Red Palm

by Ochse, Weston

  Frank pulled a Diet Coke from the mini-fridge, popped it open and savored a long drink as he thought. The military was supported by a certain set of pillars which were difficult to overcome. Physical Fitness tests were one of these pillars. He’d gotten past the last one through blackmail. It never occurred to him to actually take one. He could probably do the push-ups, but the sit-ups and the run were out of the question. So what was he to do?

  He sent all but the one UAV on station back to the Marine Special Projects Unit at Twentynine Palms where he handed off control so that they could be landed, refueled, and readied for his next sortie.

  After smoking two cigarettes outside, he re-entered his trailer, sat at the computer and typed an email to his SMU mission commander.

  Dear Sir, I regret to inform you that I must stand down the mission for a minimum of seventy-two hours. My S1 indicates I’m to return to Fort Irwin ASAP for a PT Test. Noted increased activity at the Black Grotto. Something appears to be happening, but will be unable to follow up.

  Regards,

  SGT Frank Spann

  He read it twice, then pressed send.

  He spent the next hour leaning back in his chair, monitoring the fuel levels of his Hunter UAV. With the proximity of Twentynine Palms, he could have it on station for eight hours, circling, waiting. He stared at the blurry pixilated picture on the wall above his monitor that showed her face. If he was ever caught, he’d be in serious trouble, but if Helen of Troy could sail a thousand ships, then Jennifer Karen Schriener could absolutely sail one UAV to keep watch. He didn’t know what it was about her, but the moment he saw her, his heart was no longer his own.

  Sure she was only seventeen.

  Sure she was still in high school.

  But he just didn’t care.

  Next to the image taken at long range by the Hunter were several other pictures he’d grabbed from her Facebook page. In all of them it seemed as if she’d been wounded, her soft blue eyes gazing at the camera, not wanting to be a part of the picture, but wanting something just the same.

  His old friend Tony Coles would have told him that he was reading way too much into things. But Frank had a feeling about this one. He’d gotten this far by trusting his own instincts and his instincts told him that if he was patient, they’d eventually be together.

  His email pinged as a reply to his last message came in from command.

  Disregard PT Test and stay on mission. Increase reporting to every twelve hours.

  Frank smiled, leaned back, and put his hands behind his head. He gave his girl a wink, then watched his computer track the route of the UAV above her home.

  Chapter Eight

  Bombay Beach Motel. Blane worked with Pippa making sure their markers for the zombies were accurate on the table. It would have been easier if the zombies had been injected with transmittable RFID chips, then they could have let the computers handle it. But the Monks of the Western Wind checked for that sort of thing so it was through individual reconnaissance, conducted by the zombie drivers themselves.

  Right now they had seventeen drivers. Twelve of them sat around all day with thumbs up their asses because they had nothing to do, their zombies still spinning until eventually chosen to be removed by the monks… or they died.

  Of the remaining five, three were currently working in the main cathedral in Cathedral City, one was stuck filing inventories in a warehouse, and then there was Dickie.

  “Who’d they get to drive him?” he asked Frezzie, when she came in.

  “Barry,” she said simply, then rolled her eyes.

  “Seriously?” Barry liked to drink and had gotten a previous zombie killed. “Couldn’t they get someone better?”

  “He says he’s on the wagon,” Pippa mentioned.

  Frezzie shrugged. “He was next on the list.”

  Now it was his turn to roll his eyes. “He knows he can’t drink while he’s driving, right?”

  “Why don’t you ask him?” Frezzie said.

  He shook his head. “Amateurs. Everyone’s suddenly a fucking amateur.”

  Both Frezzie and Pippa gave him a look, but he disregarded them as he burst out of the room. He took the stairs down to the salt mine two at a time. When he passed Sebastian’s room, he barely registered the giant of a man and his two Indian assistants. Not that he could be missed, it’s just that Blane didn’t want to spare the time. He’d come back later and ask him why he’d chosen to assign a known killer to someone who was arguably their best chance to get into the grotto.

  He passed four rooms, then came to the one he wanted. The number six was drawn above a wooden door affixed to a salt and rock cutout. Blane opened the door without knocking. The room was little more than a jail cell and held a single bed on the left, with a sink and a toilet against the back wall. A comfy leather chair on wheels dominated the center of the space. In it sat a sallow man with mousy brown hair, a scar on his left cheek giving him a permanent sideways smile.

  “Evening, Blane,” the man said. “Wondering if you’d make an appearance.” He pulled out a leather case from his pocket and selected a razor blade, which he placed on his thigh as he replaced the case.

  “You wondered right. What the hell, Barry?

  The man looked innocently back at Blane. “What the hell what?”

  “I thought you were restricted from driving.”

  “Oh that.” He seemed to think about it for a moment. “Thing is, I don’t drink any longer.”

  Blane stared at the man, a dozen thoughts slamming through his mind, including the knowledge that this man had killed his zombie as surely as a drunk driver had killed a lady in a crosswalk. But he also knew that that was then and this was now. He took a deep breath. “So you don’t drink anymore?”

  “Went through the program. I also take Antabuse. Even if I was to drink, I’d get violently ill.”

  Blane took it on and thought on it. “It means you’ve tried. How sick does it make you?”

  “Like eight frat boys sick. Real bad.” He shrugged. “I see what you’re saying. Yeah, I backslid and the drug caught me like a net. I’m fighting it, but the drug keeps me legal.”

  He grinned like a salesman and Blane recognized his falsehood.

  “So it’s the drug that keeps you sober.”

  “If you want to say that.”

  “I’m not saying that. You’re saying that.”

  “I just said that—“

  Blane cut him off by stepping forward, his glare and the jut of his chin expressing volumes until it was an inch from the alcoholic’s face. “Listen to me. You will take your pill every day. Pippa will record it, which means you have to do it in front of her. You’ll do it or I will see you dead. Do you read me loud and clear?”

  “Five by five,” Barry said, his dull eyes unblinking.

  “And if Mr. Richard Dean Smith turns up dead, I will blame you.”

  “Lots of ways to end up dead with the Black Bishop,” Barry said.

  “However he dies, I’ll blame you.” Blane poked Barry in the forehead. “He dies, you die.” Poke. “Don’t fucking drink.” Poke. “Got it?”

  Barry stared at Blane with sad eyes, the eyes of a man who’d killed, been redeemed, and had to live with it. Blane recognized it and felt himself soften, but then rallied against it. He was all about redemption, but when someone had been promised and then ignored and then died from it, something had to be done. Sebastian and the League had determined that this man had paid his dues. But for Blane he had yet to fully pay. This was bureaucracy pure and simple. Blane would be watching. He had to. Otherwise, how could anyone trust him ever again when he gave them testimony that he’d do everything in his power that they’d survive.

  Barry saw it all and by the look in his eye understood. He was on notice. He had no chance. He had one chance. He had to keep this one alive. He nodded short and quick.

  Blane returned the nod, just as short, just as quick. “Just so you know.”

  Barry looked down. He cou
ldn’t help the smile his ruined face gave him. The face Blane had ruined when he’d beaten him almost to death. “I know.” Then after a moment, softer, “I know.”

  “Then get to it,” Blane said.

  Barry stared at him for a long moment, then nodded as much to himself as to Blane. Then he took the razorblade, gripping it between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. He deftly drew a cut along his left palm. Blood immediately welled. He let the blood pool in his palm until it seemed as if it might overflow, then slammed his hand against the salt-encrusted wall.

  The effect was immediate.

  Barry’s head slung back and his eyes went wide. His normal gaze was replaced by the whites of his eyes. The blood on the wall ran from his hand to form an irregular circle. One minute the circle was red, the next it lighted to a view of a wall, inside of a room somewhere.

  “Dickie this is Barry, come in Dickie.”

  Silence for a moment, then, “Who is this?”

  “This is Barry, Dickie, how are you doing?”

  “Where’s Blane?”

  “He’s here.” Barry turned sightlessly to where Blane stood and grinned. Not that Blane could say anything. He didn’t have the blood bond. “Want to say anything, Blane?”

  Blane glared at Barry. “Tell him I trust you.”

  Barry winked sightlessly and said it.

  “What do I do now?” Dickie asked.

  “Relinquish control. I’m going to drive for a while. It won’t hurt. It won’t be forever. I just need to see what I can do.”

  “Are you sure it’s going to be okay?”

  “Most definitely.”

  “Really?”

  “Dickie,” Barry said slowly, drawing out his name. “Let’s not play the self-doubt game. Let’s play the game where you always win. I like that game. Don’t you like that game?”

  “So what do I do?”

  Barry leaned forward, never losing his contact with the hand and the wall. “Nothing, kid. Just breathe. From now on I’m taking over.”

  And then the view shifted as if it were the eyes of someone walking.

  Chapter Nine

  Palm Springs. Sometimes Blane liked to sit along the side of the highway and watch the wind turbines tumble. The last eight days had been the most beneficial of any that had preceded with the League. It was easy to forget how hard it had been until now—easy to forget how mind-numbingly awful it had been for so long, like banging one’s head repeatedly against the side of a giant saguaro cactus. It had been so bad that Blane had really just been going through the motions. But now Dickie had passed the Cathedral and had been charged to be a footman for the grotto. Little more than a valet, their newest zombie was nonetheless closer than anyone they previously had.

  Frezzie and the off-duty zombie drivers were taking notes about everything Dickie saw. They’d never had eyes inside the grotto before. Everything to this point had been pure conjecture. What they’d learned was shocking to say the least. The League had speculated about the missing children, especially the girls, but to actually see them, to see what they’d become was at once educational and terrifying.

  There seemed to be a rank structure among the monks of the Grotto. Outside their faces were hidden beneath the cowl of their robes and the baseball umpire-like masks they wore to conceal their features. But inside the grotto, with the masks off and the cowls down, their faces showed a surgical butchery that had to have some meaning. The youngest of them, young boys who seemed barely into their teens, had faces free of scarring and elective surgery. They were just fresh faced teens who could have been in any driveway in America playing basketball, except for maybe the looks of pure hatred that ate away at their round features. What made them hate so much the League had yet to discover, but it was speculated that there was some sort of indoctrination program. Why else weren’t they trying to escape a fate that ended in monsterfication—what Pippa called the monk’s process. And it was an apt word, Blane thought—monsterfication—because the older monks, ones in their twenties and thirties, sported faces almost completely inhuman.

  Their noses were split down the middle, ridged in unique ways or not there at all. The skin around their eyes had been pulled and prodded and filled with something that made the eyes look as if they were sunk impossibly deep into the face. Mouths had been sewn and new mouths added on the cheeks. Still others had their mouths split and muscles rearranged so they more closely resembled a Predator from the movies of the same name than the humans they were. Still others had removed their lips entirely to better emphasize their sharpened and sometimes inhuman rows of metal teeth. There seemed to be no two alike.

  The monsterfication to their ears, chins, and heads was no different. Some were just terrible to look upon. For many the shape was just wrong. It was as if somewhere in the back of the grotto there was a cohort of plastic surgeons challenging each other to come up with the most perverse, most alien version of a man, each one trying to outdo himself.

  The nuns, or harlots as they were called, were only slightly less horrific. The League had heard that the girls were turned into harlots meant to serve not only the Black Bishop, but also the monks. They’d just never seen them before… until now.

  The youngest of them, the novitiates, were all cutters. Whether they started that way or if they were forced to learn the behavior through yet another indoctrination system, the League might never know. But the newest members of the Grotto could be seen with razors, lazing about, cutting each other, making designs, glorifying in the delivery of their own pain.

  Dickie had only seen one actual harlot and the vision was brief. But Pippa had taken a picture and saved it, posting it on the wall for all to see. The harlot was suspended from a horizontal pole affixed to a cart. Her black habit-covered body was held in a sling, which was necessary because she had no legs, and only one rail thin arm with only a thumb and forefinger left at the end to hold a razor. Her face was visible and was a roadmap of a thousand cuts which had healed and rehealed. Scars lay upon scars, even where she’d removed her own ears, the tip of her nose, and her eyelids. She was pulled by a coterie of novitiates. Pippa believed that this was the Mother Superior and Blane agreed. There was no way this could be the norm. This had to be the extreme example of what the cutter harlots could do to themselves.

  Blane felt a pressure begin to build behind his eyes. He’d been so lost in thoughts of the grotto he’d forgotten where he was. He brought his fingers to the bridge of his nose and pinched, waiting for the feeling to go away. But instead of fading, it increased, magnifying exponentially, until all he knew was pain. Then it was gone, vanished, replaced by a nothingness which was completely unexpected. He held his hand out in front of him and couldn’t see it. Even touching his eye, his fingertips were invisible to him.

  Not invisible… no… somehow he’d become blind.

  Did he just have an aneurism? Maybe it was a stroke?

  Then he heard the sounds of screeching. Along I-10 hundreds of cars and trucks applied their brakes. Metal began wrenching against metal in that singular sound that comes with a crash. Only it wasn’t a single crash, it was thousands of crashes, as all the cars going east and west found themselves in a seventy mile an hour snarl.

  Blane couldn’t see any of this, he just knew. He wasn’t the only one blind. Everyone was blind.

  A sixth sense sent him out of the car, around the front of the hood, guided by his hand, then into the desert. He ran loosely, his hands out in front of him. Twice he fell, each time, his hands scored by cactus and rock on the ground.

  From behind him came the sound of the long scream of tires skidding across the pavement followed by an immense crunch that had been his car. Had he not moved, he knew he would have been dead.

  Blane ran another dozen feet, his hands still out in front of him to keep him from hurting himself too badly. But he became so disoriented that he forced himself down, falling to his knees. It was just too much. He didn’t know if he was running in a straight
line or back to the crashes. The sounds were all around him. He decided that the best thing for him was to not move.

  The crashing noises became fewer and fewer until finally there were no more crashes. But these horrific sounds were replaced by screams, and as the crashing subsided, the cries of human misery increased, until there was a new cacophony.

  His mind began to shatter as it tried and failed to explain the sudden blindness and devastation. Fragments of ideas and thoughts of causes shot out in all directions. This couldn’t be the Black Bishop. This was far too much for even him. By the sounds it had to be more than him. And was it just this section of highway or was the area affected much larger?

  As the questions fired like machine gun rounds from his confused brain, the pressure eased, and his vision returned. At first it was a sense of light, then it was an opaque film, then the opacity vanished, leaving him with the sight he’d had before this terrible blinding event.

  He stood shakily and turned, and what he beheld sent him right back to his knees. It took him awhile to remember to breathe, and when he did, his breaths quickly turned to sobs.

  A single word came to him. A word he’d thought he’d known the meaning of, but now realized his complete misunderstanding of it. For it wasn’t until this moment that he felt he completely and utterly understood the meaning of the word CARNAGE.