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“No.” Benny snapped, “We’re as normal as anybody.
Don’t you jerks ever get it? We talk to God, and She lets us walk free. We’re
the ones Columbus called en Dios, a people in God. We’re the heathen William
Penn said were Christians without Christ. My ancestors didn’t call their
religion the Wy:O:Ming because it’s a pretty word. We were given it by enemies
that were scared of our power in the spirit world.”
He snapped his fingers in Mike’s face. Mike slapped at the
hand, but Benny was gone, then his legs were swept out from under him. He crashed
to the bricks, and Benny was on top, flipping him over and pressing lightly
around spine until Mike was choking on the need to scream but was in too much
pain to breathe.
Then it was cut off, and he found his pants around his ankles.
“You friggin pervert,” he shouted, clawing the pants up.
A ghost of laugh drifted through the dark. “Didn’t mess
with the important parts, did I?”
Then Benny said, “Hey, this monocle is cool. I can see you
like it was noon.”
Tightening the velcro, Mike said, “Give it back, unless you
want to be tracked a little easier.”
Silence stretched for long seconds.
“Nah, I’ll keep it. Hide it somewhere, you know? When I
sell it, I’ll warn the guy that maybe it can do that. But, man, you are one
poor liar.” Laughter in his voice, Benny said, “Blame Millie. Your mom is a
cool lady, but is she strict, wow.”
Mike started towards the voice. From a few meters away in
another direction Benny laughed. Mike changed directions, but he felt a rising
angst. Benny called from down the block. Mike stilled.
“No more games,” Mike said. “Which way back to the
bar?”
“Follow me.” Benny said it from less than a meter away.
“Follow my voice.”
Twenty cautious steps later he was standing outside the bar.
The lights were out, and the heavy shutters wound down over the windows, but Mike
could smell stale beer and the illegal smoke of tobacco.
Mike called, “Benny?”
He waited, but there was no answer. Mike called again, and a
dog howled. He scowled, backing up to the wall despite the reek of fresh urine.
Moments later a taxi drifted from the sky with lights blazing.
The cabby’s voice muttered through a speaker and Mike
nodded.
Creel was gone, somewhere.
Slipping in, Mike said, "A good whore house.”
The man nodded. “Tight.”
“And make sure it isn’t one of those unofficially legal
places, licensed by the state. I don’t put on shows for sweaty little wankers.”
The driver laughed.
The taxicab drifted into the sky with Mike peering down.
There, on the stoop of the bar, was Benny. And the kid was flying the bird.
“Tomorrow,” he murmured. “Or the next day or the
next.” Mike yawned and let his head drop forward until his chin rested on his
chest, and visions of a dark, naked angel danced through his dreams.
Standing flush against a door and dressed in unrelieved black
heat-shielding clothing, a man recorded what passed between the two. As the taxi
drifted into the sky, then shot away to the west, he pressed the side of the
recorder.
In the police stations of Philadelphia and Washington, DC,
the secret service caught the edge of a transmission.
In DC, a woman had the sense to see it was more than just
another illegal ham radio operator and recorded it. The recording noted where it
was from, Dark Side, Philadelphia, and to where it was going, somewhere in
Ambassador Row, Washington, DC.
It was the last part that made her mark URGENT on it in red
letters and pass it up to a superior.
‘ . . . . wolf
found.’
The superior was busy with his secretary and didn’t note
the package. The secretary struck with the paddle again, striking right between a
chubby dimple and where he had the president’s picture tattooed, and the
officer screamed.
In Dark Side, the gentleman with the recorder eased down the
street to a small shack. He pushed in glaring at the filth and the stench of
urine. It no more resembled the home he had near Peiking than it did his
Emperor’s summer palace in the Himalayan foothills.
He tossed the recorder on a rickety table. It rolled off, and
he scowled but slid into a bed that stank of sweat and old people.
Stuffed under the bed was the elderly couple that once lived
here. He would have to get rid of them soon. Tonight, perhaps. Even with the
damp chill of the shack they were beginning to smell.
Staring up through the dark he tried to relive the last tea
ceremony he had with his elder wife.
Instead thoughts about his reward came though his mind to
make his heart race. An estate in the southern hills. Forests of bamboo. A few
villages of peasants, all that remained of a once vast population.
SARS took many of his own family. Then the plagues came and
took most of the people. For several years the reek of death kept people hidden
away, and then the wars began, the nation splitting into a hundred small
kingdoms. The old masters were done away with and the new put in place. Then the
emperor began to consolidate power, and the kings pressed their heads to the dirt
like peasant scum, or their heads were parted from their shoulders.
He took a deep breath, and instead of the spicy aroma of tea
plants and bamboo, there was only the smell of Death.
With a small groan, he moved off the bed and replaced the
night vision goggles and dragged the old man out first.
The corpse was light, and he stopped, staring at it.
The body cavity had been hollowed out by rats.
Clapping a hand over his mouth he rushed out to
vomit in the street. By the end of the plagues, even the rats died away, poisoned
by the very corpses they fed on.
©2004 StoriesByEmail.com
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