Alright, the first two chapters of Part Two deal with the aftermath of the fake rebellion in London and how it particularly affects Michael Haley. I tried to take everyone's advice (thanks) and I think I have the dialogue grammar straightened out as well as the flow. Also there may be a few differences in place names (etc.) between Part One and Part Two, simply because I haven't put in the edits on Part One's pages yet. (And don't let the spacing put you off, I'm trying to separate the paragraphs a little better for the forum). So please, every review is welcome... no matter how small.
PART TWO - THE GAUNTLET
CHAPTER ONE
Michael Haley descended from his Exterminator with a downtrodden expression masking his face and a feigned slowness in his stride. The dome had retracted over Ál-Jalîya moments after the airplanes had landed, and the Capital was in nearly complete darkness under a sky devoid of stars. The only light was provided by the flickering torches placed roughly every one-hundred feet along the circular terraces, creating an eerie image of a fiery funnel leading down to a pit of blackness.
Suddenly both of his shoulders were clasped by a pair of powerful hands, and a voice whispered softly in his ear. “President Shimar wishes to see you, General.”
“Then why didn’t he just come up?” Michael responded, feigning confusion. “This is where we usually meet.”
“He wishes to see you in a… more private place.” there was something nasty in the guard’s tone, specially built through centuries of intimidation. There was no question what they had predicted for their meeting…
That I’m not leaving there alive. Michael thought wanly.
The Presidential Mansion of Ál-Jalîya was massive, its grounds spanning the entire expanse of the bottommost terrace. Michael was led up to its front door where both guards clapped on the door three times with its large brass knocker. A little old-fashioned. Michael thought curiously, trying to divert his mind. The only way he would be able to escape the scene waiting for him would be with calmness and focus.
“Enter.” the voice of another guard, stoic and dry, called over the loudspeaker. There was an audible click as the door unlocked, and Michael was roughly pushed inside. The guards paused in the dimly lit foyer, waiting as another group joined them. Then they led the general up a grandiose flight of marble steps and into a hallway adorned with a hundred different types of guns.
“I see President Shimar is interested in firearms.” Michael said, his interest entirely real.
“He is.” one of the guards said shortly as they prodded Michael along. As he walked he gazed at the walls, his mind already at work. This hallway was an armory by itself. Guns of every shape and size adorned the walls, hanging from hooks, shelved in cases, everywhere the eye could see. On one wall was a collection of .357 Magnums, each one with enough firepower to destroy a man’s head with a single shot. Another wall showcased a set of machine guns, each one firing thousands of rounds a minute. In a shelf stood the finest collection of shotguns Michael had ever seen, coupled with a posse of rifles so large they almost didn’t fit on their pegs.
“Move!” the guard behind him jabbed the barrel even harder into Michael’s back. “You don’t want to make the President even unhappier than he already is!”
“Well we wouldn’t want that would we?” Michael said cheekily, expecting another jab. Instead one of the guards whacked him across the face, hard. The General fell to the ground in a limp heap.
“Get up!” the guard hissed.
The body didn’t even twitch.
“Shit.” the second guard said. “I think you knocked him out.”
“He’s not going to like that…” one of the other four piped up. The first guard hissed at them to be quiet, and knelt down next to Michael’s lax form. It was the last mistake he would ever make.
The general’s left leg suddenly lashed out like a piston, catching the guard in the abdomen. He doubled over in pain, gasping for breath, until a second well placed kick drove his nose into his brain.
As the other guards reacted as Michael spun behind the case of rifles, curling into a ball as the first round of bullets bit into the glass and wood. A storm of shrapnel erupted from the rapidly disintegrating shelves and Michael dove for the far wall, snatching a handgun from the wreckage on the ground. Knowing he had only milliseconds, he aimed for a strip of dim fluorescent lights, fired, and missed.
Instead of hitting the pulsating bulb the bullet sheared through one of the thin cables holding the massive light to the ceiling, and the structure collapsed inwards in a maelstrom of shattering glass. The casing itself struck one of the guards a glancing blow and he fell, unconscious, to the ground.
Three left.
Michael fired the remaining eight rounds into the mass of darkness, and was rewarded with seven plinks as the bullets hit stone and an agonized yell as one found a guard. Dropping the emptied pistol, he dove for cover under a glass-covered table. Milliseconds later the area where he had been lying was spattered with gunfire, tearing up the marble flooring and peppering the first guard’s dead body. A veritable tempest of dust arose, obscuring the guards’ vision far better than any smoke grenade...
It’s gonna take a while to get that repaired. He thought, watching as the feet of the remaining guards carefully approached the still form, not knowing if it was Michael or one of their fallen partners. He reached for the closest weapon, and braced himself.
There was the expected yell as they saw that the body was indeed not his, and the scramble as they searched frantically for their quarry in the still-swirling cloud of dust. Fixing his eyes on one, Michael jumped out from under the table and shouted. “Eat shit you son of a bitch!!” In that moment, where the guards were too temporarily stunned to move, he launched the hand-grenade toward them and threw himself behind another case, hoping it was far enough and strong enough to withstand the blast.
BOOM!!!
A fireball engulfed the hallway behind Michael, sucking in every last scrap of wood and air it could in its short life. He felt himself picked up as if by the hand of some massive puppet master and thrown down the hallway. Every gun in the vicinity of the blast began to autonomously pepper the walls with bullets, the heat of the explosion hot enough to facilitate the gunshots, stopping abruptly as their inner workings ruptured in the shock wave.
Goddammit that was a powerful grenade! Michael thought, carefully raising his head from the ground as the smoke cleared. Somehow he was uninjured but covered in a mass of bruises and abrasions that would take weeks to heal. And already he picked up sounds in the distance, echoing through the hollow halls of the mansion.
“…What the hell…”
“…Explosion…”
“…Firearm hallway…”
Shit! Michael swore, knowing that the amount of guards pouring into the hallway would be more than any number of grenades could overcome.
Think Michael think!
There’s nothing here to work with!
Make something!
That’s when he saw the smoking carcass of one of the guards, thrown beside him by the force of the blast. And suddenly, he had an idea.
Three minutes later a squadron of guards stampeded into Israel Shimar’s firearm hallway, all of them taking a moment to stare at the wreckage in shock. Several tried to wave away the dispersing dust. Some just stared at the bodies of their fallen companions. Even more gazed at the wreckage of the President’s prized collection, knowing where the blame would fall. However none noticed a man in a scorched uniform slipping out through a side door and down an emergency set of stairs.
Five minutes later Michael Haley emerged into the darkness of Ál-Jalîya and stripped off the stolen guard uniform. He slipped a Magnum he had stolen from the ruins into his empty holster, almost enjoying the oddly comforting weight.
I need to get out of here.
He smiled wryly, an escape plan formulating at that very moment. There was only one way out of the prisonlike city, and he knew exactly what it would take to make it work.
CHAPTER TWO
Israel Shimar paced around his lavish bedroom like a caged tiger, prowling past his audience of his three commanding guards. Every few moments he would suck in a hoarse breath, letting it out in an equally gravelly hiss. His face was covered in a sweaty sheen, and his normally expressionless visage was bathed in anger and annoyance.
“I give five of your best men the simplest task imaginable!” He suddenly roared, spittle spraying from his gnashing jaws. “Five of your best men! All they had to do was take Michael Haley… AND BRING HIM TO ME!!”
“Sir, we had no idea he was capable-” the first guard began, but was cut off by a stinging smack to the face.
“No idea he was capable…” Shimar trailed off in utter disgust. “HE WAS A FUCKING GENERAL YOU NIMRODS! He was the best man in my entire force! And you thought he wouldn’t be able to muster up any self-defense? Did you really imagine that he couldn’t protect himself?? Are you dumb, lazy, or maybe a little of both?” he suddenly grabbed the first guard by the throat, pulling him towards his furious face. “Answer me!!”
“Both, sir, both!” the guard protested desperately as Shimar’s long, thin fingers closed around his windpipe.
“Truer words have never been spoken.” Shimar growled with pure contempt. He threw the guard down to the ground with more force than a sane man could muster, and strode back to his bed. The men watched, paralyzed, as he slipped a hand under the covers and drew out what looked like a long brownish rope… at least until it began to move.
“I don’t think any of you have met my friend yet.” Shimar said, his voice deathly lucid. He withdrew his hand from under the sheets, and one of the guards let out a small yelp. Now coiled around the President’s arm, its head resting happily in his hand, was a massive snake.
“Don’t be afraid.” Shimar said softly, smiling as if he were at a picnic and not a soon-to-be death chamber. “He won’t bite you. See?” he lifted the snake’s head up to his own and kissed it softly. The guards watched in part-disgust, part-awe. The snake hissed, satisfied. “Or at least,” he began, “he won’t bite me.”
With that he dropped the snake to the floor, his audience watching as it uncoiled its entire seven-foot body onto the polished marble. Its eyes, the same murky brown as the President’s, stared at the guards with a strange sort of animalistic glee. The snake began to slowly unwind, its body creating a reddish-brown stripe against the white stone as it slithered ever so methodically toward the guards.
“Shek here is coastal taipan.” Israel Shimar whispered, his voice smooth and deadly. “Coastal taipans have the longest fangs of almost any snake species in existence. They also administer an extremely painful neurotoxin that goes to work in seconds, paralyzing your every muscle until your heart literally cannot beat.” The President smiled, feigning cheekiness. “I’ll leave you all to get to know one another. I’m sure you’ll enjoy each others’ company.” With that he slipped softly out the door, and counted softly to three.
Suddenly a terrified scream came from the chamber behind him, and the few guards who remained in the hallway, cleaning up the debris, looked up with curiosity and more than a little fear. One by one they met the President’s icy gaze, and one by one they each looked back at their work, though none could stop wincing at each subsequently weaker scream.
“I hope you’ve all learned a valuable lesson tonight.” Shimar said forcefully to the assembly of workers as they continued to clean and sweep, none wanting to meet his eyes. “Mistakes will not be tolerated, under any circumstance. Understood?”
“Yes, sir!” His congregation chanted back, frightened into submission.
“Good.” Shimar said, satisfied. “Now I will go back into my chamber. In exactly three minutes three of you are to enter to remove the trash cluttering my floor. Those three will be instantly promoted to the empty positions at the top of the force. Think carefully, and decide amongst yourselves.” With that he opened the door and slipped into his darkened room like the specter that he was.
The next morning three packages were dumped into the Pit, where the prisoners would feed them without hesitation into the incinerator. No questions would be asked. None ever were. Life would continue in the same clockwork manner, but with one exception. Moments after their fear-filled promotions, the three new commanders had been issued their first order of business. Catch Michael Haley.
Or they would quickly discover how expendable they really were.
So there you go. It's a little darker than the last part, and if snakes creep you out... well maybe you shouldn't read on. Shek will be back, that's a promise.
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