Wəlkyrie

By Helmut Fritz

A man programed as a Death Angel has killed so many times that he cannot remember how many are dead because of him. Now his mind harness is fading and he can finally glimpse reality.

Wəlkyrie sweeps you into a future-possible world, recognizable but changed as real life melds with legend in an astonishing saga where angels and gods battle in a diesel-punk dystopia.

The first book of The Light on a Hill Sagas series, which follows impossible obstacles that seem impossible to overcome, but hope never fades. Fans of speculative fiction and dystopian worlds will be entertained as they walk down streets that they may even recognize in a gripping saga so real it belies categorization as fiction.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gatekeeper Press
• Release date: Sep 21, 2022
• ISBN: 9781662924088

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

Concerning Angels & Humans

Do not forget to entertain strangers,

for by so doing some people have entertained

angels without knowing it.

~ Hebrews 13:2 NIV

Thick, falling snow has a silencing whisper that can even make the busiest place peaceful, at least for a time. An angel walked in the beauty of trillions of crystalline miracles coming down and he left footprints, certainly a test of reality for anyone who doesn’t believe in angels. A casual observer would think that this angel was just another city dweller struggling through the snow. He had been a regular guy once, after all. It was Christmas, so the old neighborhood he walked through showed red, green, or gold color here or there. No decorations were set up outside. There were laws against that. The decorations could only be seen through an occasional window on the snowy night.

Angels are a central part of Christmas but this angel was walking with purpose and he had a gun. The silencer attached to the gun’s barrel pressed against his leg from its place in his large winter coat pocket as he walked, ignoring passing traffic. Very old cars and trucks were everywhere. The streets and alleyways that they drove on were even older. Snow filled in the many potholes, and it covered all the litter, for now. The buildings looked in need of total loving care. Nothing was painted in bright colors. Everything was colored in greys and browns, but the snow coming down did lighten the night a bit.

The angel checked his gun. He knew that the gun safety would be switched on because of extreme discipline, even though that same training made him check it now. As the angel pulled the gun from his coat pocket it nearly glowed in the dark—a deep, royal blue color, silencer and all. The unusual color was very important to him. A brick wall near him was plastered with layers of standard governmental posters. Love your Mayor, Personal Information Surveys are due June 15th, Death angels are an urban myth! He ignored them. He had a command to fulfill in a condo not far away.

A decorative angel perched on top of a Christmas tree in the target condo certainly was real. She was beautiful as well. An interior decorator plunked the svelte, porcelain, nude figurine on top of a thick blue spruce in the middle of the living room. The nude was the center piece of the holiday decorations everywhere in the condo, and she looked out over a peaceful Christmas scene despite that another angel was on his way here. Though the outside city showed little or no signs of the holiday, the condo could have been part of a Christmas advertisement. It even had a realistic gaslight fireplace blazing charmingly in the living room. Christmas music came from hidden sound system speakers. The only thing missing was people.

There was one dark room in the condo—a study off the main living room area. It had no Christmas decorations. The only light to be seen in the room was from oversized computer screens on a huge, oak office desk. A lone face reflected the light from the screen.

Ben sat in the dark, all alone on Christmas Eve. Clearly the current holiday was important to Ben’s decorating contractor, but he had his own electric angels’ battles to oversee. Christmas was not a major part of Ben’s faith, so he didn’t know that his being alone tonight was a tragedy. He only broke away from his beloved software because he was hungry. Fasting was not a part of his faith either.

As Ben reached for the refrigerator, he smelled the kitchen garbage that had been percolating for over a week now. In mid-stride he decided to take the waste out, struggling to keep all of the wrappers and leftovers inside the plastic as he tied it shut. Ben hummed along to the Christmas music playing over the speakers. He glanced out the window and saw that snow was coming down outside. He put on his running shoes (that were never used for running) but no coat. After all, he would only be out for minutes. The words that came to Ben’s mind were decidedly different from any song currently on his house speakers.

Patent Dios I plead with you

What great injustice they do

My life I’ve given to this, my very soul,

Now all take my blood or just leave a big hole

Patent Dios I plead and sue

Hear me, hear me please do.

Patent Dios come help me fight

In darkness we will gain the light

Come help in the dark and we will crush the loss

They will return meekly as light attracts moths

Patent Dios come help gain right

They must pay us for sight

They stole the very heart of me

With color and care I gave free

My children starve watching them lavishly dine

But with you we will receive back what is mine

Patent Dios stand with me now

In return I give my life vow.

Ben smiled, remembering a recent talk he had with other computer geeks at a nearby bar. Every community has their legends and Christmas was a time of legends, wasn’t it? The geeks had Patent Dios, the mythical dark force in the night. Like other gods, Patent Dios had a benevolent side. Patent Dios could be the dream discoverer of talent and provider of sudden riches. The myths had to be based on some realities because many a young programmer had a Patent Dios talent scout suddenly appear with a contract and reams of cash. Crossing Patent Dios, though, like hacking into their systems or stealing their goods or ideas, could end in something terrible. It was a time of the New Hansas, where labor unions and corporations made powerful coalitions because national governments couldn’t or wouldn’t protect them anymore.

Outside, Ben opened a garbage bin with huge snowflakes on his T-shirt. He threw in his garbage as images of hacker buddies raising beer steins in honor of the season filled his mind. Ignoring the snow around him, he chuckled, thinking that even computer geeks like him could reflect on Christmas from time to time.

Hiss! Whack!

Questionable legends became very real when a bullet whispered from out of the dark with only a slight whistle. It came from behind Ben and hit him square in the right shoulder. The impact threw him into the large garbage bin where he had just dropped his bag of trash. An immediate second bullet hit the brick wall behind the garbage bins—about at the level where his head had just been. Ben rolled with the falling garbage bins instead of simply lying there in the jumble. This was the season of giving and throwing away, so the large bins were loaded and heavy. A third bullet angrily tangled itself in the garbage bins from where Ben had just rolled.

The crash of toppling bins made up for the lack of gunshots in the still, snow-muffled night. It distracted the shooter somewhere in the darkness enough for the wounded man to scramble behind a low brick wall. A few bullets followed him, piercing dumped garbage bins or splattering against bricks. Ben used the low wall for cover as he scurried away. The drive to stay alive consumed him, so he didn’t notice a large red splotch in the snow among the garbage bins or the occasional spots of red leaving a trail behind him.

Adrenaline rushed through him. It not only energized him but also temporarily masked the pain of his new wounds. He didn’t know that a Siegfried 12 slug continues to tumble once it enters a body, ripping and tearing rather than just making a clean hole.

Every hacker was familiar with the this is your one and only warning pop-up message. Ben got his about a year ago and immediately laughed it off as a joke. News anchors would scoff, proving that the messages were either tricks or an angry software developer using a scare tactic. Ben knew though that there always were stories of hackers, who made a living on other people’s work, suddenly meeting untimely ends or of destructive programmers doing their last blow against whatever empire that they were fighting before suddenly disappearing. The evil demigods of the Patent Dios faith were death angels come to collect miscreants. As Ben scrambled in the snow, it was clear that death angels were not just a legend anymore.

Ben had to get out of there fast. According to the myths, the good side of Patent Dios was that it was the protector of ideas and the giver of credit, and more importantly, of income to all those who make their ideas real. Patent Dios had many friends in high and low places, and when it chose you, you could become an eighteen-year-old billionaire. However, the real Patent Dios was not an organization to anger.

Ben was out of shape because he sat in an office chair all day, but he was young. It was adrenaline alone that had him sprinting down the alley, now shielded from the shooter’s vision by a large garage. He made it away from his city block in a time that he never could have run regularly. No more shots came out of the night, but Ben knew that he still needed more distance. In this snowy evening of angels, Ben knew that a death angel was just a few steps behind him.

Back in the alley, a shadow separated itself from the night in the softly falling snow. The death angel turned on a small light in the darkness. Light reflected far into the dark cobblestone alley lined with pure white snow. This piercing little beam was attached to the angel’s silenced, sniper sights. The light played off the gun’s blue color, seen even in the darkness. The death angel inspected a large red splotch tangled in the garbage. Already the snow was covering up the blood as if God were trying to hide the victim’s tracks. A death angel is not easily dissuaded from his task, though. He clicked off his light and moved out, following his prey. The blue Siegfried 12 disappeared in his large, black leather trench coat. His beaver pelt hat had already accumulated a layer of snow, so he looked like any other bundled up neighbor with a purposeful walk.

Prayers mingled with desperation as Ben ran down pretty, tree-lined streets to dodge through a tiny yard with an outdoor wicker couch. It was all part of the outdoor living fad in trendy Bay View, the part of town that they were in. He didn’t notice another small, red, almost Christmassy splotch left behind him in the new snow.

Ben didn’t have a plan. He just knew that his assailant must not find him. He knew better than to shout for help. What city person would open a door to someone covered in blood and shouting in the street? He may as well have a huge neon arrow pointing down at him with the words your target is here if he screamed. It was these thoughts in the cold that slowed Ben down and began decreasing his adrenaline mask. As he was zigzagging up his third alley, Ben stopped to use his right hand to wipe melting snow from his eyes, but his right arm wouldn’t move. The first effect was almost surreal. Puzzled, Ben almost pragmatically used his left hand to reach over and help his right arm do what his brain was commanding it to do. As Ben’s brain attempted to process this, its search for information quickly reactivated his pain sensors. Torn nerve endings now free to send messages burned like fire. Ben stumbled into a pristine white garage door, tastefully set into a mansion’s old brick alley wall. The adrenaline was gone. In its place was horror, shock, and extreme pain to the point of nausea. He vomited in the alley.

As his brain tried to process the agony, it recognized a warm wetness on his lower body. Had he just peed his pants? He felt a schoolhouse embarrassment as if he had wet himself in front of all of his classmates. Ben looked down but the whole right side of his body was drenched with blood, not pee.

Ben’s racing heart now only brought him pulsing pain as he slid down the garage door, kneeling on the concrete. Ben finally saw and understood the large red spot that he had left on the white garage door after leaning against it. It kind of looked like one of the Victorian Christmas ornaments on his tree. Ben looked across the alley and saw a trail of blood drops marking his exact route. He may as well have had a homing device in his back pocket.

God, I must have lost much blood.

Feeling disconnected from his body, he looked down hoping the wounds were not there and that this was all fake, hoping that he perhaps was in a super realistic game of some sort. But there it was, the entire right side of his shirt and pants was still drenched with blood.

Kneeling in the alleyway, Ben knew that a death angel was walking quietly in the night holding a gun. All the angel needed to do was the coup d’état. Someone would find his frozen body tomorrow morning.

Ben didn’t want to die. Wishful fantasy kept nibbling at his brain that this just might be an astonishing game that he stumbled into, but he knew better. Ben’s body was starting to slow down, and his depression grew. He knew that he was bleeding to death; he was going into shock and possibly, freezing to death.

Stupid, stupid, stupid, Ben mumbled as he kneeled on the freezing alley concrete. He had everything, more than most, but he just had to be stupid. It was his fault that a death angel was coming. Ben now did something that no one who knew him, including himself, would have believed him to do. Kneeling he pleaded, Oh God!

He was desperate. Oh God, help! He had always called himself an atheist, but it was the Christian God of his childhood that he was praying to. There is a saying that will never go away as long as mankind exists: There are no atheists in foxholes. A possible response to the saying could be that God answers prayers from foxholes. God’s answer to Ben’s foxhole prayer was immediate.

St. Augustine’s bells started to toll. This was the big, old church building in this part of Bay View.

Bong! Bong! Bong!

The bells echoed through the thick snowflakes across the old Bay View neighborhood as they have regularly for over a hundred years.

Bong! Bong! Bong!

In this world, religious houses of worship were allowed to operate if they said and did the correct things or at least didn’t promote ideas that central government didn’t like. Besides, the tolling bells added to the ambiance of the neighborhood. A man sitting beneath an ornament-shaped blood splotch raised his head. It occurred to him that the Christmas Eve service was letting out. People would be streaming to their cars. This was always one of the most attended religious services of the year and cars would be jammed in the parking lot and in every nearby street parking spot. A little light of hope turned on in Ben’s confused brain.

The old church stood in the neighborhood since 1908 according to the cornerstone facing Howell Avenue. Ben had walked past it hundreds of times. Ben’s on-again, off-again girlfriend fancied herself a photographer and took way too many pictures of the big, old thing. The statue of Saint Augustine, with one hand missing was placed strategically in a little wall cove over the huge oaken front doors and was of particular interest to her.

Bong! Bong! Bong!

People go to church for multiple reasons. Some go because they believe. Some are there looking for lovers. Some come for business. Some just need friends. Some simply need a touch. Some come just to be, to know, to live. Tonight, Ben realized that it was a place to run to, not that it was a particularly good plan. Ben just knew that he needed protection and witnesses. In medieval Europe, running to the church for protection was called sanctuary.

Bong! Bong! Bong!

The bells were pleading with him.

Oh God, oh God! A mixture of prayer and an animal will to survive got Ben back on his feet again. He was several blocks away from the church. These would be the longest blocks in his life. Ben subconsciously reached for his HEART—a personal electronics system that everyone had nowadays. Then he realized it was on his desk at home—a few blocks and an entire lifetime away. This contest then would be just he and God against a death angel.

Bong! Bong! Bong!

Ben started shuffling forward in the snow. The church bells were his lifeline. He knew the neighborhood but was struggling to even move. Sometimes Ben stumbled and fell. When the bells stopped tolling, he was so far beyond reality that all he knew is that he had to keep going as fast as he could, slipping and sliding in the snow. He needed sanctuary! Ben fell into the snow again.

Dammit!

He struggled up and stumbled onward again.

The church crowd thinned out fast. With their church obligations fulfilled, the parishioners rushed to warm homes with family and eggnog waiting. By the time Ben stumbled onto Howell Avenue, the main street in front of the church, there were no cars left. He had gotten so caked with snow that the remaining traffic didn’t even look at him twice. They simply didn’t care or didn’t see that he was in trouble, that he was wounded and underdressed. They couldn’t see the blood.

One person did notice. She had been locking the front church doors when she saw a man start to stumble across the street. She thought that he might be hurt. She stopped, watching. She tried to decide what to do while her thick red hair began to catch snowflakes. Then she noticed a second figure come out of the alley. The new figure was moving fast, and somehow, she thought she might know him, even muffled against the cold as he was.

Ben was nearly across Howell Avenue when something grabbed his good left arm. It had a deathly iron grip. Although Ben’s feet still touched the ground, the gripping force nearly carried him across the street and to the side of the church building. There was a stairway on the side of the church. The basement stairs had a railing with a sign advertising a fish fry on Friday at 5:00 p.m. Ben didn’t have the will to even try to fight. He knew that he was in a death angel’s grasp. The angel threw him down the concrete stairs as easily as he’d throw a rag doll, and Ben thumped against the steel basement door like a bale of hay. The fall hurt but Ben was beyond feeling. He looked up from the snow covered concrete where he landed to see his attacker at the top of the stairs.

People do strange things when they know that they are about to die. Ben just asked a pathetic question from his place against the ice-cold door. Are you the death angel from Patent Dios?

The angel didn’t need to answer since it was self-evident. The blue silencer on the Siegfried 12 reflected a nearby streetlight. Visions of bullets passing through Ben’s body and into the steel door behind him and the concrete below him ran through his head.

Please don’t kill me. Oh God, please!

The angel was already violating all sorts of rules by not immediately shooting Ben. Now he violated another major one by actually talking to him. This would be the first time that he ever talked to one of his victims.

Strange, isn’t it?

Ben stared up the stairs. What? It was the best he could answer.

That those that never give mercy are always the first to demand it.

What do you mean?

You know that when you crashed the Borealis Hospital system, twenty-five people lost their lives?

Ben started crying in his desperation, I’m sorry, really, I am. I didn’t intend to do that!

Sorry? You have the blood of twenty-five people on your hands and now all you have to offer is a Band Aid?

I’m sorry, really, I’m sorry.

The angel suddenly felt hot anger and his finger began to tighten over the trigger on its own. Maybe it was due to Christmas, but a strange thought struck the angel: I really need to get out of this business. The angel couldn’t believe what was going on inside his mind and shook his head to clear it. He accused Ben, hoping his anger would steady him.

You did it just for fun. You didn’t need money. You didn’t need respect. You already had all of that. The angel’s last sentence came through clenched teeth as his finger continued to tighten. You killed people just for fun.

Ben knew that he was dead. He knew that this basement stairway was his last place to live. Suddenly, powered by life itself, he scrambled up from where he was kneeling to face his executioner. His back straightened as if someone else took control. Ben looked up the stairs right in the dark place where the death angel’s face should be, and somebody’s words came out of him.

I promise you. If you don’t kill me, I will make it right as best that I can even if it costs me my life.

Even the voice seemed not to be his.

Ben fully expected a bullet to hit him. He closed his eyes, so he was shocked when it didn’t. He opened his eyes again and stared up the stairs. Instead of a bullet, a miracle happened—at least it was a miracle to Ben. In the surreal, snowy, Christmas night, reality and dreams seemed to mix. The death angel just stood there as a woman grabbed his gun arm. She touched the death angel’s arm gently, but it stopped him cold. Ben, being a man, even in his situation doubted that he ever saw a more beautiful woman in his life. She was tall and svelte with thick red hair that had a scattering of snowflakes. She looked at the death angel and gasped the word to him directly as if she knew him.

Don’t!

Both men stared at her.

It’s Christmas, she pleaded.

The words were pathetically saccharine, but they worked. It seemed as if the death angel deflated a bit. The woman had watched Ben and then the angel cross Howell Avenue from St. Augustine’s main doors, recovered from the shock of recognizing the angel with a blue gun in hand. She ran to grab him in time to intervene. In this night of intertwining realities, to Ben she was an angel.

The death angel stood, struck dumb. Memories and feelings of shock, fear, pleasure, happiness, and hurt all mixed in a stupefying overload. The redhead’s next words didn’t help.

Angel, it’s me, Debbie! Don’t you remember? Your wife?

That was his name! How had he forgotten it? He was an angel named Angel! The realization nearly made him drop his blue gun. He was completely speechless, but he did notice that she was shivering in the cold.

Please don’t hurt this man anymore. Her gorgeous eyes pled with him.

Angel shook free of the redhead. Then shockingly, he came down the stairs in a single bound and grabbed Ben by the skull like a steel trap. Now Ben saw the death angel’s face in the security light. It was very handsome, olive colored. His eyes were angry brown as he thumped the gun’s blue silencer against Ben’s forehead. Words came through Angel’s gritted teeth.

I will hold you accountable to that promise.

In one fluid motion Angel was back to the top of the stairs where he stopped. He looked at the beautiful red head then turned back and looked at Ben. Ben continued to shiver with his back straight against the basement door.

Get your pathetic little body to a hospital before you die.

And then, he was gone.

Ben’s beautiful red-haired advocate hurried down the stairs and helped him stumble up and into the snowy street as Ben dripped blood over both of them. They made it to the nearby Sally’s Pies Are Square bistro that was still open this late on Christmas Eve since the day was no longer an official holiday. To the horror of the patrons and staff alike, Ben fainted at the antique glass door. Blood poured all over the Tiffany-stained glass work as Debbie screamed for help. Ambulances were called. The public system was notified that a crime had happened and for a while the shadows would pull back and watch for now. Shadows can be patient if they need to be.

This was a world of future-possible, recognizable but changed; and an angel named Angel, with a blue gun hidden in his pocket, hurried onto a nearby street. The tall bell tower of St. Augustine’s had always defined the Milwaukee neighborhood of Bay View, pointing a reminding finger heavenward. The skyline of these old neighborhoods had been dominated for a century by the second largest four-faced clocks in the world, a part of the giant factory complex that once was called the Allen-Bradley company. In a much smaller version of the huge factory clocks nearby, the church bell tower had a four-sided clock shining like a lighthouse over the neighborhood as well. There were such smaller clocks spaced throughout the city: on the city hall bell tower, on some church steeples, and on a few business buildings. St. Augustine’s stood as a lighted torch in the night with snowflakes swirling around the shining spire and an ornamental cross at the very top, but the steeple was no comparison to the Allen-Bradley factory that some called The Lady.

The Lady of Milwaukee

Other than a few elite neighborhoods, Milwaukee looked ill-kempt as steam jets hissed from leaking overhead pipelines and a broken sewerage main bubbled up brackish water from under the pavement. Though a few pathetic street lights fought with the snowflakes, most of the city light came from the man-made moonlight of the Lady.

The Lady was a sight to behold. Gorgeous but foreboding, she towered over the crowded Milwaukee harbor area like a Victorian queen in business dress. The fortress-like building stood in various shades of gray with green roofs, giving both a sense of austerity and business capability. Dominating the crumbling city around her, the Lady seemed to own everything that she saw. Most of the light coming from her was from a four-sided clock tower that once was the largest in the world. The clock faces shone like a man-made full moon over a snowy diesel punk city, showing everyone who was in charge here. A for-profit governmental agency owned her now.

In some ways, the government-owned Lady was a human version of the towering termite hills in Africa. Large square factory floors with looming roofs and thousands of workers streaming in and out, like a layered honeycomb above, feeding the factory and warehouse floors below and vice versa. The pipes and wiring running everywhere were a description of human ingenuity and inventiveness personified. Yet somehow, it was ant-like. Everything was organized to the point of obsessive clockwork. Every nut, bolt, and screw being removed or added was identified, stored specifically in the endless computer-controlled storage matrixes to be recalled and presented immediately upon request. The exact cotter pin to be put in the exact place that it had been before.

Perhaps it wasn’t proper to call this factory a lady, but it wasn’t proper to just call her a factory either. She was a reflection of human ingenuity and social realities of recent history. Fiber optic data lines feeding to a multiscreen monitor were attached next to an abandoned, electric, warning bell from the 1950s. An ancient steel shaping lathe from the 1930s cut forms unassisted by human hands due to CAD-CAM modifications. The human working at the station was only there to replace finished parts with new uncut parts, a rather menial task. This human effort was cheaper to acquire and maintain right now than the robot that would have replaced the person. The Lady wasn’t only all business, though.

She was also all pleasure. Huge parts of the Lady had mahogany paneled hallways inlaid with ivory, which was supposedly illegal to use. It had real fireplaces burning real logs with stands holding silver etched champagne glasses filled with chilled sparkling wine. These were not fake fireplaces with gas jets or digital screens playing fire sound effects. No, these were real logs invisibly taken care of by worker ants dressed in unremarkable black. On one side of the factory, it was filthy, grimy, and thundering with noise. On the other side of a wall or floor just a few feet away, there was pleasant opulence with garden fountains, cut flowers, and beautiful artwork.

The huge factory reflected the world around her. She had some of the highest paid workers in the world; she had slave labor; and she had everything in between. To be clear, the slaves were not controlled by men on horses wielding whips. The people were categorized as the