The Fall of Polite

by Sam Kench

  An explosion of fiery orange illuminated the inside of the shop for an instant and another bullet slammed into the opposite side of Maria’s cover.

  ‘Fuck,’ she said out loud, switching to her rifle. One of the engines grew louder as it moved toward her through the sightless haze. She moved further down the row of dispensers and aimed her rifle between the last dispenser and the telephone pole.

  She tried to calm her breathing as she waited for another flash inside the store.

  Quickly it came. The man in the shop fired again, illuminating himself and his surroundings for a fraction of a second.

  Maria adjusted her aim and fired. The kickback from the rifle nearly knocked her over backwards. Her bullet’s destination was in darkness but she was sure that she had missed. Up, then back. Forward, then down.

  The engine roared down the street and two foggy beams of light shined through the haze. Suddenly a vehicle penetrated her field of visibility. It was a grey hummer loaded with men and armored with thick metal plates riveted to the hood and doors. The windshield had been covered by slotted metal and the wheel wells had iron plates that covered the top halves of the tires. The front was fitted with a V-shaped snow plow.

  Maria stood up and ran for the other side of the street. A man popped up through the sunroof of the hummer and braced an AK-47 against his shoulder. The driver of the vehicle slammed on the gas, speeding towards Maria and throwing off the shooter’s aim.

  Automatic gunfire hammered the street and sidewalk chaotically. The car sped toward Maria, its engine roaring.

  She let loose her final shotgun blast at the armored windshield while running. Golden sparks consumed the front of the hummer for but a moment, then dissipated.

  Maria dropped the shotgun and dove for the sidewalk, putting a lamp post between herself and the vehicle. She landed hard on her chest.

  The hummer crashed into the lamp post and dislodged it from its base. Maria scrambled forward as the lamp slammed into the ground, its glass bulb shattering on the sidewalk.

  She sprinted across the sidewalk and onto a snowy yard as the hummer reversed off the base of the lamp and the shooter yelled angrily at the driver for making him miss.

  The hummer circumvented the lamp post and drove up onto the sidewalk. Maria kept running, the wind fighting against her. A wooden staircase and porch revealed itself from the haze ahead of her followed by the old white church attached to it.

  Maria ran up the stairs, the jeep’s headlights shining against her back and projecting her shadow onto church wall. She rammed into the door, but was rebuffed. A stained glass window beside the entrance had been smashed in a few weeks prior. Maria climbed atop the porch railing and reached for the window.

  The hummer reached the church and drove straight into the wooden staircase. Possibly in an attempt to ram her, or maybe it just wasn’t able to stop in time with how quickly the building emerged from the haze. Old, wet wood was obliterated by the plow and the front of the hummer buried itself in the porch.

  Maria leapt from the railing as it fell apart, landing with her upper body half-way through the window. The side of her head knocked against the frame. In a daze, she tipped forward into the building and landed atop a corpse on the church floor. There were several other corpses littered throughout the church and the front door was braced by a pair of heavy, wooden pews.

  She picked herself up and looked through the window. The hummer’s 4-wheel drive pulled it free from the porch. The vehicle’s back doors opened and men funneled out, then the driver backed the vehicle into the white-nothing.

  Maria began a jog toward the back of the church between rows of overturned pews. She gripped the rifle’s bolt, yanked it up, then jerked it back. A brass casing spun out of the firearm and clinked onto the stone floor. She loaded her final rifle shot.

  The radio at her waist crackled, ‘She- the church!’

  She turned back toward the window; a man was climbing in, already halfway through it. Maria raised the rifle and told herself not to rush; there was time to aim carefully while he was pulling himself through. She took a step closer to him and squeezed the trigger.

  A bloody hole drilled through the man’s puffy jacket right where his heart ought to be. He fell backwards out of the window.

  Maria let the rifle hang against her shoulder, and withdrew her handgun. She continued down the aisle toward the back of the church. As she moved, the stained glass window to her right was blown apart by a shotgun blast. Flying shards of colored glass showered her, ripping up her coat and slicing the right side of her face.

  Maria fell to the floor atop the glass. Shards of stained glass stuck out of her cheek and forehead like shrapnel. She left them alone and got back on her feet. Another window exploded as she began to run, this time on the other side of the church. Men began to climb through all three exposed windows. Maria turned and squeezed a shot from her Walther PPK into the man climbing through the window closest to her.

  His shoulder jerked back and blood coated the window frame. He toppled inside the church atop the glass, but quickly rose back to his feet with machete in hand.

  Maria sprinted for the back of the church. She went past a hanging curtain into a room where three dead infants lay in a line atop a plastic folding table, swaddled in coarse blankets. A religious offering? The sight gave Maria pause, but she knew there was no time to waste. She compartmentalized the horrific sight and pushed on. It made her feel dizzy, how sick the sight was. Her ability to successfully ignore it so easily made her hate herself.

  Kicking open the back door of the church revealed a man coming up the back steps with a rifle pointed at his feet. He looked surprised to see her coming at him and she used that surprise to her advantage. While still running towards him, she lifted her handgun before he could raise his rifle and fired a single shot into his midsection.

  He let out a grunt and grabbed onto the railing to keep from falling over. Maria leapt from the top of the stairs. She grabbed onto the sides of his head, and drove her knees into his chest. He fell backwards off the staircase and Maria landed atop his chest on the ground. She heard and felt cracking beneath her knees. Blood blasted out of the man’s mouth and dribbled through his black beard. A drop of his blood clung to the underside of a stained glass shard embedded in Maria's cheek.

  Now keeping a careful count, Maria knew she only had one bullet left in her pistol and none in her rifle. She drove the stock of her empty rifle into the man’s head and he stopped his wailing. She dropped her rifle and picked up his. It appeared to be the same model.

  ‘You fucking bitch!’ A voice shouted from behind her inside the church. The machete wielding man, blood leaking from his shoulder, stepped from the shadows of the back room and into the hazy sunlight.

  Maria twisted on the ground to face him, raised the rifle and fired. Dust and splinters exploded from the top of the doorframe. The man ran towards her down the staircase.

  She yanked the rifle bolt up and back, ejecting the old shell.

  He stepped off the bottom step and onto the snow.

  She shoved the bolt back forward, chambering the new shell.

  He raised his machete for a strike.

  With the barrel a mere three inches from his chest, she pulled the trigger. Blood and jacket stuffing shot into the sky.

  The corpse fell on top of her. She pushed him off and quickly chambered a new shell from her sitting position on the ground. Another man stepped into the light from the back room, this one holding a large, silver revolver. Maria fired, her aim too far to the left. The man pulled back into the room and got behind the wall. Maria chambered another shell.

  The man leaned out from his cover and fired at her. She got down low behind the two corpses she had just created. The man fired again, his bullet striking one of the dead bodies.

  Maria fired at him; again she missed. She attempted to chamber another shell but found the gun empty. ‘Fuck!’

  The man popped out and fired another shot
that struck his deceased compatriot’s thigh.

  Maria, keeping as low to the ground as she could, dug through the bearded man’s pockets. His first coat pocket was empty and his second had only chewing gum. A bullet struck the corpse’s stomach, just beside her hand. The puttering of an engine became audible and soon two beams of obscured light swiveled like synchronized searchlights with the turning of a vehicle.

  Maria could see the start of another sidewalk across a small lawn from the back of the church. She dug into a Velcro pocket in the bearded man’s cargo pants as the headlight orbs grew larger through the haze. Another bullet struck the bearded man’s torso.

  She found what she was after and pulled a handful of ammunition from the man’s pocket. She quickly slipped one of the shells into the rifle and shoved the bolt forward. The man in the church popped out for another shot. Maria fired. The bullet didn’t catch his head as she was intending, but instead bit through his wrist.

  He let out a scream of pain and the revolver clattered to the ground. The engine roared behind Maria and she turned around as the vehicle emerged from the white haze. Expecting to see the armored hummer, Maria instead laid eyes on the other vehicle she had heard: a green, late-80s Volvo, lovingly maintained but with no visible reinforcements.

  The car skidded to a stop on the lawn a few feet from Maria. She loaded another shell into the gun, closed the bolt, stuffed the rest of the ammunition into her pocket, and stood up straight. She saw two men in the car through the windshield and aimed at the one in the passenger seat. Her bullet punched a small hole through the glass and buried itself in the passenger’s chest.

  The man gargled blood and clutched at his wound. She now recognized the driver as the boiled bodybuilder and the passenger as the young one who had pointed the others in her direction. The boiled man glanced at his wounded passenger, then opened his door as Maria filled her hand with the fallen machete.

  She sprinted towards the car and drew the machete upwards. The bodybuilder stepped from the car, leaned back inside and pulled out an automatic assault rifle. He cleared the gun past the car door, but before he could fire, Maria had buried the rusty machete halfway through his neck. He reached for the blade and gripped it with his fingertips.

  Maria drew her arms in, dragging the blade through his neck and splitting his carotid artery. Blood sprayed from his burnt skin as he spun to the ground, dead.

  Maria stepped over him, pausing only to pick up his assault rifle. She climbed into the driver’s seat and turned to the young passenger, clinging to life by a thread.

  ‘Please,’ he managed.

  She reached past him, popped open his door, and kicked him out of the vehicle.

  She set her guns down on the bloody passenger seat, threw the car in reverse, and backed up off the lawn. The car bounced as it rolled over the young man's leg, then bounced again as it traversed a mound of ice and snow and settled in the street. She shifted to drive and turned down the street.

  Bullets flew toward her car from far off in the haze and the radio crackled. She set it down on the dashboard in front of her. ‘Dick’s dead! Di- ead!’

  There was a small bubble compass mounted on the visor. Maria turned the car East and increased speed.

  ‘She’s head- own’s east entran-’ The radio crackled, ‘Send- hummer- nd the others!’

  Even with the headlights she couldn’t see very far ahead of her, then a thought hit her.

  She switched off the headlights. The drive was more dangerous, but she would be harder to spot from a distance. Maria drove another block, then made a sharp turn. The car drifted on the slick road, then charged south. She listened for acknowledgement of her direction change over the radio but heard none. Turns raced up towards her from the snowy abyss and she decreased speed to avoid crashing.

  She came to a covered bridge and plunged into darkness as she crossed it. Returning to the light on the other side brought a sigh of relief through Maria’s lips, having exited the sleepy little town. With the road now a straight shot, she increased speed.

  After a moment, she picked up the radio and thumbed the talk button. ‘You pieces of shit will give up if you know what’s good for you.’ She rolled down her window and cast the radio to the side of the road. Once she had put 15 miles between herself and the town, she turned the headlights back on.

  ***

  THE SHAME BURNED HIS SKIN. Roy could feel their judgmental eyes burrowing holes into him. Surrounded by his tired and wounded men, and by the grieving families of those who had perished, Roy knew they needed an act of leadership from him at that moment. He clenched his fists and used anger to cover his embarrassment; how the hell could this girl beat me?!

  ‘Don’t any of you think for even a second that this atrocity will go unpunished. That demon ended the lives of many good men today.’ Roy made eye contact with crying wives and children. ‘I will hold funerals for all we have lost. I will see to it that all injured survivors are properly treated and duly compensated for their pain. I will ensure that we replenish our ranks. And when our force is at its strongest, I promise each and every one of you that I will bring this demon to justice.’

  16. A HOMEMADE SWASTIKA HUNG WITH CARE

  EAMON SAT AT THE BACK of the bus, alone. The others occupied the front rows of the bus and chatted about something that Eamon did his best to tune out. In the past few days they had recruited five new members to the posse. Eamon learned no one’s name, nor had he spoken a single word to anyone since leaving the bus depot.

  ‘I’m not saying to take them with us,’ Jim, the oldest of the new recruits by two decades, said to Probey, who stood in the aisle watching through the windshield as the bus moved down the highway. ‘Just that if we happen to come across any women… it would be nice to, you know…’

  ‘No.’ Probey said sternly. ‘Women wield sex as a weapon. Even when you force it on them. Plus, sex weakens a man. You lose testosterone each time, and of course it’s testosterone that gives us our power.’

  Lance turned to face him from the driver’s seat, ‘Is that true?’

  ‘Of course. It’s how we stay superior. Never give a woman any power.’ He pointed to an upcoming exit. ‘Turn off here.’

  Once, and once only, had Probey let a sense of love, the fool’s emotion, cloud his mind. This one-time love had been both deep and unrequited. Her name was Shelly B.; a girl in his high school class. He fell for her at first glance, but she refused every advance he made. He tried anything and everything to win her love, but nothing worked. Young Probey, then known as Preston, couldn’t wrap his head around why she didn’t like him back.

  Over time, Probey came to understand the “truth”. It was her fault. Of course it was her fault; there was nothing wrong with him. Shelly B. should’ve counted herself lucky. And where is she now? Probey would often ask himself. He had looked up her obituary online; she died of smoke inhalation in an apartment fire that claimed 12 other lives in her first year after college. Right where she belongs, the stuck up bitch.

  Probey embedded himself in an environment that was conducive to his worldview. He met likeminded men both in person and online through chatrooms and forums. Their comradery strengthened and validated his opinions, and led to the formation of new beliefs.

  He accepted celibacy. He thought it akin to how a boxer abstains before a fight… but Probey’s whole life was the fight.

  EAMON RESTED THE STOCK of his assault rifle on the floor of the bus. His shotgun laid lengthwise on the bench across the aisle. He gently laid his chin on top of the rifle barrel. The image of the ginger 8-year-old’s face, in the instant before he obliterated it with buckshot, was seared into Eamon’s mind. His thoughts bounced between that child and his own, then to his wife, then to the fuzzy memory of the drunk who’s life he had taken in Kansas City. Alley, Beth, the lush, and this unknown boy were frozen in his brain as a mess of senselessly destroyed life; half his fault, half the fault of a world gone rotten to the core. He was a part of the rot,
and he didn’t want to be any longer.

  His finger reached down for the trigger. His eyes closed. The four innocents took to his mind’s stage and performed a most heartbreaking play.

  The bus lurched to a stop. Eamon’s eyes cracked opened and looked out the window beside him. Two bald men stood on the side of the road with guns filling their hands. They aimed at the door to the bus, a shopping cart full of food and batteries sat idly on the sidewalk behind them.

  Eamon watched as Probey exited the bus and confidently approached the men. They spoke inaudibly for a long while, then Probey returned to the bus and said excitedly, ‘God has delivered us our destination!’

  The two bald men lifted the shopping cart on board, squeezing it through the folding doors of the bus.

  ‘Meet Beau and Henry.’ Probey said, then took a seat beside Georgie.

  ‘Hello.’ Said Peter and Lance in perfect unison. The bald men nodded and returned the greeting. They were somewhere in their late 40s or 50s, wet from the weather. Snow boots covered their feet and dirty gloves covered their hands. Beau had a patchy blond beard and they both had blue eyes.

  They sat beside each other on the bench behind Peter. Henry gave directions to Lance as they drove.

  EAMON TOOK STOCK of his life. He thought of his brother, his sister-in-law, and his nieces for the first time since he had departed their farm. They were a reason to live when Eamon thought he had none.

  He rose to his feet and wiped the tears from his eyes. He stepped into the aisle of the moving bus and made his way toward the front.

  Beau caught a glimpse of him in one of the bus’s many mirrors, and was startled. He stood and spun around to face the lumbering man in the aisle.

  Probey let out a laugh. ‘Relax, that’s just Eamon.’

  Beau returned to his seat.

  ‘He mostly keeps to himself. He’s the sad, quiet type, but man, you gotta see him in action.’ Probey thought of something and let out another laugh, ‘His bark might not be loud, but he has one hell of a bite.’