Ramid’s face is veiled by shadow as he looks down and doesn’t sit. He scratches his beard then peers down the street as if he were waiting for the bus. “You were not supposed to see that.”
“Care to satisfy my curiosity? It will be between us and God,” Markus says easily.
“This is a personal matter. I’m sorry, but the only thing I can tell you is that the Stone of Allah is worthless to Christians.” He excuses himself for another minute and makes a call.
When he returns to the table, his demeanor has changed again. “Markus, will you come to my car? I think I can tell you something about this stone.”
“Certainly.” Markus pays the bill and follows Ramid to the alley. They stop next to a black sedan. “Quite a risk parking here. The ticket is hefty.”
Two gentlemen step out. They have olive skin and dark hair, and are dressed in tasteful black suits. One wears a necklace, the other a thick diamond bracelet and a huge gold ring. They approach casually then grab Markus suddenly.
“What are you doing? What is this!?”
They force him into the sedan and drive to a nearby parking structure. Markus pleads for an explanation, but they say nothing. At the top level, he’s pulled from the vehicle and dragged to the edge of the building.
Ramid is a community leader, a saint, Markus’s good friend. Now his weak smile and flaccid gestures seem like nothing more than insults.
Ramid’s eyes strain. “You should not have seen that,” he repeats. He lowers his head and looks away. “This is partly my fault. I’ve become too casual with you.”
The two hold Markus over the edge of the parking structure. A pistol is pushed into his forehead. He can see the road below; traffic is moving, and people are going about their day. God, please let someone see me.
“The information you have seen has led to your death,” Ramid explains. “I’m sorry, friend. This is bigger than me. This is a war, and I am loyal to my side.”
“No!” Markus pleads. “I didn’t see a thing! Please, I have a family. I have a church. I’ll forget what I saw.”
After a moment, he’s pulled back onto the roof. The pistol hammers his back, hard, nailing his kidney. Pain fills his head and he drops to the ground. Ramid pats him on the head. “Fine, my friend. But it is time to leave town. This is no longer your home. You were going to do this anyway, so this is no great hardship.”
“I promise.” Markus cringes in pain. “I’ll leave.”
“Keep your word and you will live to see the rest of your days. Stay or seek out more information and you will lose everything. Go to the police and we will find you or someone you care for and exact revenge. I will give you this one chance because we are friends. We will be watching you to make sure you keep your word. The war has found your shores, my friend. We’ll be watching.” The Imam and his thugs drive off.
Markus clutches his side, waiting for the pain to decline. When it does, anger fills his soul, bringing thoughts of evil. He’s dealt with thugs before, neighborhood dealers and thieves. This is different. He was a man of God! Threatening me! I’ve never felt so violated and upset in my life. I pray that the anger that wells up in my soul will not swallow me whole.
Markus’s cell is smashed but still works so he calls a cab. Moments later a yellow car pulls up. Markus practically throws his old bones in the back seat.
“Where to?” the driver asks. He gives him the address.
Crowds block the intersection near the church but the cab pushes through. Towers of flames crawl up the church steeple and black smoke pours from broken windows. A fire truck roars past with its lights flashing and sirens blaring.
“Can’t go further, sir,” the cabbie says. “Sir?”
Markus can’t move, can’t look away.
“Twelve fifty, sir,” the cabbie says impatiently. Eventually he speaks again, “The meter is still running.”
Markus makes no movement or sound.
“Sir?”
“Take me home, please,” he mutters, then gives him the address.
“Ah, finally, he speaks.”
#
The night comes, and Markus is still in his home office. Strangely, he doesn’t feel sad. Anger courses through his body. He uncorks a small bottle of vodka hidden in the desk drawer and takes a swig. “Benjamin Franklin once said that beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. He should have included vodka.” Markus takes another swig. God lets evil exist because he wants us to choose, to earn our seats in Heaven. But Markus wonders if there might be another way to earn his stripes. He’d build a pyramid or a city of gold for the Lord. If only he’d deliver him from pain and sadness.
The next day, Markus takes his wife and seeks refuge at his cousin’s house in Birmingham, Alabama. He chooses to not tell anyone about Ramid or his secret war, but thinks of little else. Weeks go by. Marian eases his anger with her touch and kindness and her excellent cooking. His old parishioners do a fine job cheering him up with handfuls of letters. The insurance agrees to pay to rebuild the church, but he hasn’t told his wife that he cannot return to New York even if he wanted to. He doesn’t even know if he wants to be a preacher anymore. It’s so hard to keep going, to think about anything else but hate for Ramid. It burns like coal-fire. He can’t sleep at night, because the devil at the doorstep.
Someone should have told Ramid that secrets only beget curiosity. Markus tries to ignore the fax about the Stone of Allah. He tries to forget his evil words. But if there’s a war and he has to choose sides, that would undoubtedly be the opposition.
What’s so special about a stone that they would mount a campaign to erase its existence? Who told Ramid to threaten my life and my family and burn my church? There must be a reason they don’t want Christians to know about the Stone of Allah and that the knowledge if it makes him a threat even though he’s ten thousand miles away from Mecca.
Markus takes a cab to the other side of Birmingham and ends up at a cyber café. He uses a gift card to pay for the Internet connection because of increasingly apparent paranoia.
His first order of business is information. A search for the Stone of Allah online finds nothing. He doesn’t really have much experience with this online stuff. What he needs is a library, a big, old library.
When the sun rises the next day, Markus leaps out of bed. Determination fills every cell. His wife watches him pack a bag, not saying a word.
“I need some answers, Marian. You know me.” Markus tucks pressed white shirts into a suitcase and throws some ties on them.
Her glare speaks for her.
“I will tell you everything when I return. About me, my plans, the fire. I promise.”
Worried, she accepts his proposal and hands him a bag of nuts and crackers for the trip.
The fax Markus saw said the Vatican has records on the Stone of Allah. Finding those records before they are gone is his top priority. It will explain the war Ramid is fighting.
Markus arrives at the airport an hour later, pays cash for a ticket to Rome and boards a plane to Italy.
Chapter 1.7
Isabella Torrioni:
Half-a-Million-Dollar Job
Crowds as big as New Year's Eve at Times Square flood the streets. And just like a fucking tsunami, they sweep from street to street, burning, trashing, fighting, yelling, and crying. Isabella Torrioni watches it all from the safety of her apartment window like it’s the Macy’s Day Parade or something. Across the street some dude stands at his window. They see each other, lock eyes for a minute. He’s thinking the same thing as she is,thisis fucked up. But Isabella’s thinking something he’s not.Part of this is my fault.
People run down the street by the thousands. Shit is goin’ down, and she’s not prepared. No food or water.
Isabella runs down the empty stairwell and into the madness on the street. The market is at the corner, but the door is clogged with people with the same idea. She socks a guy in the gut and forces herself through the jam. Inside, the store is al
ready trashed. Cans roll around; some are smashed, spreading out gooey contents. Soda and juices make the floor slippery. The smokes and booze are totally gone. She grabs some bread, a jar of peanut butter, and some pads then makes her way to the med aisle. Some shithead stuffs his pack, clearing the whole shelf. He’s got bloodshot eyes and snot dripping into his goatee. Isabella grabs his beige shirt and slams him against the cooler door. He coughs up goop and burbles something incoherent. She reaches into his bag. He struggles so he gets an elbow in the nose. That stops him. After grabbing aspirin and acetaminophen she lets go. He falls to his knees, blubbering idle threats and weak cusswords. When Isabella turns, she sees an old man sheltering his wife from some thugs with pistols. The man hands over all his shit, and Isabella pushes past them, coldly.
The street is still a flood of people heading off the island. The cars have long been abandoned, and people move around and over them. Dead bodies are already spotting the ground like sprinkles before the rain. Many have been trampled.
Hours later the sprinkles turn into showers as people drop where they stand. They fall from buildings, roll down steps, or simply cough until all the breath leaves their lungs.
And the shitty thing is, She’d just earned a half a million dollars. If she wasn’t able to collect, someone’s face was gonna get bashed in, just to make her feel better. Not very ladylike, but that’s Isabella. She hates ladylike.
When it gets dark, banging and screams, gunshots and explosions fill the darkness. Thugs are on the loose. Since she’s too smart to hide in her apartment where she’s kind of vulnerable, she sneaks to the roof where others are hiding. A large woman, a few teenagers, and an older man are huddled against the walls by the edge. There are three fire escapes she can get to and another rooftop that’s right next door, so her escape is set. Now all’s she’s gotta do is wait.
A dozen others come up top. They say the thugs forced them out of their homes so they could steal all their shit. Isabella knew that would happen.
Jet fighters roar overhead, and she sees rockets fire from their bellies. They’re taking out the bridges. That’s expected also. Explosions shake the very bones of the building followed by clouds of red fire that rise into the sky. The rooftop is surrounded by blooms of hellfire. Isabella grits her teeth and closes her eyes and waits. It’s not the first time she’s had to wait out a barrage of bombs.
Later she eats a slice of bread with peanut butter and drinks some water, making sure no one sees so they don’t ask for any.
The wind carries with it chaos and the sounds of distant cries. It’s nearly midnight, now. The power is still out all over, but fires keep the skyline alive.
The street below is packed with dead cars. Most everyone has cleared out. Someone bolts from a building, leaps on top of a car, and heads into the darkness. There goes a predator for sure.
Now half of the group on the roof is coughing up shit, and some dude, a self-appointed leader, tells them they have to go. The sick ones leave, their heads down and their shoulders hunched. The large woman lumbers up to Isabella. She’s fucking spreading her shit everywhere. “Do you have any painkillers?” she asks.
Isabella shakes her head, and the woman shuffles to someone else. People move away and the leader shows her the door.
I gotta get outta here even if it kills me.
#
Today is a new day, and the quiet has become more unnerving than the chaos. Isabella had stayed awake all night listening to the cries of the people around her become silent, like dogs in crates succumbing to confinement.
The city still burns; the tops of buildings funnel black clouds into the sky like massive chimneys.
Time to go. She heads down the dark and musky stairwell, stopping at her apartment to grab a broom. She unscrews the top and tosses it aside. The stick is a simple weapon, but effective.
The morning light lifts the veil of darkness. Isabella’s the only one on the street, the only one for miles it seems. A serious amount of dead bodies lie in the road, under eaves, and hanging out of cars. She wants to run as fast as she can, but doesn’t. Keep a cool head, go easy, go carefully.
A block away is a National Guard post. Sandbags surround five dead guys wearing camouflage hazmat suits. Their face plates are splattered from the inside, obscuring their twisted expressions. They must have suited up too late. Isabella grabs a shotgun from underneath the big guy and collects two nine-millimeter pistols and some ammo. Now she’s set. Somebody better fuck with me. Please, I need a distraction.
There are survivors, but few and far between. Most of them cower in their apartments, their eyes staring out, wanting, fearing.
A guy bursts out of a department store with a handful of shit. He looks at her for a moment, too long. Probably sizing her up. Isabella gave him her coldest stare and opens her arms.
“C’mon asshole!” she yells and shakes her broomstick at him. He runs. “Get outta here.” She decides to call this stick her Beater.
Two guys in tees and shorts order Isabella’s hands up. They’re loaded up with M-16s. Isa has to comply because the looter distracted her. That won’t fuckin’ happen again. Behind them sits a Bradley fighting vehicle. Its massive tank tracks crack the pavement and curbs as it inches forward. One guy grabs her bag and rips it open.
“I got your shit, bitch.” He laughs. He’s some bald, buff guy. “She’s got guns and food!” he says, inspecting her stuff. Isabella grinds her teeth, waiting for an opportunity to get at this guy’s throat. The other snarls, “Hurry the fuck up! We don’t have time for you to dip your dick!”
“She’d rip it off for sure.” He swings at her, but she steps to the side and grabs his wrist, twisting it until it cracks. He screams out just as someone clocks her across the head.
She wakes some time later, pissed as hell, with a dried trail of blood running down her neck and onto her shirt. She stands, waits for the spins to ease up, then heads north. I gotta get out and fast.
The smoke hovers like watchful phantoms. Visibility is less than fifty feet. A smell burns her nose; it’s the burning cars and buildings. They’re like furnaces. Inside, the precious paperwork curls up and dissolves into ash, computers melt into blobs, bobbleheads of sports heroes light up like candles, and pictures of families fall from polyester cubicle walls. The fire doesn’t care. It just feeds and grows.
Further from her apartment is more of the same. Accept there are no more spies in the windows, no more looters. Everyone is dead. The bodies are almost stacked on top of each other.
Had it comin’. People suck. Most of my family members suck, guys are assholes, chicks bitch too much, and weren’t we killin’ the planet by overpopulating it with assholes? The sun is still gonna come up and go down with or without them.
The streets get even harder to maneuver. Smashed cars, trash, and dead bodies create a maze. Isabella stops frequently and checks her six. No one is gonna get the drop on her again. Her ears tune in, focus. They hear creaking, and a crash that she feels in the concrete under her feet. These building are coming down. Conspiracy theorists don’t think fire can melt steel and drop the Trade Towers? Ha. Fire is the ultimate deconstructor.
Isabella picks up a shell casing off the street. It belongs to an M-242 machine gun. Those guns crown the rotating heads of Bradley fighting vehicles. Finding the shell makes her feel better. She’s gonna find those fuckers that stole her shit and split her skull open. She’s gonna kill them. They took everything: her shotgun, pistols, and food. They even took her damn pads and aspirin. What the fuck are they gonna do with pads? It was like a slap across the face. This surviving thing is going to get harder before it gets easier.
A Bradley fighting vehicle has a pretty big footprint, so it hasn’t been hard tracking it. She’s getting close, too. Being stripped of firepower, she has to come up with a plan that involves more than just beating in their heads with the Beater. If they take her down with that M-242, then so be it. Just throw her in the gutter with all the other dopes.
Isabella sneaks past an overturned and burned-out yellow cab and spots the Bradley. It had smashed through the front of a drugstore. The men inside are stealing everything they can. She runs, half bent over with the Beater in both hands. No movement in the tank. They’re all inside the store. The back is locked, so they aren’t all that dumb. She braces her foot on the tank tread, grabs a small handle above the back door, and climbs to the top of the Bradley. The overhead hatch flips open and a mole head pops out. So there’s someone left behind after all. Isabella spins the Beater and brings it down on the fool’s face. The vibration she feels under her fingers, as the wood cracks bone, stings. The man falls. She sets the Beater down and slips easily into the Bradley. The man groans as her foot steps on his head so she gives him one more knock. Now he’s out.
The back of the Bradley is filled with sodas, beers, pills, and piles of canned food. Isabella’s backpack is on top. She pulls it from the stash, and checks to see if her pads and aspirin are still inside. They are so she adds a few cans of soup and beans and slips it on her shoulders. Man-sweat hits her nose and she gags, needing fresh air, badly.
She wasn’t always so uptight. Ever since she got cornered by a dickhead outside a bar, she’s reacts this way. Fucker caught and pinned her behind a dumpster, a big hairy guy. He had that same musky smell all over him. She would have been raped if she hadn’t head-butted him. I hope he’s lying in a ditch now. Isabella shakes off the memory, burying it.
On the wall of the crew compartment hangs two pistols and the shotgun. There’s an assault rifle, too, so she takes them all. As she climbs out the top hatch the machismo returns with a box of stuff. He doesn’t see her, but she sees him. He’s the man that yanked off her backpack and laughed. This guy should have died with all the others. He’s scum, guilty as charged. Isabella flips the cover off the gun trigger and pulls it. Crack, crack, crack, crack! roars the M-242 gun. It shakes the whole vehicle.
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