by Chuck Wendig
All told, the wall was ten to fifteen feet high. Made even taller by barbed wire.
Gil shined his light up and down the length of it. “Looks like some of it could be the border fence. The one they were putting up between us and Mexico. One that never got finished.”
“Here, look,” Leelee said, pointing up above the highway. “This part of the fence isn’t just a fence. It’s a gate.” And sure enough, the fence here had a break in it—it wasn’t on hinges, but rather on a track embedded in the dirt. Almost the way a sliding patio door works: unhook it and pull it across the track. At first that didn’t seem to explain how to get through because behind the gate anybody would still have to move a handful of junker cars. But when they looked deeper, they saw it worked the same way. Those cars had been hollowed out and made light, and they too were on tracks. Explained why Coburn caught a whiff of what may have been WD-40: as long as the tracks were lubricated, seemed like they’d be able to slide out across pretty easy.
“The Sixty-Six States,” Kayla said. “I don’t get it. Country only has fifty states. Guess they can’t spell and they can’t count.”
Gil grunted. “It’s not a count. It’s like I said, this is the old Route 66. Cuts right through.”
“The Sons of Man must have territory a lot farther south than we thought,” Ebbie added.
“No,” Coburn said. “I don’t think this is them. Those assholes weren’t exactly a brain trust of intellectuals, but this seems somehow beneath even the Sons. Plus, doesn’t look anything like what the stories say. This isn’t the product of a functional society. Then again, two years is a long time, and nobody said the stories can’t be—”
Suddenly, floodlights clicked on and blinded Coburn into silence. A voice came over a loudspeaker, and they heard the mechanized roar of a vehicle fast approaching.
The cars wheeled back, grinding across the tracks with the sound of what could’ve been wheels or gears turning. The gate, too, began moving—it was not automated, but Kayla also couldn’t see anybody making the motion happen. It occurred, as if by magic.
Creampuff started growling.
When the gate was retracted, more lights blinded them and Kayla shielded her eyes: a Humvee came bounding across the cracked asphalt and skidded to a halt, blocking the opening.
Kayla’s jaw dropped.
She hadn’t expected this. In a million years she never would’ve imagined that the men bolting free of the Humvee, automatic weapons in hand, would be dressed like clowns. But not straight-up circus clowns—no red nose and nuclear-green afro wig. White face paint. Blood circles around their mouths, black paint around their eyes. All smudged, flaking off, exposing patches of stubble and skin.
Three of them stepped out. Three grim-faced, pissed-off clowns.
Kayla looked to Coburn—
Except he was nowhere to be found.
The lead of the trio, a pear-shaped pig with white-blonde dreadlocks sticking out of his do-rag like the legs of a squashed albino tarantula, stepped into the fore, gun up, barking at them. Literally. Barking at them like a dog.
“Ruh ruh ruh,” he barked. “Back up, bitches. I said BTFU or I’ll peel your scalp with a shit-storm of lead.”
They did as told, putting their hands up.
“Drop the fucking bags. Drop ’em!”
They dropped everything they were carrying as the two other Goth-clowns—one built like an inverted triangle, the other a reedy old man whose graying goat-beard was similarly gummed up with greasepaint—stepped in behind the pig-nosed, pear-shaped leader.
“What the figgity-fuck do we have here?” Pig-Nose asked. “Looks like we got a handful of terrorists wantin’ to do some assassination with a bunch of bombs and shit.”
Gil stepped forward, holding up his splinted hand. “Listen, fella, we’re not here to cause any kind of—”
Pig-Nose thrust the gun barrel hard against Gil’s face, the end of the rifle actually entering his mouth and scraping up against his gums.
“Did I say to talk, you old bastard? I didn’t say shit. You keep flapping them lips and I promise you, dude, I will split your motherfucking wig. You gonna step to me? You feel like steppin’?”
“No,” Gil said, pulling gently away from the rifle. He slowly spit a bloody loogey off to the side. “I’m not… stepping.”
“Good. Now whatchoo got in those bags?”
Gil didn’t say anything.
“I said, what’s in the damn bags?”
“I can talk now?”
Pig-Nose looked wounded. “Yes! Yes I told you to fucking talk. I asked you a question, didn’t I? You some kind of retard?”
“Supplies!” Kayla blurted out. She couldn’t stand seeing her father put in harm’s way again. “We have food. Guns. Ammo. Some clothing.”
Pig-Nose pointed the rifle at her. Her guts turned to water. “No bombs?”
“No bombs,” Gil said, hands still up.
“No bombs,” she confirmed with a peep.
Pig-Nose whistled, gestured to the two lugs behind him. “Dope Fiend. Jester. Go get that shit and bring those bags to the car.”
As they moved to grab the bags, Kayla saw movement behind them, by the gate. A shadow eased along the edge of the fence. It was Coburn. The tight knot in her stomach started to loosen, because if anybody could handle these oh-my-god-they’re-actually-clowns, it’d be him.
He held up a finger to his lips, noting that she was watching him.
She nodded.
And then he disappeared through the gate and was gone.
That bastard. Again her bowels tightened.
“Hey!” she yelled out, before she even realized what was coming out of her mouth. Pig-Nose came up, puffing out his chest like a dumpy-assed rooster, and pointed the gun at her heart.
“What are you yelling about, you little slag-a-muffin? Huh? Huh?”
“Hey now,” Gil said, protesting. The old man—who must’ve been Jester, because he wore a ratty jester’s cap with tinkly rusty bells on it—shoved him backward. “She’s just a girl, now. She doesn’t mean any harm.”
“I…” Kayla said, searching for words. “I just didn’t know you were going to take our stuff.”
Pig-Nose chuffed. Might’ve been a laugh, she didn’t know. “You bet your sweet cupcake ass we’re taking your stuff. That’s the payment for passage into the 66 States. You don’t get to see the King if you don’t tithe to the King. That’s the law. One of the only laws here, you feel me?”
“The… King?” she asked.
“Hell yes the King,” he said. “King Brutha Thuglow. The leader of these here glorious fiefdoms. The keeper of Satan’s Carnival. And a straight-up psychopathic ninja. In fact, he needs to meet your asses to make sure you can stay here, that you not some kind of terrorist. So get your poop-chutes into that Humvee. It’s time meet the King.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The King and His Castle
Out there in the desert, Kayla watched as two motorbikes chased each other in the distance. Their mosquito whine barely heard, headlights obscured by the occasional bloom of dust.
None of this sat well with her. She felt like this was a detour, a terrible move away from their intended destination. Pig-Nose—who introduced himself as ‘Lieutenant Necro-Loco,’ or, just ‘Loco’—said they were headed southeast, which meant technically they were losing ground. Going backward. And they’d been driving for an hour already.
Coburn was nowhere to be found. He’d ditched them, she knew. Revenge for when they’d done the same to him. He was a callous creature, and she could easily imagine what was going through his head: hungry, he surely figured that his own herd was worthless. Five—well, six now with Danny—troublemakers who didn’t want him around. The breadth and depth of the 66 States, however, surely was home to any number of human beings. Human beings filled to the brim with so much blood. Why slum it with Kayla and the others? What did he care if they made it to Los Angeles? The answer: he didn’t.
/> And now he was gone.
Fine. Whatever. Good riddance. He got them this far, and they got him here, too. The deal was done. Close enough for horseshoes and hand grenades, anyway. Of course, he left his dumb little dog—the terrier kept climbing up over Kayla’s lap and whining out the window, sniffing the glass like the vampire was out there, somewhere. The stupid little animal missed his master.
Danny seemed to sense her apprehension. He reached over and held her hand. She leaned her head on his shoulder. In the seat behind them sat the old Jester and the beefy Dope Fiend. They didn’t have their guns up anymore, but she knew that they still had them pointed at their backs through the Humvee seats. Ebbie sat back there with them since there wasn’t room in the middle row. Gil sat up front with Loco. Loco either didn’t consider the old man with the broken fingers a threat, or he’d relaxed somewhat.
“You said we’re heading to…” Gil started, let his words drift off.
“The Castle,” Loco said. “Home of Satan’s Carousel.”
Gil tensed. “And Satan’s Carousel is a… an actual merry-go-round.”
“No, dumbass. Satan’s Carousel isn’t a thing. It’s a state of fucking mind, vato. It’s our existence. It’s our attitude. Brutha Thuglow is the essence of Satan’s Carousel, he’s the dude who carries the flame of chaos and entropy. That makes him, like, the epicenter and shit.”
“Right,” Gil said. Kayla knew that tone. It was him being patronizing, but Loco clearly didn’t pick up on it. “Is the Castle a real thing?”
“Yo, man. Yeah. It’s an old Air Force base.”
As if on cue, the Humvee passed a rag-tag trio standing next to a junkyard Dodge pick-up truck that was more a skeleton of a vehicle than an actual vehicle. One of the three—a skinny girl, totally topless, her ribs showing—hoisted a rocket launcher on her shoulder.
She fired a rocket-propelled grenade. The RPG whistled through the air like a bottle rocket, struck an old school bus out there in the dark of the desert. The bus lifted up from the back end, then came smashing back down again. The ground rumbled and the sound was loud enough to leave Kayla’s ears ringing. She turned around, looked out the back window, saw them hopping up and down, high-fiving, the shooter’s breasts bouncing.
“Jeez,” Ebbie said. He met Kayla’s eyes. He looked scared. More so than usual.
“So I’m guessing there’s still armament there,” Gil said.
“Fuck yes,” Loco said.
“I suspect that’s how you deal with the rotters.”
“Rotters? You mean the boogies?”
“The boogies.”
“Boogiemen, yeah. Fence keeps ’em out, mostly. But we got dudes along the fence too. Take ’em out with some M-16s. We send out hunting parties, too. Chop them bitches up and fuck the corpses.” Loco paused, his voice got kind of quiet. “We don’t really fuck the corpses, though.”
“That’s real good to know.”
Friendship, Oklahoma. Home of the Altus Air Force Base.
Across the street from the airbase? A drive-in movie theater. Playing a zombie flick at 4AM in the morning. Kayla didn’t know what film it was, all she knew was that as they passed, she could see something—a splinter? a nail?—go into some girl’s wide-open eye. It made her cringe and sent her sour stomach even further south. Nobody sat in cars, but they sat on blankets and fold-up chairs next to sputtering burn barrels.
Loco turned the Humvee into the airbase proper.
Kayla had never been on a military base before, but she used to live not far from one—Navy, not Air Force. They always looked clean, utilitarian. Frankly, a little boring. Brick, square buildings. Everything at sharp, plain angles.
This was that, but it was a space subverted.
They passed rows of on-base housing—little one or two bedrooms, all brown, all nearly identical. But each had been ruined. Not by the zombies, but by those who had colonized this place. Graffiti on the walls, shrubs torn up, home-made Halloween decorations (lots of scarecrows and clowns) on the lawns, broken windows, more burn barrels. One house had a couple in full-body greasepaint humping on the front sidewalk like a couple of dogs. Kayla thought that was pretty gross, too, in some ways a lot grosser than the splinter in the girl’s eyeball.
The good news was, Danny must’ve felt the same way, because he stared outside with a look that suggested he was watching a car wreck happen before his very eyes.
Further down the way—past a circle drive with an old WWII bomber propped up in the center like some kind of decoration, a bomber that had been tagged with even more elaborate images—they passed by a series of concrete administration buildings. Same effect here: broken windows, spraypaint, toilet-paper in the trees, furniture on the lawn. Outside one, somebody had set up a half-deflated moon bounce. This place looks like a frat party gone nuclear, she thought.
Then the Humvee went through a chain link gate and suddenly they were on an airstrip, whizzing past transports and tankers, past trucks and cars. They passed a helipad with a big clunky olive green chopper sitting in the middle. On the side, spraypainted in purple, was a big crown. Three diadems, like the symbol they’d seen way back in Erick.
Up ahead: big hangars. One after the other.
But Kayla knew that only one of them was their destination, and it was easy to see which. For starters, the damn thing was covered in neon signs, and it was lit up like a city bar at Christmas. Beer signs. Hotel signs. Open signs. Carnival signs. All stuck up around the hangar—either bolted to the side or stuck on poles—with neither rhyme nor reason. The black cables coming off them looked like bundles of black licorice. Then, the front of the hangar was closed off with a giant patchwork of fabric: bedsheets, towels, tarps, all stitched together to make a mostly red-and-purple motley curtain. Like a show awaited them inside.
Loco gunned the Humvee, and instead of braking and easing to a stop like most people would, he instead accelerated toward the bunker.
“What are we doing?” Kayla whispered to Danny. He shrugged, looking worried.
“Slow down!” Ebbie said.
Loco grinned, licked his lips.
“Loco,” Gil said, “you might think about—”
Loco engaged both brakes—yanked up on the parking brake and slammed his foot down at the same time. The Humvee skidded, its back end sliding like the ass-end of a dog running on oiled linoleum. Smoke drifted as rubber burned. The Humvee stopped.
Loco hooted. “Goddamn but that feels like a fucking meth enema. Lets you know you’re still alive. Now everybody get the fuck out of Dickbucket.”
Kayla, assuming that Dickbucket was the name Loco had given to the Humvee, got out of the vehicle. She heard the chug chug chug of a nearby generator, which explained the neon. Instantly she felt a not-too-gentle shove from the beefy ’roid-head, Dope Fiend.
“Move, bitch,” the thick-necked freak mumbled.
“Hey, okay,” she said, scowling. “Chill.”
Danny stepped up to Dope Fiend and shoved his finger in the muscled freak’s face. The look on Dope Fiend’s face said that he wasn’t happy—the skin tightened and his tendons corded, and he made a grimace like he was straining to take a really hard shit. Kayla knew what was coming, knew that he was going to cock back one of those log-jam fists and with it push Danny’s face to the back of his head, but then next thing she knew Loco was there, slapping Dope Fiend hard in the face with an open palm.
“Goddamnit, Dope Fiend, you about to be in the presence of the King of 66. Why you gotta be such a cranky nug?”
Dope Fiend looked like he was going to cry.
“Whatever,” Loco said. He made a little fanfare by forming a trumpet with his two chubby hands. “You are about to meet the Joker, the Monster, the motherfucking Mix Master. You are about to be in the presence of the Killer Carny, the Psychopathic Supa-Villain, the Clown Prince of Strangling Scrubs. It is time to behold the first rider of Satan’s Carousel, the liberator of Hell’s Highway, the King of the 66 States: King Brutha T
huglow!”
Loco whipped back the curtain, almost tripping as he did so.
Smoke—green and greasy—gusted from the open curtain.
Loco ushered them inside.
They were greeted by an even deeper haze of smoke and the sound of…
A pinball machine? Bells, beeps, clangs, fake screams, the familiar dun-dun-dun-dun from the Jaws soundtrack.
The hangar was pimped out. In the center, a big circle bed with black velvet sheets. Two naked girls lay slumbering across one another, asses up, their bodies forming a kind of pink, fleshy ‘X’ across the fabric. In the back, a hot-tub. Up front, a bar made with studded leather. Kayla was too young to know what bong-water smelled like and further, what a sex swing was, but if she were to know those things, she would’ve detected their presence immediately.
A blow-up Frankenstein hung out against the back wall. In fact, the whole place had kind of a ‘’seventies pimp meets a haunted house’ feel—a shelf of chalices lay draped in faux cobwebs, a series of foam graves lay across the floor forming a kind of obstacle course, a series of warped mirrors hung from above.
And in the back of this massive hangar stood what must’ve been the King of the 66 States, King Brutha Thuglow.
He was not what Kayla expected. By the looks on everyone’s faces, nobody expected this.
Thuglow was tall, and he stood hunched over a Jaws 3 pinball machine. He was shirtless, and so skinny that it looked like you could’ve reached out and gotten your fingers most of the way around one of his rib-bones. For pants he wore a baggy pair of zebra-striped chef-pants. His hair was long and thin, an aged rockstar mane that went down to the middle of his back.
He turned to face them—Kayla saw that his face was so lean it was gaunt, the cheekbones standing out like hard granite edges. It gave him a skeletal look, but he was certainly a happy skeleton. His grin of yellowed teeth stretched from ear to ear, and his eyes were pinched, watery, bloodshot.