Chapter Four : Faithless	Archive
Father David Byrne lost his faith at exactly ten fifteen am on the day the world ended. Lost is a misleading turn of phrase, Father Byrne spent forty long years in the service of his God and any who met him were left with the firm understanding that his belief could not be shaken. But that was before he gazed down into the innocent faces of two hundred children and bore witness as they were torn apart. They had gathered to celebrate their first communion, dressed in their Sunday best and flanked by parents who appeared even more excited than their young charges. It was not a rich neighbourhood, not in the financial sense of the word at any rate, but Father Byrne's work had helped form a strong sense of community. He had been sent here as a punishment, or at least, that was how his superiors had seen it. One minor indiscretion and decades of good work had been treated as if they were nothing, an embarrassment to those who sat in expensive homes and dispatched the wisdom of their God in the manner that they saw as fit. He had chosen to take a stand, to voice not just his opinions, but the protests he'd heard from a hundred different parishes. Father Byrne had traveled the world in order to spread the message of his God and he knew that too many were suffering when the means to help them lay buried in the coffers of Rome and a thousand other scattered locations. Generations of exploiting the fears of others had helped to make his God's church a very profitable organisation. But these riches had been accrued in a different era, when what could now be seen as vile exploitation was simply considered the natural order of things. Father Byrne felt that his God's church should learn from the benefit of hindsight and redistribute the wealth that it had taken from the gullible in years long past. Father Byrne's message was treated with calm understanding but the patronising tone that delivered this understanding had angered him and it was that anger which had led him here. The media liked Father Byrne. Despite being nearly sixty, he still had a certain good look to his features and his charismatic personality hadn't faded any over the years. Starting with local parish newspapers, Father Byrne gradually found himself with a growing following. From small town distribution to nation wide dailies, he soon became a mainstay of the chat show circuit, speaking out against those who held tight to his God's churches purse strings. Summoned to Rome, he was ordered on a year long sabbatical, and that was the end of his crusade. Returning after twelve months spent in a year’s total solitude, Father Byrne was given a small parish wracked with unemployment and crime, with little time for anything as grand as religion. Inside a year, Father Byrne had managed to establish a strong presence within his new community. Within three years the figures for unemployment and crime had started to decrease and Father Byrne had a flourishing flock. Nobody noticed, of course. Nobody cared for his parish before he arrived and, if anything, the world cared even less for it now. But Father Byrne didn't care, he had found a place where his desire to make the world a better place could be put to work. The people in his parish had merely lacked a focus for their energies, a guiding force to unite them in the face of the apathy they face from those elected to represent them. He knew that had his superiors paid more attention to his methods that he may well have been ordered on another sabbatical but they had no time for him now that he was safely out of the public eye. Father Byrne didn't use religion to unite his people, he used need. He gathered the few people who appeared to care enough to want to change things, they weren't hard to find, not in a place where too many wore that blank soulless stare. Teachers and storeowners, who'd stayed were they where needed as opposed to taking their skills to a place where they would have surely fared better for themselves. Parents and the few who struggled to organise activities for the youth of the town. He gathered and organised the good people of his new parish with strong words and strong ideals, with his passion and desire, with only the merest of references to his God. His people worked long and hard, rebuilding their town and the self esteem of those who still lived in it. Neighbours looked out for each other, criminals were no longer harboured by anyone but others of their ilk. Five years to the day after he arrived in his new parish, Father Byrne opened the town's first franchised fast food restaurant. He could still smile with the memories of that day, he had met the men in their suits and allowed them into his town, but they had paid dearly for the privilege. That was merely the beginning, supermarket chains and other commercial ventures soon followed suit and though it never became a "Boom Town", Father Byrne's parish flourished more than anyone thought it ever could have before he arrived. So it was, with ten happy years behind him, that Father David Byrne stared out across his God's church at the faces of the next generation who were all too eager to follow his teachings. The church was a plain building, he had to fight to keep it so, at every town meeting the people wanted to give him something more but he accepted their offers with thanks and firm rebuttals. He did not need stain glass windows and towering statues to spread the message of his God, just a place for his God's people to sit in comfort would suffice. The end came without warning. As Father David Byrne spoke of love and forgiveness, his God butchered the people of his servant's parish. The floorboards of the church exploded under the impact of the sudden and violent growth of forest. Splinters of wood embedded themselves in the skin of screaming children as Father Byrne looked on in horror. He was standing on a raised wooden dais, he had delivered thousands of sermons from it, from as few as a dozen to as many as hundreds had heard him speak of his God's message from it. Now it merely served to separate him from his flock as they bore the brunt of his God's rage. It was over nearly as quickly as it began, with Father Byrne of his knees and his parish slaughtered amidst the forest that now stretched out before him. It was a gruesome sight and he wept as he emptied the contents of his stomach, the faces of the children were the worst, the few that still contained enough flesh to recognise anyway. Father Byrne tried to fathom what had happened, tried to put some reason to the actions of his God. His parish had been made up of good people who struggled to do what was right, not only for themselves, but for those around them. He had helped them come to terms with the responsibilities they owed each other, and in turn, they had given him a home and the chance to really make a difference to the world, even if it was only a small secluded corner of it. It wasn't a perfect place, there was crime and sin, but these things were decreasing every year and Father Byrne knew that the children could walk the streets of his parish without fear of death or rape. He knew that the people of his parish had come to accept responsibility for their own actions, as well as each others. He had remained faithful, slowly spreading his God's message to his parish, never forcing it were it wasn't wanted and talking only to those who wished to hear. It had taken time and patience, to attract people to listen without threatening them with fire and brimstone, without exploiting the primitive fears that lie at the back of every human's mind. Every week saw an increase in numbers at his masses, certainly more than three-quarters of his community had embraced the message of his God, but now they were dead. Father David Byrne spent a long time on his knees, praying for an answer to the atrocity he had been forced to witness, desperately seeking some kind of understanding, when he got to his feet he was no longer alone. Katrina gingerly touched the bandage around her head and flinched at the resulting stinging pain that lanced through her body. The short, bulky man seemed to stare right through her, but she knew better than that now. His left hand was curled tight around a gun that Katrina had seen him use twice with deadly accuracy. The first had been on James, she'd managed to stop his bleeding and he even regained consciousness at one point, mumbling something incomprehensible for drifting back into unconsciousness but he was well on the way to recovery following the patch job she'd done on the wound in his side. And then the tall, long haired man arrived, a warm smile on his faces and a lit cigarette perched between his lips. She'd been relieved to see him, especially as her brief forays into the city had yielded nothing but a host of brutally disfigured corpses, she'd almost managed to convince herself that she was the last person alive in the city and now she wished that she was. The man introduced himself as Peter and spoke with a zeal that immediately set her on guard, his eyes gleaming as he spoke of saving the world and what little remained of humanity. As he outlined his plan she grew more and more uncomfortable, mentally gauging the distance to the door from which he'd entered, glancing around the room for a weapon of some sort, should it come to that. In the end she opted to just turn her back on him, he was tall but slight and she was confident that she could handle him if he tried to stop her leaving with the still comatose James. Things were bad enough as they were without spending any more time with what was clearly a raving lunatic. She was half way towards the doorway when the short blond man appeared in it, raising and firing that pistol in one quick movement. She had draped James's arm around her neck but the impact of the bullet tore him from her grasp and his lifeless body fell to the ground beside her, a horrible wound where his face should have been. Without thinking she made to leap towards the gun man, an animal scream leaving her throat as she launched herself forwards but then she suddenly lost consciousness. When she woke she was wearing a bandage on her head and still in the company of the two men. Peter introduced his companion as simply Gun and the man had yet to speak a single word to either of them. The second had been when they stumbled across a small group of men dressed in the familiar bright orange overalls of the emergency services, the man known as Gun had flown into a rage at the sight of them, screaming gibberish as he loosed shot after shot into the group. Each bullet found it's mark, tearing through skin and leaving a dead man in it's wake. Before Peter had left them he had turned to Gun and told him to shoot her if she tried to leave, he had done so within earshot of her, and she knew that the blond man wouldn't hesitate is following Peter's orders. David listened intently to the man as he explained how he planned to strike vengeance against the God who had killed so many innocent people on a whim. The man wore an ill fitting black suit and he spoke fast, his words touched with a tad to much eagerness. He smoked fast too, chain smoked in fact, as he finished off one packet he pulled another from the pocket of his jacket, unconsciously lighting up as the relentless pace of his speech continued unabated. David listened and nodded his head as the man spoke, he was surprised at how willing he was to accept that what had transpired had to be lain at the feet of the God he once swore to serve but there could be little doubting that it should be. The pair shook hands before making their way out of the gutted church, David didn't look back as he left his old life behind, if he had he may well have caught sight of Father David Byrne's body torn between two Yew saplings. Four, thought Peter. Had James and Alison been worthy they would have been six in number, still one less than the voices had spoken of. He was happy nonetheless. The heroin was flowing freely through his veins and he was confident that he had assembled a group capable of carrying out his plan, even if Katrina hadn't accepted her place in his scheme yet, she would do so eventually. Peter allowed himself a brief smile as he lit another cigarette, yes, he was more than happy with the way things were playing out for him.
Written By : John McMahon	Archive