A Guardian Angel (34 page)

Leroy Graves smiled
as he watched.

“Among the
dead is believed to be the CEO and president of the Decree Nation
Leroy Graves himself,” the news woman continued. An image of
Graves was put onto the display. “Graves was in his office at
the time of the bombing, organizing personnel objectives. The bomber
has been identified as Rosa Marina, the leader of the terrorist
organization known as the Knights of the Proletariat. Marina was also
killed in the explosion.”

Leroy laughed out
loud in celebration, clapping his hands together. He turned the TV
off and started lumbering over to his personal bar.

He hid out in an
old family cabin, deep within the woods. There were no roads that led
to it and the only other person in the world who knew it existed was
his wife Loretta. It was decorated with exquisite furs and the such,
warm and comforting. He had built the thing with his father when he
was just a teenager. Nothing had changed in the dozens of years since
he had last been here.

Nothing, except
that Andy Winter was standing in the doorway.

“Leroy,”
Andy greeted the man, nodding.

Leroy froze in
place when he saw Andy. He stood up straight, realigning his cashmere
sweater. The shock on his bearded face faded into an all-knowing
smirk as he chuckled. “You found me,” he breathed.

“I did,”
Andy replied.

Leroy continued to
his bar and began pouring out two glasses of scotch. “How?”
he asked as he began fingering over the long line of bottles on the
shelf behind the bar.

“Loretta told
me,” Andy replied. “Before I killed her.”

Leroy was silent
and he stared over at the former hitman in horror and disbelief.
“Loretta?” he asked through grief.

“Yes,”
Andy answered. “Drink?”

Leroy numbly passed
Andy one of the glasses he had poured out and started downing his
own. Andy accepted the drink and sipped slowly on it. His eyes never
left Leroy's.

“So what
happens now?” Andy's former boss asked him.

“You know,”
Andy answered. He took another gulp.

Leroy's smile grew
large and tight as he nodded. “Yeah,” he whispered. He
moved back to his chair beside the fireplace and gestured to Andy to
sit across from him. Andy obliged.

“I've done
what I needed to do,” Leroy started after tossing back the
remainder of his scotch. “The right people are in place. My
empire will exist after I'm gone. It's a system that works, Mr.
Winter. Finally, a system that works.”

Andy listened in
silence. Graves sweated.

“Do you think
people were happier before?” Graves continued. “Do you
think that just because they didn't use guns, the federal government
wasn't killing people? Poverty, Andy. You understand poverty, I know
you do. That can be fixed. We can fix it! All of the broken systems
of the old world – healthcare, education, welfare, the election
process – they must be rebuilt from the ground up in order to
function. No more high priced medication, no more denial of
insurance. Everyone can pursue a college career and everyone can feel
safe knowing that food is provided daily. It's all in the
infrastructure. Everyone thought it would be impossible, that those
systems would bankrupt the government. But not with the right people,
Andy. I tried to do the right thing!”

“I know,”
Andy whispered.

Leroy's voice
picked up speed. “I am a satire. What I've done is reveal what
kind of illusion society is. Equal, unequal; rich or poor. Everyone
has the basic power to change the face of the world. The basic power
to kill each other,” he explained. “Society is just an
unspoken agreement to coexist. It gets broken a lot, but it's amazing
the faith that people have – ”

Andy cleared his
throat. Terror gleamed in the older man's eyes. He knew there was no
talking his way out of justice.

“I'm not
proud of
how
I did what I did!” Graves yelled. He was in
tears. “But I am proud of
what
I did. We did terrible
things –
I
did terrible things, Andy. If I could make
those things right, I would. But they were the right choices to make.
The only choices. Please, Andy tell me that you understand.”

“Be quiet,”
Andy ordered. Leroy obeyed him. “Are you ready?”

Leroy swallowed
hard and continued to stare at the assassin. Andy lifted his handgun
and rested the barrel against the aged man's forehead.

Closing his eyes,
Andy killed Leroy Graves.

PART
IV

-----------------------

HARBINGER

-Chapter Thirty-One-

Days
Gone By

Once again, Andy
Winter dreamed. He was alone in a starch white suit –
spotlessly white. Impossibly white. The corridor he stood in was
short, with a fork before him. Behind him was darkness. The walls too
were vibrant and pale as snow. Light seemed to pour out from the
cracks and seams of the structure. Fog rolled in from the darkness
and layered the atmosphere with thick cloud. Andy felt warm here.

He stepped forward,
then stepped back again when he heard someone approaching him. The
silhouette came from the right hallway, quick and confident in its
stride. It was impossible for Andy to make out any features of the
woman until she was only a yard or so away.

It was Haley. She
was hard to differentiate from the fog and the glow that was stuck in
his eyes. Her hair swirled around her face like gusts of smoke. Light
flooded and washed over her. She was dressed in a bright blue dress
as if she attended a wedding, pinned with fine broaches and flowers.
Her face was soft and delicate like a child's, her lips parted
seamlessly as she spoke.

“Save me,”
she whispered. Her features dimmed, the color vanished. “You. I
need you.”

“Haley,”
Andy said as soft as sound could be.

She turned away
from him for a moment, squeezing her eyes tight. “It hurts,”
she told him. Her lips trembled in pain. A tear fell over her velvet
cheek.

Concern was there
in Andy's eye as he watched over the beautiful crying woman. “What
hurts?” he asked her. He reached out to touch her face, but she
moved. Something about her spirit seemed so inconsolable and
tormented. Like a ghost. She glided as she walked away from him. The
fog began accumulating over her and the light brightened, engulfing
her. She started to vanish.

“Haley!”
Andy called after her. She stopped walking.

This time when she
turned to face the man, the fog cleared like the Red Sea in Moses'
stride. Behind her, the hallway opened up into a large ballroom with
rich, polished wood floors and sparkling chandeliers. There was a
magnificent ivory grand piano in the corner of the room before a sea
of exquisite stone tables and chairs. The bar was nothing short of a
divine work of art. There was a look in Haley's eyes as she gazed
into Andy's that was stone cold dead. Love never graced these grayed,
lifeless irises. As soon as the fog had cleared and Andy could see
the ballroom, it all ignited. Flames grew from the wood, splintered
and roared over the fine furniture. The piano fell over itself in a
large pile of embers. Chandeliers fell to the ground and shattered,
tossing specks of light all about the place. It all burned.

“It hurts!”
Haley screamed. Nothing but pure agony and terror filled her words.

Without warning,
she flew backwards as if pulled on a reel. Her scream loitered in the
room as she zipped back into the fire. Andy tried to look away as her
hair began vanishing and her face blistered and cracked. Her flesh
melted away as her cries gurgled, and all that remained was a
skeleton that toppled over and puffed apart as ash.

Andy cried. The
terrible image remained in his mind as the fire spread. Flames
invaded the hallway until everything around Andy burned. It didn't
hurt him at all. It wasn't even warm. Andy appeared to be impervious
to the fire, walking through the burning room as if it wasn't there
at all. Smoke filled the air, getting thicker than the fog at this
point. Andy continued down the corridor until he was in the heart of
the beast that roared and crackled in the ballroom. He drifted along
without purpose. When he stopped, the corridor had caught entirely.

“Andy,”
a compassionate voice spoke through the crackling of the fire.

He turned his head
to the bar which burned slower because of its dense material. Behind
it, Max poured out two drinks.

“Max?”
Andy's voice cracked. His eyes filled with tears again.

Max placed one
drink on the edge of the bar for Andy and took a swig of his own.
“How are you, friend?” he asked. After a pause, he
gestured to the glass he poured for Andy. “Drink?”

Andy obliged. After
his first sip, he said, “You're never in here.”

“They needed
me,” Max replied. “They're understaffed.”

It became difficult
for Andy to choke back on his tears. “Where – where were
you?” he asked.

Max smiled, then
chuckled. “Drink,” he said.

Again, Andy did as
he was told. The flames that reflected in his glass danced as he
lifted it to his lips. After he swallowed, he open his mouth to
speak, but Max shushed him.

“I'm still
dead, Andy,” Max explained. Andy sobbed at the word. “There's
nothing you can do about that anymore. You can't save me. I have
always been dead. But she isn't.” He pointed to the middle of
the room where Haley had burned to death. “You can still save
her.”

“How?”

Max leaned in, his
face close to Andy's. His eyes were warm and filled with life. “You
do whatever it takes, Andy,” he told him. A smile unzipped on
his face, happy. “Go brother. Save her.”

Andy started
packing the moment he woke up. At first, as his body heaved out of
bed and he set about his tasks, he had no idea why. But in a matter
of time, the dream started to creep back into his ears, with Max
repeating to him, “Go brother. Save her.” The sun started
to peer over the hills to the east as Andy dressed. The sky was a
bluish gray. Clouds blanketed the town. Darkness occupied the hotel
room that Andy had taken over after the Rift. It was filthy, old and
spoiled food all about the area and dust covered most of the surfaces
in visible layers. Andy had kept all of his things in one corner by
the bed, the only acceptable portion of the room. He ignored the rest
of it, with little to no motivation to clean it up when he first
arrived. For the last two months, Andy laid and slept, surviving off
of whatever he could find. Most days he didn't have the energy to get
out of bed. On the other days, he barely went farther than a block
away before he found supplies.

The town he resided
in had been abandoned about nine weeks prior when a gang of religious
anarchists set off bombs in the local church. They had threatened the
citizens, to which everyone packed what they could and fled. When
Andy had arrived about a week after that, he killed two of the
bandits and wounded the last.

“Where'd you
come from?” Andy had asked the man after he confirmed the other
two kills.

Grunting and
snarling, the man gave no answer and instead struggled to grab his
hatchet off of the ground. He whimpered and moaned as one hand
clutched onto his shattered kneecap, the other dancing over the
gravel of the local gas pumps toward his weapon. Andy stepped on the
injured knee. The man shrieked in agony, halting in his pursuit of
the ax to writhe in pain.

“Did you hear
me?” Andy questioned, barely audible over the man's howls.
“What nation are you from? Who are you with?”

“No nation,”
his victim replied in between struggled breaths. “Just the
Army.”

“Who's army?”

“God's.”

Andy chuckled as he
stood up. He lifted his foot off the man, who bent over himself and
clasped onto his knee. The former hitman strode a couple steps over
to the hatchet and lifted it off the ground. He walked back over to
the bandit, who tried to push himself away from Andy along the
ground.

“Now, I'm
going to try to word my question one last way. What group are you
from and where are the rest of your friends?”

The man stopped
crawling and started to laugh like a lunatic. He spat toward Andy.

Without any idea
where Andy could go at this point, with nowhere safe for him to stay,
he remained sedentary. This bleak morning was the first time in a
week that Andy left the hotel. A bag was slung off his shoulders and
his loaded gun holstered on his belt. Without any hesitation, he
climbed inside an abandoned Toyota Corolla that he had laid claim to
at the beginning of the war.