Rho Agenda Inception Series Science Fiction Thrillers by Richard Phillips ➱ Series Tour with Giveaway
ONCE DEAD (EXCERPT)
Sister Mary Judith limped slowly
through the darkened slum that had been her home the last forty-eight years of
her fading life. Her right shoe hurt her foot more than usual tonight. But her
bunions weren’t likely to get better. And compared to the poor people whose
souls she sought to save and whose bodies her clinic treated, she had no
complaints.
Tonight that clinic had failed a
three-year-old child and the woman whose tears still dampened Sister Mary Judith’s
shoulder. Malaria had taken the little girl from her ’mother’s arms and into
God’s. Salara. Such a beautiful name. A name that had been repeatedly sobbed
into her left ear as the mother wept in her old arms.
She was so lost in the memory that
she failed to notice the running man until he staggered into her, knocking
Sister Mary Judith to the ground. Although pain lanced through her left hand,
she did not cry out. But the cry of pain from the running man followed him into
the darkness.
Rubbing her wrist, the sister
flexed her fingers. It wasn’t broken. She’d always been blessed with strong
bones and, thankfully, her advancing years had failed to rob her of that
blessing. Apparently, the Lord needed her bones strong so she could continue to
aid these people.
Struggling back to her feet, Sister
Mary Judith glanced in the direction the man had disappeared. What had he been
running from? Not really running. More of a barely controlled stagger, with one
arm hanging limply at his side. Something had so terrified him that he had
forced himself to flee despite injuries that would have curled a strong man
into a fetal ball.
Turning to look in the direction
from which the man had come, a new thought occurred to her. He couldn’t have
come that far from whoever had injured him. If it had been a gang fight,
perhaps others lay injured or dying.
Sister Mary Judith turned her steps
in that direction. Despite their appallingly violent deeds, she had no fear of
the gangs. She moved among them every day, an old nun who posed no threat to
anyone, so unattractive that rape never crossed their minds, her clinic so
undersupplied and futile that it offered nothing worth stealing. A doctor to
set bones and sew up open cuts, boiled rags for bandages, boiled water for
washing wounds, a few old surgical instruments, a surgical table, some basic
antiseptics, some cots, and an old woman’s faith and hardworking hands. Nothing
more.
At the entrance into the alley, she
smelled death before she saw it, a smell that overwhelmed this place’s
underlying stench. The smell propelled the old nun forward, adding an increased
urgency to her shuffling steps. Over the years her eyes had become accustomed
to the darkness night brought to these backstreets and alleys, but tonight’s
moonlight eliminated the need for that talent, bathing the alley in its ghostly
glow. And in the midst of that pale light, seven bodies drained their life’s
blood into the mud.
Sister Mary Judith moved among
them, kneeling briefly beside each victim to place a finger on the carotid
artery. One man had fallen face down several steps from the cluster of bodies,
as if he had tried to pursue the one who had fled the alley. And like the
fleeing man, this one was shirtless, although, in the moonlight, it seemed he
wore a shirt of blood. There was so much of it that the nun gasped when she
felt a faint pulse in his throat.
Despite her advancing years, Sister
Mary Judith was strong. Nevertheless, the thin layer of skin that covered the
hard muscles beneath was so slick with warm blood she had difficulty turning
the man onto his back. When she achieved it, her hope that she could save him
withered within her soul. Like his back, his chest and arms were covered in
shallow cuts. Worse, a deep wound penetrated his left side. Removing her scarf,
the sister wadded it into a tight ball, pressing it as deeply into the wound as
she could manage before rising to her feet and rushing back the way she had
come.
Doctor Jafar Misra’s house was less
than a block away, but Sister Mary Judith felt the weight of all her years as
she hurried along, holding tight to the hope that God would allow her to
accomplish one good thing on this sorrow-filled evening. When she reached the
narrow door, it took more than a minute for Jafar to open it to her insistent
knock. It took another half-hour to help Jafar load the man onto a rickshaw and
deliver him to the darkened clinic.
By the time they had laid him on
her surgery table, she could barely feel any pulse at all. She took the fact
that he still lived as an indication that the Lord was not yet done with this
man. If the man’s will was as strong as his jawline and lean musculature seemed
to indicate, perhaps there was yet hope.
Doctor Misra, working by lamplight,
with Sister Mary Judith assisting, bathed the wounds in Betadine and sewed them
closed. Then, as she tied off the last knot, as if mocking their feeble
attempts to save him, their patient shuddered and passed from this world into
the next.
~ ~
~
There was no tunnel with a
beautiful light to beckon him forward. Jack Gregory hadn’t expected one. But he
hadn’t expected this either.
A pea-soup fog cloaked the street,
trying its best to hide the worn paving stones beneath his feet. It was London,
but this London had a distinct, nineteenth-century feel. Not in a good way
either. For some reason it didn’t really surprise him. If there was a doorway
to hell, Jack supposed a gloomy old London backstreet was as appropriate a
setting as any.
While his real body might be
bleeding out somewhere in Calcutta, here Jack suffered from no such wounds. He
stepped forward, his laced desert combat boots sending wisps of fog swirling
around them. Long, cool, steady strides. A narrow alley to his left beckoned
him and he didn’t fight the feeling. He hadn’t started this journey by running
away and he’d be damned if he was going to end it running away from whatever
awaited him.
The fog wasn’t any thicker in the
alley. The narrowness just made it feel that way. Jack didn’t look back, but he
could feel the entrance dwindle behind him as he walked. To either side, an
occasional door marred the walls that connected one building to the next, rusty
hinges showing just how long it had been since anyone had opened them. It
didn’t matter. Jack’s interest lay in the dark figure that suddenly blocked his
path.
The man’s face lay hidden in
shadow, although it wasn’t clear what dim light source was casting the shadows.
Still, Jack could see his lips move, could hear the gravel in his voice.
“Are you certain you wish to walk
this path?”
Jack paused. “Didn’t think I had
much choice.”
“Not many do.”
“I’m listening.”
“You’ve thought about death?”
“Figured it was just a big sleep.”
The shadowy figure hesitated.
“Nothing so easy.”
“Heaven and hell, then? Enlighten
me.”
“Keep walking this path and you’ll
find out. I offer you something different.”
“Ahhh. My soul for my life, is it?”
The laugh rumbled deep inside the
other’s chest. “I’ve been around a very, very long time, but I’m not your
devil.”
“Then what are you?”
For several
seconds, silence hung in the fog between them.
“Think of me as a coma patient,
living an eternity of sensing the things going on around me, unable to
experience any of them. I know what’s happening, what’s about to happen, but I
feel nothing. Such immortality is its own special kind of hell. Humanity offers
me release from that prison.”
“I’m not interested in being your
vessel.”
“I have limitations. I can only
send back one who lingers on death’s doorway, not someone who is beyond natural
recovery. There are rules. My host must willingly accept my presence and the
host remains in control of his or her own being. His nature is unchanged. I, on
the other hand, get to experience the host’s emotions for the duration of the
ride. I can exist in only one host at a time and, once accepted, I remain with
that host until he dies.”
Jack stared at the shadowed
figure’s face. Had he seen a flicker of red in those seemingly empty eye
sockets?
“No thanks.”
“I don’t deny that there’s a down
side. As I said, I don’t change a host’s nature in any way. But what he feels
excites me and some of that excitement feeds back to my host. The overall
effect is that he still loves what he loves and hates what he hates, but much
hotter. He’s the same person he always was, just a little bit more so. And because
my intuitions also bleed over, my hosts find themselves drawn to situations
that spike their adrenaline. Because of that, few of them live to a ripe old
age.”
“So you ride these people until
they die, then move on to the next person.”
“I never said anything about this
being a random selection. I have certain needs, and those can’t be fulfilled by
inhabiting some Siberian dirt farmer or his wife. With all my limitations, I
have a very clear sense of those who stride the life and death boundary, fully immersed
in humanity’s greatest and most terrible events. I always choose a host from
this group.”
“Such as?”
“Alexander, Nero, Caligula, Attila,
Joan of Arc, Napoleon, and hundreds of others, including another Jack who once
roamed these London alleys.”
“Not a great references list.”
“It’s not about your notions of
good or evil. Whether you want it or not, you are a part of it.”
“So my choice is to die now or to
open myself to evil?”
“As I said, I can’t make you
anything you aren’t. Hosting me merely amps up your inner nature.”
“And you expect me to believe
that?”
Again the demon paused. “You pride
yourself on your highly developed intuition, your ability to know if someone is
lying to you. What is that inner sense telling you now?”
The truth was that, at the moment,
it wasn’t telling him shit. Or maybe it was, and Jack was just too damn tired
to listen. Jack stared at the shadowy figure before him, inhaled deeply, failed
to feel a real breath fill his lungs, and decided.
“I guess I can live with that.”
~ ~
~
Doctor Misra had filled out and
signed the death certificate for one Jack Gregory, the name on the
identification card in the man’s wallet. Sister Mary Judith watched as he took
one last look at the chiseled face of the dead man on the table, shook his weary
head, and departed.
Having swabbed up most of the blood
that dripped from her surgery table, Sister Mary Judith straightened, placed
her right hand in the small of her back and pressed, as if that simple act
could drive away the pain that hard work and old age had placed there. Glancing
up at the table and the stitched up corpse that lay atop it, she grabbed a
white sheet from the freshly laundered stack, flapped it out, and let it fall
through the air to slowly drape the body. As the sheet settled over the dead
man’s face, she saw something that sent a shiver up her spine, a shallow
billowing in the sheet where it covered his mouth.
Leaning close, she peeled back the
cotton cloth, once again placing her finger on the carotid artery. One strong
pulse brought her erect. Then the man’s eyes fluttered open. And as Sister Mary
Judith stared into those deep brown orbs, a fleeting red glint within those
pupils froze her soul. Unable to deal with the vision that engulfed her, her
mind skittered to a safer place, leaving her lips repeating a single phrase, a
mantra that would follow her through the remainder of her days.
“Dear Lord, The Ripper walks the
earth.”
Tupac Inti leaned against the
bars, his dark eyes drawn to the gathering storm in the Palmasola prison
courtyard a dozen feet below his cell. In the eighteen months he’d been
imprisoned awaiting trial, he’d seen lots of violence, much of it initiated by
neo-Nazi gang members of the Unión Juvenil Cruceñista, or UJC. After all, they had
access to money, and that meant the Disciplina Interna, the prison gang who ran
Palmasola, left them alone. Real guards rarely entered Santa Cruz’s notorious
prison town, preferring to maintain a perimeter defense to prevent escapes,
leaving the internal governance to the prisoners themselves.
Tupac had been lucky. Lucky to be as big as he was.
Lucky to be one of the many Quechua people with muscles hardened by years
swinging a pick in a Bolivian mine. As he watched the eight swastika tattooed
pricks converge on the newcomer, Tupac knew that this man had no such luck. The
guards were either too disinterested to intervene or they were looking forward
to the show. Tupac suspected the latter.
The object of neo-Nazi attention stood bare-chested
in the filth strewn exercise area, having just completed a vigorous workout
that had left his upper body glistening with sweat in the hot, late-afternoon
February sun. What he’d done to get on the UJC’s bad side Tupac didn’t know. It
didn’t take much. The man had no tattoos that would have placed him in a
competing gang and he was Caucasian, a definite plus with the neo-Nazis. But,
from the scars that crisscrossed the man’s chest and back, he was no stranger
to getting on someone’s bad side. Whatever the newcomer had done, here in
Palmasola, being on the UJC’s bad side was the equivalent of a death sentence.
To look at the man, you’d never know he was about
to die. He wasn’t big like Tupac, just over six feet, with lean muscle that
rippled beneath his skin at every movement. But it was the man’s eyes that
fascinated Tupac. As those eyes surveyed the men closing in on him, they held
no trace of fear. The sight triggered the memory of a black leopard he’d once
spotted in the high Amazon. Hungry, hunting eyes, glistening with animal
eye-shine. It sent a sudden chill up Tupac’s spine.
When the UJC’s champion stepped forward, it was no
surprise. Clean shaven with short blond hair, at six-foot-six he was almost as
big as Tupac. Although most Bolivians of German descent were good, honest
people, that didn’t apply to Karl Liebkin. Until his arrest during an elite
police unit raid on the UJC’s headquarters, he had been a rising star in the
neo-Nazi subculture, claiming more than two dozen personal kills. Being in
Palmasola hadn’t hurt his body count. Karl liked to keep his victims alive,
handing their broken and bloody bodies over to his comrades for final
disposition. Their screams often continued for more than an hour.
It was why nobody screwed with these guys. But from
that look in the newcomer’s eyes, he was about to.
When Karl made his move, it was as if the newcomer had
seen it coming before it began. With an easy grace that wasted no energy, the
newcomer shifted his weight, letting the shiv slash by the side of his neck
with less than an inch to spare, using the motion to coil for the counterstrike
that put all of his two hundred pounds into the open hand impact, directly into
Karl’s windpipe. The blow dropped the bigger man to his knees, sending a bloody
froth bubbling over his lips.
The newcomer’s spinning side kick impacted the side
of Karl’s skull, directly over his right ear, the force of impact snapping his
head to the side and dropping him on his face with blood from the shattered
eardrum leaking down. From the jail cells and the crowded alleys that
surrounded the conflict, shouts and cheers rose up, growing in volume as the
newcomer picked up the shiv and cut Karl’s throat from ear to ear, sending a
fountain of red neo-Nazi blood spurting toward his stunned companions.
Then, like the black leopard, the newcomer was
among them, whirling and slashing, killing the first two before they realized
their danger. The first of the survivors to regain his senses bull-rushed the
red-eyed demon, but the attacker’s attempted tackle was met with a Judo flip
that converted his momentum into a flailing arc toward an impact that would
break his ribs. In the midst of the flipping motion, the newcomer slid his left
hand up the Nazi’s face from chin to eyes, his fingers thrusting, ripping, and
tearing the blue and white orbs from their sockets, leaving them dangling down
their owner’s bloody cheeks as he writhed on the ground.
Then the shirtless man stood clear, Karl’s shiv in
his right hand. Though his breath panted out, it was clearly from battle lust,
not exertion. Four down, four to go. And when those four backed away, the
newcomer dropped the shiv and turned his back on them, stepping across Karl’s
body on his way back to his cell as wild cheers shook the red brick hell-town.
And as the newcomer made that walk, Tupac got a
good look into the man’s strange eyes. It was a look that left him cold.
They say that what happens in Vegas
stays in Vegas. Unfortunately, Calcutta
couldn’t make that claim.
Jack Gregory had always craved
danger’s adrenaline rush. But in the two
years since his Calcutta deathbed experience and his subsequent rebirth atop
the old nun's surgery table, that craving wrapped him like an anaconda, hard
enough to make him question the nature of his near-death encounter. Whether or not the mind parasite that had
accompanied him back across the life-death threshold was a hallucination, it
had changed the way he experienced this world.
And if Jack didn't get control of it, that amped up craving was going to
render him every bit as dead as most of the world thought he already was.
Opening his eyes, Jack set the
phone down on the night-stand and shifted his gaze to the naked twenty-three
year old Polynesian woman who lay sprawled face down on the opposite side of
the bed. The right half of her body lay
uncovered, revealing a very shapely hip and thigh. The curve of her right breast where it
pressed into the mattress was almost enough to make him climb back into bed to
reawaken the fire within that lovely body.
But the phone call he’d just
received made it clear that his Kauai vacation had come to an end. The bedside clock read 7:15 a.m., so it was
1:15 p.m. in Maryland. Levi Elias had
taken the initiative to book Jack a ticket on the first available flight
back. That meant an inter-island hop to
Honolulu, followed by the redeye to Los Angeles. Another five hour flight after that and he
should arrive at Baltimore Washington International sometime tomorrow
afternoon.
After a quick shower, Jack slipped
on a pair of Dockers, his sandals, and a wildly floral Hawaiian shirt before
stuffing the rest of his things into a small canvas duffel. He wiped down his Glock and set it topmost in
the bag, then zipped it shut. Because he
would be flying commercial, he’d have to chuck the gun into a dumpster before
he headed to the airport. Although it
didn’t fit his hand quite as nicely as his favored Heckler and Koch, here on
the island, the Glock had been easier to come by. Oh well.
Easy come, easy go.
With one lingering glance back at
the sleeping woman, Jack opened the door and stepped out onto the walkway that
ran along the beach, his bag slung over his left shoulder. Jack paused, feeling the ocean breeze ruffle
his brown hair. The waves breaking on
the beach fifty yards from where he stood produced the wonderful rushing sound
that sucked the cares right out of his soul.
Jack took a long, deep breath and savored the salt taste on his tongue. He was going to miss this.
Walking down the path, Jack spotted
a dumpster and, after a quick glance to ensure he was alone, dropped the gun
inside. Fifty yards farther, he reached
the parking lot, climbed into his rented white Camry, and turned onto Poipu
Road. As he began the thirty minute
drive to the Lihue airport, Jack marveled at his readiness to sign on for this
NSA operation. Even though he’d
previously agreed to make himself available to the NSA as a private contractor,
he had the right to accept or decline such contracts as he saw fit.
There was only one reason he had
accepted this particular assignment:
Janet Price. The last time he’d
teamed with the deadly NSA agent, Jack’s actions had shocked her. He recalled seeing the distrust shining in
Janet’s beautiful brown eyes, just before she’d turned her back and walked away
from him in Miami. That memory had left
a bad taste that he couldn’t seem to wash away.
Three weeks on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean had failed
to expunge it.
Perhaps this time he could prove
that he wasn’t a rampaging psychopath with a death wish. And if he could convince himself of the same
thing, so much the better.
Well before sunrise, on the morning of January 31st, 2018, I
sat in my backyard with family and friends to toast the first Super Blue Blood
Moon since the end of the American Civil War in 1866. To say that the
experience was awesome is an understatement.
Our single moon, locked in its tidal grip with our world,
so that it shows only one face to humanity, is a beautiful thing to behold. But
in the grip of Earth’s shadow, it reveals itself to be something more: a
blood-moon, ripped from Earth’s heart by a collision with her primordial,
sister-planet. As a result of that impact, our lovely moon grows ever
more distant, year by year, century by century, millennium by millennium, until
eventually it will be lost to the heavens. And should humans survive until that
time, they will find themselves alone in a dark night, deprived of the goddess
to whom Celtic priests and priestesses prayed.
So now, in these troubled times, I encourage you to look to
our world, to our moon, and be thankful for all we have, for all we love. For
it is love, and not hate, that binds us together, that brings us peace.
Richard Phillips
Comments
Post a Comment