The Crimson Deathbringer

by Sean Robins

  I gave her PDD back. “Did you like it?”

  “Yes. You’re funny, Mr. War Hero. But I thought you were kind of cocky and full of yourself. Now is your chance to prove me wrong.”

  Who was I, as a perfect Southern gentleman, to prove a beautiful woman wrong?

  “I also worked in your movie as a stunt pilot,” she said.

  I blinked. “You are a stuntwoman?”

  “And an acrobatic pilot,” she said. “World champion in woman’s category four years in a row.”

  “Wow,” I said, tipping my imaginary hat. That was almost as impressive as my own achievements as a pilot. Almost.

  We talked a lot that night. We had a lot in common. We were both movie buffs, and we loved the classics. We were madly in love with flying and had weird senses of humor. And we were both rich.

  “Well, my family is,” she said. “My parents were originally from Cuba. They moved to the US when I was four. My mother passed away shortly after, and my father sent me to a private boarding school in England, or rather what the British call a public school.

  That explained the sexy accent.

  “Why England? Why not right here in the U.S.?” I asked.

  “To avoid seeing me even during the holidays, I guess.”

  I blinked again. This was happening a lot tonight. “What kind of a father doesn’t want to see his daughter?”

  “The abusive, manipulative asshole type.”

  Her answer baffled me, but I was uncomfortable prying into her relationship with her father at that moment.

  “Later on, I enraged my father by becoming an acrobatic pilot rather than the CEO of one of his companies and eventually marrying into money, so he cut me off. Still, I make enough money to live comfortably,” she added, straightening a curly lock of her hair with one slim finger.

  “You know, you’re too good to be true,” I told her. “Too perfect. What’s the catch? What is wrong with you?”

  “Well, I do have an impulse-control disorder,” she answered, sipping her wine.

  I waved my hand dismissingly. “It’s nothing. My therapist says I have primarily obsessional obsessive-compulsive disorder, aka Pure O.”

  She gave me a level look. “I’m an acrobatic pilot, and I can’t control my impulses. It could get me killed one day.”

  “You know what my condition is like?” I asked. “It’s like Venom’s stuck in my brain, but unlike the movies, he doesn’t give me any superpowers, and he never says something supportive or witty. He complains nonstop and predicts all sorts of negative outcomes. Sometimes I’d happily give one of my eyes for five minutes of peace and quiet inside my own brain.”

  “Venom? Really? You have more of a Peter Parker vibe.”

  I laughed and tried to change the subject. “So, besides watching movies, what else do you do for fun?”

  “Plenty. Dance, tennis. In my spare time, I run my own charity, collecting donations for New York’s orphanages.”

  I heard “tennis,” and the last part flew right over my head. “How about a few sets?”

  The next weekend, after I beat her in several consecutive sets and pissed her off in the process, she challenged me to a swimming match. I was a very good swimmer, but after we jumped into the water, all I could see was a couple of long dark brown arms moving away from me faster than the Road Runner running away from Wile E. Coyote.

  When I reached the other side of the pool, she told me, “I am going to rub this in your face for the rest of your life.”

  I had a hard time breathing, but I still managed to say, “Does it mean you think we’ll be together for the rest of my life?”

  She laughed but seemed unsure of what to say.

  “Is it a bad time to ask you to dinner?” I asked.

  “Of course not,” she said. “Swimming burns a lot of calories. I need a chocolate sundae.”

  We went for dinner. She ordered a salad and a huge chocolate sundae. I didn’t believe she’d eat it all, but she did. I liked the way she licked chocolate syrup off her lips. I liked her little sigh of contentment at the end. I guess I ate too, but I couldn’t remember after I went home later that night.

  We started dating. She moved in with me on our six-month anniversary, after we came back from our trip to Cancun to celebrate the occasion. She beat me at swimming there too, but I didn’t care. I remember a moment on the beach after we’d swum, scuba-dived and jet-skied to the point of exhaustion. She lay on top of me, trickling sand on my chest. “Your eyes are as blue as . . .”

  “The sea?”

  “I was going to say the blue margaritas at the hotel bar.”

  I realized I was in love at that moment.

  We’d been living happily together until Kurt showed up and everything went to hell.

  On the third day of my imprisonment, my guards gave me a brown suit to wear, let me take a shower and shave, put me in chains, and took me before the judge.

  The courtroom was the size of Grand Central Terminal’s main concourse, and it was filled with Zheng’s people: government officials, reporters from government news agencies, SCTU agents and security guards. There must have been hundreds of them. When I entered, all the people in the first few rows of seats turned to look at me with hatred. It wasn’t something I was used to. People liked me. I was that kind of guy.

  Under the hostile stares of the spectators, I joined Kurt and Allen, who were wearing suits and chains identical to mine and sitting in the defendants’ seats. Kurt looked at me with guilt in his gray eyes and said something about not meaning for any of this to happen, but I didn’t register his words because I spotted Liz in the courtroom. My vision tunneled, and I stopped paying attention to anything else.

  Liz, wearing a simple white skirt suit, was seated on the other side of the courtroom, surrounded by a few tough-looking female guards. At least she wasn’t in chains. Someone had probably decided having a beautiful woman in chains didn’t look good in front of the cameras, or maybe Zheng’s people were trying to project an image of leniency.

  Liz was scared, but no one but me would notice. She looked composed, but her face had never been that still. She was always smiling, mugging, glancing here and there, not like this, like a goddamn black Madonna, like a statue. She saw me, and her face came alive. She stood up as if she wanted to come to me, but one of her guards pushed her back. A look of despair and fury crossed her face. She kicked the guard in the shin so hard the sound of the impact reverberated in the courtroom. The guard looked like she wanted to attack her, but with all the cameras in the room, she controlled herself and limped away.

  I waved at Liz and tried to smile, hating myself for dragging her into this. Should I have told her I knew Kurt? It wouldn’t have made any difference. I’d never have expected him to show up. She wouldn’t have let it stop her from moving in with me.

  The court proceedings started after I arrived. We found out security cameras had caught Kurt entering my neighborhood, and later a surveillance drone’s footage had shown him entering my house. The judge, an old, fat man with rubbery lips and gin blossoms, asked me, “Major Harrison. You are a decorated air force officer. Why on earth did you decide to help a known terrorist?”

  Kurt stood up. “Your Honor, I forced this couple to help me using chemical Scopolamine. The court should consider letting them go.”

  I stood up too.

  A thought in the back of my mind, my very own personal Venom, said, “Be quiet. Maybe it’ll work. If there’s a one percent chance you and Liz don’t end up in a coffin, you should take it.”

  He had a point. I’d heard of cases getting thrown out of court due to the so-called “Scopolamine Defense.” But there was no way I’d stay silent and let my friend take the fall for what I’d done of my own accord. It was bad enough that I let him down the last time. Plus, I was sure I was dead anyway. I might as well keep my integrity.

  I opened my mouth to protest, but Liz beat me to it. Her cultured voice cut through the courtroom like a knife. �
��That’s not true. We helped him, and we’d do it again. You expected us to let a man just bleed to death? Are you not human?”

  That’s my girl.

  It took the judge only a few minutes to make his decision. He got up, leaned forward on his bench, and announced, “By the authority vested in me by General Zheng, I hereby sentence Kurt von der Hagen and Allen Johnson, the infamous terrorists, to death. Major Jim Harrison and Elizabeth Lopez, among the most privileged and respected of our citizens, shamefully abandoned their duty. They will receive the same penalty for aiding and abetting known terrorists.”

  A loud murmur swept the courtroom. Everyone had started to talk at the same time. Someone started clapping, a few more people followed suit, and soon thunderous applause filled the courtroom. The judge smiled proudly and bowed his head to the crowd.

  I wondered what the big deal was. This outcome was so predictable I felt absolutely nothing. I’d known I was a dead man since I woke up in my cell three days ago, and I had enough time in solitary to accept this fact. This kangaroo court was nothing but a charade. “Big freaking surprise that is,” I said.

  Kurt and Allen didn’t seem too bothered either. Allen yawned and pretended he was looking at a wristwatch he wasn’t wearing. Kurt tapped his fingers on the table and looked heavenward. The three of us were the very picture of nonchalance.

  Liz, on the other hand, obviously disagreed with the judge’s ruling and decided to show her displeasure. In the blink of an eye, she jumped over the table in front of her, managed to evade her guards like the stunt pilot she was, pulled her skirt above her knees, and ran towards the judge’s bench, fast as a cheetah.

  The judge gasped and took a step backward. He tripped over his gown, lost his balance and disappeared behind his bench.

  Holding back a “Liz, no!” scream, I jumped to my feet. Kurt and Allen did the same. Several guards drew their weapons and surrounded us. One of them shouted, “Freeze! Don’t move!”

  “Redundant much?” I told him.

  A court security guard tackled Liz. They both went down, but she was on her feet a second later. Another guard confronted her. She kicked him in the balls. With a comical expression on his face, the man grabbed his privates, opened and closed his mouth twice without making a sound and fell to the floor.

  That’s why all her guards are female.

  In chains, the three of us weren’t able to do anything to help Liz. I watched helplessly and hoped the cameras would keep the guards from hurting her. I gripped my chains so hard my knuckles went white. Allen took a few steps towards the guards. Kurt pulled him back.

  Liz’s own guards caught up with her and grabbed her from behind. She shouted, “Let me go!” and tried to wriggle free. They didn’t hurt her or anything, just dragged her towards her seat. I breathed a sigh of relief.

  Kurt told me, “Is this what you meant by Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?”

  “Right? She’s an enigma,” I said. “She’s so feminine and she talks like Mary Poppins, but she pulls stunts like this.”

  Allen, looking with admiration at Liz, who was struggling with her guards and refusing to go back to her seat, asked, “How do you deserve a woman like that?”

  I could see Allen still hadn’t forgiven me for what he called “dumping my best friend at first sign of trouble.” I answered, “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m super charming. How’s your ex-better half, by the way?”

  Allen, malice dripping from his voice, said, “Last I checked, the fat bitch was still wasting oxygen. Thanks for asking though.”

  The guards pushed us back to our seats. Another judge replaced the first one, who had apparently banged his fat head against the floor and lost consciousness. The new judge set the executions for two weeks later at dawn.

  “Why don’t they get this over with as soon as possible?” I asked Kurt.

  “It’s a trap,” said Kurt. “They hope the Resistance try to save Allen and me. But it won’t work.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’ll get the word out that if any of the Resistance members are dumb enough to fall for it, I’d hit a guard unconscious, grab his gun and shoot them myself,” said Kurt.

  My guards dragged me away. “See you on the other side,” I told Kurt. I tried to catch one last glimpse of Liz before they took me out of the courtroom but had no luck.

  The Coffin - January 11, 2048

  Waiting on death row makes you think about your mortality, thought Kurt, lying on his cell’s hard, narrow bunk.

  “How very philosophical,” he murmured.

  All his adult life, achieving global peace by uniting the world under one government had been Kurt’s mission. This was his father’s dream for over thirty years, and Kurt’d grown up listening to him talk about it with consuming passion.

  Given that ever-increasing global trade, environmental issues that didn’t respect borders, and global social media had made national borders less and less relevant, Thomas believed humanity’s only way forward was to face the truth: nothing was truly local. Earth was an interconnected ecosystem, and so was the human society.

  Thomas had assembled a stellar international group of scholars, legal minds and politicians. It surprised nobody that Kurt joined his old man’s team as soon as he graduated from university. The father and son fought alongside each other for a united Earth. It wasn’t easy. It cost Kurt’s father three decades of his life, and along the way, he inadvertently caused a short but bloody war that claimed thousands of lives. But together, with the help of countless other visionaries, they managed to achieve this dream against impossible odds.

  And then General Zheng had shown up, killed Kurt’s parents and ruined everything.

  Zheng! Just thinking about him made Kurt’s skin crawl. Kurt would’ve happily sacrificed his life to put a bullet in that man’s head, but he was too well-protected. Kurt had to content himself with killing his henchmen. He was positive if he kept pushing, Zheng would fall at the end, but now he was caught, to be executed the next day, and Zheng had won again. He was leaving the world a failure. Despair pierced his heart like a rattlesnake’s fang.

  Approaching footsteps echoed in Kurt’s cell. He glanced up. Zheng stood in front of his cell, looking in at him, with a predatory smile on his face.

  Blood rushed to Kurt’s brain with such force he was disoriented for a few seconds. He jumped off the bunk and considered attacking the general, but there was no way he could reach him through the bars.

  “Hi. Kurt. Can I call you Kurt?” said Zheng.

  “It depends. Can I call you a fucking piece of shit?” answered Kurt.

  Zheng shrugged off the insult. “I just wanted to meet the pesky little insect who killed so many of my subordinates face to face.”

  Kurt wished Jim were here. He’d have the perfect comeback. Something from a movie, probably.

  When Kurt didn’t respond, Zheng continued, “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry your mother was killed in the explosion meant for your dad. I met her a few times back in the day. She was a lovely woman. Too good for your father, certainly. Did you know she was supposed to be somewhere else that night? Unfortunately, by the time I noticed she was in the car, our plans were underway, and if I hesitated then, I’d be on the other side of these bars now, or dead. I had no choice but to flip the switch.”

  Kurt went pale. “You personally carried out the assassination?”

  Zheng smiled. “Of course. Your father was my greatest enemy. My Moby Dick. I couldn’t have some faceless goon kill him, could I? Oh, you must really hate me right now.”

  Kurt’s nostrils flared. “Let’s find out. Step inside.”

  Zheng laughed. “Why spoil the party? I have big plans for you tomorrow. I’ve arranged for cameramen, showgirls, and fireworks, just for you.”

  His eyes blazing with fury, Kurt stepped closer to the bars and said, “Listen to me and listen carefully. You’ll pay for what you did. I’ll kill you, and not with a bomb or a sniper rifle. I’ll kill yo
u up close and personal, looking into those fucking ugly holes in your skull you call eyes.”

  Much to Kurt’s satisfaction, Zheng shuddered, ever so slightly. The dictator shrugged, turned and left without saying another word.

  The Coffin - January 12, 2048

  Elizabeth, kneeling in her cell and holding her head down, prayed alongside the Coffin’s black-clad chaplain. “To you, Lord, I lift up my soul,” she whispered.

  A female guard banged on the cell’s door and said, “It’s almost time.”

  The chaplain stood up, looked at Elizabeth with dull eyes and said, “May God be with you, my child.”

  “I’ve written farewell letters to my siblings,” said Liz. “Could you please make sure they receive the letters?”

  “Of course.”

  Liz gave him four envelopes. “I’ve also written a letter to Jim. I didn’t want to destroy it, but I don’t want the guards to find it either. Can you keep it for me? You must promise you won’t read it.”

  “I promise.”

  “And don’t forget watering my plant,” Elizabeth told him.

  The chaplain nodded, picked up the Chinese evergreen Elizabeth kept in her cell, and walked out.

  This was the last time I prayed in my life, thought Elizabeth. The thought made her dizzy. Her vision blurred, and her knees went weak. She pushed away her fear as she’d been doing all her life. Even now—when she was about to be destroyed—she wouldn’t surrender. She refused to.