Hell's Requiem: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller

by ML Banner

  Thinking he was off course, Tom glanced at the other two guards and confirmed their presence, but his first target was nowhere to be seen. He should have been paying more attention.

  Shit!

  He spun around just as he heard the crunch of twigs to his side. A surprised man frantically pulled on his zipper, having just relieved himself, before he saw Tom. He was too far away to use his knife. Tom dropped it, swung his rifle around and fired two quick rounds into the man’s head. The stunned guard fell over without a sound, still fiddling with his fly.

  Tom let out a deep breath. Not as planned, but perhaps better since there was no chance the others would see him behind the cover of trees. And the suppressor worked to perfection, only making a slight cracking sound, no louder than a branch breaking. Perfect.

  The only problem was that it took a full two minutes to find his damned knife, and he didn’t have much time with his diversion starting soon. With knife sheathed, he scurried over to the dead guard. That was when another part of his plan fractured.

  The guard had a 30-06 bolt-action hunting rifle, when Tom had hoped he’d be carrying one of the AK or AR-type rifles that the others carried. He decided to leave it because it was too noisy and too hard to quickly cycle a round. He did find a loaded .38 revolver on the man, which Tom hastily slipped into his back pocket and moved to the tree line.

  The other two guards were where they were supposed to be and the prisoners were still in their pen. The kid was sitting cross-legged and facing in Tom’s direction, once again seemingly staring directly at Tom. And he would have sworn just then that the kid smiled at him. Tom immediately discounted this as part of the odd light that made the shadows dance all crazy-like.

  Tom glared at the kid, who still returned his gaze—at least it looked that way. He questioned his reasons for coming back for this kid: he was weird, bordering on creepy; Tom owed the kid nothing; and he wasn’t Tom’s responsibility. But the kid did leave the signs, and it was because of the kid that he found his rifle. He felt compelled to help him, and that was reason enough.

  Tom hesitated initiating the next step, when the kid stood up in the pen. The others, all lying on their sides, including Scarface, grimaced up at the boy. Their looks yelled, “Sit down, kid!”

  The kid turned both shoulders toward Tom and once again flashed a grin. Then the kid’s mouth opened. “Is this the real life?” the kid bellowed.

  “Is this just fantasy?”

  The words had a strange familiarity, almost like a song, but it was being yelled, not sung.

  “Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality.”

  The two perimeter guards, at opposite points outside the corral, and the guard by the corral were now focused on the kid.

  “Open your eyes, look up to the skies and see...”

  Two things struck Tom like a gut punch right then: the kid was singing to him, and Tom knew the song; it was the same song Tom had been singing earlier.

  A long-forgotten memory, full of rich images and raw emotions, flooded Tom’s mind right then. And so did the song.

  Hell’s Requiem Playlist, Track 12

  Song/Artist: Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen

  Keywords: real life; just fantasy; no escape from reality; open your eyes; goodbye everybody; easy come, easy go; anyone can see; nothing really matters; any way the wind blows

  27

  9 years ago

  Heaven Ranch

  Days before Drew died, he trudged silently beside Tom, their boots rhythmically crunching the soft snow pack. Every so often, Drew would glance down at his hands, which he held up so that he could see them better, as if he wasn’t sure that they were his own. In fact, they didn’t look like Drew’s hands and arms as he knew them, since Drew wasn’t born with crimson-colored gloves like he was wearing now. The redness was a recent addition, and the reason for his introspection: they were evidence—in addition to his red-stained jeans and shirt—of Drew’s first kill.

  Tom wasn’t sure how Drew would react to the whole thing. Oh, his son was completely excited about the planned hunt date: their buying tags, and all the preparations leading up to the big day. As a counter, Drew was always queasy at the sight of blood. Then add to this Mimi’s constant drumming into Drew’s head about all sorts of PETA nonsense regarding equal rights for animals. Tom wouldn’t have been surprised if his son hated the sport of hunting. But he sure hoped he wouldn’t.

  To Tom, hunting was part of being an American and a man. To him, it had felt like a connection to God’s creation, unlike anything else. He was raised to respect animals, to not let them suffer, and to never hunt unless he used the meat. All this knowledge, including what he knew about butchering the animal, were gifts he had hoped to bestow on his son, if he’d accept them.

  After Drew took the shot and brought down the buck, he was ecstatic, as was Tom. He went on and on about what it felt like to have all the different bucks in his sights; to wait for the right one, and the right shot; to breathe calmly, and to let the shot be a surprise. Drew spoke in a staccato of rapid words as they tracked the heavy blood trail. He was full of jubilation, until they came upon the fallen animal, still alive.

  The boy knew what to do, even saying it was his responsibility, just as he was taught. At first he hesitated, knife poised. Then he moved in and slit the deer’s throat. The animal died a few seconds later. And because Drew got him in the heart, and the deer had nearly bled out already, the deer didn’t spray much blood.

  Drew even valiantly worked through the blood and guts of field dressing the animal. Tom wanted his boy to learn by doing everything himself the whole time. Tom didn’t even make him take a bite out of the heart, as he was taught; he thought that would have sent Drew over the edge. Drew did everything he was instructed, without the smallest complaint. Then he promptly threw up his breakfast. Still, he seemed fine.

  After the animal was quartered and lifted into the trees, the two of them headed home by foot to then return with the four-by-four and pick-up the meat. The whole walk back Drew was pensive, until he started singing.

  It was more like speaking the words, because they were delivered quietly and carried no musical artistry to them, even though the boy at that time could belt out a tune when he wanted to. Tom only caught a few words of each verse, spoken in a monotonous voice.

  “Mama, just killed a man... gun to his head... pulled my trigger... dead.”

  Drew paused for a long period, and then asked, “Dad? Should I feel bad about shooting that deer, like the singer of the song felt badly about shooting the man? I know shooting a person is different than an animal, but I think I should feel bad.”

  Tom stopped and held the boy’s shoulders firmly, looking deeply into his son’s troubled eyes.

  “Do you feel bad, son?”

  “No, I don’t. But I think I should feel bad. Mom says animals have souls too, and we should treat them like humans.”

  “You mean, as opposed to the way animals treat their fellow animals, like when a lion kills an antelope?”

  “Dad, I’m being serious.”

  Tom was being serious too. He felt sorry that his words had come out so flippant.

  Earlier in the year, he had talked to the boy about the song. Mimi was present, and that was the problem. Tom told Drew about “Bohemian Rhapsody,” the different sounds and the meaning of the song’s lyrics. Mimi was instantly annoyed, arguing that a little boy shouldn’t know the meaning of some crazy song written by drug-induced, paranoid rockers.

  This was ironic, as Queen was one of her supposed favorite “paranoid” rock groups. It also caused one humdinger of a fight, as Tom shouted his retort that she didn’t know shit about songs and that Queen was a song-writing genius.

  Tom had long thought about the song, wondering if he too would be fighting to win back his own soul from the devil, like the song’s protagonist, since he had brought death to others—many others.

  Tom had replied to his son passionately. “No, son. You sh
ould not feel bad about taking the life of that deer.”

  “Right, Dad,” the boy answered, his voice impassive. “That’s because, it doesn’t really matter to me. Right?”

  28

  Present Day

  Warsaw, Missouri

  “I’m just a poor boy,” the boy screamed the lyrics as loud as his small voice would go so that everyone within earshot would turn and stare. “...little high, little low.”

  Tom couldn’t contain his gaping mouth, which hung slag-like. Unwilling to blink for fear of missing something, his eyes started to water as the kid continued to belt out Queen’s defining song.

  “...doesn’t really matter to me...

  To meeeeeeee.”

  “How could you know?” Tom whispered.

  How could he know about this song? The same damned song Tom had been humming before, when he was preparing for battle. The same song he talked to Drew about before their hunt—which Mimi had bitched him out about—where both Drew and he were struggling with the morality of taking a life. And now, while he was about to attempt to rescue this kid, he sang this song, of all songs?

  After a long, surreal pause, Tom’s logic took over. There had to be a reason for this. More important, why was he doing it now? The kid obviously knew Tom was there and this song had meaning to him. But why sing it so loud for me... unless it was a diversion?

  That’s it! The kid was setting up his own sort of diversion.

  A percussive boom was instantly followed by a new orange horizon that lit up the corral area like an early morning sunrise. All eyes were drawn to the southwest, where Tom had set up the explosive charge.

  He’d lost focus once again, because of the kid.

  Tom leveled the rear sight of his rifle with the unseen front-sight on guard number one in the northwest portion of the property and fired one shot. The guard’s head flipped back, and he fell backwards.

  Tom did the same with the guard by the corral, quickly focusing on one guard at a time, while their attention was in the other direction.

  He steadied the rifle, aiming for the top of the next guard’s head, attempting to compensate for the sub-sonic bullet’s drop from this distance. He pulled the trigger and the man’s head bucketed, but he didn’t go down. The struck guard swatted at the entry wound area, just above his ear, as if a large fly were bothering him, and then turned in Tom’s direction. Now his sights were trained at the top of the man’s temple. Another shot.

  This time, the man dropped to his knees. His eyes went wild and confused.

  A third guard had moved from his southern perch and was no longer visible. So Tom rushed the corral, his rifle ready the moment another target came into view.

  Heading directly at the kneeling guard by the corral, Tom studied the man’s eyes, which raced around their sockets, searching for some sense of what had jumbled his brain.

  He covered two or three leaping steps for each mental tick of the clock. He wasn’t exactly sure, but it felt like the next one should happen at any moment.

  Just before Tom reached the kneeling guard, the second blast shook the ground, this one larger than the first. He couldn’t see it but knew it was the dead truck by the road, also on the southern side of this property. The gas tank smelled like it hadn’t been siphoned off yet, so he rigged the explosive to go off there.

  His knife was already unsheathed and even though the guard hadn’t gone down, there was a long line of spittle hanging from his chin. He was no longer a threat to anyone, except maybe himself. For a moment, Tom thought it fairer to put the poor SOB out of his misery, but he couldn’t. He would take the guard’s AK-style rifle, with a thirty-round banana-shaped magazine. It would be a lot more useful than his pea-shooter. He reached around the man and tried to wrestle the gun strap off the man’s shoulder, but it was stuck on something.

  It looked like a belt buckle was the culprit. But something else caught Tom’s eye. Slid inside his belt, near the buckle, was a silver dagger that appeared to sparkle in the night sky’s jade-colored luminescence. It looked very expensive, not the kind of thing he’d expect to see on someone from Warsaw. Then it clicked: it was Scarface’s dagger. Tom remembered seeing it when the shadow of the man passed by him before he lost consciousness.

  There were loud cracks from the south and dirt exploded beside him. He fell to his knees behind the slagging guard. The soft body of the guard wouldn’t protect him too well, so Tom shimmied past the man to a huge tree stump in front of him, which would provide a much better shield. Tom raised his rifle, instantly gaining a good sight picture of the man running at him. It was Griff.

  The first round found Griff’s shoulder, but the big guy kept coming. The second round hit Griff’s chest or stomach—Tom couldn’t tell—but that seemed to just piss him off more. A more animated Griff raised his weapon again and let loose a barrage of automatic rounds in Tom’s direction.

  Although Tom had slunk behind the safety of the giant tree stump, a spray of dirt showered him like a summer rainstorm.

  When Griff’s volley had ended, with earth-born particles still falling from the sky, Tom moved his body above the stump’s protection, and aimed his peashooter at Griff. Taking out this pedophile would be a pleasure, but Tom’s heart raced, and he feared that the tiny rounds wouldn’t have enough punch to take down the big man.

  The shot was now less than twenty yards and closing. Tom noticed then that his jerry-rigged suppressor was all misshapen and bent at an odd angle. He probably couldn’t bring down a squirrel, much less an angry hulk of a man. Tom flashed the thought of running away when there was a loud double-crack behind him, and Griff tumbled to the ground—his days of molesting little girls and other people’s wives were over.

  Tom spun around, useless rifle raised up, to find Scarface, holding the kneeling guard’s AK. Somehow Scarface freed himself, unsnagged the AK from the drooling guard, and got two shots off before Tom could even think about it.

  Now the AK was pointed at Tom.

  There was other commotion coming from the south and shouting from the north. Scarface directed his attention away from Tom to the south and squeezed off two shots. He marched forward to the western corner of the corral and fired two more. He found another target and shot another two times. Scarface was as calm as if he were firing at empty beer bottles on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Tom’s heart was galloping like an old long shot on the last furlong of the day’s final horse race.

  When Scarface changed directions and focused his fire on voices coming from the north, Tom shook off his stupor. He was here for the kid.

  He quickly checked what was around him and noticed that the drooling guard was slumped forward, his face in the dirt. His throat was cut, and a black-colored puddle was steadily growing below him, twinkling in the aurora-light. It was like he had been transported into some sort of Salvador Dali-induced nightmare.

  Tom stood, but his legs felt wobbly. He hopped over the rough corral fence, snagging his leg on some wire, and tumbled to the corral’s soft dirt. It smelled of manure and horses. He rose again and spun around, finding no other threats. Scarface aimed his weapon at something outside of Tom’s field of vision and fired off another round. The boy was standing and still staring at Tom. He wore a smile that looked more like a faux Christmas decoration. It was as if nothing else was going on around him.

  Tom scurried over with his knife unsheathed and cut the kid’s bindings.

  The boy started singing again, although it sounded more like he was just reading the words. “Scaramouche, Scaramouch, will you do the fandango...”

  “How in the hell could you know? Tom hollered at the kid. He held the boy’s shoulders, intending to shake him.

  The boy just stared impassively at Tom.

  “Nothing really matters to me.” The kid smiled again.

  “Who the hell are you?” Tom was now shouting.

  Tom felt something pushed against his belly. He looked down and saw that the kid was trying to hand him something. So he
took it.

  It was a small cloth-wrapped object. Tom felt compelled to unwrap the object. So he did. It was a small crucifix on a chain.

  It was Mimi’s.

  29

  September 8, 2004

  Paris Hotel, Las Vegas

  Mimi looked stunning to Tom, even though she wore a loose-fitting blouse and long skirt. Before she found her newest religion, she used to wear skin-tight things which showed off many of her curves. Now she dressed much more conservatively and probably would be the most conservatively dressed person at the concert. But he didn’t care. This was going to be a big night for them both.

  Tom was on leave for two weeks before he would have to ship out to Iraq. When he heard that Queen was going to have a concert in Vegas during his leave, he had Mimi book them their flights and hotel. He’d always wanted to see Queen, ever since he started following them after Freddy Mercury, the creative genius behind the band, had died a decade earlier. But this evening and the concert were just the pretext to why he was there. He was going to ask Mimi to marry him.

  In their hotel room, with the Vegas lights pouring through their floor-to-ceiling windows, Tom took a knee and popped the question. At first she acted shocked—as if she had no idea—and then her reaction was what he had hoped for: tears, smiles, and the magical, “Yes!”

  After they toasted their engagement, Tom gave her a gift. Perhaps it wasn’t the most well-thought-out gift he had ever given. But it seemed appropriate at the time he had purchased it. He was back East on weekend furlough, and he found an old antique shop that had ancient things in it. There he found a pretty little crucifix in sterling silver. “It’s over fifty years old,” the proprietor said. Tom remembered that Mimi liked looking at antiques. But more so, she had been searching for a spiritual meaning to life, after falling out of her family’s closely-held Catholic beliefs. Tom thought this might root her back to something familiar. At least that was his thinking when he bought it.