by H. L. Murphy
With great resolution I kept the contents of my stomach engaged.
“What do you think you're doing?” I demanded, shaking the crumpled sign before them.
“We don't have to explain ourselves to you, patriarch thug,” the man hating male wannabe sneered in a thin voice. Judging by the size of her I had expected James Earl Jones to berate me and commend the benefits of ruling the galaxy, not a taller, more rotund version of Farah Fuckwit.
“You do remember that I kill people for fucking with me, right?” I asked evenly, my hand gently caressing the butt of the ancient Colt revolver. That little reminder started the perfumed popinjay balling his yellow tinted contact lens wearing eyes out. Naturally, two persons of indeterminate gender flocked to comfort the traumatized little daisy. Heaven forbid any of these namby-pamby simps should be compelled to brave the bitter truth of our heinous new world, a world where everyone must pull their weight or else be cast aside. A world where only those strong of character and limb had any chance of survival.
“You don't scare me, patriarch oppressor,” Nitwit number one whispered. Her words, however, didn't match the gentle quiver in her voice. Anger spiked in her eyes as she detected a note of fear in her own voice, made worse a moment later as I closed to loom over her. Confronted with my sudden, very intimidating presence Nitwit number one retreated several steps before slamming against the bulkhead, repeated nautical terms.
“You aren't scared of me?” The words came out in a throaty whisper. “You should be fucking terrified of me. I've killed men for no other reason than they were standing there. One deck up from here I disemboweled a man because he was a part of the trash that tried to mutiny, steal my boat, and threatened my family. What in all the world makes you think I won't gut you from crotch to crown, eat your fucking spleen, and then use you for chum?”
Little much? Maybe, but I wasn't the biggest fan of these whinging toads before the world went to hell. The water works dried up as our delicate little flower lost consciousness, a resoundingly hollow tone echoed as his head struck the deck, more correctly used nautical terms. My eyes never left the gender challenged nitwit before me.
“Now, I'm going to ask one more time, and if I don't get an answer that satisfies me I'm going to kick every one of your sorry asses until I do get an answer that satisfies me,” I stated, my tone penetrating the cloud of narcissism surrounding their itty-bitty brains.
“T-this is our safe space,” Nitwit number one squeaked, with just a hint of condescension. As though I were clearly too stupid to understand the concept, she pointed at the crumpled sign in my hand. Did she think I was in too great a hurry to attend a book burning to read the sign before I tore it down? The cracking of my knuckles sounded in the corridor like gunfire I clenched my fist so tightly. It was possible, I supposed, that Nitwit number one understood her immediate peril because she hastily continued. “This is where we have decided to assemble and be safe from the oppressive dictatorship run by the patriarchy aboard this floating prison. While we're here, you can't speak to us, you have to respect us, respect our decisions, and respect that you aren't in charge of anything here.”
Somewhere about the thirty second mark of Nitwit’s diatribe I stopped listening and briefly fantasized about ramming the old Colt in her mouth and splattering her useless brain matter all over my bulkhead. Only my sense of dread at the extensive clean up and the gargantuan chewing out I would receive from Lizzy and Melinda kept the old revolver in its holster.
With deliberate action I withdrew a cigar torch from my pocket and set flame to the crumpled sign. I held it aloft for all to see, rotating the sphere of stupidity to ensure the maximum amount of material caught fire before dropping it to the deck, properly utilized nautical term.
“Fuck your safe space.”
Somewhere in the world I could imagine the machinery of industry was still working at full steam, and within that juggernaut would somewhere be a device, the sole purpose of which, to grind boulders into dust. That crushing, obliterating inevitability paled in comparison to the tone of my voice, and the crest fallen, shattered appearance of my fragile little snowflakes when my statement registered in their logic starved brains.
Sounds impressive, doesn't it? It wasn't. Remember, these were the campus dwelling, characterologically deficient mayflies that required counseling after seeing a name written in chalk on the steps to a building. I could have yelled ‘boo’ and they probably would have defecated themselves.
“I am in charge of this boat, and everyone on it,” I continued, my hand resting on the butt of my Colt as I severely eye fucked the snowflakes. “If you don't like this arrangement, I invite you to swim your happy ass to shore. This isn't the old world. Bitching and whining until no one can stand the sound of your voices might have gotten you this and that before the undead showed up to eat your fucking spleen, but if you try that shit now I promise you a radically different outcome. A two hundred thirty grain outcome, and for you pissant morons that don't get that I'm talking about a bullet. Unless I'm wildly mistaken, it's fuck off early in the A.M., and you all have work to do. Get to it.”
It wasn't enough for the starboard engine to be in pieces, oh, no, I had to be saddled with genetic rejects from the far end of the gene pool. Perhaps that wasn't a fair assessment of my karmic burdens, but I had very rarely encountered individuals whose survival instincts were so insanely undeveloped. They may have all been intellectual giants on par with Einstein, Sagan, deGrasse Tyson, or Curie, but each was wrapped so thoroughly in a nonsensical cultural miasma of pseudo intellectualism it was impossible to recognize any such brilliance. Our world had grown so soft, so complacent that children were allowed to remain childish well into adulthood, and weren't expected to mature and find a place within society. Oh, no, they insisted that society adapt to their desires despite having no understanding of the world around them. No understanding of the world, and no understanding of the value or necessity of hard work. An entire generation of weak, morally vacant, overly entitled pussies demanding their share of everything earned by other people. God, and that Galilean Twat, forbid the lazy fucktards get their hands dirty and EARN their own goddamn way. I'm not saying it was easy, but life in the United States sure as hell wasn't like trying to make ends meet in places like Syria.
Great. I've turned into that old man sitting on his porch, bitching about how easy those damn kids have it. Thing is, they really did have it easy. I had it easy compared to my father, and he had it easier than his father. In our rush to find greener pastures it would seem we unintentionally destroyed the very qualities that gave us the strength to achieve greatness.
In the new world, there will be no more safe spaces.
Chapter Two
Huhn…
Within the rusting, malodorous bowels of the aged freighter I located the first of many crates to be examined. Seconds ticked by as I considered the wooden cube of commerce before me. Without doubt I needed to peruse the contents of every container aboard on the off chance there might be an item or twelve useful towards our continued survival. I just wasn't looking forward to rummaging through mountains of whatever useless shit somebody half the world away was trying to profit on. The contents of this particular crate may well have been the sum total of the hopes and dreams of a desperate person, praying day and night their fancy new widget would hit it big in the land of opportunity. Poor bastards would probably never know their widget sat off the coast of Florida, moldering away for weeks before some heavily armed, shell shocked asshole dumped the object of their fervent prayers into the Atlantic Ocean.
On the other hand, whoever shipped this lot was likely either dead or undead by now so I didn't see how it could matter who prayed for what. As far as I knew, God was vacationing in the Crab Nebula, and St. Pete wasn't answering the phone. Galilean Twat.
Ah, well, best get to it before the all knowing, all seeing decides I've exceeded my heresy allowance and strikes me down with a bolt of lightning. Or worse, makes me liste
n to Social Justice Warrior rhetoric for a thousand years. Imagine being forced to listen to one delicate snowflake after another go on and on about having assumed their gender just because the little darling has a cock and balls between his legs. At moments like this I find myself wondering whether or not I should bother saving the human race, or just enough people to start over some place brutal enough to ensure the human race doesn't go soft, but not so terrible we revert to complete, baby eating bastards. I certainly don't want to marry my daughter off to the local headman in order to cement our alliance, but something not far from that sounds like a viable alternative.
Christ on fire, we're barely two months into the Zombie Apocalypse and I'm already prepared to regress six hundred years. What the flaming fucking balls of Hell will I be like in a year? Given my luck, I'll be facing down the reincarnation of Genghis Khan and the new Golden Horde with a potato peeler, flip flops, and a smile.
With enough grunting and straining to satisfy the most ardent rough trade fan, the top of the crate launched into the air revealing an assortment of metal pipes and nozzles whose purpose escaped me.
“Well, this shit’s going over the side,” I mumbled, and sprayed painted a large red x on the side of the crate. As I selected the next crate, I briefly wondered where James was and when the fucking hell he planned on joining me in this endeavor.
Twenty minutes later I had worked through five crates of varying size and sturdiness, discovered nothing of any value, and managed to scrape three on my knuckles free of their protective coating, you know, my skin, before James wondered in.
“Nice of you to fucking join me,” I snarled over my skinned knuckles. Remarkable healing powers not withstanding, it still hurt like a bitch. And, naturally, I still bled like mad, which meant my previously clean shirt was now adorned in enough of my own life's blood to clone myself several times over.
“I would have been here half an hour ago,” James smiled at my pain, ”but somebody managed to terrify the college brats. So much so the poor things were cowering in their rooms, under their beds.”
“Bunks,” I interrupted. “At sea they're called bunks, not beds.”
“Yeah, sure, whatever Popeye. Live on a boat a few days and all of a sudden you’re Admiral fucking Nelson,” James countered. “Come talk to me after you've won a fleet action, Admiral, till then it's a fucking bed.”
“Bunk.”
“Fuck you.”
“No thanks, and it's still a bunk,” I continued unabated. “And if you're telling me those fucking snowflakes aren't pulling their weight, I'll cut them into chum. Useless fucking twats.”
“Certainly a definitive and imaginative ending, but you'll have to hold off on the fishing plans,” James explained. “Melinda and Angie found something to occupy our special needs crowd.”
“So why are you late?” I asked, my curiosity piqued.
“Well, I hung around to lend my moral weight to the girls.”
“Bullshit. You were hoping those little shits were going to talk back to Melinda so you could kick them around,” I stated with some authority.
“Maybe.”
“Well, fun times over,” I exclaimed over my swiftly healing knuckles. “Time to earn our keep.”
Together, finally, James and I worked undisturbed for next five hours. Mostly we worked in silence, neither of us having anything useful to contribute and not wanting to break the rhythm of motion we'd built up. Yet, between the two of us lay the question of our missing brother, because despite having royally, galactically, fucked us over Carroll was still like a brother to both of us. The brother you never admit is related to you because he's a complete booger eating moron that shouldn't be left unattended because he's likely to wonder off and start molesting the wildlife in an all too friendly manner. Sheep shagger, I'm calling Carroll a sheep shagger in case you didn't catch my meaning.
Crate after rotting crate, useless widget after pointless junk, James and I made our way through about thirty crates. Doesn't sound like much for five hours work until you factor in moving each crate by hand, opening each crate by hand, rummaging through each popcorn stuffed crate, resealing the crates, and then stacking each crate out of the way so we could move onto the next rotting crate. Somewhere around the nineteenth crate I decided to locate the owner of each shipment of useless crap and beat them to death the contents. Hopes and fucking dreams be damned, we needed supplies not crates of automated back scratchers.
Crate number thirty-one, a rusting metal container covered in Cyrillic script, offered a plethora of potentialities, few of them positive.
“Well, since you were late getting here, I'm going to let you open this one,” I handed James my crowbar and stood back.
“Oh, hell no,” James dropped the crowbar and started backing away. “Mr. I Can’t Die. You open the creepy Russian box filled with whatever radioactive, biological, or chemical nightmare designed to eat your fucking face off. You can survive that, I can't.”
“Point of interest,” I interrupted, noting how quickly my friend was willing to spend my life, ”but, anything designed to eat my face off will likely do the same thing to you, regardless of who opens it first.”
“Yeah, but I'll get to see you die first, and possibly have enough time to decide whether or not to kill myself or run,” James smiled, and took another large set of steps away. Sighing, I gave James a rather enthusiastic finger, and set about opening the mystery crate. Gazing upon its indecipherable script and general disreputable appearance I found myself considering the possibility an agent of some type might actually be sealed within, and what horror might be unleashed upon everyone aboard. A sphincter tightening thought to be sure. Ten thousand terrorist films suddenly played out in my brain, each one worse than the last as bombs, nukes, plagues, and poison gas lay waste to innocent populations while the prick behind the camera focuses exclusively on a pink cheeked little girl with curly hair and a ridiculously cute teddy bear just before stated event cruelly ends her too young life.
Wow, now that's a depressing thought. I paused, or rather continued to pause while the paranoid area of my personality ran rough shod over reason and common sense. Several gut busting breathes later I was oxygenated, but no less anxiety ridden.
Suck it up, pansy.
Given the nature of your most recent experiences, it's not exactly fair to suggest any lack of personal courage on your part. Proceeding with reasonable trepidation would seem to be warranted.
Christ on fire, did you eat a fucking dictionary?
No, you did. Remember those wonderful days spent copying out of the dictionary as punishment in school? An incredible number of those definitions took root in the darkened corners of your mind. You should really take the time to review the exact breadth of your vocabulary, it's impressive.
Are you fucking with me right now? I'm about to pop open a creepy steel crate covered in Cyrillic that looks like it was manufactured in the heyday of Soviet insanity and shipped to every third world communist shit hole on the planet before landing in my cargo bay, and you think I need to expand my vocabulary?
Yes.
Fuck. You. How's that? Sophisticated enough for you?
Savage.
Jesus, I really am coming unglued.
In point of fact, you are stalling. Likely because you are afraid that whatever is concealed within may actually melt the flesh from your bones and turn you into just another zombie.
That's a cheerful fucking thought. Thanks a bunch for that uplifting insight. Now that I'm good and pissed I can't get the thing open fast enough.
Which doesn't happen right away, despite my less than tender ministrations led by a steel crowbar. It isn't until I spot the series of turn buckle latches on the top of the case that I realize how foolish I must have appeared. Forgoing the crowbar treatment, I snap open the latches in short order. When impossibly colored noxious gases don't begin filling the compartment, I take the initiative and pop the steel top from the case, and nearly shit myself when
it slams onto the floor. In my haste it didn't occur to me with all the latches disengaged the lid would strike the deck with the approximate sound of a canon going off right next to me. And no matter what James later claimed, I did not release a shriek of terror to be envied by all the scream queens that lived. Nor did I pull my pistol and fire half a magazine into the deck in a wildly futile attempt to kill the highly dangerous immobile lid.
I did shout, “oh, fuck,” and jump three feet up, and back, landing with cat like grace on a stack of hot pink rubber dildos which immediately slid, flopped, and bounced from beneath me. A sudden, jarring impact with the deck reminded me the majority of the flooring in this area of the ship was metal grating, and said metal grating caused impressive levels of pain when my knees came into uncontrolled contact. It was my dearest hope James would rush forward to lend a helping hand, perhaps offer me a long pull from a flask full of bourbon to ease my suffering. Instead, the insensitive prick was giggling his ass off as I wildly flailed about amidst a small hill of hot pink rubber dildos as I clutched my aching knees. Without much conscious thought I hurled an enormous rubber phallus at James’ laughing face. His pure delight at my misfortune metamorphosed into utter horror as the impossibly colored object hurtled with uncanny accuracy directly for his face.