The Gate 2 Part 16

He unsheathed his dagger, freed himself from the body, and popped up to the surface once more. He slammed against a large structure. His face was sore and bleeding. Still fighting the current, he desperately grasped the wrought iron bars of the edifice's only visible window. His legs were being pulled in one direction as he clung to the bars and attempted to climb up.

A bouquet of dead flowers brushed against him and was swept away.

He glanced up at the sky. The rain beat down into his eyes. Lightning flashed, and for one brief moment he saw clearly the upturned wooden boxes that floated past him, as well as the construction he clung go.

A cemetery. He was drowning in a cemetery. Those weren't desks that he had been riding on the current, but coffins, the building he clung to a mausoleum. And then he saw, as lightning ripped open the sky overhead, the peaks of grave markers sticking out of the onrushing water. Stone shafts dotted his vision, and here and there were various wooden caskets, broken and leaking bodily fluids into the bath.

Jules scrambled to get a foothold in the tiny, false window of the tomb. His legs were like wet noodles, and they went out even as he forced them to continue to support his frame.

He slid back down the rough yet slick face of the tomb, gasping as a sharp pain shot up his leg. He fell back down into the water, trembling, clutching one iron bar possessively. The a.s.sa.s.sin now dangled by just that one hand, up to his mouth in the floodwaters again.

A dead woman's hair streamed across his face as her corpse brushed against him.

In a panic he tore at the hair, clumps coming off in his fingers, and then lost his grip on the mausoleum.

"No!"

He was swept along with the dead body that, to his horror, seemed to be enveloping him. Tendrils of hair were everywhere, long and black and in his eyes. He thought of Wick, of her long red hair, her porcelain skin, her blue eyes, her young, lithe body. He was going to die here in this flood, in this graveyard, somewhere outside of a backwater like Plunyport. This was supposed to have been a simple thing. An easy job. Kill some ridiculous jailer and get gone.

He spat out the noxious deluge and grabbed onto an obelisk, wrapping his arms and legs around it as if it were a parent he never wanted to lose. The dead woman was still draped around him. She was newly dead, no longer bloated but covered with slime.

For a moment it seemed that he would be able to hold on. He braced himself against the unending tide as it wore him down. He cursed the name Gilbert Marklegrove.

The dead thing still attached to him was becoming c.u.mbersome. He needed to pry it off, lighten his load. He squeezed his eyes shut, willed himself to let go with one hand, wiped the hair off of his neck, and forced the head down into the water. Then he let go of the marker with his legs and was nearly pulled away by the current.

"G.o.ds!" He grasped for the top of the obelisk again.

The corpse slipped off of him and sped away on the current.

Jules fought to pull his legs in, to wrap them back around the marker, but he just didn't have the strength.

Several panicked farm animals swept past him, tumbling against the headstones and coffins and disappearing into the darkness.

As lightning flashed again, he saw the demolished remnants of a barn coming toward him. The side smashed against the mausoleum, a portion of fence knocking into his hands, but he held tight. Then the barn's frame loomed overhead. It creaked as it crumpled against the menagerie of rocks, snapping and shifting and coming down on top of him.

The stone that he'd been holding for support broke off under the weight of the crumbling wood, and he was lost under the ghastly water once more. His body was spent. He was unable to save himself as his back smashed into a gravestone, and then his right arm broke when it collided with another. He spun, limp, sucking water into his lungs as he writhed in pain...slipping under...consumed by the darkness...his hair twisting in the void, tickling his face. He felt the life leaving him replaced by a strange sort of lightness, drawing him away from the pain.

He then shot out of the water and slid up onto the side of the barn with such violence that it revived him from near death. The barn wall rocked from side to side, and more and more debris piled up beside him. Jules lay in the confused ma.s.s atop the makeshift craft, face down, one broken arm useless and lying at an odd angle to one side, a pool of blood gathering under his head.

He wished for death. In that one moment he had tasted it, however briefly, the sweetness, the peace. More than anything he'd ever felt before, he wanted that again. But instead he was in agony, too weak to move, with garbage and dead things surrounding him.

As he lay there, half clothed and broken, he spied a corpse lying beside him, stark white in the lightning, with a mangled face and a rope tied around one wrist.

- Dawn McCullough White grew up in Rochester, NY, and is a keen observer of people. She spent her childhood listening to her father tell stories about history and ghosts. This left an indelible mark on her psyche. It is not such as surprise that, at the age of fourteen she penned her first novel and has never looked back since. Dawn currently has a Dark Fantasy series out-The Trilogy of Shadows-available in Kindle and Nook and in print through Amazon. In her spare time she enjoys watching doc.u.mentaries and keeping EA in business by buying up every single Sims expansion she can get her hands on.

Facebook Fanpage: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Dawn-McCullough-White/125763474137312.

Website: http://dawnmccullough-white.com.

WORLDWIDE EVENT.

by David Dalglish.

Jake Finley was sitting at his computer at 2:37 a.m. when the Worldwide Event struck. He started in his chair, not by any physical sensation but by the sudden lack of it. He stared at his monitor dumbfounded, his forum post momentarily halted. He scratched the stubble on his cheeks.

"The h.e.l.l?" he said.

He pushed back his chair and stood, most of his weight on his left leg. Taking a deep breath, he kicked out with his right leg. No pain. No stiffness.

"What the h.e.l.l?"

On went the lights with a flick of his finger. It was as if he needed to see, to know for sure he wasn't asleep or hallucinating or dead. He looked at his knee, saw the scar across the bottom of his kneecap. After the surgery, he'd had no cartilage left in the joint. At least he thought he didn't, but now, well...

He snap-kicked again, feeling like a short-haired, overweight version of a Rockette. No pain at all.

"What the h.e.l.l!"

After a few minutes of walking, jumping, kicking and stomping like an infant discovering his feet could make noises, he picked up the phone. He had a terrible urge to call a friend, but he didn't have any. The closest person to a friend he knew was a paralytic man named Reuben who lived several hours away in Kansas City. And of course there was the whole middle of the night thing. He backed up his browser and hit refresh, scanning the t.i.tles of forum posts that had erupted over the past few minutes.

I might be crazy but...

Miracle?

Anyone else feel that?

G.o.d is here!

The words gave him the courage. He dialed the number.

"h.e.l.lo?" Reuben's gruff voice said before Jake even heard the phone ring. It was as if Reuben had been waiting for him.

"Sorry if I woke you up," Jake said, staring at his monitor. He felt so stupid, so silly, but at the same time so G.o.dd.a.m.n happy that he had to keep going. "It's just...well, you know my knee, right?"

"Jake," Reuben said, not even giving him the chance. "I'm standing right now. As I'm talking to you. Standing on my own f.u.c.king two feet, not a wheelchair in sight. Your knee's working, isn't it?"

"Brand-spanking new."

"I'll be honest with you," Reuben said. A bit of a chuckle came through the receiver. "I didn't know who to call. I almost called you, but I didn't think you'd believe me. You do believe me, right?"

Snap-kick.

"d.a.m.n right I do," Jake said, and he laughed and laughed.

*click*

"...eaves just two roses left: Greg and..."

*click*

"...with a final score of twenty-three to..."

*click*

"...still receiving calls, but it appears that this is not a localized phenomenon. We have confirmed cases from Canada, Mexico, Great Britain, as well as reports ranging from Brazil to Germany to China. I want to stress that, no matter how outlandish this appears, this is no jo..."

*click*

"...and who now can deny the coming of the Rapture? G.o.d's hand has come down and touched us all, and if these miracles do not affirm the reality of..."

*click*

"Whoooooooooooo lives in a pineapple under the..."

*click*

The next morning Jake went for a walk, because he could. He wore gray slacks and his nicest shirt, usually reserved for graduations, birthdays, and the occasional Sunday service with his mother before she pa.s.sed away. Going outside felt like an event. There would be people out there, hundreds of them. The television had confirmed this. It all wasn't in his head, and it wasn't just him. He stepped outside and onto the sidewalk. Doing his best to fight his tendency to limp, he picked a direction and walked.

Strangers smiled at him. Some held their arms, or winked, or clutched their stomachs with their fingers. It was like everyone wanted to tell everyone what it was that had been cured. Several men walked past carrying canes high above the ground, and Jake smiled with a sense of kinship at their quick, exaggerated steps. The whole while, he ached to talk with someone, anyone, but he knew them not, and they did not know him. So he accepted their smiles, their understanding, and let his ears steal bits of conversations between strangers, indulging in their closeness.

"For over fifteen years I've had rheumatoid arthritis in both my hands. Could always tell you when the weather's about to change. Now all I feel like doing is knitting..."

"Doctor told me just last week I had cancer. Can you believe it? Still got my hair, praise G.o.d, it's almost like he did this just for me."

"Now I'm not a religious man. I go by what I see, what I touch. Smart, you know? Now I wake up, not a bit of a cough, and you ask me who I think did it?"

At this Jake laughed and turned around. He wanted to appear happy, and he really was happy, but without anyone to share, anyone to talk to, he felt aimless. All his joy, funneled nowhere, building up inside and spilling into nothingness. Before he went back in his house he checked the mail. Flipping the envelopes through his fingers, he found his disability check. He ripped it open, a weird grin spread across his face, and with the flourish of a child opening a Christmas present he tore the check into pieces, tore those pieces into pieces, and then hurled them into the air. He watched the wind take them, scatter them across the gra.s.s and sidewalk like confetti.

"I need to go to church," he decided.

Ever since his mother's funeral he had not stepped inside a church. He felt like a burglar. His mind kept shrieking at him it's Thursday! Still, Jake's gut told him the small Baptist church would be packed, and he was right. He pushed through the crowd gathered at the doors, no easy task given his large girth. His slicked back hair and shaved face didn't feel like his own. Jake was terrified someone would notice him, ask how he was doing and how long it'd been since he'd attended service. The sluggish crowd made their way through the corridor to the pews. No one noticed him, and for some reason Jake felt disappointed. A wayward son like he, weren't there supposed to be trumpets, fanfare, and a father running down the road to greet his prodigal son?

Instead he found a giant room filled with people but no air. He struggled for every breath. A man in a black suit and white tie held a microphone to his lips and shouted hallelujah. Jake did not respond in kind, feeling embarra.s.sed to reveal such emotion. There were no seats, so he stayed in the back, where the murmuring was strong. So many stories. Everyone had one. A disease cured. A pain removed. One single, prominent problem of their life...gone.

The church's choir picked up their microphones. The pastor in the white tie smiled and let them take their turn. Everything about them was spontaneous and jubilant. Jake listened, the joyous lyrics washing over him. He mouthed along, still not having the courage to sing. The first song ended, and then they began Amazing Grace. Jake had heard it sung many times before, a slow, lumbering song weighted by the burden of forgiveness, always somber, always mourning. Not this time. The joy in it floored him. He rubbed his knee with one hand, and his other he raised to the sky. He didn't care if anyone saw. There were a million hands raised high in that room, and he wanted to be one of them.

In that far back corner of that small Baptist church, Jake dared sing aloud.

The television was already on and waiting for Jake when he got back from service. Along the bottom ran updates about what had been dubbed The Worldwide Event.

"Even now we are receiving additional hard information," a pretty blond said, her makeup barely covering the dark circles under her eyes. "Hospitals all across the U.S. are reporting spontaneously healed trauma cases, gunshot wounds, but the most prominent has to be the cancer patients. We go now to field correspondent Alan Green."

"Thank you, Susan." Alan was a white man with brown hair and an enormous nose. Briefly Jake wondered how he had ever been allowed on television.

"Standing with me are lines of men and women waiting to be screened here at Sacred Memorial Hospital. All had been diagnosed with cancer sometime before The Worldwide Event, with many having already undergone months of chemotherapy. Ma'am, please tell me, why are you here?"

He leaned the microphone toward a pretty woman with a very obvious wig.

"Well my father's elbow has kept him from golfing for years, but now he's out swinging, but I can't go golfing to show my breast cancer's gone. I want, and I think we all want this, to prove what we already know. Our cancer's gone."

At these words the rest in line, which had shushed to listen to the interview, let out a loud cheer.

"Nothing but optimism here," Alan said, turning back to the camera. "And that optimism is well-founded. Every time someone leaves the hospital they've shouted their diagnosis to the crowd, and it's always the same: no cancer. Susan."

"Thank you, Alan," Susan said, taking the top piece of paper before her and cycling it to the back, as if it were relevant to her ability to read from the teleprompter. "I don't think this should surprise anyone, but church attendance in the nation has skyrocketed. Churches are reporting triple and quadruple attendance, with many holding additional days of service to accommodate the sudden..."

Jake turned off the television and sat down at his computer. He stared at it, unsure of what to do. For years he had hunched over his keyboard, doing his talking and socializing through games, forums, and voice-chat. Now he could walk. Now he could get out. But what was out there for him? He loaded up one of his favorite hangouts, clicked to start a new thread.

"I think I found G.o.d today," he wrote. "Now what do I do with him?"

After a few minutes he closed the browser, having never posted his question.

For the next two days he took long walks, wishing he didn't sweat so much and breathe so hard when he did. Sometimes he recognized a face, and he smiled at them when he did. Still no one talked to him, other than a courtesy h.e.l.lo or good morning. Sometimes he caught a few strange looks, and he had the feeling these people thought all the fat on his arms and legs should have been what was cured.

On Sunday he woke up, showered, and pondered over possibilities of work. He had been a lowly delivery driver when he'd blown out his knee. Hardly an exotic job, but what else did he know? As he slid the curtain away and stepped out, his heart halted. A twinge of pain tickled its way up his leg. He took his weight off it, clutching the towel rack hard enough to make it quiver. Slowly, gently, he put his leg back down. Again, a tiny tingle of pain. Jake let out a breath. He'd walked how many miles the past few days? h.e.l.l, his good leg hurt, too, now that he thought about it. Chuckling away his doubt, he grabbed a towel.

Jake decided to go to the park, hoping the trees and gra.s.s would help settle his unease. That feeling of aimlessness had grown stronger. There was something he should be doing, he knew, but he didn't know what. So he walked. In the park he saw a trio of women talking at a bench. Longing to join in, he leaned against a nearby tree so he could listen.

"I think that just proves G.o.d's grace," the lady in the center said, her graying hair up in curls. "Even though we don't deserve it, He has given everyone a taste of what heaven will be like."

"I hardly needed the proof," said a redhead on the left. "Not after Johnny's car wreck. But it's good. I haven't felt like this in years. You really think the rapture is about to happen, like Pastor Rick said?"

"Sure hope it does," the center lady said. "With half the nation stuffed into church this week, we might have a chance of filling heaven's bleachers after all."

"This grace, though," said the lady on the right. "That's what this is. G.o.d's grace, even though we don't deserve it. That's what we offer the world, us Christians, G.o.d's amazing grace."

Jake wandered off. He didn't have a chance in joining that conversation. He wasn't sure what the rapture was supposed to be, and the only grace he knew was in the song, which still moved him to tears when he thought of it. As he walked a man called out to him, jostling him out of his trance.

"If you wouldn't mind," the man said, sitting cross-legged in the gra.s.s with a plastic bag open before him. A few dollars and some loose change held it down against the wind. The man's clothes were dirty, his hair long, and his teeth yellow, but his smile was kind and inviting. In his lap he held a sign that read Hungry and Homeless. Desperate for conversation, Jake drifted over when his natural instincts told him to smile and continue on. Without a clue what to say, he stood in front of the man. Thankfully, he was spared from silence. The homeless man was an expert at guiding awkward conversations.

"Things just never went right for me, you know?" he said. He scratched at his face, which was covered with an uneven growth of stubble. "Tried traveling across the states, did that for awhile, but man, I haven't had anything to eat in a day or two, and I'm really hungry."

Never asking, Jake realized. His hand was reaching into his pocket, and the man had not even asked.