by Bobby Adair
Before I realized it, I was standing in front of my familiar prep table, breathing the gooey dead stink of the piled cadavers. With the cleaver in one hand and my useless hook for the other, I wondered how I was going to do any of the macabre work that would fill my day.
“Pete don’t want you in here all night this time,” said Stinky Pete’s helper. “You hear me, fucktard? Hey, you awake in there?” Pete’s helper rudely rapped his knuckles on my forehead. “Anybody home?”
My temper snapped. I snagged his wrist with my hook, pinned it to the table, and raised the cleaver to whack it off. And stopped. If I did it, trouble would come. They’d zap me until I couldn’t see straight. They’d stuff me in the suck box.
“Don’t. Please.” Pete’s helper struggled, but my iron hook didn’t have any mercy forged into it.
I glanced over at the bins—one for meat, one for bones, one for skin and another for tripe and fecal matter. There didn’t need to be any evidence that Pete’s helper was ever even in the jib room. It’s not like anybody was going to run a DNA test on the blood spatter and body parts.
“Please, I was just joshin’ you.”
His begging didn’t mean anything to me. And that seemed weird, like I was choosing to cross a line, though I couldn’t define exactly where that line was, only that I used to be one thing, a creature of another world who lived on the other side of that line. Now, on this side, I was premeditating the murder of a man I could just as easily let live. And I didn’t know which side I wanted to be on.
My bolt buzzed, sending syrup through my joints, Jell-O into my brain. But I resisted, holding firm with the power of the cleaver in my hand.
“You let him go,” bellowed Stinky Pete, “or I shit-shame swear I’ll fry every syphilitic worm out your skull so fast you’ll think your brain is spurting out your ear holes.”
Which side of that line did I want to exist on?
“Only reason I ain’t zapped you already,” claimed Stinky Pete, “is you got that stack o’ jibs to skin.”
I lowered the cleaver and pulled my hook off his arm.
Pete’s helper scampered through the door to get away from me.
Stinky Pete told me, “Git busy.”
Gut, skin, debone, separate, repeat.
Just like my first time in the jib room, the hours doused me in so much blood I was sticky and red from head to toe. Splatters of fecal drippings mucked over my boots, because no matter how careful I tried to be, one hand and one hook just couldn’t get the job of squeezing a human intestine clean without making a mess.
Despite my early start, the day wore on, through noon and into the evening. Again, the hook made everything go slow. Stinky Pete came in four or five times throughout the day to berate me for my impressive degree of retardation and sloth. He didn’t buzz me again, though. Or maybe he did, and I’d numbed myself so deeply to the greasy red hell that I didn’t even notice.
As the evening wore on, Stinky Pete and his helpers finished with their dinner chores, ordered the kitchen to Pete’s liking, and prepped it for the next day’s breakfast.
Hour after hour, corpse after corpse, Stalag 17 wound down, until I figured I was the only one in camp still sweating through his duties.
I heaved a large body off the dwindling stack, hooked my prosthetic on the ribs and dragged it toward the table, then stopped. A pink skin showed in the pile. The body of a normal. A woman, beneath the jibs, twisted against the wall, as if she’d been hidden there, her feet and hands still attached.
Alarmed because of the hands and feet, I thought she might still be alive.
I leapt onto the pile and rolled the corpse of a skinny male off the normal girl’s head, seeing a thick mane of red hair that was matted with blood over her face. I peeled the sticky red hair back, realizing as I did, that the redhead wasn’t breathing. Nor was her body warm.
I felt like a fool.
A complete, irrational, idiot.
Still, I wiped the streaked blood off the girl’s face. Why? I didn’t know. Maybe sixteen hours in the jib room was more than my mind could handle. I froze, still touching her freckled face. The last time I’d seen it, I held a chair in two strong hands, on the verge of rescuing that face at any cost. But I didn’t.
Every bit of insane rage that had been bottled up inside me erupted. I fell to my knees, wailing—silently, painfully, without a sound, without a tear—because somehow in my head, my grief for the girl conflated with all the unnamable shit in my heart over what was going on with Steph, what was happening to me, to everyone I loved. That line I thought I’d crossed in wanting so badly to cleave that man’s hand, suddenly wasn’t even there. Not for me. The girl in the pile wasn’t a monster, she was a human with a past and a future, a family, and probably a lover, someone who thought she was the brightest star in all the universe. Only now, because of Pluta, she was a brutalized, bloody jib.
My rage then slipped into a familiar place where every emotional failsafe tripped, leaving only that part of me that I sometimes feared, and oftentimes loathed, but always got his shit done.
Null Spot the Destroyer had some motherfuckers to kill.
84
I crossed the compound, gory and red, silent as a ghost, cloaked in a mist the night was settling over the world—just for me—and the carnage I carried like a burden of coal on my back.
The barracks door, heavy and usually creaky, opened noiselessly, as though I’d willed it so. I didn’t need to go far inside—everything I required hung on the weapons racks just inside the door. I found my flamethrower rig just where I’d left it after the San Marcos just-for-kicks massacre. I hefted my tank, knowing by weight that it contained a full load. I slipped it over my back and cinched up the straps.
Without disturbing a soul inside, I closed the barracks door behind me and stood on the narrow porch, considering the promise I’d made to Murphy. If I lived through the night, I decided, I’d ask his forgiveness. As for what was going to become of me, it didn’t matter. I only knew that my conscience couldn’t tolerate another sick second in Bill’s turgid Tejas. It was everything I hated about the world since the collapse, everything I’d worked so hard to make Balmorhea not be. If I were to take one more breath and keep any part of my soul intact, then I absolutely had to take action.
Pluta’s misery hut stood at the center of my crosshairs.
I jumped off the porch and hit the dirt in a run, though I slowed to a silent sneak as I crept up the stairs and crossed the wide porch. Pluta and his stooges with their clicker-zappers would buzz me into oblivion if they knew I was there. I needed to take them by surprise.
At the door, I listened.
People moved around inside, in the middle of a subdued, but vicious disagreement. Feet shuffled. One pair walked across the floor and stopped. A moment later, he noisily emptied his bowels at the latrine in the corner. Most of them were awake in there. Odd, considering the late hour, but that was just as well. Preferable, in fact. I wanted them to see me, I wanted them to piss the floor when my fire exploded in their faces.
I tried the door. It wouldn’t open. It was latched from the inside.
I turned and hopped off the porch, taking several paces to give myself room.
Having chosen my course of action, I needed nothing more than to ignite my blue pilot jet and take a deep breath.
I launched myself forward, bounded up the stairs, and charged across the wide porch, hitting the door with my shoulder and all the momentum my boney body plus a forty-pound flamethrower could bring to bear.
The door flung open in a shower of wood splinters.
I stopped just inside, raising my torch.
Most of the stooges were gathered around the dining table in the center of the room, hands and faces red with blood, thick as Texas barbeque sauce, as they fed on the living body of a normal woman who lay there, twitching. Pluta had time for nothing but panic as his eyes met mine before glancing to where his zapper lay, well out of reach.
I f
ired.
My flame exploded across the room, swallowing the Senior Man and most of his stooges.
They screamed, flailed and flopped. I hosed them where they landed, torching the floor planks and furnishings, then the walls, then the sturdy ceiling beams.
Feet pounded the boards to my left, and I jumped, rolling forward as one of the stooges pounced through the air I’d just vacated. As he hit the floor in a roll, I pointed my flamethrower at him and let loose. At such close range, he disintegrated instantly in hunks of flaming flesh and falling bones. I jumped to my feet and raced out onto the porch as the raging fire inside shattered the glass out of the windows.
I’d reached the end of all that I’d planned, surprisingly, still alive.
It was time to improvise.
I burned the kitchen facility without going inside, figuring Stinky Pete and his complicit staff were all in there. I torched the armory, and most of the vehicles in the parking lot as I wrestled with whether to attack the barracks buildings. Killing everyone in Camp 17, I decided, would be a mistake, because I didn’t know how many good-hearted men had been Shanghaied just like me, doing their year or praying for a chance to escape.
In the end, I settled for the most foolish choice of all. I ran through the camp, shouting for revolution as Whites and yellows stumbled out of their barracks doors.
Tear-gas bombs and Molotovs started to fly.
The air flowed with acrid smoke, and I wished I’d grabbed my gas mask when I’d snatched my flamethrower.
The chaos felt like a death metal festival and Mayhem was the main act.
I came upon a horde of Whites rushing toward the sound of gas tanks exploding in the parking lot. I cooked them all as they ran.
Somebody shouted curses I couldn’t understand with so much noise coming from every direction.
I figured it was time to find Murphy and I turned to run back out of the barracks but stopped. Stinky Pete stood there, pants sagging around his knees, eyes angry, and mouth shouting. Before I could bring my flamethrower’s hungry fire to bear, my head buzzed, and I stumbled. When I tried to get back up, electricity jolted my brain into oblivion.
85
It was my third day in the box of suck, though they’d kept me fed and watered, which was a surprise. The fires had all gone out. Only the smell of ash lingered, and only when the wind blew just right. That is, when I could smell something besides the ripe sewer hole beneath me.
Murphy knocked on my door.
I said, “You sure you don’t want to let yourself in?”
“Funny.”
“That’s why I’m always the center of attention.”
“I thought you spoke fluent sarcasm.”
“I do. I just don’t know torture box etiquette.”
“Maybe I won’t knock next time, and I’ll surprise you when you’re taking a piss and thinking about jerking off. I mean, I know how you get when your dick’s in your hand and all.”
“Murphy?”
“Yeah?”
“I appreciate the visit, but did you really just come here to break my balls?”
“Check this out.”
I hunched over as much as I could to see through my dinner slot.
Murphy showed me an old wooden stool. He found a spot for it to sit level in the dirt and sat himself down. “Man, it stinks up here.”
“Nobody ever closes the lid on the toilet.”
“You should complain to management about that.”
“I did.” I laughed as I remembered the look on Pluta’s face before I washed it away with fire. “Sometimes I worry that I’ve gone crazy.”
“You’ve always been crazy, but you make it work.” Murphy pointed at what was left of the camp. “Man, when you go full Null Spot, you can sure fuck shit up.”
“I guess they’re not happy about it. What are they gonna cut off me this time?”
“Don’t know. Stinky Pete told me to bring this stool up here. So, I did.”
“Damn. I was sure I fried him in the kitchen.”
“He doesn’t like to use the indoor shitter. Prefers to dump out in the field. That’s where he was when you showed up. He’s been bragging about his luck all over camp.”
“Wait, Stinky Pete sent you up here with a stool?”
“He’s in charge until they figure this mess out.”
“Huh.”
“You shoulda torched everybody when they were still half-asleep instead of running through the camp yelling like you were Che Guevara. You could have gotten away with it.”
I took a moment to explain to Murphy why I didn’t.
He laughed. “Same old stupid-ass Null Spot bullshit. Sometimes, I swear to god, you’re dumb as a brick.”
“I was trying to do the right thing.”
Pretty sure I heard a chuckle. “Ain’t no right things anymore.”
“You can’t believe that.”
“Last right thing I knew about was Bal. What we built out there.” Murphy kicked at the dirt. “Right never wins, and good guys get stuck in a stinky torture box until…until whatever’s gonna happen happens.”
“Can you get me out?”
“If I coulda, I already woulda. They’ve got four yellows following me around 24/7. Now, if I get the drop on ‘em, I might kill ‘em, all four. If it happens at night, and I can find some magic way to get past the guys they’ve got guarding your box all the time, I’ll get you out. Maybe we can kidnap Steph from the hospital and go live in happy unicorn land forever.”
“None of that was funny.”
“Really? When I tried it out on the guys in the barracks, everybody laughed.”
A whistle blew in the distance.
“Hey man,” Murphy told me. “My time’s up. I wish you would have warned me before you started this shit.”
“You’d have tried to stop me. Murphy, I needed to do this.”
“Man, you need to start having faith in other people. Sure, I’d have tried to talk you out of it, but dammit, Zed, I’ve known you since the shit just barely touched the fan. I know when to try and stop you and when to go along and make the best of it.”
The whistle blew again.
Murphy, standing up and leaning down to speak through my dinner slot said, “You had the crazy look in your eyes since you got out of here the first time. I’d have helped you. I don’t know if we’d have gotten away, but there’s one thing for sure, you wouldn’t be in this damned box again.”
“Murphy, you’re a good friend.”
“Hmph. No shit.”
86
Excitement started to buzz through the air.
The air outside the suck box, that is.
Putting my exemplary deductive skills to work, I figured it had to do with me. Somehow. So, I scrunched myself down for a peek through my dinner slot.
Out in the parking lot, past the burned skeletons of the trucks and trailers, an anachronistic convoy of pearly white SUVs with black-tinted windows were coming to a stop. Not that I had a clear view of the five vehicles—I was only able to get glimpses past the burned barracks buildings and blackened trucks, but the SUVs appeared to be not just rust-free, but shiny. No dents, no broken glass.
Given the state of the world, the vehicles were a wonderment. They didn’t belong to the big boss. I knew that. I’d seen his ride that day in the field when he’d presided over my chopping. These five had to belong to his boss, Bill. Why he’d come to watch whatever was going to happen, I couldn’t guess. But it felt ominous.
Deathly so.
That thought took a moment for me to fully appreciate as it spun through my mental gears on a wisp of hope that some other outcome could be in the offing. Unfortunately, no other guesses made sense.
Rather than working myself into a panic over the inevitable, I chose calm.
I closed my eyes and remembered Steph’s smile from one summer afternoon when we’d gone for a swim in the spring. That day was years ago, but I still felt the iciness of the water, like I’d just
jumped in. Steph laughed a lot that day. She always laughed, smiled, and unwound when she was there in the water or lying in the sun on the grass. Something about that oasis worked magic against the weight of her responsibilities and the memories of all the tragedies she’d lived through. It was her fountain of youth, the heaven of her heart.
Booted feet tromped through the dirt outside my box.
Whatever was coming, the time was nigh.
Hands unlatched my door, and I prepared myself once again to stand and strut.
The door swung open. I squinted into the sunshine. Seeing a handful of brutish men standing back, I once again tried a step. My legs gave way, dropping me face first into the dirt.
Son of a bitch.
A voice I hadn’t heard before said, “So, you’re Zed Zane.”
Not making any effort to pick myself up, I looked to the right at the feet of someone sitting on Murphy’s stool outside my box. “Hello, Bill.”
That gave him pause. “Did they tell you I was coming?”
“I’m clairvoyant.”
“Unlikely.”
I spit the dirt out of my mouth. “Well, hey, we’ve both been around long enough to see some pretty strange shit, you and I.”
In a cordial tone, Bill asked, “Do you have the strength to lift yourself up?”
“My muscles are a bit cramped. You may not know it, but I’ve been in a bit of a tight situation for a few days now.” I rolled onto my back and pushed myself into a sitting position, forcing a smile I hoped was defiant. Bill gestured to the pain box, so I scooted around in the dirt and leaned against it as I sat. Of course, looking up at him. “I feel it’s only fair to warn you that I can use my telekinetic powers to kill you in a heartbeat.”
“You like trying to be funny, don’t you?”
I shrugged. “I never quite pull it off.”