by Bob Williams
“What in the hell are you talking about? My doctor? I died thirty years ago, you idiot. I’m not a fucking low lyer! I don’t need a doctor!”
“Incredible. Who’s the idiot now? What doctor? Doctor Who, you brainless twerp. Considering your age ... well, wait a second. You died a while back, so maybe Tom Baker or Peter Davison? Me, I’m partial to David Tennant. Cole? Shields? This is the most private thing you could ever tell anyone before you die. You might as well get it out.”
“Fun fact,” says Shields, “I’ve always been partial to the TV movie with Paul McGann.”
“Bullshit!”
“Nah. It’s true. McGann was adorable.”
“Doctor Who is for dork boys like Shen here, with tiny dicks that lived in their mommy’s basement,” says Cole, turning to our host. “I bet you sat down there with the magnifying glass you stole from science class and marveled at your first pubes.”
“Enough!” explodes Shen. “I have had enough of all your bullshit. All of it. And all of you!”
“Why, Johnny Ringo! You look like somebody walked over your grave!”
“That’s the first one, Prescott. You better fit a whole bunch into the next ten minutes before we all die,” whispers Cole.
“You thought I’d forgotten, didn’t you? It’s Tombstone all the time, brother. Oh, and if you talk shit about Doctor Who like that again, I’ll kill you myself.”
“Well, it’s good to see you’re passionate about the things that really matter.”
“SHUT. THE. FUCK. UP!” Shen yells at Cole and me.
“What did we do? You can’t mess with affairs of the heart,” I say with a wry smirk.
“Untie Mr. Cole, and take him up to the rope,” says Shen, a stone-cold chill to his voice.
“Well, that’s a bunch a crap! Why do I have to go first?”
“You will go first so Mr. Prescott over here can watch you suffer and die. Then Ms. Shields will go next, so Mr. Prescott can watch her suffer and die. Who knows? Maybe, if you’re lucky, your neck will snap and you’ll go quickly. But I must say that would be terribly disappointing. Now the dog. Lexi, you say is its name? Well, I’m just going to beat it to death with this trusty two by four I found left over from the construction of this beautiful work of art.”
“The fuck you will,” I say, but I don’t really know how to stop him.
“I think you have lost, Mr. Prescott,” Shen says smugly. “Now, accept your defeat.”
Three of Shen’s henchmen have crossed back to where Cole is tethered in front of the wooden structure and attempt to untie him. He struggles with all his might, making their job nearly impossible. But eventually they succeed.
One of the men wallops Cole with a couple of vicious elbows, which renders him extremely easier to carry. My head is spinning. I can’t believe it. This is happening.
“No! No! No! Take me! I brought them here. They were only following me on my fucked-up crusade! This is not their time. Take me!”
“Prescott.” It’s Shields. “Don’t do this. Don’t cheapen our deaths. We knew damn well what we were doing when we chose to follow you. You inspired us. You gave us hope and purpose when we had none. If we die right now in this moment, then we die. But we die with you because we followed. Because we chose to fight along with you. I’ll die with my eyes open. I’m going to be looking at you. And I need you to be there for me. Keep looking. And look at Cole. Don’t look away. We are your friends, and we are your soldiers. Be the friend and leader we follow.”
I feel warm tears release and slowly glide down my face. She’s right.
“That’s it,” I muster. “You’re absolutely right. I’m sorry.”
“Cole! Hey! Cole! Look at me. I got you, brother.”
The men have dragged him up onto the stage and forced him to a standing position. He’s a tad delirious, but when he hears me he looks over, and after a couple seconds we lock in.
“I wish we could’ve done more, Prescott. We did good, though. Laura, thank you for sticking with me at the MSZ. You truly rescued me.”
“You are a great man, Michael Cole,” she says.
“So very fucking touching,” says Shen. “Can we get on with it, please? Rope him and drop him!”
I lock eyes with Cole again and say, “I love you.”
He says, “I know.”
I force myself to not look away, but as the man with the noose begins to place it over Cole’s head, something catches my eye.
My knees suddenly feel weak. I start sobbing. Because I’ve seen this miracle once before. This light has revealed itself to Cole and Shields and me in the blackness of a basement room at the Murfreesboro Safe Zone. Lexi sees my excitement and starts barking.
It’s Malcolm!
Son of a bitch! Malcolm! Hurry!
Be calm, Prescott. Help is on the way.
The ball of light I see in darkness of the night behind Cole continues to grow in size as it descends toward the Seventh Son. I give Shields a hard nudge with my elbow and she turns with a snarl. She thinks I’m taking her away from being in the moment with Cole. I don’t speak, but I calmly raise my eyebrows and tilt my head upward toward Cole.
She shifts her stance and contorts to look up and out over Cole. I see her body go rigid. She immediately has to place her bound hands on the gallows support, which leads me to believe she might collapse. She turns back to me and flashes a giant smile. Which is beautiful to see but not exactly helpful.
Rebecca storms over to where we’re being held and lays into us. “Hey! The fuck you smiling about? And what were you looking at?”
She swivels around and immediately sees the descending sphere of light, which at this point is now the size of a large beach ball.
“Master! Master! Look!” She’s practically jumping out of her shoes pointing at the sphere.
Shen’s face follows her hand pointing into the sky, and he sees the now-blinding globe of illumination. He clenches his fists and immediately pumps one of them into the air.
“Finally! You have come to answer for your transgressions! You coward!” He calls to the men on the stage who’d tightened the noose around Cole’s neck. “Pull the lever! Pull it now!”
Shields and I both scream, “No!”
He drops.
ENDGAME: FINALE
I watch my friend Michael Cole drop through the opening left by the trapdoor and plummet several feet until the rope goes taut with a jerk. Much different and more gruesome than Curt Woolever’s hanging because Cole’s hands are secured behind his back. He wouldn’t have nearly the time Woolever did. And in the time he did have, the experience would be horrific.
I lock eyes with Cole once again and mouth, “Help is on the way. Hold on, buddy. Help is on the way.”
When I shift my eyes from Cole to the sky, I witness Malcolm’s transformation from angelic essence into human form. Large feathered wings emerge from both sides of the sphere, and legs extend down toward the ground.
By the time the feet touch down on the stage of the gallows, the luminescence has vanished and Malcolm stands before us all. The Freaks who witnessed the transformation stand slack-jawed and have no concept of how to proceed.
“Seize him!” Shen bellows maniacally.
“Malcolm!” I say. “Cole!”
Cole’s face is flush and his eyes are bugging, as did Woolever’s, due to the lack of oxygen. In a stunning display of cool, calm, and collected, Cole fights with more bravery than I’ve ever seen to not kick and squirm. The less he moves, the less the noose will tighten. It’s fucking awesome. But he is still dying.
Malcolm, who now stands valiantly on the stage in a navy-blue button-down shirt and khaki slacks, looks to Cole and waves his arm, palm out toward him. The gesture says ‘come here.’
“Michael Cole, your struggle is over.” He raises his arm, and with it, Cole is lifted from his position of certain death, up through the trapdoor, and onto the stage. Another wave of his hand and the rope that binds his hands disintegrated into dust. Cole,
as quickly as he can manage between hulking coughs and huge gasps of air, removes the noose and rolls toward me and Shields at the front of the stage. Before Cole reaches us, Malcolm removes our restraints as well, and both Shields and I receive Cole into our arms and stabilize him while he continues to come back from his near-death experience.
It takes me a few minutes to realize, as I am attending to Cole, that none of the Freaks have converged on Malcolm after Shen gave the order.
Shen, who’s been left momentarily speechless by the inactivity and the outright awe of his own soldiers toward Malcolm, fires away again.
“Seize him, I said! All of you, I don’t care! Grab him and don’t let him go!”
I groan. “What is it with douchebag assholes who, even though the entire world has collapsed into a giant ball of stinking turds, still use B-movie lines like ‘seize him?’”
I watch as at least ten of Shen’s Freak army run up the steps and onto the stage, with apparently no other plan than to tackle Malcolm. He shifts his position to face the charging horde, and with ridiculous ease waves his hand, simply turning every single one of the onstage ramblers to dust mid-stride. Their clothes fall with the momentum of forward motion but the men ... they simply drift off like the breath of angels.
“Shentaka, stop this madness,” says Malcolm. “I am what you want. I am what you have always wanted. What you’re doing, what you’ve done; you must stop this instant. Demeter, the others, they did not deserve your wrath. None of them had ever done anything to you. And you used the Rohan Dagger on them. A more excruciatingly painful, and even more hateful act cannot be perpetrated by one angel on another. Yet you have done it repeatedly.”
“You ... you have no authority over me. Your words have no meaning to me. Who are you, Malcolm, to come into my house and make demands of me in front of two hundred of my soldiers.”
“More like one-ninety,” I say. “Just sayin’.”
“Prescott, please,” says Malcolm. “I’m trying to save your life.”
“Not possible,” says Shen. “In fact, you will all die. This I guarantee. Even you, Malcolm. But I will make you suffer long before you die this very night.”
“I have a question,” says Shields.
“What is it?” Shen spits with annoyance.
“Isn’t it technically morning?”
I laugh out loud, because that was so completely unexpected from Shields. Cole practically doubles over.
“Who are you and what have you done with Laura Shields?” I say.
“I’ve had enough of your insolence! The entire lot of you! You will all die by my hand! And it will be painful. You will suffer in ways you never knew possible, and in the end, you will beg me to end your lives.”
In the time Shen has been dressing down Shields, Cole, Lexi, and me, Malcolm has crossed the stage and put his hand on the shoulder of his former Protectorate protégé.
“Shentaka, this must stop. And it must stop now. Talk to me. Let us negotiate an end to all of this killing and lawlessness. You were Protectorate once. You were a policeman when you walked the Low Lying Lands.
“Remember. Think back to the pride you felt as an officer of the law. Sworn to protect the people of Columbus. The great things you did upholding the law. Protecting the people. The lives you saved. The pride you felt. Where is that man? What happened to that honorable man?”
“You killed him!” Shen rages. Spittle flies from his lips as he seethes through clenched teeth.
“Shentaka, if an apology is what you want to hear—”
“Fuck your apology. And fuck you, Malcolm!”
“Shentaka, what I did to you was reprehensible. There are no other words to describe it. For that, I am sorry. The most sacred of all the Protectorate directives requires that any Point of Light must be asked for and then grant permission to be taken to the Higher Grounds.”
“Then why? Why did you do that me?” Shen pleads. I notice Shen is acting incredibly vulnerable, contrary to the ruthless characteristics he’s displayed since I made his acquaintance. I am shocked.
“I’ve asked myself the same question repeatedly since the day I committed the act. That bullet was going to kill you, Shentaka. There would not have been an opportunity to ask you. Your entire life had been a joy to watch. You were, in my opinion, one of the most influential Points of Light to walk the Low Lying Lands in ages. You were everything we looked for in the Protectorate. I had even imagined your becoming commandant eventually. Your light, Shentaka, was blinding with the essence of kindness, hope, and goodness. I took you for what you had been and what I knew you would become.”
“It wasn’t your decision to make, Malcolm!”
“I know this, Shentaka. I’m so very sorry.”
“You robbed me of the opportunity to die for my family’s honor. You dressed me in shame and had me jump through hoops like a filthy dog. I hate you, Malcolm. I will hate you until I take my very last breath.”
I watch this interaction between two angelic beings and can’t help noticing how ... human it is. A son feels betrayed by ... his father, in a sense ... and grows to hate the man. In this case, Admiral Shen channeled his rage for Malcolm onto other like beings in what I could only see as a successful attempt at eventually drawing Malcolm out of hiding. The interaction between the two is both fascinating and heartbreaking. I’m entranced.
“Shentaka,” says Malcolm. “What can I do to make this right? How can we stop this? You must stop this and return the Rohan Dagger to the Higher Grounds.”
“The Rohan Dagger. Why in the name of the Superior would you give me such a weapon?”
“I knew I had lost you, Shentaka. I was grasping at straws. I thought if I gave you the dagger, you would see through your anger and realize that I loved you and still trusted you.”
“You thought an object would make me love you? Respect you? Do you know the first thought I had when you placed the dagger in my hand? That I was going to kill you with it.”
“Shentaka, tell me how I can atone for what I’ve done to you,” says Malcolm. He looks emotionally broken.
“You can die,” Shen says bitterly. “You can sacrifice your own miserable life.”
Malcolm says nothing. He appears to be thinking it over.
“Hey, Malcolm. I can help you out here,” I say. “The answer is no. Actually, it’s fuck no.”
“Shut up!” shrieks Shen.
Malcolm speaks to Shen. “What is the guarantee that my death will spare the lives of Prescott and the rest of his team?”
“None,” says Shen.
“Shentaka, I am prepared to hand over my life to you in a fair exchange,” whispers Malcolm.
“What?” Cole, Shields, and I say simultaneously.
“Malcolm, NO!” I scream as I make a play to hop the stage. I am immediately grabbed and held in place. As are Cole and Shields. Lexi, whose ears are pinned back, lets loose a vicious growl followed by a string of loud, scary-as-hell barks. Nobody chooses to fuck with her.
“Prescott! Stand down,” Malcolm says calmly.
“Malcolm, please. Don’t do this.”
Malcolm redirects himself to face Shen again.
“Shentaka, give me your word that you will not harm these low lyers, and I will give my life to you.”
“Fine. Fine. I will not harm your friends, Malcolm. Are you happy now?”
“I am.”
Shen whips around to face the masses. He is actually starting to scare the shit out of me. His face, as he surveys the crowd, is essentially that of the Joker without the white face and green hair. He looks like he had just bought a first-class ticket for the crazy train. He thrusts his arms wildly into the air, waves them in a ‘quiet down’ manner, and waits for his directions to be followed.
“My friends and loyal subjects—”
“Boo! Fuck you, ya limp dick twerp!” shouts Cole. He gets a knee to the gut as payment.
“Dumbass!” follows Shields. “You’d screw up jerking off!”
<
br /> “What’s gotten into you?” I ask her.
“I dunno,” she says. “I’m a bit hysterical, you know. The ‘I’m gonna die, I’m not gonna die, I’m gonna die’ business.”
“Yeah, I feel you there.”
“Prescott, you and your friends no longer have value for me, so your words are of no consequence to me. I have more glorious and important—and fun—things to do now.”
“Eat a dick, champ,” I say. Shen gazes at me with a most discomfiting look. Like nobody is home. Then he erupts into laughter and returns to addressing the crowd.
“In a much shorter time than originally thought, we have achieved our ultimate goal. As I told most of you when we started this mission in Tiffin, our goal was to march to Columbus, where we would set up a command post and wreak havoc until we drew my arch nemesis out of hiding and forced him to answer for his crimes.”
The crowd of Freaks are starting to get a little frothy listening to Shen’s rhetoric. I have a feeling that Shen’s word is as good a three-day-old dog turd, and we’ll get the noose right after Malcolm. I don’t think that at any point in my life I’ve ever experienced such a roller coaster of emotions. I’d ranged from sadness, to ire, to joy, to confusion, to survival mode. That’s where I am now. Where we have to come together as a team.
“Our plan has worked,” Shen continues. “Thanks to this idiot low lyer, Mr. Prescott. This fool right here and his ragtag team of imbeciles attempted an utterly comical attempt at overthrowing me ... and they failed. Failed miserably. In fact, these fucking scum, these disgusting, stupid skinbags failed so badly they never even got a shot off. They never even remotely posed a threat to us.
“But! And it’s a big but. They did succeed wildly at one thing. One very—no, the most important—thing. They fucked up so badly at deposing me, they actually got our target Malcolm to come knock on the front door ... AND ... he surrendered himself for execution!”
The crowd goes nuts at this announcement, and I feel bile rise up into my throat.
Somehow, someway I’m going to kill that motherfucker.
“So without further ado, I give you: Malcolm. Malcolm is a multiple—well, let’s go with chronic—violator of the Protectorate code. His name is synonymous with classic High Grounds terminology such as breaker and crosser. If this being were allowed to continue living, there would be no end to the deviant perversions he would continue to perform as the puppet master to the poor, weak-minded low lyers.”
