by Matthew Funk
The Wino couldn't blame him. Bronte was a mesmerist, unaware of the extent of her own loveliness. Should they escape this death farm, The Wino fully intended to probe whatever magic lay beneath the colorless cloud of her ghostly pubic hair.
The couple came essentially unarmed. She with a kitchen knife, he with a pitchfork. They stood nervously in front of the cages, lit by twilight cascading in through the open barn door, a young, stoned, sensual, hippie version of the couple in Grant Wood's American Gothic.
The Wino pleaded with them for booze – so drained was he from withdrawal that the only way he could sexually perform was with a spiritual fortification that had less to do with Jesus or Budda and more to do with Jack Daniels and Johnny Walker.
So eager were the couple for extended healing sessions that they complied, smuggling in cups of some feral moonshine that tasted of potatoes, oranges and bakery goods. Whatever it was, it did the trick – The Albino Wino was shortly restored.
The initial escape was easily done, after three nights of not at all unpleasant copulation, the four of them loosed upon the barnyard dirt. Freed from their cages by the longhair male who, it turned out, was some sort of trustee – possessed with a set of keys to everything on the farm – bewitched into rule-breaking sexual sessions through Bronte's longing, lingering gazes. On the third night of these clandestine moonlight rendezvous the girl let their fate slip.
"Thank you," she said, "for spiritually fulfilling me and healing my debilitating hepatitis with your seed."
The Albino Wino fumbled for his pants while the girl played with the fine gossamer of his chest hair. "What are you talking about?" he asked.
The girl rolled off of him and turned to her side, her back to The Wino. "Tomorrow," she said sadly, "Theseus will take your arms for the ritual…"
The Wino rubbed his face. "Tomorrow…"
Bronte, feigning sleep, visibly stiffened in the moon glow. She and The Wino exchanged a glance, a nod. The Albino Wino rolled, uncovered from a clump of hay the smashed top half of the minibar rum bottle and grabbed it by its stubby neck. Springing to his feet, he leapt upon the longhair male and raked the jagged edge of the bottle across his throat. Bronte gave a short shriek as the blood spray painted her bosom and face, streaking her hair pink.
The longhair girl fell agog at the sight. Bronte Fox, bloodlust and, yes, possibly envy, building up inside of her, called for the girl's blood. Bronte fell atop her like a snowy blizzard. The girls, both naked still, writhed upon the ground until Bronte plucked an old horseshoe from the hay and bludgeoned the girl to death with it.
Covered in gore, but semi-clothed at least, the duo snuck out of the barn. The night was cool but clear and under the moonlight The Wino and Bronte seemed as though one with the stars, beautifully iridescent, a constellation of two – The Vengeance Seekers, perhaps, one day to rise above this mortal coil to sit beside Orion the Hunter.
The Wino clutched the longhair male's pitchfork, Bronte the girl's kitchen knife. The lights in the compound's main house glowed in the distance. Theseus would be in there, fornicating and snorting the bones of their pale brothers and sisters.
They met little resistance on the way to the main house, and what resistance they did meet they dispatched like spear-hurling primitives, pitchforks rocketing javelin-like into jugulars and sternums. Their opposition, conditioned by spiritual nonsense, to believe that these beings in all their albinistic glory were something other than human, were defeated at the mere sight of them as they creeped like pale spectres through the scrub.
The most troublesome were the two large longhairs who had given The Wino his beatings. But by the time The Wino and Bronte encountered them, they had firearms. The Wino shot out their kneecaps and left them writhing on the ground, giving them something to think about. With each cult-sentry dispatched, so did their arsenal increase, inevitably to the point where so burdened were they with weapons that many they left with the dead.
Cultists, roused by the fighting, fled through any available exit. The Wino and Bronte shot as many as they could. Vengeance is a black and murky beast that clouds judgment and dampens all sense of kindred humanity at the best of times, but The Wino felt no kinship with these cannibals; the world would be better off without them. The chaos, the storm of people fleeing, helped protect them from the gunfire of those remaining. The Wino lost his right earlobe, torn free by a lucky shot. With blood trickling down his pulsing neck, The Wino unloaded with return fire, blowing the shooter's brains out the back of his head.
By the time they discovered Theseus Jones, sleeping still in some drugged stupor, a trio of buxom beauties by his side, The Wino and Bronte were surely fixed to fight an army of trained killers, never mind this lot of beardy, tripping rabble.
The women fled screaming, but were gut-shot by a grim-faced Bronte, the red mist far from settled in her eyes.
"I can make you a God," Theseus said upon awakening to find The Wino poking the barrel of an AK-47 in his face.
The Wino shook his head. "I don't want control over no man, no institution, or no cause," he said. And with that, the great Theseus Jones closed his eyes, clasped the vial around his neck and was turned into a bloody, chopped-up cadaver in a hail of righteous gunfire.
They found the still and The Wino drank deep. Having had their fill of killing, they let the remaining cultists run free. The little girl who served Theseus his bone powder caught The Wino's eye. She mouthed the words thank you and was gone before The Wino could respond.
Bronte shared a drink with him, coughing the moment the shine hit her lips. The Wino laughed and drank some more. With breath like gasoline, the couple headed off into the night.
Some ways down the trail that led to the highway, a mewling was heard.
"What was that?" Bronte said.
The Wino shushed her with a pasty index finger to her lips. A blinding flash erupted from the scrub, leaping into The Albino Wino's arms.
"Chalky!" The Wino exclaimed. "Drawn by the scent of the poisonous hooch on my breath, no doubt. Thanks for waiting around for me, buddy."
Chalky, apparently none the worse for wear from waiting weeks for his master, purred and nuzzled The Wino's snowy beard. The Wino turned to Bronte, "You ain't got no allergy to cats, I hope? This little guy's been with me through hell and back and I ain't about to throw him over for some piece of sweetmeat."
Bronte Fox answered by scratching Chalky under the chin and passionately kissing The Wino on the mouth. Tongues doing the Watusi together under the full moon, The Wino finally pulled free. He said, "I swiped us some cash from some dead longhair fool. Let's you, me and Chalky find us a place we can get us something good to drink."
With that, the trio headed for the highway, on to bigger adventures and deadlier foes.
THE END
Keep an eye out for the magnificent return of The Albino Wino in his next white-knuckle adventure: A PALER SHADE OF WHITE!
Cameron Ashley is the editor in chief of Crime Factory. His most recent fiction can be found in D*cked, Noir at the Bar and upcoming in The One That Got Away. He lives in Brunswick, Melbourne. This one's for Nette.
Battleground U.S.S.A.: TEXASGRAD
By Max Auger
(discovered by Christopher Blair)
CHRISTOPHER BLAIR found this Reagan-era classic at the Coos Bay Swap Meet on the coast of Oregon. Even among survivalist training manuals, Laser Tag accessories, and tarnished throwing stars, the embossed mushroom cloud and hammer and sickle on its cover were hard to miss. Very little is known about the author Max Auger; we do know that this is his first printed effort and a prime example of the '80s post-apocalyptic sub-genre of men's adventure.
That sign's in Russian!
At first, Capt. Mike McCreary thought the binoculars were playing tricks on him. He pressed himself further into the rich Texas soil and leaned forward into the dry grass like a crouching lion. He blinked and looked again.
It was too much to take in. Less than a mile away lay his
hometown, its neat, clean buildings untouched by the Russian and Chinese death that had streaked in a year before. In fact, the town looked just the way it did when he'd left Sunny here to be safe. There it was, just west of the school: the little house they'd bought with his promotion pay. Sunny was in there. Waiting for him, but thinking he was dead.
Every fiber of his body wanted to run to her, to tell her that he'd survived. But his military training told him to stay put.
The farms and fields encircling the town of Wrangler Plains looked like a pale green quilt. He saw the workers and tractors and clouds of dust, working together to bring in the harvest, the familiar motions of bending and lifting, of wiping honest sweat from an honest man's brow. He knew that his childhood friends were down there, the ones who'd stayed home, just a few minutes' sprint from the gentle rise where he now lay.
If not for the sign, printed on a bright piece of plywood planted on the shoulder of Highway 27. In bright red letters:
And printed in smaller letters:
McCreary handed the binoculars to Spec. Charles Whitefeather, crouched beside him like one of his Comanche ancestors stalking a buffalo. Whitefeather shook his head politely. "No thank you, Captain." McCreary cursed his insensitivity: Of course, Whitefeather wouldn't need the binoculars. Not with his hunter's eyes.
Instead, he handed them to Private Billy LaRoy to his left. Next to LaRoy, Spec. Brad Hawker, the sniper, took it all in through his scope.
"I don't understand, Cap," LaRoy said, "Why are all them R's backward? I may not be no college boy, but I know when letters ain't right."
"That's Russian writing, Private," McCreary said. "It looks a little like ours, but it ain't."
Whitefeather hit the dirt next to McCreary. "Tanks!" he hissed.
McCreary grabbed the binoculars from LaRoy, just as Hawker muttered, "Five of ‘em. No six. No, seven! To the right of the church, off the main drag."
Son of a bitch: Seven tanks were rolling across Hank Steinhoff's alfalfa field. Suddenly, they stopped about fifty feet from the First Church of Christ, a row of fat iron turtles. In unison, their turrets began to swing. Even a mile away, the squad could feel the tanks' metal rumbling in their bellies.
"This doesn't make sense," McCreary muttered. "The Reds weren't supposed to this far north. Intel said we stopped 'em at San Antone."
"Those tanks are huge," Whitefeather said, "I ain't seen nothin' like that this close. Not even doing Black Ops in Europe. I feel an ill wind blowin', Captain." He paused, then added: "This is bad medicine."
They all knew the truth. Only LaRoy, as always, clung to the bright side. "Maybe they're PT-76′s on a scouting run. We have to get back, tell General Pearce that the Russians are coming."
"They're not 76′s," McCreary said. The dread in his voice was thicker than Texas tea. "They're not scouts. Those are T-80′s. Seven T-80 main battle tanks. The Russian's aren't coming." He ran his hands through his thick black hair. "They're already here."
McCreary looked at Whitefeather. The big Comanche had closed his eyes, smelling the breeze coming in from town. What secrets did the air hold? It was best not to ask Whitefeather when he went to… that other place.
"Hawker," McCreary said. "You speak some Russian. What does that sign say?"
"Welcome … to Wrangler Plains … Texas," Hawker recited. "Population… 1,845." McCreary felt a stab of annoyance. He didn't need some grunt with a Russian grandmother to tell him the population of his hometown. It was 1845, same as the date Texas joined the Late Great United States.
McCreary swung his binoculars back to the tanks, parked close to the church where he'd married Sunny Summerville. There, a mere feet from the menacing T-80′s, were the front steps where he'd worn his dress blues and held Sunny's hand next to Pastor Joe.
Hawker continued: "The rest of it says: Soon to be renamed… Fertile Worker… Fertile Worker … something… Fields! Fertile Worker Fields! …"
McCreary squeezed the binoculars when he saw the distant form of Pastor Joe. The reverend sprinted down the steps and ran toward the tanks, waving his hands. The hatch on one of the turrets popped open. A gray-suited Russian tanker appeared. The Russian lifted his arm. It held a pistol.
"…renamed… as soon as our comrades … free themselves…"
McCreary watched Pastor Joe, unafraid, stop shy of the lead tank. He held something up in his hands. McCreary couldn't make it out, but he knew he held a Bible. The same one that he and Sunny had laid their hands on to become man and wife. But as blessed as it was, no Bible could stop a bullet.
The Russian tanker fired his pistol. Whitefeather whispered something sacred and sad in his own language.
"…free themselves… in their minds and hearts … from capitalist oppression!"
As if on cue, the tanks fired over Pastor Joe's crumpled body. Licks of orange erupted from their barrels. The church exploded silently, slats of pure white wood spinning in godless flame.
Three seconds later, the sound arrived at Lonestar Tactical Unit 1 and shook them to their very souls.
McCreary slept the fitful sleep of a fighting man. He dreamed, as he always did, about the week before the attack. He'd known something was afoot. Troop movements in East Germany. Chinese maneuvers in the Formosa Strait. Soviet maneuvers near Turkey, practice amphibious landings in Egypt, just miles from the Israeli coast.
He hadn't talked to Sunny in three weeks. Command had canceled all leave, and McCreary hadn't been out of Silo J-47 long enough to make a single phone call. Not that he'd have been able to, anyway, with everything locked down. Hours in the terminal he shared with Lt. Jansen. As Jansen blabbed once more about the whole thing being a Communist plea for attention, the Squawker had jolted them out of their routine.
"Juliet! Juliet-Four-Seven! Priority Message Charlie!"
He and Jansen had sprung into action, confirming the missile codes. They'd just inserted the keys when their station, buried two hundred feet under the frozen North Dakota plains, began to rock and shimmy. The lights flickered. Surely they had seconds to live. All thoughts of conscience and doubt were swept away as he and Jansen turned their keys.
On their command, in silos buried all around them, five Minuteman III's breathed dragon-fire and arced into the sky, bound for glory.
"They're away!" Jansen yelled. "That's what you get for stabbing us in the back!" He turned to McCreary, "It's been an honor serving with you, Captain."
Then, the lights went out and the bunker shook. A great roaring rip in the walls and ceiling. The smell of cold and earth. Everything around them collapsed. Somewhere up there, the world exploded and North Dakota—and America herself—was bathed in an unholy nuclear fire.
The Chinese—McCreary later learned—had initiated the plan's first phase: introducing a program into the Defense Department's computers that replicated itself, like a disease. Almost like a computerized… virus. And like a virus, it had spread over the newly installed Inter-Network that the technocrats had insisted would keep America safe. Instead, their newfangled computers had given the Communists their gateway. Linked and spreading the contagion, every weapon that carried a nuclear tip—from bombers to missiles—was rendered inoperable. Some Asian wiseacre had added the final indignity: Whenever a command was given to launch a plane, or a missile, the intercom played a tinny alien tune that only a handful of the crews recognized as the Chinese national anthem.
Then, the Chinese launched Phase 2: Sending their fifty Long March rockets high over the United States, to detonate two hundred miles up. The explosions fried every electronic circuit in the country. The Chinese hadn't tried to flatten the cities and the missile silos.
That part of the plan had been the Russians' job.
For reasons that he never figured out, only McCreary's silo—representing just five missiles out of thousands—had managed to go aloft that day. Whether they reached their targets, McCreary doubted he would ever know.
But the dreams only touched on that part of the story. When
ever he slept, his dreams always eventually led to Sunny—her long honey-colored hair, her narrow waist, her virtuous smile. Her delicate hands that could squeeze a trigger and pick off a jackrabbit at a hundred yards.
It was Sunny, the cheerleader who'd waited for him after football games. Sunny, who wore that frilly skirt, who loved him enough to let his hands roam, but loved God and her virtues enough to make him wait. Sunny, who wore his ring as he went into Air Force Pararescue. Sunny, who talked him through it on the phone after he told her he'd washed out. Sunny, who told him to come home and marry her. Sunny, who didn't get mad after their honeymoon to Corpus Christi, when the Air Force decided that they still owned him and stuck him in the ground in North Dakota.
And of course, it had been Sunny who compelled him to claw his way out of a crooked elevator shaft and to survive everything afterward.
General Pearce studied the reports on the card table he'd been using as a desk since Omaha. Sweltering in the General's tent, McCreary stood at attention, while his men—LaRoy, Whitefeather, and Hawker—stood behind him.
"This report you filed," Pearce said. "It doesn't make sense. The First Cav and the rest of III Corps stopped the Russians and Mexicans at San Antonio."
"How do we know for sure, General?" LaRoy blurted out. "We've had spotty radio traffic from that sector since last week!"
McCreary winced. LaRoy had never learned when to shut it.
"I don't remember asking you a thing, Private!" the general barked. He shot to his feet and glared at McCreary. "Once again: An Air Force flyboy and his ragtag squad of enlistees are trying to tell me how to link up with III Corps."