Survival_Book 1_And Tomorrow

by Ralph F. Halse

  He was undone around his fifteenth birthday after he broke into the local petting zoo, where police discovered him dismembering petting zoo bunnies with his hands. He gave the excuse that he wanted to see how their insides worked because he was thinking of becoming a doctor. That response amused the cops to no end, since most knew Junior was going to end up one thing—a criminal. And it was only a matter of time before they locked him up, or in more practical terms—how long his family’s expensive lawyers could keep him out of jail. The same thing at the end of the day, the Sheriff had remarked to the arresting officers.

  At his hearing, the authorities decided institutionalizing and medicating Junior was the only answer. His incredibly wealthy parents couldn’t bear the public humiliation of their son being sent to a state institution, so they did what all rich people did—they employed very expensive lawyers to water the charges down to a misdemeanor. Eventually, their lawyers persuaded the court that Junior would take supervised medication and reside at high school until he was pronounced sane by a court-appointed doctor. The problem was, most days, Junior pretended to take his pills. Consequently, when Junior was pretending to be medicated, and when overworked house teachers weren’t looking too closely, Junior indulged himself in his favorite pastime—, torturing the weak and defenseless.

  Kitch heard through the teenage grapevine that Junior was finally shipped off to a secure facility after the suicide rate at the school skyrocketed. A notable factor was Junior’s proximity to the deceased prior to and around the time of death. On that day, Kitch remembered thinking how grateful he was no longer under Junior’s influence.

  Chapter Four: Hard lessons from old friends and new enemies

  Junior Watson was a big, beefy kid in anyone’s language. Standing approximately six-foot-eight inches tall, he looked to weigh in at about three hundred and fifty pounds. To enhance his already intimidating appearance, he kept his massive head shaved. While his body shape provided the misleading appearance of carrying too much fat, Junior was possibly the biggest-boned individual Kitch had ever had the misfortune come across. His facial features were best described as mean and fleshy.

  Two cunning, cruel, and calculating brown eyes peered suspiciously out at the world above chubby cheek folds. When the sadistic giant chose to communicate beyond grunts, several chins wobbled. Beads of stinking perspiration split a fine coating of black sand and dirt clinging to his huge belly as his arm swept Kitch toward the line of teenagers staring at him with varying expressions of bewilderment and contempt. Junior’s lumbering walk was deceptive. He could move at a deadly, lightning speed when necessity required. Kitch wasn’t about to provoke him. Not with what he knew about Junior’s past. He blinked as that day came back to him in a flash of sickening memory.

  The day prior to Kitch’s fourteenth birthday, his father used the excuse of a shopping expedition to the mall for clothes and to collect medication to secretly pick up Kitch’s present. Waiting outside the drug store for his dad, Kitch watched the crowd pass like any other bored teenager until he spied the brooding Junior’s shiny skull approaching over the crowd. Exposed as he was outside the drug store, there would be no avoiding his tormentor. Kitch looked left and right. A panic attack had him ducking without considering any other options into a ‘bot service alley overlooking the river.

  Kitch figured he could hide in there among the ‘bots and emerge later when Junior moved on. To Kitch’s horror, the scowling behemoth followed. Kitch cursed himself. Shaking like a leaf in a summer storm, Kitch’s choice of refuge was a dead end. Despite fear pinching his bladder into an urgent need to go, he crushed himself in between two industrial-sized vacuum cleaner bots, shook and prayed he would be overlooked. Junior’s cruelty toward Kitch was historically proven. Beatings and serious injuries inflicted by Junior and his sycophants had Kitch fobbing off as licks earned at football practice to his parents and school authorities. Kitch spent so much time with the school’s Med-Techs that they jokingly named a Medi-Chair after him. Blind panic had Kitch worming his way deeper in behind a cleaning ‘bot as it charged its cells at a grid station.

  Kitch was relieved as Junior entered the service area. It seemed Junior wasn’t hunting Kitch. Three paces in, the then fourteen-year-old Junior turned and faced away from Kitch’s hiding place. With his legs spread wide in a classic fighter’s pose, his hulking form almost blocked the light entering the alley. Junior’s only movement was the flexing of two ham-sized fists, until two men arrived at a semi-jog.

  Halting abruptly in a skid of shoes on small, gritty stones in front of Junior’s looming figure, an older male held his arm across a younger male’s chest. Growling in a menacing tone, he asked with a shooting, sideways glance, “That him, for sure?”

  “That’s him, the goddamn lunatic,” the younger snarled in a deep Georgia accent as he separated from the older by stepping sideways.

  Junior never budged.

  The older male stepped forward, saying angrily in a raised voice as he jabbed an accusing index finger at Junior, “My son killed himself because of you, you evil piece of crap. The note he left set out how you’d tortured him for years—you’re insane doing that shit. Best you know straight up, we’re here for two reasons. One, revenge, plain and simple! Life for a life, Holy Bible says so, and we’re here to collect what’s due us. Two, to see he’s the last person you’ll ever do that to, you sadistic animal.”

  Junior pugnaciously swiveled his head from to side to regard the two angry males confronting him but did not respond. Why would he? They were telling the truth. Junior was probably reliving the moment as they spoke.

  While Junior’s attention was taken by the older male, the younger stepped swiftly forward. As he did so, he produced a baseball bat from within the folds of a knee-length military coat. With all his might, he swung it sideways in a blurring strike at Junior’s head. It was then Junior chose to move, along with the older male, who also produced a baseball bat.

  Junior didn’t exert himself except to shift backward a quarter pace. Reaching out effortlessly, he caught the younger male’s bat with an open left hand. Kitch heard it strike a palm the size of small supper plate with a meaty splat, yet Junior never flinched. He simply closed his fingers around the bat head, and raising his hand, wrenched the bat out of his surprised attacker’s grasp. Simultaneously pivoting on his heels, he shifted his bulk sideways. Junior might be paranoid and as dumb as dog turds when it came to English and math, but the big guy sure knew how to scrap.

  Junior’s pivot produced two deadly outcomes in his favor. It placed his younger attacker off balance and caused the older male’s sudden swing to go wide, the consequence of which had the older male’s bat slicing through the empty air at punishing speed. The older male’s loss of momentum had him stumbling awkwardly forward. He landed with an audible grunt on one knee beside Junior’s right thigh. In one continuous motion, Junior flipped the baseball bat over to his right hand. Effortlessly, he powered it down in a backhanded swipe toward the older male.

  When it struck, Kitch’s stomach contracted. His flesh goose-prickled at the sickening, bone-crunching sound the bat produced striking the bowed head. As the older male’s eyes rolled, Junior ripped the gore-coated bat from the collapsing male’s skull and laughed. Gripping it two-handed, with surprising speed and agility, he spun his body like a top to his left, propelling the bat in a sideways strike against the open-mouthed and gawping younger male’s neck.

  Kitch watched in abject horror as the power of the bat’s killing strike. Driven by all of Junior’s considerable weight, the blow struck the younger man’s neck. A sickening thud and bone-cracking snap followed. Junior’s motion didn’t cease there. He simply opened his hand, sending the bat into the river to float away. Even before his younger victim hit the pavement, the huge teenager scooped the collapsing attacker up into his arms. Effortlessly, Junior tossed him too out into the river. The unconscious older male swiftly followed.

  Junior didn’t bother to look
back at the floating bodies. He walked calmly back into the mall’s mainstream pedestrian traffic as if nothing had happened and disappeared, much to Kitch’s relief. After waiting several minutes, a shaky Kitch followed, thinking he should call someone. If the Med-Techs were quick enough, he was certain the father and son could be saved. But a call to the Sheriff’s department would mean voice recognition identification, and that he could not risk. Instead, Kitch maintained a safe and respectable distance until Junior turned a corner.

  A distraught Kitch resumed his position outside the drug store. He waited for his dad with images of murder crowding his Tourette’s-tortured mind. By the time his father emerged from the pharmacy carrying medications, Kitch was pale and in the throes of a major TS incident. A small crowd of giggling teenagers and shocked adults were watching Kitch trembling and twitching. Saliva dripped from his slack mouth. His eyes were rolling, and he had urinated. Not one passerby offered to help or call paramedics.

  By now, Kitch was incapable of speech at the horror he’d witnessed. His unfocused eyes and high-pitched shrieks of terror sent his father’s knees visibly watery. Concerned for his son’s psychological wellbeing, Mike ushered Kitch toward a line of parked public cars charging at a grid station to take the journey home. But Kitch wasn’t quite catatonic, simply terrified. He glanced at the clock tower as they entered an empty vehicle. As his father spoke the directions home to the navigation unit, Kitch estimated Junior had killed the two males and disposed of their bodies in less than four minutes.

  Once safe in the family home, Kitch had calmed. He changed, showered, and retreated to the serenity of his bedroom. Despite his father’s urging, Kitch refused to say what it was that had set him off. His father assumed some teenagers had teased him, and Kitch let him think that. In his room, he filled the silence with VOID-accessed music and lay down on his bed. With his forearm across his face, he tried to blot out the horror of that morning.

  He emerged the following morning for breakfast, never speaking of what he witnessed. That evening, as father and son ate their supper, the murders featured on all local and state news-feeds. No clue existed as to the killer’s identity. Police forensics had worked out where the murders took place, but the cleaning apparatus storage area contained no CCTV. Modern cleaning machines were robotic. Accordingly, no security measures were installed. Police appealed for two people seen near the entry to come forward and identify themselves. The police chief made the usual media appearances, seeking witnesses.

  Watching dozens of news-feeds on the murders, Kitch knew with a sinking certainty precisely what would happen if he spoke up. There was no doubt Junior’s family’s well-paid lawyers would have him released on bail. Kitch would never make it to court alive. Why did he think that? Junior had accounted for the deaths of three males in one family. If Kitch knew the brutal Junior well, then he was reliving each death with relish on a nightly basis. Cruelty fed Junior’s soul as oil paint fed a portrait artist’s canvas.

  That evening Kitch begged his father to take him to kung-fu lessons. Silently vowing never again would he be Junior’s victim, he ate his supper and waited to attend his first lesson.

  Stopping to face a smaller but equally belligerent and aggressive looking Asian version of himself, Junior said with some pride, “This is Pi Fong, you remember, Pi from school, hey Kitch?”

  The miniature Junior had his hair tied high on the top of his head with a length of filthy string. Pi was always a sullen, shifty-looking kid. He had cruel streak a yard wide, and he was socially inept, which was why he had fitted so well into Junior’s school gang. Pi clutched a length of construction rod loosely in his left hand. At its center, the youth had cleverly fitted a length of wood to better grip the makeshift weapon. Sharpened to a point, it was stained with dried blood. The wood prevented blood or perspiration slipping it from his grasp. His lightly mustached mouth grimaced when he nodded a greeting. Scornful, black, bloodshot eyes registered something. Whatever it was, it wasn’t the warmth of recognized friendship. It was the same look he’d given Kitch countless times—contempt.

  Next in line stood another sneering youth Kitch recognized from his torturous school days, Connor Brown. As he recalled, Connor remained an aloof student who made it known that the prestigious high school was far beneath his lofty financial standards. He rarely mixed with students. When he did, it was on terms enhancing his superior attitude. Connor had grown from a snooty child to a tall teenager with a lean face, narrow shoulders, and an equally narrow head. Two dark eyebrows knit in consternation at Kitch’s presence.

  Connor’s calculating brown eyes studied Kitch like a predatory cat would a trapped mouse, making Kitch feel decidedly uneasy. He carried a length of rounded timber punched through with a half-dozen large nails sharpened at either end and protruding outward. All were coated in dried blood and held wisps of human hair. Like Pi and the other youths studying him with varying degrees of suspicion, Connor’s hair was worn high on his head in a greasy topknot.

  Kitch was introduced along the line of grim-faced teenagers carrying an assortment of homemade yet devastating array of weaponry by a proud Junior. As he shuffled sideways, Kitch observed a second line of silent, females several yards behind. Where he could see flesh through long hair-covered faces, expressions appeared strained. Faces he glimpsed were haggard, like they had missed days of sleep. Bare arms and legs sported bruises, lumps, and fresh scratches. Several he recognized from personal VOID-casts he followed years ago. All wore filthy shift like dresses, tied at the waist with construction rope. Likewise, hands, fingernails, and faces were covered in grime, soot, and dried blood.

  Each had another odd aspect in common. In contrast to the males, all wore their hair free. Another oddity leaped out at Kitch. No one in the two lines spoke to his greeting, not a one. He wondered if that was some adopted security measure. The thought fled his mind when introduced to a teenager he knew well, Xavier Haberfield.

  Xavier and Kitch stared at each other with miserable expressions. They shared two things. One, the hated Tourette’s Syndrome, and two, Junior’s scorn and cruelty. Only in Xavier’s case, he hadn’t displayed symptoms of OCD as Kitch had. Xavier came from old Louisiana money. Privileged Haberfields attended the prestigious high school as a part of a transition into adulthood, as their forebears had for generations. As did all Haberfields, Xavier spoke with broad but soft Louisiana lilt. His cultured tones oozed wealth, privilege, and private education. Xavier, like all the Haberfield corporate executives spread across the United States, possessed a razor-sharp mind and impeccable memory. The two students met at Junior High in a class designed to manage their TS. They quickly established a firm bond, which they furthered over the years through VOID-casts and holovisits. They had to associate off-campus via holovisits since Kitch wasn’t the sort of student Xavier’s parents would expect to see their son rubbing shoulders with, except maybe to donate old clothing to.

  Kitch smiled at Xavier in greeting. His one school friend cast bleary eyes downward, refusing to acknowledge him. The raw stench of alcohol seeped from Xavier’s skin as he swayed unsteadily on his feet. Puzzled because it was morning, Kitch remained silent. At nineteen, Xavier was of slim and medium build. Xavier’s features were strikingly handsome, best described as aristocratic. The girls loved being around him. Genetics shaped by centuries of wealthy southern families breeding to maintain fortunes and bloodlines produced classical Haberfield features. Tall and lithe, he had intelligent light blue eyes, sandy hair, and fair skin that did not react well to too much sunlight. Despite his intellect, Xavier was no match for Junior’s overpowering brutality.

  “And this is Xavier, but I call him Spock. Y’all remember Spock from school too, hey Twitchy?” Junior asked, introducing Xavier.

  Kitch flinched at the cruel nickname Junior and many others taunted him with over the years. But he nodded, choosing to ignore the jibe. Pick your battles, his father had said. Now was not the time to correct Junior.

  “If I
have to make big decisions, it’s Spock I go to check my facts,” he said placing his filthy left paw none too gently on Xavier’s flinching shoulder. “He’s our tattooist too. Clever fucker made needles from permasteel and ink from soot and something else.” Studying the assembly with glaring eyes, Junior bellowed in a spittle-accompanied spray, “Back to work, fuckers. World don’t stop ‘cause we got a visitor. Brown,” he yelled.

  “Yes, boss?”

  Boss? Kitch wondered.

  Watching the muttering crowd drift off, Junior gruffly instructed Connor, “Keep the assholes busy, no slackers.” Placing a comradely arm around Kitch’s shoulders, Junior guided him toward a low fire. There was what looked like a dog carcass roasted on a permasteel rod turned by a female whose features were hidden by her long hair. Fresh blood seeped through a nearby shallow sand pit, above which flies buzzed. Through the sand, Kitch could see a hide poorly covering blue entrails.

  Sitting on an upturned bucket, Junior motioned to Kitch to take a load off on a pile of bricks before reaching over and tearing off a haunch.

  Licking hot juices from the fat fingers of one hand, Junior held the haunch out to Kitch. Even though hungry, Kitch declined. Shrugging, Junior ripped a hunk of charred meat off with teeth strong enough to bite through bone. Chewing, he waved the stringy dog-leg at Kitch, asking, “What brings y’all to my humble fortress, Twitchy?”

  “My dad’s been missing for a day now,” he replied wondering about the fortress statement.

  “No good, that.” Junior nodded thoughtfully, adding an obvious false frown of concern. “Well, he ain’t here. You’ll be lucky if he ain’t infected or if the infected haven’t snacked on him. Y’all been living at home since the outbreak with your pa, huh?”