Robert Ferrigno - Prayers for the assassin

Redbeard was slumped over his desk, weeping, when Angelina finally shook him awake. He clung to her, pressed his face into her flesh while she stroked his hair. “I couldn’t save him. I couldn’t save my own brother.”

“Let me help you to bed,” said Angelina. “You have fever.”

“I’m afraid to sleep.”

“Shhhh.” Angelina helped him up.

“If I couldn’t even save my brother, how can I save my country?”

Angelina braced herself against him as they walked. He was like this more and more lately, delirious, racked with nightmares and riven by doubt.

“If James were here, he would have known what to do. James had allies…James had friends. You…you’re the only one I can trust.” He staggered against her and Angelina almost fell. “Rakkim…I was counting on him and he joins the Fedayeen.”

“You drove him away,” said Angelina.

“I should have died that day, not James.”

“Are you God? Then do not question that which He has brought about.”

Redbeard broke free of her. Was she his wife to speak like that to him? He shuffled forward, head bowed, so weary his very bones ached. He had barely slept these last weeks, and when he did, he found no peace. It was too much for one man. Angelina was right, he had driven Rakkim away. Had driven Sarah away too. His brother’s only child and the son he had never had. Gone. Angelina was right. She was always right.

He staggered down the hallway and into his bedroom. Left the lights off. The darkness cool on his smoldering skin. He shrugged off his robe and left it in a heap on the floor. The mattress groaned under him like the beams of a sailing ship. Just a chance to close his eyes, that’s all he wanted. No sleep. No dreams. Just to close his eyes for a moment.

It was so hard to maintain the impression of strength. To appear resolute and confident at all times. Redbeard kicked off the sheets, sweating. The world seized on the first hint of weakness. His so-called allies would turn on him in an instant. The Old One was waiting. Always he was waiting. Where did such patience come from? It wasn’t faith that kept the Old One in the shadows, it was devilry. Yet…such devilry was succeeding. The president was sick. Redbeard had seen the private medical records. When the president died…

The bedroom door opened. Angelina sat on the bed, laid a cool cloth across his forehead.

Redbeard covered his nakedness with the sheet. “I don’t need babying-”

Angelina slapped his hand away as he tried to remove the cloth. “If the fever isn’t broken by noon prayers, I’m calling your doctor.”

Redbeard waved her away. He waited until the door closed behind her, started to toss aside the damp cloth, then thought better of it. The coolness of it felt good. He would rest his eyes. He would give himself time to recover his strength. Sleep was the answer. Sleep the balm to the thoughts boiling in his brain. If only James were here. Twenty-five years dead and gone. Redbeard’s head lolled against the pillow, pulled the darkness closer. The Old One preoccupied his waking moments, but at times like this, drifting deeper, he thought of James…and Katherine. Both gone.

Katherine…the name he never spoke aloud. The face he saw when he closed his eyes. Forgive me, Brother, for the thoughts I had. The desires I harbored. He had hidden such thoughts from his brother, but Katherine had sensed them. Must have sensed them. To abandon her daughter…to flee without a word after hearing of James’s death. She was a rare woman to hold her husband’s honor so dear. Forgive me, James.

Rakkim got back into the car, soaked, water dripping off his goatee. “You have a choice.”

Sarah looked out through the windows. The men surrounded the car, axes and clubs resting on their shoulders.

“You can stay here with the squatters-”

“No.”

Rakkim held up a hand. “They owe me a debt. You’ll be safe. If my plan for the assassin works out, I’ll come back for you. If it doesn’t…they’ll get you back to the city.”

“Why not have them help you kill him?”

“It’s my responsibility.”

Sarah’s eyes glinted in the red lights of the instrument panel. “Mine too.”

Rakkim started the car. Switched on the lights. The men had disappeared back into the darkness.

“What have you got planned?”

Rakkim kept his eyes on the road. It was raining harder now, and he had to keep his speed to thirty-five. He took an abrupt right turn onto a single-lane cutoff, one of the many unmarked roads. Lightning flashed at the base of the nearby mountains, a photo flash of the bad road. “You ever heard of the term werewolves?”

“Horror movies from before the transition. Full moon, hair and fangs-”

“Not that kind. Those werewolves are made up. The ones I’m talking about are real.” The headlights barely illuminated the darkness, the wipers making little headway. “Werewolves…that’s what the squatters call the ultraviolent predators who live out here. Packs of drug maniacs, rapists, and thrill killers-”

“Why haven’t I ever heard of them?”

“There’s plenty you haven’t heard of. A week ago I thought the Zionist Betrayal was a historical fact.”

“Why doesn’t the government send the army in to wipe them out? The squatters aren’t a danger to the public, but these werewolves sound-”

“The government uses the werewolves. Look around. You think any good Muslims are on this road? Any good Catholics? This is a free-fire zone. The only people passing through are smugglers on their way into the capital, and Jews and apostates on their way out. The werewolves intercept them and loot the vehicles. They ransom the survivors or turn them over to the Black Robes.” His fingers tightened on the wheel. “Sometimes they don’t bother.”

“So what are we doing here?”

“The werewolves move around so their presence doesn’t become well-known. The squatters told me there’s a nest of them about ten miles down this road.”

The wind whipped tree branches overhead, scraping the roof and sides of the car. “You expect the werewolves to kill the assassin?”

“Something like that.”

“They won’t kill us? You can talk to them?”

Rakkim laughed. “No, I can’t talk to them. I know how to use them though.” His hair was still dripping. He wiped his face with his forearm. “Last year I was doing a run. Family needed to flee to Canada. Muslim family, two kids, an eight-year-old daughter and a fifteen-year-old boy. The son was gay. Nobody’s business, but they had a neighbor…Maybe they didn’t cut the grass short enough, or maybe the daughter listened to music. For whatever reason, the neighbor went to the local imam. The family didn’t wait for the edict.” Rakkim steered to the left, one tire bouncing in a pothole, jarring his teeth. He slowed. A flat tire now…He felt Sarah watching him. “I drove their car. It was fall, the roads not snowed in. Three nights should have done it. Three nights to get us down through Washington and then up into Canada. There’s a border crossing where the guards go home for dinner every evening. Weather was perfect when we left. Clear night, quarter moon. I didn’t even need to use my headlights most of the time. There was an accident on a logging road I usually use, police cars and ambulances with lights flashing, and I got worried. The police sometimes set up a fake accident to catch smugglers…so I took another route.” He wiped his face again. “We hit a werewolf trap.”

“You never told me.”

“Werewolves had dug out the roadbed. Covered it with a thin sheet of plastic and sprinkled gravel over the top. I was driving faster than I should have…carried away by the moonlight, trying to make up the time we had lost.” Rakkim checked the odometer. The squatters had given him an estimate of where the werewolves were camped, but he didn’t know how accurate it was. “The car hit the trap going about forty-five, snapped an axle, and started rolling. Ended upside down in a ditch. Everyone screaming. We were all hurt…the eight-year-old daughter was unconscious. By the time I got everyone out, the werewolves were all over us.”