by Jake Packard
That evening early in June, they got a late start and arrived at the end the day to Bullmoose’s favorite spot down on the shores where Harvard had met the River Charles for more than four hundred years, between the Boylston Street Bridge and the walk bridge by Kirkland House. There on the banks of the brown, muddy river one would always find Harvard students hanging out, hooking up, throwing Frisbees, or sneaking hits of the latest designer weed people were calling smizz. But that crowd had already thinned out, most of the preppies and foreign students had gone off to their mahogany-paneled dining halls to eat their privileged pie and talk about William James as if anything he said was still relevant to this crazy century. If they only knew what this planet was spinning them to.
The sun was sinking low into the dirty Boston twilight, like a scoop of raspberry sherbet melting into a bowl of oatmeal, curdling on the edges and sticking to the buildings on the horizon. Bullmoose sat them both down at a spot near the bank of the river and they settled in cushy and comfy to relate.
Some water rats were swimming unseen under the river’s scum, but Bullmoose and Herbie could hear them break the surface of the water as they pushed their noses out to gather air, very upset to find the two humans sitting so close to the entrance of the sewer that led to their lair. They knew how hated they were. Bullmoose toyed with them by throwing the still-burning butts of his Lucky Strikes into the water, trying to singe the hairs around their grotesque little snouts, warning them that people were about, and water rodents should not dare try to trespass. There was something beginning to smell rotten in that night.
Bullmoose’s past travels in India, when the world was so much bigger and people so much slower and there was so many less of them, were no secret to anyone, at least the PG version. In fact, the story of the little Gypsy was a favorite amongst Herbie’s fellow geeks in the electric shop, his favorite class even though he excelled in science and math. With a watchful eye on the water rat he rambled to Bullmoose his classmates’ post-pubescent theories of how they thought the Little Gypsy was just a little street whore, or who was his grandfather kidding?
Tonight, as the vodka burned down the guardians of truth in Bullmoose’s brain, he took offense at this complete misinterpretation of an innocent time once so sweet and dear to him. He cranked his mouth open just long enough for his foot to get stuck and muttered to Herbie what a dastardly thing that was to say about his own Grandma Sonia.
As the last bits of raspberry sun melted into the artificial sticky red syrup that laced behind the gentrified Cambridge skyline, Herbie’s young mind put together a reality that he had no hope to accept, even in this absurd perverted generation in which he grew up. He sat in miasmic silence as Bullmoose realized what he said.
Herbie’s young brain felt like a slab of turkey bacon spluttering in a frying pan, bursting random globules of trans-fatty-less oil out onto the stovetop, messing it up. He felt the broiling heat of incomprehensible loneliness, and the fuel of long-term deception, ignite by this spark of recognition of his not so simple conception. Each moment’s pained realizations felt like fire.
They crept home together, in the shadows of the silence of those indiscretions. The sky was now so solid it wedged itself between the stars, shunning out the imploring moon, and blanketing the town with an impending sense of doom so full of poison that even the grisly water rodents now scurried out of the sludge and into their filthy holes to escape the greater evil and nurse their hairless young, away from the inflicted and polluted night.
Back up in his Perry Street attic bedroom where his daddy was born, Herbie shut off the lights and smoked up his stash of smizz until his brain turned into a dead fish, undulating with maggot activity. As the whites in his eye turned a sickly yellow-green, he calmly tipped the candle over and watched the little flame run the rug, and then go dancing up his bed sheets, and rush roaring up his curtains, and why should his life have very much more meaning . . .
Bullmoose burst into the flaming room with a blanket, and threw it over Herbie’s protesting body trying to wrap him up within it. But Herbie did not want to leave. He pushed Bullmoose away and he fell. The fire crackled up the ponytail, his clothing igniting. As he got back up, he was pushed back down again hard, now conflagrating.
Herbie heard his name being screamed and that he loved him so and he was so sorry and knew it could never be enough but we have to go on regardless of the whatever. Bullmoose finally knocked him down the stairs and dragged him out of the house screaming. Herbie collapsed on the asphalt to watch from the driveway as their little house where he had spent all of his life melted into the fire from the top on down.
That next day at the hospital with Grandma, his Grandfather was so wrapped up in gauze he could hardly see. Bullmoose pushed the little metal ring that the nurses slid off the melted flesh of what was left of his picking hand over to the edge of the hospital’s bedside tray towards Herbie. He managed with the rest of his strength to say something that sounded like “You’re gonna need this more than me, buddy.”
Grandma almost succumbed in pain so acutely scorching. Was she too careful with the ones she loved? With searing tears, she grabbed Herbie’s hand so unscathed and pushed the ring onto his finger, crying that maybe its special charm could still be found.
For saving Herbie’s life and giving up his own, no greater love could ever be shown. Maybe that was just enough for the wandering defender of the magic ring, to enter the limitless glory and the unbounded grace, with only five of his strings.
# # #
The gleeful warring stanis gathered in the museum lobby under Gregor’s animated exhortations of Allah, infidels, and virgins. The mujahedin shouted back and brandished their weapons, raising them to the heavens in supplication.
Huddled along the wall with Ibrahim and Jamal, Herbie tugged on the little copper ring he wore on his right hand ever since that fateful day. He felt thankful, grateful for Bullmoose albeit in a way so taboo and impure, for nothing stays the same, and they were so incredibly interconnected, and who could have thought that would have happened next?
He wondered now how his tiny human identity was connected to the one and the all. Which was the missing part of this puzzle? There was little time left to learn. The mystery of his life was now on the final leg of its journey, sailing through the furious rapids of the river of time, towards the white and foamy waterfall waiting at the end of his days.
* * * * *
Yellow
The squirrel killers on 57th Street were surprised to feel a warm misty yellow on their necks. When they turned to look, they were fully shocked to see a host of people of all colors and kinds marching up Fifth Avenue, so close and undetected.
The clothes the people wore were torn and bedraggled, but not so their countenance, which was strong and uplifted. Many among them were silent but others were almost singing, humming a mixture of an Om and a soft, sweet melody, the kind sung before music could be recorded. They possessed little, most seemed very poor, but they carried themselves with grandeur and the richness of spirit.
If this procession had any hostile nature to it, these well-trained, murderous SKs would have blasted them into hodgepodge bits of flesh, hair and bone. But they had none. Zero. No threatening anything. They were childlike, docile, intent on something far away and nebulous, like yellow itself. Not a single soldier amongst them even thought to shoot. In fact, the troops took slow steps back away from the avenue, astonished, allowing the throng to continue forward unimpeded.
It was the beginning of a day hard to fathom for these lifetime professional killing machines. What was really strange to these SKs was the silence on their radios, and their inability to contact the general, who was only a mile or so away. It was as if the golden fog floating above the heads of the procession was running interference, blocking outside detection.
Oddly, none of the soldiers at that corner ever reported seeing any of the alleged yellow protective fog. When later questioned, none were able to say they actual
ly saw Salem. But they said they knew he was there; they felt him all around as the procession advanced steadily forth.
# # #
A squad of Pythons with their titanium shields assembled into a ring around the side door of the chopper, and the Alliance stepped out into their protection. Once all the esteemed members were on the ground, they moved off as a unit through the gathering crowds of fervent neophytes and curious onlookers, all who were eager to see Salem Jones. For the moment, they settled for observing these mysterious dignitaries who landed amongst them with so much self-importance.
These people, swarming in the street with some collective undersense that something heavy was to happen there soon, were mostly from the middle class and scraped enough crumbs off rich tables each day to live in real apartments with heat and running water. Not the type to rise to violence. They were angry but not enough, and a bit too scared. However, just by being there, everywhere and all around, they created a tense and claustrophobic mood, which heightened as the crowd grew thicker and more insistent by the moment. They rabbled around the Alliance, watching them with their silent anger, turning more resentful as the nervous VIPs flinched behind the Python shields, ducking their heads low as if taking cover from psychic snipers in the crowd.
The large and immediate presence of the military, scurrying about with great mechanical noise and jostling of armor, plus the ominous explosions of tunnels being destroyed and buried off somewhere in the distance, made everybody in the area skittish, twitchy.
Pellet watched them cross Park Avenue, iron-like, rigid, body language telling it all. He knew in their paranoid condition it would be hard for them to think rationally, hard for them to reach a consensus about anything. It was foolish, and certainly a big mistake, that they came. The armored marines ushered them through the mass of people to the general on the other side of the street. Before they could say a word he was upon them.
“Who is responsible for this outrageous decision to come here? Do you know what you are doing? You are putting yourself and therefore my men in grave danger. This is a battle zone.”
The Queen of Singapore, usually the seductive tree snake, glided out from the protective ring and slithered in front of him, somewhat wavering. Although lacking her usual strength, she was able to make a stand. “Of course, General, but we felt we needed to see this for ourselves. Certainly, you understand that considering the high-level interest these developments are creating around the world, the blackout you imposed couldn’t satisfy everyone in the Alliance’s native curiosity for the truth on the ground.”
Pellet scowled at them all. He knew they were making it up as they went along. Here, on the street, confronted by the physicality of the people whose lives they controlled, these animals with unsavory smells making discomforting sounds, the inadequacy of their collective will wavered. He knew which ones in the Alliance had voted to come here in the first place but were kicking themselves now for being so stupid. He fired back without hesitation.
“You know the deal. The girl is now getting ready to broadcast the statement you prepared. And that’s enough. We don’t want to, and should not want to, show any of the mess that’s here or might likely occur here today, do we? And as importantly, I was hired to protect this city and to protect you. I can’t take the chance that if guns go off you could get hit.”
“Sincere sentiments, I’m sure, General,” the brave tree snake said stretching herself, “I know the plan. But I thought you said the situation was well under your control? That the terrorists are pinned down in the museum?”
He could see them all squirming behind the shields, their eyes glancing away from making contact with his. “It seems like you don’t trust me, or my decisions. Funny, because, up until now, I’ve been leading your group with the same consistent policy direction I have taken since the beginning of this crisis.”
“Truly.” Her deadly serpent eyes now glazed with alarm. “But now I fear that the situation may have gotten out of your expert hands. Perhaps there is something about this whole thing that you haven’t taken into account. Maybe it’s somewhere above the sphere of what is considered natural. Are you sure, General, that Salem Jones is even with the terrorist gangs in the museum?”
Pellet’s lack of rebuttal did not conceal his disdain for her ignorant presumptions.
She continued, “I’m distressed because, while flying up the East River, some of us saw a strange golden cloud moving up Fifth Avenue, that neither our heat sensors, radar, or optics had tracked. It was like a huge living mass that was completely unnoticed by anything electronic.”
She twisted her body as if without a spine and peered over her shoulders towards downtown, obscured by the burnt-out buildings before her. Pellet remained silent, baffled. “Even more bizarre, only a few of us in the aircraft could even agree that there was a disturbance out there to see. Now I am truly concerned, because this very odd thing is very close and I was sure you had to be aware of it.”
Pellet’s body language twisted like he stepped into an unseen hole in the ground.
“But no, General, now I see that you do not know. How very, very strange.”
He cleared his throat trying to find something to say, but she wouldn’t allow it. “No, General, please no more discussion, let’s move on. I am afraid of many, many things. But as of right now, we’re still in this together.”
# # #
The scouts from the roof brought Marcus in the museum lobby some grievous news. Pellet had established a strong defensive position surrounding them on the Fifth Avenue side. Large vehicles placed concrete barriers in strategic positions on the street. On the rooftops above, the Pythons had set up their versatile titanium sniper posts. From these positions, the SKs could launch a deadly crossfire at any attempt to break out the doors, while guarding against any movement on the museum’s roof. Of course, Apache attack helicopters were buzzing angrily above them in the sky, and each alone had enough missile power to launch a devastating salvo that could bring down the building.
If that wasn’t bad enough, his boys uptown were being cut to pieces by Pellet’s Street Hawks who seemed to be waiting in ambush for Gregor’s diversionary tactic. The brief messages he was getting on the N-tel seemed like the army had already knocked them out of position where the old Blockhouse used to be, and that the fighting was fierce up by the Great Hill. Marcus knew that, as valiant as his brothers were, they wouldn’t be able to hold off the intruders for too long. That meant the army would be howling up his ass shortly. He imagined the terror in his people’s hearts as they fled their tents for downtown, many falling under the indiscriminate deadly fire of the AK-87.
He knew Gregor had taken them on a suicide mission, but it was out of his control then, as it was now. But was this inevitable? For the truth was that Salem’s arrival and subsequent actions, although miraculous, had put them into this dead-end in the first place. And truly, where was Salem now? Could Gregor be right, that he had abandoned them? He looked over at Jamal, and somehow Marcus couldn’t get himself to believe that. Seeing the calm in that young boy’s demeanor, this recipient of an amazing miracle that he himself had witnessed with his own eyes, Marcus couldn’t accept the fact that this was the end. Salem said to have faith. Yes, it was a matter of faith. Jamal had faith, so, Marcus will have faith.
# # #
The titanium barrier with the wary Alliance ensconced within moved through the throngs of agitated bystanders, pushing random people out of the way who did not move quick enough. Pellet refused to walk behind the shields and led the way in front. His Hawks were making short work of the resistance uptown, and were already into Shantypark and fighting their way across the North Meadow. The point of outbreak was going to be the museum. Of that, Pellet was sure. So that’s where he was headed. He liked to be close to the action, to make sure it went down the way he wanted. Damn these pompous fools who think they can tell him what to do. Let them tag along if that’s what they want. Their presence here cannot affect the outc
ome he has arranged. He won’t allow it.
However, he still wasn’t able to raise any communication south of 66th Street. What was this new kind of interference device he did not know about, this undetectable yellow fog or cloud?
As the clock in his face shield flashed 4:24 p.m. a buzzer went off on his headgear, everything was still going according to plan, and this was right on time. Better get down to it.
* * * * *
Blackmail
A little red light flashed on Ira’s monitor. Maria and Sam were in deep discussion, Deganawida observing and nodding, the mayor still out on the floor, Iroquois shaman attending. Ira touched a button below the flashing light and the insignia of the First Army blinked on the screen. “Maria,” Ira said, “Maybe you should come over and take a look at this.”
Maria looked up at Ira with consternation, gave a sideways glance at the monitor, and moved over to the console to get a better look, Sam and Deganawida following. She was missing someone. The last couple of days had brought Herbie deep into her thoughts, her heart, her life. She ached that he wasn’t there to help her, that he wasn’t there for her to lean on. A fleeting chill shot through her body when she thought that he might be dead out there in the brooding violence.
She took a deep strengthening breath and crinkled her eyes. “Go ahead.”
Ira hit the play button and the general’s face appeared, slightly distorted on the studio monitor because of the wide-angle lens of the webcam embedded in his helmet. Although fisheyed, his image was still imposing and caused a sensation of deep apprehension to everyone who viewed it, all those in the studio tensing and tightening up along with Maria.