“I can.” He sighed, setting his mouth in a grim line and reaching for his cell phone.
He pushed his way out the side door of the shop, breathing the fresh air deep and squinting against the Western sun. Semi-dark clouds hung over the mountains to the East.
Aaron brushed one hand through the bristly hair crowning his head. The short crop he had picked up in the military years ago, temporarily abandoned and reverted back when he and Crazy Dave decided to open Wild West.
Low maintenance.
The tiny phone looked almost comical in his wide palm as he pressed a button. Speed dial two. Pressing the handset to his stubbly jaw, Dayne half listened while Allie’s phone rang five or so times.
No answer. Instead, her voicemail picked up. He couldn’t help but be amused as his wife’s voice chimed cheerily through a generic “leave a message and I’ll call you back.”
He hung up, not wanting to record his present mood in voice mail. Content to stand and breathe the clean air, he watched cars drive by.
Dayne leaned back with his hands in his pockets, flaring his nostrils and taking in the smell of pollen and wet cut grass. The clinging sense of foreboding brought on by the newscast made the hair on his arms stand up.
How did it get so bad?
If a crime like the one witnessed today on live television could happen in Salt Lake City, it could happen anywhere.
It was happening everywhere.
But this was too close to home.
He probably wouldn’t much care if he wasn’t a father, but his son would have to grow up in this world.
The dream of Mars colonization was long dead. The Antarctic Pioneer Front was a wasteland of bitter Palestinians and Argentinian ex-pats trying to escape the World Union bounty hunters that pursued them.
This was it.
Aaron pondered the ways to protect his young son from the harshness of reality without making him soft.
A cacophony of barking dogs drifted to Aaron’s ears from far down the street, barely audible. Northerly breezes carried the salty rot smell from the Lake.
The odor seemed to reflect the stink of the political climate. Personal views aside, Aaron recognized that what had happened today on television was a manifestation of the division gradually occurring worldwide. Events similar to what he had seen on a local news broadcast today were all over CNN and other major channels.
Rome,
Tehran,
Cairo,
Lisbon,
Johannesburg,
Chandu,
Brisbane,
Lusaka,
Sao Paolo,
Pyong Yang,
Recent riots in St. Louis and San Diego, and now an assassination attempt in Salt Lake City.
Something inside Aaron Dayne told him that these were not isolated incidents.
Things were changing.
The ball that had been set rolling a generation ago with the invasion of Iraq had gained momentum with each violent conflict, including the War in Argentina, where he had earned his many combat distinctions.
Violence, hate and intolerance had been slowly creeping, disregarding the borders created by world leaders.
Separatism in today’s world was bound less by national allegiance than by political ideals. Dayne’s parents lived in a generation where it was America vs. the World. His adulthood, he realized, was more likely to be defined by Right vs. Left.
Right vs. Wrong he admitted to himself.
If indeed those two things still existed.
A spatter of rain began to fall, the wind picking up. Cottonwood trees shed snowy seeds into the air. Blue sky to the west indicated that there would be no storm, just one of the typical abbreviated showers.
Something about the unsteady gusts, skittering grass clippings and garbage down the gutters made Dayne’s skin crawl. Again, a hand found its way to his scalp, rubbing in a nervous gesture. He cast his eyes to the mountains, seeing past the moaning traffic. What he was looking for he didn’t know.
There was an oddness in the air. A tinge of unrest. The pleasant springtime weather had ill-fitting edge to it.
Aaron had not felt this way since Argentina.
I’ve got to stop watching the news.
Something was stirring up old feelings. Aaron Dayne was inexplicably anxious, aroused by nothing but the dust and his own imagination.
The subtle tingle in his fingertips and tongue was not an unwelcome feeling. Only alarming because of what it accompanied in his past.
He breathed deep again, exhaling sharply, forcing harsh thoughts out with his breath. Something big was happening, somewhere, he only knew it because he felt it.
“Aaron.” Crazy Dave called from the doorway. “Let’s wrap this up”
It was half order, half suggestion. Dave had a strange talent for knowing what to say and when to say it.
His reverie broken, Aaron turned away from the world and back toward their shop.
“Coming.” He hit redial on his phone.
Again, no answer. Hanging up, he let the phone fall back into the pocket of his worn jeans.
At a time like this, having work to do was a blessing.
Experience told him that he’d know soon enough what was stirring him up.
The two friends exchanged a few words, making sure the other was alright after the alarming newscast. Each man reassured himself in encouraging a friend.
Returning to his work, Aaron tried to shake that old familiar stirring sensation. He kicked the Skil rotary on with a flick of the thumb, dropping his safety shades over his eyes. High pitched whining of metal on metal sang once again through the shop. Aaron Dayne and Crazy Dave Stanworth began once again to dance a utilitarian step to this odd music, one hunched over his tools, the other bobbing back and forth from checkbook to ledger.
Decrypted archival file 0009-595
KC Brian Hin Bishop, Zion Province, USA
Entry 1: Visual contact: Angelic: following funeral services for LDS Temple Guard, Salt Lake City UT. Non-confirmed contact.
Entry 2: Evaluation Order received from KC HQ Salt Lake City concerning target personalities.
Designate: Prince-Hunter Valdez. Las Vegas NV- Spec Int distinction.
Designate: Wicked-Unknown. Whereabouts unknown
Designate: Depot-Sheila Haddock. Stansbury, UT
Designate: Redskin- Aaron Dayne. Salt Lake City, UT
Designate: Buck- James Muirbank. Park City, UT
Designate: Doe- Jenna Muirbank. Park City, UT
Designate: Weaver- Devin Smith. Orem, UT
Designate: Tinkerbell- Tiffany Rackham, Layton, UT
Entry 3: White Alert-Sacramental Priority. Confirmed KC Adam Ironday Pope
Lai’e Hawaii
Heavy rainfall had pounded the broad leaves of the Oahu’s palms for nearly a week straight. Black volcanic soil washed down the gulches of the Ko’olau Mountains in livid torrents.
God’s coffee, the locals called it.
God, it appeared, was unhappy with Penisimani Siafolau Poloa. The entire mouthful of his name was not known to many. To friends and neighbors, he was just Peni.
Three days a week, he sold fresh sugar cane, pineapples, and the occasional mango from a roadside shack fronting his seaside farm. The farmhouse itself stood back from the two lane highway that circled the island.
Impossibly, the quaint country road served as one of the state’s most important highways. The Kamehameha expressway once served as the artery that pumped the blood of Oahu -tourist dollars- to the furthest stretches of the tiny island. Ever since the cultural center up the road had closed, it was falling into disrepair.
Honolulu had long since become notorious as one of the most congested and crime-ridden cities in the entire country. The illusion of isolation on an island paradise hadn’t fooled anybody in Hawaii’s capital city for many years.
Methamphetamines and the hybridization of poppy and salvia plants combined to create an insatiable drug culture that swallowed an e
ntire generation of Honolulu’s once-solid family structure.
Nowadays, travelers who wanted to make it safely between the airport and the glittering beachside hotels paid both cab fare and a safe-passage fee to the corrupt police force.
Adventurous types relished the sense of danger. Mostly, the tourists just didn’t bother coming. Oahu died slowly, a little more every year. Peni tracked its decline with his own eyes and ears, as fewer and fewer strangers passed by the stand or asked for directions.
Peni couldn’t enjoy the quiet. Mostly because he’d been part of the crime war that dealt the island its most grievous blow. Playing both sides of a generations-long battle between Asian cartels and Polynesian powerbrokers carried heavy consequences. The heaviest of which he’d been thus far able to avoid.
His status as the last survivor of a notorious conflict gave him no solace today.
Years removed from those harrowing days of high-crime, Peni was alone, paying for his transgressions.
The rain drenching his farmhouse beat a staccato rhythm on the patio.
Water fell from Peni’s own eyes as he gazed out into the storm.
It had not been long since he’d received the news. In Hawaii, even now, news traveled as it always had done, from ear to mouth to ear, up and down the roads like a flesh-powered wire service.
His mother, sister and two nephews slid off the road on their way over for a visit. Slick roads, poorly-tended safety walls, and twenty feet of vertical drop onto rocks at low tide were a brutal combination. Deadly.
The boys, Singa and Kaleo, had both been promising student-athletes. They had a chance for a future. They represented a chance to legitimize the family success. Not anymore.
It was too much to bear.
Despite the killing that Peni had seen and done in his life, he had found peace, surrounded by the tropical hills and the family that he so cherished.
This day had been stalking his dreams for a very long time. The day that God finally punished him for his past. The life of a different man.
Thickness welled up in his chest like nothing he had ever encountered.
He couldn’t stare it down, couldn’t pummel it with his fists, he couldn’t yell at it or chase it away or threaten it. Peni could only hang his head and let the pain wash over him. Pure sorrow was impossible to prepare for.
Responsibility for this loss belonged to him, like a damning gift. Heavy certainty weighed on his heart that he was the reason that his loved ones had been ripped from this world. The same way that he himself had been responsible for the sorrow of many mothers and fathers and friends.
This overwhelming burden, he had earned.
It was nobody’s but his own to bear, and it was too much for him.
Peni mashed the heels of his hands into his eyes, wiping away the first tears he’d cried since childhood. He walked into his bedroom and rummaged through a drawer, rifling through lava lavas and tank tops until his hand found the heavy lump of a handgun. He pulled back the slide to chamber one bullet and dropped the rest of the clip back into the drawer.
He tucked the chilly steel into the waistband of old Bermuda shorts and peeled of his white t-shirt. The cotton was damp from tears and stress.
Kissing his fingers, he brushed them across a series of photographs on the living room wall.
The smiling faces of now-deceased loved ones refused to acknowledge him.
Screen door hinges squealed as he stepped out into the rain and strode toward the highway. He never did get around to greasing them.
Tempestuous breezes pushed sheets of water through the fronting vine trees.
Instinct told him to cringe or bow his head as he walked into the rain, but he ignored it, preferring to feel the fat drops on his face and lashes. He crossed the two lane road without pause, not caring if a car hit him or a busload of tourists saw the gun nestled against the muscles of his lower back.
For a moment, the sympathetic rain let him be as he walked through a stand of heavy palms.
He continued, dead eyed and breathing hard, until he reached the beach.
The beach.
The sea was all chop, whipped into low foamy rollers by the conflicting breezes.
Damp, dark sand stood empty, the rain chasing away all of the normal visitors. Today, this stretch of paradise was his and his alone.
The strong features of his face twisted up in a mask of sorrow and anger as he remembered all of the times he had brought his young nephews to this very same strand, teaching them to spearfish and chasing the pair of ancient sea turtles that lived out on the black reef.
Those times had been his best, times that he now knew were undeserved, granted him only so that he could truly appreciate the profound sadness of this moment.
Peni looked over his shoulder back toward the house. His eyes were drawn to the gray and green hills, where the rain painted a soft, achingly beautiful picture.
Nodding a silent goodbye, he turned back toward the open sea. The shock of cool water sent a brief thrill of nerves from heels to forehead. He waded out to where the waves licked his knees and dropped down. In the attitude of prayer he let his hands dip into the water, disappearing under the white foam. Fingers melted into sand as the tide ebbed and flowed.
It gave him momentary relief, a breath of reprieve.
This ocean, this beach, that house, this life- all amounted to nothing now without the love of his family.
He straightened his back and reached around, gripping the pistol in a wet, grainy palm.
He pulled the slide halfway again, to make sure the bullet was seated properly.
Peni turned the gun over and over in his thick hands, vacillating between sorrow and anger, guilt and shame, love and loss.
He knew that he should accept God’s punishment and learn from it, live out his life as the Lord wanted.
Such was a life for a strong and righteous man. He was not that.
Peni had proven to the Lord and himself that he was nothing more than an ungrateful child. Violent, cunning, and disgusting in the face of a beautiful God and a beautiful existence. He did not have the strength to do what was right.
Never had.
He would do now as he had always done, take the easy way out.
Hot tears ran down his face, fighting the cool rain and cold ocean. He wailed in the language of his father, asking why he had lived to experience this moment.
Why?
Peni gripped the gun and pressed it into the soft flesh under his chin, angling the barrel back so the hollow point would annihilate his brain and skull completely. Whispering an apology to God and a greeting to his mother, he squeezed the trigger.
The flash, the pain, the emptiness that he anticipated never came.
Only a metallic ping and the sound of surf and rain. His own breathing.
Exclaiming in rage and disbelief, he jerked back the slide, popping the bullet out to inspect what had gone wrong.
Dented primer. Failure to fire.
For a long time Peni didn’t move.
Nothing moved.
Even water and sand paused their endless tug-of-war.
He stared at the faulty round in his own palm. The silent metal offered no answers.
It reminded him of a movie he had seen long ago, something old with Denzel Washington. There was a line that now made sense to him. Peni didn’t know why he remembered it, but he did. He repeated the words aloud to the indifferent beach.
“A bullet always tells the truth.”
This bullet told Peni to get up, to live.
He knew it was strange to put such stock in an accident, a fluke, but it came to him with such clarity that he couldn’t help it. Some fundamental part of him clung to what this amalgam of lead and brass had to say.
He knew he hadn’t the strength, but he also knew that now, it was not his choice.
When he stood up out of the wet sand and walked dripping back toward his house the clouds broke slightly, casting his world in emerald and aquamari
ne. In color. In the hues of life.
He shook his heavy head and cried. Peni did not know how he would do this, live like this. Alone. But he knew there must be a reason.
Las Vegas, Nevada
“The world’s greatest marvel of modern engineering and architecture.’ That was the official blurb in the Forbes Review Sir.”
Hunter Valdez was marginally pleased, but he didn’t smile. Nor did he let the satisfaction register in his voice.
“Very good Serena, but tell them to remove the word ‘modern’. It narrows the field too much. I didn’t spend billions on this project to have it lumped in with only ‘modern’ architecture.”
Idiots
The magazine would of course comply with his request.
Nobody ever said no to Hunter Valdez. Not since he was a boy.
Besides, his newest project deserved unmatched credit.
Still awaiting finishing touches, the tower soared high above the other buildings on the famous Las Vegas strip. Dead mountains in the distance, just visible through the polluted haze, seemed to bow in homage to the glittering super scraper.
What had started as a small cluster of saloons and cheap smoke-choked casinos, then a mobsters paradise, had grown to become the adult entertainment capital of the world. Vegas was still constantly trying to outdo itself.
Now, some thirty years into its second golden age, Sin City warranted the name more and more each year. All pretenses of family fun had faded before 2020. The purple blister dome at the gutted Circus Circus Hotel was torn down in 2022 to make room for yet another insanely large burlesque review. By wholly embracing its decadent nature, Las Vegas had earned the honor of being the number one destination city on the planet. Macau and Dubai didn’t even come close anymore.
Repeat visitors found a city that reinvented itself almost yearly. Hotel facades became bigger and better as prices and profits pushed to astronomical levels. Each megaplex expanded ever larger to compete for skyline real estate and cast shadows that would gobble up the competition.
To Light Us, To Guard Us (The Angel War Book 1) Page 3