Mozari Arrival Read online

  Jay looked, and groaned. “The Mozzarellas?” he asked. “That’s what we call them in the squad room. I know them. They’ve been recruiting the past couple of weeks. The redhead’s name is Lucretia or something like that. She’s a hottie,” the cop said. “Can’t say I blame you for that. But everything she’s got is on the outside, you know what I mean? Looks and shimmy, but up here—” he tapped his forehead, “—it’s all scrambled, same as with the rest of those kooks.”

  “Yeah, I got that impression.”

  Jay shook his head. “I don’t just mean, like, ditzy or flighty, or even particularly dumb,” he said, more seriously. “I mean there’s some kind of pathology there. They’re dangerous; every day, they get more mouthy about wanting people to do things their way, and every day there are a couple more of them. They’re bad news, West. I’d stay away from them if I were you. Hell, I’d stay away from them myself if I could get away with not having to deal with them.”

  Four

  New Haven, CT.

  Alone in his apartment, Daniel sighed and laid down the letter informing him that the final semester of his final year had been canceled. There was a mention of remote work over the internet for those like himself who had relatively little coursework remaining, just so that they could complete their studies and submit final material from home, or wherever they happened to be residing at the time.

  The apartment certainly wasn’t home. Daniel found himself buttoning up his shirt even though the thermostat said the temperature was comfortably warm.

  From his window, he could see more people in turtlenecks, and more people handing out leaflets. There seemed to be a couple more of them every day. Now and again, when out and about, he’d noticed the distinctive red hair of Lucretia in the distance, but she never approached, and he had no desire to do so, either.

  Daniel paced more in his apartment and found excuses to go for walks, although then he sought out quiet paths away from the Green that he had always loved in the past. Somehow, the independence of the apartment was soured by the creeping expansion of the various branches of the Church of the Mozari over the past couple of weeks. With the cancellation of actual on-site classes, the apartment was ever more just a place to store himself.

  A few days ago, he had gotten around to emailing the landlords, and he recognized within himself the inevitable. He’d thought he would have been reluctant to give notice, but in the end, he’d been neither reluctant nor eager. It had just seemed the natural endpoint of a decline in both the place’s attraction and its usefulness.

  Once the decision had been recognized, rather than made, it hadn’t taken long for him to begin sorting out the logistics of moving back to the West home in Greenwich. Most of the studio’s furnishings had come with the apartment, so he knew he could squeeze his TV, books, decor, and wardrobe into his SUV for the trip home. On the day he finally left, the last thing he packed was the childhood family photo of himself, his parents, and Elizabeth.

  There were still a few bored protesters wandering around the Green when Daniel carried his last bags down to his SUV, which he’d parked in the street below. He glanced over at the protestors, wondering if the redhead Lucretia was trying to recruit any of them or if her pals were around doing whatever they did when they were bored. He couldn’t tell from this distance and couldn’t be bothered to get closer, so he got into the SUV, started it up, and drove.

  As he passed the closest point to the protests, he thought he heard glass breaking in the distance, but wasn’t sure. He kept going.

  On the Green, one of the protesters stopped mid-step, stilled by shock. He had only tried to throw a rock at a group of hecklers in the doorway of a bar across the road, thinking it would discourage them. He hadn’t expected to miss, or for the rock to shatter the bar’s front window.

  There was a roar of offense from inside the bar, and several men and women came rushing out, none of them completely sober. In moments, they were throwing punches and breaking placards. Most of the protesters backed off from what only the rock-thrower knew weren’t a gang of bullies. He knew none of those who’d been with him on the Green had come looking for a fight with some drunks, and fervently hoped the cops would arrive to break it up. Yet, a couple of the protesters apparently figured that drunks were less coordinated than themselves, and they fought back.

  Police officers soon started calling for calm, and radioing for back-up, but the noise was already drawing people from neighboring bars. The rock-thrower doubted that any of them knew who was fighting who or what it was about, but tempers were hot, judgment had been lowered by booze, and before long, fights were spreading all across the Green.

  Sirens heralded the arrival of a couple more squad cars, and a National Guard truck followed them. Troops vaulted to the ground, trying to herd random groups of people away from Church Street’s bars and restaurants, towards the far corner of the Green.

  That was their biggest mistake.

  Four guys in turtlenecks and buttoned shirts came down the short flight of steps from the rowhouse on the corner, Lucretia behind them. “We’re under attack!” one of the guys shouted. “It’s a goddamn mob!”

  “I guess we knew this day might come,” Lucretia said, with an undertone of excitement. She started passing AR-15s to the four guys. “Kill those unbelieving pigs.”

  The four guys took their weapons off safety, and then they opened fire into the crowd.

  Greenwich, CT.

  Daniel drove his SUV on autopilot, heading south on I-95. He was vaguely aware that the lack of traffic on the road back to Greenwich was a surprising boon. He felt numbed, as if he was slightly buzzing from booze even though he hadn’t had so much as a light beer in a week.

  He’d tuned the radio to WGCH, expecting some decent tunes and useful traffic reports, and had been completely blindsided by reportage of the riot that had spread out from the Green. The news reporter ascribed it to Mozari-worshipers, while the occasional eyewitness on the street called them Mozzarellas. Daniel shuddered at the thought that it must have started only minutes after he’d driven out. The evening had seemed pretty normal when he’d locked the apartment door and gotten in the SUV, yet the world—or New Haven, at least—seemed to be flying apart at the seams while he was still on the road, heading home on a journey that would take less than an hour. That’s what was making him fuzzy, to the point of feeling off-balance and unable to concentrate properly.

  How the hell was anybody supposed to do anything about crazed rioters and protests? The cops couldn’t control it, and neither could the law or the army. It was as if the city had been possessed by the sort of madness that had killed Elizabeth, or that the Mozari must have felt when they’d flattened cities. Maybe the Mozari-worshipers were right about one thing, he thought. They were teaching humanity their own ways.

  He hoped so, anyway. The alternative, that humans were this insane and alien to rationality on their own, was too depressing.

  Less than an hour after leaving New Haven, Daniel turned onto the long drive leading out to his parents’ estate and in through the gates at the end, which swung open at the touch of his remote. Immediately, his heart thumped. A police cruiser sat out in front of the house. No one was in it, and it wasn’t blocking the driveway, so he pulled in and parked in front of the garage door.

  Wondering what was up, he went in to the hallway, hearing his dad’s voice from the lounge. Nathan didn’t sound upset, angry, or nervous, so Daniel relaxed a little. He relaxed a lot more when he saw that his dad was talking to Cody Walker, who, despite the cruiser outside, wasn’t in uniform.

  “Oh, hi, Cody. Official business?” Cody had always visited in his own car before, not one from the GPD motor pool.

  Cody shook his head. “Huh? Oh, the squad car? That’s orders from on high. We’re supposed to be on call 24/7 now, with things the way they are. So, yeah, a lot of us found excuses to hang on to our cars when off-duty. For now, it seems to be OK since it means more cruisers are visible on the s
treets, even if half the patrolmen are off-duty. It looks like they’ve made good on their promise to up our numbers.”

  Daniel chuckled. “Everyone’s a winner, right?”

  “Until the first guy gets caught drunk-driving one, or picks up a few dents, or whatever. Then it’ll be back to leaving them in the motor pool.” Cody smiled, and then turned back to Nathan. “You mind if I talk to Dan for a minute? It’s important. Not police business, just... something else.”

  “The house has always been as much yours as his,” Nathan replied, and with that he stepped aside to let Cody past. Cody put a hand on Daniel’s shoulder and nodded towards the French doors that led off to the garden. “Something that I need to ask you about, Danny.”

  “Problem?” Since Cody called him by his first name instead of his last, he knew this wasn’t likely to be just shooting the breeze.

  “Big problem, I think,” Cody said quietly as they stepped out into the cool evening air. “I don’t even know what to say, or where to—”

  “Just say what comes to mind. You know I’ve always got your back.” Daniel could already feel a prickling sensation at the back of his neck.

  Cody nodded. “It’s about Jill.”

  Jill, Daniel thought, of course, it is. Jill was Cody’s ex-wife. Cody hadn’t seen her in months as far as Daniel knew, and Daniel hadn’t seen her in a couple of years, which was probably just as well. “What about Jill?” Daniel asked carefully. What could she have told him that would make him think of coming to Daniel first? Avoiding the worst-case thought, that she had told him about that one weekend, Daniel kept a poker face even as a cold sweat ran down his back.

  “She’s taken Chloe.”

  It took a moment for the words to sink in, and then Daniel gaped at his friend. This wasn’t any worse than what he’d worried might have transpired. He scowled. “She what? Where? And why? I mean—”

  “She took her, Daniel. To Boston.”

  “She must be crazy. Who takes their child into a city when there are riots and curfews and—”

  “Crazy?” Cody grimaced. “Not really news to anyone here, is it, Wild? But, yeah, she’s always been... individualistic, if you want to put it that way.”

  ‘Two-faced’ would be more accurate, Daniel thought, even though he knew his friend still felt enough for her to not say it. But he sure as hell knew it.

  “She’s made some bad friendship choices in her life. I mean, even before now...” He caught Daniel’s look and shook his head. “OK, but it’s always been a harmless crazy. Annoying, irritating...”

  “Manipulative.” That much, Daniel remembered. Remembered all too well.

  “But she was never really... I dunno, dangerous to anyone. Except herself.”

  “And you.”

  Cody hesitated, and then nodded sadly. “I made peace with it. But anyway, she totally adores Chloe; she’d never hurt her, or do anything to hurt her. Not before, anyway.”

  “Before what?”

  “More bad friendship choices. Worse than ever.” Cody shook his head slowly. “I don’t know what to think about her anymore. She’s become one of those damn Mozzarellas, or whatever they call themselves.”

  “What? A Mozari-worshiper?”

  “Yeah, with one of those churches we’ve been seeing ads for ever since Islamabad and New Delhi got turned to glass. Thinking if we all worship the Mozari, they’ll spare us the coming war.”

  “Which church?” The cults were popping up in many cities, and they weren’t always friendly to each other.

  “The big one up in Boston, First Church of the Mozari.”

  “Their leader must have a hell of an ego,” Daniel muttered.

  “And a whole bag of screws loose.” Cody threw up his hands helplessly. “Jeez, they weren’t even the first bunch to start worshiping the Mozari. There was that guy’s family in Seattle, and those wingnuts in—”

  “They were the first to make money selling it and trademarking the name. Maybe that’s what does it for them; easy to call yourself ‘first’ if you can sue the ass off anyone else who does.”

  “Their nutbag-in-chief doesn’t strike me as the litigious sort.” Cody glanced around to make sure they were still alone. “Have you seen any of his interviews?” Daniel shook his head. “Come on out to the car.”

  Together, they walked around the sprawling house until they were at the police car out front. Cody opened it and got in, signaling Daniel to get in the shotgun seat. Cody closed his door and switched on the small overhead light after Daniel closed his, and then he pulled an iPad from the glovebox.

  “Thankfully, they don’t have a church here in Greenwich yet, but Boston PD and New Haven PD are both scrambling to get informants into their set-up because it’s beginning to look a lot like a doomsday cult, and it’s spreading way further and faster than those psychos usually do. Check this out.” He had opened a video file on the iPad.

  On the screen, a guy was being interviewed by a Boston TV station. The caption tagged him as Charles Kebbell, ‘Archimandrite of the First Church of the Mozari.’ He looked more like a suited executive than a bug-eyed, tinfoil-hat-wearing maniac; he was as far from the Charles Manson type as it was possible to get, in fact. This guy looked charming, and more sincere than any televangelist Daniel had stumbled across while channel-surfing. He looked harmless, until Cody turned the volume up so that they could hear the interview.

  “How did you come to start the church?” the reporter was asking.

  “In the days after the unfortunate incident that befell Sydney, I was contacted by the Mozari themselves, from their host vessel in the heavens. They told me that I was to spread their teachings here on Earth, and lead our people’s training to better ourselves—that we might be worthy to ascend to be with them. You know their messages, their mantra: unite and live. That is the simple teaching with which they have entrusted me.”

  “And what does this mantra, unite and live, mean?”

  “Exactly what it says, m’dear. That humanity must come together, not war with itself, and live, properly live, spreading life and not death.”

  “Spreading life? You mean settling in new areas, or...?”

  “Creating new life. As a matter of fact, one of my onerous duties is to create children who will be raised by the Mozari, in our care, that they may be a new generation of warless, united lives.”

  Daniel’s stomach lurched, nausea pushing acid up into his throat. He’d seen this type of con-man a lot, generally referenced in his studies of manipulative and predatory con-artists like Jim Jones and David Koresh. Seeing his friend’s face, Cody switched off the video. “I can’t listen to it, either. This is the guy who convinced Jill to move in with his church—and take Chloe with her.”

  “Screw that,” Daniel said bluntly. “Not happening.”

  “That’s what I hoped you’d say.”

  “That’s what you knew I’d say. So, who is this guy really? I mean, if the Mozari really wanted somebody to lead a religion, wouldn’t they pick an experienced world leader, like... I dunno, the Pope, or the Dalai Lama, or something?”

  “Neil DeGrasse Tyson could probably answer the second part better than I could. The first part...” Cody thought for a moment. “All I’ve been able to find out for sure in the databases I have access to is that he used to run a small casino out in Laughlin, Nevada. Retired with a nice nest egg a couple of weeks before the casino was shut down for being a front for a one-percenter biker gang’s money-laundering. And there are a lot of stories about his preference for jail-bait. Nothing confirmed, though.”

  “But he seems the type,” Daniel acknowledged. “OK, we need Chloe out of that Church.”

  “Jill, too, if we can.”

  “Good luck with that.” Daniel closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them sooner than he wanted to because he didn’t like what he saw. “The two of you share custody, but wasn’t there a clause in the agreement about crossing state lines?” Daniel, though not yet qualified, had made
sure to study the court documents closely when Cody and Jill split up. He hadn’t wanted either his best friend or his goddaughter to get hurt in any way—certainly not more than they already had.

  “That’s right. She’s violated that by taking Chloe into Massachusetts.”

  “There’s your legal grounds, then. You’re a cop; you’ve got all the contacts, right? The law’s on your side, man.”

  Cody slumped a little in the seat. “Yeah, it’s on my side, but it’s overstretched, you know? There just aren’t enough cops or enough hours in the day to handle all the looters and thieves and all the other assholes causing trouble on the streets. Small stuff like domestic court orders... Forget it. That stuff isn’t even on the horizon.”

  “What about when they’re off duty?”

  “Those hours are even shorter. And in this day and age... Ah, you know how it is. Everybody has their own families to look after, and I can’t say I blame them.”

  “So, I assume you’re asking me to help you out in a less orthodox way. Because if you’re not, I’m gonna be hell’a disappointed. And offended.”

  “I guess... I mean, this isn’t your responsibility or problem, but—”

  “But that doesn’t matter. I’ve got your back. You know that. Whatever it takes.”

  Cody rested his wrists on the steering wheel. “Aside from how stretched all the guys are... You gotta know, I just don’t know what we might have to do if the Mozzarellas try to hang on to Chloe.”

  “As in?”

  “If push comes to shove, and we have to do some stuff that’s either technically or actually... illegal. Breaking and entering maybe, if they’ve locked her up somewhere. I mean, Boston’s not in our jurisdiction, and I’m not from theirs, so it’s not as if I can just come out with a warrant.”

  Daniel didn’t blink. “Whatever it takes.”