Who’s Driving This Thing?
All published excerpts from Apostate: Life after Death in Exile:
Prologue
I never asked for this. I never asked for any of this. Some say I have lost my faith, but in reality everything I’ve done is because of my faith. Some call me a hero. Others say I’m a fool. I think the truth is somewhere in between. I’ll just call myself Apostate, because that’s what my friends call me. Well, “friends” is a loose term. Most people don’t know my real name, and there are only a few who care enough to ask. To most who see me or know about me, I’m a migrant, an outcast, a derelict of society. So the name Apostate seems to sum up my existence, at least for the last… has it been a year yet? On the one hand, it seems like I’ve always lived this way; on the other hand, it seems like only yesterday. Typically, the days of sleeping in a bed without a weapon by my side, the days of eating hot home-cooked meals, the days of talking and laughing with Janice, those days seem like only a dream…
Episode 1: Who’s Driving this Thing?
When the horn first started blaring a few seconds ago, the sound barely registered. I was deep in code, my fingers flying over the keyboard, trying to block out any sound except the Tom Petty song “Refugee” flowing through the earbuds of my iPhone.
While I was coding, I could occasionally hear Janice banging around in the kitchen as she prepared muffins or cookies or some other treat for our new neighbors, if you can call three miles down the road neighbors. The Schmidts had moved into the old farmhouse – older than ours – last week, and my wife loved to greet new neighbors. Of course, she considered anyone living in our county to be our neighbors.
Eventually, as the horn continued its wail, and as Janice’s requests to “Check on that” grew louder, I could not ignore it any longer. I pushed away from the computer, stood up stretching, and walked toward the door. Through the screen and down the driveway, I could see that a late model sedan had misjudged the curve and struck a tree on the other side of the road from our house. The car was one of those nondescript four door models in a brownish shade that only companies buy for their employees, because no one would choose the color for themselves. Now this was something new. In spite of the curve, there had never been an accident in front of our house. The county had placed enough reflectors and signs on the right of way approaching that curve that it had to be visible from low earth orbit.
I jogged down the driveway, and as I approached the car, I started calling out to the driver. Even from a distance, I could see that someone was slumped over the steering wheel. But, it was also obvious that there was very little damage to the vehicle, which still idled where it came to rest. It appeared to have coasted into the tree instead of hitting it at speed.
Within a few more steps, I was standing beside the car and reaching through the rolled down window. No, it had not been rolled down. The window had been smashed, apparently from the outside, as I could see shards of glass on the floorboard of the car. Carefully, so as not to cut my arm on the jagged bits of window, I pulled the man back into his seat and sighed in relief at the silence as the horn stopped its screeching.
The man looked pale, but otherwise there were no marks on his head. I expected a bruise or cut, or a nasty bump at least, but his face looked clean. The only thing that seemed out of the ordinary was an oozing gash on his left arm near the broken window. At first, I wondered if his arm had been cut by glass from the window, but the bloody wound was so irregular that it seemed unlikely. The blood had formed a dark almost elliptical shape on his sleeve before running down toward his hand.
Although his eyes were open, they seemed to peer straight ahead at nothing. I checked; then double checked. There was a slight pulse, and his breathing was very shallow. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the man moved for the first time, rolling his head toward me. Barely moving his lips, his voice came in a quiet hiss as he pleaded, “Help me.”
I quickly replied, “I’ll call an ambulance. Just hold on.” As I felt in my pocket, I realized my iPhone was still sitting on the desk beside my computer, the next song on the Petty CD probably playing through the earbuds. “I’ll be right back,” I yelled as I raced back up to the farmhouse. I flung the screen door open and ran to the computer desk.
Grabbing the phone, I dialed 911. It was then that I realized that the man had not said, “Help me.” He had said, “Kill me.”
All published excerpts from Apostate: Life after Death in Exile:
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