Saul of Sodom: The Last Prophet (32 page)

 
 The droog had been flipped over and the three rear sections of the vehicle
were gone; a gaping hole of twisted metal cinders and a wall of smoke in their
place.  Bodies and members were hurled like rag dolls and lay about numb and
twitching. 

  
“Get up!” he hollered, lifting the nearest martial to his feet.  “Move, now!”

  
He beat at the panels on the accesses and the pneumatic doors opened with a
sharp hiss.  The moment he hurdled through the access there was another bright
flash and the shockwave followed, knocking them off their feet.  Projectile
shards of earth and shrapnel tore through his gear and another nearby vehicle
detonated and keeled over.  Passing trucks and droogs ground to a halt, skidded
and toppled to evade the fleers and explosions, grinding up the tarmac. 
Hollers railed through the chaos:

  
“AMBUSH!”

  
“ATGs!” 

  
“TAKE COVER!”

  
Bang!
  A third blast in much closer proximity caused him to stumble. 
Orders shot across the airwaves in a frenzy.  They rushed across the street,
taking cover behind the fragmented walls of a ruined building.  More martials
fleeing from the streets took their positions, crouched and pressed up against
the wall on either side of him. 

  
“WHERE THE HELL ARE THEY FIRING FROM?” yelled the brigadier.

  
“Three red tower blocks to the north.  The upper floors.”

  
“Fire on those fucking towers! NOW!”

  
The brigadier howled the order over the airwaves just as another succession of
explosions shook the ground and shards of debris rocketed past, splintering the
edges of the walls.  Storms of gunfire unleashed northward. 

  
He peered over the edge of the wall just in time to see the great cannons on
the tank heads revolve.  Blasts of fire and smoke spouted out the thick muzzles
one after the other like a battleship broadside all along the thoroughfare. 
The sequence of shockwaves ruptured loose sections of the surrounding ruins and
a shower of splintered debris fell from above.  The three tower blocks burst,
ruptured and split like figures before a firing squad. Then a second sequential
barrage followed and ruptured the bases.  The towers toppled into one another;
a slow and ponderous fall like felled lumber crumbling, riven and
disintegrated, vanishing in a thick, white fog.  The resonance of the volleys
from the tanks and the declining rumble of the falling towers endured for a
whole minute.  The smog rose high into the air and followed the wind to the
west. They waited for some kind of follow-up -- another explosion, more
gunshots…

  
“
Hold positions,”
came the instruction over the airwaves.

  
The wait carried on for about three more minutes. 

  
The trailing mist of powdered debris swept over the thoroughfare like a
sandstorm.  Soon, soldiers started emerging onto the street one by one, and the
scene was one of fire, smoke and butchery.  Masks came down to filter out the
toxic mist.   All along the half-kilometer stretch of road, the convoy had come
to a halt, divided by segments of carnage.

  
“All teams branch out into the streets,” Saul commanded.   “Search the buildings.”

  
The brigadier removed his mask and stood up, erect, cursing.

 
 “
Five vehicles down
.  First
Brigade, damage report?
”

  
“
Multiple KIAs,
” came the response over the transmission.
 
“
Five
HGVs down.  It’s a mess.  We’re not going anywhere without replacements.
”

  
“Someone call Fort Gen,” the brigadier hollered. “We’re going to need another
convoy … I knew this place was a fucking danger zone.”

  
“We are nowhere near enemy lines,” said Saul.  “Who were they?”

  
“Freedom fighters,” replied the brigadier, “left over from the last assault.”

  
“Freedom fighters…”

  
“Civil soldiers – anti-militarists,”  The brigadier prodded a broken corpse
with his boot.  “Call themselves the ‘Phoenix Brigades.’ Nobody’s friend and
everyone’s enemy.  Their fight is against the PMCs… Talk about a waste of
blood.”

  
Martials dispersed among the wreckage, inspecting the fallen for signs of life. 
Meanwhile, Saul peered through the mist at the silhouettes of the ruined city,
the jagged edges of the broken buildings and the walls peppered with bullets. 
He narrowed his eyes, lowered the mask and breathed in the smog of dust,
scorched air and charred flesh.  Saul looked away again and gazed about in
disbelief at the desolated remains.  He knew this place.  It was the broken
carcass of Naomi’s home.  

  
“
This
… is Dolinovka,” he muttered

 
 “Didn’t check the itinerary?”

  
“What happened here…?”

 
 “Have you been living under a rock?”  The brigadier eyed him with a sideways
glower.  “The Kamchatka uprisings…?  ‘Russian Winter?’”

  
Russian winter…
 

  
He remembered the media catchphrase from a long time ago.

  
“This was a rebel city,” said the brigadier.  “Hell,” he snorted. “This was a
rebel region.”

  
“What happened?”

  
A troop of martials marched past and into the adjacent side streets.  The
brigadier sauntered casually after them.  As they went to work -- breaching
doors and cleaning out the buildings -- he continued to explain as he walked:  “There
was a mass revolt;
coups
all over the damn place,” he said.  “Most of
them were spearheaded by the Phoenix Brigades.  This city right here was their
capitol.  NSRRS forces pulled out of the region a short while after the
uprising and the U.S. moved us in a few months later – took over the whole
region.  We laid this place to waste a long while ago, but stragglers always
get left behind. This is what happens when no one sends a clean-up crew... 
Rebels,” he spat.  “They’re like rats…”

  
He broke off from the brigadier’s company and walked off into a side alley.

  
“Hey,” the brigadier called.  “Where are you going?”

  
“To search the area,” he replied without stopping.

  
“Alone?”

  
“Alone,” he asserted.  “Do not follow me.”  

  
He disappeared down the misted path. 

  
Before long, he had broken off from the main contingent and was walking
solitarily down the narrower streets west of the main thoroughfare.  He
shielded his eyes from the billowing clouds of red dust.  Further on, the air
became tainted with a pungency like decomposition, yet there was not a corpse
to be seen anywhere.  Swarms of large insects wafted through the narrow paths
and gusts of wind moaned in his ears.  Rolling tumbleweed caused him to stop, search
around, gun raised, finger fastened around the trigger, then ease a moment
later and continue.  The scene was ripe for ambush. 

  
He slowed with each step, overcome by the surreal sense of hovering over the
brim of recollection, like an enduring
déjà vu
, struggling to breach the
boundary of memory.  Suddenly, he stopped.  He turned his head to the left,
following the gleam in the corner of his eye.

  
Something barely discernible on the holed and splintered face of a door caught
his attention: a golden symbol in the form of a winged beast.  In each corner
of the street were the flickers of lost memories returning to him in broken,
undecipherable pieces: the lines of blood-stained bullet holes in the walls,
fallen masses of rubble and mud-caked seams, mounds of dirt, a few scatters of
discharged round cases, and deserted homes, upturned and shattered, still
containing most of the dust-laden possessions of the former city dwellers.  He
had seen the ruins left in the aftermath of battle, but this city looked
virtually untouched, and yet there was not a soul to be seen.  And all of it
came together in a single, ominous question:

  
Where did they all go?  

  
The next alleyway looked to have eluded the brunt of battle.  As he passed a
half-open door, the ground suddenly supple against the soles of his boots.  He
stopped and looked down.  The ground was coated thick with dust swaying in the
breeze, but through the thinner deposits he saw, quite clearly, an under-layer
of bright red that stopped at the foot of the door.  He holstered his weapon,
got down on one knee and wiped away the dirt and gravel to reveal a fine red
fabric.  He grabbed the fabric in a fist, pulled it out from under the door,
and when the dust showered off and blew away in the draft, he saw that he was
holding what appeared to be a banner.  He looked up at the door under which the
banner had been wedged and noted that it was distinguished from most of other
doors by the same golden winged creature etched into the red banner:  A golden
phoenix.

 
 He put his hand flat over the crest and pushed on the stiff door three times
until it gave.  A small horde of frightened rats scurried out, screeching. 
When he crossed the threshold, the wind yielded.  The light switch didn’t work.
 The circle of torchlight lit up a small, single-room abode, cobwebs hanging
from the ceiling corners like wall tapestries.  All the cupboards and drawers
in the room were drawn open, their contents strewn over the floor and covered
in dirt, dismantled weapon parts and gear falling out of open munitions crates. 
The place looked to have been ransacked like everywhere else.  The torchlight
passed over the carpeted floor and stopped on a small desk to the left.

 
 He lowered the torch and lifted the fallen cabinets off the desk-top with a
loud moan and bang that sent one last rat scuttling out the door.   When he
swept the dust and fragments off of the desk-top, something caught his eye,
lodged in a narrow space between the desk and the wall.  The gap was closed
with what appeared to be the outer edge of a block of wood.  He pocked his
finger into the small gap and fiddled around until the thin block slipped out
of the compartment.  It was a book. 

  
He shone the light over the cover:  no title on the front, nothing on the back
or on the spine.  He opened it, and in the middle of the very first page was
written the following:

Since I am certain that any record of us
and our cause shall be erased from the pages of history should we fail at what
we have here set out to achieve, in that event my only hope is that this record
finds its way to the world, so that people may know our struggle and the cause
to which we have commended our fate. 

Our memory is in your hands.

– NOVUM MUNDI RESURGENT –

-
         
Captain Maxwell
Wallace of the Phoenix Brigades,

Dolinovka, Kamchatka, (soon to be former)
New Eastern Republic of Russian States.

  
He flicked through the pages and found that the little book contained a series
of dated entries in the same handwriting.  The insignia on the doors must have
marked the lodgings of the faction leaders.  He propped his gun up against the
desk and pulled the chair up off the floor, sat down, turned the page to the
first entry:

Russian
Winter: Day 1

It has begun.  Our cells have infiltrated
the cities of
Petropavlovsk,
Yelisovo, Sedanka and Tigil
.  We have already spread our seed throughout
Dolinovka.  The municipalities were built recently to house exiles from the
Mongolian warzones in the southwest.  Our seed bed is small, but ripe.  We lurk
in the shadows for now, until we have garnered enough support from the people. 

Our comrades back home in the U.S. will
make us known among our countrymen when our mission is fulfilled.  Our
reputation will spread throughout Russia on the mouths of their people as
well.  Before long, the whole world will know.  The Phoenix will rise from the
ashes of all of the world’s loss.  Martial order must fall.  At any cost, it
must fall…

  
He stopped reading and turned the pages, stopping from time to time to skim
through the entries.  Every step leading up to the
coup
of the city was
catalogued in detail, interspersed with increasingly vitriolic references to
the “martial devils,” “peons of the PMCs.” “pigs of the martial economy” and  he
developed a strange connection with the rebel the further he read, as the
entries slowly became more personal, relating facts about the man behind the
chronicle.  About one-third through the journal, he stopped flipping the pages
when three words at the top of an entry caught his attention: