Temporary Rest

That is not dead which may eternal lie, and in strange aeons even death may die - H.P. Lovecraft

The last enemy to be destroyed is death – The Apostle Paul

Prologue

Dr. Bradley Williams began the end of the world on a Saturday in June in the year 2023. It had been a long road to his most significant (and little did he then know, most infamous) discovery, but in the end, the years of hard work and research and experimentation all accumulated in a 38-minute procedure that changed forever the course of history.

“This is unnatural. No human being should be put through this.”

Dr. Williams let out an exasperated sigh and inwardly cursed for the thousandth time that day the government which, though they had provided the grant necessary to cover the expenses of this procedure, had also provided (much to Williams’ chagrin) an “aid” to “help” make sure everything went smoothly with the use of that large sum of money.

“Frankly, Mr. Daniels, I couldn’t care less what your opinion on my life’s work is. And neither, I am quite sure, would our patient here, or the hundreds or thousands or even millions whom this procedure could save. This procedure could eradicate the effects of infections, diseases, even cancer like the one that has eaten up poor Mr. Morton here over the last three years, and your superiors have poured millions of dollars into making this cure a reality, so you’ll have to excuse me if your case of heebie-jeebies don’t take top priority at this time in this laboratory.”

“I understand that, but don’t you think –”

“What I think is that I am ready to begin and that if you’re not, that you are welcome to leave now.”

James Daniels let out his own sigh and shook his head.

“Fine. Let’s get to work.”

Get to work they did.

38 minutes later, Christopher Morton opened his eyes.

1

The first fit of fear came over Joshua when he looked out from the stage and saw the emaciated man with the long, dirty hair shamble past the open doors of First Methodist Church of Hopedale and, after a brief disappearance, begin to peer in the windows at the back of the sanctuary.

He had to have climbed up on the bench to look through that window. Why not just look through the door? Or better yet why not just come on in? Why-

“- good yet?” Art asked him, interrupting his thoughts.

Joshua blinked then took a deep breath, trying to calm himself.

Come on Josh. You grew up in Worcester and you’re put off by a homeless guy? South Shore living really softened you up, eh?

But it was more than just the man’s disheveled appearance. The church Joshua grew up in was attended week by week by at least 20% homeless folks and his family and himself helped to serve the free after-service meal twice a month for the entire time that they worshipped there. No, it wasn’t the man’s unkempt hair or even how thin he was that freaked him out so deeply; there was something off about the man’s walk. It wasn’t like that of someone with an injured leg or foot, or even like the stagger of a drunk. It looked more like the man was an extremely oversized toddler, just learning to use his legs.

He blinked again and began to turn towards Art, his gaze following just behind the movement of his head.

“Sorry man, kinda spaced out for a second there. What’d you say?”

Art smiled a crooked smile, one eyebrow going up.

“I said, are you good yet? Or have I serenaded you to sleep with this beautiful, slightly out-of-tune E?”

He plucked out the E a few more times on the old rollaway church Yamaha for good measure.

Joshua laughed, and thought it sounded almost genuine.

“I think that ought to do it. My guitar should be at least tuned to the piano. Of course, whether that piano is tuned to literally anything else in the world is another matter. Let’s start from the top of All Creatures of Our God and King”

Art nodded and began to play the intro.

Joshua readjusted the capo on his guitar and then looked up again to the back windows. The man was gone. He let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding in, feeling a twinge of guilt at his relief. Beginning to strum, he pushed thoughts of the man aside, closed his eyes, and sang the first verse.

When Joshua opened his eyes, the man was back: this time, he had made his way inside the church. A sheen of sweat appeared almost instantly on Josh’s forehead as he realized the man, sitting in the back row, was looking directly at him. The man began to smile at him, but the smile did not reach his eyes. That’s when Joshua realized the second thing that had freaked him out so much about the man, this revelation perhaps even more frightening than the first. The man’s eyes, Josh could see even from the stage, were blue. However, they were not sky blue or electric blue or even a pale blue: they looked milky blue, as if the man’s eyes were covered in cataracts or as though the color were partially drained out of them.

The man continued to smile as an extremely pale woman wearing a navy-blue dress and a heart-shaped locket around her neck came in and sat directly next to him. Her eyes, though brown instead of blue, had the same milky, cataract-covered quality as those of her pew partner.

Josh heard the piano stop abruptly and then heard Art say in a broken, cracked voice,

“Jen? Jennifer?”

Josh snapped his head over to Art, who had gone as pale as the ivories on which his slender fingers rested.

“Art, are you okay, man?”

Josh looked from Art, who completely ignored him, to the new arrival, who turned her head jerkily towards Art and began to smile that same empty smile that the first man had turned towards Joshua.

Art began to mutter under his breath, his chest expanding and contracting more rapidly now, his head beginning to shake back and forth.

The woman spoke.

“Hello, Arthur.”

Art’s breath hitched and then stopped and then he fell off the bench.

“Art!” Josh yelled, ripping his guitar off his shoulders and running to where his friend lay.

“Itsnotpossibleisawheryesterdayitsnotpossible” Art babbled through his hyperventilation.

“Wow, wow, slow down, man, I can barely understand you. What’s impossible? Who did you see? What – ”

Art reached up and grabbed his shoulder and then began to speak in a rasping voice.

“Joshua, Jennifer died three days ago. I played piano at her wake yesterday. I don’t know who that is or what’s going on here, but - ”

That’s when the shadows fell on them and Joshua turned around and saw not just Jennifer and the other man, but at least half a dozen people, all with milky eyes and empty smiles, standing over them.

They all spoke in unison as they reached out their hands towards them.

“Hello, Arthur.”

2

It wasn’t until months later that The Day of the Sightings (as it came later to be known) and all that followed was able to be traced back to Dr. Williams and it wasn’t until weeks after that that he was hanged on the hill where, in Decembers past, a Nativity scene would be set out for all of Hopedale to enjoy. But at that point, the hanging was pointless, except maybe as an act of rage and revenge; there was nothing that the doctor or anyone else could do to close the door which had been so foolishly and yet so painstakingly thrown open. Now there was only learning to survive, learning how They worked and, just as importantly, learning how (and when) They did not work.

“Why do They hate us so much? Why can’t we all just live and let live?” Corrine asked as she snuggled up closer to Imed in their lean-to shack at the edge of Duxbury beach.

“I don’t know.” Imed said, nuzzling his chin against the top of her head. “I guess because we’re just a plague to them. Our feelings, our compassion, our… our souls weigh us down past the point of usefulness in their eyes.”

Imed and Corrine had found each other a week or so after The Day of the Sightings and instantly took a strong liking to each other, deciding that they would try to make it on their own, having no desire to join up with what was shaping up to be a rather large group of survivors lead by a brutish and boisterous man named Brent.

Corrine yawned and looked up at Imed.

“So what’s our next step then?”

“Well, my next step is to go sleep.”

“Ha ha, funny guy. Really, what are we going to do tomorrow? You said you had a plan?”

Imed started to answer and then hesitated, rubbing his right hand from his stubbled cheek up to his hair and smoothing it back as seemed to be his habit when he was thinking deeply.

“Well, I was thinking it might be a good idea to go down to the remains of Williams’ laboratory and see if we can find any notebooks or computers or video logs that weren’t completely destroyed by the fire. If we could find something from the doctor himself, it may very well go a long way to explaining what makes these… things… tick and if they have any vulnerabilities.”

“You really think we’ll find anything of use? I heard Brent’s Bunch of Brainiacs really lit it up with those Molotov Cocktails”

Imed laughed.

“From what I hear, they were pretty lit up themselves and weren’t exactly methodical in their attack.” He shrugged. “It’s something to try, anyway.”

Corrine yawned again and said, “Yeah you’re right. And on that note, I’m going to try to get some sleep. You should too.”

“Alright. Good night.”

“Good night.”

3

Thankfully, though They seemed in many ways to be a whole lot smarter than the survivors, They were fairly easy to differentiate from regular people. Along with Their ramrod posture and perfectly measured gait, They seemed to never travel alone.

After slowly making their way through Duxbury and back into Hopedale, Imed and Corrine finally got to the remnants of the lab around 11:30 that morning.

Imed went in first and then, determining it was empty, called Corrine in after him. They had not searched long before they found a notebook tucked away in a drawer in the charred remains of what seemed once to be a big lab table. Imed opened up the notebook and began to read through the progressively messier and more manic chicken scratch of the doctor as Corrine looked around a little more.

After about a minute or so, she found a laptop and called over her shoulder, “Imed, check this out, I’ve got…” Her sentence was cut clean off when she turned around and saw Imed’s complexion, which had gone an ashy gray. He mumbled something under his breath.

Corrine’s eyebrows drew together.

“Imed?”

“They’re… dead. They’re all dead. He used some kind of electricity to get their bodies running again, but they’re – ”

“Dead,” a calm, even voice said from the doorway. Imed and Corrine’s heads whipped around to see a man near the point of emaciation and a pale woman with a heart-shaped locket around her neck standing, watching them. The man smiled and began to speak again.

“Dead, yet far more efficient. Dead, yet able to make decisions unencumbered by what you refer to as ‘the soul’. Dead, but most definitely better.”

The man raised his hand, previously hidden behind his back, and revealed a small handgun.

“Won’t you come be better with us?”

The gunshot rang out across the laboratory.