Isaiah ambled down the road, beholding the handiwork of his disciples as they nailed the unbelievers to their crosses. They were unworthy of such honor, to die in like manner as Jesus the Savior, but this was what the Son of God had commanded them to do, and so they did it without any questions.
Thud. Thud. The sound of nails being driven through hands and feet into wood. The infidels who had stumbled into Isaiah’s town were frail and feeble from starvation, making this easy work. The nails would be sufficient to hold their weak bodies to their crosses despite their pathetic thrashing. Raising the recorder to his lips once more, Isaiah continued to speak, hoping he would be heard clearly over the screams.
“Despite my best efforts to prepare us for the Lord to call us up into Paradise, our affliction continues. Even the demons have gone, but still we remain here on Earth, far from Heaven and our Creator. And then these infidels appear on our doorstep, begging for a fool’s meal. I spent the night in prayer, and Christ revealed His plan to me.”
“Purification. We must be well and truly purified in the sight of God before He will take us to be with Him in eternal life. But to do so, we must free ourselves of these wretched, sinful vessels. This is what Christ made clear to me. My flock goes willingly to the Cross, but these outsiders must be forced to be free.”
“This is my mission, I know it now. When we have finished here, my disciples and I will wander the Wild as Jesus Christ once did, to find lost souls and guide them to the Promised Land.
“Let me down! Let me down, you fucking lunatics!” cried a woman in a hoarse tone. She was one of the infidels and had arrived with an infant. Just one, to add to the two babies born recently to members of Isaiah’s flock.
“Give me back my baby! Give him back! Please!” the woman continued.
“Peace, child!” said Isaiah. “Soon you will be in Heaven, and you will meet your young one there at the Pearly Gates.”
Over the din of screams and cries for mercy rose the sound of metal scraping against asphalt. Three of Isaiah’s disciples dragged large buckets filled with water across the road.
“As you requested, Isaiah,” one of the men said.
“Well done,” said Isaiah. “The children are yet too young to bear the Cross, and they would not understand. Following the example of Christ, they will be baptized. Bring them forth!”
Three other men, each carrying a crying baby, stepped forward and awaited further orders. Isaiah tucked the black recorder into his shirt pocket and took one of the infants in his hands, then knelt by one of the buckets.
“No! Nooo! Put him down, you fucking monster! Stop it! Let me down!” cried the same woman from earlier.
Isaiah shook his head sadly. “Oh, woman. You yourself are a crying infant, unable to see that I am doing what is best for you and for your son. I say again to be at peace, for your reunion will be sooner than you know.”
The woman screamed.
The baby boy cried, his voice clearly heard by all.
The baby boy cried, his voice now muffled by water.
“Suffer the little children to come unto me,” said Isaiah, quoting Scripture.
The baby boy cried, his voice weakening.
The woman cried.
***
Abby’s hand trembled as she smashed the ‘stop’ button with her thumb, the plastic case of the recorder cracking in her white-knuckled grip. Tears streamed from her eyes as she looked around the room. The faces of those tough, indomitable Marine Raiders were ashen, and not one among them hid their own tears. Hiamovi slumped against the wall next to Abby, looking dead himself as he stared directly ahead.
“That’s…that’s pure evil, man,” said Chad, breaking the silence. “I ain’t religious but if there’s such a thing as demons, this guy is one of them.”
“I don’t wanna see that shit,” Nate mumbled as he fidgeted with his rifle. “I don’t wanna see dead babies. I can’t. Fucking hell, man.”
“We gotta find this motherfucker and make him pay,” said Vic.
“Later,” said Jax. “For now, let’s at least get those damn crosses down.”
“Wait!” Abby interjected as everyone made to leave. “Not yet. This place needs to be remembered.”
“Remembered?” asked Jax.
“Yes. This needs to be remembered, memorialized, made part of the history books taught in schools in twenty years. People need to see the kind of evil that existed out here in the Wild.”
“Why?”
“Because y’all don’t understand. You don’t understand what it was like for the people living out here. What it was like for me when I was out here. This,” Abby said, pausing and sweeping her hand in the direction of the crosses outside, “this doesn’t shock me half as much as it does you, believe it or not. Life out here wasn’t just about hiding from zombies and scrounging together scraps of food.”
“Too often, it was our fellow man that was the worst enemy. Too often, it was people who thought they could reshape the world according to their vision who caused so much suffering. That’s a lesson that needs to be taught, and the suffering of people like these folks shouldn’t be forgotten.”
No one spoke for several seconds as the weight of Abby’s words bore down on them. Finally, Jax said, “She has a point. This place should probably become a memorial of some kind.”
“So what do we do?” asked Todd.
“Leave the tape there, leave the crosses up. We’ll get in touch with the main element and tell them what we’ve found here. We’ll tell them to send the journalists up ahead so they can document this all. Abby’s right, we can’t allow this tragedy to be forgotten.”
Todd sighed and turned to leave. “I’ll see if I can get ‘em on the horn,” he said, already unslinging the backpack that contained his radio.
“The rest of you…” Jax said, but his voice trailed off as he looked around the room. He sighed, his shoulders dropped, and he silently headed for the exit as the rest of the group fell in behind him.
Abby paused just long enough to set the recorder back down on the desk, then followed the solemn procession back through the church.
“Hey, remember how I promised to keep my cool if we met Isaiah?” Hiamovi whispered to Abby.
“Yeah,” she said.
“Well, I’m afraid I have to take that back.”
Abby met Hiamovi’s gaze and saw a flame kindled behind his dark eyes, like two solar eclipses side by side. No sign of mirth or sarcasm could be seen there. Only hatred.
Abby nodded once, but didn’t say anything. She didn’t blame him or anyone for their reactions to the tape. It was indeed pure evil, as Chad said.
The group assembled just outside the church and sat in its shadow while Todd prepared a field antenna using copper wire to try to get a hold of the main element behind them.
“So he’s out there somewhere, isn’t he?” asked Vic.
“Who?” said Jax.
“This Isaiah guy. On the tape he said it’s his mission or whatever to roam the Wild ‘freeing’ people. So he’s gotta be out there somewhere killing people, right?”
“I guess so,” Abby replied. “Or he could have died by now.”
“I sure hope not. I wanna get my hands on this asshole,” said Chad as he fingered his KA-BAR.
Abby said nothing. After listening to that tape she was too emotionally drained to speak up about whether they should kill Isaiah the instant they see him or not.
“Get in line, you can have what’s left of him after I have a few words with the guy,” said Hiamovi.
“Everyone keep it together,” said Jax, though he himself appeared to be just barely in control of himself. “We’ve still got a mission to complete, and we need to be at the top of our game.”
Following a few minutes of silence, Todd came back around to the group to announce that he’d successfully radioed the main element. “I told them about the tape, and to watch out for these maniacs, in case we missed them. They’ll spread the word.”
Chapter Twelve
Silence reigned as the group rode away from Isaiah’s old town, though this felt different from the usual hiatus in talking. The stillness in the air now seemed oppressive, filling lungs with the weight of a strange kind of guilt, the guilt of living while the people behind them had suffered such cruel ends. Individually, Abby and all the others examined their own pasts, feeling shame for all the times they thought that they had it rough.
Abby was having a particularly hard time dealing with what they had just witnessed as old demons revisited her, sewing seeds of doubt and blame. She knew the victims, after all, as well as the perpetrator. Had her escape from Isaiah made him crazier than ever? Did running into Bernie and his family set off a chain of events that led to their demise?
A familiar refrain echoed in Abby’s ears. That was all your fault, the demons whispered.
“No. It wasn’t,” Abby whispered back. Nothing Isaiah or anyone else did was her fault. She had learned that the hard way, and she refused to place Isaiah’s crimes on her conscience. That’s what the old Abby would have done. She had to be stronger than that. She had to be better than that to keep that girl from creeping back into her life.
What? Don’t you miss me?
Abby snapped her eyes to the right, where she’d heard the voice. She might not have thought much of it, but hearing your own voice whisper in your ear is not something you’d normally expect.
I was stronger than you. I was the better one of us.
Abby drew her lips to a line and returned her attention to what was in front of her, trying to shut out the voice.
Henry wouldn’t have dared to lay a finger on me. I could have saved myself. I wouldn’t have needed dear old daddy to bail me out again and again. I wouldn’t have gotten Zach killed!
Ignoring her own voice, Abby leaned forward and patted Reese on the neck and rustled his mane. He threw his head up and snorted in delight at the friendly gesture. Abby smiled and sat back straight in her saddle. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath in through her nose, then slowly blew it out from her mouth. She did this again, and one more time after that.
The whispers were gone.
***
“Whatcha reading there, Abby?” asked Nate as he and the rest of the group readied their makeshift beds.
“Ivanhoe,” she replied without looking up. This book was one of her favorites, and she would read it whenever she could. This night, with the light of the moon streaming in through the window of an old cell phone store, was just such an opportunity.
Nate chuckled and said, “You know, I was supposed to read that in high school one year, but I never did.”
“Why not?”
“Well, there was a small issue of the dead rising that got in the way.”
Abby laughed. “I’m sorry, it’s really not funny.”
“I don’t know, it kinda is. I mean, I was actually looking forward to that one a little bit.”
“You wanna read it now?” Abby asked. She closed her book and extended it to Nate.
“No, that’s okay. You’re reading it.”
“No, seriously. I’ve read this at least a dozen times. You go ahead.”
Nate hesitated, opening his mouth to protest. But he took the book and said, “Thanks. I think I’ll read it right now.”
Abby stood up and gathered her gear together. “Then bring your stuff over here so you can have the moonlight. And read quickly, I’m already dying to discuss it with you.”
“Unless that’s the picture book version, I wouldn’t count on Nate reading quickly,” said Hiamovi.
Nate laughed and said, “Piss off, ‘Movi. Like you’re such a great reader.”
“Not really, but I have read Ivanhoe.”
Abby nodded her head. “Remember the first day we met? You caught my reference to the book just like that,” she said with a snap of her fingers.
“Well, bully for the cutesy couple,” Nate said. He cracked open Abby’s book and two photographs taped back-to-back slid out and landed in his lap. He picked up the pictures and looked at them, first the one side and then the other.
“Oh, those are mine,” Abby said.
“Sorry,” Nate said as he handed the pictures to Abby. “I didn’t mean to be looking at them like that.”
“It’s okay,” Abby said. “That’s me and my dad on this one. He was a Marine, too.”
“Yeah? Small world,” said Nate. “What about that other one? Extended family or something?”
Abby paused, the glimmer in her eye growing dull. “Uh, no,” she said. “No, that’s…that’s something else.”
She intended to leave it at that, and Nate’s curiosity appeared satisfied as he returned his attention to the book. But a part of Abby didn’t want to dangle such a significant moment in her life as a mere mystery. She needed to talk about these things, and keep talking about them, if she was going to keep getting better.
“It’s embarrassing,” she said, sitting up and looking at the picture, “but I don’t actually know anyone in this family.”
“Then who are they?” Nate asked.
“I can tell you who he is,” Abby said, holding up the picture and setting her finger next to David’s face. “He’s the last man I ever killed.”
Nate stared silently at the picture, and Abby heard quiet commotions around the room as some of the other guys turned to look at her, apparently taking some interest in her story. Hiamovi already knew how the story went, but he sat up and listened anyway.
Abby took a deep breath and went on. “I was on patrol once when I was undercover with the DAS. One of the guys in my team was brand new, and when we came across a store thief he chased him down. I followed, and we cornered the thief. I held him at gunpoint while the new guy moved to handcuff him. I told the thief to drop all his stuff, and he did.”
“But he’d hidden something in his sock. And when he bent down to grab it, the new guy freaked. He yelled ‘gun’ and fired. I was distracted at the moment, so the instant I heard ‘gun’ my training kicked in. Two to the chest, one to the head. The guy hit the pavement, and that’s when I saw what he’d been pulling from his sock. A chocolate bar.”
Abby paused for a moment as the weight of the moment settled onto her shoulders like a ruck stuffed with rocks. She looked up and stared out into the darkness, and for a moment the familiar faces of the Marines disappeared. They were replaced by the shocked and angry crowd surrounding her when she killed David.
“Why?!” came the little girl’s cry, a phantasmal plea from the past. Abby shook her head to dispel the voice and continued.
“I found the man’s family the next day, and I offered his widow my life. Gave her a loaded gun and everything, but she didn’t want to kill me. She wanted me to live with the guilt of killing a husband and father over petty theft.”
“She gave me that picture, told me his name, and made me swear to never forget him or what I did. So I don’t. I keep the picture as a reminder, but also as a warning. A warning of just how low I can sink when I let the bad thoughts take over.”
Abby looked up again and saw that everyone in the room was now sitting up and watching her as she told her story, their faces stamped with mixtures of pity and disbelief. But not Hiamovi. Alone in the group, Abby saw something else in his eyes, like he was proud of her for sharing her story so frankly. He and Abby both knew she never would have done so back when they first met. She turned the corners of her mouth up in a faint grin to acknowledge the look, and he returned the gesture.
“So that’s it,” Abby said to conclude. “People can call me a hero or talk about my espionage work all they want, but my real legacy from the war is that of an angry, two-bit murderer. That’s a reputation that I’ll never escape.”
“Then you’re in good company,” said Jax, speaking up from the back of the room. All eyes now turned to
him as he continued speaking.
“One of the biggest threats in Iraq was suicide bombers. They pounded this into our heads all during training and every day over in that country. So we were always on the lookout for overloaded cars, or people with cumbersome vests. Anything that resembled an explosive device.”
“Then I got to Fallujah. An absolute shit-show. Almost everyone there was a combatant. Almost everyone. Some civilians couldn’t leave their homes, complicating the assault on the city. My squad was in the thick of it, going house-to-house, block-to-block. And I gotta say that after the third or fourth time you round a corner only to find two guys with AK’s down a hallway, you tend to be quick on the trigger.”
“So that’s why I fired immediately when I turned a corner to find a woman with a bulky vest dashing down the alleyway towards me. One shot, right to the head. Her upper half snapped back while her legs kept going for another moment, so she did a kind of flip and landed on her back.”
Jax paused to lick his lips. “And that’s when I heard the crying. It wasn’t a suicide vest. It was a wrap for carrying a baby.”
He wiped away a tear with his thumb and sniffed, the only sound that could be heard. The rest of the room remained in shocked silence. None of the guys had heard this story before, not even Todd, who’d served with Jax for quite a while now. He looked into their faces and saw the understanding there.
Abby too wore a look of empathy. She got it. She understood Jax’s pain, which is something he never would have expected from a young woman like her just a few weeks ago.
“So take us as a cautionary tale,” Jax said, pointing to himself and Abby. “You don’t want to be the badass war-hero everyone talks about because it’s never that simple. There’s little glory in war, and the war heroes…often aren’t. They just aren’t.”
Jax left it at that because nothing further needed to be said. The men understood, and asked no questions. With the conversation officially ending, Jax laid back down and rolled over to face the wall.
His Name Was Zach | Book 3 | Their Names Were Many Page 10