by C.G. Banks
for it and began climbing inside. Mister Lab Coat made a mark on his tablet every time one got in. By the time it was my turn I saw there were benches on either side of the truck and there was one spot on the back left that was still empty. I climbed in and sat down. The last I saw was Mister Lab Coat backing away from us as two other police-uniformed Red Eyes closed the doors.
Then we moved out.
The troop-transport (which is what I guessed it must be) didn’t have nary a window in the back where I was, just a coupla closed-up porthole-looking things on the back doors. But right about then I wasn’t a whole lot worried about what was going on outside or where we were heading. All I knew is that for some reason here I was in the back of a SWAT transport, dressed like a fucking cop, sitting shoulder to shoulder with a passel a Red Eyes. It was kinda like waking up to discover over the night I’d turned into a slug or a cockroach with a funny little mustache. Nobody was saying nothing, just staring straight ahead like nobody else existed. Creepy as hell, and there I was one of em.
I decided it might ease my mind to just listen to the engine rumble. We were definitely off to somewhere and I had more than an inkling that wherever it was, it was going to be a helluva surprise once we got there.
After a long while the truck stopped and the engine was shut off. One of the Red Eyes closest to the front stood up and went over to a sorta cabinet fixed into the wall behind the driver. He fumbled the door open and reached in. Drew out a helmet and passed it to the one sitting close by. Then he continued pulling more out and passing them around to the rest a us. I took mine and put it on. Secured the chinstrap. Noticed they were made for stopping bullets, and I also saw there weren’t no faceplates on the front of em. That didn’t make much sense then but it didn’t take long till it was crystal-clear.
I heard somebody messing with the door and then it come open. It was all dark outside and when I got out I saw we were in some wooded area on a gravel road. We formed up into a group at the back door and just stood around like a buncha department store mannequins, nobody moving, nobody saying nothing. I heard the driver’s door open up and a Liv-er got out, dressed much the same as we were. He didn’t have on a helmet like we had, but his eyes scared me almost as much as the Red Eyes. They were dull and black like a snake’s. He motioned for us to pull up around him and then took the one who’d passed out the helmets and brought him over for a minute a private conversation. Again, I was surprised the Red Eye didn’t go about tearing him to shreds but then I had to consider myself and why I had no real urge to do it either. Maybe it was something to do with those fucking shots.
When the Liv-er got through saying whatever it was he was saying the Red Eye turned around to face us. It was then I noticed the driver had set a big duffle bag down on the ground and was bent over, unzipping it. He reached in and pulled out an AK-47. The Red Eye he’d been talking to took that and the Liv-er reached in and continued to pull more weapons from the bag. AKs, some handguns (looked to be .45s), and a few machetes. Since I was near the end of the line I got a machete. I held it out in front of me and looked at it for a while.
Then we made off through the woods. I knew we were creeping up on somebody by the way we filtered through. I entertained the thought for just a minute a splitting off and making a beeline through the woods, but the way Top Dog kept on turning around kinda put me offa that track. I knew what AKs could do and there was no way I’d be able to knock any bullets down with the blade of that machete. Besides I was real interested anyway in just what the hell we were up to.
When we saw the lights up ahead we slowed and come into a big bunch around this thick knot a trees. Ole Top Dog grunted something that didn’t mean shit-on-a-shingle to me and then pointed right and left. It seemed to be clear enough to the others I was with and I ended up in the group that was fading left. Already I had something forming up inside a me. Again I got a mind to slip out, but there was that something getting bigger and bigger inside me that actually wanted to stay. That part won over.
A short time later I saw where we was heading. Some sorta encampment of Liv-ers, not much different from any of the others I’d seen over the course of this shit even though this was the smallest by far. Crammed into the edge of the tree line I could make out a rough assortment a thrown-together buildings with an assortment of tents tossed in for good measure. Only instead of a fence this buncha Liv-ers was a little less well-off. There was no fence, just hastily set up sheets a corrugated metal and broke down trucks. If it’da been a bucket it wouldn’t’na held a drop.
I knew right then what was fixing to drop. Just the thought of fresh Liv-ers so close and available (I still couldn’t make no figure on why I hadn’t attacked any of em at the police station) had me slobbering like a dog.
The leader of our little clutch of nastiness held up his rotting hand and motioned for us to stay still. In his other hand he had a small box with a red light glowing in the center of it. From over another Red Eye’s shoulder I saw the red suddenly go to green and the one holding the box lit out toward the compound like his ass was on fire. And just like that I was off too.
As I ran I saw the other two groups coming in from different angles and from the look of it we were open for business. Alarms started sounding from inside that shitty barricade and it wasn’t long before all hell broke loose. Liv-ers started yelling and gunfire broke out on all sides. Something hot and fast whistled through my shoulder but I only half-noticed. Then after another coupla steps I heard a thunderclap inside my head and realized a bullet had just ricocheted off the helmet. Ahh, the advantages of planning. And then it come to me why no faceplates, we had a helluva lot of tooth-work scheduled.
Amid all the firing and cussing I reached the crude fence, really where I was nothing more than a piece a rutted tin leaned up against a truck sitting on all flats. I was over the tin and sliding over the hood lickety-split, the machete held out in my hand like I was some kinda modern-day pirate ghoul. And I got to tell ya, sad as it seems, I was happy as a lark.
Another bullet zinged by close enough to part hair but I wasn’t having none of it. I was over the fence and the truck hood with my feet on the ground. It was time to put the machete into play. With all of us streaming in from all sides it was kinda tough to get a target but as the bullets rained around me I spotted a cluster of Liv-ers not far away kinda hunched together behind a buncha overturned barrels. It looked to be one of em had a rifle but the others didn’t have much more than what I had. But a machete beats a shovel in a pinch. I saw the one with the rifle draw down on me and I lowered my head and charged forward. Heard another hellacious wham off the top of my head and the force of the blow slowed me down a step but not much. Next thing I knew I crashed into the barrels with a coupla other Red Eyes and found myself looking up into the eyes of the Liv-er with the rifle. He was in the middle of reloading and I let that motherfucker have it with the machete. Hit him high on the shoulder and his arm just kinda dropped off and the rifle clanged off the side a one of them barrels. I stood up full-height and brought the machete down on his head then, slicing through it right above his left ear and all the way down to his mouth. The life went outta his eyes and he went down hard. Then I was all over the other two that were with him, even though one of em did manage to sink a long-handled butcher knife into my chest. Well that wasn’t nothing but a thing. I reared back and hacked away, cleaving through em like butter. I sunk my teeth into one of em’s neck and pulled away a great, hanging mass a skin and muscle. The Liv-er went to screaming but I couldn’t hardly hear it over the choir that was suddenly going crazy in my head.
Another wave of Red Eyes poured over me while I was down on my hands and knees and when it was past I raised up and headed farther in, slashing everything I saw on the way. Out the corner a my eye I saw one Liv-er up on top of a building shooting for all he was worth. He nailed a Red Eye in the head and that motherfucker went down like a sack a rocks. It didn’t matter none to me. I was moving fast now, tracking another Liv-er that was t
rying to get away from the general rush, dragging a dead leg in the process. I came down on him from behind and grabbed him with my free hand. The shirt ripped away and I bit him hard on the side, shaking my head like a dog to rip the meat loose. It come like a wet sack tearing and as I pulled back a whole string of intestines spilled out to the dust. I reached down with the same hand, grabbed hold of a handful, and pulled for all I was worth. More intestines rolled outta him like they were tired a staying home and he began to make these muffled little baby sounds as I unraveled him all the way back to his backbone.
I raised up with blood in my eyes and tried to see what’s what. There were a few of the uniformed Red Eyes lying still on the ground but not many. We’d hit these Liv-ers too fast and too hard, especially since we had the AKs and about the only thing I could see the Liv-ers firing was old-time rifles and such. They hadn’t been expecting nothing like this. There were still screams coming from every direction and it was then I noticed a group a women and children making a run for the back of the encampment with a whole string a Red Eyes on their ass.
It didn’t strike me as something I was too interested in and I turned back to the melee looking for another sonofabitch with a rifle. I guess my sense a fair play was still riding pretty high, even if fair play to us didn’t amount to a hill a beans to them. I noticed I’d lost the machete in all the fun, so I paused to get a hand on the knife sticking outta my chest. I pulled it free with a large sucking sound. Went after a few more stragglers that the fight had almost been wrung out of.
The massacre went on for a good long while and then just as sudden as we had struck it up, it quit. I heard a few random shots fired but it didn’t seem no one was targeting me specifically so I just settled down with a corpse that had been shot through the chest, plucked his eyeballs out and ate em like cherries. They was so good I didn’t stop there and when I finally felt a hand on my shoulder I snarled and wheeled around to find a blood-splattered Red Eye standing over me with a real grim look on its face. I quit what I was doing and stepped away from the soggy mess I’d been playing at.
He made a sign like he wanted me to follow him and then moved away toward the last remaining bit a action. And as I walked I began to come gradually back to my senses. I was soaked all over with blood and two fingers on my left hand were surprising absent. There was blood and body parts laying all over, some squirming figures just starting to come back from the death they’d been through. I also saw there was a group of Red Eyes combing the place for just such unlucky bastards, finishing each one off with a shot to the head or a machete-chop to the neck. A few of our poorer sort were simply picking up rocks or stray pieces a broken cars and slamming them down on the squirmer’s heads.
A loud crash behind and I turned to see a truck (not the one we came over in, this one had a big cattle grate welded onto the front of it) bust through some metal and barrels. It was a dump truck with a horde a Red Eyes in the back and it trundled into the center of the camp and the Red Eyes swarmed out like ants, immediately beginning to pack all the former Liv-er dead into the back of it. The transport we’d come in rolled in through the hole the dump truck left and began rolling on toward the back of the compound where we all seemed to be heading.
It was an all-around piss-poor day for the Liv-ers because near the back the Red Eyes were humping torn-up bodies and a few living souls onto a big pile one after the other. I picked up what was left of one of em on the way and made my way to the heap. I had a pretty good idea a bonfire was in the making.
Sure enough the troop transport truck rolled into the area a lotta Red Eyes were clearing and the Liv-er that was driving it got out and started dragging a five gallon container of something over toward the others. When he got there he pulled out a spray nozzle and started coating the pile a bodies with gasoline. Within minutes a fire was raging to the sky.
And then, for the rest of the day until the sun went down, we burned all those unfortunate somebitches that had been holed up in there. Let me tell you, it was a long day and by the time we finished up I barely had the strength to put one foot in front a the other.
Regardless, round about nightfall a loud whistle went out and we all came together in a big, bloody bunch. The Liv-er drivers we’d come with got into the two vehicles and we all climbed into one or the other and sat there just as quiet as we’d come. Then the doors shut and the engines started and we headed back to the city.
That ride, what I consider to be the start of the Grind, turned out just as quiet as the one we’d had going over, but there was a difference in the air. And I tell you it wasn’t good. I just sat there thinking over what we’d done, all those Liv-ers we’d slaughtered, but the thing that kept coming back was what the hell the Liv-ers that was driving and the lab coats had to do with all this shit. It just kept rolling through my mind, what the hell was going on?
When we got back to the police station the doors of the transport opened up and we began getting out, the whole stinking mess a us. There looked to be fewer Red Eyes standing around; maybe the rest of em were somewhere inside the building getting ready for their own little brand a nastiness.
We all filed through the building back to a courtyard where a Red Eye was standing with a fire hose. We all lined up along the wall and let him hose the funk offa us, and then we went back inside when we’d kinda toweled off a little. I saw a coupla lab coats as we come through but none a them seemed to have a lot to do with us. They were all just moving around real quick like, talking into little handheld machines. Again, I could pick out certain words they were saying but I couldn’t fasten much meaning to any of it.
We kinda hung out in the hallway like a buncha kids waiting for the principal to chide our ass and then Lady Lab Coat came out through a doorway with another little cluster a men and said something, pointing this way and that. The other lab coats went to nodding and pecking around, splitting up the group a Red Eyes I was standing around with. I just kinda picked an area and held my ground, a lotta nothing running ‘round my head.
Then they started calling off numbers or some such and the groups began moving off. I started to follow one em, but before I got two steps Lady Lab Coat was standing right there, motioning for me to chill. I just looked at her and watched the rest of em move off in one direction or another. I noticed she was doing the same and when the hall was mostly empty she turned her attention back on me. Said something else that I almost got and headed back down the hallway. I followed behind. Wasn’t long before we was standing outside the room they’d put me in yesterday, and she grabbed the door handle and slipped inside. I looked back down the empty hallway and decided what the fuck and went inside too.
She musta trusted me more this time because there was only one other man, a Liv-er lab coat, in there with her. I came in and sat down in the chair she motioned me to. I noticed this time there wasn’t such a hurry to get the straps on and I sat there quietly watching them talk. The man Liv-er looked a little nervous and kept glancing away to make sure I was still sitting pretty in that chair. I just sat there all soggy and wet, staring back, but I got to say the last thing I had on my mind was getting up and starting some shit. I was bush-wacked like I ain’t ever been before and I guess the amount a blood I already shed had pretty much taken the spark outta my giddy-up.
Lady Lab Coat finished up what she was telling him and walked behind the desk like she done last time. Opened the same drawer and took out the same kit. I didn’t have to guess what was in it and when she’d filled the syringe from the bottle she came back over to me and sat down. It was like I was stuck in some kinda time warp because with the exception of the men from the first time it was like déjà vu all over again. She even had that same look on her face, like she’d just learned a nasty secret about me she was fixing to spill.
She leaned over and looked me in the eye while she went to rolling up my cop sleeve and I got to admit it took guts, but there was something about her that was just about as hard as reinforced concrete. Like the k
inda girl, you did her wrong, you could expect to wake up in the morning to your sawed-off dick in her hand. She stuck me with the needle and all I felt was a little smudge a pressure. Then she leaned away and handed the empty syringe to the guy standing behind her still looking as nervous as a cat in a rocking chair factory.
When she smiled it wasn’t with any humor.
“How do you feel?” she asked and I just shrugged my shoulders some. Again, I took to understanding mosta what she said when she talked slow and looked me in the eye. I just wasn’t real versed in responding. “That’s fine,” she said patting my arm where she’d put the needle in. Then she stuck her eyes back on mine like a hawk fixing to bring down hell on a mouse. “I know you have many questions, my friend,” she said. “A fundamental change has occurred and you are on our front line, so to speak. You are doing important work and as time goes on you’ll come more and more to understand. All you need to know now is that you are under the direction of the NWO and there is a lot to be accomplished. Work that has gone years in the planning. Your first tactical operation was today and I’m here to inform you that you are now fully one of our team. It is a great privilege,” she assured me, finishing her speech and standing up. “Now I’ll let you rest but I’ll be back to see you soon.” And about that time her image started going blurry before my eyes and I sailed off to wherever she’d sent me to the first time.
Only it wasn’t completely the same. This time I had dreams for the first time since the Change and let me tell you they didn’t do much for my piece a mind.
Here’s why. Before the Change most people considered me to be one of the “nuts.” They called me paranoid but I always looked at it as being prepared. If there was a conspiracy theory out there I was on it. Loc Ness, Area 51, the JFK assassination, that was the kinda shit I kept up with even though I didn’t go around talking about it all the time. As I said, I always been sort of a outcast and on the few times I voiced what I had to say on these and other weird circumstances all I usually got was funny looks. But of course that didn’t keep me from keeping on. And as I was down under from whatever the fuck it was Lady Lab Coat had shot me full of, the dreams come on full-bore.
First I was at this airport, which was kinda strange since I ain’t ever in my life been on a plane. Always thought those fuckers far too dangerous for me. I didn’t care what they said about flying being the safest way a travel. To me if it was so safe why did there always seem to be a plane crashing down somewhere in the world? Regardless there I was. Standing alone in an airport watching people milling around. Then it came to me: the Denver Airport. Those strange murals of soldiers in gas masks and bleeding babies. Something I used to follow on the internet. And then the plaque that was supposedly put there by the New World Order…
Even in the dream I felt the goose walk over my grave. Lady Lab Coat’s comment about me working for the NWO came back like a bucket a cold water in the face. It was then I recalled the strange stories on the web about huge prison-like places built not far from that very airport. There had been people who drove out there and took pictures from the empty parking lots and they damned sure looked like prisons to me. Only they were completely empty. Freshly built, mind you, but empty. As if they were just waiting to be filled up.
Then this dream was whisked away, replaced by another one. This time I was standing alone in a green field, staring at what I recognized from the Web as America’s Stonehenge somewhere in Georgia, I believe. From what I remembered, the site had also been placed there, supposedly, by the New World Order, some kinda weird one-world government. Only there was one more thing that kept springing to mind, and that was a little bit a cast-off figuring I ran across one day in my search. Something about a targeted world population of no more than 500,000 being necessary for sustaining human life in the coming centuries. A big number, sure, but nowhere close to the 7.3 billion humans that had been around before the Change.
Now, I ain’t ever been a math whiz a any sort but it didn’t take long to do the math on those numbers. According to the conspiracy theories that was about 6 billion plus humans less in the grand scheme a the New World Order. And let me tell you that made the Holocaust look like a Sunday picnic, my friend. Then a final image hit me while I was standing in that field by the set stones and that was a huge mushroom cloud rising to the sky somewhere in the distance. I turned away and started to run and that’s when I came back to my senses sitting in the chair in the back room of the police station.
I sat there for a time, eyes shut, trying to figure on the dreams. I was also (or at least had been) under the assumption that dreams were many times a sign a something rushing back to the present from the future. Before the Change I’d poked around with shit like that to keep my mind off my own failures, and I guess mostly to pretend that I was doing something important instead a looking for a job.
Now, sitting in that chair with my eyes closed, I began to consider on it in a different light. What the hell was I caught up in? The things Lady Lab Coat had said came back to me about the “tactical operation” and my “privilege” a working with whoever the hell they were now. But there was also some little worm a caution that nosed around in my head, something that told me to kept a tight lip, so to speak.
I considered on these things a while longer while I sat there, trying to work up the courage to open my eyes. In the end it simply came down to Time. I was gonna have to face the music and me being a zombie and all it shouldn’t be something to worry about. I opened my eyes. The room was empty this time, not a lab coat in sight. There was a freshly-pressed uniform hanging from the closes rack and I stood up and walked over to it. Shucked off the uniform I had in the raid since now it was dry and stiff and put on the new duds. It took a little longer because of the missing fingers on my left hand, but it wasn’t long before I was done up in that black uniform. I even took a little time to figure on the red armband with what I thought were the three letters I’d been frightened by in the dream.
NWO.
That’s what was on there, probably sewed over the name of whatever precinct this had been before the Change. Weird enough. I crossed over to the door and opened it onto the hallway. The lights were on and I could hear a hum from what musta been a generator somewhere behind all the walls.
Then I left and continued on down the hall. Thought about trying a few doors on the way but didn’t. Instead I headed straight to the last door at the end. I figured that one to be the door that led out to the staging area. And there was this niggling idea that if the front doors were open and wasn’t nobody around, I just might try to make a go at hauling ass.
When I did get to the end and opened the door that thought went the way of the wind. Because it was not empty. There musta been fifty or more Red Eyes and another handful a lab coats. The Red Eyes were silent and standing around like they was waiting on a doctor’s visit but the lab coats was bustling around like somebody was holding a fire to their asses. The second one of em saw me he stopped what he was doing and said something over his shoulder while he pointed my direction. It wasn’t a breath later that Lady Lab Coat poured herself from the crowd and came over to where I was.
“Well I see you’re back to the land of the living,” she said and laughed. I just stood there and looked at her. “Just join the rest of the others for a moment. We’ll be heading out soon.” Then she turned away to talk to the cluster of Liv-er lab coats.
I wandered over to the wall and stood with my back against it. The two Red Eyes on either side a me acted like I didn’t exist so I extended the courtesy to them likewise. Time went by until whatever it was the lab coats had going was done and then Lady Lab Coat stepped out to the middle of the room. She started pointing this way and that and the rest of the coats scrambled into whatever position she was telling em. Then she made a twirling motion with her finger above her head and we all began to file out to the plaza outside.
As soon as we were sectioned off a transport rumbled up and cut its engine. A Liv-er drive
r (not the same one who’d brought us to the raid) got out and walked around to the back of the vehicle. He opened the doors and crawled inside. Came out a second later with a big bag looked like you’d carry camping gear in. He bent down and unzipped it, reached in and pulled out a machete like the one I had before. Then started passing em down the line. When he finished with the first bag he got a second and then a third. I got mine toward the end and looked down at it. It was freshly sharpened and gleaming in the sunlight. Somebody had etched those same three letters into the handle, and looking around, I saw all of them had been done just the same. Then the Liv-er got back in the transport and started the engine.
Another Liv-er came out of the building and everything got real quiet. This was a dude I hadn’t seen before, a big tall somebitch looked like his face had been carved with one a the machetes they’d just handed out. Only there musta been an accident in the making because he had a long, jagged scar than ran all the way down the left side a his face from his forehead all the way to his chin. It kinda pulled his face into a snarl as he barked at everybody.
Well, even though it was all Chinese to me, a buncha Red Eyes seemed to get the general thrust a what he was bitching about because they began moving into solid lines like we was getting ready for a parade down Main Street. The Liv-ers, including Scar, stood off to the side and smiled at each other, sometimes clapping each other on the back. I felt like a dog in a show. This shit was beginning to get old, but I didn’t see chance one a breaking away. I’d fallen into a tight little knot a trouble here, that was the damn truth, and I was just gonna have to ride this thing out and make a move when the opportunity presented itself. If it ever did.
And truth be told, I was beginning to have my doubts.
Scar moved out to the head of the deal and pulled a whistle outta his pocket. Put it to his craggy lips and blew it like he was having a lung treatment. The sound sent a razor through my brain and I stood up a little straighter. Then we all started filing out through the gate which had been flung wide while the machetes were handed out. As we left I noticed the transport had rounded as if it was going to follow us to wherever. I just kept my head up and moved along with the rest.
In the street we kept to our straight lines and just down the block I saw a crowd a mudheads waiting on us like we was rock stars. We headed right toward em, nobody making a sound. From the rumbling behind I knew the transport was slowly following. Why, I had no clue.
I couldn’t see what caused the commotion from where I was near the back but when I craned my neck I saw a lotta action up toward the front of the line. Like a fight or a small riot, but still, with nary a sound. And as we moved on I began to see blood, muck, and body parts laying in the street. It looked to be cut-up mudheads and then it hit me, the ones up ahead was hacking their way through the crowd. But like I said, there was a helluva lotta them, and there was some left so that the ones at the end didn’t feel left outta the fun. I did my fair share a hacking too as we went, and once when I looked back I saw a whole group a Liv-ers cleaning up the body parts offa the street with shovels and tarps.
By the time we got to where we were going that goddamn transport musta been brim-full because we was really making paste of the mudheads that were standing around. I didn’t let it bother me because I never had much thought
