Nation Divided

by Drew Avera

  My tears had been shed, my heart wrung out. I didn't have the strength for appearances; I barely had the strength to support my children as they grieved. I would be damned if I would let anyone make me feel inferior for trying to be strong for my children.

  I slapped the medicine bottles off the counter and watched them fall into the trash can. I couldn't hold onto the memory of how she died. I needed to take hold of how she had lived, to teach my children who their mother was. They needed to know her before the shambles of life claimed her own. They needed to know her when she was happy, before this Presidential conspiracy. That was the memory of her that I wanted to preserve, that I would preserve for my children.

  I opened the door of the bathroom and looked at them. My children had grieved to the point of exhaustion. I stepped over to them and wrapped a blanket around their bodies, letting them sleep. They had enough to deal with tomorrow.

  As I walked away from turning off the TV, I came across our family Christmas portrait from last year. I paused to look at it for the first time since Carol had hung it to the wall. I never understood her desire to have the same portraits taken every year. Perhaps it was a part of my pessimistic attitude that only got worse as I sank deeper into this captivity by Fulton's administration.

  I stared at the image, specifically at Carol, and I could see the hurt in her eyes even then. A pang of shame shot through my body as I realized that I did anything to shield her from this life I was now living. Would it not have been better to divorce her and send her with our children off to live peacefully while I endured this life?

  It would have hurt us greatly, but divorce is a survivable catastrophe. Instead, we were left in the wake of devastation, and I doubted we would ever be the same again.

  20

  PETER DRAKE

  Travis followed me under the assumption that I needed help moving a heavy piece of furniture in my home. It was easy to guilt someone into helping you, especially under the circumstances by which he found himself in debt to me. Some schemes were so easy to plan that you would think God had bestowed them upon you Himself, I thought as we walked through Matilda's front door.

  She still lay unconscious in the basement as we rummaged through the furnishings and Travis helped me rearrange the living room. All of the furniture was lighter than I had expected, but I had mentioned having back problems that made me nervous about moving heavy things on my own. I did not expect his curiosity to be piqued too much after that.

  "Who’s this in the picture?" Travis asked as he stared at the mantle, a picture of Matilda about twenty years younger was displayed in a silvery frame. She was shown with a man, presumably a husband or ex-boyfriend. I didn't recognize him at all, not that I expected to.

  "That's my mother and my step-dad. His name was Gregory. Cancer took him a few years before my mom passed. This was my house growing up," I said, pulling the story out of thin air, creating an alibi for being in the home.

  "I'm sorry for your loss, Peter," he said with a genuine sympathy in his voice.

  "Thank you. It’s been a long time, but some days are harder than others. As step-dads go, he was a great man, and my mother was a saint." I hoped he was buying into the crap I was saying. I didn't expect to have to concoct a story on the fly like this. "Would you like something to drink?" I asked, trying to change the subject in a noticeable way.

  "Sure," he replied with a gentle smile, acknowledging my desire to move on.

  I walked to the kitchen and retrieved a few sodas from the fridge. I prepared them in glasses that I luckily found in the first cabinet I opened. Travis stayed in the living room while I was in the kitchen, which worked out perfectly. I slipped a narcotic into his drink. The potent drug would render him incapable of moving within a few minutes of consumption. I place a few ice cubes into the glass and shook it to mix the contents evenly and returned to the living room.

  "Here you go," I handed him the glass and extended a hand insisting that he take a seat in the plush chair he was standing next to.

  I plunked down on the love seat across from him and took a sip of the soda. It was flat, which I had expected from the lack of carbonated hiss when I opened it. I could see by his expression that he noticed the taste as well when he pulled the glass from his lips.

  "Thank you," he said.

  I raised my glass in the air and nodded my head. "Thank you," I said. I sat back into the welcoming cushion of the love seat and waited in silence as the drug coursed through his veins. Within minutes his eyes had a glazed over as he sat there motionless. He was out like a light. I knew that he could still see me and comprehend what was going on, but it was too late for him now. I stood up and brushed the stringy hair from his face as I bent over to look him in the eye.

  "Today is the last day you will live, my friend. I promise that it will only hurt for a little while."

  A tear rolled from one of his eyes and his pupils dilated from the lack of light in the room as I hovered over him. I grabbed the almost-empty glass from his hand and set it on the table before lifting him and taking him to the basement where the real show was about to begin.

  21

  PRESIDENT FULTON

  I hate funerals. I always have. I could remember the first one I was forced to attend as a young boy. It was a distant relative, one of whom I doubted I had ever seen while she was alive. There were tears streaming down the faces of many of the attendees, my mother included. I had no idea that my mother "loved" this relative so much that she experienced such pain from the loss.

  I felt guilty then for not shedding tears, so I did what any son would do in that situation. I forced myself to cry. It was troublesome for me to do so. I required a lot of self-inflicted pain and a considerable amount of humiliation for me to force those half-dozen tears to pour from my tightly closed eyes. I swore then that I would never force an emotional response again.

  I did not care for those who passed before me with the kind of longing that would allow tears to fall so freely. For years, I thought that I was to blame for my heartless nature, but now I do not believe that to be true. Perhaps the entire world is too emotionally fixated on those around them. How can you live with that kind of devotion to the existence of others?

  I am not a heartless man. I've known both love and hate. I've experienced loss that has all but completely crippled me. Still the tears would not fall.

  I wheeled over to the open casket and raked my eyes over the woman who lay dead in front of me. She was a dangerous woman. A woman unwilling to share in her husband's secret for much longer. She had needed to be silenced. I would never regret this decision. Instead, I reveled in the fact that things would work as needed. Stephen would realize loss in a way that he never had before and I would not be the villain in his story. His wife and her selfish act would play center-stage in his mind as he raised his children alone.

  I would not shed a tear for them either. If it were up to me, they would be next. I wanted to wring every ounce of love out of his weak heart that I could and force him to comply with my will. All in due time, though.

  I adjusted my tie before placing a white rose over Carol's body. The pile was steadily growing and I knew that most of them would not make it to the grave site. That didn't matter to me. What mattered most was that the truth would never be uttered from her cold, dead lips.

  I knew I could rest easier now that she was permanently silenced. And with that solace, I wheeled away from the casket and disappeared into the shadowy congregation, lost in the crowd of the mourning. I was a monster hidden in plain sight.

  A sneer forced itself upon my lips and I no longer tried to fight it. The evil buried beneath was fighting for a touch of light to fall upon it, and I was not willing to suppress it anymore. My enemies would know the grievous lengths that I would take to solidify my power, and I would not bat an eye at what I have become.

  22

  SYDNEY TYLER

  My luggage was packed up nicely and already checked for my flight to London wh
en I made my way to the security checkpoint at AUI. American Union International was the airport which had taken the place of O'Hare, as it had been called when we still lived in the United States. Now that Chicago was the nation's capital, a lot had changed from what was depicted in the history books.

  That was a subject that had always kept my interest in school. I wondered how the states and territories had once been united under the same flag, proclaiming liberty and freedom. The history books told the story like it had been some kind of fairy tale, but I knew that the grass must not have been much greener on history’s side. It was pure fact that it was a second civil war which tore the country apart. Economic collapse was the legal terminology used, but it was much more than that. It was skewed values, two sides intent on damaging the other side at all costs.

  And it cost everything, I thought as I stepped through the metal detector. Whether or not anyone would ever admit it was another thing altogether. I seriously doubted that the three separate countries would ever reconcile. This was especially true for the Confederate States of America. There was a holier-than-thou vibe to their government. The “Bible Belt” had clung on to God as the rest of the country sank deeper into darkness. There was something off-putting about those who clung to a cause so tightly, so passionately.

  "Thank you, Ma'am," the security agent said as I stepped through the final detector. I nodded politely and moved on without so much as a word to anyone. I pushed my sunglasses back onto my face to conceal my identity to the pedestrian traffic inside this huge facility. I did not like to be recognized when I was out in public. My personal life was not for anyone's pleasure but my own, and Frank’s of course.

  I continued to walk towards the gate when I felt my arm being grabbed. I quickly turned on my toes to see that a security guard had hold of me.

  "Ms. Tyler, we need you to come with us," the man said as three other guards approached.

  "What for?" I asked, trying to be brave despite the fact that airport security was a militant organization.

  "That cannot be discussed at this time. Please, come with us."

  "I've done nothing wrong," I said with a slightly harsher tone than I had intended.

  "Ms. Tyler, do not make a scene and do not make me ask again," the man said as he brushed his jacket to the side, revealing a service revolver holstered under his left arm.

  I didn't know what to do, but I knew that I was afraid. I had heard the horror stories of other media types accosted in airports and kept imprisoned for months at a time before they were released. I felt the urge to vomit, but I knew that would only show weakness on my part. Surely this was not one of those cases where I would be held prisoner, I tried to tell myself in order to calm my nerves. It was useless. I could see on their faces that this might be the last time I saw the outside world.

  23

  TRAVIS WILLIAMS

  Screams, the guttural remnants of fear as life evacuated a person. Screams heralded the death in front of me as another cord of flesh was torn from the waitress's body. If I could move my body, I could close my eyes, but nothing worked anymore. I watched the man that I knew as Peter turn to face me with a wicked smile.

  Matilda—the waitress's name was Matilda he had said—was definitely dead now. He was just mutilating the body for the pure enjoyment of it. The only thing that was recognizable now was her face. Tears and blood were still wet on her lifeless flesh and I felt the need to throw up, but I didn't have the basic physical ability to make it happen.

  The sick son-of-a-bitch was whistling a tune as he brought the knife down onto another body part. I realized a moment later that it was the same song the dwarfs sang in a musical rendition of Snow White I saw as a kid.

  "Do you feel the emptiness in the room, Travis?" Peter asked me without looking at me. Instead it looked as if he was still marveling at the death that he brought to the poor woman. "It's welcoming, isn't it? Almost like a good rain in the summer, cooling the temperature by several degrees, giving you a glimpse of what autumn will feel like. It's magnificent, I think."

  I could not respond. I could only feel pity for the woman and fear for myself. I wondered if the same fate would befall me. Would I succumb to a blade cutting at my tissue and filleting my flesh into tiny strips on the bloody floor below? For the first time in a dozen years I prayed to God to preserve me from that kind of death. I knew that I did not deserve answered prayers, but I couldn't imagine deserving a death as grotesque as what I had just witnessed.

  "Please, God!" I screamed inside my own head. If I had been able to move, I would be in the fetal position, lamenting what would come of me.

  "I hope you enjoyed the show," Peter said, pulling me away from my thoughts and back to him. "There's plenty more where that came from, but you won't be around to see any of it." He knelt in front of me and smiled. How could a man smile after doing the wickedness he had just done? "You see, I need a scapegoat. I need someone to take the blame for this mess and that, my friend, is you."

  He stood up and pulled a .9mm from his pocket and wiped his prints from it. I watched as he placed the gun into my hand. The rubber gloves covering his hands were stretched into a pale, bluish tint. I could see the hairs of his hand under the rubber skin. A few seconds later the barrel of the gun was pointed under my chin. I could barely feel the cold metal, but it was there nonetheless.

  "Goodbye, Travis." Peter pressed my finger against the trigger and the room exploded in front of me. I watched as fragmentations flew in front of my eyes, splattering in red hues of light. My open eyes witnessed everything. I did not know if I was alive or dead. I could not feel anything at all: I had felt nothing for the last hour or so while I was paralyzed. Time seemed to stretch, with everything happening in slow motion.

  I watched Peter move about the room one last time. He turned to look at me and winked. Then he was gone.

  24

  HENRY BURKE

  These twenty-four-hour shifts are going to drive me insane, I thought as another flashbulb went off. The coroner surveyed the area three times, which just so happened to be the number of times that I felt sick. I didn't know how a man could become so used to this kind of work that he wasn't affected by it anymore.

  "Make yourself useful, Burke," the coroner said between photographs. He was focused solely on the woman so I moved over to the man's body. I was told to take as many notes as possible on the body: position, perceived cause of death, any remarkable notes that I felt were relevant.

  I pulled a notepad from my pocket and began the task of surveying the dead. I scribbled quick remarks first. Self-inflicted gunshot to head, entry wound located under the victim's chin, weapon used is a .9mm handgun, body positioned in a seated position on a floral print couch. I didn't know if the description of the couch was relevant, but I was trying to be thorough.

  The note-taking was accomplished fairly quickly. There wasn't much to ascertain about the man. The real freak show was what he had done to the woman. I couldn't imagine the kind of bastard who would do such a thing. I thought it incredibly horrifying that the man and woman were gazing upon each other with open eyes as he lay dead on a couch and she hung dead from the rafters of the basement.

  I shook the thought from my mind as I stepped around to the back of the man's corpse. I heard a distinct gurgling sound that I had assumed was the drainage pipes in the old home. As I moved my head closer to his body, I realized that the psycho was still alive. I didn't know how he had survived; perhaps the bullet had missed his brain as it tore through the front part of his face.

  I was not raised to allow a man to abuse a woman is such a way. This man did not deserve to survive his wounds. A life in prison was too much of a gift for the deeds he had done, tearing the flesh from the woman's body in small strips. I uttered a prayer to God to mercifully take the bastard out of his misery and to condemn him to the hell that he truly deserved.

  "Are you alright over there, Burke?" the coroner asked, still taking his notes in a robotic, methodical
way.

  "Yes, Mr. Price. I was about to prepare the body for transport to the morgue unless you would like to take a look," I said, half afraid that he would realize the man was still alive as well. What would happen if he was allowed to live? Could he ever break free from his prison and do this kind of monstrous thing again?

  "It’s fine, Burke. You can go ahead and haul him up if you like. The government doesn't like wasting time surveying the depraved killers that we find dead. They seem more interested in the depraved victims instead." He laughed a grim chuckle that resulted in a phlegm-riddled cough. I didn't know how he maintained a sense of humor like this, and a large part of me hoped that I would never find out.

  Slightly panicked, I saw that I would have to handle the situation myself. I made the sign of a cross over my chest and asked God to forgive me for what I was about to do. I could swear by my life that I heard Him say to do it, that God wanted to use me as an instrument for His will. I reached my gloved hands over to the man’s neck and grasped it as tightly as I could. I could feel the weak pulse under my fingers as I clasped onto his neck from behind. The quiet gurgling sound faded away as the gentle beats of his heart died out. I kept my hands closed around him for a full minute as I waited for his death to be final.

  Once satisfied, I released him to the dark hell from which a monster like him was born. The task had been much easier than I had anticipated. I walked up the stairs to retrieve the body bags and found myself slightly unnerved at the fact that I felt no remorse for what I had just done. It was the opposite actually. I felt relief in knowing that I had done the world some good by ridding it of a killer. Contentment fell over me as I ascended each step, feeling the breeze of the summer day pouring through the opened door above.