6th Horseman, Extremist Edge Series: Part 1 (33 page)

“You can open your eyes,” Mitchell yells. He
releases my hand. We run around a building and duck into a corner.
Mitchell takes something from his pocket and jabs it into my
shoulder. It’s a needle.

“You’re going to have to run as fast as
you’ve ever run in your life. Got it?”

My lungs relax and stop gasping for air. My
muscles and sore knees stop aching. I’ve never felt better in all
my life. I want to sing! Mitchell looks back at me. He’s
smiling.

“What was that?” I yell.

“What was what?” Mitchell picks up speed. I
match him.

“I’m running like The Flash,” I yell. My
shoulder is tender where he jabbed me. “You drugged me!”

“CIA sweet stuff!” Mitchell yells.
“Experimental stuff to get you going! I was saving it. Don’t worry,
the only side effect is a headache and maybe a bit of nausea!”

I keep running. It’s quite fantastic. The air
is cool and my clothing snaps in the wind, sending tingles through
my body. We zigzag through the neighborhoods. There are a few
people in the streets now, but they stay clear of us. We run
through the old dome houses, around a manufacturing plant, and past
some apartments. It’s getting dark. Lamps light the streets, but
they are few and far between.

At the edge of the main part of town we slow
down. Mitchell stops at a huge gate. Its wood is painted red but
weather beaten, such a fascinating gate. I wonder why I think it’s
so fascinating. Behind the gate are two camels. They’re packed with
water, food, and supplies. Mitchell has been preparing. I guess I
should have expected that. The Lord is shining on him because he is
with me. I feel like giving him a hug.

Mitchell helps me onto the camel and we move
out. I feel like I want to jump out of the saddle and run to the
moon. We approach a small guarded station. Mitchell tells me to
wait and hide, and gives my camel the order to stay. He climbs off
his camel and disappears into the night. Ten minutes later he
returns. Blood is splattered on his hands and forearms. I feel
sorry he had to kill those men for me. Bless this man.

The stars are out in full force.

Those were the heavens I remembered from when
I was a kid. I grew up in Alabama and always watched the sky at
night. Since I’d moved to New York I’d become estranged from them.
Pity. They’re so majestic, so beautiful. My happiness is so intense
I think I’m going to cry. Luckily, I don’t have to steer or do
anything. I’m along for the ride. We pass a large electric power
plant at the edge of town. I can smell the acrid stench of burning
coal.

I look behind me and see the lights of
Medinine. A group of helicopters fly around the city where there is
lots of activity and spotlights. It’s dark, but, because Mitchell
had told me where the power plant was, I know we’re going south
into the heart of the Sahara Desert.

I start praying like a thief on Judgment Day.
I don’t want to go into the Sahara. I shake the fear off. God will
protect me. I quote a verse from Psalm 121:7-8. “The Lord shall
preserve thee from all evil; He shall preserve thy soul. The Lord
shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time
forth, and even for evermore.”

An hour later we reach the edge of a large
lake. I can see the reflection of the rising moon in the water, as
well as the bright stars. We ride on the waters edge, so the
lapping waves will wash away our tracks.

“So beautiful!” I yell to Mitchell. I’m
seeing beauty everywhere, except for the stench coming from the
power plant. This is an enchanted place. I raise my hands. Oh, if
Marian could be with me! She would be filled with romance. Oh, oh,
if Sister Jordan could see this. Jordan was my secretary and had a
wandering heart. She wanted to see the world more than I.

“The lake is completely dead!” Mitchell
replies. “Poisoned by a chemical factory fifteen years ago. They
dumped chemicals into underground rivers which flowed into the
lake!”

“Sometimes the brotherhood of man can be
quite. . . “

“A bummer!” Mitchell finishes.

I laugh, “That’s right, I guess. A
bummer.”

#

This was not the first time I’d seen capital
industry step all over God’s green planet. When I’d lived in Selma
as a boy I’d seen an entire neighborhood get sick because of
industry. Ten people died as a result. All of them seemed to live
in the new blocks west of the river. Four years before, a builder
came into town and built cheap houses on a bulldozed bit of
swampland. Little did they know, the land had been poisoned by a
pharmaceutical company that routinely dumped there. We found out
that the well water that was piped into the new houses had a high
level of some chemical I can’t pronounce. They never prosecuted
anyone for the dumping, or the cheap builder for not testing the
wells. No one could prove a thing. The only evidence against the
pharmaceutical company was the testimony of a truck driver who they
had fired. And he was not the best of witnesses. He beat his wife,
got drunk every night, and was a devil of a man in general. I
believed him, though. I eventually brought him into my congregation
and saved his soul.

I never understood how men could turn their
backs on God’s Earth for a buck. I do believe in punishment. If you
don’t atone for your sins, you should be punished for them. And
there is a lot of atonement that hasn’t happened, a lot of sin gone
unpunished. That’s why He’s planning the Second Coming. That’s why
God will bring the Apocalypse to the Earth. And His wrath will be
greater than anything man has seen in over three thousand
years.

#

I do some thinking while on the back of my
camel, gazing at the stars. I imagine what the Apocalypse will look
like. Who will be the Four Horsemen? Who’s the antichrist? Will he
be the President of the United States, or the head of an
international corporation? My head buzzes and tingles with so many
possibilities. The stars seem to dance about like fireflies on the
edge of the Alabama River. Is God trying to talk to me? I try to
listen to the stars for a while.

Our camels move on into the late night,
easily walking on the soft sand. Besides a grunt now and again and
an odor, the camels are quite pleasant.

The night goes on. Eventually, the moon sets.
A pressure grows in my head. The stars aren’t so pretty now and
neither is the moon. All the light I see grows coarse and jagged
and has long exaggerated spikes emanating from every source.

“You okay?” Mitchell asks me. “You’re not
cooing over the view anymore.” I don’t answer. Pushing air from my
lungs seems too arduous a task. I can’t help but slump in my seat.
That’s when the nausea kicks in. I lose my stomach over the side of
the camel in heaving convulsions.

“Light nausea!” I scream at Mitchell, wiping
my mouth. Oh, if the Lord permitted me violence I’d kill Mitchell
for drugging me, even though it saved my life. The muscles in my
legs start to tighten. I try to rub them, but my hands ache too
much. Pain follows until I slip from my camel like a sack of
potatoes and pass out.

I wake up to the bright sun. The air is still
cool, but that will change soon. My head thumps, although not as
bad as it did last night. I reach up and pull a torn wet rag off my
forehead.

“You feeling better?” Mitchell asks. He’s
sipping on a cup of coffee.

“I will once you share that coffee with me.”
He hands me a small blue metal mug. It’s some of the best coffee
I’ve ever tasted. “Wow,” I say, sipping eagerly.

“Arabian Java,” Mitchell says in between
sips. “Very fresh.”

“You’ve been holding out. We haven’t had
fresh coffee this entire time.”

Mitchell nods. “Saved it. I knew we’d need
the boost on our trip. We have to cross about five hundred
kilometers of desert to get where we’re going.

“I’m American. How many miles is that?”

Mitchell laughs, “About three hundred
miles.”

That number sounds better even though I know
it’s the same distance. I feel safe now, safer than I’d felt in a
long time, even though there is nothing but sand dunes all around
us. “And where are we going?” I ask, sipping the warm, heavenly
coffee.

Mitchell points toward the rising sun, “A
secret CIA base outside of Touggourt, Algeria.”

T
he clock ticks in
my head. I wish I had a real clock to look at. The one in my head
is so wrong. I can’t be sure what time it is, or how long they’ve
been gone. I need Tequila, badly. I’m stuck on this boat with
crybaby Rice. She’s pacing across the deck like a caged walrus
looking for a way out. I look for a cool place to sit. It’s getting
shit hot under the sun. I go below to find shade. The doorway
leading into the cabin is already open. As I step down the ladder I
feel like I’m stepping into a sauna. My pits instantly become
little sweat sprinklers.

The first area is the kitchen, a big kitchen.
Four stainless steel sinks line the wall to the left. Two
double-door refrigerators are at the rear of the kitchen. There’s a
bench all the way to the right and two food prep tables sit in the
middle of the room. It’s an impressive galley. Galley, I think
that’s what the fish heads call it. Polished red wood covers the
walls and the floors. There are two side portals and four ceiling
hatches. I open them all to get a breeze going. The kitchen is
pretty awesome. There are lots of drawers filled with every kinda
cooking tool you’d ever need. I open the refrigerator. Nothing in
there. Next to the fridge is a small book hanging on a hook. It’s a
cookbook. I thumb through the pages and read aloud, “Crostini
filled mushroom caps, bacon wrapped shrimp. Holy shit, that sounds
good.” On the next page I continue, “Cornish game hens with a
blackberry sauce, and veal served over wild mushroom cream, and a
salmon and wine dish.” My stomach growls and rolls.

Rice comes down the steps, “What’s going on?”
she asks, clearly bored out of her mind.

I can suggest something to take her mind off
things. Something hard. I laugh to myself. “Party boat for rich
dudes and their dudettes,” I say, staring at Rice. She has a pretty
face, for sure. Puffy from all the crying. I’d definitely play with
her ta-tas. Rice turns away. I hand her the menu, “Check out what’s
for dinner.”

She takes the book. “Are you going to cook
this tonight?” she says nervously, but playfully.

I shrug, “I’d love to. Let me pull a game hen
out my ass.” I laugh.

She chuckles and loosens up. “Oh, I’ll have
the veal. Got one of those in your you-know-what?”

“Nice choice.” I take the book back and hang
it on the hook. “I just hope they stop at a Romeo’s Delectable
Market for some fresh pasta.”

“I shop there too sometimes,” Rice says.
“They have chicken parmesan I’d kill for.”

“I love their Nine Cheese Rosatti.” I
salivate as I leave the kitchen and head deeper into the boat.
“Nothin’ like it in the world,” I say over my shoulder.

“Nine cheese?” she says easily. “That’s a
lot.”

“So good.” I enter the dining room. There are
two eight-person tables on either side of the walkway. Bookshelves
are here and there, filled with tons of books, and a flat-screen TV
in the center of the shelves. Along all the edges of the room are
cushy benches. “Nice shit. I can get used to this.” Rice agrees. I
continue down the hall, finding the bedrooms. I peek in the first
room. It’s got double bunks for stick people. “Jeeze,” I mumble. “I
don’t think I’d fit in these beds.” Rice laughs. She knows what I
mean. She’s a big fish like me. “Good thing we have a kid and a
skinny nerd with us.” I open all the portals in the two rooms. The
breeze gets stronger. Fresh air hits my face. The beads of sweat
that have formed on my temple ice my skin. God, it feels good. I
close my eyes and breathe. My head gets quiet. I love it when my
thoughts stop.