“Prime Minister Adharma is expecting you,” the human guards said with a hint of jealousy. Adharma’s reputation as a peacemaker, worldwide financial icon, social media maven, and political strategist preceded him. President Mateo rode shotgun on this deal. The conference revolved around Adharma and what he alone could do.
He left his transport at the hotel and entered another; a black stretch with tinted windows, flying the Italian flag. Damario wished for coffee. The two lattes he drank after his 2:00 a.m. alarm woke him up and stimulated him for now, but the unmapped road to Camp Bradley was dark, wide, straight and poorly lit. He and Madison knew this and shared it with the group the night before, suggesting the cover might mask a getaway on foot.
According to the orders handed to him by Adharma, they were the first stretch Bentley of three. Eight police motorcyclists and Capers preceded them. Without a distraction or unforeseen obstacle, the motorcade would travel too fast for anyone but an Olympic-class marksman or professional sniper to successfully shoot it. The Bentley’s tinted glass was standard issue and not bulletproof.
“Good morning, Detective.” A cheery Adharma slid into the backseat. “What a wonderful day to change the course of the world as we know it!”
He tipped his uniform cap in deference. “May I ask you a question, Mister Prime Minister?”
“Teanna Kirkwood? Theodore Mitchell? Yes, I killed them both,” he said matter-of-factly. “You were never going to figure that out. I destroyed the Ordnance, disabled the cameras and erased the transfer. Now, let’s get going. We don’t want to be late.”
When Adharma clapped his hands, Damario started the engine and turned up the heat. I should turn around and kill him now. His Ordnance weighed heavily against his hip. Micah warned him not to give into his anger – especially with no guarantees for his safety, or that of his children. Now, in the man’s presence, he could care less and wanted the evil presence to suffer and die miserably. But he stuck with the plan.
Minutes later, the caravan pulled off and Damario fell in line. Helicopter/jet hybrids followed overhead, shining spotlights down ahead of them.
Adharma closed the solid barrier between Bentley’s cab and its rear. God only knows what he’s doing back there, Damario thought. Though a frost warning had been declared, the road had slickness in some spots. He did his best not to skid much, though he’d gladly trade an arm and eye in a crash, if it meant destroying Adharma.
Pressured with the second most important task – the distraction – Harper completed it to the best of her ability using household switches and common chemicals. It unnerved her, as she violated her government contract and at least three or four national and international laws doing it. Thankfully, chemistry was her specialty in college; fellow students came to her for study notes and advice. Applied Physics was where she struggled, and the fact she chose psychiatry in another life was not surprising. Micah supervised her and stepped in when she trembled too much to handle mixing volatile substances. In all, she assembled two modes of destruction.
To avoid suspicion, Madison donned her uniform and handcuffed them both. She would drive.
Quinne heard Madison call her five minutes ago. Waves of adrenaline and nerves kept her vigilant. She did not need a lengthy explanation to do her part. She looked at it as her first official order as a soldier. She mused on her artificial future and the different battles she figured to have. The glory of war did not outshine its ugliness – like how it broke her uncle into flawed mental and physical fragments. Her bones might have been powdered in places, like his, and she would relive the horrific smell of death into her golden years.
If I make it that far.
If not, glory awaited her on the other side. She believed in God and Jesus, and even “got saved” years ago. She just did not pay obeisance to the Jesus that Anibel worshipped. The battles of the Bible interested her most; where kings of ancient times killed everything moving. The only one to die in battle that she remembered was Saul. He could not follow orders – something she would never fail at doing.
To keep himself awake, Damario thought back to the last time he had seen his children; another day he left without spending time with them. He choked up, thinking about his boy’s chubby legs and Christian’s recent developmental strides. There were no guarantees that he’d return to them, but if he did not do anything, they might as well be dead. Nothing about Adharma indicated a tendency to keep his word.
Madison involuntarily popped into his head. On Sunday night, before he left for the hotel room in one of Micah’s Cougars, he received a passionate kiss from Madison. He did not pull back as fast as he should have. Worse, he enjoyed it. The touch felt familiar and touched off a heated chemical reaction in his body. What was I supposed to do? Under the threat of death, she indulged a desire. Robinne would never understand it, in any form.
Whenever you go back to something, it’s never the same, he thought.
Without warning, the caravan slowed. Damario panicked, as any setback advanced time closer to 6:15, and he was the only one in a rush. Adharma retracted the sliding partition and glowered through the opening. “You have a schedule to keep, Officer Coley. Find out what’s going on.”
Damario hurriedly called the emergency channel. It didn’t work! He pounded his fists into the steering wheel until the horn burped. “My orders are not to leave you, Mister Prime Minister.”
“Find out what’s going on. Get out and do it!”
He exited the Bentley. The other officers did the same, as their communications had been shut down, as well. As they neared the lead Caper, a dead deer and two of its young came into view. The animals, who slipped in running across the road, had downed three policemen and their cycles.
Damario tapped one of his superiors on the shoulder. “We’re gonna keep going soon, right? We can drive around that.”
“Get back to the Prime Minister, Coley. Now!”
He jogged back to his Bentley and noticed a rustling in the bushes. Thinking it to be another animal, Damario entered the transport seconds before an explosion shattered the windows, igniting billowing clouds of flame and smoke.
Madison covered her mouth to muffle her cries. With the plan broken by the deer, each person on the team had to improvise. The overhead spotlights shined on her, and the reflective snow banks illuminated her position to the policeman searching for an assailant.
“Freeze!” they yelled.
Instead, she ran, darting through tree branches, zig-zagging to avoid Ordnance fire. To her left was a dangerous slope. She steered away from it, but inadvertently led the chase to the original rendezvous point. To throw them off and to warn the others, Madison drew her weapon, turned, and haphazardly fired in her pursuers’ direction. They split into two groups; those who continued after her, and the marksmen who set up to return fire. When she resumed running, several shots embedded into her back, causing her stumble and roll down the mountainside of jagged rocks.
Without evidence to the contrary, Micah knew both he and Harper would be in jail for the rest of their lives, or worse. He still carried the bigger explosive. Though Quinne could not be found, they would not run. It was not part of the plan.
“God, forgive me,” he said. “I love you. I never said that enough.” Bright lights had exposed their position. As policemen closed in on them, he kissed the tears away from Harper’s face.
“I love you too,” she muttered. “And I’m sorry for passing physics.”
He smiled. “This is the life we were meant to have, Harp.”
“Hands behind your heads.” Obeying the simple command could set off the timing mechanism, which Harper set at five seconds.
She looked at Micah, incredulously. “What life? Well-organized suicide?”
“Purpose.”
The phalanx of officers led them down the embankment, where they would summon reinforcements. Micah looked over at his wife, who smiled when the officers removed the package hidden underneath his jacket and opened it. Together,
they quietly counted to five.
The second, larger explosion drew all remaining human attention away from the conflagration burning in Adharma’s luxury transport. Quinne gripped the Ordnance with her hands and skulked behind the smoldering vehicle, ducking behind it whenever the lights got too close. Something’s moving inside. When a break in surveillance provided itself, she poked the barrel through the busted windows and squeezed off a few rounds. The passenger seats were empty.
Whirling around, Quinne searched the darkness and its depths for him. Emergency sirens faintly roared miles away. At that distance, she had – at best – two or three minutes to complete her mission. The stench of death filled the air. Quinne refused to search the Bentley further for fear of seeing Damario. Where is he? She circled the vehicle and found a coughing Adharma on bended knee.
Blood flowed down his nose and from his ears. “You. . .”
Quinne pulled the trigger three times at point blank range. The projectiles penetrated Adharma’s skull and dropped him to the macadam.
She watched him die, celebrating when he breathed his last.
When they came to arrest her, she laid the Ordnance down, fell prostrate on the highway, and placed her hands behind her back. I did my part. Her compatriots paid the ultimate price so she should pay hers. They had saved the world, and no one would believe the tale if she told it.
EPILOGUE
Three-and-a-half months later
Throughout the trial, Quinne admitted complicity in the assassination plot. She passed every psychological test. Her lack of remorse heightened the American public’s outcry for blood. Protesters lined the court steps, calling for the teenager to receive the maximum penalty. Not even the Hispanic political groups who opposed the death penalty came to her aid.
Guillermo and Anibel did not visit their daughter during her imprisonment, nor did they attend her sentencing. However, Damario’s widow, Robinne, flew to the prison once with her children. So did Charlotte Lowe, Laverne James, Gene and Hilary Shenk, and a girl named Crystal who had helped Micah. All asked to know why their loved ones participated in propaganda of the deed. Quinne’s unspectacular, dissatisfying answer echoed her response to the media.
“We did what we was meant to do. . .to make things right again.”
Adharma’s death forced the mark down to a fraction of its former glory and incurred a financial crisis across four continents. Israel and Palestine resumed fighting in the most bloody of manners, decimating the Dome of the Rock and the Wailing Wall. The ten-mark nations suffered from skyrocketing poverty.
Now, two weeks away from lethal injection, Quinne paced in her cell until a guard escorted her to an open meeting area. There, Channel Zero personality Nora Hunter would conduct the first one-on-one interview with the most infamous living criminal in recent history.
Dressed in a black and white Hristoff pantsuit, Nora warmly smiled. “Try to relax, be honest and open. Think of it as an opportunity to tell your side of the story.”
She nodded and closed her eyes, as a makeup artist dusted her dry skin with powder.
Nora paused until the droid-operated camera glowed red. “Good evening. I’m Nora Hunter with Channel Zero, reporting live from the women’s federal penitentiary. Quinne Marybeth Ruiz, the 19-year-old convicted of murdering Italian Prime Minister, Nandor Adharma, is speaking for the first time weeks before her execution by lethal injection.
“Quinne, your co-conspirators perished. You’ve claimed guilt from the get-go and declined to appeal your conviction. Why not try to save your life?”
She licked her lips. “My friends died for what we believed. I ain’t no better than them. Ain’t no different than a soldier on a mission’s the way I see it.”
“Who gave you that mission? God?”
Quinne remembered the Geometric Occipital Demonstrative Symbiotic Interface’s nickname and smirked. Things look different through God’s eyes. “I guess.”
“Members of the religious community hail you four for saving the world from damnation, but media outlets have branded you ‘anarchists’. Your thoughts?
She said nothing.
It’s how they would be remembered.
THE END
The Anarchists
Book Club Study Guide
After I finish a novel, I love thinking about what entertained or saddened me, and discussing the psychology behind the characters’ behaviors with people who have read the same book. I sincerely hope these questions spark your group to have lively thoughts and conversations about the themes, issues, and conflicts at the heart of The Anarchists.
If you would like me to sit in on your group’s discussion of The Anarchists, (in person, by webcam, or by phone) feel free to e-mail me at [email protected]
GENERAL QUESTIONS
1.Which moments caught you by surprise?
2.What is the book’s strongest theme?
3.Put yourself in the writer’s chair. How would you have ended the book?
CHARACTER SPECIFIC QUESTIONS
Micah
1.Micah came from a rich spiritual heritage, but he shunned the faith. Why do you think he did this?
2.Gabrielle was Micah’s daughter from a previous relationship. Explain the difficulties of nurturing a relationship or marriage with this type of situation.
3.What events turned Micah’s mind in regards to the possibility of God?
Harper:
1.What appears to be Harper’s main issue with Micah: the fact that he’s unemployed and they have money struggles or that he’s reluctant to marry her?
2.Charlotte Lowe, Harper’s mother, is affluent, yet refuses to help her daughter out financially. Discuss reasons why a parent may make this decision regarding their child.
3.Harper’s decision to change her profession to something more lucrative also rendered her infertile. Is it a myth that a career woman can also successfully balance a family without one or the other suffering? Discuss.
Damario:
1.After discovering Madison’s marital infidelities, Damario did not divorce her. What do you think was his motivation for staying married to her?
2.Damario had marriages fail in two different instances. What do you think was the common denominator of them both?
3.Whom do you think Damario loved more, Robinne or Madison? Why?
Quinne:
1.Troy’s death sends Quinne on a downward spiral into alcohol and drugs. How do you think she could have been saved from this abusive behavior?
2.Crystal Cantrell, or “Cee Cee,” was Quinne’s best friend and roommate, but Quinne viewed her as judgmental, which is often a criticism of Christians. Could Cee Cee have demonstrated her faith in a different way to make it attractive to Quinne? If so, how?
3.Kareza states in the first reality that Quinne shoots her to death. In the second reality, Quinne kills Kareza by shooting her and receives the death penalty. In your opinion, did she fail to fulfill her destiny? Why or why not?
Teanna:
1.Explain what you believe is the motivating factor behind Teanna’s substance abuse.
2.Teanna involves herself in a destructive relationship with Tiny. Why do you think a single mother in Teanna’s position would continue to date a man like him?
3.Teanna’s decision to sever ties with Teiji’s father leads to her aborting her son, never conceiving Meleasa and preventing her physical problems. She never knows the full effects of her choices until she dies. Explain what sort of insight you think you will have into your life choices at the end.
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The Anarchists Page 23
