The Book of Drome ch 1: The nameless one (murdermass)

The shadow of the gun arrived before the gun.

The security guard noticed him but the security guard was slow and clumsy. The security guard would die soon.

The room was impressively spacious with marble walls and high-vaulted ceilings. The building had been a church then a bank then a fancy banquet hall. Now it was an office building with extra floors built on top of the initial granite and marble. This room now served as the lobby. It was full of oblivious people in suits.

The shadow belonged to the gun that belonged to the nameless one. The nameless one preferred knives. There was nothing like the deeply spiritual feeling he got from killing someone up close: when their breath ran out and their souls left their bodies in shadowy sighs like orgasms of death opening gateways into other worlds. He’d done knife work for the US Army in Colombia and he yearned to do it again. But this particular job would require guns.

He came in just after the gun that came in just after the shadow of the gun.

He was dressed to kill, with bandoliers criss-crossing his chest and a sawed off shotgun across his back with a small bag holding a light parachute and a first aid kit tucked up against the mag tube.  A Bowie knife in a brown leather sheath on his left hip and on his right a Smith and Wesson Magnum.

Everyone started screaming and it echoed crazily in the spacious stone room. It was like chattering tropical birds to him. He moved quickly but deliberately in the chaos he’d caused. He noticed the security guard fumbling to pull his sidearm. He already had his rifle ready. He leveled it quickly and surely and shot the security guard in the head and the head blew apart and the man’s soul flew out and disappeared in a faint electric blue flicker. Brains and gore splattered on the other people, sending the nameless one into a state of erotic arousal and everyone else into an even more intense state of panic. 

He pivoted, raised his rifle and fired at one of the cameras. It exploded into countless small pieces that rained down on the terrified crowd. They were stunned and became quiet but still murmured and stirred. He put two fingers in his mouth and whisteled very loudly and shrilly, quieting the crowd further and focusing their attention.

He bellowed in a loud low voice like a drill sergeant: “Either calm down or be killed, make your choice and do it quickly.” He did Stentorian well. The people became quiet and still.

“Thank you,” he said. “Now let me be clear: I’m here to kill two people who know exactly why I have come. I need you two  —you know who you are— to come forward and make eye contact with me.”

The two people came forward. They felt compelled by the strange authority of his voice. They knew they would die but they did not tremble. For the first time in a  long time they felt a sense of peace as the minds and souls that they’d tortured for so long finally felt a sense of impending liberation and prepared themselves for flight.

“Round the corner….   fudge is made,” the nameless one said. These were no small words. He wasn’t sure if the other two knew what he meant but he knew they were both involved in a human trafficking operation involving the Catholic Church, the Knights Templar, the Mexican Cartels, The Saudi Royal Family and at least one European national intelligence agency, though he wasn’t sure which one.

He killed them quickly, shooting them in their hearts, and was out of the building before the bodies hit the floor. The cops were already arriving. He killed five cops quickly and easily. Pop pop pop pop pop. All headshots, it took very little time, they had not been as prepared for him as he had been for them.

He fled west on foot and hit the back alleys looking for fire escapes. He found one and climbed up to the top floor and then he shimmied up a dilapidated drainpipe and hopped a low wall onto the roof. He had a sight for his rifle in his cargo pants pocket. He took it out and attached it and glassed the near distances on the ground around the building below, quickly choosing a strategically significant target, and picking off a cop with a perfectly placed headshot from 250 yards to cause confusion among the rest.

Distant helicopters growing louder as they approached. He hopped back over the wall and landed on the fire escape with a clamor. He hurried down the fire escape quickly and quietly, agile like a cat. Once he’d made it down he stayed in the back alley. He found a dumpster and climbed into it and began removing his clothes and gear. He found some tattered stained discarded clothes among the trash and he put them on and began rubbing some gritty grimy garbage on his feet, face and hair. He did not feel disgust. He was an uncommon type of person.

He climbed out of the dumpster and went a block west and sat down cross-legged with his head turned down and his back against the wall. He began to mutter to himself as a means of becoming the role that he was now to play. He took some dirt from an ant hole by the wall and started rubbing it all over himself. The helicopters were loud now. He did not think they would clock him. If they’d had his infrared signature they would probably find and kill him. But he did not think they had his infrared signature. He stood up and began to spin around with the intent of dizzying himself before he headed out to the street proper and began speaking gibberish and giving menacing looks to passersby. He ranted and raved about how the Polish Intelligence Agency was in danger of being wiped out by the secret assassins of the Knights Templar in the service of the Vatican over the secret history of the third food at the last supper and the part missing from the ritual of the eucharist since the church’s inception.

“You’re goddam right I know where the fudge is made!” He screamed unhingedly at a passing city bus with people watching him bemusedly through the windows.

He knew it wouldn’t be long before the cops searched the dumpster. He was ready to let them find his stuff but he thought they might not get around to it for a an hour or so search the dumpster or it might take a few hours to get there. He needed a way to carry it all without any of it being visible. He wandered the streets acting crazy and saw a lot of cops in cars and on foot and the helicopters were still focusing on the rooftop and after a wave of cops passed he came upon a work site at a vacant lot that had a big hole in the fence such as the homeless create and use to get access to such areas. There were a few men there leaning on shovels and talking next to a pile of dirt covered with a blue tarp. Hooting and whooping he ran up and took the tarp and ran away and the men were not angry at all, they were entertained and laughed quite a bit at the spectacle of it. He’d run very quickly and quietly on his toes and the balls of his feet. He often walked on the balls of his feet and his toes so that he moved like a cat. That is how you do that kind of thing. He'd learned it by living with cats. 

He made his way back to the dumpster, clear in his intent while appearing to wander aimlessly, and he crawled back into the dumpster and found his stash of clothing and equipment and he wrapped it all up in the tarp and emerged back out of the dumpster without the tarp, leaving it there while he thought. He’d gotten his cash from his pants and now had it in his pocket.

By chance, fate or dumb luck then came along an actual person of the type whom he appeared to be, a crazy homeless person dressed in rags pushing a shopping cart. He offered the man two one hundred dollar bills for the cart and the man accepted and began removing his items from the cart as the nameless one went into the dumpster and got his stuff, taking out the very weighty and bulky tarp and putting it into the shopping cart which he then pushed away as the other man called out thanks and blessings. He was never cruel to such people for he knew that they were children of God. Like yourself perhaps. He began pushing the cart homeward to where his SUV was parked and made it there and loaded his stuff into the back and got in and drove quickly to the bridge out of the city which was not far. The license plates were not his, he never used his own license plates and rotated plates frequently. He never did anything in his own name. He was the nameless one.