Robert Ferrigno - Sins of the Assassin

“We got the shekel, what more-”

“The shekel’s not enough,” said Rakkim. “Every big lie needs at least three parts to be convincing. Three…aspects. They don’t even have to be mutually reinforcing, they just have to fill in the landscape of the lie.”

Leo yawned.

“The shekel’s one part. Addington…the Church of the Mists, that’s the second.”

Leo closed his eyes. “What…what’s the third?”

Rakkim glanced over at him. Leo looked like a big baby, sprawled against the door, mouth hanging open, already snoring. “Me,” he said softly. “I’m the third part.”

A large wooden cross stood beside the road, jesus saves spelled out in white boulders behind it. Another mile, another cross, this one made from flattened metal cans edged with rust. Another mile, another cross. And another. Rakkim relaxed as the narrow road led him deeper into the foothills of the Appalachians, past small towns cut off from change even before the war, towns given up to ruin and poverty, and their faith all the stronger for it. God’s country, that’s what the locals called it, disparaging the city Christians for their backsliding and arrogance. During the war, all of the Belt had been God’s country, fiercely devout, unified, fighting to the death for what they believed in. The armistice had been in effect for almost thirty years now, time enough for the rot to set in. The same rot he saw in the republic.

Leo sighed, pillowed his head with his arm.

A little after noon, Rakkim stopped for gas at a tiny two-pump station all alone in the woods. No credit chips accepted, just cold cash. The attendant sidled out, a scrawny young guy with a bad complexion and a pistol on his hip-he watched Rakkim fill the tank with a gas-kerosene mixture, the only fuel available. Probably cut with paint thinner as well, from the smell of it. Moonshine even. Rakkim had seen all of them used in this part of the Belt. The attendant lit a cigarette, seemed to enjoy Rakkim’s discomfort at the open flame. Rakkim returned the favor, struck a match on the back of his front teeth, and tossed it at the attendant’s feet, right next to a splash of spilled gas. The man grinned, ground the match out, then asked Rakkim if he wanted to buy some traveler’s insurance.

“Why?” said Rakkim, wary.

“Man like you got a need for some extra protection. Anybody with eyes can see that.”

“I’m just another traveler on the road to glory,” said Rakkim.

“Yeah, and I’m Willie Jefferson Clinton.” The attendant hitched up his trousers, beckoned, walked inside the station.

Rakkim looked around. Followed.

An old desk rested against one wall, under an Osama bin Laden dart-board. The attendant pushed aside an overflowing ashtray, opened a desk drawer, and pulled out a tray of jagged-edged silvery medallions. The medallions were cut out from oil cans, brightly colored geometric shapes-stars and crosses, eagles and rockets and knives, each with a tiny hole at the top strung with clear fishing line. “Hang one of these from your rearview, keep you safe.”

“From what?”

“From whatever means to harm you,” said the attendant. “You believe in Jesus Christ?”

“Hell, yes.”

The attendant peered at him and there was blood in the whites of his eyes. “You believe he’s coming again, bringing fire and brimstone this time, to smite the wicked and destroy the unrighteous?”

“Who could blame him?” said Rakkim.

The attendant stared. Nodded. “For you…ten dollars.”

Rakkim paid him, chose a shiny pyramid with an eye at the apex, like from the old money.

The attendant acted surprised. “Drive careful.”

“I shouldn’t have to drive carefully. Not now. Strictly pedal to the metal.” Rakkim spun the pyramid with a flick of his finger. “This thing’s guaranteed, isn’t it?”

The attendant fired up another cigarette. “Sure, buddy. You got problems, come back and I’ll give you a full refund.”

Leo was still snoring when Rakkim got back to the car.

The car bucked and backfired for the first few miles, finally smoothed out a bit from the volatile fuel mix. A half hour later, Rakkim drove past a large sign offering vacation condos along the Carolina coast, happy black and white children playing in the surf, elaborate sand castles on the shore.

The sign tilted heavily to one side, covered in graffiti and chickweed. The condos and everything else along the coast had been scoured away by hurricanes twenty years ago, the offshore islands inundated by rising sea levels, the former state of Florida eaten away until it was almost an island. The entrepreneurial Cubans who ruled Nuevo Florida had been building a dike against the inevitable for the last twenty years, a wall over four hundred miles long, stretching from the Atlantic around to the Gulf. Millions of tons of concrete were poured every year, raising the wall higher and higher to protect their orange groves, hotels, and casinos. The Belt didn’t have the money or the will to try to reclaim their coastline. God’s will was the prevailing excuse for giving up. Same excuse they used in the Islamic Republic.

Rakkim raced past crudely painted billboards daubed with BEWARE 666 and JUDGMENT AWAITS and GOD IS LOVE with the word love shot out. The crosses pounded into the sides of the road came more frequently now, homemade crosses of all sizes and materials-crosses made of stone and concrete, crosses made from twists of barbwire, crosses made of white picket fencing nailed together, a road of crosses rising into the hills, leading him straight toward the dark cloud on the horizon, a boiling mass blacker than a thunderhead.

Leo jerked awake, blinking. “I…I was dreaming of Leanne,” he said, still a little dopey from sleep. He rubbed his eyes. “You think there’s such a thing as love at first sight?”

“We’re not going to have another sex talk, are we? Because I’d rather teach you how to use a knife. I’m better qualified.”

“I’m serious. Did you fall in love with your wife when you first met her?”

“Sarah was four and I was nine-the only thing I was in love with at that moment was a hot meal and a warm bed.” Rakkim checked the rearview, gave the pyramid a spin, the eye going round and round. “With Sarah and me, love came later.”

“The moment I looked at Leanne…the very first moment, I knew. She’s so…amazing.”

A brown rabbit darted across the road. Rakkim barely had time to avoid it.

“I called her last night…don’t worry, I made sure it was safe. I told her how I felt. I was scared at first, you know, because I didn’t know how she would react…” Leo smiled to himself. “She said she felt exactly the same way.”

“I wish you hadn’t done that. I need you focused-”

“You don’t think about your wife and son,” said Leo. “Does it distract you?”

“Sometimes.”

“Well, I’m not like you.” Leo pointed at the eye in the pyramid spinning lazily from the rearview. “Where did you get that?”

“You like it?”

“I think you should get rid of it.”

The dark cloud ahead of them thickened, rolling above the trees, black and oily. Rakkim could smell it now.

Leo finally noticed what they were heading toward. “What is that?”

Rakkim felt his jaws clench. “Addington.”

Clyde Winthrop ran a small grocery store and souvenir stand. It didn’t take long to find him. The population of Addington, North Carolina, currently stood at twenty-three people, most of them living along a ridge that caught the easterly wind off the mountains, which tended to minimize the smoke from the coal fire outside the town that had been burning continuously, just under the surface, for thirty-one years. Even with the air filter humming, it was still smoky in the store, a dark, irritating haze that made your throat raw. Outside was much worse.