She was suddenly aware that her vision had almost dimmed out completely and she was on the verge of fainting. That would be certain death. She forced herself to breath deeply, sucking oxygen into her lungs and echoing the beating of her heart in her mind. Up on the stage the band was still playing but the drummer had peeled away from the score and was now tapping his drums in a fair simulation of a heartbeat. Fantasia focussed upon the sound and imagined her heart beating in time to it. The fuzzy gray from her vision cleared slightly.
“You OK Fanny?” The barkeep’s face was a waxy white-gray with sweat beading his forehead and lips.
“Yeah, think so, just slipped for a moment there.”
“Well, don’t do it again.” The mock severity was as near as anybody could get to being funny. “Your customers are getting thirsty out there.”
She was halfway across the floor when the whole room seemed to shudder. That’s all we needed. An earthquake. But, the rolling thunder wasn’t like any earthquake she’d heard. In fact, it wasn’t like anything any American city had ever heard.
Israeli Army Road Block, al Za’im, West Bank
“Turn back, can’t you see the Scarlet Beast is down there?”
The Israeli sergeant commanding at the road block tried to wave the truck down. His men were setting up their machine gun to stage a last-ditch defense of this point against the beast that was now barely a kilometer away. Husni al-Sohl brought the truck to a halt and wound down his window/.
“Let me throught. I am of Hamas and this truck is loaded with explosives. I can hurt that abomination much more than you.”
The sergeant did a double take at the words. Not so long ago, the words would have caused the truck to be raked by machine gun fire. “You’ll never get close enough.”
“I will. Just put my foot down hard. I have the explosives on a simple dead man’s switch, It’ll work. And Sergeant, there are two RPG-7s in the back and a dozen rockets. Your men will need them.”
Al-Sohl felt the truck rock as the soldiers scrambled into the truck bed and unloaded the rocket launchers. He heard on of them whistling. “Just how much explosive is in the back of this thing?’
“Six hundred kilos of the best anfo Hamas can make. And another two hundred kilos of nails. Iron nails.
“Be careful you could damage the suspension carrying that lot.” The sergeant grinned at al-Sohl then snapped out something almost unknown in the Israeli Army, a reasonable approximation of a decent salute. He and his men held it as the truck drove through their checkpoint.
The Scarlet Beast had moved some more and was across the highway that led east from Jerusalem. Al Sohn floored his accelerator and headed straight down the road at the great monster that was carving a swathe of destruction through the valley leading up to the city. He had his windows up tight and the air conditioning turned off, hoping that the seal would be enough to keep the strange dust the Whore was using to wipe out those who stood against her. The truck was shaking and shimmying on the rough road surfaces, for all Toyota’s efforts, their pick-up trucks just didn’t have the strength and stability of the Dodge and Chevvy rivals. The speedometer continued to click upwards and by the time the Beast and its rider responded, it was too late for them to stop the manned missile that was being aimed at them.
Dumah blew her stream of smoke at the racing truck and al-Sohl lost sight of his target as the gray fog enveloped his cab. He felt his lungs seizing up as the poison took hold, but he was close enough now and his last conscious act was to release the dead man’s switch in his hand. Around him, the picture of the inside of his truck shrank to nothing, a tiny white dot in the center of his vision.
Al-Sohl saw strange things, weird shapes, strange colors, indescribable things that he forgot as soon as he saw them. Things that no human mind could ever recall because they were swamped out by the great white glow as the tiny dot in his vision swelled up and filled his vision. It changed, dimmed slightly then resolved into white and gray shadows. He blinked, his eyes slowly recovering and the shadows started to make sense. The white glow was lighting, the shadow was a woman bending over him. A nurse.
“Mr al-Sohl? Husni al-Sohl?”
He tried to croak out an answer but all he could do was to nod his head.
“That’s wonderful. We’ve been keeping an eye open for you as the dead came through. The Israeli Army asked us to.”
“Did I kill the Beast?” The voice was still a croak.
The nurse hesitated. “No, but you hurt him badly enough that he broke off the attack to recover. That bought enough time to evacuate more civilians from the area. Your sacrifice saved a lot of lives, tens of thousands of them. You’re quite the hero you know. We’ve even got some virgins who’ve volunteered to come over and give you a proper welcome.”
Presidential Palace, Naypyidaw, Myanmar
“You let us down!” Than Shwe’s voice was accusing and peevish.
Michael-Lan stared down at the ridiculous figure with something close to disbelief. “Pardon?”
“You promised us you’d help us with the war against the Siamese. Now we will have to run, spend the rest of our lives in exile because you failed us.”
“If you think I promised you anything, little humans, you are sadly mistaken. I merely pointed out that the opportunities that were there for you. If you can’t turn them into reality, then that’s your fault.”
“You owe us! We have been together for years, we closed our country off from the world so you could come here in peace.”
“You were well paid for your services. Do you think I do not know how high were the prices you charged for your goods? And how low were the values you gave me for the jewels and gold you got in return.” You are really, really pathetic, thought Michael, as if I, an archangel owe you anything or should treat you as anything more than humble menials. It is you who are duty-bound to us, not the other way around. We owe you nothing. Michael-Lan reflected that he rather liked humans but their constant demands to be treated as equals were wearing.
Still, despite these people’s whining, they had done him proud on this trip. The power-assisted cart that he was using had been piled high with highly-refined number four heroin and huge numbers of methamphetamine tablets. They’d said they were cleaning out all their stocks and that appeared to be just what they had done. Even with his own literally superhuman strength augmented by the electric motors on the cart, he had difficulty overcoming the inertia of the huge cargo. It really was very, very heavy.
“Here, despite your rudeness, I have a final payment for you.” Michael-Lan fished inside his robes and tossed Than Shwe a large bag, one stuffed with precious stones Michael had ‘liberated’ from Yahweh’s palace. “They are a generous payment.”
Than Shwe counted the stones, running them through his fingers. “Generous indeed. And they will have to be now our country is collapsing before the Siamese Army. Our exile will be a long one.”
Michael-Lan raised his eyebrows at the whining voice, then jerked hard on the cart to get it around the corner that led out of the storeroom into the corridor that led to the outside of the palace building. At least, when the palace had been built, they’d had his bulk and size in mind so the corridors were high and wide. That made maneuvering the cart much easier. Michael reflected that the cart really was remarkably heavy.