The New Assault

by Steven Spellman

  He waited and watched as the guardsmen looked from one to the other. At last, the guard in the lead stepped aside and moved to Sam’s flank. He urged the guard there, the one who’d been sleeping, with a not so gentle nudge forward. The guard scurried to point position. He wasn’t anxious to be at the front, not after embarrassing himself as he had, but he was anxious to not make any further mistakes. If he was to continue as lead guard, even after being caught sleeping on the job—he had no idea how Sam knew procedure that was supposed to be secret, nor why he allowed him to remain point—he would do it as he’d been taught. He could not take back sleeping on the job, but he could make the most of his job while he still had a job by being professional. There was a massive brick building, not far away. It was a kind of safe haven for the Simmons’ family members, a place where they could orchestrate their movements through the city in a way that allowed their security detail to shadow them at all times. The building had not been used in a very long time. There wasn’t much need for it now that the Simmons rarely visited the city. Beneath the building, workers had carved a labyrinth of tunnels that snaked in every direction towards the city. The tunnels’ designs had been ingenious, and their presence had always been a necessity from the very beginning. They were still a necessity now.

  CHAPTER 8

  Sam remembered the building, but he didn’t remember it being this dusty on the inside. Like his home, the ceilings were too high and the walls were too far apart. There was simply too much space in here. Too much space for few too people. The main sitting area, which was also the largest room in the building, was where Sam and his security detail were. Thankfully, the commute from the staircase to the building had been uneventful. None of the town’s citizens had noticed Sam yet, but that didn’t mean that someone wasn’t running back to them with news of his arrival at that very moment. The armed guards, specifically the leading guard, had notified the head of their division. It was strictly protocol. Now that Sam was in the city, not only would he have to be guarded more closely, but so would the building and the mountain staircase. Not only for Sam’s sake but because the highest-ranking officials in the city would be arriving soon. They would need to coordinate their various departments to accommodate any of Sam’s movements. Standard protocol.

  This time would be different. For one, visits like this one were usually supply runs. Not this time Secondly, Sam’s father was usually present for any Simmons visit. Neither his wife nor his son had ever come down from the mountain without him. Everybody knew Sam’s mother had died years ago, but where was his father? Sam could read the questions in every mind in the room. He knew he would find the same questions in the minds of the city’s officials once they arrived. He decided he would deal with that when the time came. It wouldn’t be long. It was strict protocol but more importantly it was good PR to be seen with a Simmons. For an elected official, good PR was priceless. Yes, the important political players would arrive soon with false smiles and personal agendas. Sam had always assumed their smiles were false; now that he could read thoughts he would be able to discover if his assumptions were accurate.

  Before the officials began to arrive, more guards entered the building through the underground tunnels. The lead guard had requested a larger security detail for the remainder of Sam’s visit. He wanted to be absolutely certain his charge was safe. When the guards arrived, the lead guard immediately took charge. “You, over there!” he shouted, jabbing a finger for the first arrived guard to set a post near the door. “The rest of you, assume a post at every window…you three, assume posts on the roof.” The guards all shuffled quickly to their assignments as the lead guard continued to yell and jab fingers. It was only when he looked up and noticed Sam watching him that he began to ease off the throttle. Sam only smiled and looked away. He would’ve liked to walk over to one of the windows, to gaze out upon the streets in the distance leading out into the city. He hadn’t been in the company of more than one person for a very long time. He had only been able to watch the packed streets from afar. Now he was here, and they looked completely empty. They wouldn’t be for long. Sam knew that not only because he could read the thoughts of the people, still out of sight, already heading toward the armory where he was, but also because there was no way the streets could remain empty. Not now, not that word was surely out that he was here.

  The guards blocked him from standing directly in front of any window, even though all glass in the building was bulletproof, but he could still see into the streets from his vantage point. He peered through a particular window, down a particular street. The thoughts he sensed in his mind were coming from that direction. It wasn’t a full moment later before someone did appear at the end of the street. It was a short middle-aged woman. Sam sensed deep despair in the woman’s mind, and bewildering intensity. She stumbled awkwardly down the street, determined to reach Sam, to catch a glimpse of him. To perhaps touch the hem of his garment. She stumbled forward a long time before she came into full view of the guards posted at the windows. Sam could see that she was carrying something. It was something that dangled oddly from her outstretched arms like…a body. The woman was carrying a child. By the size of the child, Sam thought it might’ve been three or four years old. He looked harder. It was definitely a child; why hadn’t he sensed the thoughts of the child, he thought. He stretched the powers of his mind out toward the woman. He sensed only the distress and granite resolve. Nothing more. As he watched the limply dangling feet and head of the child he realized that he could not hear the child’s thoughts because there were no thoughts in the child’s head. The child was dead.

  Sam looked at the woman and cringed. He could see in her mind that she believed he could return life to her dead child. He could not, but he would never be able to convince her of that. He was the messiah for most people, better than Jesus Christ Himself because Sam was close enough to touch. He had saved the world in a way that was clearly visible, not a larger than life act long ago meant to be taken on faith. Only, this woman was taking his abilities on faith, and they were abilities he didn’t possess. His blood had saved a planet. Certainly, his touch could resurrect one child. Sam could see it all in her mind. This is what she thought of him and by the unusual resonance of her thoughts, it was what she had been thinking for a very long time. Unfortunately for her, it was her only hope. She continued to stumble toward the building until she was very close. “Tell your men on the roof not to shoot!” Sam bellowed at the lead guard. The guard looked confused, but he eventually gave the order. He did it even though he had no idea what was going on, why Sam would suddenly be so agitated and issue an order like that. Sam knew what was going on. He’d sensed in the minds of the dangerously armed guards upon the roof that at least one of them was preparing to fire upon the woman.

  As far as the guard was concerned, the lifeless bulk in the woman’s arms might just as well have been a bomb. That guard was determined that the building would not be bombed, not with the most important member of the Simmons family inside. Not on his watch. He had planned to give the woman a single warning shot. Any other shots beyond that would be head shots. Thankfully for the woman, the order reached the guard before he could fire a single round. As the woman drew closer still to the building the lead guard yelled into his headset for someone to escort her off the property. Back in the house the lead guard glanced at Sam, but Sam offered no objection. The guards did force the woman away, with much less hassle than any of them were expecting, but Sam could read in her mind that she would not stay away long. Meanwhile, the high-ranking officials of the town were beginning to mill into the room. The mayor led the group. A very large and very false smile was plastered upon his face. The other officials smiled as falsely. The Simmons’ visits were always a mixed bag as far as they were concerned. Sure, Sam’s presence, a few well-orchestrated pictures with him, a walk through the middle of the city at his side, were all fabulous PR machinations, but the logistics of a Simmons’ visit were hell. It always took so much, th
e reluctant cooperation of so many different government organizations, to move a Simmons through the city without major incident and everyone was normally clamoring over each other to take credit for any success once it was over.

  The mayor and the men and women behind him saw Sam as a benefit but also a grating responsibility. Why couldn’t someone simply bring his supplies to him? Then the officials could take pictures with a Simmons right there on top of the mountain without all the fuss. It was terrible that the Simmons family had to live in total isolation, sure, but it would’ve been much simpler for everyone else if they never came down. The mayor was a fat man in his late fifties. He had carefully cut wisps of white hair on either side of his head but only mottled, glistening bare skin on top. He eyes were glossed over with cataracts and his teeth were covered in a permanent brownish film from a lifetime of smoking expensive cigars. He walked with a slight limp, thanks to a car accident he’d been involved in when he had still been a young man. He had refused to use a cane or any other mobility aid, ever since. He stretched forth a fat hand to shake Sam’s own. As the two men shook hands, Sam could read in the mayor’s mind that as far as he was concerned he was shaking hands with a successful reelection bid. The mayor didn’t ask where Sam’s father was—Sam could read in his thoughts that he wanted to—and Sam was glad for it. Sam had come here on his father’s orders, but he remained precisely because he couldn’t bear to think about his father. He would have to eventually, he knew, just not right now. Instead, he would seek the distraction of a reeling city, made chaotic by his presence. It would have to do.

  When Sam informed the mayor that he had come only to tour the city, the mayor looked confused but did not ask the questions that were in his mind. The foremost question was also a major anxiety; how in the hell was he supposed to arrange an impromptu tour of the city for a Simmons! He hadn’t even known that Sam was coming! It was bad enough moving a Simmons back and forth to the storehouses, and here Sam was, requesting to have a casual walk through the streets. On the outside, the mayor maintained his composure but inside his mind he grimaced and bemoaned deeply. He wasn’t sure he could orchestrate such a move on a moment’s notice. He was sure that he wasn’t interested in letting on that he was facing an obstacle that he didn’t know how to brooch.

  The mayor assured Sam that he would have whatever he requested but of course Sam saw in the mayor’s mind that he himself was highly doubtful of that. The mayor turned to the lead guard and called him forward. One of the other guards reached him before the lead guard and began whispering in his ear. Sam didn’t need to read minds to know what they were discussing—the lead guards earlier lapse of duty. His fellow guards felt strongly that he no longer deserved his position. How could he lead the group when he had fallen asleep on the job? When the guard finished whispering the mayor looked toward the guard. There was obvious distaste upon the mayor’s face. He began to say something to the guard, but Sam stepped in the way. “I request that this man head my security detail for the entire trip.” He said calmly.

  The shock upon the mayor’s face lasted longer this time. What Sam was asking for was highly unorthodox. As a rule, it was bad publicity to deny a Simmons anything they might request but then no Simmons had ever made a request like this. The lead guard had already fallen asleep on the job. What if Sam were injured or even killed should the guard have another moment of weakness? The public would not care that Sam himself had made the request, they would only care that their messiah was dead because someone had dropped the ball. The mayor was determined not to be that Someone. Sam saw what was happening and intervened. He nudged the mayors mind just enough. He suggested into the mayor’s brain—he’d learned from his experience with the bear that if he did it right, the mayor would assume the thoughts were his own—that giving him what he asked was the best thing the mayor could do for his career. Sam knew that the mayor valued his career above all else, and the ploy worked. The mayor took to Sam’s mental suggestion as easily as the bear had. Just as Geoffrey claimed, people were just basically animals beneath it all.

  The mayor gave the order and the other guards backed away slowly. Reluctantly. He took the lead guard aside and began to discuss with him what would be needed for the procession through the city. Sam looked on but not with complete satisfaction. He thought the guy deserved another chance—he didn’t think he should be fired just because he took an unscheduled nap—but he had emphatically not enjoyed manipulating the mayor’s mind to do it. It had been a simple thing, offering a telepathic suggestion. Too simple. Could Sam even still call it a suggestion, considering that he knew full well that the mayor would not perceive it as suggestion, but as his own thought? Manipulation. That’s what it was, plain and simple. Low level telepathic manipulation. Sam sighed deeply, but he continued on. At least he’d done a good deed with his telepathic manipulation.

  CHAPTER 9

  Sam had visited the city before, but this time seemed different. The city was not unlike other cities that existed in the time before the Virus. There were places in the city that were more affluent, better maintained and protected, than others. In fact, much of the city had existed before the Virus. Most of it had been completely ruined, burned to ashes, or toppled to rubble, like so many other entire cities, but unlike most of those cities some of this one had survived. The people rebuilt around what little had remained intact, but there was not nearly so many people as before, so the work was slow and fraught with difficulties. Then, hordes of people began to pour in from the surrounding areas, all of them in search of new homes. These people knew little of the city’s heritages and architecture. They saw no need to rebuild the city as it had been. Different parts of the city, rebuilt with markedly different types of streets and buildings, began to rise from the ruin as these people from abroad began to build new homes.

  By the end of it the city looked like a patch work quilt. Much of it lacked any resemblance to what it once had been, and the rest of it remained in ruin. Sam had seen in his father’s memories that he had visited cities where the rich and poor lived almost literally side by side even though their lives existed at opposite extremes. Geoffrey had been shocked once while enjoying a meal at an upscale restaurant in Atlanta with a parking lot filled with Porches and Benzes, to gaze out of the window and find a decrepit homeless shelter literally the next block over. The shelter was surrounded by people, young and old, who looked as if they had nowhere else to go and no money to get there if they did. Their clothes were tattered to rags, there was a dangerous glint in most of their eyes, and too many of them looked as if they hadn’t had a bath in a very long time. Geoffrey had wondered at the fact that the two realities could exist so closely together, and no one find it strange. Weren’t the patrons of the restaurant concerned about their cars, about their own safety, as they enjoyed their expensive meals so close to people who seemed to have nothing to lose? People who probably resented the fact they had so little, while others had so much, so near? Geoffrey had been invited to the restaurant by a friend. That friend didn’t seem to find the arrangement strange. He ate with gusto, as did everyone else in the restaurant. As far as Geoffrey had seen, he had been the only one that had even noticed. He not only noticed, he cringed. These things shouldn’t be. It seemed wrong to taunt the poor like this.

  Sam agreed as his travel party led him through the streets of the city, now. If the mayor had had a choice he would’ve led Sam through the city’s most affluent neighborhoods only, but Sam insisted otherwise. He wanted to see the entire city, not just the places where the rich lived. He and his family had lived like the rich for as long as he could remember. Just like the rich they’d lived in a house that was much too big and much too expensive for their needs. Just like the rich, they lived in seclusion, separated from the common man when they were really just common people themselves. Just like the rich they were held in higher esteem than they should’ve been simply because of their position above the crowd.

  Unlike the rich, the Simmons had
been forced into that position. Sam didn’t see himself as better than any of the townspeople but they themselves did, and so he was forced to live above and apart from them or else be torn to pieces like some coveted magical charm tossed into the public square. As he walked through the streets of the most upscale parts of the city—there weren’t very many of them—he saw clearly that the rich here did not resent their position. They reveled in it, they enjoyed it. They built homes for themselves that were nearly as opulent as the Simmons’ own, and they lined the streets to see Sam covered in jewels and clothes that were distastefully excessive at best. Some of them even hung from the open windows of their huge houses and threw down fistfuls of money, showering Sam and his security detail in small clouds of large bills, like so much confetti. It was a sign of devotion, like kissing the hands of a revered religious figure, for them. A growing crowd followed Sam and most of the people in that crowd would never know what it was like to have so much money. They scrambled to snatch up the fallen cash, and were sometimes trampled by yet others desperate to do the same thing.

  As the mayor reluctantly instructed Sam’s security detail into some of these less savory parts of town Sam could tell that the mood of many in the crowd was growing increasingly more tense. He’d expected as much. There was a thick ring of people following him from every direction, just as the crowd had shadowed Jesus Christ Himself. There were rich people peppered throughout the crowd that never visited these lower-class sections of the city or if they did, they did it quickly and from behind the protection of locked car doors. It was ironic because Sam could see in the minds of the rich and the poor alike the same apprehensions. The poor people didn’t enjoy living here as much as the rich didn’t enjoy visiting. The poor dreaded the idea of poverty just as much as the rich. The difference was that for the poor it wasn’t an idea, it was a harsh reality that held them captive against their wills every day of their lives. Poverty had stolen hope from most of these people. It had stolen opportunity. It had stolen nearly everything that made life worth living. No matter how much they lost it still hurt, angered, and frightened them that the nightmare might never end. The rich could help the poor and the poor could teach the rich, but they remained separate. They always had, even before the Virus. Perhaps they always would.