Stoneworthy looked at his hands. Christ went to Hell for us, cannot I? They were numb from shock and concussion. They were red with blood. He stumbled on a ragged limb, a leg. He couldn’t react. His face had already frozen into a mask of horror. All around him bodies laid, those who were dead before the battle maintained a semblance of life. Moving, twitching shapes intertwined with contortions of pain that transcended the physical. He had thrown his gun away. It ran out of bullets by the time the armies met. The minister was forced to use it as a club. He jerked free of a tangle of clutching body parts. Moaning filled the air. His own mouth quivered with broken words. The new death he had experienced did not spare him the smell of burnt flesh.
… man is very far gone from original righteousness, and is of his own nature inclined to evil, so that the flesh lusts always contrary to the Spirit…
He slapped at his clothing, tried to tear a swatch of fabric from his coat to tie over his nose; but his hands did not have the strength or dexterity. Stoneworthy’s eyes were heavy, but his tears were spent. He looked to the Heavens, raised a fist at the growing gloom. The battle had lasted to nightfall. The Laws of the Realm may punish Christian men with death, for heinous and grievous offences.
“Father!” he growled, his lips too dry for speech. “God!” His feet slipped on blood-spattered grass, tipping him down a slope. Stoneworthy rolled until a thicket of young apple trees stopped him. On his back, the minister glared at the sky. Anger clenched his heart like a vice. His dead lungs crackled and burned. “I call upon you, Father!” The horror of his zeal tried to drag him back into the abyss of fury. He threw an arm over his eyes to push the feeling away. No more. “ I cannot turn and prepare myself, by my own natural strength and good works…”
He remembered a living young man, a defender of the City-perhaps pre-Change twenty. Stoneworthy knew that the Change made the truth of it a mystery. But he looked so young, so frightened, when the Army of the Dead clambered through the burning hail of bullets. The dead overwhelmed him. His machine gun hung in his hands, a useless thing-as horror paralyzed him. He screamed when he saw Stoneworthy’s lifeless rage, screamed when Stoneworthy beat him with his rifle. Screamed when he died.
“It’s not me!” the minister wept to the Heavens. “I cannot do this!” But he knew that was a lie, and it dragged him down.
… the Devil doth thrust them either into desperation, or into wretchedness of most unclean living, no less perilous than desperation .
Hours later they found Stoneworthy. A special detachment of soldiers had been assigned to check through the bodies for him. He was just regaining consciousness when they stumbled upon him. The relieved men took him to the command center set up in the shadow of Updike’s transport.
The Army of the Dead had won the battle. There were considerable losses for both sides, and the ranks of the untested troops had broken down in the end, and become despairing mobs-weeping as they killed. General Bolton was busy reforming his troops into effective fighting units. Captain Updike still walked among the survivors holding his temple. Pain constricted his features and made them smaller, less extravagant-less believable. There was a fire burning to the north. That was where the casualties had gone, those that had been dismembered or pulverized and could no longer find it in themselves to go on. Watching the gray smear of smoke rising, Stoneworthy prayed for the souls as the bodies were consumed. Did Heaven or Hell await them? The Change had altered everything. He was an example of that.
By the grace of God we may arise again, and amend our lives…
Medics that checked him over found six bullets lodged in his chest and abdomen. The wounds were oozing a dark fluid; but he felt no discomfort, and once the medics patched him up, he moved without any disability whatsoever. Others had not been so lucky. A woman, whose body was in excellent condition for the antiquity she claimed, had had her head blown away by mortar fire. Another, a man who had died in a fall while painting his home, had been torn asunder by machine gun fire. There was not enough of his body remaining to reattach his head. Updike himself had committed his ravaged skull to the fire.
The battle forced him to accept such shame but the minister could not waste time on the past. Perhaps, like the building of the Tower he was predestined for these stains? He was dead, and he had risen with the others to take part in a war that would define God’s purpose. I killed those men! But it was the Lord’s will, and he a vessel for that purpose. He had killed, had created others like himself. But this was a Holy War.
The Angel who had come to him had set him on this path to righteousness. What will I be when this is over? He had to help clean the world of such repugnance. The burning bags by the Dumpster had ordained it. He would persevere to work the Lord’s will. That was why he was given this opportunity after death. The Army had just won its first victory. It was victory!
Even now, his comrades were going through the fallen on both sides. Those City Defenders who had died in the battle were coming out of Blacktime and he could hear their wailing. They were reborn, and like babes needed comfort-now to help them see the light of the Trinity. Stoneworthy began to see how winning the war was inevitable. Every battle they won or lost swelled their ranks. Fatalities would be rejected by their old living comrades and be welcomed by the dead.
If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.