“Jesus Christ,” Barry said, “this shite is getting out of hand. So these men are Islamic extremists?”
“I guess,” the driver drawled through his spittle. He held out his clipboard to the medical examiner, who wore a face of abject repulsion. Barry grabbed the board and checked the particulars before signing off on the new arrivals.
“Here,” he said bluntly, shoving the clipboard into the young man’s abdomen, “and for Christ’s sake, spit that crap out. You look like a roadhouse waitress.”
Barry walked off to call his staff for help with the influx, and as the adolescent idiot left, Barry murmured, “Fucking imbecile.”
“All these?” the morgue attendant asked, looking taken aback.
“No, just the dead ones!” Barry shouted from the next office. “Glen, you have to see this.”
“What is it?” his colleague asked.
“We are going to have our hands full tonight,” Barry revealed dryly, and dropped the register on Glen’s desk. “Look at that. Eight Muslims.”
Glen looked up. Barry was well aware of Glen’s open intolerance toward the Islamic faith and its ‘harsh rites,’ and he could not wait to see his colleague’s reaction. “You can’t be serious. Why don’t we just fire up the incinerator?”
Barry chuckled, not disappointed in Glen’s response. “I knew you would suggest such a thing, but unfortunately we are not a private institution, so we have to play by the rules.”
“Why?” Glen asked forcefully. “Just chuck the fuckers into the oven and claim they never made it here. Problem solved.”
Barry laughed uncomfortably, shaking his head at how easily Glen would come up with these ‘problem solvers,’ as he called them. “We have to get their relatives to collect them. You make the calls.”
“Fuck you, Barry,” Glen grinned.
Barry walked out and called the attendants. “Remember, boys, just lay them out so that we can plug and stitch ‘em before their families collect them.”
“No washing?” one morgue attendant wanted to know.
“Nope. Their religion forbids it. But we have to at least straighten them out. Jesus, they look like smashed tarantulas, man. Straighten them out, put their clothes back on, and wrap them in sheets, clothes and all,” Barry instructed the younger staff members, who all seemed a bit perplexed at the deviation from their usual procedure. “I’m getting some coffee. Call me when they’re laid out for stitching, okay?”
“Yes, sir,” James, the confused diener, answered as Barry walked away to check on Glen’s progress in the office. Nighttime always made the assistants nervous, but they enjoyed the peace and quiet outside. To add to their uneasiness at the sight of the shattered Muslim bodies, a storm was brewing outside.
“Oh, great, just what we need,” James moaned. “Frankenstein weather.”
He’d worked at Nirvana the longest of all the dieners, so he knew the procedure pretty well. The problem was just that James was also a great fan of paranormal studies and the occult, which often woke his mind to unnecessary scenarios.
“Suck it up, Jay,” his friend snorted. “The sooner you plug ‘em, the less likely they’ll be to rise and eat your brains.”
“Oh, shut it,” James sighed, and proceeded to prepare the first cadaver.
In the office, Barry found Glen more worked up than he’d expected. Glen looked vexed by the lack of information. He looked up at Barry. “I suppose I have to do the cops’ work for them again. After I take their prints and note identifying features, you can stitch them together.”
“No problem,” Barry replied. “Are you alright, pal?”
“Just been sick since last night, man,” Glen complained. “Fever, oh, and I puked my guts out three times today. I just don’t feel well.”
“I was going to remark on that earlier, actually. That wan complexion of yours could get you shoved into a fridge here if you fall asleep for too long,” Barry jested.
The two physicians heard some excitement in the other room where the cadavers were to be prepared. Echoing voices from the morgue attendants drowned in the sharp hammering of thunder, especially when the lights flickered from the force of the gales outside.
“Doctor Hooper! Could you have a look here, please?” James cried from the hollow walls.
“Be right there!” Barry answered. “Probably saw one twitching again.”
Glen snickered, “Take him some holy water. The flickering light is bound to be a sign of evil spirits, Barry, don’t forget.”
“Oh yes, the flickering lights,” Barry laughed as he exited the office.
Moments later Glen heard Barry call him to the slabs. Feeling thoroughly under the weather, Glen did not rush for fear of upchucking again.
“Are you coming?” Barry hollered through the rumbling of the heavens.
“Yes, yes, keep your pants on,” Glen muttered.
He entered the room, finding the young morgue assistants looking less terrified than he had anticipated. In fact, they actually looked intrigued, much like Barry.
“Glen-o, this is rather interesting, but I’m not sure. Need your expertise here,” Barry told him, his face reflecting amusement and fascination.
“What is it?” Glen moaned.
“They all have permanent tattoos, doctor,” James chimed in.
Glen frowned. “So what? Depending on Sunni or Shi’a, mostly tattoos are allowed, I think.”
“You know, for someone who loathes this culture, you certainly know more than most,” Barry teased under the blinding pale white light that made him look like a blue alien under a UFO beam.
“Only when you know much about a subject can you truly judge, my friend,” Glen retorted. “I decided I detest all of it. I fail to understand people killing each other over speculative historical figures who allegedly order them to be miserable.”
“Well, it’s not that that they have tattoos that makes this interesting, Glen,” Barry explained. “It’s that they all have the same tattoo. Do Muslims have gang ink?”
“Who knows?” Glen sighed as he nudged in closer to his colleagues to get a better look. “Nothing about these fellows would really surprise me.”
Although each man had his marking in a different place, the symbol on all was the same. One corpse had his on his iliac crest, while the next had his on the skin between his thumb and index finger. Another had it on his foot and so on, fascinating the educated eye of the intolerant physician.
“Well?” Barry asked suddenly, startling Glen.
Glen uttered some sort of confused murmur that had the rest of his company convinced that he, too, had no idea what it meant. However, this was not the case. “Uh,” he mumbled as he scrutinized the symbol with a surreptitious shake of his head, “it’s not the symbol that baffles me, mate.” He looked at Barry with a perplexed frown. “What’s odd is that this is the mark of an ancient order that has quite the opposite creed from what we thought these blokes were about.”
“What the hell does that mean?” James uttered inadvertently, eliciting a hard look of reprimand from his superior, forcing him to correct his address with some respect. “I mean, what the hell does that mean…Doctor?”
“I could be mistaken, but I’m almost ninety-nine percent certain I am not,” Glen reported. “This symbol has its origins in the Templar Knights.”
“Ha!” James laughed, clapping his hands together and wringing his entwined fingers. “Pull the other one, sir!” Reluctantly the other assistants chuckled nervously in the ominous rumble of the thunder, unsure if the doctor was serious.
“I’m serious, boys,” Glen replied. Barry knew his colleague very well. They’d come a long way together, even since their college days. He knew when Glen was genuinely sincere and by the looks of him, there was no humor in his response.
“Wait a minute,” Barry frowned, “do you mean to tell me that these men are affiliated with a Christian order of knights from Jerusalem?”
“This is so cool,” one of the dieners whispe
red as he nudged James.
“They were protecting 12th Century pilgrims who visited the Holy Land, yes, but they were not necessarily from Jerusalem,” Glen corrected his colleague. “From what I know, and I am no expert, the Knights Templar were mostly from France…” he gave it some thought, “…well, the man who founded the order was French, I believe.”
“And this is their symbol?” James asked.
“It deviates slightly from what I remember, but yes, the cross and the crown was known to be one emblem, while many variations of these red Maltese crosses have served as their emblem,” Glen said in retarded words as he realized the omission in the actual pictograms he had seen.
“What’s the matter, then?” Barry inquired.
Glen shrugged and sighed. “You see, half is missing from these markings, even though the emblem is entirely that of the Templars. That is a bit peculiar.”
“Then maybe they’re not from the order of Templars, sir?” James speculated. “Maybe they just have a similar badge?”
“Makes sense,” Barry muttered.
“I’m practically positive that these red Maltese crosses represent the Templar Knights,” Glen protested, sounding rather defensive at it. “It’s just that…there are omissions in the wording around the emblem.”
“What exactly is missing? Is the red cross not enough?” Barry asked under the flickering lights of the mortuary. “It seems that anything more should be considered an appendix, no?”
“I understand what you’re getting at, Dr. Hooper,” Glen replied as calmly as he could muster the words, “but what I’m saying is that the slogan is, well, wrong.”
“What does it miss, Doc?” James asked.
“It is a Crusader’s Cross, but the Latin on it says something different to the Templar’s most prominent slogan, Sigillum Militum Xpisti?” he said hastily as the intrigue possessed him more and more. He looked up and was met with blank stares all round. Impatiently, he clarified, “It means ‘Seal of the Soldiers of Christ’ or something to that effect. But here,” he pointed out with a shivering index finger as the apprehension mounted among them, “it says simply ‘Sigillum Militum’, which means that, either they are wannabe Templars who know bloody nothing about authenticity, or they…” he shrugged, trying to find an explanation.
Young James leaned in to look at the markings and said softly under the guide of thunder, “Or these Templars are soldiers of something entirely else.”
6
The Rowback
Sam arrived in Edinburgh just before midday of the day following his visit to the hospital where the nameless woman had put him off. Without reservation, he inhaled a long and deep breath when he stepped off the plane, as if reacquainting himself with the foggy air of his city. She was always pregnant with rain and pollution, but Sam wouldn’t exchange her for the world. He knew every neighborhood, every graveyard, every warehouse, and most certainly every pub worth its salt…and whisky.
The Scottish wind was welcoming, clawing its delightfully frigid finger through his dark tresses. Not even taking his hair back and tying it could keep it from becoming unkempt. That was fine with him. His rugged, slightly unshaven look felt good, and according to Sam – and a few sycophantic adolescent girls in his apartment building – the rough wildness suited his reckless nature in pursuing a good story or gallivanting in dangerous places on excursions.
For now, though, all Sam wanted to do was get home, kiss his cat, and check his gear. He still couldn’t fathom why nobody had confiscated his exuberantly expensive cameras and lenses, recording equipment, and riot gear while the car had been abandoned in Barking.
When he got home the clouds had grown heavy and a light drizzle had erupted overhead. Nothing new for Edinburgh. Still, for some reason Sam felt a feeling of dread overcome him with every step closer to his front door.
“Hallo Sam,” said his neighbor, Mr. Coughley, a war veteran somewhere in his eighties. He was right next to Sam when the journalist lugged his bags to the post boxes. “Fed your cat, as you asked.”
“Geez, Mr. Coughley, you gave me a fright,” Sam gulped, trying not to cuss at the friendly, emaciated old man who was pulling his mail from the little open door of his post box with shaking hands. “And thanks for feeding Bruich for me.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, lad,” he laughed at Sam. “I didn’t think the likes of you ever got a fright for anything, not unless the whiskey runs out, hey?”
“That’s true, sir, that is true,” Sam chuckled as he fumbled through leaves of unimportant junk mail and pamphlets. “On that note, I see Hailey’s Off-License practically burned down while I was gone.”
“Aye, son,” the old man replied morosely. “Fifty years that place has stood there and now, two days back, some immigrant nonsense about Muslims killed in England recently wells up here and,” he motioned with his hand what looked like an explosion, “…poof! There goes Hayley’s after being declared a national heritage site by every self-respecting alcoholic in Edinburgh.”
“Religious unrest, coming to our neighborhoods,” Sam said, shaking his head as he locked the box. “Looks like soon I won’t have to travel at all to cover terrorism.”
“Aye, son, aye. Sad state of affairs, by God,” the old man agreed. “In our day those immigrants would have been put square in their plotters by now, but I fear the world has gone to the dogs.”
“I agree, Mr. Coughley, but we live on the edge of too much information and too little practical assistance, it seems. Believe me, I’ve seen my fair share of plundering go unnoticed, and it sickens me,” Sam said, feeling his words come to life in the pit of his stomach. Was this perhaps the sickening feeling of impending doom his gut had picked up when he arrived? “Well, I have to go. Got some footage to sift through for a report. You have a good day, Mr. Coughley.”
“And you too, lad. Nice chat we had. See you, then,” the old man smiled cordially and walked into the ground floor hallway with a shaky wave. To the opposite side of Mr. Coughley’s corridor a double flight of broad stairs ascended. Covered with thick, dark red carpet and bordered by an old, faded variation of gold, each flight sported twelve steps that took considerable upkeep by the housekeeping company to keep out the mold in such a damp, old apartment building.
Sam laboriously lugged his heavy gear up, his legs burning with each step. It surprised him, since he was currently in the best shape of his life, bar his late teens/early twenties when he had quit gymnastics after a serious injury to his rotator cuff and right knee put him out for good. Yet here and now, after years of being in great shape on Purdue’s often life-threatening fun and games, Sam felt his body deny him for the first time.
Without warning, Mr. Coughley’s seemingly unimportant mention reverberated to his recollection. Did he say Muslims recently killed in England, just then? Sam wondered. Could it be the very same…?
“You forgot to put your phone on charge again, idjit,” a stark female reprimand greeted him as his head reared up from the landing just outside his front door. Sam didn’t care about charging his old Nokia as religiously as most, and since it got her to physically appear at his door, he was elated for the flaw.
“Hey Nina,” he smiled boyishly, trying to look fitter than he was, easing his huffing to a less troublesome cadence. “And to what do I owe the honor, then?”
The petite brunette was sitting on the edge of a large plant pot, one of two that flanked his door. Having a smoke at her leisure, she took her time in answering him.
“When you don’t reply by e-mail or text, I will naturally hunt you down at your nest, Sam. I was worried, ye bastard. Been waiting with baited breath and worry for hours and here you are, casually marching up the stairs from God knows which war you poked at again.”
“War?” he asked, roughly setting his bags down to unlock.
“Aye!” she said, her dark eyes flashing sharply as she scanned him from crown to sole. “You look like you lost a fight with a chimney sweep, love.” Nina rose to her feet, flicki
ng the butt of her fag into the moist soil of the plant pot. Her hair was tucked under a dark purple knitted hat that completely clashed with her blue jeans and tapered, tan leather jacket. Pearls of water droplets still adorned her wool scarf, reminiscent of the rain she had just come through.
“Oh, come on, Dr. Gould. Your scarf betrays you,” Sam teased. “We both know you’ve not been here longer than thirty minutes. Tops.”
“Forty-five, actually,” she retorted.
“Thir-ty,” he persisted without looking at her.
Nina breathed in for a comeback, but abandoned the endeavor.
“You’ve never been a good liar,” Sam grinned as he pushed open the door, reveling in Nina’s sudden scrutiny of the accessory. “Now, help me with my luggage and I’ll whip you up a good warmer, alright?”
Nina sighed. Sam’s skills of observation could prove tedious at times, especially when she was trying to apply some hyperbole for pity’s sake. “Alright, Sherlock,” she conceded, taking to the arduous task of lifting the black and green duffel bag containing unknown contents she did not dare guess at. “Jesus, Sam! What do you have in here?”
“Oh that?” he answered as he plodded into the apartment, dodging the affections of his large ginger cat. “That’s just some stuff from the war I just came from, as you rightly reckoned.”
“Oi! Bruich, darling!” Nina exclaimed at Sam’s pet as it approached her for what Sam did not yield. “Let me get a cuddle in, eh?” Unceremoniously she plonked down the duffel bag right there to pick up the whiny animal. The bag fell open and a hunting knife and gas mask spilled from the neck. “Oh my God! Where the hell were you, Sam?”
“Told you. In a war,” he replied dryly, trying to get the TV on with an unwilling remote control. “I have to get new batteries for this bloody thing.”
Nina frowned at his glib report and buried her nose in Bruich’s remarkably soft fur. Dare she ask for more information? She was awfully curious, but she knew Sam better. He would have babbled on about it if it had had any significance. Therefore, bearing in mind that he was covering a story out of Scotland, she assumed that a story was all it was, regardless of the heavy artillery that slept in the bag on the floor.
Order of the Black Sun Box Set 7 Page 3