by Jake Packard
As Salem strode uptown, he gave his blessing to those he passed, and many found within themselves a place of healing. They affixed themselves to his host, and marched under the golden glow as if they all were one.
* * * * *
Checkpoint
After a short journey avoiding the masses crowding around Shantypark, the small convoy pulled up to the security zone at the ABCNN building near Lincoln Center. The SKs escorted Maria to the checkpoint, now guarded by squirrel killers. The general had replaced the ineffectual private security force that allowed in the contagious terrorists from Shantypark with his own men. Ira had to stand by helplessly as Pellet made the station his own.
As each SK passed through the checkpoint, they rolled up their sleeves and subjected themselves to an identity check. Their fellow soldiers on security duty flashed the lasers from their biopods onto their wrists. It all went smoothly until the captain escorting Maria was tested. A red light flashed on the detection device and a loud alarm buzzed in the SK guard’s hand. They all turned, somewhat stunned, and stared at the officer. Without a moment’s hesitation, the captain turned his AK-87 on the security guard and murdered him with a stream of bullets. At the same instant, two other SKs close to the captain opened fired on the rest of the squad. In a second there were eight dead marines surrounding them, littering the sidewalk.
Without a word between them, the captain and the two remaining soldiers grabbed Maria and hustled her into the building.
Just inside the front door of the ABCNN headquarters, Maria heard the running boots. The detachment of marines that had been guarding Ira in the control room dashed around a corner in the hallway toward the source of the attack and nearly plowed right into them. The captain raised his hand and shouted, “There is a force of terrorists just outside who are trying to stop the broadcast. Take up position and take them out while we get her inside.”
Without any hesitation, the marines followed his orders and ran toward the entry door. The two SKs rushing Maria into the studio let her go, turned, and gunned them down. In an instant, their bodies were splattered into bloody puddles swelling on the floor, their guns clattering away onto the tiled hallway now slopped by little pieces of their flesh. Before Maria had a chance to react to this carnage, the two murdering SKs grabbed her once again and continued to press forward, following the captain who already entered the main studio.
As they forced her through the soundproof door she saw the captain pointing his weapon at Ira, cowering behind the main console. “Don’t shoot, man, don’t shoot. I haven’t done anything wrong man; please don’t shoot.”
The captain showing him no regard, seemed to scowl at Ira through the dark eye shield of his helmet, and did not lower his weapon pointing at his head. The two SKs holding Maria slammed the door shut behind them and locked it.
A dark stain started spreading over Ira’s pants by the crotch. “Don’t shoot me. Please. I’m just waiting for the general’s orders. He said he’s going to email me the statement he wants her to read. It’s going to be here any minute, and we are going to broadcast Maria upon his command. I’m following his orders, I’m doing the right thing; I swear to you, please don’t shoot me!”
The captain kept his gaze fixed upon Ira. The TV exec’s panic was apparently amusing him, like some comic marionette from an old-time puppet show. He appeared to be lost in thought as whether to cut him in half with a power burst, or put one well-placed bullet through his forehead.
“Shit man, I don’t want to die. Please don’t kill me. Tell me what to do. What do you want me to do?”
Finally, the captain moved. With one hand, he slowly lifted his face shield and removed his helmet. He was much older than Maria thought, bald with one eye covered by a patch.
Gino smiled at the quailing media giant and said, “I want you to prepare yourself. We’re all going to be called soon, my man.”
* * * * *
Breach
After the gangs breached the outer walls defending the museum and killed off the few marines guarding the perimeter, it was easy to enter the building. But once inside, a couple of stubborn SKs had enough time to mount some resistance to the surprise attack on their compound. Huddled behind some sandbags they neatly took out Gregor’s boys as they entered the old grand room which once housed artistic marvels. It was now looted, emptied and riddled.
Taking cover out of the kill zone of the SK machine gun, Gregor sat down whistling a happy tune, reached into his parka and pulled out his pipe again. As some of his men who were blinded by the glory of martyrdom made another suicidal attempt to destroy the machine gun nest, he lit the smizz and took a deep hit of the potent drug. Herbie watched the scene with disbelief, ducking low as the marines that were hunkered down in front of him kept peppering bullets into the wall above their heads. Gregor just blew smoke rings and sighed with pleasure. No matter what was happening, he was going to enjoy this. He took another big toke and, without warning, jumped out into the hallway, diving over the bullets hitting the floor. He flipped a hand grenade into the makeshift bunker and blew those Marines into many bloody pieces.
He signaled the all clear and Ibrahim, Herbie, and Jamal ventured out after him into the ransacked historic room, smoky with the smell of war.
Gregor wiped the dust off his face. “Wow, I love this shit.”
# # #
From the moment the explosions rocked the museum, the streets outside Shantypark became a stampede of terror. Salem followers waiting in No Man’s Land for a healing glance or touch shrieked and fled from the sounds of combat, trying to find safety in the landscape of the city. But there were so many, they fell over each other as they tried to get out of harm’s way.
The SKs patrolling the crowds reacted in a well-rehearsed defensive drill. They took positions behind their armored vehicles, guns ready and pointed at the scarred façade of the once-majestic landmark.
One of the large doors to the old museum creaked open. Several well-armed stanis charged out in several directions, but the SKs quickly cut the attackers down, their bodies twisting into macabre contortions as the bullets blew through their muscles and organs. They fell, sprawled into their final postures over the stone steps leading down to the once elegant and fashionable Fifth Avenue sidewalk, portraits in a portfolio of violent death.
Gregor loved it when men readied themselves to die on his command. He sat down inside the huge metal doors and settled in, more intense, focused. He flipped on his N-tel and punched a number. “Get your boys on the move, Marcus. On my orders, I want them breaking out and giving the army boys up there hell. We want these shit-for-brains SKs to think we’re the diversion and the attack is going to the West side and to the river. So, we’re going to lay low here for a while and lull these bastards into thinking we ain’t coming out. Then we’ll hit them with everything we have.”
Herbie grabbed Jamal and tucked him under his arm. Now that the gangs were busting out, there was no turning back. He realized it was nigh time for him to die.
# # #
After the deadly shots dispatched the first few marauding stanis to the concrete steps, a tense quiet ensued. The crowd of Salemites began filtering back to Fifth Avenue, making the connecting streets too dense for the elite Pythons to clear a path. Pellet had to get out of his bulletproof BMW limo at Park Avenue and hoof it the rest of the way. Surrounded by a ring of Marines with titanium shields, he headed towards Fifth Avenue. He enjoyed this. It was his style to be in the middle of the action. He was going to be there personally when they cornered Salem Jones and whacked his terrorist ass out of existence.
There was a sharp crack behind him, a quick whistling sound, and then a large pounding explosion coming from the top floor of a nearby building on the east side of the Park Avenue divider. The tinny radio voice in his helmet confirmed what he suspected. One of his Apaches had hooked onto the signal of a news crew trying to patch onto a subcarrier going into the ABCNN satellite. Most likely it was those prying LAFox people
using proxy talent that couldn’t be tied back to them after an investigation. They would have done the same to him if they were browning out the true extent of the damage from their latest earthquake or torrential rains.
Huge blocks of building stone slammed to the ground across the way, followed by pebbles and dust that sounded like rain. He thought to remember to give a medal to those boys in the air when this mission was through.
Abruptly the tree snake zinged in on his left ear, and her low-res picture pixelated on his glasses down by his right nostril. “General, what’s your position? What is going on down there?”
What do they want now? Why are they meddling in what they know nothing about? “I’m on what used to be 83rd and Park. It’s a madhouse here. The bad news is the gangs commandeered the museum. The good news is we have them pinned down inside. They’ll never get out alive; we have too much firepower in the area. Unfortunately, this place is saturated with civilians. It will be impossible to keep the collateral damage light because they are all insane. Salem Jones has them brainwashed, like they are all on some community death wish.”
The Sony CEO from Pyongyang interrupted, blinking in by Pellet’s left cheekbone. “Oh, yeah, now I see you. Stay where you are, General, we’re coming down.”
What? Pellet couldn’t quite believe it as he shot a look back up at the Apache, which was now banking in a tight aggressive one-eighty, making a rapid descent onto the divider on Park Avenue. The general could see the anxious faces of the Alliance through the tinted glass.
Damn, this complicates things! He didn’t need some rich and powerful pansy-ass bleeding hearts to screw this up. He was the true commander. He knew when to sacrifice the limb to save the body. He knew that clemency was the road to disaster in situations like this. He didn’t need some meddlesome committee horning in on his authority here. Not now, not when the future of the world should be in his hands.
Pellet intuitively reached for the holster on his hip, his finger lingering on the trigger inside. There were always certain options that were definite and clear, and once they were executed, there could be no return.
* * * * *
Gory Corridors
The turbochopper flew up the deserted concrete gap of Broadway. Stealth in place, keeping low to the street to further muffle the sound of the blades. With all the Apaches in the air and the explosions on the ground, Sam knew there was no way they could be detected. Besides, all the SKs would be surrounding Shantypark and they wouldn’t think twice, figuring it was one of their own. Anyway, this wasn’t even his call, since the aircraft was flying itself on automatic. At this point he could do absolutely nothing about it. Sam was relearning the meaning of faith his own way.
The helicopter touched down on the street outside the ABCNN building, which seemed strangely unguarded. The Iroquois, still on the same telepathic page, unstrapped the stretcher with the unconscious mayor from the floor of the aircraft and lifted him out the side door. Without a word between them they hastened towards the building, following Sam and Deganawida close behind.
Once inside, they walked the gory corridors towards the studio, stepping over body parts and smears of blood. As they came closer to the control room, a lone SK waved them inside with a smile turning from murderous to earnest.
Maria exhaled a long slow breath when she saw them enter. Even with the events of the last few days, she was still not prepared to keep up with each new and unexpected happening. She embraced Sam and Deganawida as comrades even though they barely knew each other. Now they were like a team, and their smiles were charged with the deep responsibility they all felt at this moment. But when Maria saw the mayor carried in on a stretcher and placed on the floor, her heartbeat jumped and she ran to his side.
He was stirring, emitting soft moans, maybe dreaming he was somewhere else, someplace better, a place of joy and of peace, a luxuriant land of sunshine and harmony, a rich and gentle country of creamy milk and the sweetest honey . . . with swift running streams of warm purifying water . . .
* * * * *
Water Rats
This time when Bullmoose left home to travel, he was gone for a long, long time. Longer than he was ever gone before. Where he went, nobody ever knew. Not Grandma, not Pranan. He didn’t phone; he didn’t write; he didn’t fax; he didn’t email. When he returned he never talked about any of it, his travels, or the incident. Never. They assumed that wherever he went he must have worked out the unbelievable grief that he had to carry.
During the time he was away, back home in Cambridge, through a lot of hard work, time, tears, and all-night sessions at the kitchen table, slowly but surely, Grandma and Sonia worked out their own versions of the devastating loss just enough for themselves to survive. Of course, raising Herbie helped deflect the pain, his babyness the principal factor in their eventual recovery.
Unlike his father, he was the sweetest little thing from birth. He was the sunshine that cut through the storm clouds, raising the rainbow that bridged the distance from the broiling seas of despair to their lovely little family picnic blanket. Sitting there in the pot of gold was a gurgling, playful, smiley, Herbie baby boy.
Those years that Bullmoose was gone, Herbie lavished in grandmotherly love twixt Grandma and Grandma Sonia. With regular doses of boy brought in by his Uncle Pranan and Cousin Max, he was raised as regular and as normal as any baby could be in a twenty-first century non-nuclear, hyper-extended family.
Although he was born into extreme and dire tragedy, this gentle toddler personality, coupled with the unprecedented and singular kind of love he was given, developed into a golden boy extraordinaire. He was Grandma’s Dali Lama, Lorraine’s long-haired and sensitive rock-and-roll god, and Sonia’s beautiful teenage boy, strumming guitar in the moonlight like a manifestation of Vishnu incarnate, the energy that makes all the universe aglow.
It was all going so well for the young Herbie when right before his middle school graduation, Bullmoose returned home. That’s not to say that Bullmoose intentionally tried to shake up his home life; it’s just that according to the count-on-able rules, with nothing staying the same and everything interconnected, Bullmoose being around meant what ever happened next would always be out of the ordinary.
When he finally did show up that fine sunny day in May on the Perry Street driveway, they shelved their misgivings because they were all delighted to see him, except for the little Gypsy. Her past life with Bullmoose had caused her too much sorrow, and that heartache still played a major part in all her almost unbearable present-life pain.
When he hurried out of India, he abandoned her to a world that rewarded unmarried pregnancies with a funeral pyre. Durga, enamored with his favorite daughter, spared Sonia that awful fate, but scandalized, he banished her from his family to the lower classes as an untouchable. She had to fend for herself for months, finally giving birth on the muddy floor of the temple made of sand with the orange man as the midwife, babbling benedictions and cantillating invocations, but useless for anything else. Reduced to a beggar, she raised her little daughter without any money whatsoever, save the charity of Cudalore Cathy and the handouts from well-to-do tourists who threw rupees into her tin can in the Mahabalipuram town square.
She finally saved enough money to immigrate to the United States, because her future in India as an unwed mother was absolutely no future at all. Sonia had to hold down two jobs a day just to afford the flea-infested rat trap she rented in South Boston, and had just enough money leftover to feed the two of them white bread and baked beans. It was a life of drudgery, privation, and sacrifice.
Even though it wasn’t directly Bullmoose’s fault for the tragic events that took the lives of Herbie’s parents, there was nobody better to blame than him. It wasn’t easy for the little Gypsy to be around him, without feeling that he was responsible for tragedies in two successive lives. Even though Grandma tried to take care of the ones she loved and provided her rare trademark warmth in super-sized doses to the third grandparent of her only
grandson, sweet Grandma Sonia started drifting away from the hippie family roost. She was only seen at seldom holidays and the occasional birthday celebration.
At first, the novelty of a man living in his house was a cool change of pace for the pre-teen Herbster. Bullmoose was fun in an oddball, erratic sort of way. To be sure, he was the one who did get him started on the guitar, however usually of the five-string variety. Bullmoose gave Herbie his very own Martin to learn on, the same one he played on the beach as a younger man, strumming at the juncture of the endless motion of the universe, jamming to the melodies of life.
The first year or so wasn’t so bad. It wasn’t until the Lipton family jewels descended, and hair started growing out of Herbie in the usual suspect places and his voice turned a squeaky kind of alto, that the first signs of danger manifested themselves.
For some reason Bullmoose decided to take over Herbie’s upcoming transition from teenager to young man. According to Grandma, it was to replace the son he lost, the one he almost never had, that caused Bullmoose to push Herbie to grow up too quickly. Bullmoose always replied with his usual wisdom, “Nah, that’s bullshit. It’s 2014; kids grow up much faster than when we were kids.” With that he was not wrong.
Bullmoose’s role model madness reached the peak of insanity when Herbie was just a sophomore in high school. He took it upon himself to teach Herbie how to drink. He rationalized with Grandma using irrefutable Bullmoosian logic: Herbie was drinking anyway, or was going to do it soon enough, so he might as well learn under the safety net of the best, his very own grandfather. One day Bullmoose met him after school to prepare his young grandson in the ways of the sybarite. They were going to drink vodka together out of his flask and wash it down with Coke Zero.