The Gordian Event: Book 1 (The Blue World Wars)

by Lee Deadkeys

  “Well, we best go take a look in case we haven’t run ‘em off for good.” Everyone nodded and began repacking the vehicles, leaving room for the new members of their group.

  * * *

  The drive through the desert was murder on Frank, not just on the body but on the mind. He was tossed and jarred, jerked and thrown around the cab of the Jeep and his body wasn’t faring well. He’d given up and removed his seatbelt after only a few yards because the constant locking of the belt across his collarbone was enough to make him curse under his breath. Once the seatbelt was off, it was just a matter of anticipating the movement of the truck and going with it.

  The stress of their situation was affecting him on multiple levels. He heard things; like the hiss from a deflating tire, followed by a panicked flurry of visions of them stuck out in the open with a flat tire and the bad men coming back to slaughter them all.

  Then he would realize that the hiss was coming from the radio and he would calm down, right up until it popped into his head that if the radio was down it meant no one was left to broadcast, that this plague or infection, whatever you wanted to call it, was far reaching and not about to be over anytime soon. Enter a new panic attack.

  They were closer now and the circling vultures filled him with dread. The vultures could be eyeing anything from a dead deer to a rabbit, but he didn’t believe it. And although not one of them knew where the raider’s camp was, he noticed that they kept driving in the direction of the circling birds. Everyone, it seemed, assumed the worse.

  They came over a slight rise of earth, nothing more than a small scrub-dotted dune, and onto the edge of a litter-strewn encampment. Jess braked immediately and everyone was thrown forward. One of Annie’s boys let out a short cry but his mother hushed him quickly. Frank glanced out the window and saw that Mason and Sam had stopped as well.

  He turned his attention back to the makeshift camp. Jess was pulling her AR-15 from where she’d wedged it between the door and the driver’s seat. Frank followed suit with a similar weapon. Annie had traded in her long-range rifle for a shotgun which she had laid gently across her lap.

  “See anyone?” Annie asked quietly from the backseat. Frank shook his head but Jess pointed toward a huge fire pit.

  “I see a couple bodies. See there, among the trash, by the fire?”

  Frank strained his eyes. There were at least three stripped vehicles scattered about. The sun blasting off chrome and glass nearly blinded him. His eyes watered and burned but he squinted hard and thought he could make out a pair of legs. Bare legs, his mind whispered.

  Ox jumped from the vehicle, one of Jess’s black rifles at the ready. Everyone seemed to be waiting for this and was suddenly spurred into motion. Frank was vaguely aware of Annie talking softly to her boys, telling them to sit tight, be still, look after each other.

  A light breeze rippled over the camp. A piece of trim from a green minivan wagged against a metal bucket by the front tire, the tink-tink-tink sound bringing forth an unsettling ghost of forgotten memory. He glanced around, hoping to fix his mind solidly on the situation at hand.

  He could see the bodies clearly now. There were three men and a woman, all completely naked. The woman was laid out with her arms and legs spread open and bound at the wrist and ankles with twine and tent stakes. Her bruised, battered and sunburned body told him that she had probably been alive until recently. He noticed that something stick-like protruded from her private area and he quickly averted his eyes.

  Two of the men looked to be black and with mounting revulsion he noticed that although they were indeed black, it was not due to ethnicity. They had been burned, or more likely roasted, the fatty areas cut away. On one of them, the thighs appeared stripped of all flesh, leaving behind chipped and marred bone. He felt his stomach heave and looked away quickly.

  The area was littered with every kind of food packaging, punctuated here and there with numerous beer and whiskey bottles. A flash of orange caught his eye.

  “Prison jumpsuit,” Sam said, pointing at the swatch of orange. “I’m pretty sure we’re only about thirty or forty miles from Perryville Prison.” Frank nodded, not wanting to think about how many of those in the penal system were once again free men.

  “Jesus, you’d think it would have taken longer for them to resort to cannibalism,” Mason muttered.

  “It has nothing to do with hunger and everything to do with depravity. The sick bastards of the world just wait for a reason to act out the evil inside,” Sam said.

  “Those vehicles look, placed,” Jess whispered. “Like cover, or concealment. See, the U shape they form? The tarp stretched over the tops reminds me of a makeshift bunker.” She raised her rifle slightly. “I don’t like it.”

  Frank didn’t like it either. The place felt empty and dead, or waiting. Waiting for them to get closer, let their guard down, do something stupid.

  As soon as the word stupid had entered Frank’s mind, Ox took a step forward. A shot rang out, followed by a small explosion of dirt right at the big man’s feet. Everyone in the group reacted, firing on the wrecked vehicles and moving behind their vehicles for cover. Frank fired five shots from the hip as he stumbled back.

  Jess beat him to the back of the Jeep and quickly opened the rear lift-gate. She grabbed the younger boy onto her hip, the other by the hand and pulled them from the cargo space. Frank was about to protest as he covered her from the rear diver’s side but she was on the move before he could form a single word.

  Jess quickly jumped the small dune they had passed over and roughly dropped the boys on the low side. Frank noticed that the smaller boy was crying and felt a pang in his heart as his daughter patted the boy’s head and then pushed him lower behind the dune. She reassured them as best she could before scrambling back over the dune and sliding into position.

  Annie's eyes were fraught with fear. Jess caught her eye and said, “They’ll be safer there, bullets can’t penetrate dirt hardly at all. They’ll pass right through glass and metal, though.” Annie nodded, satisfied.

  Mason had stopped firing now and yelled for Sam and Ox to stop. Frank’s ears rang in the sudden silence. He poked his head around the end of the Jeep. The other vehicles looked like Swiss cheese but nothing moved. He was listening intently for sounds of movement when the screaming started.

  The anguish propelling the scream raked across his nerves like a rasp. He stood up quickly and ran to the front of the Jeep, ignoring Jess’s demands for him to get down.

  “Who’s there?” He yelled. “Come out. With your hands up. We won’t shoot.”

  The scream stopped and was replaced by sobs. Frank stood frozen, none of this made sense.

  “You killed Bailey, you killed him….” The voice was hopeless and tormented. Frank took a few more steps forward and stopped when his arm was jerked nearly out of the socket.

  “Don’t, Dad. It could be a trap,” Jess said from beside him. She tried to draw him back to safety but Frank resisted. She jerked his arm sharply before releasing it and firming up her grip on the rifle. “Hey, they fired on us!”

  “None of this makes sense,” Frank said, more to himself and took another step forward.

  “He’s bleeding bad, you bastards!” Came the small voice entrenched in the wreckage.

  Frank handed his rifle to Jess, who just stared at him like he’d unscrewed the top of his head and handed her his brain. When she didn’t take the weapon, he laid it at his feet.

  “I’m unarmed, I put my gun down and I’m coming in. If you fire on me, my friends will kill you, so don’t shoot.” Frank started walking slowly forward. Everything went still and silent except for the constant tink-tink-tink of the trim against the bucket, sounding more and more like some great engine of fate cooling after a hard ride.

  Jess didn’t protest this time but instead went down on one knee, steadying the rifle and taking aim. Frank stepped over the body of the dead woman, taking care to avoid looking at her shame. As he neared the darkened are
a of the wreckage, he could hear soft crying, broken only by the occasional sniffle and hitched breath.

  The sounds seemed to overlap and twist together and it took him a moment to realize it was coming from more than one person. When he reached the gap between the ruined bumper of the minivan and the equally ruined back end of a sedan, he slowed. He spoke softly and ducked under the tattered tarp that wasn’t a tarp at all but rather a heavy blue comforter.

  He stood stooped in the entrance and let his eyes adjust. He could smell urine and vomit under the tangy odor of blood and sweat. His eyes adjusted quickly and he scanned the small area. There were four bodies on the ground; three stacked almost on top of each other and one near a crouched figure, a dark stain pooling around a discarded rifle. The crying was coming from the teenage boy kneeling next to the fourth body.

  The sniffling came from a teenaged girl sitting on her haunches, glassy-eyed and shaking. Frank moved over to the boy on the ground, keeping his hands out front and in view as he did.

  “What’s your name, son?” he asked.

  “B-B-Billy,” the boy said, his voice hitching and very faint. “This is, is, Bailey, my brother. He got one of their guns and killed them. We thought you were the others—”

  Frank looked into the lifeless face of the boy and reached a hand out to close his half-open eyes, but they refused to remain that way so he took off his top shirt and gently covered the boy’s head. Billy put his head down and cried silently for a moment. He reached out and absently took up the fallen rifle, ignoring the blood of his brother coating one side. Frank didn’t react; this boy was defeated, done.

  The girl started crying too. Frank looked at her, swaying on her haunches, her expression pained and vacant. “Alexandra?” he asked, hopeful. She blinked and looked at him. “Alex, it’s okay now.” She put her head in her hands and sobbed.

  Frank gently maneuvered around the cramped space and began to move the kids toward the gap in the wrecks. He yelled to the others that he was coming out and that he had two kids with him. He tried to ease the rifle from Billy but the boy only clutched it tighter to his chest like a deadly security blanket.

  As they neared the opening, Frank told the others to put down their guns, that these were just kids. As he emerged he saw that Jess still held her rifle but that it was lowered and nonthreatening. He tried to steer the kids away from the bodies, but both of them looked over as soon as they were out.

  “That’s our Mom and Dad,” Billy said. Frank stopped, staring at the bodies. These boys had probably seen and heard everything done to their parents. The boy stopped too, turned and looked at Frank in such an intense way that his skin pricked and the hairs on his neck stood up. “Why did you kill my brother?” he asked.

  Frank’s mouth fell open. What do you say to that? “It was an accident. We didn’t know you were kids, we thought you were the men that did this.” He tried to tear his eyes away from the boy’s but couldn’t. “I’m sorry,” he said finally, feeling shame and anger cutting at his heart. “We didn’t mean to, it was an accident.”

  He sensed Jess coming closer, moving past him to inspect the makeshift bunker. He turned his head, wanting to look after her, wanting her to say something that would break this trance, but his traitorous eyes refused to be swayed. The boy held him in that awful, accusing gaze and Frank willed the boy to slap him, punch him and knock all the torturous, turbulent thoughts out of his head.

  He felt like crying. No, not crying, he wanted to wail and scream, gnash his teeth and whatever else the scriptures deemed acceptable actions when one has reached their limit of human suffering.

  “He was all I had left. He stopped my heart from exploding all the days that Mom screamed, and then kept my head from exploding when they cooked and ate Dad. I couldn’t have done it without him… he held me together, he was my brother.”

  Frank felt something inside him slip, something break with an audible crash. He was distracted by his own anguish as he stared at the boy.

  Billy jerked as if waking from a dream. He looked at the rifle in his hands as if it had been forgotten, and then in one fluid motion placed it under his chin and pulled the trigger.

  Everything dimmed as Frank watched in slow motion while the boy pulled the trigger. One minute he was staring into the perfect blue eyes, the next he watched the eyes bulge slightly from their sockets, the white area filling with red as the bullet passed behind them, through the child’s brain and out the top-rear of his skull. He was vaguely aware of being splashed with a warm substance and hearing a God-awful screaming, and then everything went thankfully, blissfully, dark.

  Mason watched Frank intently as he talked to the boy. The man’s craggy face appeared to be breaking apart from a series of muscle quakes, turning his usual kind and thoughtful expression into a nightmare of tics and jerks.

  Frank began to shake his head slowly from side to side, realization working across his tortured features. Mason tried to grab for the boy when it dawned on him what was about to happen, but seeing Frank, strong but quiet Frank, the Frank that never lost his cool, disintegrating in front of him had slowed his reaction.

  The report of the rifle had been loud but the screaming was deafening. He was at a loss on who to go for first. Everyone seemed to be screaming at once, Frank, Jess and the teenaged girl standing beside the boy. When he saw Frank go blank his mind was made up and he reached him just as the older man fell like a stone to the ground.

  Frank’s eyes rolled in their sockets, a drizzle of saliva ran from the corner of his mouth as it worked to form words that were quickly blasted into oblivion by Jess’s continued shrieks. His body seized and trembled as Mason tried to hold him still and assess the damage.

  “Jess! Shut up!” Mason yelled. “Help me with him!”

  She stopped screaming instantly and dropped to the ground beside her father. “Oh my God, oh my God,” she moaned. “Is he shot?” She wiped furiously, almost violently at the blood covering the side of Frank’s face, her breath coming out in gasps.

  Mason glanced at the girl behind him and saw that Annie held her tightly in her arms, tears streaming down her face as she cooed and soothed her daughter. Distractedly, he heard foot beats and noted Annie’s two boys running past him to envelop their sister.

  Jess grabbed Frank by the T-shirt, tugging and yelling for him to get up. A shadow fell over the trio and Mason looked up to see Ox standing over them, his face red and pinched. Ox bent and took Jess by the arm, pulling her away from her father.

  “C’mon, we got to get out of here. Jess!” She kept trying to return to her father and Ox gave her a little shake. “I got him, go help Sam, he’s throwing down some blankets in the truck-bed.” She stood still and Ox gave her a little shove to get her moving. She tripped over her feet and almost went down, but regained her footing and ran for the truck.

  Ox bent beside Frank, knees popping, and spoke softly beside his ear. “Going to pick you up now, everything’s going to be okay, ya hear?” Mason watched as Ox effortlessly lifted Frank into his arms and carried him like a child.

  “Do you think he’ll be all right?” Mason asked.

  Ox shrugged, Frank’s body rising slightly with the motion. “I think so. He’s just shut down, the stress, exhaustion, it took its toll. We need to get to that cabin, he needs rest. Hell, we all need it.”

  “What about the bodies?” Mason asked. Annie had moved her troop to the Jeep and was giving Alex water by the capful.

  “Let me get Frank settled and I’ll wrap the parents and kids in blankets and put them in one of the wrecks. Not ideal, but it’ll keep the critters off ‘em. I’ll cut the heads off the others and put ‘em on pikes, then burn the bodies. It’ll serve as a warning should their buddies come back.”

  “Jesus!” Mason said. “You think that’s necessary?”

  Ox turned and leveled him with a look. “Probably not, but it’ll make me feel better.” He turned from him and carried Frank to the truck.

  Jess and Ma
son made Frank as comfortable as they could on the blankets in the back of the truck. Jess took a sheet and spread it across the gear stacked on either side of Frank’s head and then strapped everything back down again; the sheet acting as a screen from the sun and some of the heat.

  Frank appeared to be sleeping or unconscious now and Mason silently prayed that Ox was right and Frank would return to them in time, that the damage wasn’t so deep and consuming that it kept him locked inside himself.

  As Ox had instructed, Sam loaded Annie and her children into the Jeep and drove over the small dune, checking the rearview mirror until all that was visible was sand. To his credit, Sam didn’t argue or ask questions, he seemed to understand why Ox wanted the children out of sight. Mason didn’t want to be there either, didn’t want to see Ox’s message and tried to keep his eyes averted.

  Unfortunately, the sounds of Ox working on the bodies found him and were just as unsettling as the visions that kept popping into his head. It was nearly thirty minutes later before Ox came puffing over to the truck, covered in gore from the elbows down.

  “Grab me that gallon of water, will ya Mason? Pour it over my hands and let me scrub what I can off.” Mason did as asked.

  “They’ve branded anarchist symbols on their foreheads,” Ox said, wringing his hands together under the weak stream of water.

  “Anarchist symbols? How do you know, I mean, I don’t know what that is.”

  “It’s a capital A with a circle around it. Stands for anarchist, or asshole, which they are,” Ox finished, his hands mostly free of blood and tissue and flicked the water from them.

  “So, they’re happy this happened?”

  Ox shrugged. “Probably just taking the opportunity presented. I had a run-in with a few of them back some years ago, mostly just spoiled kids and old ass hippies that wouldn’t survive ten minutes in an actual anarchy.”