Part 14 (1/2)
This was no ordinary church. David hadn't been sure what the h.e.l.l it was when he'd hovered over it in his helicopter, at least not until he saw the small manmade lake with a hill set with a twenty-foot cross. Then the extravagance and the giant parking lot in which he landed made perfect sense. A ”megachurch,” set back far enough away from civilization on its own swatch of forested land to make it suspiciously a lot like a compound and a d.a.m.ned attractive place to set down if the inhabitants were friendly. As he landed the IBC4 News copter that day, he was treated with a touch of suspicion, but more or less welcomed into the fold. After all, a copter pilot could be useful, especially one who came with his own helicopter. He actually found a curious mix of folks here in the building: from the normal to the fanatic, from the wise to the downright crazy. Walking through the school hallways toward the front reception area just this side of the cathedral and wors.h.i.+p areas, he recalled the irony that struck him on seeing the name of the place Church of the Risen King. Well, he'd thought, someone's sure risen.
The church was roughly the size of a shopping mall, with a ma.s.sive cathedral, temple, school, cafe, administrative buildings, and baseball and football fields. A small city set back in the woods: a place of their own. The scene had been marred when he saw the blackened pile of ash that reeked of burnt flesh in the back parking lot. Other than that, he could almost have forgotten that h.e.l.l had come to earth, could almost conceive living with these people for however long it took for the world to be sane again.
”If it was ever sane to begin with,” he muttered.
He rounded the corner of the corridor leading into the ma.s.sive, wide-open front entrance hall. He saw a small crowd gathered around the away team near a long bank of twenty gla.s.s double-doors. It was the old front entrance of the church, the roof sloping high above them to a line of ornate stained gla.s.s in the only homage to cla.s.sic church architecture among the steel-framed construct of modern style. They had two of the doors open near the Jeep. Carson was barking orders as they unloaded their dead.
David pushed his way through to get a look at the newcomers. Doc Ward was giving oxygen to a teenage boy whose face was streaked with blood and grime. He stirred, under the influence of the gas, David guessed. T.D. and Kathryn rolled in a second stretcher, a blood-soaked sheet covering the body. Kathryn stood there, face pale, almost a light shade of green. Carson walked over to the stretcher.
”Need any help here?” David asked.
”We've got it under control, pal.”
David nodded toward the stretcher. ”Looks like this one might be trouble.”
Kathryn gasped, slapping her hand over her lips. Eyes wide, she took a step back. T.D. did the same, which seemed all the more frightening to those who stood nearby, because T.D. was a man of imposing stature. His dark skin s.h.i.+mmered in the light of dawn painting the floor in a stained gla.s.s mosaic. Fear darkened his features. David froze as well.
No one had been expecting anything under that sheet to move.
David reached out, pulling away the sheet.
What lay there was barely recognizable as human. The only time he'd seen anything worse was a helicopter crash in Iraq when his co-pilot Henry Peele, 19, from Connecticut, had been burned so bad his skin was reduced to charcoal and deep cracks seeped clear pus from a raw map of rivers over his body. His eyelids were burned away, leaving wide staring eyes that still haunted his dreams. This was worse: flesh torn apart by teeth, by claws, ripped to shreds. Blood pooled in cavities swimming with entrails, muscles, tendons and sinew, ripped veins and shredded skin. Bone white and raw in places. In others, broken.
And yet, somehow, the mound stirred. Or rather, twitched. And then the head rolled slightly. Half a head of long brown hair, caked with gore, drooped over the side of the stretcher.
”It's coming back! It's infected! Kill it!” yelled a frantic woman in the crowd.
Kathryn and David exchanged a look. T.D., Reeves, and Carson stood motionless nearby, transfixed and heedless of the yells as a few others agreed with the gal crying out for the death of the shape on the stretcher.
That was when the Reverend himself, Lawrence James Keller, in suit pants and white dress s.h.i.+rt with rolled up sleeves, pushed through.
”What's the meaning of this, Carson?” demanded Rev. Keller. ”Bringing a child of h.e.l.l in here? Good Lord!” He grimaced and backed away when he saw the awful remains of the woman beneath the sheet.
Carson only half paid attention to the reverend as he said: ”The kid said she was okay, that she's immune.” He was staring hard at the torn body however, as if seeing something deeper.
David noticed Carson's increased curiosity and moved in, studying the awful pile of horror. His jaw dropped. Near the savaged throat of the woman, he swore he saw the esophagus and larynx begin to close, growing a new wet layer of tissue to repair the opening. In fact, even as David blinked to ensure he was truly seeing the spectacle, he detected small changes all over the body, barely perceptible if you just glanced from one minute to the next, but if you really focused, you could see muscles fibers straightening, growing. You could see veins and arteries lengthening like small worms, seeking to reestablish themselves. Even skin, from the torn remaining patches, seemed to be expanding.
”Carson?” Kathryn was next to them ”I'll be d.a.m.ned,” said T.D. in his deep but quiet voice.
”Are you seeing this, too?” Carson looked at David.
David nodded. ”I'm seeing it.”
”What the heck are you people talking about?” the reverend demanded, red in the cheeks, pale everywhere else. A crowd of people hovered behind him, as if they thought he could protect them from anything, even death.
”She's ... she's healing,” David said.
”Get her into my intensive care room, p.r.o.nto,” shouted Doc Ward, who'd come up alongside the stretcher.
They flung the sheet over the woman and wheeled her through the hall. David watched them go. The teenage boy breathed, still deep asleep on the gurney.
”I'll take this one back to the dorm rooms,” David said. ”Let him sleep it off.”
He pushed the cot with Shaun's sleeping form into the inner reaches of the church.
CHAPTER 22.
”It's the d.a.m.nedest thing,” Doc Ward said, standing next to Dejah's bed, her body now almost completely rejuvenated.
”A G.o.d d.a.m.n miracle is what it is,” said Carson.
”Please,” said Reverend Keller, leaning back in a leather captain's chair rolled in from an outer office. ”Language.”
A small group of men stood in the makes.h.i.+ft doctor's examination room near Dejah's bed. There'd been a steady stream of observers filing through for days. Word of the healing woman spread and rubberneckers arrived like sharks swarming a meal. Finally, they cordoned off this wing with guards, allowing only the families of those under care to visit the area. Shaun had set up a sleeping cot next to Dejah. She hadn't yet awakened, but Shaun swore she would, and he was going to be there when she did.
They'd grilled Shaun for details until everyone at the church knew their story. It was really not too dissimilar to those of at least three dozen or more of the 600 or so people who'd ended up under the roof of the Church of the Risen King. Except for Dejah. Who was very much unlike any of them, at least in one very important respect: she was coming back from the dead.
Completely healed.
Doc Ward rubbed tired eyes. Shaun shot Rev. Keller a suspicious look that wasn't lost on Carson. ”Maybe we should head out to the cafeteria, reverend. Grab something to eat.”
”And miss the moment we've all been waiting for?” The reverend's eyes s.h.i.+mmered with a slightly maniacal gleam.
”Reverend Keller,” said the doc. ”I don't think she's quite ready to speak anyway. If she stirs, I'll send someone for you, okay?”
”Well,” he said. He stood reluctantly, paused, staring down at Dejah's form. ”As long as you send someone right away. I want to speak to her immediately, do you understand?”
”Yes, sir, we will.”
Carson patted the reverend on the back and edged him toward the door.
Shaun and Doc Ward watched him go.
”That guy's a f.u.c.king creep,” Shaun said.
Doc Ward allowed a grin to split the side of his face.
”I don't want him anywhere near Dejah when she wakes up,” Shaun said, a slight tone of threat in his voice.
”No problem, son. We'll see to it.”
”Thanks, doc. And I'm ... sorry about the language.”
Doc Ward smiled, scratched a three-day growth of gray beard. ”Ain't hurtin' me none.”
David appeared in the doorway through which Carson and the reverend had just disappeared. ”Got the sandwiches y'all ordered.” He had a tray from the cafe full of sandwiches, a bag of chips to share, and water bottles for each of them. He came in and they divvied up the food, taking hungry bites. They'd been rationing church-wide so the sandwiches were small. The doc took a seat with one leg up on the bed next to Shaun and Dejah. David sat in the reverend's recently vacated chair. They all chewed hungrily for a couple minutes, was.h.i.+ng down the food with water.