Centurion: Mark's Gospel as a Thriller (6 page)

I reach for my gun and frantically draw it out. Then I dig the barrel hotly into his neck and say, "Drop it."

The guard doesn't obey. Instead he jerks and tries to aim his gun at me. I press down harder on his windpipe, sealing off his air supply. His face turns purple, and he drops his weapon.

Another siren roars out, echoing loudly off the buildings around us. The Centurion Guard is on the way. With my knee firmly in place, I spin my head, desperately searching for a way out. A child's wide eyes watch from an open second-floor window of a shabby midrise apartment building. When our gazes meet, he backs slowly into the shadows of his apartment. He, like everyone else, wants no part of this. The sirens and the noise of a scuffle have sent everyone into hiding, as they rightly should. No need to be present when the authorities come around, as nothing good ever comes of it.

My eyes dance from building to building and dark window to dark window. There's no way out and no one to help. I curse loudly.

I look down at the guard, whose face has turned a ghastly shade of blue. The man needs to breathe, and I need to run. Sweat drips off my bloodied chin and splatters onto his lips. His eyes are bugging out of his head. He'll die soon if I don't let up.

Before I can think better of it, I lift my knee from his throat. He hoarsely draws a gallon of air and immediately chokes on it. He spits up blood.

I lean down close to his face and say, "I came home to kill men like you. Nothing would give me more pleasure than to put this gun to your temple and flick the trigger. Do you understand?"

His voice is raw. "Yeah," he says with a tremble.

"If I hear the Kingdom is looking for a man with a gun, I'll come to your home and kill you, and I won't use this gun. Got me?"

The guard nods his head furiously, eager to comply. Jude was right. This man isn't a hardened centurion; he's a washout, a failure who's terrified of both killing and dying. Unfortunately for him, I fear neither, a truth I know he can see in my eyes.

That's when I'm filled with an unstoppable rage to murder him. He's the epitome of every evil that dominates this country. This guard—this pathetic excuse for a human being—is a cog in the great machine that keeps my people oppressed, only a small step removed from slavery. As long as King Charles reigns, we in the South will never be free.

This man needs to die, and he needs to die now.

I might not get another chance.

hear her voice before I see her face.

In a silky and unfamiliar accent, she says, "Don't do it. Come with me. We have only seconds."

I tilt my head toward the soft voice and raise the gun, taking aim at the dark woman from the Office of Record. Her tears are gone, replaced with a dry and resolute stare. I lower my gun and direct it back to the guard lying beneath me. The color of life has returned to his face; his eyes dart wildly, his mind trying to devise a plan.

"Don't even think about it," I tell him. "I dare you to give me the hint of an excuse to pull this trigger."

The sirens are louder now, no farther than a block away. If I stay where I am for another minute, it'll be too late. If the centurions around the corner see me—gun in hand—they'll mow us down.

This girl and me. No questions will be asked; their rifles will simply explode to red-hot life, and then there'll be nothing but the silence of death—but not before the pain.

The young woman, in a breathy whisper, pleads, "Come with me. I'll show you the way."

I have no reason to trust this dark-skinned woman with eyes like the night. "Who are you?" I say, the desperation in my voice startling even to me. It has the timbre of a man drowning.

"No time for that.
Come."
She offers me her small hand, taking hold of my bloody fingers. "Before it's too late. Before we have no choice."

I look once more at the guard, who now looks hopeful. He knows his brethren will be on us soon, knows I'm a dead man walking. A ghost of a smile
flickers across his exhausted face. I practically can hear the hope exploding into his brain.

"I won't use my gun," I remind him. "It won't be quick."

I raise my gun and bring its butt down viciously on the crown of his head, knocking him out cold. The crunching thud of steel against skull is sickening, but I feel no regret for what I've done. He wears the uniform of the men who murdered my parents. It's as simple as that.

Then I'm running again, following closely after this gorgeous stranger as she slips inside a dark high-rise.

She floats like an angel before me, her black hair streaming back and whipping me in the face. I follow frantically behind, praying this place will be our sanctuary. She moves with the confidence of someone familiar with the night and at home in the dark. When I trip and stumble for the third time as we round a blind corner and bound down yet another flight of stairs, she slows her pace and offers me her hand. And that's how we carry on, my hand buried inside hers, gripping it tightly, as if it were life itself—which of course it now is.

We've descended far below street level, yet I can still hear the howl of our pursuers. It's a royal cacophony of panicked sounds: sirens, harsh voices, the shuffling of boots, megaphones, barking dogs—vicious and bloodthirsty.

And then my name. The Centurion Guard is calling out my name. "Deacon Larsen! Halt! Deacon Larsen! Stop running! Give yourself up before it's too late! Halt! In the name of King Charles...surrender!"

"Where are we going?" I say, even more anxious now, only seconds away from capture and torture. We've exited a concrete stairwell into a long corridor that's barely wide enough for two people to traverse. We're still holding hands when we slow to catch our breath. We're both gasping hard for air.

"They won't find us here," she says.

"But they know we came into this building."

"The soldiers will only come so far. Kingdom officials, especially the Guard, will never come all the way down. Not to this cursed place."

We reach the end of the narrow corridor, and I discover it's a dead end. I hear my name called out again, warning me that I must surrender. The voices
have grown louder and angrier. I hear the banging of boots and the clatter of men garbed in armor as they bound down steps, taking two and three at a time.

"What now?" I say, turning to this woman who has thrown away her life in a matter of minutes.

She doesn't answer. Instead she presses a dusty button on what looks like a small intercom on the wall. A voice crackles instantly from it. "Who's there?"

"It's Maria," she says, her voice shakier than before.

Her name is Maria.

The voice on the other end pauses for far too long. Maria and I share a worried look. Time is running out. The centurions and their dogs are now in the corridor. Flashlights paint our faces alight. German Shepherds scratch and claw against the concrete floor as they hurl their fangs toward us. It'll all be over soon.

Finally an angry voice replies, "What do you want?"

"No time to explain. You must let us in. Please!"

Another pause. Then an impressive unlocking sound clicks, and the wall opens before us, revealing a small elevator with blood-red walls. I grab Maria by the waist and leap into the chamber. We crash hard to the floor. As the doors close, one of the centurions lets loose his dog from the leash. The slobbering beast tears forth and leaps powerfully off his hind legs—teeth out—and slams into the steel doors as they shut, sealing us inside.

The elevator shudders and moves downward.

Under the red glow off the elevator, I regard my new friend. Her face shines with sweat, and I wonder what it would be like to hold her in my arms, to kiss her delicate lips.

"Do you trust me?" she says, her breath shallow and quivering.

"Yes."

"Good," she says soberly. "Because down here...you'll need to."

As the elevator plunges hundreds of feet beneath the earth's surface, the din of barking dogs is replaced by the thick whir of the elevator's machinery—
hummmmmmmmm.

Down we go.

Then the thumping begins, hard and fast, its pulse infecting my bloodstream like a sticky flu—
Doosh. Doosh. Doosh. Doosh. Doosh.

I hear it loud and clear long before the elevator finishes its descent. It's a pounding beat, repeating its rhythm over and over, the trance quickly imprinting itself on my brain. When the elevator stops and the doors open, the beat is joined by a bass so bruising that I feel it reverberate in my knees. I've never heard music so loud in my life, if music is even what you call such a noise; it sounds more like an explosion.

Maria grazes a hand across my chin as the doors open. Above the noise she hollers, "Follow me." She offers me her hand, and I take it. "Don't let go!" she orders.

"Never" is what I want to tell her.
I'm never letting you go.
Our hands meld as if they were fashioned from the beginning of time to do so, as if this is all they're good for, to make the other body know the tender touch of love. We've barely shared ten sentences between us, yet I feel as if we've traveled a lifetime by each other's sides—intimately familiar with how the other moves, breathes,
wants.
I cling to her as if she were my only purchase in this world, the one true thing I can grasp. I long to touch more of her.

Maria guides me out of the elevator purposefully, her eyes focused ahead on some unknown target, a destination I can't imagine. My eyes dart this way and that, my mind manically doing its best to process the imagery my senses feed it. But it's maximum overload, and despite my best efforts, I can't absorb this dark circus in its entirety. I catch only vignettes, my attention divided between my surroundings and my need to stay as close to Maria as possible.

The space is damp and cold. My initial guess is that we're in an abandoned underground railway. The walls are a dark brick, and they're covered in a slippery film that shines like oil. I smell a putrid mixture of mildew, stale tobacco, and vomit. I reflexively lean closer to Maria and inhale the vanilla of her jet-black hair.

We walk at an even clip. The bass continues to thump at an unholy decibel, and my eyes slowly adjust to the absolute darkness of this buried place. To my immediate right is the brick wall, but to my left is what feels like a cavernous space. I squint and confirm my initial guess was correct. I make out a deep divide and can just barely decipher the steel railing running along the base of the depressed floor.

I put my mouth near Maria's ear, my lips grazing her skin, and ask, "What is this place?"

Maria shakes her head. "You don't want to know."

"Why won't the centurions come down here?"

Maria makes a sharp right turn, and we hurry up a small set of stairs that leads through an archway that's slightly better lit than the first room. That's when I begin to understand.

The hallway is filled with people. There must be hundreds of them. They're filthy, their faces smudged in grease, their foreheads shiny with alcohol-laden sweat. The smell in the hallway is infinitely worse, and no amount of vanilla in Maria's hair can prevent the stench from invading my nostrils.

Our pace is dramatically slowed as we snake through the overcrowded space. The farther we travel, the louder the music gets, growing to a deafening crescendo. I can't understand how anyone could stand being in here for any length of time. My head aches.

Doosh. Doosh. Doosh. Doosh. Doosh.
I fear it will never end.

No one bothers to glance our way as we pass; they appear lost in their individual worlds. I don't hear a single person speaking to another, not that I could with the noise, but still it's severely unsettling to see this many people jammed into a small space with no one appearing interested in anyone else. It's almost as if they can't see one another.

That's when the penny drops. These people aren't in their right minds.

A girl who must be several years younger than me is leaning against the wall. Her eyes catch mine. She has fiery irises, and she smiles wildly as her fingers unfurl from a syringe. She drops the needle, and her eyes roll back into her head.