And Thy Mother

by John Bromley

  AND THY MOTHER

  BY

  JOHN L. BROMLEY

  CHAPTER 1

  The rules are, he insisted, that life-changing events happen when you’re working, not during your time off. My rules, at least.

  But Fate doesn’t always play by the Rules.

  Geo-caching was his activity of choice during vacation, and he wondered what it must have been like when the Global Positioning System was still working, but to know that, he would have had to ask his great-great-grandfather. It was harder now, but for him it was the perfect hobby, just as the Army was the ideal career. Both gave him the chance to be outdoors, to see new places, and to exercise his talent for games of strategy. His excellence in this field had allowed him to advance quickly up the military ladder.

  Now, he was on the road outside Toronto with Mike Wilkins, his fellow officer, right-hand man and best friend, heading north toward their next assignment at a leisurely pace, since they were still on vacation for the rest of the week.

  His cell phone rang. He opened it and saw on the screen a set of coordinates. Thinking it was one of his geo-caching buddies, but having no more time for that, he ignored the message.

  Then Fate played its card, against the Rules, and his life changed.

  The phone rang again. Somewhat annoyed now, he opened the phone and looked at the screen…

  “Mike,” he said without taking his eyes from the phone, “pull over and stop the car.”

  “Why, Jim? Did I miss a turn? Is it time for—”

  “Stop the car!”

  A few seconds of squealing brakes later, the car was stationary on the roadside.

  Mike turned to his superior officer. “Holy shit, man, you look like you’ve seen a ghost,” he said, seeing Jim’s horror-stricken expression. He reached over and took the phone out of his associate’s hand and held it up, adjusting it several times to get the screen out of the bright sunlight. Once he could clearly see the display, he saw that it was alternating between a set of coordinates, followed by…

  “You’re kidding, right, Jim?” he asked. “This is what has you spooked? It’s a picture of—”

  “I know what it’s a picture of.” There was fear in his voice.

  “—a book,” Mike finished the thought, adding, “granted, it’s a very nice book… looks like one of those big old church Bibles they used to have… seems to have a hand-tooled—”

  “It’s not just a book,” Jim said in the same quiet, fearful voice.

  “Sure looks like a book,” Mike prompted.

  “I thought so, too, the first time I saw it… and I wish I wasn’t seeing it now.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because of what happened that… time.”

  Mike waited for an explanation, but none came.

  After a few seconds of tense silence, Jim asked, “What’s the phone doing now?”

  Captain Wilkins looked at the screen. “It’s stopped flashing; now it’s just showing the numbers.”

  “Write them down, and look them up. And while you’re doing that…”

  Jim got out of the car, went to the trunk and opened his duffel bag. He returned to the front seat holding a metal case about the size of a cigar box. He ignored the questioning look on his associate’s face and instead asked, “Well? What about the coordinates?”

  “Oh, sorry—those coordinates are about seventy-five miles northwest of here.”

  Jim looked out the windshield. “There’s an intersection with a large east-west road just ahead. Take a left up there. Let’s go.”

  “But, Jim, aren’t we supposed to meet—”

  “The general knows we’re still off the clock. ‘Take the rest of the week before you join the Fourth,’ he told me. I intend to do that, Mike, so we’ve got time for a little detour. I said, let’s go.”

  As they pulled back onto the highway, now heading west, Mike looked over and saw that Jim’s fear had not completely dissipated.

  “You think you know who this guy is, Jim—the one sending you the picture?”

  “No, I don’t, actually. I’m concerned that there’s somebody out there who thinks there’s a connection between me and this book.”

  Even more troubling, he thought to himself, is the fact that he’s right.

  “You think, maybe, we might be walking into a trap?”

  “I wish I knew, Mike, but my gut is telling me that I have to walk in, trap or not.”

  CHAPTER 2

  “So, uh, Jim,” Mike said after a mile or two of tense silence, “do I ever get to hear the story behind this mysterious book? Or is this a top-secret, ‘eyes-only’ thing?”

  Jim continued to stare out the side window and said, “Yeah, Mike, I guess, at this point, you need to know.

  “The day before yesterday—that really nice day—I was out for a walk, and ended up in this antique shop.”

  “Why?” Mike asked. “You’re not a collector.”

  “No, but there were cinnamon buns baking next door, and a guy on the corner was playing a really great tune on his guitar, and something in the window caught my eye, and I just… ended up there.

  “Then another guy came in, and recognized me—”

  “Comes from being ‘Jim Parker, national hero’,” Mike chuckled.

  “That’s what ‘they’ say,” Jim snapped, trying to keep his temper in check. “Anyway, he seemed nervous, and started dickering with the shopkeepers about this book he wanted to sell. They went back and forth a while, and finally settled on a price.”

  “Lower than higher, I’ll bet,” Mike commented.

  “So, they’re doing the paperwork,” Jim continued, “and one of the shopkeepers says…”

  “Oh, by the way, I assume this has been Treated.”

  It was a rhetorical question and one not heard very often anymore. However, as Jim learned later, the question was still legally required for certain private transactions, especially those involving objects which might be more than two hundred years old.

  Everything was Treated now as a matter of course. Every piece of reading material or recorded music had the ubiquitous letter ‘T’ near the copyright date, TV programs displayed it along with the rating code, and nobody paid any more attention to it than they do to the pre-flight safety instructions. It was just… one of those things.

  The customer opened his mouth, but then closed it, saying nothing.

  This lack of the rhetorical answer attracted Jim’s attention, and also that of the older man, who re-emerged from the back room. All three fixed their eyes on the book seller.

  “Sir, did you hear my associate?” said the store owner, somewhat louder. “He asked you a question. Has this book been Treated?”

  The man looked like he wanted to flee from the store. Jim unconsciously moved a few steps to block any such maneuver. The wild-eyed man made a grab for his book, but the store owner got to it first, moving it out of the customer’s reach. He opened it, scanned the title page, the next page, skipped some pages, scanned another… then abruptly closed the book, and pushed it and the papers to one side as though they might infect him. He did not return the book to the nervous man, but spoke to him loudly, anger flashing from every part of his face.

  “Do you have the unmitigated gall to come in here and offer me un-Treated merchandise? Do you know the law or not? How dare you even be in possession of such trash? I don’t know what you think, or what you’ve been told, but this is a reputable establishment, and we will not deal with your kind, or traffic in such... filth as this. Is that clear?”

  While he spoke, his hand disappeared below the counter, and pressed a button which Jim expected would summon the police. He knew that, given the number of policemen on the streets these days, they would respond in a matter of
seconds if called. Indeed, within half a minute, two officers entered the store. They were told by the shopkeepers what had taken place, and when Jim corroborated the story, they seized the man roughly by the arms and escorted him quickly from the store, with the shopkeeper and his clerk following a few steps behind. Jim knew what was coming, and he didn’t really feel like witnessing that today.

  Alone in the store, he found himself drawn to the book, and wondered why. Maybe it was because he had never seen an un-Treated object before, or it could have been the danger involved. It was more than a capital crime to possess un-Treated merchandise, and the book’s owner was seconds away from finding out first-hand what that meant. He went to the counter and looked at it, touched it, felt the smooth leather binding. It also had a beautiful red satin ribbon sewed into the binding, to serve as a bookmark. Then he noticed that the shop owner, in his haste, had closed his pen in the book. Probably should do something about that, he thought; the cops might object if they noticed.

  At that moment he heard the shot. Suddenly he was possessed by a strange idea. They would be coming back in soon; whatever he was going to do, it was now or never. Don’t look, don’t look, leave it alone, he told himself urgently. Impulsively, he opened the book to where the pen was, tore out a few pages (What are you doing?? his mind screamed), stuffed them in a pocket, put the pen aside, closed the book and quickly stepped away from the counter, just as the antique dealers and the police reentered.

  The officers picked up the book, took it outside and set it on fire in the same alley where they had just taken its former owner. When it had been completely destroyed, the officers prepared to leave, but then one of them, as though remembering a forgotten formality, turned to Jim and the shopkeepers. With a nod toward the corpse in the back alley, he said, “He tried to resist.” Jim and the other men nodded in acknowledgment.

  This statement was required of a police officer in the event that he had to conduct an on-the-spot execution, as in this case. By law, if the arresting officer said there was resistance, then there was, whether the victim fought like a tiger or had been bound, or even unconscious, at the time of arrest. The response they gave, also legally mandated, confirmed the officers’ interpretation of events, absolved the lawmen of any wrongdoing, and spread a veneer of legality, however thin, over the affair. Jim had been through this ritual once before, for a completely different reason. Apparently the store owner had as well. Possession of un-Treated merchandise was not the only crime requiring summary execution.

  The officers turned and left. Soon after, Jim also departed.

  It wasn’t such a great day anymore.

  CHAPTER 3

  “Are you shitting me, man?” Mike asked in a low voice, so that anyone running beside their car at fifty miles per hour would not overhear him. “You took pages from an un-Treated book? What the hell were you thinking?”

  “I know,” Jim replied. “I must have been crazy. It was like some… I don’t know… compulsion or something. Things like that aren’t supposed to exist anymore. Maybe I thought I’d never get another chance to… you know.”

  “To, what? Experience summary execution?”

  “I mean, another chance to see and… well, study something… like that.”

  “So, have you had time to do this ‘studying’ yet?”

  “No,” Jim admitted, adding sheepishly, “I’ve been… afraid to look at it.”

  Mike was silent a moment, then, “Does anyone know you have this material?”

  “No, no one does. Well, no one else but you, now.”

  “Hey, man, don’t worry—my lips are sealed. As much for my own protection, I admit, as for yours.”

  Both men sat for a time, lost in thought.

  Finally, Mike spoke again. “So, what happened after that?”

  “Nothing, thankfully. Then the next day…

  Jim had an appointment with his commanding officer, who happened to be in town. General Nathan Chambers was considered a no-nonsense, wouldn’t-know-a-joke-if-it-introduced-itself kind of guy. Normally in meetings like this, Chambers would be dead serious, all business, and Jim would make a wisecrack or two, which would sail right over the general’s head. Jim found this both humorous and frustrating.

  But today, things were different.

  General Chambers seemed almost amused by the details of the situation he was about to describe, and Parker was still on edge about the incident of the previous day.

  After pleasantries were exchanged, Chambers got right to the point.

  “Colonel, we received a call about a group of foreign soldiers that were sighted in western Ontario in the last few days.”

  Jim shook himself out of his reverie and forced himself to focus.

  “Did you say ‘foreign soldiers’, sir?”

  “I did.”

  “In Ontario? That’s ridiculous, sir. No foreign power has dared step foot into North America in over three hundred years. Somebody’s made a mistake, obviously.”

  “That was my initial reaction, too,” Chambers replied.

  “So, where exactly are these so-called ‘soldiers’ located?”

  Chambers pointed to a map behind his desk, indicating a spot near the border of Ontario and Manitoba. Jim looked at it and shook his head.

  “Sir, that place is at least a hundred miles from any sizeable body of water, so a naval landing is out of the question. Besides, to get there, they’d have to go around or through any number of towns, and would have been spotted long before this. And of course, if they came by air, our radar would have picked them up instantly.

  “So, who called in this alleged ‘sighting’?”

  “We received a communication from a group that calls itself the ‘Western Ontario Militia’. A bunch of radical, ‘fringe’ types, you know what I mean. They like the idea of doing military stuff, but don’t want to actually be in the military.”

  “A bunch of nuts, in other words,” Parker added.

  “No, not exactly,” the general replied. “I mean, they’re kind of screwy, but not to the point of being dangerous—if they were, of course, they’d all be dead by now. The thing is, we’ve dealt with them before, and actually gotten some good intel from them, on more than one occasion.”

  “Sir, do I understand that you’re taking this seriously?”

  “Me, not so much,” the general actually chuckled, “but my superiors are. So, to meet this ‘threat’, we… they… are mobilizing units of the Fourth Army Battalion, under the cover of ‘war games’…”

  Jim was familiar with these men, having worked with them in the past. A good group of guys, in his opinion.

  “… and you, Colonel, are going up there to take command.”

  That caught him off-guard. “With all due respect, sir—why me?”

  “For two reasons, Parker. First, because they asked for you.”

  “Who asked for me? The Fourth?”

  “No. Actually, it was the Militia.”

  “What?”

  “Your reputation is preceding you, Colonel,” Chambers said with another uncharacteristic chuckle. “Yes, apparently the Ontario Militia feels that the presence of a ‘national hero’ will throw more of a scare into these foreigners than the entire Fourth Battalion.

  “And secondly… I’ve nothing better for you to do right now.”

  “And that would be why we’re heading up to the north country,” Mike nodded in understanding.

  “Yeah,” Jim agreed. Then he laughed as he thought of something else. “So then he says to me, ‘What’s the matter, Colonel—you don’t think this assignment is befitting a ‘national hero’?”

  “You know what it is—one of those rags dug out an old bio of you, and ran it again a few days ago,” Mike said. “I didn’t see it, but I guess the general did.”

  “Anyway, I told him to cut the shit.”

  Mike laughed in surprise. “You didn’t!”

  “Well… actually I told him to ‘knock it off, sir’.”


  Something about that “national hero” crap made Jim squirm. For one thing, he couldn’t really think of a single incident in his career that would make him feel deserving of that title. Certainly his actions on the previous day were not those of a hero. Watching a man being put to death, no matter what he was guilty of, and doing nothing about it, was not the way a hero behaved. Never mind that there was really nothing he could have done—that wasn’t the point. Heroes influence events; they don’t just stand on the sidelines watching.

  Then that madness with the un-Treated book; that was not heroic—that was suicidal.

  Mike interrupted his thoughts to announce, “We’re getting close to the coordinates.”

  And, they were coming into a small town. Jim told Mike to pull into the nearest parking lot. When the car stopped, Jim brought out the small box he had retrieved from his bag at their last stop.

  Mike looked over and broke out in a sweat. “Oh God, don’t tell me you brought them with you.”

  Jim opened the box and said, “OK, I won’t tell you.” Nevertheless, inside the box were the pages, folded semi-neatly but still showing signs of being ripped from a book and stuffed hastily into a pocket.

  “Like I said, I wanted to study them. And, will you wipe that guilty look off your face, for Chrissake? Nobody can tell at a distance that there’s anything unusual about this paper. Just relax, and nobody will pay us any attention.”

  “Now, let’s see what we’ve got here…”

  Jim took the first page and began to read. His hunch was right—they were in fact from the Bible. That explained the gold on the edges of the paper, he thought.

  He had another idea. Looking around, he noticed a small shopping mall across the street. He put the paper down and got out of the car. After telling Mike to “wait here; I’ll be right back,” he sprinted across the road to the mall, which conveniently housed, among other things, a bookstore.

  Meanwhile, Mike was experiencing one of the most frightening moments of his life. Being alone in the car with the un-Treated pages made him feel like he was wearing a sign that said “Shoot Me, I’m a Criminal.” Finally, he couldn’t take it any longer and just had to get out of the car. He noticed a man behind him smoking a cigarette, and he went over and bummed one from the guy. He didn’t smoke, but he decided today would be a good day to start.