Anthology of Ichor III: Gears of Damnation (48 page)

"Future! What future! My people are going to be hunted down and killed," he yelled at her. She had driven of his Ashley when he needed her most? How dare her! Anger started to fill the numbness after hearing her words.

"No, they are not," she said calmly. She scrubbed her cheeks before returning her hands to grab his face. He always hated when she did this. "John would never allow that and you know it. He has made preparations for exiling the psychics. All psychics will be exiled to Africa."

"Africa! Africa!" He shrieked to her. "I'm not African! I'm American!"

"It's the only way." Her calm way of talking was irritating him to no end. "Psychics will be safe there. They can live in peace and start new lives." She was still holding his head and seemed to think telling him that would make it better. She was wrong.

"You listen to me Jenny. I'm American. I have lived here my whole life. I am a retired soldier who has fought and bled for this country. And I will die American." He made sure to emphasize that last statement with a glare at her. She just looked at him with that sad expression on her face. She opened her mouth to say something but snapped it shut and tilted her head. She had heard the phone ringing.

"Maybe that's George," she said rising. Obviously this wasn't going as planned and she needed an escape.

She walked over to the phone and Joshua just glared at her back.
Exile?
Like hell he would go hiding in Africa. He was an American citizen. A soldier, who would fight at a moment’s notice, if his people asked him to. He could live with the outlawing, but he couldn't live exiled from all he knew. What had happened was tragic but to think sending people to Africa. What was Angels thinking? Joshua continued to stew over the exile as he heard Jenny pick up the phone.

"Hello...Yea it's me Georgy...I know...I was called to the site to give my opinion of what happened...Yea he's here...He was a little shaken up but now he's angry... No not that. There is something else. I will have him..." A soft whizzing sound sounded in the room and made Joshua stop stewing. He looked over to Jenny and saw she was staring at her chest. The phone dropped from her hand as a red stain began filling her white blouse. She fell to the floor with a loud smack.

"Jenny!" He screamed and jumped up running to her. While running he sent Helpful Handz to close the windows and patio door. Years in the military let him assess the situation. Jenny had been shot. He reached her as she was lying there coughing up blood. He scooped her up into his arms. He opened the blouse and saw the wound was close to her heart. A Helpful Hand grabbed the phone and put it to his ear.

"Jenny! Joshy! Someone speak to me!" he heard his brother screaming through the phone.

"I'm here George," he cried, "Jennies been shot!"

"My God what happened!"

"A sniper George...It's bad...It's real bad. It's close to her heart" Jenny was gasping and choking. The blood was gushing out. He applied pressure but he realized that blood was gushing out her back too. The bullet had gone through her body.

"Sniper?!...What the...Can you move her?"

"No Georgy!" He wailed to his brother. "She won't make it!" He knew she was dying. Being in the crusade he had seen every type of bullet wound. Jenny's was fatal. He heard his brother crying on the other end of the phone.

"No. No. No. Not our Jenny! Why? Why?" His brother sobbed through the phone.

"Joshy...Joshy-Poo," said Jenny weakly. She was staring a Joshua with a pained expression.

"Don't talk Jenny. Talking makes it worse," he told her.

"Listen to her Joshua...It's our Jenny's last words. Listen to her Joshua." His sobbing echoed Joshua's.

"Joshy...Joshy-Poo...I'm sorry about your hands," she croaked coughing up blood.

"It's okay Jenny," he whispered to her, "It was never your fault." She smiled weakly at him

"Take...Take...Take care of Ash...Ashley...Joshy-Poo.....I'm....coming Jim," she said as her body convulsed.

"Jenny! Jenny! Jenny!" He cried and cradled her shaking body in his arms. Through the phone he heard George repeating her name as well. Her body shook a few more seconds then stopped. She looked at him with glazed eyes. She was dead.

"Jenny!" He heard his brother crying.

"She's...She's dead Georgy....Our Jenny is dead," he whispered softly as if not believing it.

"No! No!..." George began as the phone cut off. Then the lights cut off. Joshua sat there cradling her in the darkness with complete despair. Whoever killed his Jenny was now coming to kill him too.

Psy Chapter 8

Year 35 A.M.

Mr. Handz:

Emptiness, as vast and as deep as the universe itself, it entered him. It engulfed his heart. A vast nothingness that consumed his soul. He felt a ripping sensation in the core of his being. Something was being torn and pulled away from him. Fighting it did no good. No strength was left to him. Only nothingness. His heart screamed and tried to gather strength from the nothingness. It was a futile effort. It recoiled in shock as a large chunk was sliced away. Searing pain swallowed the nothingness. Pain reverberated and echoed throughout his soul. The shock of the pain brought him back to reality. Jenny was dead. A piece of his heart had died.

In darkness, he sat holding the dead piece of his heart. With silver eyes he could see her face still staring at him. Blood trickled from the corners of her mouth. Glazed eyes stared at him stabbing his soul. His Jenny was really dead. He still couldn't believe it. Like a big sister she had been and now she was dead in his arms. He wept and tears ran down his chin dropping onto her face. He leaned down and rubbed his forehead against her's. She felt cold. The warmth of her being fading from her body as well as his heart.

He pressed his nose into her hair. Trying to savor the smell of his Jenny one last time, he took deep breaths. Her perfume and shampoo intoxicated his senses. He uttered not a sound. He knew that if he spoke the emptiness of the room would overcome him. For a few moments that felt like years he mourned her. He wanted to mourn her fully, but he couldn't. The ones who had killed his Jenny were now coming for him. He wouldn't disappoint them. They may have come for Joshua Thompson, but Mr. Handz was who they were going to deal with.

Putting a hand to her face he closed her eyes. Gently he laid her on the floor in a pool of her blood. It was not a fitting place for one such as her. For the moment it would have to do. They were coming. He stood up slowly. His body felt numb. He looked down at his Jenny one last time before walking over to the couch. Moonlight spilt in through cracks in the curtains. No more sniper shots for the time being. He reached down and picked up his trench coat. Sliding one arm in at a time, he forced himself to stop crying. Now was not the time for tears. He had work to do. People to kill.

After buttoning up the coat over his blood drenched shirt he reached into his coat pocket. He pulled out a long brown scarf. It was bare except for two pale hands with silver eyes in the palms sown into the cloth. He folded it long ways with the hands visible side by side. Around his face he wrapped and tied it tightly. The two hands sat where his eyes were and only they were covered leaving his mouth and nose scarf free. Now he was ready. Now Jenny's killers would face the most powerful psychic in the world. Now they would face Mr. Handz.

Mr. Handz summoned two dozen Helpful Handz. The brown and white handz floated around him. Some shook as if they felt his pain. They could. They were a part of him like Jenny had been. He concentrated and they stopped shaking then balled into fists. Psychic energy surged through him and out to the floating body parts. Each fist opened one at a time to reveal a small silver eye in the middle of each palm. Vision returned to Mr. Handz as he saw himself from two dozen different angles. Without eyes they were Helpful Handz. With eyes they had become his Watchful Handz. Handz that allowed him to see with them. The military had given him so much. They had trained him on how to see like an insect. Only because he was a psychic was he able to shift the different images in his mind and concentrate on all the handz at once. The Watchful Handz were his best tools for scouting. That was until he created the next set of handz he was to use.

Concentrating on the Watchful Handz even more they began to lose color. They kept their shape, but the pale and brown colors faded away until nothing was left but a thin outline. Mr. Handz could still see himself through the handz but they had become invisible to the naked eye. Using the glass substance of his Mirror Bubble, he made them semi-invisible and they appeared as distortions in the air. His Ghost Handz they were and like real ghosts they could barely be seen.

"Now," he said to the handz, "Let’s find the fuckers who killed Jenny." The handz began to move toward the apartment door.

He was not angry. He was very much calm. The calm of a killer about to do his wet work. The calm of a military trained assassin. Pain at Jenny's death was still there. He had just ignored it. He couldn't let anything disturb his mind set. There were people to kill. A feeling he had not felt in twenty years pushed at the edge of his calm. It pulsed and tried to edge its way into him. He let a little of the feeling trickle into himself. Murderous intent put a dangerous edge on his serenity. Mr. Handz was bloodthirsty now. It was time to begin.

As the Ghost handz reached the door, he imagined them becoming as thin as paper. They deflated and he slid them through the crack at the bottom of the door. Emerging into the hallway he re-inflated and looked around. He was greeted with a sight he had expected. The T-shaped hallway was dark and eerie. At one end was a large window in which light shone on the green colored walls. Apartment doors were spaced twenty feet apart in the sixty foot hallway. One across, diagonal and one sharing the same wall as his own door. An elevator and staircase was at the other end creating the T-shape. A laundry chute and fire extinguisher sat on the wall next to the apartment diagonal from him. Eight men in swat type suits were creeping out from the staircase. They carried M16's with lasers emitting from them. Mr. Handz smiled hard. Because they cut off the power the elevator was useless to them, but not to Mr. Handz.

He decided to only keep two Ghost Handz on his floor. The other twenty-two handz floated above and past the intruders to the closed elevator. As an expert of long range combat, Mr. Handz knew he needed to get Ghost Handz to each floor. His one weakness was that he could only materialize near himself and where he could see. Hence the need for handz with eyes in them. Looking at the elevator he saw a thin crack in the door made by a wedge. Long ago he put that there for emergencies. The military had trained him well. He deflated the handz and sent them into the elevator.

Ghost Handz re-inflated as they made their way down the pitch-black shaft. The elevator itself was on the bottom floor where the parking garage was. At each floor two handz would pause while the others continued their descent. He would attack all the floors at the same time to keep each unit from helping the other. Mr. Handz knew each floor would be occupied. It was the standard way to attack and the men approaching his door had soldier written all over them. After each floor had two Ghost Handz, that left him with eight handz left. He sent them down to the elevator and hovered them above the elevator's top hatch. He would have to go through the elevator out to the parking garage. Those eight handz would be enough to sweep it clean of Jenny's killers. Mr. Handz smiled again. Time for the killing to begin.

He sent Ghost Handz in for a closer look at the walking corpses. That’s how he thought of them. He would kill them all, but he wanted to know who they were. They wore all black combat garb. Small black helmets with goggles and a gas mask over their faces. Their belts carried grenades and a pistol in it's holster. Their shined up military issue boots reflected moonlight. Mr. Handz stared in shock at the American flag patch on their shoulders. The markings of their unit patch was one he didn't recognize. These were American soldiers sent to kill him. Anger infused itself into Mr. Handz calm. His own comrades were here to kill him. He would show them their mistake. They should have killed him first instead of Jenny.

Above the heads of the men eight shapes began to form. They became grotesque shaped man sized hands. They looked skeletal in nature. Skin stretched so then they belonged on corpses. The fingernails of the hands stretched out until they protruded a foot away. The Deadly Handz they were called. Best for close combat and enclosed areas where the Kombat Handz were useless. The leader of the unit held up a hand stopping the approach to his door. Veterans they had to be because instincts told them danger was coming.

The Deadly Handz swooped down and using the long fingernails they sliced the soldiers M16's in two. The men pulled out their pistols and tried to shoot at the handz. Weaving to the left and right the handz avoided bullets and closed in on the soldiers. The unit leader was stabbed repeatedly in the chest by two handz. Three others died the same way quickly. The last four were trying to retreat back to the staircase. Mr. Handz saw the staircase door slam shut revealing more soldiers with in before closing. A second unit was waiting to join the fray.

Stabbing two more soldiers in the back while they retreated, put a bitter taste in Mr. Handz mouth. These weak pathetic soldiers is what they sent to kill him?
He was the Death God!
How dare they offend him like this!
The last two soldiers saw they weren't going to make it to the staircase and using shoulders they rammed themselves into one of the empty apartments. A Ghost Hand followed them and the other floated near the staircase with the Deadly Hand swarm. He saw the two men run across the apartment toward the patio door. Disgust filled Mr. Handz. They were trying to retreat again! Not only had the crusade vet been insulted with weaklings, but cowards as well. Being a member of the AWC meant being a true warrior. Honor until death and mission above life. These men were chicken shits who disgraced the American flag on their arms. He decided to give them deaths deserving of their cowardice.