Free The Last Infidel by Spikes Donovan Page A

ashen.
    Jadhari repeated his order, more loudly this time, and the café was emptied.
    The truck drove along the street slowly, turned right, and proceeded into the courthouse parking lot.  Behind it came a crowd of ISA fighters, followed by twenty or so soldiers attached to the Black Lies Matter Regiment (BLMR). 
    “The same mindless rabble,” Cody said.  “Some of those black guys were once Christians – they turned towelhead to save their own worthless hides.  Look - see the second guy from the front?” Cody said, pointing.  “Louis Holcomb.  Used to own the ice cream shop on Lytle.  Let’s see if he gets a conscience and decides that young, innocent white lives matter, too.”
    Jadhari selected ten men from the street, all of them infidels, and ordered them towards the cage.  Ten frightened men, surrounded by a cordon of club-wielding, anxious-for-murder Muslims, formed a ring around the wagon.  Together, they lifted the cage, slid it off the back of the wagon, and carried it over to a dark, blackened spot on the asphalt.  The truck was driven away and parked. 
    Cody, still standing on the sidewalk with Jose, caught movement out of the corner of his eye.  He nudged Jose, and they both turned and looked.  Women, all of them in burkas, were leaving the old Title and Deed building – probably taking a break from their weekly women’s re-education class.  All of them except one, probably Tracy, who hadn’t yet learned to submit, had their heads down.
    “That would be Tracy,” Cody said, pointing her out.  “She really blends, right?”
    “That’s her?”  Jose asked.  “I haven’t seen her in like forever.  And I guess I still haven’t.”
    “Funny, right?  She’s gone – safely away from here, and then she just shows up.”
    Other Muslims came out onto the square, maybe fifty or more, a mix of Muslims and useful infidels.  They circled the cage, but not too closely, with the women taking the front row.  Cody and Jose, under compulsion by some of Bashar’s men, were pushed along towards the crowd with rifle butts against their backs.  But no sane ISA soldier would dare strike either of them, not out here where they’d be seen.  Bashar wouldn’t be pleased.
    One of Bashar’s officers, young and reckless, climbed to the top of the cage.  A roar of voices rose from the crowd, roars of approval and encouragement, and the young man aimed his weapon towards the sky and let off a staccato burst of gunfire.  The crowd shouted Alahu Akbar , and then fell silent.
    “He’s going to have kids one of these days,” Cody said.
    “By orders of Bashar,” the officer cried, “these girls – these Christian infidels – who refuse to bow to the rule of Allah, peace be unto him, have been sentenced to death.  Allahu Akbar!”
    More cheering filled the square.
    “He means they refused to marry one of Bashar’s guys,” Jose whispered.
    “I wonder what will happen to all these Muslims when there aren’t any more people to torture, rape, and kill,” Cody said.  “But I guess they’ll always have the goats.”
    The man on top of the cage waved for someone on the ground, and a five-gallon container of gasoline was handed up to him.
    The girls in the cage, resigned to death, walked towards the bars closest to the burka-clad women.  Each stood shoulder-to-shoulder in a straight line, facing them; and they started singing Amazing Grace , but quietly and reverently.
    “That’s odd,” Cody said.
    “Like, these girls are probably not even ten years old,” Jose said. 
    The young man unscrewed the lid on the gasoline container like he was part of some opera act, and he grinned as he poured gas down on top of the girls, soaking them from head to toe.  The girls stood there, not once flinching; and they stared across the distance separating them from the other women.
    “And this guy always makes a game of it,” Cody said. 
    “I liked it when his pants leg caught fire last time,”