The Last Persecution

Morning came loud and noisy to Browntown, like an engine, like a train – rumbling down the tracks into the city from the east, blaring out its warning horn, Whaaah! with engines huffing and pistons chugging. Like an old train, morning came gruff and surly; it came rusted, and oil stained. It came reeking of diesel. And Dr. P. L. Tarrec, himself moved like an old train, especially in still grey mornings, gradually building up speed to face each new dismal day. Whaaah! the warning blast wailed again. Dr. Tarrec froze, still tired, stalled on his feet.

From the bedroom of his basement level apartment he looked up to a small rectangular window, too small to be an egress window, but it let in a bit of light. Along with the light, rain water had seeped in around the uncaulked edges over the years, staining and blistering the wallpaper; the pattern of printed oak leaves, acorns, and mushrooms was obscured in ragged rust colored streaks. Cold, grey light streamed in now – not sunlight, not yet. It was not quite four a.m. What light there was at this ugly hour came from silver street lights. Sunlight and heat would come later, but he would hardly be any warmer. Dr. Tarrec rarely felt warm these days.

Whaaah! “That makes three,” he said to no one in particular. “Good morning, everyone.” Another dismal day in Browntown. Browntown was a dying place, dingy with decay, but it wasn’t completely dead yet; it was limping along like a leaf in the wind, like a leaf clinging desperately to the tree at the end of October. Much of the city had burned during the Leader’s ascension riots – and during the Night of the Long Fires. Those buildings and homes and structures that hadn’t burned or been demolished with explosives were pocked with bullet holes, the architectural equivalent of acne scars. Windows were busted everywhere, roofs collapsed. Concrete and rebar were piled in the middle of the streets and sidewalks. But people still clung to life in the city.

It may have been only the desperate pretense of normality but life, of a sort, went on. Children went to school. Fans attended sporting events and cheered for their favorite teams and players. Cars and groceries were bought and sold. Old men still sat in the park reading newspapers, smoking cigarettes and playing chess. So what if the range of their conversation was truncated? They still sat in the park every afternoon as if nothing had changed. Everything was different. The Leader changed everything but everything went on just as always. We all pretended not to notice, or pretended to pretend not to notice.

Dr. Tarrec dressed himself. He may have been slow in his early morning motions, but he was meticulous in his garments, even if they were worn and threadbare. He was stylish, but decades out of style. His grey, wool pants were neatly creased; his plain, lavender colored shirt was neatly ironed and tucked into his belted pants. He wore a maroon ascot with a grey and black sport-coat. He checked his reflection in a mirror and decided it was good enough.

Below the window hung a battered calendar, a multi-year reusable calendar marked with filigreed signs of the Zodiac and Kabbalistic Sephirot. No one printed the yearly paper calendars anymore, with bright pictures of mountain landscapes, or scampering kittens, or slim women in swimsuits and red, red, smiles a mile wide and deep, wide, and inviting eyes with dark, curled lashes. Printed paper calendars were gone, replaced (as most things were anymore) with digital displays, connected (as most things were anymore) to the information cloud. Dr. Tarrec, in general, preferred the old and distrusted the new; he distrusted anything as ephemeral as a digital cloud of electronic information. He turned the page of his calendar from August to September, the end of another summer. He was a few weeks behind. But he hadn’t been in this particular apartment in at least that long. He had several apartments throughout the city, most of those where secret, and hidden, leased under a variety of names.

Tarrec distrusted the future; it filled him with anxiety. He’d seen enough of the past to know that the future would be dangerous. And worrisome. It was September 22nd now. There were dark days ahead, yes – dark, shrinking days. But he could read the cabalistic notations of this strange calendar, he could mark the wax and wane of the moon and the coming and goings of black, tom-cats. Dark days, yes, and long nights were coming, coming with great potential for good or for ill.

And now, a familiar task awaited him.

He stood beneath the window and counted the minutes, breathing and counting his breaths. He was trying to accomplish two contradictory things at the same time: first – to anticipate the arrival of his enemies. They would be coming for him soon. He could hide, but not for forever. He could run, but not far. They would find him. They would catch up to him again. And he would anticipate their arrival. And secondly – to relax. They were coming for him, but he would be ready. He would be prepared. He would meet the future with a steady hand, at least with as steady a hand as an elderly man can hold.

There and there. Now here, and here, a delivery truck rumbled passed outside the window. Right on time. Now the street lights flickered once, twice, then whiffed out, as regular as clockwork. (‘And that’s an obsolete simile in this digital age’, he thought.) “Everybody ready now. Everybody up,” he whispered to no one in particular.

He could hear them now, tramping down the street as they did every other morning, a squadron of heavy boot heels. A hundred marching men, two hundred boots marching in regular time. Clump. Clump. Clump. Clump. Marching in step, in regular time. ‘As regular as boot heels,’ he thought, ‘now that’s a simile appropriate for the times.’ He chuckled at his own little joke. The Leader’s Cataleptic Troops were as rigid in their routine as they were in their physical form. Lockstep and lock-jawed, the Cataleptic troops felt little pain and never tired.

Behind the Cataleptic Troops followed the ATT-771s, the Black Scorpions, prowling almost noiselessly 10 centimeters above the potholed surface of the street, their drivers scanning the neighborhood for cached weapons, concealed explosives, fugitive citizens and Red-Illegals. They scanned for coca-communists and for bomb-throwing anarchists, for the modern day descendants of Leon Czolgosz. Tarrec couldn’t hear the nearly noiseless Scorpions from his rooms, but he knew they were there. He didn’t need to hear them; he could feel the change in the air. He could feel the buzzing, electrostatic pressure in the air as they scanned the buildings. The Scorpions were armed with electro-mechanical stingers tipped with needles and about fifty different neurotoxic poisons, and with the power to torment their victims for nearly half a year. Tarrec hurried now.

Alarm clocks elsewhere above him in the apartment building went off. Morning news programs turned on automatically: “…reports of overnight violence in Des Moines. Seventy three deaths…” and “…Disease Control are astounded by an outbreak of a particularly virulent strain of measles…” and “…here to promote his new film, 9mm Lover…” and “…new travel restrictions in Oklahoma were announced today. No travel within a thirty mile radius of the radiation zones…”

That last report caught Tarrec’s ear. “Thirty miles. Thirty miles… A no travel zone? What is thirty miles?” On a table next to the bed he found a pencil and a small spiral-bound notebook. He began to write, trying to decipher the unspoken connections. He scribbled down the words that came unbidden to his mind.

When the courthouse clock boomed Tarrec startled from his meditative trance. The bells surprised him as they did every morning. The bells were regular, orderly, but they still consistently startled him. He dropped the pencil, saw it fall and bounce off the corner of the bedside table and skitter across the floor. Then he saw what he’d written in the notebook. It was a number and two words surrounded by astrological doodles and pointed arrows:

30miles

Zombies

A number and two words and all of them two syllables long. There was something hidden in this. There was something happening there that the reporters were not reporting. But what? What did the undead have to do with Oklahoma? Tarrec snorted in frustration. There were just too many puzzles here, too many unanswered, too many unanswerable questions. He didn’t have time for them all this morning. The courthouse bells had already rung. Things would be starting soon. So he listened.

Now further down the rail, he heard the final loathsome blast from the train. Whaaah! But still, Tarrec listened for more. He could hear the grumble of Cyclopean helicopters low over the buildings and the rattle and growl of traffic in the streets.

Tarrec, like a magician, waved his hand and the morning was begun. The sun rose over the surly city. Doors slammed. Cars roared. “I have seen the future,” Tarrec whispered. If he whispered under the volume of the televised news he would not be heard by the listening devices planted by the Right Government™ He knew they were listening to him, that they were spying on him. They had been for years. “I have seen the future and it is not real.” He had work to perform, apotropaic work. There was evil to prevent and darkness to dispel. He had sympathetic magic to perform against missiles of lead and against all of the Leader’s pretty war things, all of those lovely war toys. This morning Tarrec had a synthetic magic to practice; he had leaden missiles to change into golden spears of sunlight. He would, if he could find the power, transmute the Leader’s evil, all his base metals into something shining and new.

Another day had begun in Browntown.