by Al Ewing
His smile vanished.
"So go ahead. Hold back. Make out you're better than us. It'll last just long enough for you to die. And then we'll forget you were ever anything but the main course."
Cade nodded.
"So. You're in charge 'cause you're the biggest bastard here."
"That's right." smiled Strong. "Now, you gonna eat the boy? Or is the boy gonna eat you?"
Cade shrugged.
"Neither."
Then he moved.
Strong was still smiling right up until the lamp crashed to the floor, lighting everything up like a horror movie and throwing dark shadows onto the walls. He tried to bring his hands up, but they weren't quick enough. Cade's teeth were already in his neck, biting into the jugular.
Cade snapped his head back. There was a tearing sound that made the people skulking by the walls lean forward, anticipating.
Strong couldn't quite believe it. He kept not believing it when Cade starting ripping chunks of flesh out his throat and chest with his fingers, using the switchblade in his pocket to carve. He died not believing it.
The last thing he saw was Cade chewing his own meat.
Cade swallowed. It didn't taste too good, but he figured he needed to eat plenty if he wanted to make an impression, so he cut off a little more. Strong hadn't expected that. He'd spent a little too long with folks who either took orders or died quick. He'd starting thinking he was as invulnerable as his own image. The man was a sucker for his own hype.
Bad mistake for a man to make.
Cade tossed a chunk of meat to the boy. "Eat up." The boy looked at him for a second, then tore into the scrap. Cade figured there was more where that came from if he needed it, and it'd stop the boy doing anything stupid for the minute. Right now he had other fish to fry.
He stood up and turned to look at the cannibals. There were more coming now - trickling in to see what the fuss was. Some of Strong's blood had got on the lamp, drenching Cade in red light. He tore into another strip of flesh with his teeth, and the hot iron taste of Strong's blood made his head swim. Hell of a thing.
Half of them were shrinking back against the wall, trying to take in what had happened. These had been people, and then they'd given Strong everything they had, right down to their humanity, just to survive. Cade figured they'd be easy work.
It was the others that he didn't like the looks of. The ones who were leaning forward, eyes narrowed, almost salivating. Animals had a habit of challenging the alpha male for pack dominance - or Cade had heard something like that on Discovery, anyhow. He figured if he wanted this lot on his side, he was going to need to apply a little carrot and stick.
He looked each of them in the eye, one by one. Then he growled, deep in his throat.
"I'm in charge now."
He kept looking, looking for the challenge, looking for the eye-fuck. There was a big one, long hair, biker tattoos, matted beard - he'd muscled his way to the front. His teeth weren't just rotten, they were black, most missing. This one hadn't come into it out of fear.
He'd come into it because he liked the idea.
This was going to be the one. Cade locked eyes, eye-fucking him right back, then spat. If the biker backed down now, he was a coward. Cade was hoping he wouldn't.
He needed some stick to go with his carrot.
The biker charged, lanching himself forward, letting out an animal roar. Cade stepped to the side, catching the biker's head in his hands and twisting. There was a loud crack, like a branch breaking, and the biker's body stumbled forward to crash onto the tile floor.
Cade looked back at the crowd. Some of the eager ones were leaning back, mistrustful, weighing it up. They knew that what happened to the biker was probably going to happen to them, and that was the lesson Cade wanted them to take away.
Time for lesson two.
He leant down, using his skull-handled switchblade to cut a fat strip of meat off the biker's calf. Then he tossed it to the furthest man forward. Then he did that again, carving up the biker, tossing scraps of meat to the crowd. The growls turned to mutters of satisfaction - occasionally even gratitude. Once or twice, Cade heard human words.
A couple of the cannibals still didn't get the message. Any time one of them got within a couple of feet, Cade slit him across the throat with the switchblade and then opened up his belly. Then he used their meat to feed the rest. The message was pretty simple. I'm in charge. Act up, you die. Toe the line, you live and get fed.
Cade might have been cynical about politics, but he was pretty good at it.
Eventually, the ragged people in the BART station all had meat in their hands and in their mouths, and Cade was a bloody mess, coated with clotting red. Occasionally he still chewed on a piece of Strong, just to keep the illusion up.
He was the leader now.
Time to lead.
"Okay. Round here's deserted. Nobody left to eat. You been following bullshit." He wasn't used to making speeches, but he didn't have to say much. They were already looking at him with heads cocked, curious, like dogs following the stick before you threw it.
"Head north - up Van Ness, up Franklin, towards Marina Boulevard. Big Safeway - that's where the meat is. Meat in cans -" There was a rumble of discontent, he was losing them - "Raw meat. On the hoof. Human meat. Weak meat. Use kids as bait, you'll starve. You got to hunt."
He stopped, and looked at them. They blinked back at him, unsure.
Cade growled. He'd drawn them a god-damned map. What the hell more did they need?
"Git!"
They got.
As the throng of barely-human, half-naked things scuttled and scuffled up the steps towards the failing light, Cade noticed Fuel-Air standing in the light, shaking his head. On an impulse, Cade put his hand on one of the cannibals - one who looked a little more like he knew what was going on.
"No women, no kids. Someone eats a woman or a kid, I kill ten of you for every one that falls." The cannibal looked at him, opening his rotted mouth. "I will do it. Git."
The cannibal scurried into the shifting crowd, passing the word on in halting, broken English. Cade looked to Fuel-Air, but Fuel-Air was gone.
Cade wondered if he'd have thought of that on his own. He wondered if he'd have cared one way or another.
He looked at the marks on the wall and mused for a second on just how people - human beings, bankers and stockbrokers, CEOs, educated folk - could fall so far in just a couple of years. Then he shook his head, figuring himself for a damn fool.
Hard part wasn't falling. Falling was easy as hell.
Hard part was standing up in the first place.
Pretty soon they were all gone and it was just Cade - and the boy, gnawing on a piece of tattooed skin, looking at him with narrowed eyes. Questioning. Cade turned to look at him.
No point in sending him out to die with the rest of them. The Pastor's men were going to take a hell of a hit, but they had at least a couple of sniping rifles and a hell of a lot of other weapons. Cade figured the cannibals were going to knock his cosy paradise for a loop, maybe shake the faithful up a little bit. Make things harder.
Then when Cade came back, the Pastor's paradise might just be open for a coup. Worth trying, anyhow.
Cade would've made a hell of a politician.
He nodded at the boy. "You. Go get me my knife. I think I left it in a fella out there."
The boy looked at him warily for a second, then vanished. He was back a couple of minutes later with Cade's knife.
Cade took it from him, slotted it into his belt, and saluted. "I'm abdicating. Rule wisely now."
The boy looked uncomprehendingly at him as he climbed the steps. Cade figured he was better off alone than he had been with the rest of them. And he was a hell of a lot safer in a deserted BART station with a couple of dead folks than he would've been with Cade.
What the fuck was that shit? A salute? You growing a sense of humour in your old age, dog?
Fuel-Air was sitting under a tree with
a porno mag and an open can of coffee granules. Cade nodded to him, then set off down Market Street, heading for the intersection with Oak. "Sure."
About fuckin' time, man. Shit, you look like all ten fuckin' Jason movies. You planning on washing some of that shit off before you meet the fuckin' hippies? They're gonna think you're Charles Manson or some shit, dog... fuckin' helter skelter n' shit, right?
Cade narrowed his eyes for a second, wondering what Fuel-Air knew. There was something about Fuel-Air that Cade was starting to find troubling, beyond the fact that he was a sure sign Cade was going nuts.
Hell with it. He needed to wash off the blood and find a change of clothes. Fuel-Air was right about that, at least. Cade nodded towards him.
"You coming?"
Fuel-Air flashed his usual shit-eating grin. Cade noticed he'd gotten a gold tooth from somewhere. With a diamond lodged in it.
Thought you'd never ask, my meat-chuckin', Pastor-fuckin' brother. Thought you'd never fuckin' ask.
Cade scowled, picking at the dried blood on his arm.
Goddamn Fuel-Air never could take anything seriously.
Chapter Fourteen
The War
No dead on Oak Street.
Cade didn't know whether that was on account of the cannibals having eaten them, or whether he was in hippie territory and they'd picked them all up to use as fertiliser. Either way, he wasn't comfortable. He never thought he'd want to see a rotting corpse laying in the street, but now it came to it, he missed them. They were a sign people weren't around to screw things up.
Cade was missing the dead and resenting the living, and he figured that was more than a little fucked up. So when he saw the coffee shop after the intersection with Divisadero, he figured it was as good a place as any to wash up and rest for the night.
The taps weren't working, but there was an old cooler behind the counter with bottled water in it, and he managed to get a fair amount of the blood off his hands and face with it, although he had to get rid of his tank top. After that, he checked in the back room.
That was where he found Frank.
Cade didn't know it was Frank - all there was as far as he was concerned was a skeleton that stank to high heaven. He didn't know it was Frank's white t-shirt he found in the back of a closet, either. But he was pretty grateful to Frank anyway. Frank being there let him know the place hadn't been found yet. It meant he was as safe as he was going to be for a few hours. It meant he could get a little sleep, tend to his wounds, think about what he was going to do next.
Frank had a little whisky too, which Cade poured into the holes in his hands and over his chest, letting the alcohol burn into the cuts, saving a little for drinking purposes. It wasn't exactly standard medical practice, but he figured it was better than just letting the wounds fester, especially after his pierced hands had pulled a few bodies inside out. It was a miracle he hadn't come down with an infection already.
After he'd cleaned up and washed his wounds as best he could, there wasn't much else left to do but watch the street. The coffee shop had a second floor, and from there Cade had a good look at anybody who might be coming from Haight-Ashbury. Plus, sitting with a view to the west, he got a good look at the sun going down. Cade wasn't a man who had much appreciation for natural beauty, but he wasn't about to turn it away when it got handed to him on a plate.
And it was a hell of a sunset. Boiling pink clouds scudding across a sky filled with fire and brimstone, blood and copper. Cade hadn't seen a sight like it in forever.
Kind of reminds you of something, don't it, dog? Sky all on fire and shit.
Cade shook his head. He knew what Fuel-Air was getting at, and there wasn't any point thinking about it that he could see. That sunset wasn't anything like an artillery strike. And Cade wasn't going to think about the artillery strike anyway, so it didn't much matter if it was.
He looked up at Fuel-Air, who was sitting in a booth on the other side of the room, sipping a frappucino. Half his face was missing, and he only had one arm, plus his guts were hanging out on the table. So the frappucino was slurping out through his ruptured throat and what was left of his guts, pooling on the table and the floor.
He still had Strong's gold tooth shining out from what was left of his mouth, though. Goddamn fashion plate.
Shit, dog, sorry. I should get myself together. Bringin' back painful memories and shit, I bet.
Cade spat, and took another sip of whisky.
"Where'd you get the coffee?"
Ways and means, bitch. Fuel-Air grinned, flashing his new diamond. Cade hoped he got sick of that thing fast. It'd been irritating enough on Strong.
Say what you like about Strong, at least he knew enough to stay dead.
Cade could feel the memory pressing on the back of his mind. It wasn't going away any time soon, but he was damned if he was going to spend time reliving it. He was getting enough of Fuel-Air anyway without remembering the way his voice shook as he huddled next to the humvee.
Shit, dog, you reckon the Captain knows there ain't no motherfucker out there? Figure he's just getting his total up for the Commander - shit, is this dumb motherfucker actually in charge?
He didn't need to hear Sergeant A standing up for the chain of command the way he always did when there was a clusterfuck going on all around him.
There's a chain of command, Killer. It's there for a reason. If the Captain says artillery, we go with artillery. The Captain's the Captain and what he says is what... Jesus, Killer, what the fuck do you think you're doing? Sit down! Cade, I said sit down...
He sure as hell didn't need to remember the Captain barking into the radio set, laying down co-ordinates that were maybe a hundred and fifty metres from where they were sat, calling up an artillery strike on some bad intelligence, a damn phantom Chinese whisper that'd made its way up and down the comms. They were close enough to see with the naked eye that there wasn't any Republican Guard in that field, and even if there had been, Cade could have blown them away without breaking a sweat whether there'd been a squad of trained Marines to back him up or not. But Captain Chaos, in his infinite wisdom, was calling up an artillery strike. A hundred and fifty metres away from them.
Sir, I'm respectfully asking you to rethink this. It's danger close...
The Lieutenant. Nice guy, at least by Cade's reckoning. Named Hunter Cragg, if you can believe that. If Cade had seen that name in a movie, he'd have laughed. Hunter Cragg was a good man, though. Hunter Cragg had seen the elephant. He had one hell of a lot of combat experience. Ran his men right, gave them shit when they needed it, let it ride when they didn't, smart enough to know which was which. In another war - say, a war where the people running it had any kind of plan - Lt. Hunter Cragg would have been hailed and respected as the leader of men that he was. They'd have put a medal on him. They'd have made him Captain, maybe Commander. Maybe General. Hell, maybe President.
Cade figured as long as he was wishing, he'd like a pony.
Hunter Cragg had been stuck in the war he was stuck in, and in that war folks like Dollings got to be Captain and folks like Cragg had to suck it up and be Lieutenant and do what they were told. And if they were told to jump in the shit, they were meant to ask how deep.
Cade took another shot of whisky.
He hated thinking about the Captain most of all.
Danger close? You little pissant, danger close is coward talk! No such thing as danger close for a Marine!
Cragg's voice came again. Desperate. A strong man begging.
Sir, please, call off the strike... at least delay it while we pull back...
And then that barking, angry, ugly voice of the Captain. Captain Paul Dollings, known in the lower ranks as Captain Chaos, born in the great state of Texas, enjoying his first taste of combat and divorced from any kind of shared reality. A first-class, grade-A dumb-fuck son of a bitch, to put it mildly.
Captain Dollings had never seen real combat in his life. He'd never seen the elephant. And every word he
said made that loud and clear.
Coward talk! You had best wake the fuck up, Lieutenant, because the only place you're headed after this kind of gross insubordination is a military tribunal! I'm going to tear that bar off you myself, do you hear me, you damned coward? You're finishing out what's left of this war as a grunt like... who the goddamned hell is that? Jesus! Put that gun down! This is treason! This is...
It wasn't a happy memory, all in all. But that moment when the Captain had seen Cade raising his assault rifle, had seen the barrel swinging towards him, had looked into Cade's eyes and read the unmistakeable truth in them - that Cade was going to wipe the Captain out like a stain right there and then, and not because of any personal dislike of the man, or hatred of country or Corps or government or God or any other reason that'd allow the Captain to die a hero...
...but simply because Captain Paul Dollings was a dumb son of a bitch who was in the way and needed to be taken out of it...
...to have the Captain look in his eyes and understand his own worthlessness in the seconds before he died...
...that was a happy memory.
In his booth, Fuel-Air grinned, raising his frappucino.
You the man, dog. The look on that motherfucker's face. Fuckin' Kodak, man.
Cade raised his whisky, and nearly smiled. That'd probably been the second-best moment of his life, right after his first kill. Then Fuel-Air ruined it.
Too bad you shot the wrong guy, huh?
Sure, thought Cade. Too bad.
Too bad the Lieutenant had to go and be a god-damned hero by hurling himself in front of the bullets. Cade had liked the Lieutenant. Hunter Cragg was a hell of a good man, and he treated his men right. He'd seen the elephant.
Cade didn't know why he'd step in front of the barrel like that. Just couldn't figure it.
But he had.
The bullets had pretty much torn Cragg into pieces, which was a hell of a shame for his wife and his little boy. Cragg'd probably have survived it if he'd let himself hold back for a second. He'd probably have killed Cade, but Cade had figured on dying anyway. Probably wouldn't have been such a loss.