by Al Ewing
The girl lifted her head. "Ahhh... hey, what happened to Doobie-Doo?"
Cade swallowed. Didn't seem much point in denying it. "Killed him. Sorry."
Fuckin' heartfelt apology there, man. Shit, you'll kill just about anything, won't you? Kids, pets - you really are a brutal son of a bitch and you don't give a fuck who knows it, know what I'm saying? You feel me?
"Sorry." Cade muttered again. He didn't know where the hell to look.
"Don't apologise. I'm sure you..." - the blond fella inhaled sharply - "... had your reasons..." He grimaced, freezing in place, then brought his hand down on the girl's backside with a hard smack. In turn, she closed her eyes and bucked her hips hard, squealing out through clenched teeth. Cade still didn't really know where to look. He wasn't used to being invited into these situations and he didn't want to offend anybody.
Then again, he had just killed their dog for pretty much no reason. If they were okay about that, he figured they were fine with him getting an eyeful.
The brunette buckled her seatbelt and put the van into gear, then stepped onto the accelerator. There was a strangled scream from underneath, cut off by a loud crack, then a crunch, as the back wheels of the van bucked upwards.
"Oh gosh! I forgot Scruffy was underneath the Conundrum Car! Jeepers! I killed him! Oh, Doc Clearly's going to be so cross!" The brunette put her hand to her mouth, continuing to drive the van as the blond kid shook his head with a lopsided grin.
Cade leant back against the wall of the van. Opposite him, Fuel-Air was shaking his head, blame in his one remaining eye.
It was going to be a long trip.
Chapter Sixteen
The Doc
"See, what I'm trying to say is that the motivating force in the universe is Love. It's that simple. Everything is defined by its capability to feel Love, and it follows that Love is the highest emotion because it's the thing that defines us as a species. And it follows from that that it's our duty, as a species, to rise to that highest definition and become a species motivated by Love. So we should be judged on how much we Love one another. It's like Doc Clearly says - within each of us lies the potential to become the balance of the universe. You get what I mean, Mister Cade?" The blond kid paused, sucking on the reefer he'd lit a minute ago.
Cade nodded, then looked at Fuel-Air. Fuel-Air grinned and shook his head slowly. He was back in his utilities, holding a reefer like the blond kid - Ted, Cade thought he was called. Cade raised an eyebrow, wondering what Fuel-Air made of all this talk. He'd been a similar age to these kids when he'd died. Maybe he'd talked like that once.
Shit, dog, I'd have said anything if there was a blowjob involved.
The redhead lifted her head - Cade had to wonder if it was a reaction to what Fuel-Air had said - cradling Ted absently while she spoke. "It's not just a sexual thing either, although I do resent the implication made by the previous society that sex for mutual pleasure has to be somehow inferior to sex that's been labelled as something 'deeper' -" Ted's balls flopped down in their sac as she made the finger quotes. "- anyway, what we've achieved is Love shared by an entire community, and offered to anyone who comes to us, as well as the natural world around us that was neglected so badly by the previous society." Having made her point, she went back to what she'd been doing before, taking Ted in her mouth and bobbing her head slowly up and down, her fingers squeezing lightly. Cade looked back at Fuel-Air for want of anywhere else to look. He still hadn't quite figured out what the etiquette was for this, and while they'd forgiven him for killing the dog - and by extension the skinny kid - he didn't want to ruffle any feathers. He still felt a little guilty, which was odd for Cade.
Fuel-Air just grinned.
The brunette - Thelma, was it? - chimed in from the driver's seat. "We even Love the cannibals and that weird religious sect up to the north, although obviously we have to love them from a distance, seeing as they're, um... well, they don't exactly Love us, if you see what I mean. But any who come by, we welcome with open arms. We've had a couple from the north, and once they saw how nice things were for us, they stuck around. I think they were maybe a little repressed. The cannibals, though - Jeepers! They're the opposite!"
"The cannibals are the ultimate 'me-first-and-screw-the-other-guy' society. They have no inhibitions, but they also have no sense of anything beyond themselves. It's like Doctor Clearly says - you need a balance between yourself and the world. See, the cannibals just don't care about other people. You can't be part of their culture and have any kind of relationship with another human being. It's no wonder they're dying off." With that, Ted closed his eyes, taking a drag on the reefer, idly putting a hand into the redhead's hair. Daisy, that was her name.
"And Scruffy?" Cade said, despite himself. Now wasn't the time to start an argument, but there was something about the way they'd just driven over the fella that didn't strike Cade as being right.
Didn't you drive right over someone a while back? You want to get judgemental, dog, you best take a look in the mirror.
Cade frowned and shot Fuel-Air a look. That was different.
Daisy raised her head. "That was an accident. Thelma - well, she's, uh..." She looked up, then raised her eyebrows, mouthing the words not right.
Thelma hissed. "There's nothing wrong with me! When we find the Pastor and take his mask off - well, you'll see! It'll all turn out to be a smuggling operation! You know he's going to get away with it, too, if we don't do something! Besides, Scruffy probably isn't dead. He's just hiding in a vase. What we felt was probably just projected by a movie camera..." She lapsed into silence. The van was moving a lot slower than it had been - Cade figured they were moving through a crowd. The kids were probably taking him directly to Clearly. That was fine - he wasn't in a hurry to end the conversation just yet.
Ted blew out a cloud of marijuana smoke. "I'm sorry about what happened to Doobie and Scruffy, but it's like Doc Clearly says... their individual egos are merged with the universe now. There's no point feeling bad about it. Sooner or later, we're going to make that trip too. I mean, even today... people still die all the time - even voluntarily, sometimes. If the end of your life comes from a decision that's been made, we have to respect that decision. I can understand that. It's hard to function sometimes. At least since 'you-know-what'." Finger quotes again.
Cade wondered if Doc Clearly did finger quotes too, or talked in such a roundabout way about a man killing himself. Most likely.
Still, this answered a couple of questions. Cade figured the hippies were dealing with the bad times pretty much the same way as the Pastor's were - putting their faith in an afterlife and following the nearest authority figure. Clearly was going to have a hell of a long way to go to be worse than the Pastor, but Cade wasn't convinced yet. Ted and Daisy seemed relatively normal, despite the fact that they hadn't stopped screwing since Cade had met them, but Thelma shouldn't have been driving that damned van. Cade was slightly surprised they hadn't killed anybody else on the way.
There was something else, too. Cade wasn't a prude by any means, but at first he'd instinctively avoided looking at Ted and Daisy - the etiquette thing. But now he was getting a close look at them, he'd noticed something weird.
There were a hell of a lot of bruises on both both them. Some fresh, some old. And scratch marks as well - again, a couple fresh, most of them old. Like these kids got into a lot of fights.
Might be coincidence, though. Cade figured there was a lot of hard work involved in the hippie way of life, and if you were doing errands and lugging crap around the whole day there were ways to get a little banged up.
Fuel-Air snorted. Face it, bitch, you're only cutting these weird-ass motherfuckers some slack because you don't want to have to kill another bajillion people. Sex monkey and his girlfriend are fucked up, and the crazy freak-girl with the Choose Your Own Adventure fixation is super-duper ultra fucked up and you fuckin' know it, bitch. I give you until midnight before you break some poor motherfucker's neck over this s
hit.
Cade checked the clock on the dashboard. It was only about a quarter to twelve. Twelve hours without killing someone. Cade figured it could be done. "You're on."
"On what?" said Ted - then he stiffened, letting out a strangled grunt, at the same moment Thelma stopped the van.
"We're here, Mister Cade. Just open the door and hop out. Daisy, do you want to park the van when you're done? Then I can take Mister Cade to see the Doc."
"Mmmhmmm." nodded Daisy. Cade turned away and opened up the back door without wishing them goodbye.
The smell of dope hit him the second he stepped out of the van. They'd gone past the Haight-Ashbury and the van had pulled up outside the entrace to Golden Gate Park - and the park was full of people.
Cade hadn't seen that many people in one place since the bad times - it made the Pastor's couple of hundred seem like a small group. Cade could see at least five hundred people here - stretched out on rugs, kissing underneath trees, sitting cross-legged and meditating, playing guitars and shaking tambourines, most just walking and talking. A couple of them were naked - Cade noticed a livid bruise on one girl's thigh - some were decorated with body and face paint or home-made jewellery. The rest dressed in simple, comfortable clothing that covered the arms and legs.
There was a paper sign thumbtacked to a tree, reading 'SOFTBALL GAME AT KEZAR STADIUM TODAY 2PM ALL WELCOME' in brightly-coloured marker. Cade wandered up to it, running his fingers over the letters. He wondered if the game was still going on.
Shit, bitch, you gonna cry?
Fuel-Air was sitting with a couple on a tartan rug, smoking the same joint he'd had in the van. The couple were eating a picnic of some kind - the man had a fresh tomato, the woman was eating some canned spam with a fork. Tomato plants at least - probably other produce. There was a botanical garden near here that'd be perfect for that. And a food distribution system that worked.
Shit, you are gonna cry. You motherfuckin' pussy.
Cade shook his head. "Been a while. That's all."
A thought struck him. Why did he have to take the insulin back to the trailer park? Why couldn't he just bring the Duchess here? If the population was as big as Cade figured it was, they'd have diabetics, and they could care for them. The Duchess and Woody could both move here - if Woody could drag himself away from his mother's. The cannibals were going to be a problem, but they'd do what he told them - and even if they didn't, by now they'd worn themselves down against the Pastor's people. As for the Pastor - hell, Cade could deal with him easy enough. There were ways and means.
His eyes went to the man sitting on the rug. He was wearing a white polo-neck, and Cade could see the edge of a fresh cut on his neck, that the polo-neck was hiding. He turned, smiling at Cade, and Cade noticed he had one black eye.
The people here certainly did seem accident prone, all right.
Fuel-Air was laughing. Cade looked at him, and almost flinched. Sitting next to the young couple was Fuel-Air as he was now - a rotting, decomposing skeleton, covered in writhing maggots. And laughing.
Listen to yourself, you dumb motherfucker. Shit, you're so fuckin' stupid I'm gonna let you find out for yourself, you fuckin' empty-headed shit. You motherfuckin' hippie-ass Alice B Toklas fuckin' bitch...
Cade looked away, back at the sign on the tree. He kept his eyes on the sign until he couldn't hear Fuel-Air laughing any more.
"Mister Cade?"
Cade turned - it was Thelma. She was smiling nervously. Behind her, there was a man of about fifty, with grey-brown curly hair and a drooping moustache, dressed in a light brown suit and a pink shirt. He smoked a pipe. He had a trustworthy air about him, like a college professor, which Cade figured was probably because he was one.
"You Clearly?" Cade's voice sounded wary in his own ears. He was waiting for the other shoe. Waiting for Fuel-Air to be proven right.
Thelma smiled, and then went back to the van, which still hadn't moved. Clearly stuck out his hand. Despite himself, Cade took it. Clearly smiled, taking the pipe from his mouth. "You must be Cade. Is that a first name or a last name?"
Cade narrowed his eyes. "You in charge of this place?"
Clearly chuckled. "Not one for small talk. All right. Yes, I am the head of the community, I suppose, if you want to make that kind of distinction. But I do a lot of delegation. We're run according to principles I set out, but a lot of the actual work - agriculture, food distribution, manufacture and supply of the essentials for living, entertainment and so forth - I leave to other hands. I just sort of keep an eye on the whole shebang, so to speak." He smiled, genially, his eyes dropping to the knife at Cade's belt, and the bloodstain on the white T-shirt. "Thelma told me how you, ah, met the gang."
Cade swallowed, feeling like a damned fool. "Sorry about the dog. And the boy. I should've said something when we got in the van without him."
Clearly shook his head. "Well, we'll talk about the dog. But..." He sighed. "Scruffy... he can't be laid at your door. I've been sending the gang on errands, mostly checking on the cannibals and the religious fanatics up north - trying to instil a sense of responsibility into them. But those are troubled kids - more than most who survived the plague. I'm of the opinion that they had serious problems even before they lost everyone they knew and loved. As I'm sure you've noticed, Thelma and Scruffy live - well, lived - in a fantasy world, and Ted and Daisy... well, they have fun all the live-long day, I suppose you could say. Not that a lot of the people here aren't the same. In fact, being the, ah, spiritual guru around here doesn't preclude me from enjoying myself occasionally." He chuckled, paternally, as he looked over at a group of nudists passing a ball to one another. Cade saw a red bite mark on a man's shoulder, and one of the women had a deep scratch down her side. "Responsibly, of course. We're not short of birth control, or any other drugs we might need. Recreational or, uh, or otherwise." He looked off into the distance for a moment, as if debating whether or not he should continue the sentence.
Cade missed the cue. He had other things on his mind.
"Insulin?" he asked, scanning the man's eyes. He didn't seem like a liar. But you never could tell. There was definitely something not quite right about this whole set-up, though Cade couldn't put his finger on what that was exactly.
On the edge of his hearing, Fuel-Air was still laughing.
"Oh, we have a stockpile of that, as well as other... well, anyway. We've got a number of diabetics among us - a legacy of the days when we ate processed sugar instead of growing our own food - and there's enough to last them a good few years. Also..." he smiled, almost bashfully. After his slight stumble earlier, his confidence was coming back in force. "I am, as you may have heard, a noted drug pusher. Which brings us, in a roundabout way, back to the dog. You're a violent man, Cade, a lot more violent than we're used to around here. Did you come from the Pastor's camp?"
"Passed through it." Cade nodded.
"But you didn't start off there."
"No."
The Doctor nodded, taking a long draw on his pipe. "Hmm. Judging from the state of your palms, I knew you'd fallen foul of the Pastor at some point." Cade reflectively clenched and unclenched his fists, feeling the wave of agony sweep up his arms. He'd almost forgotten about the constant throbbing of his palms since he'd cleaned out the cuts with whisky, but that didn't mean he shouldn't get them looked at properly sometime soon. Maybe now.
Clearly noted the gesture, nodded slowly, and then continued. "I would say... and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong... that you came into the city from the north and found yourself in the Pastor's territory, and you - being a man with a violent nature - presumably made some trouble for him. Well, that or your sexuality didn't meet his approval."
Cade nodded. "Along those lines."
Clearly smiled. "I can't help noticing you've got a lot of scratch-marks and bites on you too. You wouldn't have been given any, ah... black and white..." He paused, rethinking the sentence. "I mean, is there anything I should know about, ah, concerning
that?"
"Had a run-in with the cannibals." Clearly was sharp, but Cade didn't see the need to tell him any more than he had to. Doc Clearly nodded, and smiled wide, sucking on his pipe. Cade was taking a liking to the man, but there was still something there that made Cade uneasy.
He could still hear Fuel-Air laughing at him.
The Doctor nodded. "Okay. So let's recap. Your first reaction when you came across the gang was to kill their dog. There's no two ways around that, Cade. You're a man to whom violence is second nature, and from the moment you came here - to San Francisco, I mean - you've been immersed in constant violence, which seems to have made you... well, jumpy." He shook his head. "But I don't think a reaction like that is healthy, Cade, and I doubt you do either. So I want to ask you, man to man - is that the normal way you'd react in that situation? To just kill without thinking? Without a second of hesitation?"
Cade looked into the Doc's eyes. He was serious. Cade had an inkling that if he got this question wrong, he'd be shown the door. Clearly probably wouldn't get violent about it - it'd be very polite - but it'd leave him without any answers to speak of, not to mention without any insulin either.
Cade needed to mingle with these folks a bit. Find out what their deal was. He figured he'd better tell Clearly what he wanted to hear.
"No. No, it ain't." lied Cade.
He could hear Fuel-Air laughing.
Doc Clearly breathed a sigh of relief. "Well, that's good. That's excellent, Cade. You see, I don't think violence should be unending. I think there should be a balance between a man's baser instincts, and the baser instincts of a society, and their higher selves. I believe that you can acknowledge all the awful things that have happened, and still build a community despite them. That's what I'm trying to do here. I'm trying to build a community, and... well, Cade, I think it'd be in your best interests to be a part of it."
Cade's eyebrow twitched.
Clearly smiled reassuringly, shaking his head. "Trust me, this isn't leading where you think it is. I know you've probably been given a recruitment speech a lot like that by the Pastor, most likely before he nailed you up, and I'm not going to follow down that route and tell you to join me or else. It's your decision. If you don't think we've got anything here you want, you can leave right now." His face grew serious, and he put a hand on Cade's shoulder. "What I'm offering you, though, is a chance to breathe. A chance to live - a chance to... to work through the violence that's become your life, and... well, come out the other side. Stay for the night, Cade. You might find you belong here. I won't deny we can use a man who's handy with a weapon - so long as he can put it down occasionally." He smiled, patting Cade's shoulder gently. Cade could see his thumb joint was badly bruised, as if it had been wrenched recently. He didn't pay much heed to it.
