by Brian Keene
Cringing, the old man glanced up at the Djinn and began chanting. Bloom squeezed off one controlled shot at his feet, and the old man stopped.
“Lay down.”
Bloom motioned toward the gurney with the barrel of his rifle. The old man complied, his bones and joints creaking audibly as he clambered atop it. Bloom lashed him down tight, smiling when the old man winced in pain.
He crept toward the door and listened. Silence. He opened it and peeked outside into the underground tunnel. More silence. They were alone, for now. He shut the door again and bolted it.
“I’m guessing that thing, that genie or whatever the fuck you called it, isn’t full grown yet, since it didn’t try to stop us.”
“It is not bound to me yet,” the old man babbled. “Only by causing the most pain can it be bound. Let me go, and I will see that it does not harm you.”
Bloom’s laughter sounded like the bark of a dog.
“I bet I can cause a lot of pain,” he said. “Let’s see just how much.”
He tapped the old man’s arm, searching for a vein. Then he emptied one of the speed-filled hypodermic needles into it.
“Don’t want you passing out on me. We’re gonna be here a while.”
He picked up the box knife and got started.
Above him, Kandara trembled in ecstasy.
• • •
It took Bloom a long time to find a radio that worked, and even longer to contact the coalition forces. By then, he was hopelessly lost in the underground maze. While he’d been locked in the room with the old man, chaos had descended on Al-Qurna. He was stunned at the aftermath. Everywhere lay signs of the Hussein regime’s fall—abandoned posts and equipment, shredded files, even the bodies of dead officers, gunned down by their own deserting troops. One room, behind a locked door that Bloom had to kick in, held row upon row of wooden shelves, lined with metal boxes. In each box was a plastic bag, containing the remains of previous Fedayeen victims. Some of the bags had identification cards stapled to them. Others did not. One held only a smashed skull. Another a severed hand. A third contained the desiccated remains of a newborn infant whose limbs. After that, Bloom stopped searching, afraid he’d come across what was left of his friends.
Deeper in the tunnels, he found two recently dug pits. Dozens of bodies had been thrown into the mass graves, in such haste that their killers hadn’t even taken the time to cover them up. Most of the dead were women and children. Among them, Bloom recognized the woman who had helped them along the road. Tears rolled down his cheeks.
“Eden,” he whispered.
He wept for her and he wept for his friends. He wept for Riser and Rendell, buried in the sand while they slept. He wept for O’Malley and Jefferson and Williams and Sanchez and Sharp. He wept for Myers.
He wept for himself.
Finally, he found an exit. Sunlight greeted him, shining down upon his face. He went outside to meet it, his tears drying in the heat.
“Oh, let the sun beat down upon my face...”
Humming a snatch of Led Zeppelin, he waited.
• • •
Eventually, he heard the hum of the rotors, and rose to his feet. Two Chinook helicopters buzzed toward him. He waved them down. Several soldiers disembarked, barking orders and securing the area while a medic checked on him.
“You’re gonna be okay,” the medic assured him. “What’s your name?”
“Bloom. PFC Don Bloom, 3rd Infantry.”
“The 3rd? Man, you’re a long way from the rest of your company, friend. Lucky, too!”
“Why’s that, sir?”
“Way I hear it, they’re heading into some shit. Look’s like you won’t be with them when it hits. I’m talking major shit, right outside of Baghdad. Saddam’s got the
Revolutionary Guard heavily entrenched around the city. Look’s like it’s gonna be a big battle.”
“They’ll be okay.” Bloom grinned. “I sent reinforcements to help them.”
He passed out before the medic could ask him what he meant.
• • •
Beneath their feet, in a white sandstone dungeon hidden under the desert, the remains of something that had once been human lay scattered across the room. It was no longer recognizable as the old man. Bloom had taken his time and as he’d promised, he’d been very thorough.
The desert winds howled as Kandara raced north toward Baghdad.
STORY NOTE: I’m a veteran from a family of veterans. My great-grandfather fought in World War One. My grandfather and great uncle served in World War II. My father served in Vietnam. I served during the Cold War—which wasn’t a war as much as it was a state of mind. Every male in my family has served. Hell, if you go back the family tree, distant relative Daniel Boone served (and we all know what happened to him).
I was lucky enough to see most of the Middle East during my stint with the navy, and it remains one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever visited, especially Israel and Egypt. It’s a shame what Saddam’s forces did to the Iraqi people and countryside (and what Bush and Cheney and Haliburton did to it later)—especially when you reflect that Iraq is pretty much the cradle of civilization. That’s where it all started folks. That was the breeding ground for original evil. It’s no surprise that Saddam came from that soil, and it’s no surprise that greed and corruption rule that soil in the aftermath.
Anyway, this story came about as a result of those two experiences. It was hard to write—especially the torture scenes. I don’t mean it was hard to type the words—I mean it was an emotionally difficult story to tell. It may well be one of the most brutal things I’ve ever written (excluding Castaways or Urban Gothic, perhaps), but I don’t think it could have been told any other way. This was a story that couldn’t be told in quiet, supernatural undertones. While writing the last half, it was common for me to do a few sentences, and then get up and wander away from the computer, reluctant to write the next. I absolutely hated what was happening to the P.O.W.’s, especially because I was the one doing it. But I’m happy with the way the story came out, and I hope that you are, too.
A REVOLUTION OF ONE
I protected our country while you were sleeping.
You voted every week on who should win American Idol, frantically trying to insure that your favorite candidate would go on to the next round—yet you couldn’t be bothered to go to the polling booth every few years to cast a similar vote for who should represent you in the House and the Senate. You knew the name of your favorite reality show contestant. You knew how old they were and where they’d gone to school and what things they liked—and more importantly, disliked. You followed them on Twitter and liked them on Facebook and were friends with them on every other social networking website, but you didn’t know your current Congressman’s first name, and the only reason you knew his last name is because you saw it on a sign in someone’s yard a week before the election. On Election Day, you didn’t have time to vote in the morning because you were late for work, and you didn’t have time in the evening because you had to get home in time to see the Biggest Loser results. You got mad when the local news channel ran a scroll bar at the bottom of the screen with the election results for your district, because, as you said, nobody cares about that.
While you weren’t voting, I voted for change, after a fashion.
Your indifference and stupidity stems from your ignorance—and ignorance is bliss. You stay silent because they want you to be silent. They feed your contentment and keep you pacified with a steady diet of movies, television, pop music, and video games. In social gatherings, you like to think of yourself as well-informed and politically-aware, but you are not. You seem to think that if you watch the news or join in the latest cause-of-the week online, that you are making a difference, but again, you are not. Sure, you watch the news, but what is it that you see? Instead of showing you footage from the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, or the deplorable state of our inner city neighborhoods or the rural areas of Appalachia, the media
shows you pop starlets, sex scandals and celebrity marriages. You’ve never read the Constitution online, but your toolbar is full of links to funny animal videos on You Tube. When asked, you can’t name the Bill of Rights but you can name all of the members of the latest boy band. You allow your children to idolize rappers who glamorize drug-dealing and murder and sexual promiscuity, and then act surprised when little Johnny gets busted for meth or little Janey ends up starring in a high school gymnasium gangbang, the grainy footage of which appears on all of her fellow students’ cell phones. You watch the Grammy Awards, the Oscars and the Golden Globes. You watch police procedural dramas, hospital dramas and courtroom dramas. You watch sitcoms, documentaries and infomercials. You watch all these things, but you skip past C-SPAN.
While you were channel-surfing, I was paying attention.
You say that you are taking an active role. You say that you want your voice to be heard. You attend a Tea Party protest or an Occupy Wall Street rally, and while you are there, you buy a t-shirt and bottled water, both of which have a slogan on them, and then you take a picture of yourself at the event and post it online so that others can see how involved you are. You root for your political party like you root for your favorite football team, but while the NFL has thirty-two teams to choose from, the American political process only has one. You cheer for the Republicans or the Democrats without understanding that they are the same thing. You side with Fox News or with CNN and MSNBC, without ever understanding that all three are equally biased. The media doesn’t report the news because there’s no money in it. Instead, on the rare occasions when they interrupt coverage of that week’s celebrity funeral, they simply parrot whatever their CEOs, shareholders, and friends in the government tells them to report on. Our wars, our economy, our crime rate, our social mores—all of these are reported on as a series of press releases, read to us by empty-headed, good-looking news readers. You loyally listen to Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity or Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann as if they were Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha and John Lennon, all come down from the mountaintop to impart some special wisdom on you, when all they are is empty, blathering, opinionated puppets. You identify as a liberal or conservative. You debate on message boards and at cocktail parties, regurgitating what you’ve read and heard. You blindly echo their talking points without daring to think for yourself, swallowing whatever propaganda they are required to feed you this week. And when you do it, you smile and pat yourself on the back, secure in your cleverness and intelligence and participation in something you think matters.
While you were feeling good about yourself, I got involved.
You worry about getting cancer. You worry about terrorism. You worry about Islamic radicals and Christian cults and other religious fanatics out there on the fringe. You worry about pedophiles and serial killers and crazed gunmen and online stalkers. You worry about your job and your house and what your co-workers think of you. You worry about whether your wife knows about your affair with that old flame, and whether your husband knows about what you did with that guy you met when you and your girlfriends went to Vegas for a weekend. You are afraid of black people. You are afraid of white people. You are afraid of brown and yellow and red people. You are afraid of the gays and the trans-gendered. Of atheists and agnostics. Of Communists and Socialists and Fascists. You are afraid of growing old. You are afraid that your children don’t love you anymore. You are afraid that none of it mattered. You are afraid.
While you were being fearful, I was being brave.
You sat back and watched, doing nothing while our country was taken over by corporations and special interest groups, and our young men and women died in far-off lands for bullshit causes, and our jobs went overseas, and our courts became slow and ineffectual, and our children became illiterate, and our economy tanked, and our civil and human rights were trampled on and eradicated a little more each and every day. You couldn’t be bothered to get out of your chair and run out into the street and protest. You lost that radical spirit, the revolutionary idealism that this country was founded on, a birthright that was reborn and renewed with every generation, until after the Sixties, when instead of asking what they could do for their country, people began asking what they could do for themselves. You swallow your antidepressants and turn the television up louder and go back to sleep, because you believe that you can’t make a difference by yourself.
While you were sitting there, I got out of my chair and went to work at the lab. My employee badge has a red stripe, indicating the highest clearance and full access.
While you were doing nothing, I walked into the cryogenic lab, took two vials of a deadly, highly-communicable experimental virus that is projected to kill ninety-percent of the population, and released it into the world.
While you are part of the problem, I am the solution.
I am a revolution of one.
When this is over, perhaps there will be enough of us left to try again. Maybe the American Dream will live once more.
While you were sleeping, I saved our country from the likes of you.
STORY NOTE: Cemetery Dance asked me to write a story for an anthology of politically-themed horror stories that they were publishing. I agreed, but had no idea what to write. I sat down at the laptop a few days before the deadline, and this story came pouring out. It does a pretty good job at crystallizing my thoughts and feelings on the state of our country and our political process (except that I would never unleash a deadly virus and destroy the world). If you’ve ever wondered where I stand, politically—it’s right here. I identify as a Libertarian, but I’m not even really that. I’m about as moderate and middle of the road as they come, and I hate what’s become of political discourse and journalism in this country.
FULL OF IT
STORY NOTE: This is another very early tale, from the mid-Nineties. It was written for an annual event called The Gross-Out Contest. This was something that took place for years at the World Horror Convention. Authors would compete on stage to see who could tell the grossest tale. Contestants included authors such as Edward Lee, Michael Slade, Robert Devereaux, Cullen Bunn, Wrath James White, Rain Graves, Carlton Mellick III, Ryan Harding, and many others. Me, too. I was a three-time winner, and the first author to introduce “props” (such as the year I ate a dozen live night-crawlers on stage while reading an excerpt from this story). I apologize in advance...
The mountains stretched to each horizon. The forest’s serenity was a welcome contrast from the bustle of the nation’s capitol. Kaine took a deep breath of the crisp morning air. His body ached. He’d been crouched at the base of the pine tree all night, keeping a careful watch on the area.
The camp was silent this morning. The group of degenerates that collectively called themselves The Sons of the Constitution were asleep, dreaming of anarchy and New World Orders. Kaine kept a meticulous log of their movements, but did not act. That was against protocol. Lessons had been learned from Waco and Ruby Ridge. Those were mistakes that haunted.
This time, there could be no fuck-ups.
He was tired. His arms and legs felt like lead. Standing up, he shook himself and stomped the soft carpet of pine needles, fighting off drowsiness. Through a break in the foliage, he spotted a hawk soaring overhead. The first rays of dawn shone down on his surveillance point. He thought of Melissa and the twins, and wished they were here to enjoy this peaceful moment. He missed them. She’d been upset when he couldn’t tell her where he was going.
Kaine closed his eyes and listened to birdsongs.
Then, the tranquility was shattered by the staccato report of an assault rifle.
Clenching his binoculars, Kaine peered through the branches, staring down at the camp. Two men, dressed in camouflage, stood outside the cabin. One laughed as his companion took aim at the fleeing hawk, and squeezed off another burst. Kaine identified the first as Henry Berger—former marine in Vietnam, now an unemployed steelworker who blamed the government for his personal failings. The skinny r
unt shooting at the hawk was Owen West, a local West Virginian whose only contribution to the world was his talent for blowing things up. It had been West’s handiwork behind the bombings in Norfolk and San Diego.
Engrossed in their actions, Kaine didn’t hear the twig snap behind him. He didn’t know he was no longer alone until the cold barrel of a gun was pressed firmly into the back of his head.
“Well, look at we got here, boys.”
Then...darkness.
• • •
“You’re full of shit,” Barnes said. “Tell the truth, now. How many more agents do you have out there?”
Kaine lay crumpled on the hard-packed dirt floor of a utility shed. Jonathan Barnes, the notorious leader of the militia, and currently the most wanted man in America, strutted in a circle around Kaine. Six other men were in the shed with them, including Henry and Owen. All but Barnes had their weapons pointed at Kaine.
Kaine chided himself for being so careless. His actions were those of a rookie fresh out of Quantico. Now what? He wasn’t due to make a report for another twelve hours. He was completely on his own out here. Escape was an impossibility. They’d trussed him up like a turkey. His hands and feet were handcuffed. The steel chafed his skin. Pain stabbed through his stiff arm and leg muscles.
“Look,” he answered, affecting a southern accent, “I told you. I don’t know nothing about no agents. I was hunting up here with my friends and I got lost. I was just going to ask you boys for help.”
Barnes snorted. “What exactly were you hunting with a government issue handgun? How come you’re not wearing an orange hunting vest? Let me guess. You left it in the truck?”
Kaine nodded.
