Cashless Bail

A Meta Man Thriller

Vincent Zandri

“You can bet that cashless bail will only embolden repeat offenders. These are the criminals who remain the greatest threat to public safety in the first place and letting them walk to victimize a community again is morally bankrupt.”

— Patricia Wenskunas, Founder and CEO of Crime Survivors.

1

When Casey Smith woke up that morning in a big, comfortable, king-sized bed, he swore he never died in 2054. He never had to rob a bank for cash to live on, now that mystery writers or any writers for that matter, no longer made any money (or any meaningful-pay-the-bills kind of money, that is). They called it “the democratization of the written word,” and it put people like Smith out of business. 

Don’t ask him why, but as he lie in bed on his back staring at the ceiling, the writer was somehow keenly aware that he was living (if you want to call it that) during a time when the Steven Kings and the Gillian Flynn’s of yesteryear were still alive, still thrived as scribes, and attracted big crowds at bookstores (when brick and mortar bookstores still existed).

And even Casey Smith was a not an entirely anonymous writer in his day. He could still scrape his way through life writing mysteries and suspense stories without having to get a job or even without having to make his wife hunt down full-time employment.

The royalties were coming in monthly, and they were living in a nice house in the ‘burbs. Casey was lucky enough to be traveling to all sorts of beautiful and exotic countries like Italy and Vietnam to research his stories. The married couple laughed a lot, made love even more, and they never believed the world could come to a crashing end the way it had in the 2050s.

He’ll say it again. Don’t ask him how and why these were the thoughts that invaded his mind precisely when he woke up that morning, but there you have it. It was as if the thoughts or memories had been injected directly into his brain. Something that had been happening a lot lately now that he was convinced, he’d been living in the metaverse. But then, maybe he hadn’t been living in the metaverse but was instead the victim of some pretty bizarre but vivid dreams.

Whatever the case, on the morning that he woke up inside his home, his wife was already up and, in the kitchen, preparing breakfast. He knew this because he could smell bacon frying on the stove. Sitting up, he glanced at his smartphone phone. It was a heavier phone that he’d become accustomed to in the 2050s. A lot heavier and more rigid with buttons and icons that seemed quite primitive.

When he gazed at the date, Wednesday, March 10, 2020, a sinking feeling came over him. He was still the same man, Victor Casey—same middle-aged man, same five-feet-nine inch, one-hundred-eighty-pound build, same salt and pepper hair (or so he assumed) and same scruffy face.

But the reality of the matter was this: in 2020 he was only a twelve year old, seventh grade kid. He wasn’t an adult. Not by a long shot. He hadn’t killed anyone yet and been decapitated when he ran his car into the back of a semi during a cop chase immediately after robbing a bank.  

Who was he now, and why was he back in the metaverse? Did all those thoughts about writer’s still being rich and famous have anything to do with it? Only one way to find out.

He slipped out of bed and found that he was wearing a pair of boxers and a white short-sleeve Hanes T-shirt. He went to the bathroom without having to find his way (again, a memory most likely injected into his metaverse program), used the toilet, then brushed his teeth and washed his face. Gazing into the mirror, his suspicions were correct. It was 2020, but he was middle-aged Victor Casey. His receding hair was cropped, and it was more gray than black. He didn’t look anything like a twelve year old kid.

He didn’t feel like a kid either with his aching lower back.

“Getting old sucks, my old man used to say,” he said aloud.

He had no idea what his dad was talking about at the time. But now that he was getting on in years, even in the metaverse, he knew precisely what the old man was referring to. Exiting the bathroom, he noticed the smell of bacon was getting stronger. No, that’s not right. It smelled like it was burning.

“Shit, Maureen must have left it on the stove while she went out to smoke,” he whispered to himself while he threw on a pair of black trousers that were laid out on a chair set in the far corner of the bedroom.

How do I know her name is Maureen?

Speed-walking out into the corridor and into the adjoining kitchen, Casey Smith could see why the bacon was burning. Maureen was on the floor on her stomach. Sensing movement coming from a second person, he refocused his eyes on the dining room.

That’s when he saw the son of bitch who must have hit her. He was a home intruder and he was running for the back door.

2

First thing Casey Smith did was turn off the burner before the hot grease caught fire. Then, in his bare feet, he went after the intruder. He was acting on instinct. He was going for the sliding glass doors off the family room located just beyond the dining room. He pulled the door open (how many times did he tell Maureen to keep the doors locked. It was the age of Defund the Police and criminals were getting away with murder).

The intruder ran out onto the back deck, but Casey was gaining on him. Just before the criminal was about to jump off the wood deck, Casey made a leaping tackle like he used to do back when he played high school football, catching the intruder by the ankles. The intruder faceplanted on the grass. He was a white man dressed in jeans, combat boots, and a light orange turtleneck with the sleeves pulled up to the elbows. He was mostly bald and clean-shaven with a narrow face. He was above-average height but weighing maybe twenty pounds less than Casey. He was all tinsel strength. You could see it in his forearms. His veins were popping through the thin skin on his forearms, like a drug addict who preferred to inject his dope of choice rather than smoke it.

When Casey Smith flipped the bastard over, he looked directly into his blue eyes. The criminal tried to take a swing at him but missed. Casey positioned himself so that his knees were pressed against the criminal’s shoulders, pressing him against the ground, and rendering his arms useless. To say the rage had filled the writer’s veins and his brain was like saying the Pacific Ocean was deep. It wasn’t Casey Smith who was in control anymore, but another monster altogether that had invaded his heart and black soul.

He began to punch the home intruder with abandon. Right fist to the jaw, left fist to the opposite jaw, another fist to the eye and then the nose which exploded like a water balloon filled with dark red blood. He issued some short, sharp jabs at the criminal’s mouth and took out an upper front tooth. When Casey looked not at his face, but into his face, he saw that the man was grinning. It was as if the harder the beating Casey gave him, the more the son of a bitch was enjoying it.

Who the hell was this sicko, and why did he invade my home and hit my wife?

Casey was about to start hitting the criminal harder when he felt two sets of strong hands pulling him off the battered body. Right away Casey Smith knew the hands could not belong to Maureen. They were too big, too strong, and too fast. When he peered upward, he could see the hands belonged to two blue-uniformed cops. They threw the writer onto his chest and cuffed him.

“He’s the asshole you want!” Casey shouted. “He’s the bad guy. He invaded my home and hit my wife. He knocked her out. He needs to go to jail. Not me.”

One of the cops said, “What wife, Father?”

What wife, Father? What the hell was the cop talking about?

Out the corner of his eye, Casey could see that the home intruder had been turned back over onto his stomach and that he too was being cuffed with zip ties. One cop pulled him up off the ground while the other cop pulled Casey off the ground. When he gazed at the sliding door off the back deck, he could see Maureen standing there. She was holding a dishtowel that must have been filled with ice against her head. Casey imagined an egg-shaped welt having formed there when the bastard intruder hit her...sucker punched her from behind.

“I’ll follow you to the station house, Casey,” she said.

“No, you won’t, mam,” the cop tending to Casey said. “An EMS van is on its way. That head of yours needs to be MRI’d. For all you know, you have internal bleeding on the brain.” Then, yanking Casey toward the opening in the wood storm fence. “Let’s hit the road, Father.”

“Why do you keep calling me, Father?” the writer asked.

“’Cause last I heard, that’s what you call a Roman Catholic priest,” the cop said.

“A priest,” I said. “I’m married, for Christ’s sakes.”

“Married,” the cop barked as he pulled Casey Smith along a path that paralleled the side of the house toward an idling cop cruiser parked at the top of the drive. “Maureen Smith is your younger sister, Father. You two live together in the house your parents left you after they died. Or have you gone totally crazy?”

Casey Smith thought, If I’m a priest, why didn’t I realize I was a priest when I woke up in bed? Maybe the metaverse AI was slipping these days. One thing was for sure, as the cop opened the back door and shoved me inside, I knew that whatever was happening to me in 2020 was not good.

3

The Albany cops immediately put the home intruder and me into separate interview rooms. They were good enough to remove my cuffs and even brought me a coffee in a Styrofoam cup and a glazed donut. The coffee tasted a little like rust, but the donut was fresh and made up for it, or so thought Casey Smith. 

Eventually, a detective entered the room. She was a plainclothes cop who was maybe 50 or 51 years of age. She was wearing a tight white blouse that was unbuttoned enough to show off some cleavage and the lace on her black pushup bra. Her slacks were also tight and made her posterior look inviting.

I’m supposed to be a priest, Casey thought. But I’m still a man. 

She had a black semi-automatic holstered to her black leather belt. For footwear, she chose black high-heeled pumps. Between her shoulder-length dark hair parted smartly over her left eye and her immaculate, chiseled face, Casey wondered how her fellow male cops could concentrate on their work when she was around. But then, he was a crime writer, and he was aware that law enforcement officials took their jobs very seriously.

But then, he also was aware that cops tended to have affairs. Maybe it had something to do with the terrible fact that they could lose their life at any time, especially during an era where the left-wing politicians made cops out to be the villains, or maybe it was just the overall pressure of the job. But even the supposed happily married ones tended to carry on at least one affair.

She sat down across from Casey, introduced herself as Detective Mary Clark, and held out her hand. Casey gladly took hold of the hand and shook it. A part of him wanted to keep holding it, but that would have been entirely inappropriate. 

“Listen, Father,” she said, looking him in the eye with her green eyes. “I’m sorry to have dragged you in here like this.”

“No need to apologize,” he said, sipping his coffee. “You weren’t the ones who did the dragging.”

“The uniforms were only following orders,” she said. “Ever since this cashless bail thing and the defund thing, we have new protocols.” She shook her head in disgust. “Did you know that if you killed the man who intruded your home and attacked your wife, which in mine and God’s book you have every right to do, you’d be sitting here facing a murder indictment?”

It took a moment for the cop’s words to sink in. Until Casey decided to come up with a lie. 

“I’m going to tell you something confidential, Detective,” he said. “I was one of the first people in the Albany area to get this thing they’ve been calling the Corona Virus.”

“The virus that they say could be a pandemic,” she jumped in. “The governor is talking about lockdowns. Keeping people home. Non-essential workers anyway.” 

“That’s the virus,” Casey Smith said. “It was like having a bad cold for a few weeks, but I’ve been very forgetful ever since. I didn’t even realize I was a priest until the police reminded me.”

“That’s quite the detail to forget,” Clark said. “But I’ve heard that can be one of the lingering symptoms.”

“It’s probably due to the fact that I’m not really a practicing priest anymore,” Casey said, praying that it was the truth. “I’m actually in the process of becoming a civilian again. It’s been a little stressful, so when that man broke into our home, I sort of lost my cool and went off on him. If you know what I mean.”

She nodded.

“I certainly do,” she said.

She wrote something down on a form that was attached to a clipboard and looked Casey in the eyes again.

“I appreciate that,” she said. “By the way your sister is fine. The MRI scan showed no bleeding. She’s already been sent home.”

“That’s a relief,” Casey said. Then, staring into his coffee. “What happens to me now? Will they arrest me for beating up the criminal who broke into my home-sweet-home?”

Mary Clark stood.

“Not on my fucking watch,” she said. Then, catching herself, “Oh, sorry for the language, Father.”

Casey stood, and chuckled. He also tried his hardest to see if Mary was wearing a diamond ring on her wedding finger without being too obvious. 

“No fucking reason in the world to apologize, Detective,” he said. “Like I said, the priesthood is behind me.”

She tried to smile, but Casey sensed she wasn’t happy.

“What’s wrong, Detective?” he asked.

“The man who broke into your home,” she said. “His name is David James. He’s forty-nine years old and he’s got a decent-sized rap sheet of violent incidents. Assault and battery, sucker punching, even mugging. He’s spent some time in county lockup, but not enough if you ask me. This is his first home intrusion...” Her voice trailed off and she shifted her eyes to the floor.

“I’m sensing a but here, Detective,” Casey Smith said.

“But he’s being released as we speak,” she said. “We can’t hold him now that New York State abides by the cashless bail law.”

His stomach sinking to somewhere around his ankles, Casey nodded.

“So, what you’re trying to tell me is this creep could easily revisit my house and do more damage to my sister and me,” he said.

“You have a gun, Father?” she asked.

“Call me, Casey,” the writer said, shaking his head. “Never felt the need for one.” 

“When you leave here,” she said, “head to the closest gun shop and buy a shotgun. A twelve gauge would be best. You have any trouble, tell them I sent you.” She reached into her pocket, pulled out one of her cards and handed it to me. It contained her name, her rank, an email, and a phone number.

“That’s my cell phone,” she said. “Call me if you and your sister have any trouble at all, you understand me?”

Once more Casey nodded. He pocketed the card.

“I’ll need a ride home,” he said.

“Tell you what,” Detective Clark said, “I usually take a coffee break around this time. I’ll be happy to take you gun shopping and then I’ll take you home, Casey.”

Suddenly, Casey Smith felt like things were looking up, at least for now. But he also knew that much like the Chinese pandemic that was beginning to spread on a global scale, his troubles had only just begun.

4

It took a minute for Detective Clark to grab her jacket, the keys to her company car, and to sign Casey Smith out. As they were walking out the front door of the precinct, they encountered the one man they did not want to see.

David James.

He was standing at the bottom of the stone steps, a spring water bottle held in his right hand, no doubt courtesy of the empathetic APD. He was eyeing Smith and Clark with his deep blue, but now swelled black and purple eyes. A piece of surgical tape covered his busted nose. His lips were swelled, and his upper tooth was missing. Despite the facial carnage, the criminal gave off the appearance of a man who wasn’t the least bit hurting; not the least bit damaged or humiliated. It proved disturbing to Casey Smith. 

Casey looked into James’s damaged eyes and was about to say something like, “If you even dare try to break into my house again, I will kill you.”

But he sensed all it took for him to get arrested in these lawless times was a threat to a criminal who was paroled not because it was good for society, but because society had caused him to be a criminal in the first place. In the eyes and the rather demented brains of the lawmakers, the criminals were the good guys, and the victims deserved what they got. It was a time of legal anarchy, and for reasons that must have had to do with his new metaverse programming, Casey Smith was well aware of this.

“Don’t even look at him,” Detective Clark said. “Just walk on by.”

Casey pulled his eyes away from the man who broke into his home and who attacked his sister, for a brief beat or two, felt like he might upchuck his donut and the weak coffee he drank to wash it down. But within seconds they came to the cop’s company car, which was a black, unmarked Dodge sedan that looked like it could do one thousand miles per hour if required.

The detective opened the door locks by pressing the key fob. She came around to the passenger side and opened the door for Casey. It felt good that she was allowing him to sit up front. He would feel more like a bad guy if he was made to sit in back.

Casey was just about to slip inside the car, when David James barked at them.

“Where you two going?” he said. “Are the priest and the cop heading to a motel to fuck? Is that what you’re doing? Jesus H, no wonder we can’t defund you idiots fast enough. Wait till my Antifa pals hear about this one...a priest and a detective getting together in broad daylight to have sloppy sex at a cheap motel-no-tell. Now that’s fucking rich, you ask me.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Clark said as she came around the car, opened the driver’s side door and got behind the wheel.

Casey climbed inside and shut to the door. He put his seatbelt on and admired the electronic dash which consisted of a laptop computer that was attached to it, plus a radio, and a panel of buttons that were attached to Mary’s sun visor. He could only assume that the buttons controlled the cruiser’s rooftop flashers, sirens, and speaker system.

When the Detective slipped the key fob into the starter the car roared to life. She backed up a little and then made a U-turn on a busy Central Avenue. Did it without hardly bothering to see if there was any oncoming traffic. Luckily, there wasn’t. As they passed by David James, who was still standing four-square at the bottom of the precinct staircase, his battered face having zero effect on his mood, he raised the hand that gripped the water bottle.

When Casey pressed the back of my hand against the window, extending his middle finger, the criminal tossed the water bottle at the cruiser. It exploded upon impact. In the sideview mirror, Casey could see James laughing his ass off.

“I told you to leave him alone,” Clark said while slipping on a pair of attractive round tortoise shell sunglasses.

“I couldn’t help myself,” he said. “Can’t we bust him for tossing a water bottle at us?”

“In the good old days we could,” she said.

“The way things are going,” Casey said, “these just might be the good old days.”

5

Casey Smith was feeling hungry by the time they made their way out of town and onto New York Highway 787, northbound. But he did not think the detective had food on her mind at that point. The Hudson River ran parallel to the highway. He recalled how when he was a kid, plenty of upstate Capital District region residents resented the highway since it destroyed what might have been a vibrant waterfront.

Instead, the Hudson Riverbanks had become a hideout for drug dealers, perverts, and crackheads. The city had put in a three-mile-long bike path, but you dare not traverse it at nighttime or else take a chance on getting yourself mugged at best, or shot at worst.

They pulled off the busy mid-day highway and entered the backwater town of Green Island. Truly an island surrounded by both the Hudson and the Mohawk Rivers, Green Island was a blue-collar community for men who used to work in the old General Electric plant, which was knocked down when he was a child and the sandpaper factory where most workers retired with lung cancer. If they made it to sixty-five, they were considered lucky.

Those were memories, it should be pointed out, that had nothing to do with the metaverse AI, but that came from Casey’s own experience. How strange to be back on his home turf not as a boy, but as a middle-aged man. It made him feel like a ghost. A man risen from the dead who walked the earth.

But then, maybe that was just the over-imaginative writer in him.

Clark kept closed-mouthed while she drove past a gym called Metabolic Meltdown on the right and a strip mall on the left that contained a Subway, a Dunkin Donut, and a liquor store. It was as though the less she conserved with the writer, the better. Maybe her lack of conversation was her personality, or it was police Standard Operating Procedure. A little of both, Casey guessed.

A second or two later, she pulled into a concrete building that had a large sign mounted to it that read, American Tactical. As soon as Casey opened the cruiser door and slipped out, he could make out the sound of gunshots that were coming from the gallery that was attached to the gun shop. Clark got out, closed her door, and locked the cruiser with the key fob. 

“I know the people who work here,” she said, making a beeline for the gun shop’s front glass entry. “Let me do the talking.”

“Yes, mam,” Casey said.

Making their way inside, Casey took in the room-length counter filled with every type of handgun imaginable. The opposite wall was covered with all sorts of long guns. He wasn’t a gun expert since by the time 2054 came around, it was illegal to own anything but a shotgun in the United States, and even then, strictly for hunting purposes. But he was a thriller writer too, and he’d done his research. That meant he recognized the AR-15s, and the bolt-action rifles, and the riot shotguns that were there for the picking.

It was one of the black police/riot shotguns that Clark was most interested in since she immediately pulled one off the wall. A stocky man about an inch or two taller than Casey with a salt and pepper beard covering his narrow face approached.

“You buying another shotgun, Mary?” he said. “How many will this be? You’ve got more guns than rooms in your house.”

“You can never have enough self-protection in this day and age, Mike,” she said, with her usual straight face. “You of all people know that. But this one isn’t for me. It’s for him.”

That’s when she introduced Mike to Casey. Mike, it turned out, was ex SWAT as were all the men and women who owned and worked not only in this shop-slash-shooting range, but also the one they maintained in West Albany. She quickly explained Casey’s situation with the home intruder, David James, to Mike.

The ex-SWAT man’s face went tight, not like he was feeling rage, but more like he was sick and tired of being told the same old story over and over again. You know, the one where the criminal is right, and the victim is a white supremacist ultra-MAGA asshole who has no empathy for the dregs of society.

Since Casey was no white supremacist by any stretch of the imagination and was far too young to Vote for Trump back in 2016, he resented being labeled something he wasn’t by the left-wing politicians and the mainstream media. Again, how did he know they referred to a white middle-class man like him in those terms (even if he was supposed to be an ex-priest)? Because the metaverse AI said it was so. He also recalled his dad bitching a lot about it back in the late 2010s and the early 2020s.

“So now I see why you came here straight from the Central Avenue Precinct, Casey, and why Mary personally escorted you.”

“I guess she feels my pain more than I feel my pain?” Casey said.

It was intended as a joke but no one laughed.

“How about the Mossberg 590A1 Mil Spec,” Mike said. “It’s been around since the Marines invented the military shotgun for trench warfare. It’s got red-dot scope plus its barrel is made of steel. It’ll hold twelve rounds which should be enough to blow every limb off an intruder plus spatter his brains all over the living room wall.”

“Mr. Smith used to be a priest but he’s also a writer, Mike,” Clark said. “I’m sure he appreciates your vivid description.”

“Have I read anything you’ve written, Mr. Smith?” Mike asked. “Or is it, Father Smith?”

Casey might have mentioned a few titles he published in the 2030s and 40s, but what was the point? In the metaverse, they hadn’t been written yet.

“I’m just getting started writing now that I’m no longer a priest, Mike,” Casey said.

“Let me know when you get published,” Mike said. “I love to read local authors.”

“Truth be told,” Casey said, his eyes focused on the riot shotgun. “I’m familiar with this shotgun.”

The real truth be told, Casey didn’t know shit about the Moss 590A1 military job. But the AI that was messing with his dead brain did.

“You wanna try her out in the range?” Mike said. “That is, before you lay out your Visa card?”

Jesus, Casey thought. Do I have a Visa card or any kind of credit card on me?

He could only hope that he did.

“Grab a box of twelve-gauge steel magnums, Mike,” Detective Clarke said. “Let’s see what Casey’s got.”

“Should be fun,” Mike said heading around the glass counter and grabbing a box of virgin shells. “A former priest and a killer shotgun. Got a real Pulp Fiction, Quentin Tarantino, feel to it.”

Tarantino’s been dead for ages, Casey thought. Mary handed the shotgun to him. Somehow, it felt as familiar and warm to him as holding the cup of Christ with his two bare hands. 

6

They took all the necessary precautions before entering the range. Namely, they donned ear and eye protection. Only one other person was using the range and he was located at the far end of the big concrete-walled and ceilinged range.

“We’ll use the police tactical training space,” Mike said above the noise of pistol gunshots.

“Use the life-size targets,” Clark suggested.

Clark didn’t have to think about what to do next. He walked into the narrow tactical training space and set the shotgun on a table along with the box of magnum shells. Opening the box, he made sure the barrel of the weapon was pointed away from the other two. It was one of the golden rules of a rifle range. He loaded the shotgun like he’d been loading shotguns his entire life. The metaverse wasn’t playing tricks on him. It had programmed him to know what he was doing.

He positioned himself, feet squarely planted and shoulder-width apart, the bottom of the stock tucked not against his shoulder but in the small divot that existed between the tendon and the ball joint. Otherwise, he would have one hell of a sore shoulder later on.

The first of what would be many life-sized targets appeared. This one was clearly a bad guy with the intent to kill. Casey Smith knew this because the target was a white man with an angry, ugly face and equally ugly clothing who was pointing the barrel of a revolver at him at point-blank range, his finger pressing the trigger. Acting on gut instinct, Casey blew a hole in his chest and immediately pulled back on the pump, cocking the riot shotgun and sending another fresh magnum round into the chamber.

He stood ready for what came next. It was another bad guy. This one was wearing a black hoodie over his or her face, the word ANTIFA printed on it in big white letters. The ANTIFA member was holding a two-by-four and, had it been a real live human being, would have swung it at Casey’s head, perhaps killing him on the spot or, at the very least, rending him brain dead.

Casey aimed and blew the ANTIFA member’s head clean off.

The next image came immediately after. It was a black teenage girl who was carrying a book bag. She was smiling. Casey lowered his weapon and inhaled a breath.

The next life-size image appeared. It was an old white man who was holding a cane. Casey stood down for this one too.

Hardly a half second passed before a young black man dressed in a white wife beater and holding a knife appeared. Casey did something then that no one—not Mike or Detective Clark—expected.

“Drop the knife or I’ll shoot,” he barked.

The next image came at him rapid fire. It was not one man but two men and a woman, all of them aiming AR-15s at him and by the looks of it, ready to unleash hell on him. He shot them, thrice.

The last image was of President Joe Biden dressed in a suit and wearing his trademark aviator sunglasses. Again, Casey lowered his weapon.

“That’s cheating,” he said.

Clark and Mike couldn’t help but laugh.

“Okay, Casey,” Clark said. “You seem to know how to handle that thing. And your score was perfect. Although you would likely do time in county for a few days over that Antifa one. But with the right lawyer, you would have gotten out in a day or two.”

“I thought twice about shooting that creep,” Casey said. “But it was better than taking a two-by-four to the head and letting him get away with it. You never know who a DA is going to side with these days.”

A thought entered Casey’s metaverse brain. But it wasn’t an AI-enhanced thought. It was a memory that came from his own brain stores, even though technically speaking, his physical human brain should be long dead and gone by now.

He recalled a time in the mid to late 2020s when the violent ANTIFA gang was declared official domestic terrorists. It didn’t mean legally armed citizens could shoot them at will, naturally. But what it did mean is that if they committed acts of violence against innocent people and property they were quickly arrested and, if convicted, were sent to state maximum security prisons like Green Haven or Sing Sing where they quickly became targets by the existing violent felons doing life.

Violent felons doing life didn’t give a shit who they messed up, for obvious reasons. But they took a special dislike of ANTIFA because most of them were rich, spoiled white brats who had ruined what might have been a good thing, once upon a time in America.

“I’ll buy it,” Casey said. “And five boxes of the magnum rounds.”

Mike gave Casey a look. It was a serious, man-to-man look.

“You’re expecting this home intruder to come back at you, aren’t you?” the ex-SWAT man said.

“Wouldn’t you?” Casey said.

“Let’s go pay up,” Clark said.

Rapidly sliding the pump six or seven times, the writer emptied the chamber of the remaining shells. Aiming the barrel at the wall he pressed the trigger and as expected, heard and felt only a mechanical click.

“Good to go,” Casey said not without a smile.

This time, when Clark looked into his eyes, he saw something more than just a concerned cop. He saw somebody who might be falling for someone who was now an ex-priest. And what did the ex-priest translate into?

Single and ready to mingle.

7

Using a Capital One credit card Casey didn’t realize he possessed, he paid for the shotgun and the five boxes of rounds. He also purchased a black zip-up carrying case that boasted enough room to handle both the firearm and all that ammo. Altogether his bill was just a hair under five hundred dollars. For Casey, who spent most of his adult years in the 2030s, 40s, and 50s, he couldn’t believe how cheap things were in 2020. 

“I never did an FBI check,” Casey mentioned as he was about to walk out the door along with Detective Clark.

“That’s because I’ve already taken care of it on your behalf, Casey,” she said. “I have friends in high places.”

She made a fist and gave him a love-tap then. Casey had to admit, he felt his blood run faster when she touched him, and he felt his stomach go tight and his mouth go dry. Was he also falling for the APD detective like he suspected she was falling for him? Maybe. Correction...he most definitely was falling for her. He never understood why the metaverse Gods would have made him a priest, but he was very glad that at the very least, they made him a former priest. 

They made their way out the door and back to the cruiser. Detective Clark unlocked it with the key fob.

“Just toss the stuff in the backseat,” she said.

Casey opened the back door and placed the shotgun bag in the back, as directed. He then closed the door and opened the passenger side door. He slipped inside.

Clark opened her door and got back behind the wheel. Finding that he couldn’t keep his eyes off the dark-haired, green-eyed beauty, Casey had himself a chuckle. She could not have been more than five feet three or four inches tall, and yet she drove with the seat positioned far down and the seatback at an almost sixty-five-degree recline. He’d also noticed that she liked to drive with one hand on the wheel and the other on the console stick. She also drove fast, ignoring all speed limits. But she was a cop, and she owned the road. 

She put on her attractive circular sunglasses and started the powerful engine. Placing her hand on the center console transmission, the detective stole a second to glance at the read-out on her dash-mounted laptop. There must not have been anything important happening in Albany or any crimes pertaining to her anyway, because she seemed unaffected by what she read. Placing the transmission stick in reverse, she went to back out.

But Casey placed his hand on her thigh. She focused her eyes on his hand. The writer felt his heart pounding. He knew it was possible she could demand he remove his hand. But she didn’t. In a way, that made his heart pound all the more.

“Mary,” he said, “are you married?”

She locked eyes with his.

“Why do you ask, Casey?” she said.

“I guess I was just wondering is all,” he said while swallowing something very dry and feeling his heart pounding against his sternum.

He felt profound relief when she said, “No, Casey. I’m not married. Not anymore, anyway.”

“Excellent,” he said.

He didn’t want to say excellent, but it just came out. Like he had no control over what he said or didn’t say. Maybe he should blame the metaverse AI for not making him sound more intelligent or maybe he should be blaming himself. Because Casey Smith might have technically been a dead man. But he was still flesh and blood. He still had a beating heart. He still had oxygen inside his lungs. He still had a normal, functioning brain. He even had memories not only of his physical life on earth but of his life in the metaverse.

He remembered waking up as a cowboy and waking up as a Space Force security soldier who was stationed on a spaceship headed to mars. What would be even more incredible, is if he still had a soul. Didn’t priests have souls? Good souls? 

One thing was for certain, he still possessed the ability to fall in love. And right now, he was falling for Detective Mary Clark hook, line, and weighted sinker.

Mary was still looking into Casey’s eyes when she leaned into him and gently kissed his mouth. He leaned in even closer to her and wrapped his arm around her and kissed her even harder. Together, they embraced one another for what seemed an eternity, until a car pulled into one of the empty spots a few spaces down, and they had no choice but to come up for air.

Without a word, Clark backed out and then drove toward the main road.

“You live with your sister,” she said while turning right onto the road. “She’s home now recuperating. We can’t go there.”

“I don’t understand,” Casey said.

Reaching out for his hand which was resting on his thigh, the detective took hold of it.

“I really feel the need to make love to you, Casey,” she said. “I haven’t felt like this in a long, long time.”

Once again, Casey felt himself swallow something dry while his temples pounded in time with his heart. He hadn’t felt this good and this excited since he was in high school. He wanted Mary so badly he could taste it. In reality, he could still taste her mouth on his mouth. She tasted sweet and her mouth was so soft. He wanted nothing more than to kiss every part of her body. Whether Detective Mary Clark was real or not, or whether she was a made-up character playing a role inside the metaverse did not matter to Casey.

What mattered was that he had her all to himself, and like him, she was a living, breathing human being. If he cut her, he knew she would bleed and her blood would be red. She was entirely human, and she was all woman, and Casey had to have her like no other.

She turned onto the on-ramp for highway 787 in a northerly direction.

“Where shall we go, Mary?” he said, placing his hand over her hand as she gripped the center console transmission stick.

She shot him a quick look.

“We’ll go to my apartment,” she said. “But we must make it quick, I’m afraid. Maureen is home alone and now that the creep has been let go on cashless bail, there’s no telling when he’ll show back up.”

Casey squeezed her hand.

“Maybe it’s best if I go home now,” he said, sadly.

Concentrating on the three-lane highway ahead of her and the many cars, trucks, and semi’s that were weaving in and out of traffic, Clark said, “He won’t come back right away. He knows the police are keeping a close watch on him. But you can expect him in the middle of the night. That’s why you’re now armed with the riot shotgun. He won’t be expecting it. He comes through that door, you blast him to hell. I’ll back you up completely when the police arrive on the scene.” She shot him another glance. “Do you understand me, Casey?”

“I used to be a priest,” he said. Again, it wasn’t like he was talking but instead, someone else. Casey was a writer after all, not a priest. He should have been thinking and talking like a writer. But he couldn’t help the words coming out of his mouth. “I shouldn’t condone killing anyone in the eyes of God. But if that bastard steps one foot inside my house again, he’s a fucking dead man.”

Mary shot him a grin.

“We’re on the same page,” she said. She shifted the cruiser into the far left passing lane and punched the gas. Casey felt like they were taking off in a rocket and not a car. “Let’s get to my place as fast as possible. I can’t wait to tear your clothes off, Casey Smith.”

8

They pulled into an empty space at Detective Clark’s apartment complex in North Albany. It was an older complex made entirely of red brick and located directly across the street from the Albany Memorial Hospital which presently had not one, but at least a dozen EMT vans pulled up to the Emergency Room entrance.

“Something bad is going on over there,” Clark said, her eyes once more focusing on the laptop. “But I still don’t see anything important coming over the scanner. No calls coming over the radio either. But something is definitely going down, and my cop gut tells me it’s not good. I’ll keep my radio on inside the apartment.”

Situated directly behind the brick apartment complex was the Wolfert’s Roost Country Club. Casey had to laugh because his father had belonged to the country club back when he was a boy in 2020. In fact, on a beautiful, unusually warm March day like today, he would surly be putting in at least nine holes with one of his insurance clients. That was one of the perks of the job, his dad always said. In the warm months, you got to golf almost everyday because it was the best way to entertain a potential client.

“You should give the insurance trade a lot of thought, son,” his tall, thin, balding dad used to say as Casey began to enter into his teens. “People will always need insurance. It means, if you’re good enough, you will always have a job.”

As the two exited the unmarked cop cruiser, Casey stared out onto what he believed was the country club’s nineth green. Several men wearing pastel-colored trousers and Bermuda shorts were standing around the putting green. A tall, slim man wearing a white baseball cap and a V-neck sweater like the type and style his dad owned was concentrating on his putt. Casey felt his heart sink a little. Was that his father?

For a split second, he almost felt like approaching the man. He was only about two hundred feet away. But then Casey heard Mary saying something to him, and he was broken from his spell.

“Earth to Casey,” she said.

He turned and looked at her.

“Sorry,” he said. “I was just thinking about something from a long time ago.”

“Well, you claim to be a writer,” she said. “I imagine you catch yourself thinking a lot.”

He couldn’t help but once more gaze over his shoulder at the man putting. He could not shake the feeling that the man was, indeed, his dad.

“Mary,” he said, “what’s your apartment number?”

“Why?” she said.

“I need to do something,” Casey said. “It will only take me a second or two, I swear. I’ll meet you at your place.”

“Okay,” she said, her portable radio in her hand. “But make it quick, Casey. I don’t like what’s going on across the street at the hospital. Two more ambulances just pulled up.”

“Apartment number?” he asked.

“Building three, apartment four-A,” she said. “It will be at the top of the stairs on you right.” She winked at him. “I’ll leave the door open.”

He winked back.

“Be there in three minutes,” he said.

He took it double-time across the parking lot, along a piece of lawn browned by the winter that existed between two apartment buildings, and then onto the nineth hole. The man he took to be his father, was finished with his putt and now he was standing off to the side, away from the putting green while one of the country club members wearing Bermuda shorts lined his putt up.

The closer Casey came to the man in the V-neck sweater and the white baseball cap, the more his heart pounded, and his stomach cramped. The man coughed into his hand. Just the familiar sound of the man’s cough told Casey he was his father.

“How crazy is this?” he whispered to himself.

What was even more crazy was that his father was younger than he was by maybe five or six years. He slowly approached his father, so not to alarm him.

“Excuse me,” he said softly. He didn’t want to disturb the man who was putting, “are you Mr. Edward Smith?”

The man turned to Casey. His eyes went wide as if he recognized Casey as his son. But how could that be? His son was hardly a teenager.

“I’m David Smith,” the man said. “Who wants to know?”

“David Smith of Four Orchard Grove in Loudonville?” Casey went on.

“You’re not about serve me papers, I hope,” David Smith said. “Last I knew, my wife and I got along really well.”

Casey couldn’t help but laugh.

“No,” he said. “I’m not a private investigator here to serve you separation papers. I just wanted to see you.”

David Smith was leaning on his putter. His right hand was covered with a red golf glove.

“See me about what?” he said.

For a moment, Casey wasn’t sure what to say. How to react. He was a writer, but he was suddenly out of ideas.

Until he said, “I just moved here from Syracuse and I’m going to be coaching football at The Albany Academy. I understand your boy will be attending the private school next year and that he’s an excellent Pop Warner football player. I just wanted to say we’d love to have him come out for the team.”

Now smiling proudly, David Smith said, “I will make sure to tell him.”

Then something happened. Casey’s father began to cough hard into his hand.

“Hey Dave,” the guy putting said, “you sound like you’re losing a lung.”

“Coming down with something I think,” David Smith said. “Sorry I messed up your putt.”

Casey said, “Well, I’ll be seeing you, Mr. Smith.”

“Thanks for introducing yourself, ummm, what did you say your name was again?” David Smith said.

“Casey,” he said.

The elder Smith’s eyes went wide.

“Hey, just like my boy.”

“That’s right, just like your boy,” Casey said.

Turning, he moved away from his father. He did it quick before David Smith noticed the tears forming in his eyes. It was when Casey was walking back toward the apartments and as he reached the parking lot, that he noticed even more ambulances lined up at the ER entrance.

“What in God’s name is going on here?” he said aloud.

That’s when it hit him like a brick to the top of his head.

“Holy fuck,” he said, pulling out his smartphone and gazing at the date. “It’s COVID-19. The pandemic has begun.”

9

Casey recalled his father coughing violently into his fist. It all came back to him then. How three months into the pandemic his father contracted a fever of one hundred and three, how he was coughing so hard he was drawing blood, how he couldn’t breathe, how he was rushed to the very hospital he was staring at where he was immediately placed on a ventilator. How he never got off the ventilator until he died at forty-seven years old.

A wave of frigid water washed over Casey and the fine hairs on the back of his neck stood at attention. He wondered if he should warn Detective Clark about what was presently happening and the effect it would have not only on every person in the U.S. but the world over. How millions would die.

But then, what was the use? He was living in the metaverse and none of this was real. It might have seemed real to the people who were living inside it, but it wasn’t real. His feelings were conflicted. On one hand, he was so happy to see his father again, alive. On the other hand, he wanted to make love to Mary in the worst way. Was it selfish of him not to tell her what was happening?

But then it dawned on him that if he told her a pandemic had struck, she would think he was crazy. How the hell did he know there was a pandemic coming? She was a law enforcement officer. She would certainly know about it long before a former priest-turned-fiction writer knew about it. With that clearly in mind, Casey approached Building Three and hit the buzzer that would open the main door.

He heard a click, telling him the door had been electronically unlocked. Opening it, he made his way up a step four flights of stairs and sought out apartment A which was on his right-hand side. He was about to make love to a beautiful woman. He wanted to appear happy and optimistic. But knowing what he knew about the present and about the future, it was tough for him to plant a smile on his face. He knew that starting right this very minute, millions of people were being infected by a deadly disease that had been created in a lab in China.

Still, as he placed his hand on the doorknob and twisted it, he made sure to plant a smile on his face. Or, not a smile necessarily, but a grin. Something that Mary would interpret as I’m so happy to be here alone with you.

He made his way into the apartment living room. It was very clean. There was a gray, cloth, a sectional couch, and set in the middle of it was a glass coffee table. The table contained some nice magazines like Town & Country and a few National Geographics. The wall was filled with framed photos of a baby girl. Besides those were framed pictures of the girl at all stages of her life. In the photo closest to the kitchen and corridor that he guessed led to the bedroom, was a full-color photo of the now young woman holding a little baby.

“Mary is a grandmother,” Casey whispered to himself. “Who knew?”

“Casey, I hope that’s you and not some crazy stalker I’m going to have to shoot dead,” she said from the bedroom.

“It’s me, Mary,” he said. “I’m just being nosy, looking at your pictures.”

Coming from outside, the sound of sirens. More ambulance sirens. Casey tried my best to ignore them. He could only hope Mary couldn’t hear them from where she was in her room. In his head, he pictured her police radio. He hoped it wouldn’t sound off while he was making love to her and ruin everything.

Making his way down the short corridor that also accessed a closet and bathroom, Casey entered the master bedroom. To his right was a window that was closed and the curtains drawn. To his left was a dresser of drawers and a mirror mounted to the wall above it. In the center was a king-sized bed with a navy blue comforter. Mary was lying on top of it in her black underwear. In a word, she appeared stunning. So stunning, she stole his breath away.

“You don’t look half bad for a grandma,” he said, not without a chuckle.

“And you don’t look so bad for a priest,” she said.

“A former priest, thank you very much,” he said, as he pulled his button-down shirt off like he would if it were a T-shirt. He then sat on the bed, and pulled off his boots, pants, and underwear. He was entirely naked.

“Would you like to take my panties off?” Mary said.

“Yes,” he said, his heart racing and his temples throbbing.

Casey Smith might have been living in the metaverse during a period of time that was repeating for him, but this experience with Detective Mark Clark in her bedroom was all new for him. She asked him then to remove her bra. He gladly did it.

They held one another then and kissed until they felt like their lips would burst. When Casey entered her, she was hot, damp, and tight. They started slowly at first, but soon faster and faster until they came to that place where nothing else in the world mattered. Not home intrusions, not his banged-up sister, not his leaving the priesthood (he didn’t recall ever being in the priesthood anyway), not seeing his long-departed father again, not a pandemic that would kill millions and last for two years.

All that mattered was he and Mary.

When they were finished, they slowed their movements and Casey rolled over onto his back. They were both covered in a sheen of sweat and Mary lay her head on his bare chest. 

“You know, Casey,” she said softly. “You are somebody I could feel great affection for, for a long, long time.”

He kissed her on her thick, lavender-smelling hair-covered head.

“Is that your way of telling me you’re falling in love with me?” he said.

She raised her head and looked him in the eye with her bright, wet, green eyes. She was about to say something when her radio exploded in a cacophony of panicked voices.

10

The loud tinny voice was reporting multiple deaths and dozens of sick people overwhelming the switchboard with 911 calls. All officers were ordered to their precincts for briefings on what was considered to be a potentially fatal virus. Fear of lawlessness and looting was a priority while a disaster was said to be declared by both the federal government and the state governor. All law enforcement officers were to take special precautions against the...and I quote... “bad element.”

It went on and on like that for what seemed forever. While Casey lay naked in the bed, his back pressed up against the headboard, Mary pulled the comforter off.

“Casey,” she said, “I’ve got to go. Go now.”

She went to the window, naked and beautiful as the day she was born. She opened the curtain and looked out. He got out of bed and stood beside her. The scene at the Albany Memorial Hospital was crazy and getting crazier. Riot conditions had ensued. More sirens were sounding but these were not only from more ambulances but also from APD black and whites.

Maybe a dozen uniformed police officers were trying their hardest to reinstate some sort of order. What was strange, yet eerily familiar were the white medical masks the officers were wearing.

“I recall hearing about this Coronavirus coming out of China back in January,” Mary said, as she began to get dressed, but I really didn’t believe it would hit our side of the world. Boy, was I wrong about that one. I’ve got to get to the station house, now.”

Casey too got out of bed and started to get dressed.

“You, Casey,” she went on. “I want you to get home, now. Protect your sister. Bring your new gun. There might be more than one home intruder to worry about tonight and not a whole lot of cops out there who can answer the call. There’s just not enough of us.”

Casey followed Mary out of her apartment. There was a pit in his stomach because he honestly felt like he would never step foot inside the place again. In his gut, he sensed that tonight would not only be a long night. It would be a deadly night. Not just because of the pandemic. But because the streets would run wild. He couldn’t remember every bad thing that accompanied the pandemic that plagued the world in 2020 because he was so young. But he recalled not only the many body bags being carted out of the hospitals, but also the riots in the streets, the burning of buildings, and the killing of innocent people.

He recalled how the cops were villainized and tortured by a group of thugs who referred to themselves ironically as Antifa. Or Anti-Fascist for short. He recalled his father, just prior to one of his coughing fits saying, “Now doesn’t that just frost your ass. A bunch of brown-shirted fascists going around calling themselves anti-fascists. Doesn’t make an ounce of sense.”

Casey Smith feared for Detective Clark. He knew she would become a victim in just a matter of hours, minutes, or even seconds. Maybe right now, there were bad people roaming the streets with metal pipes, rocks, and Molotov cocktails who might go after her and her law enforcement brothers and sisters. There would be bad people gripping illegal guns who would shoot to kill and get away with it, because 2020 was a time of cashless bail which translated into catch-and-release.

It was a time of turmoil and tears and fear. And it was all created by design by one political party that had set its sights on consolidating its power. These are the things Casey remembered while living his new life in the metaverse.

“Do you want me to drop you off, Casey?” she asked.

“I can walk from here,” he said. “It’s less than a mile away. Even closer if I cut across the golf course.”

Mary opened the backseat on her cruiser to retrieve the riot shotgun. She handed it to him. He held the semi-heavy bag under his left arm and he took hold of her with his right hand and kissed her hard.

“You be careful,” he said. “Do you hear me?”

“I’m a professional, Casey,” she said. “I know what I’m doing.”

“Do you?” he said. He held her arm tightly. Maybe too tightly.

“Casey, you’re hurting me,” she said.

He let go.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his eyes drifting to even more EMT vans and police cruisers pulling into the hospital. So many, in fact, they were lined up out on the road. “It’s just that this thing...this pandemic...it’s going to get real bad for us all. Many will die. People will go crazy. Rioters will kill innocent people and burn entire city blocks to the ground. They will be encouraged to do bad things by the media and the TV reporters.”

The detective looked Casey in the eyes. Her face was still beautiful, but there was something strange behind her gaze, or so Casey couldn’t help but believe. It was as if she thought him a bit crazy.

“Are you okay, Casey?” she said. “Because I believe we will have this thing...whatever the hell it is...under control in just a few days, tops. There’s no reason to be afraid or panic.”

He shook his head.

“It’s a very difficult thing to explain if you haven’t already been through it,” he said, knowing he shouldn’t have.

She scrunched her brow and slowly shook her head. 

“And when have you been through a pandemic?” she asked.

In his mind, Casey knew he’d better quit while he was ahead. Or perhaps the more correct thing to say was, quit while he was behind.

“I love you, Mary,” he said, kissing her gently one more time.

“I love you too, Casey,” she said, as she got into her car, fired it up, and backed out of the parking space.

As she sped away in the direction of downtown Albany, he feared he would never see or hear from Detective Mary Clark again.

11

Casey Smith took it double-time up Route 9 into Loudonville. After about a quarter of a mile, he cut through the Wolferts Roost Country Golf Course until he reached Little’s Lake which was situated all the way on the opposite side of Van Rensselaer Boulevard and where the 200-year-old Albany Rural Cemetery was located.

He turned left and jogged the last three hundred feet until he came to Orchard Grove where his house was located. The very same ranch house where he and his sister grew up in. His heart sank when he noticed that an EMS van was backed into the driveway. A couple of EMTs were wheeling his sister out of the house on a yellow collapsible gurney. They were wearing surgical masks on their faces.

“Hey, pal,” one of them barked. “Get yourself a goddamn mask already. Don’t you know people are dying in the fucking streets?”

“I just walked all the way from Memorial Hospital,” Casey said. “Sure, the parking lot is packed with ambulances, but I don’t see anyone dying in the streets.”

“They will be soon,” the cop said. “Believe you me.”

Casey made his way to his sister just as the masked EMT crew was about to place her inside the back of the EMS van.

“Hey,” said one of the female EMTs. “Stay away from her. She’s infected and you’re not wearing protection.”

“Toss him a mask,” the other, male EMT said.

Female EMT reached into her bright yellow coat pocket, pulled out a surgical mask, and tossed it to Casey. He grabbed it out of mid-air and clumsily put it on, the elastic bands feeling strange behind his ears. He made his way closer to his sister.

“Maureen,” he said, “did you call an ambulance because of your head wound?”

“No, Case,” she said weakly. “All of a sudden, I couldn’t breathe and I feel so hot. I was afraid, so I called nine-one-one.”

The EMTs lifted the mechanical gurney and shoved his sister inside the van. The female turned to Casey.

“Apparently, your sister was treated for her head wound at Albany Memorial,” she said. “That place is crawling with the COVID-19 virus. She must have gotten it there. Now she needs a ventilator or she’ll die.”

“COVID-19,” Casey said. “That’s what they’re calling it now?”

He recalled how the disease was originally referred to as Corona Virus. But Corona was almost like a nice name. It reminded people of cold beer, sandy beaches, and relaxing vacations. Bu COVID-19 sounded like death.

He also recalled hearing later on how the government purposely changed the name of the virus to scare people into staying inside their homes and not going anywhere unless it was for food. Eventually, even the hospitals and doctor’s offices would stop seeing the afflicted.

But he was living in the metaverse now, and he didn’t know if history would repeat itself exactly as it happened many years ago, or if it would be more like an exaggerated version of history. He reached out to hold his sister’s hand, but she was too weak to take it. He wanted so badly to tell her he saw their father today. But then it dawned on him that Maureen should not be an adult. She should be a little girl if the year is 2020. And then it came to him that she too must have died at some point and was now sharing the same metaverse story with him. No wonder the AI had them living together.

The EMTs slammed the doors closed on the van.

“Should I follow you to the hospital?” Casey said.

“You’re not allowed in the hospital,” said Female EMT, as she opened the driver’s side door. “We’ll call you if you need to know anything. Understand?”

“I guess I have no choice but to understand,” Casey said.

He watched the cop cruiser and the EMT van speed out of the driveway and go right onto Orchard Grove and then hook another right onto Route 378. He felt in his heart, the same thing he felt for Detective Clark. That he would never see his sister alive again.

12

For what seemed a long time, Casey just stood in the driveway. The afternoon was turning into early evening and the sun was beginning to set. It seemed like every two minutes an EMS van would speed past on Route 378 or out of his own neighborhood. The ambulances must be dumping the sick off and then speeding right back out to pick up more of the infected and dying. As much as he tried to recall what the virus was like as a kid, he did not remember the early days being this chaotic and tragic. It was almost like he was living inside a war zone.

The riot shotgun still gripped under his arm, Casey made his way into the house. The place was dark, so he turned on all the lights in the family room, the dining room, the living room, and finally, the kitchen. He set the shotgun bag on the kitchen table and pulled out a chair. For a time, he just sat there and listened to many sirens that were producing the Doppler effect. That is, they would start out low-pitched, then as they passed directly by Orchard Grove they would increase in intensity, and as they sped passed, the tone would lower along with the intensity until everything once more went quiet.

But this was not all quiet on the western front, so to speak. The quiet screamed so loudly, it was deafening. The sensation that filled his guts and his heart was not just dread. Dread was too light a word. It was more like you were flying on an airliner where one engine was already dead and the other had just burst into flames. You were in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and there was nowhere to go, nothing you could do other than place your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye.

Then came an explosion. It shook him to his very core. Rattled his bones. He unzipped his shotgun bag, pulled out the black riot shotgun, and loaded it with a maximum of ten rounds. The blast came from the direction of the city. The downtown. That said, with shogun in hand, Casey made his way from the kitchen through the dining room, down a couple of steps into the family room, and out the sliding glass door onto the wood deck his old man had installed not long before the pandemic began so that it was once newer and more untarnished by years of bad weather and negligence.

He saw a plume of smoke coming from out of the distance. Maybe three miles away. He wondered what could have blown up and who or what was responsible for it. He glanced at the wood storm fence that surrounded the square-shaped property. It wasn’t much of a deterrent if the inner city people started rioting, or the man who broke into his house this morning and knocked his sister out were to come after him tonight now that he was free on cashless bail. But he was glad that it was there.

He stood on the wood deck with the shotgun, and he heard the distinct sound of gunshots.

“They’re already shooting it out,” he whispered to himself.

The fucking metaverse had created a pandemic scenario that’s worse than the real one he encountered as a kid. It’s more violent. More deadly. More insidious. He would have to act with vigilance if he and his sister were going to survive it.

Something dawned on him then. Food. Supplies. Water. Candles...everything he would need if the power went out and if he was stranded inside the house for days or weeks. He ran back into the house and checked the cupboards and the refrigerator. Nothing much more than some pasta, a few eggs, some bread, a carton of milk that was past its expiration date, and that was about it.

“Shit,” Casey said. “I’m got to go back out into this hell. I need to get supplies.”

He knew what he faced would be a madhouse. Maybe he’d even have to fight off looters. He grabbed the keys to his old Ford F-150 which was parked along the curb outside the house’s front lawn. He locked up the entire place, and with shotgun in hand, made his way out the front door and down the lawn to his truck. Opening the driver’s side door, he got in and set the shotgun on the passenger side seat. Closing the door, he fired the engine up, put the tranny in drive, and pulled away from the curb.

When he came to the stop sign, he had to wait for yet another cop car and an EMs van following it, both with their sirens blaring and rooftop lights flashing, to go by. Then he turned left and began the short drive to the supermarket. In the back and front of his mind, he knew he was about to enter a war zone. Ex-priest or no ex-priest, if anyone tried to kill him, he’d kill them first. Maybe God have mercy on his metaverse soul.

13

The scene was precisely what Casey Smith expected. Dozens of cars and trucks pulled up to the supermarket at all sorts of odd angles, as if searching for a proper parking space would simply waste too much time they didn’t have.

A couple of big men were wrestling for something. A package of toilet paper.

People were shouting at one another, hating one another. People were emerging from the store with their shopping carts full. One older woman pushed her cart with one hand and held a baseball bat with the other.

“Go ahead,” she barked. “Just try and take something from me. Make my day.”

Everyone was wearing a mask. Casey had forgotten his, but then maybe he could use his maskless face to his advantage. His breath and his shotgun might be enough of a deadly deterrent for the mad, desperate people to leave him alone. Gripping the shotgun in both his hands, he made his way through the mad crowd. He was surprised because no one was running for their lives like he was a serial killer bent on shooting up the store. He knew that it was more likely than not, that a lot of people were carrying firearms on them. They were if they were smart.

People backed away from him as he walked into the overcrowded supermarket. But they weren’t afraid of his shotgun. They were afraid of his maskless face. The people knew if they got close to Casey Smith, they could catch the deadly disease. Getting too close to the former priest was a chance they simply could not take.

Casey couldn’t find a shopping cart. He saw a big man who was wearing a sleeveless t-shirt under a leather biker vest. His big arms were covered in tattoos and his head was shaved. He reminded Casey of some of the bullies he had to put up with in grade school and high school. The big biker man had a black swastika tattooed on his arm. It angered Casey to no end.

The ex-priest made his way directly to the biker, pointed the shotgun in his face, and pulled back on the slide. The mechanical sound of a 12-gauge round entering the chamber filled the produce section.

“I’m taking this fucking cart,” Casey said, his voice toxic and determined. “And there isn’t a fucking thing you can do about it. Unless that is, you want me to spatter your brains all over the cauliflower.”

The big, black-masked man slowly held both his hands up like he was surrendering.

“Hey man,” he said, “I don’t want no trouble from a twelve gauge.”

Casey held the shotgun in one hand, and he reached into the cart and pulled out three of the four items the man had stored inside it. A head of lettuce, three boxes of spaghetti, and three cans of spaghetti sauce. Then extra-large carton of toilet paper Casey decided to keep for himself.

“Now fuck off,” Casey said.

Something was happening to the ex-priest. He was no longer Casey Smith anymore. He was becoming someone else entirely. Survival instinct had kicked in. It was making him an animal. He didn’t know if it was coming from his own true being, or the AI program created by the metaverse.

He pushed his way into the meat section. He pushed people aside who were stuffing their carts with packages of chicken parts. If they refused to move, he aimed the shotgun at them. They dropped their chicken packages and put up their hands.

“Take it easy,” an old man said. “I didn’t survive Korea to get shot at the Price Chopper.”

Casey then tossed six packages of chicken into his cart. He did the same with packages of hamburger, pork chops, and even some steaks.

The shotgun aimed at whoever stood in his way, he made his way to the coffee aisle and placed a dozen boxes of Keurig coffee into the cart. He then made his way to the milk aisle and put three gallons of milk in the cart. Next was the canned vegetable and soups aisle. He wasn’t sure how many cans he placed inside the cart, or precisely what product the cans contained, but it was enough to just about fill it to the cart to the top.

He had just enough room left over for bread, butter, eggs, and peanut butter. He also grabbed five pounds of bacon. By then, his cart was overly full. 

Thus far things had gone relatively smoothly. Until he got to the self-checkout lane. Casey was dismayed to see that the line was short. Too short considering all the desperate people that packed the store. It meant people were looting. These weren’t down-on-their-luck poor people from the projects who had no choice but to loot if they wanted to eat during the metaverse’s version of the COVID-19 emergency lockdowns. These were suburbanites, many of whom were well off. As an ex-priest, Casey felt ashamed of them. He said a silent prayer to the good Lord on their behalf.

As for the stuff he grabbed at gunpoint, he intended to pay for it. But that’s when trouble raised its ugly head again. Three massive bikers approached him in the self-checkout lane. The big guy standing in the middle was the one he took the cart off of right after entering the store. Casey Smith did the right thing. He aimed the riot shotgun at them. There was a live round in the chamber, so there was no reason to cock the weapon.

The men were not only big, bald, and tattooed, two of them pulled switchblades from their jeans pockets while the biker who Casey took the cart from pulled a semi-automatic from his pant waist. He aimed the gun at Casey, point-blank.

“That cart of food is ours now, old man,” said the Biker not without a grin, bearing brown and gray teeth. “You chose the wrong dudes to fuck with.”

The other two men thumbed the triggers on their switchblades. The long, shiny blades appeared. Curious people were gathering around Casey and the three angry bikers. Some were filming the standoff on their smartphones. There wasn’t a cop to be found anywhere or else this confrontation would quickly come to an end. But Casey knew that a police presence inside a supermarket would be a luxury in a desperate situation like this one in which the entire city was engulfed in an emergency.

“I didn’t fuck with all of you dudes,” Casey said, his eyes on the Biker with the pistol. “I fucked with you and you alone. Now do the right thing and go away while I pay for my groceries.”

“You mean our groceries,” the armed Biker said.

He pressed the pistol against Casey’s forehead and thumbed the pistol hammer.

“Shoot him, RJ,” the big Biker to his left-hand side said. “Blow his brains out. Nobody cares ‘cause there’s no cops around.”

“Even if there were cops around,” the Biker with the knife on his right said, “you’d go free on cashless bail. Shoot the motherfucker, take the cart, and let’s get out of here. There’s germs all over the place.”

“Say bye-bye, jerk,” the pistol-toting Biker said. “Time to meet your almighty maker.”

That’s when ex-priest Casey Smith did the right thing. He pulled the riot shotgun trigger.

14

The shotgun blast blew his left hand off. He dropped the pistol and immediately grabbed hold of his wrist. Dark arterial blood was spurting out of it. Casey kicked the pistol away and it disappeared under one of the self-checkout machines.

“I need a fucking tourniquet!” the big biker man screamed. “Or I’m gonna bleed out.”

The man gripping a switchblade on Casey’s right raised the blade high and came after him. Casey lifted the barrel and blew his face and the back of his head off. The guy on the left dropped his switchblade, turned tail, and took off, leaving only Big Biker Man desperately holding his wrist and losing about a pint of blood every few seconds. He was also crying real tears.

“How the fuck could this happen?” he screamed. “Nobody pushes me around. People are afraid of me.”

Screams and shouts filled the supermarket. Some people abandoned their carts and ran for the doors, and yet others just kept on collecting food like nothing had happened. Cocking another live round in the chamber, Casey pressed the riot shotgun barrel against his good hand. He pressed the trigger. Bye-Bye surviving hand.

The big biker didn’t scream. He didn’t faint. He didn’t say a word. His already pale face went bedsheet white as both his stumps were spraying dark red blood like he had suddenly turned into a fountain. He only had so long to live unless an EMT team showed up real quick. But Casey didn’t care about that. He just wanted to get the hell out of the store as quickly as possible.

When out of the corner of his eyes, he could see that some of the men and women were pulling guns out of concealed shoulder and hip holsters, from out of ankle holsters, from out of pocketbooks, he knew the time had come to make his escape.

All it took was one gentle shove against the barrel chest of the big, now dying biker, and he went down hard on his back. As Casey wheeled the cart past him, he could see that the back of his round, bald head hit the floor so hard, a puddle of blood was forming beneath it. The ex-priest wondered if he would live even another minute.

“You’re gonna love hell, asshole,” Casey Smith said.

Outside the supermarket, things were getting worse. Two men were shooting at one another. They were both hiding behind their respective vehicles...one a black Land Rover and the other a new model Toyota pickup. They were shooting it out like there was only room for one of them on planet earth.

A small man dressed in ratty jeans and a t-shirt that had a confederate flag printed on it approached Casey. He wasn’t wearing a mask. But he was holding his own shotgun. He raised the barrel and aimed it at Casey point-blank. Hesitation was the redneck’s bad luck. Because Casey blew a hole in his stomach that was so big you could see daylight through it.

More people were entering the lot and many of them were staring at Casey Smith and the carnage he had caused. No one bothered him after he blew the redneck away. Tossing the groceries and supplies into the back of the truck as fast as he possibly could without breaking anything, like the eggs, for instance, Casey Smith made a 360-degree sweep of the area with his riot shotgun just to make sure no one was preparing to jump him.

When he was convinced it was safe enough to get back behind the wheel of the truck, he hopped in, started the engine, and didn’t bother with backing out. He turned the wheel hard to the left and ran the redneck over. He was dead anyway, so who’d give a fuck?

Casey drove away from the parking lot until he came to Route 378. You could only go right or left. He turned left in the direction of his house. Only when he was driving the suburban road did he begin to breathe freely again. Also, his heartbeat calmed down a little. The virus was making life on earth an absolute nightmare. For the life of him, Casey didn’t recall the situation being so bad when it really happened back when he was still a boy. What he meant was, things did get bad, and millions died. But things happened slowly and in stages. However, for some reason, the metaverse developers had decided to make COVID-19 an immediate living nightmare. Not only was a deadly virus in the air, but people were turning on one another. A civil war was erupting before their very eyes. 

Driving.

Casey Smith wasn’t paying close attention to what was behind him when he suddenly noticed a big grill that belonged to a pickup truck that pulled right up on his ass. There couldn’t have been more than a few inches that separated the two vehicles. Reflected in the rearview were two young men. Both wearing baseball hats, and both were bearded. Two more rednecks. They were hitting their horn and revving their engine.

Finally, the driver pulled into the oncoming lane and pulled up right beside Casey. Both their windows were rolled down and so was Casey’s. 

“Pull over, fucker!” the passenger said, not without a sly grin. “You killed our brother you motherfucker.” 

“Good,” Casey said, speeding up. “He had it coming.”

The engine on their Dodge Ram was more powerful than Casey’s Ford, so they kept right up with him. Lucky for them, there was no oncoming traffic. But Casey knew there would be soon enough.

“I said pull over!” Redneck Passenger said, pointing the barrel of a semi-automatic at the ex-priest. “Those supplies are ours now. This is war.”

“No, they’re not,” Casey said, taking hold of his shotgun by the slide, and cocking a round in the chamber, one-handed.

He then took hold of the grip, tossed the barrel over his left arm, and pulled the trigger. The entire action took less than a second and a half. It was not only a direct headshot, but at that range, he blew the redneck’s entire head off. All that was left was a blood-red stump for a neck.

When the redneck driver screamed, Casey noticed that a speeding fire engine was barreling toward the Dodge Ram. The fire engine's sirens were blasting, and its flashers were exploding. Casey only had a second at most to send the redneck to his maker. Letting go of the wheel, he cocked another round in the chamber and shot the bearded bastard in the ribs, blowing a gaping hole in his side. Then he put the pedal to the floor.

One eye on the road ahead of him, the other in the rearview, Casey watched the firetruck obliterate the Dodge Ram.

“May God strike me dead, I don’t feel even an ounce of guilt. If anything, I felt happy about the day’s kills,” he whispered to himself.  

As he blew through the red traffic light on his way home, Casey Smith had to seriously ask himself, how was it possible that he was ever a priest?

15

Orchard Grove was quiet. Almost too quiet. Casey Smith knew that everyone was hunkered down inside their houses. They were afraid of their own shadows. Afraid of what the mainstream media was telling them on their flatscreen televisions. He couldn’t help but recall how years later the media was exposed for spreading tons of misinformation and lies about the COVID-19 virus, especially when it came to the death count it caused. At the same time, they also championed the riots that brutalized the country’s major cities while backing the new, insane policy of cashless bail.

He also recalled the young couple who lived next door. He wondered if they still lived there in the metaverse version of 2020. He remembered they had a couple of kids about his own age. The wife was good-looking, had blonde hair and a killer body. When she’d wash her underthings and hang them on the clothesline in the back, it used to excite Casey. He was just a kid and he was full of hormones. Her husband wasn’t around a lot because he was a salesman of some sort. The short, bearded, paunchy man sold pharmaceuticals or something like that. 

No sooner had Casey pulled up into the driveway, and who appeared emerging from her front door, but the woman who lived next door. She looked entirely the same. She wasn’t wearing a mask, so he got to see her pretty face. A face he hadn’t seen in decades. She ran across her front lawn and his.

He rolled down the passenger side window.

“How are you, Mrs. Howard?” he said. “You and the kids holding up?”

“We’re okay, Casey,” she said. “And for God's sake, call me, Kerry. Mrs. Howard is my mother.”

Casey couldn’t help but chuckle. It was so strange because the boy she knew back in the real year of 2020 was barely a teenager who’d harbored a secret crush on a woman many years older than he was. Now he was a middle-aged man. A former priest turned ruthless killer. Or was it a ruthless survivor?

“I just got back from the supermarket,” he said. “Things are getting bad out there. People are shooting at one another. They’re fighting over food and supplies.”

“I saw the news about it on the TV,” she said. “I can’t believe this is happening. How is your sister? I saw the ambulance.”

Casey shook his head and frowned.

“I’m not sure,” he said. “They won’t let me see her. They say it’s too dangerous to enter the hospital.”

Kerry ran her hands through her thick dirty blond hair. She was wearing a gray t-shirt with the words Shaker High School printed on it. There was a chill in the air and her nipples were erect. Casey couldn’t help but stare at them. He knew that she knew he was looking at them because she formed what he interpreted as a sly grin. She crossed her arms over her chest.

“I also saw police here this morning,” she said. “You must be having a really bad day.”

He told her about the home intrusion and that even though Orchard Grove was considered a safe, North Albany neighborhood, nowhere was safe now between the cashless bail law and now the COVID-19 pandemic.

She gazed at the riot shotgun set on the seat, and the empty shell casings that lie in the passenger side foot well.

“I can see you’re ready for action, Casey,” she said.

“What about you?” he asked. “Is your husband home? Do you have a firearm? Are the kids okay?”

He was lobbing a lot of questions at her, but she just kept nodding like all was well even though Casey knew that it wasn’t.

“I was wondering,” she said, after a beat. “My husband is away for a couple of days and the kids are at their friend's house down the street. My kitchen light went out and I don’t trust myself on a ladder. Would you mind so much coming over and replacing it for me?” She grinned again and uncrossed her arms so that Casey could clearly make out her pert breasts and hard nipples. “There will be a cold beer in it for you. I’m sure by now you could use one.”

He smiled. He could hardly believe his ears. Kerry Howard was not only inviting him over to her house while her husband was out of town, but she was offering him a beer. And if his gut was serving him sell, she had something else up her sleeve too.

“I’d be happy to help,” he said. “Maybe while I’m there I’ll take a look at your door locks to make sure you’re secure. Tonight could be rough.”

She reached out and placed her hand on his forearm. He felt the electricity of her fingertips. It was the first time she had ever touched him. Casey might technically be dead, but sometimes he loved living in the metaverse, even during a crazy time like 2020.

“Great,” she said, smiling.

“Just let me bring these supplies into the house and I’ll be right over,” he said.

She reached into her jeans pocket and pulled out a single key. She handed it to him.

“I’ve been meaning to give you this for a while,” she said. “Just in case me or one of the kids gets locked out.”

He felt even happier now that he had a key to her place.

“You can just let yourself in through the front door,” she said.

She ran her fingers down the length of his forearm, turned, and started back across the lawn. He watched her strut her perfect ass in her tight Levis jeans. He also admired her worn cowboy boots. 

“If I suddenly wake up from this dream,” he whispered to himself, “I’m going to be really, really pissed off.”

16

Casey Smith was no fool. At least, when it came to the character he was playing in the metaverse, he was no fool. He was also someone not to be messed with. It meant that before he carried any of his supplies in, he would make a check on the entire house with his riot shotgun at the ready. For all he knew, more rednecks were after him or the man who attacked his sister that morning had already intruded the place a second time and now, he was out for blood.

With that clearly in mind, before taking even a single bag of groceries into the kitchen, he grabbed his riot shotgun and entered the house through the front door.

“Hello!” he shouted in a loud voice.

He knew that if the home intruder had come back, just the sound of his voice would be enough to put an ice-cold fright into the criminal because even cold-hearted bad guys are not immune to being afraid. If Casey’s shouting wasn’t enough to get to under the bastard’s skin, then the sound of a shotgun being cocked would.

Taking a step forward so that Casey could easily see in the apparently empty living room, he cocked the shotgun. He did it hard so that the mechanical noise of gun metal against gunmetal, plus the sound of the fresh round entering the chamber could be heard loud and super fucking clear.

“This ain’t like this morning!” Casey barked. “This time I’m armed and if I see you, I will blow your yellow brains all over the wall. How’s that grab you, you evil son of a bitch?”

What was this, a Wild Western? Casey didn’t know what had gotten into him. Not too long ago, he was a human representative of the Lordly Prince of Peace. But now, he was turning into a natural-born killer. And what’s more, he fucking liked it. He never felt freer in his entire life. Or, at least in his metaverse life, that is.

He glanced to his right. The first room to make a check on was his sister’s home office. It had been converted from the bedroom she used when she was growing up and when their parents still occupied the master bedroom. The barrel pointed parallel directly ahead, he stepped into the room, his heart pounding not in his chest, but in his throat.

No one was visible as far as he could see. The overhead light wasn’t on, but there was enough sunlight coming in from the windows to provide him with enough illumination to see perfectly. He slowly walked to the desk and swung the barrel around just in case the intruder might be hiding behind it. But besides the desk chair, the space was empty.

He checked the closet by opening the sliding door swiftly. No one hid among the few clothes his sister still stored inside the space, on top of office supplies like copy paper and stacks of legal pads.

Casey Smith exited the room. He made a check on the bathroom, and then the second bedroom that his sister now used. He then checked the master bedroom which he called his own now that his parents were dead, plus the attached bathroom. All empty.

Next, he made a check of the kitchen, the dining room, the living room, and the TV room. Nothing. He even opened the sliding glass doors and made his way outside to examine the fenced-in backyard. Nothing to see there.

Heading back inside, the only spaces left to examine were the garage and the basement. Opening the door to the garage, he pointed the gun at Maureen’s car which was a new model, yellow Volkswagen Beetle. He walked around the car and found no one hiding behind it.

Back inside, he made his way into the kitchen, opened the basement door, and flicked on the light. His heart was pounding again because he knew that if he were a home intruder, he’d likely hide in the basement. He slowly made his way down the carpeted steps.

“Anybody down here?” he barked. “Because if you are, you’re already a dead man.”

Casey wasn’t sure how he was able to say the words and sentences his metaverse brain was putting together. A priest, even an ex-priest, would never even think of threatening to kill a man no matter how guilty. But still, he couldn’t help it. The words just kept coming. He also knew that if the intruder was hiding inside the basement, he wouldn’t hesitate to blow him away. He almost hoped he’d find the intruder. It would give Casey great pleasure to blow his brains out. 

Coming to the landing, he pointed the gun at the open space. It was a second TV room that he and his sister hardly ever used anymore. There was a weight set that Casey used to keep in shape and a small area that housed the washer and dryer, plus the boiler. There was an old couch pressed up against the wall opposite the wall where the flatscreen TV was mounted.

Casey couldn’t help but remember how in real life, he and his sister would hang out in the basement with friends. On occasion, they’d drink beers and maybe share a joint. Good times, until the pandemic ruined all the fun.

Satisfied that his home was safe and free of the intruder, Casey made his way back upstairs. Spotting the shotgun shells on the counter near the sink, he reloaded the shotgun, then made his way into the master bathroom where he looked at his face and hair. He could use a shave, but maybe he should comb his hair. He wanted to look handsome in front of Kerry. Using his free hand, he combed his salt and pepper hair.

Exiting the bathroom, he thought about texting Detective Clark, but knowing how busy she had to be and also knowing he might be screwing more than a lightbulb at Kerry’s house, he decided against it.

Locking the door behind him, Casey Smith left his house via the front door and made his way across the lawn to Kerry’s house, his trusty riot shotgun in hand.

17

Per her orders, Casey unlocked the front door to Kerry’s house, let himself in, and shut the door behind him. He also made sure to lock it. For a long beat or two, he stood in the vestibule the walls of which were decorated with maybe a dozen framed family photos. There was a wedding day picture of a much younger Kerry and her even younger-looking husband. She looked great in her tight white gown. He looked like a cherub with his puffy smooth-shaven cheeks and his awkward baby smile.

Another showed the happy couple standing in the doorway of their home. Kerry was holding a newborn infant in her arms. Their nice little family was just beginning. There were a couple of photos of them on some beach, maybe in Cape Cod, the kids digging in the sand, the sun shining bright and hot and optimistic. Yet another showed Kerry building a snowman with what would be two kids out on the front lawn. Simpler, happy times.

Casey heard footsteps on the staircase.

“That you, Casey?” Kerry said. “I’m awful glad you’re around to do this for me. I’m a klutz when it comes to ladders and my kids are still too little.”

“You can always count on me if your husband isn’t around,” Casey said.

Of course, he was careful with his words so that she got the double meaning loud and crystal clear. He couldn’t keep his eyes off of her ass as she descended the stairs in a short, denim mini-skirt and the same gray sweatshirt she had on earlier. The skirt was so short, he could see that she was wearing a red, satin thong. It was sheer and he could make out her small patch of trimmed pussy hair.

When she came to the landing in the vestibule, she placed her hand on his shoulder.

“What are you looking at, naughty boy?” she said.

That’s all it took for Casey to grow hard. Looking down, he saw there was no hiding his erection.

Making her way along the short corridor that connected to the kitchen, Kerry said, “I’ve already set up the stepladder for you. The fresh lightbulb is on the counter. I can help.”

Casey followed her into the kitchen and spotted the aluminum ladder and the fresh lightbulb. As he brushed past her, he sniffed her lavender scent and his face brushed up against her dirty blonde hair. She ran the tips of her fingers over his erection, but neither of them said a word about it.

He climbed the four steps on the ladder and removed the ceiling-mounted lighting fixture cover. He unscrewed the old bulb and shook it to make sure it was dead. When the glass jingled from the broken filament, he was convinced the lightbulb was indeed dead. He handed it to Kerry and she, in turn, handed him the fresh one. He screwed it in.

“Flip on the light switch just to make sure it works,” he said.

Making her way to the wall, Kerry flipped the switch up. The light turned on. She then turned it back off. Casey placed the fixture’s glass cover back on.

“Job well done,” or so he whispered to himself.

He was still hard as a rock when he started down the stepladder. But Kerry held out both her hands.

“Wait,” she said. “I haven’t paid you yet.”

Casey chuckled.

“You don’t owe me a thing,” he said. “I’ll just take that beer you promised.”

“But there’s something I want to give you before the beer,” she said.

“Oh?”

“You’re most definitely no longer a priest?” she asked.

“Haven’t been for two years now,” he said. He wanted to add, “At least, that’s what my manufactured memories tell me.”

“So, you probably haven’t had any kind of sex in a long while,” she said not bothering with beating around any bushes.

“Not in a long, long, long time,” Casey said, the two of them both eyeing his erection once more

“Well, Casey Smith,” she said, as she proceeded to unbuckle his pants while he was still standing on the third wrung of the stepladder, “we’d better take care of that right this second.”

With that, Kerry pulled Casey Smith’s overly stiff manhood out and stuffed it in her mouth.

18

The sex didn’t end there. Both had too much to give to one another. Like pent-up teenagers, Kerry and Casey had sex in the kitchen on the kitchen table. They had sex in the den with more framed shiny happy family photos staring at their pale naked asses. They did it upstairs and on the stairs, and finally, Casey fucked Kerry in her marriage bed while she watched the action reflected in the big mirror that was attached to her dresser of drawers.

When it was all over, they were both wiped out and coated in a sheen of sweat. But they seemed happy despite the deadly war and the plague that was being waged outside the suburban dwelling.

“How about that beer?” Kerry asked.

“What about your kids?” Casey said. “Won’t they be home soon?”

“Oh no,” she said. “They hate hanging around the house. They’ll be gone for hours playing video games down in their friend’s basement.”

He thought about when he was a kid during the original 2020 and how oblivious he was to the pandemic, other than having to wear a mask every time he went outside which, even at his young age, he thought was ridiculous. Like his father said back in the day, the little Italian guy who had been appointed the safety czar of the pandemic was the same guy who created the plague in a Chinese laboratory in the first place.

“Only in the U.S. can you make a killer a safety czar,” his dad spouted.

Casey went to get up, but Kerry beat him to it.

“You relax,” she said. “I’ll get it for you.”

“You sure?” he said.

“Sure, I’m sure,” Kerry said.

Casey didn’t mind looking at her perfect ass as she made her way from the bed, across the bedroom floor, and out the door. While he waited for her to retrieve his beer, Casey listened to the sounds of small explosions and what also sounded like gunshots coming from way off in the distance. Most likely in the city center where the projects were located.

With that in mind, he might have been fulfilling a childhood fantasy by being with Kerry right now, but he worried about Mary the cop. He took hold of the TV remote and flicked it on. The flat-screen television was mounted to the wall beside the big dresser mirror. He channel-surfed until he found the Spectrum 24-hour breaking news channel. What he saw made the fine hairs on the back of his neck stand up at attention. There was a battle going on between the residents of the projects and the police.

Cops dressed in riot gear and holding riot shotguns were firing into the crowds. Young men and women wearing black hoodies were shooting back at the cops with semi-automatic weapons. Even with their black body armor on, the police were dropping like flies. Buildings were burning, and people were tossing Molotov cocktails at cop cruisers and vans. It was total mayhem.

The on-the-spot reporter was dressed as if for a war zone with a blue military-style helmet that had the word PRESS taped to both sides. He was also wearing a Kevlar vest.

“Anarchy has invaded the once quiet streets of Albany,” he said into his hand-help mic. “The residents of this low-income community have finally had enough of the police and their tyrannical ways. The mostly peaceful protests have realized plenty of police violence, however, which has resulted in the deaths of several innocent citizens.”

Kerry came back in with Casey’s beer and one for herself. She got back in bed and handed him the cold bottle.

“Thank you,” he said, taking a deep swig.

“More like, thank you,” Kerry said, cuddling up to him. Then, noticing the TV. “This is crazy. The whole city is burning.”

“And the press insists on calling this mayhem mostly peaceful protests,” Casey commented.

“What the hell is the matter with these reporters?” Kerry said. “What happened to telling the truth? Isn’t that the true job of a journalist?”

“They’ve become a propaganda arm of the leftist Democrats,” Casey said, not sure how or why an idea like that would enter his brain.

When he was a kid and all this mayhem was going on for real, he didn’t really care who was a Republican or a Democrat. His dad did, he guessed. But then, his dad was old at the time. In his late forties or thereabouts. He cared about shit like that until the plague caught up with him and killed him, just like it would again in a matter of months. In the metaverse, history was about to repeat itself. 

“We also have breaking news from the Albany Police Department,” the reporter went on while behind him, a dark-skinned man tossed a brick at a cop and hit the law enforcement officer in the head. “As of approximately one half an hour ago, a decorated detective is said to have been killed in the line of duty. Her name is Lieutenant Homicide Detective, Mary Clark, 49, of Albany. When asked about the nature of her death, a spokesperson for the APD said she was shot at close range while patrolling the intersection of Clinton Avenue and Henry Johnson Boulevard which now is considered the ground zero of the civil unrest.”

Casey couldn’t take anymore. He grabbed the clicker and turned the television off. His entire blood supply felt as if it had emptied out both his feet and he became dizzy. Obviously, he was visibly dizzy, or visibly shaken anyway, because Kerry asked him if he was okay.

He shook his head and placed the beer bottle on the nightstand.

“No,” Casey Smith said. “I’m not, I’m afraid, Kerry. The APD detective who was killed...she was a friend of mine. I just spoke with her this morning after my sister was assaulted by the home intruder.”

He didn’t dare tell her that Clark and he had made love only hours ago. He didn’t want to hurt Kerry since he genuinely liked her and lusted after her. Would they ever have a real relationship together? How could they? She was married.

But he and Mary might have had a real relationship one day. If only they survived the metaverse together. But in his heart, Casey knew that she would not be the only one to die. That he would soon follow. But that didn’t make him feel any better about her sudden loss.

He got up and started to get dressed.

“You’re leaving?” Kerry asked.

“I’m sorry,” Casey said, slipping back into his pants, and throwing on his shirt. “I’m not very good company right now, Kerry. Besides, it’s getting dark, and I think it’s a good idea that I keep an eye on my house in case the paroled intruder decides to come back and finish what he started this morning.”

Casey went around the bed and kissed Kerry gently on the lips.

“I want you to promise me something, Kerry,” he said. “If anything bad should happen tonight, I want you to call my cell phone right away. You have my number. Or, you and the kids can just stay at my place.”

“Nothing bad is going to happen to us here in the suburbs,” Kerry stubbornly insisted, as if what happened to Casey and my sister this morning was an illusion.

“Don’t be so sure of that,” Casey said, straightening himself up. “Anything can happen. Trust me.”

She didn’t realize he was talking about the metaverse, but he still meant what he said. She pulled her blanket off.

“Let me see you out, Casey,” she said.

“No,” he said. “That’s not necessary.” He tried to work up a smile even though he was very unhappy at the moment. “I loved what we did today.”

“Maybe we can do it again soon?” she said

“I want to,” Casey said.

But it was a lie. A lie, because he wasn’t sure the metaverse would allow him to live through the night. The big question was, this time when he died, would he stay dead, or would he return as a human being living in another time and another place?

19

It was almost full dark by the time Casey Smith crossed both front lawns back to his house. Just like he did a couple of hours ago, he made a check on his entire home, including all its hiding spaces with riot shotgun gripped in both hands, combat position (locked and loaded, barrel pointed straight ahead, finger on the trigger). When he was satisfied he was alone, he sat at the kitchen table and just stared at the old GE refrigerator for a while listening to its familiar electrical hum. But he wasn’t seeing or hearing the refrigerator.

He was seeing his sister lying on the floor this morning, and a big man escaping through the back door. He saw himself beating the living crap out of the man—something he never thought himself capable of doing. He saw the cops come. He saw Detective Mary Clark and he saw the desperation in her eyes when she told him how the home intruder would be released on cashless bail. The system of law and order was flipped on its head and it had everything to do with the people in power and votes. It was a sad affair.

Now, the pandemic was upon him once again. Soon enough his father would die a second time. He could only hope he died first. Casey couldn’t bear to live through the agony of his father dying a second time. He saw Maureen and he knew in his heart that she had to be lonely and scared being all alone in a hospital that was going insane inside a city that was going insane. Why were they refusing to let him see her? Because he’d get the virus? Chances were, he had it already.

“Fuck this,” he said, standing.

Taking hold of his shotgun, he headed to the front vestibule and grabbed his keys. He opened the door and stepped out into the night, locking the door behind him. Making his way to the driveway, he got back in his truck and turned the engine over. He backed out, threw the transmission in drive, and drove toward the end of Orchard Grove. His one eye on Route 378 and the other in the rearview, he saw Kerry’s two kids entering the house through their front door. He hoped she was sensible to lock the door behind her.

Hooking a right, he drove the half mile to Van Rensselaer Boulevard and turned right. He sped down the tree-lined suburban road, passing by a gang of teenage bikers riding off-road motorcycles. They weren’t like the typical black, leather-clad, heavy-set biker gangs that rode Harleys on the highways. These were juvenile delinquents who wore black, World War Two era Nazi helmets, black hoodies with white skulls printed on the front, and full face masks.

They rode in packs, did wheelies, and tailgated suburban drivers. Sometimes they would surround a car or minivan, just for the fun of terrorizing an innocent family. If the cops came after them, they’d easily escape by driving onto the golf course and getting lost.

In the past, when Casey was still a priest, the off-road motorbike gangs would frighten him. If he saw them coming up on his tail, his breathing would go shallow and his heartbeat would increase so that it felt like the pumping organ was about to bust out of his sternum. At least, that’s what he remembered about the gang of motorbike thugs.

But now that the riots were happening, they felt more emboldened than ever. Or so Casey assumed. He would not doubt it if they attempted to break into some of the suburban North Albany homes, rape the women and children, and burn the homes to the ground. It’s what he feared most for Kerry. That she would be naive enough to actually be kind to these teenage savages and allow them inside her home.

It wasn’t that Kerry was stupid. Far from it. It’s just that, like many people who resided in the relative protection of the suburbs, they thought themselves impervious to the evil deeds of some very evil people.

Casey drove the length of the boulevard until he came to the edge of the Wolferts Roost Country Club. That’s when he hooked a right and caught sight of the hospital on his left. There were so many EMT vehicles and cop cars in the parking lot, he thought it prudent to park in Mary’s apartment building lot across the street. He parked in her space. She wouldn’t be needing it anymore and it bought a tear to his eye.

When he got out, he thought about taking his shotgun with him. But then, he thought better of it. He wasn’t about to start shooting at the cops. He had to use his brain, not bullets. He had no idea how he was going to do it, but under the cover of darkness, he was going to sneak into the hospital and see his sister. What he worried about most, was that it would be the final time he would see her before she died.

20

Casey was aware that the hospital contained a morgue in the back, on the basement level. If he could sneak in there and perhaps grab some surgical scrubs which he could wear over his clothing, no one would give him a second look. He’d also find a surgical mask to wear since everyone was wearing masks now.

He walked the exterior of the overly busy emergency wing, which took up an entire third of the hospital. Beyond that, he came to an area that was being used to test people for the virus. Mobile LED spotlights turned the night into day. People were lined up for as far as the eye could see. There were soldiers keeping the people calm and at bay. They were wearing gas masks and holding M16s. Casey got the distinct feeling if you got out of line, or tried to run away, they’d shoot you.

The testers were wearing full hazmat suits. They were shoving long swabs up people’s noses and then placing the swabs in test tubes that contained some sort of pinkish chemical liquid. They knew the results of the tests right away. If a person tested positive for the disease, he or she was dragged away not by one hazmat suit-wearing worker, but two. If a person tested negative, they were free to go but issued a mask which they were to immediately put on. Not many people being tested were negative. Or so it seemed.

One person standing in the middle of the line tried to run away. One of the soldiers took a shot at him. He could have killed him, but the soldier shot over the running person’s head. It was enough for the person to drop to the ground and put his hands over his head.

“What the hell is happening here?” Casey whispered to himself as he walked past the testers and the mobile trailer they were using as a work base. 

Again, his human memories flooded back into his brain. He recalled being tested for the virus, but he didn’t recall being made to stand in a line a mile long. He didn’t recall any military being employed to force innocent people to be tested. No one was shot at while they waited for their testing. Again, this was the metaverse’s version of the pandemic. The AI made it seem a lot worse than it had been during the real year, 2020. 

Casey made his way past the testing area on his way to the morgue when someone shouted out at him.

“Hey you,” a gruff voice barked. “Where’s your fuckin’ mask?”

Casey tried to play along by patting his pants and shirt pockets. He turned and saw that it was a soldier who was yelling.

“Shit, soldier,” Casey said, “I work in the morgue and went to grab a bite. I forgot the mask. Not used to it yet, I guess.”

The soldier, who had three stripes sewn into each arm, reached into his fatigue pocket and pulled a white surgical mask out.

“Take this,” he said.

Casey went to him, snatched it from his fingers, and proceeded to put it on.

“May it serve you well, brother,” the soldier said, not without a laugh.

That’s when a question loomed large in Casey’s metaverse-driven brain.

“Hey Sergeant,” Casey said. “How many are dead already?”

“You really wanna know?” he said.

“I work in the morgue,” Casey lied. “It’s my business to know.”

“I’m told worldwide, about two million so far,” he said. “In Albany County, we’re closing in on one hundred thousand already.”

“Jesus,” Casey said. “We’re not gonna have enough room or caskets.”

“We got body bags coming your way,” he said. “Leftovers from Viet Nam and the First Gulf War.”

“How many are projected to die in the next week?” Casey asked.

“Close to a billion,” the sergeant said. “It’s possible Albany will be mostly wiped out. Men, women, and children. It’s the end of the world you ask me.” He smiled wryly. “But you know what, Mister?”

“What’s that, Sergeant?” Casey said.

The soldier patted his John Brown belt.

“I got one bullet saved just for me,” he said. “I won’t let the virus take me.”

“I understand,” Casey said.

He started walking again toward the back of the hospital and the morgue.

“Hey buddy,” the sergeant called out once more.

Casey felt a start in his heart. He turned.

“What is it?” he said.

“I feel like I know you from somewhere,” the soldier said.

“I used to be a priest,” Casey said. “Now I help out at the morgue.”

The sergeant smiled again and snapped his fingers.

“That’s it,” he said. “St. Bridgette’s in Pine Hills, right?”

Casey nodded because the soldier was right. He had served as a priest at Saint Bridgett’s Roman Catholic Parish in West Albany. It was a metaverse memory that had been artificially stored in his brain.

“Yes, sir,” Casey said. 

“I knew it was you, Father Smith,” the soldier said. “That’s why I didn’t get trigger-happy with you. Go in peace.”

“Good luck, Sergeant,” Casey said.

“See you on the other side, Father,” the soldier said. “If there is another side after we die.”

21

Finally, Casey made it to the morgue. The black hearses filled the lot. It was total mayhem. There were so many dead bodies, they were wrapped in black rubber body bags and stacked like cordwood outside the sliding glass doors. All sorts of people were coming and going from the morgue so that the doors never had a chance to shut.

As sad and crazy a sight this was to witness, Casey knew it worked in his favor. With so many people coming and going and the panic that seemed to fill their veins, he knew no one would give him a second glance much less ask him for ID. The front vestibule was almost filled to the ceiling with body bags and a few steel and wood caskets. There were so many of them, a kind of corridor was created in the center to allow for the to-and-fro movement of people.

The smell was death. Or so Casey thought. No two ways about it. It was as if the virus in this metaverse version of it, not only killed its host but ravaged it from the inside out. He made his way past workers, nurses, and doctors dressed in green scrubs, their faces (or what you could see of them under their masks), were ashen, their eyes hardly blinking, telling Casey they were not only working harder and hard and on no sleep, but that they were worried. Worried that the future held one thing and one thing only. Certain death.

Casey moved forward along a narrow corridor that was packed to the gills with bodies, alive and dead. The ceiling was open and he could make out the ductwork and aluminum pipe chases. He heard steam valves hiss and groan. When he came to the morgue, he peered inside one of the round windows embedded into the two swinging wood doors that accessed the space. He saw that every one of the half-dozen stainless steel tables contained not just one body but two. Every bit of space was being utilized.

Everybody was naked. He imagined that their clothing was being incinerated. He witnessed little children, teenagers, young adults, middle-aged people, and lots of old people whose immune systems were already compromised by their many years on the planet. One particularly heart-breaking scene was of a young mother with long brunette hair. She was dead, and her dead baby had been placed in her arms.

“Was it really this bad back in the real year 2020?” Casey silently asked himself. “I can’t believe that it was. It has to be the metaverse that’s changing things.”

He recalled there being a rule about going back in time and about how little things can change. Sometimes big things can change too. For instance, if he were to die tonight, and wake up during the first century AD in Jerusalem, it was quite possible that Jesus would have been crucified, but that he would have miraculously come down from his cross to the utter astonishment of all who witnessed the event. Anything was possible when you went back in time. Things were the same, but not the same.

He wasn’t sure what motivated him to do it, but he pushed the door open and stepped inside the morgue. The three or four pathologists who were busily autopsying their dead patients never bothered to give him a second look. If they did, they must have just assumed he was another hospital worker assigned to some task like retrieving one of the bodies for the many hearses lined up outside.

Casey slowly walked past the steel tables and made his way to the dozen or so yellow collapsible gurneys that were stored way in the back beyond the massive wall of cold storage drawers. The gurneys were identical to the one the EMTs took his sister, Maureen, away in this morning after the home intruder hit her over the head.

As he walked, Casey felt his pulse elevating and his mouth go dry. He developed pain in his stomach. He felt dizzy, like the world had tipped on its axis, or like he was about to have an out-of-body experience. What was happening to him? Was it intuition that was speaking to him? He felt afraid. No, that’s not right. It was more like, while on one hand, he was afraid of approaching the gurneys, something inside him was pushing him toward them.

It was almost like he knew what he was going to find when he came to them. Because he wasn’t ten feet away when he spotted her. It was Maureen. She was lying on her back, as still as a body can be. She was naked and he felt shame for her nakedness. As his heart pounded in his chest and his eyes filled, he looked around for something like a towel. He found a green sheet stored under one of the stainless-steel tables and he covered his sister’s sex parts with it.

“Jesus, Maureen,” he whispered while taking hold of her now cool hand. “I’m so, so sorry. How could this happen to you?”

Her eyes were still open, and she was staring blankly at the ceiling. They weren’t fully dilated yet. Judging by her pupils and the touch of her hand, Casey knew that she could not have been dead for very long. He checked her toe tag. The time of death was recorded as 6:18 PM. That was a little over an hour ago. If only he’d made it here earlier, he could have said goodbye to her.

He shifted himself to her upper body and he used his hand to close her eyes. Now she looked like she was sleeping. He understood that she was awaiting an autopsy. He might have said something to the pathologists working on the bodies, but he couldn’t think of anything that would make sense or matter very much. His sister was dead now and that was that. Now, it was a matter of calling a funeral home.

As he left the morgue and walked back to his truck, he wondered if he should let his still-alive father know that the adult version of his daughter was dead. But then it occurred to him that if he was sent back in time, a second Maureen might exist. Also, a second Casey. The two would still be kids. But was there a second Orchard Grove that contained an identical home to the one he grew up in?

As he got back in his truck, it came to him that in this new version of reality, his parents might have moved to another house altogether. As he pulled out of the hospital lot, it dawned on him that his mother had her heart set on two different houses. The one on Orchard Grove and another on Reddy Lane just up the road.

“That’s it,” he said to himself, as he made a left turn at the country club and continued along the boulevard. “My parents and their young children live on Reddy Lane.”

In his heart, he knew it was a bad idea to find out if his gut instinct was right, but he couldn’t help himself. When he came to Orchard Grove, he didn’t make the left toward his house. He went straight and set a course for Reddy Lane.

22

Number 42 Reddy Lane was located off Osborne Road just beyond the grammar school he and Maureen attended when they were kids. The same school the metaverse version of the Casey kids now attended, or so Casey surmised. He turned right into the neighborhood. It was an area his mother would have described as quaint, quiet, and upper-crust.

“The perfect place to raise a couple of little rugrats,” he recalled his mother saying at one time.

He stopped the truck a few houses down. If the metaverse recreation of his family did indeed live at 42 Reddy Lane, he didn’t want to startle them by parking right outside the house. The city was on fire, for God’s sake, Casey thought. The animals were promising to take the fight to the suburbs. Casey knew his father would not be happy with that. His father owned several guns on behalf of his family’s protection. A .45 caliber model 1911 semi-automatic handgun, and a 12-gauge double barrel shotgun.

If Casey wanted to get a look inside the house, he’d have to be stealthy about it. He’d have to be like a shadow moving under the cover of darkness. He closed the truck door, once more leaving the riot shotgun behind. He began walking toward the split-level, stone, brick, and redwood home. The house was set on a big parcel of property located on the corner of the residential roads Reddy Lane and Osborn Road. The property had lots of mature trees on it, including some old oaks and pines.

When he came to the driveway, Casey slowly made his way along the northernmost perimeter of the property. It was an overgrown area that separated his dad’s property from their next-door neighbor. Approaching the backyard, he slowly walked past the garage then turned right and climbed up a small hill to the rear wood and glass door off the kitchen. He glanced through the glass on the door and saw two pre-teens seated at the kitchen table. They were his younger self and Maureen’s younger self and it gave Casey chills down his spine to witness them.

They were doing homework. That is, their schoolbooks were open along with their laptops. But they were goofing around and laughing it up. With the pandemic in full swing, they wouldn’t be attending a real school. They’d be having Zoom conferences with their teachers and mostly spending their days playing video games and doing nothing. If memory served him sell, it will become a real strain on their parents who are forced into the role of teacher and parent and many will fall behind in their studies and never catch up.

Ducking, Casey moved on past the kitchen to the dining room window. It was a big, floor-to-ceiling-sized window which meant he needed to be careful not to be spotted by either his mother or father. Facing the red brick wall, he inched ever closer to the window and saw that both his parents were seated at the long table. By the looks of it, they’d just finished their supper and his father was finishing off a bottle of red wine.

All seemed normal, but there was nothing normal about what was happening all around them between the deadly pandemic and the civil unrest in the city—civil unrest that was sure to reach the suburbs. Making things worse, if anybody did harm or damage to the Smiths or their property, the new politically charged law of cashless bail would guarantee the criminal would be back out on the street within hours. It was possible the criminal would come back to terrorize Casey’s family again and again.

The world in 2020, had been turned upside down, and now Casey was living it all over again, only not as a participant, so much as a spectator. He was witnessing the destruction of his family. But his father seemed to be ready for anything. Casey realized this when he saw that his dad was carrying his .45 caliber semi-automatic on his hip. Something that surely made his mother nervous, but that remained the prudent thing to do.

But something else wasn’t right. Casey’s father was having coughing fits. It seemed like every few seconds, David Smith would cough up a lung. The man was infected, and it was likely Casey’s mother and father knew it, but either did not want to admit it, or they realized full well that if he decided to go to the hospital it was quite possible he’d never make it out alive.

Taking one small step toward the big window, Casey stepped on a dry twig. It made a loud snap. His father heard the noise and immediately shifted his focus to outside the big window. David Smith spotted Casey. He drew his pistol and went for the side door connected to the dining room. 

“David, what the hell are you doing?” Mrs. Smith barked.

That’s when Casey turned tail and ran.

23

Casey’s father might have been sick. But when he got angry or desperate or both, he was an unstoppable force. The middle-aged man made it outside in a flash.

“Hey you,” he screamed, “stop.”

The man yelling at Casey was his own father. It didn’t matter if this was the metaverse. Basic instinct kicked in and Casey stopped and turned to face David Smith.

“I’m sorry,” Casey said, his heart pounding in his throat. “I wanted to see how my family was doing?”

“Your family?” a wide-eyed David Smith said. “You’re the creep who followed me out on the golf course today.”

The man followed up with a deep, painful-sounding, guttural cough.

“I wasn’t following you, dad,” Casey said.

“Dad?” David Smith in a hoarse voice. “You really are crazy.”

Raising the pistol, he gripped it with two hands, in combat position. David triggered a round that nailed Casey in the left shoulder.

“That should teach you to stay the hell away from my home and family, you creep!” David Smith screamed before once more entering a coughing fit.

He clearly doesn’t understand, the wounded Casey whispered to himself as he turned and ran off into the night. And he’s also dying.

When Casey got to the pickup, he got in, started the engine up and punched the gas. He knew that his father would be calling the police, not that any overburdened law enforcement officer would show up anytime soon. But Casey didn’t want to take any chances. He was still a wanted man, even in the metaverse...wanted for a murder and a bank robbery that took place in the 2050s. It was something the former writer had to always keep in mind. 

With his shoulder bleeding, he needed to get home and do the best he could to patch up his wound. It hurt like hell which might have been a good sign since flesh wounds always hurt more than a bullet that makes its mark. The fact that he was able to drive was also a good sign. Casey’s father was a good if not great shot due to his weekly visits to the range. If he only injured Casey a flesh wound, it wasn’t by accident. It’s exactly what David Smith intended to do.

When Casey came to the red traffic light, he slowed down, looked both ways, and drove through it. He needed to get home as soon as possible. When he pulled into Orchard Grove he came face to face with a nightmare. The black-clad dirt-bike, ANTIFA gang had invaded the peaceful neighborhood. They were riding on the lawns of the homes, tossing bricks through picture windows, tossing Molotov cocktails at cars and trucks parked against the curb.

They were wearing their usual black hoodies, skull-like facemasks, and World War Two-style German helmets. One ANTIFA fascist was doing a donut on a lawn two houses up from Kerry’s. Another was doing a wheely down the middle of the road. Casey saw that two dirt bikes were parked in Kerry’s driveway.

“Kerry,” he whispered. “Please let her and the kids be okay, Lord.”

But he was an ex-priest for a reason, and he didn’t trust in the goodwill of the Lord any more than he trusted the devil not to snatch his soul out of mid-air when he finally died and the metaverse left him the fuck alone.

Killing the truck engine, Casey grabbed the shotgun and jumped out of the truck. Running across the lawn, he decided the best plan of action was to go around the back. There were dirt biker criminals all over the place and in the back he would be hidden from them. Jogging over his front lawn, Casey made his way around the side of Kerry’s house until he came to the gate on her wood storm fence. He opened the gate and shut it behind him.

His pulse pounded in my temples while he made out the screams of children. He could also hear Kerry pleading for someone to get off of her. Jumping onto the wood deck, Casey Smith peered into the sliding glass door and saw Kerry lying on her back on the floor. Her shirt was pulled up over her bra and her jean skirt was pulled up over his waist. Her panties had been torn off her. One of the skull-masked, German helmet-wearing thugs had his black jeans pulled down and he was in the process of trying to rape her.

But Kerry, God bless her, was putting up a fight, hitting the kid with one fist to the face after the other. The two kids were also clawing at him and screaming into his ears. Casey tried to slide open the door, but it was locked. That’s when he aimed for the center of the glass and pulled the trigger. The blast disintegrated the glass. The noise was shocking enough to frighten the kids so much that they retreated to the couch and held one another in their arms.

The biker trying to rape Kerry peered at Casey. He reached for a knife he stored in his back pocket and pulled it out. It was the last move he’d ever make on God’s earth. Casey blasted him in the chest. The hole he put in the ANTIFA thug was so big, he could see the blue carpet under his back. Bending at the knees, Casey tore off the dead criminal’s facemask. Just as he suspected. He was a white teenage kid who probably lived close by.

Then a noise came from the living room. It was the second biker. He was coming at Casey with a knife. Taking his time, the former priest cocked the shotgun with one hand, took aim, and blew the thug’s head off. Whether the criminal knew it or not, he looked a lot like one of the dead characters in the first-person kill games he and his evil buddies probably played on a daily basis while getting stoned in their parent’s basement.

24

Bounding up quickly, Kerry pulled her shirt and skirt down, and composed herself as best she could. She went immediately to the kids, took them by their hands, and led them out of the room and upstairs. While she cared for them Casey Smith dragged both bodies out the back sliding glass door, out the storm fence gate, and laid them along the side of the house.

Heading back inside, he made his way into the garage. He found an axe and brought it back outside with him. This is when he proceeded to do something he never would have imagined himself capable of doing in a million years. But he chopped the first thug’s head off. He carried the head to one of the two dirt bikes, and stuck it on one of the handlebars via the neck. Then he rolled the bike out to the end of the driveway.

Heading back up the drive to the other dead thug, Casey pulled up his hoodie and exposed his bare chest. Using the thug’s own switchblade, he carved a swastika into the thug’s bare chest skin. He also carved the acronym, ANTIFA. Casey then rolled the second dirt bike to the end of the drive and placed it beside the other bike that boasted the severed head.

Heading back up the drive, Casey dragged the headless body down the driveway and, using all his strength, deadlifted the thug onto the second bike. The dead thug lay on his back, balanced on the dirt-bike seat, his blood leaking onto the driveway, and his new switchblade-carved scars plainly visible.

Soon enough, both dead thug’s criminal buddies would come racing around the corner and view Casey’s handy work. If all went according to plan, they would be so scared, they would disappear from Orchard Grove altogether.

Casey was heading once more back up the drive when three of them came racing toward him along the road. The closer they came to the bodies on their roaring dirt bikes, the more they slowed down. He turned to face them and cocked his weapon. If given the slightest provocation, Casey was prepared to blow them all to hell. That is, a hell existed in the metaverse. 

“Holy fuck,” one of them said.

“Yeah, holy fuck,” repeated another. “Let’s just go. That dude is fucked up.”

The three dirt-bikers revved their engines and bolted. The display of their dead ANTIFA comrades must have shaken them to their very core. But then, that was the point.

This was war, Casey thought. All is fair.

Casey went around the back of Kerry’s house once more and entered through the skidding glass door. She was standing in the kitchen, nervously smoking a cigarette, and drinking a beer.

She held the beer up for Casey to see.

“You want one?” she said. “I know I sure could use one or three.”

“How are the kids?” Casey said, feeling the weight of the riot shotgun gripped in his right hand.

“They’ll survive,” she said. “But how does a kid get over seeing their mother get attacked like that?”

Her eyes were big and wet and when she brought the cigarette to her mouth, her hand trembled. Casey could see then just how shaken up she was, and he couldn’t blame her one damn bit. Coming from outside the house, the continuous sound of police sirens, gunshots, and the occasional explosion. He imagined that if they went back outside, and looked in the direction of the city, they’d be able to witness the orange glow of the many fires that had been started in the Arbor Hill section where all the Albany projects and slums were located.

“I’ll take that beer,” he said.

Kerry opened the fridge and pulled out a can of Bud. She handed it to Casey. Setting the shotgun on the counter, he popped the top and took a long draw on the cold beer. The alcohol seemed to go to work on his system right away. He felt that much calmer and cooler. But he knew that a long night that lay ahead of him. A long, deadly, violent night where God never entered the equation. 

“The neighborhood’s been cleared out for now,” he said. “I want you and the kids to stay with me tonight. I won’t take no for an answer.”

Kerry nodded.

“And I don’t want the kids to look out onto the driveway,” Casey warned. “What’s here will frighten them.”

“It’s the bodies of those...those...animals, isn’t it?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Casey said. “I needed to make a statement that would stick with their surviving friends. If all goes well, they won’t even think about coming back. But just to be safe, you guys will stay with me.”

Kerry smoked some more.

“I’ll pack a bag,” she said.

“While you do that,” Casey said, “I’m going to check out my house and make sure it’s clear. Then, I’ll come back for you. Lock everything up and close all the curtains and drapes.”

“I understand,” she said.

Setting the empty beer can down, he grabbed the shotgun. He was about to head out the back door when he stopped and turned.

“Have you heard from your husband?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“My gut,” she said. “It tells me he’s in some hospital in some strange city. Because he would have called by now. He always calls.”

Casey nodded. He knew that being admitted to the hospital was a death sentence. He opened the sliding glass door and stepped outside. He looked in the direction of the city. He was right after all. You could make out the glow of the fires.

25

Unlocking the front door, Casey stepped inside the ranch home. The place was dark, so he went to work immediately turning on every single light, beginning with the vestibule overhead fixture. It seemed like each room he entered would cause his heart to skip a beat. He fully believed that as soon as he turned on the light, the intruder would be standing there, a knife or maybe an axe in his hand, his face looking like raw hamburger from the beating the former priest miraculously delivered this morning.

It dawned on Casey then that what the defund the police and the cashless bail movement were all about. It was about scaring entire populations into submission. What better way to control people than by keeping them always on the edge? Always keep them wondering, when is someone coming for me to kill me? It was about keeping the population always terrified of leaving the relative safety of their houses.

On top of that, they wanted to take away their guns so that any kind of self-protection against the criminal element would be gone. The criminals would have all the power and all the rights to do whatever they wanted to whoever they wanted whenever they wanted. It was all a big political power play.

But right now, politics should be the last thing on Casey’s mind, while he made his way through the entire upstairs. The intruder was nowhere to be found.

“Time to check the basement,” he whispered to himself, as though the mere act of saying it out loud would give him the jolt of encouragement he needed to head into the kitchen and open the basement door.

He flicked on the light and, holding the shotgun barrel straight ahead, he began to descend the staircase slowly, one tread at a time. With each wood tread he placed his rubber-soled foot on, he felt his heart pound against his sternum. Something had changed in Casey Smith. Something had even snapped, you might say. He had gone from a peace-loving, God-fearing man, to a cold-blooded killer. But that still didn’t mean he wasn’t afraid of the danger that awaited him.

He'd gotten the best of the home intruder this morning, and he’d just about slaughtered the ANTIFA dirt bikers. But he was still afraid. The fear was physical. It ran through his bloodstream like a cancer. But a part of him was happy for the fear. He might have been living in the metaverse, but fear was the one thing he had left that made him human.

When he came to the bottom of the steps, he turn and aimed the shotgun at the old playroom and at the clothes-washing area. Nothing to be seen other than the old carpet and walls that needed a new paint job back when Slick Willy occupied the White House. Just for the hell of it, he checked behind the old GE washer and dryer. He also checked behind the old furnace and water heater.

No home intruder to be found. 

Casey’s heartbeat slowed a little. His pulse also took a breather. He made his way into the playroom and sat himself down on the old couch. He set the shotgun down on the couch beside him. The remote for the wall-mounted TV was set on the plastic coffee table that his mom picked up at Sears back in the mid-1970s. He turned the TV on, and channel surfed until he came to the Spectrum-24 Hour News.

It was more of the same. Reporters standing in front of burning buildings or smoldering cop cars. Police decked out in tactical gear were firing rubber bullets into crowds of rioters. Most of them were black and shirtless. Were they letting off a kind of overheated steam that had been building up for decades? Or were they just taking advantage of a situation where people were dying from a manmade virus? Were they intent on replacing the rule of law with anarchy now that people were dying at a record rate?

But these were stupid questions that not even the best sociologists could answer. And besides, what the hell did they matter at this point anyway? It was the end of times, and Casey knew it.

He turned the TV off and thought about Kerry and her kids. It was time to retrieve them. But for just a quick moment, he sat back on the couch, and he thought about Detective Clark. He thought about how nice she had been to him. He thought about making love to her in her apartment behind the country club that very afternoon, only moments after seeing his dad on the putting green. He reached around and touched his tender, wounded shoulder.

“My dad shot me tonight,” he whispered. “Can you believe that shit?”

He found himself grinning. Why? He didn’t have the slightest clue other than he might be losing his mind. But then, his mind wasn’t really his mind to begin with. His mind died when he ran into the back of that semi in the 2050s. Now his mind was a manufactured tool. It was flesh and blood, but it was still manufactured. 

He thought about his older sister Maureen and seeing her dead body lying on the gurney in the Albany Medical Center Pathology ward. He missed her too. About the only connection he had left to humanity was Kerry. He would do his best to save her and her children from the carnage that was sure to consume not only Albany, but the world.

“It’s a good thing to wish for,” he whispered to himself as he grabbed hold of his shotgun and stood up.

Casey Smith was headed for the basement staircase when he heard heavy footsteps stomping on the kitchen floor, and the basement door slammed closed.

26

His heart went back to work, racing at full gallop. The adrenaline was mainlined through his brain. He knew in his gut the inevitable had happened. The home intruder was back.

“Thank God I haven’t retrieved Kerry yet,” Casey said to himself. “The intruder must be so insanely angry he won’t hesitate to kill her and her children.”

Cocking a fresh round into the chamber, Casey began to slowly climb the wood staircase. As he climbed, he heard the abrupt and harsh noise of dishes being smashed against the walls, and of tables and chairs being flipped. He heard angry moans and screams coming from the intruder. He also heard something else. Coughs. The intruder was yelling something unintelligible but at the same time, he was coughing up a lung.

Did the intruder have the dreaded virus? Almost certainly he did, and it was all the viral weaponry he needed to kill Casey if he got too close. The former priest would have no choice but to keep him at a safe enough distance, and then remove his body from the house. Maybe the coy dogs that came out of the nearby gravel pit would take care of him during the night. They were wild, angry dogs, and they were eaters of the dead.

When he came to the top of the stairs, he heard more coughing. But Casey heard something else too. He heard crying. The kind of semi-muted crying that comes from little kids when they’re so afraid of something or someone, they can’t hold back the tears. He also heard a female voice.

“When Casey sees you, he’s going to kill you,” Kerry said.

“Jesus,” the former priest whispered to himself. “The intruder must have been watching me the entire time. He knows I’m trying to protect Kerry.”

Casey Smith was out of options. He couldn’t very well climb back down into the basement and hide for the rest of the night. He had no choice but to attack the intruder, head-on. But he couldn’t go blasting his way into the kitchen. If the intruder had placed himself close enough to Kerry and the kids, the wide spray of the 12-gauge pellets would kill them all on the spot. That meant Casey had no other choice but to bust through the door, take a shot at the intruder’s lower legs, then attack him by engaging in hand-to-hand combat, just like he did this morning.

Will the intruder be armed with a gun or a knife? Casey had no way of knowing. It was a chance he’d have to take. He had to act quickly. He had to make his move now while he had his chance. Placing his left hand on the doorknob, Casey inhaled a deep breath and threw the door open.

To his right was the tipped-over kitchen table. The two kids were seated in two of the chairs. To his left was the intruder, his face swelled and purple with bruising, two of his front teeth missing. The stocky, balding man was holding Kerry with his thick, left arm, and with his right hand, he was pressing the tip of a French knife against her neck. He had a grin on his round, scruffy face and his eyes were wide and deep. If you looked into them for too long, you could see all the way to hell. Or so Casey, a man of God, thought.

Casey aimed the barrel at the intruder’s lower legs.

“Do it, Casey,” Kerry said. “Blow the motherfucker away. I don’t care if you shoot me in the process.”

“Mommy, don’t say that,” insisted one of the kids in a trembling voice. She was a little girl of about nine.

“Shoot him, Mr. Smith,” said the boy who was about twelve. “Just don’t shoot our mom.”

“Shut the fuck up, you brats,” said the home intruder who was free on cashless bail while shooting them a look. Then, refocusing on Casey, he once more grinned. “You don’t have the balls to press the trigger on that thing. Maybe it will blow me in half, but Kerry is the love of your life and you would never allow a single hair on her head to be harmed.”

“Kerry is married,” Casey said for the sake of the children, even though he knew in his gut that Kerry’s husband was likely dead from the virus.

The intruder coughed up a lung again. Was the entire kitchen infected with the virus? More than likely. Which meant Casey had to stop stalling. This time, it wasn’t his job to put down the intruder, render him harmless, then call the police. The police wouldn’t respond anyway.

This time it was Casey’s job to kill the home intruder and feed his viral flesh to the wild dogs.

27

Casey lowered the barrel just slightly. He fired. The blast connected with the home invader’s feet. In fact, the top of his left foot was completely obliterated while the shoe on the right foot was blown clean off, along with three of his toes. That’s when Casey rushed the intruder and slammed him up against the far wall.

There was a slider window located about five feet above the floor and the stocky man’s head went through it. He screamed and swiped the knife across Casey’s chest, opening it up like the zipper on a leather bag. Casey went down on his back, dropping the shotgun. He felt the burn of the cut and the blood leaking from his flesh and skin. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw an uninjured Kerry go to her kids. She went around the backs of their chair and wrapped her arms around them to protect them.

The intruder somehow managed to step forward. He threw himself onto Casey. He raised the knife as though to thrust it into the former priest’s neck and chest. But Casey summed his energy reserves and grabbed hold of the hand that gripped the knife. The two battled for control of the blade, the both of them screaming and hollering, the kitchen becoming a den of violence, the white tiled floor streaked with fresh blood that was leaking out of both men.

The frightened kids cried and sobbed while Casey used all his strength to pry the blade away from the intruder. He didn’t hesitate to thrust the blade into his thick neck. The cashless bail-released home intruder went wide-eyed. He straightened his back and exhaled. He tried to say something, but no words would come. Until he dropped face-first onto Casey’s torso, his final rancid breath coating the former priest’s face.

If this now dead son of a bitch has the virus, Casey said silently to himself, there’s no doubt in my mind that I now have it too. 

And if he had it, there was a good chance he would pass it on to Kerry and her children. Pushing the deadweight body off him, Casey looked a stunned Kerry in the eyes.

“You’ve got to take the kids back home,” he insisted. “This man had the virus. He’s given it to me. I don’t want to give it to you.”

“But Casey,” Kerry said, “you’ll need medical help. You need to go to a hospital.”

Getting back up onto his feet, Casey felt the blood leaking from his chest wound. He made his way to the kitchen sink and turned on the hot water spigot. He grabbed a fistful of paper towels from the dispenser and patted the six-inch-long gash. It turned out that the blade only created a surface wound. But it wasn’t the outside of his chest that had Casey worried. It was what was happening inside his chest that concerned him. The virus spreading throughout his lungs and heart.

He picked the shotgun up off the floor and handed it to Kerry.

“Take this with you,” he said. “If anybody tries to break in...if anyone attempts to harm you or the kids, don’t hesitate to shoot them. There are no available cops for your protection. You have no choice but to rely on yourself. Do you understand me, Kerry?”

She nodded, sadly.

“Okay, Casey,” she said, her face pale and withdrawn. “We’ll do as you say. I just wish there was something I could do to help you.”

The former priest patted his wound once more with the blood-stained paper towels.

“There isn’t anything you can do,” he said. Then, his eyes focused on the children. “Protect your mom, guys. Take care of her. She will need your help.”

They wiped their wet eyes with the backs of their hands, and they nodded.

“Goodbye, Mr. Smith,” the little girl said.

“See ya, Mr. Smith,” the boy said.

Kerry and Casey exchanged a long glance. But they said no parting words to one another. In both their hearts, they knew they would never see one another alive again.

28

Didn’t matter that Casey was likely infected with the virus. He didn’t want the home intruder’s dead body lying on his kitchen floor, bleeding out. He needed to get him outside and feed the corpse to the coy dogs.

Bending, he took hold of the short, stocky man’s feet and pulled him across the kitchen floor, over the wood dining room floor, and down the two steps into the TV room. He was leaving behind a trail of the dead man’s dark blood smeared all over the floors. It would take quite an effort to clean it all up.

Dropping the dead man’s feet, Casey opened the sliding glass door. Once more grabbing hold of the two feet, he yanked the body out onto the wood deck. From there, he dragged the body off the deck and onto the grass. There was a small opening at the far end of the fence where the coy dogs routinely invaded into the yard. He wanted to make things as easy for them as possible. That’s why he dragged the body all the way down the inclined lawn to the fence opening.

Staring at the dead man, he wondered if it would be worth going through his pockets to see if he had any money on him. Maybe he should pull out the man’s wallet and check for identification. But when Casey felt his lungs begin to ache and itch on the inside, causing him to break out into a coughing fit, he knew he was not long for this life. Like his sister Maureen, it was possible, Casey might not live out the night.

“That’s how aggressive the virus is in the metaverse,” he whispered to himself. “You go back in time and expect everything to be the same. But it’s not. Things are the same, but they’re different too.”

He brought the back of his hand to his forehead, and he coughed again. He felt feverish. He also tasted some blood in his mouth that came not from the gash the home intruder caused when he ran the knife over the former priest’s chest, but from the interior of his now diseased lungs.

“So, this is how it ends,” he said into the darkness.

In the distance, he saw the glow of the fires. It had gotten more intense as the hours passed. It was as if the entire city was burning down. Maybe it was. He heard the intermittent gunshots and the occasional explosion. He saw the pretty cop’s face and he tried to recall what it felt like to hold her in his arms after they made love that very afternoon. He also saw Kerry, and he recalled the love they made also.

Was it wrong to make love to two different women on the same day? They were the first women Casey had been within decades. That is the first women that the former metaverse priest, Father Casey Smith, had had.

“When you look at it that way,” he whispered to himself, “I deserved to have two women. I just hope that Kerry lives to see her children grow up.”

Slowly, he made his way back up to the deck. Heading into the house, he closed the sliding glass door behind him. He didn’t bother to start cleaning up the blood or sweeping the broken glass and plates from the kitchen floor. Instead, he went to the vestibule and grabbed his keys.

Making his way out the front door of the house he grew up in, Casey didn’t even bother to close the door behind him. He got in the truck, put the key in the starter, and fired up the engine. He backed out of the driveway and then shifted the transmission into drive. He tapped the gas and drove to the end of Orchard Grove. He made a left-hand turn and drove past vehicles that were on fire, passed bodies lying dead in the road, and on the side of the road. A couple of houses were on fire, but no firetrucks were available to put the fires out.

When he came to the traffic light, it wasn’t operating. He looked over both shoulders and went through the light. He drove past the old rick elementary school and hooked a left at a road called Upper Loudon. He drove past the quaint suburban houses and all the newly dead bodies that had been discarded outside them until he came to the Saint Pious Church where he’d been a priest for many years. About two dozen cars, SUVs, and trucks occupied the parking lot.

Parking the truck, he shut it down. He opened the door and left the keys in the ignition. Making his way to the front wooden doors of the church, he opened the one on the right and stepped inside. The smell of death immediately slapped him in the face. Stepping past the vestibule and into the church, he saw maybe a dozen bodies seated in the pews in the dim overhead light. The bodies were hunched over and dead. He knew there had to be more of them laid out in the pews and therefore hidden.

“They all came here to die,” Casey said to himself. “Better to die in the presence of the Lord, than to die all alone.”

Using all the energy he had left in his body, Casey Smith made his way along the center aisle until he found an unoccupied pew. He sat down in the pew and stared at the altar and the big crucifixion of Jesus mounted to the wall behind it. He made the sign of the cross and looked the suffering Jesus in the eyes.

“Forgive me, father, for I have sinned,” he whispered, followed by a cough so deep, blood seeped out the sides of his mouth. “Please, please, please allow me to die this time.”

With that, Casey Smith lay down on his left side. He brought his knees to his chest and he wrapped his arms around them as though for security.

“Please make this the end, Jesus,” he whispered. “Even you were allowed to die.” 

Casey Smith closed his eyes then, and he saw a bright white light off in the distance. It was a heavenly light that was welcoming him home. He went to the light.