Lies of the Prophet

by Ike Hamill

  Carol and Lynne looked at each other and nodded.

  With two deep breaths to prepare, Jenko was off. He sprinted up the slope. When he got to the top, before he disappeared out of site, he started shooting.

  Carol counted seven shots before she couldn’t see him anymore. They didn’t hear the all-clear scream. Carol opened her mouth to comment to Lynne, but Lynne held up her hand, requesting another moment to listen.

  “Did they get him?” whispered Carol.

  “I only heard his gun,” said Lynne. “If they got him, they must have done it without a shot.”

  “What if one of their shots was simultaneous with his?”

  Lynne shrugged—“Let’s go look,” she whispered.

  They moved together, up the slope to the center of the island. With their second step more gunshots rang out. These were throatier and more serious than Jenko’s pistol. It sounded like a small cannon and it went off three times. Lynne and Carol froze. The shot sounded farther off than Jenko’s shots. They didn’t know what to do.

  Lynne set her jaw and nodded. She and Carol moved side-by-side up the slope.

  “Boat’s back this way,” Carol said into Lynne’s ear. She pointed back behind them. She wasn’t totally sure of the direction, but it seemed right.

  “We’ll head that way, but we need to figure out what happened to Jenko,” said Lynne.

  “Of course,” said Carol.

  As they descended the small hill, the first thing they found was a blotch of blood on the rocks. Carol dabbed her finger and smelled it to confirm.

  “Stay low,” said Lynne. She took the lead. Whenever Lynne turned back, Carol indicated the direction they should go. They both stopped short when they heard the laugh. It was a mean laugh, something desperate and a little crazy. Carol ran into Lynne’s back. Carol was inclined to move even faster towards the boat, but Lynne turned around to track down the source of the laugh.

  “Watch out,” said Carol. Lynne looked up to see Carol pointing at the ground. A human finger, cut very precisely through the knuckle, was stuck in a small crack on the rocks. Lynne pushed the hair out of her face and bent down to look at the finger. A tiny smear of blood ran up the finger, but aside from that, it looked like it had arrived there with little trauma. They stepped wide around the finger and headed towards the laugh—the last clear sound.

  On the other side of a rock they heard a scream.

  “Do you think that was Jenko?” asked Carol.

  “Maybe,” said Lynne.

  They continued around the rock.

  “Maybe there was nobody here and Jenko just has a screw loose?” Lynne proposed.

  “Please,” said Carol.

  Without intending, Lynne picked up her pace when she heard Jenko’s voice. He was on the other side of another big patch of rocks. Lynne moved around the pile until he could see Jenko from a safe distance. Carol came up beside her.

  Jenko was facing away from them. He was on the back of a very tall man. Jenko’s arm was around the man’s throat.

  The tall man flailed his arms backwards, trying to get a grip on Jenko. Jenko, pretty tall himself, swung from the man as he staggered across the rocks. The tall man staggered and his knees buckled, returning Jenko’s feet to the ground. Jenko hugged him from behind and somehow kept his feet, supporting the tall guy. Jenko walked the man forward, towards the shore. Moored off the coast, a red boat rocked in the water.

  “That’s the boat they brought me here in,” said Lynne. Carol and Lynne stayed low, between the big rocks, and moved closer to Jenko and his captive. They kept their distance. Jenko was talking to the tall as he marched him towards the shore.

  “Down,” said Carol. She pulled at Lynne’s shirt. “There. On the boat,” Carol continued. She pointed and Lynne looked. On the boat, a man stood at the rail pointing a long rifle at Jenko. “Should we go help?” asked Carol.

  “Jenko would come get us if he wanted help,” said Lynne. “I think we should assume he knows what he’s doing. We need to stay out of sight." They held their position and watched. It seemed safe enough—Jenko had a firm grip on the tall man, and the guy on the boat had his full attention focused on the pair of men. The boat was far enough away that Carol and Lynne could just barely make him out.

  Jenko and the tall man moved out of sight over the edge of the rocks at the shore. When they reappeared, the tall man was rowing a little skiff towards the red boat. Jenko crouched in the stern and pointed a gun at the tall man. He didn’t wait long. When they were still fairly far away from the red boat, Jenko lifted his arm with blazing speed and took a single shot towards the sniper at the rail. He then turned his gun on the tall man before he had a chance to let go of the oars. The tall man fell over backwards and the oars lifted up in the air. The sniper on the boat slumped down but his arm caught on the rail.

  “Holy shit,” said Carol.

  “Yeah,” said Lynne. “Come on." She jumped up and started moving towards the shore. They moved slowly at first, waiting to see if any other men would appear on the boat.

  Jenko reached the ladder on the red boat and tied off his bow line. He paused halfway up the ladder and spotted Lynne and Carol moving towards the shore.

  He pointed towards the hill at the center of the island and yelled—“Get those bodies to the shore.”

  “What?” yelled Lynne, the wind had carried off most of Jenko’s command.

  “Go find those bodies and bring them to the shore. The two of you,” said Jenko.

  “Where?” yelled Carol.

  “Follow the gulls,” said Jenko.

  The two women figured it out at the same time. Above the hill, two small clouds of gulls swarmed. One bird would take off as another would land. Lynne headed back to the hill, but Carol was nervous that Jenko would still find resistance on the boat. She watched him climb the ladder and move around the deck, pointing his gun behind every corner. She finally got moving when Jenko disappeared into the cabin of the boat. She caught up with Lynne on the hill.

  “There’s one,” said Lynne.

  A man, short but muscular, was laid out in a broad crack in the rocks. Several gulls pecked at each other and his exposed hand. A couple others seemed focused on his hair.

  “Shoo, git,” Lynne commanded. She waved her arms. The birds scurried, but were reluctant. They didn’t hop far away.

  “They’re so fast,” said Carol. “How do they even know he’s dead.”

  “Get the feet,” said Lynne.

  “You get the feet,” said Carol. “I’m strong.”

  “Okay,” said Lynne.

  They got on either end of the man and lifted. Lynne had him under the knees and Carol got him under his armpits. The weight was immediate. Carol felt her back complain. She knew she’d never make it all the way to the shore in one trip. She focused on the horizon and then on Jenko when he reappeared on the deck of the boat. She watched him loop a rope around the tall man in the skiff and then muscle his body up to the deck. He hoisted the man by making a loop around the tall man’s body and then passing his lifting rope through that loop. Then he belayed the lifting-rope around the rail. Carol wondered how many times one would have to haul a dead body before that series of steps would look so natural.

  They got their corpse to the water’s edge by the time Jenko had rowed back to shore in the skiff.

  “There’s two more,” said Jenko. He pointed—“one there, and another behind that rock there. See if you can find a finger, too. One of the guys lost a finger. We don’t have much time, so move as fast as you can.”

  They nodded and jogged back to the hill. Jenko took possession of their other body and started rowing back to the red boat.

  Carol and Lynne carried the other to bodies to the shore. Each one felt heavier. Each time Carol thought she wasn’t going to make it. They switched off who took the torso. The second and third were lighter, so that helped a little. They couldn’t find the finger, but they scared another gull away from the spot where they’d se
en it.

  Jenko repeated his trick with the other bodies, hauling them onto the boat. Lynne and Carol sat on a rock and watched him as he moved around the deck. He descended the ladder and tied another rope, a long rope, to the skiff.

  “What’s he doing?” asked Carol.

  Lynne grunted and shrugged.

  Jenko was back on the deck. He weighed anchor and then started the engine. They watched him come closer to shore, spin the boat and then start away. Carol stood up, and wondered if he was going to abandon her and Lynne. He emerged from the cabin sprinting and practically threw himself at the ladder. With the boat turned around, they couldn’t see the side with the ladder, so they didn’t see him again until they spotted the skiff coming towards shore.

  Jenko got close—he was only a few feet away from the shore—when the long rope went taught. He jumped and made it to shore without getting his feet wet. The red boat headed out to sea trailing the small skiff on a very long line. Jenko walked over to Lynne and Carol while peeling off thin latex gloves.

  “It had a great navigation system on it,” said Jenko. “I set it for international waters. Looks like it had enough fuel to get pretty far out before it runs dry.”

  “Fancy navigation? Like it might report home its position?” asked Lynne.

  “Maybe,” said Jenko. “I disconnected all the antennas I could find except for the GPS. Still, not safe to hang around and find out. Let’s get moving.”

  Carol had started to stiffen up, sitting on the rock and watching Jenko work. She stretched and rolled her neck. Her hands still felt dirty. Her mom had always said that dead things—birds or squirrels—should not be touched. They were dirty and likely had fleas and disease. That thought kept coming back as she wiped her hands on her pants. She wished she’d had Jenko’s gloves while they carried the corpses, but doubted it would have helped. She’d already washed her hands in the ocean twice, and that didn’t help. Lynne and Jenko were trudging back to the hill.

  “Our boat’s this way,” said Carol.

  “Yeah, but I want to put that rock back in front of the cave entrance,” said Jenko.

  “And turn off the heater,” said Lynne.

  “Oh,” said Carol.

  Chapter 15

  Marta Develops

  The next time with a real person was an accident. It could have been worse.

  She’d practiced on mice for a while. She learned to execute her power with amazing precision. Through walls, across the room, from memory, or while looking directly at her victim—Marta could target a single mouse and snuff it out. She killed without noise and without action. One second the mouse was eating a piece of bread, or trying to climb the glass, and the very next instant, dead.

  Some nights Marta cried herself to sleep. Other nights she’d wake up in a sweat, convinced that she had accidentally committed murder in her sleep. Whenever any doubt crept in, she remembered Gregory. She remembered that he must be stopped. His power, granted to him by his immortality, couldn’t be suffered. It would eventually ruin everything. Marta didn’t stop to wonder why this was so, she just felt it to be true.

  But it was just mice. That was the other thing she would tell herself. She’d done a squirrel that danced in the road and nearly caused an accident. And, of course, she’d done a pigeon whose only crime had been to perch on a power line. Marta wanted to know how far she could stretch.

  The accident happened at the Memorial Day parade.

  Marta went alone, to see the mounted police. The convergence of uniformed men on horseback was irresistible. Unfortunately, they were a very small part of the parade, and Marta had to sit through an endless stream of uninteresting exhibits before her calvary came along. She leaned on a big blue mailbox—it paid to arrive early—and watched the floats and marchers. Eventually, her eyes settled on the little boy across the street.

  He stood on his grandfather’s thighs—he must have been about four or five—and his grandfather sat in a lawn chair. The boy was precious. He wore overalls and a baseball cap. He was pudgy, but not fat, and he loved everything about the parade. The grandfather held on to the boy’s legs so he wouldn’t jump up and down. Marta smiled and the boy smiled back between floats. The boy had an epiphany and dug in his pocket for his forgotten confetti. He tossed the paper with a limp hand. It barely cleared the curb. Marta laughed.

  She caught the feeling too late. Her heart had reached out and embraced the little boy. She felt his heart beating in her own. By the time she realized what she was doing, she was completely in tune with the little boy. His life was in her psychic hands. If she let go of him now, she would have to watch the boy collapse to the pavement, dead before he hit the ground. Knowing how close he was to death only increased Marta’s sympathy for the little boy. Her heart became more entangled with his.

  Marta decided to try to set him down easily. She’d had other experiences where she managed to untether from a subject. It had always been accidental, but she’d done it. She focused her energy and tried to release the boy’s heart somehow without killing him.

  Across the street, their eyes met—Marta and the little boy—as she tried to release him. At first, it looked like it would work. She felt his heart receding and imagined herself just letting him go instead of casting him down. The boy sat down hard in his grandfather’s lap, and his head lolled backwards. Marta poured her energy back towards him. She exhaled and leaned back as the boy began to recover. She understood how close the little boy had been to dying; how close she’d been to killing him.

  Marta closed her eyes and focused. She leaned heavily on the mailbox. She couldn’t withdraw from the boy, so she took the opposite approach. All her sympathy, empathy, love, and caring poured across the busy street to the boy. She expanded her feeling for him until she felt a river of caring extending across the street to the boy. Something wonderful happened. It wasn’t just the boy anymore—she could feel the grandfather too, and the fuzzy outline of the other people standing near.

  As she marveled at this new feeling, she felt her heart synchronize with the grandfather’s heart as well. Now their three hearts beat together, and the grandfather and grandson were now captured by her empathy. It was easy to shift. Marta shifted her focus from the strong little heart over to the aging, tissue-paper heartbeat. She opened an eye to be sure the boy was okay. He was. He jumped up and down on his grandfather’s thighs, excited by the firemen parading down the street.

  The grandfather didn’t look so good. Even though she still held him, he looked like he was under a great strain. Marta felt her own stamina starting to flag. She flushed out her feelings for the grandfather. She ignored the little boy completely now. The grandfather didn’t move much. His hands had already fallen away from his grandson’s legs, but one slipped a little further down, under the arm of his old lawn chair. The man’s eyes stayed open, but his head tilted and his old mouth fell open.

  Marta knew he was dead, but the grandson didn’t. He continued to jump up and down on the old man’s lap.

  A young woman, maybe the boy’s mother, reached over the old man and grabbed the boy. He was deposited on the broad shoulders of a man—perhaps his father. The boy was moved up the street so he could track the firemen, and see one of their demonstrations beginning to form at the end of the block. Marta watched the young woman—daughter, or daughter-in-law—attempt to rouse the grandfather.

  Marta was tempted to look away. Then she realized that this was her new growth opportunity. Her power to snuff a life might need a little improvement. She needed to hone her skill against stronger and stronger prey, and develop precision, but what she really needed was to build up her emotional callouses. She couldn’t be a cold-hearted killer if she fell to pieces at the site of a dead old man.

  The people around the woman remained oblivious. The first to notice were people near Marta. They were looking straight across at a marching band. It was fairly impossible to miss the young woman; her panic growing at her inability to wake the old man. She
kneeled next to the curb, shaking his lapels, stroking his face, and looking around for help. Her nearest neighbors noticed her at about the same time as the cop came up. He was probably there to tell her to step up out of the street, but he diagnosed the situation quickly.

  Marta surprised herself as she stepped off the curb. She strode right across the street, between the trombones and trumpet players, and approached the policeman and young woman.

  “Is everything okay?” she asked.

  The cop straightened—“Are you a doctor or a nurse?” he asked.

  “No,” she shouted.

  “Then thank you, but no. Could you back up a little? We need to lie this man flat,” yelled the cop. The marching band had stopped right next to them—they waited for the firefighters to finish their demonstration.

  Marta walked up the street, towards the corner, leaving the cop to perform CPR on the dead man—her dead man. She still felt some possessiveness. He’d been her kill. She spotted a man with a little girl on his shoulders and knew how she could help. It took a while to press through the crowd, but she found him—the man with the little boy who’d been her first accidental target.

  She tapped the side of his arm and spoke into his ear so the boy wouldn’t hear—“I think your wife needs you. Something wrong with the older man?”

  “Wife?” he asked. “No, that’s my sister. This is my nephew,” he swiveled his head around. “Oh, dad? Something with dad?”

  Marta nodded and turned down the corners of her mouth.

  “Thank you,” he said. Now he was pressing into the street, making his way upstream past the marching band.

  Marta focused inward, to assess how she felt about the kill. It would have been sad if she’d killed the little boy, the little nephew. She was surprised to find that she didn’t feel that bad about the grandfather. That night she cried, but not much. In fact, she’d cried more about the first mouse she’d killed. The mouse had been so innocent. A person, even a child, could never be that blameless. A mouse might be thoughtless or destructive, but could never be mean or careless. They couldn’t hurt you even though they knew it was wrong. When Marta closed her eyes she didn’t see the mouse, or the boy, or the old man. Marta saw Gregory, slumped next to his mailbox.