Bentley Little - Dominion

Holbrook shoved his way past her into the building.

She looked toward Kevin and their gazed locked for a second. Then Kevin shifted the boxes in his hand and followed Holbrook through the doorway.

Penelope went in after him.

The inside of the building was filled with bodies.

The extent of the carnage took her breath away. Despite what she'd seen the past few days, despite even the scene outside in the meadow, she had started to become inured to the bodies, had begun to view them as casualties of war, a natural effect of the current situation in the valley.

But there was nothing natural about this.

The long corridor had been carpeted with viscera, wallpapered with wet skin. What remained of the bodies after their skinning and evisceration had been hung up and strung up, attached to the ceiling with the heavy wire used to tie grapevines. They were hung low and high, positioned at regular intervals, forming makeshift dividers, creating narrow walkway that zigzagged through the wide corridor|

The thing that truly sickened her was that she recognized some of the faces on the wall. Eyeless and toothless,! they were stretched tight, widened and lengthened, distorted. Yet she saw familiar features, individual attributes! in the forcibly misshapen faces. There was Tony Veltri'sf big nose. Here was Marty Robert's close-set eyebrows.

The stench in the corridor was horrible--rot and decay; 1 blood, bile, and excrement--and Penelope held her: breath, trying to breathe through her mouth.

Only ... it wasn't quite as horrible as it should havef been. The shit was bad. And the rot. But the scent of the I blood was pleasant, alluring, and below it all she could 1 make out the sweet smell of wine, and she felt a familiarff tingling between her legs.

She tried to breathe in through her mouth, out through | her nose, tried not to smell the odors, tried not to think, about them.

Next to her, Kevin vomited loudly, bending over and| facing to the left so he wouldn't throw up on the boxes inj his hands.

Holbrook was already navigating the corridor, blithely! shouldering aside the bloody corpses as he walked for| ward. "How far to the wine?"

he asked.

Turning back toward the open door and taking a deepij| breath, Penelope followed after him, her feet sinking intof the squishy organs and tissue that covered the floor. "Sec-1 and door on He right should have some vats," she said.1

Behind her, still gagging, she heard Kevin literally following in her footsteps, his shoes making loud, squelch-Jf ing sounds.

The door must have been locked, because Holbrooki had put down his boxes and was kicking it when shelf caught up to him. He kicked, slipped, fell into the grue on J| the floor, then got up and did it again. On the fifth try the door gave a little, and on the sixth it swung open.

Inside, the pressing room was clean. No bodies, no gore**! no blood.

Holbrook let his boxes drop to the floor He"! looked around the room at the huge steel vats and various Jf pieces of machinery. He turned toward Penelope, pointing;

at a red-valved pipe protruding from the closest wall. "The power here," he asked. "Is it electricity or gas?"

"Both," Penelope said.

The teacher grinned. "Gas," he said. "This may work after all.".

Kevin straggled into the room, lurching past Holbrook, trying to get as far away from the door as possible before putting down-his boxes and loudly exhaling.

"Uh-oh," Holbrook said, frowning and patting his pockets. "Did anybody bring a matchbook?"

Penelope's heart leaped in her chest.

"What--" Kevin began.

Holbrook grinned. "Just joking." He opened one of his boxes. "Hurry up.

Let's get to work."

Under the teacher's supervision, they soaked the rags and newspapers in gasoline, piling them in strategic locations. Penelope showed Holbrook where the runoff valves were, and he opened three of them to a trickle.

It was becoming hard to breathe due to the fumes, and even Kevin was taking gulps of air from outside the doorway.

"Isn't this going to explode when you put a match to it?" Kevin asked.

"How are we going to get out in time before it blows?"

Holbrook was emptying the last drops of gasoline in a trail leading from one pile of rags to another. He tossed the can aside, walked over, and grinned. "I'm not completely dense." He reached into his pocket and withdrew a folded envelope. He opened it. Inside was a bluish white crystalline powder. "Chlorine," he said.

Kevin frowned. "Yeah?"

The teacher reached into his box, withdrew a plastic container of transmission fluid. "Mix these two together, and they'll start a fire."

"So will a match. What's the point?"

"There's a delayed reaction. It'll take a minute or so to start. I'll put it next to some paper that hasn't been doused with gas. It'll have to burn through that first. Then it'll start the rags on fire. Then the fire will spread. By the time this place goes up, we'll be long gone."

"I hope it works," Kevin said.

"It will."

They finished placing the newspapers, rags, and boxes around the room.

"Okay," Holbrook said. "It's time." He poured some transmission fluid into the envelope and heaved the still mostly full container at the wall. He shook up the contents of the envelope to mix them, then twisted the envelope and placed it next to a long length of rolled newspaper.

"Haul ass," he said.

They ran. Penelope nearly slipped in the corridor, slamming into one of the bodies, a sticky chest cavity hitting her in the face, but she kept going, and the three of them emerged outside seconds later.

In front of them, the house was surrounded by young girls dressed in white and holding hands.

"What's that?" Kevin asked. "What are they doing?"

"They're virgins," the teacher said.

"Vestal virgins," Penelope said. "Or Hestial virgins. They are to be consecrated to the goddess of the hearth."

"Consecrated? What the hell does that mean? Sacrificed?"

"No. They'll merely become the goddess's servants or hand maidens.

Priestesses, as it were. They will devote their lives to her. They will be killed only if they break their vows."

"Jesus," Kevin breathed.

"The virgins are probably sober," Holbrook said.

"That means--"

"We have no choice," Holbrook said. "We'll just have to make a run for it." He looked at Penelope. She nodded.

They dashed between the two buildings, running toward the parking lot.

They were probably spotted, probably seen, but there were not wild screams, no hot pursuit. The virgins remained in place, holding hands, and the other bacchantes continued their revelry and their harvest festival.

They made it back to the car with no problem.

They were on the road, nearly back in town, when the building blew.

JITON Mel Scott looked around at the mounted heads on the wall, at the bodies of the doctor and the nurses on the floor. Flies had gotten hi somehow and were everywhere, buzzing, constantly buz/ing, alighting on the stinking heads and corpses, then flying annoyingly back into the air again.

Paradise wasn't supposed to be like this.

His head hurt. It had been hurting all day, like a hangover, though he had remained consistently drunk enough that he should not be suffering from a hangover. The DT's perhaps, but not a hangover.

Barbara was dead.

He had tried to fuck her back to life, had taken her first in the pussy, then up the ass, then in the mouth, but she had remained cold. He had prayed to his new god, but his god seemed to have forsaken him.

And now he was running out of wine.

The room stank and he was running out of wine.

Paradise wasn't supposed to be like this.

There were people in the church again.

Praying.

To God.

Pastor Robens peeked out through the crack in the door. They had abandoned God, all of them, had forsaken Him for mat drunken diety from Greece, and now they were back.