“Tell me something, Brennachecke. What do you intend to do with little Bobby-Leigh after you murder her sister? Are you going to kill her too?”
Brennachecke was too stunned by the question to answer it, which was just fine because Beverly didn’t really care what the answer was anyway. She’d just wanted to see his reaction. She smiled, until movement outside the window on the little balcony caught her eye and she turned toward it. The smile on her face widened into a goblin-like grin as she suddenly recognized who was outside watching them in the snow.
“Dan! Oh, Brennachecke, you brought friends! Why didn’t you tell us!”
Brennachecke turned his head toward the balcony to see what Beverly was talking about, but the cold steel of his well-seasoned soldier’s instincts already knew exactly what he would see. In the instant he saw Dan through the glass, those same soldier’s instincts also knew exactly what was going to happen next. There would be no more flight school for the pirates. There would be no more staring the MIC down. No more sexual exhibitions by Beverly. Not that any of these things were really great losses. The really great losses would be coming soon enough, though.
This plan of his had been moving sideways since he’d arrived, so he guessed part of his mind had already been mentally preparing for a disaster. There was not so much as an inkling of surprise in his heart when Dan kicked in the French doors.
With a flurry of cold and snow, the man who once used to be in love with Beverly entered the room, drew an arrow from his quiver, and nocked it. He didn’t say a word as he drew the string back and let the arrow loose in a smooth, almost beautiful movement. Brennachecke didn’t know how he knew who Dan would be aiming at with that first shot, but he did. Still, even though he could see it coming, the old soldier was only fast enough to avoid being killed instantly. He wasn’t fast enough to avoid being hit.
The arrow landed with an audible thud just below his shoulder and ran through his body and nearly six inches out the other side before coming to a vibrating stop in his chest. This was the first time Brennachecke had ever been shot with an arrow and it hurt a lot more than he thought it would. But even as the pain exploded through his chest and shoulder, he could tell that the piercing tip of the bolt had missed anything immediately vital. In his experience, immediately mortal wounds were not quiet or sneaky about their natures, though somewhere in the back of his mind he did note that there was an awful lot of blood oozing around the arrow shaft.
Regardless of how serious of a wound it was, he had to keep moving. He closed his eyes and mentally shut off the pain and threw up blinders to the blood. Odds were that everybody in the room would be dead in the next five minutes, and if he was going to buck those probabilities, he needed to get his hands on a gun, and fast.
* * *
Dan trudged through the thick snow like an insect. He was unaware of being pulled forward by forces he couldn’t really understand. Unaware that he was moving steadily toward his own death. Unaware that the loss of his life would seem both completely unnecessary and inconsequential to all the folks who witnessed it. Unaware that his consciousness was the equivalent of a single cell in the follicle of a single strand of arm hair on the pilot of the B-29 that dropped the first atom bomb. Unaware that he was insignificant in all the ways that mattered, and yet remained an integral part of the complex clockwork of chaos that maintained the very fabric of the whole of existence.
He wasn’t alone in his ignorance. Humanity was never designed to comprehend even the smallest pieces of the big picture. How can a single cell in a person’s body understand its role or its importance in the actions that person’s body will take years from now? We are all just cells in the great body of the universe. Our purposes are locked into the way we carry out the daily functions of what we are designed to do. Do you think a liver cell understands the significance of what it does day in and day out in terms of protecting the organism as a whole? It most certainly does not. It just wants to keep up with the liver cell next to it. Man is no different, not that folks will ever stop trying to make sense of things. That is the curse that balances the power of our intellect.
Dan was no exception to this human need to make sense of things. His mind was its own cold storm of thoughts. He told himself he just needed to know what Brennachecke wanted him to do now that it was fucking snowing in the middle of July. He told himself that he just needed to know for himself if the Kessler girls were actually here or not. Maybe he could just break them out and they could all just go home. Sure, that wasn’t the plan, he thought. But the plan didn’t make any sense to him anymore.
He got all the way to the front of the Raj without seeing another soul, or so he thought. Beverly’s sirens—the naked, disfigured, and left-for-dead women secured to the front pillars—had been at last put out of their misery by the cold. The snow had covered them enough to disguise their true natures from a distance. Dan didn’t recognize them for what they were as he stood in the parking lot flanked by the rows of trees on either side of the long driveway. The limbs of the trees were breaking under the pressure of the heavy wet snow on their thickly leaved branches. Dan felt oddly sympathetic toward them. As he looked up at the Raj washed in the soft yellow glow of the lights in the windows, he wondered if maybe he was breaking under the pressure too. But even if he was, he didn’t care anymore. He was cold and wet and the only thing that would warm him up would be knowing what the hell he should be doing. When he was finally close enough to see that the snow-covered pillars at the entrance to the Raj had dead bodies wrapped around them, it still took him a second to understand what he was seeing.
“Jesus!” he squealed as he fell back down the steps in horror, immediately looking around to see if his outburst had drawn any attention. The Raj was buttoned up tight against the snow and the cold. He was safe from discovery. Standing up again, he looked at the lit windows and weighed his options for gaining entry.
It was surprising, even to Dan himself, how quickly he settled on climbing the frozen limbs of the sirens to get to the balcony on the second floor. But it seemed like the best course of action because the only two real alternatives were going in through the front door or going around and finding a service entrance out back, both of which would not allow him to observe much before he inevitably ran into a pirate of some sort or another, who would surely end up sounding the alarm. He wanted information, not a body count. Or so he thought, as he climbed up the ladders of frozen dead human flesh. He quietly pulled himself over the balcony and peeked into the window, not suspecting for a moment that everything was about to change.
He saw Brennachecke standing closest to the balcony doors. The man seemed to be in an intense staring contest with one of the men who had been learning to fly, a man who was now swapping blood and getting blown by some woman. Quite obviously this was the Man-in-Charge. There were about a half dozen bored men with guns in the room as well. Dan supposed they were bodyguards of some kind. The doors to the library were closed. He didn’t have the slightest idea what kind of sicko shit was going down in there, but he figured Brennachecke was explaining why they couldn’t continue their little pilot school and that it was not going over too well. Why the Man-in-Charge needed to be blown while he received the information was beyond him. Blood pirates were crazy. That was the only explanation he could come up with. And it didn’t matter; it’s not like he cared who had the man’s johnson in her mouth. Brennachecke obviously didn’t care either, which was perfect because if the old soldier would just look over he’d be able to signal him without anybody else being the wiser.
He watched the Man-in-Charge blow his load in the lady’s mouth, then felt his blood drain as the woman stood up and smiled like she’d just been given a diamond ring for her birthday, daintily wiped her mouth, and turned around to flirt with Brennachecke.
Beverly?
It wasn’t a question. He had no doubt that he was looking at his lost wife-to-be flaunting her na
ked body at a man he’d trusted his life with.
Beverly.
Alive.
Sucking the cock of some other man.
He felt something stir inside him.
Something wild.
Something dangerous.
She wasn’t a prisoner. She wasn’t being raped. She wasn’t missing. The thoughts were like daggers in his heart and they kept coming faster and faster. She’d left him. She’d left him to be a fucking blood pirate. No, to fuck a blood pirate. King of the blood pirates, apparently.
The cage door inside his mind that had been holding that dangerous, wild something back was suddenly flung open. And Brennachecke’s known the whole goddamn time. Somehow in Dan’s mind that betrayal was even worse than anything Beverly had done. He’d almost expected this of her, he told himself, even though it wasn’t at all true. But Brennachecke? The man was his friend.
Had been his friend, he corrected himself, literally frothing at the mouth, seething with anger now. That’s why he never wanted to come here looking for her. He knew we’d find her here. He knew I would go fucking nuts and start some shit. So instead of helping his friend deal with the truth, he took the easy way out and just lied to my face.
For almost a year!
The man had lied to him for 345 days. Right to his face. Over and over again. The whole time saying that doing the right thing, even when it was the hard thing, was what made man worthy of his fellow man.
Dan sucked in a hissing breath of freezing, damp air and felt the coldness spread inside him. It seeped from his lungs into his blood and then rocketed into his brain. But the cold did not bring calm for the cuckolded man. He would not be calm again until death finally put him out of his anguish.
Fucking hypocrite!
Dan was breathing so heavy at this point, his breath had started to fog the glass of the French doors. Brennachecke, he thought. You’re going to fucking die.
Beverly suddenly looked over at him and laughed.
Laughed!
That was it. Dan was done. Though only human blood flowed in his veins and he had no demonic monster hiding inside him, ready to knock him out and destroy everything in sight, he went as berserk as his human body and mind would allow. He kicked in the French doors, drawing an arrow from his quiver as he did so, and allowed himself to be consumed by a new mission objective.
Everybody in that room was going to die.
But Brennachecke was going to die first.
* * *
“She could have at least found me something black,” Bobby-Leigh muttered loud enough to make her sister smile and open her eyes. They’d finished their twenty-minute meditation a few minutes ago and were now in the resting state, slowly coming out of it.
“Your choker goes good with the pastels, dude.”
“You know that’s not true.”
Jen laughed. Of course it wasn’t true. Why her sister couldn’t part with the dog collars after all the trouble they’d caused her was not something she’d ever understand. Why had she worn them religiously since that day at Walmart? What could they possible represent for her? These were all things she knew she’d never talk to Bobby-Leigh about. Things she would never understand. She almost suggested taking them off, but knew better. Besides, she actually didn’t look that bad. Bobby-Leigh was just like her sister; she looked good in just about anything, spiked dog collar chokers and pastel yoga shirt and pants included (well, almost). But looking good and feeling good about how you look are two very different things.
“You’re like a ray of sunshine on a dark and stormy morning.”
“Fuck that.”
Jen laughed again. Bobby-Leigh didn’t want to smile, but she couldn’t help it. Her sister’s laugh was infectious. It took her a few seconds to get her familiar scowl back in place. With the exception of the raven-black dye job that still held fast among the streaks of her stubborn natural red hair and the ever-present spiked dog collar chokers, the little girl’s entire identity had been washed away in the hot water of the shower, which, for as good as it felt after everything they’d been though, was not much of a consolation to her.
Who the fuck is this girl looking back at me? she thought as she eyed her reflection in the bathroom mirror from her position seated on one of the beds.
The yoga pants, rolled up at the hems because they were too big, and the organic cotton long-sleeved yoga shirt burned her pride like holy water. Jesus Christ. She couldn’t imagine a more inappropriate outfit. Her painstakingly cultivated Lolita-goth stylings were just not something folks who stayed at Ayurveda health spas like the Raj wore. And even though she knew the priority had been to just get her naked body covered again, she still felt ridiculous and vulnerable.
I’d almost rather just be naked, she thought, but that wasn’t true.
“I wish I at least had my makeup. I mean, shitballs, there has to be makeup here somewhere, right? She could have at least brought me some lipstick and eyeliner.”
“Beverly doesn’t even wear clothes anymore, you think she’s thinking about makeup? She doesn’t give two shits about that stuff, dude. We’re lucky to have anything more than those stupid robes to put on.”
“Whatever, you look good in anything and never cared about clothes anyway.”
Jennifer was wearing almost the exact same outfit as her sister, except for the collars around her neck. The torn, soiled, and dirty clothing they’d arrived in was in a pile in the corner of the room.
Bobby-Leigh was right, of course. Jen didn’t care at all about how the clothes looked on her. All she cared about was that she was able to find a place to secretly strap the remaining karambit blade to her body and that the shirt and pants were loose enough to not restrict her movement. It’s probably healthy for Bobby-Leigh to take a break from the emo goth thing for a day or two anyway, she thought to herself. Nobody’s identity should be that wrapped up in what they wear.
“Do we have a plan for when Brennachecke comes?” Bobby-Leigh asked, already knowing the answer was no.
Before her big sister could confirm it, though, the sound of automatic weapons being fired came blasting through the hallway of the Raj. Immediately, both Jennifer and Bobby-Leigh knew exactly what to do. They didn’t need to talk about it. They didn’t need to prepare for it. Although neither of them had ever heard a gunfight before, to say nothing of one with automatic weapons, they had no misconceptions about what the sounds were or what they meant: It was time to go. Time to take advantage of the confusion and get the fuck out of Dodge before they had to deal with Brennachecke, or something worse.
“Shoes,” Jen said.
Bobby-Leigh was already moving off the bed toward the pile of dirty laundry before her sister had even opened her mouth. She tossed Jen’s bloodstained sneakers out of the pile to her sister and slipped on her own Mary Janes, hating how the filthy shoes clashed with her new ensemble almost as much as how it clashed with the dog collars, or more accurately how her new ensemble clashed with the dog collars and her filthy (but perfect) shoes. As they huddled at the door, Bobby-Leigh suddenly ran back and grabbed their robes as well. They’d need all the layers they could get for the weather outside.
Somebody screamed. A man, but not Brennachecke. Both girls knew he was not the kind of man who screamed. Jen wondered whether their surrogate father was even in the building. Maybe they’d manage to slip away without ever seeing him again. But somehow she knew in her heart that was not how this was going to play out.
Bam-bam. Bam. More gunfire erupted.
A stray bullet suddenly ripped through the wall and lodged itself in the headboard of the bed Bobby-Leigh had been sitting on only minutes ago. Both girls flinched.
The adrenaline floodgates opened, and Jen felt the demon inside her stir, its crazed, bloodthirsty eyes fluttering and half-open. Effortlessly she switched that inner lens of her experience to autofocus an
d adjusted the depth of field, muting the world around her. As the now familiar detachment spread out from her mind, she felt the demon’s eyes close as the beast within once again settled into oblivious slumber.
Bobby-Leigh looked at her sister, dreading what she might see looking back at her, but she had nothing to fear. Somehow in the craziness of the day, Jen had tamed the beast inside her. She smiled, and even though bullets were flying all around them, she felt safe for the first time in as long as she could remember.
Tears of relief filled her eyes.
Jennifer misinterpreted them. “I’m okay, dude.”
“I know,” Bobby-Leigh said and smiled, wiping tears from her eyes.
The two sisters shared a look and suddenly transcended time and space, transcended the very fabric of the universe itself. Their look connected them together beyond their shared hereditary biology, beyond their mutual familial love, even beyond the glimpses of pure and absolute consciousness they’d occasionally felt during meditation. For a single ephemeral moment, they experienced the fundamental truth at the core of all existence. Reflected in the other’s eyes, Jennifer and Bobby-Leigh saw how all things are one and nothing at the same time.
But the human mind is simply incapable of reconciling the ramifications inherent in that true singularity, and so as quickly and profoundly as it had come to them, the moment broke apart. Reality came crashing back in, and the universe was broken into an infinite number of individual pieces again. Folks experience moments of enlightenment like this all the time, but rarely remember them beyond the warm, confident afterglow they leave in their wake. The Kessler sisters were no different. Within fractions of a millisecond from the time their shared transcendental experience began, thoughts surfaced again and broke it apart.
Jimmy was dead.
Brennachecke was after them.
Beverly had saved them.
The Raj was being torn apart by gunfire.
Transcendence: Chronicles from the Long Apocalypse: Book One Page 26