Capes

by Drabble, Matt

  “What about you?” Doc asked Crimson.

  “What about me?”

  “The jungle? Your attack?”

  “How did you get away?” Jesus asked pointedly.

  “By the skin on my ass.” He grinned back.

  “That’s not much of an answer,” Jamie-Lyn prompted.

  “Look, something attacked my compound, went through my men like they were nothing, damn near took my head off too. I never got that good a look at whatever it was. It came out of the darkness, and I never saw it coming… never even heard it coming,” he finished as he looked down at the ground, his face telling a story of rare fear, and a silence fell over the room.

  “So what’s the bottom line here?” Jamie-Lyn finally asked.

  “That we just don’t know anything for sure,” Doc answered. “And to be honest, I’m not sure that we should be having this sort of conversation without CJ present.”

  “Ah, who needs him,” Crimson sneered. “I say we can’t trust him, and yes, before any of you start, I know that’s going to sound rich coming from me, but let’s not forget he’s not really one of us. He never has been.”

  “Well I still say it’s her, Cynthia Arrow,” Jamie-Lyn said firmly. “I mean it has to be, right?”

  “We would know if she was back,” Jesus replied quickly. “Even if she was, and that’s a big if, then she’s small fry, a lunatic old woman who’s maybe gathered a handful of nutcases to her cause. No way she’s rebuilt anything approaching what they were… no way in hell.”

  ----------

  The Willowlands estate was a large sprawling country house and grounds covering some 18 acres. There was a large main house sat in the centre, one which would have been perfectly suited to hosting any Agatha Christie murder mystery reveal.

  The estate had once been a working farm owned by the Williams’ family, a business handed down from generation to generation, children raised to love and understand the land, farm-strong hands and backs who took pride in their productive lives. That was up until Rosemary came along.

  Born a small sickly child, Rosemary had faced an uphill struggle from the very start. Her parents were told that the baby wouldn’t last a week, then they were told that she wouldn’t last a month.

  After a while, the doctors told them that Rosemary might live but she’d never function properly, but Rosemary was farm strong and she just kept on trucking along, just as her parents had known she would.

  Rosemary grew stronger as she grew taller. Her body might have had problems – her spine was crooked, her left arm never reached full strength, she had a lazy right eye and she walked with a cane for her whole life – but her will was iron.

  She always knew that the cards life had dealt her came with caveats. Working the farm would always be beyond her, but that was okay. She was always heading in a different direction, away from working the land and into protecting it.

  At 18, she had stood in a local council election on the platform of stopping a property developer buying out a local bankrupt farm and turning it into a 12-home estate, his first of many for the greenbelt area.

  She had won that election and she had gotten a surprising taste for politics into the bargain. She had found her true calling.

  Once she was on the political treadmill, she never got off, and it took her all the way to the highest office in the land, to being the prime minister.

  Her career was built on being open and honest, on showing the country that everyone could be far more than their own limitations, that anything was possible, but most of all she was ruthless and merciless.

  Her physical difficulties were always a useful platform when necessary, either to garner sympathy at the right times or to discard whenever she needed to show strength.

  As she grew older, she found that in politics, everyone had an angle, everyone had their own agenda and no one, not even your closest allies, could ever be trusted.

  The mountain climb to 10 Downing Street was far easier to ascend than the job of staying on the summit. Once she’d gotten there, it was open season on Rosemary Williams and everyone came gunning for her.

  31 years ago, she had been embroiled in a faltering economy, rising unemployment and crime figures at a record high. The British public were not interested in a worldwide economy slow down. They were not interested in reasons. They only saw excuses from the “cripple woman” who couldn’t handle the job.

  Her poll numbers had fallen to an all-time low, and the rumbles of a leadership challenge by her own party had grown into a dull roar. They were coming for her, and she had no weapons to fight back with. That was until the unthinkable had happened, the unimaginable: the shocking arrival of a visitor from beyond the stars.

  The public were momentarily diverted as the entire world held their breath and looked to the UK for answers as to how and why we were no longer alone in the universe.

  Rosemary had watched on with the same open-mouthed shock as the rest of the country, but while they were all frozen, her mind was racing along at a truly frantic pace.

  Celebration and fear had been the two overriding emotions running wild across the UK and the world beyond. Of course, human nature being what it was, fear started to take an early lead.

  Rosemary Williams saw an opportunity in the chaos. She saw a conflict brewing as protests started to mount along with suspicion over their visitor, and being a born politician, she started to play both sides of the divide.

  In public, she was a staunch supporter of the alien who’d quickly become known as Cosmic Jones, a silly name if ever she’d heard one.

  In private, she was feathering the nest of the protesters, in particular a charismatic woman by the name of Cynthia Arrow who was becoming a rising star on the extremist circuit.

  As she’d predicted, Cynthia Arrow had taken the bait. She was a woman with a sketchy past, one that had taken the most discreet of government enquiries to uncover. Her father had been a dangerous paranoid schizophrenic with delusions of being a preacher, and the condition was apparently hereditary.

  Cynthia Arrow was given special protection while she blossomed into a force with her own army. Rosemary watched over the woman like a mother hen as the country became more and more divided about their new resident.

  Rosemary backed Mr Jones in public while maintaining a tough stance on his stay. He was sequestered to a government facility but allowed to continue with an online presence administered by a local news reporter he’d appeared to have adopted.

  As she’d predicted, the public interest started to wane when Mr Jones had proven himself to not be on a mission to take over the world. Then, just before the voting public’s attention started to return to a failing prime minister, Rosemary Williams gave the war a little prod along.

  Winston Churchill wrote his name into the history books on the back of World War II, a man hailed as a nation’s hero for standing against the dark invading hordes, a man whose failings were overlooked and expunged when his legacy was reviewed. Rosemary saw the man as a role model, a path to follow… she would just have to create it first.

  Operatives were placed inside Cynthia Arrow’s burgeoning SOUL movement, men and women to aid the growing sense of violence brewing.

  Weapons and expertise were made available to the Arrow woman as every tool was afforded to her. The police were kept away and any potential investigation quashed.

  Everything should have been in place for an armed conflict, a new enemy to fight, one that could unite the country, but it was taking too long. Rosemary was starting to fall in the polls again, and the vultures were circling. She needed something to push Cynthia Arrow over the edge.

  The incident at Boulder Ridge was, of course, staged by Rosemary herself. An explosion at the facility was carefully managed so as to not actually cost any lives. She wasn’t a monster after all.

  Cosmic Jones was working at Boulder Ridge with some of the government’s top scientists on an energy project. The work was not producing anything of particu
lar note, but Rosemary had simply wanted his presence at a private site, one that would undoubtedly stoke the paranoid fires of the growing SOUL organisation.

  The explosion worked, and all Rosemary had to do was to point-blank refuse to offer up any details despite her aides’ insistences. After that, rumours spread like wildfire and Cynthia Arrow decided she had waited long enough and the war began.

  She had quickly played up the threat, and after the attack at the National History Museum, she didn’t have to exaggerate it anymore.

  The attack had been known about well in advance, allowing her to debut Cosmic Jones in action, a real-life costumed superhero brought into play by Rosemary Williams, a leader with the foresight to recruit and control the single most powerful being on the planet. After that, the public were like putty in her hands as they demanded swift and severe retribution for the terrorists within.

  She’d preyed on the public fears and stoked the fires. SOUL were officially tagged a terrorist organisation, and the Anti-Radical-Religion Bill was enacted.

  Opposition voices were quickly silenced for fear of being branded sympathetic to the terrorists as the country banded together in a time of war, and everyone seemed to be trying to scream the loudest to prove their patriotism.

  The upcoming general election, one that Rosemary had been on a crash course to lose heavily, was suspended using extraordinary government powers. The opposition had briefly objected, but even they saw the way the rivers of public opinion were flowing and relented.

  The only unforeseen problem that she encountered was that her plan had been too successful. She had created a monster, but the monster grew too large, and very quickly it became apparent that the SOUL organisation under Cynthia Arrow was getting out of hand.

  The war raged on, and then on and on. Rosemary Williams became the hero who stood against the forces of darkness before fading into the woman who could not defeat the enemy.

  She saw the writing on the wall and called a general election during the third year of the war and won with a much smaller majority than she’d expected.

  By the seventh year, public apathy was setting in. The SOUL attacks had become less and less frequent in time and severity and her party saw their chance to oust her.

  It had been a bloodless coup. In truth, her will was spent and she still had enough credit in the bank to retire with grace, knowing all she had to do was to wait for history to smooth out any rough edges of her career.

  Her only regret was that by the time Havencrest rolled around, when the war was officially ended in a decisive victory, she was spending her days rattling around the Willowlands estate long after it had stopped being a working farm.

  She sat now in the library, a large spacious room that she’d had converted into one of the finest first edition collections in the world. While she had little in the way of a passion for reading, she always had a passion for making statements.

  There was a large pile of newspapers and magazine articles all containing pieces about her secrets. Most of the articles were wild conspiracy theories, but it was starting to make her nervous just how close to the bone some of them were getting.

  There was a fire crackling softly in the imposing Gothic fireplace, and even though she was sat almost on top of it, the fiery warmth struggled to penetrate her aching bones. It seemed the older she got, the colder she felt. She often wondered if it was the grave reaching out to take her.

  She shook her head at the maudlin thought; old age seemed to be accompanied by a sentimentality that she would have poured scorn on in her youth, but now she couldn’t shake it, nevertheless.

  The fire cast long dancing shadows across the room as she sat deeply in the tall-backed leather armchair with only a glass of exquisite brandy for company.

  She had never married. In truth, she had never felt the need for human company. She also doubted that there was a man or woman on the planet capable of being her partner. Marriage was a weakness, as far as she was concerned, and the last thing she would ever be was weak.

  The estate was currently home to over thirty people – domestic, professional and security staff – but they all knew their place and their place was to be out of sight whenever possible.

  She was gently swirling the glass in her hand, enjoying the sparking crystal as the brown liquid was warmed by her hand, when the door behind her surprisingly opened.

  “This had better be bloody good,” she snapped without turning around.

  “Oh, I can assure you it is,” came a woman’s reply, a voice that Rosemary couldn’t immediately place.

  The woman entered the library and walked slowly around until she was standing in front of the former prime minister.

  “Well, this is certainly a surprise,” Rosemary said as she deliberately took a small and slow taste from her glass to show that she wasn’t intimidated.

  “It really shouldn’t be.” Cynthia Arrow smiled back. “You should have known that I’d come for you.”

  “I thought you were dead, after Havencrest,” Rosemary clarified.

  “God had a different path for me to follow.”

  “So I see. You know, you don’t look as though you’ve aged a day. Terrorist life must agree with you,” Rosemary toasted. “Please..,” she said, indicating for the other woman to take a seat in the opposite armchair.

  Cynthia nodded and sat down.

  “Drink?” Rosemary offered.

  “Not for me.”

  “Ah, all business then. You don’t mind if I have another?”

  “Please do.”

  Rosemary stood and walked awkwardly to the table where the decanter was and poured herself another stiff crystal glass full with one hand while the other slowly reached into a drawer.

  “I wouldn’t bother,” Cynthia called out before Rosemary could find that there was no pistol in the drawer where she’d been expecting it.

  “You’ve planned ahead I see.”

  “Always, now please sit down,” Cynthia ushered.

  Rosemary carried her glass back to her chair, all the while trying to think of a plan, trying to think of a way out.

  They were roughly the same age, but she looked and felt a hundred years older than the terrorist leader facing her. While her own limitations had only grown worse down the years, Cynthia Arrow appeared to have grown stronger, more vibrant, somehow younger, and while she didn’t appear to be holding a weapon, Rosemary felt like she was under a very direct and dangerous threat.

  “So why are you here?” she asked as she sat down again. “What is it that you want from me? Revenge?”

  “Revenge? Is that what you think of me?”

  “Lady, you don’t want to know what I think of you.”

  “‘Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing.’”

  “What is that? The Bible?”

  “Peter 3:9.”

  “Well whoop-de-doo,” Rosemary responded, twirling a finger in the air.

  “I am not here to harm you, Rosemary, quite the contrary. I am here to save you.”

  “Save me? Save me from what, exactly?”

  “Why, from yourself, Rosemary. From every bad instinct that you have, every bad decision that you have made. I am here to offer redemption.”

  The snorted laughter came out of Rosemary before she could stop it. Cynthia smiled and showed no sign of anger.

  “You believed in me once, Rosemary. You believed in what we were trying to do.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You allowed God to enter your heart and show you the way, once, but you fell from your path, Rosemary. You fell from his path, his way. You slipped from the light, Rosemary, and the darkness took you.”

  “Well I’ve got to give it you, you really are one batshit crazy lady,” Rosemary toasted as she took a drink.

  “‘I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins n
o more,’” Cynthia quoted. “There is a way back, Rosemary.”

  “A way back from what? What the hell are you talking about? I mean, seriously, lady. What is wrong with you?”

  “You were there at our birth, Rosemary. You helped us in the beginning, God showed you the way, and you were willing to aid us in this fight.”

  “Wait a minute…,” Rosemary began as something started to dawn.

  “That’s right. I know all about the agents that you sent to us, agents who came to help us. ‘Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.’”

  “Now just wait a damn minute,” Rosemary started, looking around as though afraid they might be overheard. “Now I don’t know what you think you’ve heard, but I can assure you that whatever… nonsense someone has put in your head, it is just that – nonsense.”

  “Do you think that I don’t know? Do you think that I didn’t know at the time? God shows me everything, Rosemary. He knows everything. Did you think he wouldn’t? Did you truly believe that I wouldn’t? I took in your agents and I showed them the way, the same way I hope to bring you back to the light.”

  “I did what I did for my aims!” Rosemary hissed back, infuriated by the other woman’s calm demeanour. “This is my board, you bloody fruitcake; this is my board, and you are all just pieces on it!”

  “The god who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands.”

  “This isn’t your church.”

  “The whole world is my congregation. The whole world, Rosemary, and everything in it.” Cynthia smiled. “Including you.”

  “I am nothing like you. You…, you’re insane.”

  “That’s what they want you to think, what he wants you to think. That is his plan, Rosemary. This is what the LORD says: ‘Look! I am preparing a disaster for you and devising a plan against you. So turn from your evil ways, each one of you, and reform your ways and your actions,’” she finished with another Bible quote.