The Rising: Deliverance

  THE RISING

  DELIVERANCE

  Brian Keene

  DEADITE PRESS

  P.O. BOX 10065

  PORTLAND, OR 97296

  www.DEADITEPRESS.com

  AN ERASERHEAD PRESS COMPANY

  www.ERASERHEADPRESS.com

  ISBN: 978-1-62105-176-3

  The Rising: Deliverance copyright © 2015 by Brian Keene

  The Rising: Deliverance first published as a signed, limited edition hardcover by Thunderstorm Books, 2010

  The Resurrection and The Life first published by Biting Dog Press, 2007

  The Siqqusim Who Stole Christmas first published in The Little Silver Book of Streetwise Stories, Borderlands Press, 2008

  Cover art copyright © 2015 Alan M. Clark

  www.ALANMCLARK.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written consent of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

  Printed in the USA.

  Acknowledgements

  For this edition of The Rising: Deliverance, my thanks to Jeff Burk, Rose O’Keefe, and everyone else at Deadite Press; Paul Goblirsch; Russell Dickerson; my pre-readers Tod Clark and Mark ‘Dezm’ Sylva; Cassandra Burnham; and my sons.

  DEADITE PRESS BOOKS BY BRIAN KEENE

  Urban Gothic

  Jack’s Magic Beans

  Take the Long Way Home

  Darkness on the Edge of Town

  Tequila’s Sunrise

  Dead Sea

  Entombed

  Kill Whitey

  Castaways

  Ghoul

  The Cage

  Dark Hollow

  Ghost Walk

  A Gathering of Crows

  Last of the Albatwitches

  An Occurrence in Crazy Bear Valley

  Earthworm Gods

  Earthworm Gods II: Deluge

  Earthworm Gods: Selected Scenes from the End of the World

  The Rising

  City of the Dead

  The Rising: Selected Scenes from the End of the World

  Clickers II (with J. F. Gonzalez)

  Clickers III (with J. F. Gonzalez)

  Clickers vs. Zombies (with J. F. Gonzalez)

  Sixty-Five Stirrup Iron Road (with Edward Lee, Jack Ketchum, Bryan Smith, J.F. Gonzalez, Wrath James White, Ryan Harding, Nate Southard, and Shane McKenzie)

  This book is dedicated to Nate Southard.

  More than three hundred is always good,

  but even less than that counts.

  “Thou art my hiding place; thou will preserve me from trouble; thou will compass me about with songs of deliverance.”

  —David, The Book of Psalms

  “Nevertheless, not what I will, but what You will.”

  —Jesus Christ, The Book of Mark

  “Well, because that’s what God had planned for us. That’s what God wanted me to do.”

  —Reverend Martin, City of the Dead

  One

  After they began to lose track of the days, and it became obvious that whatever it was that had happened to the world wasn’t going to be over anytime soon, the Reverend Thomas Martin began to pray for deliverance.

  At first, the news reports had been random and sporadic—filler in between the regular stories of joblessness and stock market decline and crime and politics and war. It started with a riot at a rock and roll concert in Escanaba, Michigan. Then there was a mass murder in Ghost Island, Minnesota. That led to pandemonium in the streets of Belleville, Illinois and New York City. Then everything erupted.

  When the chaos reached the tiny town of White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, Martin, Becky and John had taken shelter inside their church. It was there that they watched things fall apart. Despite the situation outside, the power remained on and the networks kept broadcasting. Soon enough, the news had confirmed the rumors spreading across the internet—the dead were coming back to life, not as slow, shambling, mindless creatures, but rather as beings possessed. Indeed, from what Martin had witnessed with his own eyes, it was as if the corpses of the recently deceased were now inhabited by a race of supernatural deities. Demons, as they were called in his trade.

  He had no reason to doubt it.

  Just as he believed in God the Father, maker of Heaven and Earth, and in Jesus Christ, His only son, our Lord, so did Martin believe in the other side of the coin—Satan and his minions. Demons from the pit. The hordes of Hell. The Yin to the Yang. God had His angels and Satan had his demons. The Bible that Martin had known and loved and taught for years was very specific on this. God ruled in Heaven, but Satan had dominion over the Earth. This had never bothered Martin before, because he knew that eventually, good always triumphed. God might sometimes work in mysterious ways, but it always balanced out in the end.

  At sixty years of age, Martin had seen evil at work in the world time and time again, and he’d had his faith tested more than once. He’d walked through figurative hellfire on more than one occasion. He’d been bitten by a copperhead snake when he was seven years old, while picking raspberries for his mother to make into a pie. He’d contracted pneumonia when he was ten, and had been laid up for over a month, missing school and a winter that was fine for sledding and making snowmen. In the case of both the snakebite and the pneumonia, he’d almost died, but the good Lord had seen him through.

  But that wasn’t all. He’d served as a Navy chaplain during Viet Nam, and seen the horrors of war first-hand. He’d smelled burning flesh, and heard men screaming like children, and witnessed the atrocities they committed on one another—killing indiscriminately, taking ears and noses and genitalia as grisly trophies, losing their minds and their souls in a haze of drugs and alcohol and murder. He’d seen the Devil at work in the jungles. He’d seen Satan’s face appear in the napalm smoke and heard his laughter in the thunder of the mortar rounds, and knew that the Devil was alive and well on planet Earth.

  And yet, despite everything he’d witnessed, Martin had made it back home alive by the grace of God—safe, sound and sane. Soon after his return to the United States, he’d gone to work for and alongside the Reverend Martin Luther King, attracted not just by the man’s civil rights work, but by his efforts to end both poverty and the Vietnam War. Martin had felt a strange sense of prideful glee that his last name was the same as the Reverend King’s first name. He’d remembered being younger, and listening to the speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Martin had shared in the dream, and was now working for that dream. And then, on a gloomy April day almost a year after his return from Vietnam, he’d seen that dream gunned down in Memphis, Tennessee. Perhaps it had been James Earl Ray who pulled the trigger that sent the bullet smashing into King’s jaw and shattering his spine, but it had been the Devil that guided the assassin’s hand.

  But there had been divine providence in even that act of evil, for after the assassination, Martin had returned here to White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, and had become pastor of the very church he was now hiding out in. He’d married his wife, Chesya, and they’d had two fine sons, Mark and William. Mark had died in Desert Storm. William had moved to Los Angeles and gotten in trouble with the law and was now doing hard time for manslaughter. And Chesya had passed five years ago after a battle with breast cancer.

  His faith had gotten him through all of this and more. But now, for the first time, Martin wondered if that faith would be enough. He needed it, clung to it as a drowning man would cling to a lifejacket. Yes, he’d been through a lot in his life, and had always emerged stronger, both in body, mind and spirit, but none of the tests the Lord had given him ove
r the years were as fundamental or encompassing as the one he faced now.

  The last thing he’d seen before the news stopped broadcasting was a press briefing with the Secretary of State, who was filling in for the President. It became apparent to all just why the Secretary of State was fulfilling this role when, live on camera, the reanimated President darted toward the podium, spewing obscenities, and proceeded to slaughter the Secretary of State live on camera. The camera actually zoomed in as the Zombie-in-Chief clamped down on the victim’s arm, biting through his suit sleeve and into the flesh beneath. One Secret Service agent drew his weapon on the former President. A second agent then shot the first. Chaos descended as more agents exchanged gun-fire and reporters scrambled. The Vice-President, it was re-ported, suffered a fatal heart attack following the press conference. Following that came a news report that both the House and the Senate had been overrun by zombies. Then the stations went off the air and the power died.

  If those final reports didn’t prove that the Devil’s minions were working overtime, all Martin had to do was look outside the walls of his own church. It was, quite literally, Hell on Earth. And here he was, living in the midst of it. So yes, while he’d had his faith tested before, it had never been like this. Still, as Martin was fond of telling his congregation, the good Lord didn’t waste his time testing those who didn’t have much to offer. He just wondered what else he could offer at his age in a world gone in-sane. His parishioners were scattered—either dead or in hiding. Other than John and Becky, he had no one to minister to. What did God need him to do now?

  Speak to me, Lord, he prayed. Show me what you need of me. Reveal your will and let me know your mind. And if you don’t need me, then please deliver me from this place. Deliver us from evil, Lord. Deliver—

  “A penny for your thoughts, Reverend?”

  Martin jumped, so startled that he rapped his elbow against the wooden railing he’d been kneeling in front of. He winced as his forearm went numb.

  “I’m sorry,” Becky Gingerich, who’d been the church organist for the last seven years and a parishioner long before that, apologized. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I thought you heard me come in.”

  “No,” Martin said. “I was busy praying. But it’s okay, Rebecca. Although, to be honest, I don’t know that my thoughts are worth a penny.”

  “Oh, I bet they are. At least to me.”

  Smiling, Martin slowly got to his feet. The arthritis in his knees and ankles flared up as he did, competing with the numbness in his arm.

  “I made dinner,” Becky said. “Chicken soup and some crackers. John’s already eating. We figured you might want to join us.”

  “That sounds like a plan.” Martin’s stomach growled. He hadn’t realized he was hungry until then. Not for the first time, he found himself surprised at Becky’s ability to guess his needs, even before he himself was aware of them.

  Becky smiled, and Martin felt himself blushing. Then the organist blushed, as well. Clearing his throat, Martin turned his glance to the cross hanging above the altar. A life-sized wooden Jesus stared down at them.

  Martin nodded at the figure. “We’ll finish this later, Lord.”

  If God heard him, He didn’t respond. Of course, Martin reflected, the Lord wasn’t much for direct response these days anyway. Gone were the burning bushes and the giant, disembodied hands that came down from the sky and wrote on walls. These days, God didn’t send armies of angels. All he sent was courage and peace and strength.

  “I wish it was more,” Becky said, once again interrupting Martin’s thoughtful reverie. “You and John must both be getting tired of canned soup all the time.”

  “We make do with what we have,” Martin replied, his tone gentle. “The three of us were lucky enough to take shelter here in the church, and the Sunday School pantry was well-stocked. The Lord has provided. It could be a lot worse. Think of how it must be for some of the other folks holed up out there. I’d be willing to bet not all of them are lucky enough to have food and water wherever it is they’re hiding.”

  “That’s true. Do you… do you think there are more out there? Hiding? Alive?”

  “We must have faith that there are.”

  She frowned, her forehead creasing and the tiny wrinkles around her blue eyes becoming more pronounced. Although she didn’t say it, Martin knew that Becky was thinking about her loved ones. She had a daughter who attended West Virginia State University in Morgantown, and a son who was in the Army. Becky hadn’t heard from either of them since the Rising had started. She had, however, received a series of desperate, plaintive text messages from her ex-husband, who, after ten years apart from her and a second marriage, had apparently decided that the end of the world was a good time to tell his ex-wife that he’d never stopped loving her and begging her to forgive him for all the things he’d done while they were married. A tearful Becky had texted him back and told him that he was forgiven, but she’d never received a response in return. Martin supposed that the silence was probably more heart-wrenching than the original message had been. She’d tried to play her concerns off to Martin and John, proposing that her ex had probably gotten drunk and passed out, but the unspoken assumption was that something bad had happened to him, preventing him from responding.

  “And besides,” Martin said, trying to cheer her up, “you do more with a can of soup and some dry old crackers than most gourmet chefs could do with an entire pantry of organic foods at their fingertips. You’ve got talent, Rebecca. And I’m not just talking about your skills with the piano.”

  Beaming, she glanced at the organ, which had sat silent since the siege began. They’d been reluctant to make any sound that might alert the things outside to their presence inside the church.

  “I’ve got to do something,” she said. “Keeping busy seems to help. And I like cooking for you both.”

  “We like it, too. Now come on, before John eats it all.”

  As they walked down the center aisle, the pain in his arm subsided. Martin wished the same could be said of the aches in his joints. Their footfalls echoed in the empty church. Three of the pews had blankets and pillows strewn across them, where the three had made their makeshift beds. The hard wooden benches hurt Martin’s back, but he’d padded them as best he could with foam play-mats from the church’s nursery. The aisles between the rows of pews were half-hidden in shadow. John had used thick plywood sheeting to board over the beautiful stained glass windows, and the only source of illumination was the few meager rays of sun that peeked through the spy holes he’d drilled in each section of wood. At night, they used candles that they had found in a storage room—left over from communion and the previous year’s Christmas Eve candlelight service.

  Martin and Becky passed through a door into the vestibule and then walked down a flight of stairs to the church basement. Martin ran his palm along the handrail as they went down the stairs, stirring up dust. He sneezed.

  “God bless you,” Becky said.

  “Thank you, Rebecca. He does.”

  “You know what one of the things I always liked about you was, Pastor?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Sometimes you call me Rebecca. My mother used to call me that, but everybody else in this town just called me Becky.”

  “Even your husband?”

  Her frown returned. “He called me other things, most of which I’d rather not repeat.”

  They made their way through the Sunday School rooms and into the kitchen where John, the church’s janitor, groundskeeper and all-around handyman, was seated at a card table, loudly slurping chicken soup from a paper cup. His dentures sat on the table beside him. Becky clicked her tongue.

  “John Amos Kuhn, you get those nasty old things off that table right now! Other people have to eat here too, you know.”

  His shoulders slumped at her reproach. “They’re not nasty. They’re clean. I brush them every night before bed. Although I reckon I won’t be wearing them much longer. I’m just about out
of denture cream.”

  The soup bubbled inside its saucepan, which was sitting atop a kerosene heater. With no electricity to run the microwave or the oven, Becky had resorted to using the heater to cook their meals. John had assured them that they had enough kerosene stored in the church’s boiler room to last them through winter, though he held the opinion that they wouldn’t be trapped inside the building that long. The heater had been turned off after the meal was prepared, but the warmth still radiated from it, wafting against Martin’s legs as he brushed by it.

  “Given the situation,” Martin said, spooning some soup into a paper cup, “I don’t know that denture cream is very high on our list of priorities, John. You might just have to go without.”

  “I don’t know, Reverend. I’ve been thinking about that.”

  Martin and Rebecca took seats around the card table, and John paused long enough for Martin to say a brief prayer.

  “Thank you for providing us with this food, Lord, and for continuing to keep us safe. In your name, we pray. Amen.”

  “Short and sweet,” John said. “That’s why I like you, Pastor Martin. You don’t mess around.”

  Martin grinned. “Good food, good meat, good God, let’s eat.”

  John cackled with laughter, spraying cracker crumbs from his mouth. Becky smiled, sipping her soup.

  “So what were you saying, John?” Martin asked.

  “You probably ain’t gonna like it.” The janitor sat his cup down. “I was fixing to go outside tomorrow. Make a supply run. Not just for denture cream, either. There’s all kinds of stuff that we need.”

  Martin balked at the suggestion. “We’ve talked about this before, John. I don’t think going outside right now would be very wise. We’ve all seen what these…zombies…are capable of doing.”

  “I wouldn’t have to go far,” John said. “Reckon I could make it to my place and get my pickup truck. It’s only a quarter of a mile or so over yonder. Then I could swing by the convenience store out near the highway, grab what we need, and come right back here. The whole thing shouldn’t take more than a half hour.”