Chapter Five : Suffer The Children	Archive
Crucifixion, thought the fallen priest as he stared up at the crumpled remains of the corpse hanging before him, was highly overrated. David's request of Peter, that they nail the wounded man to a crude cross cobbled together from a pair of broken street lamps, was a petty thing borne out of his desire to recreate the act that had once slain the son of his so-called God. Peter was the only one of his new travelling companions who paid the fallen priest even the slightest bit of attention, and even that was in the form of the occasional curt word spat at him between the long haired man's incoherent rants and drug induced emotional breakdowns. Not that the lack of attention he received from the rest of the group was in any way troubling to him. The short man's blood splattered apparel and sheer force of presence was enough to make him thoroughly unpleasant company. The woman, who was incapable of going more than a minute without reaching to poke and prod at the crude bandage wrapped around her head, seemed more interested in shooting violent glances at the others to even spare him a disinterested scowl. Peter's mood had somehow managed to grow even more sullen and distracted in the aftermath of their grisly meeting with the man, who now hung dead from the makeshift crucifix, and his young charges. The dull throbbing in her head wasn't enough to distract Katrina from the sense of revulsion she felt at Peter's latest act of violence. He'd begun shouting short strained sentences at a figure that was only visible to his drug addled mind as he forced a brisk pace through the thick undergrowth away from the remains of the ruined church. She didn't know if he'd finally given up any pretence of sanity or if his continued digestion of a disturbingly large amount of narcotics had simply caused him to see figures that weren't really there. When the first strains of the children's singing reached her ears, she'd hoped that Peter was too lost in his mindless yammering with invisible confidants to pay it any mind. The man he referred to as Gun never acknowledged any sound outside of Peter's voice, so she wasn't overly concerned about that murderers reaction to the out of tune rendition of whatever-the-hell it was that the kids were supposed to be singing. Time passed at an agonisingly slow pace as the shrill voices gradually become fainter, they were barely audible when Peter called a sudden halt to their march. Katrina let loose a string of curses under her breath as he turned his gaze in the general direction of the children's singing. Peter scratched idly at the dry blood coating the sleeve of his jacket as he looked down at the sprawling concrete complex that marked the end of his journey. He should have felt some form of elation at having gotten this far, or at least some small surge in his spirits but the shrill desperate screams of the children still echoed through the narrow confines of his skull, laying waste to any hope he had of feeling anything beyond an overbearing sense of self loathing. The voices that had led him so far tried in vain to comfort him, to assure him that he had only done what was necessary to save the planet and those he loved from the strange ailment that had befallen it. Their words rang hollow in the face of his most recent deed Pointless violence on howling innocents in the name of his self-righteous anger, impossible to justify as an act for the common good. His guilt was deserved, but it was important that he put a show on for the others, that they knew what they had to do was just and right, so he forced himself to smile before turning his back on the buildings and making his way back to their camp. There would be a penance to pay for his loss of control, but for now he had to concentrate on finishing the task he had been chosen for. Alex Doyle hated children. Didn't need to be some over priced psychiatrist to figure out why either - he grew up the eldest of eight brothers and sisters. His folks were great but both had to work nearly every hour of every day in order to keep eight screaming kids fed and clothed, which left him with the job of den mother to his younger siblings. So he spent five of his six teenage years changing their nappies, tending to their cuts and bruises and putting those who thought they could bully his family firmly in their place. Then, on his nineteenth birthday, he met and lost his heart to Miss Kirla Holte, a German woman who it turned out would get pregnant if she happened to watch two people fuck in a movie. Seven children of his own and one more on the way, four girls and three boyss, all of whom ensured that he'd never have a quiet moment in his life again - not that he'd ever really had one before. Alex's last thought, as the strange little quiet man drove a heavy iron spike through the fleshy sinews of his feet, was to wonder just why he'd decided to take the course of action that had led him to this bloody end in the first place. Alex had been rushing across town to pick his wife up from her latest check up, he was already in her bad books for having to miss the appointment itself due to an impatient boss who didn't appreciate the perils of a scorned pregnant wife. In fifteen minutes his wife was going to be standing outside of the hospital gates and if he wasn't there...well, better not to dwell on such horrific thoughts. He knew that he'd have to avoid the main roads if he was to have any hope of getting to her on time, so he decided to cut through a small little suburb situated ten minutes drive from the hospital. It wasn't until he turned into the housing estate in question that Alex discovered that the local primary school was on a half day - a fact he gleaned after finding himself stuck behind a slow moving school bus in the process of transporting the local little terrors back to the loving embrace of their poor mothers and fathers. When the bus stopped for the third time in less than three minutes to unload yet another gang of giggling kids, Alex decided that he was going to have to break the law and overtake the yellow monstrosity if he didn't want to have his throat ripped out by his wife. It was then that the world went insane and nature itself appeared to run rampant through the streets of the city. As he pulled out to overtake the stopped bus, something exploded up against the underside of his car with such force that it flipped the vehicle over onto its side. The car landed with a violent shudder, sending a shock of terrible pain through Alex's arm as he slammed down against the inside of the driver's door, his seatbelt digging tight in against his skin through his shirt. All around him he could hear terrible sounds, freakish tearing noises mixed with childish voices screaming in fear and pain. He hung there for several moments, held in place by his seatbelt, fighting the onset of shock as he tried to figure out just what had happened. It took him that long to realise that the sun appeared to have gone out. Bright rays of sunshine had been streaming in the windscreen before his car had been toppled but now he was in a cold shadow. Bracing himself against the driver's door, Alex unclipped his seatbelt and slipped free. Reaching over the seat beside him, he popped the passenger door open and crawled out of his car and onto the street...or what should have been a street. Instead he found himself standing in the middle of a lush towering forest. The school bus had been torn apart by the arrival of the new vegetation. From where he was standing, Alex could see that it too had been knocked onto its side but then two trees shot through the middle of it, smashing through the windows and rending the metal frame wide apart. Following the barks rising from the carnage of the bus with his eyes, he was forced to his knees at the sight of the tiny bloodied forms hanging from the loping branches over the metal frame. His stomach heaved, emptying its contents onto the remains of the road as images of the dead children played out across his tightly closed eyes. He bent double, tears rolling freely down his cheeks, his now empty stomach still retching. It was the crying that echoed all around him that stirred him from the depths of his shock. Alex forced himself to his feet, making sure to keep his eyes averted from the brutal scenes above him as he scanned the forest for the children. They were standing a couple of feet from the bus, eight of them, five girls and three boys. Each of them was dressed in an untidy blue school uniform and, with one exception, they were all staring wildly about them and screaming at the top of their lungs. One of the girls was just sitting on the curb, staring at the destroyed bus with a vacant look in her eyes. It took him four tries but eventually he managed to right his car, pushing it down with a loud crash onto the road. The children, who had all fallen into a quiet wide eyed state of shock, allowed him to herd them into the shattered vehicle but otherwise paid him very little attention. He didn't like the idea of leaving the children on their own but he liked the alternative, bringing them with him as searched the neighbourhood for survivors, even less. His mobile phone was getting no reception, probably due to the interference being caused by the newly created forest. For three long hours he picked his way through the trees and the gutted remains of the suburb, making periodic trips back to his car to make sure that the children were obeying his orders and staying put. His search yielded nothing but grim scenes of death and destruction, each discovery of a corpse - be it one crushed beneath falling rubble or dismembered by errant forestry - left him sick and horrified. Eventually he was forced to concede defeat and admit that not one else in the immediate neighbourhood had survived the recent freakish events. After foraging some basic supplies from a number of the lesser-damaged homes, Alex returned to the car and his young charges. He took turns carrying them on his back through the forest, the going was far from easy and even without the harsh terrain left in the wake of the trees to contend with he could only move at the same pace as the youngest of the children. Try as he might, Alex couldn't get any of the children to speak to him. He tried holding a conversation with each of the children as they took their turn on his back but all of his questions were met with silence and even something as simple as a request for a name led to nothing. After a while he stopped trying to talk to the children and instead let his thoughts turn to Kirla and his own children. If the events that had struck the suburb had also taken place across the city, and he knew that they were coming close to the edge of the estate with no end to the trees in sight, then his wife was probably in the best place. The hospital would have the staff and facilities to deal with whatever the fall out might be from this nightmare, the next-door neighbour they had left their children with however, would not. What was that stupid television show that little Eileen always insisted he watch with her on Saturday mornings ? He was damned if he could remember the name of the show but the words of its theme tune came unbidden to his lips. "...got to catch them all, got to catch them all...". Alex was jolted out of his musings by the sound of the children taking up his tune and singing along with him. Their singing distracted the children from their plight, indeed it seemed to rouse them somewhat, and although they still refused to speak with Alex they seemed quite happy to regale him with childish song after childish song. He hoped that he was leading them in the general direction of the hospital but in truth he was disorientated and after five hours of hiking through the wilderness he was near convinced that they were travelling in the wrong direction. He didn't see the point in veering from their course though - if they continued to travel in a straight line then eventually they'd have to stumble onto some other survivors. At one point they passed the remains of what appeared to be the local parish church, Alex left the children outside but found nothing in the ruins but a dead congregation and the butchered body of a priest pulled apart between two saplings. The children were belting out their rendition of a theme to a kid's television show, a program that seemed to involve many creatures predisposed towards using karate to beat each other up, when they came face to face with another small group of survivors. What happened next was somehow even more horrifying than the events that had transpired earlier that day. They had come out into a small clearing at the same time as the other, smaller group. There had been three of them - a tall thin man with long hair dressed in a bad suit, a red haired woman who might have been quite attractive if her head hadn't been covered in an ugly bloodied bandage and a short, stocky blonde man in a blood splattered t-shirt. Before Alex could address this new group, the long haired man started shrieking and pointing at him. The man's voice was too high pitched and lost in hysteria for Alex to make sense of his words but the woman's calm tone was easily understood - "Run. Now.". The children were screaming behind him and the boy on his back was digging his nails in tight against the top of his shoulders. The blonde haired man bought his hand up as Alex half-turned back towards the forest, something flared bright twice in his hand. Alex's right knee exploded in agony as an unseen object drove hard in against the back of it, causing him to lose his footing and stumble face first into a tree. He struck the bark hard, his forehead splitting open against the wood, driving him into unconsciousness. Alex was being dragged across the ground by his arms when he came to, his right leg bent at an awkward angle beneath him, a trail of blood being left in his wake. Looking up he could see that he was being pulled from the clearing he had entered untold moments before. Eight small unmoving shapes lay along the tree line opposite him. The long haired man was standing off to his right, talking to him as the blonde man tugged him along by his arms. "I had to get Gun to kill them. I did. They'd just slow us down you see ? I couldn't risk leaving them behind us, what if our enemy found them ? They'd be onto us then and we can't be having that now, can we ? I didn't want to do it but I had to. It's up to us. Yes. Up to us. You're the last of the seven. You're a hero. It's not easy being a hero you know ? The things we have to do to earn that title - brutal ugly things. Only we can do these things and only we are deserving of that mantle. Hero. Yes.". Alex could barely hear the babbling lunatic above the sound of his own tears as he cried for the murdered children. Two hours later he tried to kill the long haired man. They had come across an overturned ambulance which prompted the long haired man's decision to call a halt to their march. He got the man called Gun to drag Alex into the ambulance and then told him to watch from the doorway. The long haired man ordered the woman, whom he called Katrina, to tend to his leg with whatever she could find in the ambulance. As she rummaged through the medical supplies, the man sat by him and again tried to justify his murder of the children. Alex listened for a full sixty seconds before launching himself at the man, grabbing for his throat. Although his back was to the doorway, he knew that Gun had drawn his weapon and was bringing it to bear on his exposed back but he didn't care, he closed his fingers down tight around the long haired man's throat and squeezed the life from him. Katrina leapt past him towards the doorway, he didn't know what she was doing but he heard a sick thud behind him moments before he lost consciousness again. Alex woke screaming in agony, to find his arms outstretched and his hands nailed to a rudimentary cross. Peter sat cross-legged at the foot of the cross, his back resting against the remains of the street lamp that formed its spine. It was dark and cold but he was in no mood for Katrina's accusing glances, or Gun's impassive stare for that matter, both of which were waiting for him around the small fire he'd set for them before heading on alone. Pulling his cigarette from his lips, he exhaled a cloud of smoke from his nose and glanced up at the rotting body hanging over him. It had been the priest’s idea to crucify the man but it had fallen on Gun to do the deed itself, as ever he followed Peter’s orders to the letter, never stopping to offer comment or rebuke. Gun understood just how important their task was, but the children...the voices had possessed Peter and used him to give voice to their desires, without thinking he had ordered Gun to strike down the children and, without thinking, Gun had done just that. Pushing back against the remains of the street lamp, he forced himself up onto his feet and continued his journey back to the camp. There was little point to dwelling on the horrors of the past, better to focus on the future and the fact that their destination had escaped Mother Nature’s little temper tantrum and was sitting unscathed, waiting to be used against her.
Written By : John McMahon	Archive