“Let’s roll.”
For nearly an hour the general listened with eyes wet with threatening tears as one American after another declared their desire to join his cause. Every voice represented that much more hope for eventual success in defeating Fenwick Sage.
It looks like we’re not alone after all. People are listening out there, and more importantly, they’re willing to fight.
----------------
EPISODE FIFTY-THREE:
Nearly a thousand snarling motorcycles moved as one down the narrow country road like a landlocked pirate brigade upon a sea of pavement in search of its next bounty. The Beast watched from his position in the middle of the road directly in front of the Viper Pit, the place he had chosen to be his base of operations for the next several days.
The mass of lard behind the counter inside the bar didn’t know that yet, but the Beast considered that something to be communicated soon enough.
Chef stood nervously to the right side of the Beast, knowing he had been the one to allow a woman and her two children to get the drop on him, which in turn allowed the nigger named Preacher to escape.
The Beast had said nothing of that yet, but Chef knew he would not likely escape an accounting for his failing.
Bike after bike came to a stop in the road as the Beast glared back at the two-wheeled chrome mass that formed in front of him. It was his army, and he intended to unleash it fully very-very soon.
The first order of business would be his acquisition of the Viper Pit.
The establishment’s multiple-chinned owner stood inside the chain-link fence protected entrance space looking more and more nervous as he watched a hundred bikers quickly transform into hundreds of bikers.
Oh, shit…
The Beast raised his thick-knuckled and heavily scarred hands above his head, signaling for silence. Every motorcycle motor was abruptly turned off. Even the wind seemed willing to comply. The air went still and quiet as blood still oozed from the wound Preacher had delivered to the top of the giant biker’s nose.
“Bring me a Thumper!”
The bartender’s eyes became round saucers and blinked multiple times in rapid succession as he watched a heavily bearded biker emerge from the metal and leather clad pack with a refurbished military-grade M79 Thumper grenade launcher and hand it over to the Beast who then proceeded to place it against his right shoulder and aim it at the Viper Pit entrance.
“You got some spics inside that place, right?”
The bartender nodded.
“Get them out here, every last one of them – NOW!”
The Viper Pit’s owner motioned for one of the two armed men who stood with him inside the gated entrance to go back inside and do as the Beast demanded. Moments later, seven men were pushed past the Viper Pit’s unlocked gate and left standing in a row in front of the Beast and Chef.
“Sit down on the ground!”
The seven men were quick to comply, huddling in a circle on the dirt and gravel parking area.
The Beast turned to Chef and gave the much smaller man a grin that let Chef know his moment of repayment for his earlier failure was about to be explained.
“You and that blade of yours need to go put an end to that disgusting mess sitting down over there. It’s either you or them, understand?”
Chef nodded and then withdrew his knife and gripped it tightly in his right hand while the Beast growled his instructions to the others.
“You seven spic-monkeys have just one way of leaving here alive. You kill him or he kills you. If you try and run, I’ll kill you myself.”
The seven Hispanic men jumped to their feet, a motley collection of young and old. Three had done hard time while three others had spent the last few years as illegal migrant workers on farms throughout South Dakota, Wyoming and Nebraska. The last one, who was American-born, a former Army Ranger, and also the oldest at fifty-six, had come to South Dakota from Arizona three years earlier to work in the oil fields – fields that had since been abandoned after the Race Wars started. Robert Diego had a wife, children, and three grandchildren who had remained behind in a vacant trailer park in Arizona. He had not spoken to his family in nearly two months and had intended to start making his way back to try and locate them by next week.
Looking at the biker mob massed before him, he knew he faced the very real possibility of never seeing them again.
Chef was first to react, scrambling forward with his knife at the ready as he faced the seven unarmed men who began to make a circle around him while the other bikers watched with eyes yearning for imminent bloodshed.
One of the three who had done time suddenly lunged toward the biker. Chef flicked the blade of his knife and left a deep gash in the man’s right forearm which caused a roar of approval from the gang. Chef whirled around and stabbed another of the seven men who was trying to sneak up behind him. The biker’s blade sunk several inches into the man’s upper stomach before he pulled it out. The man groaned loudly as both his hands attempted to cover the wound while his own uncooperative blood seeped between his fingers.
Another loud roar ensued.
It was at that moment, while the attention of the others was momentarily diverted, that Robert leaned down and picked up a small rock that he then held tightly in his right hand. Meanwhile, two of the migrant workers suddenly flung themselves at Chef from both sides, one hitting him high, and the other at his knees.
The biker was knocked backwards but managed to remain on his feet. The knife plunged downward into the back portion of one man’s left shoulder and then arced upward where it left a three inch crimson trail across the side of other migrant worker’s throat. Both men retreated with blood oozing from their wounds.
One of the Hispanic men decided to run away, scrambling down the side of the road heading north. The Beast watched the departure with casual amusement for several seconds before taking aim with the grenade launcher.
The weapon made a soft whoosh sound as the Beast pulled the trigger. His shot was wide and to the right by nearly ten feet, but the detonation was enough to throw the escaping man several feet into the air where he then lay dead in the middle of the road with a skull fractured by the impact.
The bikers whooped their collective approval and then refocused their attention on the life and death battle between Chef and the remaining six Hispanic men while the Beast reloaded the M79 Thumper.
“Hurry your ass up, Chef, or you’re next!”
Chef lunged again, nicking the upper hand of another of the men who tried to reach out to him. This was followed by a slash at a second’s man’s throat which missed by several inches. The biker felt the arms of one of the men grabbing him from behind. He twisted his body to the right in an attempt to escape, but instead fell face-first into the gravel and dirt below where a series of punches and kicks soon left him gasping for breath and struggling to remain conscious.
The biker gang began to murmur its disapproval of seeing a group of Hispanic men delivering a beating to one of their own. The Beast glared back at them and snarled his retort.
“Silence! If he dies it’s because he was too weak to be among us!”
Chef cried out his rage as his blade was stuck into every bit of flesh he could find. Hands and arms were cut. Then the side of a face, scalp, and finally the knife was sunk hilt-deep between the ribs of someone who screamed and rolled away, ripping the knife from Chef’s grasp.
The biker pushed himself back onto his feet, wincing at the pain of a body already covered in bruises. His eyes lifted upward to see but one uninjured Hispanic man remained.
It was Robert Diego.
“C’mon you spick bastard, you want some?”
Chef’s voice betrayed his fear. He was hurt, exhausted, and without a weapon. Also, there was something in the other man’s eyes that indicated he knew more than a little something of fighting, and of delivering death to others.
Chef wiped away blood that oozed from a gash below his left eye with the back o
f his left hand and then clenched his fists and prepared to attack. Robert waited for those same hands to fall a few inches lower and then launched the rock at the biker’s head.
The former Army Ranger’s aim proved true.
The rock struck Chef in the center of his forehead, snapping his head backwards as his vision detonated into an explosion of white sparks. Robert moved quickly toward the barely standing biker and delivered a right hook that smashed into the side of Chef’s face, dropping him like a water-logged bail of hay. Chef groaned as he tried to crawl away, nearly blind and far too weak to put up any more of a fight. Robert picked up the same rock he had just used so effectively as a weapon and smashed it into the back of Chef’s head over and over again until Chef moved no more. He then stood up and flung the blood-soaked rock onto the ground and pointed at the Beast.
“Ok, he’s dead. I’m alive. You let me go like you promised.”
The Beast’s eyes narrowed and his voice was a low rumble of finality that made clear to Robert that in the world of the Race Wars, promises meant little, and promises made to him by the likes of the Beast, meant even less.
There would be no escape, no longed-for reunion with his family.
The grenade launcher was fired for the second time that day. Robert closed his eyes right before the projectile hit him in the middle of his chest. What little of him remained after impact and detonation was scattered in a thirty-foot radius of blood, tattered flesh, and bone.
Again, the bikers cheered.
The Beast quickly reloaded the launcher for the third time and aimed it at the Viper Pit’s entrance where the bartender stood wide-eyed and fearful.
“I like this place. It’s mine. You’re welcome to join us or die. Give me an answer – now.”
Some of the bikers chuckled, enjoying the spectacle of having a leader so dominant and fear-inducing as the Beast.
The bartender’s chins quivered as he nodded his head and stammered a response.
“It’s yours! It’s yours! Whatever you want!”
The Beast’s smile was a thing of nightmare. He was never more certain of his invincibility, of his being in the right place at the right time. He turned to look back at the massive mob of bikers that stretched out for nearly a quarter mile down the road behind him, an army of discontent that would bring swift justice to any who opposed them.
Like that nigger and his friends.
“Listen up! All of you, all of us, were put on this earth for this moment. We are the natural and rightful progression of human kind! Our enemies are weak, inbred, disgusting mistakes that must be wiped out! We will prepare, and then we ride to war to spill the blood of the subhuman mongrels! All of them will die! They are the lambs to our slaughter!”
Shouts mingled with gunfire as the biker gang roared its approval. The Beast stood with his large square chin jutting upward and the grenade launcher held casually in his right hand, drinking in the cacophony that was the bikers’ enthusiastic devotion to him.
For the Beast, life had never been as good as it was at that moment when there was such an abundance of death all around him.
With every fiber of his being, the Beast ached for more…
---------------
EPISODE FIFTY-FOUR:
Silas Toms had not had so many people in his home since before his mother and father were both still alive. Lu took on the part of happy host, urging Preacher, Sarah, Tom Dolan, Sabina, Jackson and Mika to make themselves comfortable inside the rancher’s cabin while both the dogs were quick to curl up in front of the wood stove.
Lu had a wide smile as he brought out a platter of salted meats and dried fruit and a pitcher of water and encouraged everyone to help themselves. Tom looked out one of the front windows to the dirt-packed drive that led to the home from the road that intersected the other side of the Toms’ property. The former sheriff turned to the rancher who stood in the space between the small living area and the kitchen, his grey-haired head nearly touching the ceiling.
“We’re safe here?”
Silas took two long strides toward Tom and nodded as his eyes looked through the same window.
“Yes, there’s monitors placed along the drive to alert us to intruders. And like I said, I have weapons – lots of them.”
“So you’ve been preparing for something like this, huh?”
The rancher peered down at Tom, sensing they each shared in the belief that good preparation was an essential component to life.
“That I have. I’ll show you more tomorrow. Lu said you were in law enforcement?”
Tom’s face tightened for a brief moment as he was reminded of a former life and the family the abrupt ending of that life left behind.
“Yeah, small city in southern Illinois.”
The rancher said nothing more, having heard the hint of pain in Tom Dolan’s voice and guessing it had to do with a family that was no longer with him. Tom in turn was grateful for Silas’s silence and found himself already forming a bond with a man he had just come to know.
“The guy in the bar…he’s gonna be looking for us. I think you made quite an impression on him. Seems you have a lot of strength left in that old body of yours.”
Silas grunted, amused by the friendly slight.
“Guess I do. Not sure if it’d be enough to hold up to him for long. If they show up here, we’ll be ready.”
The rancher glanced behind him as the sound of laughter filled his home, the response to a joke Lu had told.
“I’ll admit I’m happy to have your help, Mr. Dolan.”
Tom shook his head.
“Now hold on, you’re the old guy here. You don’t get to go around calling me, Mr. Dolan. It’s just Tom, ok?”
Tom extended his right hand and then watched it disappear inside the rancher’s own hand which appeared to be almost twice the size of his.
“Tom it is, so long as you do the same and call me Silas.”
Tom was certain if Silas chose, he could easily crush every bone in his hand.
“Ok, we’re on first names now. Guess that means we’re friends, eh?”
Silas appeared to be on the verge of a smile.
“Yeah, I suppose so.”
Soon after, everyone was sitting down inside the cabin sharing stories of how they had come to be at Silas’s ranch from wherever their lives had once been. Lu told of his parents’ shoe store in Chicago, the epicenter of what came to be the Race Wars.
Sabina, with her children seated on either side of her, explained of the violence that gripped Bellingham, the harrowing escape by water, and the treacherous journey east that made them witness to so much violence and bloodshed.
Preacher and Sarah repeated their stories as well, including how they met Akrim while all of them were attempting to get away from the Islamic terror that overtook Detroit. They also told of the still-painful decision to agree to Akrim’s demand that he be left behind so that he might try give them more time. Sarah’s tears let the others know she had come to accept they would likely never see Akrim again.
When it was Tom Dolan’s turn to speak, his eyes fell to the floor as he took in a deep breath and then exhaled right before looking up with a jaw clenched tight and a lower lip that trembled.
“I thought I had planned for everything, but instead, everything is what I lost. My kids, my wife…they took it all from me. I was supposed to keep them safe. I didn’t. I wanted to die. The only thing that kept me from checking out was the hope I’d get to do to them what they had done to me. But now, well, you folks can’t give me my life back, but I think you might just be giving me my reason for living back, and I’m grateful as hell for your having done so. I can feel it, that something that has brought us together. Call it dreams, fate, or divine intervention, whatever it is, all I know is that we were meant to be here, right here, right now.”
Silas stood up from a wooden chair that had been made by his father nearly sixty years earlier. He was already in the place he had always been, and so felt no
need to explain how he came to be there. Instead, he went to a corner of the room and brought back the shortwave radio he and Lu had been listening to for weeks, which he then sat down on a table in the middle of the room and turned on.
After trying out several different frequencies, Silas was finally able to locate a broadcast. The voice was unfamiliar to any of them. Though male, it had a delicate femininity to it, a sort of asexual, whining-whisper that Silas found instantly repulsive.
…Do not resist my authority. Do not entertain ridiculous dreams of insurgency. Simply obey and your basic needs will be taken care of. Anything less than absolute compliance will be met with very swift and decisive repercussions.
RACE WARS: Season Nine: “LAMBS TO THE SLAUGHTER”: Episodes 49-54 of an ongoing post-apocalyptic thriller series... Page 5