by D W Bell
Unimpressed and bored, Boudreaux swirled his drink while he waited for the reverend to finish, “Well, I admire your dogged adherence to the crusader theme at least, but you’ve turned it into a clumsy, ugly cliché. I’ll wager quite a few of your knights could properly perform the Klan handshake if pressed, and the rest of those bald-headed goons probably sieg heil with a fistful of Nazi decoder rings, but you’ve completely misunderstood the art of it. These good ol’ boys of yours are nothing but uncouth, albeit violent, amateurs.”
“Better than the darkies and kikes you got runnin’ for you, Boudreaux!” Even the pastor was surprised by his caustic vitriol, but his anger quickly fizzled as the other man simply sighed in response.
“I had hoped you were smarter than that, pastor.” Boudreaux scolded the old man with the disappointed tone of a teacher explaining a basic concept to a pupil he knows will never truly grasp the principle. “All that divisive race and religion rigmarole is just to fire up and tribalize the bumpkins against each other. It’s all meaningless.”
“Meaningless…” The pastor mumbled in confusion. He had carved out an empire for himself through the deft utilization of religion and race. It was not meaningless. It could not be. He shook his head to clear the mental fog and opened his mouth to interject but was silenced by Lilith’s disembodied voice calling from the intercom system.
“Sir. All units are in place and await your commands.”
“Ah! Delightful.” Boudreaux gave the reverend an exaggerated wink, “Shall we sit across from each other at your lovely little chess board? I’ll let you play the white pieces. Hmm. No, that won’t do will it. Too tropey. Besides, you’ve shown yourself to be more of the checkers sort, eh, sport?”
Lilith entered the room and began tapping away at her digital tablet to activate and select sources for the multiple screens of the office media center.
Boudreaux rose from his seat and refilled both glasses patting the crestfallen pastor on the shoulder as he helped him to his fuzzy-slippered feet, “Reverend, you look downright tuckered out. Let’s just watch a little television to unwind.”
Both men took seats in front of the bank of video monitors that began to display images of the surrounding compound. The pastor’s brow furrowed as he recognized the setting for today’s exciting episode.
“What’s this? You’re filming here? Why?”
“It struck me as the perfect location to produce our little educational film. You see, after that piss poor showing in Los Angeles, I figure you and your boys would benefit from seeing what a real operation looks like. Get a little game film of a team playing at the professional level as it were. An exhibition scrimmage of sorts.”
The pastor looked with bewilderment at the dizzying myriad of stationary and mobile camera angles dancing across the screens. “How did you get all these cameras installed without my men noticing?”
“We got into drone technology early on and have continued to grow with the increasing capabilities. I call this particular fleet The Swarm. But that’s enough questions for now. Sit back and enjoy the show. We’ll discuss production notes after.”
Boudreaux signaled to Lilith and with a swipe of her finger she activated 108 green lights in 108 headsets and silently sent 108 killers over the wall outside.
―
The White Knights were simply no match for the mongrel horde. Boudreaux’s operators were everywhere and appeared to know the lay of the land better even than the pastor’s garrisoned units. The entire compound was overrun in less time than it takes to deliver a pizza.
Boudreaux entertained himself by providing a cackling running commentary, often with imaginative voice-overs for the silent video scenes. With a gasp of excitement Boudreaux gestured for one particular feed to be plastered across the screens as he recognized a teachable moment.
“My lord, reverend! Is that your king dick bubba?”
The pastor raised his head and nodded in assent as he recognized the burly, bald-headed commander of his little legion.
“Splendid! That boy he’s squaring off against is our Golem. This is a perfect illustration of what I was trying to teach you earlier. Race and religion are immaterial to the mission. One must choose the proper tool regardless of personal prejudice.” Boudreaux’s eyes lit up with a little giggle at a private joke, “The Chosen, indeed.”
“He’s Jewish?”
“Not exactly. Golem is a member of the Druze community, sort of a half-Hindu offshoot of the Muslim faith in cahoots with the Jews since biblical times, which means your rednecks will double-hate him.” Boudreaux chuckled and took a drink, “No, sir. The Jews may be the official chosen people of God, but I’ll choose this vicious bastard every time.”
A real-life action movie standoff was developing on the screens before them. The cornered commander of the pastor’s forces had already dropped his weapons and torn off his shirt, taunting Boudreaux’s Golem to fight hand-to-hand, as God intended.
With a smile broad enough to be visible to the drones above, Golem moved to oblige him. He dropped his gear and stood shirtless, displaying both sides of his open hands in front of him like a boxer demonstrating that there were no loaded fists or other trickery, then assumed a fighting stance. With a roar that was almost audible from where the two-man audience watched the video feed, the raging redneck charged Golem.
He didn’t make it. Smooth as silk the smiling Golem pulled a knife from concealment at the small of his back and sent it hurtling to target with a spinning flourish. The hungry blade found flesh and bit deep, plunging through bone and into brain, burying itself to the hilt in the shiny, bald head.
“And there we have it!” Boudreaux smugly toasted the conquered Crassus, “The right tool for the job, regardless of color or creed. No heroics or histrionics, just results.”
The defeated and dejected old man in the bathrobe was nearly in tears. “I suppose you’ll have me step down from my ministry.”
“God, no! I want you to continue shepherding your flock and doing the Lord’s work! There will just be a minor shift in command structure.”
Lilith approached Boudreaux with a perfectly manicured finger to her earpiece as she listened intently to situation reports from commanders on the grounds, “Sir, Golem indicates all objectives have been secured and requests your directive regarding the disposition of the remaining antagonists.”
Both men looked at the image of a knot of kneeling shapes surrounded by armed men that played from several angles on several screens. “Well, I had hoped these boys would comport themselves in an impressive enough manner that they might prove viable as a farm team, but this crop is stunted and blighted and mustn’t be allowed to contaminate our pure strains. Not even worth feeding as tackling dummies or cannon fodder.” Boudreaux leaned back in thought. “What do you say, rev? They are your babies after all, but they did fail you at every turn. Should we give your white knights a chance at redemption? Or shall we purge all that foolishness and move on?”
The broken old man could only drop his head into his hands and nod his ascent to the choice he knew he really didn’t have. “Atta’boy, reverend. Born again, like a phoenix rising from the ashes.” Boudreaux turned to Lilith, “Full clear, dear. Thank you.”
Part II:
Once upon a time, I, Chuang Tzu dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering higher and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly.
‒Chuang Tzu
Chapter 24
“Rise and shine, my little butterfly. You slept well, I trust?” The nightmares had been horrible. Bloody and torn faces just beyond the shadows reminding him of his sins with haunting eyes: the innocent faces of children from the village he had burned stared blankly from scorched and blistered brows, the bloodied head of the man in Hong Kong who still looked on him with pity from empty eye sockets, Freya with a crooked neck to match her crooked smile, and his wife and best friend furiously fucking, shattered limbs akimbo, blood-stippled flesh twisting into impossible positions, scowling all
the while at him in their angry, joyless humping.
John would have welcomed any wakeup call to escape these terrible images, but these were the deviously dulcet tones of his malefactor Boudreaux, and proof that some horrors of the waking world were worse than any dream.
“My lord, John, you look like hell! You have been out at least eighteen hours and you look like you haven’t slept in a week. The sedatives did not agree with you?” Boudreaux looked at John with genuine concern as he busied himself unbuckling the man’s restraints, “Well, you better perk up, son. We have a lot riding on you and we need you fresh for the fight.”
“What fight?” The still groggy John sat up on the gurney and tried to shake the cobwebs and memories of the nightmares from his head. They were in an empty parking lot at a trailhead in a hilly, wooded area. “Where are we?”
“Atta’ boy, John. Now the gears are turning again. Little hamster finally made it back on his wheel in that thick skull of yours.” Boudreaux rapped his boney knuckles on John’s throbbing forehead, “I must have neglected to mention that you will have to fight your way into this stud program. The new one has to beat the old one, it’s tradition.”
“Sadly, Hans is more akin to a steer and should have been cut into steaks long ago, but rules are rules I suppose. Unfortunately for you, he has been personally trained by one of the world’s preeminent masters of Tiger kung fu for decades. Suffice it to say, he has never been defeated, which has put quite a damper on my program considering his handicap.”
“He’s handicapped?”
“Not in a way you can exploit to your advantage like Charlie’s limp. Hans is impotent, which is also a limpness.” Boudreaux chuckled at the pun, “Let’s walk and talk. Nothing like a stroll in the woods to clear one’s head.”
The men walked along the well-worn trail at a leisurely pace in, for John at least, uneasy silence. If it was true that he had been out for eighteen hours they could be most anywhere in the world, and he certainly did not recognize the landscape. John trudged along behind Boudreaux in the gray sweat suit that had been his only attire at the training facility while the other man sauntered up the trail resplendent in traditional English shooting attire, cheerily puffing on a meerschaum pipe stained nearly black from decades if not centuries of use. The sharp smoke of the English blend tobacco invaded John’s nose and caused him to sneeze. He asked again, “Where are we?”
“The only place in the world you can find real, authentic, traditional kung fu these days, my boy!”
“China?”
Boudreaux scoffed at the idea with a snort, “There ain’t been real kung fu in China since the commies took over. All that silly wu shu shit is just government propaganda derived to bilk westerners out of their discretionary funds. All flash and no substance. I must admit, though, the touring theatrical group with the acrobatic ‘monks’ was a nice touch.”
“No sir, John. If you want the real stuff you have to find the old families wherever they fled. Canada used to be a hotspot, but nowadays California is the Mecca for all sorts of martial arts. However, even in the relative safety of The Golden State, pseudo-communist governed as it is, many of the old families have died out and true masters are rather thin on the ground. As it has been said, only the strong survived, and you, my dear boy, are going to train under the tutelage of the strongest. If you survive, that is.”
“Hans is Chinese?”
“Not an inept leap of logic, John, but wrong I’m afraid. This is no descendant of the Han Dynasty, but Hans of Stuttgart, Germany.” Boudreaux puffed drily at his pipe with a smile to allow time for the absurdity of the idea to sink in, but no smoke would come. “I realize it seems a bit incongruous but allow me to fill you in on a little more background of our little project.” The dapper devil stopped to tamp the bowl and relight his pipe allowing the still haggard John to catch up, “Do keep up, son. Hans is a product of Lebensborn.”
“A product of what?”
“Well, I guess it was silly of me to assume you knew anything about history. I’m not the only one who has thought of this breeding thing. Lebensborn was the Nazi version.”
“Nazis?
“It means ‘Fount of Life.’ An old SS program devised to develop Germany into a nation of Aryan supermen, and women, through racial purity and selective breeding.”
Still a little puzzled, John queried, “So why all the Chinese stuff? It doesn’t seem to go along with the whole Aryan superiority angle.”
“Synergy, my boy! Synergy! We are displaying our progressiveness as an organization. Taking the lessons of the past—elitist, racist, and exclusionary as they may be—and combining them with the technology of the future for the greater good of our clients.” Boudreaux smirked in playful chagrin, “Viable or not, the mere existence of the program is a selling point in and of itself. Besides, when one owns such a valuable international heritage treasure such as a true, old-school kung fu master, one must display it in a properly gilded cage. Have you not learned from your time with me that perception is everything?”
“I suppose so. What’s with the music, though?”
“That’s enough question time for now. Let’s not break character, shall we?” Boudreaux adopted an exaggerated stage whisper, “Immerse in the moment. You must save your breath for the ascent. Stairway to Heaven, John. Whatever your spiritual equivalent of seventy-two virgins is, the earthly delights await you up there. But you’ll have to fight like hell to get it. Onward and upward, my boy! You first.”
The stagecraft of the devilish director was clearly effective. John thought he caught a whiff of incense floating on the breeze.
―
For once, Boudreaux had not been exaggerating. At the top of the stairs, in Southern California, John was instantly transported to a monastery in storybook feudal China, where saintly old masters imparted their wisdom to chosen disciples who then went out to make a better world.
It was if Boudreaux had enlisted Disney imagineers to trick the place out in faux-stone steps and Imperial veneers. Breaking through the trees of the Sierra Nevadas at the top of the stairs, John felt as if he had stepped into a Shaw Brothers film. Their ascent had even been accompanied by scene-appropriate music courtesy of speakers hidden in the trailside tree canopy.
“What the fuck is this?” A very spry looking old Chinese man stood barefoot and bare-chested in a pair of loose-fitting basketball shorts at the temple entrance. In scarred arms he cradled a VEPR-12 with two 12-round magazines duct-taped together for an old-school quick-change. The loaded mag was buckshot, the reload was all slugs.
“Master Fu, greetings!” Boudreaux climbed the last few steps and joined John in the clearing with a smile, “I hope we haven’t come at a bad time.”
“Mr. Boudreaux. We weren’t expecting you. I was wondering who turned on the goddamn music. Who’s this asshole?”
“Charming as always, Master Fu.” Boudreaux shook his head in amused disappointment at the old man’s breach of etiquette, “Allow me to introduce my protégé and martial champion John Smith.” Boudreaux cleared his throat, winked at John, mouthed the words my favorite part, and nodded for him to join in a formal bow. “By the laws of combat, and in accordance with our ancient charter, we do hereby challenge your chosen champion for breeding rights.”
Master Fu’s eyes narrowed in disbelief as he really looked at John for the first time, “This guy? He’s your champion? Looks like he barely limped up the stairs!”
“Believe you me, he was not my first choice either, but, he defeated our headmaster in single combat, killed him as a point of fact, and rules are rules.”
John thought he saw Master Fu’s eyes flash in shock at the statement, but it seemed to be in reaction to his extensive burn scars, “What happened to his face?”
“Gardening mishap. How is Hans?”
“Napping. We old men get cranky and aggressive without our naps.”
“Quite,” Boudreaux chuckled. “Well, we mustn’t wake him then. That would be ru
de. As you can see, my boy could use a little beauty rest as well, but he would sleep for decades with that face.” His eyes narrowed as his voice turned cold and he retrieved a flask from his inside coat pocket, “Master Fu, let us take a little refreshment together while we wait. We have much to discuss, and a little Laphroaig would do us both some good.”
“Come.” With another appraising glance at John, Master Fu tread softly but purposefully into the temple-like structure.
“An unexpected reprieve,” Boudreaux addressed John and then snarled, “You better make productive use of it and warm up whatever trick you used to convince Charlie, you’re gonna need it.” He puffed thoughtfully at his pipe and stepped toward the open door, “Hans is no fucking joke. I shit you negative.” Boudreaux always shifted to an approximation of what he felt the parlance of the listener was for truly serious statements, adopting mil-speak for Smith’s benefit.
But it had to be a joke. The sculpture of Teutonic perfection that stepped from the incensed darkness of the faux-temple, looking as if it was formed of twisted steel and rawhide, could not possibly be a product of Lebensborn. There was no way this monster was born in the 1940s. Maybe he looked like a super fit man in his 40’s, but even that guess was pushing it.
“That motherfucker is seventy-years-old?” Incredulous, John stood to Boudreaux’s left shoulder who was seated in one of those red-stained chairs you see as decoration along the walls of Chinese buffets. The expanse of sand that formed the training grounds glimmered in the fading sun.