“Mrs. Edwards,” beseeched a little red-headed girl, “Can I play White Princess with Meghan and Natalie instead?”
“Not right now, sweetie.” The teacher smiled. “You can play that next week how about? Dietrich and Luigi, would you go and bring over the four copies of Future Family so we can set up the games?”
For the next hour Rick watched his wife preside over game play. The children, even the European refugees, escaped from their world into the folding boards and colored pieces of Stewart’s games. They smiled, laughed, and clapped their hands. Looking on with mild envy, the adults longed for days when plastic and illustrated cardboard could erase, even fleetingly, their troubles.
Chapter 21
In the ill-lit gym, the vice president’s epidermis looked gun-metal. He wore shorts and a thin-string tank top that hung low like a cooking apron. Around his neck he wore the Mr. U.S.A. medal. The gray weights, the gray rubber floor, the gray sky—all blended soothingly in Smith’s eyes. He walked to a large window and delighted in the chill that managed to penetrate the glass. Low lying gray clouds streamed by—and he twitched with a brief spasm of vertigo. Was he looking up toward the sky, or was he standing, inverted, peering down into the current of a gray ocean? Where was gravity—was it pushing or pulling?
He closed his eyes to reorient himself, but before he opened them again he saw his father. The man was dressed in an expensive black suit. He was tall and powerfully built, but a scowl darkened his face. He was slowly shaking his head in fifty degrees of disgust.
“You bring shame on our family,” Smith whispered aloud, eyes still closed. He clenched his fists until his nails were tested against the layers of calluses along his palms.
“What you do . . . who you are . . . makes me sick,” the vice president uttered, and his eyes darted frenetically beneath his lids as if in REM sleep.
“I don’t care how far you go . . . I don’t care what job you hold, what money you make, what power you have—you’re a pervert, a freak . . . and you’re no son of mine.”
Smith’s lips quivered, and his wincing eyelids were fresh, thin dough applied over pies.
“Dad,” his lips writhed, “don’t you know . . . don’t you know . . .” The whisper died suddenly. “Don’t you know . . . that I can’t . . . fucking . . . help it?” he roared, eyes open and cauldron-black.
Smoldering, he marched toward a shoulder press in the gym’s corner. Bending down, he sandwiched three forty-five pound plates and ripped them from the steel branch that transfixed them. He slid them, all at once, onto the bar. Then he loaded the other side in a like manner.
He seated himself and scooted back, until the mid portion of the bar chafed the nape of his neck.
“You think I ever really had a fucking choice?” he asked his reflection in a mirror. “Do you? Well how stupid are you? Why the hell would anyone choose this for themselves, Dad? Your body tells you who to be attracted to—it’s involuntary—it’s like fucking digestion.”
Aligning each ring finger with a groove on the bar, he sat up straight. The plates grumbled among themselves like faintly disturbed cymbals as the bar rose from its catch. The liftoff from the back of his neck was an explosion of power. He raised the bar high above his head until his elbows nearly locked out before permitting a measured descent. After the ninth repetition he was unable to slow the bar’s downturn and it slammed home in its catch. Gravity had won.
“If you could see me, you wouldn’t care at all about this.” He brandished his medal amid heavy breathing. “And you wouldn’t care about this.” His eyes spanned the room. “Because all you could see me for was a so-called pervert!” he bellowed, tearing off his lifting gloves and hurling them to the floor.
“Look at me now,” he addressed the mirror. “You think I’m despised by God as an abomination? You still think I’m going to hell?” His eyes darted to the floor momentarily, as if in a lapse of conviction.
“Well, I’m not! Divine Color loves me and doesn’t judge.” He placed a hand on the mirror. “Actually, I’ve become a super man, Dad. I’m not a sissy like you said I was. And I wish you were alive to see me so maybe . . . maybe, somehow, you could appreciate all that I’ve accomplished and I could make you proud . . .” His words had faded to a whisper again, but his breaths still came hard. Hand pressed against the mirror, he lowered his head.
By the time his ear vibrated, he had sunk down to a knee, the frosted trail of his fingers descending on the mirror nearly to the floor. His ear buzzed twice more before he answered the call.
“Hello. Smith here.” The greeting would have sounded robotic had it not been heavy with melancholy.
“Mr. U.S.A., how are you this morning?” Hommler’s voice was ophidian.
“Fine, Herbert, what can I do for you?”
“Nothing, really, just called to chat. All this gloom and low-lying fog here at my castle. It’s glorious! What is the literary term—sympathetic weather? Well, the net effect is indisputably gothic.”
“Then you must be . . . happy. Everything’s gray here too. Been this way for weeks.”
Smith thought he detected a chugging sound, as when a drink is rapidly imbibed.
“Ahhh,” breathed Hommler. “Last night I was reclining on my throne at the witching hour, watching Luna denude herself of misty robes through an open window. That’s when I think most clearly—at midnight.”
“I think most clearly after a workout.”
“How appropriate. My ruminations returned again and again to your victory at the bodybuilding competition. You’ve really caught the imagination of the American people with that victory.”
“Thanks, Herbert.” Smith noticed a faint blush on his cheeks in the mirror.
“You’re a spectacular athlete,” continued the vampire. “I mean, I truly believe, and I’m not just saying this, that you could have won that competition all on your own.”
“What do you mean? I did win it all on my own.” The vice president rose to his full height and his eyes were suddenly alert.
Hommler crossed his legs and reclined against the steel, ebon bat wings of his throne. His smile was the nick of a red pen on white paper.
“Scott . . .” The emissary’s voice was sibilant. “So how blind are you . . . really?” The vampire trolled his finger along a chalice, withdrew it, then licked it clean.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Herbert. I . . . I mean, those judges chose me over all the rest—even Charles and Hawas. I won that competition fair and square, and I did it with my masterful pose-down. I had the guts to line up with the two favorites. I said I’d gun them down, and I did. And then all hell broke loose—and you saved us with your prayer to Divine Color.”
“Well, you are right in two regards. All hell did break loose, perhaps more than you know. And I did invoke Divine Color to intervene, which It did. But can you really say that you won that medal fair and square?”
“Yes,” Smith affirmed, his jaw set. “The Mr. U.S.A. judging council is known for its impartiality.”
“But isn’t it funny the way people are willing to purchase their safety with tendentiousness? Though in this case those judges got a raw deal.” The fiend chuckled.
“No, no, no,” protested the vice president. “That’s untrue. I’ll call them myself to prove it to you. They received no compensation from Terry and they weren’t threatened in any way.”
“Scottie,” Hommler took a long sip of scarlet until his eyes rolled drunkenly, “the judges were turned to bloody jelly beneath the, ah, ‘inadvertent’ tread of our citizens. They’re all dead.”
Smith’s face tensed as if grieved.
“People died that night?” he asked, and gulped. “God, I . . . I feel horrible.”
Setting down his glass on a flanking pedestal, the vampire raised his upper lip and gripped the hoary craniums decorating the termination of his armrests.
“I find your word choice . . . and your sympathy, very troubling.” The fiend’s writhing lips were a ser
pent that had swallowed its tail. “Swan paid off those bastard judges to let you win. And if I ever hear you invoke God again, except in malediction, you will rue it.”
Smith gripped the medal around his neck with his right hand while the other covered his eyes.
“Why are you telling me these things? Why are you hurting me? This . . . this meant so damn much to me. And now I know, if you’re telling the truth, that it was bought in blood. Everywhere I turn there’s fucking blood!”
“That’s right!” Hommler spat, droplets propelling to the flagstones at his feet. “It is everywhere, and don’t you forget it!”
“I’ll forget it as best I can, and so will Terry. I’ll turn the blindest eye I can to all the hell that goes on in this world until Divine Color arrives to set things right. Because then there will be no pain, no hatred, and no death. And you . . . you’ll be parched I guess because all your precious torrents of blood will be gone.”
Hommler’s curled lip relaxed, and his eyes looked up toward his domed ceiling, painted like the night sky. Faintly, a smirk broke his face, followed by a toothy grin.
“For a moment I thought I may have lost you.” He sighed. “But your fealty to your god is strong.”
“My loyalty is unflagging, but not to you, remember that.” Smith clarified. “In fact, I’m your superior—I’m the vice president of the United States, and an American. You’re just the Secretary of State, and a pseudo-American.”
“Ah, so right you are, master,” patronized the vampire. “But enough of our fencing. I have some news to pass on to you that you may find intriguing.”
“What is it?” asked Smith suspiciously.
“Well, I was thinking of ways to continue to explore your newfound role as Mr. U.S.A. For once, we Americans have a representative that may be a bit intrinsically appealing to Alien males—well, for imitative purposes, I mean. Perhaps seeing more of your super-American persona will convince them to Americanize more rapidly.”
“What did you have in mind . . . a commercial?”
“No. Another sporting event. Actually, you could argue it transcends sport. If you were to win this competition, you truly would prove to the world that you are our finest, strongest, most athletic citizen. And you would strike a blow for homosexuals and bisexuals the world over who only have the tired name of Alexander the Great to cling to when their fighting prowess is questioned.”
“I don’t know what kind of event you’re talking about.” Smith stretched his deltoids to keep them primed for his next set.
“The Aztecs are hosting a grand fighting tournament in San Diego. The venue is out of our jurisdiction, and Swan won’t intervene with the judges. But just to be sure, don’t mention this to him until you’re on your return flight with the trophy in your hands.”
“What kind of fighting?” Smith asked.
“Oh, boxing and grappling, basically. But no need to worry yourself with that—you’ll blow those Alien scum to oblivion with your American guns. How big are they again?”
Smith blushed. “Uhh, they were twenty-six inches but I’ve been pushing really hard lately after I got my medal. So now they’re more like twenty-six-and-a-half. But that’s when I’m cold—if I have a pump they’re . . .”
“That’s amazing,” Hommler interrupted. “Wouldn’t you like to prove to yourself and the world that you’re the strongest man in the country? And wouldn’t you like to prove it by knocking out some Aztec nationalists? By Divine Color, they won’t stand a chance against your might! You could win this tourney with one hand tied behind your back!”
“I don’t know, Herbert. I’ve only been in a few fights in my life, and they were years ago in high school. I was okay, but I wasn’t great or anything.”
“Were you an American then?”
“No.”
“Had you sworn allegiance to your god, and been Colored in the shielding rays of Its spectrum?”
“No.”
“Are you bigger and stronger now than you were back then at the time of your prior fights?”
“Much.”
“Do you doubt the power of Divine Color’s iridescent plurality to bless you with unrivalled strength and prowess to vanquish the Aliens?”
“Of course not. I owe everything I am today to Divine Color. I devote my life to It.”
“Would the true Mr. U.S.A. shrink from the challenge to prove his strength to the world? Would he miss the opportunity to silence his critics that say he won his medal because of presidential influence? Because there are many Alien dissidents already likening you to a Roman emperor who enters games that are fixed in his favor.”
“When is it?” demanded Smith, his face resolute.
“November 15.”
“I’m there. Don’t tell Terry; he hates combat sports.”
“I won’t. And I’ll take care of your entry. Normally, I believe, a man without an impressive professional record wouldn’t even be considered at this level of competition. But I have a feeling they’ll permit your entry. How many Aztecs would give their heart to take a shot at President Swan’s right-hand man and the newly-crowned poster boy of gray America?”
“I’m sure plenty.” Smith felt a nervous chill rush through his body. A chrysalis was torn wide inside his stomach from where fluttered butterflies. The vice president gritted his teeth and shored up his determination.
“Scottie,” Hommler was a serpent gliding over coins, “you don’t have to do this. I mean, if you’re scared just tell me and we’ll forget . . .”
“No, I want to do this—this fight—whatever it is. I presume there’s a belt or trophy involved? Well, I want to take it out of Aztlan and bring it as a trophy to the House of Color. Maybe if I beat up on a few Aztecs I can show them what great warriors we Americans can be. Who knows? Maybe it’ll curb their ambitions of conquest. Maybe a personal battle between me and a ‘Tec could serve as proxy for a war between Aztlan and America in which millions are killed. We’re talking huge political ramifications here, potentially,” speculated the vice president.
“Indeed! Well, Divine Color will bless you in battle. I’ll keep you posted about your flight and time frame. Have a Colorful day.”
“Same to you.” Smith tapped his ear and prepared for another set of overhead presses.
Hommler blazed fire eyes at his favored acolyte, Keedu. The servant-wretch laughed in an inhuman manner, hands slithering nervously over his pate.
The vampire inverted his silver chalice over his mouth to catch some last drops of blood, then slammed it down.
“He’s fucking dead!” Hommler exulted, chin elevating, thin nose pointing toward a medieval chandelier. “Those Aztecs will beat that fool until he’s a bloody pulp. And if he makes it out of there alive, he’ll come limping back to Swan, and . . .”
“You will have your pretext for war,” puled the wretch.
“Pretext? Pretext? I don’t need a thrice-damned pretext! Those Alien scum kicked me and stomped me like an abused street-beggar. It won’t be a pretext—it will merely be my means to get the cogs of our war machine turning.”
Keedu gasped repeatedly and his eyes orbited. His breaths grew more rapid—he hated when his master grew angry with him.
“By Tiamat, man, get hold of yourself,” rebuked the vampire. “I want a seer, not a simpering, spastic basket case. With the way you act and fear me you’d think my name were Vlad Tepes.”
Chapter 22
Hans sprinted up the winding staircase to his father’s study. He would have told his mother first, but she was teaching. He would tell her tonight over a celebratory dinner. Within moments he found himself at the solid oak door to the study. A complex heraldic symbol was carved into the wood. In some areas the contours of the shield and its design were worn thin. When younger, the titan would wait here at the threshold to speak with his father—sometimes for hours—and trace the wood carving with his finger. He’d listen to the Beethoven and Bach, Chopin and Wagner transmitting faintly through the oak until
finally his father would open the door, his eyes strained from the glow of word processing programs and internet use.
It was in that room, Hans knew, that his father waited for emails and text messages that never came. As a young boy, his admittance to the room was unfulfilling. He’d talk at length about his problems, his dreams, his crushes, and his father would utter platitudes at regular intervals. His father’s real interest was the “check mail” button in the upper-right corner of his screen. He used to watch his father hit the button again and again. The progress bar would elongate then vanish in a shred of a second. Sometimes a new message would appear, and had the mail been tangible, Stewart’s speed with the touch-screen navigation would have translated to the furious rending of an envelope.
It was in that room that the family had received their last contact with Drake and Karl when Hans was fourteen. The last email, written by Drake, grimly noted that he, his brother, and a few hundred other Christian resistance fighters were under siege in the city of Lyon.
Hans remembered his father telling him about what he called “the beginning of the end” for Europe—“suicidal” immigration policies that favored non-Caucasian peoples, “suicidal” speech crime laws that criminalized any protest against the Muslim influx and displacement of indigenous whites, and the “suicidal” accession to the European Union by Muslim countries like Turkey, Morocco, and Libya. As a child, that’s what Hans found infinitely galling—that Europe’s destruction was facilitated, and even welcomed, by its white population. The willing, and sometimes gleeful supination on self-constructed altars by the people—their proffering of sacrificial daggers to the invaders—the bestowment of their wealth, residences, and families to the Muslims—and the shit-eating grin on their faces as the daggers rent their throats. Hans noted what his father had said—nature grants the wish of those who yearn for death, and wipes clean their imprint on this world for the impression of a new mark—the mark of those who yearn for life.
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