by Bob Williams
“That’s right!” Kade spat into the mic. “Time to go to work. Your job today is to rain down on the Murfreesboro Safe Zone like a plague of pestilence.”
“PUNCH IT!” the Freaks boomed in unison.
“Your job today is to kill everything you see breathing.”
“PUNCH IT!”
“Your job today is to take back everything that those people took from you.”
“PUNCH IT!”
“Your job today is to annihilate all of their communications abilities. If there is a radio, smash it. If there are computers, destroy them. If there is a box of fucking envelopes, burn them!”
“PUNCH IT!”
“And your final job today is to relieve those rats of every ounce of gasoline they possess. We’re taking the tanker, so you best fill her to the rim with Brim, you assholes.”
“PUNCH IT! OOOH, TIME TO GO TO WORK!” The Freaks erupted into a cheer of exultation and crazed euphoria.
“All right, then. Fall out to your transports and get to work. We have twenty-six miles of fairly easy Interstate to travel. They’ll hear us first. Then they’ll see us. They will not be able to stop us.” Kade dropped the mic to the stage with resounding feedback and walked off towards the convoy.
As expected, five short hours later, the objective was in view. Just a short hop off of Interstate 24 and there they were. The old Middle Tennessee State University Health Services building. When Kade finally decided it was time to take down the Murfreesboro rat cage, he briefly considered moving the entire operation there. However, that idea didn’t last long. For one, it would’ve taken too much work. More importantly, destroying all of the medical equipment within those walls and any medicine or any antibiotics, along with a total massacre, would set the Regular movement back on its ass.
God damn Regulars, thought Kade. They’re like fuckin’ mosquitoes. However many you kill, there’s always more. Well, this time we brought about five hundred flyswatters.
The convoy of well over two hundred cars, trucks, motorcycles, and one very large tanker truck converged on the MSZ. Kade’s black Suburban led the centipede-like entity of vehicles into the parking lot, but it was only a formality. Kade stopped directly in front of the entrance, about a hundred feet back, and waited while the slow moving line broke in opposite directions, quickly surrounding the over 200,000-square-foot building. Once the building was surrounded, the Freaks started to scream. It was a chilling sound that was accompanied by the revving of engines and the firing of a multitude of weapons. This strategy was devised by Kade as the introduction of the intended victims to their imminent doom. He wanted to scare the shit out of them. And it did. He didn’t have to be inside those walls to know they had already won.
Once Kade heard the war cry, he knew it was time to begin. But, honestly, this part always gave him a thrill. The cry started out as a low rumble and grew into an overwhelming tidal wave of terror...or ecstasy, depending upon whose side you were on. Kade always let this go on for several minutes before he sent up a red flare. The flare was the signal for those wild-ass jackals to calm the fuck down. And they always did. Because they loved this part.
Kade had two giant speakers attached to a rather large contraption in the bed of his truck. When he flipped the toggle, the speakers would rise to about ten feet up in the air. It was a nice wireless setup that Ortiz had jerry-rigged for him.
He got out of the truck and flicked on the microphone he kept in his truck for just this type of special occasion. He wasn’t a fool. He knew he had sights trained on him but for some reason—it was crazy actually—they never shot him. He had thought about that once. The only reason he could think of was this: however long he chose to speak for was that much longer they got to live. Because they were going to die.
“Good afternoon, neighbors,” he said politely into the mic. “You may or may not know me, my name is Kendrick Kade. But for today’s exercise you can call me Kade. I can only hope you heard us coming and have been able to fortify your establishment. You see, we have come to kill you all. And we will. I have an army of Freaks and they are, well, hungry. But we’ll get to that.
“More importantly, me and my merry band are looking for a fight. It’s been awhile since anyone brought the fight to...wait...that’s never happened. I own this territory. We took Nashville. All of it. The big bad wolf huffed and puffed and blew down that safe zone. So, what are you? Are you the bricks, or the sticks? I’m betting...the sticks. You know, it’s a fuckin Freak parade just thirty miles down the road. It’s high time you joined us.
“It begs the question, how have you managed to hang on this long? I think I know. It’s the medical center you have there in your compound. I’ve had reliable intelligence from within your safe zone that says highly skilled medical personnel have flocked here since the Collapse, and that they not only have the medical equipment all fully operational, but you have these highly skilled medical and technical minds doing “Good work” for the Regulars. Well that stops today. Starting in about, oh, five minutes me and my boys here intend to cripple this operation. No, scratch that, we are going to annihilate you. When we’re through today, Luke Skywalker would think he won the fuckin lottery when he found Aunt Beru’s smokin’ ass on the ground compared to you. You feel…”
A shot cracked off from an indeterminate point, went through Kade’s hand, and blew the mic to bits. Pieces from the microphone tore through Kade’s hand and a small but damaging piece lodged in his forehead.
Everyone stood absolutely still for a brief moment. Kade was bent over, covering his face with his bloody hands. He stood up tall and pulled the piece of microphone from his forehead which caused a torrent of blood to flow from the gash.
With a blood-soaked face and through gritted teeth Kade said, “Kill them! Kill. Them. ALL!”
THE BLACK HAND SERVES
Lou Bixby had been the Chief of Communications for the Murfreesboro Safe Zone for exactly one year. He’d worked his way up through ranks after showing up injured and near death at the front door of the MSZ about a year and half ago. He was also a card-carrying—and rather fiercely loyal—member of The Black Hand. He was sent to the MSZ after he willingly took a bullet in the leg and a vicious beatdown from Ortiz. It had to be authentic or they never would’ve bought it.
Before the Descent, Lou had been a Navy midshipman with a specialty in communications. There wasn’t anything that could put two people in contact that he couldn’t operate or construct. Case in point, Lou built a communications array from existing undamaged components. He had to credit Middle Tennessee State University for having a top-notch communications department. When the shit hit the fan and the looting and destruction began, college campuses weren’t deemed the greatest targets.
One of the first things he did was pitch a plan to the Three about leading a party over to the communications building and cherry picking enough equipment to build a competent way to talk to other safe zones. Which meant that a Black Hand agent helped create the Network. But that was his job.
Kade had specifically told him: “You do everything in your power help them. Get in deep, Lou. I want them to be green with rage when they come to find out that we tore them down from the inside. I want to see it in their eyes. All I want you to do is set up a way to talk to me one time so we’re good. Then wait for the signal.”
So that’s what he did. On more than one occasion he very much wanted to ask Kade when they were coming because, well, he was really building them up quite nicely. The Health Services Building took up about half of the Recreation Center of the former MTSU. While Lou did drag his feet, he’d been an integral part of getting the med center back up and running. It was shocking, really, how the world fell and Freaks didn’t trash the shit that mattered. The shit that they left was basically still good.
Then, on an epically glorious day, Lou Bixby received the message he’d been waiting for. Kade gave him an exact time, in two days, for him to disable the communications array and kill the secu
rity feed. Lou was in the know about a scouting party that was in Nashville and felt it would add a nice touch to make them aware in real time, before he slipped out, that the base was under attack. That way they couldn’t possibly do anything about it and would be crushed upon their return. Kade lauded his sickness and told him to proceed.
On this day, Kade would not actually get a fight with the MSZ inhabitants. There just wasn’t enough time to enact even their most basic defense protocol. Lou Bixby had, in fact, disabled communications after sending the message to Shields, Cole, and Prescott. He didn’t know what was so important about this Prescott guy, but Shields had gone with Cole, and they had lucked into finding him.
Who knew he’d have a CB radio? Didn’t matter. This place was Freak food. Hasta la vista, baby!
As he made his way down the hall, he thought he heard a gunshot. It was faint, but he heard it.
That was unexpected. I better get the hell out of here.
No sooner had he thought that when he heard what sounded like a cattle stampede headed in his direction. He turned around and started to run. Arrows from a compound bow entered the back of his head, and a silver-tipped arrow replaced his nose. He was dead before he hit the ground.
MASSACRE AT THE MSZ
Even though the main security feed had been disabled, Security didn’t panic. They simply adopted an attitude similar to Davy Crockett at the Alamo. They were going to defend the MSZ until they couldn’t any longer. There was simply no opportunity to evacuate, and there wasn’t enough time to get set up. The longer Kade talked, the longer they lived.
Jim Hawkins was the commander of base security and he was scrambling. While he didn’t have the ability to send out a base-wide security alert, it was too late for that anyway. His personnel wore walkie-talkies at all times.
He was able to bark several sets of order into the radio as he was running to his quarters to retrieve his sniper rifle.
“We don’t have a lot of time here. Get one and two into the Pod. Quickly. That is first priority. Next, establish a wall, as many security and non-security bodies as you can find. Protect the Network. Finally, whoever else may be hearing this, YOU HAVE TO FIGHT! Whatever you have, whatever you can, you use. You must help us. Go to the front entrance and fight. I know what I’m asking you to do, believe me, I do. And I’ll be joining you later after we send a few Freaks back to Hell where they belong. FIGHT, PEOPLE!”
Hawkins made his way to the roof as fast as he could. He was sure the Freaks had spotters looking at the roof, but he had to take a shot. He made his way down the roof and to the front corner. He had one shot. And he didn’t have a spotter. If he could take out Kade, they were still all going to die, but the next guys to come along would hopefully be able to take advantage of a wild bunch without a leader.
Or at least that was his hope. He had no idea.
He sat in the corner with his back to the wall. He had the butt of his rifle flat on the roof and the barrel pointing skyward. He said a quick prayer that the deaths of his friends and family would be quick and painless. And that the MSZ would go down fighting and never surrender. He popped up, dropped the gun to the edge of the roof, sighted up, and fired. Kade moved, and his shot hit his hand and killed his mic.
Damn. He’d missed. He ran back down to join the others as he heard a stampede of running, screaming, and shooting Freaks within the walls of the MSZ.
As the tidal wave of terror flooded in through the front entrance, it didn’t take long to destroy the front doors. A mass of bodies went left to the rec center side, and a mass of bodies went to the health center. What followed was what Kade often referred to as the “Sound of Music.”
A group of about twenty men and women armed with as much as they could carry set up in the old pool area. The pool had been drained and was used for training. Another group of fighters set up in the gym. The armory did their best to pass out as many weapons as they could before it started.
A small group of people unable to fight was asked to escort the children to the very back and try to escape via the tennis courts. It was an exercise in futility, as the entire building was surrounded.
The bulk of the available fighters and official security personnel were sent to what the MSZ referred to as the med center. The hallway to the lobby was filled with security officers and residents who were there to take down as many Freaks as possible. The medical stash within the walls was invaluable—MRI and X-ray machines, labs, a mostly full pharmacy, and supplies. If all of it was lost it would essentially set the Regular movement in the Southern region of the former United States of America back to the Stone Age.
Two hours later there was nothing left of the former Murfreesboro Safe Zone. Kade’s Freak forces had easily made it past the trained security force in the med center and destroyed everything. The rec center side had gone down just as easily. Ortiz took a number of the most horribly carved up, shot-up, and violated bodies and posed them inside the empty pool to spell out MAYBE NEXT TIME. This had truly been a devastating attack perpetrated by Kade and his crew, but it wasn’t over yet. They had come to steal gas as well, and they weren’t leaving without it.
The tanker was pulled around to the back of the building where the racquetball courts were located, and also where about five hundred gallons of gas was stored in homemade, industrial-sized storage barrels. Kade was pissed there wasn’t more gas. It was going to be a bitch getting those barrels transferred to the tanker. They’d syphon what they could from the vehicles and head back to Nashville.
Kade felt they’d just about milked everything they could out of the place and it was time to go. He was pleased with his Freaks. They had done him proud. As Ortiz said, Chaos would most assuredly be pleased. It was time for their reward.
He stood on the ledge of the roof of the med center and fired his pistol into the air. When the masses looked his way he waved them in as close as they could get. He didn’t have a mic anymore, but his voice was very commanding.
“Can you hear me in the back?”
“YES, SIR!”
“This is what happens to Regulars who think they can operate with impunity and with malicious intent towards us on our land! This land did not belong to them. Did it?”
“NO!”
“It belonged to us!”
“YES!”
“Do Regulars continue to believe that they have a place in this world. Our World! Do they?”
“NO!”
“You’re damn right they don’t.” He turned and shouted to Ortiz, who had been behind him. “Bring him to me.” Sitting on the ground, bound and brutally beaten, was Jim Hawkins. “Go load the precious cargo. We’ll be leaving here shortly.”
Kade fired another several rounds into the air to make sure they were all paying very close attention to what was coming. He turned to Jim Hawkins and said, “Have you made your peace, Regular? I guarantee it’s only going to hurt for a little while longer.”
“Do your worst, Kade. I know where I’m going. And when the times comes for you—and it will—I know exactly where you’re going.”
“Don’t make me laugh, ha ha ha! When my time comes, I will ascend and sit at the right hand of the Lord and Master, Chaos, who has made all of this possible.”
“Whatever, pal. When your ticket gets punched, you’re going straight to Hell.”
“Regardless, you won’t be here to see it.”
He walked to the edge of the roof and started speaking again. “We are going to be leaving in just a few moments, but I wanted to teach you a little something first. It’s about how you make an exit. Whenever one of these rat-cage safe zones gets destroyed, the Regulars say, ‘it fell.’ Well, we are going to leave a little message for the remaining two members of this outpost that are rushing back as we speak to discover what we’re leaving them.
“This is Jim Hawkins. Now it’s been told to me that this is the man who had the balls to take a shot at me to kick off our little soiree. I respect the hell outa you, Jim. And it’s
because of that that I have chosen you to deliver this very special message.”
Ortiz brought forward a very crude handmade sign that had rope knots tied through the top corners. He showed it to the crowd of frothy, broken Freaks down below, who still hadn’t come down from the violence. They went nuts with ecstasy. Ortiz turned and showed the sign to Jim Hawkins. When Hawkins read what it said he spit in Ortiz’ face. Ortiz put the sign around Hawkins’ neck and gave him a shot across the cheek for good measure. Kade resumed control and bellowed to his audience, “Gentlemen, start your engines.”
He put a noose around Jim Hawkins’ neck, kissed him on the lips, and shoved him off the roof.
Kade always liked to be the last car to leave a conquest. He lit a cigar, puffed a big plume of smoke, and drove out, away from his handiwork. He looked one last time in his rearview mirror and saw Jim Hawkins swaying gently from side to side. The sign around his neck clearly spelled out in blood:
I FELL.
NO MORE RUNNING
We arrive at the old college campus via Middle Tennessee Boulevard and creep at a snail’s pace through the deserted campus in a tight bumper-to-bumper convoy. Lexi is on high alert and I feel pretty confident she will let me know if she sees something. I follow Cole and Shields up to the back of the Student Union. The place is massive. At least it is to me. And there’s so much glass. How has this place survived?
Cole, an MSZ security officer, knows the immediate campus buildings in relation to the Rec/Health Services Building, which houses the Murfreesboro Safe Zone. With weapons drawn and Lexi bringing up the rear, Cole directs us through an expansive hallway to the front of the building. Through the clear glass double front doors, we can see a killing ground strewn with bodies. There are three men standing on a lower piece of flat roof that covers the front of the MSZ. One is very much in charge. The other two are most likely a lieutenant and either a hostage or an example. It doesn’t take us long to find out.