Red Twilight: A Dawning Of Power

Chapter 12: The Call to Arms

The doors slam to the storage room. Trash and Spooky pile boxes up behind them to hold the doors shut. Spooky looks at Jacob. "Why the hell did we bring a corpse in here with us?" He points at him nonchalantly. "We should have left him with the rest of the cadavers."

Snake stares him down. "No one is touching Lances."

"What if he turns into one of the undead?" Trash says, nervously.

"He will not." El interjects.

Snake turns his attention on El. "How the hell would you know?"

El squares his shoulders to Snake. "Because he isn't dead," he responds in a matter-of-fact fashion. "He is in neurogenic shock." This is a lie, El has no idea what happened, but frightend men need a sense of control, some understanding that someone is in charge, someone knows and understand everything. El is willing to play that roll.

Snake squints in confusion and says, "What is that?"

El glances down. "In case you didn't go to school, neurogenic shock is a form of paralysis resulting from dopamine overdose, much like combat fatigue. When frightened or injured, most all omnivorous animals enter a state known as the fight or flight response. During this, one's heart rate rises, as does blood pressure. Muscles tense, and dopamine is introduced into the bloodstream. In the instance of prolonged trauma, a cooldown stage must be interred in order to prevent damage to the brain due to depressurization, which induces the condition called shellshock—the inability to act within normal parameters without the chemical agent. Neurogenic shock is a forced cooldown to prevent brain damage. I've seen it a dozen-and-a-half times. He will be fine in twenty minutes."

Snake laughs in irritation. "Well, Mister Wizard," he says covering his eyes as if a headache seems to set in, "do you get a kick out of busting my balls?" He smiles f.o.r.c.i.b.l.y. "I mean, really, is there anything you don't know?"

"If so, I haven't figured it out yet," El replies sassily.

"Ouch!" Larry yells, "Incineration! You set the high score!" he jokes.

"OK." Snake starts undoing his tie and shirt. "That's it 'Coin-Dexter,' I am sending your a.s.s to school."

El exhales hard. "You're not really going to do this, are you?"

Snake cracks his neck. "The name of the class is Pain. My name is Professor

Gekks, and I will be your instructor."

Snake throws down his coat. He steps into El, throwing a punch. El grabs his arm and spins him around, tucking the appendage behind its owner. El places his free hand on Snake's shoulder, bending him over. He jars upward, pushing Snake's own elbow into his shoulder blade.

Snake raises his head and starts shouting nonsensically. El c.o.c.ks Snake's wrist downward. "Will you look at this?" he says, taunting. El starts dragging Snake around the room, bent over. "It seems I have your arm." He pushes his catch into a wall face-first. "I think I might just chop it off."

"Oh, f.u.c.k no!" Snake cries out.

"Why not?" El whispers to him. "It's mine now to do with what I want."

Lacerti knows well that El is simply playing with him—not that El couldn't rip Snake's arm off right now. To the contrary, he could have snapped his spine just as quickly. But El doesn't kill people that don't need to die. Killing those people is my job, Lacerti thinks, snickering at the fruitless conflict. Pistol stares on in shock, not knowing whether to help Snake or stand back and let El have his fun.

El is a combat artist. He could have thrown Snake to the ground and he wouldn't have felt a thing, but instead he twists Snake's arm a little farther. El wants him to feel it, and he does. " You want to know about pain? Let me take you to school, wiseass," El teases him. "Pain is a nervous response of the body stimulated by the interruption of the brain's electromagnetic resonation. There is a thin line when it comes to pain; if the resonation is slow and rhythmic, we perceive it as p.l.e.a.s.u.r.e. But if it's fast and violent, even a good touch can turn into a painful one inexplicably quickly, as is the case with phantom limb syndrome. The trick is to learn the differences. I could rip your body into beef jerky and so long as your brain is functional, I can slow roast your bits and pieces and you will feel the burn. I bet the detachment could be amusing to a weakling like you."

"Snake," Larry yells, "are you OK?" Larry rushes over to help his brother. Lacerti holds out an interposing hand.

"Fight back! Fight me, you worthless maggot!" El commands, smashing him into the wall again. "Prove you're not as worthless as you look!" Snake can do nothing but call out for help. "God damn it!" El shouts as his inner demons make their way to the surface. "Do something. Do something! Do you hear me? You sack of shit! Fight for your life! Fight for your rights before I take them away!"

"I can't," Snake cries.

El squeezes his wrist, and the bone starts to make a tense, pulling sound. El smiles devilishly. He understands that Snake is helpless, and if he squeezes any harder, all the cartilage in his arm will be destroyed. "I spent three years getting stabbed in the rips by a baboon, sitting in waist deep water being electrocuted for the dam of it. All to prove my love to Uncle Sam, what did you ever do to prove you are an American? you disappointment. Kids like you have never seen evil, never seen war." El spins around and throws Snake partway across the room onto his back. "Now get the troops organized, figure out who knows what about what, and stop wasting my time with banter."

"Holy shit, Snake," Larry whispers as he helps Snake to his feet. "It looks like you just got owned."

Snake nods as he grabs his shirt and coat, redressing. "I guess I did." He cradles his arm. "What are you going to do?" he says, looking up to El.

El rubs his eyes. "I have to think." He walks to the back of the room and sits down. He stares around the room at the men that are now his brothers at arms, noticing each one uniquely. He seems to lose himself in his thoughts.

***

El produces from his coat a tape recorder, he sits down for a moment talking to himself.

"There was a man that lived in Great Britain in the 1880s whose name was Dr. Joseph

Bell. His field of expertise was social science. Professor Bell ran classes at Edinburgh University. He believed that man was capable of seeing and understanding far more than we realized. "Most people see but do not observe." The eyes of men are the windows to the truth of mankind.

He was the real Sherlock Homes, it was said by the local papers. He often would attend "fire sides," pep speeches," and host "power points" and other debates. His favorite game—and claim to fame, I might add—was to invite a guest onto stage with him and tell them who he thought they were and then ask if he was right. From what I understand, 70 percent of the time he was right. "Glance at a man, and you find his nationality written on his face, his livelihood on his hands, and the rest of his stories in his gait, mannerisms, watch-chain ordainments, and the lint adhering to his clothes."

I myself have been practicing a similar art, hoping it would help me understand a world that I am otherwise separated from. Allow me to take down this record that should anyone ever follow our footsteps, my knowledge may guide others. My unit is now nine bodies strong, consisting of: six able men, two women, and one man, currently disabled.

Six are MIA, including who I assume to be the older of Lances Jacob's children.

The most recent addition to my combative party calls himself Pistol. I wager it's either a s.e.x.u.a.l connotation or a nickname given by his colored confidant. He is likely in his early forties but has the energy of a man in his twenties. His posture is loose, but he stands bladed. He has some training as a warrior. His hands are cracked and filthy, indicating that he works with his hands and in a place too tight for gloves. His eyes are lively. My best bet, he is a boiler engineer or technician. His friend looks like a boxer, but his skin is too glossy for active fighting—maybe he is a personal trainer, or mayhap a PE instructor. Trash, the girl with them, looks like a student. If she works, it is not legally.

Snake is by far the greatest thorn in my side at this time. He and his brother seem to have dreams of the better things in life—expensive clothing, a custom-fit Mag revolver, tattoos, and gold rings on most every finger. They're likely drug dealers who've never worked a real job, born and raised on the streets of some backwash city filled with wanna-bes, soft, small-time criminals running from underpaid or maybe corrupted law enforcers. Snake is the loud one, fairly unsophisticated, and the elder of the two. He sees his brother as a rabble-rouser, or maybe as if he were mentally ill. I think he is just without discipline.

Next there is Lances Jacob. It's obvious that he is a priest or parishioner, to what faith is unimportant. He has two children, both girls, and I'm pretty sure they're not his biological children seeing how he would have been in his mid-fifties when they were born. Not impossible, but not likely. He is intelligent and fit as a fiddle. His stern realist point of view is a welcome one. He seems to have a tattoo on his c.h.e.s.t but I can't make it out, looks like some form of writing, my first impression is it is an early Christian, he also has a ring on his left hand, gold with a blue stone in it and silver etching, the letter 'G' is imbedded in the stone as well as two triangles. The is the sign of the knights of the Masson Brotherhood.

Lacerti—one may ask, how can one become like him? The secret is male selective breeding, a ritual first doc.u.mented as having been practice in Rome. The hypothesis is, if you take one man with a d.e.s.i.r.ed trait, such as excessive height, and mate him with a woman of similar magnitude, there is a one in four chance the spawn will be greater still. To determine success, look for the child to be born twice the size expected. If this is not the case, kill the runt and try again. The change over a century is small, but after several iterations it is extreme, as is in my partner.

He and I fought together in Vietnam. We were both field commanders for the Marine Corps sniper division. We were stationed together after the two of us returned from separate but equally disastrous missions. To my understanding, both our units were annihilated at the hands of Vietnamese guerrilla warriors—we were the sole survivors. We served out our terms thereafter and retired from the armed forces. We have an agreement never to speak of those times again.

Today we fight again, and again we fight an enemy we can't ID. One with no weak spots to exploit, and we fight them on their terms. Not a fun situation at all. I myself am not a doctor, investigator, or even a man of arms anymore. I'm only a driver. But today I will have to resume my old job. El Driver XIV will once again have to become Lt. David Lay, black ops agent.

***

"OK," Snake calls out to the team, "what do we know so far?"

Trash speaks up. "Well, they're already dead. That part seems noteworthy."

"They're undead, not dead," Spooky pipes up. "The dead don't walk and talk."

"Well, we can't kill them," Larry adds.

"Jacob killed one," Pistol explains.

"And I impaled one, but it got back up," Trash adds with a look of annoyance on her face. "Are you confident he killed one?"

"Well, it burst into flames. I'm fairly sure it's dead." Larry jumps in, "How did Jacob do it?"

"He blasted it at point blank." Pistol explains.

Snake looks agitated. "Bullshit, I pumped one with a half dozen .44s. Shooting them won't do shit." He pauses. "Wait, Lances is a priest." He thinks about that for several minutes, then he leaps to his feet and confidently rallies the team. "All right, gentlemen, we are dealing with ghouls, undead parasites. Now, I don't need to hear any skeptical tales, because I'm a skeptic myself. But I know the undead when I see them, and that's what I'm seeing right now, so …" He paces about. "Tell me about ghouls," he requests.

Everyone looks around as they think about it. A good deal of confused looks are passed back and forth before Snake looks to Larry. "You read Demonology and Witchcraft in school, didn't you?"

Larry looks up for a moment and narrows his eyes. "You mean the Frank X. King book about the occult?" Larry strains to remember. "Nothing. I can't remember." Trash sits on her knees and adjusts her skirt before enlightening the group.

"That's because ghouls are not associated with witches. If anything, they are vampiric. Ghoul, or ghoulah, is an Arabic term that refers to an animated human husk that was the body of a vampire or of a vampire's victim. In modern mythology, the traditional Ghoul is now a half-bred zombie. A figure from Haitian folklore, Ghouls and Ghoulah are the reasoning behind burying the dead. When a body isn't disposed of properly, it stands back up and attempts to resume its former existence, but with a taste for the flesh of its own kind."

"there is also that little part where they walk around graveyard's or seek out the sick and dying and eat them, some people think they can also shapeshift." Pistol looks surprised. "How do you know that?"

"J. Gordon Melton's book, Vampire: Encyclopedia of the Dead," Trash responds.

"How can we fight them?" Snake asks.

Trash exhales heavily. "We can't, unless you want to cut them all into kabobs. Zombies are indestructible; you can't kill the dead."

Jacob begins to stir about. "Snake, Snake!" he calls.

Snake leaps to his side. "Lances!" He kneels. "You're OK."

Jacob reaches up and grabs Snake's arm. "Snake, I'm sick!" he coughs.

Snake tries to comfort the old man. "You're fine, Lances. You are in some form of shock."

"Damn it, Snake, listen to me!" Jacob shakes him. "I'm sick, and I'm going to die." He coughs again. "And it is going to be soon." He turns his head and spits up some blood. "if not in the flesh in spirit."

Snake nods. "OK, Lances."

Lances sits up as he regains his balance. "Snake, I want to kill as many of those monsters as I can before I fall."

"Lances, I'll get you out of here," Snake explains. "Gentlemen, let's get out of this hellhole!"

Spooky speaks up, "Did you forget about the door problem?"

"We'll use the back," Snake proposes.

Pistol joins the conversation. "There is no back door."

Larry joins in also. "There is always a back door."

Pistol shakes his head. "Not here."

Snake says, "There's always a back; the Federal Health and Safety Committee ordered all buildings constructed after 1896 to have one installed."

"I know the law, but there is no back door," Pistol insists. "I spent forty-five minutes running around downstairs, and I saw no doors."

El approaches. "The building is on an incline, so there won't be a back door."

Larry looks to El. "There has to be … cat burglars count on it." Snake cuffs him on the back of the head.

El looks annoyed. "Fine, we will look for a back door."

Spooky looks to the group, changing the subject. "Won't a holy sign work against them?" he asks.

Trash looks at him. "A holy sign is only as powerful as the man holding it." She thinks, But a blessed object will work for anyone.

Jacob takes Trash's arm and nods, not needing any more explanation. "I'll do it," he suggests. "I can bless our weapons." "You can?" Ashley asks.

Jacob half-nods. "Just like wine." One by one, he prays over the adventurers, blessing their guns, knives, and every other object in sight. With a new confidence, the group gets ready to set out again. Pistol can see something is wrong, but he can't put a hand on it. Jacob looks colorless and pushes his child away as she tries to hold him while he works on his prayers.

Pistol narrows his eyes as he considers the circ.u.mstances. What sort of darkness is hidden within us?