"Hello!"
Nobody answered.
He turned, toeing his ruined drone out of the way, and ran the flashlight along the ceiling, where the sheer walls curved up into a smooth arch. There was something strange that took him a moment to put his finger on.
No lights.
The cold sent a shudder through him. It was freezing in here, colder than above in the open air, and it felt like an icy breeze was blowing straight over his skin, despite his thick winter parka. The dust wasn't moving though; there wasn't a single breath of wind, but still he felt it.
He ran the flashlight further around. There were no lights anywhere, on the walls or on the ceiling; no switches, no outlets, no pipes or cables of any kind, nothing you would expect of a habitable bunker. He shuddered again, his legs shaking now, and shone the light down the length of the corridor.
The hollow thumping cacophony seemed to be coming from both directions. He turned, shining the flashlight down each direction, but its light only soaked into the deep dark. He chose a direction and started along it, taking careful steps with his gun held up, though his knuckles burned with the cold.
The corridor receded away, and with each step the banging grew louder. Ten paces he went, fifteen, then the beam of light caught a glint of metal.
His finger twitched and the gun barked a rough blast. The bullet sparked off something, ricocheted four of five times in a mad tympanic fury, before falling silent again. Echoes hammered him, coming like peaks in the wave of hollow thumping.
He took a deep breath, trying to calm himself, but the air was so cold it burned his lungs and stopped his throat, starting a panicky throb deep in his chest. A moment of silent panic passed as he strained to breathe.
A horrible moment passed before breath came back, and he took it in shallow gulps, like a man drowning on the surface of a rough ocean, each one a raw wind on his aching throat.
Enough. He stepped forward, running the light over the space ahead. It was an outsized metal door, fitted perfectly to the dimensions of the corridor, hung on three fat hinges each as thick as his fist. The door had no markings on it, no handle either, and no zombies standing in front of it, though the banging was louder now than ever.
Spiraling panic twisted his insides as the thumping went on. Where had the zombies gone, and if it wasn't them what on Earth was banging?
He took a step backward, terrified. Was it the denizens of the bunker, fighting to get out? Was it some hellish beast straining to break through and shred his body? What the hell had happened to the zombies he'd dropped down?
Then he realized, and breathed a sigh of relief. He'd got turned around coming down the rope ladder, and walked back toward the exploded gun chute. This door surely led into the hollow tube beyond, down which he'd dropped several zombies a week ago.
They were still hammering now.
He leaned against the cold cement wall and gave a few ragged, freezing laughs. His legs shuddered and almost gave way beneath him, turning to liquid now the terror was past.
But it wasn't past. He turned and faced back along the corridor, the way he'd come. That's where his latest zombies had gone, back into darkness.
The cold was overwhelming now, the breeze becoming a harsh wind that seemed to clamp around his head and interfere with his thinking.
He walked into it, and every step forward the invisible wind grew colder and stronger. Holding up the gun became too difficult so he let it dangle uselessly by his side, then fall to the floor. It clanked on the cement and he trudged on, holding the flashlight hip-high with both hands.
The smashed drone lay ahead. Already it felt like he'd been walking for hours and he could scarcely feel his numb feet touching the floor. His lips throbbed under the wind, but he pressed on. He'd come across a continent for this. He'd fought off missiles from the sky for this. He pushed on into the frozen darkness, and the sound of zombies banging on hollow metal grew louder again. His breath steamed in the air. The flashlight wavered and his legs shook, barely supporting his weight. The wind was a gale he had to lean into, though not a breath of dust moved around him.
Then he saw it.
It was a man. It was a giant red man, standing in the darkness and sparkling with a sheen of ice or glass before him.
Julio's breath stopped again. The giant towered over the three zombies beating at his thighs, his head almost touching the ceiling. His eyes were closed but there was something utterly present about him. He was naked and a bloody red color, solid with thick and sinewy muscle round his chest, his thighs, his calves.
Julio dropped to his knees, struck dumb. Tears welled in his eyes and he reached toward the giant's sleeping face, so peaceful in repose. The cold was a blast furnace now, scouring his skin and leaving him pure.
"Oh God," he whispered. The cold gathered him in and hugged him close. It seemed as though at any moment the red giant would awake.
Then a voice rang through the still, mortuary air, like a fugue called out on a single trumpet.
"Welcome, Julio," it said.
* * *
The voice talked and he listened. Hours passed as knowledge poured into his mind, delivered from above. It was a woman's voice, the clearest, brightest voice he'd ever heard. She loved him, he knew that now. Everything that had happened, every step along the path to reach here, was written with her loving forgiveness.
"It was a test," she told him. "All the bombs and gunfire, it was a test to see if you were worthy of reaching this place."
He couldn't speak. The icy blast from that great peaceful red face held him silent and prone, quivering long past the point that his knees started to ache on the cement, through pain into a barren plain of snow.
"You passed our test. You gained access to this inner sanctum. Do you know what you're looking upon?"
He managed to give the faintest shake of his head.
"He is an angel. We call him Gabriel. He watches over us and keeps us safe. He's one of the chosen ones, a warrior. We know you're a warrior too, Julio. We've watched you for years, from above. You are a warrior, aren't you?"
He nodded. All he wanted was for her to love him. All he wanted was to kneel in the face of this magnificent angel until the breath froze in his lungs.
"You fought for your community. I know that's why you came to us, because you love too much. You care too well. We have a place for warriors like that here. You might stand beside Gabriel one day."
Sick longing filled him. There was nothing he'd like more. To be so vast, so powerful, so fully alive as this awesome specimen, it would be better than anything he'd ever imagined. All the respect he'd ever hoped for would be right there. It would be everything he'd dreamed of, casting off this sick, wasted body with its petty urges and needs.
He would be clean and pure, a holy warrior of God.
At some point he fell asleep on the cement.
It was very dark when he woke, the flashlight was dead, and there was a heavy silence in the air. The cold wind was gone, but it had left its mark within him, like the tide recedes and leaves the sand forever altered.
The contours of his insides were new. The hole he'd felt for so long, left by a lifetime of being the outsider in his own life, which he'd tried to fill with women, guns, violence, sex and finally rape and murder, was full.
He wept as this new self inside him sucked in a breath. The air, which before smelled musty and tinny and had hurt to breathe, was now the most wonderful thing. The words of the woman echoed down to him, all the kindnesses she'd showered upon him, and all the promises.
He was chosen. He was select, and he would rise up. He would ride at their bloody tideline when the time came to cleanse the planet. Everything would be washed away.
He was a holy angel of death.
"Where are you?" he'd asked toward the end, trembling in a trancelike state. "I want to find you."
"We are nowhere," she'd replied. "You will never find us. But we are always watching."
"I want to see you. I want to know you."
"Then do your work," she'd answered. "A holy crusade lies ahead, and the date of revelation is known to you. Prepare the ground for our coming. Do what must be done, and cleanse the land as you can. Keep this holy sanctum safe from all who would trespass upon it."
He had bowed low, then, and kissed the floor. "I will."
"Begin with these others," she'd commanded.
He'd killed them, stumbling to the three zombies still pounding at the glass, and cut their heads off. Dust had poured from their veins. After the first was dead, its dry head in his hands, the others had come for him.
Their teeth had snapped at his arms, breaking his skin. Their spidery fingers clutched at his belly and tore where they could. He stabbed the second in the back of the neck and it dropped. The third he boxed until its head lolled to the side like his own, and his twisted right shoulder burned and his knuckles bled. Then he knocked its emaciated body down and stamped on its head.
"Good," the woman's voice had said. "Now you are our agent, sent to end the plague upon this great and bountiful land. Go forth in light, Julio."
In the darkness, blind, he staggered to his feet. The red giant was there before him, cloaked in darkness like an unbreakable sentinel. The three zombie corpses were there too, silent and still. With each movement of his body he felt his link to them shifting. They were a faint warmth on his skin, buzzing like a magnet.
He didn't need light to see. He closed his eyes.
The giant was there on his skin too, like a shadow cast across him, a pleasing coolness that had nothing to do with warmth or cold. It felt like home.
He stood very still and studied the many sensations dappling his body, like reflections on waves. There were warm spots on his back and across his shoulders, spread like glowing dots on a radar screen. He felt the map of the land above slotting into place with the sensations in his body.
There were zombies, trapped in a 7-11 three miles down the road, burning in the small of his back. He'd driven past them weeks ago, and now he could feel them, like a splinter touching his spine. They had to be excised.
There was another in a home five miles away, atop a hill. A mansion. He'd seen it in his earlier explorations: grand rolling lawns now thick with young spruce, winding stone-slab walkways leading to monastic cloisters, a palatial home with two dozen rooms. It was trapped in a panic room, hammering its fists against a metal enclosure of its own making.
There was such a thing as too much security.
He felt the gun in his hand, familiar and heavy. That was good. That was right, because there were others out there too; not only the dead, but the living. The heat they gave off was like the pinhole light shining down from the stars, far away but sharp and precise. One was a woman, he guessed in New Hampshire now, heading south.
A smile stole across his face.
Heading toward New York. Toward Amo's first cairn.
As he padded down the corridor, already the exact meanings of the woman's voice were fading. He'd never really believed anything, beyond the Catholic sense of heaven, hell and guilt. He didn't believe the red creature before him was an angel, nor that the woman was the voice of God.
He didn't know who or what they were, and neither did he care. Because of them he felt better than he ever had in his life. That required a payment, and he was happy to give it.
He climbed from the underground sanctum into the cool light of a bluish wintry day. Fresh snow lay on the scattered wreckage of his exploded drones, drifted in places over the craters in the torn land, making it fresh and clean.
The car woke at his touch. The sense of the woman to the south was keener now, sharpening across his skin. This was the first of his gifts, his payment for being the holy mercenary of some hidden God.
"You will never find us," she'd said. "If you seek us we will crush you."
He grinned. He could feel them already on his skin, thousands of them, their bodies clustered like a burning beehive beneath the mountains. So many, and all of them bustling, moving and working.
He saluted the mountains. Perhaps they were watching him even now, from a drone far above. It seemed clear they needed him. Bursting open their vault had exposed them, and their unholy red giant. That suited him. He would be their security, and they would be his purpose.
A deal.
He got in his panel van, checked the weapons bag in the passenger seat, and drove out into the white.
21. MAINE
When Cerulean woke from a fitful sleep, they were driving. Julio called out the states as they passed through: Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio. They stopped for the night in Cincinnati.
"One more day and we'll be there," he said, sitting on his chair in the back of the van, looking down at Cerulean. "The true end of the world. It will end not with a bang, but a whimper."
"Shut up," Cerulean answered. "Just shut up with your crazy bullshit, Julio. You want to have a conversation, unlock this chain. I'll have something to say after that. Until then, why don't you just shut your mouth?"
Julio looked at him. In the harsh lights of the van the left side of his face looked leprous, pockmarked with the scars of Cynthia's buckshot. "I should warn you, I hear a lot worse than that. The last man I took, he just screamed. I wasn't hurting him but he kept screaming as if I was, like the pain would protect him. I tried cutting out his tongue, but he still honked, like a goose. After that I turned to duct tape."
Cerulean felt his face turn pale. He'd known it. Torture. His throat went dry and he swallowed hard. Julio studied him with interest.
"You understand me. I think the duct tape killed him. Not being able to scream broke him. I stole his control. I'll take yours too."
Cerulean's legs began to shake involuntarily. That was new. Perhaps, if he wasn't careful, he would piss himself. His stomach became tremulous. He tried to imagine Julio standing over him in his torture gear, plastics splattered with blood, and almost gagged.