by Dina Rae
“Ah, full circle. Back to the beginning of our conversation. Still don’t get it, do you? Your DNA gives you another name, the mother of all names. Funny how you mention an abortion. You are the queen demon of killing children. You were Adam’s first wife. Because you refused to lie with him and obey him, you were banished from the garden. There is one thing very special about the Lilith though. She never ate the forbidden fruit. And because of that, she never fell. She became immortal and continues to live through you.
“Your genetic designers must have noticed your parents had the raw material and took advantage, carefully rearranging each gene perfectly, matching all twenty thousand of them to Lilith. You had to be the work of Sawyer and Westin. Am I right? They had preserved strands of Lilith’s hair. I asked them for a strand, just one strand. They refused to share. I have it anyway. It’s blonde, same shade as yours.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. My parents never mentioned any doctors. They had me designed because they didn’t want to see me go through all of the endless operations my older sister went through. Believe me, they were never part of your inner circle. Lilith means nothing to them or me.”
“Your sister was deformed? Yes, that’s a sign. Most definitely a sign. She, too, had the sequence. I could have fixed her without surgery! This baby is a sign. I am your Samael and you are my Lilith! We will marry, starting a new unification in this brave new world which our baby will inherit.”
The helicopter propellers were deafening. Two of them plus a heli-auto landed in the backyard. A mob of townspeople sacked the small army situated in front of Stephen’s house. They came to rescue me thanks to Raphael’s breaking news.
Stephen ranted more crazy tales of ancient lore, mentioning names of other ancient gods and demons who I never heard of. He ordered his guard to carry me into one of the helicopters. Laurie and his solider strapped me into the backseat of the four-person cockpit. Laurie sat next to me. He brought a wooden box with him and tucked it behind his legs. The soldier and pilot sat up front. We lifted off of the ground. Max and a Peacekeeper jumped into the heli-auto, and four surviving Peacekeepers from Laurie’s home filled the other helicopter.
We were only fifty feet off of the ground. I had an incredible aerial view of the chaos ensuing down on Gallagher Street. The beautiful, majestic neighborhood had turned into a warzone within minutes. The Peacekeepers below fought a losing battle as more trucks and tanks blew up. Dead soldiers littered the ground. The mob must have found our arsenal. My Patriots were brilliant.
I banged on the window, doubting anyone below could hear me over the loud propulsion, but a few were already looking up. One of the men in the mob even pointed upward. My helicopter kept ascending.
I was about to fly off into the sunset with the Prince of Peace and live happily ever after in Hell. I still had one more option. I unclicked the seatbelt and discreetly sat on my buckle. In the hasty getaway, I doubted the pilot or Stephen remembered to lock the doors. I thought of Raphael’s Patriot, Jun. He had the courage to hang himself.
Any second from now, I would dive out of a flying helicopter. Jaxie, the martyr. Jaxie, the suicide jumper. Would I go to Heaven or Hell for this? Being in Hell by myself was better than being there with Stephen. Maybe Raphael could make a statue of me and name it ‘The Patriot’. I could stand over the new Capitol Hill or the new White House. Just do it already!
Laurie’s eyes shifted down towards the crowd. In an instant, I let the seatbelt retract and pulled the door handle. It was not locked, but the power of the wind kept the door from opening. Laurie still hadn’t noticed. This was my only opportunity. With every pound of my body, I pushed the door open and wiggled out of the opening.
“What are you doing?” Stephen yelled.
My legs dangled out of the helicopter and I slowly slid into the icy air. I felt myself beginning to fall until Stephen grabbed my arm. The helicopter swung sideways.
“Forget about it!” He yanked my torso back in the helicopter. I writhed out of his grip and started to slide out. Had it not been for the wind that kept the door from fully opening, I would have been splattered in his backyard.
Stephen unbuckled his safety belt for better leverage. My body felt the ice of the wind as it hung out of the cockpit. A couple more inches to go, and I’d be dead. The soldier upfront leaned back and yanked at my sweatshirt, preventing me from dropping into the sky. The pilot lowered the helicopter. We hovered less than one hundred feet over the roof of Stephen’s house.
The wind caused the vehicle to lose control. The helicopter swayed side to side like a boat in a stormy ocean. I thought about my Sensei. Using my legs for leverage, I flipped Stephen over me. Now his body hung out the door. His hand clutched to the door handle as he dangled outside of the helicopter. Using my best roundhouse kicks, I violently kicked at his hands and head until he let go. Down he fell to the ground of his backyard. My suicide would have to wait.
The soldier and the pilot did not treat me like an enemy. They kept on steering the helicopter through the gusty winds. We began ascending again. Stephen landed smack onto his paver patio. He had to be dead. From my vantage point of the neighborhood, I saw at least a thousand faces looking up at the helicopter. Most of the Peacekeepers were dead, but some surrendered and were cuffed with their own equipment. The angry mob rushed into Stephen’s backyard. His body lay motionless. The pilot began to drift away from the morbid scene.
“Please. I must see what happens,” I yelled over the roaring propulsion.
The pilot nodded and drifted over the house. The mob took turns shooting, hitting, clubbing, and pulling apart Stephen’s body as if it was a piñata. I winced from the gore. Within minutes, the man’s body looked like fragments of tissue, torn clothing, and bone with blood doused all over. It was ugly, horrible, even evil, but necessary.
The pilot handed me an earpiece and microphone. I put it on and could now hear both the soldier in the front seat as well as the pilot.
“So, where are you taking me?” I asked.
“Well, I honestly don’t know anymore. You and your friends have energized the masses,” the pilot said.
“Not just here. Chatter on the radio speaks of a grassroots style of revolution taking place in three other cities. We hear two more cities have organized,” the soldier added. There was a nervous edge to his voice.
“Do you know anything about my brother-in-law, Raphael King? Or his friends, Chad and Marta? Please tell me Brick and Sai made it out of the hotel,” I said.
“Your Patriots were saved. It appears as if they incited a civil war, or, as they are calling it, a second American Revolution. Other soldiers are begging for help in Boston right now. These mobs stormed one of our military outposts and burned our flags, new uniforms, and all World of Peace regalia. They have a small team of medical experts across from Boston Symphony who are volunteering to remove everyone’s microchips. Unit cards have been burned,” the soldier said. He yanked off his emblem on his uniform and handed me the military badges and insignia. “I renounce the World of Peace and the Twelve. I am here to serve you and all Patriots.”
“I renounce World of Peace and the Twelve. I am here to serve you and all Patriots,” said the pilot. “Your friends are in Boston, but it might be too dangerous. The helicopter has the new emblem painted on the side. You might get shot down.”
Shocked, I paused for a moment, not sure how to respond. Carefully, I said, “First of all, you do not serve me or any Patriots. You serve America like you once served America before the war. That is if you want to serve.”
Both men readily agreed. The pilot said, “Please don’t have your Patriots kill us.”
“We don’t want to kill anyone, but when backed into a corner, anything can happen. You both are no threat to me or my Patriots. If you want to resume your allegiance to this country, then there will be a place for you once New World Order falls. Now if you could drop me off at my home that was taken from me, the home that I am rec
laiming, and ensure my safety back in Brookline, I would greatly appreciate it.”
I yanked Stephen’s wooden box from under his seat and put it on my lap. The box was old and worn. Scratched bronze hardware trimmed the corners. I opened the latch. As I expected, there sat his crown. The extraordinary piece took my breath away. I touched the dozens of jewels that once glowed with other crown jewels at Stephen’s coronation. My sudden fascination caused me to forget, at least for a moment, the pandemonium underneath me.
Chapter Forty-Four
Raphael
Peacekeepers swarmed Laurie’s Treatment Center. I followed Chad, Marta, and Gloria up to the roof. With the handguns that were taken from dead soldiers, we shot down at the Patriots as they charged the building. Most of them were shot before realizing our location. There were more, but they were inside. The coast was hardly clear. One by one, we covered each other as we slid down the fire escape. Occasionally, there would be some company, but we managed to make it out of the clinic alive. Again, divine intervention saved us. There was no other explanation.
Gloria could barely be heard through the howling wind as we crossed the street away from the remaining Peacekeepers. “The network is probably back on the air. They were filming the press conference outside, by Boston Symphony Hall. They set up their podium next to a dead woman pierced through a spear like a shish-kabob. We need to take over. Raphael, you just hosted the show of your life. We can’t relax now and hope for the best.”
“That woman was Wendy Grossman. A true Patriot until the bitter end. You’re right. Let’s go. It’s not far from here.” I ran in front of the three and we raced down Tremont to Massachusetts Avenue.
In the distance, we watched a crowd form. What were they looking at? We slowed our gait down to a walk and slowly approached the crowd. Three dead people, two men and one woman, laid under the ripped-up New World Order flags strung across the street. A fourth corpse missing a head laid next to the spike that pierced Wendy. My eyes traveled upwards. The battered head was carefully displayed on the very tip of Wendy’s spike, just a few feet above Wendy’s head. Death lost its shock value.
A group of people began tying three of the bodies up with rope. One of the dead bodies I recognized. She was a beautiful reporter who was covering the Boston Symphony Hall attack.
A couple of people affixed the long part of the rope onto the same line that held up the flag. They were stringing up the bodies to the banners. Our broadcast sparked all of this. I didn’t know whether to be proud or horrified.
“Did the crowd kill those people?” Marta asked nervously.
Chad answered, “You know they did. May God forgive us, but it had to be done. We need this crowd. C’mon, I see the camera on the ground. The show must go on!”
Marta shoved herself through the crowd and grabbed the camera. Gloria found the news reporter’s handheld microphone and grabbed it. Both women came up to me with pleading looks on their faces.
I grabbed the microphone, and Gloria grabbed the camera. In seconds, we were on the air. I never felt so alive. Aysa must have felt like this when she was on the scene in a violent city with a violent crowd. The growing mob parted like the red sea, allowing me to walk closer to the dead bodies.
“This is Raphael King, reporting right outside of Boston Symphony Hall. As you can see, the newly remodeled world government building was ransacked. I would like to thank God that the firefighters are unharmed. As reported earlier, my vigilante group known as the Patriots take full responsibility for this destruction. But for the record, the attack was not terrorism. It was self-defense.”
I turned around with my back to the crowd. Gloria had the perfect view of me with hundreds of others who were up for a fight. More people were joining us from all directions. The crowd cheered me on.
“Our acts of rebellion reflect a need for change. As you can see, the mob behind me is angry. We’ve got four dead people here. Three are being strung up under the ripped up World of Peace flag. One of them I recognize. She was WBNX’s reporter. Are the other two cameramen?”
The crowd screamed “yes”.
“Who is the headless man?”
The crowd chanted Hal Greene. Hal Greene controlled the media of the entire surviving world. He was also one of the Twelve.
“Quite a message. Well, to pick up where I was rudely interrupted earlier this morning, my brother and sister Patriots Brick and Sai left us all hanging after burning down the hotel room of two of the Twelve. I see smoke to the north not too far from here. I’ll bet that is the hotel. Let’s walk towards it.”
Our crowd kept on growing as we marched towards the Cooper Hotel. There had to be one thousand men, women, and children with me as we closed in on the new scene. Gloria followed me like a true stalker with the cordless camera. I lost Chad and Marta, but assumed they were deep within the crowd.
As we walked, one of the followers told me that others banded together to free Jaxie. Beautiful Gallagher Street in Cambridge turned into a battlefield. I reported her story as we stopped a few hundred yards away from the hotel. The hotel’s fire appeared to be contained to a corner of the building. I silently prayed that Brick and Sai made it out of there alive. Maybe I should have prayed for their captives, but I wasn’t there yet as a new Christian.
A small group from the massive crowd screamed and pointed to the west. I turned to see what they were so excited about. Standing on top of a Peacekeeper tank and armed with rifles, stood Sai and Brick. Their winter jackets were coated with soot and torn to ribbons. Both wore no hat despite the below freezing temperature. The wind whipped through their hair, making them look like superhuman.
I put the microphone aside and said, “Gloria, are you catching this? It can’t be true. They are alive.”
Gloria nodded and pointed their way. “Give them the mic!”
I ran over to the tank and handed Brick the microphone with one hand and wiped away my tears with the other.
“My brother, fellow Patriot Raphael King!” Brick yelled. “Now that’s one brave son of a bitch! I am Brick Theriault and this is Sai White, reporting live outside of the Cooper Hotel in downtown Boston. How am I doing, Raphael?” I smiled and cried. Brick’s manic excitement gave the crowd hope. Their cheers got louder. “We’ve got some news. Two of the Twelve, Amala Patel and Wolfgang Herrmann, died in a fire! Only ten more of these assholes to go!”
I yelled to them as they stood on top of tank, “Brick, Sai, the crowd beheaded Hal Greene!”
Brick then yelled into the microphone, “I stand corrected! The good people of Boston got another asshole, Hal Greene! So that leaves nine more Elders to hunt down. We can do it! And free Jaxie Nottingham! Sai, anything to add?”
The crowd chanted “Sai! Sai!”
She came off as a shy and quiet woman as she hesitantly accepted the microphone. “Thank you all for helping us. It means everything. But as our fearless leader Jaxie Nottingham once said, ‘Give me liberty or give me death’! I can see that you all feel the same way. I got some good news for you! Anyone want to guess what Brick and I have inside of this tank? No peeking!”
The crowd went wild. I almost felt as if I was at a rock concert. Looking out at the sea of people, the population must have doubled within the last ten minutes.
Brick jumped off of the tank and waved me over to the tank’s door. Inside were three men and one woman, all hand-cuffed. My stomach dropped. They looked half dead. “What do you plan on doing with them?”
“I had some poison tablets on me. They were actually meant for me, my dad, and whoever else wanted to check out. I took a chance and used the poison on them. Come on. Let’s pull them out of here.”
“Brick, who are they?” I asked.
“Four more assholes! I’m going to grab the microphone again. I got more to say.”
Brick and I threw the pile of bodies in front of the tank. He took the microphone from Sai and continued to rally the crowd. “What did I say earlier? Three dead assholes, nine more to go?
Well happy birthday, you crazy Patriots! Here’s four more we don’t have to worry about. The woman is Doctor Helena Shatin and the three men are Michael Siglino, Prince Ahmed Watobi, and Katsu Ikeda. A want to give a shout out to three Peacekeepers who were supposed to be guarding these assholes.” The crowd booed. “Wait now, these former Peacekeepers are Americans and have renounced their allegiance to this New World Order. They helped Sai and I escape from that hotel and then gave us these assholes, some guns, and their tank.” Cheers erupted from the crowd. “Okay then! Sai, get down from there and start this bitch up.”
Sai jumped down from the tank and darted inside of the driver’s seat. As she cranked the tank’s engine, the crowd cleared. She shifted the gears and then the tank rolled forward, over the four bodies. Muffled screams were barely heard over the wind and the tank’s engine. She shifted to reverse and ran over them again. As the bodies flattened into a pancake of smashed up bones and hammered down skin, the crowd screamed her name. The bloodshed made my stomach turn. Were we as monstrous as they? Aysa handled live violence her entire career. I had to be brave like she would have wanted.
Despite the cheering and screaming, I heard the crackle of a radio in his hand. Brick handed me the microphone and cupped his ears to shield the noise. I couldn’t hear the conversation, even though I was right next to him. He smiled as if he’d won the lottery.
Taking the microphone back once more, Brick got on top of the tank again and announced, “We got another asshole! The prince of all the assholes! Prince Stephen Laurie has passed away!” Some set up a speaker somewhere and played dance music in the background. “Don’t know the details, but do know that our leader Jaxie Nottingham is still alive! Is God helping us, or what? Still got four more assholes to hunt down. We don’t know where they are. We do know that Fogle CEO Max Steele and his guards fled west in a heli-auto and helicopter.” Tears streamed down Brick’s face. He handed me the mic and hugged me.