Project Terminus

by Nathan Combs

  “Anything new, Chris?” asked Randal.

  “Negative. They took the captives up to the middle building and people have been walking around doing whatever. Other than that, nothing unusual.”

  They watched for the remainder of the day, taking turns to grab some much needed sleep.

  Just before dusk, the captives were brought back to the stage and forced to sit on the left front side. Within seconds, Light members gathered and jostled for position in front of the stage. Laughing and dancing, it appeared they were high on the hallucinogen Gator mentioned. As the flames grew in the rekindled bonfire, the shadows of the revelers danced across the football field in an eerie display of decadence. When it was totally dark, six buckets of strategically placed oil lit the stage and Saadeh and Lutrova made another grand entrance. As before, the giant Aziz trailed behind. When the entourage gained the stage, Saadeh addressed the crowd. It was impossible to hear what he was saying, but there was little doubt what his gestures meant. When he was finished, he stepped back and Nina Lutrova walked to the center of the stage. She stood motionless, staring into space. Saadeh motioned to Aziz and the giant picked up one of the men, dragged him to the center of the stage, and made him kneel at her feet.

  The horde of drug-crazed cannibals roared.

  Saadeh nodded and Aziz brought one of the women to center stage. He pushed her to her knees just to the left of the first captive. The process was repeated until all four captives were kneeling in front of Lutrova. Saadeh walked to the first male and, using thumbs up/thumbs down gestures, exhorted the crowd. The man was short and impossibly thin, and the cannibals—now completely under the influence of the drug—yelled and screamed and gave thumbs down. Saadeh placed his hand above the head of the young pudgy female captive and again made the thumbs up/thumbs down gesture.

  They went ballistic, chanting, “Saadeh, Saadeh, Saadeh!”

  Saadeh raised his arms for silence and they obeyed. He put his hand back above the girl’s head and made the thumbs up gesture.

  The cannibals, in a demonic demonstration of acceptance, began jumping, dancing, and screaming their approval. The process was repeated with the next two captives. The remaining man, who was short but obese, was given the thumbs up. The other female was elderly and frail; she and the skinny guy were taken off the stage and out of sight.

  Saadeh began screaming at the crowd, but it was impossible to hear what he was saying because the din from the cannibals had approached deafening levels. Minutes later, Aziz stepped forward and turned the two captives so they faced Lutrova, then stepped back. Saadeh again raised his hands and commanded silence. When they quieted, Saadeh nodded to her. Standing in front of the two captives with a look of rapture on her face, she gazed into the distance for nearly a minute. It was so quiet you could hear the proverbial pin drop. Suddenly, in one smooth motion, she withdrew a sword from the scabbard on her back and beheaded the man, then the woman.

  The two heads came to rest at the edge of the stage, eyes still sending images to the brain, mouths still open in silent screams. Lutrova stilled, then shuddered. Raising the sword blade to her mouth, she licked the dripping blood. The entire population watched in revered awe as she bent down and put a hand in the blood spurting from the severed carotid artery of the woman. After smearing the woman’s blood on her face, she stood with her eyes closed, facing the still silent crowd for nearly a minute. Then shuttering again, she thrust the sword into the air and screamed, “LIGHT!”

  The dense crowd of hysterical cannibals responded with riotous chanting. “Nina, Nina, Nina!”

  Randal asked, “Still think she’s beautiful, Bill?”

  “Jesus H Christ, what I wouldn’t give to be able to call in an airstrike,” he said.

  “Well, boys,” said Wade. “I think we can guess what the next step in this little play is. It appears the only thing left is the butchering, cooking, and eating.”

  They were quiet for several minutes, watching the obscene cannibal orgy unfolding below them.

  Randal broke the silence. “Dad, here’s my assessment of this mission. There’s no way we can assault those buildings with four men. We could get in and plant some charges, but without knowing the interior layout, we’d be wasting both time and resources. Plus, there’s a good chance one of those derelicts would stumble upon us, and since we don’t remotely resemble one of them, we’d end up fighting the whole bunch. We can go back to Fort-T and prepare for a future assault. And they would come, especially when the patrol we just took down doesn’t return. I doubt they’d show up with eight dipshits, either. Based on our assessment of their combat capabilities, we could take out a lot of them and maybe even hold them off for a while. At a minimum, I think we could force them to retreat. But eight hundred fanatics that are on…well, whatever it is they’re high on, would make them totally unpredictable in combat. That could prove to be a tough nut to crack. I don’t want to risk that. We could just stay here and take out patrols as they send them out, harass them, and hope they eventually move on. But, of course, we don’t have the luxury of spending an indefinite amount of time out here. So that’s not a viable choice. This event,” he nodded toward the football field, “is probably repeated every night. I doubt two people shared by hundreds will satisfy their appetites or their blood lust. As we saw, the leaders are all on stage at the same time. The other option, and the one that’s the most logical, is that we take them out and cut the head off the snake. And there’s a good chance, based on what we’ve seen so far, those four are probably the only ones who know about Fort Terminus. I think that’s our best shot.”

  Wade was thoughtful, then nodded and said, “I agree with you on most of it. But we can’t be certain someone else won’t step up and lead them. And while I think you’re probably right about who has knowledge of Fort-T, we can’t be positive. It’s possible the runner who talked to Justice knows, and if he does, others might too. We can’t take that chance. There is one other option. We can hook it back to Fort-T and resupply with the ordnance to take all these derelicts out, right here. I’m sure you’re correct about this being a nightly event. If we go home, re-supply, and come back with enough C4 and napalm pipe bombs to wire both the football field and the stage, we can take most of them out in one fell-swoop. And we can snipe the leaders at the same time we detonate the C4, just to make sure we get them. Afterwards, we can take out survivors and mop-up. If they did manage a counter-attack, we’d have the high ground and the firepower to smash it. If any of them escape, they’re unlikely to present a danger to Fort-T in the near future.”

  Randal nodded while staring across the field at the mayhem. Finally, he said, “I like it, Dad. All right, cache your gear except for the M4s and side-arms and let’s get back to the fort.”

  Using a combination of highway and service roads, they arrived at the forward OP just after 0100 hours. By 0130, Fort-T was a beehive of activity. C4, detonators, homemade napalm pipe bombs, grenades, and the SAW and extra ammo were inventoried and packed.

  Wade met with the women and gave them their instructions. “We’re taking Sean and Highlander with us on this mission. We don’t intend to let one of their patrols get by us, but just in case, I want you to take turns manning the crow’s nest. If you see any sign of enemy activity, I want you to abandon the fort immediately, and get to the safe spot.”

  At 0300, Wade addressed the assault force. “It would be nice if we had time to notify the Northern Groups, but we don’t. If The Light’s response to the patrol we just took out is the same as it was to Gator’s, then we have roughly one day before they send another one out. We won’t be able to place any charges until late tonight, which means the earliest we can accomplish the mission is two nights from now. You all know this will not go according to plan…Murphy’s Law and all. Are there any questions?”

  Highlander said, “What’s Murphy’s Law?”

  Bill said. “You’re shittin’ me, right?”

  “No, Bill, I am not shittin you.”
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  Bill gave Highlander his best you’re-a-dumb-ass look and said, “Murphy’s law states that if anything can go wrong, it will go wrong.”

  Highlander grinned and said, “And it will go wrong at the worst possible time.”

  Bill said, “Fuck you, Highlander.”

  They all laughed, releasing the tension that had been building up.

  Randal asked if anyone saw a hole in the plan. Nobody did.

  “Okay then. We’re good to go,” said Wade.

  Randal said, “When we hit the blacktop, we’ll suppress weapons. Bill, you have point. We use the service roads for the return trip. Let’s go.”

  Two hours after they arrived, they were headed back to Robbinsville.

  Chapter Seven

  The Light

  When the country collapsed, Nina Svetlana Lutrova was the lead pianist for the Philadelphia Orchestra. She was born in Novgorod, Russia to a Russian mother and an American father. When she was three years old, her father murdered her mother, and then committed suicide. She bounced from one foster home to another for the next fifteen years until, at eighteen years of age, she migrated to the United States. Nina Lutrova was twenty-seven years old and, at five feet six inches tall with jet-black hair and deep blue eyes, was stunningly beautiful. Quiet by nature and highly intelligent, she preferred her own company to that of other humans. Those who knew her did not know her well, which was her intent. Nina trusted no one, and other than an occasional sexual liaison with either gender or when forced to interact with people at rehearsal or in concert, she kept to herself.

  When the riots started in Philly, Nina saw the future and didn’t like what she saw. Throwing a few items in a small backpack, she walked out of Philadelphia and never looked back. Scrounging what food she could find along the way, she arrived three months later in Chattanooga. Those three months taught her a lot about surviving. Blinded by her beauty, she learned that both men and women could be manipulated to do her bidding. Sex wasn’t personal to her. It was an out of body experience. A tool she used like a sharp knife to achieve her goals. She also discovered that it was much better to be in charge than to be a follower. Her mind already had a dark side, and the rigors of surviving Armageddon gave free rein to the thoughts constantly knocking on the door of her consciousness. She discovered taking a life was the most pleasurable experience she’d ever had, and with every kill, she experienced massive and overwhelming orgasmic-like pleasure.

  Mohammed Saadeh was very charismatic and extremely adept at motivating people. It was simple. He told them what they wanted to hear. He’d learned at an early age that was how to get others to do what he wanted them to do. The fact was, most people wanted to be around him and wanted his attention and recognition. Born in Egypt, he was 37 years old, with soft brown eyes that projected gentleness and trust. But he was nothing more than a con man. Always had been, always would be. He was also a Muslim, but didn’t pray, didn’t go to mosque, and didn’t give a rat’s ass about the Quran. He didn’t even own a prayer rug. Mohammed cared about one thing, and one thing only. That thing was Mohammed Saadeh. Educated at Georgia Tech University in Atlanta, he graduated with a degree in chemistry. He worked for a local chemical company for ten years until he discovered life was much easier, and much more lucrative, if he manufactured and sold his own chemicals. So he experimented selling his own brand of synthetic hallucinogens, and after three years, was very well off financially.

  Saadeh had no clue what went on in the world because he never read a newspaper, didn’t own a TV, and never went online. Thus, the riots and food shortages caught him by surprise. His only form of recreation, other than sleeping, was shooting, and he had a nice collection of guns and knives. Deciding Atlanta was not safe for his Egyptian ass, he hauled it out of Atlanta along with several of his favorite firearms and headed for Chattanooga. Forced to survive, he did so by using his con man mentality, and killing when he had to. Taking a human life wasn’t personal to Saadeh. He didn’t derive pleasure from it, nor did he feel regret afterwards. It was just something that he occasionally had to do.

  Paul Justice was an asshole and a bully. He never did an honest day’s work in his life, and was proud of that fact. Work is for fools, he often thought, not for me. But at the tender age of twenty-three, he considered the possibility that stealing and conning others to get what he needed was too much like the work he despised. So Paul Justice joined the army. He took to army life like a duck takes to water and discovered if he was patient, he would eventually be put in charge of others, which dramatically enhanced his ability to avoid working. He also identified a lucrative market for the military items he pilfered from the company supply section where he worked. His biggest revelation was the discovery that he got off on belittling others. It put them in their place and made him feel superior. After four years in the army and just after being promoted to sergeant, Justice was brought up on charges of sexual harassment and inappropriate touching of the female private who worked for him. Found guilty, he was dishonorably discharged. A week after separation, he drove to Chattanooga where he knew a guy he could stay with.

  Faisal Aziz was a giant. Born in Brooklyn, Faisal’s Palestinian mother home schooled him and, unfortunately for Faisal, she did not do a good job. Faisal never met his father, who left when he was an infant to fight the Zionist horde in Israel. Faisal had no clue what that meant. In fact, Faisal didn’t have a clue about anything. He was as dumb as a rock, but worshipped his mother and accepted everything she said as fact. While he was growing up, the neighborhood kids called him Jabbar, which means giant in Arabic. Faisal liked that name. Actually, he liked everything and had no clue the other kids were insulting and making fun of him. When he was twelve years old, he stood six feet ten inches tall and weighed two hundred sixty pounds. Now he was twenty-eight years old and had grown to seven feet tall, and a healthy four hundred seventy-five pounds. Faisal was truly a Jabbar.

  Although she was a loner, Faisal’s mother was also shrewd and paid close attention to the political world—especially what went on in her native Palestine. She was also very intuitive, and long before the world descended into anarchy, she and Faisal packed their meager belongings and moved to Chattanooga where they had relatives.

  During his twenty-eight years on earth, Faisal had never hurt a fly. One night shortly after the riots started, he came home from his evening walk and found his mother and the other members of his family slaughtered where they sat. Faisal stared at the bodies for a long time, and as he stood there, something dark and sinister stirred inside his soul. He burned the house with the bodies in it, and then went looking for those who killed his family. Everyone he found was the murderer. And everyone he found, he killed.

  When the collapse began, Chattanooga, like every other metropolitan area in the United States, experienced violent riots and lawlessness. Homeland Security and army troops evacuated thousands of people a day to FEMA camps, never to be heard from again.

  Nina Lutrova wanted no part of anything remotely called a camp, so she gathered what she had and headed into the Chattahoochee National Forest east of Chattanooga.

  Mohammed Saadeh was not going to a FEMA camp. No how, no way. He looked at a Georgia map and decided the safest course of action would be to put as much distance between the troops and himself as he could, as fast as he could. Quickly loading a backpack, he decided the safest place to ride it out would be in the Chattahoochee National Forest.

  Paul Justice feared the army. More specifically, he feared they might find out he had stolen and sold hundreds of thousands of dollars of US Army property. Putting together a survival kit, Justice looked at a map and selected an area in the Chattahoochee National Forest. He figured it would be a long time before the army expended resources to find people in the woods.

  Faisal Aziz watched from a copse of trees as soldiers came from everywhere, took people out of their homes, and put them into semi-trucks with slats on the trailers. He wasn’t sure what was going on, but his insti
ncts told him it was not good. For the first time in his life, Faisal Aziz felt fear. He decided he would go back to the culvert where he had been hiding and think about it. Turning, he came face to face with a man with a large bushy beard. He looked just like his father from the pictures his dead mother had shown him.

  Mohammed Saadeh looked at the biggest man he had ever seen, and the only thought that came through was, holy shit. With a big smile, he extended his hand and said, “How are you doing my friend? My name is Mohammed.”

  The giant just stared at him. Thinking the man did not understand English, Saadeh repeated the phrase in Arabic. Aziz understood English perfectly well, and understood the Arabic too. It just took him a few seconds to make the mental trip from Saadeh being the murderer of his mother to that of friend. Faisal decided that because the man had a beard like his father, he could not have murdered his mother. Therefore, he was a friend. He replied in English, “My name is Faisal Aziz, but you can call me Jabbar. That means giant in Arabic,” and he shook Saadeh’s hand.

  Saadeh decided Jabbar might be a good man to have on his side. “Where are you going, Jabbar?”

  “I don’t know,” said Aziz. “My mother is dead and I don’t know what to do.”

  Listening to Aziz talk, Saadeh realized the man was slow. “Come with me, my friend. I’ll take care of you.”

  Aziz looked at Saadeh for a moment, then asked, “Are you going to be my friend, Mohammed?”

  “Yes, I am. I am going to be the best friend you have ever had. We are going into the woods where it is safe. Do you have anything you need to bring?”