Ascension: Invocation (26 page)

Milan would lose sleep, forever lost in a moment in which he had nothing to offer, short of needless apologies. Amber would find strength from this debacle but not in this moment. Graham Barry would later recall the significance of this flash in time as it would serve for the betterment of his soul. Everyone in the room that day, in fact, would have burned in their mind's eye the next sixty seconds. Except Alicia. For this was to be another moment in which she came to know the ire long ago cast in her soul; and rage is as impervious to details as it is blind.

All present agree that he appeared suddenly and without pronouncement. He looked tired and Milan immediately engaged him. Something had been weighing heavy on his mind.

"Hey, I wanted to apologize about the other day. I've really felt terrible about not returning. When I arrived at Ground Zero, I just... well, I got involved. Were you ever able to reach your family?"

Distracted, Alicia walked through the store to catch up with Alex. As determined as she was to stop her from placing a call to L.A., the photos of the injured from Ground Zero were her first priority. As she opened each photo on her phone, Alicia quickly scanned the room for matching faces. She heard the front door open and saw a familiar face on her screen. The caption read "falling debris, minor scrapes and bruises". Hal.

Milan would later recall the last thing he heard Sariana say. "Is this the failsafe?"

All at once, there was a great deal of shouting in the studio. Alicia trampled over equipment and display cases in time to see Hal grab Sariana and force her to her knees as he stood behind her. A pistol appeared in his right hand and he held it against her back. Alicia saw everything in slow motion. The bullet escaped from the chamber and passed through Sariana's body in a flash. She fell forward onto the studio floor as screams erupted from the crew. Initially stunned, Alicia now rushed to Sariana and held her still conscious body in her lap.

"Sariana!!!" she shouted. "Someone find a doctor!! Help!!"

Amber began shouting to the room for medical assistance as Hal looked on. A rush of emotions surged through Alicia. She was shocked, frightened and her heart raced.

"The message," Sariana managed. "You must get the message out."

"What?"

"Tell all of the souls. Start the rebellion."

"Oh, no. We're not done yet, Sariana. You stay with me." Tears began to well up in Alicia's eyes. "Somebody get a fucking doctor!!" The girl tried to smile at Alicia but was overtaken by a grimace. "Don't die! Sariana!! We've almost completed your mission, honey. Don't die!!"

"What do I do when I die, My Queen?"

"No! Baby, stay with me. It's all going to be okay. We're going to get you help."

"Please try to remember." Sariana now appeared very frightened. “I don’t know what to do when I die.”

"We're going to fix you up, honey, and then we're going to go see the Exalted One just like you wanted to do." Sariana began coughing up blood. "No, no, no. It's all going to be okay, Sariana."

"My education was not complete. It wasn’t supposed to be this way."

Alicia began crying and stroking Sariana's hair and face. "I'm so sorry. I'm sorry. Baby, hold on. Please."

“I suppose I begin again.” A calm seemed to come over Sariana. "You will see me again. Remember?"

"I don't remember, Sariana. I'm sorry... but I don't think I do. I don't want to lose you."

Sariana took Alicia's hand. "You can do it, My Queen, and you will hold me as a child. Don't despair. Please tell your children that I did my best."

"Of course, you did! You did so well, Sariana. You did a good job, baby. You did so good. I love you, honey. Hold on."

Alicia felt Sariana's last breath escape from her body as her hand went limp. Through her tears, she saw blurs of faces staring at her and her dead companion. She saw Amber crying. Members of the crew finally jumped on Hal and held him to the ground. She held Sariana's body close and hugged her tightly.

"Somebody get the police!" someone shouted.

In that very moment, something snapped inside Alicia. She felt it. Her heart beat so loudly she suspected the onlookers could hear it. She felt blood surge in her brain and a well of adrenaline shot from deep within her. She gently laid Sariana's body on the cold studio floor and slowly stood, her clothes awash in Sariana's blood.

She locked eyes with Milan whose tearing eyes now gave way to fear as he saw the emptiness, the harsh, soullessness that seemed to emanate from Alicia's face. She approached him and calmly asked for the gun.

"Ms. Parker, no!" Amber shouted.

Milan didn't know what else to do. He felt practically hypnotized by her gaze. Milan was the only other person in the room who understood Alicia's motive. He knew that wasn't Hal barely struggling under the weight of four men. Milan didn't hesitate. He gave her the gun.

Alicia was dazed. She walked to the men holding down the shooter. "Let him go," she said. The men did not comply. She pointed the gun at the men. "I said release him!!!" she screamed.

The men hesitantly scattered and Hal tried to rise but before he could completely sit up, Alicia smashed the gun into his mouth, shattering his teeth and sending his head violently back to the floor, spraying blood on Alicia and the nearby onlookers who quickly dispersed. She sat on top of him as the Human moaned in agony and choked on his broken teeth.

Alicia removed the gun from his mouth and clutched it in her right hand as she grabbed a handful of his scalp with her left and slammed his head into the floor twice more. She stood as the man lay writhing on the ground, spitting up blood and shaking violently. The room had now grown silent.

She was soaked in blood. Alicia let out a long scream that was equal parts rage and wailing sorrow. It came from deep within her and she felt as if she were channeling a massive violent anger, galaxies large. She circled the man like a lion watching its prey in its final death throws. She stepped down hard on the man's throat. Hal was still alive but now his breathing became a loud wheeze.

Alicia now loudly addressed the studio as the police finally arrived at the scene. "Princess Sariana died for you!!! I command you to kneel before her body!!!" Amber was the first to comply and she held the dead girl's hand. She was followed by the few other employees but most just stared in silence. Alicia waved the gun at the crowd. "Kneel!!!" With the exception of the cops, guns drawn, everyone within earshot awkwardly knelt where they stood.

"Drop the gun, lady," one of the policemen shouted. "It doesn't have to end this way!"

Alicia instead grabbed the shooter's head by his hair and shouted in his ear. "Do you see?! Do you fucking see?! They worship her. You have failed!! You're a god-damned fool. You’ve wasted your soul!!" Alicia pulled his head closer to her own face. "I bring death and you’re the first soul I’ll seek. I will find you. You are now face to face with the woman that will extinguish your God-forsaken soul." Alicia dropped his skull to the ground, stood and pointed the gun at the man's head.

“Drop the gun!!! We will shoot!!”

The man struggled a smile, replete with broken teeth and he spat out blood. With that, he coughed his final words, "I’m... not... Human."

A chill ran up Alicia’s spine. She looked back at Sariana's dead body. Amber knelt above her in an ever-expanding pool of blood, holding the girl’s hand, her mascara smeared by tears. The sight of her grand-daughter’s lifeless corpse brought Alicia to tears again. The killer was one of her own; an ascended new soul, a death savant. The soul’s mission was now clear to her. Sariana was gone. Her soul had been exterminated. There would be no twilight sleep for this child she’d grown to love so dearly. Sariana’s soul wouldn’t be starting over in her home dimension. This beautiful daughter of her unborn child was never to be again.

She unleashed another long and terrifying scream. The cops shouted orders she couldn’t hear. The onlookers trembled in fear for their own lives. Alicia felt as if her rage would tear her skin away. Centuries of hate coursed in her blood, devouring all remnants of fear and empathy. These were things collected in vain by a once ignorant soul and they were childish in this moment.

Her now furious soul fought through the pain. Killing this wretch wouldn’t bring Sariana back. No. This soul wouldn’t die. Alicia didn’t know how to kill it yet. It would be afforded the very opportunity of rebirth it had only a moment before eternally denied the girl. Regardless, the thought of sharing her dimension for another breath alongside Sariana’s murderer infuriated Alicia.

She knelt again to the murderer. “Then, send a message back,” Alicia whispered. “The Queen’s edict has changed. I have no interest in peace.” Alicia again pointed the gun at the man’s face. “Tell them the new, unholy souls of Lucifer are coming for them. This time... Human eradication is imminent. In fact... it is promised.”

Alicia emptied the clip into the man’s body, dropped the pistol and was immediately tazed by the police. She lay on the floor, her cheek pressed to the cold linoleum of the Dollar Store floor, her eyes locked with Sariana’s vacant gaze. They placed handcuffs on Alicia and stood up her up with a jerk. Milan saw an entirely new person being led outside. That giddy gleam in her eye from days before was now gone. The pretentious redhead had been thoroughly erased. Alicia had come to Alabama with lofty career aspirations. She would leave Queen.

CHAPTER SIX

             
Chaos accompanied the
next several hours outside the Dollar Store. Milan had managed to slip away unnoticed. The commotion surrounding Alicia’s arrest and the collection of Hal and Sariana’s bodies gave him ample time to exit the studio. There were simply not enough officers on the scene. He began to fight the crowds and make his way back to Ground Zero.

Amber, meanwhile, stumbled, dazed into the wave of vagrant souls gathered outside in the streets, nearly all of whom were blissfully oblivious to what had just transpired inside. She made little effort to move. Rather, the crowd bumped and shoved her forward over the course of the several street blocks. She was confused and startled. Eventually, Amber found a curb and sat down.

She looked out across the mass of people that now occupied her little town. Where had they all come from? Amber heard that the elementary school, where she had learned her numbers and affixed candy hearts to poster board was now home to migrants, sleeping on pallets and doing their washing in the cafeteria sinks. The high school football field was full of garbage and the police were losing control. Only weeks before, this was a desolate and charming little place with only a handful of visitors, most of whom were relations or simply passing through. Today, she didn’t recognize this ugly landscape she once had called home.

A familiar face approached Amber. “Hey, girl.” It was Tommy, one of her boyfriend’s oldest pals and the former bass player for Wicked Suns, his failed garage band. Amber didn’t much care for his company but right now it was a pleasure to see him. “How you holdin’ up?”

“I just saw the most fucked up shit, Tommy.”

“Yeah. There’s some chick over on Second Street charging five dollars for hand jobs.”

“No, you don’t understand,” Amber was nearly breathless to tell her tale. “This little girl just got shot in the Dollar Store and then this news lady fucking beat the shit out of the guy that shot her and then she shot his fucking face off.”

“Woah. In the Dollar Store? Over what?”

“It’s a news studio now.”

“What do you mean?”

“They’re doing the news over there, Tommy. It’s CNN or something.”

“Is the Redbox out front still open?”

“What?”

“I was going to get a movie later.”

“Goddamn it, Tommy,” Amber noticed the uncracked fifth of Jack he toted. “You gonna open that?”

“Go ahead.” Tommy sat on the curb next to Amber. Her hands shook as she hurriedly twisted the bottle open and took a long draw. A fight broke out about a block away. Amber and Tommy watched as cheers and laughter erupted from the crowd. In a few moments, it was over. A bloodied and angry man limped by the pair shortly thereafter, mumbling something about the assholes that jumped him.

“What the fuck is happening?”

“Fuckin’ aliens or some shit.” Tommy took his own drink. “People got shot, huh?”

“Dude, right in front of me! I saw them die.”

“What were they fighting over?”

“The end of the world, Tommy. Ain’t you been paying attention?!”

“Of course I have. But, unlike you, I have other responsibilities.”

“What do you mean other responsibilities? You have things to do that supersede the apocalypse?”

“I got a wife and kid.”

Amber took the bottle back and helped herself to another belt. “Where are they?”

“Hell if I know.”

“That little girl I was talking about? The one that got shot?”

“Yeah?”

“She said she was a princess from another dimension. We ain’t supposed to stand in that rain they’re talking about.”

A voice from behind them joined the conversation. “Your friend is wise.” Amber and Tommy turned to find an unkempt man sitting in a ragged lawn chair. His throne was surrounded candy wrappers and empty Mountain Dew two liters.

“Why do you say that?” Amber asked.

The man leaned forward in his chair. “This is the end-game. The Illuminati holocaust.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Surely, you’re not that naïve, are you?”

“Just fucking tell me.”

“The Illuminati control everything. Always have,” the man said excitedly. “Assassinations, currency manipulation, Super Bowl halftime shows...”

“What?”

“Shit’s all executed through puppet institutions. Motherfuckers like the Federal Reserve, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Freemasons, and Def Jam.”

“Def Jam? The record company?”

“More like an oppression company.”

“What are they trying to do? What’s the...”

“What’s the end game? I’ll tell you what they’re doing. The people that get in that rain, they’re about to be alien food.”

“That’s... sort of what the princess said.”

“Which princess?”

“Sariana. The little girl that I saw get killed.”

“Oh. Well, yeah, that’s what’s going to happen. Anybody that so much as lets a drop of that pesticide touch ‘em is gonna be paralyzed and then fed to the Reptoids.”

“She talked about Lucifer and the Humans and...”

“I don’t care what you call it. It’s all the same shit. From day one, we were put on this Earth for one reason and one reason only.”

“That’s what she said!”

“To be brunch for a fuckin’ alien race.”

“That’s some fucked up shit.”

Tommy whispered in Amber’s ear. “I think this guy’s a little weird.”

Amber looked the man over again. Tommy was right. She wasn’t going to find any definitive answers chatting with these lunatics. “Well, thanks for your... insight,” she told him.

The man nodded and handed her a leaflet about something called the Reptoids Research Center. “All the truth you need to know in fifteen hundred words.”

“You want to walk?” Tommy asked her.

“Yeah.”

Amber was still a nervous wreck, of course. Save for her Grandmother in a casket when she was very young, she’d never seen a dead body before. She’d certainly never seen anyone killed. Perhaps what shook Amber the most, what ripped her to the core, was how unceremoniously all life, all spirit vacated the lonely girl’s eyes. Sariana was just... gone. How could this be? Where were her memories? Did a lifetime of earned knowledge just suddenly cease to be? If she could comprehend it, Amber might have gone mad in that very moment. But it was the fear that Sariana expressed before she departed that unnerved Amber the most. The girl was not at peace in her time of dying. She was fucking terrified. This would, hereafter, be the stuff of nightmares for this young Alabama woman, reared on angels, singing serenades for Jesus.

“You ever hear from your sister?” Tommy asked and, for the moment, stopped her mind from racing.

“No. Not for a while.”

“Cops never did catch her?”

“Like I said, I ain’t heard from her.” Amber took the bottle back. “She left town with one of her clients.”

“Yeah, I heard she was hooking.”

“Escorting.”

“Same thing, ain’t it?”

“Just a more polite way of putting it, I guess.”

“Well, I hope she’s all right.”

“Me too. Not that it matters much now.”



Milan, on the other hand, had a better understanding of what had transpired at the store and he hurried to be among Sariana’s converted inside the radio station. He quickly found General Ramsey who was already briefed of the circumstances. The Presidential cabinet, it seemed, had placed Sariana’s cries for help aside for the moment. It would become official in the morning but most of the military on-site were abuzz with talk of China dissipating the fog.

In the hills of Beijing, armed with 37mm anti-aircraft guns, the Chinese shot chemicals into the yellow fog and managed to eliminate it. Scientists the world over were stunned as they watched the radar and satellite feeds of the yellow cloud disappear. The Weather Modification Division of the Beijing Meteorological Bureau was mum on the technology utilized to vanquish the rain but it was remarkable nonetheless.

In the past several years, China had spent astonishing amounts of money on cloud busting and with good reason. China needed water and a lack of it could potentially cause their economy to collapse. While in most cases, the Chinese effort had been to create rain over specific areas of the country, it was theorized that they had simply used another chemical to eliminate the cloud. Unfortunately, in the process they had eliminated the cloud from parts of Burma and South Korea as well. There was to be much outrage.

Unlike the Presidential cabinet, however, General Ramsey had given much thought to Sariana and Alicia. He thought it best that he and Milan meet with Graham and attempt to explain the scenario. Foremost, Ramsey wanted the tapes of Sariana’s interview with Alicia. If the Princess couldn’t be present to state her case to the Exalted One, perhaps she could speak to him from beyond the grave. Triton’s legal department, however, was having none of it. Clearly, this incident at the studio was far too fresh for them to feel comfortable releasing evidence of any potential wrongdoing. In less than thirty minutes, they had refused. No one would see the tapes before the lawyers.

“General,” Milan urged. “You are the military. Just send your men to take the footage.”

“The footage would be nice but who says we need it?”

“I don’t follow.”
“As you said, I am the military. Drastic measures may be in order.”

Milan wasn’t entirely sure that he liked the sound of that. Nevertheless, General Ramsey ordered Graham to his office. Alongside Milan, they attempted to recount Sariana’s prophecy in somewhat clumsy detail.

“In short, the Princess indicated that you are one of the most powerful military commanders in the universe. For you to ascend would be tantamount to becoming a traitor against your own kind,” the General concluded.

Graham began to laugh. “What?”

“We’re serious, Mr. Barry.”

Ramsey was a bit stoic for Milan’s taste. “Graham, I realize that what we're saying here is... extraordinary, to say the least. However, I believe that her claims were not without scientific merit; the concept of other dimensions and the like. I realize that this might be a lot to take in but, well, just look at your present circumstances. Out of all of the people in the world, the voice chose to speak to you. Don’t you think that there is some great significance attached to that?”

Graham, of course, had considered this. It kept him up nights. Why him? Since his fall from grace years before, Graham had always assumed the worst. It was as if he’d long been paying a penance for his past transgressions. Even when the voice was deemed worthy of attention, Graham still approached the honor of being chosen as a dubious one at best. He found it hard to consider this good fortune; instead he found himself wondering why he should have such rotten luck. Perhaps he’d not only put his ego in check, he had, instead, beaten it into submission. Still, an other-worldly warrior he was not. Graham felt certain of that.

“Guys... I'm sure you understand. It's hard to know who and what to believe these days. I feel that I can trust the voice. I really don't think that it's misleading us. This girl..."

“That girl was assassinated less than two hours ago attempting to get a message to you, Mr. Barry,” the General interrupted. “Obviously, she didn’t think it was all horseshit.”

“I never said that, General. And I feel terrible that she died...”

“I just think that she’s owed a bit of respect.”

Again, Milan felt the tone of the conversation uncomfortably escalating and thought it best to intervene. “Graham, if I could just show you the evidence. There's not much, I'm afraid, but we believe that the first man that attempted an assassination of the girl had, in fact, died previously. He was ‘possessed’, if you will. Likewise, regarding the bombing. Unfortunately, the body of the producer at the television studio is not likely to yield significant test results...”

Graham stood up. “Respectfully, doctor. This is a lot to absorb."

"I certainly understand. We're trying to get the footage of the girl's interview with the television network right now. I think if you just take a look at that, you might understand. Perhaps you might be able to speak to Ms. Parker as well..."

"Sit down, Mr. Barry!" the General barked and Milan jumped in his seat.

"Excuse me?"

"I said sit down."

"And I said that I wanted to think about all of this."

"General..."Milan attempted to diffuse him but was met with a single, outstretched finger indicating that had he said another word, he'd endure Ramsey's temper next.

"You need to have a seat, Graham," the General said, quieter this time. Graham hesitantly returned to his chair. For a moment, all the General did was fix an icy stare on him. Graham did his best to return it but, clearly the military had done a better job than rock and roll of teaching expert-level intimidation. Nowhere in Graham's eyes could the General see any indication of a fierce warrior. Nowhere. And he did his best to look hard. Finally, Milan nervously cleared his throat and Ramsey began.