Elias sobbed and begged. How many helpless souls had begged him for mercy? She laughed as he must have. Total power over another human being. Was this the exultation he experienced when he raped her?
She reached for his face.
“No …” His bowels opened. The stench mingled with his sweat, blood, and terror.
Three tiny feet pinched her shoulder. Puck whined in fear—of her?
Kayla paused, her fingers hovering inches from Elias’s eyes. Her hands trembled. What was happening to her? Am I to become a murderer? The fire faded from her vision, and she dropped Elias in a filthy heap. He rolled onto his side and vomited. She’d reached a moral crossroads. An eye for an eye, or love thine enemy?
“I won’t kill you if you tell me the truth.”
“Yes. Anything.” His body shook violently, the first stages of shock.
“Did you catch Ishan?”
“No,” Elias gasped. “His horse outran ours—I swear it!”
She knelt beside him. He closed his eyes and whimpered. How good it would feel to kill him. She tore a long strip of cloth from his shirt and he flinched. She fashioned the strip into a tourniquet just above the break in his disarticulated forearm, slowing the gush of blood.
Confusion filled his eyes.
“If you want to live, you’ll have to cut it off.” She jabbed his arm and he screamed. “It’s not a complicated operation. The blacksmith can do it, just tell him to make sure the blade is red hot.”
Why am I sparing him? What if he raped or killed someone else?
Maybe I’m just a coward.
“Swear that you’ll never force yourself upon another.”
Elias nodded with desperate jerks of his head. “I swear it.”
“And you’ll live to serve others as Jesus did?”
“Let me live, and I promise to repent!”
For a moment, she hesitated. Finally, she turned and walked away.
“I will return if you break your promise.” He obviously didn’t fear God’s retribution—maybe she could offer a more tangible substitute.
How I yearn to go to Ishan. But he’d seen her die, and she wouldn’t let him see what she’d become—not bring her curse to his door.
She caught Elias’s horse and rode north.
Word spread quickly. The moment Kayla came within sight of a town, the local church bell sounded, and the land drained of human life until she’d passed. This made it easy for her to scrounge food and water from vacated huts. She hated stealing, but what other choice did she have? At night, people with torches and spears manned barricades and sometimes trailed a safe distance behind to make certain the demon kept going. What if they attacked? Am I willing to kill?
One of the books on evolution had displayed a map of the migration route ancient humans took out of Africa. It occurred at the one place the African continent connected by land to the Asian and European continents—the northeast corner. This spot served as her one hope of escaping Potemia.
At night she navigated by the star Polaris, hovering just above the horizon. The monk had taught her the constellations from childhood, and her favorite was Orion’s Belt. In the winter, if you followed the three stars of Orion to Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, it pointed to where the sun would rise in the east. Just like the three wise men following the star in the east to the place where the Savior would be born.
And now I’m following the wise stars in hopes of my own salvation.
Once, Kayla surprised an old man and little girl walking their cow. At the sight of her, they fled into their fields, praying in their strange language. “Oh, great and powerful Parvati, preserve your humble children from this demon!”
Kayla froze. I understand their words!
“Is the demon gone?” the little girl whispered in Hindi from her hiding spot.
“Be still!” answered the old man.
Another miracle, another mystery.
When Kayla reached the edge of the desert, she set her exhausted horse free, fearing he would die in the harsh environment. She placed Puck on the ground with the bread and cheese she’d stolen for him.
“I’m sorry, Puck. I can’t have you risk what I’m willing to, and it’s time for you to find others of your kind.”
The scorching sand did little more than warm her bare toes. She lifted a skin of water to her lips, then paused. Was she indestructible? She replaced it over her shoulder. I will test this new body.
Kayla walked through the blazing desert a full day until the sun sank beneath the horizon. Hunger and thirst dogged her, but her pace continued undiminished. The next day brought the same, with no decline. What power drove her limbs onward, day after day?
“And Cain said unto the Lord, ʻMy punishment is greater than I can bear. Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth; and from thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth …’ ”
Life clung to her, either as a gift or a punishment. There remained one place for her to go.
The Wall.
Were the ancient tales true? Was it possible to pass through to the Outside?
Day and night she continued toward the northeast corner of Potemia.
After three days, she collapsed onto the moonlit sand and gave in to her single remaining weakness—sleep.
Chapter 6
Kayla’s mind drifted while she slept. The dream started with sudden clarity, like the blinding flash of light in a midnight storm. She lay on a cot inside a square tent. Before her vision hovered a photograph of a woman with amber curls and an ivory complexion. The woman held a brown-eyed little girl with darker skin. Braided pigtails poked from beneath a pink party hat. A cake decorated with five candles sat in front of them, and wisps of smoke curled before their faces. At the bottom of the photograph, childish writing stated: We Miss U Daddy!
The dream was incredibly vivid, even down to the sour smell of sweat and the stench of unwashed clothes. Kayla tried moving her gaze from the photograph, but couldn’t. Then she tried moving her hand, without effect. She attempted speaking, also without success.
The hands holding the photograph were a man’s, strong and calloused. She could feel them gripping the smooth edges of the image, and could even tell that the back of the paper was less slick. Still, she had no say in their motion.
Her vision blurred, and tears formed in her surrogate body’s eyes. “I miss you too,” the man said. She felt his lips and tongue form the words, and even had the sensation of each breath leaving his lungs.
That must be his wife and daughter, Kayla thought.
Out of the corner of the man’s eye, she glimpsed a strange contraption blowing cool air onto his muscular arms. She tried turning his head toward the device, but with no effect.
Maybe this isn’t a dream at all. Maybe I’m somehow seeing the world through someone outside the Wall? A sort of telepathic link.
Can you hear me? She projected the thought to him with as much force as she could muster. But there came no reply. Neither could she hear his thoughts. The dream-link was limited to his five senses, with her as a passive observer.
The door banged open, and the man’s gaze left the photo as a young, black-skinned soldier entered and slammed the tent’s plastic door.
“What’s up, Tyrone?” her surrogate’s voice asked.
“Fucking ordered back out.” Tyrone threw his cap onto the second cot. “You hearing me, Pete? I can’t take more of these goddamned Groundhog Day patrols!”
So my body’s name is Peter. Words from the Gospel of Matthew came to her mind. “And I say also unto thee, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it.”
“Bullshit timing,” Peter said, pulling on his socks and boots. “Just five hours since the last one.”
“Same fuckin’ road that wasted Matt last week.” Tyrone slumped onto his cot and shook his head. “I ain’t fuckin’ going, no fuckin’ way.
”
Peter sat next to him. “C’mon, man, you just got one month left and you’re out.”
Tyrone grabbed Peter by the shirt and glared with bloodshot eyes. “Matt had two weeks left. You weren’t there, you didn’t see him. His own mamma couldn’t have picked him out of a lineup.” Tears rolled down his cheeks, and his entire face contorted. “I ain’t getting on that fuckin’ road again, I just ain’t!”
Tyrone covered his face with his hands and shook with sobs. Peter put his arm around his shoulders.
“You want me to call the psych officer?” Peter asked.
“Oh, fuck.” Tyrone shook his head. “I ain’t crazy, man.”
“I know.”
Tyrone wiped his face with an old shirt. “Latissa’s leavin’ me.”
“No way,” Peter said. “She actually say the words?”
“Says we need to talk when I get home. Then my daughter says over Skype how Uncle Phil took them to the movies last week, even though I don’t know any fuckin’ Phil.”
“I’m sorry, man.”
Tyrone stood. “Haven’t told anyone, so keep it on the low.”
“Sure.”
They helped each other strap on gear, check guns, and shoulder their packs.
“We should start a fucking union,” Tyrone said.
Peter laughed. “I nominate you to present our demands to Colonel Colrev.”
Tyrone did his best badass impersonation. “I ain’t afraid of that motherfucker!”
“Yeah, I’ll bet!”
Peter followed Tyrone out the door and into the blistering desert. Tents, trucks, and soldiers baked in the noontime sun. Peter’s shirt soaked with sweat in seconds.
“God, I’m sick of this motherfuckin’ moon dust!” Tyrone loaded his gear into the truck.
“Hope those damn plates hold.” Peter inspected additional steel rigged to the truck. “Good job on those welds.”
“Cut them off a burned-out transport last week.”
Another soldier joined them and tossed his backpack onto the pile. “The three musketeers ride again!” He took a drag on a fat cigarette and offered it to Tyrone.
“Gimme a hit of that Chicago-black, Louis, you La Raza, bar-hoppin’ speed-datin’ castoff.” Tyrone took a long drag, held the smoke in, and then exhaled a plume of sour-smelling smoke. “What the fuck are we doin’ here, anyway?”
“I enlisted the day after nine-eleven,” Peter said.
“Which Iraq had nothing to do with,” Tyrone said.
Louis played along with a grin. “Weapons of mass destruction?”
“Maybe the Hajis are hidin’ them under the couch cushions.” Tyrone took another deep drag.
“You assholes are here because you go where you are fucking ordered to!” The iron-forged voice snapped the three to attention. Tyrone coughed and tossed the cigarette behind him as six feet of muscled swagger stomped around the truck. A pit bull in fatigues.
The officer stopped before Tyrone and thrust his square-jawed face inches from the still-coughing soldier.
“Do we have a problem, Private Nichols?”
“No, sir! Just talking politics, sir.”
“The one political solution is this!” In a flash of polished steel, the barrel of the colonel’s .45 hovered inches from Tyrone’s left eye. The arm holding the gun displayed a series of strange symbols tattooed into the flesh. Tyrone froze, the bands of muscles in his neck tense, a vein in his forehead bulging.
The colonel’s expression marked him a killer—born, bred, and unapologetic. “We need to remind the fucking world of that fact. Everything else is bullshit. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, sir!” all three soldiers shouted in unison.
The officer holstered his gun and glared at Peter. “And you, Private, what are you fighting for?”
Peter hesitated, then straightened. “I guess when you come right down to it, I’m fighting for my wife and daughter, sir.”
The colonel nodded, then waved them into the truck. “Outside the wire, now! You’re on point.”
Peter hoisted himself into the passenger seat and leaned his rifle within arm’s reach. “What’s that tattoo on Colonel Colrev’s arm say?”
“He commanded a Special Ops team in Afghanistan—real Meat Eaters.” Louis climbed into the driver’s seat and started the engine. “That’s his unit’s motto. Some kinda Sanskrit shit.”
Tyrone went into his tough-man impersonation again. “You see, I told you I wasn’t afraid of that motherfucker!”
Everyone laughed.
As Tyrone climbed into the back to stow some gear, Louis leaned close to Peter’s ear. “How’s he doing?”
Peter shook his head. “Not good.”
Louis headed out the gate with four other trucks following. “How’s Danielle and Sierra doing?”
“Third tour’s wearing thin,” Peter said.
Tyrone held his gun at the ready, scanning the passing buildings, occasional burned-out cars, and a few children playing soccer near the road. His eyes hardly blinked, and his hands gripped his gun until his knuckles grew white. Every pothole made him flinch.
Louis exchanged a glance with Peter. “Hey, Ty, you ever notice the tiny writing on those Trijicon scopes?”
Tyrone examined his rifle’s scope. “What the fuck is that?”
“Out of respect for our Iraqi hosts, the State Department ordered sayings etched onto every new scope—from the Quran.” Louis winked at Peter.
“WHAT!” Tyrone shouted. “From the fuckin’ Kor-Ran! What the fuck were they thinking?”
Peter and Louis burst into laughter. The truck hit a series of bumps, and they rattled about for a moment.
“This ain’t funny,” Tyrone said. “I am not using a rifle with fuckin’ Haji gibberish defiling it!”
Louis swung the truck around a large, blackened hole in the road. “It’s in English, dude— why don’t you read it?”
Tyrone squinted and read the tiny words aloud. “Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, ‘I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.ʼ ” Tyrone glared at his two companions. “You assholes, that’s from the fuckin’ Bible.”
Peter laughed. “You think?”
“Does your gun have Haji writing on it?”
“Of course not,” Peter said. “You think the military would buy them if they did?”
“Well, that’s pretty cool.” Tyrone looked at his gun with new respect.
“Oh, sure, now it’s fine,” Louis said.
“Damn right,” Tyrone said. “These are words from God Himself.”
Louis threw his hands in the air. “I don’t appreciate being forced to use a gun with any religious crap on it.”
“Aren’t you Catholic?” Tyrone asked.
“I used to be.” Louis leaned on his horn until a man on a motor scooter pulled over to the side of the road. “Until I realized religion is a conspiracy.” He gunned the engine and surged past the scooter. The man covered his face as dust and sand engulfed him.
“Bold statement,” Tyrone said. “Care to back it up?”
“My parents are from Guatemala, which is one of the poorest countries in Latin America because its population is too large to feed itself. Why? Because the fucking Pope says contraception is evil. Why? So they can breed more Catholic babies to glut their collection plates in this world with promises of repayment in a fictional next one!”
“Fictional?” Peter said. “How’s that?”
“If anyone else asked you for money for something invisible, you’d pronounce it a fiction too.”
“That’s faith,” Tyrone said.
“Faith is the most valuable tool in any con-artist’s bag of tricks.”
“I thought there were no atheists in foxholes,” Peter said.
“Well, you’re fucking looking at one.”
“I respect your right to damn yourself to Hell,” Tyrone said. “But Bush his-self called this a Crusad
e, so don’t go tellin’ me God ain’t taking sides.”
“You better stow that in front of Sergeant Khalid.”
“Yeah, yeah. There’s a few Muzzies in our unit,” Tyrone said, “but they’re American Muzzies, which is different than Hajis.”
A bit of gravel hit the side of the truck with a bang. Tyrone tensed and crouched.
Peter adjusted his helmet. “Those bastards who flew the planes into the World Trade Center sure had faith, I’ll give them that much.”
“Amen,” Tyrone said. “You wanna win this war, show them our faith is stronger.”
“Sounds like a suicide pact to me.” Louis came to an Iraqi checkpoint but didn’t slow, and the foreign soldiers scrambled to raise the barrier. They blew past in a cloud.
“Aren’t you afraid to lose God’s protection in a place like this?” Peter asked.
Louis glanced at a wide area of scorched ground on both sides of the road ahead. “Matt was the most devout guy I knew.”
Everyone went silent, and Tyrone’s eyes followed the burned circle without blinking as they passed. Then he removed a tiny metal cross hanging on a chain around his neck and kissed it.
When they came to the dead camel, Peter groaned.
“It fucking figures it would be my turn,” he said, opening the door and walking the fifty yards to the rotting corpse. Flies swarmed the bloated remains, and he gagged at the smell.
“How long has this been here?” Peter said into his radio, eyes scanning the surrounding brush and few buildings nearby. Here and there, civilian faces peeked from windows.
“A patrol reported it yesterday,” Colonel Colrev’s voice said in his earpiece.
“Why the fuck is it still here?”
“Easier to drive around it. Just check the body for booby traps.”
“Yes, sir.” Peter scanned the area. His eyes locked onto a wiry line snaking through the ground, and he stiffened. Creeping forward, it resolved into a frayed shoestring. Peter relaxed.
“Looks clear,” he said and faced the convoy. Tyrone stood over a slight ridge, pissing into the sand.
Peter’s eyes paused on a patch of discolored ground beneath his truck’s bumper.
He glanced at the buildings. A head ducked in one of the windows.
Nihala Page 7