Wicked Messenger by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview
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Chapter 24
For a few more days the United States was the beneficiary of a much desired quiet stasis, as the parties attendant to the recent upheavals coincided in retreating into their studies for further reflection upon their actions. Mercifully, this was the only place where action prevailed in the massive chess game, as pawns and kings alike pondered where they now stood in terms of attaining or their likelihood to obtain current and long term goals.
Cronos relished his re-acquired position of being the
“commander” of the man who would be seen as an Eli hero, even though it was illusory. Though he no longer trusted Joshua in the least; that was subordinate to his desired appearance of success. He was uncertain of his “limited war” plan. He thought it important to his future to be seen as a “no nonsense Eli, but if war was not the most pragmatic option, he wanted to be seen as reasonable. While he thought his idea was excellent at the time, he was now considered it possible that he might have gotten the worst of both worlds. He tried to find some way to back out of his stated position, without denying it. It was a formidable task and he searched books for ideas.
Seth, Brigitte and Prometheus lounged at their homes, spending a morning half hour on the phone. They were being interviewed on an Eli sponsored radio program, hosted by Anne
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Ramsey. They casually spoke of “progress” they and their subordinates were making in the “We Need More Information”
campaign. They showed mild amusement when they were joined by fourth guest, Completion scientist Hawk Stephens, who said that he had all the information. He proceeded to ask Brigitte for a date, during which he would show her his knowledge. It remains to be seen if she has been fully informed.
Marshall played a computer Civil War game with someone from Manassas, Virginia who used the name Rising South. He won rather handily as RS was intent on defending his ground, and the Eli strategist knew that one cannot win by only playing defense.
Zeus discovered the Earth internet pornography superiority.
Time flew in a haze as he found films and photos of every possibility his mind conjured, including the newest category; Inter-galactic. Some Elis had been extremely enterprising.
Joshua enjoyed his morning realization that everything was fine. Despite all the other fleeting absurdities, his subterfuge had grown beyond his reasonable initial hopes. Though he was positive that Cronos no longer trusted him, he knew there was nothing he could do about it, without damaging himself. It really didn’t matter as he could spend the rest of his life as an Eli hero and endorse consumer products. He wasn’t truly in any danger from an Earthling as all he had to do in the case of being accosted was to use his “silver bullet.” The contented
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feeling started to wane about two hours after he finished smoking the cigarette he had purchased from the talkative man on the streets of Manhattan.
Assassins, protestors, militant radicals of all persuasions, pranksters and Frank were serenely confident that they had not paid any price for their actions or lack thereof, and given the passage of time, with every undisturbed day, it was increasingly likely that they never would.
Earth’s population, old and new, went about the routines of the lives they had lived prior to 7-4-58. They went to school, work, shopping centers, and in their free time laid around a lot. They watched news programs, which carried nothing worthy of remembering the next day, except the weather. A huge gray and white cloud covered the bulk of the United States. It didn’t rumble, produce lightning or rain. It just sat there putting a lid on things. Some said it was responsible for the sudden and unexpected tranquility. Some said the people were merely tired.
Becky spent hours and hours with Grandpa, assisting the bedridden man with all the things he could no longer easily do for himself. She could not think of any foolproof places to put it, so she carried the “silver bullet” with her at all times.
Grandpa’s right side was normal, but his left suffered from an improving, but continued and annoying paralysis. While he still verbally professed to “be fine in a short time,” for the first
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time in Becky’s memory he also, at times, spoke in far-away parlance. In a very tired voice, he told her; “Don’t worry.
We’ll always be together,” then asked her to leave as he needed sleep. It had the opposite effect on her, as she knew that they were not ALWAYS going to be together on this Earth, but his saying so made her think that he was drifting off into thoughts of an afterlife.
She would never tell him her morbid thought, as he would probably get upset with her being overly analytical, precise and interpretative over a stupid little sentence and he didn’t need anything upsetting now. She went to her room, sat on the floor, and thought about death. It wasn’t the first time, as when she was a “little” girl; she unnecessarily squashed some bugs in the desert, and then wondered where “they” were. She looked at the still carcasses and wished they would come back into them and run away. She felt awful, cried and vowed never to pointlessly kill another bug. She kept going back to the same desert spot every day, hoping to see that the bugs had up and gone. But, they remained in the same sandy spot, getting a bit more covered every day, until a howling northern wind passed through one night. The next morning she did her practiced bug inspection and they were gone. She convinced herself that the wind had brought them back to their bodies and that they had left. This
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ameliorated her bad feelings at the time. But, now she was a
“big” girl and knew better. The bugs had become zombies.
She put the “silver bullet” on the floor and saw it as death incarnate. She hated the little monster with the audacity to brilliantly shine like a star. She kicked it across the room and thought that ever since this tiny fiend entered her life, so did death. It was innocuous appearing death.
Yet Grandpa had told her to be “responsible” for it, whatever that exactly means. Her thoughts of killing death by smashing it subsided, as whatever Grandpa had meant, she was certain that being responsible contradicted killing and smashing. Besides, there were others just like it. **** Elis.
She got up, put it in her pocket and went back to Grandpa.
His nap was over and he was sitting up in bed eating a TV
dinner with a very small amount of difficulty. When he pressed his fork into the chicken with his right hand, the plate slightly slid to the left, and it almost fell off his lap because of the limited ability of his left. Becky took the fork from him and he felt silly, but he allowed her to feed him like a baby. She catered to his every need, though he was still capable of doing most things for himself. After an hour she saw that it was time for his bath and offered to help him. She became convinced that he truly would be all right, when he used
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both hands to shoo her out of the room, saying; “Get the hell out of here.”
She again went to her room, but this time had a laughing fit. When it subsided she felt full of energy and overviews, and decided to bury the “silver bullet” in the desert. It seemed obviously appropriate for it to rest with the cactus and the sand; other things incapable of movement. She put the little monster into a spineless pink box, which once contained the discarded books in which she never had any interest; received years ago when they had the audacity to masquerade as a birthday present. “Freedom,” “CivilWarLand in bad decline,” and “Tenth of December,” among others with less ostentatious titles had rightfully gone the way of the horse and buggy, leaving the empty container, long ago suitable for burial.
Becky meandered through the brightly lit dryness, as she searched for a spot with something uniquely memorable, so that she could find it again if necessary. The sameness of the stoic cactus and sand was a revelation in the moment, as she had never before searched for anything distinctive in the barren land. She went on until she came to a place where the rosy blooming cholla intertwined with the much less dangerous prickly pear. She carefully brushed away the white sand with her bare hands and placed the box in the small gap. She covered it over with sand and made a mental note that the menace was interred where the
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hazardous cactus met the benign. She vigorously and cheerfully walked back home thinking her work was done.
When Becky was out of sight something emerged from behind the rock which hid it. Undetected by Becky, a tribute to decades of experience creeping between and under rocks, it was a woman dressed as a man. This was obvious from its lack of an Adam’s apple, tiny hands and feet, wearing unwashed, baggy zip-up pants, a slept-in button down brown shirt, and crowned by a short, two-tone hair-do, gray and darker gray on each convoluted clump, first introduced by Jody Welch, in her lesbian acclaimed melodrama; “I’ve Got a Headache.” It was a homeless drifter called Rancid who had roamed the Southwest for decades alternating between searches for God and searches for revenge on the men who ignored her. Despite having had a youthful passion for the opposite sex, Rancid was not blessed with the charming and attracting attributes of most girls, and consequently had difficulty drawing male attention. She initially found this a disheartening experience, but hoped it would change as boys matured. When they didn’t mature to her satisfaction, she had her consciousness raised in her adulthood. This made her embarrassed by her prior behavior, and she had since come to be convinced that she was the “victim” of male abuse, though anyone else would call it benign neglect. Excepting her days of sought solar illumination, she has spent decades mad as hell at the
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boys/men who had no interest in her. Rancid’s progression from adolescent horror to adult repulsion have induced the few men who have had the misfortune to have made her acquaintance, to refer to her as the “Penis-envying, steroid teratism (monster), PEST for short.
Having nothing to do, other than being a wart on the beauty of nature, she went to where Becky had been and clawed at the ground. Her coarse and calloused fingers soon unearthed the pink box, the pretty color much to her dismay. She ripped it apart and was more disappointed when she found the two inch, silver lipstick canister. In anger she tried to open it, intending to write something objectionable on an innocent cactus. But when she pressed the tiny button, she only succeeded in making it emit a ray which obliterated part of her face, including the entirety of her nose. While it was debatable to most whether or not this was an improvement, her appearance now most resembled Lon Chaney in the original “Phantom of the Opera,” which in its time is said to have induced fainting in the audience. However in PEST’s case, she was infused with as much happiness as she had experienced since youth; actually none, but she had no way of knowing; as she realized that the more of her face that was gone the better she looked. She planned subsequent “cosmetic”
fine tuning.
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While her situation was considered sad, rather than comical, to people new to her demise, the passage of time invariably led everyone to a revised conclusion. Despite sympathizing with Rancid having been born with the looks of a journeyman boxer, her lifelong attacks and harassment of the male population led people to conclude that; “Her circumstances are indeed unfortunate, however everyone else would be better off if she didn’t exist.”
PEST turned the “silver bullet” on the annoying giant saguaro with the large branch at its approximate mid-point, which she accused of following her around, and again pushed the tiny button. It disappeared. PEST had mixed feelings. While she was elated to have found the power that she desired, she was sad to have obliterated the cactus, as she was now without anything to accuse of fallacious pursuit. Her temporary schizoid mindset ended when she realized that there was almost an infinite supply of saguaros to harass.
Her mind focused on the magnificent power of the ‘silver bullet,’ and like Robby Allison before her, for the first time she clearly saw the purpose of her rootless life. She hated Elis merely because she was, at this point, in love with hate and they were a safe target because there was plenty of company in that feeling. She also hated men, who were a less safe target, but, nonetheless provided somewhat of a bull’s eye, as they were
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seen as an enemy by a not insignificant number of elderly spinsters. She thought she would get the best of both worlds for the first time as she planned to kill Eli men. Her “genius” had been cited by a few low IQ meth freaks and her bravery was not to be questioned merely because there were no effective laws or penalties against killing Elis. Due to her numerous managed and petty brushes with the law, she had been advised of the latter by competent counsel and that fact should not besmirch the valor of her steroid induced bravado. Her contact with and understanding of reality was obvious from her implicit assumption that this weapon was the former never used property of a little girl, as she never gave a thought to the possibility that the “silver bullet” just might be an advanced technology brought to Earth by the Elis.
PEST, now potentially more than a nuisance, hiked to the railroad line and hopped a freight train to Phoenix. She sat in the straw-filled goat car, accompanied by seventeen pygmy and eight full sized specimens, which seemed to take a liking to either her or her perfume. Also in the car were three male hoboes who did their best to pretend not to notice her, probably indicative of some prior knowledge. She spent the trip glowering at them, just in case they looked her way .........or didn’t.
After arriving in the big city, she donned her long haired, blonde wig, ostensibly to appear normal and not draw attention.
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After taking a few steps toward town, she sharply looked back to see if the hoboes were watching her. They weren’t, but a few of the goats seemed saddened, as if they had lost a companion.
Downtown Phoenix bustled with activity, which with the exception of Rancid, travelled on four wheels or more. Alone on the sidewalks she got un-nerved when she thought that she was being avoided because they knew her and what she was up to. She fondled her “silver bullet” and her mindset changed to that of a swaggering, gun-toting cowboy; Billy the Kid, albeit Billy the Kid with half a face, a long blonde wig, fifty-eight years of age and a two inch weapon.
She sauntered into the McDouglas hamburger emporium on Stetson and Skyway and ordered a shake. She took it to a booth occupied by two elderly men, sat down, made “horrible” faces at them, not generally in common practice outside of mental institutions and subsequent to the second grade. After thinking that she had intimidated them, she demanded to know; “Where are the Elis?”
The men flinched, as they thought they were being approached by an elderly and deformed reverse transvestite, wearing “Eau de Goate.” Rancid was proud to think that her bullying demeanor invoked codger fear.
The men choked on their burgers as they attempted to wolf them down. Rancid slurped her shake, thought she diabolically
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grinned with her half face, and raised her voice in her best imitation of John Wayne, however she sounded like John after taking laughing gas. Her high pitched squeal repeated; “I said, where are the Elis?” She pointed her “silver bullet” at one.
The man not blocked in decided to forego the rest of his burger and got up to leave. His friend said; “Excuse me” to PEST
and attempted to do the same. PEST did not budge.
The standing man slouched and said; “The Elis hang out at
‘The Pantheon.’ Everyone knows that.”
“Where’s ‘The Pantheon?’”
The slouching man pointed north and said; “Two blocks down Skyway.”
PEST stood and pointed a finger at the drooping man. She said; “You better be right or I’ll be back.”
The seated man slid out of the booth and said; “That’s the last thing we want.” The friends slouched out the door.
The concrete sunbaked street reflected the heat of the day’s constant sun storm, causing PEST to break into a sweat as she trod the pitiless, scorching road. Misdirected lizards scurried back to the safety of the off-road dirt, putting a hold on their expansionary thoughts, for the moment content to settle in the shade of a palm tree. Storefronts exacerbated the heat, as their silver, chrome and glass imperfectly reflected the illuminating rays, but perfectly magnified the temperature.
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Rancid felt uncomfortable on foot, jealous of those scooting by in air-conditioned cars. However, this made her all the more determined to prove her mettle in defiance of the cool auto occupants, too long removed from the elements to make it on foot. The tourist oriented retail establishments held authentic American Indian merchandise, assembled on the reservation from parts manufactured in Taiwan; designer Italian women’s wear imported from Brooklyn; and Mexican “antique” furniture, with ill-fitting pieces made all the more charming by a contemporary, sloppy paint job in yellow or red. The severely rectangular, black shelf clock incorrectly had both hands on eleven.
Uninterested in upgrading her wardrobe or household effects, Rancid focused on her “real” mission, not distracted by the bargains on sale.
She came to an establishment faux supported by faux Greek columns of paper Mache, protected from the elements by a layer of polyurethane and an overhanging awning. “THE PANTHEON” was ostentatiously emblazoned in gold above the entry. “Sunnies Only” appeared in smaller black letters on the door itself. Dark skinned revelers sitting at tables on the public street, shielded from the sun by the awning ate, laughed and drank, paying her no heed. This enraged Rancid, as did everything. She stopped near a table, put her hands on her hips and said; “****
Sunnies.” She got the attention she sought and her mind flipped
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to the other angry side. The couple nearest her got up and went inside to get the manager or security.
Rancid followed them in. Her white skin advertised her trespass. Two security guards approached, stood in her path, and one said; “You’ve made a mistake,” their burly male presence elevating her hatred past tolerance level.
She wryly said; “Think you’re bad ass mother *******?”
One guard took her elbow and said; “Hey, hey. We’re all nice people here and you’ll have to leave.”
Rancid used her free arm to retrieve the “silver bullet”
from her pants pocket, fired twice, and the two guards were gone. She turned to the seated patrons, who were frozen in shock, yelled; “Revenge for all women!” and obliterated two seated men. A military patron stood and blew her away.
The place was oddly quiet, perhaps because of the quietness of the killings and the unreality of seeing Elis killed, a first for non-militaries. The military man walked to where Rancid was and picked up the “silver bullet.”
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