THE DAMNED

by William Ollie

  “Which is why you and I are here and my little girls aren’t.”

  “Come on, Dennis.”

  “Unfortunately for us, it’s the only thing that makes sense. Unless you can explain damn near half the earth’s population vanishing in the blink of an eye. Look, my father was a preacher, a good old fire and brimstone tossing prick who made sure my ass was in the pew every Sunday morning and each and every Wednesday night. I know my scripture, and now I know I made a huge mistake rebelling against him and his beliefs. That’s all we had to do, Scott, believe, commit ourselves to Him and live our lives according to His teachings. You know, love one another and all that shit, tolerance and forgiveness? Some pretty good ideals there. We’ve been told all our lives there would be a day of reckoning, but we didn’t listen. We went our own way, and now here we are.”

  “You don’t really believe that, do you?”

  “Yeah, I believe it. I can feel it. My girls are gone to Christ and I’m sitting here with a shotgun and an empty house and a cellar full of survival gear. The only thing left now is to try and prepare ourselves for what comes next, and you do know what’s coming, don’t you, Scott? Something darker than those clouds and bleaker than anything you’ve ever been through, anything you’ve ever imagined. And no matter which way you go, which way you turn, you’ll not escape it. Seven years of trials and tribulations and all out hell. The believers have been swept up to Heaven and the world has turned to shit, and we’re right in the middle of it.

  “The signs they talk about in scripture were all around us, and now that it’s happened we’re surprised. War, famine, death and destruction. People living as if God didn’t exist, ridiculing his very existence—I can’t tell you how many times I saw people on the Internet comparing Christ to Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy, as if He were some kind of legend made up by a bunch of shepherds to scare the rest of the world straight. I didn’t believe in Him, but I do, now. I believe it all, now. What good it’ll do me, I don’t know, but it’s the only hope I have of ever seeing my girls again.”

  Scott sat forward. He was tired, stressed out by his neighbor’s dire predictions. He didn’t want to believe what Dennis said was true. But he was right about one thing: the world had gone to hell, and here they were stuck right in the middle of it.

  “That’s a lot to bite off, Dennis. I mean, I don’t know what happened. A biblical Rapture? Well, I didn’t see it for myself, so it’s kind of hard to…”

  “I’m tired, Scott. Dead tired. I’m gonna go home and stretch out for a while. But before I do, I’m going to tell you what to look out for, so when you see it you’ll know I was right. The world has collapsed, the economy’s down the drain, no police, no electricity, no one to bail us out when the wolves come pounding on the door. That won’t last long. Pretty soon some guy’s going to show up with all the answers. Miracles will ensue and the world will come together with peace and prosperity, sunshine and rainbows and yummy-yummy lollipops.”

  Scott smiled, and Dennis continued, “But our newfound savoir will be nothing but a liar, a wolf in sheep’s clothing destined to lead us all straight to Hell, and before he’s through there’ll be Hell on earth, much worse than what we’re witnessing now. Christ had a father and so does this guy. And it sure as shit ain’t God he’ll be shilling for, if you get my drift. Anyway, Scott, when some guy shows up pulling the world together and pulling miracles out of his ass, fall down and give yourself over to Christ, pray for forgiveness and for Him to come into your life, and hope like hell you’re still around seven years from now.”

  Dennis stood up and held his shotgun by his side. “Like I said, I’m tired. I don’t sleep much at night anymore. I’m gonna go stretch out for a while, see if I can’t get a little shuteye going. Come over later if you want. I’ve still got plenty of food down in the cellar. I’ll rustle us up something to eat.”

  Scott laid his holstered weapon on the thick shag carpet, got up and followed his neighbor down the short hallway to the front of the house. He opened the door and Dennis walked outside. Then he turned to Scott and said, “I’m sorry about Sandi. I wish I could’ve done more.”

  Dennis had watched them take his wife away. He had a shotgun and he didn’t do anything. He just stood in the window, hoping like hell they didn’t come after him. But Scott could see the sorrow in his eyes, and knew that he regretted his inaction. “That’s all right,” he said, even though he didn’t think it was all right at all.

  He stood for a moment, watching his neighbor turn and head across the yard. Then he looked up and down the empty street. He wondered how many people were left on his block, how many were peering out their slightly parted curtains at this very moment. When Dennis disappeared into the hedges separating the two yards, he closed the door and went back to the living room. There was an old oak trunk in the corner of the room. Scott opened it and pulled out a couple of photo albums, one of family photos, both his and Sandi’s, the other a white satin-covered album devoted entirely to their wedding day and subsequent honeymoon. He took both volumes and headed back to the couch, sat down and laid one on the cushion beside him. Scott opened the wedding album and stared down at the photograph: he and Sandi standing in front of the altar, Sandi in her white bridal gown, her emerald eyes sparkling in the light filtering through the ornamental, cut-glass windows. He had almost forgotten just how startlingly beautiful she was. A tear formed in his eye as he touched the picture, and then rolled down his cheek.

  Yes, he would find his wife and get her back.

  If she was dead he would destroy whoever had killed her.

  And if he couldn’t find out who was responsible, he’d lay waste to as many of those Devil’s Own pricks as he could get his hands on.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Claude woke up with a headache, but it didn’t take much to rid himself of it, a couple of toots of coke, a swig or two of beer, top it off with some crank and he was good to go. He threw some water on his face, some food down his throat. Then he left the hotel and went out to his bike, started it up and hit the road. Both he and Jet had wanted to travel the Interstate this morning, but Dub had settled that argument before it even got started. And now here he was headed up State Road 83 so Dub could ‘see what’s happening’ out in farm country. A two-hour ride up a winding, two-lane back road. For what, to see a bunch of farmers trying to put their lives back together? More than likely to see nothing, because whoever was left up there would scatter like the wind when they heard the Harley pounding its way along the roadway.

  At least it got him out of the city for a while. Out of the city and away from Dub. The guy was a natural born leader—there was no denying that. But he needed to put the coke down for a while, give the crank a rest, at least long enough to get some sleep. Claude wasn’t a psychiatrist; hell, he barely had a high school education. But even he could see how delusional Dub was becoming with his ‘let’s amass an army’ bullshit. They were in the middle of a good run. Hell, they were running the whole damn city. They had the guns and the gas, enough drugs to outfit a hospital. The banks were sitting right there in front of them like piggybanks waiting to be cracked open. And that’s what they should be doing, busting them open and cleaning them out, and then going on to the jewelry stores and anything else they could turn into a quick buck whenever things went back to normal. They should be stacking the cash so they would be sitting pretty when that happened. Not riding herd over a bunch of John Q. Citizens while Dub-the-Grand-High-Overlord sat around plotting to take over the world. Yeah, they’d beaten and terrorized and run roughshod over a passel of those wormy pricks, had killed a great many and locked a great many away. Big deal. So what if the same geeky fuckers they’d been tormenting since high school were getting the shit stomped out of them. What exactly were they getting out of it, nothing but the satisfaction of knowing they’d put the boot to a few respectable citizens of the world. The doctors and lawyers and Indian chiefs who had spent the better part of their adult lives looking d
own their noses at people like them were now on their knees, their noses pointed in a different direction—up at their captors, looking up through wide eyes as they begged for release, some kind of relief, a reprieve from the daily grind Dub and his boys were putting them through. Claude didn’t know who had it worse, the ones caught and beat and put to work or the other flesh-and-bone creatures who kept out of sight, scavenging through the dirt and ash and picked-over shelves for any kind of morsel to keep them going. At least the workers were fed something. Hell, Dub was talking about easing up on them, making them a part of the process, whatever that meant. But Dub said a lot of shit now days, a lot of crazy shit, and everybody had to go along and do whatever he came up with, agree with him or end up like Ben.

  Ben.

  Claude couldn’t believe he’d been tossed off the roof like that. Thrown over like a sack of garbage. They’d been together since the eleventh grade, he and Ben and Dub and Teddy. Friends for life, he’d thought, and now Ben’s life was over. For what? For nothing, as far as he could tell. For looking at Dub the wrong way when he was going on about his new world order in the Ambassador last night, for having the backbone to voice what every motherfucker sitting at that table had been thinking.

  From high school to the army, to the dry and dusty deserts of northern Iraq, Ben had always had his back, and he his. Many a battle had been fought, both here and abroad, and they’d always made it through. Shootouts and bar fights, dirty cops and double dealing scumbags, all of that they had survived. Hell, Teddy would’ve been dead a long time ago had Ben not saved his ass when a routine drug deal with four big-assed rednecks turned ugly a couple of years ago. They wanted it all: the money, Carlicci’s pound of pharmaceutical flake, and Teddy’s hide stretched across the hood of their F150, and would’ve had it if Ben hadn’t cut loose on them like a bizarro Dirty Harry on mega dose levels of steroids. Two in the head and two in the chest left them D.O.A. on the blood-soaked pavement, and left Teddy with a new lease on life. Teddy, who stood by while Ben was tossed off the jailhouse by some brainless moron who would kill himself if Dub told him to. The same Teddy who owed his life to Ben, and didn’t lift a finger to help him.

  Claude roared down the highway, the city behind him, the country stretching out before him. At least what used to be the country. All he saw now was barbwire and scorched wooden fence posts, grey skies and miles and miles of dust and ash. Every now and then a farm house or a broken down shack set back into the flat land would come into view. Claude wondered what manner of people might be lurking within their walls, who they were and what they were surviving on—if they were surviving. For all he knew, there might very well be families of desiccated corpses rotting within those walls.

  He rushed along the roadway, the wind blowing against his bearded face, the engine rumbling beneath him, and wondered (not for the first time) why he should go back at all. What awaited him back there: money, drugs and women, a place of high standing in the army of Dub, all his for the taking. But how long would it last, and would he still be around when it came to an end? Could he keep his trap shut and go along with whatever Dub told him to do? Sure he could, just bide his time and go with the flow, gather up the spoils and stay the fuck away from him and those two behemoth morons of his when they ventured out into the dark of night. Claude sure as hell didn’t want any part of that shit; he could stomp ass with the best of them, but he wasn’t about to eat somebody’s ass, or tits, or whatever other body part those morons were carving off their roasted captives. The thought of it turned his stomach. Yes, he had killed, he had robbed and raped and beaten people senseless for little or no reason at all. He was a monster; he readily admitted it. But he wasn’t that variety of monster. He wasn’t a cannibal. He was perfectly content to live off cocaine and crystal meth, canned food and beer.

  He didn’t eat people.

  Blowing down the road on his Harley took him back to all the road trips, all the fun and games from his past, the booze and the broads, the money and drugs he had so thoroughly enjoyed. For a moment he was able to pretend the world had not gone to hell; the wind was blowing, the sky was grey, just another overcast day signaling the coming of rain. He would ride into the country, take a look around and go back. What else was he going to do, take off on his own with a 9mm. and four clips of ammo, a half a tank of gas and a bad attitude? Set off on his own to rule the world? No, he wasn’t like his fearless leader, he wasn’t like Dub. He had no visions of grandeur. He was a soldier, and a soldier belonged to the platoon. He would go back and claim his share of the spoils, the money, the drugs and the jewels, and if the army or the National Guard showed up, he’d take his bounty and haul ass the hell out of there, rich as a motherfucker.

  The wind was in his face, the Harley purring beneath him. A steep ditch lined either side of the road he traveled. Fences and farm houses and ash-covered flat land to the left and the right. A sign appeared and he smiled: Culberton, two miles, friendliest little town in America. He felt the impact a split second before he heard the crack of the high-powered rifle. He knew it was a high-powered rifle because of the way his chest exploded. His legs flew up and his bike went over, into the ditch while he skidded on his backside along its rim. The blood bubbling up his throat threatened to choke the very life out of him. He was hurt, bad, but he couldn’t feel his legs, nor pain of any kind.

  Somebody called out, “Got him!”

  Somebody else said, “Damn right you did!”

  An engine rumbled to life. Then came the screeching of tires, the winding of gears as the vehicle grew closer. He could see it now, coming down the two lane blacktop, kicking up dust as it approached him, a rust-colored pickup carrying two people his way. He looked down at the gory pit they had blown into his chest, at his mangled bike that rested beside two others at the bottom of the ditch. The truck stopped, the engine was silenced. Doors opened and quickly slammed shut, and the two men moved quickly to his side. He was coughing up blood, his twitching body already beginning to shut down.

  “Good job, son,” one of them said, an old guy dressed in jeans and a red flannel shirt.

  Claude’s ankles were grabbed, hands hooked under his armpits. Blood spattered the dusty road as they hoisted him up. “Up and over,” somebody said, and he went sailing into the ditch, landing with a jolting thud beside two withered corpses in sleeveless denim vests just like the one he wore. His right arm lay twisted behind his back, his legs folded awkwardly beneath him. His eyes fluttered. They fluttered shut and he saw himself back on that country road, the wind blowing through his hair and the endless two lane blacktop stretching out before him. The sun was up, the sky was blue. There was money in his pockets—drugs, too. And he was free, free of pain and free of strife, free of Dub and all his bullshit. Free to do as he pleased for as long as he wanted.

  Then the light dimmed.

  The sun dropped from the sky.

  And darkness took him.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Dawn came, not with orange streaks painting the horizon, but with pitch black lightening to dull shades of grey. The same drab and colorless sky Karen had seen for more weeks than she cared to remember was back, a not so gentle reminder of how bleak her situation had become. As if she needed reminding after last night. At least she was still alive, which was more than she could say for Jet. Karen had dedicated herself to treating the sick, to helping people stay alive. She never would have thought it in her to take a life, but when push came to shove she had done just that, and would do it again if she had to. She was a survivor. She’d discovered that yesterday with a swing of a bat and a swipe of a scalpel. If cornered, she would fight back. If pushed into that endless night, she would not go willingly.

  She had been right about one thing: she had not been able to lie down in that disheveled bed and wait for Ben to show up. She sat on the couch for hours, wondering what would happen when he finally did drag himself through the front door. Maybe he’d be too tired to bother with her. But he wouldn’t stay
tired. Eventually he would want more of what he’d gotten last night. If she said no, he would demand it, and if she insisted… well, she didn’t want to think about that.

  She’d sat around for quite a while before even noticing the dried blood on her hands, the dark brown streaks on her torn halter top or the soiled splotches on the jeans she wore. She went into the bathroom and found there were smears of blood on her face, too. She took off her clothes and turned on the water, got into a steaming hot shower and scrubbed it all away, and then stayed there, letting the hot water soak her. It felt so good she didn’t want to get out, like a warm and nurturing cocoon protecting her from the cold realities of the world outside. She finally did leave its soothing confines, though. She turned off the water and stepped out of the shower, and went through the same ritual she had undertaken at Tina’s place last night, the same one she had performed immediately upon showering for as long as she could remember: she dried herself and rolled on some deodorant, brushed her teeth and dressed in the clothes she’d pulled from the knapsack Tina had given her. A dash of makeup and she was good to go. Subconsciously, she was thankful for her little routine, because for a brief moment it kept her from thinking about her problems, kept her from thinking about Ben and what might happen when he came home.

  A knock on the door brought those problems streaking right back to her. She went down the hallway, into the living room. The knocking was persistent—insistent.

  “Hey!” somebody called out. “Open up!”

  It was not Ben’s voice she heard, but it wouldn’t be, would it? He’d just unlock the door and step inside.

  “Open up, Doc. I know you’re in there.”

  The pounding continued. She didn’t want to open the door, but he’d probably just kick it in if she didn’t, so she walked to the door and took hold of the doorknob. “Hold your horses!” she called out, and then turned the latch and threw open the door.