Children of Wrath

by Ryan King

  Joshua carefully climbed out. When his feet touched the ground, the other guard slammed a long baton down on the back of his neck. Joshua dropped and lay there unable to move. They then tied his hands together behind his back, sliding the smooth hard stick between his arms and back. They each lifted an end of the wood, and Joshua felt his shoulders try to pop out of their sockets. Without thinking, he got his feet under him to relieve the pressure on his shoulders and walked where they led.

  He was marched into the manor house through an ornate set of doors that led to a small foyer lined with small couches and bookshelves. This room transitioned to other parts of the house through a hallway with a large dining area to the right and a den to the left. The entire interior was lit up with oil lanterns and candles. They dragged him down the hallway, and long before they arrived, Joshua could hear voices and smell something burning.

  "There he is," said Conrad cheerfully. "I've missed you, son. Let me introduce you to the big man himself: Colonel Vincent Lacert."

  Joshua looked toward where Conrad indicated and saw a muscular man with cruel blue eyes seated on a cushioned chair.

  "Pleased to meet you," said Joshua weakly.

  The room went still for a moment until Vincent laughed. The rest of the room followed suit.

  "You see that boys," bellowed Vincent. "Common courtesy. That's what's wrong with the world today, a lack of common courtesy." He turned back to address Joshua. "We might just get along fine, you and I. You have begun well; let us see how you finish."

  "Where are my men?" asked Joshua.

  Vincent shook his head disapprovingly. "You are mistaken. You no longer have any men. They are my men now, either part of my army or hanging out on the road or working in my salt mines. There is no other reality for you or them. Every man here has faced a similar choice and has chosen."

  Joshua looked at Conrad, and the other man dropped his eyes.

  "But first," said Vincent, "I love to visit and socialize. More than anything, I love to hear tales from those who have come from far away. Why don't you tell us about this JP?"

  "Did my men talk to you?" Joshua asked.

  "Yes," said Vincent. "Some more courteously than others, but they talked."

  "Then why do you need me to tell you anything?" Joshua asked. "I don't know any more than they do."

  Vincent shook his head. "Tsk tsk. Lying is so discourteous. And I thought we were going to get along famously. Your men have already told us that you are the son of a very important man in the JP. That means you know important things. It also means you are valuable to me."

  Joshua and David had been through Luke Carter's interrogation resistance training. Joshua knew there were basically two ways to be uncooperative. One involved playing for time—telling a little bit of truth, but not too much. It required subtlety in minimizing the importance of critical things and making trivial things seem vitally important. It gained time if you needed it. The other way was more direct. It forced the issue quickly and invoked the brain's natural resistance to coercion and torture.

  "Piss off," said Joshua.

  "Oh, son," said Conrad sadly. "I thought you were smart."

  "Let's have some fun," said Vincent. He nodded to the men behind Joshua who dragged him to a chair. Once there, they tied him down with thick leather straps before stepping back.

  "Last chance," said Vincent.

  Joshua closed his eyes and turned away. The next thing he felt was a tickling feeling on his right forearm. He opened his eyes to see a soldier carefully pouring gunpowder out of broken cartridges onto his arm. He then stepped back while another lit a match and carefully touched it to the powder before leaping away.

  Logically, Joshua knew what gunpowder could do. He had been around guns his whole life and had seen plenty of explosions, but he never really understood the power of gunpowder till now. Thankfully, he had closed his eyes and turned his head away at the last minute or he might have been blinded by the heat and fire.

  The magic of gunpowder is that it burns relatively slowly. Other gas and liquid propellants had been experimented with in the past, but they burned too quickly and simply blew the guns apart. Gunpowder, however, built up pressure as it pushed the bullet down a barrel and out the other end with great force. Part of Joshua's brain thought about all of this as the gunpowder slowly burned into his arm.

  The other part of Joshua screamed and writhed in pain.

  Mercifully, they tossed a bucket of water on him before the fire spread too far. Even so, Joshua's arm felt dead to him. They didn't even give him an option to talk before burning the other forearm and then dousing it in water also.

  "Ready to be courteous?" asked Vincent.

  Joshua had already decided to abandon his strategy and try out another one. He didn't really need to play for time except to delay until they hurt him again, but right now that time seemed very sweet to him.

  "I am," said Joshua gasping. "I'll tell you anything you want to know."

  "Good," said Vincent. "Tell us about your father."

  "Dad?" asked Joshua, and nearly choked at the thought of him. "Well, he is a Capricorn, likes pizza and ice cream. He's a terrible dancer, but that doesn't stop him from trying. He does some half-decent imitations of famous people if he's had a few drinks. Wise beyond his years people say."

  Conrad chuckled, but Vincent did not seem amused and waved a hand at the soldiers standing behind Joshua.

  He felt grains pouring down on top of his head. "Now wait!" he yelled. "I said I would talk. What the hell are you doing?"

  "I am the only one allowed to play games in this house," said Vincent and nodded at the men.

  It actually took a second for Joshua to realize his head was on fire. He could see the reflective glow in the faces of the men facing him. Then a wave the pain engulfed his entire being. Before, he had thought the burning of his arms was agony, but he had been naive. That minor pinprick had been to pain what an acorn was to an oak tree. It was the mere appetizer for a full banquet of agony. Joshua felt like he was going to pass out and eagerly sought that oblivion. He turned and actually saw his reflection in the windows, and it appeared as if he had a full head of red hair standing up straight off his head.

  Then, he blacked out.

  When they woke him again, the fire on his head was out, but there was more agony in store for him. He saw they had stuck his penis in a bag filled with gunpowder and held a match to the lip of the bag.

  Joshua told them everything and held nothing back. He hoped his father would understand.

  Chapter 13 - Saltpeter

  A long-time golfer, General Butch Matthews found it surreal to be riding in an electric golf cart around the Murray State Campus. He had been a professor here before N-Day, and except for the lack of automobiles and about a quarter the number of previous students, things looked pretty much like before.

  He saw other golf carts zipping around campus and admitted it was a smart means of transportation over short distances. After all, electricity was plentiful.

  Doctor Valerie Cutchfield, the Dean of the College of Engineering slowed the cart as they approached a large square brick structure.

  "Isn't this the old basketball arena?" Butch asked.

  "Sure is," answered Cutchfield. "We needed someplace that could be secured and keep out anyone curious. Besides, not too many basketball games going on these days. The few there are use the new arena across campus." The dean pulled a set of keys from her pocket as they stepped out of the cart and unlocked a door with a new lock in it.

  Butch walked into the building, and the professor immediately closed and locked it behind him. Butch's nostrils flared at the smell, and he turned with alarm on Valerie. "You used the same building for this as for the refinery?"

  "Sure," answered Cutchfield, obviously confused by his concern. "Best way to secure both projects, and most of the people working on the oil refining are also working this project. Besides, the new odor is somewhat drowned in the smell of petro
leum refinement."

  "Isn't there a danger of one project igniting the other?"

  Cutchfield looked wounded. "Sir, that is very unlikely. We take proper precautions."

  "Okay, okay," said Butch. "Show me."

  The dean led him around the top of the arena so they could look down past all the stadium seating and see several large round cylinders connected by thousands of tubes and air compressors sitting on the basketball court.

  "So it's working?" Butch asked.

  "It will," said Cutchfield. "We're in the final stages now. We'll start with a few hundred barrels of oil next week and see how it goes."

  "Our own gasoline," said Butch with awe.

  "I wish I could share your enthusiasm," said Cutchfield. "I've spent most of my career looking for alternatives to fossil fuels, and here I am, bringing them back from the dead."

  "We need this," Butch said. "There is no more efficient fuel source available to us but gasoline."

  "I of all people know that," she said, "but it doesn't mean I have to like it." She unlocked another door and led them through.

  Before she could lock the door another odor, even stronger and ranker than the last, caused Butch to gag. Cutchfield handed him a medical mask to cover his face.

  "Here, take this," Valerie said. "Not sure it helps much, but makes you think the smell is better."

  "What is that?" asked Butch through the mask, still trying not to gag.

  "That is the wonderful smell of us making potassium nitrate," she answered. "The primary ingredient in gunpowder. We get it from boiling away the water from urine and feces."

  A lanky man had walked up. He was not wearing a mask and seemed oblivious to the smell. He wore a polo shirt with a Remington Arms logo on the breast. "Actually it accounts for seventy-five percent of gunpowder. Charcoal makes up fifteen percent and sulfur the remaining ten percent."

  "General," said Cutchfield, "please meet Tony Glover from the Remington Plant in Mayfield. He's here as a consultant."

  "Our plant is ready to make ammunition," said Glover, "just as soon as we get the materials."

  "Other than gunpowder, what do you need?" asked Butch.

  "The gunpowder is obviously of primary concern." The man laughed nervously. "The gunpowder itself can effectively fire a projectile nine times its weight in powder."

  "Good to know," said Butch, trying not to sound sarcastic.

  The man continued as if he hadn't heard, "Shell casings can be produced and recycled. We actually have a fairly large stock of casings from a reloading store in Paducah."

  "So, you have all you need," said Butch.

  "Not exactly," said the dean. "The primers are needed to ignite the powder. We have some from the reloading store, but not enough."

  "Can't you make more?" asked Butch.

  "In theory," answered Valerie. "It is only a chemical process after all."

  Tony looked insulted. "A chemical process? It is much more than that. It is a piece of art. There are only two real types of centerfire primers: the Boxer and the Berden. Both are trademarked items, and their compositions are jealously guarded trade secrets."

  "I don't think that counts for much anymore," said Butch.

  "No, but it means we don't have a recipe," answered Tony. "We're going to have to reverse-engineer primers. Like Dr. Cutchfield stated, it is only a chemical process, the main purpose of which is to produce a spark of sufficient strength to ignite the gunpowder. I am confident of success, but our product will likely be inferior."

  "Inferior how?" asked Butch.

  "We don't have the manufacturing equipment or knowhow to make primers even as good as they did a hundred years ago," answered Cutchfield. "We'll get better with time, but the first few hundred thousand primers will have high percentages of misfires."

  "These things have been around for over a hundred years," Butch said. "What could possibly be so hard?"

  "There are a lot of things we no longer know how to make from scratch," Valerie explained. "We'll be able to do it, but everything takes time, trial, and error."

  "A few hundred thousand? You sure you need that many to figure this thing out?"

  "We have to make the primers in batches," said Tony. "If one primer in a batch is good, the others are likely good, but no guarantee. And good is a relatively nebulous term. We'll know if a primer ignites the powder, but we won't know if it did so just barely or efficiently."

  They were interrupted by a knock on the entrance. Cutchfield opened it and held the door for two college students who wrestled two large wheelbarrows through the doors. Butch started dry heaving.

  "Yeah! More feces," squealed Tony and moved away from them as if he had forgotten they existed.

  "Can we please get the hell out of here?" asked Butch.

  "Certainly," said Cutchfield, locking the door behind them.

  Once outside, Butch pulled the mask off his face and breathed in great gasps of air. His clothing was going to continue to smell like shit until it could be washed. "I'm not so sure all this is worth it," he finally said.

  "All of what?" asked the Dean.

  "The gunpowder," answered Butch. "I think I've decided we're going to go back to bows and arrows."

  "Might be more reliable," said the dean as they climbed into the golf cart.

  "Oh please don't say that," said Butch, his joking mood gone.

  Chapter 14 - The Sword of Uriel

  Jacob Daniels trudged generally westward, bypassing as many large settlements as possible. Food was a problem, but the knights had taught him how to discern edible plants, leaves, and roots from God's fallen creation. Still, he craved nothing more than a large rare steak. His stomach rumbled, and he tried to think of something else.

  The wind was picking up, and Jacob looked nervously at the menacing gray sky. He didn't like storms. When he was a toddler, his older brother had locked him out of the house during a horrendous thunderstorm while their mother was out drinking. Jacob had been terrified of them ever since. He whined and picked up the pace.

  There really was no place to go. He knew enough to stay out from under trees, but there was no manmade shelter in sight. Looking down the road, he thought he saw something geometrical. Something solid. He started shuffling as heavy drops of water hit the pavement around him.

  The geometric shapes increased and spread across the field. It was a graveyard and an old one by the look of it. Lightning flashed to the earth, and almost instantaneously, a gigantic boom of thunder made Jacob fall on his face. He looked up through the field of tombstones and thought he saw a small structure. Climbing to his feet, he took off in a dead run toward it.

  He saw numerous open graves and overturned coffins. Jacob couldn't imagine why anyone would dig up a grave. He had heard of grave robbery for jewelry, but what good was jewelry anymore? Bodies in various stages of decay lay out on the ground, and dispersed body parts and gnaw marks showed where scavengers had already nosed through the meatier pieces. The animals must be fairly desperate, thought Jacob. Those bodies are likely packed with embalming fluid. He then caught a glimpse of a headstone with the date 1898. Well maybe some of the really old ones aren't filled with embalming fluid. Probably like people jerky to them. He laughed and then wondered how it might taste.

  Some of the caskets themselves had been broken apart and taken away. Jacob couldn't tell if this was for the wood itself or simply part of the process of getting at the bodies. The stiff wind swirled leaves around the dead face of what had once been an old woman. Her vacant left eye stared at him from a sunken and shriveled face. The other eye had already been claimed by a scavenger.

  Thunder boomed again, and Jacob squealed. He could see the structure ahead and could tell it was a small shack. Old lawnmower parts leaned against the outside of the walls, and he guessed it was a maintenance shed of some sort. Running up to the opening, he spotted a broken lock, but the warped door was still intact.

  Jacob pushed against the cracked wood and stumbled in. He wrestl
ed the door shut with difficulty and realized it wouldn't close due to the warped frame. Looking around, he saw a large metal wheel on the floor and wedged it in front of the door that the wind was trying desperately to blow open. Once the wheel was in place, he stepped back cautiously. The door continued to jump as each gust of wind caused leaves and cool gusts to blow in around the cracks, but for now, it held.

  He turned and got his first look inside the shed. It was quiet and filled with shadows. Smells of dust, mildew, and old grease filled the air. There were two large riding lawn mowers and one small push mower crammed in the shed that Jacob doubted would measure twelve feet square. Someone had obviously already ransacked the contents. Empty tool boxes lay on the floor with various screws, nuts, and bolts laying all about. The smell of gasoline indicated that someone had drained the mowers at some point.

  Looking out the window, Jacob saw that the storm had decided to get down to serious business. Dark sheets of rain now approached in waves. He could still hear the thunder, but the lightning was obscured by the torrential flood of water and was only implied by a faint but indistinct glow in the sky at times. Jacob realized he was going to be here for awhile.

  He took a broken-handled broom and swept off a place where he could place his bedroll. Jacob froze when he swept up the dried out husk of a dead rat. How many rats come out at night around here? All those bodies. His mind filled with images of swarms of giant rats with thick wicked teeth and long naked tails scurrying over and around him. He shuddered.

  "I am not Jacob Daniels," he said loudly. "I am Uriel. Fire of God. Knight of the Apocalypse."

  He heard a small scurrying in the corner at his loud voice, but his fear gradually receded. Turning back to lay out his bedroll, his eye caught on something and his heart stopped.

  A sword. Against the far wall.

  Holding his breath and praying it wasn't a fantasy, he crept forward as if toward a skittish animal, afraid it would vanish. As he got closer, he could see a long straight and flat steel blade. It was about two inches wide and nearly three feet long and had a round hole in the middle. Sharp edges deflected the dim light. The point was jagged and sharp.