Burning Bridges: A Renegade Fiction Anthology, Page 4

  The door to the room opened and a woman entered. He looked at her through creased eyes – he was finding that squinting seemed to blot out some of the pain. She closed the door behind her and looked at him for a moment. He was surprised when she didn’t have the now expected initial look of revulsion in her eyes as she appraised him. Her dark hair was cut short, resting just above her shoulders as she held herself with a degree of poise he hadn’t seen in, well, a long time. She was dressed in a well-cut business suit – family must be well off he thought as she walked across, the sound of her heels clicking against the hard floor.

  She placed her briefcase down on the metal table that he was sitting at – he watched her delicate fingers manipulate the lock and spring the catches free. Her deep brown eyes looked at his, taking in the sight before her. She reached into the metal case and bought out a small device that was shaped like a pen. He watched her press the top of it and a small LED began to flash red.

  “I am Samantha Ardent,” She said in what he took to be some sort of European accent. “I’ve been sent to discuss your latest assignment. However, before we start, let’s get a few rudimentary details resolved shall we?” He watched her remove something from the briefcase – a thin and very flat sheet of Perspex. Her fingers danced across it and it came to life. “You are Eron Mitchell, correct?” He nodded. “And, in your own words, can you describe what your assignment was.”

  “Assignment – you make it sound so…straight forward,” Mitchell scoffed. He saw that she wasn’t budging. “I had volunteered to take part in an undercover operation – part of the New Earth Government’s attempt to infiltrate and understand the Rapine Storm in Southeast Asia.”

  “Understand?” She asked.

  “Yeah – you know, if you understand your enemy then you can exploit that knowledge – find weaknesses, predict movements, that sort of thing.” Mitchell explained, even though he suspected she already knew that. Everything is on the record. “However, how can you understand an army of unspeakable horrors?”

  “And you volunteered for this assignment?” Samantha asked. Mitchell nodded.

  “Yeah, yeah,” he had this sort of sick desperation in his voice. “I…volunteered.” He paused for a moment. “You got a smoke in there?” He indicated towards the briefcase. Samantha opened it again and removed a packet of cigarettes and a lighter. He accepted them from her greedily and lit one. It was gone in under a minute. The second one lasted longer.

  “You know, they said to me with the right training and the right disguise that the Rapine Storm would accept me. They told me that there would be some horrifying things that I’d have to do, but if I was careful I could avoid most of them. The ones I had to do were just the sacrifices that I would have to make in service for the NEG. Everything I did was going to be for a better world.” He took another drag on the cigarette.

  “Is that how you still feel?” Samantha asked. Mitchell shook his head.

  “Typical fucking psychiatrist’s question.” He said, lighting up his third cigarette. “They didn’t tell me about the rest of it but they had to know – the guys at Intel in the New Earth Government aren’t idiots. You know, if they had told me everything then I would never have volunteered.” She saw that he seemed to be calming down slightly.

  “Okay, well we’ll get back to that.” Samantha said, making a few notes on the e-pad in her hands. “Now, what happened to the others?”

  “The others,” Mitchell looked away into the distance, almost as if he could see past the confines of the room. “Well, Medkowski died about three weeks in – we were hit by some NEG Mecha and the unit he was with was wiped out. Vaporised. I don’t know what’s happened to Celek.”

  “When was the last time you saw Agent Celek?” Samantha asked Mitchell. He began to scratch his head and a faint trickle of blood flowed from the wound as his sharpened nails dug grooves into his sickly pale skin.

  “The last time I saw Celek was about a month ago. It was just before the assault on New Delhi. I barely recognised her – she looked so different, so happy – it was like someone had lit a fire inside her and she had embraced it. She was one of the leaders of the only purely human unit who were fully embraced by the Storm. They called themselves the Children of Chaos – It’s a fringe group if you like who suicidally throw themselves into a genocidal fury whenever the Storm wished them to.” Mitchell commented, lighting up his fourth cigarette. “If you ever find Celek again, whatever she has become, she’s lost to us now – she’s beyond us.”

  “So you believe that she has fully accepted the teachings of the Storm?” Samantha asked the question – anticipating Mitchell’s response accurately.

  “It’s not a question of whether you want to accept the teachings or not – it’s a question of having to in order to survive.” He spat back, giving her a glimpse of that mouthful of sinister looking teeth. “There’s no way that anyone back here could understand – you might think you have a good handle on everything here, but the truth is you haven’t got a clue.” He finished the cigarette and slumped down on the desk, his head in his hands. “Everything is sanitised for your protection. Once you go out into that world it’s just a one-way street – there’s no way back.” Mitchell said, shaking his head. “The last bastion of heaven lies abandoned and burning.”

  “Why do you say that?” Samantha asked.

  “Because they will get there first – before us – and when we reach it they will have already destroyed it.” He looked around the room – the white, sterile room – and shook his head. “You wanna know how come the Rapine Storm move so fast?” Mitchell said. “It’s because when they breed they swarm – they just consume everything in their path, like a plague of locusts.” He began to laugh hysterically. “And, you know, it’s funny, because they see us as a plague too – one that needs to be exterminated.”

  “You asked me how I feel? Tattoos or some rite of passage I expected. Extreme piercing, body modification and scarification are something else entirely. My teeth are all filed sharp – I don’t know how long it’s been since I’ve seen a mirror, but I’m sure I’m not very human anymore.” He was crying now, tears running down his face. “Not that I feel it anymore after the things I’ve done. I’ve helped exterminate entire villages and brutally tortured and murdered innocent people. I’ve eaten the flesh of my own kind – repeatedly and regularly. I’ve raped women to death and done much worse to children. And you want to know how I feel?”

  “They can correct the physical scars,” she said. “With therapy we can help…”

  “Can you make me forget?” He interrupted, looking straight at her, making eye contact for only the second time in their interview. “Can you take away the memories and the nightmares?” Samantha watched him, observing the husk of what was once a proud man in the service of his government reduced to this. A quivering wreck, filled with fear and self-doubt. She opened her briefcase again – the next time he saw her hand, Samantha was holding a pistol and pointing it directly at him.

  “Thank you.” He murmured, the last glint of humanity flickering in his eyes. She adjusted her aim slightly and fired – the single shot striking his head and killing him instantly. The force of the close range shot knocked his body backwards, throwing him from the chair and to the cold floor beneath her feet. She stood up and looked at him. Apart from a few involuntary twitches, Eron Mitchell was dead.

  “The New Earth Government commends you on your service.” Samantha muttered as she returned the pistol to her metallic briefcase. She picked up the tiny cell phone and made a call.

  “It’s Ardent. I need a clean-up crew here.” She said as she closed the lid of the briefcase and locked it again. “And we need to remove some elements of Agent Mitchell’s operational report – it might deter NEG personnel from engaging in future undercover operations once it’s published.” Ending the call she took another glance at the body on the floor. Samantha opened the briefcase again and withdrew the pistol. Four more shots were dischar
ged into the body on the floor.

  Better to be safe rather than sorry, she thought as she left the room.

  The End

  Mark Cooper is a 38 year old father of three. A life-long lover of the strange and bizarre, he divides his time between his mind-numbingly boring office job and acting a patron of many of the West Midlands finest comic book stores. If his wife knew just how much his comic book addiction has spiralled out of control it could be grounds for a rather messy divorce. To date he has completed two of his three goals in life; however taking over the world has proven more difficult than he expected.

  Punishment/Lola

  ~ Darren Sant

  “The hardest thing in life is to know which bridge to cross and which to burn.” – David Russell

  Punishment

  Gonzalez looked me up and down the disgust clearly registering on his face. He drummed his fat fingers on the desk as he considered my punishment. In his eyes I had fucked up and Gonzalez was not a forgiving man. The many bodies in the foundations of the freeway could attest to that.

  “One simple fucking task I give you and you screw it up.”

  I had the good sense to look down and appear ashamed of myself. Truth of the matter was I’d let the kid go. He was wet behind the ears and he hadn’t meant to cross Gonzalez but the fat chump’s oversize ego couldn’t take losing a simple game of poker in front of his buddies. The order to kill the lad had come almost immediately after the fat fuck’s defeat. I’d decided to cut the boy a break and let him do a runner. I knew there would be a dressing down at the least.

  “Sorry boss. It won’t happen again boss.”

  “Damn right it won’t. What shall we do with him boys?”

  He put his feet up on his desk and addressed the room. The mob Captain’s sniggered and sneered at me whilst being secretly glad it wasn’t them in the hot seat. I shuffled like a naughty boy being humiliated by the school bully.

  “Here’s what’s going to happen. I’m docking you a months pay.”

  “But-”

  “And you get to accompany my wife to the charity ball this Friday. I’ve been looking for a goddamn excuse to get out of that. You can go in my place.”

  He took a puff on his huge cigar and exhaled blowing the smoke in my direction.

  “You get to buy her the drinks all night out of your own pocket.”

  The Captain’s cracked up laughing at this. It was rumoured that Lola drank like a fish.

  “Ok, boss. Thank you boss.”

  “Now fuck off. Pick her up Friday and wear your best suit.”

  I heard them laughing and joking as I left the room.

  Lola

  I tooted the car horn impatiently. The damn woman was supposed to be ready. Now the thing about Lola is that she was half the bosses age. Beautiful and sweet as apple pie. God only knew why she’d ended up with Gonzalez. Surely the money couldn’t be worth having that fat pig sweating and grunting on top of her. She tottered from their house on six inch heels and over to the car. Her figure hugging dress accentuated all of her curves. Her ample bosom was doing its very best to escape the tight confines of the dress. My eyes were drawn to the acres of soft lightly tanned flesh. It was going to be a long painful night fighting off all the idiots who didn’t know who her husband was. She sat down in the passenger seat beside me. I had expected her to ride in the back like the Queen of fucking Sheba.

  “Hi, I’m Lola. Are you John?”

  I gave her my most winning smile and dragged my eyes up from her cleavage. Damn no one had warned me she was so good looking.

  “That I am and very pleased to meet you Lola.”

  I held out my hand for her to shake but she leaned forward and pecked me on the cheek. I felt a pleasant little tingle at the contact. Her perfume was subtle and heady. I could see little glinting flecks above her bosom, some sort of body glitter.

  We arrived at the Country Lodge and I handed over our tickets. A valet took my keys and parked the car. This opulence seemed at odds with the African charity that would be benefiting from the two hundred dollar meals. We linked arms and I wandered into the place with a beauty on my arm. I felt ten feet tall. She leaned close to me. When I felt her hand squeeze my ass I knew there would be trouble. When the dancing started she insisted we join in. We danced close and slow. Her body pressed close to mine and she blew softly into my ear. I prayed there were none of Gonzalez’s friends around. I laughed at the thought. Men like him didn’t have friends they had cronies like me. They wouldn’t be seen dead here. Charity was for the weak in their eyes.

  Two hours later Lola was riding up and down my cock in the back of the car down a side lane. Her breasts pressing into my face. She was gasping my name over and over. As I came I realised that my life would never be the same again.

  Sunday

  She’d snuck out whilst he was in town losing at poker again and we were headed for the outskirts of the town at speed. My Camaro accelerating away smoothly. Lola’s bags in the back of the car were full of her clothes and most Gonzalez’s stash of cash. I made a quick stop and mailed an envelope. Some lucky Fed was going to have a VERY good day next week. I stopped briefly and looked back at the town as I stroked Lola’s knee. The bridge looked as small and ineffectual as a trestle in the distance. I turned on the radio and an old Kinks number filled the car. We laughed briefly at each and sped away and into our new life.

  The End

  Darren Sant is a 41 year old writer living in Hull in the UK. His wife, step son and two cats are happy when he is writing because he isn’t annoying them.

  He enjoys writing flash fiction and longer short stories based on a fiction housing estate called the Longcroft. His writing often features violence but is peppered with humour, emotion and morality. His varied reading tastes are sometimes mirrored by variety in his writing.

  Asylum

  ~ George S. Geisinger

  The night is for sleeping, at least for most people. Some few know the night, like some few know the rain and the snow. There are homeless people walking around the streets all over America, all hours of day and night, all across the nation, who know more about the hardships of life than they know about anything else. They are the street people. Those people used to be in the asylums, the hospitals centers, the state hospitals. The fact that they have to be on the street was mandated by the great President Ronald Reagan, when he closed down most of the asylums, except for housing the most severe cases, which were locked away so that they’ll never see the light of day again in their lifetime. I was almost one of them. I was doctor committed to a hospital center at the age of thirty. The only reason I was ever released is that I got sober and stayed sober.

  I solved my problem with the help of the medical profession, the Program and my Higher Power. I got saved like nobody around me ever had. All my buddies were still out there.

  The word asylum means safe haven or sanctuary. The United States once had a network of asylums throughout the country, for people with various kinds of problems with their minds. In Maryland, they were called Hospital Centers. I spent my youth doing life imprisonment in hospital centers, on the installment plan. I was very overwhelmed by a chemical I took from the hand of someone I considered to be a friend when I was twenty years old. It was a pill. We both took half of it. He was fine. I’ve been sick for the ensuing forty years since. I had no idea what was going to happen to me, until after it happened. By that time it was too late.

  I was one of millions of young Americans who got sick participating in recreational chemistry, the thing that most of my generation was doing in my youth. I was trying with all I had in me, to participate in the young people’s movement that was going on in the sixties and the seventies. There was an insurrection among the young people in America in the sixties and the seventies. The government disarmed the insurrection with some very subtle machinations. I still don’t quite understand how they pulled it off.

  Many of us can’t really say what the insurrection wa
s about and what we were trying to accomplish, by this time in our lives, except maybe to get our troops out of Vietnam. But there was more to the young people’s movement than the protest against the war. The government effectively disarmed and dismantled the entire young people’s movement by the most subtle means. Particularly in the disarming of the ideation of the whole thing. The movement failed. We lost our civil war, just like Robert E Lee lost his. Many more young people lost their lives in the process than just the four kids the National Guard killed at Kent State. Those few deaths were a drop in the bucket, compared to the price our generation paid all over the country.

  The United States Government is a very intelligent, powerful machine. They let us all ruin our selves, or go on with our lives. I had to be a ruined man until I was over thirty, before I could finally go on with my life. Even at that I needed a lot of help. There were many times I almost didn’t make it, like so many of my friends didn’t.

  Most of those people, who are not in some sort of premature grave, are now walking the streets of this country in all kinds of weather, at all hours of the day and night, utterly disenfranchised by the federal government and the general population. They do not have their medications situated, sometimes. Sometimes, they’re starving. They’re begging nickels and dimes on street corners, as I once did. I’ve been there. Some say they’re making fortunes on street corners panhandling, but I never got nearly as lucky as all that. Ronald Reagan kicked us all out into the weather for no better reason than to take some short cuts in the national debt.

  His trickle down economics doesn’t work.

  I’m one of the lucky ones. I have more resources beyond my disability check and my crafting income. I found out that what I need to do is to stay away from all sorts of alcohol, which was the center of the snowball of my mental in-capacities. If I don’t drink alcohol, I have a fighting chance at having a decent life, in spite of the fact of having all of my other complications in life. I was able to give up all the substances that were making me sick, after I’d been a little older than thirty. I got clear of substances, and have been well situated ever since. I’m not in hospital centers any longer, I’m in assisted living. Sure, it’s still an institution, but it’s a nice place. Very comfortable.