not stop until they fell. They’re probably dead from thirst by now.” Sandbag was distressed. He’d never struck Carver as the religious type, so when he unconsciously crossed himself, it unnerved her. “That was only for the ones who pray. The rest he nailed to the poles.”
“Little fucker would need a ladder,” Corvus muttered. “He’s gone mental.”
“He says they brought him here, but they didn’t understand what they dug up. He’s insulted they thought he was just some mere weapon.”
The kid smiled at them.
Then he began weeping blood.
That was when everything went horribly wrong.
Rudy realized he was gripping the edge of the table so hard that his knuckles had turned white.
“What’s wrong, Rudy?” Lieutenant Carver asked him with unnerving calm. “You seem frightened.”
“I’m fine.”
“No. You are broken. You are an unworthy vessel.”
All the hair on his arms stood up. “You mean my eye?”
“Among other things.” She smiled, but it wasn’t a real smile. It was more as if something were wearing Carver’s face as a mask, and pulled the strings to make the face muscles perform the motions it assumed were appropriate. “I’ve been hidden away so long. The world above has changed. I do not understand it anymore. I was supposed to rest until the final days. Only the Canaanites opened my tomb. By the time I was fully awake, they had brought me to the hot lands below.”
“Canaanites?”
“I don’t care what you name them now. I was weak, without purpose. I have found one again. I will seek out my old enemy, and begin our war anew.”
Rudy didn’t know where his next question came from. “Why did you come here?”
“I heard this one’s song. I had to come and see for myself if it was true. Is my enemy here?”
“Who?” It was now so cold his breath came out as steam.
She leaned close and whispered to him.
Rudy bolted upright and headed for the door. He pounded on it. Thankfully the MPs opened it right away. “Keep that locked. Nobody else goes in or out.” He didn’t have the authority to order them around, but it wasn’t a suggestion.
Church was waiting for him in the observation area. “She really seems to be opening up to you, Doctor.”
Rudy raised one hand to stop Church. He wasn’t in the mood. He was silent for a long time, breathing hard, staring through the glass at the woman on the other side. She’d gone back to trembling, knees nervously bouncing, just a poor, traumatized woman who had seen her squad turn on each other and rip themselves to pieces.
“Clinically, on the record, I’d say she’s severely delusional.”
“And off the record?”
“I’m not going back in there without a priest.”
Then the lights went out.
“Stay calm.” Church’s voice was flat.
The logical part of his mind immediately rationalized the power outage. The overworked air conditioner had caused the building to blow a fuse. But the part of him that had just been laid bare, and terrified by an alien presence that should not be, knew that wasn’t the case.
The lights came back on.
She had left two bloody red handprints on the other side of the glass for them.
“Carver’s gone.”
The interrogation room was empty. The handcuffs were on the table, still closed, as if she’d just torn her hands right out of them. The door was closed.
Church moved to the hall. The MPs were still there, oblivious but unharmed. He threw open the door, and despite Rudy’s admonition to the contrary, they knew not to mess with Mr. Church. He came back out. “Sound the alarm. Find her, but do not engage.” The soldiers rushed off. Church returned a moment later, glowering. “She’s escaped.”
Nothing ever seemed to shake Church, but Rudy was sick to his stomach. “That specialist who’s on the way… he’s an exorcist, isn’t he?”
“I don’t know if Agent Franks puts that on his business cards, but I suppose that might be among his many qualifications,” Church replied. “This is important, Doctor. I couldn’t make it out over the speaker, but the last thing she said to you, when you asked her about this old enemy, about why she’d come here, what did she say to you?”
“The song said ‘God Is an American.’”
Larry Correia is the New York Times bestselling, award-winning author of the Monster Hunter International series, the Grimnoir Chronicles, the Dead Six trilogy, and Son of the Black Sword. He has also written dozens of short stories and two novels set in the Warmachine universe, is actually the basis of a G.I. Joe character, and wrote the audiobook The Adventures of Tom Stranger, Interdimensional Insurance Agent. Before becoming a full-time writer, Larry was an accountant, a machine gun dealer, a firearms instructor, and a military contractor. He lives in the mountains of northern Utah.
EDITORS’ NOTE: This story is a crossover between the Ledger-verse and Dana Fredsti’s character Ashley’s world from her exciting Plague Town series. Although Joe Ledger appears in the Rot & Ruin novels, which also tell how he would survive a zombie apocalypse, the Plague Town novels are set in a different version of that catastrophe. Which one is the real future for Joe Ledger is a matter of some speculation. It’s a big, strange, complicated universe, and as explored in the eighth Ledger novel, Kill Switch, the future is in no way set in stone. Anything could happen. The story here is one glimpse into a dark, nasty, possible future.