Tumultus (36 page)

“C’mon!  We get those Muslim dogs!”

Bear, the tallest of the group, was able to spot at least eight men racing across the tracks just a hundred feet in front of them.

“Got at least eight in front of us, Mac.  All armed.”  Another grenade blast detonated just on the other side of the tracks, sending debris landing on top of the heads of Mac and the others and causing the Russian to jump and roll down to them from the top of the train tracks.  He grimaced as he landed hard on his left shoulder. 

Mac began to move forward again, the others all following.  It appeared even Yakov had decided to defer to Mac’s expertise.  The voices of the Muslim bandits could be heard just on the others side of the tracks.  Mac leaned down and whispered to the group.

“Yakov, Bear, and me will go ahead another hundred yards or so and then make our way back to their location, guns firing.  Give us just five minutes.  You sit here as quietly as possible.  As soon as you hear us shooting, you join in.”

Reese nodded silently as Cooper Wyse removed both of his Colt pistols from their holster.  Dublin reached out to grab Mac’s forearm, telling him to be careful.

Mac’s group was no more than thirty feet ahead of where Reese, Dublin and Cooper waited when the third grenade went off directly between them.  Mac, Bear, and Yakov were thrown forward and landed, unmoving.  Reese felt himself carried backward, where he landed and then tried to roll over to his side, but his body refused his attempt.  Cooper Wyse too was thrown backwards, where he remained motionless.  Dublin, who was just behind Reese when the grenade detonated, was thrown to the left.   Her head ringing, she rolled over onto her hands and knees while trying to replace the breath that had been knocked from her lungs.  Her vision blurred and she felt herself on the verge of passing out.  A voice seemingly coming from a great distance away, shouted above her excitedly as she felt herself being lifted up.  This calmed her, as she was certain it was likely Reese taking her to safety.  Her damaged awareness, still clouded by the grenade’s explosion, was unable to warn her she was being carried away by one of the Muslim bandits.

XXXII.

The Great Consulate was nervous.  He was always nervous when his adviser stopped by for their regularly scheduled visit.  Those visits used to be daily, then weekly, but now, thankfully, they came only once per month.  Still, he would much rather they not came at all.  He was too busy playing with his seeker in the killing room, and planning to burn the world for its ungrateful treatment of his legacy as a living and breathing god among the wretched creatures called the human race.

Only she had access to his private residence atop the New United Nations building in New York.  She had placed him there years ago, soon after he was made Great Consulate.  There he remained, and would remain, likely for the remainder of the world’s existence, which he knew to be coming to and end shortly.  It was his will – and after all, he was a god.

The entrance door chimed the adviser’s arrival.  He could hear her light steps as she made her way to his office – a large, ornately furnished room overlooking the New York skyline.  The Great Consulate grabbed a handful of candy corns and waited behind his desk as the smoke from his most recently lit cigarette drifted upwards to the ceiling.

Somehow the adviser had hardly aged in all the years since their mutual rise to power.  The Great Consulate, though a god, knew his body both looked and felt older, and yet, she remained a relatively vibrant, older woman.  She was in fact, nearly five years older than him.  She was already in her eighties, and yet, somehow remained much the same as she appeared to him over three decades ago.

“Hello, Great Consulate.”

Try as he might to conceal it, he cringed at the sound of her voice, as his stomach tightened in fear.

“Welcome, Adviser.  Please, sit down.”

She took one of the two large leather seats on the opposite side of his desk, placing her folded hands on his desk and leaning in to look at him with her withering, cold, dark eyes.  Those eyes had always made him uncomfortable.  They seemed to know his thoughts, his fears, his weakness.

“You have no weakness – you are a god!”

The voice had returned to him, bolstering the Great Consulate’s confidence as he looked back at the adviser.  A small smile crept across his thin, ashen face.

The adviser appeared to not like his smile, her eyes narrowing just slightly as they remained staring at him.

“Something amusing to you?”

The Great Consulate shook his head, panic again rising up inside of him.

“No.  Please, continue with your update.”

She sat back in her chair, though her eyes remained fixated on him.

“Did you receive the notification of your status as Great Consulate Emeritus?”

The Great Consulate nodded slowly.

“I did.”

She waited for him to say more.  He refused to do so, even as the rage of that notification reignited within him.

“You cannot trust her.  She was the one who pushed the Consul to strip you of your authority.”

The voice was going against his adviser?  Could it be true?  Was she in fact responsible?

The adviser spoke again.

“It is effective immediately – has in fact been in effect for days already.  You didn’t respond to my electronic message, so I wanted to confirm you knew your revised status in person.  That is my purpose here today.  I will continue to call you by your former title, but the Consul will not.”

The voice cried out inside of the Great Consulate’s mind.

“See!  She was the one!  This is her doing!  She is a traitor to a god!”

The Great Consulate smiled back at the adviser, hoping he appeared calm and fully in control of his emotions.

“Did you offer any opposition to the Consul’s directive?”

The adviser shook her head.

“I did not.”

The Great Consulate leaned forward in his chair, his diseased, black-gummed smile growing wider.

“And why not?”

A corner of the adviser’s upper lip curled downward slightly as she smelled something foul and realized the Great Consulate was urinating below his desk.

“It was the right decision for the New United Nations.  The Saudis agreed.  You have served us, and them, well.  It is now time to move on.  You should do the same.  We will continue to provide for you of course.  You can remain here at the residence if you choose, or another location can be set up as well.”

The Great Consulate’s voice cried out a warning to him.

“She lies!  They will kill you!  She must not leave this place!”

Sensing some new danger in the Great Consulate’s eyes, the adviser stood up from the chair.

“We are already directing our drone program to prepare for the attack on Alaska to bring them back into compliance.  The Saudis have also paid one of the Canadian warlords to strike at Juneau within days.  They have been given significant weapons to accomplish this.  It is our intention to make the Alaskans have to send all resources to Juneau to deal with the Muslim attack, and then send in our drones from the west and north.  Our military directors have estimated we will have defeated the Alaskan rebels within seventy two hours.  The Texas Resistance is already fragmenting under our repeated drone bombings.  We have pushed them down into Mexico, where the cartels will begin to attack them from the south as well.  Soon this pathetic rebellion will be fully terminated, and the entire former United States will be brought back into full compliance of the mandates.”

The Great Consulate sat silently, processing the information the adviser had just presented to him.  The voice was right – she had betrayed him.

“You speak as if you are now the Great Consulate.  Are you?”

The adviser paused, and then shook her head.

“No, only acting Great Consulate until a formal vote can take place.”

The voice cried out again inside the Great Consulate’s mind.

“Kill her!  Kill her now!  She has defied a god!”

The Great Consulate rose from his chair, his body trembling with both the betrayal of his adviser, and the fear of contemplating taking revenge. He had never acted against her, and the thought of doing so now panicked him.

She pointed a perfectly manicured finger at him.

“Sit down.”

The Great Consulate obeyed without thinking, his body complying with the request.  He looked back up at the adviser as the fire of rage began to burn hotter within him.  The adviser, thinking him having returned fully to his passive self, smiled back down at him.

“This truly is a new beginning for you.  Don’t concern yourself with policies or politics.  Devote your time fully to other interests.”

The Great Consulate slyly smiled back at her.  Other interests?  Oh yes, he had other interests.  His beautiful children.  His beloved seekers who were, at this very moment, catching up to those Dominatus animals.  And the one in his killing room of course.  That seeker remained alive…and very, very hungry.

Standing again, the Great Consulate nodded his head.

“Yes, it is for the best.  You are right, this will give me more time for my hobbies.  I have a particular hobby.  My seeker program.  It has been doing very well, you know.”

The adviser nodded back at him as she took two slow steps backward toward the room’s entrance.

“Yes, I’ve seen the reports, though it was difficult to determine how many of those creatures have been created.  The reports were inconclusive regarding that.  I will have to receive more details soon.”

The Great Consulate giggled.

“Details – yes!  I can show you them!  More…details.  Right now!”

He moved far more quickly toward her than the adviser would have thought possible.  She panicked and took a too fast step backwards, the high heel of her left shoe buckling underneath her.  The fall was all the Great Consulate needed to land on top of her, his hands circling around her neck and squeezing.  She could smell his putrid breath as he struggled above her.  A thin, discolored line of drool dropped from his mouth onto her face as his hands attempted to squeeze more tightly and choke the air from her lungs.

The voice was thrilled at the Great Consulate’s attack on the adviser.

“Yes!  Kill her!  Do it!  Do it!  Do it!”

She continued to struggle underneath him, her hands clasping onto his wrists and pushing against them.  The Great Consulate worried she was proving too strong for him, and already he was straining for breath.  He determined he must squeeze her throat harder or else she would soon overpower him.

Finally, she began to weaken, her hands falling away from his wrists.  The Great Consulate’s one remaining lung wheezed loudly as he struggled to catch his breath.  Pushing himself back up from the floor, he grabbed another handful of candy corns, letting them dissolve in his mouth.  Looking back down at the adviser, he saw her chest rising and falling slowly.  She remained alive.  He thought this a good thing.  It would make for a warm meal, and a much more intense experience.

It was time to feed the seeker…

XXXIII.

Though still unable to move off the ground, Mac could hear the bandits talking loudly to one another as they neared where the grenade had gone off.  From what he could understand, the Russian had killed or wounded two of them.  The loudest of the voices, likely the one in charge, began to talk excitedly about finding a woman.  Other voices claimed to have found her first, but were silenced by the leader.  He intended to take the woman with him back to camp where she would provide him entertainment for the night.  Another voice argued that she should be shared with the rest after the leader was done with her, to which the leader agreed.  Mac heard what sounded like two other men joining the leader to head back to their camp with Dublin, while the remaining two bandits were ordered to stay behind and check if any in Mac’s group had survived the blast.  If so, those survivors were to be killed and their supplies stripped from them.