by Jake Bible
She pointed the barrel at him. “No, you may not,” she told him. “All I want you to do, Mr. Chief Advisor, is to sit there with your mouth shut. Do you understand me?”
He did, turning to look at the screen of his tablet as if nothing was going on.
She redirected her aim back to the president. “Now,” she said, “where were we? Oh yes. We were talking about how futile my attempt to wage war against you on Capitol Hill would be. And you’re right. You have far more political clout than I could ever dream of having. You will continue to fill the pockets of your constituency with enough money so that they’ll turn a blind eye to the truth, and the aged people of New Miami will continue to live a less appreciated life.”
“You don’t want to do this,” Michelin told her.
“Oh, but I do, Mr. President. People like you don’t deserve the privilege of sitting on the highest political seat in the land. What the people in the Fields of Elysium need is a person of integrity and moral fortitude.”
“Yeah, well, good luck with that.” He stared at the pistol. “So your answer is to kill me, is that it?”
“It’s not exactly what I want to do given my Christian beliefs, but if this will better the Fields of Elysium, then I don’t see where I have any other option, do you?”
“There are always options,” he told her. “All we have to do is negotiate. Simple, right?”
“I’m afraid, Mr. President, that from this point on there will be no further discussions or debates or negotiations. Your tenure as president is up. I’m sorry.”
The moment she raised her pistol to the center of the president’s body mass, Eldridge lashed out with the tablet and knocked the firearm aside, the pistol going off in a loud spit, the bullet missing its intended mark and lodging inside the door.
President Michelin reached forward and grabbed the governor’s hand. The gun went off two more times, both muted spits from the suppressor, the bullets piercing the roof.
“Give me that, you bitch,” he hollered as he tried to wrest the gun free from her grip.
For a woman who was aged and sickly, Michelin thought that she put up quite a struggle as they seesawed with one another for the gun’s ownership—first he was in command, and then she.
“Well don’t just sit there, you idiot!” the president said to Eldridge. “Do something!”
The chief advisor leaned forward and pinned the governor’s shoulders to the seat, which gave Michelin the upper hand.
The president enfolded both his hands over the governor’s, forced the gun’s barrel to the soft underside of her chin, looped his finger around the trigger, and pulled.
The bullet punctured the top of her skull with the exit wound the size of peach. Slowly, the governor arched her body a moment before settling back down and sighing a final breath.
Drippings of blood and gore rained down from the ceiling and landed on her blouse. The gun was still in her hand as she sat there with her head leaning to one side.
The president was covered with blood, his face marred with the bloody runnels of warm wetness. “Son of a bitch!” he cried. Then he looked at his hands, which were also peppered with the governor’s blood. And then at his suit, which held minute traces of pulpy matter. “Dammit! She ruined my Bertucci!”
“It had to be done, Mr. President,” stated Eldridge. “She was going to kill you.”
The president continuously whipped his hands about to shake the blood off them. “What the Hell am I going to do now?”
“We can figure this out.”
“Of course, we can,” he returned. “The question is, how do we turn this to my benefit?”
“Obviously, the woman was not in the right frame of mind. She was ill, dying. She reached into her pocketbook, took out a gun, and she became irrational. Which is the truth, correct? We can definitely trace the gun back to her. That won’t be a problem. Not at all. What we have to do is spin a tale that will benefit you in the eyes of the people in New Miami. It’s all about how we promote this.”
“Promote the killing of a governor?”
“Just listen,” said Eldridge. “Though you were sympathetic to her condition, she was less sympathetic to your policies; therefore, conversations spiraled out of control. When you tried to neutralize the situation regarding a woman with issues of instability and depression, the firearm unfortunately went off and killed the governor. Of course, we’ll have to clean it up a bit and put in more detail, but we can make this work.”
“Do whatever it is that you have to do, John. And make sure you get it right. I don’t want any mistakes on this. I want a thorough effort.”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“And one other thing.” He reached inside of the governor’s pocketbook and retrieved the tablet, and then handed it to Eldridge. “I want every file on this tablet traced to its source of origin. I want everything deleted, and I want them deleted yesterday. I want you to hack into her systems, her data lines, anything that may hold a marginal trace as to my transactions since the day I took office, and get rid of them.”
“You got it, Mr. President.”
“Look, John, you do this one thing for me, I promise you a villa inside of an Elysium of your choice. I know I don’t have to tell you this, but I know you’ll do a bang up job.”
Eldridge couldn’t hold back a smile “You know I won’t let you down, Mr. President. I never have. I never will.”
President Michelin turned to the governor who leaned to one side, the life smashed out of her by a single gunshot. And then he examined the ceiling above her and watched the slow drip of gore fall and stain her blouse with macabre fascination.
Yes, he thought. He would find a way to benefit from this.
So in tandem, he and John Eldridge considered his options as the vehicle continued on to its final destination.
Mausoleum 2069 is available from Amazon here
