Authors: Bryan Smith
The guy at the ATM mumbled something unintelligible and kept his gaze focused on the screen. He continued to poke buttons in an apparently haphazard way.
Jeremy heaved an exasperated breath and glanced over his shoulder, hoping for some gesture of support from the others in line, but the only person behind him now was a tall man whose dress and appearance was disquietingly similar to that of the ATM abuser. He had a lot of bushy hair and an unruly beard. A crudely fashioned homemade necklace encircled his thick neck. His clothes had the typical look of handmade hippie apparel, the sort he often saw those annoying cult kids wearing when they were out recruiting around town.
The man met Jeremy’s gaze and smiled, but the smile didn’t look friendly.
Jeremy glanced in the direction of the bank’s entrance, thinking maybe he should go inside and report these guys to security. The only thing keeping him from doing just that was the time factor. He was in a hurry. He was due to meet the usual after-work gang for happy hour at South Street, a hip restaurant with a fun open-air area. Tonight he was especially anxious to get there because the cute new girl from the office was joining them for the first time and he had already developed a terminal crush on her. She was the whole reason he’d stopped off at the ATM in the first place. He hoped to impress her by throwing some cash around, but now he was thinking it was time to give up on that idea. Trying to be flashy with his cash was a cheap move, anyway. He would think of some other way to ingratiate himself to her.
He turned away from the ATM to head back to his car, but the tall homeless guy put himself in his path. “Need to ask you a question.”
Jeremy sighed. “Sorry, pal, I don’t have any money for you.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “Your ATM-hogging friend over there saw to that.”
The tall guy smiled in that unfriendly way again. “Don’t need money. Currency only means anything if you let it.”
Jeremy laughed. “Right. Groovy. I can dig it. Now if you’ll excuse me—”
The tall guy blocked Jeremy’s path again when he tried to go around him. “Are you ready to accept John Wayne’s gift of love?”
“What?”
“Are you ready to accept John Wayne’s gift of love?”
Jeremy’s face screwed up in confusion. “What the hell does that mean? Actually, never mind. Just get out of my way.”
The tall man started laughing.
This whole thing was creeping Jeremy out. He’d heard a lot of wild rumors about these Order of Wandering Souls people. Some were even saying they’d had something to do with what happened to Melanie Montgomery. Jeremy didn’t know if he believed that. It was probably just the usual kind of fear-mongering. Still, the sooner he could get away from these guys, the happier he would be. And if this beanpole in front of him tried blocking his way again, he was getting knocked over.
He was tensing himself to do just that when he detected the presence of someone just behind him. The tall guy’s eyes flicked in that direction an instant before Jeremy caught a whiff of foul-smelling breath. Before he could turn around or attempt to run, something sharp punched into his back, penetrating deep. The person wielding the knife yanked it out and jabbed it back in again. A blinding surge of pain hit Jeremy, instantly crippling him and causing him to stagger into the arms of the tall man, who held him upright while the blade punched into him from behind again and again.
The tall man held him close and patted the back of his head in a reassuring way. “It’s okay, brother. Take the gift. Join us in the light.”
Jeremy had no clue what he was talking about. All he could do was sob against the tall man’s shoulder while his partner ripped the life out of him with his knife.
A group of about a half-dozen young men and women walked into the lobby of a downtown law firm mere minutes before the end of regular business hours. A glance from the receptionist—who took one look at the motley bunch and immediately knew they were trouble—prompted the lone security officer on duty to intercept them.
The firm was small, but it had been around a long time and had a solid reputation. Some of the city’s powerful old-timers were among its list of clients. The bigger firms had offices in skyscrapers and did business with a lot of the younger movers and shakers in the ever-evolving and fast-paced modern economy. Some of the junior attorneys at Lowell & Hyde undoubtedly envied their peers at the bigger firms and aspired to eventually move on to positions there. Even so, most of them were pleased to get their feet wet at the storied old firm. It was good experience and the firm’s reputation meant it would be a solid early entry on their resumes.
A young attorney named Bernard Tate was not among those who felt the appropriate amount of gratitude for getting on with the firm. He had applied at all the bigger firms with no luck, this despite an array of impressive academic accomplishments and passing the bar exam with a stellar score on his first try. Simply put, he felt he was better than Lowell & Hyde. He should be rubbing elbows with other young go-getters in one of the glitzy high-rise offices. More than one veteran attorney had tried to counsel him in the matter, advising patience as well as the need to guard against getting eaten up with inappropriate bitterness. But their wise words fell on deaf ears. Bernard wanted his future
now
.
The elevator doors dinged open and Bernard stepped out into the lobby at the precise moment the old security guard moved to intercept what looked like members of a rock band and their groupies. He cringed at the sight of them and prepared to scoot around them to the entrance. As usual, he wanted out of the building as fast as possible, but this time it wasn’t just because he loathed being there. He was meeting a particularly attractive client named Brad at a 2
nd
Avenue bar shortly. And with any luck—
A scream rang out.
The source was the receptionist, Lupita, who was on her feet behind the desk and was scrambling backward as one of the longhairs dove over the desk at her, brandishing a machete. She tripped over her feet and the man with the machete disappeared behind the desk. Bernard was shaking in his loafers as he watched the machete appear above the top of the desk and go up and down several times. The first time it appeared the blade was clean. The next time it was dripping with Lupita’s blood. The security guard had met a similar violent fate seconds earlier when one of the intruders slammed a screwdriver through his temple.
Bernard found he couldn’t move as three of the lunatics went charging past him, piling into the elevator before it could close again. They were all giggling like maniacal, misbehaving schoolchildren. And they were all armed with various forms of edged weaponry. Bernard could only assume they intended to unleash a similar degree of mayhem in the offices upstairs. The image of old Mr. Lowell cringing beneath the descending blade of an axe almost made him smile.
A pretty girl in sandals and a plain dress approached him. She had a dandelion tucked behind one of her ears and a machete in her right hand. “Are you ready to accept John Wayne’s gift of love?”
“What?”
The machete blade arced toward him.
Bernard’s head went flying across the lobby.
Nathan Hargrove was able to keep it together until his wife started begging the people who had invaded their home to spare the lives of their young son and daughter. Until that moment, he had believed he could reason with these people, perhaps come up with an arrangement that would allow everyone involved to get what they wanted.
People who did things like this were after money, after all, and he had easy access to a significant amount of cash, starting with the hundred-grand rainy day fund he kept locked in his office safe. He was hopeful that amount would be sufficient to send these animals on their way with no harm done. He would happily and without hesitation hand over every penny to save the lives of his wife and children. Though he’d dedicated much of his life to acquiring wealth, it meant nothing to him next to what really mattered. But if it wasn’t enough, the hundred grand was just scratching the surface of what was available to him. He could lay his hands on many times that amount without much difficulty, though obtaining the extra funds would have to wait until the next day. There were a lot of hours remaining between now and the beginning of the next business day, but given the stakes involved, surely these people could find the necessary patience.
That was before he understood exactly how unhinged they were. Nathan’s confidence in his ability to successfully negotiate a way out of the nightmare began to crumble when the invaders started in with their crazy, borderline incoherent ramblings about John Wayne de Rais and his “gift of love”.
Like practically everyone he knew, he had followed the occasional news reports about the so-called Order of Wandering Souls. He had dismissed it as the usual sort of fake religion con a certain segment of society often fell victim to, this time presented as an idealistic revival of the 1960’s peace and love hippie ethos. Most of the ones he’d encountered had that old-school bohemian look to them, right down to the long hair and perpetually stoned expressions.
These three did not fit that mold. Their clean-cut appearances and conservative attire made them resemble Mormon missionaries. It was why he’d opened his door to them in the first place. He had no more interest in their religion than he had in rehashed Summer of Love flakiness, but Mormon kids were harmless.
Except that they weren’t Mormons.
The one called Sally slammed the butt of a gun against the crown of Margaret’s skull, momentarily silencing her pleas as the blow drove her to her knees. Then she leered in Nathan’s direction as she aimed the gun at the back of his wife’s head and squeezed the trigger. Nathan’s heart almost stopped at the sight of the gruesome exit wound that made a shocking mess of his wife’s forehead. A spray of blood and bone fragments decorated the living room coffee table an instant before his wife’s body toppled over.
His children started screaming again. They had been sobbing the whole time, terrified by the invasion of their home and the disruption of their charmed and perfect little world. Their sounds of terror broke Nathan’s heart. Part of why he had worked so hard and become so successful was to create that world for them. They had lived the entirety of their short lives perfectly insulated from harsh reality.
Until now.
The one Sally had called Joshua tackled Benjamin when he tried to run for the front door. He was grinning in perverse delight as he raised a knife high above his head. The unrestrained joy in his expression drove home the brutal, bleak truth of the situation. None of them were getting out of this situation alive. His entire family was doomed. Parental instinct caused him to take a lurching step toward Benjamin, but another part of him now believed it might be best to let it end quickly for all of them. It was the only kind of mercy they could expect.
“Stop!”
Everyone looked at Sally. Joshua’s hand remained frozen high above Benjamin’s prone form, his execution at least temporarily stayed.
The psychotic blonde bitch had his daughter on her knees in front of her. Courtney was shaking uncontrollably and could not stop sobbing. Tears streamed endlessly down her puffy face. There was an ugly welt below her left eye from where Thomas had punched her seconds after the gang swarmed into the house. Seeing her like this stirred his anger, an emotion he’d foolishly tried holding back during that brief period when he imagined he could reason with these monsters.
His hands curled into fists at his sides. “Don’t hurt her.”
Sally wasn’t looking at him. “Don’t kill the son,” she said, addressing Joshua. “Drag him over here. Knock him out if he resists.”
Joshua hauled Benjamin to his feet and dragged him across the room by a slender arm. His son was then made to kneel next to Courtney.
Benjamin’s bottom lip trembled as he made eye contact with his father. “Daddy…”
Tears spilled from Nathan’s eyes as a hideous smile twisted his face. The smile was parental instinct. Basic, helpless. It was meant to reassure, to say that everything would be all right, but it was a lie and it was the lie that made it hideous. Even Benjamin could see the lie. Nathan knew this because the boy started crying harder than ever.
“Look at me, Nathan Hargrove.”
Nathan did as Sally said. He couldn’t bear looking at his son’s face, anyway. “What do you want? Why are you doing this?”
She smiled brightly. It was awful how wholesome she looked, even moments after committing cold-blooded murder. “What’s happening here is part of the great cleansing. The world must be purged of filth and greedy pigs like you. Are you ready to accept John Wayne’s gift of love?”
“What does that even mean?”
She laughed and pointed the gun at the back of Courtney’s head. “Are you ready to accept John Wayne’s gift of love?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” Her eyes flicked to a spot somewhere behind him. “Thomas, it’s time to record Mr. Hargrove’s testament of love.”
Thomas moved into view. He had a smart phone in one hand and a hatchet in the other. There were specks of blood on the front of his starched white shirt. He stood next to Sally and aimed the phone at Nathan.
Nathan frowned. “Are you recording a video?”
Sally smiled. “Yes. All you have to do is answer the questions I put to you and accept John Wayne’s gift of love. The video will be posted online as a testament to the great power and beauty of this time of cleansing. If you’re a good boy and perform as required, your beautiful children will be spared today. Are you ready?”