by Bob Williams
“Don’t ever forget. I’m not fucking kidding around here, you ungrateful bastards. I should cut every one of your worthless heads off and start over. Ungrateful turds. You think all of this is free? You think you can just come in here and do whatever the hell you want without consequence? There are rules. They are followed. If you don’t follow my rules, the rules set forth by Chaos, our master, whom we all serve without question, you will be punished. Severely. Do you understand?”
The crowd roared. “YES, KADE!”
“Yes, you are Freaks. I don’t give a flying fuck if you like that name or not. I don’t. I don’t give a shit. But you, you were made this way because Chaos has willed you to serve him through me. So y’all should care! You should be proud. You should own it. Yes! You should! When you feed, own it! When you kill, own it! When you rape, own it! When you break, own it! When you do everything within your grasp to bring misery, death, destruction, violence, and darkness to this cesspit of a world… You. Fucking. OWN IT!”
Kade would never admit it, of course—if he did, he’d kill the person he told—but he had just made that shit up right there on the spot. That’s just how totally amazing he was. The Freaks were losing their minds out there. He could see the look of mild concern on Ortiz’s face. There were times, on occasion, when Ortiz was a pussy and would advise Kade to not get them so riled up. He worried there would come a day when they couldn’t control them. It wasn’t about control. It was about the collective mentality. As long as Kade was around, he would never lose control.
It was time for the evening’s entertainment.
Kade gestured, his thumb crossing his throat, to tell the Freaks that it was time for all of them to shut up.
“Ortiz, good man, is the table ready?” Kade turned and saw the table waiting in its normal place, a black velvet sheet covering up the contents beneath.
“Yes, Kade! All of your favorites are there and awaiting your selection,” said Ortiz joyfully.
“Well, then. Let’s get this party started! Queue the music!”
Social Distortion blared to life over the speakers, singing the Johnny Cash classic “Ring of Fire” as three Regulars were led onto the stage. Each prisoner had a burlap sack over their head and their hands were tied tight with rope. They all appeared disheveled, and their body language showed fear. Most definitely fear.
“Okay, okay… I said shut the fuck up! Trying to talk here, you crazy buttholes. Listen up. This could happen to you.”
Kade turned to the prisoner closest to him, grabbed him by the neck and dragged him to the front of the stage.
“WE WANT BLOOD! WE WANT BLOOD!” the Freaks chanted.
Kade threw a vicious head-butt, dropping the man instantly to the ground. “Get up,” said Kade. Get…up!”
The man was on his knees with his face planted firmly on the ground. Kade grabbed his arm and jerked him violently to his feet.
“What’s your name, Regular? Wait, hold on.” Kade removed the burlap sack, which had a rather comical-looking blood stain soaking through. The man had an open cut that was bleeding heavily down his face.
“Uh… David. David Thompson.” The man was twenty something and dirty. He might have shit his pants when Kade rocked him a few minutes before.
“David. Can I call you Dave? Great. We have a problem here, Dave. Do you know what it is?”
“Listen, we’re just out here like you, trying to survive,” David pleaded. The severity of the situation had snapped him back from the head-butt, and he was in full-on survival mode.
“Dave, we are not out here surviving. We live here, and we are quite happy, to be honest. At least we were until you and your Regular pals broke into our house and stole our supplies!” Kade jammed the microphone into David’s Adam’s apple and he began gasping for air.
“Dave, get ahold of yourself, for goodness sake. You’re embarrassing yourself. Let me ask you another question. Who’s your lady friend? I haven’t seen her face, but she has legs for miles, Dave. Ortiz, bring her on over.”
Ortiz grabbed the woman by the arm and dragged to the front of the stage next to Kade. The woman was sobbing uncontrollably under her sack.
“What do you want?” she cried. Ortiz punched her in the stomach, ripped the burlap sack off her head, and prevented her from falling to the ground by grabbing her arm and holding her up.
“No! Stop! Please,” Dave pleaded. “We didn’t know. We’re travelling through. We heard there was a safe zone in Murfreesboro. We’re sorry. We were hungry!”
Kade pondered what he’d just heard for a moment and then walked over to the table. He picked up a Louisville Slugger and walked back to the woman. “What’s your name, Miss?”
“Nico,” she muttered. She stopped crying and became stoic.
“Nico. Interesting name. And how do you know Dave, Nico? Speak up, we got a large crowd here.”
“He’s my husband.”
“Your husband? So what does this say about you, Nico, that you would be married to a damn thief?” He kneecapped her with a vicious swing of the bat. The sickening thud of the bat crushing her knee sent David into a frenzy.
Not one to be upstaged, Kade drilled David in the stomach with everything he had, then gave him another across the back. “NOBODY STEALS FROM ME! NOBODY!” Kade screamed, spittle flying. “I’ll deal with Nico shortly.” Kade turned to the bloodthirsty crowd of Freaks. “Stand him up. Look at me, David. Why did you steal from me?”
“Hungry, we were hungry.”
Kade punched him in the face.
“Why did you steal from me, David?” he asked again.
“Told you,” he muttered through a fat bloody lip. “Hungry.”
Kade punched him twice more in the face.
“One last time, David. Why did you steal from me?”
Aside from the sobbing you could’ve heard a pin drop. As if this was the single most important question, and answer, in history.
“We were hungry, what do you want from me?” roared David.
Kade dropped the bat, ripped his hunting knife from the scabbard on his hip, then walked over and sliced open Nico’s stomach from left to right with a deep, gruesome cut. He reached in and pulled out a section of large intestine and cut it off. He followed that by cutting her throat clear through to the spine and then kicked her off the stage to the Freaks waiting down below. The arterial spray had coated Kade in dark red blood, and even Ortiz thought to himself, Holy shit.
Kade walked over to David, who was sobbing uncontrollably, and said, “Well, then, Dave! Dave. Dave! Come on? Get your fucking act together for fuck’s sake. Dave? God damn it, if you are so fucking hungry, eat this!” Kade crammed the entire piece of intestine in his mouth. Dave started to vomit, but Kade picked up the bat again. “Don’t you do it, Dave! You’re hungry, remember? If you puke, your stomach will be even emptier. You don’t want to be hungrier, do you Dave?”
Dave was making a number of gargling, chewing, and gagging sounds, which Kade was absolutely loving. Inevitably, though, when Dave attempted to swallow, he started to puke. Kade cracked him in the ear with the Louisville Slugger.
“Swallow that shit, Dave! Don’t you disappoint me! After all, you were soooo hungry you felt like you could steal from me. Oops. It looks like you pissed your pants, Dave.”
The hit from the bat had effectively ended Dave, and with a last shred of will, he made a run at Kade. A very slow and clumsy run. Kade brought the bat down hard with a skull-crushing blow right to the center of his forehead. Dave fell dead to the stage. He lay lifeless with his eyes open and a piece of his wife’s large intestine hanging out of his mouth.
“Well, shit, Dave. Okay. We have one last toy to play with and then it’s back to work. Now, Dave and Nico were fun, but this asshole… this Regular asshole was actually the one caught red-handed over at the old Tootsies Orchid Lounge. When these three were discovered by our guards, this guy was loading our canned goods into his backpack. Our. Canned. Goods. Get him over here, O
rtiz.”
Ortiz brought the man forward, removed the burlap sack, and cut the ropes from his wrists. He was about forty and in decent shape. Obviously older. He didn’t look like either Dave or Nico, so they probably hooked up somewhere in their quest for the Murfreesboro Safe Zone. Well, it didn’t really matter anymore, of course, but the Murfreesboro Safe Zone wasn’t going to be around much longer. This man was probably the de facto leader of the pack, the father figure.
“And what’s your name, sir?” Kade asked in a wickedly creepy game show host voice.
“You… you killed ‘em! You killed ‘em! They didn’t deserve that. What’s wrong with you?” the man demanded.
“Let me make something very clear here, Mister. You are a miserable fucking Regular. You will tell me your name, and that is all. No more fucking commentary.”
“Bob. My name is Bob Taylor. Do what you will, Mr. Kade. I’m a man of God and I know where I’m going when I die.”
Kade retrieved his knife again and drove it through Bob’s foot and into the stage. Bob screamed in pain but caught himself quickly. Kade framed him as a proud man. A man who was going to do all he could to not show Kade anything. Right now, though, he was showing was an extreme desire to not pass out.
“Bob, did you happen to hear what I said a few moments ago? About how you were caught red-handed, stealing from me.”
“All of this belongs to God, and it is his will that in these trying times his children will share their fruit with those in need if there is an abundance.”
Kade strode across the stage and kicked Bob squarely in the nuts as hard as he could. He still had blood in his eyes, so he missed the bullseye. But it’s still a solid triple ten. Bob doubled over and fell to the ground. Kade stomped him repeatedly for close to a minute.
“Mention God one more time on this stage, asshole. All of this belongs to Chaos and The Eighty-Eight. These trying times you speak of are what we refer to as things going according to plan. The Descent was merely the beginning. There is so much more work to be done. Our next little bit of work is your Murfreesboro Safe Zone. I mean, you won’t make it, anyway. That place is going down in short order. And we will fight until our very last breath to eradicate every safe zone there is to ensure the will of Chaos is done.”
“I know nothing of this Chaos you speak of.”
“Bob, there is a ton of shit you don’t know. But we’re getting off track. You stole from me, Bob. That spells trouble for you. Ortiz! The Block!”
Ortiz wheeled up an old rolling cart with a butcher-block top and stopped it next to Bob. Bob was terrified. Kade stood directly in front of Bob and asked, “Why did you steal from me, Bob?”
“You heard what David said. We were hungry and thirsty. This street has a hundred old restaurants and bars. We figured one of them would have something. We didn’t take much.”
“Wait a second. Wait just one second. Bob did you say you were thirsty? I’m thirsty. People can do crazy things, Bob, when they’re hungry and thirsty. As evidenced by y’all stealing from me! I’m downright parched. Are you, Bob? Ortiz! Can we get a couple of glasses up here? I know you weren’t expecting this, so we can wait a bit. Send someone back to the Hard Rock.”
Ortiz said, “Spahr, you heard the man. Go!” A large bull of a man took off down the stairs and disappeared into the old restaurant. He emerged a few minutes later with two tall pilsner glasses and gave them to Kade. Kade looked at the glasses and looked at Bob.
“Are you thirsty, Bob?” He walked right up to within an inch of his face. “I said, are you thirsty, Bob? I’m practically dying of thirst. Can I get you something to drink, Bob?” He never took his eyes off Bob’s. His mic barely picked up the ominous whisper he was using to speak to Bob.
“Yes. I’m thirsty. Could I please have a drink?” Bob sounded completely defeated.
“Yes! You can, Bob!” Kade walked over to the table and picked up a cleaver. He walked back, grabbed Bob by the wrist, and slammed his arm down on the block. Without hesitation, he hacked off Bob’s right hand and threw it into crowd. He then picked up one of the pilsner glasses and put Bob’s stump about halfway into it.
Bob did not scream. He refused to give Kade the reaction him and his followers so desperately needed. He simply glared at him while he felt his lifeblood draining from his body.
“I’m real thirsty, Bob. Stay with me, Bob, we’re going to do something very special here in a second.” The first glass filled quickly, but the second wasn’t so Kade punched Bob in the chest a few times and that caused the second glass to fill.
“Okay, everyone shut up! We’re about to call it a night. One last thing: me and Bob here are going to do a very special toast.” Kade picked up his glass and swirled it under his nose. “Damn, this is a fine vintage!” At this point, Bob was a ghastly pale color and starting to slump. Kade attempted to hand him his glass, but he wasn’t taking it.
“Oh, well. Here we go, Bob. This goes out to everyone who can hear me. Freak or Regular, I don’t care. If you steal from me, you—will—die. Cheers, Bob!” Kade turned to raise his glass to Bob. As he did, Bob grabbed the cleaver and launched himself into Kade, driving the cleaver three inches deep into Kade’s shoulder.
Without bothering to remove the cleaver, Kade jerked Bob in close and proceeded to gruesomely head-butt him until his face looked like a bowl of Campbell’s soup. When Bob finally slumped to the ground, Kade took a moment to remove the cleaver. He then grabbed Bob’s head by the hair and hacked on his neck until he was decapitated. He looked at Ortiz, then at the body, and finally the crowd. Ortiz picked up the headless bloody pulp of a body and threw it into the crowd.
Kade walked down to the front of the stage. He picked up Bob’s untouched glass and held it in one hand, raising Bob’s head with the other.
He raised the glass to his followers, who cheered and applauded wildly. He raised the glass to his lips, downed it, then tossed the glass aside. He took the mic out of his back pocket, turned it on, and took a few deep breaths. When he was finally ready, he lifted the head.
“When you drink the blood of the thief who violated your home, you own it!”
The crowd of fiercely loyal Freaks, who would fight and die for this man, started chanting. “KADE! KADE! KADE!”
“And when you take the heads of those thieves and stick them on pikes so that every last Regular or Freak who comes to our house with ill intent knows they will be met with suffering and death, you must own it!”
“KADE! KADE! KADE!”
“Thus endeth the lesson.” He dropped the mic, tossed the head to Ortiz, and walked off the stage.
TRAVELLING
I take another walk around the Jeep and get in. Lost in his rundown of everything my Jeep Comanche has become is the small cache of guns and ammunition in the backseat. There are two Glocks and two assault rifles that all smell freshly oiled and prepared for battle. Also included are two jugs of gas and a two-day supply of non-perishable food items. Two days if I ration well. I have Doc West’s bottle of pain meds, but I can’t take them and also drive. So it appears that however long I’m on the road, pain and discomfort will be my travelling companions.
The last and possibly most interesting addition to my Jeep is a CB radio. Of all things. Why a CB? Who the hell even uses a CB anymore? I sit for a moment, then an idea hits me. I pick up the handheld and press the button.
“Prescott to Normal Safe Zone, over.” I wait.
“Ops to Prescott. We read you loud and clear. Safe travels, sir. Always be vigilant,” says Kevin from his station in Ops.
“Will do. Pulling out.”
That morning I had rolled the dice with my Galaxy S3 and found a GPS signal. The nice lady told me it would be 429.9 miles with a drive time of six hours and twenty minutes. That is, of course, ridiculous. I’m allowing myself a little gallows humor. Nobody uses GPS anymore. You are basically a joke if you do. Battery life and other cell phone functions are much more important than trying to use GPS. I have
my trusty 2013 U.S. Atlas and that’s all I need.
I’m not looking forward to this. I’m driving alone, to an area I’d never been to, on a long stretch of Interstate on which I have no idea what to expect. I’m already sore and hurting as it is, and the thought of having no pain meds for the next ten to twelve hours is a tad horrifying.
Twenty-four hours later, I pull off of Interstate 57 into the Welcome Center, not in Nashville, Tennessee, but Paducah, Kentucky. Interstate blockage has caused me hours of delay, which has depleted the majority of the gas Jay gave me. Before I hit Interstate 24 to Nashville, I have to stop.
It’s taken me twenty-four hours to drive two hundred and eighty-nine miles. I’m exhausted, in pain, and I can’t stop sweating. I’m sweating like Fat Elvis at a Vegas concert. I need to eat something, take some painkillers, and sleep.
The parking lot of the welcome center is littered with abandoned vehicles and trash. This place has been tossed more times than a prison bitch. I’m not going to find anything useful, but I have to look anyway. There’s a new-looking Chevy truck with its hood propped up that looks tempting, but something tells me to stay away, so I move on. Almost all of the other vehicles have the glass busted out and are picked clean. Rest stops and welcome centers are incredibly dangerous places to be these days, as evidenced by the odd assortment of bones I discover in an old Pathfinder.
The rest of the cars in the parking lot bear no fruit, so I head inside. I pop a couple of pills and my stomach is telling me to eat something by starting to feel queasy. I draw my Glock and enter cautiously through the front door. The Center feels anything but welcoming. The place has been summarily destroyed, first by the Collapse, then repeatedly trashed after the Descent. I give each office the once over, hoping to find anything I can use or take with me, but again, the place has been properly scavenged. Well… looted. I mean destroyed. I’m just wrapping up my office visit when I hear what sounds like scratching coming from the direction of the lobby.