by Black, D. S.
The boys and Pinky didn’t argue. They picked Rainmaker up, their adrenaline making it much easier than the first time, even with his body shaking and jerking.
“On three, boys!” Pinky said. “1…2…3!”
They threw him into the violent water. His body sunk in, followed by a loud hiss as steam came off him. He sunk, the water pulling him under as though it had hands.
Zarina and the others stood on the embankment waiting. Only Zarina was not afraid. She had a wild look of excitement, but fear was not a part of it.
Though it felt much longer to Pinky and even the kids, Rainmaker was only under water for about ten seconds.
He shot up like a man who’d just been baptized. The wind dyed, the water went back to normal, and the lightning was gone. He stood up, and looked around, a look of wild eyed confusion on his face.
“Something just happened,” he said.
Zarina was the first to laugh, and the others followed.
“Oh my friend, something certainly just happened,” Zarina said. “You are healed!”
“How do you feel?” Pinky asked, helping Rainmaker as he stepped back onto the shore.
“I’m fine. In fact, … I don’t feel any pain at all.” Rainmaker looked at Zarina. “Thank you, Zarina. I owe you my life.”
“Nonsense. You brought me this,” she said, patting the supernatural revolver holstered on her hip. “I have only paid you back in my own way.”
“Well now that I am back on my feet, how about some food? And maybe a look at your maps and drawings. We have a battle to plan.”
Zarina shook her head in agreement.
Soon they were deep into food, and their plans for the final battle against the Militia.
An Artist’s Mind
1
The brush moved deftly in Spade’s skilled fingers. He enjoyed the feel of the smooth wood grain, opting to use his hands, though he easily could maneuver the brushes with his mind. The strokes left dark beautiful shadows upon a growing landscape. For weeks he’d worked on this painting. A large field of battle. Bodies painted in deadly detail, limbs torn, hearts ripped from bodies still beating on the ground. The look of horror on the faces he created, much of it in 3-D, screamed off the canvas.
His studio was a large rectangular room. High vaulted glass ceilings allowed light in. The floor was cold concrete. Around him were unfinished and finished works of art. Diabolical scenes of pain and torture. One was a woman impaled by knives, her pussy bleeding, every detail caught by his painter’s eye. Another one was of how he envisioned the Voice. It was a hard one for him to paint. He’d spent an entire month on it. It was painted in varying white, blacks, grays, and reds. The form he created was 3-D, seeming to change shape depending on the angle one looked at it. There were many others—children training under the guardianship of his Guard, women raped by an army of drugged men. One was of the Old World, side by side with the New World, captured by painting the same cityscape. In the Old World, men and women went about their day with busy business-oriented faces. In the New World, those same men and women ran screaming from, or being eaten alive by hungry zombies.
In the corner of the studio, a small painting sat. It was of a little boy and a woman with deep amber hair. It was unfinished. There was no background, the boy’s half smile begging for the other side of his face; the woman, looking down at her son, smiling, had no body, just a soft outline. A single hand was drawn on the boy’s shoulder. A strong masculine hand. Spade had tried to return to the painting, wanting to finish it, capture something of his old life; but instead, his wife and son remained unfinished, and he continued to exist as only a single, fatherly hand grasping his son’s shoulder.
How can he finish a sweet thoughtful painting of his Old World family with the black evil thoughts echoing in his mind’s eye? He couldn’t paint his family the way they died. Not a chance. He wouldn’t do it, though the Voice would no doubt like that very much. It would mean Spade had gone that much deeper into the void of no return, finally breaching the thin walls separating him from his diminishing sanity.
Just thinking of his wife and son grew harder by the day. Their faces blurred, turning red and dead. The violent death they endured ringing loudly in his mind. In those moments, only the time he spent painting the bleak scenes accumulating in his studio calmed his rage, his helplessness.
Stroke after stroke, bloody corpse after bloody corpse, battle scene after battle scene; his nerves finally calmed. His mind settled into a tranquil state of relaxation.
The brush moved over the canvas, back to the paint, back to the canvas, all with fluid, effortless precision.
2
As a boy, his father saw the talent in him.
Then smashed his passion and drive with brute force.
“Do you understand, son?” His father said, another powerful backhand connecting with his face. “Spades aren’t sissy faggot artists. We’re warriors. Blue angels who fight for the State. I’m burning this shit!”
“No! Dad, no! Please.”
His father ignored him, took his sketch book, flicked a Bic lighter and lit the edge. Tears whimpered down his face as he watched months of labor go up in smoke. The flame crawled across his sketch book, erasing his vision, his creative musing and worst of all, his drive to ever put pencil to paper, or brush to canvas.
His father slapped him again. His sobs came in short gasps, his heart beating faster than he could breathe. He looked away from his father, holding his hands over his head for protection.
His father’s boot drove into his rib cage, and he howled with pain. He crawled to a corner, hoping for refuge. He was pulled up, thrown across the room, falling in front of the small tin trash can his father had put his smoldering sketch book.
“Stop the crying, boy! Spades don’t cry! We fight! Now get up and show me what you got!”
His father yanked him onto his feet. His legs felt like Jello, but he forced himself not to fall. He stared up, wiped tears from his face, and made eye contact with eyes filled with rage and hate.
His father laughed and sent him back to the floor with another stinging, dizzying back hand. He saw stars, bright lights flashing as he crashed into the concrete floor of his father’s basement.
Another volley of blinding pain shot up his leg, he looked down. His father’s massive boot pushed down on his ankle. Blood fell from a cut on his head, dripping to the cold floor. His hands pressed against the hard concrete, trying to scoot himself away, free his ankle.
His father let him go, then quickly swooped down and pulled him up by the front of his shirt. He stared at his father’s insane eyes. Smelled the tobacco and whiskey breath. Saw the veins pumping rage down the man’s thick neck. They looked like blood worms and would haunt his dreams for many years to come.
From that day forward until the moment he was transformed by the Voice, anytime he thought of drawing or painting, he saw those angry eyes, raging veins, smelled the sickening stench of whiskey and tobacco. Painting took on negative painful connections. The very idea made him sick to his stomach. For years, he buried his talent deep inside his subconscious. He ignored the way he would be drawn to a painting, a drawing, or even a sculpture.
Then he’d met the Voice and all that changed; he was free. Free to paint and draw. Free…to an extent. The catch was; the only thing his mind now conjured were the dark images of pain and suffering, torture and hate, blood and guts. Whatever youthful beauty his talent once possessed had not been excavated, only buried deeper while his bleakest nightmares were resurrected and unleashed upon the canvas.
Yet, he still found deep peace with each stroke of the brush. It didn’t matter that it was gore. He saw the beauty in the deep shades of red, the screaming faces, scared eyes. The need to create anything else had not occurred to him, not since the moment he tried to draw his Old World’s family’s portrait. Only blackness, only burnt faces, blackened bodies, roaming hordes of zombies eating the flesh from the living. If he could defeat the Vo
ice, he didn’t think that his dark heart would change. He didn’t want it to. The evil screaming inside him offered confidence. Certainty in an age of insanity.
So now, he sat his brush down, and walked over to the unfinished portrait of his dead family. A set of cabinets set over to his right, and in them he found a box of matches. He struck the match against the rough side of its box and put the flame against the canvas. He kicked it over, watching it fall to the cold concrete. He watched as the flame spread to his wife’s face, then his son, and finally consuming the hand. The one part of his Old World self he’d been able to recreate died in a crescent of flame, the paper crackling and smoking.
He put the final remains out with his boot, then swept the ashes of his old life, and dumped then in a tin trash can.
He didn’t cry. A Spade never cries.
Dinner Preparations
Mary Jane and Tasha both smiled when they walked into the two-room suite offered to them by the Mountain King. It was more than huge, it was luxurious. Mary Jane had never stayed in a place quite as nice, not even in the Old World. She’d once taken a vacation with her sister to Greece, where they stayed at an ocean side villa. Decked out and beautiful, but nothing compared to the finishing she saw before her now.
Thick, red, lavish carpet covered every square inch of the floor. The sheets were high thread count silk. A massive TV was on the wall, worthless now, but still a nice touch. The room smelled rich. The doors were thick mahogany. There was a Jacuzzi not far from her bed. A wine cabinet filled with expensive vintage hung from the wall. A refrigerator with imported beer and liquor sat in the corner. She wondered how all this alcohol survived with so many men staying near, but then remembered the White Mist. Who needed alcohol when they had a supernatural drug?
Her and Tasha had found their way to the room alone without an escort, just as the Mountain King promised. Her first thought, her initial instinct, or better put; her hope had been he wasn’t as bad as his Militia made him out to be, but that was foolhardy. The man, if she could call him that, allowed a lowlife drug pusher to mix up a dangerous drug that the king then fed with supernatural power. He allowed his men to rape and murder at will, hold women as sex slaves, and turn children into soldiers for his disgusting empire of evil.
No! The Mountain King was not a good man. Never would be, and he could read all these thoughts coursing through her mind. What could she do to stop him?
Nothing.
At least she didn’t know what to do at the moment, other than to prepare for dinner, hoping she could discover a way to kill him, or at least slow him down.
And what if he could read her thoughts? What if he knew she might be plotting something against him? He needed her, didn’t he? The Voice creature owned him, and he wanted free. She was his only chance to rid himself of the tyrannical chains of supernatural slavery.
But, just how strong was his mind reading capabilities? How far could his powers reach? Was it close encounters he needed to read her thoughts? Or was he listening to her now?
Her and Tasha undressed, and put on clothing that waited for them.
“Look at this…”
Tasha stood in front of a massive walk-in closet. Designer dresses hung from velvet purple hangers. Under the dresses, designer shoes waited for them to try them on. It was at least under ordinary circumstances, a girl’s dream come true.
“This closet of clothes amounts to more than I made in a year teaching.”
“No doubt. Jesus… look at these!” Tasha held up a pair of red high heel shoes, holding them as though they dripped with pure gold. “Where did they get all this? They raided a designer mall just for us?” Tasha said, now flipping through the dresses.
“I suspect most of it already existed here. This was probably a VIP suite, and these dresses belong to a rich woman who spent her last days here.”
“Probably right.”
They took out the dresses and shoes, trying different outfits and combinations. They lost track of time. Forgot where they were at. What world they now lived in. They allowed the clothing to take them to a faraway world, where it was safe to dress up and go to dinner. Where drugged up rapists didn’t exist just down the hall. Where a supernaturally endowed former sheriff didn’t call himself king. Harmless escapism. A way to lessen the stress of the moment.
After showering in the biggest and best shower she’d ever been in, Mary Jane put on the outfit she’d chosen.
“What do you think?” Mary Jane asked, turning to face Tasha. She wore a black satin dress. It hugged her hips in all the right ways. Her breasts flirted with exposure. On her feet, she had on a pair of pink heels.
“You look like a queen,” Tasha said smiling.
“Don’t say that… I don’t want the king to get any ideas.”
“Nah…he doesn’t like women…Or men. Remember?”
Mary Jane nodded while looking at herself in a large mirror, then turned to Tasha. “What about you? What are you wearing?”
“Hold on…”
Tasha disappeared into the bathroom, clothes in hand. When she returned, smiling ear to ear, blood rushing against her blushing cheeks, Mary Jane let out a complimentary whistle. Tasha wore a hot pink designer skirt, black pumps on her feet, lacy gray stockings, a snow-white crop top, and a pink ribbon in her blonde hair.
“Hey! What’s wrong, Mary?”
Mary Jane wiped tears from her eyes. Mary couldn’t help it. The girl was just so damn beautiful with an air of youthful innocence. Tasha didn’t deserve to be here, getting dressed up for a sick freak. She deserved to be enjoying her graduation summer. Planning her college life. Spending time with friends, saying goodbye to people she’d spent her high school years with.
“Come here,” Mary Jane said holding her arms open.
Tasha was crying now, and that made Mary Jane feel bad; but the embrace, the deep loving, sisterly hug made the tears worth it.
Mary forced back the dark thoughts trying to force themselves to the forefront of her mind. They were witnessing the end of humanity, their extinction event and here they were, pretending to be school girls preparing for prom.
She wanted Duras. Wanted him here now more than ever. To hold her. To be near her. To tell her things that made all this a little easier to deal with. To smoke a joint with her, make her laugh till her sides hurt. Mary pushed Tasha away from her gently, and investigated her eyes. They were wanting something similar. Okona, she assumed. Okona must not be such a bad guy after all, if this sweet brave girl loved him.
“Go clean your face. I’m sorry, Tasha. I made your makeup smear.”
“Yours to,” Tasha said running her index finger under Mary Jane’s eye holding it up for her to see.
They both laughed, a cheerless sound.
They went to the bathroom, reapplied makeup and pulled their thoughts and faces together. They looked at each other now with hard determined glares, women forged through rape and hell, pain and loss. They didn’t have to say anything. They knew this entire fucked up world. The last year, for what it was worth was going to be their last.
Probably their last. There was still a glimmer of hope shining in their eyes, if only for a moment. The chance that somehow, they would find a way to fight back and win. To gain some of what they’d lost. To pay back those who harmed them.
They turned, hand in hand, stepped out the door, and walked to meet their dark destiny.
Dinner with the King
1
The dining table was long, elegant, dark mahogany and riddled with hand crafted runes. A huge chandelier hung from the vaulted ceiling, it’s crystals shining like diamonds, brightening the room. Soft classical music played in the background. Large well cushioned chairs surrounded the table, and like much of the casino, thick and lavish blood red carpet covered the floor.
At the head of the table sat the Mountain King. To his left two empty seats were reserved for Mary Jane and Tasha. Fresh bread and wine waited for them.
“Welcome. Pleas
e, sit down and enjoy a meal. This is my Guard, you’ve already met the general, Don and Baker.”
End to end, the white dead like faces of the Kings Guard looked at them, sending a shiver down Mary Jane’s spine. She felt as though her mind was being probed, touched by invisible hands, searching her thoughts, her motivations.
“Don’t worry, Mary. Sit down,” the king said.
Mary sat closest to the king, and Tasha sat beside the general. The other men stared at them, their eyes swirling marbles of strangeness.
“May I say... you’re both stunningly gorgeous. I knew I chose the correct suite for them,” General Bright said.
“It’s true. Mary, you are dazzling,” Spade added smiling.
“It’s fortunate you protect us from your brutish soldiers,” Mary Jane said smiling, trying to ignore the deep unease she felt.
The Mountain King ignored her comment. “What did you think of my chemist?” he asked, smiling crookedly.
Mary Jane took a large sip of red wine, sat her glass down softly and said: “My king, please understand, there’s not a fat chance in hell I can work with someone like that.”
Spade laughed, then said: “Please continue, tell me your thoughts about him.”
“He’s trash. Pure and simple. An amateur to the extreme. His formula for the Mist is only powerful because of your supernatural blessing.”
A roar of laughter erupted at the table. The men and the king slapped the table and their knees as though she’d said the funniest thing ever.
“Forgive us ladies, but I’ve tried to convince the king to abandon that fool for a long time. It’s very nice to hear you say what you just said.”
The king interrupted. “Well his services were needed till now, but I’m sure the Voice could use another soul to feast on. Add him to the lot, General.”
A deep and frightening silence filled the room after Spade mentioned the Voice. For nearly a minute, not a word was spoken.