by Bryan Smith
A scream rang out.
The source was the receptionist, Lupita, who was on her feet behind the desk and was scrambling backward as one of the longhairs dove over the desk at her, brandishing a machete. She tripped over her feet and the man with the machete disappeared behind the desk. Bernard was shaking in his loafers as he watched the machete appear above the top of the desk and go up and down several times. The first time it appeared the blade was clean. The next time it was dripping with Lupita’s blood. The security guard had met a similar violent fate seconds earlier when one of the intruders slammed a screwdriver through his temple.
Bernard found he couldn’t move as three of the lunatics went charging past him, piling into the elevator before it could close again. They were all giggling like maniacal, misbehaving schoolchildren. And they were all armed with various forms of edged weaponry. Bernard could only assume they intended to unleash a similar degree of mayhem in the offices upstairs. The image of old Mr. Lowell cringing beneath the descending blade of an axe almost made him smile.
A pretty girl in sandals and a plain dress approached him. She had a dandelion tucked behind one of her ears and a machete in her right hand. “Are you ready to accept John Wayne’s gift of love?”
“What?”
The machete blade arced toward him.
Bernard’s head went flying across the lobby.
Nathan Hargrove was able to keep it together until his wife started begging the people who had invaded their home to spare the lives of their young son and daughter. Until that moment, he had believed he could reason with these people, perhaps come up with an arrangement that would allow everyone involved to get what they wanted.
People who did things like this were after money, after all, and he had easy access to a significant amount of cash, starting with the hundred-grand rainy day fund he kept locked in his office safe. He was hopeful that amount would be sufficient to send these animals on their way with no harm done. He would happily and without hesitation hand over every penny to save the lives of his wife and children. Though he’d dedicated much of his life to acquiring wealth, it meant nothing to him next to what really mattered. But if it wasn’t enough, the hundred grand was just scratching the surface of what was available to him. He could lay his hands on many times that amount without much difficulty, though obtaining the extra funds would have to wait until the next day. There were a lot of hours remaining between now and the beginning of the next business day, but given the stakes involved, surely these people could find the necessary patience.
That was before he understood exactly how unhinged they were. Nathan’s confidence in his ability to successfully negotiate a way out of the nightmare began to crumble when the invaders started in with their crazy, borderline incoherent ramblings about John Wayne de Rais and his “gift of love”.
Like practically everyone he knew, he had followed the occasional news reports about the so-called Order of Wandering Souls. He had dismissed it as the usual sort of fake religion con a certain segment of society often fell victim to, this time presented as an idealistic revival of the 1960’s peace and love hippie ethos. Most of the ones he’d encountered had that old-school bohemian look to them, right down to the long hair and perpetually stoned expressions.
These three did not fit that mold. Their clean-cut appearances and conservative attire made them resemble Mormon missionaries. It was why he’d opened his door to them in the first place. He had no more interest in their religion than he had in rehashed Summer of Love flakiness, but Mormon kids were harmless.
Except that they weren’t Mormons.
The one called Sally slammed the butt of a gun against the crown of Margaret’s skull, momentarily silencing her pleas as the blow drove her to her knees. Then she leered in Nathan’s direction as she aimed the gun at the back of his wife’s head and squeezed the trigger. Nathan’s heart almost stopped at the sight of the gruesome exit wound that made a shocking mess of his wife’s forehead. A spray of blood and bone fragments decorated the living room coffee table an instant before his wife’s body toppled over.
His children started screaming again. They had been sobbing the whole time, terrified by the invasion of their home and the disruption of their charmed and perfect little world. Their sounds of terror broke Nathan’s heart. Part of why he had worked so hard and become so successful was to create that world for them. They had lived the entirety of their short lives perfectly insulated from harsh reality.
Until now.
The one Sally had called Joshua tackled Benjamin when he tried to run for the front door. He was grinning in perverse delight as he raised a knife high above his head. The unrestrained joy in his expression drove home the brutal, bleak truth of the situation. None of them were getting out of this situation alive. His entire family was doomed. Parental instinct caused him to take a lurching step toward Benjamin, but another part of him now believed it might be best to let it end quickly for all of them. It was the only kind of mercy they could expect.
“Stop!”
Everyone looked at Sally. Joshua’s hand remained frozen high above Benjamin’s prone form, his execution at least temporarily stayed.
The psychotic blonde bitch had his daughter on her knees in front of her. Courtney was shaking uncontrollably and could not stop sobbing. Tears streamed endlessly down her puffy face. There was an ugly welt below her left eye from where Thomas had punched her seconds after the gang swarmed into the house. Seeing her like this stirred his anger, an emotion he’d foolishly tried holding back during that brief period when he imagined he could reason with these monsters.
His hands curled into fists at his sides. “Don’t hurt her.”
Sally wasn’t looking at him. “Don’t kill the son,” she said, addressing Joshua. “Drag him over here. Knock him out if he resists.”
Joshua hauled Benjamin to his feet and dragged him across the room by a slender arm. His son was then made to kneel next to Courtney.
Benjamin’s bottom lip trembled as he made eye contact with his father. “Daddy…”
Tears spilled from Nathan’s eyes as a hideous smile twisted his face. The smile was parental instinct. Basic, helpless. It was meant to reassure, to say that everything would be all right, but it was a lie and it was the lie that made it hideous. Even Benjamin could see the lie. Nathan knew this because the boy started crying harder than ever.
“Look at me, Nathan Hargrove.”
Nathan did as Sally said. He couldn’t bear looking at his son’s face, anyway. “What do you want? Why are you doing this?”
She smiled brightly. It was awful how wholesome she looked, even moments after committing cold-blooded murder. “What’s happening here is part of the great cleansing. The world must be purged of filth and greedy pigs like you. Are you ready to accept John Wayne’s gift of love?”
“What does that even mean?”
She laughed and pointed the gun at the back of Courtney’s head. “Are you ready to accept John Wayne’s gift of love?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” Her eyes flicked to a spot somewhere behind him. “Thomas, it’s time to record Mr. Hargrove’s testament of love.”
Thomas moved into view. He had a smart phone in one hand and a hatchet in the other. There were specks of blood on the front of his starched white shirt. He stood next to Sally and aimed the phone at Nathan.
Nathan frowned. “Are you recording a video?”
Sally smiled. “Yes. All you have to do is answer the questions I put to you and accept John Wayne’s gift of love. The video will be posted online as a testament to the great power and beauty of this time of cleansing. If you’re a good boy and perform as required, your beautiful children will be spared today. Are you ready?”
Nathan didn’t believe they would spare his kids. Mercy on any level didn’t fit with the brutality these deranged people—who were barely more than kids themselves—clearly loved dispensing. He was being lied to and used. There was nothing in him that beli
eved anything other than this.
And yet…
“Yes. I’m ready.”
Though he believed doom for them all was certain, he had no choice but to play along. So long as there was the tiniest, most infinitesimal chance Sally was telling the truth, he would obey her every command.
“Are you a filthy, greedy pig who values material possessions and the accumulation of an obscene amount of wealth above all other things?”
Nathan swallowed hard and heaved a breath. “Yes.”
Sally smiled. “Tell me what you are.”
“I’m a filthy, greedy pig.”
“Oink for me.”
His instinct was to rebel against this indignity, but he suppressed it and made the requested sound. Sally’s male cohorts giggled.
Sally put a hand on Courtney’s head. His little girl flinched as the woman who’d murdered her mother began to stroke her hair in an obscene mockery of maternal tenderness. “Isn’t your father funny, Courtney?”
Courtney’s only response was another sob.
Sally grinned. “Next question. Do you believe John Wayne de Rais was sent to this filthy world to save us all?”
Nathan sighed. “Yes.”
“Do you accept John Wayne’s gift of love?”
“Yes.”
“Should everyone else do the same?”
“Yes.”
“Do you accept your death as the just judgment of God?”
“Yes.”
Sally glanced at Thomas. “Stop the recording.”
Thomas pressed a button on the phone’s screen and tucked it away in a rear pocket.
Sally raised her gun again. “Are you a music fan, Nathan?”
He frowned. “What’s this got to do with anything?”
“Just answer the question.”
He lifted his shoulders in an exasperated little shrug. “Sure. I guess. Isn’t everyone?”
Sally smiled. “I sure am. I’m a big fan of the Doors. You ever listen to them? I figure an old guy like you must. Anyway, there’s this book about them called No One Here Gets Out Alive. It’s one of my most favorite books ever. I’ve read it over and over.” And now her smile turned overtly menacing. “Appropriate, don’t you think?”
Nathan’s eyes opened wide as her meaning hit home.
He opened his mouth to scream.
Sally fired her gun until it was empty.
At several locations across the city in those early evening hours, many more similar incidents unfolded. All of them occurred in places where the wealthy and privileged lived, dined and did business. Soon the populace was in a froth of panic. The multitude of crime scenes made for a tremendous amount of confusion and chaos for those charged with investigating the incidents and attempting to restore some measure of calm. By the time the city’s leaders could put their heads together and come to the conclusion that it was time to move against John Wayne de Rais and his cult with significantly more force than before, it was too late to matter…
Chapter Twenty-Five
Coming Down Fast
The thing that mattered most to John Wayne de Rais as the last day of his life began to unfold was that all his years of scheming and manipulating others had to mean something bigger in the end than just the pursuit of money. This was why he had devoted so much time to defining his central message as a rejection of the modern world’s obsession with money and material things. In his sermons to the faithful, he railed with tremendous fervor against greed and the tyranny of big business. Once upon a time he’d had to fake that depth of feeling, but no more.
Because now he had at last become the man he was always meant to be. All the superficially “bad” things he’d ever done had served a greater purpose in leading him to this transcendent moment in time. All his former cynicism vanished as the larger purpose behind all the years of madness and deception was finally revealed.
The time had come to send his message out to the world in the most dramatic way possible. The events he had set in motion today would rock the foundations of corrupt western civilization. Even now, as he prepared to take the final steps of his own journey, his emissaries were out there communicating the message and sowing seeds of fear and chaos. Video recordings of the many acts of painful love would soon be appearing in many places online. His own pre-recorded farewell and statement of intent would be uploaded by Jade in the moments following his death.
The world will hear us, he thought as he stared at the closed curtain in the backstage area of the compound’s meeting hall. The time for revolution is ripe. The poor of the world are more desperate than ever. We are the spark that ignites the conflagration that burns the world clean again.
Before today, there had been moments when he wondered whether his increasingly frequent cloudy moments meant he was deluding himself about the rightness of steering the Order down this revolutionary path. Maybe his quest for some kind of larger meaning was nothing more than megalomaniacal selfishness.
Today had put an end to that for good.
For the first time in weeks, he woke up without a crushing headache and free of even the faintest wisp of confusion. He didn’t trust the apparent relief of symptoms, thinking they would reappear soon, but that never happened and he spent the day feeling clear-headed and more mentally fit than he had in ages. John was no fool. He knew well the medical reality facing him. This was nothing more than a blessed respite from suffering. But the temporary lifting of the clouds convinced him he was doing what was righteous and just. The respite was a sign from God, a gift for rallying the faithful to make this great sacrifice.
John smiled.
Time to make history.
He parted the curtain and stepped out onto the stage to applause that was nothing short of ecstatic. The faithful were on their feet, the mass of humanity so dense it all but made the rows of chairs invisible. Some rolled on the floor as if possessed by manic spirits, while many others danced and sang. Their hands were in the air, their feet were stomping and their voices were thunderous enough to raise the rafters.
John walked to the podium at the edge of the stage and stood there beaming out at the rapturous crowd. He didn’t bend his head to the microphone to ask for quiet, choosing to allow them this moment of perfect joy a while longer. The revelry of his faithful further reinforced the rightness of what he was doing. Soon enough, though, the crowd noise leveled out, dimming amidst loud shushing sounds from many in the audience.
When the noise had dropped to an acceptable level, John smiled and put his mouth close to the microphone. “Are you ready to go to heaven tonight?”
The crowd erupted again.
Hundreds of feet stomped the wooden floor.
The building shook.
When the frenzy again began to abate, John looked to a black-clad man at the rear of the building and gave the prearranged signal. The man opened the door to the meeting hall and stepped back as several more men in black entered the building.
The mood in John’s private quarters was tense as the remaining members of his inner circle awaited his return from his final speech to the faithful. Keely’s understanding was that the group once numbered more than a dozen people. Desertions and death had reduced inner circle membership to half that number. If John’s plan played out the way it had been outlined to her, all the remaining inner circle members would be dead within the next hour.
Keely wanted no part of this madness and had said so—loudly—many times. It struck her as grotesquely humorous that her official position in the Order remained “inner circle” despite her attempted escape and the fact that she had never felt like anything other than a prisoner during her brief time in the big house. But it was the way John wanted things, which she took as more proof of his raving insanity.
No one in the room was talking. The couple she had glimpsed in the hallway outside her bedroom prior to her foiled escape attempt—the heavyset man and his female friend—sat on the edge of the large bed, their hands intertwined as they stared at t
he floor. A security guy in the usual black stood with his back against the door, a semi-automatic rifle clutched in his hands. He steadfastly refused to meet anyone’s gaze. A female couple sat cross-legged opposite each other on the floor, holding hands and staring into each other’s eyes. One was weeping quietly, but both were smiling. That was the crazy thing to Keely. They were all about to die, but no one was outwardly panicking. They should all be scared witless.
Jade was standing by a window that overlooked the area behind the big house, watching and waiting for John’s inevitable departure from the meeting house.
Keely approached her. “He still in there?”
Jade didn’t look at her. “Yes.”
The terse one-word reply made it clear she wasn’t interested in further conversation. The implicit warning of physical retribution if she dared pursue it was impossible to miss. In normal circumstances, that threat would be enough to still her tongue. But she was facing imminent death anyway, so what did it matter?
“This is ridiculous. You can’t want to die.”
Jade said nothing and kept staring out at the window.
“I don’t get it. You’re young. You’re attractive. You have a fuck of a lot to live for. Throwing all that away over this bullshit is insane.”
Jade looked at her. Her jaw tightened and her nostrils flared, but still she said nothing. She flexed her fingers around the handle of the gun in her right hand, tightening her grip on it. Her rapidly fading patience was as palpable as her anger. It wasn’t out of the question that she would fabricate some excuse to shoot her now rather than waiting for John’s arrival. Already tonight the woman had gunned down two other inner circle members who’d attempted to flee.
But Keely again put her fear aside and pushed ahead. “This is stupid. You’re not going to some celestial paradise when this is over because there’s no such thing. You’re just gonna be fucking dead. For no good reason. For nothing.”
Jade’s face twisted in a snarl as she whipped the back of a hand across Keely’s face. The loud crack made everyone else in the room flinch. The pain made her cry out and stagger away from Jade, who followed her into the middle of the room. She said nothing as she delivered another, even more devastating blow, this one a closed-fist punch to the face that made Keely’s knees buckle. The next punch drove her to the floor.