“Shut up!” he roared. He punched the man back down into the ground.
“You have no idea what's coming next,” the intruder said. Tim could hear all of the blood in his mouth as he spoke.
“What did you say?” Tim raised his gun at the man.
The man laughed again. “Go ahead, shoot me,” he chuckled. He spit out a mouthful of blood. “It doesn't change what the Crusade will do to you. They are going to tear you limb from limb like hungry dogs.”
“Who?” Tim asked. “Heaven's Crusade? The church?”
The intruder grinned. “It's the end-times, Mr. Simacean. We're just opening the doorway.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Tim asked. He started to feel paranoid.
“His army is coming,” the intruder began. “We're just securing His kingdom before the unholy do.”
“Why?” Tim demanded.
Laughing more, his captive ignored the interrogation. “Javier escaped. I know he did. Right now, he's on his way to tell an army of God's servants that you will not give up His miracle.” He chuckled more. “When he does, they are going to bring the retribution of hell down upon you.”
Tim's heart felt cold. Could he trust this man's threat? How could he defend himself?
The captive rose to his feet, the grin of a sick dog smeared on his face. “They will be coming,” he sneered. He spat at Tim's feet.
“Yeah, well,” Tim started, cocking the pistol, “they'll be up to see you shortly.”
He put a round between the man's eyes.
-Chapter Twenty-
This House
“As multiple investigations have proved to be incriminating for America's largest corporations, Decree, the company that was first investigated for its human rights violations announced publicly that they have purchased and retained control of the New York Police Department. The officers 'under new management' have begun operations to disperse the rising number of protestors in the New York business district. Their first step involved covering the sidewalks with a foul-smelling fertilizer compound. When protestors remained, they began passing and enforcing strict anti-vagrancy laws. For example, being found asleep in any public area, with the exception of medical issues, one could find himself in jail for the night and fined fifteen-hundred dollars.
“In response, the president has declared that the federal government will not be acknowledging the Decree policies as constitutional legislation. When asked what will be done to stop the privatized police forces, the president had this to say:”
“We do not want to attack our own citizens. Right now we are working on a solution, but the fact of the matter is that these people are well armed and well organized and as long as things remain civil, we will not invade one of our own cities.”
The radio broadcast continued as such, going on to talk about a man named Arnold who was comatose in a hospital. It played in the background as Tim and the crew pounded in signs on every visible angle of the compound.
They read, “All trespassers will be shot on sight.”
Police and ambulances pulled onto the Simacean Ranch just as dawn broke. Tim had his self-defense angle nailed due to a lot of coaching from Barney. He told them that the men had broken onto his property and tried to vandalize the angel. He explained how they saw him and opened fire at him and how he returned it. His story was that he had accidentally killed both of the dead men who were now being wheeled into ambulances while returning fire. The officer he was giving his report to stepped away to his patrol car to radio in something. In his absence, two men in windbreakers stepped in. One had a dark gray jacket while the other wore blue. Henry Douglas was the man in blue.
“Sir,” the unknown man nodded to Tim.
“Mr. Simacean,” Agent Douglas started, almost with a smirk. “Here I am again.”
“Unfortunately,” remarked the rancher.
“Sir, you were notified to stop commercial activity around the object and secure it from general access just earlier this week, were you not?” the unidentified agent interrogated.
Tim gawked. “I wasn't told to secure shit,” he spat.
“You wanna check your attitude, Tim?” Douglas asked cheerfully.
With cold malice burning under his brow, Tim stepped as close as he could to the agent without standing on his toes. His jaw sharpened and his slitted eyes stared into Douglas' smug happy eyes without a sliver of compassion. “I killed two men this morning,” he hissed. “Forgive me if I'm a bit sour. You want to get the fuck off of my property?”
Douglas' smile dropped only a little and he stepped back.
“Do you know what the repercussions are for disregarding a direct federal order?” the man without a name asked Tim.
“I'm shutting down shop already,” Tim replied quickly. “My men are barring the property right now.”
“That's not good enough, Tim,” Agent Douglas started. “Some people are going to be coming around to remove the angel from the premises.”
Tim's mouth dropped in offense.
“You will not be compensated,” Douglas continued. “You will not be notified ahead of time. You cannot – ”
“This is ridiculous!” Tim interrupted. “I have had my entire life's work smashed by this thing. I've been threatened by lunatics so I have to hole up in my house like a fortress and shoot trespassers on sight, and now you want to take the only thing I have left?” He was almost in tears.
The unnamed agent looked over at his smiling counterpart and waited while the gears ground inside Douglas' head. Without dropping his full blown smirk, he said, “We'll be coming for the angel within the week, Mr. Simacean.”
The rancher stepped back. His wrinkles were sharp and deep as his face was carved with malevolence. He gestured to one of the new signs. “Like it says,” he seethed through his lips, “trespassers will be shot on sight.”
Barney pulled up to the Simacean Ranch after picking up the other three of the crew. As he slowed to a stop, his brow furrowed in confusion. He watched Tim as the rancher was carrying bags of sand one after the other from his truck and dropping them in a pile in front of the entrance. Sweat poured down the side of his reddening face. He worked fast and with purpose.
“Hey boss,” Barney said in a tone that attempted to convey his curiosity to Tim, who ignored it. “What are you doing?”
“Barney!” Tim gasped, stopping his routine for just a second to acknowledge the man as if it was the first time he noticed his presence. Perhaps it was. The rancher wheezed with exhaustion through his words. “I need your help.”
Barney nodded and turned to the guys who were getting their things from the car. “Hey! Come help carry these sandbags!” he hollered.
“No, listen,” Tim said with just the right tone of fear to shock Barney. “People are coming here and they want to kill me and take the angel,” he said. Whispered.
Color drained from his face as Barney struggled with dialogue. “Who's coming? Who is? The guys from last night?”
Tim nodded.
Barney wiped the mist of sweat off of his upper lip. “You know this for sure?” he asked.
Tim nodded.
“And they've got firepower?”
Tim didn't even nod. He just stared past Barney's ear in distracted horror.
Barney clapped his hands over his mouth in a brief moment of panic. “Oh God,” he moaned. He snapped to. “How can we help?”
The rancher quivered from the tears of fear that accumulated in the corners of his eyes. “Barney, please,” Tim pleaded. “I need you to help me protect this house.”
A moment passed in which Barney said nothing but just stared off like Tim had. His color depleted.
“Barney!” Tim begged through tears.
“Okay,” Barney answered in the smallest voice he had ever spoken in. “We'll help with the fortifications and then I'll go back into town and, uh, get some guns.”
Tim nodded graciously. “Th
ank you.”
“What do you mean, 'closed?'” the woman that had approached the booth whined.
“The EPA deemed the angel dangerous,” Tim explained as sympathetically as he could to the crowd.
There were about twenty of them. There were four councilors, the round blond woman, who lectured Tim about how he needed to test these things before he let people be exposed to them and to advertise changes like this, included among them. The rest were a diverse and assorted group of young adults who had been court ordered to a rehabilitation class. This was one of their key field trips.
“You don't understand how rough these kids have it and how much getting to see something like this means to them!” the woman continued to complain.
His expression stilled like a man who didn't have a word for concern in his language. “I'm sorry,” he said. “There's nothing I can do.”
A younger girl peeled up through the crowd and addressed the complaining woman. “Trevor's crying, Miss B,” she said. “He's acting weird.”
Ms. B turned around, leaning this way and that. She peered through the faces for the man. “Trevor?”
Everyone turned until they saw Trevor, his torso heaving as he breathed in terror. His lips trembled and he perspired around his light facial hair. Something about the dilation of his pupils and the discoloration of his skin conveyed that he was under horrible panic. He stared up past the heads of his peers, past the walls of the facility and into the brown, rusted face of the angel. Lax lipped, he started to catch up with his breathing and his face started to show relief. His eyes darted away for just a moment as if he couldn't help it and he folded over himself. He buried his face into his knees which he hugged with his arms. He started breathing rapidly again.
“What the hell is going on with him?” Ms. B asked to the people adjacent to Trevor.
“Dude, he's tripping fourteen hits of acid,” a guy in a hoodie inputted. “He told me so on the bus.”
“Jesus,” Ms. B sighed, relaxing.
Suddenly, Trevor jolted upright into a full sprint.
“JEEEEEEEEEESUSSSSSSSS!” he screamed at the top of his lungs, jumping up and around the sandbags that stood between the world and the angel.
Tim chased after him. He ran as fast as he could. He could hear a babbling of voices and a storm of feet following behind him. As they all ran into the clearing with the angel, Tim slowed and drew the Taurus revolver Barney had brought him earlier. Barney himself had dropped the wheelbarrow he used and sprinted after Trevor.
“Dear God, what are you doing?!” the woman cried at Tim as she turned the corner and saw him with the gun.
Ignoring her, Tim squeezed one eye shut and peered along the sights. Barney ran in front of his line of sight after the tripper, however, and the rancher lowered his gun in fidgety frustration.
Neither Barney nor he could do anything as Trevor dove headfirst into the angel and exploded in a shower of blood. Popped like a balloon. All Tim managed to do was extend his arms to either side to stop the people behind him from running past.
Everyone froze in shock. Ms. B's face expanded so that it could contain the expression of horror that was stamped upon it. Seeming to run into an invisible wall of astonishment, no one moved.
All that was left of Trevor was a puddle.
“What – ” one of the male councilors said, struggling to breathe as he did so, “What just happened?!”
Tim raised the revolver as he turned around to the crowd. In a sweeping motion, he pointed it at all of them. “Leave,” he demanded.
With haste, they obliged.
-Chapter Twenty-One-
Heaven's Crusade
“Today marks the first day of what is being unofficially referred to as the Standstill. Local police in over two hundred American cities have begun department-wide strikes, refusing to work against the privatized police forces that have been springing up in their home towns,” the broadcaster said.
“They are mercenaries and thugs,” a different voice spoke. “In no way do they recognize or enforce the laws of the United States government, federal or otherwise. In fact, there seems to be no record of what they are enforcing, which means that no one is safe from harassment.”
The original voice. “The Standstill was largely motivated by an incident in Philadelphia yesterday in which the private police arrested and detained three officers of the Philadelphia Police Department. All three were on active duty when – ”
The radio cut short. The batteries had died.
Night was being introduced to the region by the sun as it tried to make a hasty exit behind the mountains. The sky tinted from orange to pink as the bugs seemed to wake up and start making a racket. The beauty unnerved Tim. To him, it seemed to signal something final. He checked his gun again. He held a pitch black AK of some sort. He confirmed that he had a full magazine for the fourth time in the last ten minutes.
“You look like you can see them coming,” Barney commented, picking up his own rifle from the floor.
Tim nodded. “They didn't seem patient,” he explained.
They stood above the entrance, which had been replaced by a brick wall instead of an opening, on the ramparts. Tim brought anything and everything he could find to line the edges of the wall for cover. All of his building material was used to build two fences, one within the other, that cut off the far side of the facility from the road. They wanted to bottleneck Heaven's Crusade.
“What do you think the authorities are going to say about all this?” Barney asked. “I mean, who's side would they pick?”
“I don't know if it would matter, Barney,” Tim replied. “I'm not like these cultists but it's not hard to tell that change is coming. We have cops arresting cops and people rioting.” He stopped to watch the sun sink and leave the sky in a warm purple blanket. “One way or another, the world as we know it isn't going to be here.”
Barney thought about this. “Damn,” he concluded.
A gunshot ripped through the night. Both Barney and the rancher slammed themselves to the floor and brought their firearms up to their eyes.
“It sounded close,” Tim whispered.
Barney hissed back, “How did we not see them?”
The rancher shushed him and listened. His breathing almost stopped as he absorbed every noise around him and evaluated each.
Then a voice broke the silence. “That was me, guys!” Chance called out from the wall on the other side of the compound. “Sorry!”
“Jesus Christ man!” Barney yelled back. “What the hell are you shooting at?”
“Nothing!” Chance replied. “I was just nervous! Really thought I saw something!”
Tim stood up and started marching along the wall toward Chance, passing Gus. Frank hid down in the opening of the compound, somewhere opposite of the angel.
“Pay attention to what I say,” Tim began with a voice so firm that it inspired shame. “If you find yourself dying in this fight, you can look to any side you want but you will not see me dying along with you. If your problems start being more than just your problems, then I might have to handle you myself.”
Chance nodded and remained silent.
“Yeah?” Tim asked for confirmation
“Yes, sir.”
Tim turned back around. “Keep watching the horizon,” he ordered as he started walking back to his post. Barney followed him.
An explosion tore a hole in the brick wall just under his post before he could get there. Gus got thrown to the floor, dropping his gun and getting showered in debris. Brick bits soared high into the air and dashed themselves all over the ground, rattling and shaking the stillness of the air with their movement. Everyone clasped onto their ears. The bang rang in Tim's like the screeching of car tires. He noticed slowly that everyone else had hit the deck and that only he remained standing. Laying down, he watched as Chance opened fire into the smoke. Someone ran out of the smoke and into the clearing, opening fire with what l
ooked like an automatic handgun. One of Chance's bullets went right through the intruder's left eye. He continued shooting for a few extra seconds as he dropped to the ground. Chance stopped firing and all of them waited in silence.
Moments passed into minutes when Tim noticed that the smoke wasn't clearing up at all. The more he watched, the more convinced he became that the wall was on fire. He swore under his breath and sat up into a crouched position.
“What're you doing?” Barney hissed from the floor.
“Frank!” the rancher yelled out into the clearing, making everyone along the wall jolt. “I know this sounds scary but you need to grab the fire extinguisher from the stairs next to the entrance.”
Barney's face turned to him in confusion.
“I'm covering you buddy, you got this. Put out the fire,” Tim called out. His eyes darted all over the clearing to see where Frank hid. It seemed like a long time passed, so he yelled out the man's name again. Then he appeared, running out from behind some scaffolding and to the indicated fire extinguisher. He sprayed its contents all over the entrance until the cloud of stuff was so thick that Tim couldn't see into it.
Then there were three gunshots. Everyone heard something drop to the ground. Tim's heart sank as he yelled out anyway, “Cover!”
The air cleared up and a sigh of relief aired when Frank could be seen rolling to his left and behind some sandbags. They could also see two guys with rifles walking into the clearing. One of them was looking to see where Frank had gone while the other scanned the wall. Before they could see him, Tim opened fire. He sprayed in a horizontal line, dropping both of the militants. Frank popped up from behind his sandbags and shot into the smoking hole in the wall. A body tripped and fell through, dead.
Barney and Tim ran right along the ramparts while Chance jutted left and rejoined Gus, who had recovered from the blast. They all aimed over the wall and strained their eyes for further militia. When he saw none and Frank confirmed that it looked all clear, Tim used his scope to spy along the highway. There were two sedans parked in a roadblock on the asphalt and the rancher could see a truck weaving off of the highway into the field west of the ranch. They were much too far to shoot at.
A Guardian Angel Page 14