Gudsriki (7 page)

She almost smiled to herself at that estimate as she topped a mountain of rubble. This one held a view far better than most of the sorry remains of Scotland. She saw the waters of Pentland Firth, cold and junked at the shore, but beyond it was Orkney. Beyond it was her only chance of seeing Violet's face again.

 

 

I
NVESTIGATORS
FROM
the city worked quickly to piece together what had happened. Services had started at 8:30 a.m. as usual. At 8:42 during the opening sermon, a brown Chevy truck (identified by the security camera on Elm and Hanover) drove into the parking lot of the small white church. It paused for a few seconds then backed up into the front doors, obstructing them.

The assailants, both dressed in black cloaks, then took four Molotov cocktails from the truck and threw them through the glass windows of the nave, lighting fires across the interior. The Molotov cocktails were made with frozen orange juice and gasoline, producing napalm that stuck to several patrons. Most of the victims died of burns, a few of smoke inhalation.

With the front door obstructed, patrons ran for the side door by the pulpit, the only other door to the building. At this point the assailants took guns from the truck and positioned themselves outside the door. At least one 12-gauge shotgun and one 9mm weapon were used. The lab would rush results for the exact types. The assailants fired over forty-nine shots (counted on the first pass, likely more), most hitting their victims.

Many of the laity died on the scene of gunshot wounds. The clergy died… differently. Pastor Cody Sparks and his son Ryan Sparks, police chief of the town, were found burned to death, nailed to two of the three crosses standing out in front of the church. Backward, facing the wood. They had burned slowly, succumbing to the wick effect, likely without losing consciousness until they died. The third cross held the burnt remains of Margaret Clay.

The truck left at 8:59 a.m., only five minutes before first responders arrived at the scene. The security camera was unable to identify the license plate, but an APB was issued for all brown Chevy trucks in the county. The targeting of Margaret Clay proved the most critical information, as when officers went to inform Andrew Geki and his wife Jessica of her mother's death, they were missing, as was their brown Chevy truck.

Investigators swarmed the house and surrounding lot. In the lot they found a recently buried infant, severely mutilated. The biggest manhunt in the history of the state began. The Geki couple were branded terrorists, and the Department of Homeland Security became active in the hunt. But the trail was utterly cold. There was absolutely no sign of the couple until the next Sunday—when another church was attacked.

Thirty seven died in the attack, committed in much the same manner but almost a hundred miles northeast in the big city. The brown Chevy was found parked at the doors, and it took a day to ascertain which of the laity's cars was stolen. By then it had already been found in the neighboring state. Security at every church in both states was exceptional the following Sunday. The next church they attacked was all the way out in California.

By the time of the fourth attack in Texas, Homeland Security was shamed by their inability to catch the couple, who appeared and disappeared without a trace, as if by magic. Their reign of terror lasted three years and killed hundreds. Dozens of churches attacked.

But after their capture, after the famous revelation of their motive, after debate and anger and blame ran their course, after the copycats and after the creation of the House Of Worship Defense Infantry, what people remembered most was the tremendous fear the Geki couple had caused across the nation. The image of two black cloaks, for a time, was the very quintessence of fear in America.

Politicians adeptly played upon that fear to suit their agendas. In the following years, the first antiheresy laws were passed in violation of the First Amendment. Criticism of Protestant Christianity was classified as hate speech. Under the guise of persecution, practitioners of the religion were elected en masse and soon the country was effectively a Protestant theocracy, leading to the peaceful first Catholic uprising and its violent quashing.

The Protection Of Islam act of the EU functioned similarly. Sharia law had to be respected, criticism was prohibited, and the globe finally found itself split between Muslim rule in the eastern hemisphere and Christian in the west.

Politics stagnated for decades. The quality of living decreased slowly, marred by the prohibition of vaccinations, which led to widespread disease, the restriction of women's rights across the planet, the downfall of higher education, and more. It was in this age of decline that June Waystone, after her release from prison on heresy charges, posted the work she'd written inside, a work that put her right back in prison before she could say “injustice.” But the work,
The Foolish Weaver
, was on the net and impossible to stop. It revealed to the public the first “World Cold War.”

Christian America and Muslim Europe were at the brink of going hot. Intelligence in Europe had found Muslims in internment camps in the United States. Intel in the States had uncovered mass executions of Christians in Denmark. Both blocs were planning military intervention. Waystone didn't stop at these revelations. She also proved that the intel on both sides had been forged by Sadie Schrubb, the vehemently Christian arms manufacturer who had bought most of the US Senate.

As both sides of the globe weighed the nuclear option,
The Foolish Weaver
went viral in influenzal proportions. Tens of millions risked arrest by spreading the literature, and hundreds of millions found that they were not alone in their doubts about the religious nature of their countries.

The counterculture was soon ravenous, champing at the bit. The nonreligious majority was growing tired of the prospect of nuclear war. But the majority had little say. The orthodox elite that ran the country went on and instituted a draft to gather warriors of God.

For many that was the last straw. With nowhere to run from the draft, draft centers, many located in churches, were burned and bombed. When the masses were merciful, that is. When they were less so, the masters were burned alive or crucified backward, reminding a few historically savvy individuals of the Geki couple.

The revolution marked the end of the World Cold War. It quickly inspired an old world counterpart and all religion was banned for good. That inspired the less peaceful second Catholic uprising and a great number of similar events. What companies had bought up the governments of the world, as they began organizing into GAUNE and UNEGA, pursued means of controlling the uprisings while allowing religious extremists to believe they were still forces to be reckoned with, to believe they still had a say so long as they remained nonviolent.

They had to scare the religious groups into believing there was a force that could easily incinerate them all on a whim but did not. A force that allowed them to act within reason to gather and exercise the most extreme of individuals while maintaining control. Above all, a new force that could infiltrate any deviant group to frighten the holy hell out of them when they grew out of hand.

No such force had scared the religious community so since the Geki couple. Lacking any real creativity, the companies in power over the regions with the worst religious rumblings elected to resurrect the Geki.

With a few modifications of course. Instead of Molotov cocktails, Zaibatsu donated their experimental flame implants. Instead of plain black cloaks, Google donated their displacement satellites and the displacement fabric to warp across the air inside them. Pfizer donated a med chamber and Puma County donated land for a base of operations, coincidentally only seven kilometers from Andrew and Jessica Geki's old house. The icing on the cake came from RAND: the Farnesene Pulse. Pure weaponized fear.

Dozens of the highest military elite were subjected to the Farnesene Pulse. Five were able to function within it. The five trained under the pulse to use the implants and the satellite system, to learn advanced psychological warfare techniques, to learn psychiatry and politics and police work. In the end Michael Lederer and Richard Gregor were selected to don the cloaks.

The second Catholic uprising was well under way when they were selected. Fighting viciously against their oppression, the Order of St. David Roland Waters began by assassinating politicians and scientists, bombing community centers and clinics and other usual religious terrorism targets. Their headquarters in downtown Providence, Rhode Island, was identified by conventional intelligence, the fully automatic Geki intel web still being under construction.

The Geki prepared for their mission. They had both mastered the Farnesene Pulse; they had both mastered the fire. They knew the ultimatum they were to deliver. They jumped.

Fear struck the basement of the cathedral. Paul Perry was startled when they appeared, a feeling that didn't leave him once affected by the pulse.

“W-what—what are you?” he asked as bravely as he could muster.

“We are the Geki.”

“What do you want?”

“You will stop your terrorist acts or we will incinerate you all.”

“Yes!” The pulse forced him to agree. “Yes we will, anything!”

“We are watching you. We can see your every move.”

“I believe you!”

“You will see that all in your command obey us.”

“Yes!” He composed himself as best he could. “Can—can we still give the word?”

“What?”

“We'll become missionaries, anything you command!”

“Uh, yes. That's good.”

“So we can practice? We can preach?”

“Just don't blow anything else up and you can preach to your heart's content.”

“So we can do whatever we want?”

“We will not stop you unless you threaten the status quo with violence.”

“So a mission to the people is okay by you two?”

Gregor grew frustrated.

“Just…. Don't fuck shit up.”

And they were gone.

They arrived back in the citadel, concerned about the Farnesene Pulse.

“He didn't seem very scared. He seemed almost… unsurprised.”

“Yes, it's as if he's used to living in fear of a vengeful omnipotent commanding force that's always watching him.”

 

 

T
HERE
WERE
no boats visible on the shore, just flotsam or jetsam. She didn't remember which was which without the net to check. And there were the usual corpses. Everything bobbing in the water under a layer of snow. Everything filthy.

She hunted for anything she could sail in, hoping she'd not have to use the clamps. There was a suitable oar in the form of a burnt roofing shaft but nothing seaworthy, nothing that could hold her weight. She accepted the inevitable and began looking for a sturdy cadaver or two.

There were two shaggy cows amid the trash, one too torn up to use—presumably someone had tried to eat it. She examined the other. It was in good shape. It had only died recently, and the cold had preserved it, so far. She got to work skinning it with her Tikari. Nelson picked up on what she was doing and tried to sneak under the skin, but she shooed him away. She couldn't risk any holes in her new boat.

Shortly after she had it free, thawed and floppy. She began clamping all holes but the neck. Once airtight she threw in a smoke bomb and held the neck closed. She'd have to retrieve the bomb before the inflated skin burst, so she didn't clamp it. The skin neared its breaking point so she held the neck closed around her arm and retrieved the bomb, tossing it into the water. Sadly as she clamped off the creature's neck its natural grease slipped in her hands and sent the thing sputtering out to sea like a leaking balloon.

She sighed and got up to look for another corpse. There were no more animals, just their owners, an extended family of cherubic freckled Scots. No sense in letting them go to waste.

The sailboat,
The Sinclairs
, left port early the next day. She rowed toward a small speck she could identify on the horizon, hoping whatever was floating so far out would make a better boat than the unfortunate family. As she approached she found she was in luck: it was a real sailboat. She abandoned the
Sinclairs
and climbed up its ladder.

She could smell the boat's crew. Dead for quite some time, rotting from before the freeze. She found two men and one woman in the cabin, killed by microwave burns. Working microwaves were rare after the EMPs. She assumed pirates were at work and cleared the boat just in case. Once certain it was abandoned, she dropped the bodies overboard and tried the motor, also dead.

There was just enough buzzing radioactive wind, so she checked her Valhalla partitions for sailing and found a simple file with the basics. She still had to fumble with line and sail for an hour before she caught a breeze that sent her toward the Orkney Islands.

She stood at the bow and reapplied radiophobics to her head and hands. The wind was very cold on her wet skin. Nelson and Bob fluttered around, orbiting her slowly on the prowl for anything dangerous. But the sea was dead silent except for the sound of the boat cutting through the water and hitting the occasional rubbish or body.

The bodies were everywhere. Inescapable. She'd long since stopped telling herself they weren't all her fault. She tried at first to blame Veikko alone, or assure her conscience that GAUNE and UNEGA were on a path that wasn't dependent on their break-in or the Presov nuke. But she suspected, accurately, that hacking the Ehren Plates kicked off the nuclear war.

She knew there was no point in dwelling on it. No matter how bad the results, she had to try to nuke the ravine. She simply had to. She wondered why the Geki hadn't killed her to stop it from happening. Had Veikko crippled them at the critical moment? Had he not killed one would she have been burned to a crisp before she could've launched the missile? Had he finally killed the other? That was her only guess. On the Geki scale of Fucked Up Shit, total global nuclear and wave war had to be an eleven, so why else wouldn't she be dead? Or perhaps there never was any Geki fire, nothing but tricks to keep Valhalla and its allies in order.