by J. Thorn
“Much better. Now we can talk all night,” said Father.
Father grabbed a stained hunting knife from the table. He walked toward Jana. She struggled and cursed, doing her best to turn away from him and his foul cigar smoke. He took the tip of the knife and placed it on the left side of her head. In one, swift motion, Father slid the blade down, cutting off Jana’s left ear. She screamed and John howled profanities at the madman. Father grabbed an old rag from the floor and wrapped it around the fresh wound, tying the rag tightly.
“I don’t want you bleeding out yet, do I?” he said as Jana’s eyes rolled back into her head, on the verge of passing out.
“You sadistic bastard!”
“It is more effective for me to get to you through her. Sit tight, John the Revelator. Your time will come.”
Byron pulled himself to his feet. He looked into Jana’s eyes and had to turn away.
“My dear, what dance shall we dance next?” asked Father.
He took the knife and wiped it clean on Jana’s jeans. Father traced the outline of her breasts with the edge of the blade, barely touching the fabric of her sweatshirt. He slid the knife between the waistband of her jeans and the top button. The thread gave way and the button rolled to the floor. Father grabbed the zipper and pulled it down. The soldiers stopped playing cards and Byron took a step forward.
“I have four men here that would enjoy a little action. Isn’t that right?”
Father asked the question while looking over his shoulder at the soldiers. They stopped playing cards, but each man continued to hold them in his hands.
“Fine. Come here and I’ll tell you what you want to know,” said John.
Father took a step toward John. On his way, he bent down and placed his head at Jana’s waist. Father inhaled an exaggerated breath through his nose and released it with a smile on his face.
“I can smell the excitement and fear on your wife,” he said to John.
John ignored the comment and waited for Father to ask a question.
“What has He said about the Final Battle? What do you have to share that is not explicit in Revelations? Do not make me think that God was mistaken about you,” Father warned.
“God says that his people will reign. The Second Coming of the Messiah will restore peace to the world through His one-thousand-year reign. The Great White throne will usher in the New Heavens and New Earth.”
Father stopped and looked into John’s eyes. The cigar dangled from his lips and came close to burning them. He put the knife down and sat on a box in front of the two prisoners.
“I’m impressed, John. I would like to hear more.”
John sighed and licked his dry lips.
“It is the work of Seven,” John continued. “The Seven Cycles of events in Revelations can be compared to the works of the Holy Covenant. The First Cleansing must surely be the first of those cycles.”
Father’s face lit with a beaming smile. He looked at the soldiers and Byron, all of who wore blank expressions on their faces.
“Yes, yes it is. You are very perceptive, John the Revelator. Tell me more of the Book of Revelations and how it is being interpreted here.”
John coughed and his eyes darted around the room. He looked to the ceiling while whispering under his breath.
“I’m thirsty. Can I get something to drink?”
Father turned and said to one of the soldiers, “Get this man a bottle of water.”
John looked to Jana, but she buried her chin in her chest.
A soldier fumbled through an olive-green bag and produced a half-liter of bottled water. He opened it and hoisted it to John’s lips. He gulped as much of the sweet-tasting water as he could before the soldier pulled it away.
Father’s mood turned and his face contorted into a ferocious snarl.
“Enough! Continue or the pain will commence,” he said to John.
John shook his head and looked at Father through shimmering tears.
“Don’t hold back on me!” Father shouted.
He turned to Jana and punched her in the stomach. She moaned and lifted her head in agony. Father picked up the knife and placed it under Jana’s chin.
“Talk or I will send her to her final judgment.”
John looked around the room as it began to swirl. The dark blacks and grays of the basement flowed together into a kaleidoscope of color and motion which forced his eyelids shut. When he opened them, Father stood in front of Jana. Her sweatshirt had been cut open. Jana’s jeans sat in a pile at her feet, and her panties hung from the hilt of Father’s knife.
Two of the soldiers moved toward her, each loosening the belt on their pants. Father stood in front of her, his chest heaving and eyes bulging. Jana finally looked over at John, her eyes piercing his soul. John pulled as hard as he could on the ties binding his wrists, but they did not give. He tried to scream, but his brain refused to form coherent thoughts and would not send them along to his mouth.
John looked around the room and saw Commander Byron. His cane supported what was left of his dignity.
Father screamed unintelligible words and beastly sounds at Jana. He tore at his own shirt, and his fingernails drew long, red trails down his own face. The two soldiers that approached Jana did so with looks of consternation. The other two remained seated on the boxes, trying to convince themselves that they were not part of the proceedings.
Father stepped in closer to Jana. He bent down and placed his tongue on her navel. He ran it up her stomach and between her two breasts until his lips almost touched hers. Jana looked straight ahead, beyond Father and into a time and place where she existed without her physical body. He placed both hands on her breasts and pushed her tight against the wall.
The two soldiers discarded their initial state of shame, and dropped their pants to their ankles. Both men gripped growing erections in their hands.
John heard himself screaming, and the echoes reverberated inside his head. No matter how hard he tried, his mouth would not release a sound. Byron stepped closer, a foot from the wall that secured the prisoners.
Jana began to struggle, pulling hard on the ties that bound her wrists together. She screeched in pain as the binding tore deeper into her shattered wrist bones. Jana brought her legs up in an attempt to knee the attackers. The two men seated on the boxes saw this and ran over to secure her ankles. They tied them to cinder blocks laying scattered on the basement floor. The proximity to Jana’s exposed body and primal instincts stole their focus on the task at hand. The four men and Father stood, drooling like wild beasts over their kill.
John shut his eyes and tried to replay another scene from their past, but his mind would not cooperate. He heard Jana crying, and he heard the men jockeying for position.
Chapter 50
The commander felt life draining from his body. He wished to shed the pain, to sleep and not wake up.
Sergeants drilled compassion out of the soldier from the very first hours of boot camp. A good soldier was taught to react on instinct, action before thought, and to achieve the objective at any cost. All of these ideas pushed empathy to the side.
Byron fought extensively in the hills of Afghanistan in the 1980s. With the USSR at its peak, and in the midst of the Cold War against the United States, he led troops through the hellish terrain. Although he collected many war stories, the Kremlin did not have enough firepower or willpower to defeat the Afghan foot soldiers. The Afghans knew the lay of the land, they knew the local war lords, and no number of Russian tanks could change that.
Byron took his share of Afghan women. The only way to instill fear in the local leadership was through inhuman celebrations, and Byron studied the ancient masters. He claimed, although the legitimacy of that claim was in question, lineage from the great Genghis Khan. Once, the commander captured some Afghan rebels. As they approached the next village, the prisoners of war, dressed in Soviet fatigues and with explosives strapped to their chests, would be the first ones sent into battle.
Once a village had been conquered, Byron salted the earth. He instructed his soldiers to round up all men between the ages of ten and eighty. Byron insisted on a bullet to the back of each of their heads. Once the women of the village finished watching the grim spectacle, the commander let loose his soldiers. After repeated gang rapes, the women pleaded for death. Before Byron set fire to the village, the heads of all those that had been executed were stacked in a pyramid on the road leading into it. Byron took deranged pride in his revival of the Mongol war tactics.
From Afghanistan, the KGB offered Byron employment. He assassinated sympathizers to Democracy. Whether it was Granada, the Falklands, or Jerusalem, Byron eliminated all human targets on his docket.
He blinked again at the scene in front of him. John’s eyes were closed and his head turned as far away from Jana as possible. Father had devolved into a wild beast, his robes torn and covered with blood. Two of the four soldiers worked up to the precipice of violation. The other two, after securing her ankles, dropped their pants to their ankles and waited for a turn.
Byron lifted his nine millimeter and pulled the trigger twice. The deafening blast in the confined space of the basement blew out his right eardrum. The heads of the two men closest to Byron exploded in a burst of pink flesh. Their bodies fell to the floor behind Father. Father turned to look at Byron, but his eyes did not connect the noise with the destruction wrought upon his men.
The man on Jana’s left reached down to grab the pistol off his belt, now on the floor and tangled in his underwear. The commander lodged two bullets in his torso, the one to his chest killing him instantly. The flash of the muzzle and roar of the gun did not faze Byron. His hand moved in deathly syncopation with the cold steel.
Another shot knocked the man to Jana’s right against the wall. He slid down to the floor, leaving a meandering trail of hot blood on the white wall. The man clutched his throat as blood spurted from the gaping wound below his Adam’s apple. Mists of red tormented his final exhalations. Byron looked down at the four bloodied bodies on the floor.
For the first time since Byron fired his weapon, Father moved. He grabbed the tattered shoulder of his robe and wiped the blood and gray matter from his face. He looked at Jana, her head down and sobbing into her chest. Bits of flesh and fluid covered her naked breasts and pubic area. Jana’s head bounced up and down with every silent heave. Father spoke first.
“You dirty piece of shit. How dare you?”
“Step away from her,” replied Byron.
“You will hang for this. I will make sure that you suffer in this life and the next.”
Commander Byron kept his gun aimed at Father’s face while the priest spoke. Father took measured steps toward Byron until the barrel of the gun was almost touching his blood-soaked face.
“You are nothing but a charlatan, a fake. You claim to be a man of God, but you are nothing more than a cold-blooded murderer like me.”
Father stepped up and pulled the barrel to his mouth.
“Go ahead then, you big coward. Do it.”
Jana glanced at John, her eyes locking on his. She closed them tight. John turned back to the unfolding standoff between Father and Commander Byron.
“Where did you stray from your faith, Father? At one time you were a respected man of God. What happened?”
Father laughed the deep, guttural laugh of a man on the verge of insanity.
“You know nothing, you piece of garbage. You have taken so many lives that it makes me sick. What right do you have to question my motives? This is not God’s will. He did not intend to have pure evil walking in His Garden. The Holy Covenant came to purify, to cleanse the palace before the King’s arrival. I’ve spent my entire life trying to help drug dealers, prostitutes, abusers, and murderers. And you know what, Byron? That’s all over now, because God prophesized the Final Battle in Revelations. He anointed His church to destroy the evil that has plagued mankind for centuries. The Covenant has begun, and there is nothing you can do about it. The First Cleansing was just that: the first. There will be more until we have brought the Thousand Year Peace to our Lord. He will sit upon the Seventh Throne and rule the world of righteousness and holiness.”
“You’re a lunatic,” spat John, interrupting the conversation between Father and Byron. “No man of God kills innocent people in his name. You continue to perpetuate the same cycle of religious fanaticism that has contaminated mankind for two thousand years. You are a sadistic fraud.”
Father stepped away from Byron and picked up his hunting knife. He had raised it to John’s neck when another blast shook the room. Plaster and dust fell into John’s face from the hole in the wall punctured by Byron’s warning shot.
“Back away from him, or the next one shot will be at you.”
Father tossed the knife into the corner, where it clanged off of the weapons of the dead soldiers. The stench of burnt hair and feces filled the room. The smoke from the exploding gunpowder helped to mask the wretched scent.
“I am at Death’s door,” said the commander. “I have no misconceptions about the price I will have to pay for my time here on earth.”
Jana opened her eyes, looking at Byron through a silent waterfall of tears.
“I have made peace with my decisions,” he went on, “and am willing to face the eternal consequences for them. Have you?”
Father sneered at Byron and spat blood upon the dangling medallions on his chest.
“I answer to a higher power than you, Commander Byron. There is nothing more I need to say.”
Byron aimed his weapon.
“Then die, you evil son of a bitch.”
The bullet blew a hole in Father’s abdomen and tore a ragged handful of flesh from his back on the way out. He fell to his knees and brought his hands together in an attempt at prayer. Father’s mouth moved silently as blood poured over his bottom lip. Byron put the barrel of the gun to the top of Father’s head and pulled the trigger a second time. Father’s body crumpled to the floor at Jana’s feet.
The ringing in John’s ears prevented him from hearing the silence. He tasted the fear and relief in the air, and his eyes burned from the smoke that filled the room.
Byron stepped over the bodies and toward Jana. John heard two snapping noises and watched Jana’s hands fall from the holes and down to her naked breasts. She sat on the floor, clutching the remnants of her clothes.
“I apologize for the pain I have inflicted upon you. I wish I could take back the pain and suffering I have caused throughout my life, but I cannot. My body is giving out on me. I only ask that you let me leave and find my own place to die. But you may kill me if you wish.”
Jana rubbed her wrists, the broken one so swollen that she could not bend it. Commander Byron walked over to the corner of the room and picked up Father’s knife. He wiped it clean on his pant leg and handed it to Jana.
“I don’t know what your future will be, but it is now in your hands.”
“What am I supposed to do?” asked Jana.
Byron winced as he stepped over the bodies toward the steps. His cane would not support his life for much longer.
“What you believe you should do. You are a creature of the universe and you have Free Will. Exercise it. Those that surrender their life to ‘faith’ risk the perversion of it. Your world will no longer be the same, but it is yours to make.”
Commander Byron stopped in front of John. “Your life is hers. I wash my hands of it.”
Jana and John watched Commander Byron take each step. His knees buckled and his lungs pulled at the oxygen in the air. His silhouette disappeared down the driveway as the moon fought through the heavy clouds.
Neither John nor Jana said a word. Neither one moved. A single gunshot echoed through the dead neighborhood, rumbling by the house like a spring thunderstorm.
Chapter 51
“Honey, cut me loose.”
“Why?”
John’s lower jaw fell at the same time his eyebrows peaked on his f
orehead.
“More of them may be on their way here right now. We need to get out of this place.”
“Why, John?”
John’s body pleaded to be free from the bindings while his mouth tried to answer her question. He dropped his head down with a careless shrug.
“John, do you remember the time we were alone on the lawn of the Machek Building?”
John looked up again, nodding in confirmation.
“Do you remember what you said to me that night?”
“No, Jana I don’t. Can’t we discuss this somewhere else?” The fear crept into John’s voice.
“You told me you’d always be faithful, no matter what. You told me you would never be tempted by someone else. You said you’d leave me first, because that was the honorable thing to do.”
He sighed again, looked back at the steps leading to the driveway, then finally responded.
“Yeah, hon, I remember something like that. What does it have to do—”
“Sarah. The pics. You cheated on me with your ex-girlfriend.”
John straightened up and looked at the ceiling. He exhaled and shook his head back and forth.
“She drugged me, Jana. It was all part of her plan to be a spiteful, home-wrecking bitch. And you’re letting her do it.”
Jana slapped John hard across his face and screamed at him.
“Don’t you dare shift the blame to me!”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t fucking sorry me. You should have known better than to let that whore put you in a compromising position. You should have been smarter than that.”
“So now what?” he asked.
Jana slapped him again, this time harder.
“You really have no idea?”
Jana began to cry. She set the knife down on an overturned box and pulled the olive-green coat from one of the dead men on the floor. The sleeves swallowed her arms, so she rolled them up to the elbows. Jana took a handgun from one of the men and slid it inside the front of her jeans. She removed the belt from another to help keep her pants together without the strategic top button.