Ark of Fire

CHAPTER 73

The place does have a decidedly charnel house feel to it, Caedmon thought as he hurriedly ushered Edie across the abattoir.

Hopefully not a harbinger of things to come.

Shouldering open a rickety door, he motioned Edie through. A second later, they emerged into another dimly lit room, this one with a high-pitched ceiling and an arched window set into the gable. Heavy chains dangled from the rafters. Elaborate cobwebs adorned all four corners. Overhead, a pair of sparrows flew through the broken panes of glass, the abandoned abattoir having evidently become a makeshift aviary. The menacing space would have made a black-robed inquisitor feel right at home.

Quickly, knowing he had but a few moments to set the trap, he shoved Edie toward a rusty metal cart, that being the only piece of “furniture” in the room.

“Get yourself behind the cart. And for God’s sake, don’t move,” he tersely instructed.

Satisfied that she was out of sight, he placed the long-handled garden hoe on the floor near the door, the blade pointing upward. In what he hoped would be Sanchez’s direct path. Then, removing the ax from his pocket, he positioned himself in a dark, cobweb-strewn corner.

Knowing he would have but one chance with the dully honed ax, he waited.

A few moments passed in tense silence. Then, as though scripted, the door to the cavernous room creaked open.

In the next instant, Sanchez, looking like a battered chimney sweep, slowly entered the room, gripping a semiautomatic pistol in his right hand. A powerful weapon, it could blow a man’s head clean off his shoulders. Two steps into the room, Sanchez came to a standstill, scanning for the slightest hint of movement.

Don’t move, Edie. For the love of God, don’t even think about moving.

Caedmon held his breath, hoping that the other man didn’t glance downward, the hoe innocuously set some six feet from his booted right foot.

Tightening his grip on the ax handle, he mentally envisioned the attack. A practice run. Having bowled many a cricket game while at Oxford, he first imagined hurling the ax in a straight-armed delivery. Knowing he wouldn’t get the desired height, he replayed the scenario in his mind’s eye, this time with bent elbow.

He spared a quick sideways glance at the cart, relieved to see that Edie had faded into the shadows. His gaze then ricocheted back to Sanchez, who had taken a tentative step forward.

He calculated the other man to be three steps from the upturned blade of the hoe.

Then two steps.

One step.

As planned, the instant that Sanchez’s booted foot landed atop the blade, the hoe handle flew upward, hitting him square in the face. Like a child’s top, Sanchez unsteadily wobbled. With the element of surprise now on his side, Caedmon stepped out of the shadows and hurled the ax toward the other man’s chest.

A dust-laden beam of light from the window glinted off the spinning ax blade.

Instinctively Sanchez twisted, his arm protectively shielding his heart, parrying the blow as best he could.

The dull blade caught him on the right bicep, slicing deep. But not deep enough; Sanchez grunted as he grasped the ax by the handle and yanked the blade out of his arm. His eyes glazed, but still cognizant, he searched the room, a gun in one hand, the bloody ax in the other.

Seeing Caedmon standing in the corner, he narrowed his gaze.

Slowly, in no apparent hurry to kill his quarry, Sanchez aimed the powerful pistol at a point somewhere in the middle of Caedmon’s head.

There being nothing he could do to stop the bullet from reaching its intended target, he defiantly stood his ground.

Smiling, Sanchez pulled the trigger.

A dull click.

The smile having suddenly vanished from his lips, Sanchez pulled the trigger a second time. Again, the only sound was the hollow click of the firing pin.

Sanchez was out of ammunition.

With a muttered oath, he dropped the gun. Then, in a quick blur, he was on Caedmon, swinging his arm, the ax blade aimed at his soft underbelly, the man clearly of a mind to eviscerate him. Caedmon leaped sideways, the blade missing him by a scant inch.

Out of the corner of his eye, Caedmon saw Edie lurch to her feet.

“You bastard!” she screamed. Wild-eyed, she grabbed a chain from a nearby wall hook and began swinging it over her head like a medieval mace.

Endowed with enviably quick reflexes, Sanchez pivoted in Edie’s direction.

Which is when Caedmon lifted his left foot off the ground, ramming his wellie into Sanchez’s kidneys. The well-aimed kick propelled the other man several feet, smashing his head into an array of metal instruments hanging from the wall. The ax slipped through his fingers, falling to the floor.

Not giving his foe time to recover, Caedmon rushed forward. Securing one hand against the back of Sanchez’s skull and the other against his spine, he rammed the brute’s head against the metal cart.

The rickety walls of the abattoir shook with the impact.

Sanchez, a stunned, owl-like expression on his face, rolled into a fetal ball. A moment later, he opened his lips. To speak or scream, Caedmon knew not. The only thing emitted from his gaping mouth was a bright red trickle of blood. A second later his body shook with a mighty spasm, his feet convulsively jerking. Caedmon suspected that the other man’s brain battled on, still sending fight-or-flight messages to his limbs, his brain refusing to accept the inevitable, refusing to lie down and quietly die.

Edie turned her head, unable to watch Sanchez in his death throes.

A few seconds later, Caedmon placed a comforting hand on her shoulder.

“He is gone. Where to, I can not say. Although I suspect he will be refused entry to the heavenly realm.”

Edie glanced at the sprawled corpse. Deprived of that bit of animating spirit called the soul, bulging muscles were flaccid, eyes open wide in a ghoulish stare.

“I need to get out of here.” Pushing him aside, Edie staggered toward the door.

Going down on bent knee, Caedmon quickly searched through Sanchez’s pockets. The search concluded, he followed Edie out of the abattoir.

Silently they stared at the wreck of a farm. On the wet breeze Caedmon heard the creak and groan of rotted wood. In the distance, a dilapidated shutter rattled against an equally dilapidated window frame.

“Now what?”

“If we are to steer the ship through the dense fog, we must remain calm,” he told her.

“Couldn’t you have come up with a more uplifting cliché?”

“Sorry. My brain is a bit mashed.” He showed her the cell phone that he had discovered in Sanchez’s coat pocket.

“Do you think MacFarlane will give chase?”

Caedmon thought about it for a moment before finally shaking his head. “He has the Ark. That is all he cares about.”