A body hangs from the sturdiest tree, a branch laden with rotten fruit. One crow watches me, and another flutters its wings as it pulls on the eye dangling from the optic nerve.
I’d know the body anywhere: a boy with two broken legs and a Flood-swollen skull.
And all the fowls were filled with their flesh.
The death squads dragged him to the culling fields because he was a failure whose body was burned out by God’s light. He couldn’t survive taking upon the mantle of holy war, so the soldiers gave him mercy by putting him down. Theo stood beside me as we watched; we had to watch him die, Theo wiping the last bits of rot from his mouth, knowing that could have been him if God’s plan had fallen just a little bit to the left.
I am in New Nazareth again.
No. No, that can’t be right. This boy rotted months ago, and it’s empty here, too empty. It’s not real. It can’t be. I was just at Reformation. The dust is still in the back of my throat. The howls of the Graces and soldiers still ring in my ears, and I swear those are dust motes swirling in the light coming through the stained glass windows, but—
Right now, somehow, I am in New Nazareth. A dead New Nazareth, where it’s just me, the body, and the birds.
And the four beasts had each of them six wings about him; and they were full of eyes within; and they rest not day and night, saying HOLY, HOLY, HOLY, GOD ALMIGHTY.
Something else is here too. A monster among the trees. Obscured by branches and dead legs, split-wound mouth hanging open with teeth and tongue, its body wreathed in a halo of six broken wings. Rotting, growling. Fangs, feathers, flesh.
I stumble back, and my feet sink into the muck.
A Lamb as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God.
And I looked, and beheld a pale horse; and his name that sat on him was Death.
It is beautiful. It is terrifying.
The wrath of God made flesh, the Flood made perfect.
And I stood upon the sand of the sea and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.
Hide from the wrath of the Lamb. Hide from the wrath of the Lamb. Hide from the wrath of the Lamb.
The six-winged monster sees me, and it rears back with a shriek, white eyes whirling—and I fall to my hands and knees in Reformation Faith Evangelical Church.
I lurch forward, heave, and tear down my mask. I gag so hard my jaw pops. A trail of black spit falls to the carpet. A crash sends dust raining down and shakes the dead lights hanging from the ceiling.
What the fuck? I want to scream it, but all I can do is choke. I want to scream until my skin burns off. What the fuck just happened? Was it a vision like the one given to John of Patmos, the prophet of Revelation, or is the virus eating holes in my brain? I can still hear the red stream, the crows, the beast. Can still taste the soft, thick smell of wet leaves on my tongue. I dig my fingers into the carpet and feel old wool and the silt of the creek bed.
The Grace. Shit, the Grace. I force myself up and find them surrounded by the bodies of Angels, ramming themself into the barred front doors. The wood buckles under their weight. They bellow, long and low and sad, and all the dead from Judgment Day scream in return, grabbing the ankle of a passing Angel and dragging them shrieking into the mass of so many corpses.
I can’t see any of the Watch. I know that’s the point, but I still feel sick. I just want to know they’re okay.
But behind me, suddenly, somehow—
A voice I thought I’d never hear again.
“Benji?”