Centurion: Mark's Gospel as a Thriller by Ryan Casey Waller Read Free Book Online Page A

Doosh. Doosh.
I fear it will never end.
    No one bothers to glance our way as we pass; they appear lost in their individual worlds. I don't hear a single person speaking to another, not that I could with the noise, but still it's severely unsettling to see this many people jammed into a small space with no one appearing interested in anyone else. It's almost as if they can't see one another.
    That's when the penny drops. These people aren't in their right minds.
    A girl who must be several years younger than me is leaning against the wall. Her eyes catch mine. She has fiery irises, and she smiles wildly as her fingers unfurl from a syringe. She drops the needle, and her eyes roll back into her head.
    The seizure starts after that.
    I stare wide-eyed at the young girl who has just fallen to the mossy floor. She has collapsed into the fetal position, and her seizure has stopped. I fear she's dead. I move toward her to help, but she's enveloped into a fold of men who lunge and grope for her discarded needle. I stumble backward, tripping as I try to escape the scene. I turn and stroke my arms over people as though swimming through rough ocean waves. Each person I shove past stares at me with open eyes that do not see.
    I find Maria in the thick crowd, her dark skin standing out among the ashen faces. I grab hold of her shoulder and demand an answer. "What is this place? Where are we?"
    She keeps moving, her eyes focused on a destination beyond the mass of people. "We're almost there," she says quickly. "I promise. But we
must
keep moving. It's not safe...especially here. These people are cannibals. They'll eat us alive—and savor every bite."
    We carry on like this for at least another two hundred yards, bobbing and weaving, pushing where we must, until the cohesive glob of humanity begins to break apart and there's finally room to draw a breath of air untainted by human waste.
    I inhale deeply and catch Maria's sweet smell once more. It's enough to keep me moving.
    Maria continues to walk with a confidence that suggests she knows this dungeon well. We take a decisive left out of the crowded hallway and pass through another archway that's guarded on either side by two men wearing long black robes with hoods. Neither seems to have a weapon, but my body tenses just the same, preparing for the fight I know is coming; I feel it in my bones.
    The passageway is narrow, with room for only one person at a time. Maria leads the way. Neither hooded man moves as she passes, and while I can't see either face from beneath the shadows of their hoods, both men issue snakelike hisses as I brush past their shoulders. I'm narrowly beyond these men, if that's what they are, when a long hand reaches out from the robe and scrapes my arm with the sharp claw of a wolf.
    I jump forward as blood flows down my arm. The passageway is pitch black, and I walk blindly, clutching to Maria for guidance. While the absence of light makes for an even more terrifying journey, here—in this tunnel that feels like a crypt—we find our first respite from the deafening roar of the techno beat. With each step we venture into the abyss, the noise settles deeper in the recesses of the awful place we've left behind. The silence, however, is a small consolation for the growing dread of walking into a black hole.
    Maria whispers to me as we shuffle along, "How is your head? You took quite a fall."
    My head.
I've all but forgotten the episode with the bank guard. I reach around to feel that my gun is still secure in the waistband of my pants. The adrenaline from our escape suppressed any pain I might have felt, but now it blossoms to painful life on my chin and deep within the sockets of my jaw. I pat my face with my bruised hand and feel that my jaw has begun to swell. I stick a dirty finger into the gash on my chin; it's sticky and warm with blood.
    "I'm fine," I say. "It's nothing I can't clean myself."
    "Nonsense," she says. "I'll bandage you after we speak with