Read Online Rotten Gods by Greg Barron - Free Book Online

have …’
    â€˜Because I was so forward. Sorry, but you just happened to come along at the right time. I was ready.’
    Simon hugged her tight. ‘It was my first time too.’
    â€˜Was it good?’
    Simon’s voice took on a languorous tone. ‘I rather think it was.’ A pause then, ‘Do you think we might try it again?’
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    The relationship sustained them through his pilot training and Isabella’s Bachelor of Political Science. Marriage followed. Children. Fatherhood. Simon came to understand that to be a parent is to live not one, but two, three or four lives. That you share every fall, every success, every tear; every disgrace. That you feel each more keenly than your own.
    A blur of years followed. Soon there were bad memories, too. Fights. Sullen silences that went on for days. Unbridgeable gaps.
    More than anything now, Simon wants the wasted time back again. How could he have let it happen? He shudders to himself. If there is ever another chance … If she survives this. If the girls survive this. Simon steels himself. It is up to him to make sure that they come through, but first he has to find the girls. Without them there is no future worth living.
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    CNN runs the story dispassionately, while FOX presents Dr Abukar as a once loyal servant, now deranged, having teetered off into extremism. SKY News labels him as a complex villain; afundamentalist on a mission to save the world. Acting presidents and prime ministers promise that they will not cave in to terrorism, not even for the life of their own leader.
    Men and women all over the world gather information, draw their conclusions, perpetuate their prejudices, air their opinions over backyard fences, and on Quora, Scribd, Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Diaspora and Namesake. Amateur news gatherers use Twitter to disseminate information hours ahead of traditional news services.
    The general opinion is that Dr Abukar will be content to make his point then walk away. The demands are unworkable, and he must realise this. Zhyogal is another matter. The word evil is bandied about by people who should know better. Clever journalists uncover evidence of his earlier exploits, including footage of a massacre in an Algerian village, and predict dire results this time around.
    In student unions, East and West, young men and women cheer and raise their glasses, while working-class strollers, polled by rough-and-tumble street journalists, click their tongues at such a treacherous lack of patriotism. ‘After all,’ fifty-three-year-old Isaac Stanton of Bethany, Pennsylvania, tells FOX and the world, ‘he’s our president. Even if I never voted for him myself I wouldn’t like to see him blown into little pieces.’
    The name Zhyogal takes on the media-fuelled proportions of a Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin or Slobodan MiloÅ¡evíc, an uncomplicated vision even Isaac Stanton of Bethany, Pennsylvania, can understand. Dr Ali Khalid Abukar, however, is condemned as a traitor to the world that once gave him his living. Reports that a substantial UN salary is still being paid into a bank account in his name outrages the moral majority, leading to a rapid and comprehensive freezing of his assets.
    The team behind Inspire, the al-Qa’ida magazine launched and originally edited by the American born martyr, Anwar al-Awlaki, rushes to upload a special edition. This ten-page feature praises the brave mujahedin at Rabi al-Salah, and takes pains to link al-Muwahhidun with their own organisation, devoting half a page to details of the original association between Osama bin Laden and Yaqub Yusuf.
    Financial markets, never secure in these troubled times, reflect the possibility of a world without leadership. The Dow Jones dives, and the Hang Seng suffers its worst one-day loss since a wave of water destroyed the Miyagi prefecture’s coastal strip and an ageing nuclear power station went into meltdown years earlier.