Body by Blood

by Patrick Johnston

  “I need a favor,” I say. “It’s not a stolen vehicle and I’ve committed no crime. I just don’t want to be found. No questions asked, no receipt or ID requested.”

  He appears pleased with the transaction, especially when I pay him three of the four bills up front. He asks me to park out back, which I do. He comes out with a red toolbox. “I’ve got only a ten minute break. If I can’t finish, it’ll have to wait until noon.”

  I glance at my watch. It’s 8:15 a.m. I cannot afford to wait till noon.

  Not ten seconds after I flip the hood for him, I hear an approaching roar from the sky, appearing to come from every direction at once. At first, I think we are near an airport, but soon the unmistakable thumping of a helicopter’s rotors begins to blow our hair around like we are in a tornado. I cover my eyes from the dust thrown up at me from the stiff downward draft’s collision with the concrete, hoping that this is an emergency helicopter for a customer in the store who is having a heart attack, or something like that. The mechanic abandons his tools and runs for the shop. As the helicopter lowers to the ground directly in front of me, I see the unmistakable black metal of a weapon protruding from the open side door of the copter. I jump in the RV and slam it in reverse. However, in the rearview mirror I see another copter landing behind me, blocking my exit.

  A loudspeaker announces, “Raymond Verity! Step out of the vehicle with your hands in the air! Now!”

  Behind the helicopters are several black vans and trucks. They break with a squeal and dozens of SWAT agents descend upon me, shouting orders to get out of the vehicle and fall to my knees with my hands behind my head.

  I pray a prayer for Mary Nell and Nellie. Even now, even with all the risk I have taken to protect those girls, I still feel like an impenetrable wall separates me from my Maker.

  I get out of the car, and following their orders, fall to my knees and place my hands behind my head. The first agent to reach me aims a weapon at me and fires. It feels like lightning strikes my right shoulder. I hear the zapping of his Taser as he holds down the trigger. I fall to the ground. After ten seconds of immense pain, he ceases.

  Another agent bends down near to me. “Where’s your family?”

  “My family?” I repeat through gasps of pain.

  “The dupe, Mary Nell. Where is she?”

  I hesitate to answer and the agent pulls the trigger again. Finally, after I think I can take no more of the pain, he releases the trigger. I am surrounded on all sides by a wall of black-clothed federal agents, concealing my suffering from the eyes of any passers-by. There is no way out of this.

  The agent bends close to my ear and calmly asks again. “Where is the dupe? I will ask one time, and then we will give you ten to sixty seconds of electricity.”

  “Across the street!” I spit out the words, trembling for fear of the pain. “At the chicken place.”

  They give me erratically-timed moments of electricity every twenty seconds or so. I guess they don’t want to give me any relief in case I am lying, so they keep torturing me. They are merciless and my screams in between bursts of spasm appear to have no effect on my tormenters. This period of suffering feels all the more sadistic because of its purposelessness. They ask me no questions and give me no answers.

  “Why are you hurting me?” I inquire between gasps of air. Then more pain. Over and over.

  Finally, after what seems like an hour but probably isn’t over three or four minutes, the agent who addressed me earlier raises a hand to stop the voltage. Several feet run toward me from the direction of the store. Then I overhear some dialogue I cannot understand due to the ringing in my ears. The agents dissipate, getting back in their vans and helicopters. I am hoisted up by two men, who support my weight with their arms under my arms.

  I suspect they have caught my family. At least, my suffering is over.

  Then the agent who has been speaking to me announces, “You’re lying. They aren’t there.”

  This is simultaneously encouraging and horrifying. Encouraging, for my misdirection must have worked. My family must have fled when they saw federal agents charge the restaurant adjacent to them. Horrifying, because the federal agents are probably just changing my location so they can be more creative and intentional in their infliction of suffering.

  I am seated in the back of a windowless van. My hands are shackled behind my back and my feet to a stainless steel U-shaped bar on the floor beneath my bolted seat. Then they pull a black cloth bag over my head.

  “What are you going to do to me?”

  Silence.

  “Hello?” The door behind me slams shut. “Anybody there?”

  Nobody is in the back of the van with me. I am alone with my thoughts.

  The van lurches forward and then, suddenly, its hover-engines brake hard, throwing me forward. The jerk of my chains against my wrists and ankles pulls at my flesh, testing the limits of my joints and stretching my tendons. I scream—for fear more than for pain—and try to perch myself precariously back up on my seat.

  I suspect that there has been a collision. “Is everything okay?”

  There is some shouting in the front of the van and behind me. Then gunshots. From all directions.

  A bullet pierces the van, and I lower my head.

  A gunfight commences outside the van. After a pop, the van drops behind me. An engine has gone out.

  After a few minutes, the back door opens and someone jumps inside. Then the van begins to move again, scraping the bottom right of the van intermittently against the concrete.

  “Ha ha! We got him!” The man in the back of the van apparently shouts to someone through a communication device. The van accelerates over a speed bump, knocking me out of my chair again.

  “Ow!”

  The man pulls me back into my seat.

  “Who are you?”

  “You are now the people’s property. Let’s go! Quickly.”

  I overhear a voice on the man’s radio. “We’ve lost the other vehicles, but—”

  “You haven’t lost them! There’s a beacon on this vehicle. Removing it is a priority—”

  “No, listen—”

  “Remove the beacon, then move to position two, like we planned . . . ”

  Another helicopter is rapidly approaching, and then several high caliber rounds fire from overhead.

  The vehicle lurches to the left, and I hear the rear bumper scrape against the ground and then, with a loud bump, it falls off, scraping against the cement. We lurch to the left again. Only my chains keep me in the seat.

  “What the . . . !” The man in the back of the van with me is thrown against the wall and falls hard to the floor. He taps his communication device. I hear the metallic smack of his rifle against the metal floor of the van. “What are you doing?”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you! We have two rapidly approaching helicopters. Our men on the ground have engaged with one of— ”

  Several rounds of the helicopter’s guns shatter glass and silence the van’s driver. He lets out a bloody gurgle as he heaves several noisy breaths.

  “Bear One!” The man in the back with me calls out, “Bear One!”

  The hovering helicopter fires several more rounds. Given the sound of shattering glass, piercing metal, and billowing flame, it has struck vehicles nearby.

  The man behind me curses, then pulls on my chains. He curses again then fires at the chain between my legs. Shards of metal strike my leg, startling me with searing pain. “Ahhh!”

  He grabs me by my collar and flings me to the floor. My leg bonds have been loosened and are no longer binding me to the floor.

  “Stay down!”

  The pain in my left shin makes me wonder if he has shot me in the leg. I wiggle my foot and it still functions.

  He begins to search my body with a beeping device.

  “What are you doing?”

  He does not respond. He removes the bag over my head and runs his hand through my hair. I jerk my head away
from his probing fingers. “What are you—”

  He smacks me in the face. “Shut up!” My cheek stings.

  The gunfire grows in the distance. He taps his communication device. “Bear Two! Wolf One! Elk One! I need a driver, now! Bear One has been shot!”

  Rapid gunfire echoes through his communication device, and a fretful voice responds, “We are forced to retreat. We have a copter in pursuit . . . overpass . . . fourth street and . . . ”

  “Engage! Do not retreat!”

  “Ground forces are converging on the other side of the overpass! Half my men are down! Abandon . . . !”

  “Do not abandon your post!”

  There is silence on the communication device. “Elk One! Come in, Elk One!”

  The man curses when there is no response. It sounds like the gunfight has moved about a block away. The man unzips something, and removes something metallic. After several clicks, the man stands in front of me and turns his back to me. “Camera, check. Mic, um, check.” I hear him flip some switches. “Wireless connection, check.”

  A helicopter whizzes past, firing its machine guns at a distant target.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Broadcasting your execution to the world.” He turns to me and flips on a blinding light that forces me to close my eyes and turn my head away. He grasps my jaw and pulls my head back around to face him. “No, no. Keep your head this direction and say hello, Dr. Raymond Verity.”

  I squint against a battery-powered light he has aimed at me.

  The man turns to face the camera and ensures his assault rifle is off safety. “This is Raymond Verity, the man who has been most responsible for the Holocaust of cloned people, handicapped children, butcher extraordinaire of aborted babies . . . Yada yada yada. You know him . . . ”

  My eyes begin to adjust to the bright light as he aims his weapon at my head. I hear the whistle of a rocket—either a surface-to-air or air-to-air, I cannot tell. Then, a massive explosion overhead, which rocks the van slightly with the percussion, causing the man to lose his footing. I am confused and disoriented from the extreme volume of the nearby blast. Either the percussion of the blast or a piece of shrapnel has ripped some of the bag that covers my face, allowing me to see through my left eye. Shrapnel has punctured the side of the van, and sunlight comes through the angular holes in the black metal. The man’s camera, propped up on his book bag, has fallen. He curses and then repositions it. I hear high caliber automatic machine gun fire from overhead, and then a copter speeding past.

  There are screams in the distance. More heavy-caliber machine gun fire comes from a copter hovering above me.

  My anxious captor aims his weapon at me.

  I squint and try to make out his facial features. I see a black hood, and a black hole where the face would be. It reminds me of the black beast of bones that sat upon my chest as I breathed my last in my previous life. Here I am again. Facing Death. It appears there is no escape. I have tried to make amends. Why do I yet fear it?

  “I have changed!” I wheeze through raspy breaths. “I was wrong, and I’m trying to fix it.”

  “What? You want mercy from me?” I look, and now see a man’s face where the black hole was before. “Only the merciful get mercy. How many dupes has your organization de-brained? How many others will die in the name of that vile law that bears your name?” He presses his finger against the trigger.

  “If only the merciful get mercy, then what are you going to get?”

  “The satisfaction of justice,” he responds coldly.

  I close my eyes. What will happen to me in the next few seconds? Will I even hear the sound of the gun blast? I have really tried to do right. I have tried to prepare for this moment so that I would be at peace. But, here at my end, I still fear what will happen to me. “Oh God,” I mumble. “Help me.”

  In the blink of an eye, a massive gunshot tears a hole the size of a softball in the side of the van. The sound is so loud that my rapid, anxious respiratory rate doubles, inebriating my senses. The man’s brains ooze on the side of the van beside me. His headless body seizes on the floor, causing his trigger finger to pull in secession.

  Blam! Blam! Blam! Blam!

  I cower from his gunshots, throwing my body away from the trajectory of his bullets, screaming. The chains that have bound me to the chair are loose, broken by some chunk of shrapnel or a bullet.

  There is a gun blast at the back door and it thrashes open. Someone shoots the seizing guard several times, causing the headless man’s firing to cease.

  “Raymond Verity?”

  Though I can only barely hear the man’s voice due to the ringing in my ears, I can still recognize it. I cannot place it, but somehow it brings me relief.

  “I’m here. Who are you?”

  “Are you injured?”

  “I think so.” I examine my painful leg through the rip in the bag that covers my face. The wound has bled my shoe wet.

  “Where?”

  “My ankle.”

  The person opening the back door turns away from me and yells, “I have the target!”

  I look at him. It is the stranger that spoke to me at the party celebrating our pro-life ethics panel.

  “Are you going to tell me who you are now?”

  “Alabama State Guard Intelligence officer.” He kneels to tend to my wound. “Let’s relocate you and then we’ll doctor that.”

  “Alabama? They have intelligence in Alabama?”

  He chuckles at my choice of words.

  “No, I didn’t mean it to sound like that. I mean, um . . . ”

  He slings his rifle over his shoulder and helps me to my feet. “Tod Farrell. Your attackers were from the Free America Militia.”

  He helps me out of the van and moves me into another windowless van. My ankles function better than I suspected, probably from the adrenaline.

  Bodies sprawl on the ground around me, lifeless in red pools reflecting the scattered clouds of the sunny day. Many are in suits and ties, others in black SWAT outfits with black helmets. Others are dressed in camouflaged outfits who, by their long hair, facial hair, and the diversity of their weapons, I assume to be civilian militia. On the other side of the auto shop, a large fire billows smoke into the sky, apparently from where one of the copters went down.

  “My family? They were in that fast food restaurant with the indoor playground.”

  “They’re safe.” He removes the hood off my head.

  “There were three adults and two girls . . . ”

  “All of them are safe,” he assures me.

  “How, how do you know?”

  “We were tailing you.”

  I glance at him cockeyed.

  “When we saw what was happening, we intervened. Fortunately, the Free American Militia took out most of the feds . . . ”

  “The feds?”

  “We took two casualties from a sniper on top of the building. We still don’t know if that was the feds or the militia.”

  “How did you find me?”

  “We have insiders in the Bureau helping us.”

  He sits me into a metal chair by a black van with rubber tires . . . Only in Alabama.

  “I don’t understand. Were you trying to capture me, prevent the feds from capturing me, prevent the militia from . . . ?”

  “No.” He grins and shakes his head as a medic begins to clean and bind my superficial ankle wound. “No. You’re valuable to us.”

  He looks at his handheld computer and reads a message. He looks up at me and grins broadly, his eyebrows raised with surprise.

  “What?”

  “Congratulations.”

  “For what?”

  “For breaking the world record on the most hits in ten minutes.”

  “Hits? You mean hits on my life? I only got hit once, in the ankle.”

  “No. That was probably a world record too, but the man that was about to execute you was live-streaming wirelessly through multiple servers simultaneously. It was s
till streaming when we left the van. Looks like the feds only just now turned it off, but not before it was shared tens of millions of times. Looks like your courage with his rifle in your face, as well as my team’s rescue has made the both of us famous.”

  “I didn’t feel that courageous. That’s for sure. How did you shoot that fellow through the wall of the van anyway? You know, you could’ve shot me.”

  “I assumed that he wasn’t the one chained to a seat and you weren’t the one shouldering a rifle.”

  “You saw us? Through the wall of the van?”

  He taps the square-shaped scope on top of his fancy black rifle. “Thermal image scope on a Tracking Point PGR.”

  I wince from the pain of the bandage application. “PGR?”

  He chuckles. “We’ll keep you safe. But all of it’s not for nothing. We need you to do something for us.”

  “For Alabama?”

  “And Mississippi. And some other states at the table.”

  I assume he means at the table of states resisting or planning to resist the federal government in some way. His friendly countenance and the words of wisdom he shared with me the first time we met has instilled in me a deep trust for this stranger. I feel like I trust him more than I even trust myself. He fixes his eyes on me, expecting me to accept his offer.

  “Yee haw,” I say with a grin. “Alabama it is,” I bellow in my best cowboy accent.

  “I think you’re confusing Alabama and Texas.” He does not reciprocate my light-hearted smile.

  What dire straits have he and his superiors conspired for me?