He turned to his Praetor. “It does sound like him. Pompous. I’ve heard he was basically a nerd.”
“I had some time to read.”
“Do you think it’s him, Praetor?” Invictus asked.
The man shrugged.
“How about you?” he asked another soldier, and proceeded to take a quick survey of the room, with no one committing a solid answer.
The Great Lord finally turned to the man hanging out the window. “Is it him, Jonathon?”
“He thinks he is. And his name is Jerry. You should have seen him come back for me when I pretended to fall at the aquarium. Which, by the way, was the only way your guys were going to catch him. Maybe consider less armor for the troops and more calisthenics.”
“I’ll take it under advisement,” Invictus said. “Bring them in.”
Jerry turned and looked at the man dangling next to him. “So, it’s not Connor.”
“Sorry, Jer. My name is Jonathon Skinner. You killed my grandparents.”
Jerry jerked and the distance between the two men closed suddenly. There was a crack as the Librarian’s head shattered Jonathon’s nose.
“You dick!” Jonathon cursed, but it sounded more like ‘you mick!’ because his nostrils had quickly filled with blood.
“You betrayed us all,” Jerry growled.
“I bid mot. I mas neber on your smide, smo I coulbn’t metray you. I mought you mere smose to be mart.” He screamed at the guards. “Mull me bin!”
The guards began to respond but Invictus stopped them with a raised hand. “What if it’s not him?”
“Kill himb anymay. I’ll jus mork my way back imto the groub. They hab no idea I’mb faking.”
Invictus nodded and the guards dragged Jonathon Skinner back into the tower and cut him free. He pinched his nose and pointed back out the window at Jerry. “Mop ma Mufker.”
The guards looked to Invictus to see if they would indeed drop the fucker.
“No,” Invictus said. “He rides the Falls. This city must see him die.”
“Mis if mullshit!” Jonathon shouted, and pointed at Jerry hanging outside the window.
“Jonathon,” Jerry said softly. “I owe you an apology.”
“Mhat?”
“Your grandparents. It wasn’t right. I wasn’t myself. I was angry. Angrier than I’ve ever been. That doesn’t make it right, but I hope you can understand. They took the person I loved most from me and I just went blank. I felt nothing. It’s like it wasn’t even me, like I was removed from my body and all I could do was watch. I did things I’m not proud of. I gouged out his eyes and listened to his screams. I can’t even imagine the kind of suffering I caused. Yes, there’s the immense pain, but can you imagine the frustration, the feeling of powerlessness that must come from being violently deprived of your sight. In a brief moment you would realize that your life is forever changed. That nothing could ever bring it back. That you’d never look upon your loved ones again. See their faces. See how they look back at you. See the love in their eyes. That’s what I heard in his screams. It wasn’t pain. It was loss. I took that from him and I’m sorry.”
“Myou sum omf a mitch!” Jonathon screamed and rushed toward the window. He had no plan. He wanted blood.
Invictus’s guards grabbed the young man and pushed him back from the window. The guards let him go, and he screamed and stomped then rushed the solider holding the end of the rope.
Jerry dropped from sight.
“Grab the rope!” Invictus shouted as the soldiers dove to the ground.
There was a clanging of armor and screams of rope burn as the men got a hold of the cable and stopped the prisoner’s descent, while others tackled the young Skinner and pinned him to the ground.
“Pull him up!” Invictus ordered the guards, and turned to Jonathon. “What the hell was that?!”
“He’s not Mibrarian! Kill hib!”
“You said it was him.”
“How the mell mould I bow? I’b neber met the guy.”
“Oh, now I get the deal with the window,” Coy said, as he entered the throne room wearing a garish black cowboy hat. He walked across the room and nodded to Invictus. “That’s a good idea, Mr. Great Lord.”
Invictus took a deep breath. The Coyote was a moron. A frustration he didn’t need right now. But maybe he had good news. “Did you catch them?”
“Not all of them. But I heard my men got two of them.” Coy spotted Skinner on the floor and pointed at the kid. “That’s one of them. What did you do? Throw the other one out the window?”
The guards were winded and starting to sweat, but one final pull brought their prisoner back into view outside the window.
Coy smiled and walked to the ledge. He put his hand on his hat and turned his head upside-down so he’d be eye-to-eye with the man hanging by his ankles. “Well, well, well. If it isn’t the Library Guy.”
Invictus pulled The Coyote out of the way and knelt before the prisoner with a grin of pure joy. “Ready the boat.”
NINETEEN
Potato sack. Pillowcase. Stitched-up sweatpants. By this point Jerry was getting pretty familiar with the different types of hoods used to blindfold a captive. He didn’t really have a preference for material. Burlap and canvas tended to chafe more, but whatever it was they made sweatpants out of really held onto the smells of former prisoners. He found it was more the methodology of the hooder that really made a difference.
The guards in the tower were rough. The Resistance was the worst. The gentlest captors in town, surprisingly, were the prison guards. Admittedly, gentle was relative.
The hood came off quickly, but an effort was made to lift it straight up versus violently back or forward for that head-snapping effect kidnappers seemed to live for.
The view was shocking enough. It was a dungeon. Rock walls. Steel door. Wooden bucket. There was a pile of hay on the floor he had to assume was his bed.
He shrugged off the question of where one could find a dungeon in Niagara Falls. Tyrants were, almost without exception, a resourceful bunch. It had to take a remarkable imagination to consider yourself worthy of praise while considering others expendable. To hold with the conviction that you were best suited to decide what was best for others. And furthermore, that the pain and misery you inflicted on others was truly for the greater good.
It was a fantasy they all lived, and that creativity often extended to the physical constructs of their tyranny. Not everyone had access to alligators, bears and/or mutants. Shark tanks were almost completely unheard of away from the coast. Still, the despots of the apocalypse had adapted in surprising ways.
Tusk the Terrible’s entire porcine motif had been built around the feral hogs of the Southwest and included a death pit filled with the massive 800-pound beasts. Victims of the Long Leg found themselves caged with vicious territorial ostriches with nowhere to run. But the worst had to be what legend had come to call the Furry Fury, where a prisoner was encased in a box with a thousand hungry hamsters. It was an embarrassingly adorable and brutal way to go.
But he had to give credit where credit was due. Between the scale and presentation of the gator pit, the tower throne room and the authentic dungeon, Invictus had the other warlords beat when it came to the tyrannical theme game.
He was also the most powerful warlord Jerry had come up against. But he was no less confused than the others. The man simultaneously wielded, manipulated, tortured and forced others to do his bidding while holding the belief that it was what was best for everyone. It wasn’t a unique perspective. The world had lost perspective long before the end, when we started telling each other what we should believe. Not just debating or arguing, but holding in contempt and punishing others for thoughts that conflicted with our own. At the time there were differing opinions on how we had gotten here. Some claimed that mankind had grown more horrible over time. Others said mankind had always been horrible and the internet made that horrible nature visible. Still others argued that mankind was an off
ensive word and should not be allowed anymore, and accused anyone who used it of possessing some of humanity’s most horrible traits. That didn’t help things.
Thinking we knew what was in the hearts and minds of others was a slippery slope that hit bottom when the bombs fell.
Then came the war, and some of the survivors hoped that things would be put back into perspective. But blowing everything up just made things worse. People still hung onto the thought that they knew better than others. Entire tribes were built around these beliefs, and dissenters were either cast out into the wasteland or relegated to a lower class within the society. And as long as it worked for those in power, it continued. Right and wrong had become twisted and intertwined into an unrecognizable mess.
Jerry put his hand on the wall. The gray paint flaked from the sculpted foam into his hand. He sat down on his bale of hay and thought. Maybe he was the one who had it all twisted. Maybe it was the natural order of things for the strong to prey on the weak until there was enough to go around. Maybe he was interrupting the new natural selection by defending those that would otherwise fall.
And where had doing the right thing gotten him? He had saved a lot of people. He had stopped evil people from harming others. But Erica was dead. Maybe revenge was right after all. Maybe righteous anger wasn’t as just as we’d all been led to believe. But the more he thought about her, the more it seemed right.
He had to stop thinking about her. He had to put her in the back of his mind and find a way out. Could he rely on his “friends” from the museum? Connor had betrayed him. Had the others been caught? And what about Chewy?
She was always clever enough to hide when the need arose and loyal enough to come through when it counted. But she was shit at picking locks, and he couldn’t count on the assumption that his note had found anyone that would help.
“I’m here to see the prisoner.” The voice came from around the corner and Jerry saw the guard nod in his direction.
Jerry had first met the hired gun named Coy in a steakhouse in Amarillo and had hated him ever since. He and his partner had chased and harassed and even momentarily abducted Jerry as he chased Mr. Christopher. This was the dumber of the pair, and he was surprised to have seen him in Invictus’s tower.
Coy smiled and tipped his cowboy hat. “Do you remember me?”
“I think your name was Coy.”
“That’s right,” Coy seemed genuinely excited to be recognized. “Well, that was right, but I’m not Coy anymore. I’ve changed. Now I’m The Coyote. Want to know why?”
“Not really.”
Coy laughed at that and pulled up a chair in front of Jerry’s cell. “Well, seein’ as how you’re locked away in here, I’m going to tell you anyway. But I think you’ll like this story. You’re in it.”
Jerry leaned on the bars of his cell. “You know what I miss? The Geneva Convention.”
“You see, Coy and Willie were the best of friends. They did everything together since they met in high school. They cut class together, got expelled together, they partied together. And everything was going just fine until the end of the world. And then, things got even better.
“You know what there were less of when the world blew up?”
“Hygiene standards?”
“People,” Coy said. “Less cops. Less people telling you what to do. Less people complaining about how much noise you were making. No one bitching about you setting off fireworks in the middle of the night outside the La Quinta. Things were pretty good for old Willie and Coy. They had free reign of the world.
“So one day, the two best friends were sitting around Bomb City minding their own business, planning to have a few beers and maybe steal some shit or hit the trails and do sweet jumps on their dirt bikes. That’s when this guy shows up, wearing a stupid hat and offering them a job. He says they can make some easy money if they just help catch this guy from the library.”
Jerry grabbed the iron bars of his cell and did his best to twist them. “How’d that go over for them?”
Coy smiled. “It sounded easy enough. Bookworms are nerds. And Willie and Coy never met a nerd they couldn’t wedgie, so they take the job and they’re going to be rich and do some amazing things with the money.”
“Maybe they should have spent less time daydreaming and focused on the job at hand.”
Coy removed his hat and looked at the ground. His voice dropped. “Things got messed up along the way. There were a lot more people involved than they knew. Some pretty fucked up people. Cruel people. Crazy people. There were people dressed up like animals. But ole Willie and Coy thought they could outsmart them all. They were going to double cross everyone. But then they got caught.”
“I’m just shocked that their brilliant plan didn’t work.”
Coy looked up at Jerry. His face had changed. His eyes were heavy on the verge of tears. “That’s when Coy met the Skinners.”
Jerry hung his head. This man had pursued him across the country, tried to kill or catch him several times, and still he felt for him because he now knew how the story was going to end.
“They were looking for the guy from the library, too. And the guy that had given Willie and Coy the job in the first place. They were all nice at first. They treated Coy kindly and even fed him some bacon. It had been a long time since Coy had had any bacon.” Coy looked away, his eyes about to pour. When he looked back they had changed. They were cold and dry. “So he ate the bacon.”
Coy stood up and turned away from the cell. “But it wasn’t bacon. It was his friend. His only friend in the world.”
“There aren’t words for this, Coy. I’m truly sorry.”
“Don’t cry for Coy. Coy’s dead. After he ate Willie, Coy couldn’t live with himself. Friends, real friends, don’t eat their friends. So Coy did the only thing he could think to do. He killed himself.” Coy turned back around. “And ever since that day I became The Coyote. I changed. I’m smarter, meaner and better-looking than Coy ever was. And The Coyote only has one purpose in life. Revenge.
“I tracked down those bastard Skinners to make them pay for what they had done to Willie and Coy!” The Coyote grew enraged and kicked the chair across the dungeon. “But you know what?”
“They were already dead.”
“They was already dead!”
“Because I killed them.”
Coy rushed up to the cell door and put a finger in Jerry’s face. “Because you killed them!”
“Because they killed my wife.”
“Because they killed your wife!” Coy slammed his hat on the ground in a fit of rage and then snapped his eyes back to Jerry. “What?”
“They killed my wife, Coy. Christopher had taken her. I chased that bastard in the stupid hat halfway across the country. I fought a war. I fought you. I fought marauders and raiders and cannibals just to see her once more. And the moment she was finally back in my arms—the moment when we both believed that everything would be okay—that old man ran her through with a knife and took her from me.” Jerry trailed off.
“Fuuuuuck.” The Coyote backed away from the cell door. He looked more like Coy than his alter ego. “That is a total dick move!”
“I know.”
“You must have been pissed right the hell off!”
“I was. I still am. It’s not something you can forgive.”
Coy picked up his hat, still shaking his head in disbelief. “And you probably thought the whole time that everything would be okay.”
“I hoped it would.”
“’Cause that’s how it works right? And then just all of a sudden? Out of nowhere.”
All Jerry could do was nod. Murder was often sudden and rarely expected. You didn’t hear the click of a firing pin before the gunshot or the pop of a cork from a vial of poison. It just happened, and life had to change around it.
“I mean, shit, you couldn’t write something that terrible.”
Jerry hung his head and looked at his feet as the memories and the horror
s came rushing back. He relived his revenge on Skinner and felt his hands tighten on the cell door as he remembered forcing his thumbs into the man’s eyes. He heard the screams. He felt the neck snap in his hands. And it wasn’t enough. He’d still wanted more. He wanted the world to know of his outrage. He wanted everyone to know that it had been unfair.
“You know?” Coy said softly. “I killed that Christopher guy.”
“Good,” Jerry said.
“Good?” The Coyote sounded as confused as his old self. “I figured you would have wanted to kill him.”
He did. He wanted to kill them all. To kill every person responsible for his pain. But what’s done was done. He looked back up and saw Coy in front of him, not this persona he had created in his own moments of rage. “As long as he’s dead.”
“But I took your revenge from you,” Coy said. “Doesn’t that piss you off?”
“As far as I’m concerned, there’s only one person responsible for the death of my wife.”
Coy remained silent. Jerry could see the gears turning and all but hear the hamsters running around in the man’s head. Coy looked over at the dungeon guard. The Coyote looked back at Jerry. “Do you have any idea what they’re going to do to you?”
“It sounds like I’m going for a ride.”
The Coyote nodded. “Something like that. They call it riding the Falls because everything around here seems to have a name. They’re going to tie you to a boat and send the boat over the Falls. If you live, you’re innocent.” The Coyote put the hat back on his head. “But I doubt they’ll let that happen.”
Jerry watched as The Coyote walked out of the dungeon and left him alone once again.
TWENTY
Standing sentry on the border between Wallacia and Transylvania, on a mountain most likely shrouded in mist, fog and werewolves, is Bran Castle. With its peaked spires and blood-red tiles, the palace has often been referred to as the home of the titular character from Bram Stoker’s Dracula, despite bearing no resemblance to the home described in the book or being even remotely related to the character’s inspiration, Vlad the Impaler. Right up until the end of the world, Bran Castle was kept in good repair and remained a spectacle of wonder and grandeur.
Revenge of the Apocalypse (A Duck & Cover Adventure Post-Apocalyptic Series Book 4) Page 15