A Guardian Angel

by Williams, Phoenix

  Everyone was equal.

  -Chapter Twenty-Five-

  Retaliation

  Andy Winter relaxed into the driver seat as he saw the sign pass by him. He had just entered the city limits of San Francisco. He was glad to be somewhere that the Decree Nation hadn't stained yet.

  Yet.

  The former hitman kept on the move ever since he heard about his motor accident on the radio. He had no idea what anyone thought of him. The general public knows him as a hired gun for Decree. I killed for the bad guys, Andy thought. That's what they know.

  The men and women at the Decree Nation probably saw him as a turncoat. Someone who had the trust of Leroy Graves himself only to start this war by allowing their secrets to get out. That's what I did, Andy believed. I started this war all for the life of one woman.

  What did Haley even think of him?

  He didn't want to think about it much, so he turned up the radio.

  “I just can't believe they can do this so in-your-face to the public,” a woman commented. She was upset.

  “If you're just joining us,” another woman started, “we're having a discussion about the Denver Massacre that happened earlier this afternoon. Forty-one protestors were killed by Decree employed private police during a brief moment of confusion at Union Station. Over seventy others were wounded, including several officers of the Denver Police Department. There were no casualties for the Decree Nation.

  “As of now, we know that over a hundred and twenty people were arrested and placed into Decree custody. This includes the civil rights activist Haley Flynn, who originally published the article exposing Decree's illegal activities.”

  Andy glanced down at the radio at the mention of her name. He got her, he thought mournfully. After all this, Graves still got her.

  “Our hearts and prayers go out to the families of the victims,” the first woman said. “Justice must be brought for these crimes.”

  Clicking off the radio, Andy sped up his truck. He took the exit to the airport and booked himself on the first flight to Chicago.

  He turned the truck off before climbing out and lumbering down the street. The road had been blocked off so traffic couldn't run anywhere near the scene. Andy ducked down as he walked down the hill on the grass. He moved quietly, hiding away from the figures on the road.

  In the distance, he could see men in strange orangish urban fatigues with what Andy identified as M4s slung over their shoulders. They moved around the scene. Two or three of the closest ones amassed by the side of one of their vans, discussing something. Others made their way to or from the street that ran under the bridge. Those coming from carryied filled body bags to two rows that the mercenaries had organized.

  Andy was horrified. He took a moment to clutch onto his knees and look away. Two rows of the same length, Andy thought. Only saw one. Twelve in one row. Andy regained his posture as he looked back, confirming his math. Twenty-six people are dead, with the addition of the two being added to the rows.

  Murdered.

  The former hitman stopped short when some of the merc-cops walked right between him and the makeshift morgue, their backs to him. “All right, that's plenty. Start bringing new bodies over,” one of the mercenaries called out to the rest. He jogged to the other side of the street, far away from Andy, elongating the last sound of that final word all the while. “Here! Got it?”

  There was a loud and somewhat disorganized, “Yes, sir!” in response, while the mercenaries started walking away to Andy's left. Relieved, Andy continued over to the first twenty-six.

  Jesus, he thought. That means they got more than twenty-six. How many people even lived in this camp? If they keep bringing them in, the odds that Homer survived dropped with every casualty. Mathematically, his friend was dying faster and faster.

  He took a brief moment of silence before he started unzipping the bags. The first two were a couple of guys who must have been so strung out on dope that they probably didn't even know that they died. There were smiles on their faces. The next one was a large Asian woman. She looked so harmless that Andy knew that there was no fight here. Just a slaughter.

  When Andy unzipped the next one, he looked away and dropped to his knees. He started gulping for air as it seemed hard to take in. There was a little boy, couldn't be any older than eight. The look of complete terror that had set in on the child's face as he died made Andy sob. He zipped the bag back up and continued to lament as quietly as possible.

  He was ready for the next bag. He unzipped it and his head hung low. There he was. The dead man himself. He had a smile on his face. His eyes were closed. Homer died with no regrets.

  Andy zipped the bag up when he heard the shuffling of feet in the distance. He started to make his way back to the street where he could hail a taxi. He looked back one more time at the bags where both the little boy and his beloved friend Homer laid.

  Leroy Graves must die, Andy decided.

  Barney Slechta peered out through the bars of his prison cell at an overcast sky. Even the gray color couldn't sink his spirits any further for they were as low as he could ever remember them being. They have been ever sinking since he arrived in this hole.

  He sat in a federal prison somewhere in southern Colorado. He only gathered that from overhearing bits and pieces from the guards that strutted around. He had been there for about two weeks, his trial much more of a dream than an event that will ever take place. They had detained him with the same label as most of the Heaven's Crusade fanatics they roped: an anarchist combatant.

  Grief indented itself on the man's face. To be considered the same as the people who killed my friends. In fact, Barney thought, my captors killed them, too.

  He raised his head when he heard more people being led in. There were two of them, a borderline obese man with a buzz cut and a shorter guy with a goatee. They were locked in the cell next to his own before the guards lumbered off and away.

  “Hey fella,” the large one said.

  Barney looked over his shoulder at him. The idiot must have been drunk when they arrested him. A stupid smile sat on his face. “Hi,” he said.

  “What'd you do?” the guy asked.

  “Oh, you know,” Barney started. “Wrong place, wrong time.”

  “Yeah, we've got a bit of that, too,” the newcomer commented. A period of silence ensued. “You hear all that slander everyone has been throwin' around about the Decree Nation?” he started again after an hour or so. “It's horseshit.”

  “Is it?” Barney humored him. The man didn't sound drunk. Why was he so damn cheery?

  “The movement is much more than just rebelling against Uncle Sam,” he explained. “The system has been rotting for years. Bureaucracy hampering all the issues important to Americans. People who are in charge of people's well-being are only interested in a dollar-sign. It's sick, man. But no, not with the movement.” The man looked into Barney's eyes with burning intensity. “It's about putting the power back in the hands of the people.”

  “You're a Decree officer,” Barney concluded.

  “That's right,” the man said. “It's not a bias, man. I've got to do my part for what's right and that happens the be with the Nation. It's the only thing I can do.”

  Barney's brow furrowed. “Why are you so happy?” he asked outright.

  The man chuckled as if he meant it sarcastically, then he leaned in and beckoned Barney to the bars. Barney listened. “Because,” the Decree officer started, “I don't think we're going to be here for long.”

  Homer's face stenciled itself in the intricate folds of Andy's subconscious as he traveled. Nothing but vengeance burned hotter on his skull. In the silence, the memory of the first night he had met the kind homeless man came to him. It was over ten years ago.

  Andy stood on the edge of a ten-story-high roof when he first heard Homer's voice.

  “Hey!” the man had boomed. “Get down from there! You, there!”

  The fledgl
ing assassin ignored his cries. Tears stained his pale face as he gazed down at the sidewalk. At all the beautiful street lamps and glittering lights that buzzed on in the late Chicago night. He made no sound at all as he wept but the tears flowed out as a constant stream. In the front pocket of his fine tan suit jacket was a thick envelope. An admission of guilt. His zombie-like stare was immovable.

  Again, the man hollered up to him from the alley below. “Hey man, you don't need to do this, man!” his voice still deep and rich even in youth. “Please come down here! I don't want to see a man die!”

  “Then look away!” Andy yelled back down at last. His rapidly changing mood had placed him into a heated anger.

  “No way!” Homer yelled back. “You'd be doing a hell of a lot more than saving your life if you'd come down. Please, man!”

  A moment passed by while Andy's breathing strained from emotional turmoil. He closed his eyes and tried his hardest to imagine just stepping off the ledge and falling. He pictured hitting the ground and feeling each and every single bone shatter, one after the other. To savor the sensation of his muscles tearing and his skull cracking. To enjoy his own punishment.

  He couldn't do it, but he didn't come down and talk to Homer.

  Only a day passed where he had tried sleeping his life away in his apartment. His guilt weighed so heavily that Andy couldn't move a finger against its gravity and laid like a vegetable into the night. Once he couldn't take it anymore, he left the apartment and climbed back onto the roof.

  He had found a way onto the fire escape by leaping from a neighboring roof that was much closer to the ground. From there he would creep along so no one in the apartments would look out their window and spot him. Not like they could stop him now. He strained as he pulled himself up to the top, panting. His breath took hold when he saw the homeless man there, reading something in the moonlight as he sat inside a sleeping bag.

  “You came back?” Homer said, closing the magazine he held and setting it beside himself. “I was terrified you might have chosen a different roof.”

  “What are you doing here?” Andy asked.

  “I thought you might come back,” Homer replied. “Why are you trying to kill yourself?”

  “How is that any of your business?” Andy barked. He had his hands burrowed deep into his pockets and his shoulders flinched out of nervousness. He had been caught red handed. “Who are you anyway?”

  “My name's Homer,” the man replied, offering out his hand. “And I want you to live.”

  Andy didn't know what to say at the time.

  “Look man, why don't we both get off of this roof,” Homer offered, “and I'll get you a nice cup of cocoa. How's that sound?”

  “A cup of cocoa?” Andy repeated. His cheeks twitched to fight back tears. “Why?”

  “'Cause it sounds like a nice thing to do tonight,” Homer answered. His voice was warm and soothing. So kind and ungrudging. “Yeah?”

  A single tear fell out and streaked Andy's cheek. “Yeah,” he replied. The homeless man smiled reassuringly as he turned the way Andy had come. “Thank you.”

  “You got it, man,” Homer said.

  Together they climbed down the side of the building and came back in to the alley where Andy's car was parked. Homer led him past it, down a sidewalk for two blocks and down a little road that led under a bridge. There were dozens of homeless people living together here, most of them asleep. His host led Andy to the front of a boarded up real estate office. The hitman took a seat on the stoop and looked around as Homer fetched a thermos from under a crate. He offered it to Andy.

  “Thank you,” Andy said again. The container was still warm when he grabbed it. He took a long sip from it and passed it back to Homer, who imitated the action.

  “You can talk to me about what's wrong,” Homer said after a comfortable moment of silence, “or we could just talk about something else. My ear is yours, pal.”

  Andy stared down at the pavement. His eyes were hooked onto the edge of a paper bag that had been run over and then blown back onto the sidewalk. He stared at it for a moment as he thought. “Where would you go if there was a zombie outbreak?” he asked.

  “A zombie outbreak?” Homer repeated with a grin. He hummed. “Well, I think that I might go for a nice, secluded cabin in the woods. Where would you go?”

  “See, I don't know,” Andy said. “If I could, I'd like to think I'd get on a boat.”

  “Ah, 'cause they can't swim,” Homer commented.

  Andy chuckled. “Naturally,” he said. Another minute or so passed where neither of them said anything. “I feel so guilty about something bad that I've done,” he told Homer.

  The homeless man nodded in thought to the statement. “That's the natural reaction,” he replied. “But tell me, or rather, tell yourself where you're going to go from there. Feeling guilty's nice and all but it's doing you no good.”

  Another tear dropped out of Andy's eye. He kept remarkable control over his voice, never releasing a sob. Just a silent cry. “Where would you go if you were stuck in the city during a zombie outbreak?” he asked with a clear voice.

  Again, Homer hummed in thought. “I think that I'd go to the top of the tallest tower,” he answered.

  As soon as Andy made it into New York he started beading his way to the towers that loomed in the distance. He could see the Decree Tower from where he drove. Its sleek design separated it from most of the other skyscrapers.

  Traffic forced him to park several blocks away from the tower itself, so he grabbed his three-eighty auto, hid it on his belt and then walked. As Andy approached, the streets were cleared of vehicles and instead swarmed with people. There were tents set up along the sidewalks with such artifacts as a sign depicting Leroy Graves with devil horns set up against them. The people themselves were dirty and unkempt. Fatigue glimmered in their eyes as the mood turned from one of resistance to one of rioting. Some people had found bats and rocks and batons and began trying to smash down the glass windows that led into the Decree Tower's lobby. They yelled. Andy caught a few curses at Graves. The former assassin started to climb the steps of the building, into the heart of the crowd, but a large announcement board caught his eye. It was a familiar face that he had noticed so he stepped back to take a clearer look.

  The segment Andy looked at was labeled “Wanted.” The face that he saw had been Haley Flynn's. Andy laughed as he read the flier. It said that she was to be charged with spearheading an insurrection and that she was wanted alive. Her reward was fifty-thousand dollars. However, to Andy's dismay, the words “captured” had been stamped over her image in big red letters.

  Andy then recognized himself at the top of the board. It gave his full name and what looked like an outright printout of his driver's license. His reward was one hundred-thousand dollars. He was wanted either dead or alive.

  He glanced back over at the mass of angry people who smashed on glass, banged on metal and caused an angry racket. As if on cue, a couple vans pulled up to the area. Andy could see a couple of the merc-cops peering out at the mob from inside the tower. Mercenaries piled out of the vehicles and circled around the herd of protestors.

  “It's time to go,” one called out.

  Andy agreed. He ducked his head as he slipped back down the street toward his rental car. The merc-cops pulled out their mace and stun guns and went to work containing the mob. The hitman turned away from the scene and abandoned his through-the-front-door plan of attack. Live to fight another day. Take Graves on when he can really take him on.

  Without watching where he walked, Andy stepped right into a third van that had stopped up the street. A couple of men in the orange uniforms seized him. He struggled but was caught so off guard that nothing could be done as his wrists and ankles were bound with duct tape. A piece was slapped over his mouth before he could cry out and then a black bag shut out all the light for him.

  They threw him in the van and sped off from the cries of th
e people.

  -Chapter Twenty-Six-

  Knights of the Proletariat

  Everyone did what they could to help each other in the larger communal cell that they shared in the entry levels of the Lumnin Super-max Penitentiary. For Haley Flynn, that meant keeping the flame of hope from being snuffed out. A community effort was at play in the prison, each member of a protest sympathetic to each other. These people weren't criminals. The prison had been under Decree control since its construction.

  Guards were ordered to do what they could to harass and hamper the efforts of the prisoners. For a little while they would only serve meals to select people in the crowd, trying to turn them all against each other. They were surprised to find that the compassionate human nature in all of them allowed them to share and even sacrifice to support their cellmates. They weren't like normal inmates. They hadn't earned their stay here.

  For the time being, the lights in the cell block were left on to keep anyone from getting a decent night of sleep. To combat this, the prisoners all gathered their outer clothing and formed a sort of canopy, under which people could sleep away from the stinging fluorescent lights that burned day and night. Sometimes, when they came together with a solution like this, the guards would be ordered to come in and take whatever they had made down and confiscate it. They tried to see if they could incite some sort of retaliation. There never was any. The people just let the guards take what was theirs and then went along to construct a plan B.