The Last Infidel (8 page)

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Cody Marshall sat at the small, wooden desk in the basement of the Greenspan Realty and Auction building.  He was leaning forward with his arms on the table, caressing the hands of Lisa Maddox, the mother of Marcus, the woman who lived in the basement of the destroyed Emmanuel Methodist Church.  The single oil lamp, trimmed to a minimum, glowed faintly in the small, damp space. 

“And you saw him take Marcus?” Cody asked, as he looked into Lisa’s dark, sad eyes.  “You saw Jadhari take Marcus?”

Lisa, her eyes glistening in the light, and her mouth contorted in sorrow, nodded her head and said, “Yes.  Jadhari and five men.  I couldn’t shoot – I was trying to get my gun unjammed and . . . and the next thing I knew, they were gone.”

“Nobody saw you?”

Lisa shook her head.  “I’m a coward,” she said softly.  “I couldn’t bring myself to save him and I---”

“No, Lisa,” Cody said, his voice reassuring and gentle.  “You came to me because you know that I know people.  I will get Marcus back.  Look at me, Lisa.  Look at me.”

Lisa lifted her face.  Her dark brown eyes, awash with tears, and her long brown hair, dusty and thick, didn’t detract from her beauty one bit.  Cody loved her face, the way she looked, and he loved her deeply as a friend.  He’d thought of her often over the last year or so, remembering to bring her odds and ends he’d stolen just for her and her son.  Necessary things, like food and medicine.  He’d even brought her clothes, infidel clothes, tight and high cut.  Without him, she and her son would have perished long ago.

“I will get Marcus back,” Cody said.  “But I need to ask you if our little secret is still safe.”

“Yes.”  Lisa sniffled and managed a pained smile, a sure sign she knew Cody could handle Marcus’s safe return.  She got up and came over to Cody’s side of the table and wrapped her arms around him.  “Nobody will ever know how much I---”

Cody, distracted, tried to turn when he heard the light footfalls of someone stepping into the room, but he couldn’t see who the footsteps belonged to.  A second later, he saw Tracy; and she saw him and Lisa, in their embrace, before they saw her.

“Cody,” Tracy said, her voice high and surprised.  “What are you . . . what are you two doing here?  This place is supposed to be---”

“A place for runaway slaves, Tracy,” Cody snapped, and stood up.  “Or are you so caught up in your mission you’ve forgotten the mission?”

Lisa stood up, startled, and looked at Tracy.  “Is she a friend of yours, Cody?  I didn’t think there were any women left.”  She put her arm around Cody and balanced herself, tilting her head on his sleeve to wipe the tears from her face.  Then she looked at Cody and asked, “Can she help us?”

“Absolutely she can help us,” Cody said.  “She’s the wife of one of Bashar’s men – and she’s an old friend of mine from another time and place.  Lucky for us she’s on our side.”  Then he leaned over towards Lisa, cupped his mouth with both of his hands so that Tracy could not hear him, and he whispered, “When I pull away, giggle and smile.”

Cody pulled away, smiling.

Lisa asked him, “Why do I have to giggle and smile?”

Tracy rolled her eyes at Cody.  “Nice try, moron.”

“Lisa and Marcus were in hiding,” Cody said, coldly and plainly.  “Jadhari and some of his thugs found Marcus, and now they have him.  We – that means you and I – are going to find Marcus and bring him back down here.  Now, Tracy, if you don’t mind, where in this tunnel do we hide people?”

“Under the courthouse is as good a place as any,” Tracy said, pointing past Cody.  “The problem isn’t that Bashar will find us down here.  The problem is going to be how we feed her . . . them, I mean the people we hide.”

“Figure it out – you’re the one living with the enemy,” Cody said.  “I’m sure a logistics guy can figure out how to get a couple of meals down here, don’t you think?  You’re the one with the communications degree, start talking to Zafar.”

Tracy shook her head, looked at Lisa, and said, “Follow me, Lisa – and bring that lamp.”

“Why don’t you let her live with you?” Cody said.  “Let her sleep near the door of this little subway of yours – if there’s trouble, she can run.  Or, better yet, we can get her a burka and Zafar can have twice the fun.”

Lisa eyes opened wide, “That’s a bit inappropriate, don’t you think?”

Cody drew Lisa up to him and hugged her. “Zafar is a Christian with a family, posing as a Muslim who wants a harem.  He’s harmless.”  He looked at his watch.  “Time to go.  It’s six o’clock, July first – Tracy – Friday morning.”

“Just get Marcus,” Lisa said.  “I’ll do anything---”

“Remember what I told you,” Cody said.

Lisa smiled, wiped her face again, and nodded.  “I love you, Cody – you know what I mean.  You’ve been the only man who’s ever taken care of me and Marcus.”

Cody picked up her rifle, the one he had traded to her a few days earlier, and told her to keep it under wraps.  He smiled and sent her away with Tracy.  Cody got up and headed for the mosque.

“They took Mikey,” Jose said remorsefully when Cody walked into the construction trailer.  He got up from his chair, accidentally knocking the blue prints off the desk, and approached Cody.

“It was only a matter of time,” Cody said.

“You’re not saying you don’t care about him are you?  You know what Bashar’s men are going to do to him.  They found out that he used to be---”

“Gay?”

“They’re gonna throw him off the top of the courthouse tonight,” Jose objected.  “And that piece of crap Bashar – may he burn in hell – is gonna make us watch it.  Jadhari told me so.”

Cody pushed Jose out of his way, but with care and gentleness and a half-smile, and he walked over to the office desk.  He knelt down and picked up the papers Jose had dropped. “You have to learn to pick up after yourself, Jose.  This country already looks like the Gaza Strip – imagine if we add Mexico to it.  Hell, we’ll be tunneling through garbage like taco-sized rats.”

“And when are you gonna finally man up and start fighting?” Jose yelled.  “You---” Jose moved closer to Cody, bent down beside him, and lowered his voice to a whisper.  “You have bombs.  The rest of us, well, we can round up a couple of nice guns – at least lead us so we can go down fighting.  Maybe we can take down a few of those towelheads, along with that bastard Bashar, and make them hurt a little.”

“They’d shoot us like fish in a barrel,” Cody said calmly.  “And you know what they would do to anyone they caught alive.  Bashar’s men live to watch and enjoy long, creative, slow deaths.”

“Like, we’re not fish in a barrel already?  When are you gonna wake up, man?  Come July fifth, we’re all dead men anyway.”

“Aren’t we dead men already?”

“And there you go with that crap again, Cody!” Jose yelled.  “So you’re just giving up, right?  Giving up on everybody but yourself.  I know you – you’re gonna run, aren’t you?  But we’re just too much baggage that will slow you down!”

“We’re not having this discussion,” Cody said.

“The words are forming sentences in the air waiting for you to see them, only you’re too self-absorbed to look!”

Cody, with the blueprints in his arms, and his baseball cap pulled tightly over the top of his head, started for the door.  “Come on – we’ve got a mosque to finish.”

For one hour, forced to stand in the hot and sultry heat of that late Friday afternoon, Cody Marshall and his infidels stood at attention on the rear lawn of the Rutherford County courthouse.  Behind them and in front of them, also standing at attention, stood two rows of Bashar’s soldiers.  Mikey Ferguson, the young man about to be executed, a boy with close cut hair and a thin, boney build, stood alone on the concrete walk, facing the doors of the courthouse.

Bashar was late.

Everybody knew Mikey, loved him like they did their own child.  At the age of sixteen, distraught over his attraction to men, Mikey tried to take his own life.  He’d managed to keep his struggle secret up until his suicide attempt – an overdose of painkillers he’d stolen from his pharmacist employer – but later, in desperation, he confessed his problem before his church family from the bed of the local hospital.  With the help of friends and family, Mikey learned to cope with his feelings, not once giving in to them; and his church family surrounded him with love and care and understanding.

But yesterday, one of those church members exposed him.

That man, Gus Rimes, a man who had recently renounced his Christian faith, needed to prove his devotion to The Prophet and Allah.  Turning Mikey over to the local mosque president was good enough for ISA; and Gus had outed Mikey two days before, just so he could save his own head from the edge of a dull, Muslim sword.

Bashar, flanked on either side by two of his bodyguards who, when they weren’t watching the courthouse, were beating the hell out of Cody’s guys, walked out of the courthouse.  He looked past Mikey and walked around him.

“To heaven with him,” Cody heard one of his sheetrock guys whisper beside him.  Then the man dropped his head and he began to sob quietly.

Jose whispered, “Do something, Cody, you piece of---”

Bashar stepped up to the line of men; but because he hated their stink, something everyone except Bashar had grown accustomed to, he kept his distance.  Before he spoke, a terrible silence filled the square. 

Cody knew for a fact that Bashar hated this business of executions, but he could never understand how such an educated man as Bashar could bring himself to oversee such wanton acts of cruelty and violence.  He asked him once about his view of forgiveness and mercy, and why Islam was always so swift to kill any transgressor.  Wouldn’t it have been better, Cody asked him on one occasion, to grant mercy in the hope the sinner might be allowed time to grow and convert?

Bashar read the verdict – all of it exaggerated beyond any glimmer of reality – against Mikey Ferguson.  He spoke of several liaisons Mikey had had with different men, none of whom could be named, and whom, conveniently, nobody had bothered to round up so that they too could share in Mikey’s fate.

Mikey, where are your accusers?

Bashar swept his dark, black hair away from his short forehead.  He looked over to his right, holding a piece of paper in his hands; and he looked at the president of the mosque.  He nodded, officially and dutifully, and then he looked down at the paper once more.

It occurred to Cody that the man was searching through his duty-bound skull to muster the courage he had failed to find on so many other occasions, a courage he knew he must find within the next few seconds or risk being accused of violating Sharia Law.  And when Bashar raised his head and looked past the front row of his soldiers, Cody knew he was looking for somebody to carry out the sentence that he himself knew he could never carry out.

Cody looked down at the ground, pumping himself up for another confrontation with Bashar.  He suddenly looked up, defiantly, and his eyes smoldered with fire.  He leaned slightly to the left and looked past one of Bashar’s bastards, casting his eyes upon the skinny, sweat-drenched back of Mikey Ferguson, a boy who could have been any mother’s son, and any man’s baby brother.  He allowed his compassion to move him, not only emotionally, but physically; and he moved out from his line and stepped through the row of guards separating him from Bashar.

As he brushed past two guards, he felt the blow of a rifle butt on his back, and he fell to the ground.  One of Bashar’s bodyguards, probably under his orders, stopped the soldier.  Cody stood up on his feet and, undeterred and with little concern for himself, walked towards Bashar.

Bashar looked at his two body guards and told them to prepare to escort the prisoner to the clock tower atop the courthouse.  They did as they were told and made their way towards Mikey Ferguson.

Cody never once worried about his own safety.  He would have preferred to confront Bashar in the privacy of his office; but he knew Bashar, now under the eyes of the president of the mosque, the imam, and some of his associates, had no choice but to proceed with the execution.  He looked at Bashar with every muscle and vein straining against his skin, and said, “Look, you dirty, filthy Muslim, those charges against Mikey – every one of them – is false, and you know it.  He’s a Christian – and I take pleasure in saying that that boy has never, ever hurt a single soul.  You owe me, mister.  Let him go.  The people of this town showed more respect and love to your son than you ever did – you filthy pig!”

Bashar reached to his side and grabbed his small, rubber truncheon.  He flung himself forward like a coiled snake, beating Cody in the face and on the head until Cody hit the ground bleeding.  He beat him on the back multiple times, swinging with every ounce of strength he had.  When his hand and wrist began to fatigue – his swings began to slow rather quickly – he backed away, puffing and panting, leaving Cody on the ground.

But Cody had protected himself, and Bashar had relented.

“Get up, Cody Marshall,” Bashar said.  “I will not kill Mikey Ferguson.  You will do the job.”

“Like hell I will,” Cody countered.

“And now I will remove the heads of one of your men.”  Bashar called over one of his soldiers, a man holding a large sword with a leather-wrapped brass handle.  He told him to select one of Cody’s workers, tie his hands, and prepare to behead him on the old, limestone, slave stepping stone sitting to the right of the sidewalk.