It only took fifteen minutes to round up the troops and sneak around to the end of the abandoned building.  If there really were only two troops in the building, one would be busy trying to make the hit, while the other would provided cover.  Lennux grimaced as he looked at his troops.  The best of the messiah’s forces were inside of the courtroom watching the prisoner who was bound at the wrist, so Lennux was stuck with ill trained attack dogs.  Many of the dogs had not yet set foot on the battlefield with the undead, let alone participate in a gunfight.

            So many things were going to change when Lennux became God.

            Now, Lennux stood outside of the target building with thirty troops.  The incompetent guard, who reported the snakes, stooped next to Lennux, with a blank grin on his face.  He couldn’t remember the soldier’s name, nor did he didn’t care.  The idiot would be dead soon anyway.

            “Lieutenant, I want you to go first.  Check the fifth floor,” Lennux ordered.

            The dog obeyed his master.

            “You check the eighth floor, and you check the sixth,” Lennux said, pointing at two other troops.  “Check the windows!”

            Lennux shouted his warning, knowing that the assassins might hear him, but caring.  The heathens would know they were not alone in less than a minute.

            The temporary lieutenant reached the fifth floor before either of the two others reached the second.  The guard opened the window and entered.  He disappeared inside for a couple of seconds then poked his head outside.

            “I think it’s safe to…” the dog’s words were cut short by an explosion, which threw his body outside of the window.

            Twenty-nine, Lennux though with a grin on his face.

            The other two troops he sent in were a bit smarter.  After seeing the fate of their comrade, the soldiers both opened their windows at the same time and climbed down a floor, and waited for ten seconds.  Both windows had been rigged with grenades.

            The fire escape did not buckle under the weight of the guards, so Lennux figured it was safe.  He split the surviving troops into three squads, and sent each into one of the floors which had been breached.

*

            “They’re in,” Jack said after the third explosion, and took a step outside of the room.

            “Wait,” Helen said.  “Stay in here, let them set off some more traps.”

            Jack forgot all about the traps they had set.  There was only one fire escape intact, so they strung fishing wire to the windows and around the pins of grenades.  If anyone opened a window from a fire escape, the act would mark the last ten seconds of the intruder’s life.  There were also grenade traps rigged on the stairwells, as well as a few other obstacles.  It was possible that every intruder would be killed before finding Jack and Helen, but they couldn’t afford to count on it.  The cultists seemed to be more than mere humans, but a supernatural juggernaut, indestructible and unstoppable.  They were a single entity existing for the sole purpose of destroying all civilized life.  And the only thing that could stop them was a pair of refugees.

            “When you hear them coming down the hall, start shooting.  They’ll come in from the staircase,” Helen shouted.

            “I can handle them.  Just take the shot.”

            “Calhoun hasn’t stepped near the window!”

            Jack wished he had a better throwing arm or a rocket launcher.  If he could get a grenade through the window, they wouldn’t need to aim or wait for the messiah to step into view.

            “How many troops do you think they sent after us?” Jack asked.

            “I don’t know.”

            Jack heard shouting a few floors above, and a few floors below.

*

            Rudy Piper was only eighteen years old, and had not seen much action, but now he was serving the messiah.  He was leading a hunting party to gather the heads of those who would defy God.  Rudy was finally serving his lord, and it felt good.

            He had been sent in on the eighth floor, and had been smart enough to wait for the trap to go off.  Rudy saw what happened to Garret, and he wasn’t that dumb.  He didn’t know why Commander Lennux put him in charge, but the mistake had been short lived.  Garret had not been worthy, and he had paid the price.

            The floor squeaked under Rudy’s feet and he moved out of the room where the grenade exploded only five minutes ago, shattering the window.  The corner where the grenade had been was now blackened, but not on fire.  There seemed to be no structural damage, but the building was in such ill repair that the troops were going to have to be very careful regardless.

            But they would succeed because they had God on their side.  Rudy was honored to be serving such a divine purpose.  Many of the men next to him would not live to bask in the glory of the kill, but they would live out the rest of eternity in the blessed afterlife.  Their bravery would be repaid, but Rudy himself felt invincible, perhaps even immortal.  He would walk out unscathed and deliver the severed heads of the two heathens to Commander Lennux.

            He wondered what kind of honor the messiah would bestow upon him.  Surely he would be repaid and his days of fighting lepers would be over.  He would participate in the next raid and exterminate more than just these two heathens.

            Rudy was the first to leave the room.  The hallway outside was dark, and the floorboards creaked under the soldiers’ feet as they marched.  None of the rooms had doors, and nobody popped out of an empty doorway and spat the sulfurous fire of hell.  Rudy inspected the side overlooking the executive building himself, but there was nobody there.

            “We’re going to have to search the lower…”

            Rudy was cut off mid sentence by a loud explosion coming from the floor above.

            “Move to the stairwell!”

            Rudy ran to the stairwell, followed by his troops, who kept pace.  The run was only ten yards, but it seemed twice as long.  Rudy lost all sense of time, so for all he knew the run could have been two days or a miniscule fraction of a second.

            When he finally reached his destination, Rudy poked his rifle up the stairwell.  A large, muscular soldier moved next to him and pointed a shotgun in the same direction.

            A cloud of smoke hung in the air in the upper portion of the stairwell, but there was no fire.  The stairwell was dark, so Rudy could not see if the walls were as black as the ones in the room they came in through.

            “Hello, you alright up there?”

            There was no response.

            “Is anyone up there?”

            Again there was no reply.

            “Oh lord,” the big soldier said.

            There were nine soldiers in the group upstairs, which cut the number of friendly soldiers down to twenty.

            “We move,” Rudy said.

            Rudy led the charge down the steps.  He wanted to get out of there before the evil that took the party upstairs could get his troops.  Now Rudy was beginning to wonder if God really wanted him to win.

            When Rudy reached the third step down, he tripped over something and tumbled down the stairs.  Rudy had stumbled on some kind of a trap.  He knew it, and tried to yell out for his troops to run back, but his voice was lost.

            Rudy hit the ground head first, and heard a nasty snap.  He tried to get up but couldn’t move his arms or legs.  Again, he tried to yell, but his throat was so dry, and breathing was so hard.  He could feel the energy draining from his body, but he couldn’t feel anything below his head, which pounded like a mad man trying to get out of a cage.

            He saw an explosion engulf the top of the stairs.  Their cries were short, but terrified.  With his troops all dead, all Rudy could do was wait for death to take him.  Unworthy for the task and now he knew he would spend eternity burning in hell for his sins.

*

            Lennux heard the explosions above, and knew he was going to have to be extra careful.  There was no telling how many of the troops had been killed.  Aside from the ten troops currently under his direct command, Lennux might have no reinforcements.  The soldiers were all dumb enough to rush into a trap in one large clump, but Lennux was smarter.  If a situation called for it, he would sacrifice a couple of troops one at a time to get to the snakes, but he would not be anywhere near the front of the formation.

            The traps set were all grenades, or at least they had been so far.  The grenades took ten seconds to detonate after the pin was pulled, so they were most likely either a little ahead or a little behind the trigger.

            Lennux looked around for the weakest of his troops and found one who seemed to fit the bill.  Towards the front of the squad, there was a scrawny soldier who was only about five feet tall.  He looked about fifteen years old, but was probably sixteen or seventeen.  The boy had a face covered in zits, and a quick and merciful death now would probably save him the pain of thousands of rejections from women, and a life alone.  Assuming the kid wouldn’t have been killed in battle or a freak accident.

            “You,” Lennux said, pointing his finger of death at the child.  “Check the stairwell and see if anyone else is on top.  The rest of you, stay back here.”

            They were about twenty yards behind the stairwell, which was probably enough distance to shield the rest of the troops from an explosion.  Lennux would be safe if he backed into one of the rooms, but he wanted to see the configuration of the explosions.  He would be able to tell if there was just one grenade or several.

            The kid moved forward, with his rifle aimed at the stairs.  The poor little shit probably expected the heathens to materialize in front of him and pull him down to hell.  Maybe he thought they would suck his blood like vampires and suspected bullets would not kill them.  Whatever the kid thought, he was trembling.  The floor creaked under the soldier’s feet, and he looked back at the rest of the troops, who stepped back another ten yards.  The soldier then moved to the stairs and paused at the bottom.

            “Go on,” Lennux urged.

            If he wasn’t using the kid to defuse traps, he would have shot the little coward on the spot.  A good soldier was a fearless robot.  If an attack dog was going to piss its pants every time it was given an order, what good was it?  Hell, if the kid survived the battle, Lennux would kill him.  Urged by his commanding officer, the kid began to move up the stairs.  He made it about three steps up, and then stopped again.

            What the hell, Lennux thought.  That’s when the kid turned around.

            There was a look of utter terror on his face, and there was a growing wet spot on the front of his pants.  The kid had served his purpose.  Lennux grinned, and waited as the kid just stood there, paralyzed with fear.

            Finally, after the longest ten seconds of Lennux’s life, there was one explosion, six stairs up, and another at the bottom.  That was two grenades.  Lennux ducked into the closest room, and most of the other soldiers did the same.  As he heard shouting and screams outside, he hopped the damage was minimal.

            As soon as Lennux picked himself up, off of the floor, he stuck his head, and M-16 through the doorway.  To Lennux’s delight, most of the injuries were minor flesh wounds.  Three soldiers had been grazed by flying shrapnel.  One soldier had been hit directly in the leg, and would move pretty slow.  Lennux would use him if they had to defuse any more traps.

            The rest of the soldiers were perfectly fine, but they did not wait for Lennux’s order to charge the stairs.  Lennux wanted to make sure the top wasn’t rigged too.

            Before he could yell out to the idiots, two more grenades detonated at the top of the stair case.  Natural selection was working overtime today.  And Lennux only had four troops under his command.

*

            “They’re at the top of the stairs!” Jack shouted.

            “I hear them.”

            Jack had almost wet himself when he heard the explosion at the top of the staircase.  His mind’s eye saw an endless line of soldiers armed with automatic weapons running up the stairwell.  There would be more troops than Jack would be able to shoot and there were no more traps between him and the cultists.  Jack was Helen’s only defense.

            “Jack, cover the hall.  Wait ‘til they’re away from the stairs to start shooting.  Take out a few before they get a chance to take cover.”

            “Got it.”

            “And stay low and try not to get hit.  I don’t think I’d forgive myself if you died.”

            “I’ll try.”

            Jack kneeled by the doorway, and used a mirror to view the stairwell from the door jam, just like Helen instructed him to do earlier.  He saw two forms moving at the top of the stairs and waited.  One emerged at the top, and limped into the open with a rifle in his hand.  He’d probably been injured by the grenade and was now being used as to draw fire.  Jack would wait to strike until someone else emerged.

            Less than a second later, Jack got his wish.  Another soldier reached the top of the stairs and walked into the hall.  Without thinking or taking any time to aim, Jack turned around and sprayed the hallway with bullets.  The able bodied soldier took hits to the shoulder, leg, chest, stomach, and head.  His body toppled backwards and tumbled down the steps.

            The injured solder returned fire, but missed.  Jack fired again and hit him in the shoulder.  The soldier dropped his rifle, pivoted, and tried to run, but Jack shot him in the back.  The dead soldier fell flat on his face, where a puddle of blood formed under his body.

            Jack aimed his rifle at the top of the stairs, and saw a gunman.  The soldier was using the stairwell as cover, only breaking the surface with his head and rifle.  The gunman opened fire, and Jack dived behind the doorway across the hall.

*

            After the first explosion, the trial stopped.  The crowd was being held in the room by the guards, and Sam assumed that anyone who attempted to leave would be shot.  The second and third explosions triggered a panic among the cultists inside of the room.  The spectators in the crowd ducked under benches.  Sam’s guards were still watching him as though nothing happened.  And the messiah’s guards looked like they were about to shit a collective brick.

            Half of the blood soldiers were kneeling by the elders, who were under their table.  The other half were trying to talk the messiah into hiding with the elders.  But Calhoun did not want to cower.  The scar looked like he was about to have a heart attack.  The other blood guards put their hands on Calhoun’s shoulders.  Their messiah pushed them away.  He seemed to want to inch closer to the window.

            Sam was both amused and intrigued by the spectacle in front of him.

*

            Lennux waited at the bottom of the stairs behind the two troops left under his command.  Propped against the wall next to Lennux was the body of the pimple faced teen who’d set off the first grenades.  It was mostly intact, but the skin and clothes were charred.  Half of the boy’s face was missing, and the left leg was gone.  There was a huge splatter of blood on the wall where the boy had been standing, and there was a crimson and black puddle under the corpse.

            A few steps up, the bodies of the four fools who charged the stairs were stretched out with their faces in eternal war cries and their bodies forever broken.  Lennux pulled out his sidearm and shot all five corpses in their skulls.

            At the top of the stairs, the two surviving troops opened fire at the hallway above.  At least they were smart enough not to get shot right away.

            Lennux crawled near the top of the stairs on his belly and pulled the two soldiers down a couple of steps.

            “You,” Lennux said pointing to the soldier on the left, “charge the hall, I want that little shit dead.”

            Lennux looked at the other soldier.

            “You give him some cover.”

            There was a short burst of gunfire from the hallway above.  When the shooting stopped, the two gunmen moved to the top of the stairs.  They opened fire, then the dog on the left stood up and charged into the hall.

            Lennux crawled to the top of the stairs and began firing at the right side of the hallway.  The gunman next to Lennux was firing at the left.  Wherever he was, the snake was hiding in his hole.

*

            The doorjamb exploded into splinters around Jack and more gunfire shattered the hallway outside.  Jack wondered how Helen was doing, and he wished she would get a shot soon.  He could use some help.

            Jack reached down for the rest of the grenades, but realized that they were in his back pack in the room across the hall with most of the spare clips of ammunition.  Jack only had two on his uniform.

            Shit!

            The floor creaked and boots thudded against the floor as someone charged through the hall.  The barrage of gunfire was providing the bastard with cover, while Jack hid.

            Without waiting for the gunfire to stop, Jack swung his upper body outside of the doorframe and let hell loose blindly into the hallway.  The soldiers at the stairwell ducked, but the one who was charging kept running.  The cultist fired at Jack, but missed.  Jack opened fire again, and the soldier’s head exploded.

            Before the body hit the ground, another solder charged at Jack, and the gunman who stayed behind opened fire.  Jack had no time to get away, so he aimed his rifle at the soldier.  To Jack’s dismay, he didn’t have time to shoot either.  The soldier clubbed Jack with his rifle.

            Jack’s M-16 flew out of his hands and into the room he had been hiding in.  For a second, Jack thought he was going to fall over, but he kept his balance.  With one fluid motion, Jack snatched the rifle out of the soldier’s hands, and without thinking tossed it to the end of the hallway.

            The soldier punched Jack in the face.  Jack kicked the soldier in the stomach, and pulled out one of his pistols, a thirty-eight caliber revolver, and shot the soldier in the head.  A spray of red escaped the cultist’s skull and the body crumpled to the floor.

            The firing from the stairwell ceased seconds ago, and Jack had lost track of the last soldier.

            Out of the darkness, a fist struck Jack in the head.  He flew backwards, towards the stairwell and landed on his back.  He tried to draw another pistol, but something jumped on top of him.

            A fist landed in Jack’s gut and he grunted.

            “Hello asshole,” the figure on top of Jack said.

            “Hi,” Jack said, reaching for his second pistol.

            The man on top of Jack was a large grizzly man with an unshaven black beard.  He wore all black.  He seemed to be less human than a primitive monster.  The monster punched Jack in the ribs, then grabbed Jack’s spare pistols and tossed them aside.  The grizzly man got up and pulled out a fifty caliber pistol, which could have splattered the contents of Jack’s head all over the hallway.  Instead of shooting, he stood over Jack with a twisted grin.

            “Alright you son of a bitch, you think you can take away my right?  You think you’re so tough.  Why don’t you prove it?”

            “What the hell are you talking about?” Jack asked.

            “You know.  You’re a pawn of the messiah.  I know he knows of my plan, but he’s failed.  You will fail.  Your messiah is nothing and soon all will kneel before the mighty Randal Lennux!”

            The man was a god damn giant, even larger than he’d looked through the binoculars.  He must have been six feet tall with solid muscle for his bulk.  His eyes were not human eyes, but something else.  The man was pure evil, and Jack began to fear that this thing in front of him would become a god.

            Jack swore he would kill this man, but a hand to hand fight would be no match.  Lennux would crush Jack like a roach.

            The grizzly threw aside his sidearm and pulled out a katana, which he also discarded.  In fact, Lennux threw aside all of his weapons.

            “Face me if you dare.  I can feel my power growing as my moment approaches.  The all powerful Judas is about to become God.”

            Jack got up and ran towards Lennux, intending to punch the bastard in the face.  Instead, a meat and bone wrecking ball crashed into Jack’s face, preventing the assault.  Lennux grabbed Jack’s skull and began to squeeze, but Jack kicked the grizzly man in the crotch.

            Lennux let go of Jack’s head and stumbled backwards.  Before he could recover, Jack punched him in the face.  He tried to kick Lennux’s ribs, but the grizzly man grabbed Jack’s leg and threw him backwards.

            Jack hit the ground, and bumped his head.  His skull felt like it was going to explode.  Jack’s side ached, and his breathing was incredibly fast.  Jack’s heart pounded inside of his chest as though it was trying to get out.  But Jack didn’t care.  He wanted blood.

            Jack rolled away in time for his face to avoid Lennux’s boot.  Jack kept rolling away and jumped to his feet.

            Lennux charged at Jack with the ferocity of an enraged rhino and there was nothing Jack could do to avoid the attack.  The collision itself would have been enough to nock Jack into the wall, putting a dent into the structure, but Lennux kept running like a damn freight train.

            The impact with the wall knocked Jack out cold.

*

            The struggle with the blood soldiers continued.  One of them grabbed the Messiah’s shoulders in an attempt to pull him further away from the window.  The messiah pushed away the blood guard’s hands and punched him in the face.  Then the messiah reached into his robe, and pulled out a thirty-eight caliber pistol and shot the blood guard in the head.  A red matter sprayed out of the back of the hapless guard’s head, and the body fell like a tree to a lumberjack’s ax.

            Sam didn’t quite know how to react, but kept watching in with both a sense of bewilderment and glee.  The messiah obviously believed that it was high time for a miracle.  Little did he know, the miracle would do more for the heathens than the loyal followers of the gray haired one.

            The messiah stepped towards the window.

*

            Battle raged outside of the room, but Helen was in a world of her own.  Nothing existed but the courtroom window and herself.  The window was a gateway to yet another world where Helen had to shoot.  The rifle was an extension of the sniper’s body.  She was no longer Helen York, but a hunter with one purpose: to eliminate a target.  The sniper’s mind’s eye pictured the target as a giant buck toothed mole in a suit and bow tie.  Such cartoon images had always made a dirty chore easier to accomplish by pushing moral weight aside until the job was done, though in this case it was habit.  The sniper had no qualms about shooting her current target.

            A lot of shadows moved past the gateway, two stories down, and across the pathway, but no solid shapes moved into the sniper’s sight.  Not even the coveted target.

            There was struggle on the other side of the gate, and a shot was fired.  The struggling stopped.

            The target stepping into view.

            “You Judas.  I took you under my wing and chose you to bear my seed and you betray me?  Well, you may take your shot, but I will rise and all the sinners on this world will pay.  And believe me, there is a special place in hell for you.  Take your shot betrayer.”

            The sniper sighed, and moved the scope down to the target’s chest.  Her finger began to tighten on the trigger, but something moved behind her.

            Drawn out of her safe place, Helen blinked.

            Her rifle was yanked out of her grip, and flew to the other side of the room.  Before she knew what was happening, a fist struck the right side of her face.  She caught another blow to the ribs.

            Helen grunted in pain.

            A hand caught her neck, and forced Helen against the wall.  To her right, was the gateway to the perfect shot.  Helen struggled against the hand, but another hand slapped her in the face repeatedly.  The free hand then moved to Helen’s chest and squeezed her right breast, hard.

            Helen tried to kick, but the body at the end of the arm was too close.

            The hand on Helen’s neck forced her gaze towards its master’s face.  Helen’s tormentor was none other than Randal Lennux.

            Images flashed through Helen’s eyes of the knife to her throat.  The whisper of the promise of death echoed in her head.  The feel of her clothes being ripped away from her body was vivid, like it was happening now.  The fear was as fresh as ever, but this time, Helen knew she would not be able to run or hide.  After Lennux was finished with her, he would kill her.

            “You little bitch.  You think you can steal what is mine?” Lennux snarled.

            Helen said nothing, but struggled at the claw clutching her throat with both hands.  Helen shifted her weight in an effort to overpower the hand, but a fist caught her in the side.

            “I just won’t tolerate that.”

            Lennux’s eyes traveled down Helen’s body, and then back up to her face.  Then his eyes drilled straight into Helen’s, savoring her fear.

            “It’s a shame I have to kill you.”

            Lennux grinned, showing the full yellow of his teeth.

            “But since you tried to take something of mine, I think it’s only fair if I take something of yours.”

            He moved in closer, smothering Helen’s body against the wall.

            Oh no, not again.

            Lennux looked back.

            “Hey asshole, I’m not done with you!” someone yelled behind Lennux.

            “Wha…?”

            Before Lennux could finish the question, a blade sliced upward, cutting him in the face.

            Lennux stumbled towards the window, clutching his face.  Jack stood in front of Helen, brandishing a bloody knife.  He looked at Helen, then at Lennux.  Jack moved in for the kill.  He raised the knife and arced downward, aiming to skewer his target’s adam’s apple.  Before Jack could strike, a hand caught Jack’s arm.  Lennux punched Jack in the face.  Then he punched Jack in the ribs, then again in the face.  Then he pushed Jack against the wall.

            Before Lennux could throw himself at Jack and pummel the poor kid some more, Helen swept Lennux’s feet out from under him.

            “You son of a bitch,” she said.

            Helen kicked Lennux in the ribs, but the blow had no effect.  Helen tried to kick Lennux in the face, but he rolled out of the way, and jumped to his feet.

            “Just take the fucking shot!” Jack shouted.

            Lennux turned around, and Jack punched him in the face.  Lennux head butted Jack and pushed the boy through the doorway.

            Helen retrieved her rifle and moved back to the window.

*

            Lennux followed the weak little mortal outside of the room.  The boy was no snake at all.  Lennux had overestimated him, and was very disappointed.  He expected some kind of a challenge before crushing the puny little rat with his fists.

            Though unworthy, the rat did get one lucky blow.  He still had both eyes, but Lennux now had a scar to match Reed’s.  Blood flowed freely from the wound and with each drop he lost, Lennux’s rage grew.  He could still feel the godly power growing inside of him and he knew that no matter what happened godhood was his.

            No that wasn’t quite true.  The bitch could stop him.  Lennux would have to kill the boy fast, for the Judas was the one to be feared.  The Judas was always to be feared.

            Lennux rammed both fists into the boy.  He then picked the child up and threw him towards the stairs.

            The boy landed with a violent crash.

*

            The target was still standing in the sniper’s sights.  The mole in the suit and bow tie was still taunting her.

            The sniper made sure the rifle was aimed at the target’s heart then squeezed the trigger.  The messiah grabbed his chest and fell backwards like he had been hit by a tree trunk.  He was dead before he hit the floor.  The cultists would be in for a shock if the messiah hadn’t tried the cure.  All Helen could do was wait.

            Several guards moved around, and there was a lot of confusion.  Sam and Zach were surely executing an escape, so they would need help.  One of the former messiah’s red garmented elite guards crossed the window, and Helen shot him in the spine.  He died instantly.

            Below, the troops were too busy controlling the massive, panicking crowd, so Helen concentrated her fire inside of the courtroom.

            The chaos grew larger with Helen’s every shot, whether she hit someone or not.

*

            Jack landed near the stairwell, right next to the body of the formerly injured cultist Jack shot in the back.  Jack pulled himself a little closer and reached for the fallen soldier’s belt, where there was a thirty-eight resting in a holster.  Jack only hoped that mere bullets would be enough to slay the mighty Randal Lennux.

            Jack heard footsteps approaching followed by gunshots at Helen’s window.  The footsteps stopped.  As Jack struggled with the holster, he hoped to God she hit her target.

            “So it’s been done,” Lennux said.  “It looks like I’ve underestimated you.  This means there is only one thing left for me to do.”

            The footsteps approached again.

            Jack freed the pistol from its prison and rolled onto his back.

            Lennux was only three feet way.

            Without aiming, Jack emptied the chamber into Lennux’s chest and torso.

            Lennux collapsed and his lifeless body leaked blood all over the floor.  Two false gods had fallen.

            All in a day’s work, Jack thought.

*

            When Helen heard the gunshots, she remembered Jack and stopped shooting.

            Oh God no, don’t let him be dead.  Don’t let him be dead!

            Helen dropped her rifle and pulled out a revolver, which she had forgotten about when Lennux attacked her.  Helen cursed herself and rushed into the hallway with the gun pointing in front of her.

            She saw Lennux laying face up, dead with six holes in him.  Hatred swelled inside her, for the dead thing in front of her was still an affront against all that was good in the world.  Helen emptied her revolver into the dead creature’s skull.

            Helen fell to her knees, and tears rolled down her cheeks.  With the empty revolver still in her right hand, Helen rubbed her eyes with both hands.

            “Helen,” Jack called out.

            The boy was lying on his back, only a few feet away from Helen’s side.  She wiped her face with her sleeve and crawled over to him.

            “Helen.  Are you okay?  Did he hurt you?”

            “Yeah,” Helen paused, “I’m better than I’ve been in a long time.”

            Jack sat up, and winced as he climbed to his feet.

            “Come on Jack, let’s get the others.”

*

            As soon as the first shot was fired, all hell broke loose.  Most of the guards inside of the courtroom were busy containing the crowd.  Other guards were rushing around the room.  Two guards had been killed by sniper fire, and now their bodies and the body of the messiah were being dragged away from the window.

            Of the crowd of onlookers a few had panicked and tried to run, but were stilled by the guards.  A few of the panicked spectators had been shot in the head as they tried to flee, which set an example to the others.  Other spectators only watched the courtroom.  Some sat placidly with shocked expression.  Others watched with anticipation as though expecting the messiah’s corpse to rise up and stop the madness before his greatness hit room temperature.

            They were in for an eventual surprise alright.  The messiah would rise again, but not in the form they expected.  Sam saw the shot, and it only hit Calhoun in the chest.  His brain was undamaged by his death.  The exulted messiah would rise and seek the flesh of the living just like any other person who died.

            In the mean time, Sam was trying to escape.  His two guards had been distracted long enough for Sam to slip away, but they were hunting him now.  Nunchucks was searching the wrong side of the courtroom, but the guard with the tranquilizer gun was two feet away from Sam, searching behind the benches, unaware that Sam had slipped into the doorway and was now behind the hunter.

            As the gunman bent down low, Sam grabbed the guard’s skull and twisted his head like it was the cap on a soda bottle.  There was a snap as the guard’s neck broke, and Sam let go.  The body hit the floor with a thump.

            Sam grabbed the tranquilizer gun.

            The two guards closest to Sam saw the action, and were now charging into battle.  They still seemed to want to apprehend him alive.  Maybe they wanted to hold him until their leader returned and could pass judgement.  If they hadn’t wanted Sam alive, they would have simply shot him.

            Sam fired, hitting one guard in the neck.  He fell to the ground, unconscious.  Sam pulled the trigger again, but the gun clicked empty.  Sam grunted and gripped the barrel, brandishing the rifle as if it was a club.

            The second guard did not slow down, but ran right into Sam’s swing.  Sam expected the rifle to shatter in his hands, but it didn’t.  Sam savagely beat the butt of the rifle against the guard’s skull until he heard a satisfying crack and blood and gray matter spilled on the floor.

            Sam discarded the tranquilizer gun for the pistol on the dead guard’s belt.

            Nunchucks was still unaware of Sam on the other side of the room and amazingly, none of the other guards seemed to catch any of the action.  The panicking in the crowd grew more violent as three more spectators were shot.  Some of the placid spectators were driven into a frenzy by the shots fired into the crowd.  Others ducked under benches.

            Sam moved to the guard he shot with the tranquilizer gun.  The dart was still sticking out of the front of the soldier’s neck.  After tucking the other pistol into his waistband, Sam grabbed the guard’s pistol.

            It would be easy enough to slip away from the courtroom undetected, but Sam wanted to make sure the cure was not in the compound before he left, and getting out with the medicine would not be so easy.  If it was in the compound, the cure would probably be located in Calhoun’s quarters.  The problem was that Sam had no idea where the messiah’s quarters were.

            The surviving blood guards were rounding the elders under their table and guarding their position.  They were assisted by several of the regular guards in black attire.

            The elders must be some sort of a council, Sam thought.

            If he could grab one of them and hold him at gun point, it just might give him the leverage he needed.

            “Hey, drop the gun!” a familiar Jersey voice shouted.

            When the guard ran within thirty feet of Sam, he fired the pistol.  The bullet tore through the guard’s throat and he hit the floor trying to hold the blood in as he died.

            “Hey, stop him!” a voice shouted.  The scar pointed in Sam’s direction.

            Four guards drew their guns and opened fire, but the scar’s declaration gave Sam enough warning to leap behind the benches, where the guards were still busy.

            The four soldiers moved in on Sam’s position, and Sam knew he was about to die.

            Suddenly, the guards stopped in their tracks and the crowd stopped panicking.  The courtroom fell silent.

            The messiah sat up.

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