Richard Heller - The 13th Apostle

Ludlow heard the crack of her neck as it snapped the life out of her. For a moment, the room was silent, save for a tiny exhale of her last breath.

“No!” Ludlow shrieked. He was on his feet, and his hands found the face of the executioner. Ludlow held him by his hair as one eye yielded its soft viscosity to his death grip. Ludlow’s screams of rage drowned out his victim’s cries of pain.

The old man heard nothing, saw nothing, knew nothing. His body did what it had to do and continued grasping and flailing, even as the second intruder pulled him from the first and beat and kicked him until his body could no longer bring muscle and nerve together to move.

“Now give it to us,” the murderer demanded.

“I don’t know what you want,” Ludlow mouthed. His chest spasmed with unreleased sobs. “I don’t know what you want,” he whispered again.

“The diary, you old piece of shit! Just give us the diary and we’ll let you die in peace.”

“The diary?” Ludlow whispered, confused.

Another kick to his back. “Like you didn’t know,” his torturer snickered.

Ludlow struggled to clear his thoughts.

That’s what this was all about? The diary! No, it couldn’t be. It was all too fantastic to imagine.

He had warned DeVris that powerful people had powerful reasons to get control of the diary. DeVris had laughed at him. Sabbie had indulged him his secrecy and had gone along with his emergency preparations, though she had thought him over the top about it. Sarah, too. But none of them had ever considered him anything but paranoid about the whole matter. Even he doubted his own concerns. And, now, son of a bloody bitch, he had been right all along.

Ludlow smiled; a tiny raising of the corners of his mouth, an insignificant movement that echoed a greater victory than any round of cannon fire.

He had what these murderers so desperately wanted, but they had left him with no reason to give it to them. They had taken everything; his Sarah, his desire to live, and his body’s ability to continue to endure their abuse. He was dying and he knew it. Yet this, the only thing they really wanted, they would not get.

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