Judas' Gospel

Chapter 2

“Patrol Seven here. We are almost on the spot, is there any news?”

“Here Operative Central. No news, the guy is comfortably barricaded in the apartment. It doesn’t look dangerous, but the Simple Guards couldn’t get him out.”

“Well, we’ll make him change his mind!” Fabien said turning on the flashing lights and the sirens, then pressed the accelerator firmly.

“Who knows why all those who refuse to undergo the Treatment are residents of the Fourth Quadrant,” Nick wondered aloud, holding on to the handle.

“Once upon a time, there was a nuclear power plant there. Maybe the fault of the air or the radiation or something like that,” the patrol leader speculated passing in the meantime his handkerchief over the small gold disk again, which continued to mist up due to humidity. A small crowd admired the arrival of the car and the blatant spin with which the boy parked on the meadow in front of the house, raising a wave of mud. Greedy eyes stared almost hypnotized at the light that swirled on itself, throwing blue and red flashes to pierce the hazy veil of the evening. The spectators, aware that the luck of seeing such a show could only happen once in a lifetime, were determined to enjoy it to the fullest.

“Well, the show begins,” Joe announced gravely, after smoothing his walrus mustache.

“Put your weapons in the trunk,” he added, preparing to get out of the car.

“Do you want to go there unarmed? It could be dangerous …” Nick protested, surprised by his decision.

“Dangerous? That poor devil is terrified; didn’t you see how he is looking at us from the window?”

“It is precisely for this reason that he might be doing nonsense,” Fabien objected.

“The sight of guns has always been a great deterrent,” Nick tried to insist.

“Enough now, I told you to lay down your arms!” ordered firmly Joe, he hated being contradicted.

He closed the trunk and walked with a decisive step towards the house, Fabien admired his ability to stop being simply a man to become a policeman in an instant. The Simple Guards who guarded the house greeted them formally, after which they went to reinforce the cordon intended to keep the crowd at a safe distance. Joe motioned for Fabien to stop there, halfway, then headed for the entrance, followed by Nick.

“Is there anyone?” he said in playful tone, by knocking on the door as the other two smiled again.

The door opened slightly and a flicker of light crept into the darkness, accompanied by a creaking. The man beyond the door glanced at Joe without batting an eye, his forehead beaded with sweat and the veins in his neck swollen with tension.

“I want to speak to a reporter,” he announced in a shrill voice.

“Come on man,” Joe snapped, “stop it! We all have our problems, but this does not give us the right to terrorize the citizens. Tonight there is the match of the year and we don’t want to lose it. And then giving up now or in three hours what difference does it make to you? You know you will give up anyway.”

“Are you deaf? I said I want to talk to a reporter!” the other insisted.

Joe was already starting to lose his patience, but the idea of using force against that man displeased him. He told himself that he was probably just a poor devil, who was behaving like that because he had lost everything he had. He was tempted to reply harshly, but when their eyes met again, he winced. In the small and fleeting eyes of the other he had not read fear or despair, only a lucid and cold determination. Immediately after, the sharp metallic click of a safety informed him that the man was aiming a weapon at him from behind the door. Joe felt his blood freeze in his veins, he wondered how he could have gotten it, since the townspeople had no access to the technological tools of offense.

“Don’t be silly, as you see my colleague and I have come unarmed. We can talk about it if you want,” he hastened to say in a benevolent tone to buy time and rationalize the new situation, meanwhile, with a wave of his hand hidden behind his back, he had ordered Fabien to go and retrieve the combat equipment. After hearing the click of the safety, Joe’s expert ear recognized the typical buzz of the micro-turbine trigger. He understood that what kept him under fire was a laser gun among the most powerful, capable of piercing any type of material without any effort or dangerous refractions. He wondered again how that man could have gotten it, seized by an intuition he lowered his eyes and saw the bloodstain, which was rapidly spreading on the marble threshold.

“He took off the chip!” Joe said to himself, realizing that beyond the door there was a man ready for anything. With a feline leap, incredibly agile for a person of his age and size, Joe threw himself on Nick. The handrail that bordered the pergola broke and they fell off a kind of balcony. During the fall, Joe had already determined what the next move would be. The door had closed, he was sure that the man barricaded in the house was trying to invent a strategy. Not being familiar with similar situations, however, it would have taken a few seconds too long to make any decision, those few moments suddenly became the most precious of Joe’s entire existence. He would have used them to quickly climb the three steps and knock down the door with a mighty shoulder, the other would have fallen backwards, losing his weapon and they would have taken the opportunity to arrest him. It would be a really great move, the last heroic feat before retiring with full honors. “Maybe I’ll receive even a new gold medal, for avoiding a m******e”, he told himself. He had already experienced that scene dozens of times with his mind, but when he realized that his legs refused to obey him he realized that he was still lying on the ground. No, not yet. Again! And this time he had his eyes wide open in a stupid expression. The blood-stained mustache framed his wide open mouth, now unable to vent the cry that bounced from one side of his brain to the other, looking in vain for a way out. He was surprised how he felt no pain, just a feeling of discomfort from the wet suit he felt stuck to him from his own body fluids. And a sense of annoyance in understanding that he was dying, in the only way he had always thought it would never happen to him. “To die so miserably, six days before retirement after a rather quiet life. Moreover, precisely on the day of the wedding anniversary … what an i***t!” he thought.

He would have wanted to resist, fight with all his might not to succumb, but he knew it would be useless and pathetic. Suddenly his golden diskette came back to his mind, he looked up at his chest but found that his eyes could no longer see. Then he ran to look for the gold disk with his hand, but it fell into a chasm that seemed immense to him, it seemed to him that it was sinking into his own lungs greedy for air, taking away his already too tiring breath. “My disk” he thought one last time. After a few moments, the more daring spectators began to get up from the ground, their eyes wide with fear and their faces covered with mud.

Fabien was running as fast as he could towards the car. The excitement and fear merged into long waves that rising from the bottom of his chest quickly rose to his temples, stunning him. It had only been operational for a few weeks, the sudden perception of danger instilled in him a doubt: he wondered if the baptism of fire was so tormented for everyone or if he was just a coward, because he had already understood that being there at that moment was the last thing he would have wanted. Meanwhile, he kept running as his mind jumped from one thought to another, trying to remember the things he had learned in police school. He realized with some disappointment that the training course had brought him very little, the notions they had tried to inculcate in his head, to the point of becoming conditioned reflexes, had slipped off him like water on a raincoat. He knew that he lacked the instinct and determination that every good policeman must have by nature. Any trace of cockiness had by now disappeared from his contracted face and he cursed himself for having wished, even if only for a joke, to be able to use the tools of death waiting for him in the trunk. “I have to hurry”, he kept telling himself, but his legs didn’t respond as he would have liked. It seemed to him that he was running along a beach and these, immersed in the water up to his knees, were proceeding slowly compared to the arms that were circling like crazy in the air.

Suddenly someone shouted “Down!”, he dived and slid through the mud until he hit the bumper of the car. The collarbone of his right shoulder broke, causing him to scream in pain, soon after he turned towards the house and it seemed to him that he was witnessing at the slow motion scene of an action movie. “Stay down!” Joe had ordered Nick the moment they hit the ground, a moment later he was running again with his shoulder stretched toward the house door. A moment that lasted an eternity, Joe had his eyes narrowed with fatigue and anguish, as soon as he bumped into the door it was as if this, offended, had immediately reacted. A flash of fluorescent green swept through the elderly patrol leader, as if he were a hologram rather than a real person, then continued his course until hit a car parked thirty meters away, which exploded. An invisible hand lifted the man and threw him violently backwards, his golden medal rolling in the air glistening like a small disk of light. Now Joe was lying on the ground again, motionless on his back, his head tilted slightly to the side. The legs resting in a strange pose on the wooden steps moved in jerks, with a last imperceptible movement he brought an arm towards his chest. Fabien was shaken by violent retching, caused by the pain in his shoulder and by what he had just seen, he shouted out the name of his companion and saw everything dazzled because he was crying. Just a moment later, however, he felt something change suddenly inside him. He knew he would never be as brave as Joe, but he told himself he would at least try because he owed him. He stopped crying and wiped his face with his forearm, his eyes had become two narrow slits and his lips were pursed with anger.

“Damn you,” he mumbled as he stood up, “you’ll pay dearly.”

He took the weapons from the trunk of the car, then violently closed the hatch and walked towards the house with a proud step, holding the laser guns. He threw one at Nick indicating the back door, picked up Joe’s badge and squeezed it until the palm of his hand bled, as if that simple gesture could have transmit him all the strength and experience of his companion. After carefully cleaning the gold disk, he pinned it to his friend’s chest, then lowered his eyes as he marveled at not having vomited again in front of that macabre spectacle.

“Get out with your hands up!” he shouted resolutely towards the house.

“It’s not my fault,” the other whimpered from behind the door, “the shot went off when it hit me … it was an accident, I didn’t want to hurt anyone … please don’t try to enter or someone else will get hurt, I just want to see my son again … and I want to talk to a journalist!”