Lazarus Rising

1.7 The Churchyard

It was dark and it had begun to snow. A grey snow borne of belching industrial chimneys, spewing blast furnaces and the ash of the dead, falling from the city incinerators in a flurry of soft, grey, angels wings.

Huge flakes of ice bound, crystallised ash swirled in the darkness catching the light of Cheyenne's torch as she made her way through the narrow alley toward the churchyard. Goose snow, some people called it, in reference to the similarly coloured grey baby goose feathers that danced along the shores of Grafton Lake long after the winter geese had departed.

Cheyenne moved in the lee of the buildings that surrounded the high railed walls of the overgrown churchyard giving her some protection from the bitterly cold wind that tore up little tornados of snow and raced them along the track, back toward where she'd left her aero. Under the shelter of the buildings the snow had yet to settle, on the other side against the crumbling stone wall that marked the church boundary the snow was starting to build up in drifts like folded blankets of soft, warm wool.

Ahead, at the very limits of her torchlight, caught in the blur of whirling snow she could make out something moving on the ground. She assumed it was an animal caught in a trap but as she came closer she could she it was the flailing form of a human body lying in the wet ground by the entrance to the churchyard. She knew instantly what it was.

A dying Riser lay, head forced up against the wall, arms thrashing uselessly around him, legs twitching uncontrollable as if gripped in an uncontrollable fit. His white suit was a patchwork of sticky glistening stains which as first she thought was blood but then realised was the pool of mud he was lying in.

A horrible thing seeing a dying Riser at the end of his life, brain intact but body overworked to the point of failure. Legs that could not support him, arms so weakened he could not lift himself from the clinging mud. The slow degradation of his muscles and flesh begun at the point of reanimation, had finally captured him. As she came closer his head fell sideways so he could see her. He stopped flailing and watched her approach in the darkness. He had a wretched face, it reminded her of her Haydens, sallow and gaunt, containing the peculiar allure of the near dead.

She crouched down and pulled the dead weight of his body until he sat almost upright then carefully brushed the snow off his head and face. She could see he was struggling, the pupils of his eyes were rapidly dilating and shrinking as he tried to fix his gaze upon her, his mouth opened and closed as if he was gasping for air.

With a startling quick move he grabbed her coat and pulled her close to him. "I ... saw... the... devil..." he choked. He released his grip then fell back, jaw moving uselessly up and down like a clockwork mechanical toy running down.

"What? What did you say?"

She leant down close to him. He smelt of decaying flesh and engine oil. His jaw moved up and down a few more times and then fell slack. His watery eyes blinked up at her, she could tell he was alive but his faculties had finally failed him, in the way all Risers bodies eventually did.

She did her best to smile reassuringly at him but was conscious that it probably appeared thin and unconvincing. To make up she placed her hand reassuringly on his chest and then feeling his detached pectoral muscle shift alarmingly under his skin, quickly withdrew it.

"It will be alright, someone will come." She made a show of taking off her jacket in the hope it might distract them both, laid it over his chest and tucked it around his shoulders. She couldn't bear to watch him any longer. She stood, walked under the teetering Lych-gate into the graveyard, turned off her torch and waited.

In the glow of the febrile reflective light thrown up by the glistening carpet of snow she could make out the gravel path leading up to the derelict church and the looming shadows of a line of fir trees stretching out ahead of her. There was no sign of the Metro Captain. After waiting impatiently for a few seconds she stepped off the path, made her way silently toward the church and ducked under the spreading boughs of a giant yew tree. There she stood and waited while her eyes became accustomed to the dark.