Knock Three Times

33. Martyrs

                NOTHING REMAINED BUT DEATH beneath a blackened sky, as a fierce and unholy wind blew like a haunting omen from the west—an omen of dark things to come. As the torches which lined the massive temple rippled in their mounted chalices of fire, their glow barely touched the countless empty eyes that now peered this way and that, unblinking and eerily still. Mounds of human meat were scattered throughout the Wastelands and within the grand satanic temple that towered high above a sea of mutilated despair.

    Though the brutal war between light and darkness had began with a vicious roar, it had ended with a whispered dread, as the last of the cloaked soldiers of darkness fell at the blade of a single police officer in an unsettling silence. He looked up from his gaze of conflicted madness, his body covered in blood and sweat, a piece of an ear sliced off and a huge bite mark on his shoulder, which saturated a deep crimson though his shirt.

    A cleansing rain fell from on high, but did nothing to sooth the grief of a noble leader, as it was in his nature to feel responsible for all who had sworn an oath under the Chief's leadership. The sole survivor stepped over the corpses carefully, for he roamed through the lost dreams of the finest men and women he'd ever known. His heartbroken gaze met their haunting glares in erratic flashes of lightning from above, each strobe a scattered reminder of once lively brethren, silenced forever in blood and merciless mutilation. Each face he knew well, brothers and sisters both through profession and Masonic fraternity.

    Chief Saunders wept as he looked into the lifeless expression of a rookie cop he had hired not a month prior, fresh out of the academy and barely able to grow a beard. Saunders had hired him over the other applicant because he was a newlywed with a child on the way—a fatherless child after this night. A decorated sergeant lay near, a known crack shot aim awarded many metals for her bravery and talent in the line of duty, now stewing in a giant cauldron of blood and organs, her body ripped from neck to pelvis and her innards pouring outward onto the floor. A charred man lay burnt to ash on his left, his badge somehow still reflecting against the crimson sky, clinging to the black sooted remains of Leonard Dawson, a dedicated officer who had only just made detective a few days prior.

    Every turn of his hairy cheek was another promising future laid to waste—another cluster of happy memories slain in the face of an evil he could not comprehend.

    As the clashing of swords and screams continued from on high, he flopped down exhausted on a pile of still red cloaks. His bitterness toward the damned justified their cursed vessels to be used as furniture. They were all sick and murderous villains, worthy of nothing more in his mind. He could piss on them all and not feel a damn thing.

    He caught his breath, dabbing the blood and sweat from his face with a section of red fabric, and feeling the sharp sting of his severed earlobe. He then spit on the still face of a traitorous city official to thank him for the loan.

    Reaching forth with a tired groan, Chief Saunders grasped an officer's radio, being ever so careful not to disturb the body, and engaged the button on the side of its casing, but there was nothing but silence—not even the calming hum of radio static. Bloody fingers rotated the power dial on, Timothy fully expecting nothing but silence, but he was suddenly grateful that the tiny green power light had flashed on and the static lightened what little remained of hope. His fallen officer was vigilant enough to wrap the battery in electrical tape, as Detective Jenson had suggested.

    'Is there anyone out there?' he waited for a moment, but could hear nothing but the low hum of static. 'Anyone at all? This is Police Chief Timothy Saunders requesting immediate assistance.'

    Nothing.

    For a devastating moment he thought the whole of Belleville's finest had been out there, each and every one laying dead all around him. Even if he could, there was a part of him that would hesitate sending even more of his brethren to slaughter. He swallowed this thought with great difficulty, knowing the fight high above wasn't over, and the whole of humanity must not suffer their fate.