Judas (The Iscariot Warrior Series Book 1)

by Roy Bright

  Judas notices the girl looking at him and turns down the music. “You okay, little girl?” he asks, his attention switching between her and the road, expecting to be answered in the same manner as all of his last questions with a small, innocuous move of the head.

  This time she speaks.

  “Charlotte,” she mumbles, looking down into her lap.

  “What?” His head snaps to the right.

  “My name’s Charlotte.”

  He stares at her for a second then looks back at the road, “Well, Charlotte, my name’s Judas.” He glances down at her, his usual approach here would be to lie and introduce himself as Jude but he knew that soon, he would have to tell this girl everything and in the light of that event, honesty would be best right from the start. “I bet that felt like a pretty dumb question, huh?” he asks, screwing up his face.

  She looks up at him.

  “I mean; how could you possibly be okay? Hell, I’m not okay.” He snorts a laugh and shakes his head. He looks down at her once again; she wears the faintest of smiles. “I bet you are wondering just what in the hell is going on?”

  She nods.

  “Well, Charlotte, ‘what in hell’ pretty much sums it up right now.” His attention on the road ahead, his eyes dart left and right seeking, searching for something. “Tell you what. Why don’t we find that motel we need and if you have any questions…” he looks down at her, “which I’m sure you do…,” his attention returns back to the road, “then I will try to answer as many of them as possible before you get some rest. Deal?”

  She nods once again.

  “Good,” he smiles. “Let’s find a place to settle up for the night and figure out what we are gonna do.”

  She smiles at him. Yes, she likes this man. She can trust this man.

  He signals right about one hundred meters after a sign stating SOUTHAMPTON 3 MILES and then turns the muscle car into the dusty parking lot of the Atherbright Motel.

  Downtrodden, wretched and without doubt a haven for hookers and drug dealers alike, the place exudes a distinct ‘Bates Motel’ vibe with twenty-four rooms spanning two floors branching off to the right from the reception, each as drab and in as poor a state of repair as the other.

  The place reeks of ‘off the radar’ to him, and he thinks this is just perfect.

  Charlotte has always hated places such as these. She had seen far too many in her short life, her every experience (sometimes for too long) almost identical. Nights cowering beneath dirty sheets on mangy carpeted floors; screaming and shouting bellowing out of other rooms; people shouting at each other whilst making strange loud grunting and often screaming noises; gun shots; more screaming. She hated places such as these and as she looked across at him as he was bringing the car to a halt, applying the handbrake, she could tell he saw that hatred in her eyes also.

  “It will quite literally be for just one night,” he reassures her. “You are the safest girl on the face of this planet right now with me looking after you and this place is so far off the beaten track that no one is gonna be looking for us here. You’ll be perfectly safe. Okay?” He looks around out of the windows as if to verify his statement.

  She manages another tiny smile and nods. She believed him; but she still hated this place.

  “Okay, honey. I need you to wait here for me for a second, alright?”

  She shakes her head, pleading, “No, don’t leave me, I wanna come with you.”

  He loses his patience. “Look, it’ll just be for a second, okay? I need to go get us a room and the fewer people who see us together, the better. They will be looking for a man with a little girl; if the guy in there doesn’t see you he will most likely shake his head if he is asked ‘has he seen us’. I will be one minute, tops. Okay?”

  She looks at him with puppy-dog eyes, small tears welling up in them. She nods.

  He just got mad. Had she been wrong about him? No. She still feels he is okay, but he just got mad.

  Noticing the fear creeping into her eyes, he readjusts his tact, not wishing to distress the child any more than she has been tonight already. “Good girl. Now you be brave for me and scoot on down into the foot-well as before, yeah? Wait there till I come get you, no one else, just me, all right. Can you do that for me?”

  She nods again, a slow and unconvincing one.

  He decides to ignore her lack of conviction. “Great. Back in a sec!” Taking the keys out of the ignition, he climbs out of the car and closes the door and then walks about five paces towards the reception before stopping. Cursing aloud he walks back to the car and locks the doors. He stares down to where Charlotte has taken refuge, places an outstretched palm on the window, smiles and nods at her.

  She smiles back, although frowning, as his forced wide-smiling face at the window makes him look a bit mental.

  He once again resumes his walk over to the reception of the motel.

  A large, half-lit neon sign looms up to his left stating MOTEL - PEACEFUL QUIET ROOMS - AMERICAN OWNED.

  He sighs and shakes his head, muttering to himself, peaceful, my ass. Walking into reception he stops, as it reflects the impression presented of that from outside. Jesus, what a shithole, he mutters.

  The room is sparse, save for a magazine rack on the left hand side of the entrance that carries a handful of what appear to be local area maps. A few chairs are dotted either side of the rack and he thinks that sitting on them would in fact require him to go to the emergency room afterwards for a tetanus shot.

  Opposite the front door is a brown wooden reception desk with a dirty brass bell on the counter. A doorway sits just on the other side of the counter, separating the back room from reception with a tacky plastic rainbow-colored door blind. He can hear the drone of a television emanating from the back room, the sound of laughter associated with a game show. A grey, pulsating light bleeds out from under the blinds. I bet that TV is as shit as everything else in here, he muses, walking over to the counter. Reaching out, he slaps the button of the bell five times with deliberate pauses between each ring. In his experience, he has found this to be the perfect number of rings to irritate a receptionist enough into making them come out of their hobbit hole.

  It works… every time.

  A voice grumbles out from behind the blinds and soon after, follows a skinny redneck with slicked back, greasy black hair, tattooed arms and neck, unconcealed by a mucky grey vest that may, at one time, have been white. He pushes the annoying blinds away from over his head. “Can I helps you?” skinny drawls, eyes half-closed, head cocked to the right.

  Judas pities the man. Not out of a sense of any economic situation that this person has found himself condemned to, no, more out of the fact that he is without doubt, a fucking idiot.

  “Errr yeeahhh,” he drawls back, mocking; it provokes no reaction. “Need a room for the night!” He double taps the counter.

  Skinny stares at him for a second. “That’ll be twenny bucks.”

  Judas smiles, raising his eyebrows. “Okey dokey then.” He says, mocking him for a second time. He reaches into the right-hand pocket of his jeans, and pulls out a crumpled set of bills he had stuffed there earlier, before setting off out of the lockup and tosses a twenty-dollar bill onto the counter. This was intentional. He knew that to remain inconspicuous, he had to avoid rolling out neat, crisp and vast sums of money when the need arose to avoid drawing attention. Attention that he could very much do without.

  Skinny turns and reaches to the key box over his right shoulder and removes one with a large red wooden holder attached to it.

  “Number 13,” he states, tossing it onto the desk.

  It slides towards Judas.

  He picks it up and examines the holder to confirm the correct room. “Lucky me!” he quips, and with a sarcastic smile, turns and walks out of the door. Fucking redneck loser, he mutters under his breath. At that moment he becomes very aware of his own appearance, realizing he still looks like the bum he was four hours ago. He imagines the redneck has
just said the very same thing to himself about him. He stops, turns and stares at his reflection in the left hand window of the reception.

  Skinny retreats into his hole, eager to return to grinning at his TV.

  Judas cannot make out much of his form in his reflection, but he sees enough. “Fuck’s sake, I do look like a fucking loser!” He makes his way back to the car, unlocks the door and climbs back into the driver’s seat inserting the key into the ignition.

  Charlotte starts to sit up, to get into the passenger seat but he reaches out with his right hand and checks her movement.

  “No, no sweetie, stay down there till I pull around to the room. I’ll call you out when it’s clear, okay?”

  She liked being called sweetie; liked it when Sister Marie called her this, she starts to think of Sister Marie once again.

  He doesn’t wait for an answer instead, brings the car to life and moves it down the side of the motel rooms, around the back and into the parking space out in front of the last two, theirs being the one on the second floor. Killing the ignition, he climbs out and moves to the rear of the vehicle.

  Charlotte edges up. She peeks out of the passenger window in time to see him walking back towards the front of the car. He is looking around, turning his body, walking backwards then forwards once again; scanning the area for any signs of onlookers. He climbs the stairs at the end of the row and up to the second floor.

  He stands in front of Room 13. The number ‘3’ has broken its top fastening and is hanging to the right, almost forming a W.

  “Typical,” he tuts as he inserts the key into the lock, twists it to the right and tries to open the door. It’s stiff. He pushes harder into it with his shoulder and this time, it swings open. The room is in darkness and he struggles to see within. Reaching around the doorframe with his right hand, he moves it up and down in a blind attempt to find the switch, grumbling as he does. He locates it.

  Click!

  Just enough light radiates out from a small beside lamp on a small table to the left-hand side of the bed to bring the room out of darkness revealing it and the bed, located at the right-hand side of the room. The room is grim, very grim. Grey stained flowered wallpaper hangs from each wall. A dirty, brown-green carpet that without doubt, has not seen a vacuum cleaner in a very long time, adorns the floor but not all the way to the edges. The ceiling has a large, reddish stain in ring patterns in the far corner of the room to the right of the bathroom door and he wonders what the hell could have caused that.

  He is thankful that the bedding looks like the only thing in this room that has seen a wash in years. “Aggh! It’ll do, it’ll do,” he reassures himself as he sits onto the bed. It creaks four times, his weight causing the mattress to spring up and down. He sighs, “It’ll do!” He stands, makes his way back to the car and opens up the passenger door, once again scanning the vicinity for signs of life, for anyone watching. Satisfied, he motions Charlotte out of the car and hustles her up the stairs, into the room, closing the door behind them in a hurry. He turns to her, “Okay, sweetie, I know you won’t be cool with this but I gotta leave you for a very short time.”

  She is shaking her head before he has even finished his sentence, not wanting to be left alone again.

  “I know you’re scared, Charlotte and I understand that, but I have to go and get us something to eat; we need to make sure we have enough strength in the morning to start our plan. You understand?”

  She continues to shake her head in protest. She has now found her voice, “Please, don’t leave me, please. I don’t want to die like Sister Marie, please, don’t leave me,” she begs him.

  On hearing this, he looks at her and realizes that he is missing a vital part of the story here; realizes the child must have been through so much more before he found her. He sits her down on the bed and drops to one knee.

  “Sister Marie was your friend I take it?” His eyes search hers, trying to unlock the information for himself, to decipher what has happened to her. Her eyes fill up with tears and he feels uneasy and at a loss at how to contain this. He weighs up his options, on how to speak to her, to get through. He picks wrong. “Charlotte, I need you to be a big girl now. I’ve told you we can’t be seen together or we will give ourselves away. Now, I’m gonna go out of that door and get us something to eat and drink. I saw a grill a mile or so back down the road. I’ll shoot off, get us some burgers and fries and be back before you know it. Okay?” His final word a stated fact rather than a question.

  She jumps off the bed and runs into the bathroom slamming the door in the process, tears streaming down her face.

  He stands, rubbing the top of his head and shouts towards the bathroom door, “Good idea. You hide in the bathroom till I come back. I’ll only be a minute, okay?”

  No reply.

  “Ahhh for fuck’s sake,” he mutters under his breath. Reaching into his jacket, he pulls out his car keys and then ambles over to and opens the door. Glancing back at the bathroom a final time, he shakes his head and walks out pulling it shut behind him, then tugs at it hard to make sure that it’s locked.

  Charlotte sits in the rust-stained white bathtub, sobbing. Has she been wrong about him? He got angry with her, again. Why does she always make men angry? She wipes the tears from her eyes and sits up. Grabbing her shoulder straps, she lifts and removes the backpack from around her. Opening it, she reaches into the very bottom and pulls out a small light brown furry teddy bear; a tad crumpled from being stuffed in between her books and pencil case.

  She wraps her arms around and cuddles it, whilst at the same time twisting from side to side. She smells its fur. She loves the smell of Mr. Tumble. She named him so, as she could never get him to sit upright during her little tea parties, herself and Mr. Tumble being the only two participants. She has had the bear for years and its appearance now reflects that. One of her real mom’s ‘friends’ gave it to her the first time he came calling. Funny how he became much less nice the more he visited, the longer he stayed; but she loved the bear all the same as it was the only thing anyone ever gave her, other than trouble. She hated her old life. She hadn’t hated her real mom; more had felt sorry for her even after she had left her sat on a bench at that bus station. She felt sorry for her even after watching her walk away, dragged off by the latest man in her life, her eyes swimming in drugs, promising her that she would be back soon, would be back in a minute. She looks to the bathroom door; through it. He will come back, she tells herself, this one won’t abandon me, he is a good soul, I can feel it. She doesn’t know how she comes to think this way, she just does. This strange internal monologue has been going on for a few days and she has been experiencing bizarre thoughts, grown-up thoughts, thinking things that she knows little girls shouldn’t know at her age. Clever thoughts and words inside her head that she shouldn’t know the meaning to, yet there she was, thinking them, understanding them, applying them to situations around her. Just as when Father Mallory and Sister Marie had asked a few days ago how she perceived the world and humankind and she thought this to be the oddest of questions, taken aback by it, but somehow, found herself remarking, ‘I feel humankind is trapped in a void, unsure of where it is and what it must become. The world is the void and humankind huddles within its confines, desperately trying to push back the darkness with useless things, possessions, vanity and gluttony. Humankind requires a light to guide it from the void, a light to show it the way.’ She remembers looking into the eyes of Father Mallory and Sister Marie, unable to explain how she had come to say such a thing, unable to communicate an understanding of what she had said, albeit knowing at the time, she understood it in full. However, that thought had vanished almost as fast as it had arrived, a ghost in the back of her mind.

  The more she tried to bring it back, the more it faded, danced away from her. Something was happening to her, she sensed as much, given that they did not seem surprised by the remark, more so expecting it, knowing that she would give such an answer. The briefest of glances
between them solidifying that notion. She had been sat this way, pondering the most mature of thoughts for almost ten minutes when she realized that her crying has subsided and she didn’t want to be in the bathroom any longer. Wiping her eyes, she zips up her backpack, grabs hold of Mr. Tumble, hoists herself up and moves into the main room. She nestles into position on the left-hand side of the bed, between that and the nightstand housing the illuminated table lamp; tucking herself away, hiding. She looks up and notices a small New Testament Bible sitting on the table’s surface and grabs it, looking at the gold leaf lettering on its front cover for a few seconds before flicking the pages with her left thumb; stopping at a page at random. She opens the book and reads the first paragraph that grabs her attention.

  Romans 8:38-39

  For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

  She stares at the words for almost five minutes, reading them over and over, feeling that an answer is trying to propel itself forward, on the tip of her tongue. Licking her lips, she can taste it but cannot force it into words. The answer does not come. She stares at the paragraph a few moments more then, closes the Bible, unzips her backpack and slips it inside. She will look at it again later; she needs to understand something important, maybe tomorrow it will be there for her. She closes her eyes.

  Her eyes snap open. The sound of the door handle rattling sends her heart racing. She is aware that she has been sleeping but is unsure as to how long. As she looks around the room she realizes Judas isn’t there; she panics. Once again she draws her knees tight up into her chest, making herself as small as possible, shrinking herself down to the tiniest size to avoid detection.