Kent Kelly - Archangel

“I tell you, if ever you hail the crawling, you call out a name and they don’t rise and answer, you drive away. Fast as you can. You run, you shoot if you have to. They’s of the Beast . They howl and chase and kill you now, if ever they still can move. It’s like the world is full of devils now, and all of them devils are dying, and their only hope left is to kill you, to drag you down with them before the end.

“Oh, I know my mythology. That’s what keep us sane to read, that fantasyland when I was in ‘Nam, me and Frankie Kilbride. Yeah. They say Charon, old Ferryman of Hell? He demand a gold coin from the dead for the comfort of the waters, the comfort of the netherworld. The damned without any gold to pay him for, old Charon he leave them on the shore forever, forever to know pain and to know what they become.

“I believe, truly I believe those of the Beast now are upon that shore. They standing there, poor as they can be. Like that girl eating her daddy or someone by the highway. And we, the living souls? We’re the gold. You know what I’m saying? These things, they will kill you if they buy any peace from taking you down with them. I do believe that. That’s all now they ever have.

“So you shoot them, and you purify. They not answer to no name? ‘Hey Mike’ and you get no answer? Then the soul is gone, then you burn them and send them down.

“I do it for you, if it need be. I owe you all. I do shoot well.

“Well, I was saying. I followed that old police car, but never too close. I drove through that hollow vein in traffic and ruin they had made. See, they pushed a path for me. Miles out, it’s not like you’re going to lose somebody you’re tailing. Worse problem is that they’re going to see you, coming up behind.”

“One more living, I did see, after the eating girl. Another soul.

“I see her rise up from the cornfield of the dead, where that little wildflower airport used to be. Athanasiou? Pretty name.

“She a girl, she wave to me. I open my car, yes. To that one. I take her in for a night.

“Amelia was her name, she still a soul and she remember. She had bottled water and some bags of nuts from a vending machine, all tied up in a shirt, and I the car. Must have been eighteen.

“She start at once trying to take off her pants and she offer herself to me. I say keep that on, I only need food and drink. She wary then, like then it’s a trap. It’s like that now.

“She told me things, after I refused her. When I didn’t touch her, she told me things she overheard in the airport at the end, things that I won’t share with you.

“It’s the world. Everyplace in the world is just like here now.

“But Amelia, she didn’t make it here. And you, Mrs. S.-G., you don’t , you don’t stop, even for any Amelia or any man like me. You cannot tell how people are going to react.

“Some I meet early on, when I was guilty still about the pregnant woman and trying to help, they run up and hug you, ‘Oh thank God, you real,’ and they treat you like you’re their mamma and their daddy and their baby all rolled up in one. And they go to sleep crying tears of joy, and then they die in the night.

“See, those ones, they was waiting . They was waiting to hear it was okay for them to let go. But others, they give you the eye like they going to kill you slow, only slow because they’re not hungry yet.

“And you don’t know . You get Amelia giving you hugs, you get an old woman giving you that feasting eye while she’s scoping you with a rifle. You just can’t assume anything anymore. Best case, you’ve got to go reign over those who you find as if you are the Queen o’ Death, you show them you dominate, until your gun is in their mouth and they certain you’ve the advantage. And only then, if they know you strong enough to kill them, can you ever dare to show the weakness of compassion.

“Like you just did, those days ago. Coming out there suited up in the ladder-shaft, Queen o’ Death reflecting red right out of you, covering me with some submachine gun straight out of James Bond? You didn’t hold that right, but you was close, my critical eye will tell you that right now. See, that was good . You meant business, you the death dealer come to save me.

“And now, you’re the nicest person left alive. That I promise you.

“So all right, if you understand.

“I follow that police car, I lose them up here on these old sweet mountain roads, or what is left of them. I took some wrong turns, after I laid Amelia down on the road. Best peace only I could give her, up above all the others. I saw no other living soul.

“One thing I did see, three deer walking out of the tattered forest, one doe with her face without any fur, the other two behind with milk-white eyes. Those two behind, they had seen the sky, they were blinded. And this, this one with the face of velvet rose, she was leading them, blind and all limping, they… oh. Oh, I cannot tell you.

“Pray good thing I got lost, following that police. Because otherwise I would have been right behind them, caught up too close in that canyon to know any better. In that dead end up in here, if they see me right behind, I don’t think it would have gone well for me.

“There was a gunshot. They had thrown out a woman, I am sorry to tell you. Yes, here in your canyon. First, I think they all might have stood out and drunk to her like a farewell or something, there was liquor bottles still upright in a circle. She’s draped now over the water pump.

“Right after that gunshot, I was driving up close behind them, just after they pull away. Think the dust they kicked up peeling out, that barely hid me. They almost left a kid screaming there, that woman was his mommy, I believe. But in the end as they drive away, he limp-run and he got back in. They was sorting out who was living and who was dying, see.

“Somehow, they knew this shelter were here, and that it might not be enough for holding everyone.

“So that police car, your Pete, he slow just a little and he go under the waterfall. I hid that night, sleeping in my own car with one eye open. Yeah, you really can do that after ‘Nam, I do assure you. I hear things, shots and screams, but I keep sleeping lest I die. That I’m sorry.

“I come after them through the waterfall, day after, and that police car is full of the dead. Piled. And the trunk was bulging, I don’t like to think about that.

“But that police car, maybe it still run? Its doors are open and the water now pooling up over the floorboards. Help me, I did see all those dead. I did reach in and pull out one shotgun before I come into your tunnel. Promise you, I left it by that fallen Good Man you name Sheriff Pete. It his gun, his car my guide to find you. I honor him, that gun be his forever now. Brother mine, I honor him that.

“And here I am. Think you can figure out the rest.

“No. No, I do not want to.

“Getting tired. So tired. But Mrs. S.-G., no I will not call you Sophie any longer ma’am, much more now you stop asking me, love. I thank you. Now hear me to the last.

“When you leave this place, with me or without me, the dead out there? After poor Pete who I cover, well the bodies up in that cave, that police car, the one by your SUV? Lady, all I can tell you is look away.

“The Beast is terrible in his decay, no crime of man nor woman too great for him to suffer and to show you. Look away. Ain’t no soul who should have to see what those pathetic creatures became before the end. Just you look away ever after, say your grace, lest you be scarred forever.

“There are many things to see out there, Mrs. S.-G., that are going to destroy you. Ain’t no reason to make it worse than the worst already be. Behold what you must, seek your daughter. And if I am blessed to live awhile longer, then I swear that I will guide you. Sixty-something-old Hell and gone, yes. I will be your soldier.