FAR WEST Afterlude

Well, I hope that we learned something in all this madness.  That our characters evolved and became fully rounded players in the cosmic game.  

After the fires died the black sooted Tower still remained standing above the city.  It was left as a reminder of what man can do and what man cannot.  A monument to our inescapable frailties, our venality and weaknesses;  To the characteristics that were ours no matter how hard we worked to repress our evil; For the artificial ethics and morality propagated by the academics and religions to give our lives a purpose beyond fucking and farming, and the golden nostalgia of days now long gone. 

            Maggie Bezzeg, enough of your didactic rantings!

            I am sorry, I tend to get worked up and have a difficult time bringing myself back down to reality.  This, I am the first to admit, is not a good quality for an FBI agent to possess.  I will try and control myself.  The story is nearly over and badly in need of a proper bookend.  Read on.  I promise that it will make sense in the end. 

            The black ziggurat could be seen from the jets that passed over en route to Montreal or across the ocean towards Europe and the world.  This great tangled phallus of charred brick and mortar rising high into the blue sky above the green trees, was in great contrast to the overtaxed road crews busy filling in the crater that was Taconic Street and gutting the empty buildings of the depressed Cranbury downtown for the copper before demolition. 

            The day the Tower fell was lost to the official records but it was the highest rated newscast in WQNP’s history, according to Peter Schneider, the producer departing to join his young career woman wife in Albany.  From the beginning of the implosion to the cloud of dust blinding the crowds disabling the city another day, the audience was transfixed.  In the dust cloud, the remains of the Tower came crashing down into rubble that would be not be mopped up before the winter snows arrived.  Audie was granted a furlough from prison to watch the Tower fade into darkness well as to attend the funerals of the civilian victims, the helicopter crew, and the shot police soldiers. 

            That was the gist of my husband’s last days in Cranbury.  He would convalesce at the state hospital in Farmington and serve his prison time without complaint as he devoted himself to his newfound faith. 

            He is still mine, unable to work, unable to travel, and unable to change his reputation or his future.  But he is alive.  And here comes the long-winded and heavy-handed existentialist part of the tale because after all every story must have a moral.  A lesson.  A purpose.  Why else would anyone read anything, for entertainment value or because it’s intellectually fascinating?  No, that would be absurd. 

            We love being manipulated to take heed of whatever life-altering message that the pretentious author happens to believe.  Thank you, L. Ron Hubbard, Mark Twain, and Joseph Smith.  Thanks for showing us what we are, blind monkeys lost in space, eager to accept any path home.    

            The point is that nothing could save the Cranbury Vale.  There was no hero of the day.  No delusional political campaign promise fulfilled.  No government stimulus package.  No welfare.  Nothing.  My husband’s sacrifice was meaningless.  The city was selected for extinction like the dinosaurs and the dodo bird.  Cranbury died while no one weeped but all came to cheer it on.  The population continued on the road to disincorporation, a triple X bond rating, and irrevocable bankruptcy.  This was oblivion—more than just becoming another vacant city of the rustbelt with Rochester, Buffalo, Cleveland, or Toledo.  A fate worse than death. 

           

In the days leading up to the demolition of the Victoria Tower, the remains of Robert Stegner were returned to the earth.  In the Litchfield piedmont, near the covered bridges of Cornwall, his ashes were scattered on a wet autumn eve.  His killer, Audie, in chains, watched the west wind take the ashes into those woolly green hills beneath the bare branches of a great oak tree. 

Who were laid in this ground
 Living, their enemies, dying their guests,
In honor of service and sacrifice
For the Strengthening of Hearts
This memorial is placed.

 These are just the erased words of the burned books and legends of history, of those before us who made us what we now are.  Shed no tears for the ghosts.  Who truly remembers history?  Who will remember our time a thousand years from now?  Who will remember my husband, but me, his wife? 

            No one.  No one will ever live to see the future.  No one escapes this life. 

FAR WEST Chapter Ten

NEW HAVEN



In the darkness of the predawn hours Maggie changed her jacket and formal dress in front of Audie handcuffed to the rear seat of the Crown Victoria.  She threw the dirty clothes over his face laughing as his hot breath oscillated the muslin rags up and down.  Maggie climbed into the car and kissed him lovingly; they groaned and fought for space among the suede seats of the FBI plated sedan.

            Maggie rose from the backseat and left the car to wash up and fix her matted hair for the  trial and the impromptu press conference afterwards.  The other agents, sick of their relationship, were impatient to remove Sergeant Bezzeg to Marion, Atlanta, or Leavenworth within the day. 

            By the time that she returned the clouds had opened up into a light drizzle that cooled the roads and suppressed the summer dusts from rising into the atmosphere.  The convoy departed with her car leading in the vanguard position.

            The five cars drove down Route 88 and took the Derby Pike over to Westville and continued on down Whalley Avenue through Yale’s ever expanding campus to the Green.  The blackness of the night made way for the hazed blue of early morning and quickly rose the red sun bleeding over the eastern horizon 

            As stern as Maggie had tried to appear, it was obvious subterfuge that failed to adequately hide her melancholy.  Her man, her ally, and her lover was on the verge of vanishing from her grasp into the penal system never to come out of captivity again.  This prospect neared fruition with each step they took closer to the courtroom.  She knew that it would not be a difficult estimation that Audie would be convicted on all counts varying from Rico statutes to the manslaughter of unarmed suspects.  He was a thug.

            The parade of marshals led the shackled Detective up the front steps of the New Haven Federal courthouse past the broadcasting vans of the local and regional news stations.  Inside the courthouse the gaslights of the lobby and halls reflected dull images on the polished surface of white and black marble.  The reporters, including a very tired and angry Rachel Cox, chased the Bezzegs and the assortment of prosecuting and defense lawyers into the restricted space of the courtroom.  Flashes of the cameras and the lights blinded the throng of government agents that moved along rapidly into the room that awaited their presence.  The oak doors swung open as they crashed through past the security guards and newspaper reporters taking cryptic notes on the physical appearance of the parties involved.

            Audie had his hands bandaged with gauze pads for the second-degree burns he suffered.  Dried purple blood suffused the skin on his neck and stained the zebra design on his soccer jersey.  He walked with a limp and a determined gait that contradicted the mood of the room drenched in dust and the intense morning light of late summer.

            Maggie brought her prisoner through the audience aisles past the benches to sit by his lonesome on the defence desk opposite the loaded prosecution.  Maggie uncuffed him from the seat behind him.  She crossed her legs, righted her skirt and adjusted her block letter identification badge hanging on the front pocket of her blazer.  Audie with his head turned, smiled eyeing his wife’s thighs, thinking about the last time they had been together. 

            “You know I haven’t seen you naked in two hours, no soft hands running up and down your thighs pulling at your pale skin.  Waiting for the purr you make that groan stirring through your marrow.”

            She tried to ignore the pheromones rising, and returned him a sinister smile that betrayed the tension.  “Shut up will you, this is the rest of your life, Audie.”

            “A hundred years gone.  I’d say this could be the worst day of your life.”

            “I’m starting to think my worst day was when I met you and got into this mess of yours.” 

            Maggie was interrupted as the masses on both sides for and against the former Lieutenant stood up promptly when the magistrate entered the crowded courtroom.

            “All rise for her honour, Judge Elina Weisz.”

            The Judge, was in her early sixties, with graying hair and had a wounded glare on her face.  Audie thought to himself she had just had a root canal or a bowel obstruction that lended her countenance extreme suffering and weakened stamina.  She cleared her throat and addressed the US Attorney, the prosecutor of Audie’s case. 

            “What are the charges against Lieutenant Bezzeg?”

            The nameless US Attorney smirked an upward glance to Judge Weisz and dove into the long laundry list of charges.  It took almost five minutes to read out the indictments.  He remained standing and gave the time over to Audie, who had chosen to represent himself.

            “How do you plead?”

            “Guilty on all twenty-three counts, your grace.”  Audie said lacking the gravitas expected of such a decisive admission. 

            The US Attorney spat out the water he was drinking all over his testimonials and the pressed Brooks Brothers suits of his counsel from the New Haven and New York offices.  Maggie Bezzeg grasped hold of Audie’s shoulder tightly.

            “Sidebar, your honor,” the US Attorney asked sitting uncomfortably in his wooden swivel chair.  He approached the bench and waited for Audie to arrive from his table. 

The US Attorney burst out suddenly, before Audie could reach the bench, “Sergeant Bezzeg does not know what he is doing, he made a deal with us to divulge information on the Cranbury Police and Mayor Ramsay.  This is a breach of our agreement.”

            Audie responded in kind without the indignant condescension.  “This supposed agreement was never put into writing nor was it ever recorded.  An implied plea deal is not a real plea as recognized in the courts.  Any imagined plea by the US Attorney is inadmissible because it’s a conversation and cannot remotely be considered as an agreement.”

            “I’m afraid that I will agree with the Lieutenant’s interpretation.  Is that all?” 

            She was visibly upset but felt compelled to agree with Detective Bezzeg and concur that this trial was unnecessary.  Bezzeg had saved the jobs of hundreds of county employees and city police officers from the threat of trial and imprisonment; he would have a lifetime incarcerated to savor his sacrificial goodwill.  And, yes, the entire city is corrupt and proud of it.

            Audie sat back down and listened to Maggie whisper into his ears—revealing her feelings about his ridiculous sacrifice for his home and people.  “You did the right thing, Audie.  I’m going to really miss you.”

            “You’re a worse liar than me, you know that Magpie.”

            She fought off the emotions, “I know.  I love a loser.” 

FAR WEST Chapter Nine

GOLGOTHA

Robert’s methamphetamine fed mind drifted off into reverie.  His waking narcodreams were often of his times teaching History and Literature at Wycliffe University, but were just as often lost in the montage of dead and extinct civilizations with special attention paid to the Roman Empire, the Mayans, and the Jerusalem of the Jews, Maccabees, and Zoroasters.

            Doctor Robert Stegner, until the recent closure of the University and the subsequent sale of the charter back to the British Sovereign, had been a full tenured Professor at Miskatonic College.  Miskatonic was one of the original colleges of Wycliffe established before the American War for Independence, well respected for its noted volumes of Latin and Hindi demonology books, religious texts, the papers of Milton, Cromwell, and Stowe, and original Arabic manuscripts in the library and its esteemed alumni in fields such as Philosophy, Theatre, Literature and more recently Atlantic History. 

            It had been a fitful job placement for Robert, who had the intellectual discipline and curiosity to devote his life to education, as it provided him many carnal opportunities with his female students and their mothers, if possible.  At Miskatonic, Robert met his future and former wife. 

            In the beginning, she was simply another sexual conquest to be notched in his hidden black notebooks he had used to catalogue the bagged students in some semblance of an accessible archive.  He was a real stickler for data, spreadsheets and organization.  She proved to be the shot in the arm that forced him to abandon his perverse dreams and accept the good and honourable society.   

            Audie struggled mightily to climb the Tower lugging the full weight of his pack with his heavy flak jacket and a large brown sledgehammer.  By the time he reached the landing beneath the metal access door he was out of breath, softly panting to himself.  He wiped the sweat off his hands onto his jeans and unsheathed his MP5 submachine gun from the back of his Kevlar vest.

            In a sudden jarring stroke of the hammer Audie sent the horizontal door flying upwards and open.  As it banged loudly in the confined space he pulled himself up by his arms into the belfry.  Flashes of brilliant white light were exchanged between the two as the teeming masses below watched on in unbroken fascination.

            The crowd had cocked their heads in near unison towards the exchange of fire emanating from the observation deck.  Rachel stared down at the road at her feet plaintively in a manner that mirrored Maggie save for the tears rolling down her face that revealed her real sentiments that she usually could keep hidden from the world. 

            The motley army of Cranbury Sheriffs, Police and County Firefighters looked up to the burning Tower in complete and unexpected silence.  This was an extraordinary sight to behold for the Tower had been part of the Vale for many generations without change or second thought for its place as meaningless landscape.  It was only a matter of time before it would return to the earth.

            Audie lay up against the far wall of the open air belfry busily checking his body for wounds, burns and all other possibly injuries.  When he finished his crude diagnostic exam, he brought his attentions to the dying man on the opposite wall beyond the gaping doorway in the floor that dropped hundreds of feet down to the shattered pieces of the broken television camera.

            The man writhed in pain. 

            His upper body was torn apart from the array of small entry and large exit wounds.  Audie had used ammunition of an explosive and illegal nature because he did not care of these consequences.  The man coughed out dark blood over his already blackened shirt, choking to death.  His eyes were covered in a thick layer of blood and severe acid burns from the muzzle flashes that now dominated his visual cortex’s last received images.  He would never know who had ended his earthly tenure—his surprise remained.

            “Sleep.”

            Audie said to the man unsure if he had yet to pass through the threshold to the other side.  This brief valediction was more for his own aide than that of the Shooter.  The moment passed as Audie threw off his vest as the heat of the chemicals smoldering grew more intense.  He dropped his pack to the ground and dropped down through the doorway to the small landing below the floor. 

            He raced blindly down the stairwell as he fumbled, tripped and hung on the rusted bars of the railings for the duration of his descent.  The vapors of various chemical reactions and the festering wounds he had not discovered on his body filled the Tower although he sensed nothing in this blurred and confused epinephrine state.

            Rachel and Ernie were permitted to film the growing conflagration, with a borrowed digital police camera, the final moments of the standoff under the close personal supervision of Commander Jaskilka. 

            The Mayor arrived to the operational headquarters with his outed Chamberlain to observe the unfolding events.  He had not changed out of his jogging suit and was openly ridiculed by his underlings for his silly appearance.  Rachel refused to speak to her father let alone give a single glance over to her future stepmother, who had failed to wipe all of the semen and curly black hairs off her mouth.

            Meanwhile, Maggie sat on the hood of the Major’s car ignoring the characters that had come to surround her in the flickering orange light and dark shadows of the wild conflagration consuming the high belfry of Victoria Tower.  The tears remained fixed on her cheeks as her beveined eyes continued to worry about the unknown futures that would arise the following morning.

            The world shook as the roof of tower erupted in a tremendous explosion.  The watchers retreated in their places as others ran for cover behind back alleys and dumpsters in desperate need to be emptied as their bowels were formerly.  Maggie was a stone.  Large portions of the roof were deposited in the rivulets of sewage, the clock and its gears landed in a chaotic range of scattered locations among the grave markers of the old Castle Cemetery, as for the bell it was never to be seen again.

            Out of the blanketing darkness Audie came stumbling across Taconic Street until he reached the inner perimeter where the firefighters had frantically established triage in the moments after the belfry was vaporized. They let it burn, unwilling to put out a fire that affected nothing of value.  Audie was brought to an ambulance to be patched up by the trauma nurse as her assistants tended to the burns that had accumulated around his neck and face.

            Maggie met her husband sitting upright on the stretcher and held his hands.  Her tears were gone as she kissed him lightly on his brow.  He whispered, “I believe.”

FAR WEST Chapter Eight

FANDANGO

 The Bezzegs stood together opposite Major Templeman in front of the ruined hood of his car and the department’s ancient diesel Crisis Winnebago, also known as the operational headquarters, for the debriefing.  The Major began his blustering ramble and was able to finish within a single breath of burning air, borrowing a page from George C. Scott.  As he concluded his theatrics, Maggie’s hostility intensified as her face became blanched in thick streaks of crimson and pink. 

            Aguinaldo and Jaskilka leaned against the hood of the Major’s car with a small collection of rifles, sledgehammers and gas canisters at their feet, waiting for the official niceties to finally pass.  Boredom was evident in their faces; this was just one more mass killing shooting no different than the last one.  Aguinaldo yawned picking his nose as Jaskilka smoked through an entire pack of cigarettes.    

                Maggie pestered the Major with her understandable and legal arguments against their latest plans.  “So what do you want him for?  I can think of at least a hundred things wrong with this whole stupid endeavour.”

            “That sounds like something you’d say, Misses Bezzeg.”  Major Templeman spat on the sidewalk and walked past her to Audie, in efforts to prevent himself from saying something he would not regret. 

            “This is from the Mayor directly.  His orders are as follows: end this mess.  Its right from the Star Chamber stamped and signed Lord Protector and County Director.” 

            Templeman turned around and handed the paper to Maggie.  She crumpled the orders up and threw them to the ground.  Templeman smirked acidly.  Audie picked it up and shoved the paper into his pants pocket keeping a keen eye on his wife and her left hand gripping the holster of her sidearm.

            “Gentleman Johnny’s sure got a sense of humor, don’t he?”  Audie chided.

            Maggie groaned in defeat, withdrawing her hand from the holster.  With her head down, she thought to herself of English history, the information beaten into her head and her wrists from catholic school.  The Ursuline nun’s distaste for organic churches such as the Saints was evident.  The English Troika.  The Star Chamber.  The Chancellor passed judgment on those they believed guilty, without due process.  No habeas corpus and no trial.  Death was the only sentence, true draconian law.  The One can take their head, torture them, seize their property or rape their wife.  Wish I did not think like this.  Wish I was unable to remember anything.  Maggie was still infuriated but had submitted with a tight grimace and ignored the insults that the both genders of the Cranbury Police dispensed under their breaths whenever she was present.

            “We are not going to bury you in that fucking shirt, Lieutenant.  If it were a Bruins jersey, maybe.”  Templeman winked to Bezzeg and returned to his shot-out car with Chief Aguinaldo. 

            Jaskilka led Audie away from the operational headquarters to the ERT support vehicles, which had been once been a delivery truck now painted in navy blue.  Maggie held her husband’s hand as they walked behind the chain-smoking Commander.

            Audie pulled on a Kevlar vest, embroidered in scarlet with a silver pictograph of the city seal covering the back, over his shoulders and lowered it down over his upper torso.  The zebra strips of his Newcastle United jersey jutted out from the sides of the armored vest until Maggie compulsively tucked it in from sight.  She fastened the straps around his waist.  Audie took a sidearm from Jaskilka, stuffing it into the Velcro holster hanging off over his shorts.  Maggie withdrew her blushed extremities as he kissed her face lightly offering her silent thanks for her presence.  Jaskilka lit a cigarette and gave it to the Sergeant for a quick draw. 

            “Were you ever in the Army, Beg?” Jaskilka said adjusting the laces of his black boots.

            “A long time ago not here and not with this asshole up in the Tower—Charles Whitman was a much better shot.” 

            Audie said as he puffed out a long drag of the ratty cigarette hanging out the side of his mouth.

            “I remember doing things just like this a long time ago.  We never had crowds this lively; it’s like the stage or a football match where everybody is free-basing on cocaine.  This riot is going to be a real bad one.”

            “Yeah, without the horses, y’all are going to get stampeded.  Where, back in Poland?”  Audie looked up to the seniored Police soldier.

            “Don’t quite know if it was really Poland back then.  And you, in der Amerikanerischer Armee, ja?”

            “In die British Armee—Gewehr.  Warum, alles dis German?”

            “Some kind of bad joke, I suppose.  Never fired a gun have you?”

            “I did serve some time.  You’ve never made nitroglycerin explosives, fought religious fundamentalists or taken on infiltration missions I take it?”

            Maggie listened to their very male conservation, watching from a close proximity.  The wetness of spent tears boiled on her face and turning her green eyes a fiery red, riven with the ebb and flow of severe inflammation.  Audie felt the heat escaping from her face, but continued on his conversation with Jaskilka, foolishly ignoring her. 

            “What are you going to do?  Kill them all?  Take the lift to the top and open fire soon as the door opens?”  Maggie asked in an enraged fury.  The words were barely audible.

            Audie drew his weapon, pulled the clip back on the sidearm and blew clear the dust and powder from the barrel.  It snapped cleanly and likely would not jam.  Jaskilka test shot his carbine and other lesser calibers shotguns startling the crowd already harried by the incessant violence though their eardrums had bled out hours earlier. 

            “That’s the general operation for flushing out a sniper, Magpie.” 

            Audie puffed out hot air from his throat and approached Maggie. 

            “What if you get killed?”  She asked softly, low for privacy, but loudly enough for everyone inside the jersey barriers to hear.  She need these last moments and would not easily accept her husband’s fearless bluster.

            “Then I won’t be going to prison.”

            “I meant what am I supposed to do without you.”

            “What do I care—I’ll be dead.”

            Maggie stomped her feet and slapped hard Audie right across the face.  Jaskilka grimaced sadly and handed him his weapon. 

            “Weapons check complete.”  Jaskilka said as he had finished inspecting Audie’s arsenal, who had done the same for the ERT Commander.

            “What do you want to listen to on the way up, some Supertramp perhaps?”  Audie changed the tone of the moment in an instant from the drama of his wife’s wrath to the waiting battle high above them in the clouds. 

            Maggie stared at him coldly, regretting her decision to lease her prisoner back to the Cranbury police, who needed his skills as an unfeeling killer.  He was a mercenary, as were his Hessian ancestors and was good at this job.  She did not want him to go.  The world without him was not one she wanted to live in, and had hoped that she would not survive to see that possible world of emptiness.   

            “No, I’m afraid that that look means Supertramp is right out.  Well, what do you suggest Commander?  I can’t think without prior approval from the queen bee herself.”

            “Fuck you, Audie,” barked Maggie.

            “That’s the saintly woman I love.   We could read a passage from the good book.  Something about Jacob’s Ladder, Revelation or the Words of Wisdom?”   

            Maggie despite her animus for her husband approached and spoke directly to him as if they were alone at home, in a voice that could barely carry six inches.  His brown eyes kept to her green eyes for a long embrace.  She had blood underneath the sharp and slender cuticles of her fingers, but failed to notice.  Audie gripped the hilt of a long sledgehammer in his left arm and kissed her smugly.  He was gone.
            “Too late for tomorrows,” Maggie whispered to herself. 

Rachel sat across from the Shooter, who was presently turning down the volume of his police band radio.  Ernie remained in the shadows of the giant brass bell and the pillars that supported slate roof between beakers filled with unknown foul smelling chemical compounds and the used grenade launchers.  At the center of the floor of the belfry the heavy rusted metal access door was left ajar.  It rested on the handle lock against the white unfinished surface of the floor.  The distant sound of the police and the festering inebriated mob behind the pickets was nominal, non-existent. 

            The camera was rolling as she continued her exclusive interview of the Shooter. 

Rachel countered, “They will kill you.  There is no other way that this will play out.  It is instant karma.”

            “And may we all shine on . . .” 

            The emaciated skeletal contours of Shooter’s face emerged from the shadows to the light of the camera.  His dark brown eyes leaped from sockets searing into the film with a grave and distant voice that could lilt the smartest soul into dumbfounded submission.  The twitching of his crystallized blood veins was nominal, but the evidence of his losing battle with the addiction was starkly abundant. 

            Ernie bit his lip, noting to himself that she lost her journalistic integrity, although none of this could really be blamed on her unfortunate circumstance.  The vulgarities would bring down the heavy-hand of the FCC, ending her career, but that was unimportant and somewhat absurd to the moment.  This end was far better than the stories of the anchors and reporters, who had lost their jobs for cursing out invalids, punching police officers in the face, and attending sex parties with the defensive line of the Minnesota Vikings.  This interview was her best work, the something that would make his own career seem almost worthwhile, even as a camera operator on a local network affiliate.

            “This world is hell.  Nine levels of endless shit to bear.”

            Ernie countered the weight of his heavyset body.  The shot was adjusted for the camera to capture Rachel’s shaking hands in the light of the Benson burners and the lights of the old downtown.  Her nerves betrayed her growing horror.  Ernie felt it necessary to let the audience see her honest and understandably shaken nerves.  He wanted to show her as everyone else saw the world scared witless.

            “What the fuck are you talking about?”

            “Your own mother slit her own wrists.  You were in and out of Butler Psychiatric and rehab clinics for attempted suicides and heroin addiction.  You may care about the life of others, but you say fuck me and prove it.  Destruction is noble.  Self-destruction is human frailty.  Weakness.”

            “A bit preachy with that big gun aren’t we? Up on the high horse and prophetic, eh?  Making up for a lack of something.  This is most fucked-up way to commit suicide!  Charles Whitman is not a hero—he’s nothing.”

            “You would know, I suppose, Mistress Cox or is it now Kemken?”

            “I hate that Ukrainian whore.  I know she’s using my Dad to run the city.  The only way Kemken can retain his power is through his cunt of a daughter.”

            Ernie snickered.  He enjoyed and encouraged the inadvertent release of state secrets for the sake of transparency, scandal, and ratings.  Profanity, on the other hand, like sex and violence was still chided away from because it was more real than acceptable. 

            Ernie said to himself:  It’s all he can get.  No one wants to fuck the Mayor of Cranbury.  She must be a real psycho, worse than Rachel, if that is even possible.  The Mayor and the Chamberlain, by definition of their relationship, had to have the same agenda not of some elaborate socialist conspiracy. 

            The Opposition would take on the temporary mantle of the moralist, puritan, perfectionists until they were in government and had Ramsay’s head on a pike.  They would demand that their perfection must be satisfied and that this out-of-wedlock relationship did not reflect that perfection in any facet.  Such a political opportunity was hard to not exploit.    

            Dust gathered as Rachel starred meekly away into the shadows of the steeple.  The Shooter felt her mood and inched his body out from the belfry to the open deck with his rifle.  “I think that it was time you left.  The song is ending.” 

            Ernie cut the feed, turned off his camera, and packed it into its case for the long way back down to the loading dock.  He helped Rachel to her feet and continued about his tasks to leave.  She did not cry as she left the overlook.  The Shooter, Robert, waxed sentimental over his life as Ernie vanished into the shadows of the stairwell. 

            “I thought I was meant for so much more than this.”

            Rachel responded from the threshold, “That future is not for us.  Just the fucking Mormons and Jews.  We are not the chosen—just the trash.”

Audie was winded after he had ascended about half the height of the Tower.  Jaskilka continued on the way leading the pace ever upward.  The steepness of their vertical ascent was daunting on the verge of causing severe vomiting.

            “How many flights are in this goddamn Tower?  Isn’t there an elevator?  Shit.”  Audie vented his frustrations to the captive audience of one.  Jaskilka had to listen, as he slowed his progress to keep his charge moving along to his objective. 

            Jaskilka was calm.  “There was an elevator, but it broke and killed eleven people.  The city was sued and lost, so they decided to remove it.”

            “That sounds about right.”

            “But it does seem to go on forever, guess that’s the point of a challenge . . .”

            “Think that cocksucker’s waiting for us?”

            “Most definitely.  He knows the outcome.  Might over Right.”

            “What he thinks is right.  Offing random people who have done nothing to him, does not seem to be in the right.”

            “What’s the difference?  Morals are personal and the liberty of discretion.  A freedom of conscience.”

            “Is all our conversation going to be about your anarchist amoral Trotskyite nonsense philosophy or do you have other things to offer?”

            “It’s boring you?”

            “Yes it is.  Don’t you play darts?  Cruise bars?  Pick fights with witnesses?”

            “Without dreaming about why we’re here than what’s the point of dreaming at all?  We want what we can’t have and we hate what we have.  Americans have no sense of their place or time.”

            “When you’re worm food I’ll remind you how meaningless it all was.”

            “You could get shot dead soon as the door opens and that’s it.”

            “You sound like you’ve been planning for the next world.”

            “I am an old man ready for whatever is on the other side, if there is more than oblivion.  HP Lovecraft said—.”

            His conclusion was rudely interrupted when there was the loud stumble of heavy weighted feet above their position.  That thunderous clap of noise had killed the quiet succor of the poignant conversation.  Audie glared at Jaskilka and took the point up the stairs. 

            Audie drew out his sidearm and crept up the steps cautiously ahead of Jaskilka.  He moved quietly watching the figures circle around above him aiming his way while he climbed.  Jaskilka held the rear, his shotgun cocked, holding the second line of fire for whatever was barreling down the way.  Two figures came around the next bend and were grabbed by the two waiting policemen from the shadows.

            “Drop the fucking camera!”  Audie barked at the genuinely surprised pair. 

            Jaskilka held his sights firm on the right temple of the female reporter.  He did not blink as he unlatched the safety.  She became hysterical.  His finger gripped the trigger tightly as he waited ready to pull it and stamp her flame out. 

            Audie grabbed the camera kit from the man when he refused to surrender it.  He held the kit over the railing and dropped it down the center of the stairwell.  Seconds later, it exploded into a thousand pieces at the cement base upon impact.  The Reporter was livid as her eyes bugged out like Chaucer’s.

            “We have a fucking right to be here!”  The Reporter spat out in ferocious desperation despite the gun digging into her temple.

            “I’ve read the constitution too, Miss, and this is nowhere in it.”

            Audie turned away from her glare to address Jaskilka, “Arrest these two for trespassing in closed county property, breaking the police picket and consorting with a criminal.”

            “Arrest us, who are you fucking kidding?”  Rachel Cox was not pleased and had no control of her emotions for the killers of her only husband.

            “I’m kidding.  Kill her then the cameraman.”  Audie deadpanned perfectly to his temporary partner, who understood the humor and finally blinked. 

           
“Going out with a bang, eh, Lieutenant?” Jaskilka said as be descended the stairs, escorting the two, as he prodded them on with his shotgun butt. Audie breathed heavily and continued on his way up the last flights to the belfry.

FAR WEST Chapter Seven

The language herein is especially salty.

CATHERINE McCORMACK

On what must have been the eightieth circle of the Tower, the helicopter exploded outward in all directions.  The rotors, in a field of yellow sparks, spun off the hitch falling and ripping through the asphalt surface of the street seconds before the descending heap of twisted metal fell upon it.  The helicopter continued its crash down through the crater after impact, until the burning fuselage came to rest sunken beneath the city center.   

            Taconic Street was a poorly constructed heavy use thoroughfare built seventy years previous by the Kemken Chemical Corporation with the undocumented labour of émigrés from the Russian Empire.  The sewer still did not work properly with the occasional random toilet explosion, cholera outbreak, and generally bad prevailing smell of rotting waste.  Cranbury remained one of the last municipalities in the state to build a comprehensive sanitation system despite its declining capacity needs.

            A large splash of raw sewage exploded out up onto the street.  The putrid yellow, brown, and green wave dissipated before it reached the police’s picket line back towards the worn out bowling pitches of the Green.  The piercing screams of the sharpshooters and the pilot coupled with the sight of the great thundering bird burning away in its crater had quieted the crowd and the audiences watching from home.  The news programs aired the beginning and end of this particular fiasco inside of a greater unfolding calamity that had cost the city six more lives and upwards of millions of dollars of which they did not have.  The local schools would lose their funding for another year. 

            Over the side of the Tower fell what looked to be a smoldering lead pipe.  It danced in the air until it made a soft thud into the grassy patch around the loading dock immediately beneath the Tower.  The sanitation and water mains began to pump thick brown liquid out onto the street.  With its flood came more of the sewer soup out of the impact crater, putting out the flaming wreckage of the helicopter.  The Public Works crew on the scene made a call to the Cranbury Water to close the aqueduct’s flow valves in line to the Green.  The city was at its whits end of patience as the things they took for granted slipped farther out of grasp.

            “What the fuck was that?”  Major Templeman’s red eyes and hard breath worked as one betraying his visceral disbelief.

            “The spent shell casings of an RPG.  Looks rudimentary.”  Jaskilka said matter-of-factly as he lifted himself up from the hood of the Major’s car.

            The Major was lost and was compelled to ask, “RPG?”

            An ERT sergeant, with severe burns and scars crisscrossing his face in a haphazard tesserae which could have been exhibited at the Whitney or the Armory Show as a modern art masterpiece, interjected before the commander could speak.  “Rocket Propelled Grenade.  Ain’t you ever seen Black Hawk Down?  Could be an M203, one of our make, sir.”

            “One of our make?  Get out of my sight; this is not the time for a fucking sales pitch!”  Major Templeman barked at the sergeant.  “Frost Armaments and that evil CEO of theirs, Cody, are the ruin of this police force.  We have to take their no-bid non-compete contracts and test their damn plastic weapons.  I really hope they hang Archibald Cody, I’d be there cheering from the front row.” 

Commander Jaskilka licked his lips and turned away from the carnage to face the rankled crowd.  The lights of the news crews, cars and the street lamps blinded his eyes but he looked ahead past everyone to the faintly illuminated white and red St. George’s cross that stood upon the ring of mountains towering over the Vale.

            The Major’s conspiracy theories and disgust of mercenary corporations gave way to a more productive and logical curiosity.  “How did he get a goddamn grenade launcher up there?”

            “He knows what he’s doing.”  Jaskilka began to read out a list that he had compiled in his head to serve as a swift profile, “He’s got a broad knowledge of chemistry, physics, and probably has a military background.  He baited that helicopter in—waited for his shot and made it count when it hit those rotors.  He’s patient, methodical, and armed to the teeth.  We should have gassed him out when we had the helicopter, searchlights and grenade launchers.  If we weren’t so goddamn cheap.”

Jaskilka walked past Major Templeman to Aguinaldo, who was on the phone.  He was in an embittered fervor with whoever was on the other end of the line.  The voice on the other end was that of the FBI Special Agent- in-Charge, Maggie Bezzeg.  SAC Bezzeg was also known as the “Cunt” by the county civil services and almost everyone who came into contact with her.  She was argumentative, prone to anger and never hesitated to chew people out in public regardless of rank or position.  The ugly nickname was a badge of derision that had lost its derogatory meaning because of the frequency of its use, at least when applied to her.  For the worst word in the English language it meant nothing despite the efforts of George Carlin, Lenny Bruce, Kenneth Tynan, and the FCC.  

            Waiting for the Chief to end his phone conversation, Jaskilka crouched low to the ground and lit a wooden match off a storm drain.  The sulfur phosphate smell rose from the head and filled the void between the two police cars.  He watched it flame out as the tips of his fingers felt the sensation of its heat briefly.  Aguinaldo ended his phone call and met Jaskilka kneeling down to the pavement. 

            Aguinaldo promptly gave the ERT Commander the status report of their secret weapon.  “The Cunt is en route with her husband.  Beg’s ours for the night.”

            “What good luck he’s got, Chief.  He’s going to die tonight.”  Jaskilka stood up.

            “Past his jail time only God knows,” Aguinaldo said.

            “If he saves the city his life may mean something after all.”   Jaskilka left his side and walked to the ERT support trucks his mind drifting among the stars above the droning lights of the cordon.

            The scene in downtown Cranbury had become increasing more chaotic than the one that Swarbrick and Pizarro had left three hours earlier in the day.  This had become akin to the arena parking lot after the end of a minor league hockey game complete with the meaningless scuffles, singing, and the public urinating.  That communal drunkenness had infected the masses, bringing them closer to riot than could be consciously acknowledged.  The crowds had become restless, agitated further by the uncertainty following the helicopter crash which had at first silenced them. 

            Most of the onlookers had been drinking since the shooting began in the mid-afternoon and the alcohol consumption peaked leaving a mass congregation of drunks, outnumbering the homeless vagrants who called the Green home.  Eleven people were now dead, yet the crowds were unafraid, and were in fact joined by hundreds more that came to see the spectacle after work.  They had nothing else going on.  The Police were powerless to reassert control of the scene for fear of the Shooter’s response and the coming riot. 

            The Vulture squad detectives were unaffected and remained focused on their meaningless discussions, as they pushed through the thick clusters of overweight teamsters, corporate and bureaucratic workers in their suits, mustached bikers, and high school football players making out with their morally casual girlfriends in their letter jackets.  The crowds were primarily composed of adult men, with exception of those female friends with benefits, police officers, lawyers, reporters, and civil employees.

            “No that’s garbage.  Atlantico is far better than Rangers,” Pizarro contended smugly. 

            Bezzeg, based on his wife’s preference and the fact he was wearing their zebra striped shirt, argued, “They’re still not Newcastle United.” 

            “Fuck the Toon, fuck Newcastle, fuck the Goal movie, fuck Kevin Keegan, and fuck Alan Shearer!  Rangers are as consistently great as the goddamn New York Yankees.” 

            Swarbrick was less cordial in his blind support for his home-town club, living up to the Scots’ martial spirit.  Pizarro and Bezzeg were more of a sanguine nature than their elder friend, but still enjoyed a good fight even in joking.  Swarbrick did not find humour in these believed insults to his manhood and abandoned city on the Clyde.   

            “At least the fans attack the players still and yeah, the Yankees, great example, they haven’t done shit in almost a decade.  Well, Glasgo smells worse Waterbury—oh shit—this is where you’re going to tell me to marry your daughter.  We have had this conversation far too often.”

            “Give it some thought, Beg.  She maybe only twenty-five but—.”

            “I’m not going to marry your daughter.  Stop asking or I might actually agree to it and Maggie’ll castrate me.”

            “No one else would ever take her as a wife.”

            “Wonder why, Swar?  All of the women you have married are completely insane, how is she any different?  And I know you’ve wanted my wife since we met, believe me she ain’t worth it.  Nags all the fucking time even in coitus—its painful and humiliating sex.”

            “Maggie could double for Catherine McCormack.  She is a looker, Audie. I cannah help but think about it.”

            “I know—you’re a pervert like the rest of us.  Really Catherine McCormack?  The haughty actress with the great breasts and teeth?  I always thought she looked more like a blonde Jenny Agutter.”

            “Her teeth ruined Braveheart.”

            “Well, maybe they had special 13th Century dentists in Scotland, used pig’s intestine for floss and cow shit for the paste.  If Maggie looked like her I would never let her out of the house—she would have a thousand marriage proposals within the week.”

            “I saw her perform on stage before; she was terrific but can’t see for shit without glasses.  The entire male audience, even the nancies, fell for her completely.  I doubt she gave much of a toss, but she had us all madly in love.  It is a compliment to your wife; she does have her unique charms.  That wit of hers is always sharp and fast, its so un-Mormon.”

            “Swarbrick, you fall for every woman you meet.  Actresses don’t go for our types.  We are not urban hipster artists; we don’t live for the art or feel it like they supposedly do.  No one likes us pigs, especially internal affairs, but we keep civilization humming along and protect the peaceful from the cruel and violent.  We are the slaves and they are the masters, whom we serve.  Don’t get me wrong, I know that we are on page with the universe, but the artists are incapable of giving a shit unless I direct some moody atmospheric Bergmanesque movie about meaningless social problems or write some boring and dense book that makes no sense—which at this point is as unlikely as Catherine McCormack moving to the Vale and becoming your seventh wife.”

            “Sir, shut-it.  Its time.”  Swarbrick prodded his former boss on.

Swarbrick and Pizarro walked their former Lieutenant through the picket lines to the array of the senior brass of the Vale’s civil services.  Maggie trailed behind them at a respectful distance and out of earshot with her agents, watching the stars and nearby planets coming out through the dense light pollution.  Swarbrick and Bezzeg continued to argue as the three arrived at the operational headquarters to receive further instruction their superiors.

            Bezzeg countered, “She’s anti-social, boring, and too smart for her own good.”

            “So?” said Swarbrick.  He was unable to understand Audie’s rhetoric.

            “I prefer a challenge.”

            “She’d be a better wife for you.  Get you some children and out of this shithole.”

            “Don’t get me wrong, Swar.  I have thought about it seriously but Maggie needs me.  Kelly doesn’t need anyone.”

            “She will when she’s too old to find a husband, lonely with her cats and plants.”

            “And we’re dead in Elysium.” 

Audie thoughts were fittingly his own.  Gladiator was a great movie, the kind women hate and men love.  Plenty violent without a fucking love story that resolves or has a happy ending riding off into the sunset like Shane. No Catherine McCormack waiting for your return.  Audie sullenly glanced to Swarbrick and obliged him.  Swarbrick held his shoulder with a hard grip and made their good-bye. 

“Guess you’ll see her then.”