I remember seeing it, when we visited family when I was a kid. My dad’s brother, my dad had come from Alabama, my dad’s brother had taken us to church, and I was just a young kid. The preacher was something else. I had actually liked it, I had never been to church before. The preacher was loud and fun, and people would get up and praise Jesus, and put their hands up, and I thought this was amazing, this was the real deal. But my dad, he looked disgusted. And things just kept building up and then people came to the front and the preacher, he would lay his hands on them, and then they would start speaking gibberish, and their eyes would roll up in their heads and they would start writhing on the floor. And my uncle went up, and started talking nonsense, and his eyes went white and he was on the floor, this big bear of a man, writhing like he was possessed, like worms were under his skin, and I was scared, real scared. And I begged my dad, I wanted to leave so bad, I was so scared. And then he was disgusted with me. But he went outside with me, I think he wanted the excuse anyway. He told me to man the fuck up, he said that a lot. He said they were just crazy, the people in there, not to be scared of them, they were just crazy. Religion, he said, was a mind virus. He had read that somewhere, a mind virus.
Later, when my uncle came out and we went back to his house, dad was watching TV and my uncle asked me what I thought about all that. I said it scared me. He said not to be scared, speaking in tongues, it was a sign that the Holy Spirit was present, that the Spirit had possessed them. That they were speaking the language of the angels, that that was what I had heard.
Well, what if the demons had a language too? What if that’s what everyone was speaking, why it was making them crazy, ’cause it was demon speak?
Joe was still praying, begging, I guess begging to get out of hell, and I just couldn’t’ take it anymore. I took two of the handguns and walked right up to the bars and starting shooting, aiming carefully, aiming right at their faces. And more stepped up, more got shot, and more stepped up, and more brains were blown out all over the others. And they didn’t care, some of them even ate it, and ate the fallen, and more were shot, until I had cleared just enough out of that one spot that I thought I had a chance, and I dropped the guns and lunged for it.
It was just barely out of my reach. I pushed myself through the bars as hard and far and fast as I could and got a finger on it and pulled it a little closer, another stretch and I moved it a little closer, and then I had it. And they had me. Steel like grips on my arm, and burning pain from them biting, biting hard and deep. What if I was wrong? What if it was like the movies and it was passed by being bitten? But it probably would’ matter, they were going to tear my arm off and I was going to bleed to death here in this cell anyway.
And then something went boom and all I could hear was ringing, but I felt another boom and another, close enough I didn’t have to hear it, and something was pulling me hard, pulling me away from them.
Joe. Joe pulled me to the other wall and started tearing his already pretty torn shirt and wrapping it around my arm above the bites. He was trying to stop the bleeding. It was tight, but my arm wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Hell I could still move my fingers. And it was still in them, my arm still had a vice grip on it. Joe’s journal.
I handed it to him and thanked him and grabbed his arm and pointed to the words on it and to his journal. I knew the writing on there was something to remind him, I had seen the Doctor point to it and to his journal. And then I passed out.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
From the journal of Jude Guerrero
12/25/2012
I was reading my journal, remembering the only way I knew how. I had treated Tim Toms wounds while he was out, using our shirts to wrap them and stop the bleeding. Wasn’t’ much more I could do right now. Then I started reading, catching up. Ignoring the demons, the affected. I had started to think of them as demons in the last hour or so, while my memory was going and I was trying to make sense of what was going on and I couldn’t. At first I thought maybe this was an Iraqi prison, and these other prisoners were just insane. Maybe they were experimenting on them and had given them something or driven them crazy. Or maybe this was some kind of mind game, brainwashing, like sleep deprivation or something, and they were trying to make me insane. Break me so I would talk. Then I realized how grotesque they were, and started thinking they were demons. And I was in hell. In hell because I had never believed. Had never believed in a God. And for a while there I did, I believed, and I begged for mercy, begged for forgiveness. And, hell, maybe I still do. For how long, who knows? Can you have religion when you can’t remember being religious? Could a soul be saved that didn’t remember its own sins?
I was reading, and then writing, and thinking about these things I had no place pondering upon under these circumstances, when I heard something. It sounded like an engine. I noticed a few of the affected in the back had left, to go see what it was. I wasn’t at the point in my journal where I knew if anyone else was left. And then I heard a siren, a loud fucking siren, and more of the affected went to see what the ruckus was.
And then the wall fucking moved behind me. They must have come in quick because I had barely heard the engine before it hit the wall. When it hit some of the wackos must have been in the way because brains and blood came squirting through the barred window on the wall above us. Then the truck pulled forward and backed in again, hitting the wall and crushing a few more affected.
Tim Tom was up by this time, “The delivery van!”
I had no idea what he was talking about. Then the back door slid up and open and there was a tall guy with glasses — he looked like shit.
“Doctor!” yelled Tim Tom.
“My God,” the doctor said, “you’re both still alive.”
This must be Dr. Gates, he was in my journal.
“Well, it took you long enough,” I said jovially because I really didn’t know how long it had taken them.
“Sorry, we thought you were probably dead until we heard the gunshots about 40 minutes ago.”
Tim Tom looked at me and shrugged. That’s right, the journal had said he wouldn’t understand us.
“It was Tim Tom,” I told the Doctor, “he was getting the journal for me.”
“Oh, yes, you remember me, don’t you?”
“No, but I’ve read about you.”
“Ah well, not much time now, they’re trying to get in the truck. We still have the welding equipment, do you think that we can cut the bars with it?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
And older women, wild looking but pretty, brought the welding stuff up.