There were only a dozen or so people in the mosque. All were men who appeared to be middle-aged and older. I shot nine with the Uzi, beheaded two with the scimitar, and let one run from the building, shrieking as if his mind had come unhinged.
My nerves were steady during the slaughter, which only added to my disgust. But the part of me screaming to stop was tamped deeper and deeper into the bowels of my soul. It was as if I were working on some kind of sadistic autopilot, only I knew exactly who the pilot was in this case.
AO.
When I was done, I casually walked back to the car, packed my weapons in their cases, and drove for New Hampshire, obeying the speed limit, in no particular rush. I didn’t need the navigation system or AO instructing me where to go now. I was operating on pure instinct.
What I had done was unconscionable. Murdering people while they worshipped in what was supposed to be the sanctity of their faith. I had easily slipped past being a monster. I was a demon. I was the goddamn devil!
Driving down I-95, I saw tiny tendrils of smoke rising from the steering wheel. My first thought was to pull over and find out what was wrong with the car.
It wasn’t the car.
The heat emanating from my palms was burning so hot, they were melting the wheel.
I cast a glance in the rearview mirror. The whites of my eyes had been replaced by black-veined rubies.
“What the fuck is happening to me?”
I also realized I was harder than a fire hydrant. It felt as if I were becoming something else, transforming into the unearthly creature I had doomed myself to become by my actions.
The moment I thought of taking an exit and turning back, my brain mushroomed. The Mustang swerved back onto the road. My head keranged off the side window.
I couldn’t go home. First, because there was more to be done. Second, I couldn’t let Candy and Katie see me like this. I wasn’t their husband and father anymore. How could I be? My cock pulsated when I thought about mowing down innocent people in prayer. My hands could melt glass.
All I wanted to do was cry, but the tears wouldn’t come—couldn’t come.
The radio clicked on by itself. A newsman reported on the multiple quarantines being enforced in major cities around the country. What they thought was Ebola was actually some new virus that mimicked the disease but in turn was twice as deadly. It was spreading at an alarming rate. Worse still, it was now confirmed to be an airborne disease. The mortality rate was just under ninety percent. The CDC’s resources were stretched thinner than the finest thread.
At the current rate of infection, it would jump from metropolitan centers to outlying areas in days, if not hours.
Was I driving into an infected zone?
That wouldn’t have been a bad thing. Fate would have to be the one to stop me in my tracks, sending a microscopic bug into my system, killing me quickly, painfully. I was the dreaded Martians in The War of the Worlds, weaving a path of destruction, a Goliath waltzing right into the tiniest David.
Another story caught my distracted attention just as I was crossing the border into New Hampshire. A freak storm had hammered the Midwest overnight, demolishing countless vital crops. Hurricanes had also popped up in Florida, wiping out orange groves as easily as a kid holding a magnifying glass over an ant farm.
Everything was coming unglued.
The car stopped of its own accord in Portsmouth.
“No,” I said, staring at the high-spired church. “Not again. Please, not again.”
AO’s voice blared from the speakers, rattling my ribs, threatening to shred my eardrums.
“YES. AGAIN. WITHOUT IT, ALL WAS FOR NOTHING. DO IT NOW!”
My head ached; my flesh sizzled. And no matter how much I didn’t want to do it, I found myself exiting the car, weapons in hand.
Please, someone see the madman with the gun and Arabic sword and call the police! Make sure you get a cop with an anxious trigger finger. Shoot me! Kill me now before I ruin the lives of everyone in the church!
The big double doors squealed on hinges in desperate need of oil. An organ played, singing to the heavens with massive pipes bursting with fervent air. Walking down the aisle, I looked up to see the adult choir practicing. Men and women holding songbooks before them sang their hearts out.
“Be not afraid, I go before you always…”
I used to sing that very same song when I was a kid in the choir, two years before I was eligible to be an altar boy. When I was a kid, I loved just being in a church. It was so peaceful, so comforting. In church, I felt safe, cared for.
Now I was here to desecrate it.
I smelled something sharp and metallic.
My hand was cooking the handle of the Uzi!
The choir didn’t even know I was in the church. How could they? The organ was playing loud enough to be heard in space.
Turning the gun on myself proved impossible. Not only wouldn’t my hand cooperate, but my spirit, if I even had one anymore, was anxious to make the singing stop—forever.
I stepped farther down the center aisle to better see everyone in the choir. A man saw me, looked right at me as if to say just one more chorus and I’ll be right with you.
The first barrage of bullets wiped the flesh from his face, spraying fragments of bone into the stained-glass window behind him. My arm swept from left to right, sparing no one. The organist slammed into the keys, bouncing off the organ and flipping over the rail. He landed at my feet, badly wounded, but alive.
“Allahu Akbar,” I said, knowing I had a shit-eating grin on my face.
I pulled away from the church just as I heard the first sirens wailing.
One more stop.
There was a synagogue a few miles down the road. I’d never been to Portsmouth, but somehow I knew damn well about the synagogue. I just needed to spread my charm there and I could punch out for the day.
My clothes smoldered. Even my hair smelled the way it did when it got caught in a blow dryer.
Some people burned in hell for their sins.
It looked like I was getting an early start.