A New Day in America

by Theo Black Gangi

  He hears the click-clack of guns cocking. The soldiers walk off. Nay screams and screams and screams until she’s muzzled. Her suffocated cries diminish as the boots march further away. Marked with sin?

  Nos struggles, helpless. “My daughter,” he utters.

  “Is gone!” he shouts.

  Nos remembers Baker’s words. Have you seen a single person with that rash in Revelation territory?

  “God now holds you over the pit of hell much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over a fire! He abhors you! He looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be thrown in that fire! He is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight. You are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes as the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. Tis nothing more than his hand that prevents you from falling into the fire every moment!”

  Nos lowers his head and holds still as death. Conversion at gunpoint.

  “O sinner! You hang by a slender thread! Thus are all that never passed under a great change of heart by the mighty power of the spirit of God upon your soul! All that were never born again and made new creatures and raised from being dead in sin to a state of new, and therefore unexperienced a state of light and life, you are thus in the hands of an angry God! ‘Tis nothing but his mere pleasure that keeps you from being swallowed up in everlasting destruction.”

  “Save me, Father,” says Nos into the floor. “Save me.”

  “Do you wish it so? Pure in heart?”

  “I do. I do, save me please.”

  “Stand him up.”

  They bend to stand him. They reposition, shift weight, and grab Nos under his arms.

  Time.

  He spins and tears away from the grips on his arms. He ducks and powers his shoulders into two guts. Two strongmen barrel into two more, and four collapse like a lawn chair. He flips his Sig ready and unleashes four kill shots. The Revelation soldiers die where they lay.

  The preacher runs down the hall, and Nos shoots him in his leg. He tumbles and slams against a door.

  Nos pulls his pigsticker and hunts the preacher down. Nos grips his forearm and yanks him up onto his feet.

  “Where is she?” Nos demands and shoves the knife in his groin. More howling. Good, but not enough.

  Two soldiers rush from down the hallway with AK 47’s raised to shoot.

  Nos turns the preacher around as a shield, holding him up by the knife handle. “I said, where is she?” Nos jams the blade in further.

  “Glory, glory, glory,” the preacher rants. “Glory in His wrath. Yes! Yes! Glory! Praise be glory! Yes! Yes!”

  The soldiers hesitate, sights on Nos.

  “Glory! Glory!”

  Nos throws the preacher at one soldier as he fires. Bullets tear through the preacher’s black coat. Nos ducks and blasts a round though a soldier’s throat and hammers another into the other’s stomach.

  Nos’ leg goes numb. Feels like he wet his pants. Blood gushes on the floor. The one hit in the stomach howls and vomits torrents of red.

  The tip of Nos’ knife finds the top of his kneecap and thrusts into the bone. The screams are good, but not enough.

  “Where is she?” he orders.

  “It is too late for those marked by God? They are consumed by the fires of His—” he cries.

  Nos thrusts the knife in deeper, working the blade through cartilage like carving a turkey.

  “Where is she?”

  Blood drains from his mouth. “Kill me, God loves me. You can do nothing to me, my soul is eternal, my soul is eternal, my soul is eternal, I am eternal—”

  “But you will not die, not for hours,” Nos explains. “I will skin you alive.”

  Nos put his foot on the thigh and hefts his knife out of the knee, releasing a burst of blood. He turns his blade along the man’s shin and saws. The knife’s edge skims along the line where flesh meets bone. The skin peels backwards as he slices toward the ankle. This time the screams are more what Nos had in mind.

  “I’ll peel you like a grape.”

  “Third floor! Please kill me! Third floor psych unit! Kill me now! Please, kill me now!”

  “Fuck you,” says Nos, and he throws the soldier into his puddle of blood.

  Nos jets to the nearest staircase. Footsteps are oncoming. He bangs a new clip in his Sig as a soldier rounds the corner. Nos bangs a bullet through the bridge of his nose.

  He reaches the third floor and follows the arrows to the psych unit. Two soldiers stand in front of a large door. Nos puts them down and then puts a round in the lock.

  The door flies open. The room is full of worshipers. No children. No Nay. He lied.

  The congregation looks up at him. He’s covered in blood. A preacher stands at a podium. They are terrified.

  Back to the hallway. He’s losing time. Think. The Humvees.

  The school buses.

  Nos bowls into the ER, knocking over a crowd of people and firing off into the air.

  “Everybody get the fuck down!”

  He turns and pops a Revelation guard twice in the chest.

  The ER hits the deck. Except Leila. She looks at him, shocked.

  “Have you lost your mind?”

  He runs toward the exit.

  “They took Nay!”

  “What?” The concern on her face is intense. For Nay? Or me?

  “I’m OK,” he blurts. “It isn’t my blood,” he says and runs past her.

  He is out the door before Leila can follow. No time.

  Nos scurries through the parking lot and makes a line for the van. He pops the doors open, and the dogs growl and bark. He snags his rucksack and his .50-caliber and slings them both over his shoulder.

  Nos keeps his Sig drawn as Revelation Guards burst from the ER doors, searching for him. A soldier sits on a police bike in the lot, trying to figure out what’s going on as Nos cracks three bullets through his helmet. He kicks the dead man off the bike and hops on. He rides to the road and looks left and right. Nothing. He has to pull out his scope as troops are coming at him from behind. He sees a convoy in the distance on a winding road—a school bus and a Humvee.

  He lays cover fire at the guards and takes off through the return fire. The bullets hiss. When they are close they crack.

  He burns up the road behind the convoy. The Revelation is on his ass. Can’t take out the gunners, not yet. Can’t risk the bus flying off the road. Has to wait for them to stop, but at that pace, he’ll get caught from behind.

  A soldier stands and mans the mounted .50-caliber.

  Nos pulls his Sig, fires, and misses. No better than a warning shot. The bike swerves. He keeps shooting, firing wide. He balances the bike handles and fires. He hits the hull, hits the fuel tank, and then the gunner. Gasoline bursts from the vehicle and gushes onto the highway.

  The gunner holds his bloody stomach and grabs the .50-caliber and starts blasting. Tough motherfucker. Nos brakes as rounds explode on the pavement in front.

  The convoy approaches a checkpoint stocked with heavily-armed personnel at every tollbooth. They don’t stop. Massive tankers wait on the side roads.

  He can’t slow down—can’t lose the convoy. If he comes on fast enough, he can burn through. Only chance. Make it count.

  Nos ducks and accelerates and flushes past the toll dividers. Sirens blare behind him.

  He chases the Humvee onto a long bridge.

  He’s stuck. Can’t get too close to the convoy, they’ll shoot him down. Can’t fall back, they’ll catch him from behind. Only one option. Sideways.

  He glances to the vast waters below. They’re closing in from behind. Bullets pop and ricochet. Can’t even see who’s firing from where—just deafening suppressive fire. No choice.

  He jerks the handles hard to the right. The wheels spin out, and he crouches and skids under an opening of support beams. The bridge slips away from the wheels, and he flies.

  Free of ground and sound.

  Chapter 5

  It’s Not My Blood

>   The other children are crying. There are two of them. Nay can’t tell how old they are—maybe older than her. A boy and a girl. They have white-pink rashes like her. She can’t hear her own crying from their noise, but they all cry the same cry, whether for Mommy or Daddy or Pa. A soldier sits in the front in a tan uniform that she’s seen at times on her Pa. He has a big monstrous gun. The soldier doesn’t look at the children no matter how hard they cry. A fat ogre in black with a green face reads from a book and tries to raise his voice above the crying.

  “The wrath of God is His eternal detestation of all unrighteousness. It is the displeasure and indignation of divine equity against evil. It is the holiness of God stirred into activity against sin. It is the moving cause of that just sentence which He passes upon evil.”

  The ogre-words mean nothing. Pa is gone. All those men had him on the floor and pointed guns at him, and he couldn’t do anything and neither could she. She cried and hit and screamed until she couldn’t hit and scream anymore. Pa couldn’t do a thing. She had never seen anything he couldn’t do. The ogre keeps talking as the children keep crying, and the road gets bumpy and rattles through the school bus.

  “Insurrectionists against God’s government shall be made to know that God is the Lord. You shall be made to feel how great that Majesty is which you despise and how dreadful is that threatened wrath which you regard so little.”

  Gunfire. The bus vibrates with the rat-tat-tat. Nay runs teary-eyed through the aisle to the back where the sound is coming from. They don’t stop her.

  It’s Pa. Her heart lifts. He’s on his bike, and they’re shooting at him. She doesn’t stop crying. Sirens blare from way down the road. Pa shoots the truck behind the bus, but they shoot back, and their shots are stronger. They reach a bridge. Nay feels an arm pulling her away from the back window.

  “Pa!” she cries, holding to the door handle. “Pa! Pa!”

  It’s the soldier, but she doesn’t care, Pa is stronger than them all. He will beat them all. He will. He always does.

  Pa falls back, a dot on the bridge. The trucks get closer to him. He stops, the bike skids, and he falls, him and the bike flying way, way down to nothing.

  Nay weeps and weeps into the soldier’s uncaring arm.

  The ogre starts talking again.

  “God will vindicate His dominion as Governor of the universe.”

  The bus begins to slow. Nay’s head is in her knees. Her face is stuck to her thighs from the tears. The other kids cry softer. They see something and hush. She looks up. A gigantic roller coaster snakes through the sky. They’re pulling up to an amusement park.

  The bus stops, and the ogre puts nose plugs in his green nostrils. The soldier shoves the kids down the steps and out the door.

  The three kids cry less as they walk through the park, following the ogre with the soldier behind them. The park is empty, but there’s so much everywhere. A round ride like a big pink mushroom stands with strings and seats dangling on the ends, swaying in the breeze like beads. A Ferris wheel makes a circle that’s round and perfect.

  They smell burning fumes. Nay and the children cough and cough. The fumes are wrong, like when plastic catches fire. Something that was never meant to burn.

  They pass a huge swimming pool with no water inside, only a blackened pile in the middle that steams. The smell gets stronger, and even the soldier coughs. When Nay gets closer she sees the small burning bodies against the baby blue of the pool floor. They are all children. They are naked and black in the flames.

  The boy and the girl with the rash cry, but Nay is done crying. She doesn’t know why, but she doesn’t have tears left. She feels like she will see Pa again, Mommy again, Joachim, and Mikey again, too. She thinks about how Pa was right and she does miss Mikey after all.

  She follows the children and the ogre. They approach a tower at the end of the road. The tower looks like it was made of four gigantic sticks with big platform elevators on all four sides. One of the children tries to run, but the soldier grabs her and smacks her in the face. The five of them step onto one of the elevators, and it takes them up. She sees above the Ferris wheel, above all the buildings, past the highway, and to far away mountains with green glowing trees and brown and tan earth. When they reach the top of the tower Nay looks about the endless sky, and she sees everything ever in the world.

  The ogre ruins it by talking.

  “By this you shall know that the Lord has sent me to do all these deeds; for this is not my doing.”

  A rope dangles off the edge of the tower. The soldier pulls it up toward them. It’s a thick braided rope, and it makes a circle at the end. He holds the girl who tried to run away by the shirt and puts the rope around her neck. The soldier kicks the girl off the tower, and the rope unravels and snaps. Her body bounces up once like it’s in water. Her crying is done, her neck broken, and she hangs limp as a sawdust doll.

  The boy cries. Nay doesn’t; she doesn’t know why.

  The soldier pulls the rope up with the girl attached at the end. Her neck is stretched long with rope marks like it’s part of the rope. Her face is so horrible Nay can’t look. The soldier takes the rope off her neck and strips her of all her clothes, and she’s naked. He then puts the rope around the neck of the wailing boy. He gets the rope because he’s crying and Nay isn’t.

  “By this you shall know that the Lord has sent me to do all these deeds; for this is not my doing,” the ogre says again.

  The soldier kicks the boy in the back, and he flies off the tower, farther than the girl, like the soldier put joy in the kick. The rope flies out and snaps like it would rip through the boy’s neck.

  The boy swings back and bangs against the tower. Pee soaks the boy’s leg and drips all the way down.

  Now Nay wants to pee. She has to go so bad.

  The soldier pulls the rope back up with the boy at the end. His neck is badly broken, and his leg is drenched down to his sneaker.

  “I’m not touching that,” says the soldier.

  “Strip him,” grunts the ogre.

  He is disgusting. Nay feels a rumble in her empty stomach, and before she knows it, bile flies from her mouth. She throws up off the edge of the tower and if falls and separates all the way down.

  “Fucking kids,” says the soldier as he carefully peels the pants off the boy and puts the rope around Naomi’s neck.

  Naomi has to pee. She has to go.

  “By this you shall know that the Lord has sent me to do all these deeds,” says the ogre. “For this is not my doing.”

  Nay closes her eyes and tears squeeze out like juice from a lime.

  Mommy. I’m coming.

  And then a pop. Something wet slaps her on the back. And then another pop.

  Nay opens her eyes. The soldier and the ogre are on the tower floor beside the dead children.

  They don’t have heads.

  Nay is alone with the rope around her neck on top of the tower.

  Chapter 6

  The Narrows

  Nos is soaking wet. He had to watch the second kid hang as he readied his rifle. Wasn’t fast enough. Saw the little girl like a dot dangling on the tower. Saw the little boy piss his pants. Saw Nay spit up and vomit. But she wasn’t crying. He didn’t know how she wasn’t crying.

  The Revelation walkie he has set beside him buzzes with panic. Shots fired. Preacher down! Preacher down!

  Time to move.

  Nos bounds down the fire escape. He’s still soaking wet. He’s leaving a trail of water as he goes. Easy to follow. Just like how he followed the trail of fuel from the road to the amusement park. The Humvee tank leaked all the way to the smiling gates.

  He flung himself off the bridge and pushed off the bike in mid-air so it wouldn’t fall on him. He straightened into a desperate dive and smacked into the water and tunneled deep. Didn’t die.

  He swam out to the land. He had swallowed so much water he wanted to puke. He was trained to do better.

  He climbed all through the
brush and the trees as leaves stuck to his wet face. Nos stood in the road and blocked the first car that came. The Laredo stopped. The driver yelled at him. Nos put his Sig in his face.

  Nos rode the Laredo along the trail of spilled fuel and found the park. Nos caught a soldier as he was taking a leak in the woods. Knifed him without a sound, quick and dirty. Apparently his name was Lucky, because the voices on the walkie kept asking for him.

  Nos hauled up the stairs of the nearest building. Found the high ground. Found his girl. Laid his scope on the men, stock firmly in shoulder, focusing on the target, not the cross hairs. He pulled, turned, and pulled, and a couple of monsters’ heads burst like popping mosquitoes.

  Nos stays hidden in the park’s wide-open spaces, going from kids’ rides to abandoned cotton candy stands. He has to get to Nay, and the soldiers are forming a four-point perimeter around the tower. They are half a dozen, and Nay is still vulnerable.

  Nos doubles back to Lucky’s corpse. He still looks shocked, and his throat is spilled in the grass. Lucky has a small block of C4. Small, but big enough.

  The Laredo is a short walk away. Nos drags Lucky by his arms to the car and sets him down in the driver’s seat. He takes the block of C4 and Lucky’s hunting knife and stabs the explosive into Lucky’s chest. Lucky is lucky he’s not alive for this.

  Nos arms the C4. Starts the car. Takes a rock and leans it on the gas pedal. The school bus is dead ahead.

  Lucky the gearshift is on the steering wheel. Nos flips the car into drive and pulls his arm right out, getting smacked by the doorframe as the Laredo drives.

  The car goes relatively straight. Nos runs.

  Laredo smashes into the back of the school bus. The soldiers rush to it. Nos jets around the park and over to the tower. He watches as the soldiers turn their backs to him and start firing at the Laredo. Dummies.

  “Stop shooting! Stop shooting!” yells one. “Wait. Lucky?” he says.

  Another shoots anyway.

  The explosion is good and loud. It rattles in Nos’ head. The back of the school bus blows and flips forward and crushes a soldier.