‘Worse.’
‘Don’t like farewells, so let’s make this short.’ The police officer checked his watch, was sticking to schedule. ‘Council’s passed sentence, Ted. You’re a risk, so you’ve gotta go.’
‘It ain’t nothin’ personal,’ the Forrester volunteered.
The policeman nodded. ‘Absolutely not. Just we gotta build a firewall between you and us, put in distance, reduce liability.’
‘Jack …’ There was a plaintive, whisper-quality in Bell’s delivery. A single word, enough to carry incomprehension and the sourness of betrayal.
‘Managing threat is the optimum way of minimizing it.’ The police officer was showing impatience. ‘No more rounds of golf, Ted. Feds have acquired evidence linking several Forresters – ex-82nd Airborne guys – to your properties. They’ve built the big picture.’
‘Not to mention gained up to 300 captives lassoed at Compton. Interrogation leads to intelligence, leads to problems …’
‘… It’s a matter of time. Twenty-four hours and they’ll be moving against you. We can’t allow you to fall into their hands.’ Unrelenting, cold-blooded logic.
Bell was shaking, the mist of confusion evaporated. ‘Fly … I … I … can fly. Anywhere. I have money.’
‘And we’ve got our heads in nooses. I’m sorry.’ It was the cop equivalent of apology. Insincere, punctuation. ‘Not exactly Valhalla, but we’re kind of limited.’ The four guards were donning respirators and night-vision optics. They received the command. ‘Okay, take him down.’
The Forrester waggled his fingers in valediction. ‘Bye, chief. Watch out for rattlers.’
‘Don’t … don’t …’ Large eyes, a turned head, an added echo to the desperation, and the party struggled over the rim and into the tunnel beyond.
Tadarida brasiliensis, the Mexican free-tailed bat. A very special kind of animal. Gathering in colonies up to fifty million strong, its nurseries represented the greatest concentration of mammalian life anywhere on earth. From Eagle Creek Cave in Arizona through the Bracken Cave in Texas and on to the Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, T. brasiliensis swarmed and clustered, blackening the sky at sunset, creating a living environment, a living hell, unlike any other. Humans had caught rabies merely by entering such a place. It was into this that Ted Bell was brought.
He was choking, gagging, tussling with his escorts while they waded knee-deep in the ammonia broth of bat shit. The air had gone, replaced with the foetid, superheated vapour from myriad tons of wet, decaying guano underfoot and countless litres of urine dripping from above. His eyes burnt and streamed, his nose bled, at the corrosive fumes burrowing up his sinuses, his unprotected face bleaching, blanketed with mites rushing to annex a fresh surface. He tried to vomit; the insects entered. Around, the bats stirred, mothers and pups alerted to the aliens, vocalizing their concern, restless in the presence of danger. In a few weeks they would migrate, returning in the spring to give birth and raise the newborn. The bugs and parasites dependent on them, those left behind, had evolved to last the leaner months, to find alternative diet. Survival of the bloodsuckers, of the meanest in the food chain.
Bell landed flat, face down, his hands tied behind him, feet manacled, his body submerging in the shifting mass. He swallowed, asphyxiating, regurgitating the swill, maggot-rolling and floundering in a spray of panic and filth. The bats responded. They peeled from the walls, swelling the atmosphere, their wing-beats frantic as they cloud-descended on the bucking figure. He was covered, gone, swamped by the writhing creatures, his torso pushed under as they clambered upwards to gain height and launch. A retching scream, strangled off, a desperate thrashing motion suppressed by weight. It weakened, the shape sinking. The white supremacist was somewhere beneath. He rose, slipped back. Then the first bite. A second, a third, the beginnings of a feeding frenzy. Other species had been drawn to the struggle, intended to benefit.
It was said that revolutions ate their own. Bell would be consumed by something else. Dermestes carnivorous, the voracious flesh-stripping beetle that moved through crap, took no crap, was a by-product which dined on by-product. It was not a pretty thing, nor a picky eater. A favourite treat was young bats plummeting earthwards from the overcrowded eaves. They would be skeletonized within hours, their mistakes pounced on, dissected and digested. Failing that, during the famine months, anything would do. Today was special, a promised feast. The beetles rummaged over Bell, more paddling in for the kill. Quick or slow, he was down and going nowhere. No one would disturb them, no one dared.
As he drowned, Bell could only wonder. In deep. He would much rather be working on his golf handicap.
* * *
A director, an actor and an agent. The beginnings of a joke, of a practical demonstration. Azania studied the three. They were perched on the parapet, huddled, blindfolded, their hands and feet bound, their faces crumpled with tearful dejection at impending freefall. People could be so afraid of new experiences, the impact of the unknown. He tapped an arm of his sunglasses reflectively against his lips, assessing, deciding, the distant rumble of a military jet trespassing into his thoughts. It drew his eyes skywards. Reconnaissance had increased in recent days. The authorities were getting forward, becoming careless, impatient. Video-conferencing had ceased the previous evening, an inexplicable deterioration seen in their composure, an abrupt halt brought to the flow and stall of negotiation and offer. Perhaps it was his new demands. If white supremacists such as Adolf Hitler and Ted Bell could call for Aryanization, he could insist upon Africanization. That had woken them up. Affirmative action was not enough. He was asserting the right to uproot the wider and white economy, to replace Caucasian management structures, to have businesses turned over to the black nation. Pity to be missing the frantic midnight sessions at the White House, the chaos he had sown within government. They needed reminding. Selection had been made.
‘Are you ready?’ he asked.
A small voice, barely audible, shivered eventually in reply. ‘F-for what?’
‘To be shooting stars, portents.’
‘You … I don’t … I d-don’t think so.’ Words emerging as gasps.
‘You don’t think so?’ Azania came closer. ‘But you don’t have to think when fate is predetermined.’
‘I don’t want to die.’ She was the female of the party, her mouth contorted with feeling, legs wobbling as they dangled. A book-end about to drop.
‘Don’t be like that. You have the advantage of knowing the time, the place, the date, the how, the why.’
He thought of the Tiger he had sent to London, of the heads wrapped in duct tape. So similar to those bagged up and facing him. Bit-players. Victims could forfeit their features, personality, sex, so easily, become lost in the epic, dwarfed by the scale of the event. Just more green bottles hanging on a wall, more green bottles chosen, listed, to fall accidentally. All in a good cause, a great project. They would land in the racial quagmire he had prepared, belly-flop onto the front pages of every newspaper. Additional coverage, further confusion, almost 3,000 others in reserve. He was keeping his resources dry, fed, keeping them guessing and afraid, keeping them on camera while sending their laments to the media. No, he and his vision would not be marooned in that sea of indifference. Absolute power, amandla, turned him on absolutely.
The woman’s face was soaked, her crying infectious. Three blubbering nobodies waiting to die. The group dynamic was a fascinating one, a special one. A shame he did not have longer to investigate. He adjusted the frames on the bridge of his nose, peered over the rim.
‘We’ve done nothing wrong,’ the man at the centre of the base jumpers was volunteering. Unseeing, in blind faith. ‘It’s not our fault.’ He could do with losing a few pounds, with trying weightlessness.
‘You’re merely the piggy in the middle.’
‘Sir … with due respect …’
‘Do you have respect? Do you have self-respect?’
Below the bandaged eyes, the face was melting, an ice-cream float in acid sweat. ‘I have a family, sir. A wife, two children. I got photographs of them, Reverend, sir …’ He was reaching deep, grasping for defiance, coming up with extenuation.
‘Photographs?’
‘I’ll show them to you. You wanna see them?’
Azania ignored the offer. ‘And what shall we show in return? Would you care to say something to camera? Anyone? Anything?’ There was only muteness and misery, a lapse into submission. ‘It’s the curse of modern movie-making,’ he went on. ‘Stunts taking precedence, the scripts inferior. I’m creating art, shaping a genre, giving you speech. Please, work with me here.’ The video-diarist was recording.
‘I don’t want to die,’ the woman repeated. Her faltering mantra, her final say.
‘Think big picture. You are victims of intransigence and stupidity, of your own people, of an Administration of hollow men, vain and venal men. You are casualties of war, of a centuries-long conflict that I will bring to closure and conclusion. Be kind on yourselves, praise yourselves. Brace yourselves. You are leaping from obscurity into illustriousness.’ It was time to force the pace, to enforce his judgement.
A click, the sound of a catch releasing, of a switch-blade sprung. He swung his head, saw the group prepared and pre-placed, feet spaced wide, hands holding clubs, knives, machetes, guns. It was a delegation from the senior ranks of the Tigers, a lynch posse. One-sided, and one way of raising personnel issues, settling personal scores. In a small world, industrial dispute and character clash could trigger overspill, get messy, mean. Required finesse, careful handling, would benefit from experience, from the guileful mind and fancy steps of Reverend Al Azania.
He smiled – teeth and eyes – accepting, welcoming. They were his boys, his recruits. Plainly a misunderstanding. ‘Am I seeing what I believe I’m seeing?’
