by Black, D. S.
Looking at Thompson’s dark eyes, Rusty’s face lost all color, turning a paler white than he already was. His voice was weak when he spoke. “You do not know the city. I know routes that can lead you straight into the heart of the city.” Then with panic laced deep in his throat: “Trust me!”
The Lieutenant let out a light chuckle, then with a danger in his voice. “You keep on talking like you really believe you have a chance of surviving this encounter.” In one fast motion, the Lieutenant reached out and struck the dagger’s hilt against Rusty’s forehead. Rusty fell back, stunned.
The Lieutenant marched around the desk, grabbed Rusty, picked him up, and held him in a bear hug. “You’ve given me all I need! Swear loyalty to me right now, or I will rape your happy little ass.” His words came out with hot spittle, splashing against Rusty’s scared face.
With blood running down Rusty's head, he forced dignity into his words: “I swear only to God! Do what you must!”
The Lieutenant ripped Rusty’s clothing off, and forced him into positions Rusty never imagined he’d be in. Tears dripped from Rusty’s face. He screamed, his religion dying with every hefty thrust the hardened Lieutenant gave—salty tears streamed out, hot salty semen streamed in. Soldiers stood around watching; their eyes bulging with drugged delight. “Bring in all the boys!” Thompson screamed as he fucked Rusty deep and hard.
Soon they’d all have a go with dear Rusty. And in Rusty’s mind, an even darker reality dawned: maybe there isn’t a God. God, please hear me! Please! God stop them! Please! It hurts like you cannot know.
Thompson pulled out of with a deep and satisfied sigh. “He’s all yours.” Thompson walked out of the office, and then left the building to join the troops outside, and put the final details on his invasion of the City of God.
“Cry, little Rusty! CRY! CRY! CRY!” a soldier said as he mounted Rusty, thrusting hard into the rear.
OUCH! OH GOD! PLEASE MAKE IT END! WHAT HAVE I DONE! PLEASE! Then out loud: “God! HELP ME!” This brought a thunderous round of laughter, clapping and jeering. A large bag of white powder opened; lines were spread out on the desk.
While lines were snorted by one soldier after another, poor Rusty dripped blood from regions that would never be the same. A look of desolation and madness covered his face. His eyes stared blankly and blinked after each cruel thrust.
Then his mind slipped back into a sweet and warm memory. Sitting at his mother’s kitchen table, her big tubby behind pushed up toward the heavens while she removed biscuits from the oven. She placed them on the counter and began slathering them with butter; she’d melted the butter in a blue acrylic bowl with gold crosses painted on the sides. She’d made it at her pottery class; that was nothing compared to July 1996. While most kids his age (12 at the time) hyped about Independence Day, starring Will Smith; Rusty Ray prepared for his trip to Christian Day Camp. His mom didn’t let little Rusty watch TV, or go to movies. She’d been top of her class at Bob Jones University, and she sure was not going to ever let her baby boy see vile sinful filth (even though her and Mr. Ray enjoyed a private collection of BDSM porn).
“Rusty! Who the fuck’s your God now, sissy boy!” A Militia soldier screamed, causing Rusty to snap back to his current and most painful conundrum (oh how he wished to taste his momma’s biscuits). No biscuits today, Rusty! No biscuits for you! OUCH! OUCH! OUCH!!!!!
4
Rusty wanted to die. All hope in God disappeared somewhere in the middle of the gang rape. Five of the soldiers still surrounded him; their perverse shadows darkening his face. The pale moon shone through the open window. Rusty saw ripped camouflage and blood-stained skin cast in the dead of night, a mixture of hateful madness. All five of the soldiers removed their clothes, and before the first thrust, Rusty blacked out and woke in a dark misty place deep in his mind. He smelled the black cancer coming from his mother’s breath; he knew he was in the hospital room at Coastal Memorial, July 2005. The month that brought us The Wedding Crashers and The Devil’s Rejects; not that Rusty got to see them at the theater.
The hospital had snuggled close to the east coast and hot summer air tinged while salty sea blew into an open window. The white curtains flapped with the breeze and little Rusty Ray sat holding his momma’s hand. His mother lay on the hospital bed drugged and dying; her eyes dark, hollow caverns of misery. The final solution, or as the nurses called it, END OF LIFE MEDS. Rusty always smelled her black and dying breath, that smell that meant cancer’s victorious dominance over life was near at hand. The cancer ate her alive from the inside out, and there with little Rusty watching as she rested her final minutes, a hospice-care worker came in to check every 20 minutes. His mother had been in her forties but looked eighty; her body was frail and pale; her smile faded to a painful grimace. He’d watched her take her final breath. He had said a prayer as she died, asking God to take her soul and put her by His side.
But the pain of losing his mother was nothing compared to what he felt now. Rusty Ray laid on a cold floor shivering with blood dripping from his anus. Dried semen covered his face like glaze from a Krispy Crème doughnut.
Rusty now understood something he never understood before: there is no God. There is no holy direction. Only death, bloody black death. All the sermons, the bedtime stories, ALL OF IT—lies. He saw his past now as a collection of pointless dabbles, encounters that led him to this very predicament. Rusty lay for an unknown time before a few soldiers picked him up, took him out into the night, and threw his worn and torn body into a nearby ditch. He splashed into the gully and lay staring at the sky. His eyes black and without hope or clarity of sight.
Some hours later, without ever knowing what had become of his beloved City of God, Rusty woke with sun rising in the East, a new day. A day without God, without hope, without any meaning, rhyme, or reason. Lies! all of it. Monstrous LIES!
Rusty Ray felt a powerful surge of anger pump into his veins. There was a God. He was only angry. He couldn’t blame God for this. He pushed himself up on one side and screamed. “To God be the glory!”
Then it was 1990, and a hot and cool wind whipped in through the open windows of his father’s recently purchased Corvette. The red Corvette that meant more to Daddy than living people. Even his father’s love for the dead could not compete with that fucking red Corvette. Black and tan leather seats, convertible top. His father drove with his chin held high, his salt and pepper hair blowing in the wind; his dark shades resting comfortably, his palm on the gear—Daddy never believed.
This realization hit Rusty like a ten-pound hammer and he jumped back into consciousness. The soldiers were gone. The sun now burned high above. His skin was burned and red, with blisters forming. The puss pushed up from his skin like ready to pop domes. In the distance, about thirty feet off the right, stumbling and jerking down the road was a horde of zombies; their eyes bursting with death’s white glow. They stopped, and in unison, sniffed the air; they smelled Rusty Ray.
He heard their grumbling and smelled the rancid decay rising from dead skin in gagging wisps of hot air. “Daddy never believed! Daddy never believed! DADDY! NEVER! BELIEVED!” Rusty screamed at the world, at his past, at everything he never experienced; the boys and girls holding hands, eating shakes at Buster’s Ice Cream. Rusty saw them now with absolute clarity; the tan skin of the soon to be class of 01, the bully jock boyfriend with his shitty smears and big muscles. Rusty saw the world in a way he’d never seen before. A world without a mystical force controlling the heavens; just a primal sloppy mess. Rusty saw it clearly. The evolution of mankind, the clear lack of a guiding hand, the branching of this species into that; the spawning of new and tropical life, the beautiful majesty unfurled upon his mind’s eye.
He saw glory and wonder, insights that he’d never considered. He stood up and pointed a trembling finger at the approaching horde. His clothing hung, tattered and bloody. His face was dry as a desert with long lines of broken skin, like dried up tributaries. His pants were completely missing. His w
hite Fruit of the Loom briefs still hung, mostly ripped and torn—a clear rectal hazard zone.
The horde inched closer, jerking his way, growling under the humid July sun. Then Rusty’s mind jumped again, back into a dark recess of his mind. There was his mother and father. His father’s eyes were glued to a new Laser Disc system, 1988. Little Rusty saw the television. The Nightmare on Elm Street played vividly. His father drank a bourbon and scotch and watched Freddy butcher young girls. The room was dark, save the glow of the TV. Every few seconds his father would smile. His father nearly broke into tears of joy at the sight of Johnny Depp’s guts spraying out of a pristine white sheet hole. His mother sat in a Lazy Boy, with a Walkman playing the sounds of Carmen (the bringer of such tunes as “Comin' On Strong,” “The Champion,” and the unforgettable. “A Long Time Ago ... in a Land Called Bethlehem.”) Her eyes were closed, her hands folded neatly in her lap. A cancerous lingering of cigarette smoke trailed toward the ceiling, where it moved across the room like a misty nightmare. His father cackled and finished off his drink, pouring another.
The world came back into view. Rusty stood half naked, his ass blistered and raw—shriveled like a sunburned red raisin. The horde nearly upon him, their smelly bodies in direct view. “Daddy never believed!” He screamed at the hungry growling faces. “DADDY! NEVER! BELIEV—
The first one took a deep bite into his right shoulder. It's dark green and yellow teeth dug into Rusty’s burned skin. Hot blood filled the hungry creature’s mouth with oozy pleasure. The zombie wore a tattered green hemp dress with a blood-stained peace symbol. On the back of the shirt said: LOW COUNTRY JAM FESTIVAL. Another one grabbed his left arm, then the brunt of the horde came in, stumbling yet fast; quickly taking Rusty down to the ground. Hands tore into his belly. They pushed their hands deep, removing organs, making sucking sounds and chewing with great lust. Rusty screamed and screamed. Horrible and fatal cries that no one heard, save the dead.
Thompson Takes the City of God
1
Thompson stood on the black Humvee. It was hours before Rusty would die at the hands of zombies. Rusty was still inside, whimpering and crying; the last few soldiers just finishing with him. Outside, the temperature had dropped a few degrees.
A warm wind blew against Thompson’s face. Fire, passion, and unbridled hate-filled ambition erupted in his eyes. This was the time. This was the place. He smelled the fear coming from the city. Smelled the hot sweat of horror.
The city was his for the taking.
“Here! Here! To me soldiers! Take this line and snort it!” He broke out lines on the hood of the Hummer, and one by one, the soldiers came up and took their share.
As they snorted the White Mist, Thompson looked up at the sky. It was a clear night. The stars looked down at him, winking as though to tell him they were on his side. The entire universe; God and Satan himself, stood at Thompson’s side. No threat! No man! Nothing could stop him now. He would conquer the City of God, and then bring the wrath of Hell to Cap.
After they’d each gotten their allotment, Thompson started again, raising his voice not caring who heard—living or dead.
“You chosen few! You brave men of the Militia! Selected by nature, bred by brutality!” Cheers rose up to meet his words. Their eyes were captivated, wild marbles of hate, lusting for death and plunder.
“I’ve only two questions! Answer them loud and proud!”
He jumped down from the Hummer and walked through his men. They made a path for him whichever way he went, like a snake moving through water.
“What do we want!” He screamed with his right fist pumping high into the air.
“DEATH!”
“What do we need!”
“BLOOD!”
“I SAID: WHAT THA FUCK DO WE WANT!” He said this with his head cocked wildly to the side, his black eyes daring anyone to challenge him.
“DEATH!”
“WHAT THA FUCK DO WE NEED!”
“BLOOD!”
“Then by God, lets go fucking get it! Arm up, stand up and kill! KILL! KILL!”
“KILL! KILL! KILL!”
“MOUNT UP, BOYS!” Although Thompson had no White Mist in his system, his eyes blazed with such intense manic blood lust, one would have sworn he’d taken a raging dose of the Mist. His mind blazed with excitement. He wanted to hurt and kill anyone he ran into. Now was the time. Slaughtering Randy, ripping Rusty Ray’s ass in two, and all the hurts, tears and deaths he’d created since the Fever first came, would pale in comparison to what was about to happen.
2
Mary Jane sat drinking a hot bottle of chardonnay. Not top shelf either!
Fuck!
I hate this fucking goddamn world! She thought as she chugged the bottle hard, turning it up high, letting the wine course down her throat.
She sat alone in her room. A room that once belonged to a young hipster, who most likely now roamed the world as a zombie. She knew this because of the pictures she found when she moved in. He’d been a lanky fellow with a ridiculous looking artsy goatee and slick black hair that looked like something out of Grease. No doubt, he thought it a real hip thing to do, dressing up his hair like he lived in the 50s. Hipsters never made any sense to Mary Jane. Rich kids; she always graded them down. Always. No matter how good their paper may have been.
But tonight, drunk and high; she sang to herself. Soon enough her world would turn upside down, but right then she drank for the Old World. She sang, she sang some more. Not a jolly tune. Not a tune at all. Just a sound that wreaked of wine and depression.
What’s left in this shit hole anyway? More depression than wine. That’s for sure. Jesus! This wine is disgusting.
But so is everything. I hate it all. I hate Duras too. I hate them all. I want out, I want out of this dreadful excuse for a city-state. The ancient Sumerians would laugh at our pathetic attempt to save Western culture. Oh, and the Greeks! What would Aristotle say to a fenced in hell hole that is forever surrounded by roaming dead men?
No! She didn’t hate Duras.
Plus…
Where could she go?
But she did want out. She wanted to go back in time. She wanted her students back. Their cheerful faces, even the hipsters. She wanted research grant money back. She wanted the summers off. She wanted to be called Professor again.
Her husband, with his little round belly. Her son, her little boy.
A tear rolled down her face.
Now she just sat. Drunk and stoned. Her whole life, nothing but drunk and stoned. Weed and drink. That’s it.
Sex with Duras.
The hated task of caring for the needs of people too dumb to care for themselves. She wished they would all die.
She turned the bottle high. Down it went.
Oh God. When will it all end?
To hell with it! Tonight, I drink alone. Tonight, I am free. Tonight, the dead win. Tonight, I cry a tone of solidarity with those dead fucks. Fuck them all.
She walked to a mirror and spoke to her reflection. “I warned them. I told them about Holocene Extinction. Did they listen?”
She threw the empty glass bottle against the wall, causing it to shatter. The little shards of glass fell to the floor like a slow-motion movie scene, and she watched them bounce for a moment.
Mary heard a mighty explosion; her townhouse shook. Gunfire erupted from somewhere outside. Shrieks of fear cried out. Her drunk mind forced itself to think. She walked a few feet, and looked out of the window.
A loud blast broke the window and sent her flying backward. She crashed hard against the wall. Her face and hands bled. A large shard of glass cut into her leg. She looked down, it was in deep. She stumbled to her feet, holding the wall for support. She worked her way out to the townhouse landing, and then fell down the stairs, landing on the street. People were rushing by her. She crawled back to the doorway, back into her townhouse, and while still on her knees, horror in her eyes, peered out broken panes of glass.
Soldiers. She sa
w soldiers. Camouflaged men marching through the streets killing anyone they saw.
Lock and load.
She ignored the pain in her leg and ran over to the closet. She opened the door and removed her AK-47. She moved back to the only unbroken window, squatted, moved the dark blue curtain over just a bit and peered out. The screams were getting wilder and the gunshots continued to ring out. People were being murdered in the streets. Kids, women, men, it didn’t matter. It was a horror fest. Hell had come to the city.
“The only thing worse than the dead are the living, especially when they wear uniforms.” She said to herself.
Her father had believed uniforms gave men a sense of authority, and the conviction that all their deeds are justified, regardless of how deplorable and gruesome. That’s something her daddy told her years ago. He was drunk that night and gave her a rare story about the war. Tears ran down his eyes. “We shot up an entire village. Kids, old people, you name it. We thought it was all justified. We had on uniforms, didn’t we? That’s all a man needs to forget all decency, a fucking uniform.”
Back when she'd joined ROTC in high school, she didn’t believe any of that. She had hoped her father was just dealing with PTSD.
But now, looking out and seeing the murder in the streets, she knew her daddy was right. All a man needed was a uniform.
My sister!
The image of her Sarah’s dying body crossed her mind like a waking nightmare.
Mary Jane’s leg hurt like hell, but she had to get to her sister. She had to get past the uniforms and find Sarah.
She rushed out of the house and onto the streets. Gun shots were everywhere. Screams of dying children. The laughs of soldiers. More gunfire; she ran through the streets. Her heart raced faster than her feet could move.