Chapter 155

0935 hours, local time
Saturday, 9 August, 2014
Daviess County Courthouse
Owensboro, KY

“Fucking bastards!” I heard a tall, burly man in his fifties shout as he fired back at the heavily armed gang assaulting the courthouse.

“Tell me about it,” I responded as I strode over, an AK-47 in hand (the more modern AK-74 being unavailable).

My whole company, except for the babies and those watching them, practically jumped off the buses that we rode. The mere mortals among us wore combat fatigues and those like me who were immortal walking around in the buff. The man in question took a hard look at the strange, nude man with the Russian assault rifle and his equally packing tribe and shook his head as if to wake himself up. He kept firing at the enemy like the professional that he was, of course. He wore an obvious Kevlar vest on a navy blue uniform and a helmet with the word “Sheriff” on it, naturally.

“Wait, who are you, sir?” the lawman asked as we kept firing into the ranks of the rather aggressive criminal syndicate that opposed us.

“I’m Adam Clarke. Are you the Sheriff or a deputy?” I simply answered, watching his face change as he took in the reality of my identity.

“I’m Sheriff Bud Saunders, as it happens. So, you’re the one that they call ‘the Prophet,’ then? Are you really a Prophet? If so, who made you one? Have you spoken to God or something like that?” the Sheriff probed as we continued to relieve the courthouse and the local fuzz of the imminent threat of this gang of goons.

“I am a Prophet, yes, I do speak to God, and more importantly, he speaks back. I’ve seen his face. I bear the truth of the doctrines of Havenism. I am only naked because a resurrected person cannot bear to cover their flesh with clothes. Yes, I briefly died and rose from the dead. That is why I have that mark on my lower back. I am immortal and I cannot be wounded or injured, either. These are my family, my tribe,” I introduced them as we kept pouring fire upon the foe.

“Seriously? Do you have any powers, then?” the Sheriff dared to ask me.

I laughed and brought out my staff, smiting nine thugs dead on the spot. Sheriff Saunders dropped his shotgun for a moment prior to picking it up and staring at me with awe. His entire force now watched me and mine with serious anxiety and apprehension, even fear. The burned out eye sockets on the faces of my victims left no room for doubt. I was the real deal, a true modern Prophet.

More gunshots broke the Sheriff’s concentration and mine, among others. I raised my staff again and smote six more goons, incinerating all of them with fire from its tip. Then I switched back to my rifle and flipped on full auto mode, mowing down the assailants and doing my boot camp drill instructors proud. I flipped back to semi auto as their numbers thinned out a little, not wishing to waste ammunition. When I used a rifle grenade, my companions followed suit. Evie used her demonic powers and pitchfork, while Jeanette slaughtered many with her flaming sword and angelic abilities.

The explosions were individually small, but collectively devastating to the remnant of what turned out to be a relatively minor gang by comparison to others in the area. They were just particularly aggressive out of proposition to their size. A few more bursts and one last, desperate charge that we mowed down quite ruthlessly later, the last members of the gang surrendered. They grudgingly up their hands as they understood how hopelessly outnumbered, outgunned, and outmaneuvered they were.

Twenty-eight men might seem like a fairly sizable group, but when attacking a county courthouse and opposing a combined force of a sheriff’s department and a heavily armed family caravan like mine ... it wasn’t enough. It was also a mere tenth of their original strength when they began their raid, in which they counted far too much on the element of surprise. I suspected that it was a decapitation strike and that someone else misled them in order to use them as cannon or machine gun fodder here. Someone wanted the county government rudderless, in order to seize control of the whole place.

“Who are these pricks, anyway?” I asked while watching the deputies zip tie their prisoners under the watchful eye of the good Sheriff there.

“The Quinlan Gang, led by the late, unlamented Randy Quinlan. They’re mean old drunks with high thresholds, large muscles, tiny brains, hot tempers, etc. I’m sure that Peterman and his crew put them up to it. Now we took some lumps and losses, but they’ve been utterly destroyed as a criminal enterprise. They’ll never rise again and we have you to thank for so thoroughly tilting the balance in our favor at a critical moment there. Be my guest tonight. I want to pick your brain about the future, now that we might actually have one,” Bud Saunders invited me and mine to his place.

“I’d be honored to dine with a brave lawman just fighting for a better, freer, and safer community. Yeah, I’d like to leave tomorrow knowing that I got you off to an excellent start. You know, men like Quinlan remind me of that verse by Sir Walter Scott. ‘The wretch, encentered all in self, living shall forfeit fair renown, and doubly dying shall go down, to the vile dust from whence he sprung, unwept, unhonored, and unsung.’ Of course, my brain automatically changes the spelling to American English.

“Are you the only real leader in the community or are there any others to help you out with this? Do you have any tentative ideas or plans for this city or county now that the Quinlan punks are out of the way? Do you expect any new attacks from one of the other gangs in the near future? These are my wives, my futanari wives, and my co-husbands. This is the angel Jeanette, who also happens to be my first cousin as well as one of my wives. This is my wife Evie, who is a succubus, as you can tell. You saw them in action.