Monsters of the Apocalypse (6 page)

The flight
attendant opened the door slowly and then stood back. Jacob sauntered
onto the plane with a smile, followed by Arian and two large Indians.

"You
may relax, my dear, you did the right thing. And trust me, the bad man in
front of the plane with rocket launcher is very unlikely to blow up the plane
now that I'm on it. Now, do me a favor, you and the rest of the flight staff
get off of the plane for me, okay?"

The
attendant nodded, as Jacob moved past her to stand in front of the passengers.

“Hi
everybody, I’m sorry to have interrupted your little migration here, but I need
a word with our friend, Dr. Thomas, in seat 5-B. I assume you know who I
am, Doc?”

“Are you
here to kill me?”

Jacob
laughed at the man who sat shaking, his skin dripping with the sweat of fear,
causing his glasses to slide ever so slightly down his nose. His hand
shook as he reached up to resettle the frames.

“Yes, I am
here to kill you,” Jacob said moving slowly down the aisle.

“Please, please
don’t...”

“Well, you
killed me first so… I’m going to kill you. I mean, you can’t just go
around giving people injections that kill them and expect them not to kill you
in a really terrible way.”

“Oh God...”

Jacob now
stood in front of Dr. Thomas' row. He reached down and unbuckled the
seatbelt of the man between him and Dr. Thomas, then stepped aside to allow the
man to move out of his way. He then sat down and put his hand on the arm
of the shaking, terrified doctor.

“Do you
really believe in an interventionist God? Did you believe that you were
doing God’s work when you designed this evil little toxin? Or that He just
wasn't looking? Do you think He let you kill millions, but will stop me
from killing you?”

“I don’t… I
don't… please…" the small man tried to continue, but fear made him silent.

“You see, I
don’t have the ego that you do," Jacob smiled. "I don’t believe
that God gives a shit about my little life or what I do, anymore than I would
care if the ants in my childhood ant farm were racist. I mean, you hope
they’re not racist ants, but you don’t try and listen to their conversations -
because they're ants. But, I tell you, I do feel that if God knows what
sort of nasty shit you’ve done, He probably isn’t going to stop me from cutting
pieces off of you.”

Jacob felt
the presence of a large man to his side. He turned and looked up with a
smile, recognizing the old man as a Supreme Court Justice. In the corner
of his eye he saw Arian pointing his gun at the Judge's head.

“Listen,
Jacob, we all heard the President's speech," the brave justice said in a
rich bass. "We all know that The Shot isn’t fatal. You can’t
fool us. We’re the most intelligent people on the planet. That’s
why we’re on this plane!”

Jacob
laughed and lit up a cigarette.

“You're a
brave man! Justice Gaines, right?”

“Yes.”

“Say what
you will about the Apocalypse, no one cares if you smoke. Anyway, nice to
meet you, I'm Jacob Rothschild, we haven't met before, but I'm sure there is a great
deal of mutual respect here nonetheless. I’m well aware that this flight
is filled with intelligent people. I watched them load the plane. I
also watched the one that left before you, the one with the potent women.
Boy, sure makes a guy wish he’d studied harder so he could have gone to a good
school and be headed to The Island, but when I was a kid, I just wanted to kill
people so I joined the most elite fighting force in the world.
Foolish. As for the President's speech, well, I happen to know that he’s
a very good liar. Now Dr. Thomas, why don’t you tell the Supreme Court
Justice how The Shot works? If you don't lie, and by the way, I know the
truth so I’ll know if you’re lying, I won’t shoot you in the crotch, right
here.”

Jacob didn't
bother to turn, he simply held the justice's eyes and waited.

“It
accelerates the body," Dr. Thomas mumbled, "the internal organs and
the brain. With no drastic change to appearance on the exterior, the
interior runs itself ragged. After a year, it’s as if the inoculated man
is ninety, or a hundred years old. Heart-attack, cancer, liver failure,
Alzheimer's... in a young man’s body he’ll die an old man’s death.”

The plane
grew silent. The justice opened his mouth, but no words came out. He
moved back as Jacob stood. Jacob moved into the aisle and smiled at the
doctor, waiting. Dr. Thomas eventually managed to stand up and walk down
the aisle to where Arian and the Indians stood waiting, guns scanning the
seats.

“Listen up
folks, I’m taking Dr. Thomas here with me to do some work," Jacob said
through a cloud of cigarette smoke. "You are free to go to The
Island and impregnate all those pretty women in honor of saving mankind.
As we all know, this is a very big honor, and a very expensive honor, since all
of you bought your spot. Most intelligent men you said, Justice
Gaines? Well, the most intelligent who could afford to be here, I
say. In any case, you could also get off the plane, in a show of unity
with all of us who couldn't buy a seat and now have fatal toxin in our
veins. Talk to the press. Show that you’re with "the
people". That you don’t agree with the mass murder of every young
man left in America.”

Jacob looked
around the plane. No one moved.

“No
one? Fair enough. Come now, Doc.”

Once on the
tarmac Jacob steered Dr. Thomas past the corpses of the various security guards
that he had killed while approaching the plane. Arian moved away to say a
few words to the flight crew, who stopped their walk towards the plane and
instead ran off in the opposite direction. Dr. Thomas and a giggling
Jacob got into a limo and waited as Arian and the other members of the Shadow
Army joined them. The last one laid a rocket launcher at his feet before
getting comfortable.

Dr. Thomas
looked nervously over the faces of these soldiers. It took him a moment
to register that they were all American Indian, except for the heavily tattooed
and branded black man. All of them were smiling.

"Everyone
good? Good on leg room?" Jacob asked the men.
"Great. Really good job guys, I'm so glad to be back with you
boys, those grunts we were with earlier, well, they just didn't know how to
soldier. Anyhow, gents, this is Dr. Thomas. Dr. Thomas is the guy
who put poison into you. Doc, say hello to a few of the Shadow Army's
finest."

Dr. Thomas
couldn’t find enough air or moisture to speak, but no one seemed to mind.
The car pulled away as a laughing Jacob Rothschild pulled out a small pink
trigger with a little smiling cat on it. Jacob, still laughing, looked at
Dr. Thomas and pushed the button on the trigger and behind them the plane they
had just left exploded.

Night had
fallen. Nestor lay perfectly still, his eyes unblinking, his Barrett .50
caliber sniper rifle with silencer enhancements held in his hands, aimed at the
door, finger on the trigger. He'd been in this spot for 27 hours.
Sneaking in before the Presidential Guard's arrival, he had buried himself
almost entirely under dirt and leaves. He hadn't moved once. Even
when a guard had stood inches in front of him, his focus hadn't switched.
It wasn't that he was invisible. Nestor just knew how to become a part of
the ground, rather than blend in with it.

Nestor
had once told Jacob that the trick was to realize that there was no ground,
that there was no Nestor. Jacob had just laughed.

Nestor's
focus stayed the same. He didn't move his eyes off the door. The
guard outside the door leaned back against the wall. The guard wore
Kevlar, but the Barrett could put a bullet through a cinder block, so it
wouldn't matter. If he was shot at this moment the guard would slide
silently to the ground rather than falling loudly from a straight standing
position. Nestor knew this to be true.

He squeezed
the trigger softly and firm. His finger didn't squeeze one moment past
the shot. He exerted no excess energy and he did not blink.

In five more
minutes another guard came out the door. The guard saw the body of the
other guard and leaned over to see if he was okay. If shot at this moment
he would collapse silently onto the other body that would muffle the sound of
impact. Nestor knew this to be true.

Nestor
squeezed the trigger. There was no sound. Even the birds in the
trees above went on chirping undisturbed. Voices began. Two guards
came out the door, walkie-talkies at their mouths. Nestor did not kill
them. It was time to let the chaos start.

At the sight
of the bodies the guards disappeared back into the doorway. They
reappeared momentarily with flashlights attached to the top of their drawn
pistols. They moved cautiously out of the doorway covering opposite sides
of the building. Alarms began to sound. Lights came up all over the
compound. Nestor waited until ten guards had begun to comb the
area. He never bothered to check the windows. The President
wouldn't be going near them. Ever. He was a smart man.

Nestor shot
five of the guards before the flash of his muzzle gave away his position.
By then he had raised up to a knee, the blood rushing through his legs making
them numb, the burning of pins and needles seconds away.

The muscles
of his thighs painfully clenched making movement impossible. From his
knee he killed three more men. Two were now under the cover of the trees
and he let himself fall forward behind a log that lay a few feet in front of
him. He kept his gun positioned forward as the pain of the pins and
needles coursed through his body as it woke up. He knew that it would be
a minute before he could rise up and move well. Shooting from a stationary
position that had been exposed would be a mistake. Instead he went still,
knowing that the quiet would lead the guards to believe he was moving into
another position. He knew that they would begin by shooting at where they
had seen the muzzle flash, but they would quickly spread a wider net and the
safest place to be would be where he was, as long as he wasn't shot in the
first five second volley.

He kept
still as bullets hit around him. He slowly reloaded his rifle.

After the
minute of stillness, which seemed endless to the guards, they moved out from
behind their cover thinking that they must have found their mark and killed the
sniper. Nestor rose up firing on refreshed legs. Once all the
guards were dead, Nestor stood still and closed his eyes. On the back of
his eyelids burned the flash of the guns he'd only moments earlier seen as he
was shot at. He waited patiently for the lights to fade away. He
could hear shouts and yelling. He heard the beginning of helicopter
rotors.

He breathed
in once and let the black of his eyelids envelope him, then, knowing that his
night vision had returned, he opened his eyes and broke into a dead run through
the surrounding woods, towards the back of the house where the helicopter pad
was.

He kept his
eyes on the ground as he ran. He briefly glanced up at the trees around
and in front of him, aware of the shadows cast by the compounds security
lights, but never risking his night vision with a single glance in their
direction. He knew that a trip over an unseen root posed a greater risk
to the mission than the many bullets that security was spraying in the woods
around him.

When Nestor
could hear that he was within five hundred feet of the helicopter he stopped
mid-stride and went to a knee. He breathed through his nose, the dead
sprint not having raised his heart rate at all, his hands remained steady as he
took aim and killed the helicopter pilot and the copilot in two shots. He
then shot the engine block and listened to the rotor wind down as he reloaded.

A mass of
people that had been en-route to the helipad from the house froze. The
ten or so security guards that shielded the President's body undulated with
panicked breath. Ten more security agents came out of the house and shot
into the direction of the woods. One bullet took off a piece of Nestor's
right ear. He focused on the sensation. He considered the fact that
with this injury he would soon start losing dexterity, stamina and
strength. His cognitive thinking would be impaired by the blood loss.
His breathing and heart rate would increase by the minute. He leaned back
against a tree and watched the bullets hit the forest around him.

He unhooked
a flash bomb from his belt, closed his eyes and threw it over his shoulder
towards the shooters. He heard the explosion and knew that they would be
blind for the next ten seconds. He also knew that guards, that highly
trained, would attempt to continue shooting in the direction of the
explosion. He knew that they would expect him to move during those ten
seconds. Nestor did not. He moved his legs into the lotus position
and felt his heart beating slowly in the wound of his ear. He focused on
his breath and slowed the beating of his heart as much as he could.

He could
distantly recognize the sounds of people moving in the direction of the
helicopter. Nestor took one final breath. He stood up and turned
around the tree branch, already squeezing the trigger as he moved. He
shot between two of the guards and shot the President in the liver. He
knew that the shot had given away his position to the guards who'd been
searching for him a few hundred feet away. He ignored the inevitability
of their bullets and shot the President once more in the left eye.

As a bullet
hit Nestor's stomach he knew that the President was dead. Nestor passed
out when the next bullet went through his chest.