The Last Infidel (15 page)

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Cody sat on the foot of his bed on the top floor of the hardware store, carefully dabbing his head with an old, out-of-date antibiotic cream.  He’d eaten lunch with the guys – stale bread, a couple of raw onions, and a couple of small chicken legs that Nabeeb had brought – and now he felt like he needed to sleep.  But the chances of grabbing a badly needed hour of shuteye looked slim.  According to a variety of wrist watches, none of which seemed to be in agreement, the time was twelve-thirty; and that meant, or might not mean, that a truck would be coming for his men in the next two minutes.  Maybe he’d put them all in his truck instead – three in front and four in back – and just drive them over to the mosque himself.  That would really anger the other guy, a Muslim driving an older contraption.  How wasn’t that not a good thing?

Cody fell asleep.  Thirty minutes later – or something like that – he heard someone shouting his name.  He started to swing his feet over the edge of the bed, something he never did when someone called for him, so he decided to just lay there.  Whoever wanted him could come up the steps and find him.  Maybe he should just roll off the bed and then roll right back under it and stay there for the rest of the day.

“Cody Marshall!” came the call, loud and clear this time.  The voice was unmistakable: it was the voice of Bashar el Sayed. 

“Bashar,” Cody said under his breath.  “May you burn in hell.”  He sat up, feeling a stab of pain in his right temple, and then got out of bed and stood up.

“Don’t make me come up there and get you, Cody,” Bashar said.  “If you do, you will regret it.”

“Is that a promise?” Cody yelled down.  He walked over to the stairs and slowly made his way down to the lower floor, wondering why he ever slept on the hot upper floor anyway.  He walked over to Bashar and said, “Why don’t you get your men to switch these rooms out for me?”

“If that’s what you want, then that’s what you can do,” Bashar said.

“You’re here alone?”

Bashar handed Cody a piece of paper, something that looked like it had been torn out of a three-ring binder belonging to some junior high kid.

“Are you serious, Bashar?”  Cody said.  “You fired guys with poor office habits a few years ago.  Now you’re worse than they ever were.  I guess I’m supposed to read this?”

Bashar nodded. 

Jadhari came into the room, making it a point to announce his presence by calling Cody’s name.

Cody kept his eyes glued to the paper, reading it over, line by line.  “And to think that you had to type this.  I guess computers are a thing of the past.  And so you’re taking Vernon away from me?  For slandering the prophet?  You must be kidding me.  Why don’t you just beat the hell out of him like you do everybody else and let’s call it even?”

“Let me remind you, Mr. Marshall, that I am not here for your opinion on the matter,” Bashar said. 

“And the imam doesn’t want yours either, I take it.”

“Where is Vernon?”

“Probably at the mosque by now – I didn’t hear the truck arrive because I’ve been trying to close my eyes for a bit.  In fact, I don’t see any of my guys here.  So that answers your question.”

“Then you will go to the mosque and bring him back – and you will take Jadhari with you.”

“Bashar, if you don’t mind – can we both, for auld lang syne, just revert to four years ago, when life was good, back when he had Charmin and toilets and personal lubrication, and all those wonderful things that made us a civilization, and speak as friends?”

Bashar rolled his eyes.

Jadhari walked back into the work room, uninterested in the discussion.

“Why don’t you let me take Jadhari to the mosque, I’ll let him have some target practice, and we’ll let him tell the imam that he put Vernon up against the wall and shot him.  You know and I know that I need Vernon to help me out with---”

“But he’s a metal guy,” Bashar insisted.

“Not anymore,” Cody said.  “He’s been working on the electrical system with me.  If he doesn’t get his job done, the lights part of the project isn’t going to dazzle anyone.  You know when someone is lying, and you can tell I am not lying to you.  I taught you how to spot a liar how many years ago?”

Bashar, not humored at all, just stared at Cody.

“Just lie this time, Bashar,” Cody insisted.  “And I hope you have a plan to get me out of here before they trim too much off my shoulders, if you know what I mean.”

A loud crash, like something metal falling to pieces on a hard, wooden floor, came from the work room.  Cody turned, thinking the noise nothing more than a typical workday mishap, and looked.  Jadhari said or yelled something – whatever he said sounded muffled and unintelligible, like some adolescent cursing quietly so that a parent couldn’t hear – and then everything went silent.

“The imam thinks he’s going to keep you on indefinitely,” Bashar said.  “And that’s partly why I have come to talk to you.  Between you and me, you just need to convert – but that’s not important right now.”  Bashar leaned to the side and looked past Cody towards the door to the workshop, probably looking for Jadhari.  “I’ll do what I can for Vernon.  How much good that will do, I cannot say.  But I think it will be best if you head over to the mosque and spend the rest of the day there.  And just keep the imam happy and make sure we’ll have power tomorrow at five.  I’ll follow you out to your truck.”

Cody and Bashar walked through the workshop, Bashar saying something or the other about the generators, and how he’d planned on keeping the mosque supplied for the next two weeks with gasoline. 

Cody paid him little attention, his eyes cutting over to the partially opened door to the Underground Railroad tunnel.  It was cracked by an inch or two, but cracked wide enough that it might draw attention.  Cody positioned himself between the entrance and Bashar, and he tried to hurry up their little meeting.  When he and Bashar walked through the shop to the back door into the alley, Cody pushed the lock button on the inside of the knob and closed it snuggly behind him.  Now, Bashar would have to walk down the alley to get back to the courthouse.  He’d never see the secret entrance to the tunnels.

The driveway into the mosque from Greenland Avenue was as smooth as any asphalt road.  The parking area – perhaps ISA thought there’d be thousands of cars parking here one day – was much lager than a building this size needed.  But the higher powers agreed that it was sufficient, and Cody let it be.

Several men, all of them Muslims, all of them wearing their signature camouflage, looked up when Cody stopped his truck in front of the mosque.  A cloud of dust, thick and gritty, swooped forward, enveloping the men, who covered their faces with their hands.

The tall man, the one wearing a towel around his head that matched his camouflage shirt and pants, was the imam, Husain Kumali.  This was the same man who’d overseen the execution of Jose a few hours earlier. 

As Cody stepped out of the truck, he tried to remember Jose’s face.  Nothing.  That’s how it had been for the last two and some odd years.  Here today, gone tomorrow.  Only there were fewer and fewer infidels to step up and take the places of old, departed friends.

This time it was Cody who greeted the imam, and his feigned eagerness in getting the job up and running suggested a willingness, however contrived, to let bygones be bygones.  “I guess you’ll be wanting the air conditioning on as soon as possible – but I can only promise air for the prayer rooms only.  Sorry about that.  But that’s reality.”

“Are you saying we are responsible for that reality, Mr. Marshall?” Imam Kumali announced loudly in a pleasant, up-beat voice as he handed a tablet of curled legal paper to a man standing beside him.

“Of course not, sir,” Cody said.  “But you’re doing a great job convincing the rest of these guys of the truth of the matter, so I bow in your general direction.”

Imam Kumali turned and whispered to the man standing behind him, and both men smiled and laughed.  He turned to Cody and said, “We thank you for your compliments, truly.  Now, if you will, we have some businesses to attend to – is that right?”

“The generators, yes,” Cody said.  “Unfortunately, we don’t have enough generators to power the entire building, as you already know, so we need to be careful about what we turn on and when we turn it on.  We don’t want to strain the motors, not if you want them to last. Then there’s the matter of the gasoline.”

“We have the gasoline matter well in hand at the moment,” Imam Kumali said.  “We have a tanker truck, a large one that is full.  It is on the way as we speak.”

“Where are you going to park it?” Cody asked. 

“It is near the Golf Course Camp, as we speak.  It should be here in the morning.”

“I mean no disrespect, sir – imam – sir,” Cody said.  “
Where
are you planning on parking the tanker when it gets
here
?”

Imam Kumali conferred with the man beside him yet again, and then he said to Cody, “Wherever you think it should be parked.”

Cody saw movement out of the corner of his eye.  Vernon was inside the mosque, walking the perimeter of the wall.  Imam Kumali must have just arrived.  Otherwise, he’d have bumped into Vernon and had him arrested.  That, or had him summarily beheaded or shot, probably the former, as the imam was a great fan of Mohammed’s techniques.

“If you will, your hineyness---”

Imam Kumali bowed.

“Why don’t we all take a quick walk around the side of the mosque and get a look at how I have this thing all set up, would you mind?” Cody asked with his hand out towards the right side of the mosque.  “You never know what might happen to me, right?”

Everyone agreed and started off towards the right of the building.

Cody brought up the rear, lagging behind a yard or two, and then he said loud enough for all to hear, “Just go on ahead of me, I need my tool kit.”  He waited long enough for Imam Kumali and his entourage to clear the front of the entrance, and then he ran to the door.  Vernon wasn’t too far away.

“Vernon!” Cody yelled as he waved him over to the door. 

Vernon came jogging over.  “You’ve got a death warrant on your head – blaspheming the prophet, or some such nonsense.  Imam Kumali has put out a warrant for you, only nobody’s seen the warrant.  You have food and water, right?”

Vernon, his eyes wide with fear, and his hands clasped together in front of him, began to shake.  “I’ve got plenty.”

“Get into the crawl space beneath the rear emergency exit – you remember it,” Cody said.  “You had to cut the vent to fit – it took you half a day.”

“I got it,” Vernon said.

“You get in there, and you stay in there – and don’t you come out until somebody comes for you, do you understand me?  I think I have a job for you that you’ll really like.  Just be sure to grab a jug of ammonia from the cleaning closet and---”

“I know, I know – cover up my scent.”

“Imam Kumali will almost certainly make a sweep of the mosque tomorrow,” Cody reminded him.  “Remember, stay hidden.  If nobody comes for you Wednesday morning, head east through the dumps and . . . and just go.”

Vernon, looking both ways, scanning the porch area from left to right, hurried away through the main prayer room and disappeared.  Cody closed the glass door and jogged over to this truck. He grabbed his tool belt and caught up with Imam Kumali.

Cody spent the next hour explaining the operation of the air conditioning units and how and when they were to be used, and how to combine their usage with the usage of lights.  He also detailed how classrooms and hallways could be heated and cooled independently of the many large prayer rooms.

“This is a nightmare, Mr. Marshall,” Imam Kumali announced for all to hear, as he looked to his posse of head nodders for agreement and support.  “But, on the other hand, there is nothing else we can do about it.  Not until we can get electricity back again.”

Cody chuckled to himself.  Electricity?  ISA had destroyed the electrical grid two years earlier, they’d demolished every factory on the east coast; and every road, including the interstates, needed resurfacing.  Cody had heard a year earlier that, during the rainy season, I-24 at Antioch had a fifty-yard section washed out during an epic flood. And the only gasoline factories that remained in the United States were in the west.  How the military was holding up out there was anybody’s guess.

The tour with Imam Kumali and his men ended a half later at the rear of the mosque where Cody knew the gasoline tanker would need to be parked in order to serve the generators. 

Cody looked back towards what used to be Middle Tennessee State University – now an ISA camp for half of Bashar’s Islamic Front Army.  A high, flat plateau of packed earth and gravel, elevated about a story high and paved before the war, blocked his view.  The original blueprints for the mosque included plans for an office complex on the site but, due to monetary restraints before the war, the plans were scrapped.  Instead, it became an elevated parking lot where contractors parked their heavy equipment, much of which still sat parked up there, mired down in the asphalt.

“We’ll park the tanker right here, up against the building,” Cody said.

Imam Kumali’s assistant leaned over and whispered something in Arabic, and the two seemed to have a disagreement.