Centurion: Mark's Gospel as a Thriller

by Waller, Ryan Casey

  These truths hit me like a cold bucket of water, and my legs fold beneath my body. As I tumble forward, concrete rips the skin off my outstretched hands before my chin collides with the ground and splits wide open.

  But the truth burns far worse than the gash on my chin. I've attacked a Kingdom guard...and I'll be executed.

  Searing pain fires from my chin into the back of my jaw. But there's no time to afford myself a moment of pity. I use my bloody hands to scramble back to my feet and keep running hard and fast, willing my body to find one final gear of speed.

  The streets and the people on them are a blur. The siren wails. The guards close in. I'm a strong runner, but the adrenaline has my heart beating entirely too fast for me to find a sustainable pace. My lungs cry out for oxygen, demanding my legs slow down. A dagger-like pain cuts jaggedly across my chest. My legs are gassed. It's only a matter of seconds before they give out and I'll be back on the ground.

  I'm slowing down. My body is crashing. There will be no escape.

  I look behind me. There's now only one guard in pursuit, and it's not the one I struck in the face. Good. If I'm going to die today, at least I made one of them suffer. This cruel thought gives me a surprising amount of joy in my last moments.

  That's when the guard gets down to business. A shot rings out, and the whoosh of a bullet screams past my ear. I hit the ground. In a panic I flip my aching body over and meet the end of a steel barrel.

  "Freeze! Don't move!" The guard comes closer and kicks my inner thigh with a tremendous amount of force. "Roll onto your stomach, and place your hands on your back. Slowly"

  I do precisely as he says, resting my bloody hands on top of the gun I've concealed beneath my jacket. The guard's boots click-clack against the concrete as he circles me. He speaks breathlessly into his radio, calling for backup. I have only seconds to react.

  I make my move the moment he gets close to my legs and not a second later. Kicking out hard, I sweep his boots from underneath him. An errant gunshot cracks out, and the guard falls backward, landing hard on the ground. He tries to retrain his weapon on me, but I'm too fast. Like a silver wolf pouncing on prey, I leap on him and jam my knee hard on his throat.

  I reach for my gun and frantically draw it out. Then I dig the barrel hotly into his neck and say, "Drop it."

  The guard doesn't obey. Instead he jerks and tries to aim his gun at me. I press down harder on his windpipe, sealing off his air supply. His face turns purple, and he drops his weapon.

  Another siren roars out, echoing loudly off the buildings around us. The Centurion Guard is on the way. With my knee firmly in place, I spin my head, desperately searching for a way out. A child's wide eyes watch from an open second-floor window of a shabby midrise apartment building. When our gazes meet, he backs slowly into the shadows of his apartment. He, like everyone else, wants no part of this. The sirens and the noise of a scuffle have sent everyone into hiding, as they rightly should. No need to be present when the authorities come around, as nothing good ever comes of it.

  My eyes dance from building to building and dark window to dark window. There's no way out and no one to help. I curse loudly.

  I look down at the guard, whose face has turned a ghastly shade of blue. The man needs to breathe, and I need to run. Sweat drips off my bloodied chin and splatters onto his lips. His eyes are bugging out of his head. He'll die soon if I don't let up.

  Before I can think better of it, I lift my knee from his throat. He hoarsely draws a gallon of air and immediately chokes on it. He spits up blood.

  I lean down close to his face and say, "I came home to kill men like you. Nothing would give me more pleasure than to put this gun to your temple and flick the trigger. Do you understand?"

  His voice is raw. "Yeah," he says with a tremble.

  "If I hear the Kingdom is looking for a man with a gun, I'll come to your home and kill you, and I won't use this gun. Got me?"

  The guard nods his head furiously, eager to comply. Jude was right. This man isn't a hardened centurion; he's a washout, a failure who's terrified of both killing and dying. Unfortunately for him, I fear neither, a truth I know he can see in my eyes.

  That's when I'm filled with an unstoppable rage to murder him. He's the epitome of every evil that dominates this country. This guard—this pathetic excuse for a human being—is a cog in the great machine that keeps my people oppressed, only a small step removed from slavery. As long as King Charles reigns, we in the South will never be free.

  This man needs to die, and he needs to die now.

  I might not get another chance.

  hear her voice before I see her face.

  In a silky and unfamiliar accent, she says, "Don't do it. Come with me. We have only seconds."

  I tilt my head toward the soft voice and raise the gun, taking aim at the dark woman from the Office of Record. Her tears are gone, replaced with a dry and resolute stare. I lower my gun and direct it back to the guard lying beneath me. The color of life has returned to his face; his eyes dart wildly, his mind trying to devise a plan.

  "Don't even think about it," I tell him. "I dare you to give me the hint of an excuse to pull this trigger."

  The sirens are louder now, no farther than a block away. If I stay where I am for another minute, it'll be too late. If the centurions around the corner see me—gun in hand—they'll mow us down.

  This girl and me. No questions will be asked; their rifles will simply explode to red-hot life, and then there'll be nothing but the silence of death—but not before the pain.

  The young woman, in a breathy whisper, pleads, "Come with me. I'll show you the way."

  I have no reason to trust this dark-skinned woman with eyes like the night. "Who are you?" I say, the desperation in my voice startling even to me. It has the timbre of a man drowning.

  "No time for that. Come." She offers me her small hand, taking hold of my bloody fingers. "Before it's too late. Before we have no choice."

  I look once more at the guard, who now looks hopeful. He knows his brethren will be on us soon, knows I'm a dead man walking. A ghost of a smile flickers across his exhausted face. I practically can hear the hope exploding into his brain.

  "I won't use my gun," I remind him. "It won't be quick."

  I raise my gun and bring its butt down viciously on the crown of his head, knocking him out cold. The crunching thud of steel against skull is sickening, but I feel no regret for what I've done. He wears the uniform of the men who murdered my parents. It's as simple as that.

  Then I'm running again, following closely after this gorgeous stranger as she slips inside a dark high-rise.

  She floats like an angel before me, her black hair streaming back and whipping me in the face. I follow frantically behind, praying this place will be our sanctuary. She moves with the confidence of someone familiar with the night and at home in the dark. When I trip and stumble for the third time as we round a blind corner and bound down yet another flight of stairs, she slows her pace and offers me her hand. And that's how we carry on, my hand buried inside hers, gripping it tightly, as if it were life itself—which of course it now is.

  We've descended far below street level, yet I can still hear the howl of our pursuers. It's a royal cacophony of panicked sounds: sirens, harsh voices, the shuffling of boots, megaphones, barking dogs—vicious and bloodthirsty.

  And then my name. The Centurion Guard is calling out my name. "Deacon Larsen! Halt! Deacon Larsen! Stop running! Give yourself up before it's too late! Halt! In the name of King Charles...surrender!"

  "Where are we going?" I say, even more anxious now, only seconds away from capture and torture. We've exited a concrete stairwell into a long corridor that's barely wide enough for two people to traverse. We're still holding hands when we slow to catch our breath. We're both gasping hard for air.

  "They won't find us here," she says.

  "But they know we came into this building."

  "The soldiers will only come so far. Kin
gdom officials, especially the Guard, will never come all the way down. Not to this cursed place."

  We reach the end of the narrow corridor, and I discover it's a dead end. I hear my name called out again, warning me that I must surrender. The voices have grown louder and angrier. I hear the banging of boots and the clatter of men garbed in armor as they bound down steps, taking two and three at a time.

  "What now?" I say, turning to this woman who has thrown away her life in a matter of minutes.

  She doesn't answer. Instead she presses a dusty button on what looks like a small intercom on the wall. A voice crackles instantly from it. "Who's there?"

  "It's Maria," she says, her voice shakier than before.

  Her name is Maria.

  The voice on the other end pauses for far too long. Maria and I share a worried look. Time is running out. The centurions and their dogs are now in the corridor. Flashlights paint our faces alight. German Shepherds scratch and claw against the concrete floor as they hurl their fangs toward us. It'll all be over soon.

  Finally an angry voice replies, "What do you want?"

  "No time to explain. You must let us in. Please!"

  Another pause. Then an impressive unlocking sound clicks, and the wall opens before us, revealing a small elevator with blood-red walls. I grab Maria by the waist and leap into the chamber. We crash hard to the floor. As the doors close, one of the centurions lets loose his dog from the leash. The slobbering beast tears forth and leaps powerfully off his hind legs—teeth out—and slams into the steel doors as they shut, sealing us inside.

  The elevator shudders and moves downward.

  Under the red glow off the elevator, I regard my new friend. Her face shines with sweat, and I wonder what it would be like to hold her in my arms, to kiss her delicate lips.

  "Do you trust me?" she says, her breath shallow and quivering.

  "Yes."

  "Good," she says soberly. "Because down here...you'll need to."

  As the elevator plunges hundreds of feet beneath the earth's surface, the din of barking dogs is replaced by the thick whir of the elevator's machinery—hummmmmmmmm.

  Down we go.

  Then the thumping begins, hard and fast, its pulse infecting my bloodstream like a sticky flu—Doosh. Doosh. Doosh. Doosh. Doosh.

  I hear it loud and clear long before the elevator finishes its descent. It's a pounding beat, repeating its rhythm over and over, the trance quickly imprinting itself on my brain. When the elevator stops and the doors open, the beat is joined by a bass so bruising that I feel it reverberate in my knees. I've never heard music so loud in my life, if music is even what you call such a noise; it sounds more like an explosion.

  Maria grazes a hand across my chin as the doors open. Above the noise she hollers, "Follow me." She offers me her hand, and I take it. "Don't let go!" she orders.

  "Never" is what I want to tell her. I'm never letting you go. Our hands meld as if they were fashioned from the beginning of time to do so, as if this is all they're good for, to make the other body know the tender touch of love. We've barely shared ten sentences between us, yet I feel as if we've traveled a lifetime by each other's sides—intimately familiar with how the other moves, breathes, wants. I cling to her as if she were my only purchase in this world, the one true thing I can grasp. I long to touch more of her.

  Maria guides me out of the elevator purposefully, her eyes focused ahead on some unknown target, a destination I can't imagine. My eyes dart this way and that, my mind manically doing its best to process the imagery my senses feed it. But it's maximum overload, and despite my best efforts, I can't absorb this dark circus in its entirety. I catch only vignettes, my attention divided between my surroundings and my need to stay as close to Maria as possible.

  The space is damp and cold. My initial guess is that we're in an abandoned underground railway. The walls are a dark brick, and they're covered in a slippery film that shines like oil. I smell a putrid mixture of mildew, stale tobacco, and vomit. I reflexively lean closer to Maria and inhale the vanilla of her jet-black hair.

  We walk at an even clip. The bass continues to thump at an unholy decibel, and my eyes slowly adjust to the absolute darkness of this buried place. To my immediate right is the brick wall, but to my left is what feels like a cavernous space. I squint and confirm my initial guess was correct. I make out a deep divide and can just barely decipher the steel railing running along the base of the depressed floor.

  I put my mouth near Maria's ear, my lips grazing her skin, and ask, "What is this place?"

  Maria shakes her head. "You don't want to know."

  "Why won't the centurions come down here?"

  Maria makes a sharp right turn, and we hurry up a small set of stairs that leads through an archway that's slightly better lit than the first room. That's when I begin to understand.

  The hallway is filled with people. There must be hundreds of them. They're filthy, their faces smudged in grease, their foreheads shiny with alcohol-laden sweat. The smell in the hallway is infinitely worse, and no amount of vanilla in Maria's hair can prevent the stench from invading my nostrils.

  Our pace is dramatically slowed as we snake through the overcrowded space. The farther we travel, the louder the music gets, growing to a deafening crescendo. I can't understand how anyone could stand being in here for any length of time. My head aches.

  Doosh. Doosh. Doosh. Doosh. Doosh. I fear it will never end.

  No one bothers to glance our way as we pass; they appear lost in their individual worlds. I don't hear a single person speaking to another, not that I could with the noise, but still it's severely unsettling to see this many people jammed into a small space with no one appearing interested in anyone else. It's almost as if they can't see one another.

  That's when the penny drops. These people aren't in their right minds.

  A girl who must be several years younger than me is leaning against the wall. Her eyes catch mine. She has fiery irises, and she smiles wildly as her fingers unfurl from a syringe. She drops the needle, and her eyes roll back into her head.

  The seizure starts after that.

  I stare wide-eyed at the young girl who has just fallen to the mossy floor. She has collapsed into the fetal position, and her seizure has stopped. I fear she's dead. I move toward her to help, but she's enveloped into a fold of men who lunge and grope for her discarded needle. I stumble backward, tripping as I try to escape the scene. I turn and stroke my arms over people as though swimming through rough ocean waves. Each person I shove past stares at me with open eyes that do not see.

  I find Maria in the thick crowd, her dark skin standing out among the ashen faces. I grab hold of her shoulder and demand an answer. "What is this place? Where are we?"

  She keeps moving, her eyes focused on a destination beyond the mass of people. "We're almost there," she says quickly. "I promise. But we must keep moving. It's not safe...especially here. These people are cannibals. They'll eat us alive—and savor every bite."

  We carry on like this for at least another two hundred yards, bobbing and weaving, pushing where we must, until the cohesive glob of humanity begins to break apart and there's finally room to draw a breath of air untainted by human waste.

  I inhale deeply and catch Maria's sweet smell once more. It's enough to keep me moving.

  Maria continues to walk with a confidence that suggests she knows this dungeon well. We take a decisive left out of the crowded hallway and pass through another archway that's guarded on either side by two men wearing long black robes with hoods. Neither seems to have a weapon, but my body tenses just the same, preparing for the fight I know is coming; I feel it in my bones.

  The passageway is narrow, with room for only one person at a time. Maria leads the way. Neither hooded man moves as she passes, and while I can't see either face from beneath the shadows of their hoods, both men issue snakelike hisses as I brush past their shoulders. I'm narrowly beyond these men, if that's what they are, when a long hand r
eaches out from the robe and scrapes my arm with the sharp claw of a wolf.

  I jump forward as blood flows down my arm. The passageway is pitch black, and I walk blindly, clutching to Maria for guidance. While the absence of light makes for an even more terrifying journey, here—in this tunnel that feels like a crypt—we find our first respite from the deafening roar of the techno beat. With each step we venture into the abyss, the noise settles deeper in the recesses of the awful place we've left behind. The silence, however, is a small consolation for the growing dread of walking into a black hole.

  Maria whispers to me as we shuffle along, "How is your head? You took quite a fall."

  My head. I've all but forgotten the episode with the bank guard. I reach around to feel that my gun is still secure in the waistband of my pants. The adrenaline from our escape suppressed any pain I might have felt, but now it blossoms to painful life on my chin and deep within the sockets of my jaw. I pat my face with my bruised hand and feel that my jaw has begun to swell. I stick a dirty finger into the gash on my chin; it's sticky and warm with blood.

  "I'm fine," I say. "It's nothing I can't clean myself."

  "Nonsense," she says. "I'll bandage you after we speak with Legion."

  "Who's Legion?" I say.

  "You'll find out soon."

  "Wait. Who are you...and why are you helping me? You saved my life."

  Maria stops walking and turns her body to face mine, wrapping her arms tightly around my waist. It's supremely dark, and I can't see the face I know is within inches of my own. I feel her sweet breath on my lips, and my body trembles. She presses her chest against mine and resurrects the part of me I thought was dead forever—my heart.