"Aye, aye! it was that accursed white whale that razeed me; made a poor pegging lubber of me forever and a day!" Then tossing both arms, with measureless imprecations he shouted out: "Aye, aye! and I’ll chase him round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom, and round perdition’s flames before I give him up" --Captain Ahab, Moby Dick
REVENGE!!!! Captain Ahab and I are brothers in blood for I too have lost a leg on the journey down the dark path of bloody vengeance. I look out to the crater where my mailbox used to be. I placed that mailbox myself and every day my dear, sweet, child...my little white adventurous dog would become a blur apparition, darting to that mailbox to relieve herself in appreciation. Ah sweet friend, my lovely little daughter, for what parent ever had a child more loving, what parent could be more proud of their own flesh than I was of that ray of fur-covered sunshine.
The total eclipse came when the M1A2 Abrams tank came around the bend of my dirt road and launched a shell from its main turret leaving a crater where the mailbox and my heart had been seconds earlier. I stood on the porch stunned.
My wife was down at the church, not to register her pledge but to play the game of espionage, to see what, if anything could be done to shield ourselves from this full scale invasion of our little village now that the Homeland Agency of Defense was known to be looking for terrorists in our township. We had little hope of protection since I had picked a fight with the local priest over the placement of my flower garden, but hoped that perhaps we could find and exploit some weakness that could aid in our escape.
With no other allies to turn to, I grabbed my grandpa's pistol and headed down the street half-cocked and ready for revenge. Anger, tears and blinding hatred impaired my vision nonetheless a tank is a fairly difficult target to miss from close range.
"HEY YOU DIRTY SON OF A BITCH!!!
A life for a life you bastard"!! , I scream.
Pop! Pop! Pop!! Pop!!! I fire off shots hitting the Abrams in a scattered fury of shots. One of my bullets ricochets off the hull of the tank and strikes a little girl who was hiding behind some bushes where I didn't see her. I gasp in horror as her little body collapses silently in a heap.
The Abrams turned its .50 caliber gun in my direction and as the shell went through my leg I could swear I heard laughter. I am thrown twenty feet. A soldier lifts the hatch and begins filming me with his camcorder, then he lights up a cigarette before the tank continues down the road toward the church. Quickly I pull off my belt and strap it tightly at the pressure point above the wound where most of my leg has been blown off. Crawling off to the side of the road, I grab a dead tree branch for a crutch and stagger home. My wife never came home while I still drew breath. I grab some duct tape and try to stop the flow of blood, but it’s obviously a mortal wound. Hopping into my favorite La Z Boy, I pull the crank to the footrest, attempting to elevate my leg. Hypnos placed his heavy hand over my eyes and my story ended...or so I thought.
REVENGE!!!! Herman Melville, William Shakespeare and all the rest, while talented writers did not understand the meaning of the word. Revenge is in no way related to justice. Revenge is not some fictional character with blood in his heart, hate on his breath and the means to kill whatever specter haunts his or her dreams. Revenge is a motive so strong, a force so pervasive, dismissive of time and matter, coalescing manifest in an entity eternally bound to itself. I am Revenant! I am terror!!
Sing O' Muses!
Sing a song of my coming.
Whisper my name in the shadows.
Revenant
************
‘Oh for shame, how the mortals put the blame on us gods, for they say evils come from us, but it is they, rather, who by their own recklessness win sorrow beyond what is given" --Homer
I pull my gaze away from the ill-fated crater where my mailbox once stood, look over to my wife and say out loud, "What now"?
With a look of surprise, she turns to me and says, "That is my question, I thought you had a plan".
"Nope", I say," running off half-cocked got me killed. Let's think about this. We are outgunned by the world's most powerful military, the local government is controlled by a priest who hates us, we need to find allies, and we are ghosts. Did I mention Brad Pitt or Clint Eastwood is not playing my part in this show"? "There is one perk to being a ghost, I lost my paunch, dropped ten years and my leg wound is gone"!
As I ponder what to do, I have to shake my head and wonder, how did we get this way? What went so terribly wrong that our own government turned on us. Who are us? As time went by us became a more and more exclusive group. Some I guess would say our democracy failed. I believe we failed our democracy. We stopped voting. We got cynical. We got turned off, things were too good and we no longer appreciated how we got these things. Sure, there were protesters, but over time protesters were seen as undesirables, people who didn't love our country. There were dissenting voices, but when they were fired from their jobs, we turned our heads.
We were looking for a fiction. We wanted an America that never existed…A nation without hunger, crime, corruption. We wanted a place where everybody smiled and shook your hand and called you sir. We wanted everyone to look like us, speak like us and believe like us. What did we believe?
We lost our way. We stopped wanting good for all, stopped saying WE THE PEOPLE and started saying THEY should stop trying to make waves. THEY should be like ME! We blamed our neighbor, blamed foreigners, blamed our gods, and turned our hate on ourselves like the Midgard serpent devouring our own tail. We believed if we could just get rid of the people who were not like us, everything would be okay again.
I see a fleeting figure darting back and forth in my neighbor's yard...or what is left of my neighbor's yard. The fence is gone, in fact only the foundation of the house remains. It’s Action Man! I have nicknames for all my neighbors. Action Man is really Ricardo. He moved here from Miami. I gave him that nickname because the guy never stops working in his yard. It could be 2am and he's out in the yard with a flashlight raking leaves. I start to call out to him then I notice something odd even for him. Action Man loads up a sack of leaves in his wheel barrel, dumps them, and an instant later he is back in the same spot raking up the same pile of leaves.
Action Man is a ghost. Even worse, Action Man is cycling. Cycling is what I was going through myself until I finally broke the pattern. Not really sparked by intelligence, the spirit is simply replaying the same scene, over and over, unable to notice the passage of time, unable to shake free from some repetitive behavior. Suddenly, I have an idea. We need allies. Action Man is one of the most industrious guys I know.
"Riii-caaar-dooooooo", I call out. "Come to me in the now. Hear the voice of my Muse. What have they done to you? You know what you must do. Are you lazy? You are needed now, look at me and reclaim your freedom".
Looking over at my wife I say, "I can't really believe that worked". She says, "You didn't have to be so cheesy about it". I respond curtly, "Yes I did"!
************
Action Man is standing in front of us, looking slightly disoriented. "What the hell happened to you? I ask.
"What the hell happened to me"? Ricardo looks at me incredulously, "You did"!!
"Me"? I say. "What are you talking about"?
"You are a bit of a hero around this village. When you rushed out, gun blazing in single combat with that tank it sparked the entire village to take action". Ricardo explains.
"Yeah, well more like village idiot than village hero since that stupid act got me killed". I say sardonically.
Ricardo interrupted excitedly,
"No my friend, you don't understand. Every act of heroism is a leap of stupidity. Your act of defiance, no matter how futile, made the rest of us understand that we couldn't sit around doing nothing. We agreed to do what the authorities said in the daytime, but at night we met secretly and discussed how we could start taking back our village. We pooled our knowledge, made bombs, created booby traps, sabotaged equipment, refused to be sheep, herded to the slaughter. One late evening I came home just in time to see my wife and kids being loaded into some sort of troop transport vehicle. I never owned a gun, so I grabbed my shovel and charged. I don't know what I was thinking, but I knew I couldn't let them take my family. I never saw it coming, never heard it, but I felt it. One of those new probes was flying silently behind me. A beam was fired from that drone right through my back and out my chest as if I had no solid body at all. I looked up to see it fly off just before I passed beyond the world of mortal men".
I look over at Ricardo with much to think about and a new appreciation of the consequences of my actions. "Thanks Ricardo, I guess we've all been granted a second chance to do things better. Experience is a great teacher and we've all experienced things that should prepare us for whatever the Fates have in store for us".
************
Silently the three of us begin walking down the road toward the church complex. I wonder what happened to the rest of my neighbors. I hope some of them escaped with their lives. I look around from my driveway. Most of the houses, barns and storage buildings in my village are gone. The little village church, built during the establishment of my village is missing its steeple. Strangely this saddens me. As we walk down the road, I see the spot where I fired at that Abrams tank and in that exact spot is AN ABRAMS TANK!!! All of us quickly scramble off the road. There is no movement from the tank; in fact it is not running. Cautiously we approach and can see the entire front half of the tank has been blown away. The turret is bent upward and a crevice in the road indicates a massive improvised explosive device has been used to finish off this tank. Someone spray painted in bright pink paint on the side of the tank, OUR DEAD NOW HAVE A VOICE. I had hoped to find my cigarette smoking executioner's rotten carcass inside but find nothing. The best I can determine, the tank has been here for a long time. I now wonder how long it has been since I was shot on this very spot.
As we continue walking I can see signs of a pitched battle. Shell casings litter the path, trees are shattered from tank fire and the ground is parched as if a great heat baked the meadow to the West. A mound nearby suggests a hasty burial of a number of people. We notice a few ghostly neighbors trapped in the cycle of their own dreams. We ignore them. Just ahead we see the church complex.
We all look at each other hungrily.
"Do you feel it"? My wife asks.
"YES!!! I do and I am drawn to it". I say.
We walk through the parking lot of the church complex toward the power line. Suddenly one of those damn probes whirrs overhead. Ricardo hits the deck! Just as quickly, the hovercraft zips off past the church and heads north into the woods.
I chuckle at Ricardo, "Good thing ghost urine leaves no trace because I am pretty sure you just pissed yourself Ricardo".
"Not Funny"! He says in an annoyed voice.
We all gravitate to the electric box, find some unshielded wiring and drink deeply from the raw power. I look at my friends with an ecstatic smile and say, "I can't believe how weak I was until we found this power source". They look back at me wordlessly absorbing as much energy as they can. When we all feel sated we step inside the church complex knowing there is no turning back.
************
The church complex is vast considering it is located on the Northern tip of our rather small village. Security cameras, key card access only doors, and even finger print scanners are featured access prevention measures we see throughout the place. Still bothered by the probe passing by outside, Ricardo says, "We should not have been able to hear that drone". I look at him saying, "We are no longer living, we have some heightened senses and are not restricted as we were when we were alive."
My wife informs me she has been inside this place before and tells us to follow her. As a proud husband, I should tell you a little more about my wife. My wife's parents were hippies and she was the last of nine kids. Her given name is Life Gale Moonbeam Archer. If you call her any of that you will probably be sucking your dinner through a straw for a few months. Most folks call her Mrs. Archer or ma'am. I tend to call her Xena. You see, my wife has mad ninja skills. Literally! While I was busy reading Milton, Tacitus and Meng-zu, my wife would pick up a martial art. The martial arts I know she studied included Aikido, Jujitsu, Italian Renaissance Swordsmanship, Tai Chi, Karate and Ninjitsu. One day I was out planting asparagus when my wife showing off her amazingly keen sense of humor, scrambled across the telephone wire squirrel-like, silently leaped down behind me and then asked me what I was doing. I howled like a banshee. Oh, how she enjoys scaring the crap out of me! She told me once that if Obama got re-elected she was going to apply for a position in the government as a spy. My wife is spooky enough without actually being a spook! I have no doubts that under better circumstances she would be deep under cover in Thailand or Bolivia right now.
After walking down a few corridors, my wife stops at a door. Ricardo gives a startled alarm as two soldiers look down the hall in our direction. Satisfied that our corridor is clear of intruders, the soldiers continue walking and leave our vicinity. "They could not see us!!", Ricardo say. "We are ghosts, Ricardo, we are undetectable unless we choose to be seen by the living, get it"? I say. We then pass through the door into what looks like a fairly extensive archive room. I am familiar with most archive storage systems and am able to quickly pick out some volumes for the three of us to scan for information. We sit down at a reading table and begin reading. Ricardo looks at me and asks, "What am I looking for"? "I am not sure Ricardo, anything that might help us plan our next step." I say.
After some time passes, I discover a journal logging activity and interactions with the local citizens. The list indicates that any citizen with a foreign sounding name, dark complexion or sporting an accent was detained, processed and deported to Ohio, later to be transferred to Gitmo. As I continue to scan the pages I see many familiar names and then my eyes fix on one in particular...Xena Warrior Princess. I read the entry: The complex was infiltrated today by a woman dressed in black fatigues. Somehow she got past all of our security and had entered the server room. Several encrypted messages were sent but when we later tried to decode them six of our servers crashed and no data could be recovered from them. We don't know if she was working alone or with a team of commandos. Casualties included six Special Forces Rangers and twenty regulars before she was captured. She had been subjected to harsh interrogation for several weeks and all we could get out of her before she died was the name Xena Warrior Princess. I'm told the name comes from some stupid chick-flick fantasy show from the 90's.
Looking over at my wife, I get up to show her the journal. I am about to ask her some important questions when suddenly my buddy Joe waltzes over with a large leather tome under his arm and says, "Dude, we need to talk". He plops down heavily in my chair, oblivious to our perplexed gazes.
Joe has always been a bit perplexing. I've never been one to seek friendships, but Joe was one of the few people I'd met at work who took the time to get to know me. Joe had once worked for a Senator and so had insights as to how the government worked, who to contact, what to say or not say to get your voice heard. Joe also is an encyclopedia of sports knowledge, conspiracy theories, secret organizations, and barbeque sauces. Just when I thought I knew what he was talking about, he'd change the questions. One day he just stopped coming to work. Some said he went insane. Others thought he hit the lottery. He called me a few times after he disappeared so I knew differently. Joe had joined a secret society.
I look at Joe with furrowed brows and ask him, "Why the hell did you leave me cycling for so long? I know you could have used your insight to help me escape that endless loop, reliving the days just before disaster struck my village".
"Easy dude!, If I was to go around shaking every dead guy out of his struggle between sleep and death I wouldn't have any "me" time. Besides, your dreams were kinda wild. I have to admit your imagination is better than anything on cable"!
Before I can convey to my wife the desire for her to put one of those katanas through his eye socket, Joe points to the book he brought over and says, "You need answers, here are your answers". The book has a thick leather cover with gold embossed lettering with the title The Secret Societies of All Ages and Countries by Charles William Heckerthorn 1868. An intricate bronze locking mechanism has been opened revealing gold leaf pages with handwritten script in a flowing penmanship.
Joe looks up excitedly and begins to explain, "The 1875 edition you could find using Google. The 1896 revised edition was also widely available, but what we have here is the primary source, handwritten by the guru himself in 1868. Can't say why it is sitting in this backwater dude, but here it is!"
Noticing our impatient looks, Joe clears his throat stating in an authoritarian tone, "There are lots of secret societies. Most of them are crap, filled with self-important nobodies using pseudo-occult, make-believe rituals and tying themselves to various founders or events from history. Some were hoax organizations set up to keep eyes away from the real hidden societies. You've heard of some of them, Free-Masons, The Knights Templar, Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn...but actually there are a few that had/have real power. Some of them are religious orders, some political, some were hybrid groups...Anyway, one in particular stood out from the rest. I made it my life's work to find this organization and become a member".
Hurriedly Joe rolls up his sleeve and points to a tattoo on his arm and then to an entry in the book, "The organization I spent my life looking for is known only as "The Society". Nobody knows its true name, but this symbol is how it is often represented. The symbol is a series of odd runes inside a cartouche with a free-floating pyramid encasing the infinity symbol, with each half of the infinity circle filled with an ever-seeing eye".
Joe begins reading a passage from the book, The Society believes that every man has an "Anime" which belongs to him and is not so much within him so to speak, but without him. This obscure Anime is stronger than he is and he cannot rebel against it nor hide from its search. This part of us is intangible, cannot be reduced, terrorized out of us or extinguished. It creates a dualism in us which makes itself felt as remorse or guilt when suppressed. When a man feels virtuous, pure of purpose, and at peace with himself this Anime does not torture him, he is in harmony. When a man does something evil, his Anime rebels. The Society is dedicated to the principle that the Anime of people and politics must work in virtuous symmetry, and when necessary The Society must become a vengeful and purifying remorse, regenerating upon death to bring light to the darkness enforcing the universal laws of brotherhood, equality and truth. In fact the primary oath of The Society is revenge for the evils of nations. Revenge is different from personal rancor, which desires to punish institutions, not individuals, to strike foul ideas with legitimate hatred. For necessary hatred is the salvation of nations, peeling away the poisonous layers of a corrupt form of government. Woe to the people who do not know how to hate, because intolerance, hypocrisy, superstition and slavery are evil! Beyond our oath The Society is ever vigilant for the rise of one Anime who espouses our beliefs as the eternal embodiment of our mission. A figure of dual nature, oath incarnate, death incarnate, cleanser of nations, righteous revenge, he shall be known as revenant.
As Goliath was struck with the stone of David and fell face down in the dust of Earth, so was I struck by this passage from some obscure book. I know what I must do now, and I have a plan.
************
I look over to my wife and she senses from my sorrowful eyes that I learned how she had died, "We need to get to that server room and do as much damage as we can. If we can knock out communications and the signal to those hovercrafts, any people still resisting occupation will have a better chance of surviving. I am reasonably certain now that if we focus, we can manipulate physical objects.
Ricardo looks at me baffled, "Server room"???
"I'll explain", I tell Ricardo.
I stuff The Secret Societies of All Ages and Countries into my backpack. I had pushed Joe aside and spent quite a bit of time turning the pages of that book. "I have learned much from this book", I say.
"If it is correct, the ability to work in the visible and invisible realms gives us an advantage. The book is also in agreement with Einstein's theory of relativity. E=MC2. Energy and Mass are equivalent and transmutable. Ghost can transmute from pure energy to mass and back again".
After we disrupt things inside this compound, we need to find survivors. A place like this can't run without food and labor. I expect to find prisoners of war, at least those not sent to Gitmo, working the farmland near this complex". Both my wife and Ricardo nod in agreement. I look over at Joe, but he is gone.
"I guess Joe will not be joining us today. Lead on", I say.
Silently, my wife leads us down a series of corridors. We seem to be heading down several levels below the ground floor. Some of the doors in this corridor have windows. I look through one curiously and see a soldier with his back to me. He is sitting down at a table facing a large television screen, drinking a vending machine coffee and smoking a cigarette. He is playing Solitaire with a deck of cards. Instinctively, I know this is the man who killed my dog and shot me in the leg.
I whisper to my wife and Ricardo to continue to the server room.
“ I will catch up, I have something I need to take care of".
The look on my face forestalls the discussion and they head down the hall, walking with purpose toward the server room.
Flipping through another losing hand of Solitaire, Lt. Col. Daniel Cooper takes a long drag on his Winston, feeling utterly bored. Now that the war against domestic terrorism has basically been won, there have been few missions and lots of down time. He sits back remembering each confirmed killed, each hurrah, he got from his company. Even Homeland Defense television is down right now he laments to himself. Suddenly, the television flickers on and off in rapid succession, a blur of white noise and some sort of image. The screen settles into the solid image of a small white dog walking out to a mailbox, that Cooper remembers quite fondly. The dog vanished and in its place is a smoking crater. Cooper whoops in triumph. The crater scene fades and in its place is a home video Cooper took from the top of his tank moments later. Some idiot yokel had come rushing out at his tank firing off a few rounds. Cooper turned the machine gun on him. It was like shooting fish in a barrel, he smiled. Cooper's smile turns to terror just as quickly, as a figure in a dark brimmed hat, wearing a black trench coat and dark boots slowly oozes up from out of the tile floor forming a solid mass before him.
Cooper stammers in a stilted voice, "No! Nna-nooo! I Sshhot you!
You're Da-da-Dead man!
I killed you"!
I laugh hideously. In sing-song whispering tones I speak,
"Oh no, I'm not dead!
I was merely sleeping.
I am reborn.
I am REVENGE!!
I am revenant".
Cooper reaches for his pistol. Average human reflexes can perform an action like this in .45 seconds. Cooper is well above average and pulls his pistol in half this time. Before he can pull the trigger, I shoot the gun from his hand with my old WWII German handgun. While Cooper looks at his wounded hand, I pull a jar of my grandfather's moonshine from my backpack.
Lighting the wick, I smile wickedly at Cooper and say, "I understand you like to smoke"! I hurl the jar of flaming liquor at the door, cutting off Cooper's escape in a wall of flame.
"Cooo-per!
My little dog demands an apology. My little dog thinks you don't like her. Coooo-per! Hell has come to collect a debt. Won't you embrace her fiery bosom? My concentration seems to enhance the flames. I take my leave as the cacophonous choral ode of Cooper's screaming reaches its climax and then fades to dead air.
Drawn to their energy, I find my wife and Ricardo heading toward me from a lower level with several unconscious people in tow.
"Who are they?" I ask. Ricardo shrugs that he has no idea. My wife looks at me with a piercing glance,
"Interrogation victims".
"Did you destroy the servers"? I ask.
Ricardo answers with glee in his voice,
"Mrs. Archer sure knows how to do damage! There will not be any online poker tournaments tonight!"
A few claxon horns alarm repetitively before stopping completely. There is the sound of marching boots and shouting voices. Then the lights go out. We exit the complex and see a few vehicles parked nearby. We set our rescued prisoners on the flatbed of an all-terrain vehicle and drive off into the woods. There is a stock of food, water and an emergency kit in the storage compartment of the ATV. We do our best to help the prisoners as we streak off toward the nearby farmland.
************
We drive the ATV for a few miles into the woods. I look back but there is no sign of heavy smoke to indicate that the fire I started at the church complex got out of control. Looking ahead, I see a clearing with a few old barns, a grain silo, some cattle and other farm animals and a large field with corn, ready for harvest. Dozens of people dressed in orange jump suits with black hoods over their heads are kneeling in the dirt, handcuffed and chained together. A gas generator powers a small building with a stage area that is lined with loud speakers. A gaunt fellow, grown like a pole bean stands at the top of a raised platform, accompanied by two men in military outfits. He is dressed in the clothes of a pastor and is speaking into a microphone,
"And ye shall be left few in number, whereas ye were as the stars of heaven for multitude; because thou wouldest not obey the voice of the LORD thy God.
Obedience to God supersedes obedience to family, to civil authorities, even to this great nation! If thou wouldest hear my words in thy heart, thou shall cast off the shackles of sin. Thou shall become as of one with God".
The sermon continues,
"Nevertheless the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel; and they said, Nay; but we will have a king over us; If ye will fear the LORD, and serve him, and obey his voice, and not rebel against the commandment of the LORD, then shall both ye and also the king that reigneth over you continue following the LORD your God: But if ye will not obey the voice of the LORD, but rebel against the commandment of the LORD, then shall the hand of the LORD be against you, as it was against your fathers".
I look over to my wife and Ricardo standing next to the ATV.
"Those two people you rescued will be alert and able to fend for themselves soon".
"We need to free those people listening to that sermon. I only see two soldiers guarding that priest. If we can take them down, it should be easy enough to get those people to form a resistance movement. Every person matters in this struggle to regain what our government has taken from us. There must be freedom for all or there is freedom for none.
Fast as light, we gain entrance to the back of the stage. Directly before us are the two soldiers scanning the crowd with rifles in hand, at the podium is the priest speaking to the crowd,
"Yea, all Israel have transgressed thy law, even by departing, that they might not obey thy voice; therefore the curse is poured upon us, and the oath that is written in the law of Moses the servant of God, because we have sinned against him"...
Life and I simultaneously hit the two soldiers over the back of the head and they go down in a heap. Ricardo strangles the sermon out of the priest using something resembling a half nelson hold to keep him from struggling. Afraid to move, the prisoners remained kneeling in the field. I step in front of the priest and motion for Ricardo to let go of him.
The priest looks me in the eye, "YOU"!! He says in fearful recognition. "How...how can this be? About your garden, I had nothing to do with the order to have it paved over. The Homeland Administration for Religious Services was informed by the Environmental Protection Agency that your garden had become a significant health risk to the village due to an outbreak of plague-laced insects that had moved into the area. I...I was going to talk to you personally about it and offer compensation, bu...but was told to stay out of the ma-matter".
The willowy priest must have noticed a strange glint in my eye because his knees begin to knock as he chitters out a fast explanation, "I...I had NOTHING to do with that TANK firing on your dog!!! NOTHING!!!"
Just then I hear ratta-tat-tat-tat-tat. "DIE SCUM"!!!
Riddled with machine gun bullets, Ricardo looks at me in surprise and then collapses face down onto the stage before disappearing completely. Waltzing over to me like a cock on the roost, Lt. Col. Cooper lights up a Winston and says to me. "Hell was a disappointment".
Cooper's translucent form helps me to understand that he is as much a ghost as I am. Cooper points his rifle at me and says" "I'd be willing to bet this time around you will vaporize just as fast as that stinking little white mutt I lit up with the M1A2 turret". Cooper's finger goes for the trigger just as my wife's katana removes his head from his shoulders.
"That little dog was my best friend you bastard!!" she says. Cooper's head and body hit the stage in unison and then vaporize to nothing.
I look at my wife thankfully and she whispers, "Poor Ricardo". I nod in agreement and we honor him with a moment of silence. In the excitement the Priest has escaped us. I can see him running off into the woods at a full run. Deciding he is not our biggest concern, we gather keys from the guard and walk over to release the prisoners. My wife and I release the people from their shackles and they begin removing their hoods. "You are free..." I begin.
Fast as the words leave my lips, I hear them say in a panic:
"GHOSTS!!
HOLY SHIT!!!
RUN!!!! RUN!!!!!
Before I can explain they are in a mad dash, scattering like the wind, leaving a trail of urine and black hoods behind them.
************
Life and I walk back to the ATV parked on the edge of the woods. "You call that a plan"? She asks.
"I have to admit, planning might not be my best attribute. Death has not been kind to my persuasion skills" YOU can plan the next prisoner rescue! So how the heck are we going to organize a rebellion when one look at me sends people to the exits"?
"Deodorant and mouthwash? A disguise"? Life asks humorously.
We are shaken from our thoughts by shouting.
"Hey!!! You two are bad-ass!!! Seriously, we saw what you did back there. You two could be weapons of mass destruction if guided in the right direction. Ghosts that kick butt! Freakin' unreal man"! These are the two men Life rescued from the church complex.
"I take it you are not afraid of us"? I ask.
"I'll admit you are scary, and since I haven't had a blunt since I got locked up. I am pretty sure you are real...although we were subjected to a lot of chemicals in the hole...maybe you ARE hallucinations". The tall one is doing all the talking. He is over 6' 6" tall, long dark hair, covered in body hair with thick angry looking eye brows. His hands are thick and show signs of many fist fights. The smaller guy looks like a smaller version of the chatty fellow, but he has a thin build and wild brown eyes that have trouble focusing on us. As we get closer, the tall one pokes both of us with his finger, watching in amazement as it goes through us.
My wife gives him a look that convinces him that if he were to stab his finger in her direction again, he would be counting fewer of them.
"Hey! Don't blame me for being curious! He says. People call me Fast Eddie and this is my brother Rodney". He offers his hand which we both look at as if it was the appendage of some squid-like alien from another galaxy. Eddie lowers his hand and offers, "We are members of the Michigan Militia. We are loosely associated with the American Resistance Forces movement. I would be honored if I could introduce you to our team".
Before we can respond, Fast Eddie hops on the ATV. "Rod, you stay with the freaks, I'm going to recruit those orange suited peeps before they get gunned down by the probes". Without waiting for a response, Eddie opens the throttle, leaving us in a shower of mud and stones. I see Eddie take the guns from the staging area, strip the guards and handcuff them to the stage supports before heading off in the direction most of the prisoners fled in.
The three of us slump down against a large sugar maple trunk. Passing time with a living person seems a wee bit awkward to me now. "Sooo, Rodney, I noticed you are rather quiet, is your brother always like that"? Rodney slowly begins to focus his gaze on my form,
"O Death, O Death, won't you spare me over for another year"? He sings. He looks at me closely, "Your eyes burn violet with the flames of revenge, but revenge is a weapon not a tool. You must become a tool, an idea, a principle or you might as well be the Grim Reaper".
Rodney falls silent and refuses to respond to my questions.
An hour or two passes when we hear a powerful engine and then see a large troop transport speeding in our direction. My wife and I do our best to hide Rodney, but the vehicle is heading directly for us. It suddenly grinds to a halt twenty feet away from us. Fast Eddie is sitting in the driver seat and about a dozen people in orange jump suits are seated behind him in the bay. "Check it out man! It's a RG33L Category II troop transport! Totally Bad-ass"!!! He waves us forward and we enter the vehicle. Rodney takes a seat, my wife and I stand near the entrance, and keep an eye on the horizon as Eddie closes the door and hits the gas.
"Should I ask how you acquired our transportation", I ask Eddie.
"Dude, someone just left it in the back of some old barn. Obviously they didn't want it anymore. It makes it a lot easier to seat our guests". He says.
I look back and notice them all averting their eyes whenever I glance upon them. I smile and in my most charming voice I fib,
"I did put on deodorant today. Please do not be alarmed."
Fast Eddie says, "Don't sweat it man, I already told them you were straight. They are all eager to join the team".
"Where are we going"? I ask Eddie.
Eddie says, "We are heading to our secret headquarters. Those nobs have never been able to find it. When you see it you are going to laugh your way all the way back to the grave dude. Seriously bro, I couldn't of come up with a better symbol for sticking it to THE MAN"! Eddie snickers to himself as we whip through the farm fields and pasture land, heading west as fast as that RG33L will take us.