6th Horseman, Extremist Edge Series: Part 1 (7 page)

Someone should have told Ramid that secrets
only beget curiosity. I try to ignore the fax about the Stone of
Allah. I try to forget his evil words. But he’s at war. He chose
his side and I’m on the other side. What’s so special about a stone
that they would mount a campaign to erase its existence? Who told
Ramid to threaten my life and my family? Who gave the order to burn
my church? There must be a damning reason they don’t want
Christians to know about the Stone of Allah. There’s a reason I’m a
threat even though I’m ten thousand miles away from Mecca.

I take a cab to the other side of Birmingham
and end up at a cyber cafe. I use a gift card to pay for the
Internet connection. I can’t explain my paranoia, but I believed
Ramid when he said they were watching me. If this is a war, I need
to know, and I’ll take every precaution I can to protect myself and
my wife. I look up the Stone of Allah online. I find nothing. I
don’t really have much experience with this online stuff. What I
need is a library, a big, old library.

The sun rises and I leap out of bed. My wife
watches me pack a bag. She doesn’t say a word. I feel a
determination I’d not felt in years. I tell her, simply, that I
need to seek some answers and that I would tell her everything when
I return. Worryingly, she accepts.

The fax I saw said the Vatican has records on
the Stone of Allah. Finding those records before they are gone is a
top priority. It will explain the war Ramid is fighting and ease my
mind.

I am at the airport an hour later. I buy a
ticket to Rome with cash and board a plane to Italy.

I
t
takes New York two days to
completely unravel. The Big Apple falls from the tree and now rots
in the grass. Everyone is getting sick with some kind of flu.
Crowds as big as New Years at Times Square flood the streets. And
just like a fucking tsunami, they sweep from street to street,
burning, trashing, fighting, yelling, and crying.

I watch it all from the
safety of my apartment window. Across the street some dude stands
at his window and stares like it’s the Macy’s Day Parade or
somethin’. We see each other, lock eyes for a minute. He’s thinkin’
the same thing as me,
This is fucked
up
. I am thinking one thing he’s
not.
Part of this is my fault.

People run down the street by the hundreds,
no thousands. Shit is goin’ down and I am not prepared. No food or
water. I can’t have that. I run down the empty stairwell and into
the madness on the street.

The market is at the corner, but the door is
clogged with people. I sock a guy in the gut and force myself
through the jam. Inside, the store is already trashed. Cans roll
around, some are smashed, spreading out their contents. Soda and
juices make the floor slippery.

The smokes and booze are totally gone. I grab
some bread and a jar of peanut butter and some pads then make my
way to the med aisle. Some shithead is stuffing his pack, clearing
the whole shelf. He’s got bloodshot eyes and snot dripping into his
goatee. I grab his beige shirt and slam him against the cooler
door. He coughs up goop and burbles something incoherent. I reach
into his bag. He struggles so I elbow him in the nose. That stops
him. I grab aspirin and acetaminophen and let go. He falls to his
knees. I got what I need. When I turn I see an old man sheltering
his wife from some thugs in do-rags. The old man hands them all his
shit. I push my way out.

The street is still a flood of people heading
upstate. They don’t stop. The cars have long been abandoned and
people run around and over them. Dead bodies are already spotting
the ground like the sprinkles before the rain. Many have been
trampled.

Hours later the sprinkles turn into showers.
People drop where they stand. They fall from buildings, roll down
steps, or simply cough, until all the breath has left their
lungs.

And the shitty thing is, I’d just earned a
half a million dollars. If I wasn’t able to collect, I was gonna
bash someone’s face in, just to make me feel better.

It gets dark and I’m hiding out on the roof
of my building. So are a dozen others. We see jet fighters overhead
drop bombs where the bridges are. They shake the ground with their
ordinance. I grit my teeth and close my eyes. It’s too dark to see
anything from the edge of my twenty-story building. The wind fuels
the chaos and whips up distant cries and screams. It’s nearly
midnight. The power is out all over, but fires keep the skyline
alive. Half of the group on the roof leaves when it’s clear that
everyone is getting sick.

A large woman lumbers up to me. She’s dying.
I can tell. I step away from her. “Do you have any pain killers?”
She asks.

I shake my head and decide to leave at first
light.

Today is a new day and the quiet has become
more unnerving than the chaos. I had stayed awake all night,
listening as the cries from below had slowly silenced. I head down
the twisting flights of stairs, stop at my apartment and grab a
broom. I unscrew the top and toss it aside and continue to the road
below. The morning light has just started to grow. I’m the first on
the street. I quickly find a National Guard post. Sand bags
surround five dead guys. I grab a shotgun and two nine-millimeter
pistols. Now I’m set. Some body better fuck with me. Please.

There are survivors, but they are few and far
between. Most of them cower in their apartments. I feel their eyes
on me. They look at me like I’m for sale, an item on some shelf.
What does she got? Can I take her?
They think.

This guy bursts from a department store with
a handful of shit. He looks at me for a moment too long. Probably
sizing me up, thinkin’ ‘bout what I had that he wanted. I gave him
my cold stare and opened my arms. “C’mon fool!” I yell. I shake my
broomstick at him. He runs. “Get outta here,” I mumble. I think
I’ll call the stick my Beater.

From the side street come two guys in tees
and shorts. They’re loaded up with M16s. They order my hands up. I
have to comply because the looter distracted me. That won’t fuckin’
happen again. Behind them comes a Bradley Fighting Vehicle.

One guy grabs my bag and rips it open. “I got
your shit, bitch.” He laughs. He’s some bald buff guy. I know the
type. “She’s got guns and food!” he says, inspecting my stuff. I
grind my teeth, looking for a way to get at this guy’s throat.

The other adds, “Hurry the fuck up! We don’t
have time for you to dip your dick!”

“She’d rip it off for sure.” The third
bastard clocks me across the head. I go out.

I wake up some time later, pissed as hell. I
walk north. I gotta get out and fast. Everyone is dead. I don’t
even see any more survivors. No one is staring out the windows. No
one is looting. It’s weird, but I’m not too sad about it. Most had
it comin’. People suck. Most of my family members suck, guys are
assholes, chicks bitch too much, and weren’t we killin’ the planet
by overpopulating it with assholes anyway? The sun is still gonna
come up and go down with or without them.

The streets are hard to maneuver — through
the smashed cars, trash, and dead bodies — and still watch my six.
I listen to the wind whistling between the buildings. No one is
gonna get the drop on me again.

Black smoke fills half the sky. The air
smells like burnt tires and occasionally the odor of some dead
guy.

I pick up a shell casing off the street. It
belongs to an M-242 machine gun. Those guns crown the rotating
heads of Bradley fighting vehicles. Finding the shell makes me feel
better.

Why? Because I’m gonna find those fuckers and
kill them. I want my shit back. They took everything from me: my
shotgun, my pistols, and my food. They even took my damn pads and
aspirin. What the fuck are they gonna do with pads? It was like
slapping me across the face. This surviving thing is going to get
harder before it gets easier. I know that as long as I have my
share I’ll be fine.

A Bradley fighting vehicle has a pretty big
footprint, so it hasn’t been hard tracking it. I’m getting close,
too. Being stripped of my guns, I have to come up with a plan that
involves beating in their heads with my Beater Stick. And if they
take me down with that M-242 then so be it. Just throw me in the
gutter with all the other dopes.

I sneak past an overturned and burned out
yellow cab and see the Bradley. It had smashed through the front of
a drug store. I’m sure they are inside, stealing everything they
can fit in the crew compartment. I run, half bent over, with my
Beater Stick in both hands. There’s no movement in the tank.
They’re all inside the store. The back is locked so they aren’t all
that dumb. I brace my foot on the tank tread, grab a small handle
above the back door, and hoist myself on top of the Bradley. The
overhead hatch flips open and a mole head pops out. So there’s
someone left behind after all. I spin the Beater Stick over my head
and bring it down on that fool’s face. The vibration I feel under
my fingers, as the wood cracks bone, stings. The man goes down. I
set my Beater Stick down and slip easily into the Bradley. The man
groans as I step on his head and knock him out with a quick thump
of my Beater Stick.

The back of the Bradley is filled with sodas,
beers, pills, and piles of canned food. I see my backpack. I pull
it from the stash and check to see if my pads and aspirin are still
inside. They are. Good. I add a few cans of soup and beans to my
pack and slip it on my shoulders. I groan as the smell of man-sweat
hits my nose. I gag and need fresh air badly. I’d gotten cornered
once by a dickhead outside a bar. He caught me and pinned me behind
a dumpster, a big hairy guy. He had that musky smell all over him.
He would have raped me if I hadn’t head-butted him. I hope he’s
lying in a ditch now. My stomach tightens. I shake off the memory,
burying it.

On the wall of the crew compartment hangs my
pistols and my shotgun. There’s an assault rifle too. I take them
all. As I start to climb out the top hatch I notice one of the
machismos returning with a box of stuff. He doesn’t see me, but I
see him. He’s the man that pulled my backpack off my back and
laughed. This guy should have died with all the others. He’s scum,
guilty as charged. I flip a cover off the gun trigger and pull it.
Crack, crack, crack, crack! Roars the M-242 gun. It shakes the
whole vehicle.

I rotate the head turret and unleash more
hell. The massive bullets shred everything in the store. The
shelves, toys, candy bars and all the other crap they sell explode
in a million different pieces. Life in confetti. I pump a few more
rounds into that man that stole my stuff, splattering his guts. I
hear the other guys start to return fire. I duck down the hatch and
exit through the back door.