What were these prisoners before him? Men, women, and children.
Farmers. That’s what they said they were. Simple farmers.
Liars, he thought, with some evidence to back him. They were settlers trying to reclaim and re-green land on the edge of the desolation left by the ancient bombs. Invaders were what they really were. Land thieves. Murderers.
New Belgorod had been carved out of parts of what was once Mexico and parts of what had been the American states of Arizona and New Mexico. It was a country made by the war and its aftermath.
The war, known by some as the Real Last War, and by other as the Great Burning, had been terrible. Once the nuclear bombs started going off on every continent, the only thing that had prevented total apocalypse was rebellions by the military in each of the nations that had existed at the time. Betrayal and murder of the leaders of all the major nations, including the top generals and admirals, had ended the war. Once the lunatics that had let the war happen were gone, the world, or what was left of it, was able to start the arduous process of survival. Rebuilding would come later.
A joint Russian and North Korean expeditionary force had reached the Southwest border of the United States during the war, after making an initial landing near Los Mochis in western Mexico. Remnants of this army, what was left after the last bomb hit, were being led by General Leonid Gasparov. They were heavily armed, rich in combat experience, and without any means of getting back to homes that were likely to no longer exist.
These soldiers became the founders of New Belgorod. Thanks to their weapons and battlefield knowledge, they had the advantage over other groups still alive in the region when it came to establishing their new nation. Their General became the first of his line. They started their lives over again. They took wives and mistresses from among the women of the region —those who had the good fortune to not be dead. They started families and helped their new nation grow.
General Leonid Gasparov the Sixth addressed the prisoners. His harsh gaze fell on all of them, but it was the minister, that supposed man of the cloth who was the group’s leader, that was the primary target of his invective.
‘Settlers, you say? You are invaders! Colonizers! This village and the lands around it are part of New Belgorod. It has been part of our nation since it was founded.’
The old man, dressed all in black, spoke from under his wide brimmed black hat.
‘God granted us this land. Prophet Hank said so.’
This angered General Gasparov the Sixth even more. The Prophet Hank was the current head of the Wasserman Church. Gasparov despised the Wassermans. Their religion was founded by a former online preacher after the Last War. The church had caught on among distraught survivors, guilt-ridden by the fact that they lived, while at the same time lamenting the ‘paradise’ of supermarkets, golf courses, subdivisions and online shopping that had been lost.
The church was strong in the mountains to the north. Its leadership was ruthless. The church sought constant expansion through conversion and conquest. Maybe the Wasserman faith gave strength and inner calm to its members, but it was a major pain in the ass to its neighbours.
It was difficult to keep track of all that happened in every town and village along the border. General Gasparov did not get wind that there was trouble in his province of New Crimea until a Wasserman missionary was captured in the town of Gorky West. Gasparov had no choice. He gathered forces and launched an expedition to eliminate the invaders and their dangerous ideology from New Belgorod’s territory. Once an area was retaken, a purge was necessary. The Wasserman faith was a dangerous infection that could take hold in the weak minded and those with hidden animosity to the state.
Blood had to be spilled. There was no glory in it. It had to be done to ensure the continuity of the nation and the Gasparov dynasty.
Gasparov shouted at the old man.
‘You say your God granted you this land. Didn’t your God know that there were people already living here?’
The old man responded from the line of prisoners. His wide rimmed black hat kept his face in shade.
‘We found no one alive here. There were only corpses, bodies with no vital signs, laying in bunk beds in one of the buildings. We buried them out of respect before constructing our community.’
Gasparov, spine rigid, walked up to the man. He put his nose in the old man’s face. The minister had the face of a shrivelled weasel.
‘Dead, you say? Didn’t you or anyone in your group see the wires and tubes connected to them?’
‘We saw tubes, no wires,’ the minister admitted. ‘The bodies had been there neglected for a long time. They were covered with cobwebs. The machines they were hooked to were not running.’
‘Cobwebs!’ Gasparov shouted. He grabbed the old man by his shoulders. The General pulled him out of line and forced him to the ground.
‘There were no cobwebs. Those were nano wires. There was nothing wrong with the machines. I examined them myself. The machines were on timers to save energy. They were not required to run constantly. My people, the residents of ….’
The General hesitated with the name of the community. He had cleansed many towns and villages of the Wasserman scourge. The names of the places often did not appear on the maps that he had. The names had come to blend into one red stain in his mind.
Feeling compelled to say the name of the village, Gasparov partially covered his mouth with one of his hands and blurted out something unintelligible to all who were present.
Even his personal aides and bodyguards, who always kept close to him, could not make out the name that their general had pronounced as belonging to the place where they were. Trained to stoic resolve, no aide or bodyguard displayed the least confusion or uncertainty. There was no thought of laughter. They were too disciplined for that. Besides, they wanted to live.
General Leonid Gasparov the Sixth went on as if nothing had happened. No error of mind or speech had occurred. The General did not make mistakes. The mumbled name would later be recorded in the official histories, replacing the name the village had once had on the tax rolls. The old name, which few knew anyway would become completely forgotten.
The General confronted the Wasserman leader and his flock with the truth as he knew it. Whenever the General declared something to be the truth, it became the truth. Presentation of any evidence to the contrary was usually interpreted as an act of treason. On this occasion, however, the General actually had his facts right.
‘My citizens had placed themselves in a minimum metabolic state. They did that whenever a winter brought an overly heavy snow that buried buildings, or in summer if they were faced with a prolonged period of excessive heat and drought. Even you must understand how scarce safe food and fresh water is since the Great Burning. You certainly know how scarce arable land is, or you would never have come here.’
The general unsheathed his sword, prepared to kill the minister there and then. He paused with his sword blade at the base of the man’s neck.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Too easy. You buried my people alive when you dug graves, threw their bodies in, and covered them with dirt. No quick death will do for any of you. I will decided what is appropriate, a fate that matches the crime. ‘
He went into one of the empty houses accompanied by a trusted aide. The aide was bookish in nature and carried with him the texts that mattered to him.
General Gasparov consulted the laws of his nation, past precedent, and his own feelings on the matter. His personal opinion was what mattered most. After all, he could always order a backdated change to any law. He came up with a sentence that he determined justified by the circumstances.
He left the building where he had deliberated on the fate of the captives. He marched over to where the minister and his followers were standing with arms and legs tied. He stood proud and erect.
‘I have reviewed the facts, the law, and my own heart. I shall now pronounce the sentence, one in keeping with the crimes committed.
Some of the Wasserman settlers wept. Many recited prayers.
General Gasparov looked at them. He displayed no emotion.
‘Impalement,’ he announced. ‘A horrible death justified by a horrible crime.’
There were cries for mercy mixed with tears from the prisoners.
The General ignored the noises issued by those he viewed as vile troublemakers.
He turned towards his soldiers and issued the order.
‘Impale them. All of them. Use the fence posts.’
The hundred armed men and women that had gone with General Gasparov to reclaim the captured village snapped to attention. In unison they saluted and cried out, ‘Yes, General, sir.’ They ran off in their patched hand-me-down uniforms to begin their bloody task.
The soldiers had driven metal poles up through a few of the settlers, setting one end of each pole in the ground, and hoisting the victims into place for public viewing, when a lookout shouted a warning.
‘General, someone is approaching from the Dunes.’
The Dunes were a large area of blowing sand and debris that bordered the Desolation. There had always been sand there. Now there was a lot more. Part of the Dunes had once been cities and towns. Brick buildings had become dust as living things had become various coloured ash as a result of the Great Burning. The Dunes, and the sand that blew from there, were reminders of destruction that had happened nearly two hundred years earlier.
General Gasparov turned to where the lookout was pointing. He made out a figure wearing a colourful poncho over a radiation suit. Had this man crossed the Desolation on foot?
Antennae rose over the crest of a sandy hill, waved in the air, then sank out of view.
A rider? Gasparov thought. There were few bugs big enough to carry a man, and much less that were sufficiently tame to mount. Maybe the stranger had a vehicle concealed among the dunes?
Gasparov ordered some of his soldiers to secure the remaining prisoners, and others to point their weapons at the new player on the scene.
Loud prayers came from the Wassermans that were still alive. They hoped the stranger was some kind of deliverer sent by their God.
General Gasparov addressed the man in the poncho and radiation suit.
‘Stop! You have entered the territory of New Belgorod No one can enter our country without the required special passport.’
The man raised an arm from under his poncho. He waved a blue piece of metal.
The General shouted, ‘You have a passport?’
The General turned to an aide.
‘Bring that passport to me.’
The aide sprinted over level ground and up the sandy hill.
The man in the radiation suit handed the blue plastic passport to the aide.
The aide glanced at the passport. His mouth fell open. He raced back to the general shouting at the top of his lungs.
‘It’s Johnny! ‘
The General’s eyes widened. His jaw dropped.
‘Johnny,’ he gasped.
The man on the sand hill pulled off the hood of his radiation suit. Blond, blue eyed, and handsome, Johnny glared towards the General and his soldiers.
A murmur spread among the soldiers.
‘It’s Johnny.’
‘It’s Johnny.’
Some of the soldiers with raised rifles began to shake. Their aim was no longer on target. There were plenty of stories in New Belgorod about Johnny. They were all interesting stories, fun to listen to, but not the kind of story you wanted to be a part of. There was too much bloodshed, too much carnage and destruction, in any story about Johnny that they had ever heard.
The man in the radiation suit began to walk slowly down the hill. As he came closer to where the General stood, all could see how tall Johnny was.
‘Listen, Johnny,’ General Gasparov shouted. ‘We are friends, right?’
Johnny shouted back, ‘I thought we were—once.’
Johnny did not sound happy.
‘Is this about Reno? Something came up. An emergency. It is not easy to be a sovereign.’
‘We were supposed to meet for dinner. Three weeks ago.’
‘I told you. It was an emergency. I sent you a telegram.’
‘It was a dinner date,’ Johnny shouted, while continuing to walk towards the General. ‘I was waiting for you at the restaurant. You never showed. I was wearing my best dress. It was white. After an hour passed, I ordered a shrimp cocktail. After two hours I was angry. Very angry. No one has ever stood me up on a date. They know better.’
General Gasparov began to tremble. His shouted words to Johnny sounded more like pleas for mercy.
‘Johnny, I tried to cancel. I sent a telegram. That was the best I could do. If we had telephones or internet as they did before the Great Burning… ‘
Johnny kept coming. There was no change in his pace, or in the tone of his voice.
‘After three hours I got up to leave. I knocked over the remains of my shrimp cocktail and the bottle of wine that I had ordered to calm down. My dress got stained. I had to have it dry cleaned.’
Gasparov begged, tears forming in his eyes. ‘For mercy’s sake, Johnny. I sent a telegram. I said I was sorry.’
‘I received your telegram,’ Johnny said. His voice was cold. So were his eyes. ‘Six hours late. What kind of fool do you think I am?’
‘You know I never wear a watch. I have other people to wear watches for me. I sent a telegram as soon as they told me the time. Do you know how expensive a telegram is?’
Johnny kept walking slowly towards the General.
‘Six hours late,’ Johnny said. ‘Do you know how long it took me to get to your country and track you down? Two and a half weeks. You had plenty of time to send me a telegram before I went to the restaurant. Unless you never planned to come at all. Two and a half weeks. Your telegram should not have come from your capital. No, that looks wrong. If it had come from some place much closer to Reno, I might have been angry, but deduced you ran into trouble on the way. We could have rescheduled for a few days later. But that telegram came from your capital. Not only that. It came from the office in your palace. If you had a jet plane, you could have sent a message from an airport saying “It will take another two hours.” I could have made arrangements. But you do not have a jet, do you? No one has a jet anymore. It is too difficult to keep a jet fuelled. There are not enough active wells, not enough refining capacity. It is near impossible to maintain a jet either. There are not enough competent engineers and mechanics for that kind of work, not while other projects are more pressing. Where would you have obtained a jet, anyway? Did you find an old jet somewhere? Have your people built one for you? I didn’t think so. The simplest explanation to the situation is that you are a lying bastard with no lasting interest in me. You see, I gave much thought to your not showing up and the telegram that you sent. Too much thought. My conclusions were not good.’
Johnny was passing by the Wassermans now. He ignored their pleas for help. He had no love for Wassermans. He figured they had earned any punishment the General was dishing out to them. Besides, he had no time to help any of them. He had come here with a specific purpose. He had a man to kill.
‘It is the fault of my aides, ‘ Gasparov cried. ‘They did not remind me. My schedule is so busy. It is ever changing. I am a head of state, damn it. I should not have to apologize.’
‘Is that what you are trying to do?’
Johnny was getting ever closer to where General Gasparov stood. The General tried to look Johnny in the eye, if it could be done at that distance.
‘I am being honest with you, Johnny. A hurricane struck the eastern part of the country four weeks ago. I had to show myself. I had to be there! I had a lot of towns to visit. A head of state needs to show his face when there is a disaster. He has to show that he loves and cares for his people. I travelled all over the affected area. Then there was this rebellion I was dealing with in the south. It is an off and on thing in the southern area, near the border with the reconstituted nation of Mexico. After the hurricane, the rebellion was suddenly on again, Then there was an invasion of Wassermans in the north. I was still trying to take care of the Wasserman problem when you showed up.’
Johnny looked at Gasparov. Beads of sweat were forming on the General’s forehead.
‘You were right to send a telegram,’ Johnny said. ‘That was the right thing to do. You had to have known about your scheduling conflicts long before I got to the restaurant. You had no plan to be there. That is what it looks like to me.’
‘It wasn’t me!’ the General said. Tears leaked from his eyes. ‘It was my aides. I will cut off their heads and give them to you. Will that help?’
Johnny grinned. It wasn’t a nice grin.
Gasparov’s aides exchanged glances. They ran in separate directions.
‘I liked you,’ Johnny said. ‘I really liked you. I thought you liked me. ‘
‘I did like you. I still do.’
Johnny kept coming towards him with that menacing look on his face. Gasparov guessed he was not going to be able to talk his way out of it this time. He gave the order, ‘Fire at will.’
A muscle twitched on Johnny’s face, below his left eye.
Gasparov countermanded the order. ‘Hold your fire.’ His tears flowed now.
It was too late. The first volley hit Johnny. It did not stop him. He threw off his poncho. There wasn’t much left of it. The radiation suit underneath was riddled with holes. Parts of Johnny’s metal body could be seen, undamaged, through the holes. The guns at his sides were also visible.
His weapons were special, one of a kind. They had been designed for Johnny by his friend and mentor, the surgeon-scientist Doctor Jesus. (As seen in previous episodes)
The guns were long-barrelled pistols. These were connected to tubes and wires. One tube attached to each pistol fed compressed gas from tanks built into Johnny’s back. Another set of tubes could feed points of metal or rock of a uniform size into the firing chamber of each pistol. The guns were designed to provide a constant flow of projectiles, fired at great speed, and capable of travelling great distances.
Johnny drew his guns. He shot with perfect accuracy. Nonstop. Soldiers fell. They kept falling. Even as they ran away.
Johnny spent a few rounds on the Wassermans that were slowly dying on spikes. Their moans had irritated him. He reached General Gasparov.
Gasparov made another offer.
‘Please, let me buy you a new dress. I can pay you for what you spent at the restaurant, your dry cleaning, your travel expenses to get here, whatever you want.’
Johnny stared down at his onetime lover, a man ten centimetres shorter than him. It had been good between them for a while. Their stay in Nuevo Vera Cruz remained one of the best memories of his life. He remembered looking out from the balcony of their hotel at the new shoreline, watching the waves and the rising sun with Gasparov beside him. He turned his head, looking away from the General. When he turned back his blue eyes seemed different.
Gasparov did not know what to make of those eyes. He could not read them. Tremors went through his body. He was glad his men were dead or had run far off. He would not have wanted them to see their leader, the big man, their beloved general, like this.
‘You want more, Johnny? I will give you more. Anything you want. You want to rule instead of me? You can. I will leave New Belgorod, go away somewhere else to live. Someplace where nobody knows me. Be a nobody.’
Johnny did not respond. He continued to stare at Gasparov with those strange blue eye of his. He kept walking towards the General.
‘Kill me then, if that what you want,’ Gasparov begged. ‘But spare my people from further revenge.’
Johnny smiled. It was a thin, cruel smile. Johnny could have easily killed the general, but that was not what he wanted.
‘You can live,’ Johnny said. ‘You can also rule. I want something else from you.’
General Gasparov got on his knees, ‘What? I will give anything, do anything. ‘
Johnny was right in front of the General now. He looked down at the kneeling man with the epaulets.
‘Put a ring on it,’ he said.
The General stammered, ‘Marry you? That would be technically against the law in New Belgorod.’
Johnny stared at his General, his sometimes lover, with a mixture of anger and pity.
‘I thought you were the law. Aren’t you General Leonid Gasparov the Sixth? Change the law. Change all the laws that stand in our way.’
Gasparov wiped his face with the sleeve of his uniform. This removed the tears and snot from his face, but left his uniform stained.
‘Johnny,’ he said, looking up at the cyborg’s face. ‘Johnny, I don’t even know your last name.’
‘I never had one.’
The response seemed to strengthen Gasparov. He started again. His voice had more timbre.
‘Johnny, will you marry me?’
Johnny stared at General Gasparov for a long time, causing the petty ruler to sweat again. When he felt the torture had lasted long enough, Johnny replied.
‘Yes.’
Johnny helped the General to his feet. He let him set about finding his surviving soldiers.
Johnny quietly eliminated the remaining Wassermans before assisting his fiancé with his task.
Johnny was curiously happy as he and the general left the cathedral, with its adjoining casino, meeting rooms and twenty-four-hour buffet. He liked Gasparov. He liked the capital. He liked his white wedding dress with its long train. He liked the look of the young soldiers that carried it at the end.
Most of all, Johnny liked knowing he was no longer alone. A hundred and twenty years of living alone was too much for anyone, even someone who was more than half machine.
Johnny knew that Gasparov would not change. Not in any real way. Gasparov would try to manipulate him. He was certain of that. His husband would seek to use him in wars against neighbouring countries in a desire to stabilize borders or expand them. Johnny knew it would not always be like that. Eventually his General would give in, accept the limits of power, and the limits of who he was.
As marriages go, Johnny expected it would only last twenty years or so. Being fully human meant a shorter lifespan. After his husband was gone to his grave, maybe he would remarry. Maybe he would decide to live alone again. Neither decision needed to be permanent. Doctor Jesus had told Johnny long ago that he might live more than two hundred years, possibly three hundred. That left Johnny plenty of time to change his mind about everyone and everything, and change it again and again.
Who knows, he thought. In a hundred years I might even come to like the Wassermans. He doubted it, but, then again, who knows how things can change in a hundred years.
