3 Federal sentencing guidelines mandated a prison sentence between twenty-five and fifty years in a federal penitentiary. On the appointed day of sentencing, Bishop Lawrence Thomas was brought to the federal courthouse in Los Angeles and sentenced to forty-five years in a federal prison. The crowd inside the courtroom ignored the judge’s previous warnings against public displays—they burst into tears and shouts, as federal marshals forcibly ejected them from the courtroom and the building.
Two monks from a monastery in Spain, who had come to El Paso specifically for the trial, self-immolated on the steps of the courthouse, as a mortified crowd cried in prayer. One local couple later claimed they saw Christ in the flames, and videos of the incident were widely distributed on YouTube and other sites. Many people fell into tears and fits of ecstasy at the sights and claimed that the monks had attained a higher state of consciousness before setting themselves alight. The monks had left a sparsely worded suicide note with their bishop in Spain, which was then heavily redacted by the Vatican before it was released to the authorities and the public. Many websites claimed that the redacted portions of the note referred to a vision they shared, told in a dream about preparing for their “fire baptism” and the calamities that would follow if the Gloamings were to gain in power.
4 Normally, a prisoner of such notoriety would be sent to the Supermax prison in Colorado. It’s unclear why the federal judge removed Thomas to Terminal Island. Justice Department officials investigated, but an appeal to the appellate courts was dismissed by the Attorney General.
Chapter 17
May Day
Thirty-Six Months After the NOBI Discovery
Sara Mesley
Nurse
I used to tell people the only way I’d go back to Baltimore was if I was born twice. Turns out I was sort of right.
My first tortured upbringing in Baltimore—doesn’t that sound delightfully pretentious?—was by a single mother who worked three jobs. After high school, I enrolled in Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, and during my first year as a nurse, also at Johns Hopkins, I realized I was not cut out for the job. The suffering and ailments of everyday people weighed heavy on me; I became more despondent about the state of the world, bored by the monotony of my current position, and decided to enroll in the United States Army.
I was sent to Syria as first lieutenant assigned to the Forty-First Infantry Regiment to support Jordanian forces in the Battle of Sadad. It was somewhat uneventful as war zones go, but on October 5, I was part of a two-jeep convoy ambushed by forces aligned with the al-Nusra Front, ISIL, and the Free Syrian Army. I was riding in the back of a Humvee, rolling down a desert highway that could have been located in California or Arizona, when suddenly the world literally turned upside down.
I remember the flashing lights and the lack of sound. I always imagined I’d handle that type of situation well instead of temporarily losing my mind and good sense. But it took me far too long to get myself together after the blast. I found myself begging for help from whoever would listen as the smoke drifted out of the wreckage. I remembered my uncle teaching me the five rules of Yijin Jing and it was all I could do to remember it all: quietness, slowness, extension, pause, flexibility.
Five other soldiers were killed and I suffered a broken leg and arm as well as a gunshot wound to my shoulder. At first I wondered if we’d rolled over a stray roadside bomb, until bullets whizzed by my ear. I knew we were under attack.
Through waves of nausea, I maneuvered my way to the front of the overturned Humvee and grabbed an M16 lying on the upturned window. I spotted two Toyota trucks and an old armored vehicle about a hundred yards east. With the M16 cradled in my broken arm, I sighted one of the trucks—they always taught us to aim high from the sight—and pulled the trigger.
I wasn’t sure if I hit anything, but the return fire drilled the engine block of the Humvee like a woodpecker on meth. We went back and forth, returning fire, until all my magazines were empty.
Though I called in my status and the vehicle was equipped with GPS, no reply came back.
So, like a little kid, I crossed my fingers.
I sat staring at the trucks for about an hour, until the sun made its descent and a large group of men exited the trucks, holding AKs. I couldn’t feel my leg anymore and certainly couldn’t move—all I could do was wait for them to arrive. They took their sweet time slowly making their way to my Humvee, and it was agony. I almost wanted to yell at them, “Hurry this shit up! Get it over with!” They tramped around me, like zombies in turbans—I wondered if this was the walking dead or if my mind was already gone. Finally, they arrived and, without a word spoken, cleaned out the Humvee of essentials, like ants picking at a carcass, and left the corpses of my fellow soldiers. I was carried to their truck and we drove the highway for an hour to a recently shelled five-story building on the outskirts of Aleppo, a couple of miles from a cluster of refugee camps.
My ten days there were an odd mix of sheer terror and soul-crushing boredom. I was given primitive medical treatment from a “doctor.” For meals, they fed me tahini, hummus, sumac, and flatbread. I got skinny and spent most of my time alone.
On October 15, after receiving reports of my whereabouts from a paid informant of the CIA, U.S. Marines from the fourth battalion—as well as members of the Navy SEALs and Army Rangers—staged a diversionary attack, while other members of the team infiltrated the building and found me on the third floor.
I had spent so much time sleeping that I was off dreaming when I heard a muffled explosion, screaming, and chaos. I had already been planning how I was going to make my last mark: I had constructed a makeshift knife from the wiring on my cot and had it hidden under a pillow. I was searching for my crude weapon when the cell door blew off its hinges.
I heard English. English! “We’re here to take you home.” I’m pretty sure I asked for a gun as they picked me up off the floor.
Two weeks later, I was back home in Baltimore.
The army didn’t really know what to do with me afterward. I didn’t want to participate in interviews about the capture and rescue. The thought of hand-shaking at the Capitol made my stomach turn. Admittedly, I was being rather difficult—when I look back on the entire ordeal now, I realize everything had to do with my anger: I hated my home, war, Syrians, Muslims, the U.S. Army, the U.S. government, the president, every fucking elected official I could think of, and yes, finally, myself. The army called my bluff with an honorable discharge—with a Bronze Star, Purple Heart, Prisoner of War Medal, and Army Commendation Medal. I accepted it through gritted teeth, though the prospect of going back to work in a hospital or doctor’s office filled me with despair.
Reentry as a civilian was, for me, like trying to become a whole person, a new person, again. Maybe a less angry person, someone who didn’t need the adrenaline rush of combat. I had learned about this in nursing school: a particular genetic variance that influenced my dopamine receptors to cause my subconscious to seek thrills. It sounds so mundane on paper, yet in real life, it was torture. I went mountain climbing, motorcycle racing, and became obsessed with amateur mixed martial arts. I craved remarkable success or remarkable failure. Nothing compared to the thrill of military combat.
I traveled to Portland, Oregon, for the wedding of an old classmate. I was in a pub killing time when I glanced over at the New York Times Sunday edition spread out on the table. Years later, I would tell a reporter I had felt almost supernaturally compelled to read that newspaper. My hands grabbed it as if they were not my own. I opened the Sunday magazine to one piece in a long-form five-part series by Maggie Haberman, on the Gloaming presence in America and beyond. Obviously, I was aware of the Gloamings but I was incredulous to learn how they were attempting to take over the Catholic Church. I probably have some latent persecution complex or delusional disorder—as I’ve been accused of by certain weird outlets—but I read about this mysterious organization known as the Order of Bruder Klaus, and how the media theorized that the o
rder was responsible for many assassinations and bombings targeted at the Gloamings.
Something in my mind—or my hearing—clicked.
This was righteous. This was true. It was violence that made sense, I thought.
No big surprise, the Order of Bruder Klaus’s official office in Rome, Italy—like other male-dominated entities—first preferred to use me like a secretary. Obviously this did not sit well with me. I was a veteran. A fucking prisoner of war!
With pathological intensity, I badgered many of the high-ranking members of the armed operations section, including Bishop Thomas, to include me in any special projects that involved the armed missions; I argued, quite loudly, that my military experience made me a more valuable asset than others without that experience. They eventually relented but sent me on a few missions strictly as medical support.
Until the Gloaming safe house in Mexico City.
Our objective was to break in and confiscate all computer hard drives and documents. Surveillance showed that the house—located in a cramped row of old brownstones in an upper-class downtown neighborhood—was not currently occupied by any Gloamings. We rented two rooms via Airbnb in a brownstone next door and broke through the wall between the brownstones—the entrance and exits of the Gloaming house were covered with surveillance—with a handsaw to ensure maximum silence. Of course, I was tasked with waiting behind.
Everything appeared to be going better than expected—a classic red flag!—as the team collected three hard drives and other documentation from the one room where the computers were housed. After the team gathered the necessary data, one of the members found a locked door, and instead of checking for any irregularities—another red flag!—the team attempted to break down the door with brute force.
The door exploded off its hinges.
The explosion shook the house next door, where I waited. Chunks from the ceiling fell onto my head. I wasted no time crawling through our makeshift hole into the Gloaming house. I followed the smoke down a flight of stairs, to the smoldering mess on the first floor.
One of my team members was unrecognizable, just shredded body parts. The other two were covered in blood. I had to tamp down my nursing instinct. I needed to carry them to safety first—a seemingly impossible task.
There didn’t appear to be any more people in the house. Unfortunately, there was something more concerning: two Gloamings, standing in the rubble and dust in front of me. One male and one female. Both were dressed in black and wore some very self-satisfied looks. It was as if they thought, Is this the best that the Order of Bruder Klaus could send?
I pointed my gun and pulled the trigger. I heard an empty click. Damn it.
Strangely, I kind of wanted them to laugh or make fun of my empty gun, but the Gloamings just exchanged a blank glance.
I turned over my last card and pulled out a curved blade from my back holster. This brought the Gloamings to attention. The male Gloaming stepped back as the female stepped forward.
I smiled. I knew some things they didn’t. I knew my self-preservation was matched only by my ambition. I knew I was about to put down the thirty-sixth chamber of Shaolin on their Gloaming asses. I knew I would never be as fast as them, but I could match their speed with my stillness.
I dropped into a qigong position on the floor, breathing measuredly as if in meditation, my curved blade held in front of my body. The female Gloaming seemed somewhat confused by my posture.
She jumped about ten feet in the air and, as if time had slowed beyond my perception, I felt closer to enlightenment than ever before.
I moved my blade a few degrees west with the wind.
It sliced cleanly through the woman’s head, just below her ear and above her jaw.
The Gloaming man would be coming for blood, literally and figuratively, next. I took another deep breath and summoned memories of the five rules of Yijin Jing. The man pivoted until he was behind me, but I stayed seated with my blade before me. I felt the brush of wind from his hands and I swept the blade behind me.
I heard a sharp scream. I felt a tap on the floor.
I rose up and saw two hands on the floor. The male Gloaming, now handless, was running in the other direction.
I guess they didn’t know what I knew.
Soon I was leading my own teams into operations. And with Bernard recovering from injuries suffered in a failed mission to find Liza Sole, it would be up to me to coordinate and implement the plan to rescue Bishop Thomas from prison.
The plan involved two helicopters: one as a diversion—I was always a believer in diversions, especially if Gloamings were involved; the more arbitrary the better, to deflect their infuriatingly precise senses—and the other to land on the roof of the prison where the administrative offices were located. All Bishop Thomas needed to do was make his way to the roof—specifically the nurse’s office—at the appointed time.
A sympathetic janitor that subcontracted with the prison provided the bishop with a copy of the key to the nurse’s office, but the bishop would still need to make his way there from the library. On the day of action, the bishop would forget his Bible and tell the guard he was going to borrow one from the food service secretary, who had an office next door to the nurse. He made it there without incident and, even with the cameras watching, he waited for a moment until he heard the large crash—which sounded closer and more explosive than he imagined it would.
Outside in the vacant rec yard, a large helicopter had crashed into the ground. It was a remote-controlled life-size helicopter. A diversion! The order’s technician crew, in spite of their blue-collar name, was actually a highly sophisticated group of hackers and engineers. Unfortunately, the operation did not go as planned. The techs did not adequately account for the high Santa Ana winds that day and could not remotely allow for corrections to the path. The helicopter was meant to crash farther from the prison complex, but it crashed near the living quarters and caused four deaths: three prisoners and one guard. At the same time, the manned helicopter landed on the roof and I was there to guide the bishop inside. Even though we had the bishop and brought him to the safe house near Joshua Tree National Park, I still felt the plan did not proceed exactly as conceived and that I had failed. Everything had been so much trouble and I was being ganged up on by fear, loneliness, and terror. I wasn’t even sure I had learned anything from these experiences, but by God I would probably be forced to eventually because we never go to those places freely.
The prison escape shocked the nation. The federal government began a full-throttle effort to find Bishop Thomas and any other members of the order. In accordance with section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act [INA] of 1965, the secretary of state designated the Order of Bruder Klaus as a foreign terrorist organization [FTO].
This designation brought about a series of restrictions on all our offices, and our members were forced underground. The president went on television for a prime-time address from the Oval Office to discuss the order and the threats of domestic terrorism to emphasize how serious this issue was for the administration.
This event, of course, was a defining moment between the Order of Bruder Klaus and the federal government.
We had won the battle but brought on the war.
Chapter 18
June 6
Thirty-Seven Months After the NOBI Discovery
Jerome Liu
Reporter
“Is she a Gloaming?” Barbara asked.
“Well, I don’t think so—”
“It is nighttime,” she continued.
“True,” I replied, “but she’s holding two dogs, and dogs absolutely hate Gloamings, ergo…”
“That makes me feel so much better.” But her glare told me the opposite. “What now? Outrunning her probably isn’t an issue, but two pit bulls?”
I shrugged. “If we—”
The large woman holding the pit bulls laughed and looked me straight in the eyes. “You’re going to die tonight, homeboy.”
&
nbsp; That was my first assignment with Barbara Budig, my new partner, who clearly was going to be an interesting highlight of my professional life. We were investigating reports of two degenerate Gloamings taking down illegal gambling operations in Chicago. So we attempted to meet with a bookie in a South Side public housing complex. An open door, two reporters inviting themselves inside, and an unfortunate meeting with an obese woman and two pit bulls: all this soon led to a sprint down a staircase and three weeks of rabies vaccinations.
But we got the story.
I was hired by BuzzFeed after working for Facebook news and the Associated Press. They paired me with Barbara, a monster of a young reporter who had covered financial news for Bloomberg. On my first day at the office, Barbara took me to lunch, and by the time we’d finished she had made the waitress cry and had yelled at an older gentleman at the next table who hadn’t realized his cell phone was beeping. I soon realized, however, that she had a knack for getting to the bottom of any story. No matter what.
I needed that kind of determined ally on my side. Our mandate from the start was to help put BuzzFeed on the map of more “serious” journalism, although it was hard to combat the clickbait BuzzFeed always generated with lists like “Hottest Gloaming” or “Funny Gloaming memes.” Still, I knew there was something more out there, something less amusing and more disturbing. There had to be: their lifestyle was strange and perhaps illegal. And one day I found the lead I needed: an email from a man named Eric Holcombe, who wanted to speak to me about the mysterious Rio Grande Institute in New Mexico. Aha! I had always wanted to do a story about that place. The email had been sent through the secure ProtonMail system and encrypted prior to being sent through the Tor network.
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