Kill
By Andy Marlow
Copyright 2011 Andy Marlow
Smashwords Edition
Discover other Titles by Andy Marlow:
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It’s in the name, really. Except there’s also a dinosaur at the end.
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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Chapter 1: Peter
The road ahead snaked into the distance, a mud-coloured meandering sprawl disappearing behind the horizon. Its eventual end, and the silhouettes of vegetation along the way, were bathed in the all-embracing glow of a rising desert sun, huge and glorious against the chalk-blue backdrop of the receding cosmos. The horizon was flat, a level line from east to west, save for the odd bump of rocky stack or a particularly tall cactus plant.
Sheltered by the embracing arms of two rough-hewn cliff faces was the scene of our crime, where deeds most foul would soon be undertaken. Here, the sun’s light and warmth were visible only through a gap in the rockface, where human machinery had broken through the design of nature to build a path for his snaking roadway. The signs of human interference were visible to this day, despite the passing of time and weathering of erosion: pockmarks where dynamite had made its impression, and odd scars in the naturally linear patterns of the sedimentary rockface. Nature had been tamed, but the sun was not to be held back: it burst its way through the passageway and when it had the chance, exploded left and right to fill all but the scrubs and bushes hugging the cliff-face with the awakening of light.
The road that passed through the crevice and marched against the flow of sunlight curved left and right haphazardly, only straightening to obey the demands of nature and pass through her stony gateway. To the right its route was drowned out by white light; to the left, only illuminated, and one could see its winding path five miles back to the city of Jamahiriya.
Out here, nobody had heard of the war going on back in urban civilisation. Out here, no-one knew of the terrorists trying to bring down the government. Out here was innocence and tranquillity, a simple way of life untroubled by politics and murder.
That was, until today.
For Peter Robinson stood by the side of the road, coiled like a waiting adder. Peter Robinson would kill today.
His target lay across the man-made track way, across the path of sunlight, ensconced in a wooden shack almost hidden in the cliff’s shade of protection. She lived out here for protection and solitude: five miles from civilisation gave her those privileges, but any further and she would have exposed herself to highwaymen and ruffians lurking in the wilderness. By this cliff-face, she was safe, hidden, still within the jurisdiction of Jamahiriya’s law enforcement agencies.
His body was stationary: hidden in the shadows; hidden in plain sight. His target was not home yet, so he was simply to wait it out until the appointed time when she would return from berry-picking in the woods. Until then, he may as well not have been living. His life had sapped into the ground like water from a tree and he stood now as still as any of the cacti surrounding him, as much a piece of furniture in the living room of nature as they were.
His lungs still rose, his heart was still beating, that was sure. Yet these were mechanisms of nature, not evidence of life; his mind was elsewhere, gone; his body, a vessel, filled now with empty readiness.
Perhaps his mind was permanently gone. It did seem that way these days: he would be in this state, an empty vessel, for days on end until a new target was provided for him- and then life would return at the death of another, at the prospect and idea of draining the essence from a living creature’s soul.
But it may not have been his life; he may not have had life, in the ordinary sense of the word. His identity, whatever it was, had been subsumed under the idea of: kill. It was more than his raison d’être. It was his very essence.
It was what made him him. Every skill in his possession, every muscle on his bones, had been trained for this very task, time and time again. His vision had become precise and formed a permanent tunnel, a visual barrel-of-the-gun down which all he could see were targets and victims. The rest was as a nothing to him. The concept of the world, the they-self he found himself in, was that one word: kill.
Thud Thud, went the beat of his heart, the mechanical pump that fuelled his body. Thud Thud. Yet there was no person to pump for. Not yet. His face was of a dead man, and perhaps he was. Perhaps the life he felt when he took another was simply the equalising force of bringing him and her, or him and he, together into the same form of existence: death.
The MP4 in his grasp was the instrument of choice. It weighed heavy on his soul. Though a soulless piece of metal, it was perhaps the only thing in the world he could connect with. If love were a concept he understood, he may even have said he loved it. He felt at one with it, as if it were part of his own body and not simply a tool for his labours. The passion with which he administered to it was like the passion of a husband to his wife, or an enthusiast to his hobby: he had cleaned and inspected it himself this morning, spending over an hour making sure every nut was tightened, ever scratch buffed out, every splinter removed. He had great pride in his gun.
Tick Tock went his watch, and a silent vibration stimulated him to life. Thud Thud went his heart, faster, and now it had someone to pump for: the life in his body had finally turned on; the light in his eyes had finally lit up. The machine was active and ready to go.
Its feet, his feet, began to slowly move forward: mechanically, methodically. He was in no rush. His watch was his guide and its ticks informed his every movement, working his muscles like clockwork as if it were his guide, his master, his life-giving creator.
His boots were heavy. Not that this bothered him, but it bothered nature and the spirits of this valley, for they knew what he was about to do. Each time his footfall fell on Gaia’s innocent surface, she let out a clouded protest right into his face.
If he was human, he might have spluttered, have coughed or protested. Yet he was not human. He had the heart of a man and the lungs of a man; the brain of a man and the limbs of a man- but not the mind. Nor the will. His existence was programmed; never flexible, never free, but governed by the tick of his watch and the whims of his paymasters. At seven o’clock, the watch had turned this killing machine on. And at half past seven, when the deed was done, it would turn him off once more, returning him to the state of empty vessel, waiting for orders to be inserted like coins in a slot machine; waiting for his leader to give him the hatred he required.
His mechanical feet led him onto the road and into the wide shaft of sunlight beaming down upon it. Heat was carried on its rays: blistering, uncomely heat which would make any normal man cringe- especially any normal man wearing the kind of kit Peter Robinson was carrying. Yet his face remained the same: rigid. Determined. Dead. Life was only exhibited in his eyes, and even then very little; his facial muscles, from cheek to forehead, had grown weak from lack of use and sagged like those of a man twice his age.
The heat lasted but a minute while he crossed the road. And then there it was, just to his right and emerging from the shadows: his target for today. The house of Miriam Stopwood.
The house, or shack, was built from dark pinewood and had stood there for a century or so. It looked its age. Of the two storeys, only the ground floor was still useable since anyone foolish enough to walk upstairs may just have found themselves falling through the ceiling. Even the ground floor looked delapidated: windows askew and doors hanging loose, a disused garage to the side. Any normal person would have abandoned this place years ago. Any normal person would have thought this place was abandoned. But Peter knew Miriam, and she was no normal person. It made perfect sense that she would choose a hole like this for her home.
There was no insulation, no running water, no electricity, no gas- yet this suited her. Being the middle of the desert, there was little need for padded walls and double glazing, and a well just five minutes from here provided her with all her water. Peter knew this from the intelligence he had gathered about her. He had been staking her out for several days now and knew her routine. Right now it was seven o’clock in the morning, and she would be on her way back from berry-picking in the woods beyond the ridge.
The house was, therefore, deserted; yet Peter still felt the need to maintain an air of caution. He did not go blazing into the property, but was carefully, slowly, softly treading his way towards it. Presently he reached the garden path: a cobbled affair completely out of character with the rest of the property (or, indeed, the rest of the natural environment) more suited to an English country mansion than this desert hellhole. On either side were similarly out of place shrubs and foliage, plucked from various corners of the world and arranged in terms of colour and size. Given the run-downness of the interior, it was surprising how much care the owner took of her garden.
The door was ajar. It stood on hinges and only one of them was working, so the rectangular plank of wood normally used to provide a block to unwanted visitors, and normally used to standing up straight, was now doing neither of those things: it balanced precariously, still, in a lopsided position, leaving a permanent crawling space big enough for a grown man to fit through. Big enough even to fit a gun through.
It was tight, but Peter managed it. He even avoided getting any splinters, and as his gaze hit upon the inside he found it airy and light, with an inexplicable gust of cool wind coming from somewhere to his left and cooling his parched, dried, cracked skin. He would have smiled at the freshness of it, had his mind not been a disciplined, thoughtless mechanism of murder.
The first thing to do, now he was inside, was to find somewhere to hide. This room was as good as any. The hallway was a simple affair: rectangular floor space, two doors on either side, a staircase on the left. From one door came bright light and breezy sensations; from the other, darkness and the vague image of a bare, boarded-up room, perhaps abandoned or disused. There was no furniture inside it.
From what he had viewed of her movements, Miriam would be entering from the brightly-lit doorway in precisely three minutes, so he had until then to find some concealment from behind which he could aim.
Under the stairway, like under most stairways, was a cupboard. And like most cupboards under the stairs, it was most likely crawling with insects and snakes, spiders and scorpions. While somewhere like Britain or Scandinavia would have rendered such worries to be mere vanity, here in the desert the arachnids and scorpions could be deadly. If you were unlucky enough to be bitten by one particular species of spider, Peter had heard, you had only ten minutes before death became you.
Nevertheless, it was the best place to hide. So, forgetting himself for the moment, Peter climbed into the cupboard and waited.
It was a terse wait. Within a minute, the nerves on the back of his neck were tickling and he knew that something had taken an interest to his skin and was crawling about on it, upwards and downwards and side to side in that scattered fashion which characterises an insect’s gait. It may have been something with six or eight legs, or maybe even ten. He did not know; but what he did know was that, whatever it was, its bite might be deadly. If he was really unlucky today, the hunter might become the hunted.
He stayed perfectly still, like a coiled cobra. His training told him that whatever it was, its sting or bite could most likely be avoided if he refrained from doing anything to scare or anger the poor creature. So it continued its merry walkabout on his flesh for a further minute, unencumbered by worries about oncoming hands, before mysteriously disappearing down his shirt, or back into the woodwork.
A noise distracted him: the doorbell rang, the door-knob turned and a woman came home. Miriam as yet could not be seen, but he could hear her footsteps and she was coming this way.
She had come home with many berries today. Her load was heavy, evidenced by her groans and the jangling noise of berries on basket, but her mood was light. Such a haul would see her fed for many days to come.
Peter stayed where he was, listening. The door she had come through led straight into the kitchen and there she was now, setting down her load and reposing herself for a while. She poured herself a drink, like a normal human being. She began muttering to herself, like a normal human being. Peter tried to listen in to her musings, the last thoughts of a soon-to-be dead woman, but found her language strange, her dialect foreign. His brain sought out the meaning of her words in all the various languages he knew- in vain.
She was happy, though. He could hear that. She spoke with the tone of someone who had just heard some good news, or made a happy plan; someone with much to live for- a family, perhaps, or a new job; or a personal success, like the publication of a story, or victory in a race. Or collecting many, many berries for the oncoming winter.
Her muttering stopped and her pacing ceased. Something had come to block her thoughts- a worry, a memory, a new idea, or something. Whatever it was, whatever she now had to do, it lay outside the kitchen and out in the hallway.
As she stepped through the doorway, Peter gained his first glimpse of today’s victim. He had never seen her before, although her name was famous in his circle of friends. She had been discussed many a time before, always with vicious words and accusation- always spoken of as if an idea, an animal; certainly not a human.
Seeing her now, then, he was struck by her simple humanity. There was nothing special about her, sure, but it was what she shared in common with other human beings which gave her the value he now saw: her eyes, her legs, her smile, her hair, bundled up in a bun in common with most of the women round here.
She was tall for her age, and fit too. The shrinking that had befallen most women in her generation long ago had not affected her yet, and nor had that mythical “middle age spread”. Though seventy, her body could have been that of a forty year old. She wore a scarf round her neck which, no doubt, had recently been used to cover her head to protect her from the sun, and she wore a smile on her face, constant and unashamed, hopeful and secure, as if life could do no wrong to her.
She was wrong. Just yards away from her was a camouflaged gunman hiding in her cupboard, waiting for the opportune moment to strike- and that moment was now. Blissful in her ignorance, she took just a step closer to the painting on her wall that had caught her attention and gave him the perfect shot: point blank, in the back.
Yet he did not want to take it. He wanted to watch her fear, her squirming and fright, as the understanding reached her eyes that this was it. This was the end. This was the moment when all was over and the future she so looked forward to would vanish in the blink of a cold, dead eye.
So instead of taking the shot, he jumped. He leapt out from the cupboard and imposed himself and his gun into her personal space.
The crash of noise as the masked gunman came out from her cupboard made her nearly jump out of her skin at the shock of it; and then, when she had hoped relaxation would kick in and she could say something like “oh, it’s just you, Muhammad”, she realised that she never could say those words ever again. The man had a gun, and he was pointing it straight at her.
Words failed her for a second as she glanced from man, to gun, to man again. Then she realised her predicament and that words may be the only thing which could save her, and said the only thing that came to mind in that dreadful moment.
“Please, who are you?” she asked. Her words betrayed a falter of confusion, a complete lack of understanding about who he was or why he might be here. Evidently she thought that maybe she could reason with him; find out what he wanted and spare her life.
He didn’t reply. Instead, he took one step closer so that they were nearly touching; the barrel of his MP4 was now resting on her scalp.
“Who are you, sir, please? Please, maybe we can talk about this. Maybe I can help you.”
Peter allowed a sliver of emotion to pass through his defences and reach his face: a snigger, a faint smirk of derision at her foolish remark. She finally understood.
“Please, please, no!” she screamed out, more for the benefit of anyone who might hear rather than herself or her gunman. Words would not work now: so she turned and ran, headlong and forthright, back into the kitchen she had come through; back into the woods she had picked her berries from.
At least, she would have done. That was her aim. Yet she only made it as far as the kitchen table before the sound of gunfire rattled in her house and she found herself sent to the floor by a series of bullet wounds to her leg.
She screamed bitterly in pain, but mainly in terror- for she knew her fate. The pain was unimaginable, worse than she had ever known, but she could have coped if she knew everything was going to be alright, that she would heal and live to see her future. He could not have understood what she had been saying in the kitchen; that she had received word of a new baby boy in the family, that she would have a grandson. A grandson! Ideas of seeing him grow up and playing with him as baby, toddler, child and teen had flashed before her eyes on hearing the news. Now they flashed once more, only to flash out of existence again as she realised they never could be.
With Peter Robinson in her house, her wounds never would heal; rather, they would only get worse and worse, hurting more and more each time, until finally they killed her.
He walked idly into her kitchen and stood over her. His face was terrifying, as if what he was doing didn’t phase him at all. To him, she was not a person, not a human being. She was a target. That’s all this was to him: target practise, like shooting at some rings or going to hunt for ducks. And he had done this a thousand times before, she knew it, because his eyes and his manner were like that of a cool professional. He knew how people died. He knew what their last breath sounded like, how they would scream and beg at the end for him to stop, how it appeared when the life drained from their eyes. He knew it so well that it had come to bore him.
He loaded up his gun, getting ready to shoot. And in all this, she was lying there, slumped against the kitchen table just- watching. She could do nothing else. Perhaps she had the option to crawl away, but it simply did not occur to her; at any rate, if she had done that, he would easily have been able to catch up with her or outrun her and do what he was going to do anyway. So she watched as her murder weapon was loaded. She watched as he inspected it was ready. And she watched as he cocked the gun with its barrel pointing towards her head, his eye gazing coolly down the scope.
“Please,” she begged again, despairingly, hopelessly.
He shook his head. And then he pulled the trigger.
In a second, she was gone: Miriam Stopwood, seventy years of age, widow to Muhammad and mother to Sadiq, grandmother to Qasim; former archaeologist and founder of the Church of the Holy Tabernacle, who liked to ride horses and go swimming in her spare time. Gone.
Chapter 2: Mo
“We are going into war, lads,” barked their leader. “We are going into war against an enemy who won’t even recognise our existence. An enemy who won’t even admit they’re at war. They talk about us like we’re criminals and treat us like we’re vermin, denied even the right to life. They will not be merciful with you- so give as good as you get, lads!”
The five soldiers in his modest platoon uttered a unified cry of approval and saluted their commander. The scene was pretty pathetic, really: they had lost thirty men already and their headquarters had been taken over by the enemy, reducing them to meeting in an old abandoned garage on the other side of town, in one of the few suburbs still controlled by the Army. Yet their spirit had been strengthened rather than crushed by it all: they had witnessed what the enemy was capable of, the atrocities they were willing to commit, and had been galvanised into action. They would not let the enemy make them suffer anymore. They would not let the enemy put them under the yoke of oppression or enslave their women and children. Enough was enough, and their cause was just. If the situation was so dire that they would have to die for their cause, then die for it they must.
“Out there, right now, our brothers and sisters are fighting. Are dying. We cannot stand by and let them suffer while we stand around here yapping, so let’s move out now and kick some enemy ass! One, two, three, four, march, soldiers!”
The garage door was opened and the force of six men marched out into a chaotic scene. Fighting was everywhere, and it was often difficult to tell just who was fighting who. As a general indication, the enemy had better technology, so any soldier carrying a weapon made after the 1970s was probably not on their side. Yet other than that, the distinction was very blurred: both sides wore the camouflage khaki uniform common to most modern armies; both sides were largely from the same ethnic background, speaking the same language in the same accent; both sides followed similar tactics.
If tactics were even relevant anymore. Commanders watched from the sidelines in utter dismay as they saw their carefully-drawn plans descending into sheer might-on-might mêlée, where clever logic gave way to the brute force and individual wit of each soldier. This was not army versus army, both sides fighting as one, but every man for himself, with the only rule being that you don’t run from the battle or you get shot by your own side.
And six new soldiers had been added to the brawling. The battle spanned the whole suburb for about two miles to the West as the enemy tried to make good their already impressive gains and push the Army out of the city entirely, banished into the southern wastelands where hunger and cold would get them before guns or knives ever did. As the five footmen and their commander looked to their left, the sheer scale of the battle took them all by surprise and suddenly all the words of the garage, all the theories they had learnt and ideas they had memorised, vanished into nothing: it was time for action now, not debate.
Among the six was a man named Mo, a soldier with particular reason to hate the enemy. He had once been a family man, a proud father and husband who worked tirelessly as a mechanic to keep his family provided for in a time of severe economic decline. Then one day he had come home to find his house demolished to rubble and the cold, dead hands of his wife and child sticking out from the debris.
The enemy had done that to him. To his family. Before that day, he had been a pacifist; since that day, he had become a warrior, with understandably little care for his own personal safety, so long as he could avenge his memories of wife and child.
He knew other families who had been torn apart by the enemy, and he knew that if they were allowed victory, they would continue to do the same to others, too. Those who survived would be in no better a position, for the enemy would so restrict their freedoms as to make them virtual slaves. Of course, in the 21st century, nobody would ever admit that fact; the words “slave” or “slavery” would never be used; “apartheid” and “ethnic cleansing” would be vigorously denied, but the fact would remain the same, whatever name was given to it.
So he had been forced into action- “any means necessary”, as Malcolm X had said. He would blow himself up if he had to for the protection of his motherland.
The scene immediately in front of him was a crossroads on Palmer Street in an eastern suburb of Jamahiriya. He knew it well: one hundred yards to his left lay the school his son had attended; one mile to the right, the house they had inhabited together; straight ahead, the road to the city centre.
Yet the scene before him did not fit the image in his memory. Where houses should have been was now rubble; where street, now potholes. Bodies littered the area so mangled that it was impossible to tell who they had once been or which side they had been fighting for.
The enemy were coming from ahead. Their numbers were deceptively small: they were scattered about on the road from Cain Avenue, reinforcements arriving in a steady stream from behind. It looked sincerely like there were only fifty or so of them, but their fighting had the effect of five hundred men. It was like they were respawning like villains in a computer game: the player had the task of only surviving as long as possible, with no hint of an eventual victory.
And all of them were boys, not men. The fighters of the army showed the guts and wrinkles and toughened hands of age; the enemy were, in most cases, no older than Mo’s son would have been children, fired up by the idealistic ideas of youth and a revolutionary fervour for their theories. Back in the city, one David Weinberger was extolling his followers with the virtues of communitarianism, his own political doctrine which provided the basis for their struggle against Mo’s forces. The soldiers here did not have to think, merely obey orders; Weinberger did the thinking for them, and they all agreed in unison.
“For Weinberger! For Community! For the country!” was their battle cry, a chilling sound to any who had to fight them: for it signalled the beginning of a fresh assault, or the start of a new offensive, and with it the deaths of many good men.
Their cry went up now, and the new reinforcements who had amassed just behind the battle-lines rushed into the mêlée with guns and vocals blazing. At least two Army soldiers went down in this initial dash forward: Kam and Jamal, good friends of Mo. He cried bitterly at their loss.
Six were assembled, about ready to run in; yet the arrival of a seventh delayed their departure with news of a tragedy.
“Have you heard the news?” he panted, breathless. “Miriam. Miriam Stopwood. She’s dead. They killed her.”
“Miriam?” gasped the commander, aghast. “What kind of monsters are these?”
“They’re terrorists, sir,” offered Mo. “Nothing but immoral terrorists. Terrorists and murderers.”
“Miriam…” muttered the soldier next to Mo. His voice betrayed deep shock, betrayal, despair- and they all felt it. Miriam had been their spiritual leader, the head and founder of the Church of the Holy Tabernacle. It was their national religion based on the archaeological discovery of 3rd century scrolls by Miss Stopwood, who had then been a humble archaeologist, which had shed new light on the life and times, and teachings, of Jesus. Her discoveries had soon become popular for the way they unified Christians and Muslims under the banner of her new religion and were very quickly coming to influence government decisions. In the ten years since her discovery, her fame had made her into a household name, beloved of many.
Some disagreed, of course. The hard-line and the secular opposed her new interpretations, or her influence on government, but everyone understood that she was a peacenik and they respected her for it. She had earned a status elusive to most people in the public eye: she had become, almost, universally loved.
And now she was dead, murdered at the hands of what Mo could only see as criminals, murderers, immoralists with no respect for the life of anything or anyone aside from them.
“Right, lads, let’s give them what we’ve got,” ordered the commander, still a little shaken by the news. His five soldiers and their guest heartily obeyed and, with the passionate battle-cry of “Allahu Akbar!” resounding from their lips, they plunged themselves into the heat of battle.
There was half a road to run across before they reached the first line of troops, and then it was like pushing his way into a bustling crowd. The six had separated in their mad dash and were now hopelessly lost in a wall of people, crushed on all sides and struggling to recognise friend from foe. It was an undulating mass of living mayhem, with the only thing protecting him from certain death being the fact that everyone around him was already locked in their own struggles of mortal combat. It reminded him of the mosh pits his son used to go to, except this was much more deadly.
People here- weren’t people. They couldn’t be. At least, he couldn’t see them as such, for to do so would complicate his morals and slow him down, and he didn’t need that. Rather, he had to force himself to view them as machines, or monsters- empty vessels filled only with a hatefulness that justified their eradication. Given what they had done to his wife, his child, and his spiritual idol, this attitude was not difficult; but it still struck a note of discomfort on his soul.
Of course, this did not apply to the soldiers of his Army. He found himself trying to make the curious distinction between human allies and subhuman enemy in a sea of identical faces in identical uniforms, so that it was hard to keep up his hatred when its target could easily be a friend.
His gun was in his hands. He pointed it round himself nervously, flailingly, daring himself to pull the trigger- but he couldn’t. Hatred and compassion flitted in his mind as he saw now enemy, now friend, now enemy, now friend, sometimes the same person taking on differing roles twice- because he couldn’t know everyone in the army. He couldn’t remember the faces of all he fought with, and the faces of all he fought against, and everyone was wearing such accursedly similar uniforms that his task was impossible. He had been sent in here to kill, but was rather just flailing around pathetically with luck, or similar confusion in other people, being the only thing keeping him alive.
Some here were soldiers, and some were terrorists- but how in God’s name was he supposed to tell the two apart? Both wore uniforms and both carried guns; though the fact of close quarters fighting meant that most had tossed away their rifles and were now resorting to knife fights. So now that he couldn’t even differentiate by the fact that the enemy had a greater technological level of weaponry, how was he supposed to tell the two apart?
He couldn’t. It was useless, so he decided for the time being to settle on self defence and fight back against anyone who decided to take him on. But really, what was the difference between the two? The terrorists were immoral, he reminded himself. They killed spiritual people and innocent civilians; the Army’s cause was just, while theirs was unholy. That was the difference.
Yet in the madness of mêlée, that difference didn’t show itself. All he saw was men fighting men, with no indication of sides; both as moral or immoral as each other, as far as outer appearances could show; both groups forgetting their ideologies of the Church of the Holy Tabernacle, or of Weinberger’s communitarianism, and engaging in a mutual fight for simple survival. Perhaps everyone here was entirely moral, then, exercising the most basic right of any living creature: to protect their life from someone who may try to take it away.
It was in the midst of such panicked though that he saw him. Jacob.
The world stopped around him as their eyes met across the battle-field. For Mo, this meant everything; for Jacob, the stranger with a moustache and double chin was nothing more than one other Army soldier he would have to fight. Jacob was brandishing a sharpened machete, dripping with the blood of a recently killed dueller. He grinned at Mo in a bring-it-on type of invitation, which Mo had no choice but to accept.
“Allahu Akbar!” he roared, and he began to push his way through the crowd once more towards his chosen victim. No longer was he plagued by moralising doubt; no longer was he twirling confused on the spot. Because he knew Jacob, and he knew him to be one of the worst of the enemy.
After the murder of his wife and child, he had done what anyone else would have done and endeavoured to seek justice for their memories. In particular he vowed to track down the man responsible. The memory haunted him to this day of that afternoon on November 9th 2002 and the sight of freshly charred bricks and mortar, and a helicopter flying away into the distance.
Whoever had been piloting the helicopter had been his family’s killer.
He had engaged in tireless research to find the answer to this crucial question. He had gone to the library at the local University and searched through the military archives; he had made himself an expert on hacking, and eventually made his way onto the enemy’s website. His newfound skills made it impossibly easy for him to hack into their personnel files and see who had been doing what and when.
November 9th, 2002 was what he was looking for. According to the files, that day had been a quiet one with only one reported military success: the destruction of a weapons factory in a Jamahiriya suburb, which had been carried out by one Jacob Klein.
Weapons factory. Is that how they justified it? What kind of dodgy intelligence had they got, if they thought a mechanic’s family home was instead a storage depot for Army tech? The injustice of it all had been seething below the surface since the day he found out, and Jacob Klein had become his nemesis, a name that haunted him day and night, in wake and in sleep.
And there he was. He could recognise the face anywhere: it was engrained on his heart from the smiling service photo on the enemy’s website. Smiling. As if the man were not a mass-murdering monster; as if he were an ordinary human being with an ordinary job; as if, and some would even have said this, as if he were a hero.
The enemy had set up their own TV station, which Mo had watched on occasion. It had at one point become like the “Daily Hate” of George Orwell’s 1984, at which point he had decided to pull himself away for the sake of his mental health. Yet on the station, men like Jacob- and probably at one point Jacob himself- were being paraded round as “heroes”, as if the murder of unexpecting civilians could ever be anything but an act of pure, evil cowardice. Especially from high in the sky from the safety of a helicopter.
And there he was, “hero” Jacob Klein, smiling. The monster. Even as he plunged a blade into the heart of Iqbal Khan, a man who Mo knew as the local shopkeeper in his day job, he was smiling. Like he enjoyed this. Like it was fun for him. Like the murder of innocents was his playtime.
A smile that really didn’t suit his face. In fact, nothing but a veil or a cardboard box would have done the trick, Mo thought he was that ugly. His nose was misshapen; his forehead bulged outward; his lips jutted out and his ears were enormous- and all over his unsightly features were pockmarks and moles scattered about in uneven fashion.
Perhaps he wasn’t that ugly, Mo conceded to himself. Perhaps his hatred was rendering his face in a much more hideous light than necessary. But whatever. Mo wasn’t after him for his looks. He was after him for his crimes.
He was close now, and he roared out to get his nemesis’ attention.
“Jacob Klein!” came the resounding echo of his voice, loud enough even to break through the deafening sound of mêlée and catch his subject’s attention. It was so loud that several fighters around him stopped to stare at the man with such volume and rage in his voice, admiring or fearing him depending on who they fought for as he pushed himself through the crowd towards not the enemy, but his enemy.
Mo was not a small man by any means. Work as a mechanic over many years had built up considerable muscle on his bones and gifted him with a large, strong form which could push past the young and comparatively skinny enemy fighters he was wading past like they were mere currents of water. His vision was tunnelled now: Jacob was his target, and each step took him a little bit closer to getting justice for his kin.
Jacob could see him. His deafening cry had had the desired effect of catching his enemy’s intention and the ugly face of his demon was looking back at him, a playful glint sparkling around his eyes. He could do with another fight and here was someone offering it to him, free of charge.
“Jacob Klein, you die today,” bellowed Mo again. He was now ten feet away and preparing to engage; Jacob was standing there almost casually, as if this were fun for him. “You killed my family nine years ago, and now I get my revenge.”
Perhaps Mo had spoken with a certain level of ferocity, a particular sense of righteous justice in his voice; whatever it was, Jacob suddenly betrayed a hint of fear. He backed away slightly and brandished his blood-stained machete in front of him menacingly, defensively. Mo, for his part, found himself armed only with a blade the length of a kitchen knife, having thrown away his gun in panic. He cursed himself: presented with this golden opportunity to avenge his family, he may be about to waste it, and lose his own life in the process, through foolishness in not bringing enough kit.
Nevertheless, it was almost an even fight. The kid before him was clearly inexperienced with the machete; at any rate, much less experienced in combat than Mo was. Once he had found out who his family’s killer had been, he had enrolled for the Army and taken up combat training immediately. He had devoted himself day and night to it, and had learnt knife fighting under the late Aikido expert Graham Simkin, a skilled fighter from abroad who possessed a third Dan in the discipline and had mastered the art of Aikido so well that he would quite happily engage in bladed combat for fun, never so much as getting a scratch. After weeks, months, years of intense training, he had finally reached a similar stage to his master and now, even with an extended, bloodied blade facing him, he felt confidant of his ability to outfox his opponent.
He closed his eyes briefly to remember the words of his old master, and to concentrate on the memories of his wife and child for whom he was fighting.
“It’s a spiritual discipline,” he remembered Graham saying. “You need to feel at one with your body, your chi. You need to be aware of everything around you at all times- and then you will succeed.”
He closed his eyes for perhaps too long, for when he opened them he was greeted with the sight of a glinting blade coming down upon him. Yet he was ready: he rolled out of the way instinctively and positioned himself to the right of his opponent, ever focused.
Focus. That was what he needed. Emotion would get in the way; so, to prevent himself from getting carried away by desires for revenge, he imagined the monster before him was Mr Simkin, sparring with him for fun and for education. He saw the stern yet caring eyes of his former master baring down upon him from his nemesis’ face and felt a calm descending over him as he entered a mood of battle-readiness.
The blade swung round again, and he dodged it again. Technically his martial arts training had been strictly for self-defence; he had been taught not to kill, only to disarm- but that was not his aim here. He wanted his family’s killer to suffer, to bleed, to die before him in the same pain to which he had subjected so many innocents before him. So with a swift stroke of the air with the blade of his knife, Mo cut a deep gash through his opponent’s sleeve and left his forearm bloodied; what’s more, he had specifically aimed for the tendons in his wrist, so as Jacob screamed out in pain the machete fell involuntarily from his grasp.
He tried in vain to move his hand, but not luck: the snapped tendons could no longer support the movement of his fingers, or his wrist. His right hand had become useless.
Fear flashed across his face now, tangible and unhidden. Mo even felt a little pity for him. Just 27 years old, he had been a mere boy of 18 when he had dropped the bomb on Mo’s wife and child. He probably couldn’t even remember it. Probably never gave a thought to the lives he destroyed in his movement of “heroism”. He remained every bit a boy even now, though 27 years old: his mind remained as unthinkingly devoted to his ideological cause and the ideas of David Weinberger as ever before. He had never grown up, never learnt to think for himself.
So Mo pitied him. Part of him wanted to kill him, but part of him felt revulsion at the very act and wanted to teach the boy the error of his ways. Pure, bloody necessity intervened to prevent that: for a show of compassion by Mo now would inevitably lead to his slaughter at Jacob’s hands, so killing was the only way. It was the only way to get proper justice.
He swung his knife round once more, this time on an unarmed opponent, and left a deep gash in Klein’s mole-ridden face. His enemy began to moan now; to wail in torture and pain, and Mo could see the image of his wife and child, his Aikido instructor too. He had expected them to be applauding him, to be thanking him for taking revenge- but they were not. In his mind’s eye, Graham Simkin was slowly shaking his head, tearing up his belts and the certificate which had given him his first Dan; his son was looking away, while his wife was looking on horrified.
This was the moment he had spent his whole life waiting for. The past nine years had been geared up to this: revenge on his family’s killer. But he knew his family, he knew his friends, and he knew his conscience- and they were all disapproving when the moment came round. And he could see why, too; he could feel it: his soul becoming clouded by the very poison which must have taken over his enemy’s soul, turning him into the very monster he sought to destroy.
He had not killed before; this was his first battle. Despite being in the Army for several years, he had, up till now, always occupied desk jobs or work behind the scenes. He had mainly been occupied by work as an Army mechanic. It was only when times had become so desperate, when their control over the city was being diminished and every hand was needed to defend against the Communitarian scum, that he and his fellow back-benchers had been brought to the front line. In his group of six, two had been medics before now, one a researcher and three mechanics; none of them were front-line fighters, and none of them were killers.
Now he was to become one. The whimpering form of Jacob Klein lay before him, face cut and wrist bleeding, defenceless. Utterly defenceless.
Mo bit his lip. He understood now that he would be betraying his family’s memory, not avenging it, by becoming their murderer’s murderer; yet he could not in all conscience leave this man to run free, killing again and again. Something had to be done to stop him.
So he lifted his blade into the air, aimed it well and plunged it into the man’s spine so as to paralyse him. It may sound cruel, but this was a kindness: for the other option would be to deprive him of life entirely, and Mo could not do that in all good conscience. This way, Jacob would live, but he would never again be able to fly a helicopter or kill an innocent again. This way, justice could be served.
Except it didn’t quite work like that. Mo had been a mechanic, not a medic; his knowledge of the human body was based solely on television hospital dramas and the like. As such, he had no idea where to position his blade and, quite accidentally, punctured a major blood vessel in Jacob’s back.
The man screamed, of course- for being stabbed is one of the single most painful things one can experience ever in the course of your life. But as Mo watched, his moans of pain quickly died down and the life began to leave his eyes. He was dying.
“No, no, no, no!” screamed Mo, leaping down to help his dying victim. He knew he could not live with the death of another man on his conscience; not even the death of his family’s killer, for he could not allow himself to become like Jacob. He could not become the very thing he hated. Even though they were dead, he knew that if Jacob died here today, his wife and son would never have seen him in the same light again, had they been alive; they would never see him the same again, if they were now spirits.
But given his complete lack of medical knowledge, his efforts were in vain. Jacob Klein died in the arms of Mohammed Amjid at eleven o’clock on the morning of 9th November 2011, precisely nine years since he had committed the murder of his killer’s family.
Chapter 3: Aftermath
“Peter! How was it?”
“Okay. Simple. She croaked like a frog. Quick, easy, I’ve had worse.”
“It’s all over the news, man. Every station.”
“How’d it get there so quick?”
“Wi-Fi. Who knows?”
Peter Robinson had entered the barracks of Number 10 Commandos on the outskirts of Jamahiriya at two o’clock that afternoon. After killing Miriam early in the morning, he had chosen to walk the long way back through the scrubs and bush land that surrounded the city. Time had passed quickly; it had almost been an indescribable blur since half seven that morning, as if nothing had happened since then, or he had been absent from his own body.
Only Johnson was present when he entered, and only he had known about Corporal Peter Robinson’s secret mission to assassinate the spiritual leader of the Jamahiriya Resistance Army and their Church of the Holy Tabernacle. Given the news reports, he had presumed it had been a success.
The news was on now, and Peter settled down to watch it in the silent company of Johnson. He caught the presenter in mid-sentence:
“…was arrested today for the murder of Jacob Klein, nephew of Prime Minister David Weinberger. Jacob Klein was an Air Force pilot who served his country for nine years before transferring to work for the Urban Police Force. He was killed today in clashes with the Jamahiriya Resistance Army in the eastern suburbs of Jamahiriya city by one Mohammed Amjid, a powerful figure in the Resistance Army who has been wanted by police on charges of treason and terrorism for several years. Mister Amjid gave himself up without a fight and is now being questioned by police.
David Weinberger issued a press conference today condemning the latest terrorist action by the Jamahiriya Resistance Army and expressing his grief over the death of his nephew:”
The view changed from the face of the female newsreader to a packed room where, at the front, the familiar form of Prime Minister Weinberger was standing. He was still, frozen; far from the normal wildly gesticulating and charismatic statesmanlike persona which normally addressed his nation.
“Today’s atrocities have affected us all: from rich to poor, young and old, men and women. And they have affected me personally. I lost my nephew today, a brave soldier who nine years ago pledged to lay down his life in the service of his country, should he be called to do so. Today, he was, and myself and my family have spent the day in mourning.
Rest assured we will not let this stand. The ongoing war against terrorism and religious extremism will go on. The Community will defeat the extremist element among us, who act with such flagrant disrespect for other people’s lives. Innocent men have died today: brave, heroic, patriotic men. We will not let their deaths go unpunished.
I am today going to go before Parliament and request that they give me emergency powers to fight the terrorist scum with greater force and firepower than ever before. If, when, they do, I can promise you, citizens, that the terrorist threat will be eliminated within the year. Thank you.”
The Prime Minister stepped down from the podium to rapturous applause and the screen switched once more to the newsreader, whose poker face remained as stone-cold as ever. She switched from this story to the next as if the emotional content of it had not penetrated her professional shell:
“In the economy, stocks in petroleum giant General Oil have plummeted…”
Johnson turned the TV off.
“Bloody terrorists,” he muttered. “Evil, aren’t they? I can’t understand for the life of me why they do it.”
Peter nodded in agreement, only half listening. He had returned to his state of emptiness, soullessness, waiting for the next set of orders from his superiors; until then, he would remain in this state.
“Peter, that’s your next target. Find the leader of the so-called “Resistance Army” and take him out.”
He nodded and stood up, happy to be once more given the chance of living through taking another’s life. His feet walked forward mechanically to the exit and the killing machine was off again, driven by a blind purpose to take a life in the name of his country.
***
Mo sat quietly in his cell. He had seen the same news report as Peter had, and it filled him with shame. And anger. The media, as expected, had painted him a terrorist, and by that word had cancelled out any criticism of Weinberger’s men and any questioning of the Army’s cause. They had painted Jacob Klein, the killer of his wife and child, as a “hero”- just as expected.
Jacob had been no hero. But equally, neither had Mo. He had sat by the side of his erstwhile nemesis while the life faded from his eyes and he tried desperately to prevent the blood loss, to keep him in this world. He had failed; Jacob had died, and, as the Enemy forces of Weinberger’s government came forward and the fighters of the Resistance Army were forced to retreat, Mo had stayed by his victim’s side silently weeping.
For he had become the very monster he sought to destroy. Now he was in prison, but his iron cage did not phase him; rather, the prison of his soul, the loss of his personality beneath the weight of another man’s life, was his jail cell. If the state chose to release him and pardon him now, he would not be free. His soul would still be imprisoned.
He could still see his wife and child, his old martial arts teacher, there in his mind’s eye- but they could not look at him now. They were ashamed of him. The hatred they had held for their killer was now transferred to their former husband, father and pupil; the evil of Jacob’s crime had been absorbed into Mo’s soul and he, Jacob, had been the one who now enjoyed the blissful lightness of liberty.
Such was the situation in Mo’s mind. In the real world, he was just sitting on the bed in his cell, gormless expression on his face and dusty light pouring through the windows.
His execution was soon. In Weinberger’s Community, ‘terrorists’ did not get trials or juries; not that he would have needed one. He had already openly, bitterly confessed to his crime, filled with shame and remorse and ready for his death. He deserved it.
The clock said seven; the sun was setting. Its red rays poured in through his iron bars and as he watched the sun disappearing behind the horizon, as he saw his guard returning to take him away on the last journey he would ever take, he felt his life going down with it too.