The Manhattan Prophet

by Jake Packard

  “Okay, Maria, it is time. At exactly 4:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, the whole world will be waiting by their televisions for some word from you about what is going on here in New York. Your statement has been downloaded into the teleprompter. I want you at your best. Convincing and sincere. I truly hope you remember what I told you earlier. But for added motivation, or because I think you might be foolish enough to think I’m bluffing, I want you to take a look at this.”

  The screen flashed to an interior of an army barracks. A man who looks like her father is tied to a support beam in the center of the floor. Some SKs enter the frame. The man starts to shake and flail against his ropes. No, no, no, he is shouting though his mouth gag. The SKs stare at him like he is a pathetic little skunk snared in a hunter’s trap set for bigger game.

  The screen flashed back again, Pellet is looking at her from behind his combat helmet. “If you don’t do what I say, we finish this and do your mother next, except with her we have a lot more fun. You have five minutes.”

  * * * * *

  Jack

  Ibrahim edged closer to Herbie and Jamal as the stanis finished their silent communion, petitioning in their own vicious way to a convoluted Allah for the violent deaths of their enemies and a glorious martyrdom for themselves. The attack was imminent and Ibrahim needed to take some measure to insure their safety, even though he knew it was just about futile. They were surrounded by intense firepower and had little chance for survival. He knew they had to go forward, there was something out there in their destiny and he was going to guide them to it.

  He looked at Jamal imperturbable in the face of disaster, and Herbie, usually intent and highly charged, now had an almost poised sense about him, like a big cat in the jungle, on a stake out, waiting all night for that one perfect moment to strike.

  All three had looked death in the face together before and came out alive, maybe with a black eye and some cuts and bruises, but alive. This time . . .? We all have an end game to play out, but never know how much time before the final whistle blows.

  Gregor, kneeling, rose to his feet before the now reverent stani gang and they followed, standing before him. “My brother warriors, my blessed mujahedin. We came to rot here in the bowels of this foul and heathen city in what was once America, from the sweet mountains of our ancestors halfway around the world, where the disease dwelling within our midst brought destruction on our homelands and forced us here. Now we are imprisoned in the center of the evil empire that as children we were brought up to hate and vow vengeance against. So now we rage against the evil infidel in his home. It is through this great jihad that we now find ourselves together once more as brothers in combat. We are perched on the sunset of our destiny, with a chance to go down forever in history as men of great valor and of the highest nobility. I say we make the most of this moment, for he who dies fighting, will certainly live forever in the bosom of Allah’s bounty.”

  # # #

  Witnessing the imminent execution of her father had a profound emotional reaction on Maria, just not the one Pellet intended. Now for the first time since Salem’s release from prison, she found herself grounded, centered, like she knew herself better than ever before. Maybe it was the culmination of so many life-changing events one directly after another, but she really didn’t have time to psychoanalyze herself right now. Not only was her parents’ life on the line in the next five minutes, but most likely the city itself.

  As she read through the Alliance’s prewritten statements that she was about to deliver to the entire world, she knew things were still changing in ways entirely too fast and therefore totally beyond her conscious understanding. By the end of the day Shantypark would probably cease to exist. Pellet was intent on going in and eradicating any gang power that existed in the search and destroy Salem Jones mission. What would happen to all those poor people? And if he achieved his loathsome goal, the loss of Salem after the world had only just found him would be cataclysmic. From what she saw first-hand, his unique power was a true gift this world could not afford to lose. But what was she to do?

  Ira was no help, just twittering away about work-related technical nothings, satellites in the air, beyond commission, beyond repair, drifting out of control. Sam was the opposite. He was speechless, unable to create the plans he had always been able to make with his uncanny knack of finding the lowest common denominator in every situation. And Deganawida, always good for spiritual support, seemed to be lost in some kind of meditative prayer, as if he was trying to contact dead ancestors for advice. And Herbie? Where was Herbie?

  Mayor Storm sat upright, lasered out of unconsciousness, but babbling and jabbering, talking in tongues.

  They all drew close to him, surrounding him on the floor. He opened his eyes and his babbling stopped. He looked at them with a relaxed twinkle in his eyes, as if all this was just a silly little joke they could now share together, like he simply fell asleep at an inopportune moment during a routine briefing.

  But for Maria, it was another shock in a sequentially shocking day to see him recover so quick. It didn’t help with her clarity of the situation when Gino, Esteban, and Lucas started laughing amongst themselves. True, they raised Salem from an infant, and they were heroes for her up to this point, breaking out of prison and rescuing her from the SKs, but let’s face it, all three were known killers of men throughout their lifetimes, including all the bloody mess they perpetrated a little while ago back in the studio hallways.

  Maria also did not find it funny when Jack stood up like there was nothing wrong and walked over to Ira, who was breathing with difficulty and peering into the flashing monitors on his control desk. The mayor put his arm around the tired old TV exec in a friendly gesture, smiled with his usual nonchalance, and suggested to Ira that to help set things straight, he ought to start searching the scopes in the east for the star that was going to rise in the sky.

  * * * * *

  Maria’s Broadcast

  At the same time Salem crossed 72nd Street, an SK runner in full combat gear, who somehow enabled himself to break free of his presence, sprinted up the avenue and found the general standing behind some of the armored vehicles that created a barrier of protection from the gangs waiting inside the museum just across the street.

  Before the soldier could catch his breath to speak, the Lady of Singapore clutched at her throat. Staring south above the roofline, she cried out. “There do you see it?”

  Bewildered, but not wanting to sound shaken, the general muffled his voice into her ear so that no one else could hear what he said, “What in hell are you talking about?”

  She turned to him, frightened, and grabbed his burly shoulder and slightly shook him. “Above the trees, above the buildings, that yellow shiny fog. Do you see it?”

  “General, sir,” the exhausted soldier blurted, “It’s him, sir. It’s Salem Jones. He’s just walking straight up Fifth Avenue right towards us, sir,” he panted for some more air, “and there must be thousands of people walking behind him.”

  At that instant the broadcast started, which saved the general from looking like an immediate fool to everyone.

  Maria’s face popped up on the screen inside the general’s face shield, and on every face shield of every SK in the city. It also blinked on all the biopods and other personal communication devices of everyone else, believer or not, who was out jostling for position on the streets of Manhattan. The broadcast reached deep into every home in New York and throughout the Northeast Alliance of Cities and City-States, all over North America, across the oceans, and onto every seaside, mountaintop, and river valley on every continent, and anywhere there was a TV monitor in the whole living, breathing, waiting world.

  # # #

  “Ladies and Gentlemen, it is 4:30 in the afternoon here in New York City on Christmas Day, December 25, 2047. I am Maria Primera, broadcasting to you today from the ABCNN headquarters here in Lincoln Center. Sadly, I have to report that tensions have reached a peak here. Earlier this mo
rning there was a second ambush in as many days on a platoon of First Army regulars by terrorist gangs from inside Shantypark, resulting in the brutal execution-style massacre of twelve Marines and the hijacking of an armored vehicle. Many eyewitnesses on the street reported seeing Salem Jones on the scene.

  “Shortly after that incident the army located and engaged the hijacked armored vehicle in a firefight and destroyed it just outside no man’s land, killing all the hijackers. Gang fighters from Shantypark then breached their borders and attacked the city via the underground tunnels. They too were repelled. At the moment, we can hear the army destroying all other known subterranean routes out of Shantypark, sealing them off.

  “In fact, war between the city and its Shantypark gangs has just now been officially declared by General Rodney Pellet, commander of the First Army, acting under contract of the Northern Hemisphere Alliance. General Pellet is known as the sworn protector of the free world, and to be a man of character and dignity, one whose name is synonymous in keeping the peace here in New York and around the world.”

  Maria paused and looked down off camera. All the world watched and waited through this brief unintended instant. The clarity she felt and the focus she found went way beyond the words, it spiraled forth from that singular human intelligence that stems not from logic but from the synthesis of all intuitions firing in the human heart. With calm resolve, she lifted her head back up, eyes now deadlocked onto the center of the lens.

  “A short while ago I downloaded a statement onto my teleprompter which was written to tell you that everything is under control and the First Army is suppressing the radical terrorist forces organized inside Shantypark. In the physical sense that is true. But you are going to have to make your own mind up about today because nothing is what it seems. Usually what we say to you and what we show you here on the air is only what we want you to know. It isn’t really the news, never the whole picture, and certainly not the truth.”

  What is she saying, this bitch? We didn’t write this. He punched a button on his phone and relayed a message to several waiting sets of ears, “Plan B. Eliminate her.”

  “What I know for a fact is, that as I speak, a division of the First Army is sweeping from the north through Shantypark, massacring the outgunned retreating gangs and routing people from their homes. They are spearheading towards the Upper East Side where the Council is believed to be holed up inside the old Museum of Modern Art, which the terrorist gangs had commandeered in a daring raid a short while ago. They are threatening at this point to break out from there into the city in hostility. The bulk of Pellet’s forces are dug in firmly around the entire block on Fifth Avenue and the streets behind. Army spokespeople are confident that these troops are fully prepared for any eventuality. If we had cameras we would show you that the whole place is also packed with Salem Jones supporters who are everywhere, seemingly heedless of their own personal safety.”

  Pellet barked into his transmitter, “Shoot her. Kill her now.” But of course, the command fell on recently dead and butchered ears lying in bloody puddles in the hallways of the ABCNN studios.

  “But what is most amazing in the middle of this battle for the control of the city and possibly the entire world, is that those who truly believe are able to see a huge procession that is following Salem Jones, moving uptown on Fifth Avenue, on a direct collision course with both the army and the gangs from Shantypark. How Salem and any of those people arrived there is unknown at this time.

  “I believe it is important to know that the battle being fought here today will not be won with guns and bullets. The outcome of this conflict will be decided in each one of our individual hearts. We all must take a firm look at what is really happening in the streets of New York City today and make up our individual minds about what the results should be. Because it is these determinations within our collective souls that will decide the outcome in this war.”

  The missile from the attack helicopter ripped into the transmitters on the rooftop with a mighty roar blowing the building apart, and Maria’s face in the picture on every TV screen around the world sizzled off and died.

  The Alliance registered the general’s barely audible grunt over the intercom and was troubled by his ambiguity.

  The proselytes murmured between themselves, and that began a dangerous din that unsteadied the squirrel killers who were trying to follow their orders without any confusion.

  The stanis gazed at Gregor whose eyes drifted off the biopod and rolled up into his head.

  The soldiers back in the barracks heard the words they had often liked to hear. Plan B. The lady didn’t look too bad for a middle-aged chick, especially when they tore the burlap bag off her cardio-ripped body and saw her naked and trembling on her knees before them.

  But when the SK reinforcements on the ground broke into the main studio at ABCNN all they found was a dumbstruck babbling old fool playing with a video recording device, amongst many images of that woman reporter frozen on several computer and studio screens. He just looked at his executioners, took a deep breath and told them it was too late. Even they couldn’t stop a rising star. Luckily for him he was finally composed and at peace with himself when the burst from the AK-87 tore across his neck and split his head off. It thudded as it hit the studio floor, rolled a turn or two away and stopped against a wall, with a shit-eating grin on its face staring back at his killers like he was the winner here.

  The mayor was already hustling back down Broadway, aided by Gino and the other two disciples from Rikers, Esteban and Lucas. He was thanking them profusely and was very excited, and looking forward to getting back to his office, when the missile struck. They were so close the force of the explosion knocked them to the ground. With debris still settling around them, the four men lifted themselves up from the street and dusted off their clothes while feeling for broken bones. Finding none, they smiled the fond smiles of men who just shared near-death together and continued back on down the Great White Way, the mayor knowing there was going to be a lot of work to do at the end of this day.

  Sam was in the pilot’s seat but once again the helicopter’s GPS had taken control and flew itself west and away from the battle. He and Maria had gotten out just in time, lifting off just as the missile zeroed in and blew off the roof of the TV studio. The stealth technology on the turbochopper kept them out of the crosshairs of any other possible bad guys. But where were they going now he wondered as they hovered over the Hudson River.

  Maria looked through the chopper’s window back at the smoke and fire raging on what was left of the ABCNN building. Now that her recording was smashed, she had bought all the time she could. From now on it was all about what went down on the streets, where she knew Herbie had to be. She stared down at the blank monitor where her face had just been trying to warn the existing world, and wished with all her heart and all her soul that something would appear.

  # # #

  Herbie watched the screen on Ibrahim’s biopod go black just as the doors of the museum blew open and the stanis charged out. His body went cold with fear for Maria’s safety when he saw the screen go dead. But now he could only tuck Jamal close to him and run as fast as he could, following Ibrahim out, believing there was a reason they were still in his hands. His body tensed up as he ran out into the indefensible open air, expecting at any moment to feel bullets pierce through his flesh. But, there was only deafening quiet.

  Instead of the ear-shattering sounds of modern war filling the air with instant death, he heard the preternatural hush of an immense mass of silence coming from so many amazed people. Down the steps and in the streets by the museum there was no fighting, no violence, only massive crowds of the motionless, and the sounds of their breathing and their hearts beating, and that soprano music he swears he has heard before.

  The attacking stanis ahead of him were now standing still by the curb of the sidewalk, looking puzzled at their soldier counterparts instead of trying to slaughter them. The squirrel killers directly acro
ss Fifth Avenue had their weapons lowered to the ground and were paying the stanis absolutely no attention back. Everyone was just staring at the man in the long trench coat, standing in the middle of Fifth Avenue.

  Salem pivoted in a great circle, captivating every individual in his presence, peering directly into all their souls. With lightstream eyes as bright as the Christmas sun beginning to set in the New York sky, thus spoke the Manhattan Prophet.

  * * * * *

  Salem

  “You ask me who I am and why I cause you this trouble. Well, my brothers and sisters, I ask you the same. Who are you, and who were your parents, and who were the parents of your parents and those that came before them? Are they those who chose to defile our mother earth and destroy the harmony of this blessing, this miracle of life conceived here in this hallowed part of the universe so very long ago?

  “Since mankind crawled out of the oceans and the mud and self-proclaimed dominion over every species on earth, there has been a slow and determined decline towards these days of affliction. And now, standing here on the brink of extinction, I ask all of you, why did you bring on this disaster?”

  Pellet stood just off the curb of the street corner, a step or two ahead of the leaders of the Alliance who cringed behind him, stymied, overpowered. He was speechless, stonewalled. He wanted to shoot Salem dead but he couldn’t. Like everyone around him he was transfixed, powerless, like grass blowing in the wind.

  But not so Ibrahim who pulled at Herbie’s elbow and guided him and Jamal down the steps towards the street, silent, unobserved behind the halted stani marauders.