Masters of Mayhem

by Franklin Horton

  “Are you done?” Barb asked.

  “I’m not sure yet,” Conor replied. “My point is that if you are jealous, if you feel like you blew it, you got no one to blame but yourself. None of this is Shannon’s doing.”

  “I haven’t thought about it much,” Barb said. “I don’t know how I feel about him. It’s not something I’ve spent any time dwelling on.”

  “Ah,” Conor said.

  Barb cut him a look. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Maybe it’s not that you want him,” Conor said. “Maybe it’s just that you don’t want anyone else to have him. Maybe you’re pissed off that your puppy dog started following someone else around.”

  “That what you think of your daughter?” Barb asked.

  “Don’t act all offended with me,” Conor said. “I’m not buying that for a second. No one in this world knows you better than I do. And I’m certainly not one to judge. The morality in this family has always been slightly skewed. What’s right for us, may not be right for others.”

  “What’s right for us might be wrong,” Barb shot back.

  Conor shrugged. “I live with that reality every day. There was a point when violence went from simply being our family legacy, inherited from my father and grandfather, to being my legacy too. It happened when I built my first bomb and used it on another person. Not everyone can live with the weight of that. I can. I sense you can too. It may be a flaw in our personalities that allows us to do so. Perhaps we’re sociopaths. I’m okay with it.”

  “That’s a lot to think about,” Barb said.

  “I’ve had a lot of time to process it,” Conor said.

  “I’ll need more time to think about that and all the other things on my mind. I can’t do it with you rattling on in my ear. How about we just shut up for now?”

  “Good enough.”

  Before long, Conor began humming Mo Ghile Mear, an old Irish ballad. As the humming reached a fervor, he burst into song.

  “I think I preferred the interrogation to this torture,” Barb mumbled.

  26

  After learning of the existence of this character who called himself the Mad Mick, Bryan felt like he was being bombarded with the MM symbols every time he turned his head. They were everywhere he looked and each angered him a little more than the last. It was an arrogant taunt, rubbing it in his face that his men were dead and his farming enterprise destroyed. The anger made him erratic in his thinking and Bryan’s interactions with locals turned from violent recruitment to equally violent interrogation.

  He had over seventy soldiers in his army now. Here in the Mad Mick’s territory he was afraid to do any more recruitment. While the loyalty of troops recruited under duress was never a sure thing, he would be even less comfortable with troops recruited from within the Mad Mick’s backyard. His standing army was as much of a force as he would have for his mission to find this Mad Mick. Perhaps when this task was accomplished, when the Mad Mick was dead, Bryan could once again seek to increase the size of his workforce, finding more people with hands-on skills and strong backs for the work of building their new estate. His current army had but one task now, and surely they were of an adequate size and skill-level to accomplish it.

  This Mad Mick was only one man, after all.

  At a mid-nineteenth century farmhouse outside of Bluefield, Virginia, Bryan halted his force on the road. It was a sprawling brick structure likely built by a gentleman landowner who had done quite well for himself. Bryan knew that brick like this was made at a local kiln of local clay, possibly with the kiln or town’s name stamped on the bottom of the brick. There were various barns, all painted a matching white, and masonry siloes with round tin roofs. He wasn’t there to appreciate the architecture though. That was his old life as a history professor, before he became whatever he was now.

  From the road he could see five men of various ages watching another skin a small deer. The deer hung upside down from an oak tree many times older than the house. If they had a notion to do so, it would have taken several of the men just to encircle their arms around the base of the tree. The five men, likely just back from a hunting trip, were probably armed. Bryan waved to his men, gesturing toward the deer skinners.

  “Forward ho!”

  One of his men opened a galvanized cattle gate separating the farm from the road and the procession moved up the gravel drive toward the house. The men working the deer spoke among themselves and cast nervous glances toward the group, uncertain as to what to do. One of the men dispatched someone smaller than him, perhaps a child, back to the house. He then took up a lever-action rifle from its rest against the tree and faced Bryan’s army.

  “That’s far enough,” he called when perhaps fifty feet separated them. He leveled the rifle on Bryan, riding front and center of the group.

  Bryan raised a hand to halt the procession behind him. He regarded the gun-wielding man with an easy smile that was entirely inappropriate to the situation. It could have meant many things—that Bryan was comfortable with the odds, that he didn’t fear the gun pointed at him, or that he was completely out of touch with the reality of events transpiring around him.

  The history professor within Bryan could not help but notice that the deer hung from a crude iron gambrel that was probably forged here on this very farm. Imprecise hooks twisted beneath the tendons of the deer’s back legs. Rusty chains connected those hooks to a spreader bar stout enough to hold a hog or small steer. How much meat had hung from those hooks over the years? Bryan could not help but wonder.

  “Excuse me, friend, but I was hoping I might bother you with a question,” Bryan began.

  The man shifted uncomfortably, as if the situation was already deviating from the script that played out in his head. He looked back to his companions and found no help there. They were as scared, as confused as he was, by the sudden appearance of this army, like nothing else they’d seen since the world went dark. The oldest of them, the deer skinner, stood with his bloody wrists folded onto his hips, the fur-encrusted knife gripped loosely in his hand. It was a stance that would appear feminine on men of today but was frequently seen among men born of a generation long gone, men who spent more time walking, standing, or hunkering.

  When he received no response, Bryan held up a hand in contrition. “Sorry, didn’t mean to put you on the spot. I acknowledge it was a might abrupt of me to simply ride up to your home and head straight to the business at hand. I realize it’s important we don’t forego manners and decorum in this time of chaos and scarcity. Shall we start with names? My name is Bryan.”

  Bryan continued to smile, fixing the man with an expectant stare that begged a response.

  “Gabriel,” the man replied cautiously, as if even offering such a scant detail could provide Bryan with the ammunition to bring about their ruination.

  With the odd smile still plastered across his face, Bryan nodded. “Good, good!” he said, as if they’d spanned a social hurdle. “Nice to make your acquaintance, Gabriel. Now that we’re friends, can I ask that you please avert your rifle from me? I find it makes the conversation a little awkward.”

  “It’s not awkward from this end,” said Gabriel. “Matter of fact, I’m a mite more comfortable this way.” His speech had the unrushed pacing of a farmer.

  The smile finally left Bryan’s face, leaving an ugly and cruel mask in its absence. He sighed heavily and called back to his men. “Gentlemen?”

  Seventy-two rifles raised in Gabriel’s direction, their movement creating a disconcerting mechanical murmur, a battle rattle that no one wished to be on the wrong end of. Gabriel’s eyes grew wide.

  “I’m sure you can see what I meant, right?” Bryan said. “A bit unsettling isn’t it?”

  Gabriel nodded but did not lower the gun. “I can see your point.”

  “Unfortunately, your failure to comply with my request in a timely manner has made it difficult to proceed in a congenial and gentlemanly manner. I’m afraid now I’ll have to ask
you to drop your weapon completely. Maybe just lean it against that tree there if you prefer to be gentle with it.”

  “And you’ll drop yours?” Gabriel asked.

  Bryan laughed and shook his head. “No, no, my friend. Our guns will remain pointed at you and your party until the conclusion of our dealings. Whatever that conclusion may be.” That last bit Bryan added with a hint of menace, with a prediction of dark consequences.

  Gabriel did not lower his gun. Perhaps he did not scare easily either, finding himself not intimidated by the odds. He stood boldly and unwavering, displaying no more fear than a man driving a raccoon from his garbage. Perhaps he knew that to toss aside his weapon was also to toss aside any chance for survival.

  “Are you familiar with the blues of Robert Pete Williams?” Bryan asked. “I’m fond of his song Parchman Farm.”

  Gabriel had struggled to follow the intention of the stranger’s fancy words throughout the entire conversation, and this tangent lost him entirely. He raised a quizzical eyebrow. Unfortunately that would be the last expression Gabriel willfully made. From somewhere in Bryan’s group, the trucker Zach pulled the trigger on the Marlin .45-70 he’d taken to carrying. There was a deafening boom and a hole the size of a coffee cup opened up in Gabriel’s chest. The next expression Gabriel made, one of awe and confusion, was purely the result of facial muscles slackening in death.

  The men to each side of Gabriel flinched at the shot but were simultaneously frozen to the ground in fear. Their eyes locked on Bryan, a collective with only one question between them—would they be the next to die?

  Bryan surveyed the remaining men with a serious expression. “That whole question about Robert Pete Williams was just a trick, you see. He is a damn fine musician but the question was a signal to my man back there to go ahead and shoot because I could see diplomacy was failing here. It would be to your benefit to recognize from this point forward that I am no longer proceeding as a friendly visitor to your farm. We are not neighbors bullshitting through the windows of our pickup trucks about hay or whatever other damn things you talk about. I am the pissed-off leader of an invading army demanding answers. Respect and cooperation is expected.”

  The old deer skinner dropped his knife to the ground and wiped his face with a bloody wrist. He was crying. “Dammit, why’d you have to go and do that? We’ll tell you anything you want to know. We wasn’t bothering nobody. Been keeping to ourselves.”

  Bryan shrugged dramatically, producing an exaggerated hunching of his shoulders. “I felt a need to make a bold statement. To emphasize the seriousness of our discourse. You picking up what I’m putting down?”

  The man frowned in frustration and gestured at Bryan’s army with an angry sweep of his gory hand. “You got a hundred men pointing guns at us. You think we’re not going to take you seriously?”

  “Whatever mistakes you made earlier in our relationship, I don’t think you’ll repeat them.”

  The crying man gawped at Bryan. “Then ask what you’re wanting to ask and get the hell out of here. Leave us alone.”

  “Very well then,” Bryan replied. “Where do I find a man called the Mad Mick?”

  “Who?” the man replied, confusion on his face. He looked back over his shoulder, curious as to whether the name rang a bell with anyone else.

  “The. Mad. Mick,” Bryan repeated. “Allegedly, he killed a number of my men and came through here with a group of women.” With that bit of information disclosed, Bryan saw the dawning of awareness flare up in the remaining faces.

  “Oh, that feller,” the deer skinner said. “He’s the one been putting that double-M all over the place.”

  Bryan nodded. “That would be him apparently. What can you tell me about him?”

  The deer skinner looked to his associates for confirmation, then looked back at Bryan. “Not a damn thing, really.”

  Bryan screwed his mouth up in frustration. “That’s it?”

  Sensing his life was suddenly in danger from this erratic madman, the old skinner held up both hands as if that might ward off any flying bullets. “We know he’s real. We weren’t sure at first but we heard the story firsthand from the family of one of the kidnapped women. He’s real, alright.”

  “Then where might we find him?”

  The man shook his head. “Southwest of here is the rumor. He ain’t local to us. We’d know if he was.”

  “You have nothing more to add?”

  The skinner looked around, then back to Bryan. “No.”

  Bryan nodded, a grim expression of dissatisfaction evident on his face. Was he going to have to stop at every house and repeat this process until he got a firm answer? He hoped not. He made eye contact with Zach, who’d assumed the role of his de facto lieutenant in the absence of Lester and Top Cat.

  “Kill these men. Burn their house with everyone inside it. Take the deer.”

  Zach nodded. Bryan continued staring at him until Zach met his eye.

  “You can do it right?” Bryan asked. It was the first time he’d asked such a thing of Zach. The man appeared to have had no trouble shooting the armed man a few minutes ago but this was a different thing entirely. This was mass murder. This was the kind of thing that would be seen as a war crime even in the ugliest of wars.

  “Leave me a half-dozen men,” Zach said. “I want to check the farm for supplies first. We’ll catch up with you at the next camp. That work?”

  “Pick your men. We’ll see you tonight,” Bryan replied, spinning his horse with a tight rein and galloping off.

  Zach picked the crew of truckers he’d been stranded with and a few of the others he felt he could trust. They held the deer hunters at gunpoint while the rest of Bryan’s army turned slow as a cruise ship in a tight harbor. Bryan was already back to the road and, once turned, his army galloped off after him.

  “Don’t kill us, mister,” begged the old skinner. “We got women and young’uns in that house.”

  Zach walked his horse closer to the man, his gun still on him. “I think you understand the seriousness of this situation. Am I right?”

  The old man nodded.

  “I’m going to give you one minute to run to that house and get your folks out. You better run like the devil is trying to pinch your ass. Once you’re out, you all keep running and don’t stop. I’m going to hold your buddies right here to make sure you don’t come out shooting. You comprende?”

  The man’s response came in the form of launching into an awkward run toward the house. It wasn’t pretty but it covered ground. Zach looked to the remaining men. “When he gets out, I’m going to start shooting. I need my boss to think you’re all dead. Then I’m going to burn your house. He’ll be looking for the smoke.”

  “It’s all we got,” one of the men pleaded. “You burn it, we die.”

  Zach leveled the lever-action rifle on him. “You don’t listen, you’re going to die anyway.”

  “They’re out,” Carrie, the female trucker said. “Running like a scalded dog.”

  “Your turn, boys,” Zach said. He fired a shot into the ground, then another as fast as he could work the rifle. The rounds impacting the ground flung dirt but there was no one left to be sprayed by it. All the men were now making haste across the muddy stubble of a cornfield behind the house.

  “You fellows fire a few, too,” Zach called to the rest of his party. “I’m going to check out the house.”

  It took them about fifteen minutes to perform a hasty looting of the farmhouse. Upon completion, they gathered back in the yard where one of the men remained to guard the horses and ensure that the displaced homeowners made no attempt to circle back around. Each had a pillow case or two of items they felt held some value or benefit to the group.

  “Spark it up, boys,” Zach said.

  “You think we could just burn the barn instead?” Carrie asked. “It would smoke as much as the house and these poor son-of-a-bitches would have some place to come back to.”

  Zach shook his head. “If we w
ere to ride back in this direction and Bryan see this house still standing, he’d kill us on the spot for not following orders.”

  “You’re right,” Carrie acknowledged.

  “Burn it down!” Zach called out.

  One of the men lit a glass kerosene lamp, then tossed it through an open door. The lamp shattered, spilling a carpet of flaming oil across smooth pine floorboards. In minutes, the old wood structure that lay beneath the handmade bricks was fully engulfed. Zach and his men had to back up several times, first because of the growing heat and, later, because of the risk of one of the tall brick walls collapsing onto them.

  “I ain’t got to tell you all that word of what we did here better not make it back to Bryan. Are we clear?” Zach said. He looked at each in his group, seeking confirmation that they held an alliance between them. “You all know he’s kindly high-strung. He’ll kill all of us if he gets wind of this.”

  “He’s an asshole,” Carrie muttered.

  Zach cocked his head in agreement. “I’ll give you that but until we find a different asshole with a different plan this is all we got. Now let’s get that deer down and get back on the road.”

  27

  Their first day’s ride took Barb and Conor past the roadside barbecue joint that held memories for both of them. Barb remembered being locked there in an old garage with the other women who’d been kidnapped with her. Conor’s memories were of finding the man that Ragus had tied up there and left for him.

  Barb hadn’t wanted to stay there at first but Conor told her it looked like it might rain in the night. They’d be better off staying under a real roof than stretched out under a tiny tarp in the woods. In the end she conceded, telling herself that she was returning to this place as a victor, not as a victim. The men who’d brought her here the first time were dead now and she’d played a part in dispatching them.