by ML Banner
She still didn’t understand what she was doing in this place, or why this man was putting her and Frank through this torment. Maybe it was his way to punish her for slashing his boy. But she was sure it was more than this, reasoning it was Jonah’s way of keeping tabs on her and Frank while they searched for what she didn’t know.
It was better than being shot. She pushed this thought out of her head.
There was movement in the distance in front of them.
More than movement. It was four figures wrapped in multicolored blankets, running their way.
It was more of the odd in an already surreal situation. It appeared as if four differently colored human-sized carnations were blowing in their direction. “Look.” Lexi pointed.
Jonah’s two men swung their rifles up and aimed at the four figures barreling right at them.
Each of Jonah’s men struggled, unsuccessfully, to get his gloved finger into his trigger guard. It was obvious the thought of how to shoot their guns while wearing the suits hadn’t occurred to them before they put them on.
One of the figures, a man wrapped in red, yelled something in their direction. But with his mouth covered, it was impossible to hear.
Another figure pulled away the blue blanket covering his mouth and face. “Help us,” he shouted.
The quartet slowed only slightly, angling to get around Jonah’s group.
The lead man, wrapped in pink, who was steadying a female soldier, pulled back his blanket. “We need to get off this base and into a pool or the ocean ASAP.” He said this as he and the other three fuzzy blooms raced by Lexi and the others, back down the path they had just come, toward the front gate.
“Peter,” Jonah hollered through his comm to his man holding the baggied radio, “take Lexi and follow them. Get them to the clinic and make sure they get whatever help they need.” He grabbed the baggie from him.
“Come on!” Peter said to Lexi, who looked up to Frank.
“It’ll be okay,” he assured her. “I’d feel better if you weren’t here any longer.” Frank squeezed her hand once more before letting go.
~~~
Travis
“Have you killed little boys with that gun?” Travis asked the man sitting next to him on the box truck’s bench seat. The man, whose name he’d forgotten, had a rifle restively bouncing in his lap, pointed away from him. The man’s foot tapped away a silent tune of impatience. “Have you killed many people for your boss?”
Travis was staring directly at the man, his posture demanding a response.
“Would you kill your own son if Jonah asked you to? Would you use a knife or—”
“Shut up, kid! My God, you ask a lot of questions,” the man huffed in frustration.
Travis didn’t care. He was tired of waiting for Lexi and Frank and the man they all worried about, their boss, Jonah. And he felt pretty sure this man wouldn’t shoot him.
They all looked at Jonah with fear and trembling—Travis always loved that phrase—as if they thought he was evil or something. But they had no idea what it was like to be in the presence of a truly evil man. Travis knew true evil. He was, after all, the nephew of the evilest man on this earth.
Travis considered this man and then Jonah. He was sure they were more full of bluster than anything else.
He pressed harder.
“Sarin gas is pretty scary stuff. I read about it in school.
“Did you know if you breathe in sarin in its gas form, it will burn your insides and you’ll puke out blood and parts of your lungs? Do you think it would hurt to puke out your lungs? I don’t think your lung tissue has nerve endings, so maybe it won’t.
“I read that only a tablespoon of sarin could wipe out all of Miami.” He knew this was not entirely true, because each person in Miami would have to have directly inhaled sarin, and it would take a lot more than a tablespoon’s worth to get to every citizen of Miami. “I wonder how many tablespoons that drone spat out?” Travis looked up to the ceiling of the cab for effect, as if the sky outside held the answer to his rhetorical question.
He kept his head fixed upward, but shifted his eyes toward the man to see if his words were getting a reaction. They were.
The man was hunched over the truck’s giant steering wheel, looking up owl-eyed. The endless silent tune in the man’s head must have crescendoed, as his leg was practically jumping off the floor. Then the man’s rifle slid off his lap with a thud.
A curl of a smile creased Travis’s lips.
The man rummaged for his rifle and then grabbed his radio parked on the space between him and Travis.
“Hey, Jake, you think we’re far enough away from the base to be safe?” the man begged into his handheld. His voice fluttered as if he were speaking through the chop of a large fan.
“Stay off the radio, numbnuts,” Jake’s burly voice huffed on the other end. Travis could see the big guy in the pickup pointed at them, glaring back through the windshield, his own handheld pressed against his ear.
This was fun, but it was getting boring. He really didn’t want to be here anymore.
As if in answer to his desires, he could see four people covered in multicolored blankets burst through the gate opening and shed their blankets, like flowers shedding their petals.
The man in front was barking something at the others, and they began to pull their clothes off while hurrying in the direction of the trucks.
“Behind you, Jake. Soldiers are coming out of the gate,” the man next to Travis shouted, his voice filled with indecision. “They’re taking their clothes off?”
“They’re removing anything that might have sarin on it and getting it away from their bodies,” Travis announced. “They probably need to hose off too. Do you have a hose or water?” Travis asked. Frank had already explained all about sarin gas and what they needed to do if they came in contact with anything that might have sarin on it.
“In back,” the man mumbled.
“Did Jonah say what we should do if someone came out besides them?” Jake asked as the four disrobing figures approached Jake’s truck parked next to Jonah’s Vette.
“I don’t—hey, wait,” the man barked at Travis’s empty seat.
Travis had hopped out of the truck and was walking toward the approaching soldiers, now in their underwear. One of them was a woman, who looked very pretty, but also pale like she might throw up.
As Travis approached the four, he could see his sister, in her blue suit several sizes too big, and another man bounce through the gate, trying to catch up with the others.
“There are some jugs of water in the back,” Travis told the soldier helping the pretty woman.
Lexi pulled her suit off, shedding it like a lizard would molt its old skin, only a lot quicker. She was able to pop out of her oversized boots and gloves easily, leaving them behind. She ran to her brother, pulling off her mask, and threw herself around him, huffing for air.
She felt wet with sweat, but Travis didn’t pull away, not one bit.
“I’m so glad you didn’t come with us,” Lexi puffed.
That was all she said. She breathed rapidly and clutched her brother, both relishing each other.
“Come on,” a voice demanded behind them, startling them. “Jonah said that we’re supposed to take these four to the clinic and let Dr. Scott know who brought them in.”
~~~
Frank
“I can guess why you’re here. So why am I here?” Frank panted. He wobbled a little, grasping the side of a building, while he and Jonah waited for his other two men to finish searching the last building on the base.
“Okay, why do you think I’m here?” Jonah huffed, also out of breath.
“Weapons and other supplies.” Frank stated this unequivocally as he would state any other fact, like Florida being a peninsula.
“Fair enough. You’re here because I’m not as familiar with these suits and sarin contamination. I want to make sure that whatever we get out of this place can be used after we
get it.”
“But I’ve already told you that you can wash most of it off, and then whatever is still on there will be inert after a few days. And you know as much about these suits as I do by now. So what’s the real reason?”
“All right, I guess it’s more curiosity about you and the two kids and Stanley Smith, I mean Stanley Broadmoor’s story.” Jonah hopped up and down a couple of times. He found that that caused the condensation to roll more abruptly down his faceplate so that he could see better, at least for a moment.
“What’s to tell? Stanley had many secrets. There are apparently many things you know about my friend that I don’t.” Frank watched Jonah as best he could through their foggy environs, trying to read him. When he had heard about Jonah, he thought he’d be a threat to him and the kids, and he wanted to head off that threat quickly. Although, Jonah made that happen quicker than he would have asked. But now after talking to him and his men, he suspected this threat was manageable. In fact, he felt surer that Jonah could even be an ally. It seemed that his friend Stanley had befriended this man for the same reason.
“Like how he became friends with a rogue like me?”
“Exactly.”
“I couldn’t help but like Stanley—still hard to believe he didn’t make it, though …”
Frank could tell Jonah was contemplating their friend.
“Anyway, he saved my butt one day, and for no reason. He didn’t want anything from me in return, so I felt like I owed him—”
“Hey, boss!” an excited voice chirped over their comms. “You better come in here.”
“We’re coming,” Jonah said as he slogged in through the door. He glanced back and saw Frank was following him inside.
“Where are you?” Jonah asked as his eyes scanned for the light.
“Right here, boss.” His man was standing half in a doorway they had broken through. The light was evident now. What Jonah didn’t know was that his man wished Jonah could see through his faceplate, because then Jonah would see him grinning ear to ear. The man pointed inside with his rifle.
Jonah walked into the semi-dark room. A little light coming from his man’s flashlight gave him the sense that the room was not large, and it was tight with unknown materials and stacked-up crates. He couldn’t see clearly at all, even bumping into something in the middle of the floor.
His man and the flashlight followed him the rest of the way inside, its light now revealing to Jonah that the “something” was stacked cases of ammo and grenades. And along the wall were dozens of military rifles. They had found the base’s weapons.
“Now we’re talking!” Jonah exclaimed.
Jonah turned to see if Frank could see all the bounty. But Frank wasn’t there. “Frank, where are you? Being a military guy, you’d appreciate this.”
Jonah grabbed the flashlight from his man and stepped back out of the room, tripping at the door.
He shined his flashlight down and saw that he had tripped over someone’s blue boots. He could see it was one of his biohazard suits. At first he thought it was his other man, but then he saw that fellow coming from deeper within the building. When Jonah looked again, shining his light on the man’s faceplate, he could see it was Frank. He looked dead.
Chapter 12
Crystal Waters, Florida
Many of the community’s men, and one young woman unaccompanied by a man, were crowded around the giant sign recently erected on the front lawn of Crystal Waters City Hall. Although they were riled up by the imam’s words only moments ago, there was a hushed silence now as they attempted to understand what those words meant to them. After the first few phrases, it was clear to everyone.
To: The Crystal Waters Umhah (community)
From: Imam Ramadi
As-salaam Alaykum.
Praise Allah and his prophet Mohammad, peace be upon him.
I am happy to announce that we can now publically testify to Allah’s greatness in all that we do, by practicing what his prophet Mohammad—peace be upon him—has taught us. To this end, I declare as a servant of Allah that as of today, July 9th, this umhah will practice Sharia within the confines of Islam’s Five Pillars:
All must openly declare their faith to Allah, Mohammad, their Mahdi, their imam, and to the holy precept of martyrdom;
All must pray five times per day and heed the public call to prayer;
All must give 50% of their supplies and resources to their imam, who will distribute it to those who need it more;
All must fast during Ramadan; and
All must make their pilgrimage. However, since travel to Mecca is impossible at this time, all men in this umhah are expected to make their pilgrimage with their Mahdi in the field of battle. All men will start to train tomorrow at the soccer field, in preparation for the next phase of the war against the infidel.
Practicing Sharia will prove our submission to Allah and make us purer and more acceptable to Allah. In addition to the above, the following are required of all men and women:
> To protect and preserve the virtue of our women, no woman above the age of twelve will appear in public without her husband or father. No woman will drive a car. Each will remain chaste, not engaging in sexual behavior except with her husband, and will cover her body, hair, wrists and ankles so as not to entice others.
> Proselytizing against Islam is punishable by death.
> The penalty for theft is loss of hand.
Additional rules will be added.
All rules are subject to change by your imam.
All penalties will be decided by your imam and be carried out in front of city hall, every day at noon.
The crowds grew steadily throughout the morning as more and more gathered around the sign. The din of discussion began first as a murmur, but then culminated into a clamor that could be heard for miles around. Long before the noon hour approached, the men were frantic in their chants for Allah, for their imam, and for sharia.
Some of the men and the few women who ended up in front of the sign, but immediately knew they didn’t belong there, tried to slip away unnoticed. But these, who were perceived as either Christians or simply shirkers, were grabbed by those yelling and chanting in between their fist-pumps to Allah. The detained women were ushered to the front of city hall, where they waited for the noon hour.
Some of the men who had tried to quietly leave, especially those known to be Christians, were summarily beaten. Two were beaten so badly that they eventually died on the city hall’s well-manicured lawn.
The few who were able to flee the multiplying mob, now numbering in the hundreds, ran for their homes, keeping to the shadows in hopes of escaping.
The hundreds of other Crystal Waters residents who had not yet witnessed the violence but could easily hear the uproar quickly understood what was happening from others who made their chanting pilgrimage down some of the town’s streets and walkways. The parade of horror wound through the residential streets and then returned toward the city center so that all could witness the festivities at noon.
Crystal Waters was effectively split in half: those adamantly supporting the imam on one side and everyone else on the other side. There was no standing in the middle or on the sidelines. The Imam and his supporters demanded public support, from everyone.
At noon, the chanting crowd, now over one thousand strong, was once again silenced by Iman Ramadi, who exited city hall like a pope coming from his apartment to address the crowd in St. Peter’s Square for Christmas Mass. Imam Ramadi wore all the pageantry befitting a holiday announcement, including a fine new silk thobe. Upon reaching the dais, set up with microphones all connected to the city speakers, he held up his palms to calm his people.
“Asalam Alekem.” His thick beard cradled a grin of pride.
“Asalem Asalam,” the crowd replied in perfect unison.
“Brothers and sisters, as I have told you and as you have just read, it is our time to come out of the shadows and openly pronounce our faith to the world. Furt
her, this country of infidels will soon become part of the great new caliphate begun by our Mahdi only a few days ago.
“I will be brief today and attend to the proclamation of penalties. This is not so much a demonstration of punishment or cruelty as it is a demonstration of our allegiance to Allah and his laws.
“First, bring up the women.”
Several women, some detained from the crowds and a few others already being held, were prodded as a group to an area of posts set up below the dais. Several men then bound their hands in front of them and around the posts so that their backs were to the crowd. All anxiously waited for what was coming next.
Several men from the Matawi, now dressed in black, their faces completely covered, approached the women, who ranged from fifteen to sixty. When each man reached a bound woman, he grabbed a collar and aggressively yanked—some using their knives to assist—tearing their clothes from their neck down, exposing their bare backs. A few only yelped, but most hollered or cried.
“These women,” the imam boomed, “were in public, unaccompanied by either their husband or guardian. They’ve all been warned about this rule by Matawi. And because our rules were just proclaimed today, their punishment will be fair. It will be much harsher in the future. Five lashes!”
Some of the crowd looked away with fear, thinking that it could have been one of their wives or daughters up there. But most of the crowd cheered and called the women foul names in English and Arabic.
After the lashings, the women were unbound and allowed to flee to their homes, holding their tattered clothes and covering with their arms and hands what little dignity they still possessed.
The crowd then grew louder as they sensed the next phase of punishment would turn more gruesome.