The Afterblight Chronicles: Death Got No Mercy

by Al Ewing

  Those folks were just of a certain mind, Cade figured. If they were in some country where folks weren't quite so fired up about God and his particular wants on a subject - Sweden, maybe - they'd find another reason to bully folk. But Alpha Male believed every word, and so did the other nine.

  In another moment, they were going to do their damnedest to kill him for the length of his chin hair, because in their minds, that's what Jesus had told them to do.

  Cade couldn't help but wonder if they'd come up with that one on their own.

  He cracked his neck, and popped the chain from round his waist. There was the sound of another bottle breaking. Then a third.

  Alpha Male grinned.

  "Praise be."

  And then they charged.

  Chapter Six

  The Fight

  As it turned out, Alpha Male was the first to go.

  Alpha Male had a real name, of course. It was Marvin Wilton, and he'd been a basketball hero in college before settling down with the prom queen, who also sang regularly in the local church - which had unfortunately been wrecked during the roughest days of the bad times, like a lot of churches had been. He'd had three children, all of whom were now dead, and before the bad times hit he'd been a pillar of his community, albeit a little judgemental when it came to some of the people he shared San Francisco with. His neighbours would have been shocked to see him acting this way, had they lived. They wouldn't have thought Marvin Wilton capable of this kind of wanton violence.

  But the bad times changed people.

  Not that Cade gave a damn about Marvin Wilton. Cade had turned not giving a damn into a science, and if someone had tried to tell him Marvin's life story Cade would have found something else to do by the second trimester. Alpha Male was Alpha Male, and that was the name he was going to die under as far as Cade was concerned.

  It was a legacy of his time in the humvee with Sergeant A - Cade wasn't much on people's actual names. As far as he figured, he was facing down Alpha Male, Combover, Man-tits, Skinny, Budget Ben Affleck, Ears, Never Forget, Tall Fella, Other Tall Fella and Global Hypercolour.

  To be honest, he didn't even give them that much thought. But if he'd wasted a second looking at them, that's what he'd have called them, and it makes what happened next a little easier to describe.

  What happened next was Cade doing what Cade did.

  The heavy gauge chain whipped out, the combination lock on the end whirling through the dusty air like a mace until it slammed hard into Alpha Male's mouth. Marvin's perfect teeth cracked and splintered on impact and he reeled back, spitting out enamel fragments and blood, the remains lacerating cheeks and gums as he screamed - and then Cade swung the lock down on the top of his skull with as much force as he could bring to it. There was another flat crack and Alpha Male dropped like a sack of coal, bleeding from one ear. He was one of the lucky ones. He'd lost most of his teeth and he'd never be able to count to a hundred again.

  But he'd live. For a while, at least.

  In a matter of days, he'd have the jugular torn from his neck by a cannibalistic ex-finance director who hadn't bathed in two years, but that was in the future.

  Man-tits lunged with a broken bottle that'd once been full of some Brand X Perrier substitute. Once upon a time, drinking something like that in Blarney's might have been taken as the sign of a man who wasn't in full possession of his manhood. It might even have earned a medium-level ass-kicking, like as not from Man-tits himself, who was the type to take offence at that kind of thing. But things had changed some since the bad times hit. According to the Pastor, alcohol was the work of Satan, and refined sugar likewise. Water was good for the system and good for the spirit, although anything that still managed to struggle out of the taps in San Francisco wasn't likely to be either of those and it was best to stick to the bottled variety, as passed out by the Pastor himself, blessed by his hand. Man-tits had come to believe very strongly in the Pastor and his word.

  Man-tits was a man who believed strongly in a lot of things, especially if they were told him in a loud voice and it was implied that he was some kind of communist queer-boy if he didn't buy into them. Man-tits was just that sort of fella.

  Cade shifted to the side, then used his free hand to catch Man-tits by the wrist and break his arm at the elbow, making sure to twist it so the broken bone pushed up through the skin. Then he snapped his head forward hard enough to break Man-tits' nose. He could've left it there, but Other Tall Fella had a bottle of his own and was bringing it round to slash at Cade's throat.

  Cade grabbed Man-tits by the hair and swung him across, and Other Tall Fella's bottle went right into his neck, carving it wide open. Cade took a step back, doubled the chain in his fist and swung it so it raked across Other Tall Fella's face. It didn't do his complexion a whole lot of good.

  The diamond-shaped weights in the chain - that made it look so nice and pretty when it was strung on the edge of a man's lawn - burst both eyes and broke a mess of teeth, which pretty much put Other Tall Fella out of the fight. His fellow men of God pushed him out of the way when he started screaming. He stumbled back, tripped over his own shoelaces and then toppled back like a falling tree, until the back of his head met the corner of the bar with a crunch that finished him off for good.

  Probably for the best, considering.

  That left seven.

  They were a little wary now, though their blood was still up. Cade took a step back, and they took a step forward, shuffling around the bodies. Cade was swinging the chain in his hand, round and round, a slow circle. It made a little ch-chink sound every time it went round. A little whisper of metal on metal.

  Ch-chink, ch-chink, ch-chink.

  Global Hypercolour stepped forward, sweat dripping down his forehead and off his nose, big hot-pink stains spreading out from his armpits and down his chest. The rest of the T-shirt was purple, aside from the Global Hypercolour logo in white. Cade had never understood the appeal of those things.

  He whipped the chain out, around Hypercolour's neck, then jerked him in, like reeling in a fish, grabbing the big man in a headlock and twisting his neck quickly until he heard it snap. It was as quick a death as he could make it, but Tall Fella and Combover were already rushing his flanks, and now his good chain was tangled up around Hypercolour's throat. Combover had a broken bottle, Tall Fella just had his fists, and Bargain Ben Affleck was coming up in front to make three.

  Cade didn't need to think too hard about it. He took a step back and caught Tall Fella's ear in the fingers of his right hand and Combover's bottle in the left. Then he pulled. Tall Fella had his centre of gravity a little far forward as things stood - the tug on the ear, hard enough to rip the cartilage, send him stumbling forwards until his feet met Hypercolour's thrashing body, and then over he fell. Cade kept his grip on Combover's wrist and moved the broken bottle so Tall Fella tumbled face-first into it. It made a sound like a shuriken hitting a twenty-pound steak.

  Bargain Ben crashed into Tell Fella and the two of them went down to the ground while Cade popped Combover's arm out of its socket, and once Ben was down on the floor Cade brought his boot down on the back of the man's head hard enough to smash his face into the barroom floor. Cade figured he probably wouldn't look too much like Ben Affleck after that, but that was his own lookout.

  Tall Fella was screaming his lungs out through what was left of his own face, so Cade gave him a kick in the side of the head to shut him up and then swung a right hook around to break Combover's nose and put him out as well.

  The whole thing had taken about fifteen seconds so far.

  Cade was a pretty quick worker when he had a mind to be.

  He cracked his neck again, looking each of the last three square in the eye. Skinny and Ears looked like they might listen to reason at this point - especially with a couple of the bodies still thrashing and voiding their bowels on the floor - but the fella with the crying eagle tattoo and the Never Forget underneath it, he was going to be a problem. It wasn't ju
st the tattoo. It was in his eyes. Never Forget wasn't a man to start talking in a situation like this.

  Fella had something to prove.

  Cade figured he'd try talking anyway.

  "I've got some questions. Hoping you could answer them."

  Ears swallowed. Skinny looked down at the dead, his face pale. Never Forget just stared. His lip was curling into a sneer. Cade didn't know whether it was on purpose or if his face was just built that way. He nodded, then spoke one more time.

  "I would be obliged."

  Never Forget spat on the floor.

  Cade shrugged. Hell with it. Least he'd tried to do things the easy way.

  "You got a nerve, you -" said Never Forget, and that was as far as he got, on account of the next second Cade's combat knife was lodged in his throat and he couldn't get the next word out through the blood flooding out of his mouth.

  Cade was a man who was willing to give a fella a chance when he had a mind to.

  But he didn't always have a mind to.

  Cade went into a roundhouse kick, aiming the steel toe of his boot into Skinny's chest, snapping a rib and sending the man down to the floor. In the movies, folks tell you a broken rib ain't much of anything. They're liars. A broken rib's a hard thing to work around, especially when it breaks off bad and ends up going into a lung. Cade had made damn sure it'd gone into a lung, and now Skinny wasn't going to get up again in a hurry. He had his hands full just taking a breath without screaming.

  That left Ears. He was already raising his hands to surrender, but Cade didn't catch it in time. Cade wheeled around in another roundhouse - what Duke had called his Chuck Norris move - and brought his foot up a little higher this time. The steel toe cap slammed into one of those big elephant ears hard enough to burst the eardrum. Then Cade followed up by smashing an elbow into the man's face.

  That's another thing the movies tell you is easy - driving a man's nosebone into his brain hard enough to kill him stone dead. It's a hell of a trick, especially with the elbow.

  Maybe Cade just got lucky.

  Still, after he'd stepped back and taken a breath, he didn't feel quite as lucky as all that. Skinny'd passed out pretty much right away, which meant there wasn't anybody likely to answer his questions. He had a few more of them than before. Cade was a man who could put two and two together if he had a mind to, and he'd figured on there being some kind of old-time religion operating in Frisco - when the bad times hit, a lot of people had made some snap decisions about religion - but damned if he knew how far it spread or what the hell else might be going on. He wasn't any closer to finding any insulin, and he damn sure wasn't any closer to finding out what'd done for Sausalito.

  He'd killed a bunch of folks, sure, but there came a time even that wasn't much consolation.

  "Hell with it," muttered Cade, and reached down to tug his knife free of Never Forget's windpipe.

  That was when he heard the voice.

  The voice had a thin, reedy quality, a kind of soft hissing rasp that made it seem like a snake talking. It had a way of taking its time over the vowels, drawing them out before biting the consonants into harsh little snaps. The kind of voice that would make a man feel uneasy in the depths of his stomach, make him draw in his breath a minute and take a step back.

  The Pastor had a way of making folks hear his word.

  "Oh Lord..." It came out Oooh, Loor-r-rduh. "Oh Lord, oh, Lord, what hast thou sent to tempt your faithful servant now? Why, a demon of vengeance, Lord, sowing wrath and murder among the faithful. Lord, thy tests are strange and terrible, yes indeed, but your servant shall not flee, oh no, oh no..." He clicked his tongue. "Turn yourself, Demon. Turn yourself to face the Lord's best-trusted servant."

  Cade turned himself.

  The man was about six-five, thin as a rake, and dressed in black with a white band at his throat - a man of God. Cade figured this was probably the fella calling the shots around here. The right person to ask, anyhow.

  He nodded. "I've got some questions. Hoping you could answer them." He nodded down at the dead and the dying at his feet, and the growing pool of blood on the floor. Then he locked eyes with the man in black. "I'd be obliged."

  The Pastor smiled, a smile that seemed to crack his thin face into a thousand wrinkles, but never touched his eyes, which were grey as Cade's own but with a touch of ice in them. Cade always figured you could tell a lot about a man from his eyes. From the look of it, this was a stone cold son of a bitch, and violent with it. Cade wasn't too happy about that.

  Town probably wasn't big enough for two.

  The Pastor let his face drop back into its normal expression - a serene half-smirk, eyes heavy-lidded, that gave the impression of a rattlesnake shaking its tail. "Well then, my son. I shall oblige you. Please, follow along with me." He nodded, stepping back through the door. Cade could see at least six men behind him - big fellas, armed with aluminium baseball bats.

  That told Cade something. Muir Beach now had a population of three, and that was counting the trailer park. Now, admittedly, it'd been hit hard, and it was a small community. But all the same, it said a lot about a fella that he could get so many men together, train them and arm them - and the big fellas did look like they'd had training for some kind. Plus, this Reverend or Padre or whatever had no way of knowing Cade wouldn't just go to work on these six like he had on the fools in the bar. Which meant they were expendable into the bargain.

  Cade was surely considering going to work. Something about the fella's smile, and those grey eyes of his, made Cade figure he'd be a hell of a fool not to. Put the son of a bitch down and find his answers another place.

  The Pastor smiled, all teeth. "The Lord must be obeyed, my son."

  Cade gripped the handle of the knife. Then he relaxed, put it back in his belt, and nodded.

  "Hell with it."

  Cade figured he could handle whatever the thin fella had to show him. And if he couldn't - hell, he'd have time to regret it later.

  And he did.

  Chapter Seven

  The Pastor

  "This-a-way, my son. This-a-way, to walk in the very footsteps of the Lord..." And a chuckle like animal bones cracking underfoot. Then the Pastor turned back to his shuffling walk, one foot dragging after the other, the shoulders jerking back and forward in time with the steps. It was eerie, like watching a cobra trying to walk on its tail like a man.

  The more Cade saw of the Pastor, the less he liked it. Those damn neck hairs were standing up to be counted.

  The streets were still clean, and apart from the Pastor and his guards, there still wasn't a soul to be seen in them. Cade followed along - the way he saw it, if he wanted answers, he could either walk in the very footsteps of the Pastor's God or just kill the guards and beat the answers out of the Pastor.

  There were a couple of problems with that second option, attractive as it was. For one, Cade had done things to people occasionally that folk would call torture, and there wasn't anything about it that was reliable for getting information out of anybody. The only thing torture was good for was torture, and unless you were ready to own the fact that there wasn't any kind of purpose or reason to it besides that, you were fooling yourself. So Cade had to shake his head a little when he heard some damn fool talk about using it for an interrogation on the Iraqis or whoever the hell it was this week. That was just fool's talk from a bunch of clowns who figured the only way they could get another bunch of clowns to vote for them was by showing how very badass they thought they were. 'Course all it did was show they were clowns, but a clown's gonna vote for a clown anyhow.

  Cade was a mite cynical when it came to politics.

  Anyhow, aside from the practicality of beating a confession out of the Pastor, it was pretty obvious the man was crazy as a broken-backed snake and he was likely to say any damn thing that came into his head. Best Cade could do was follow along as the man's guest and hope he picked something up.

  Hell, if Cade acted godly enough, maybe the Pastor'd hel
p him out with his insulin problem, or at least tell him what happened to Sausalito. Acting godly wasn't something Cade had much practice in, but he figured if he kept his mouth shut, that'd about do it.

  Keeping his mouth shut was something Cade specialised in, after all.

  The Pastor smiled, bobbing his head and moving with that gentle, sinister, shuffling gait as he led them down Cervantes Boulevard to where it intersected Fillmore Street. Ahead of them was the Moscone Recreation Centre - a big grey and white building. Cade shot the Pastor a look. It wasn't exactly a threat, but there was a hint in his eyes that he could just as soon go straight to the killing if he was forced to, and he'd take a certain amount of pleasure in doing just that.

  The Pastor smiled his cracked-face smile, his eyes as cold as January morning. "They had basketball here once. Did you know that? One of the best places in the city, I was told." He chuckled softly, like a glass file rubbing against a shard of bone. "We have other entertainments here now. Oh yes, we do..."

  Cade was starting to wonder if beating the Pastor's head against the concrete until it cracked open wasn't the best plan after all. Cade wasn't a man to be unsettled easy, but there was something in the Pastor that just didn't strike him as right. Part of him was already clocking the positions of the guards with their baseball bats, working out who to kill first, who'd make a good shield, who he should take his blade to and who he could just disarm and put down with a simple neck-breaker or a dislocated leg. Cade had a pretty good strategy worked out by the time they pushed the doors open and walked down to the basketball court. That was when the smell hit him.

  He'd spent a day at the San Diego Zoo, once upon a time. Hell of a place to spend time, and even a man like Cade could find a point of interest in it. He'd spent a while in the monkey house, on account of he liked watching them - Cade was of the opinion that monkeys were people with most of the bullshit taken out of them. Not that the smell of shit there wasn't overpowering, but you got used to it quick. Cade had spent a good couple hours there, watching the monkeys do what the monkeys did. After a while the smell stopped bothering him, and he didn't even notice it. When he'd gone to get himself a Coke from a vending machine, the fresh air had smelt sweet as rosewater. A few minutes later, he went back to the monkey house and there it was again, strong as ever. Monkey shit. Didn't matter if you'd gotten used to it - one breath of fresh air and you were primed for it all over again.