Saul of Sodom: The Last Prophet (33 page)

Russian Winter: Day 52

We strike tomorrow.

I may not live through the assault, but I
am not as fearful of my own death as I am for Aaliyah’s.  As much as I want to,
I cannot stop her from fighting.  She came here to fight…

He
skimmed through the entry.

 …I have contemplated her death.  I can’t
say whether I would feel the same way about our cause.  At the same time, I
know this is the way of the world: To gain all one must lose all.  I suppose we
shall know what we will have gained and lost after tomorrow.  I love her so
much…

The
entry carried on in a long monologue.  He could read the fear in his very pen-strokes,
the sort of fear that was the first thing eradicated when one crossed over to
the martial world, unadulterated by neural programs and martial conditioning. 
A pure fear – a human fear, the fear of a man torn between something to die for
and some
one
to live for.

  
He turned the page.  As he began to read again, the first thing he noticed is
that the handwriting of the entry had altered.  It was more irregular, more
twisted.  The second thing he noticed was that a long period between the next
entry and the last went unrecorded:

Russian Winter; Day 76
: 

It has been two weeks since the
uprising.  The whole region has been taken over by the Phoenix.  Our sun has
risen, but inside I feel only darkness and the cold breath of empty space… 

Aaliyah is dead.  Others have lost their
whole families, many of whom were not even for our cause.  I wonder, now, as I
had thought I would, whether it was all worth it – to know that we have caused
so many the sort of pain that I feel now.  I do not know…

  At any rate, we are the enemies of the
world.  I doubt that I will live to see the end of our blood and efforts but as
long as I am able to fight, I must.  The cause must come before our pain. 
Always.  It is what separates us from the martial dogs…

  
A none-too-far-flung spurt of gunshots broke his concentration, and the echoes
faded into the dying wind with no follow-up.  There was no time to waste.  He
had to know what happened to the people of the city.  He would not be able to
live with knowledge that there had been a chance that Naomi’s family was still
alive.  He had to know.  He flicked through to the later entries in the journal
and continued to read:

Russian Winter; Day 221

UMC forces have landed on our shores.

 They have already begun setting up an
outpost to the southwest.  As we understand it, they are here on a mandate from
the United States government.  We could not even win the support of our own
people…

It is official.  Our blood … Aaliyah’s
blood … It was all for nothing.  This world runs on war, and war will wear it
out to naught.  We were fools to think that we could change it … to change
humanity.  I see clearly now what I did not see before.  The problem lies far
deeper than any bullet can pierce.  Fear, pride, greed, power, progress … no
amount of fighting – no amount of pleading to man’s conscience can ever destroy
these forces.  They will go on until they consume the world.  The meme has
taken over…

  
He turned over the page:
 

…The PMCs … devils… they keep the fear
alive… the wars continue… the martial dogs are their slaves…

  
He turned the page again:

…I regret for the people of this city.  Most
of them have no idea what fate awaits them.  Many of them have taken measures
to hide their children.  Others have fled.  Where they will go, I have no
idea.  There is no escape now.  We led them to believe in our cause.  Now they
must watch everything we promised crumble to ashes along with their homes and their
futures…

The Phoenix Brigades will fight to the
end, even if the blood we shed will make no difference in the long run. 
Perhaps something new will rise from our ashes.  Though I have not the
slightest faith in Providence, I have no hope apart from it.  I have lost too
much to possibly see death as anything less than a reprieve…

  
He dropped the journal, drew a sidearm and turned when he heard the sound of
footsteps from behind.  With the abruptness of the turn, the chair was thrown
across the floor with a clatter.  Through the window, a motionless figure cast
its long shadow on the outside walls.  Someone was just outside the door.

  
“Who goes there?” he called. 

  
When no answer came, he soundlessly approached the door.

 
 The shadow zipped away.

  
“Wait!”

  
He rushed out of the door.  A silhouette disappeared into the side street and he
turned the corner just in time to see the edge of a shadow stop at the top of a
stairway under a small incline of little favela-like blocks.  He heard the
sound of beating against a door and a voice shouting something undecipherable
through the wind.  Just before he reached the top of the stairs, he heard a
door open and shut. 

  
He lurked past each of the little huts, listening intently and stopping when he
heard hushed and panicked voices, bringing his ear close to the door.  He waited. 
When the voices stopped and distinct, rapid movements like the fretting for a
weapon sounded soon after, he stood back at once and drove the sole of his boot
into the door.

  
“
Stoy
!” he yelled, bursting over the threshold.

  
Strobe lights flashed, and between him and the wall stood a man, frozen.  The
man slowly turned a grimace of anger into the light, showing the raised palms
of his hands.  His head rose and a brutally scored and sun-beaten face surfaced:
scars curling all around his features, and his dark, vexing eyes, unblinking in
the face of the flashing strobes.  

  
“Are you one of them?” he demanded.
 
“The Phoenix Brigades…?  Answer me!”

  
The muscles in the rebel’s jaw beat and his teeth trembled rabidly.

  
“Martial dog…” he snarled through clenched teeth and spat.  “You will all burn
in your own hell.” 

  
Saul’s sights darted around the small room.  There were large closets and
cabinets all around, presumably filled with munitions and supplies.  The place
looked like a storehouse.

  
“Where is the other one?” he demanded. “I heard voices.  There is someone else.”

  
“Just kill me and go,” growled the rebel.  “GO!”

  
He stared directly into the rebel’s eyes.  The strobe lights stopped.  He
lowered the gun by a slight angle, sufficient to show that he meant no harm.

  
“What happened to this place?” he asked, his voice low.

  
The rebel maintained his sideways glower and a steady flow of breath, deep,
quick and furious.

  
He approached, slowly, easing his grip on the gun.

 
 “I am not going to hurt you,” he assured.

  
The rebel leered and cackled.

  
“Hear me,” he said, lowering the gun farther.  “I saved a little girl from this
place.  She has a mother and father who may still be alive.  I need to know
where the people of this city fled to.”

  
At these words, the rebel’s rabid breaths stopped.

 
 “Alive…” he muttered. 

  
A silence followed.  Then, short, terse exhales like something between a laugh
and a sob proceeded from him and he started to shake his head in hopelessness.

  
“Please … I must know what happened.”

  
The rebel turned up a look of woeful resignation and his hands slowly begun to
lower. 

  
“Do not do it,” he pleaded.

  
But the rebel reached behind his back and when the hand came out it bore a
pistol.

 
 “I am sorry.”

  
“Don’t.”

  
“I cannot die on my knees.”

  
“NO!”

  
The rebel’s gun rose not three inches before three shots rang out.  Four in
rapid succession tore across his chest, each shot knocked him back to the wall
and he collapsed in a slew of his own blood.  His dying eyes fixed their stare
on him until the instant life left them.  And for his last dying seconds, he
looked as though he was trying to mouth something of dire importance.  The
words were choked off by blood.  His head hung. 

  
Saul stood staring at the collapsed rebel, trying to decrypt the words from the
last movements of his lips, but the rapid sound of movement caused him to twist
around again.  The noise came from inside one of the cabinets.  He pinpointed
the exact one and lined his sights.

  
“Come out,” he commanded, “slowly.”

  
He approached the cabinet from the side.

 
“Hands where I can see them”

  
He waited. 

  
Another sound of movement came from the same cabinet, but no answer.

  
“
Vykhodi!
” he shouted. 

  
No answer.  He expected, at any moment, for shots to come from inside, or for
the cabinet doors to break open.  He heard movement again and was convinced it
was the drawing of a gun.  His nerves still brimming with the last kill, he
aimed the pistol low and fired two quick shots at where the legs would have
been. 

  
Silence.

  
He expected to hear some kind of groan or yelp, but no sound came except for a
short slump like a dropping sack. 

  
He waited. 

  
A second later, he heard something.  Something very, very distinct. 

  
He opened the cabinet doors, looked down and the gun slipped from his grip. 

  
A young boy cowered at the bottom of the cabinet clutching the middle of his
abdomen, and a steady-growing stain of red began beneath the small hands where
one of the rounds has passed through him.  The boy looked up, his face
contorted, his tear-filled hazel eyes gaping.  The small breaths started to
shudder. 

  
“No…” He bent down at once and lifted the boy out of the cabinet.  “No, no, no,”
he repeated with dreadful whispers.  He cradled the small figure in his arms,
held the back of his small head and looked into the wide, perplexed eyes. 
Small squeaks of panic shot from the boy’s lips like arrows.  The young boy
shook and wretched.  Blood issued from his lips.  The little face went blank
and the little head drooped in his hands, blood pouring out the side of his
mouth. 

  
He went on mouthing frenzied nothings, gaping at the small, dead face in
horror.  His hands shook loose and the boy slipped from his arms and fell
lifeless on his side. 

  
He stood up and recoiled. 

  
The blood had poured from the exit wound and drenched his hands, and he looked
down at the bloodied hands, washed over by a most familiar terror.  Images
started to blaze past his mind’s eye, images he had never seen in his vilest
nightmares -- shrieks and wails rising unrelentingly like banshees.  He gripped
his own skull and the child’s blood smeared him.  It would not stop. 

  
Stop… stop…
 

  
At that moment, the door swung open again and slammed back against the wall.

  
“In here!” a voice yelled from behind.

  
The hawk-eyed brigadier burst through the door, followed by a three-man squad. 
The shadows danced about the wall in front of him.  He slowly came off his
knees and onto his feet, staring down at the child’s corpse.

  
“We heard the gunshots,” said the brigadier coming up beside him. “You have
blood on you.  Were you hit?”

  
The words “you have blood on you” repeated in his head.  He remained with his
head hung, eyes gaping at the floor.

  
“What’s wrong…?”

  
He said nothing. 

  
The brigadier turned to his subordinates.

 
 “Get the bodies out,” he commanded.  “Keep searching the area.  There’s
probably more of them around.  Move.”

  
The rebel soldier was hauled out of the room first and the child was dragged
away from his sight afterward, slung over the shoulder like a gunny sack and
carried away.

  
“Let’s go,” said the brigadier, turning to the door.  “The convoy will be here
any minute.”

  
Finally, he spoke: “These people had families … children.”

  
The brigadier stopped and turned back with a guarded glower.

 
 “A lot of them did,” he replied.  “Now, let’s go…”

  
“You were here?”

  
“What?”

  
He slowly turned around, his eyes bulging, aflame.

 
“Were you here – when this happened?”

  
The brigadier stopped and approached him, as though he were squaring up.  His
jutting brow knotted and his grin was baleful.

  
“I was here.”