A Guardian Angel (25 page)

Movement exploded
on the street. Most people seemed to settle on flowing out of the
intersection, away from the Decree officers. Homer joined the crowd,
hopping up over the heads on occasion and yelling for people to
leave. He knew it wasn't fair, and he knew it wasn't right. But
that's not what mattered now. Live to fight tomorrow.

“Homer,
what's happening?” the woman he was with earlier called out to
him. He spotted her and her son getting pushed about by people as
they tried to move past. They looked disoriented.

“You need to
get your son and leave right now,” Homer replied. Nothing on
his face resembled a smile. It seemed so unlike him, as if he looked
like a complete stranger. This scared her. He looked down at a watch
his dear friend Andy had paid for. “We have two more min –
”

Gunfire interrupted
him. He looked over his shoulder as everyone started to move faster,
now engaged in a synchronized jog away from the mercenaries as they
began to open fire on the homeless men, women, and children. They
shot white men, black men, red men, and yellow men. They shot the
old, the young, the sick, and the unsound. They fired on families of
good God-fearing folk and they fired on slimy scumbags as they tried
to scamper away. Rich men, proud business owners, avid American
consumers, hard working humans of the middle class, the poor, the
homeless, and the less fortunate. They all bled red when they were
shot. They all made the same sound when they hit the ground.

Everyone was equal.

-Chapter Twenty-Five-

Retaliation

Andy Winter relaxed
into the driver seat as he saw the sign pass by him. He had just
entered the city limits of San Francisco. He was glad to be somewhere
that the Decree Nation hadn't stained yet.

Yet.

The former hitman
kept on the move ever since he heard about his motor accident on the
radio. He had no idea what anyone thought of him. The general public
knows him as a hired gun for Decree.
I killed for the bad guys,
Andy thought.
That's what they know.

The men and women
at the Decree Nation probably saw him as a turncoat. Someone who had
the trust of Leroy Graves himself only to start this war by allowing
their secrets to get out.
That's what I did,
Andy believed.
I
started this war all for the life of one woman.

What did Haley even
think of him?

He didn't want to
think about it much, so he turned up the radio.

“I just can't
believe they can do this so in-your-face to the public,” a
woman commented. She was upset.

“If you're
just joining us,” another woman started, “we're having a
discussion about the Denver Massacre that happened earlier this
afternoon. Forty-one protestors were killed by Decree employed
private police during a brief moment of confusion at Union Station.
Over seventy others were wounded, including several officers of the
Denver Police Department. There were no casualties for the Decree
Nation.

“As of now,
we know that over a hundred and twenty people were arrested and
placed into Decree custody. This includes the civil rights activist
Haley Flynn, who originally published the article exposing Decree's
illegal activities.”

Andy glanced down
at the radio at the mention of her name.
He got her,
he
thought mournfully.
After all this, Graves still got her.

“Our hearts
and prayers go out to the families of the victims,” the first
woman said. “Justice must be brought for these crimes.”

Clicking off the
radio, Andy sped up his truck. He took the exit to the airport and
booked himself on the first flight to Chicago.

He turned the truck
off before climbing out and lumbering down the street. The road had
been blocked off so traffic couldn't run anywhere near the scene.
Andy ducked down as he walked down the hill on the grass. He moved
quietly, hiding away from the figures on the road.

In the distance, he
could see men in strange orangish urban fatigues with what Andy
identified as M4s slung over their shoulders. They moved around the
scene. Two or three of the closest ones amassed by the side of one of
their vans, discussing something. Others made their way to or from
the street that ran under the bridge. Those coming from carryied
filled body bags to two rows that the mercenaries had organized.

Andy was horrified.
He took a moment to clutch onto his knees and look away.
Two rows
of the same length,
Andy thought.
Only saw one. Twelve in one
row.
Andy regained his posture as he looked back, confirming his
math.
Twenty-six people are dead, with the addition of the two
being added to the rows.

Murdered.

The former hitman
stopped short when some of the merc-cops walked right between him and
the makeshift morgue, their backs to him. “All right, that's
plenty. Start bringing new bodies over,” one of the mercenaries
called out to the rest. He jogged to the other side of the street,
far away from Andy, elongating the last sound of that final word all
the while. “Here! Got it?”

There was a loud
and somewhat disorganized, “Yes, sir!” in response, while
the mercenaries started walking away to Andy's left. Relieved, Andy
continued over to the first twenty-six.

Jesus,
he
thought.
That means they got more than twenty-six.
How many
people even lived in this camp? If they keep bringing them in, the
odds that Homer survived dropped with every casualty. Mathematically,
his friend was dying faster and faster.

He took a brief
moment of silence before he started unzipping the bags. The first two
were a couple of guys who must have been so strung out on dope that
they probably didn't even know that they died. There were smiles on
their faces. The next one was a large Asian woman. She looked so
harmless that Andy knew that there was no fight here. Just a
slaughter.

When Andy unzipped
the next one, he looked away and dropped to his knees. He started
gulping for air as it seemed hard to take in. There was a little boy,
couldn't be any older than eight. The look of complete terror that
had set in on the child's face as he died made Andy sob. He zipped
the bag back up and continued to lament as quietly as possible.

He was ready for
the next bag. He unzipped it and his head hung low. There he was. The
dead man himself. He had a smile on his face. His eyes were closed.
Homer died with no regrets.

Andy zipped the bag
up when he heard the shuffling of feet in the distance. He started to
make his way back to the street where he could hail a taxi. He looked
back one more time at the bags where both the little boy and his
beloved friend Homer laid.

Leroy Graves
must die,
Andy decided.

Barney Slechta
peered out through the bars of his prison cell at an overcast sky.
Even the gray color couldn't sink his spirits any further for they
were as low as he could ever remember them being. They have been ever
sinking since he arrived in this hole.

He sat in a federal
prison somewhere in southern Colorado. He only gathered that from
overhearing bits and pieces from the guards that strutted around. He
had been there for about two weeks, his trial much more of a dream
than an event that will ever take place. They had detained him with
the same label as most of the Heaven's Crusade fanatics they roped:
an anarchist combatant.

Grief indented
itself on the man's face.
To be considered the same as the people
who killed my friends. In fact,
Barney thought,
my captors
killed them, too.

He raised his head
when he heard more people being led in. There were two of them, a
borderline obese man with a buzz cut and a shorter guy with a goatee.
They were locked in the cell next to his own before the guards
lumbered off and away.

“Hey fella,”
the large one said.

Barney looked over
his shoulder at him. The idiot must have been drunk when they
arrested him. A stupid smile sat on his face. “Hi,” he
said.

“What'd you
do?” the guy asked.

“Oh, you
know,” Barney started. “Wrong place, wrong time.”

“Yeah, we've
got a bit of that, too,” the newcomer commented. A period of
silence ensued. “You hear all that slander everyone has been
throwin' around about the Decree Nation?” he started again
after an hour or so. “It's horseshit.”

“Is it?”
Barney humored him. The man didn't sound drunk. Why was he so damn
cheery?

“The movement
is much more than just rebelling against Uncle Sam,” he
explained. “The system has been rotting for years. Bureaucracy
hampering all the issues important to Americans. People who are in
charge of people's well-being are only interested in a dollar-sign.
It's sick, man. But no, not with the movement.” The man looked
into Barney's eyes with burning intensity. “It's about putting
the power back in the hands of the people.”

“You're a
Decree officer,” Barney concluded.

“That's
right,” the man said. “It's not a bias, man. I've got to
do my part for what's right and that happens the be with the Nation.
It's the only thing I can do.”

Barney's brow
furrowed. “Why are you so happy?” he asked outright.

The man chuckled as
if he meant it sarcastically, then he leaned in and beckoned Barney
to the bars. Barney listened. “Because,” the Decree
officer started, “I don't think we're going to be here for
long.”

Homer's face
stenciled itself in the intricate folds of Andy's subconscious as he
traveled. Nothing but vengeance burned hotter on his skull. In the
silence, the memory of the first night he had met the kind homeless
man came to him. It was over ten years ago.

Andy stood on the
edge of a ten-story-high roof when he first heard Homer's voice.

“Hey!”
the man had boomed. “Get down from there! You, there!”

The fledgling
assassin ignored his cries. Tears stained his pale face as he gazed
down at the sidewalk. At all the beautiful street lamps and
glittering lights that buzzed on in the late Chicago night. He made
no sound at all as he wept but the tears flowed out as a constant
stream. In the front pocket of his fine tan suit jacket was a thick
envelope. An admission of guilt. His zombie-like stare was immovable.

Again, the man
hollered up to him from the alley below. “Hey man, you don't
need to do this, man!” his voice still deep and rich even in
youth. “Please come down here! I don't want to see a man die!”

“Then look
away!” Andy yelled back down at last. His rapidly changing mood
had placed him into a heated anger.

“No way!”
Homer yelled back. “You'd be doing a hell of a lot more than
saving your life if you'd come down. Please, man!”

A moment passed by
while Andy's breathing strained from emotional turmoil. He closed his
eyes and tried his hardest to imagine just stepping off the ledge and
falling. He pictured hitting the ground and feeling each and every
single bone shatter, one after the other. To savor the sensation of
his muscles tearing and his skull cracking. To enjoy his own
punishment.

He couldn't do it,
but he didn't come down and talk to Homer.

Only a day passed
where he had tried sleeping his life away in his apartment. His guilt
weighed so heavily that Andy couldn't move a finger against its
gravity and laid like a vegetable into the night. Once he couldn't
take it anymore, he left the apartment and climbed back onto the
roof.

He had found a way
onto the fire escape by leaping from a neighboring roof that was much
closer to the ground. From there he would creep along so no one in
the apartments would look out their window and spot him. Not like
they could stop him now. He strained as he pulled himself up to the
top, panting. His breath took hold when he saw the homeless man
there, reading something in the moonlight as he sat inside a sleeping
bag.

“You came
back?” Homer said, closing the magazine he held and setting it
beside himself. “I was terrified you might have chosen a
different roof.”

“What are you
doing here?” Andy asked.

“I thought
you might come back,” Homer replied. “Why are you trying
to kill yourself?”

“How is that
any of your business?” Andy barked. He had his hands burrowed
deep into his pockets and his shoulders flinched out of nervousness.
He had been caught red handed. “Who are you anyway?”