Indomitus Est (The Fovean Chronicles) Read Online Free PDF Page B

his big chest rippling underneath a loose-fitting cotton shirt.  “Just another bruddah, huh?  Well, I tell you something, you’d be wrong, man!”
         And he leaned close to me, so I could smell his breath, and unlike the cop’s, his smelled sick, sweet like dead things smell, like his insides were dead even though he kept moving on the outside.
         “I am my own religion, man,” he whispered, his eyes sparkling.
         Oh, man!  “Look, I had enough of Jesus freaks in the Navy-“
         “Pah, don’t tell me ‘bout no Jesus, man – this ain’t about no Jesus.  I’m an Egyptian, man.  I’m the last high priest of Anubis, and I tell you, man, Anubis can walk you right out through these bars like they wasn’t here, man.”
         “Yeah, well, I am the Green-Freaking-Lantern, myself, man , so I don’t need no Jesus and I don’t need no Anubis, either.”
         The other man shook his head.  I didn’t know what an Egyptian looked like so I didn’t know if he was one . If so, then he was the biggest one I ever saw.  I didn’t look forward to him going on about his god all night.
         Most of what he had to spew covered not giving up, about faith.  That pissed me off worse than anything, because giving up wasn’t on my itinerary.  I wasn’t giving up.  I might not beat this – those guys were going to lie, like that junior officer had – but that didn’t mean it could beat me.
         As for faith – I didn’t want to hear it.  God didn’t care about me.
        “Look, shut up, OK?”
         “Oh, you don’t want to hear about Anubis – you don’t want to be free of this place?”
         “Sure, I want to be free of this place, but you know what?  That ain’t gonna happen.  I killed a cop’s brother to save a dog, so quite frankly, your Anubis is about all that could get me out of this situation if he were real, which he isn’t.  And like the rest of the world, he doesn’t have any reason to help me.”
         I’d had enough of religious people in the Navy.  This belief that ‘god’ comes out and helps you for no reason.  A nice fantasy, but nothing in my life ever went that way and I didn’t doubt that nothing ever would.
         “Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong, man.  You have had a whole destiny that brought you to me right now.  So if none of it ain’t your fault, and if you could believe in Anubis, then he would have a reason for getting you out of here.”
         “Yeah?” I asked. “What reason?  Why should he be any different than anyone else?”
         “You fought the just cause, man,” he said.  “You coulda kept walkin’, but you didn’t.  You a warrior , man!  You fought for the one who couldn’t fight for himself.”
         “Yeah, right !”
         “If he took you out of here, would you be willing to believe in him, then, man?”  The Egyptian’s eyes shone bright – obviously, this is what he had been working toward all along.  He stood a good three feet from me now and still I could smell the sick-sweet reek from his breath.  I felt exhausted, tired of fighting, tired of being fought, tired of the cards life had dealt me and how I had played them.
         I’d fought for the dog, but they killed it anyway.  What did its suffering really matter?  What did anything matter now?
         “Sure,” I told him.  “Sure, mother fucker – if Anubis can get me through these bars right now, then I’ll convert.   You got your warrior.”
         “Then give me your hand, man,” he told me and he reached out a huge black paw to me.
         I reached up from where I sat and I knew that doing this must be fundamentally wrong.  I looked at those dark, clutching fingers and watched them enfold my lily-white hand.  That grip felt as cold as a tomb, as if he had been holding ice, but dry and rough like sandpaper.  I watched him with his hand holding mine as he