The Romen Society: A Harry Cassidy novel

by Henry Hack

  The inefficiency of this SUV monster bothered Lawrence Chalmers not one bit. People like him who could afford the price of this vehicle, plus the cost of insuring it, did not have to worry about the price of gasoline. The vehicles had attracted quite a little group on the lot in the few minutes since they arrived. The sales manager and several of his salesmen, prospective buyers and even some of the service technicians were drooling over the new beasts. Lawrence did not mind the disruption in the work schedule at all. If the prospects saw the employees, managers and even the dealer himself fawning over their products, he figured it could only increase sales. Chalmers grabbed the set of keys from the truck driver and announced, “I’m taking this baby for a spin. See you later.”

  “Can I come along?” the sales manager asked.

  “Not now, Stan. I think you can take a few orders for the next delivery of these babies right now. Get to it.”

  “Yes, sir,” he said, “but later I want my turn. A good salesman gotta know his product.”

  “You got it,” Chalmers said as he turned the ignition key. The behemoth turned over and immediately settled down to a quiet, but powerful purr. He slipped the gearshift into D and headed for the open road and the nearest gas station.

  “Howdy, Mr. Chalmers,” the attendant said. “Fill 'er up?”

  “All the way, Joe – with top octane premium.”

  “Yes, sir!

  “She sure is a beauty.”

  “Just rolled off the truck from Detroit. The first of the new model year.”

  “Can I look under the hood while she’s fillin’ up?”

  “I’ll join you for that look. Nothing like a clean, shiny engine in a new vehicle, heh?”

  They finished their engine check and the pump had still not clicked off. “How much does she hold?” Joe asked.

  “See if it’s on the window sticker.”

  “Yeah, here it is – thirty-one gallons. We got a few more to go.”

  The pump finally stopped and Joe squeezed in a few more squirts to bring it to an even twenty-eight gallons. He took the credit card offered by Lawrence to process the transaction without mentioning the dollar amount of the fill-up – $136.90 at the premium price of $4.89 a gallon. He returned and Chalmers signed the charge slip without batting an eye and, with a cheery “See ya, Joe,” took off down the road.

  Forty minutes later he was back at the dealership and threw the keys to the sales manager. “It’s a mean machine, Stan. We’re gonna make a lot of money. Don’t be too long. I want to head for home in about twenty minutes.”

  By the time Lawrence Chalmers arrived home to his sprawling ranch in the suburbs of Denver, the gas gauge read half-full, not that he noticed or cared. He brought his wife, Betty, and his children out to inspect his new vehicle.

  “Is this going to be ours?” asked his twelve-year old son, Ben.

  “No, this is the demo model, but I love it so much I may just buy one myself. I get a great dealer's discount,” he said with a chuckle.

  “Can we go for a drive?” asked his ten year old daughter, Karen.

  “It’s getting dark out, and I’m hungry for dinner. How about we take her out tomorrow for a long drive in the countryside?”

  They all agreed, and after a final inspection of the huge beast, they went back into the house with Ben asking on the way, “What gas mileage does she get, Dad?”

  “I don’t rightly know yet. Probably around eleven, but that’s not our concern. Who cares about mileage when you can roar around Denver in this baby?”

  As evening fell the next day, the Chalmers family was sitting down at the dinner table after an enjoyable drive through the fall foliage. Lawrence had topped off the tank before their excursion and did the same when they arrived near home. Ben, calculator in hand announced, “It took 17 ½ gallons and we went 165 miles, so that comes to 9.4 miles per gallon.”

  “Not bad,” Lawrence said. “It’ll get better as the engine gets a few thousand miles on it.”

  At eleven o’clock that Sunday night in October the last bedroom lights were turned off and the Chalmers family settled in for a good night’s rest in anticipation of the Monday bustle of work and school. The candy-apple red Grand Ranger sat proudly in the driveway as if it too were at rest waiting for the next turn of its ignition key. The night wore on and at 2:45 a.m. a voice whispered, “Look at the size of this son-of-a-bitch.”

  A second voice responded, “According to the sticker this thing gets less than ten miles a gallon around town.”

  “All the more reason to kill this bastard,” the first voice said.

  “I’m going to call Number Two,” the second voice said, “and see how things are going.”

  “Things are going well, Number Six,” Number Two said on the cell phone. “Chalmers Motors is burning brightly as are at least 50 SUV’s, including his five brand-new Grand Rangers.”

  “Are the firemen and police there yet?” Number Six asked.

  “I hear the sirens in the distance now. The cops should be notifying your boy out there in ten minutes or so.”

  “Okay, details of Mr. Chalmers tragic death to follow at the meeting.”

  Twelve minutes later, Numbers Four and Six heard a faint ringing of a telephone coming from the house. Then an upstairs light went on and seven minutes later a tired and worried looking Lawrence Chalmers rushed out the front door and opened the door of the Grand Ranger. Numbers Four and Six stuck guns in Chalmers’ face and motioned him to the ground. They handcuffed him, tied his feet together and duct-taped his mouth closed. Then they placed him in the spacious cargo compartment of the huge SUV and Number Four got behind the wheel. “Can you believe how huge this monster is?” he asked.

  “What a terrible waste of material and fuel. How can they keep making these things?”

  “Maybe we’ll make them stop soon.”

  They drove down to the bottom of the driveway where an old Toyota Corolla joined them and followed the Grand Ranger to a pre-selected location in a commercial district about three miles from Chalmers’ home. Numbers Four and Six pulled Chalmers out of the SUV under the watchful eye of the driver of the Corolla who now opened its trunk and withdrew two five-gallon containers of gasoline.

  The three dragged him over to a telephone pole about fifty yards from the vehicle and tied him securely to it. They opened the rest of the doors, raised the hood of the engine compartment and removed the gas cap. They saturated the interior of the SUV with the entire ten gallons of gasoline and placed a long gas-soaked rag into the filler hole in the tank. As they were doing this, the newest member of the group walked over to the terrified car dealer. He smiled and placed a thin rope around Chalmers’s neck with a cardboard sign attached. The words, neatly lettered in red ink, proclaimed: Death to Those Who Would Destroy Our Mother Earth – The Romens. He withdrew a nine-millimeter automatic from his waistband and said, “I am the Apostle Andrew and these gentlemen are two of my disciples. The only reason to use gasoline is to destroy things that will destroy the earth, like that red beast of yours over there. It’s a pity you won’t be alive to see the flames as your beauty burns to ashes, but we must be on our way.” With that, he fired two rounds into Lawrence Chalmers’ head, killing him instantly.

  Number Four retrieved the two cartridge cases ejected from the pistol as Number Six snapped a few pictures of the dead car dealer. The trio returned to the big SUV, lit it afire and ran to their Corolla as the vehicle exploded into flaming light and searing heat. As they drove from the scene, they took a few more pictures of the burning Grand Ranger. Andrew said, “A good job. Well done, my disciples. The Savior will be pleased.”

  The Savior was indeed pleased – all twelve attacks comprising phase two of their first campaign had gone off precisely as planned. The apostles personally fired the guns killing their designated targets. Just as it was of paramount importance they knew he had personally killed Senator Millard, it was of equal importance each of the twelve apostle’s eight disciples knew of t
heir group leader’s willingness to pull the trigger.

  He had not been known as the Savior for long; it was not a title he dreamed of, or aspired to. It was placed on him half in jest by Bill Gannon, now known as the Apostle Paul. At one of their planning sessions, on a rare occasion where all twelve of his group leaders were gathered together in the same room, Gannon remarked, “You know, Ted, there’s twelve of us just as Christ had twelve apostles.”

  Steve Mills, now known at the Apostle Matthew said, “We are on a quasireligious mission, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Absolutely,” Gannon said. “Ted, you should then be called the Savior, and we should be your apostles.”

  “I’m not so sure about that,” Ted said, while thinking to himself that Savior sounded a lot better than Theodore Gillenbock.

  “It adds a layer of security to our identities as well,” Mills said.

  “And if we apostles call our eight members disciples, and refer to them by numbers,” Gannon said, “we add in more security.”

  “I’m the Savior,” Ted said, “and you twelve are my apostles with a first name only. And your disciples have no names at all, only a number?”

  “Yes,” Mills said. “What do you all think?”

  There was general agreement they should adopt the new titles despite a couple of objections about the obvious religious overtones and implications.

  “But,” Gannon persisted, “we are similar to Christ’s organization. He came to save the earth and mankind, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”

  “What do you two think?” Ted asked, addressing the two Jewish members of the group.

  “I’m good with it,” Mike Silver said. “After all, Jesus was a Jew.”

  “Fine by me,” Andy Schultz said. “That way the powers that be won’t be able to blame everything on us Jews, as usual.”

  They laughed and Ted asked, “How about you two atheists, and the agnostics here?”

  “I’m with Andy,” Will Maxton said. “Let the press blame you Jesus-loving Christians rather than us non-believers.”

  There were no further objections so Ted said, “Okay. Are you on board with all of this, George? You’ve been pretty quiet.”

  George Richter, who had been with Ted from the beginning, said, “I like the idea, both from the security viewpoint and the holy mission viewpoint. I think The Romens will strike a sympathetic chord with the public. We may be viewed as redeemers compared to al-Qaida and the other Islamic extremists who were out to destroy our way of life.”

  “Fine,” Ted said. “How shall we select your new names?”

  “I’m not sure I even know all twelve names,” Maxton said, “but we’ll have to pick an alternative for Judas. I’m sure none of us wants that traitor’s name.”

  “And let’s eliminate Thomas,” George said. “There will be no doubters in this group.”

  “Before we choose,” Ted said, “I want George to be Peter, the apostle closest to the Savior. Are you all good with that?”

  “Of course we are,” Bill Gannon said. “Let me pull up the twelve original names on the computer.”

  They discarded one of the two named James, Thomas and Judas and replaced them with Paul, Joseph and Mark. Gannon wrote the eleven names on slips of paper and each man chose a slip at random. When the selections were complete the new apostles – Peter, Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Thaddeus, Simon, Matthew, Paul, Joseph and Mark – toasted their new identity and their group. “To The Romen Society,” the Apostle Peter said. “To the Restoration of Mother Earth Now.”

  “Maybe we should change Restoration to Resurrection,” the Apostle Joseph said. “That might be more in keeping with our holy mission.”

  They all agreed and the Savior said, “Then it’s settled. A toast to the Resurrection of Mother Earth Now Society.”

  For Theodore Gillenbock the transition from a placid young boy growing up in the sparkling suburban town of Golden, Colorado to a dedicated environmental extremist was not gradual, but marked by a few critical events that shaped the direction of his life. He had loved walking the mountain trails, stepping through the rushing crystal-clear streams, breathing in the pine-scented crisp air, reveling in the pristine forest. At age five he was shocked by the smells, smog and filth of Denver on his first visit there with his parents. He sneezed and coughed for the entire shopping trip and his eyes were itchy and tearing. His father had remarked, “Sally, it looks as if one of our kids is not going to be a city boy.” His mother had responded, “Thank goodness it’s not bothering the younger ones.” The younger ones were Ted’s brother, Joey, age three and his baby sister, Melissa, age one.

  Two years later Ted came home from school to find his mother and father sitting at the kitchen table. It was strange to find his father home during the day; he usually arrived home from his office job in Denver around six o’clock. His father was bent over the table, coughing, and a tear was running down his cheek. Before they noticed him, Ted heard his father say, “Jesus, Sally, it hurts so much. I don’t know what’s wrong.” His mother said, “It’s those damn cigarettes, Joe. You’re going to the doctor right away.” They stopped speaking when they noticed their son standing there with fear in his eyes. “Everything will be all right, Teddy,” she said. “Dad has a bad cold. Doctor Edwards will fix him up tomorrow.”

  Stage four lung cancer was beyond the scope of Doc Edwards’ healing powers and Joe Gillenbock was dead in four months. His firm, where he had been the manager of the investor and government relations department, was generous in keeping his salary coming right up to the end, and they took care of some of the funeral expenses. But most generously, they hired Sally Gillenbock as a secretary at a good salary for that position, however it was less than half of what Ted’s father had been earning.

  She kept the family intact despite their reduced income and, despite the loss of their father, the three children led a decent, happy life. That was until the second tragedy occurred that would change their lives forever. On her way home from work Sally was driving at the speed limit in the right lane. A frustrated, tail-gating maniac in a 350 horsepower, V-8, huge sports utility vehicle, unable to pass her, or the car in the left lane, failed to stop when Sally had to suddenly slow down for the braking traffic in front of her. He literally ran up and over her small Honda Civic, smashing it flat, crushing and killing Sally Gillenbock instantly.

  Since both sets of the children’s grandparents were deceased and since both Joe and Sally had no siblings, the three children were put into foster care. They were individually shuffled from family to family, and by the time Ted turned eighteen years of age and was out on his own, he didn’t know where Joey and Melissa were, and he never saw them again. He traveled around the country seeking his fortune, but was still affected by, and appalled with, the filth and litter and foul-smelling air he had to contend with in the cities he visited while looking for a position. And New York City was the absolute worst. He gagged during his first and only ride on the subway. The heat, the claustrophobic press of human flesh, people hacking phlegm onto the platform, the ground steel dust attacking his lungs – and the stink of sweat and urine! – how could any human being stand it?

  He didn’t have to read the papers or listen to the television news or glance at National Geographic magazine to know mankind was hell-bent on destroying the earth. The evidence was all around him and he vowed to try to do something to change things before it was too late. He joined Greenpeace and was thrilled to associate with a group of people that shared his views – but something was lacking. Their goals were noble, but their methods to attain those goals seemed weak – there was no sense of urgency. Then he joined PETA, but they were not much better, and although he was concerned about the treatment of animals, he felt the larger purpose should be the treatment of the whole earth and all its inhabitants.

  Next came ALF. Their methods were much more direct and violent, and got the media’s attention when they engaged in action. But, again, their
concern was animals. They didn’t get the larger, more important picture. Then, finally, Ted thought he found the organization that could lead the fight and bring about substantive change – The Earth Liberation Front. People were becoming concerned about the actions of ELF. Their chief weapon was arson and their goal was vast property destruction. Their massive explosive and incendiary attacks received widespread media coverage, but Ted was to be disappointed once more and he realized why. Perhaps this realization was his epiphany in that the clear fact suddenly emerged all four groups of which he was a member could never succeed because they all refused to take the one final step that could bring them final victory – murder.

  It had come to him at an ELF meeting in Colorado Springs where many of the group were so close to taking the plunge in that direction, but were voted down by a narrow margin. The ELF member who was leading the push had handed out a pamphlet he had written titled, “The Necessity to Escalate – A Call to Arms.” When Ted spoke with the man after the meeting and told him how strongly he shared his views, they decided to go to the diner for a sandwich and coffee. George Richter had not been a member of the other organizations, only ELF, but had come to the same conclusions as Ted – they would not succeed using their current tactics. Then Ted said, “Why don’t we form our own organization?”

  “Me and you against the world?” George asked.

  “Me and you, and a lot of others. I know there are people who think as we do in all the groups I’m in, but they are in the minority and keep quiet. And I bet you know several in ELF alone who would gladly join us.”

  “How do we proceed?”

  “I know you must be aware of the terrorist attacks by al-Qaida and OBL-911 over the past several years.”