6th Horseman, Extremist Edge Series: Part 1 (11 page)

The night doorman opens the door for me,
“Mornin’, Mr. Gladstone,” tipping his hat.

“It’s Ian. Mr. Gladstone is my father.” I try
to return a smile, though I want to punch the guy in the face for
reasons I can’t explain. Maybe it’s just the stress. I wasn’t born
a criminal. My mind isn’t conditioned to compartmentalize feelings
of guilt.

There is a flat screen TV in the lobby. A
blond woman spouts off the headlines. “We are getting reports now
that there is an attack underway, targeting the satellite
infrastructure of the United States.” I hold my breath. She isn’t
talking about my little spy game. I do expect that news report any
time now. Have been for months, but no one is the wiser. The
satellites are something different altogether. I wonder if Zilla
knows what’s going on. I speed to the elevator.

The doors open and there’s my neighbor. He
shakes his cell phone at me. “I was about to make ten thou on the
UK stock exchange,” he complains. “But the satellite dropped my
call. Smart ass hacker needs to get a job.”

I nod because my throat is too dry to speak.
More violent thoughts pop into my head. I want to kick the guy. We
switch places as I get in the elevator.

“I better check my accounts,” I croak
sheepishly. That came out wrong. I’m not built for this shit.

“He’s probably some punk living in his mama’s
basement, eating animal cookies for lunch. I hope they throw him in
jail for the rest of his life.” My neighbor moves on, smacking his
gum like a hyperactive cow.

After the doors close and the elevator starts
moving I speak out loud. “You are one of the reasons this world is
so screwed. I hope you lose your entire fortune with this virus.”
Maybe I’ll just piss on his door.
I shake my head regretting
that thought. Time to check out. I am frazzled.

At my door there is a red package and a
bottle of Blue Label Johnny Walker scotch. The scotch has a nice
black bow tied around it. I scoop up the package and slip inside my
condo. I re-lock the locks and turn my security bar until it
clicks. I sit the red box and the scotch on my coffee table and
stare at it. Zilla. Who else? Today is my last install, so it fits.
I open the red box. Inside is a red tinted syringe filled with
something. I’m confused. My brain can’t process what I am seeing so
I open the scotch, take a long swig, then flip on the TV. At two
hundred dollars a bottle, this stuff is just what I need to calm my
nerves.

The burn in my throat sends icicle shivers
throughout my nervous system. My body anticipates the drink before
it hits my liver. I immediately take another drink without a breath
between. Then comes the heat. I can feel the stress flake off my
consciousness like weathered paint peeling in the sunlight. Now
that
is a well-tamed scotch.

I watch the news about the computer virus
until two in the morning, scotch in hand. Then the TV fuzzes out.
The cable news gets the bug. I laugh. Blonds in suits should have
been expecting that. I take two sleeping pills and pass out.

The next day I wake with a bad hangover. It’s
around eleven in the morning, but I feel it’s still too early to
get up. I try to turn on the lights, but they don’t work. I shrug
and sluggishly lumber to the bathroom. The bathroom lights don’t
work either. Power must be out. I piss then flush. The water
doesn’t refill. Something is wrong in the building. I close the lid
and try the sink. No water. Damn, what I really need is a hot
shower. I shuffle to the TV and try to turn it on.
No
electricity, dummy.

I look at my watch. It’s dead. I can feel my
brow tighten as my confusion slips into panic. I leap to the
nearest window and peer to the street below. There’s a five-car
pileup in front of my building. My adrenaline kicks in. I run to my
closet and tear through boxes until I find my binoculars. They were
a gift from my dad on my sixteenth birthday. I remember being so
pissed off when I got them. What I really wanted was a car. My dad
is a multimillion-dollar man but he couldn’t even buy his son a
car. The binoculars are six hundred dollar peeps, and I never use
them. I rip open the box and run back to the window. The street is
a mess. People yell at each other and hover around the car wreck.
One car has crashed into the building across the street. I look the
opposite way. There are two guys throwing punches in front of the
barbershop. No one tries to stop them.

I head down to the lobby, taking the stairs
two at a time. It’s empty. No bellman and no annoying rich
neighbor. Out on the street is a different story. Thousands are
running or walking or stumbling up the street. They’re rats fleeing
a sinking ship. The cars are jam-packed and some people are running
over the tops. A motorcycle weaves in an out, pushing people out of
its way without a word or a gesture. There are sirens and horns and
yelling. I pace in the lobby for a minute, then I go outside.
Someone has to be able to give me some news.

I duck back inside after almost getting
ripped apart by someone vomiting and crying out in pain. I can’t
hear anything over the thumping in my ears. My stomach tightens and
its contents threaten to hightail it out of my esophagus. I stumble
back up the stairwell and slam my condo door behind me.

I wish I had a TV or a radio. Without the TV
the house is so quiet. I try to put on my MP3 player, which
operated by batteries, but it doesn’t work either.
What the
hell?
Anxiety starts building in my veins. After taking a giant
pull from the bottle, I pour a drink of scotch and watch the world
from my window. The street continues moving, the mass migration
never ending, except for the bodies left behind. I watch people
fight, steal shit from each other, and panic.

It’s total chaos and no one is in control.
The street has bloomed with fear. It’s a constant flow of survival
of the fittest. This is the end reel. The credits are about to
rise.

I hear gunshots. Machine guns. A Humvee tears
down the road, rams a car wreck and tries to push through it. It’s
swarmed by people. I can’t look away. A boom startles me. It came
from my hallway. I am afraid, in shock. I don’t utter a single
word.

Outside the window I see a body, a woman,
fall from above. The sight stops my heart. I drop my drink.

Had she jumped or was she pushed off her
balcony? I find her with my binoculars. She’s splattered on the
sidewalk like an orange that had been stepped on. My veins fill up
with a thickness that I’d never felt before. It dulls my thoughts
and anchors me to the bottom of a great and heavy sea. I — I just
want to shut down, hit my power button and blink out of existence.
I look into my kitchen, at the knives on my countertop. Best knives
on the market. Sharp as shark’s teeth with mirco-diamond serrated
edges. I make my way to the darkened kitchen, grab the largest
knife, then stumbled back to the window. The light bit into my head
as though it were the knife. My vision re-adjusted. I know, really
know, that I had something to do with what is going on outside my
window.

Just then, the clouds part and let a jet
plunge through their dark fluff. Its engine burns. It falls fast
and lands in the distance. A moment later, the glass in front of me
shakes. A cloud of black smoke rises above the skyline. The smoke
merges into the other dark towers of smoke and ash rising from the
skyline.

I pull out my guitar and try to distract
myself, but I’m too drunk to play. I pop a few sleeping pills and a
couple of sedatives and wash the pills down with some more blue
label scotch. The pills hit me like a kick in the head. I forget
about the world outside and have no more inclinations to leave the
condo. I dance and make jokes and go utterly mad for the next four
or five hours.

I end up face to face with one of my writing
awards clinging to my wall. It is trapped in a two hundred dollar
frame my father insisted upon purchasing for me. It reads,
High
Literary Achievement Award from Columbia University. Awarded to Ian
Gladstone.
The type is printed in shiny metallic foil and has
an official looking insignia and fancy borders. I rip it off the
wall and stomp on it. I rip my PEN Award off the wall, too, and
smash it. Finally, I try to sit on my rocking chair but miss the
cushion completely and land on my ass. The room spins and I laugh
again. I laugh hard. I laugh so hard that my head tightens like it
was in a vice, and my eyes tear. The world is so funny. It has
played a joke on me, and I just got the punch line. It’d been so
long since I’d laughed like that. For years I’d taken everything so
seriously. I’d acted as if the world was so broken that I had to
fix it. Maybe I was broken. Who was I trying to fix the world for?
I’m utterly alone.

Until I’m not.

The door bursts inward and five big dudes
hustle into my living room. They have a police battering ram,
bulletproof vests, pistols, and batons, but they aren’t officers.
They’re thieves. I sway and gape at their intrusion, still trying
to figure out why I’m as frozen as a bronze statue. The bald guy,
with the wife beater shirt under his vest and the intricate tribal
tattoos covering ninety percent of his body, comes at me. I should
be able to raise my hands, to defend myself or my home, but I
can’t. I’m too fucked up. He brings up the baton and clocks me
across the head. I fall into an abyss of dark swirling nothingness.
It feels like I’ve crawled into the dryer and hit tumble-dry. I’m
not out yet because I can hear them.

One guys says, “No food.”

Another snaps, “We’re not here for food,
fool!”

My closet door bangs open and someone else
rifles through my desk.

The pounding in my head increases. Warm blood
drips down my forehead. I need to call an ambulance! Shit. The
spinning won’t stop. I want to pull out my phone and call the cops.
Ha! The cops. I’ve railed against the perceived police state in
blogs and articles and never thought I’d need them. Now, here I am
wishing I could call someone to help me.

I crack my eyes open and watch the guys move
to the door. They’ve got armfuls of expensive clothes, suits, my
computer, back-up hard drive, my guitar, and a box of jewelry my
mother left me. It’s everything of value I have in the world.
Someone should tell them the computer stuff is as valuable as a
burnt piece of toast.

Well, it doesn’t take a genius to be an
asshole. I kind of feel like one myself.

The bald guy comes back to me, slips off my
watch, which is quite expensive, and brings down his baton on my
head. I go out this time.

I wake early morning around five or six. The
sun rises, squeezing through the gaps in the blinds, but barely
pushes back the dark. My once tidy apartment is completely trashed.
I have nothing in this world now. I am naked.

My head forces me to get up and go to the
mirror. I’m a blurry reflection of myself and I feel exactly how I
look. I’m too thin, covered in blood, and shaking. I use a water
bottle to clean off the blood, and take a handful of ibuprofen.

Not a sound enters my ears — no cars, no
screaming, crying, no computer fan or air-conditioning unit —
nothing.

My head spins again and I end up on the floor
with my head between my knees. When it stops, I move to the windows
and roll-up my vinyl shades to let the light in. I want the light
to penetrate every nook and cranny of my condo because I don’t want
to be in darkness anymore.

The New York skyline is still, cold and
silent, like the model architecture on my dad’s development table
in his office. It isn’t a model; it’s the beginning of the new day,
a dark day. A day I fathered.

The flame of New York sits on the brink of
darkness. Its progress: the ideas, inventions, and laws, all grind
to a halt like an engine without oil. Without electricity the
buildings look dingy and old. However, the stillness is far from
tranquil. There’s sensation of sadness in the air, tears on the
wind, and screams, silently stuck in the throats of millions.