Sins of the Assassin

by Robert Ferrigno

  He awoke to the sound of thunder, awoke curled on the floor. Up quickly now. Glanced at his watch. Six o’clock! He had slept for two hours. He looked at his right hand, touched it. No pain. The brand was part of him now. He gingerly reached the doorknob, found it cool to the touch. Which made as little sense as anything else about the church.

  He stepped outside as the flame wall started its down cycle, ran straight through the guttering fire and into the smoke beyond. Tripped on some loose rocks, landed hard on his arm, and scooted up. Didn’t look back.

  The rain started as he walked quickly back the way he thought he had come, the clouds opening up as he ran through the perpetual twilight. Steam rose where the rain landed on the hot rocks, made breathing even harder, but the cool rain soaked his clothes too, and that was a blessing. The storm brought high winds, thinning out the smoke a little, and soon he was seeing familiar landmarks, slabs of rock he had passed on the way in, a discarded camera, a broken water bottle…the crushed skull. He hurried on, slipping on the wet ground, splashing through mud, hurrying faster, not sure he would ever find his way out when night fell.

  Faster now as the smoke eddied around him. No ghosts, no whispers on the wind. He was sure-footed, effortlessly dodging the flames that still rose all around him. Faster, faster, faster.

  He burst out from the smoldering coal fields, rain beating down as he staggered onto the streets of Addington. Through the haze, he saw Winthrop’s store in the distance, lights on, the generator thumping away. He ran a hand through his wet hair, wiped at his face, walking slower now. His muddy shoes squished with every step. No one was on the street. The other storefronts were deserted, windows spiderwebbed from the heat.

  Leo and Winthrop were drinking coffee when Rakkim walked through the door. Leo knocked over his chair and ran to him, hugged him, crying.

  “What’s his problem?” Rakkim said to Winthrop as Leo clung to him.

  “He’s got sense, that’s his problem,” said Winthrop.

  “O ye of little faith,” chided Rakkim, squeezing Leo until he yelped.

  Chapter 30

  “I still can’t believe I was asleep in there for fourteen hours,” said Rakkim, driving with one hand. “I looked at my watch in the church and thought it was six in the evening.”

  “Mr. Winthrop…Clyde and I stayed up all night waiting for you to come back,” said Leo. “Every half hour one of us would walk along the edge of the coal field with a searchlight, calling your name. Clyde gave up on you, said no one could survive that long in the smoke, but I knew if anybody could…Well, I figured you might have gotten lucky.”

  “Thanks, Leo.”

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  “Yeah, you did.”

  Leo blushed, the red rising from his neck into his cheeks.

  They had left Addington after breakfast, had been driving for almost two hours, right into the Tennessee mountains, the rugged terrain rising steadily as the day wore on, the road hemmed in by pine trees now.

  “I read all the briefing notes on the Belt before we left Seattle,” said Leo. “Classified and unclassified. Never heard of this Malcolm Crews and the End-Times Army.”

  “If it’s in a briefing paper, it’s old news, out-of-date and unreliable. You’re going to be fine, just do what we talked about.”

  Leo shifted in his seat. “Clyde said Malcolm Crews is a total psycho.”

  “Malcolm Crews believes he’s been touched by the hand of God.” Rakkim grinned. “I can work with that. I think so, anyway.”

  “Tell me again about what the church was like.” Leo sensed Rakkim’s resistance. “Please?”

  “It was…quiet. No time, no fear. Just an overwhelming sense of peace. Maybe it was because of all the smoke and fire outside, but it was this perfect…oasis, this refuge. It smelled good too. I’ve been in a lot of churches. Lot of mosques. They’re filled with talk of God, but it’s just talk. God’s nowhere around. This church, though…this little church…it was like, this is where God goes when he can’t bear what’s become of the world.”

  Leo nodded. “What about—”

  “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

  “Could I see your hand?”

  Rakkim showed him. Even with his rapid Fedayeen healing, the burn should have been red and inflamed for a few days. Instead, a raised white scar crossed his palm, the image of the crucifixion clear.

  “Did it hurt?”

  Rakkim ignored him.

  “Before we got to Addington, you said a big lie needed three parts,” said Leo. “The Judas coin is one part, and that brand on your palm is the second. So…what’s the third part you’re going to use to convince Crews? I think you started to tell me, but I fell asleep.”

  “My charm and sparkling personality.”

  Leo massaged his temples like he had a headache.

  Rakkim passed a family van with Georgia plates, the kids in the back-seat waving to them until their mother raised the privacy screens. He watched the father pull off onto a side road, the rough-cut eye in the pyramid spinning slowly from Rakkim’s rearview.

  “Clyde and I looked over some geologic maps of Addington while we waited for you last night,” said Leo. “Addington sits on some interesting terrain. Full of fault lines and pockets of natural gas. Probably never should have mined coal there.”

  “Little late for that.”

  The road wound along the foothills. Far below, Rakkim could see a ribbon of blue water rushing over the rocks. In the distance an entire forest had been clear-cut, one whole side of the mountain stripped bare of trees; it was the third one he had seen since leaving Addington. Mountains of stubble now. Shipped to India probably, or South Africa. Mandela City’s burgeoning middle class had fallen in love with the dense grain of hickory and ash and hemlock, just as they had fallen in love with lush green lawns and rose gardens; vast tracts of homes now spread across the veldt, each one with hardwood floors and cabinets, their lawns and gardens irrigated from the last of Lake Tanganyika. That great lake might be drying up, but there were still vast swatches of the Belt’s natural resources available—Appalachian timber, natural gas from Louisiana and Texas, opals from Arkansas. So much white limestone had been shipped out of southern Georgia that miles of the landscape were uninhabitable, riddled with sinkholes. Dozens of indigenous songbirds were virtually extinct, thanks to a sudden craze for them by the Chinese ten years ago. Everything was for sale.

  “I just wish we could get some current satellite imagery for Mr. Winthrop,” said Leo, rolling now, anything to get his mind off what was coming. “I sketched out some architectural plans. His computer’s circa the early Pleistocene, but I was able to make some rough sketches, trying to use the topography of the surrounding area and a history of prevailing wind currents to redesign the town. Change the whole site. You know, minimize smoke and toxicity. It could be done. Just have to—”

  “Why bother? It’s not like the Belt is overpopulated. The people who moved out of Addington had the right idea.”

  “It’s their home, Rikki. Clyde said the people who left would come back if the air was better, if their kids could play outside. You’d feel the same way if Seattle suddenly became—”

  “You’re wasting your time…” Rakkim’s voice trailed off as an empty dump truck roared past them from the opposite direction, bumping along the shoulder, barely staying on the road. He glimpsed the driver’s frantic face, saw bullet holes in the windshield. “Leo…why don’t you slide down in your seat?”

  “Why?”

  Rakkim pushed him down into the leg space under the dash. He slowed slightly, watching both sides of the road. Something flashed near the top of one of the trees and he braced himself for a bullet to the brain. Nothing happened. He kept driving. The flash was a signal to those who waited ahead. He slipped his knife into the heel of one boot, hid the thousand-dollar gold piece from Stevenson in the heel of the other, the boots deliberately too worn to be worth stealing. The road banked steep
ly, curving. The perfect spot for an ambush. He slowed, leaned on the horn, the sound echoing off the rocks and trees.

  “This is it, huh?” said Leo, voice muffled from his awkward position.

  “Let me do the talking. You just speak Jewish.”

  “Hebrew. It’s called Hebrew.”

  Rakkim shrugged. Sounded the horn again.

  “What’s going on?” said Leo.

  “I want Crews’s men know we’re coming. Let them know that we’re aware of them waiting for us. That’ll make them curious. They’ll want to talk before they kill us.”

  “Kill us?” Leo scuttled out from under the dash, banged his head. “I thought they were going to take us prisoner.”

  “They don’t take prisoners.” Rakkim slipped the silver shekel into his mouth and placed it behind his teeth on the right side, right up against the inside of his cheek. He could hold a conversation or sing a song and no one could tell it was there. The taste, though…two thousand years of sweat and greed filled his mouth. He drove on, horn blaring.

  “I should…I should have never left Leanne,” said Leo. “I should have just stayed with her…married her.”

  “Marry her later.” Rakkim saw a car blocking the road as he rounded the corner. One end of the car was stove in, probably from where the dump truck had plowed through. Rakkim waved to the men pointing machine guns at him. “You can tell her all about your dangerous adventures and how you saved the world. Women love that.”

  Leo’s lower lip quivered. “Really?”

  “No.” Rakkim stopped the car. Rolled down his window.

  There was a moment when the two men in front almost opened up with their guns—he saw it in their expression, their posture—then another man, dressed in a black jumpsuit with white bones on it, said something and they half lowered their weapons. The man in the skeleton suit walked toward the car, a pistol at his side.

  “Why…why is he dressed like that?” whispered Leo.

  Rakkim peered at the skeleton man. It was a Halloween outfit. Looked like it anyway. Sarah had shown him pictures from the old days, pictures of people dressed as devils and witches and wild beasts. A holiday or something. Kids and adults both took part. People scared each other and then passed out candy, evidently. Halloween had been banned in the Belt since the war. So what was this guy from the ETA doing dressed like a skeleton?

  “Howdy.” Skeleton man pressed the barrel of his pistol against Rakkim’s forehead. “Any reason I shouldn’t kill you?”

  “I want to see Malcolm,” said Rakkim.

  Skeleton man ground the barrel deeper into Rakkim’s forehead. “Does Malcolm want to see you?”

  Rakkim watched the others form a semicircle around the car, a grungy group, half starved, long hair matted. Many of them were bare-chested against the chill, but well armed, torsos draped with belts of ammunition, their automatic weapons clean.

  The pistol rapped Rakkim’s head. “I can’t hear you.”

  “Malcolm’s expecting me,” said Rakkim. “He just doesn’t know it yet.”

  The pistol eased back slightly as skeleton man considered it.

  “You don’t want to be wrong, pal.” Rakkim spun the eye in the pyramid, the metal flashing in the sun. “I’d hate to be you if you fuck this up.”

  “Get out.”

  Rakkim allowed himself to be tripped as he stepped out of the car, his hands jerked behind his back and wired tight. Leo got the same treatment and a few kicks beside. The kid didn’t cry out, just muttered something in Jewish or Hebrew or whatever it was.

  The two of them were pushed and dragged to a four-by-four panel truck and tossed in the back. They landed on a pile of luggage; leather bags and suitcases, overnight duffels and a red leather makeup kit. The worst was a couple of kids’ small suitcases festooned with stickers from Florida Fiesta-Land. Nobody else in the back of the truck, though. No prisoners. Rakkim saw Leo fight back tears at the sight of the happy stickers, saw anger in him too, and was pleased. They were going to need that anger in the coming days.

  “You comfy back there?” called skeleton man, turning around in the front seat.

  Rakkim and Leo stayed silent and skeleton man turned back. They bounced along in the semidarkness for a long time, at least an hour, while the truck climbed steeply, then careened down a long, twisting slope. Rakkim braced his legs against the side of the truck, but Leo slid back and forth, gashed his face on the edge of a plaid suitcase.

  The truck stopped, engine idling roughly before being shut off. The back door swung open and Rakkim blinked in the afternoon light, before the two of them were hauled out and dropped onto the ground.

  Skeleton man glared at him. “If Malcolm isn’t interested in what you’re selling, you’re mine.”

  Rakkim got to his feet, looked around. They were on the edge of a large clearing, a stream running down the ridge. Cannibalized cars, new vehicles, and motor homes were scattered across the site, most of them occupied by armed men. Dozens of jungle hammocks hung from the trees, mosquito netting glistening in the damp air. A bullet-riddled school bus lay on its side. He counted nine men wearing skeleton costumes…officers maybe, or maybe they had just looted an old store of merchandise and liked what they saw. Guns and ammunition were stacked across the site, small arms, mostly, with a few heavy machine guns. A couple of pickups with antiaircraft rail guns mounted on the back were parked near the edge of the clearing. Men filtered toward them from the woods, their faces hostile and sullen.

  Leo had to roll onto his knees to stand up, wobbling.

  A tall man strode toward them from the largest motor home, a very tall man, at least six foot six, maybe taller, dressed all in black. Skinny as a blade, thick-bearded, his long hair braided with pink ribbons and yellow marigolds. His eyes boiled with a twisted intelligence…the eyes of a starving maniac lost in the mountains after a plane crash and forced to eat the other survivors. And maybe he hadn’t been that hungry when he took the first bite. He looked Rakkim over.

  “He…he said he had valuable information, Malcolm,” said skeleton man. “Information you’d want to hear.”

  “So you brought him here. He and his soft-bellied companion.” Crews never took his eyes off Rakkim. “What if he’s carrying a bomb? What if he’s been sent by the Antichrist to assassinate me?”

  “I frisked him myself, Malcolm.” Skeleton man sneered at Rakkim. “Besides, seems to me the Antichrist could do better than these two.”

  “You’re an expert on the Antichrist, are you?”

  “No…no, Malcolm.”

  A crowd had gathered—hard, disheveled men, faces crusted with dirt.

  “What if he swallowed a tracking device?” Crews said lightly. “My enemies might already be on their way, with iniquity in their hearts.”

  Skeleton man bowed his head. “Forgive…forgive me, Malcolm.”

  “Go and sin no more.” Crews drew a pistol and blew skeleton man’s brains out. As the sound of the gunshot echoed, skeleton man sat down, then fell backward onto the ground. Crews was fast. Fedayeen fast, maybe.

  Leo closed his eyes, trembling.

  Rakkim kicked dirt on the body of skeleton man. “Well, one nice thing about hell, there’s always a vacancy.”

  Shouts from the crowd. Demands for Rakkim and Leo to be skinned alive…and worse. Crews paid them no mind, his attention on Rakkim. A short man wearing dirty glasses squeezed through, wanded Rakkim with a sensor stick. Then Leo. He looked up at Crews, pushed back his glasses. “They’re clean.”

  “No one’s clean,” said Crews. “All have fallen short of the glory of God.” The breeze made the flowers in his hair flutter. “Any last words?”

  “Come closer,” said Rakkim. “I’ve got something for you.”

  Crews watched him. Wolf eyes under a full moon. All pupil.

  Rakkim shifted his tongue, slid the silver coin half out of his mouth.

  “Something for the ferryman?” Crews snatched the moist shekel from Rakkim’s mouth. His
eyes widened slightly as he looked at the coin.

  “What is it, Malcolm?” said one of the skeleton men in the crowd. “Malcolm?”

  “Untie him,” said Crews, still staring at the coin. “Untie the both of them.”

  The short man snipped the wires that bound Rakkim.

  Rakkim rubbed his wrists, taking his time. He nodded at Leo, who couldn’t seem to stop shaking.

  “You surprise me, pilgrim.” Crews suddenly embraced Rakkim, kissed him on both cheeks. His breath was foul and the flowers in his hair brushed against Rakkim’s neck, their cool, spongy touch like dead fingers. “What’s your name?”

  “I’m Rikki. This is Leo.”

  “Walk with me,” said Crews. “My flock will take care of Leo.”

  Rakkim waved to Leo, then followed Crews into the woods, the two of them slipping into the twilight canopy. No one came after them. Crews was either sure of Rakkim or, more likely, sure of himself.

  Crews rubbed the coin as they walked. “You always travel with a Jew, Rikki?”

  This whole time in the Belt, Crews was the only one who had recognized Leo as Jewish. The South wasn’t nearly as anti-Semitic as the Islamic Republic, but there were plenty of good Christians who thought the Jews had got what was coming to them. “I travel with a couple of other Jews too,” he said. “Jesus Christ and John the Baptist.”

  “A good answer.” Crews held the coin by the edge. “Did the Jew give you the shekel of Tyre?”

  “Now I’m the one surprised,” said Rakkim. “I didn’t know if you’d recognize it.”

  “I asked you a question.”

  “No…I didn’t get it from Leo. I got it from my grandfather.”

  Crews smiled. “And you gave it to me. How thoughtful.” He led Rakkim deeper into the woods, up a steep, twisting trail, in the increasing darkness. Wind trickled through the trees, cold and damp. Most men would have been exhausted by the climb, but Crews wasn’t even breathing hard, seemingly exhilarated by the exertion and their solitude. “So why have you come here, pilgrim?” He flipped the coin, caught it deftly, and held it up for Rakkim to admire. “You and your silver shekel.”