The Last Mission to the Vandals

I swallowed the heart-shaped locket without a sliver of hesitation.

The Vandals encircled me like grotesque effigies, sunken eyes gleaming within druidic headdresses of petrified flesh and bone. They rifled through my possessions in silence – the Southern Vandals had long lost their capacity for speech in the Great Undoing. Speculation ranged from industrial solvent abuse to mass vaporization of the vocal cords via atomic shockwave. The truth, however, remained elusive. Even voiceless, they were a people dreaded for their wanton brutality.

As the last itinerant man of the cloth in Texarkana, I worried only for their souls.

The necklace slithered greasy and cold down my throat. It coiled in my stomach like the meals of bark from the lean years – a dense, foreign lump like coal. Though I was certain the Vandals had not seen me gulp it down, the idea of the treasure’s temporary safety gave little comfort. A bald fear filled me as I watched my potential proselytes stamp about, gleeful in their profane attire, a horde of mutant anthropophagi condemned to trawl the wasted earth and forever tend the dwindling harvest of the Damned.

When they finished ransacking my belongings, the host began to communicate amongst themselves – progressions of complex movements like hand puppetry. I observed in horrified interest. After a long spell, one pointed at me where I lay aching on the ground. He was colossal and bore runic markings across his torso. With a pipelike finger he drew a circle around his scarred right pectoral. The host turned to look upon me.

I shut my eyes. Powerful hands gripped my underarms as I was hoisted to my feet. Someone slapped me. My eyes popped open as I released a piteous yelp. Several of the Vandals laughed, a susurrant croaking suggestive of a wet, punctured tire pumped full of air. Vision roiling, I found the big one – their clear chieftain – assessing me in my evangelist’s cassock with a rictus of fractured teeth. An inexplicable embarrassment warmed my brow.

The chieftain retraced his pectoral. A great drumming of chests erupted amongst my captors.

I prayed for strength.

o-o-o-o-o

The Vandals stripped me of my cassock and marched me the entire night across the ravaged prairie.

We took only a single rest. Dawn emerged as we reached the base of a small mountain, atop of which sat a ramshackle nomadic settlement. Exhaustion threatened to topple me as they forced me to climb, but I refused to yield. I had my orders. I would not fail St. Rico.

Lord, guide this treasure.

Morning staggered over creation with an ebbed fire as we approached the collection of ragged tents at the summit. The camp was nearly empty save some cookpits and an enormous altar at the center piled high with trophies of the doomed – pelvic bones, femurs, clavicles, ribcages – a bloodstained shrine to the mindless lizard dwelling in all men, which, when unleashed by war or pestilence, will turn his brothers into feasts for the running dogs of destruction without a second’s regard for codes or conduct. My heart spasmed as I saw the cardinal piece: a skull impaled upon a crucifix.

Hopelessness consumed me. I was not the first, despite what we assumed. How could I have ever completed this mission? Even the worst of the pagans were not so devoured by iniquity. The utter absurdity of the leftover world settled along my shoulders like a vest of stones. I wept.

The Vandals paraded me through the camp to a place beyond where makeshift cages containing prisoners lay by a cliff. A faraway valley stretched out below the precipice. My captors prodded me to an empty pen. Removing my bindings, they unfastened the bolt on the door and yanked it open. A foot found my back without warning, sending me plummeting to a painful heap inside. I heard their hissing, viperlike guffaws where I lay stunned as they relocked the door.

I struggled to my knees. The marauder throng had filtered away, leaving only the chieftain. A careless rage rankled in my breast. I spat toward him. The glob carried through the air like a little wad of paste and landed inoffensive two feet away. I clenched my jaw.

The huge Vandal smiled. He squatted and with three fingers sketched the Sign of the Cross over his chest. The blood departed my face. His grin widened, and then he was gone.

o-o-o-o-o

I woke from a fleeting sleep determined to continue the mission. Rubbing the rheum from my eyes, I sat up and poked my belly. The locket jostled jellylike within. I exhaled in relief. It had not drifted further through my system. Good. I still had leverage.

Sounds of celebration carried raucously over the prison from the Vandal camp. Looking about, I discovered a hollowfaced young woman in the cage nearest my own. She hovered over a mound of stained bedspreads. I scooted to the steel bars and leaned my mouth through a gap.

“Are you alright?”

The woman started to panic. She hunched quaking over the coverlets like a beggar shielding an exclusive prize. I lifted my hands and fluttered them in pacification.

“No, no,” I assured. “It’s okay. I am a man of God.”

Her expression slackened a touch. She seemed to evaluate me for a long time before she turned to scan the prisonyard. No Vandals lingered about. Apparently satisfied, she bent and retrieved a bundle from the bedspread heap. She cradled it to her and then pulled back a portion of its casings, angling it toward me.

My breath escaped as if I were crushed wholesale in a vice.

It was an infant child, little head wreathed in wispy black hair like dead cornsilk. It squirmed and gave a clogged cough as it cast its tiny gaze on me. Something behind my sternum warped excruciatingly.

“Mi hijo,” she cried with trembling lips. “Mi hijo no tiene comida en tres días. Ayúdame, señor. Ayúdame, por favor!”

I careened back, dumbstruck. I spoke almost no Spanish, but I knew the child was failing. Frantically, I lifted a finger to my lips to urge quiet. She seemed to understand, nestling the bundle closer to her body.

What have you done, Lord?

The locket shifted in my stomach like an ill-gotten dinner. This treasure belonged to the fallen Order of St. Rico, designated a gift to entreat with the heathens. Many days in our tiny council had been spent deliberating its use. It would be an affront to Heaven to deviate from its purpose. I could hear the voices of the elders ringing in my head: ‘May this treasure bring light to the shadowed Vandals, bereft of the Word of God.’ I slumped with the weight of it all.

I did not know how long I spent drifting in that void until I heard a warble from the child.

Riddance to the mission.

I recovered, quivering, clutching at the bars of the cage.

“I can help you,” I said to the woman. My voice spun raw but strong from my gullet. “I can get you out of here. I have something. Something very valuable. Hijo. Comida. Freedom.”

Though it was obvious she did not comprehend my words, she appeared somewhat soothed. I checked the perimeter for Vandals. With a clear coast, I turned my back to the settlement.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the young mother watching as I jammed two fingers adjoined down my throat. Pulpy flesh like rotten oranges met my fingertips. I pushed and automatically convulsed as a wave of nausea swept my body. Saliva filled my bonedry mouth and coated my hand. I pushed again; bile flowed forth and splattered into the dust. I could feel the locket stirring. Almost there. I pushed with a renewed vigor.

The necklace ejected past my hand and landed to the ground with a sodden thud.

I seized it, digits dripping with digestive broth, and turned to the woman. Her soft face was stricken. I slipped a fingernail beneath the clasp and flicked the heart open. The treasure nearly tumbled out. Taking it between my fingertips, I held it up for her to see.

A shard of diamond, dazzling in the sun.

I grinned, panting. She returned it timidly. I made to speak, but a feral pounding of feet close by drew our attention.

The Vandal leader emerged with two others a short distance from our cages. His companions clouted their chests with vehemence, but the chieftain froze, studying the perfect gemstone I held aloft. Juvenile wonder possessed his vulturous features. My anger returned.

“You like this?” I spat with a delirious fury, waving it around. “You want this worthless thing?”

The leader hushed the others with a motion across his shoulders, followed by some command that involved flicking his fingertips down to his navel. He then alone approached, gradually, concentrating on the gemstone.

“No,” I barked, flashing my palm. The Vandal chieftain stopped sharply. I pointed to the woman and child and then to the gate of their cage, pantomiming the process of opening it. “You want this gift? You let them go.”

Confusion wrinkled the leader’s painted forehead. I reiterated the opening motion, then pointed off into the distance. Once more. And again. I continued this until the big Vandal appeared to grasp my offer. He wheezed caustically in response, moving to close the gap to my pen.

Terrified, I bellowed a garbled warning and cocked my arm, aiming the diamond toward the abrupt crag some yards away. The leader halted again, unease replacing aggravation.

“Come any closer, and I will launch this damn thing so far you will spend weeks trying to find it,” I said, pantomiming my threat. “First, release them.”

I knew instantly he understood. He returned to the others and gestured furiously to the coterie. Sweat drained down my face and back but I did not move, keeping my arm poised. Our captors conferred for an agonizing time until the chieftain eventually gave a signal. His attendants hurried to the mother’s pen and opened the door.

Tears leaked down her cheeks as she gazed at me. I flapped my free hand madly.

“Go!” I howled. She glanced at the grimacing Vandals and back to me before scurrying out of her enclosure with the infant hugged to her breast. She wove through the prison, making her way toward a spot where the decline was least steep. Our fellow prisoners broke into enfeebled hollers of delight. I kept my eyes on her form until she disappeared over the lip of the mountain.

The chieftain stared at the gemstone with naked anticipation. I shook my head indignantly, violently.

“Oh, no. We’re going to wait awhile.” I imitated the earlier fingertip-flicking directive. Stay put. “We’re going to give it a good, long while.”

o-o-o-o-o

I kept the Vandals at bay until the sun well surpassed the rim of the world. They had become enthralled by the stone. Members of the camp gathered feverish at the prison border to witness the treasure as drums began to thrum like the detonations of payloads. I allowed then an apology to callous Heaven for this catastrophe of a mission. There would be no opportunity to reach them, now. Darkness would bind them unremittingly until some mightier spirit arrived.

Yet, even then, I did not feel so much as a kernel of the sting typically accompanying forsaken duties. Serenity received me.

I beckoned the chieftain forward. His tense frame loosened, perhaps comforted by the prospect of finally obtaining the gift.

As he reached my cage, I wound my arm back and hurled the gemstone through the bars with all my might. A frenzied beating of chests broke out as I watched it sail over the precipice, refracting the pale kiss of the moon for an instant before vanishing into the night.

The big Vandal dropped to a knee. His mouth hung open in stark astonishment. I smiled and performed the Sign of the Cross.