by Chuck Rogers
I drooped my wrist at him and rolled my eyes. "Ask me . . ."
His right cheek muscle flexed.
I was enjoying this a little too much.
I was probably pissing off the wrongest guy ever.
He took the bait.
Turns out Marshal Miles wasn't made of steel after all.
His voice was no longer conversational.
It was very tightly controlled.
"How many of my people did you kill?"
"Kill? Well? Funny you should ask. Let me tell you a story."
Like the last ki ki the Marshal and I had shared, I told Miles the absolute truth. I told him everything that'd happened after he left the station, and I mean everything. Then I told him everything that'd happened to me since entering Ged's World of what Remains. I finally got back to the now. "So, to answer your question. Larry was breathing when I left him. I mean, he was whistling through his tactical pen like a teakettle, and man, he looked bad, but he was breathing."
Marshal Miles spent long moments staring at me.
I perked an eyebrow. "Do you believe me?"
"Thank you for sparing Larry."
That was big of him.
"So what's your plan? Get over on the SOG and then get within range of Ged?"
"Something like that."
"Listen, I have people I intend to get back to. You want to pull a suicide run on Ged you knock yourself out, but for me that's Plan Z. Don't even think about involving me. I gotta find out how many fighters he has, how many heavy weapons and what other enemies he has. Then maybe I try and kill him or blow a bunch of shit up. I don't think killing him will stop this. His movement is too big. So I have every intention of extracting back to Malibu intact and getting the defenses ready. Stay out of my way. I'll stay out of yours. If any pertinent information pops up on either end we can exchange details."
I can't remember the last time, if ever, anyone outstared me, but this asshole wanted a shot at the title. He finally relented. "You were telling the truth about Malibu? All of it?"
"I never lie to cops."
"Really."
"I tell the truth or keep my mouth shut. Did a nickel in Leavenworth over that once. I could do another."
I'm not saying he started to respect me, but if he believed even half of what I had told him he might well have been coming to the conclusion that I was a serious asshole.
"You shouldn't have hit me."
"You keep saying that. You know something I don't?"
Then he smiled.
The pale-eyed hangman smiled at the man on the scaffold and lifted his chin.
"As a matter of fact I do."
On cue a black, 80's vintage, Chevy Suburban rolled up. I'd pulled security detail as an MP and done plenty of private security work in LA. One look at the body panels and how the truck rode on the shocks when it came to a halt told me it was armored. Marrs slid out of the back seat.
"Frame! Quit fucking with Barneys!" He held up a black hood for me to put on. "You have a date to see the man."
* * *
THE HOOD CAME OFF.
I was in the White House.
I'm pretty sure my face registered some shock.
I wasn't just in the White House.
I was in the Oval Office.
After about a half-hour car ride, a walk across a parking lot and going down some corridors I was led into the room. I blinked around. There it all was. The ceiling, the walls, and the presidential Resolute Desk with the three windows behind it and the two flags. There were a few differences. Both flags were black fields with the lightning bolt breaking the Earth in two. Then there was the guy sitting behind the desk.
He didn't look presidential.
Now, God-King of the Apocalypse, Ged for short?
Yeah, he looked the part.
He was a huge, light-skinned black. His buzz-cut hair and chinstrap beard were that black person with red hair ginger color. He was as big as the man-mountain Chuck I'd met at the roadblock, but while Chuck was all natural the man behind the desk had obviously spent many long hours in the gym moving very heavy iron.
Funny thing?
I knew him, and I knew exactly where I was.
"Does the Great Communicator know you stole his office?"
William Gedrick Castaneda raised a bemused eyebrow. "Check out the big brain on Frame."
Marrs shrugged non-commitally.
We were in the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley. I'd taken the tour a few years ago.
"Thank you, Marrs."
Marrs left us alone.
I didn't exactly know Ged, but he'd been a professional wrestler. A fairly famous one. When he was a face he wrestled under the name "Big Billy G." When he wrestled as a heel he wore a mask and was Dread Ged. Being a big black guy he only wrestled under his Spanish last name when he worked in the Mexican leagues. In Mexico he was known as La Nube del Olvido.
The Oblivion Cloud.
I smiled at my new overlord.
"You know, I once wrestled a show you were in. It was a dark match. You probably wouldn't remember. You probably weren't even in the building yet."
"I remember everything." Ged regarded me coldly. "I remember everybody."
Oh shit.
Ged suddenly grinned impishly. It was startling in that face. "Frame Train."
Yeah, that was me.
I wrestled for bit. I was the Frame Train, with my tag-team partner, the bottle-blonde and be-sequinned Legendary Gary. We generated some heat in one of the development leagues and got a push but it never went anywhere. Wrestling is a rough business. I was told from the get-go I was starting out too old and my wrestling sucked dick, which it did. I was much better at hurting people than pretending to hurt people. I was also informed that I was a "skinny piece of shit" and needed to put on weight for the camera. I already mentioned I don't like lifting weights and steroids were a non-starter. I really only had three strengths as a professional wrestling heel. One, I excel at leering. Two, my wrestling may have sucked but my outside the ring evil antics generated solid heat. I had the crowd howling for my blood, and three? My promos? They killed. The things I said about all the girls wanting to get on board the Frame Train and my colorful metaphors about what exactly the Frame Train was going to do to his opponents and their various orifices had everyone including the AV guys blowing coffee out their noses.
I may have been the only professional wrestler in history to mix-and-match sexually paraphrasing Nietzsche and Freud while screaming with the veins in his neck standing out.
End of the day?
Wrestling is hard work. If you not an A or B-lister you spend your life driving from city to city living out of cheap hotels if your not actually living out of your car. It is a long, hard slog to Wrestlemania and most don't make it.
I figured that out early and got out with my body intact.
Ged started his interrogation with an innocent question.
"Whatever happened to Gary?"
I was all in.
"He got born again. He was doing motivational speeches last I heard."
Ged nodded sagely. It was a surprisingly common fate for a lot of wrestlers. "Have a seat."
For about one heartbeat I considered coming across the desk and finishing this dance. I'm pretty sudden, but the distance was long, I suspected deliberately so. Then there was the coal-black, Desert Eagle .44 Magnum automatic casually laying within Ged's reach on the Resolute Desk. What looked like the biggest belly-dancing sword of all time lay in a sword stand on the window table behind him.
The edge gleamed like it was sharpened and I doubted it was just for decoration.
I had a strange feeling that the Desert Eagle on the table might not be loaded but there might be something else I couldn't see that was.
For that matter, I wasn't exactly sure I could take Ged in a stand up fight. I didn't know what other training he'd had, but he had several inches in height and at least a hundred pounds on me. I'd seen him
wrestle. He was light on his feet for a super-heavyweight, and ask any fool who had gone up to a pro in a bar and said, "That shit's fake!" Professional wrestling can go real in a heartbeat, and you will be broken like kindling.
I took a seat in the Oval Office.
When I fucked Ged's ass I would do it the traditional way.
From behind.
The POTUS chair creaked as Ged leaned back. "Tell me a story."
I told the big lie about coming down the coast in a boat. I threw in the orcas when I disembarked and I had his interest. I told the truth about pushing a motorcycle up into the hills until I found a passable road and getting shot at. I told him what I'd seen and about getting arrested and not receiving due process from the Hangman. I told him about Larry. That got a snort of amusement out of him. I omitted the tracheotomy. He didn't ask any questions until I had finished.
"Frame?"
"Yeah?"
"What is up with you and Ron?"
God damn it.
"Who?"
"The Barney you laid out in the latrine trench."
The Marshal was right.
Shouldn't of hit him.
"I don't know." I shook my head. "It was a rough night. I took it out on him."
"You are technically still a provisional. You do not have the right to fight or fuck anyone. You get fucked or get beat down. Prospects can fight and fuck but only with permission."
"Well . . . just . . . shit."
"Shit is right." Ged nodded meaningfully. "You fucked up everything."
It looked like Marshal Miles was getting the last laugh after all.
Ged continued to regard me coldly from under those black-Neanderthal brow ridges. "After that stunt you pulled in Agoura you were bucking to be the first provisional to ever make member without being a prospect first, but now?"
God damn it.
"Now you are going to have to be punished."
I remembered Dez, her whip of braided paracord and talk of tying people between two trucks.
Ged read my mind. "Then again, this has all happened very quickly for you. You did not spend months as a provisional learning the rules, much less a prospect learning our ways. On top of that you are already very popular. Flogging you will not go down well with the sons and daughters, and I cannot have you in the med for a month with your spine showing through. I think I may have immediate use for you."
"I'd like to volunteer for immediate use."
"For that matter, I really cannot put the guy who led the bayonet charge at the Battle of Agoura back in purple." He stared at me like an ice cold Buddha who regularly deadlifted six hundred pounds for reps. "What am I to do with you, Frame?"
"Hug me, pet me, squeeze me and name me George?"
If Ged got the Looney Tunes reference he wasn't amused.
"You do not seem to understand the seriousness of your situation."
"I think I do, and I don't think an apology or begging is going to cut it."
"No, it will not."
"So?"
"So what you have done requires action."
"So, I'll just keep smiling and wait for the hammer to fall?"
Ged suddenly smiled.
It reminded me of Miles.
This was not a good development.
"That is exactly what you are going to do. Meantime you may consider yourself officially reprimanded."
I was thinking that a flogging, one, over and done might have been the better course. "Thanks."
"You are welcome. What is up with you and Dez?"
"What do you mean?"
"You said it was a rough night, and you took it out on the Barney."
I sagged in my presidential cabinet chair. "I don't know what you heard, but Dez is a complicated girl. Like any rumor you've heard about her is probably true kind of complicated. She just lost her sister. Let's just say the evening was a physical and emotional roller-coaster."
"And?"
"I guess she's my girlfriend. Or since she's a member, I'm hers?"
He didn't smile.
"You know Dez and her sister Del were founding members."
"I suspected."
"And Dez is a personal friend of mine. If you fuck her over I will be very displeased with you."
"Honestly, despite the baggage? I kind of dig her."
"That is good to know. I am told you volunteered to help Dickie hunt the burned. You can track?"
"Since I was a kid. My uncle Mankiller taught me."
That almost got a bit of a amusement.
Face it. Mankiller is a cool name.
"Marrs told me you and Horse were using hand-sign."
I was getting the feeling very little escaped the eye of Ged. "Yeah."
"Marrs believes you were a soldier."
The soldiers are former, Marines are forever rap almost came out. I just kept it simple.
"Force Recon."
"Really."
"Finding and fucking the enemy was my job. I did two tours overseas."
I saw the wheels turning in his mind. "I am promoting you to prospect."
"Thanks."
"Punishment still pending."
"I'm sure you'll think of something creative."
Ged smiled and it reached his eyes. "I am famous for it."
* * *
"FUCK TENT! WHOO!"
Dickie was excited.
"Fuck tent, Frame! Fuck tent!"
Fucking Dickie.
He was so happy.
Horse and Franco shoved me inside.
It was a Cirque du Sodom and Gomorrah of debauchery.
The Fuck Tent was big enough to house a county fair livestock auction and I wouldn't have been surprised if that's where the SOG had stolen it. There was a bar with taps and bottles of just about everything. A whole boar turned on a motorized spit. The DJ alternately pounded gangster rap and metal. There were actually people dancing. There were women dancing in cages. There were two girls dancing on stripper poles. A cloud of cigarette, cigar and pot smoke hovered about level with my eyebrows. Members were doing lines and doings serious drugs. In one corner of the tent ladies and gentlemen of the SOG appeared to be engaging in games of chance. In another corner a small mob of members and prospects had encircled something just out of view and chanted.
"GO! GO! GO!"
Pretty sure I didn't want to know.
Along one wall of the tent a line of naked women and a few young men knelt. Members and prospects unceremoniously grabbed them by the hair and took them through the tent flap that I gathered led to the fucking part of the Fuck Tent. I noticed that a lot of the victims being dragged in or out of the Fuck Tent proper were stumbling, and it wasn't just from abuse.
They were blind.
I guess it showed on my face.
Franco was a not-so-nice Catholic School Italian boy. A trace of guilt ghosted across face. "Hey, man. At least we're feeding them."
Dickie cackled. "Feeding 'em dick!"
Fucking Dickie Bell.
I looked over at the taps and lied. "I haven't had a beer in four months."
Horse grinned. "What kind of beer you want?"
"What kind you got?"
"Two kinds. Pitchers, and mugs."
"Pitcher, please."
Terrified girls with sight dressed in variously provocative outfits carried trays of liquor and food to the tables and couches. Some were not so terrified and aggressively courted members.
Horse shouted at a serving girl. "Hey you!"
She tensed and turned around.
Fuck me.
The little cotton sundress, hair up in pigtails and lipstick threw me off for a second.
But it was Jaiden.
Jaiden's eyes bugged out of his Cover Girl blue eye-shadow at the sight of me. He screamed, dropped his serving tray and nearly snapped both ankles trying to run away in heels.
"Awww shit!" Franco roared. "Looks like everyone's heard about Frame and his dick of death!"
Members and prospects within ra
nge looked up at my name and shouted and raised their glasses to me.
"Frame!"
"Congratulations, man!"
"Expecting big shit out of you, prospect!"
"Keep it up, fuckface!"
Really? Still?
"I hear he always keeps it up!"
Thank you.
I grinned and waved and put an "Aw gee!" smile on my face.
Horse glared after Jaiden. "Don't you run from me you little bitch!"
I grimaced inside as Horse stalked after him.
People whooped at Jaiden's expense.
"J-Girl gonna get taken to the rez!"
I kept my concern off my face as my grommet tightened.
Security was breeched.
Jaiden was a grenade in drag that could blow up my cover any second.
Someone shouted over a megaphone.
"FUCK AUCTION! NEW MEAT!"
Everyone looked over as a spotlight hit a stage in a corner of the tent.
A young black man stood on the stage crying.
He was black, branded, had recently been whipped and was blind.
A member in full ringmaster mode shouted over the megaphone. "He's black! He's buff! He's blind and he's already crying like a little bitch! Who wants first crack at him?"
I'm a bad person.
I've done bad things.
But I am a red-blooded American of my generation.
The sight of a black man being sold as a slave at auction started flipping switches.
Franco nodded grudgingly. "Nice abs."
Everyone and everything around me started slowing down.
No, I was speeding up.
Dickie's fist pounded the table. "Know what I'm gonna do tonight?"
Franco looked away from two girls making out in a cage. "What's that, Dickie?"
"I'm gonna fuck me a Nubian faggot!"
The sound around me in the Fuck Tent started going tunnel-hearing.
My knuckles creaked into fists.
"Yo, Dickie," Franco was appalled. "I am half tempted to tell Chuck you said that."
"Fuck Chuck! I am going to fuck that Nubian faggot and call him Chuck while I fuck him! Tell Chuck I said that!"
Franco roared. "I think I will!"
My gaze snapped over to the line of slaves waiting to be raped outside the Fuck Tent proper.
People think the term seeing red is a metaphor.
It's not.
I'd been on the wrong side of people like the SOG before.