D
ice was eerily silent when we got back. He didn’t speak and just kept moving all this equipment out to the picnic tables. We had gotten started pretty early in the morning. I didn’t have a watch, but the angels could tell time by the sun, and Leif informed me it was three in the morning.
It was now starting to get dark, and people were slowly trickling back in from their flights. We were eating leftover burgers, and there was more apple beer. No one was talking, and I had no idea why. Did something go wrong that I didn’t know about?
Dice finally hopped on the picnic table. He had his MP3 player out and a small headset on.
“People of the United States. Florida has brought you a gift. You should be able to leave your houses now, and you’ll notice the Rage Heads are now dead. Burn them, don’t bury them. But be smart about it. Don’t cause fire damage. We are about to move into the process of rebuilding the world.
“We’ve been through some shit. We’ve all lost people. It’s time to move forward. In a few weeks, we will elect a new government and remaking the world. But now we just celebrate. Mourn your dead. Give them a proper rest.
“We’re all scattered now. Some of us are no longer in our home states. We don’t talk to our neighbors anymore, and I want that to change. If you have a radio, I want to hear your story. We all do. The entire country wants to hear from you. This is more than just my music. We have a shared experience. If you’re hearing this and you have a way to talk back to us, do it. Tell us your story. Tell us about the people you lost. This is all we have now. We are our stories.”
Dice just hopped off the table, plugged his MP3 player into his contraption, and took a bite out of his burger. We all just waited. Was someone going to talk to us? Would I actually hear from someone who wasn’t in a state I’d already been to?
“Hello?” a male voice said.
“Hello. What’s your name, friend?”
“Davis.”
“Where are you from, Davis?”
“New Jersey.”
Oh, shit. A living person from New Jersey after everything I saw there?
“Some nasty shit went down in New Jersey, Davis. Tell us your story. How did you survive?”
I heard Davis’s breath hitch.
“We were visiting family in Georgia when the Rage Mutation hit. We tried calling our family and neighbors back home, but we got no answer. We wanted to go home, but they blocked all the roads with traffic, and the news cut out shortly after that. One of my friends back in Newark does radio as a hobby, but I couldn’t raise him either. We’ve gotten no news from New Jersey. Do you know what happened?”
“This all started because of tainted water, Davis. Armilus did this on purpose. New Jersey got hit pretty hard by the Rage Mutation, as did several other states who totally adopted their water supplement. If you didn’t turn, it means you avoided the tainted water, or you have a certain blood type. We will deliver a vaccine soon in case there is any of the water left.”
“Who are you? None of the governments have been able to fix this so far. How did some random man in Florida?”
I bit my fist. I was sure Dice, Aeron, and Leif just loved being referred to as some rando in Florida. I was trying so hard not to giggle.
“I didn’t do this alone, Davis. We all did this. I had help from all over the country. Several states helped with this, and Mexico was where the vaccine was produced. We’re going to fix the world. Tell me, Davis. Are you still in Georgia?”
“My brother-in-law has a house with one of those fallout shelters. We’ve been down here for years. We came down when war broke out. We’re starting to run low on rations, so your help came just in time.”
“Whereabouts in Georgia are you, Davis?” Aeron asked.
“The outer Macon area.”
“All the Rage Heads out that way are dead now, but you still have to worry about some people who didn’t turn. There’s a lot of disorder in Atlanta right now.”
A group of men stepped forward.
“We can bring a truck and go get them until we settle things. We have enough gas, and Georgia isn’t too far away.”
“No!” Davis said. “If there are bad people out there, they could have a radio and hear this. They’ll set an ambush.”
“He’s right,” Dice said. “How soon will you run out of supplies, Davis?”
“Maybe a month.”
“Can you hang tight another two weeks? By then, my people will have handled some things, and my team can personally bring you some supplies and deal with the riffraff.”
“Oh, thank you! My battery is about to die, but I’ve been listening to your show every day.”
“Take care, Davis. We’re coming.”
Now that Dice and Aeron had set the scene for personally helping people, I expected people to blow up the airwaves wanting food and help. But the line went silent until I heard a laugh I never wanted to hear again.
“Well, aren’t you just so fucking helpful? Are all four of you here this time? I know you have Ariel,” Isaiah said.
I guess now that Dice had opened up the airways, anyone could use them. It felt like someone had dumped ice water over my head, but I wasn’t afraid. I was furious. I wanted to jump through that radio and strangle him.
My gentle Leif just started laughing like a madman.
“Oh yeah. We’re all here, and we’re coming for you. We got rid of your little pets, Isaiah. America, do you know who was pulling strings at Armilus and created the Rage Heads? Your fucking president!”
What was Leif doing? He was going to cause riots. Aeron had gone around spreading the word about the tainted water, but I didn’t think anyone knew Isaiah was the mastermind behind it all.
“The rantings of a terrorist!” Isaiah said. “These men kidnapped my daughter, and they were the ones who created the Rage Mutation.”
Did Isaiah think they were keeping me in a little box, and I wasn’t allowed to speak? I mean, I was sitting right here. And I was about to clear up some shit. If it meant an angry mob with pitchforks and torches took him out instead of me, the end goal was still the same. He would be good and dead.
“Hi, First Daughter here, and I can totally speak for myself. Isaiah experimented on me and terrorized me as a child. He kidnapped me again after I ran away and kept me in a coma at a research facility trying to find a way to make those of you that didn’t turn Rage Heads too. I’ve got flash drives of the research, shit head. I’ve read the emails. Remember how pissed off you got about Hillary’s emails? I’ve got yours, and when the internet comes back up, they are going to get plastered everywhere.”
“America, can you see how evil these terrorists are? Do you see how they’ve groomed my own child against me? Do you see—”
“Hey, shit for brains!” I yelled, cutting him off. “If what I say isn’t true, then why wasn’t I mentioned during your campaign? If I was off missing getting groomed by terrorists, why didn’t you make a fucking peep about it? If you knew the water caused the Rage Mutation and knew who caused it, why didn’t you say anything on your radio show about it? You sent Nazis to Mexico because you knew they were working on a vaccine there, but you never warned a single damned person about the water.”
“You’re delusional, Ariel, and I’ll be praying for you. America, we do need to come together, but it’s fighting these terrorists. You see what they’ve done to my own child. You can’t trust that vaccine developed with a bunch of spics. You know we can’t trust anything and anyone that comes out of Mexico. They bring crime here, and that vaccine is going to kill you. This has been their plan all along.”
“You’re such a racist fuck,” I growled.
All of those people that didn’t want to share their stories when Dice asked were chiming in now. I heard accents from all over the fucking country.
“If I had enough gas, I’d come to D.C. and waste a perfectly good bullet on you.”
“You’re going to burn in Hell for this. No one actually voted for you. You just seized the throne, and I hate your radio briefs. You say nothing important. All you do is stoke hate.”
“Where are the terrorists? I’m not taking that vaccine. Everyone who is woke knows they use vaccines to sterilize you or microchip you. Like I’d ever trust a vaccine out of Mexico. Tell me where they are, and I’ll end this myself.”
The radio was blowing up from both sides—people who could look at the evidence and see the Rage Heads were now dead because of the Horsemen where Isaiah hadn’t lifted a finger to stop them or warn them about the water. Then there were the people who saw terrorists in anything unfamiliar and were willing to side with the Antichrist out of fear.
Dice cut that shit right off.
“We have proof of Isaiah’s crimes, and they will be made public soon. Before another war breaks out, I’m ending this. Enjoy some fucking John Lennon.”
Dice and his toys. He just swiped up on his MP3 player, and all the arguing stopped, and what must have been every single antiwar song John Lennon ever wrote started playing.
Dice gave us a grim look.
“Did you have to do that, Leif? We would have released that information after we killed him. You’ve just pissed off the entire country. I expect that shit from Aeron, but not from you.”
“He was taunting us, Dice. He would have gone the terrorist route eventually because he knows we are coming. He knows his Rage Head army is dead, so he wants a wall of humans around him to stop us. I just leveled the playing field so they are after him too.”
Don’t ask me where this man came from, but I could just tell he was the missing Horseman I hadn’t met yet when he stormed up to the picnic table and flopped down. He was the same size as the other angels, but his hair was pure white and way longer than the other Horsemen. He had it pulled back with a strip of leather.
He was dressed head to toe in black, and he had a black bandana around his neck like he pulled it up to disguise his face. He ran his hand down his face and glared at Leif. He totally ignored me.
“What the fuck are you thinking? All the militias Isaiah has gathered for personal security are riled up and swarming the White House. You know those people love a good terrorist story and have a problem with facts and evidence. They are ready to blow the head off of anyone who so much as farts in Isaiah’s direction. Why didn’t you just cut him off when he decided to make an appearance to taunt you? Wasn’t that the entire point of your radio show? To silence him?”
I guess I was finally meeting the mysterious Asher, who took one look at the shitshow going down in D.C. and decided to make an appearance in Florida. I hadn’t officially met him. I was just sitting at the same table. He hadn’t spoken to me and was acting like I didn’t exist.
“You know how the Antichrists are, Asher. They are just like movie villains. I watch the same movies Aeron does, and I’ve got a history of Antichrists to go on. I was hoping if I let him talk a little, he’d drop something that would help us. Leif just got his panties in a twist and pissed off the entire country. But he is right, in a way. Isaiah would have known he’s next and riled up his army of Bubbas.”
“Well, we have to step up our plans because not everyone in D.C. and the surrounding areas are a part of his militia. Many people have radios there, and they heard that shit. We have to stop Isaiah before another war breaks out, and we have to get the proof of his crimes out, so those loyal to him stand down. I don’t think you understand the sheer number of armed people outside the White House right now.”
Aeron stood and ran his fingers through his hair.
“I haven’t gotten to kill anything since Leonard and Bubba. Let’s get back to the hotel so we can get to Asher’s hole up in D.C.”
I held out my hand. If he would not introduce himself, then I was.
“I’m Ariel. Or you can call me Speedy if you want.”
Asher looked at my hand like I covered it in green baby shit and refused to take it.
“I’m aware. I think you should stay here.”
Okay, the Horseman of Conquest was a bit of a dick, and who was he to bench me right at the end? I needed to see Isaiah die. Dice, Leif, and Aeron surrounded me.
“She’s coming with us,” Aeron growled.
“We can’t leave her,” Dice said.
“We can’t have a Nephilim you’re all fawning over with us while we take down the most dangerous Antichrist we’ve encountered so far!” Asher said.
Leif just slung his arm over my shoulder and smirked.
“She has to come. You know she’s a Harbinger, and she’s painted us in the White House twice now. Without her, we die. With her, we have a totally lovely orgy after we send Isaiah back to Hell.”
Asher just scowled.
“Fine, but I’m not babysitting her. Let’s go before more people die.”
We started heading off to the hotel. The time had come to face my father and his militias, finally. I didn’t blame Leif for getting mad and letting it slip that Isaiah was responsible for the Rage Mutation. We were about to kill the sitting President. He didn’t get that seat legally, and he definitely abused his power. Still, even if people didn’t like him, they got upset when you assassinated government officials, even if they were the Antichrist.
We would have had to get our proof out with angry mobs after us. Sure, Leif created different angry mobs, but at least it would make a little more sense to the more reasonable people in the population when we announced he was dead and tried to show them our proof.
Asher walked ahead of us while Leif, Aeron, and Dice stayed close to me and held my hand. This was it. Everything we had done so far to get to this point was paying off. People in several states had been vaccinated, and Rage Heads all over the world were dead. We just needed to kill the Antichrist, and I could retire in Mexico with my angels.
My heart was thumping in my chest, and my adrenaline was pumping. I was going to get my revenge for everything he had done to me and what he had done to the entire world. I was sure he had some ace up his sleeve, but I had all four Horsemen now.
Asher seemed to hate me and didn’t want me to be there, but he had a vested interest in sending Isaiah back to Hell. Surely that would mean he wouldn’t let me die at the White House, right? Asher was this big question mark, and he didn’t seem like he wanted to get to know me.
So, why the fuck was he included in that painting I did? I pushed the painting aside. I didn’t need to be thinking about orgies right now.
I was totally going to Tyrion Lannister my father, and I was here for it.