The Veil (Testaments I and II) Read online

  Table of Contents

  THE VEIL

  TESTAMENT I

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  EPILOGUE

  TESTAMENT II

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  THANK YOU FOR READING

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ALSO FROM HORRIFIC TALES PUBLISHING

  The Veil (Testaments I and II) by Joseph D’Lacey

  The Kill Crew First Published in 2009 by StoneGarden.Net Publishing

  The Failing Flesh First Published in 2012 by Dark Prints Press

  This Edition Published by Horrific Tales Publishing 2016

  http://www.horrifictales.co.uk

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  Copyright © 2016 Joseph D’Lacey

  The moral right of Joseph D’Lacey to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  eBook Edition

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  THE VEIL

  TESTAMENTS I AND II

  Joseph D’Lacey

  For Foxy and Noodles

  TESTAMENT I

  THE KILL CREW

  CHAPTER ONE

  Night falls like a hammer-blow because we dread it. What you wish for is delayed, what you fear is swiftly delivered.

  It begins with the sound of people crying. Hundreds, maybe more. They’ve lost something treasured and they want it back. Now the first gunshots; a few singles, the sound of booted feet running on cold sidewalks and empty streets. Then volleys of gunfire, coordinated and precise. More running, faint shouts of caution or command. Nearby the shots sound like firecrackers, farther away they’re just popguns, hardly real. We all listen to the night sounds because it would be wrong, disrespectful somehow, to ignore them. Each of us waits for screams and prays we never hear them.

  If I try really hard, I can remember the true sound of the city at night. Cars and sirens and a million tires breathing over tar-bound stones. Jets and choppers sparkling and slicing up the air above us. People yelling, music passing by.

  All we retain now are the gunshots. Once they were the sound of anger snapping and of private wars. Now, against the silence of the city, they are the sounds of survival.

  “Crewing tonight, Sherri?” asks Ike.

  “No. You?”

  “What do you think?”

  Ike Delgado never crews if he can help it. Doesn’t have the belly for it. He’s only asking so he knows if he’s getting laid or not. Now he thinks he is.

  He isn’t.

  “I’m doing spam and beans Delgado, accompanied by a ‘98 Beaujolais. Want to join me?”

  “I’ve got my period.”

  Ike hates blood. Especially from what he calls the axe-wound.

  He tries to hide his squirming and does a pretty good job. “Doesn’t mean we can’t have dinner together.”

  “It does if I’m not hungry.”

  He shrugs, smiles. Somehow it’s not nasty.

  “More for me.”

  My turn to shrug. Then he says, “Want to sleep at my place tonight?”

  And suddenly we’re in new territory. I don’t like the look of it.

  “Maybe tomorrow, Ike.” He shrugs again, then leaves.

  Now I’m alone, sitting on an upturned soda crate in Sally Alley cleaning and oiling my guns. My period is actually a couple of days late. Been irregular ever since the Long Silence began. I’m crabby as hell because I haven’t crewed for almost a week. The gun barrels are pleading for heat. Or maybe it’s PMS.

  Either way, Ike Delgado sleeps alone tonight. Sherri Foley needs space.

  It doesn’t take much discipline, but it takes guts. If there’d been any soldiers who’d survived, maybe they could have taught us more about maintaining order amid the chaos. Keeping our boots shiny and guns lubed while the body count rises. Marching and singing to keep our spirits up. But no soldiers made it, or if they did, they don’t live in the Station. It doesn’t matter. We’ve learned how to do the necessary. It’s probably not quite enough knowledge to stay alive.

  The crew goes out every night. It’s a lottery. Anyone can volunteer but only seven take the shift. If something goes wrong, we only lose a few. We keep a tally of the numbers – how many of them we stop, how many of us are left.

  What we got:

  A city block of shops, apartments and alleyways. Two gun stores. Three mini markets, two restaurants, and a wholesale warehouse. One pharmacy. A few years’ supply of LPG in portable tanks. Rainwater catchments on every roof. Some grow bags and a few seeds. A wall at the end of each alley made of demolition leftovers and other salvage. More living space than we can use. About two hundred souls. I don’t know how many we started out with, but we’re counting down to zero as the months go by.

  What they got:

  Disposable numbers. Unpredictable requirements. Insomnia.

  I just want to put you in the picture. There’s more to it – a lot more – but now I’ve laid the groundwork the rest’ll make more sense.

  You must have had one of those relationships you know isn’t right and won’t last. When you know darn fine there’s a better one out there but you just haven’t found it yet. I used to think of those relationships as stops on a train journey. I might get out, wander around, see the local sights. Soon enough I’d be back on that train, going somewhere more important. I always believed I’d reach that special destination; find that other person out there who was travelling from afar to meet me.

  Right now I’m seeing Ike Delgado. And because I’ve run out of track – because the whole world’s run out of track – I’m going to be seeing him a lot longer than I’d planned to. For the moment, as far as I can tell, my train ain’t leaving this station.

  By a coincidence of some kind, someone coined the name the ‘Nielsen and McKinley Station’ for this hastily cordoned-off ghetto of ours, this last stop on the line. The block is sandwiched between 33rd and 34th streets going north-south and Nielsen and McKinley going the other way. Mostly, we just call it the Station. I believe we do this in the hope that one day there will be some other place to go, a recommencing of all our broken journeys.

  This thing that happened, the day the Long Silence began, we don’t know if it was a bomb, something in the water, something they sprayed on us from jets, or if it was nature’s answer to the craziness of the world. The strange thing was it didn’t affect everyone in the city. It was more prevalent among the office workers, pen-pushers and keyboard-punchers - the white-collar drones. Or maybe it was where they were on the day it happened, high up in their office blocks. Whatever the case might be, they’re out there, outside our wall, all over this city in their thousands. In their hundreds of thousands. You know them as soon as you see them. We’ve come to know them as the Commuters because they still get around.

  And we’re the Stoppers. Because we live in a Station. Because we’re going nowhere.

  Because we
put an end to Commuters.

  True, we’re not real soldiers but we keep our equipment clean and in good working order nevertheless. Only a suicide wants a gun to jam or misfire when they’re crewing. It’s best to get outside while it’s still light, before the Commuters arrive. Otherwise, they’ll be ready for us. About the time the sun gets blocked by the tallest buildings in the city is when we get ready.

  To be safe.

  It’s what we do.

  Before we climb the ladder we test our gear one last time. Everyone flicks the miner’s lights on their heads to check the batteries. Everyone carries a spare in their pack. We ensure our weapons are fully loaded, safeties on until we get outside. I carry two pump-action shotguns. Each holds eight rounds. The stocks are plastic so they’re lighter for me to carry. Cain is loaded with ordinary scattershot cartridges. I have him handy as I exit the cellar. Abel contains cartridges with single slugs. On the rare occasions I draw Abel it’s for heavy work. His recoil is so fierce it hurts my shoulder to fire him. In case of emergencies, I carry the Paramedic – a .38 snub I use on fellow Stoppers for total anaesthesia. Got snacks and water for later in the shift and a first-aid kit, which if you ask me is a waste of space. Get hurt on the other side of the wall and the chances are you’re not coming back to the Station for a change of dressings.

  What’s a hairdresser doing carrying guns and making out like she’s a militiaman?

  Surviving.

  Just like everyone else.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Here’s how the crew works:

  Anyone can volunteer as often as they like. Some put in a request every day, others occasionally. Those who don’t want to crew don’t get a choice. Once a week, every name goes into the cracker barrel. That makes it fair.

  Non-volunteers run the highest risk outside – they haven’t built any skills. They don’t have knowledge. None of the regulars want them on the crew but everyone understands why it’s important. It mustn’t become a case of us protecting them. We have to work together. Everyone must contribute.

  Despite the weekly non-volunteer lottery there are still people who’ve never taken a gun outside the walls of the Station. People like my man Ike. But that doesn’t really matter. The lottery exists to ensure everyone is eligible, even if they haven’t had the pleasure.

  Seven on the crew again. Seven soldiers. Seven sinners. Seven stars.

  It’s like a magic formula. Something sacred. The number seven protects us. Sending seven, it takes away the wrongness of what we do. I don’t know how we decided on this number or whose idea it was. Like so many important things, it just happened.

  Among the seven, I feel safe. As safe as anyone can.

  “Everybody ready?”

  Monty Spence, tonight’s captain, looks from face to face in the restaurant cellar on 33rd. We use different exits each night. Sometimes over the wall, sometimes under it, always a different side of the Station.

  Each of us nods. This is the moment, just before we leave the sanctuary of the Station, the threshold moment beyond which nothing is certain. Each of us sits in that cellar wondering if tonight’s the night we don’t come back. Reaching into a future we haven’t the eyes to see. We assess ourselves for ‘bad feelings’, test our inner winds, watch for signs in everything around us. We’re compressed toward this moment like particles in a syringe. There’s only one way, and that’s out.

  Spence climbs the ladder, pistols strapped on each side of his chest and a sawn-off slung over his shoulder. He listens through the steel plates that form the cellar doors. These panels are tough, set into the concrete of a once-thronging sidewalk. The Commuters will never get through it. Spence keeps us waiting though. He doesn’t want to climb into trouble. Neither do we.

  My guess is nine out of every ten people in the Station put themselves up for the daily crew lottery. That must seem like craziness but there’s something more to it. Most of us had jobs before all this. I used to work as a hairdresser only a couple of blocks away. I spent my days cutting, coloring, bleaching, styling, talking shit to the customers. Can’t say I was a big cog in society’s machinery but I had my place. After the world went quiet we all lost that sense of who we were. Most of us lost our families and friends – the people who gave us our identities. The world lost its face too. Suddenly it was a place none of us recognized. So we seek order. We impose order. We need to know who we are.

  Crewing gives us back a sense of identity and purpose. It’s a job every Stopper respects, one that most of us want to do. And it must be done.

  Spence looks down at us and nods.

  He unclasps the padlock.

  He pushes open one half of the cellar door. A rope allows him to lower it silently to the surface of the street. He does the same on the other side and steps up into the city night. We wait. A few seconds later he whispers, “It’s clear.”

  One by one we climb the ladder into the night shift.

  We go to work.

  ***

  No TV or radio. No internet connection. It’s been like this from the start.

  The same questions occupy us every day. Is anyone else out there? If not in the city then beyond it somewhere? Holed up like us perhaps and struggling to stay alive? I believe it. I believe they’re out there but right now it isn’t safe to go. We can’t walk out of here. We certainly can’t drive. Whatever happened that day stopped every car in the city, every wristwatch, every cell phone. Anything with a spark of electricity running through it died and stayed dead.

  The only exceptions are simple things like flashlights. Take the flashlight apart, clean its components and put it back together. Bang, it works. Don’t ask me why. The one person in the Station who understands what could cause this is Davey Sontag. He says the only thing that could knock everything out that way is some kind of magnetic pulse. It could have been a weapon, he says. Or it could have been a big solar flare. The world’s still spinning but it went very quiet that day.

  Every once in a while we see a car we haven’t tried before and we turn the key. It’s like squeezing a pistol trigger and not even hearing a click. Silent and dead. I keep hoping we’ll run into some people out there, people like us but with some smarts. People who can get us moving again, get our train out of the Station.

  Once we’re up, Monty closes the steel doors just as carefully. Below, someone snaps the padlock shut. They’ll stay down there all night waiting for us to come back. Whether we’re early or late, they’ll be there to let us in.

  On the sidewalk we spread into a V like flying geese. Monty leads us off into the night. City nights used to be almost as bright as day at street level. Gleams from headlights and shop fronts, streetlamps and neon created electric day when the sun was too tired to continue.

  It’s different now. You’d expect it to be as dark as a forest on a cloudy night but it isn’t. In every street and from every direction comes a kind of light with no obvious source. It’s greenish and we see as though through night vision lenses. No one knows where the light comes from but it’s another thing we all think about. Some people like to discuss it, others keep their theories to themselves. You can’t put all these anomalies together and be glad about what it points to. We’re all trying to survive. Thinking about the worst thing that could happen might be realistic but it doesn’t do anything for your will to keep fighting. It doesn’t help you to stay alive.

  Sometimes, though, you can’t help thinking about it. It comes over everyone from time to time. That’s when the suicides happen. People walking out of the Station alone and unarmed without telling anyone. Then, hours or days later, we realize someone’s missing and search the whole Station in case they’re sick or there’s been an accident. So far it’s never been that. It’s been someone who’s stopped believing in the future and wants to get the waiting over with.

  Funny how they never slit their wrists or hang themselves. They always leave the Station. Perhaps they sense they’re dishonoring us by dying here when, in their hearts, they
’re no longer part of the place. Perhaps they’re ashamed of giving up. Or maybe, and this is what I believe, they want to see the outside world one last time. They want to walk unimpeded through the streets of the city, make a break for the city limits and try to see some place they’ve never seen before. I guess if they left early enough they could get out beyond the suburbs and see some open land. Maybe. They’d have to walk hard and fast. Or they’d have to run. Do they just walk to a park bench not far away and imagine the sights and sounds of the city all around them as though it was a perfectly normal day? Maybe they do that instead of waiting for nightfall. One last beautiful day in the city. The way it used to be.

  Sometimes I think suicide creeps up on a Stopper and they don’t even know it. The subconscious tells them their life is over but the conscious mind won’t accept it and they just keep fighting to survive. Stopper’s with this problem become machines. When this happens, they can’t win. Some deep instinct overcomes everything you thought you believed. An animal in the wild would lie down and die.

  Mistakes. That’s what gets the subconscious suicides. Accidents. Those are the worst. The ones who believe they’re trying to stay alive when deep inside they’re already dead. Those are the ones who fight it when the time comes to die. They go the hard way, never giving up.

  Makes me sick to think about it.

  It’s simple, what it all comes down to: get them before they get us.

  Do everything we can to make it hard for them, do everything we can to discourage them from coming near us. Reduce them. Cut them down. Course, all we really seem to do is make them desperate, more determined.

  I love the daylight in a way I never could before the Long Silence began. The moment I can see without a flashlight or lamp I’m up. It seems safe in the daylight but we’re still not certain. Now and then we still lose Stoppers during the day. We just never find out whether they meant to disappear or not.