6th Horseman, Extremist Edge Series: Part 1 (8 page)

I have my pack on my back, an assault rifle
and shotgun slung over my shoulder, two pistols in my belt, and my
Beater Stick in my right hand. I’m running as fast as I can down
Lexington Avenue. They don’t follow me.

I have to get to Central Park before sundown,
which is in an hour or so. Most of the fires are going out and
without electricity the city will get dark, so I don’t wanna be
walking the streets. The park sounds the safest.

When I get there, I set up camp in the middle
of a baseball field with a fifty-foot perimeter of things that make
noise like soda cans, plastic bags, and egg cartons. I don’t want
to stay in one of the million buildings because they’re graveyards
now, filled with dead and rotting corpses of the people that
thought they were being smart by staying home.

I let my mind wander. Has my family survived?
Most of them I don’t even know. It’s not like we all hang out at
family reunions or anything. My dad’s the real kicker. I try not to
think of him now, but I can’t help it. He was a strict Catholic,
the head of an import syndicate that worked with cartels south of
the border. God must have looked the other way when my dad’s
clients laundered money, hid cocaine in legit import deals, and
sold illegal guns to thugs. Hypocrite.

He was worse than just a hypocrite. He was a
beater. He’d get mad and “whoop” my mom or me. I remember the day
he found out I failed out of private school. He beat me so badly he
had to kidnap me and lock me away in his cabin on Lake Rockland
until my bruises completely healed. He always told me it was for my
own good and that I’d be a better person if I knew how to behave.
Life is always about either making the rules or following them, is
what he always said. He beat into me the fact that he didn’t think
I’d be making any rules, so I needed to learn how to follow them.
Bastard!

There I go again, wanting to punch somethin’.
I turn to the trunk of a tree and punched it hard. My skin splits
so I punch it again. “Now who’s making the rules?!” I hiss at the
tree. “If you’re alive, Papa, I’ll show you some new rules. Rules
that I make up. And because you broke all the rules I’ve made, you
won’t like your punishment.”

I try to change my thoughts. I need to sleep,
not get angrier.

#

I hadn’t had a nine-to-five job since I got
kicked out of the army. I tried many times, but I always ended up
hating my bosses. They’re usually men with egos like my father.
They know everything. They just want to pull on those puppet
strings and I ain’t no puppet. Besides, they always break the rules
they make.

I’d gotten by okay doing odd jobs for people.
One day, after punching this bitch out at Club Crisis — she started
it — I was approached by this guy, called himself Professor Cott.
He hired me to be a security guard at his university. He paid me
fifty grand for a year’s work. I couldn’t say no to that. In
addition, he contracted me to protect his ass on his off hours, to
be his bodyguard. He was a pasty white dude with a bright white
beard, bald head, and thick glasses.

Turns out Cott had more of a night life than
most people do when they’re in college. He would go out at night to
bars and clubs and sometimes to these shit-hole warehouses in
Jersey. Sometimes he’d end up in some back room with shady lookin’
people. I’d be called in if there was trouble. Most of the time
there wasn’t, but hey, that’s the security business for ya.

During the day I guarded a physics lab
outside of Colombia U. They made all kinds of shit there. Even had
the military stop by a few times to peek at some trashcan thing
they were makin’. I didn’t think too much of it then.

The year went by and I was livin’ it up. I
only had to get in three, no, four fights for this guy. And it was
always after some late night meeting he was attending.

Oh yeah, there was this other thing that
happened. Just, like, last week. One night he met up with an
activist group called People for Stable Fairness. Bunch of weirdo’s
in black. After a political rally, he disappeared into a Jersey
warehouse with the head honchos. I was told to stay out in the
alley. The last time we went to one of these meetings Cott had
gotten kicked out. He was thrown on his ass, and I had to keep him
from getting beaten up. So I got ready for a fight that night.

I waited out in the alley for a long time. It
was just after midnight when a limousine drove up and a woman waved
me over. I walked up to the limo.

The woman had jet black hair and wore
sunglasses even though it was nighttime. “You’re Professor Cott’s
guard?” she asked me.

“What’s it to you?” I replied. I put my hand
on the grip of my pistol, which I had in a shoulder harness under
my jacket.

“How would you like to make half a million on
a job?” she asked.

“Fuck you,” I said and backed up. I thought
she was gonna ask me to do a film for her or whack someone.

She stepped out of the vehicle. To my
surprise she was dressed in full camo gear, not some slick cocktail
dress. “This is not some sicko offer,” she said and took off her
glasses. She had the eyes of a fighter, not some bimbo. A scar on
her right cheek extended to the bottom of her jaw. It gave me
goosebumps. “This is a job that will test your endurance, not your
loyalty or your morals.”

“You stop me on the street, looking like you
just got off tour, and expect me to do a job for a half million?
Piss off and find another bitch. I ain’t living the rest of my life
in prison.” I turned to walk away.

She touched a white envelope to my shoulder.
I stopped and took it. It was fat with cash. “This job is for a man
called Zilla. He needs your skills. It’s for a top-secret
surveillance job. It has to be done tomorrow by mid-day.

I flipped through five bundles of one hundred
dollar bills. “I ain’t going to prison for no one, not for Cott, or
my family, or this Zilla guy.”

“There will be no prison. Ever again. No one
will care what you decide two days from now. Just follow the
instructions on the envelope.”

I stuffed it into my pocket. She had my
attention.

Later Cott came out of the meeting and I
escorted him home. He was in a weird mood, and didn’t talk as much
as he usually did.

After he trudged inside his house, I sat in
his carport. Eventually I pulled the envelope from my pocket and
flipped out the note. They wanted me to fire off this rocket the
brainiacs in the physics department at Columbia had built. It had
to be tomorrow. There were detailed instructions too. I looked them
over and decided that it would be impossible to launch without
getting caught. I wasn’t goin’ to jail for no one. I pulled out my
cigarette lighter, lit a smoke, then touched the glowing embers to
the paper. I let the flames lick my fingertips before I tossed it
out the window. No, thanks. But hey, you just try and get a refund
for your deposit, lady.

The next day I went to work as usual. I
arrived at six o’clock sharp. Those brainiacs like to get started
early. There was no guard, which was weird. I had to use my key to
get into the building and shut off the alarm. No lobby guard
either? That was also weird. There was always a guard twenty-four
hours a day. I stashed my lunch in the refrigerator and went to the
front desk. At least one guard had shown up. His shit was all over
the desk: a book, a crossword puzzle, an ice-cold cup of
coffee.

I waited around until way after seven.
Usually there were all kinds of people in the facility. But today,
no one was showin’ up.

I thought about the half million dollars. It
sure would be nice to sit on that cash. I got an adrenaline rush
like you’d never believe and took off toward the physics lab. If I
was gonna do this, it would have to be quick.

I unlocked the door to the lab and shut off
the alarm. The huge rocket was at the far end of the room behind
four-inch Plexiglas. It was quite longer than I remember, and an
extra piece had been added. I pulled out my pistol and aimed at the
Plexiglas. Then I thought, the glass is probably bullet proof, and
they might be able to tell it was my gun. So I found a metal bar in
the supply closet and started chipping at the lock. It finally
broke open. I ripped the small door off and removed the four corner
clips on the inside of the enclosure. The entire side of the
Plexiglas cover came off. I tried to roll the thing, but it was too
heavy. I retrieved a dolly from the closet next door, tipped the
rocket on its end, and walked it onto the dolly. This was too easy.
Zilla must have cleared the way for me. From that point it was even
easier. I simply rolled the thing to the roof.

There was a note stuck to the roof access
door.

‘You have exactly fifteen minutes to complete
this project before being arrested. If you beat the clock you will
be able to get away.’

My heart jumped and my pulse thickened. Bitch
told me there would be no cops. I rolled the rocket to the middle
of the roof, took it off the dolly, and kicked the dolly away.
There was a red button at the bottom of the cylinder. I pushed it.
Three legs folded out of the base. A remote was clipped to a leg. I
looked up and noticed a police helicopter approaching. So some
rules are being broken, huh? I looked at my watch. Fifteen minutes?
Well, now I’ve got only eight minutes left.

I scanned a set of illustrated instructions
on the remote then stepped way back. I pushed the buttons in the
order listed. The rocket stabilized by automatically adjusting its
legs. I stepped back toward the wall. Sirens wailed in the
distance. Lots of sirens! Something was going down, something big.
Five minutes. I brushed my hair from my face. I took a deep breath.
The last instruction was to enter a code. The note I’d burned had
given me the code. Shit. I pictured the note in my head. I tried
two words then I looked at my watch. One minute left. Then it
clicked. ‘Silence’. I typed it in and without a second thought
pushed the button. Smoke poured from the rocket’s engine, then
fire. It lifted off as smooth as unsheathing a sword.

I blocked out the sun with one hand and
watched the rocket rise. It climbed and climbed. Then, to my
surprise, the bottom of the rocket dropped off and a second stage
motor ignited. It disappeared into the sky and was gone. No
explosion and no sound. Well, those fools said it was for
surveillance.

I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t hear
sirens anymore. So I ran to the base of the rocket, picked it up,
threw it over the edge of the building, and ran. There was a red
box hanging from the doorknob of the roof door. ‘Urgent’ was
printed on it. Inside the box was a red syringe and a note.

‘
Use or die. The New World thanks you.
Your service was indispensable. ~Zilla.’

I was about to throw it over the edge of the
roof, but I didn’t. I had a weird feeling. So I stuck myself with
that needle, somehow knowing that I didn’t have a choice. I flung
the roof door open and ran down the steps. The stairwell was dark
now. The lights weren’t working. There was no way we were out of
power, unless the entire city had blacked out.

When I got to the street I froze. The cars
weren’t working. No traffic lights either. People were standing
around yelling at each other. Their cell phones didn’t seem to be
working either.

A loud engine whined to my left. I turned
just in time to jump out of the way of an old Chevy truck.
That
truck was working. It was all over the sidewalk,
running people out of its way. The old truck disappeared around the
corner. I ran the opposite direction. It was time to go home and
wait this craziness out.

That was three days ago. Since then everyone
had died. Some croaked in the streets or in their cars, some in
their homes, and some at work. Most of them died trying to get out
of the city. The looks on their faces were placid and still, like
mannequins of wax or plastic. It was traumatic for most. There was
shit comin’ from their noses and eyes. It was like thick yellow
snot. There were a few that looked like they had just leaned
against something and went to sleep.