Revelations

There was nothing he could have done. That’s what he had to remind himself every time something like this happened. He could not have prevented it – he had not known.

But it hit him harder every time – he couldn’t make himself a stone statue like the others. He would never get used to the carnage. But he was here because he wanted to make it stop – to make a difference – even if it meant sacrificing himself.

There were at least a dozen of them – all mercilessly slain. Not even the children were spared. There were three of them – under ten years of age – staring blankly at walls splattered with blood. Had it been quick? They would never know that. Autopsies were rare these days – now the best thing to do was burn the dead to prevent an uprising.

A hand rested on his shoulder and he turned around.

“How can you stand to see this?” he said. His voice was dim and hollow.

“Experience,” was the response. “You’ll learn to do the same in time, Mickey.”

The man named Mickey slumped his shoulders. “It’s hard.”

“And it’ll only get harder. Remember that.”

That wasn’t what Mickey wanted to hear, but at least it was the truth. These days, honesty was respected above most virtues. Telling someone that everything was going to be okay was like saying that the sun was turning green. Things were never going to be okay.

A large, broad-shouldered man entered the room. He had an air of authority about him. A scar ran down the left side of his face, from the corner of his eye right down to his ear. And there was another scar on his neck. Two puncture wounds from years ago. He had almost become one of them.

“Burn ‘em,” he barked in a voice made gravelly from years of smoking. “Burn this whole building down.”

The other men followed his orders with silent adherence. The large man stood at the doorway, watching over everyone with a cigarette in his mouth.

Mickey unscrewed the bottle of kerosene and began dousing the bodies with it. He did his best to remove all emotion from his face, to show that he could be strong about this, but it was hard. Most of these men had been raised around this stuff, had the emotion weaned right out of them. But Mickey was still fairly new. He’d only been here a couple of years. He wasn’t properly hardened, so he worked extra hard to appear that way. Jace had seen through it though, from the very beginning.

“You might be foolin’ the others,” Jace said to him, doing the same task as Mickey, “But you’re not foolin’ me. I can see the sorrow on those baby blues of yours.”

Mickey heaved a great sigh. “It would be easier to be a statue, with a heart of stone. But I haven’t been at this as long as you. Blood, I’m used to. Everyone is. But seeing so many bodies... every day? Never.”

The house wasn’t well-stocked when it was searched. It held much out-of-date food and threadbare sheets, curtains and clothes. It was deduced that this group had meant to spend just one night under the shelter of this run-down house and move on at dawn. They had been ambushed.

Crosses were nailed at every entrance and exit and garlic hung from hooks on the ceiling. Many of the deceased held vials of holy water or stakes in their hands. One or two held a gun filled with wooden bullets. Mickey guessed that there must have been a whole party of vampires, which meant ten, as was the standard number.

“Poor sods never stood a chance,” muttered Philip, who had recently arrived from Britain.

“It looks as though they were heading for the city,” Mickey said, feeling confusion. “Why the hell would they do that?”

He looked over at the team leader, the broad-shouldered man named Stan. Stan frowned, making him look all the more menacing. He took a few puffs of his cigarette and growled, “there must be some kind of rebel camp in the city.”

“In the city?” Jace shook his head. “What kind of craziness seized them to make ‘em wanna go there?”

“There are plenty of underground facilities,” responded Stan. “They musta stumbled across one. When we get back to base I’ll tell the Director. He’d be interested to know.”

Mickey glanced at the bloodied bodies, now soaked with kerosene. Why had they put themselves in such danger? Why did they want to go to the city? He could never understand why they would wish to take themselves into the most dangerous place in Australia. But what was more, he didn’t know how they had managed to make it so far without being killed by vigilante groups along the way.

After the place was doused with kerosene the men were ordered to leave the building. One of them lit a match and dropped it at the threshold. The place was up in flames in seconds.

Mickey watched for a few moments with a deep sadness aching in his heart. Jace told him it was best to close off his heart for this job but it couldn’t be done. Mickey had always been lead by his heart – perhaps that was his weakness.

Two helicopters settled noisily down and the men, numbering about fifteen, climbed in. It was best to vacate the area as soon as possible, even during daylight hours. The last one to climb in was Mickey. He glanced over his shoulder at the burning building. Then he made the sign of the cross, and murmured a few words of prayer.

Most of the men made fun of his beliefs. He guessed that a lot of them didn’t believe that there was a god out there. But he had to believe. He had to believe that there was something out there, beyond all this. He had to believe that one day, things would get better. If not, he didn’t know why he bothered living.

As the helicopters rose into the air, whipping the wind around them, Mickey saw the flaming beacon and whispered, “Amen.”