He was losing blood fast, vision moving in and out of focus. Another shattered shape crashed out of the sky into a nearby wall at alarming velocity. Dark, oily bits of what may once have been tissue or skin fluttered like bastard snow after the body.
His will and vision fading, Emmanuel Tyson struggled to make sense of this final waking dream as the void approached and his lids grew heavy.
Another shape descended from the smoke. Backlit by the raging fires of the war around him.
An angel, diving toward where he lay in a pool of his own blood.
The remaining Iraqis scattered, cringing away from its terrible beauty.
One man stood his ground, shouting what could only be curses of disbelief and gesturing with a loaded rifle. He was set to a flight of his own by a blow from the angel’s arm, a brutal gesture that should not come from such a creature.
Emmanuel Tyson felt a lazy smile spread across his dying lips as he recognized the face of this terrible avenger. Another American, a Marine. The man from the night before.
John Collins.
He felt himself go weightless as he surrendered and closed his eyes, glad that God had forgiven him and granted him this deliverer at least. Merciful silence and darkness embraced him as the hot wind dried his pooling blood. It was finished.
Decrypted Archival File 0000-003
KC Adam Ironday Pope
PRIORITY MANIFEST: (TRANSLATION FROM GAELLIC TO ENGLISH A.D. 1228, LANGUAGE OF ORIGIN UNKNOWN. EXCERPT: KC ARCHIVE VOLUME 1)
… AND WHEN THE BOWELS OF HELL ARE FULL, THE KINGDOM OF THE ADVERSARY SHALL BOIL OVER UNTO THE GREEN EARTH. THEN MEN SHALL BE CALLED TO JOIN THE LEGIONS OF MICHAEL. THESE SHALL BE JUDGED BEFORE THE APPOINTED HOUR. THESE SHALL BE BLESSED ACCORDING TO THEIR GOODNESS. THESE SHALL WIELD THE HAMMERS OF HEAVEN AND DON THE ARMOR OF LIGHT. THESE FEW SHALL DEFEND EDEN’S CHILDREN AND RESTORE ORDER TO THE KINGDOM UNTIL THE FINAL HOUR…
NEVER WILL THEY FEAR THE ARMIES OF HELL, NOR THE CORRUPTION OF ADAM’S FAULT. NOR WILL THEY BEAR THE SCARS OF MORTAL MEN, NOR THE HUNGER OF DEMONS. ON THEIR SHOULDERS AND WINGS THEY SHALL TAKE THE YOKE OF MANKIND, APPOINTED BY HE WHO JUDGES THEM. FOR SO LONG AS THERE IS GOODNESS IN THE WORLD, MORTAL MEN SHALL BE GUARDED BY THESE, THE ANGELS THAT WALK AMONG THEM…..
…..AND ON THE DAY THAT THESE MORTAL ANGELS NO LONGER WALK THE RAVAGED EARTH, THE MINIONS OF HELL SHALL REIGN, AND DEATH KNELL OF MANKIND SHALL SOUND…..
Salt Lake City, Utah
Aaron Dayne heaved a heavy sigh and tossed a spark plug wrench onto the cluttered work table. His boss and business partner, “Crazy” Dave Stanworth frowned at the noise from his desk in the corner. The clang wouldn’t bother the older man typically, but Aaron knew the bills were outpacing the profits Crazy Dave busily logged in his yellowed binder. Week by week, Wild West Custom Cycles was slowly going under.
For Aaron, this job represented everything he had left professionally.
Never quite made it in sports or academically, couldn’t see the appeal of a military career after Argentina, and lacked the patience for a desk job.
Prospects? Few.
The sad reflection was punctuated by a few drops of sweat sliding off of his nose onto the chrome pipes of the beautiful machine he tinkered over. Another masterpiece of motorcycle art.
Of course, he grinned to himself, I made it.
The eventual owner of this bike would probably never ask much of the 110 inch S&S V-twin motor or Corbin air ride suspension. Sunday cruises along the boulevard and summer rides to the ski condo at Alta were as far as most of the custom cycles that left the shop ever stretched. No matter.
If a dentist wanted to spend eighty-five-thousand on a bike he would never really appreciate, that wasn’t Aaron’s problem.
“Aaron, when do those tins come back from the painter?” Crazy Dave’s voice was nasal, like if a camel could talk.
“They arrived this morning!” Aaron Dayne shouted over his shoulder, searching for the Skil multi-tool he needed to grind the excess paint and powder coat off of various parts before final assembly.
Failing his search, he sauntered over to where Crazy Dave attacked the bubble wrap surrounding the newly-arrived gas tank and fenders.
Aaron shoved him aside affectionately, eliciting a surprised huff. Flipping a well-used knife out of his back pocket, Dayne cut the tape to pull layers of airy plastic away from the cherry red gloss.
Good ol’ Tim never fails.
As always, the paint job was impressive. A subtle snakeskin pattern in crimson gave a three-dimensional feel to the thin steel sheets.
Crazy Dave snatched the wide rear fender away from Dayne, turning it over in his slender hands. He shook his head slowly, issuing a soft honk of approval.
“That old Indian really knows what he’s doing.”
The “old Indian” he referred to, Tim Greatwater Lougee, was a strange and solitary fellow. He was also the best-kept secret in custom motorcycle painting. His work won awards all over the country. If he so chose, Lougee could be a very rich man. The rub with Tim was that he didn’t like most bike builders, or most people for that matter. He wouldn’t do work for most of them, and he wouldn’t paint over factory colors. The old man didn’t even seem to enjoy painting, but he knew he was the best. Aaron was never quite sure why he was willing to paint Wild West bikes when he refused virtually everyone else. Lougee and Crazy Dave knew one another from way back, but how they met was a bit of a mystery. It seemed a bit of a stretch to link a reservation man, born and bred- and an economics major raised in Salt Lake City’s Capitol Hill neighborhood.
Whatever the connection, it was a valuable one. A well-built bike was worth fifteen to twenty thousand more because of his work alone. In fact, his agreement to paint Wild West’s bikes probably had more to do with the success of the shop than anything else.
Theirs was a small operation.
Crazy Dave and Aaron both preferred to keep their work totally custom; avoiding the puzzle-piece sort of work most of the high-volume shops were doing. They also didn’t have the time or resources to do the interminable circuit of bike rallies and shows. The appeal of a Greatwater paint job went a long way toward convincing most collectors that a Wild West Custom was worth the high price tag.
Still, the market in Salt Lake City was not a huge one, and the more notable Vegas shops swallowed up much of the out-of-town business.
Aaron Dayne didn’t worry. He’d been able to save plenty over the past couple of years. His new wife had a good job, and he knew Crazy Dave would come up with some way to resurrect the suffering business. He always took care of Aaron, with no wife or children of his own, Dave was free to project his affections onto the sturdy young mechanic and his budding family.
With the help of a generous boss, Aaron was almost sure that he could do it better the second time around.
Dayne paid his child support to his ex, Serena, for their six-year-old son Danny without complaint.
Six years already, Wow. Aaron almost couldn’t believe that his boy could be that old already.
Danny was a huge blessing, unplanned of course, but a blessing all the same.
It was Aaron’s biggest regret that he and Serena hadn’t been able to work things out, for the boy most of all.
The combination of her demanding job and his time spent away on deployment were just too much for their young relationship. Eighteen months spent in Argentina, from the time little Danny was only eight months old until after he turned two.
Serena was left to raise him, not knowing whether or not the boy’s father would survive the incredibly violent conflict in that turbulent South American country.
When Aaron finally did return, he was not ready to be a father. He had blood on his hands and in his heart. Holding a sweet, cherubic son in arms that had cradled only a cold rifle and dying soldiers for almost two years had felt somehow wrong.
He couldn’t look Serena in the eye back then, and she wasn’t able to understand the emptiness in him.
It wasn’t guilt. He had almost convinced himself that the mission had been a valid one. Almost. It had proven too much, coming home to become part of an unconcerned public while a large part of the nearby world tore itself apart.
The sun had looked different, the mountains had looked different, and his young wife had looked different, untouched as she was by the smoke and fire and death that Aaron had become so accustomed to. A pileup of unfulfilled dreams and manifested nightmares was simply too much weight for their fledgling nuptials to bear. Serena was insistent that he take advantage of the counseling and support afforded to combat veterans. She could see the change that he was never fully willing to acknowledge in himself. Her insistence had turned into an ultimatum, and things had fallen apart.
They had no business being married anyway. Both of them were far too young. He had proposed with mixed feelings a week after finding out she was pregnant. They loved each other, as much as eighteen-year-old kids could love one another, and they both loved Danny more than anything. He was still stinging from failed attempts to land a scholarship, instead enlisting to fight for his country.
Aaron blamed himself for the failure, but now, more than three years after the divorce, there was nothing for it. Besides, things had smoothed out. He saw his son whenever he wanted, and he and Serena were civil, even friendly. She didn’t ask much of him. That had been a different time, a different life. Everyone understood that.
Aaron, after so long, was finally happy again. Or close enough to it. His wife, Allie, was understanding and accommodating of the whole thing. She knew Serena, liked her even, though it was understandably awkward at times.
Most importantly, she loved Danny almost as if he were her own child.
He smiled at his own good luck getting a second chance.
Mentally reprimanding himself for his sentimental reverie, he hefted the motorcycle tins back into the box they came from.
Hanging from a mount high up the wall, Aaron noted the television blaring another special report. One more example of the deterioration of American society. He curled his lip disdainfully at the images broadcast from the State Capital building, only a mile away.
A cloning-rights rally was well underway, and about to boil over by the looks of it.
Picketers on the screen shouted red-faced at a church official speaking from the podium.
Aaron Dayne, not a Mormon himself, still recognized the man as Elder Brady Nielson, an LDS official heralded for restoring traditional doctrine to the church. Some believed that Nielson, in a savvy move, had used the Church’s political influence to block the passing of bills that would have legalized prostitution, gambling, abortion, and of course human cloning.
Utah, in the past twenty years, had become something of an oddity. The last remaining state to disallow the sort of vice that had become commonplace in America.
An influx of Bible belt Christians, conservative Catholics, and of course the Mormons, had crowded along the Wasatch Front in a sort of alliance against the encroaching relativism that blurred the moral picture.
Locally, politically charged divisions had gradually distinguished certain neighborhoods from others. The tree-lined Avenues north of the city proper were saturated with free thinkers, those who supported the shift away from religion and the conservative values of the previous generation. University neighborhoods and ultra-liberal Sugarhouse joined the Avenues in creating a core of political rebels. While still in the vast minority, this voting base was gaining momentum on certain hot-button issues.
The more family-centric neighborhoods on the south end of the valley appealed to the older generations, the big money, and the individuals who had found success in the traditional Utah paradigm. As a result, Sandy, South Jordan, and the east bench boroughs of Cottonwood, Holladay, and Mill Creek stood in stark contrast to their neighbors, at least politically.
On the West Side, the economic climate had worsened to a point that rarely afforded its residents the luxury of strong political concern.
The entire United States, and a good portion of the industrialized globe, was beginning to develop an interest in the Utah microcosm, where the polarization between factions was so glaringly obvious.
Supporters of intensifying religiosity had called Salt Lake City the new capital of Christendom. Detractors constantly filled editorials and pamphlets with protest, criticizing the state government as a modern day theocracy.
In recent months the debates and protests had intensified until demonstrations had escalated to miniature riots as opposing sides passionately defended their respective positions.
A prime example now played out on the screen in the corner.
The police presence at this televised rally was beefed up, but it looked to Aaron Dayne like the department may have underestimated the size and volatility of the crowd it would be dealing with.
He watched as protestors surged forward, hurling insults at the man behind the podium, who stood grim-faced and unflappable, waiting for the din to die down before continuing his statement.
The camera panned out, revealing a smaller group, no doubt supporters of the day’s decision to squash yet another bill that would open the door for publicly-funded genome experimentation. This group seemed more focused on the protestors than the speaker, as if they were waiting for something to happen.
The two factions were separated only by caution tape and a line of policemen. The five or so yards of granite staircase between the two groups shrank rapidly as the tension mounted.
Aaron had seen his fair share of poorly controlled crowds during his military service. The situation on-screen was already well beyond proper containment.
Crazy Dave stood and walked over to stand at Aaron’s shoulder, the two of them watching the screen intently.
Neither man felt a need to speak.
Both silently dreaded the inevitable.
Elder Nielson, who Dayne remembered was once a friend of his former father-in-law, seemed to note that his statements weren’t helping the situation so much as they were inflaming the crowd. He calmly closed his remarks and stepped aside, with a subdued ‘thank you’ and a brief nod toward the press. He walked calmly down the steps, flanked by his bodyguards. His path took him directly between the two factions, drawing the continuing ire of the protestors.
A bearded man wearing a black t-shirt with bold print trumpeting some political agenda or another leaned over the tape and spat at the dignified trio descending the steps.
Nielson simply shook his head and shrugged to one of his bodyguards. All the while, the reporter covering the story narrated in a dramatized hush tone, sensationalizing the actions of crowd and intervening police alike. The spitting would no doubt be all over the news for days. Played and replayed until it became a memory for every man woman and child who owned a television. This reporter didn’t want to be lost in the fray. It looked to Aaron as if the two groups might come to blows.
The police present were doing an effective job effective job of keeping them apart at least.
“Perhaps only insults will be hurled today.” came the hushed voice of the news team.
Just then, the camera jerked down and to the left as the live feed picked up the harsh boom of what could only be a gunshot.
Aaron Dayne’s eyes widened in disbelief as one of the men guarding Elder Nielson dropped face first onto the stairs. His partner dove toward the church official, shielding with his own body and steering the older man rapidly toward the cover of squad cars parked on the drive. Police in the frame surged toward the protestors, vainly trying to control the panic. More shots echoed from the T.V. as the picture was distorted by the movement of the camera man rushing for cover of his own.
When the scene returned to focus, officers stood over two crumpled forms, shouting into shoulder radios. One of the downed men was the church bodyguard, his face obscured behind crouching policemen. The camera zoomed to reveal two trails of blood descending the steps in front of the fallen man.
One
crimson line coursed down three, then four steps, the other crawling laterally along the step just below the crowd of men. That much blood could only mean a lethal wound.
Next, the camera focused in on the blustering and angry grimace of the man in the black t-shirt. The spitter.
His face flushed a livid purple behind the unkempt beard as one officer knelt on the back of his neck. Another handcuffed him roughly. The frantic words of the Channel 4 news reporter were accompanied by the sound of more sirens approaching.
No doubt an ambulance and more police, too late.
The newswoman’s armor of professionalism proved much too thin a shell for the present situation.
Nonsense syllables poured from her mouth in an upset torrent as she tried to make sense of what she had just witnessed.
Eventually, she stopped altogether.
The microphone in her slim hand suddenly wavered as if it weighed fifty pounds.
She drifted to one side of the frame, previously coifed hair askew. Her mascara ran through the orangeish blush she wore and left a muddy stain on the collar of her ivory blouse. Vacillating dumbly between the scene of the crime and her own network camera, she looked like a six-year-old lost at the grocery store.
The traumatic scene on the television threatened to incite even darker imagery in Aaron Dayne’s mind. He averted his wintry blue eyes, blinking away the sight of all that blood.
He looked at his friend, who despite his moniker was not nearly as crazy as what they are seeing on the screen. Crazy Dave stared at the television -quite obviously horrified- transfixed by the chaos unfolding only blocks away.
“Holy Shit...” He muttered. His face twitched in a combination of confusion, anger, and sadness at what he’d seen.
“Holy shit….” More words caught in his throat. “I can’t believe this.”
Glancing again at the screen, Aaron swallowed the lump in his own throat, his face tightening as memories of similar tragedies he’d witnessed - and maybe even perpetrated- a half a world away danced in and out of his consciousness.
To Light Us, To Guard Us (The Angel War Book 1) Page 2