by David Smith
"I know what you're thinking." Mac said, his eye closed.
Chapter 21: On Killing
It gets easier every time, killing. I've done more killing in the last three days than in my entire life and it was easy. And I'm not talking about killing the dead. That's always easy. They've got no soul. God has already judged them and sent them where they needed to go. A body in motion will remain in motion unless acted upon by an outside force. All we do is act on it, put it to rest.
I'm talking about a living man with a soul inside his body. You kill him and you are the judge. You have to judge to kill him. Judge not lest thee be judged. By what measure you judge a man, you will be judged. So judge now, lest thee be judged later.
I judged Kwame Jackson on the river bank. He wasn't the judge, but the executioner, an innocent man doing a hard job to protect what he loved. I have judged many since. I judged the men out on the highway, to save myself from their judgment. But they were not the judge, only executioners, some. Others, the jury. Others, just there to watch the show when the columns fell and the roof came down, caught up in the judgment.
Soon, I'll find the judge and kill him and I'll become the judge, then who will judge me? You? Might as well be you, if you're ready to bear that burden.
Ain't no right, ain't no wrong, how much will you give up just to get along.
Ain't no wrong, ain't no right, how much will you take just to survive.
Does doing what you gotta do to live make you right?
Does doing what you gotta do to live make them wrong?
Ain't no right, ain't no wrong, just takers and givers, just the weak and the strong.
Chontelle was crying by this point. "Sean, stop it." She said. "Don't mind him, he's talking crazy."
Chapter 22: The Worst Laid Plans
If Mac had heard our conversation outside, that meant Choppa had too. He didn't say a word when we got back into the truck, but he wouldn't, not here. I stared at him, waiting for him to turn his head and give a look, any kind of indication that he had overheard. Maybe Mac's little rant was just a coincidence. I hoped so.
We were somewhere south of Poplarville when Dave eased off the throttle. "What is this?" He asked.
Choppa leaned forward in his seat. "Looks like trouble. Run 'em down." He said.
"Let's not be so hasty." Dave said. "I could've run you down this morning if I thought that way." He said as he brought the truck slowly to a stop.
Kara woke up and looked at me across the darkness, her sleepy blue eyes catching every bit of light. "What's going on?" She asked.
I stood, went up to the front and looked through the slots. There were three men, all in camouflage of a non-military pattern. Two had hunting rifles and the third, a bow. They just stood in the middle of the highway, a hundred feet or less from us, waiting for us to make a move.
"Well, master negotiator. You're up." Dave said. I heard him but I thought he meant Choppa, sarcastically, until I looked down to see him looking up at me.
"Me?" I asked.
"Yeah. Up the hatch. Keep your head low." He advised.
I thought about Dad and how he was killed. I could get up there, spin the 240 around and take them out before they had the chance but I doubted they would try anything with so many of us. It would be suicide.
"What is it?" Kara asked again as I started to climb the ladder and I stopped.
"A few hunters from Magnolia Ridge." She looked around like she was looking for a way to help with a worried and helpless expression on her face. "Don't worry. It's just three of them, it'll be fine." I said then pushed open the hatch and the sun beamed down into the sleeper.
I climbed up just till I could see them from the shoulders up and noticed they had three of the motorcycles from the biker compound parked off to the side of the highway. I hated to be the one to open such a conversation with no idea of their intentions. I didn't want them to think we were weak but didn't want to instigate or prolong the violence if it didn't have to come to that.
The bikers pulled up alongside the truck, weaving through the wreckage and debris, until they could see what was going on. This also made me nervous because I knew they were out for blood and this was a good opportunity to get a way into Beth if that could be avoided. I hoped they wouldn't be able to see the other three motorcycles from their lower point of view.
"We don't want any trouble." I said.
"Sure seems like you do from the look of that truck down the road." The youngest one said and the middle one, somewhat older, looked at him and lowered his brow.
"That wasn't us." I replied. "We've got you're truck though..."
"What you mean their truck?!" I heard Choppa say from inside.
"and we've got the one who stole it." I continued.
I just wanted to get to Beth and the rest of them but I couldn't screw Dave over either. He really had no right to the truck because his deal was with Choppa who had stolen it to begin with. He was most deserving of it but wasn't the rightful owner and wouldn't take it from Jennings even though he easily could. He would try to make a deal with him and I knew that would just lead to more bloodshed. Jennings was a deal maker and would make the deal if backed into a corner, which he was now, just to save his own skin. But he was responsible for so much misery, so much death and he needed to answer for that.
"None of us can afford to keep killing each other over it but these people got it back for you and they deserve not to leave empty handed." I explained.
They all looked back and forth at each other before the oldest on spoke. "I don't want to see any more killing but that's for the Captain to decide."
"Lead the way. We'll talk to him." I said then climbed back down the ladder and sat next to Kara on the bed.
"You sum-bitch!" Choppa said, turning out of the seat and standing. "You tryin' to sell me out to him?!" He raised his voice as he took a step closer, one to be followed by another, fully intent on killing me.
"Sit down, fat boy." Mac said and Choppa stopped just before he wrapped his hands around my throat.
He looked at Mac for a moment then back at me, pointing one fat finger at me. "You just wait, you little bastard. I'm gonna get you." Then he looked at Mac again and backed away, turning and sliding back down into his seat.
"What are you going to do?" Kara asked.
"I hope I can convince Jennings that he's got no choice but to make a deal. He's lost a lot and he's going to lose it all if he doesn't. He's got to pay for what he's done though."
She thought for a minute, just staring at me. "Pay how, what do you mean?" She finally asked.
"He's got to die."
"What?!" She exclaimed. "You can't do that. He was like a father to me."
Choppa turned his head and gave her one of his demonic looks then rolled his eyes.
"Kara, you don't know what he's done, what kind of man he really is."
"I know more about him than I do about you." She said, defensively.
"You really think that? Do you know why your Mom took you away from there?" I asked, starting to raise my voice.
"My guess is she didn't know how to handle not being abused." She replied at full force.
"No, because he was going to make you a sex slave." I said and I could tell by her expression she was taken by complete surprise, mouth open, eyebrows lowered. "That's what he does, that's how things work there. The men protect and provide for the community because the women are shared between them as commanded by him and if someone doesn't like it, he has them killed. The men put in a request and he provides as long as they follow orders."
She was still staring at me with that same look. "That's ridiculous. I was only twelve years old."
"You're only fifteen now and what is Spider, 30?"
"That's different. He's number two and I'm promised to him, only him. I'm not passed around like some whore. And we haven't even done anything yet. Like you said, I'm only 15 and he's 26, not 30 but still, that's gross. Besides, he doesn't love me. That
's why I want Daddy dead, so I can choose for myself."
I was taken aback, kind of surprised that she hadn't been used that way, not yet at least. Even moreso, I was impressed at her strength of conviction when it came to love and the importance of her own virtue and her right to choose with whom she would share it. Then it occurred to me that she sure wanted Choppa dead as soon as possible and I hoped that maybe I was the reason. I decided that was a conversation for another time. I thought she had felt something for me, the way I did for her but that could've just been my own naivety
"It's all true." Mac chimed in weakly. "Everything he said is true."
She just stared at us both, maybe half-believing but maybe half was better than definitely not at all.
Soon, we were coming to a stop on Sycamore Road. I climbed up, halfway out of the hatch, just as before and I couldn't see the house yet but could see the long, double fence of the field up ahead. There were 20 or so dead trying to get through, spread out along the length of it but no one inside, fighting them off as before.
"Why are we stopping here?" I asked the hunters as they approached the truck.
"It's safer that way, for everyone." The oldest one said. "We'll go in quiet from here as not to draw anymore dead to the gate. Can't really afford to now."
I went back down into the truck and Kara was tightening her boot laces.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"I'm going in with you." She answered.
"I don't think it's safe."
"And you think it's safe for you?" She argued. "Besides, you say he's so bad. I want to see for myself."
"I'm coming too." Dave said. "I've got as much at stake here as anyone."
We stepped out of the truck and moved quickly away as the three closest dead, some hundred feet away, noticed us and started toward it. We followed the road from the woods without incident and ran to the gate as men came to let us in. I recognized them as farmers from the days before. They searched us, took Dave's hatchet, and led us into the house.
It was much quieter than before, eerily so, and they led us into the interrogation room to the left where Jennings was already waiting with a man and a woman, other civilian types. The other two men and the hunters came in with us and stood against the wall. We all sat down and Jennings gave that same long, hard stare as before only there was no false friendship in it this time, no shaking of hands.
"Dane Sampson." He said slowly. "Some of my people said they saw you with The Vultures last night. I'm assuming you're here to bring my truck back."
I took a moment to gather and organize my thoughts, what I had been trying to do all night.
"This is the man that got your truck back for you." I said, giving Dave a nod. "But I understand how things work around here and so does he." I didn't want to provoke him or sour the deal but I decided this was the time to forgo the subversion and lay the truth out on the table. "I know about the assassinations, including my own, and I know about the deals you make with men involving their wives."
"And let me guess," he cut in. "you want me to change my ways, let every man have his own wife and let every woman have her own husband." He said mockingly, raising his hands like Moses giving out the law. "Yeah, I've read that book but it's not that easy. For society to be upheld, sacrifices have to be made and it's up to men like me to make those hard decisions."
"Whose sacrifice? Not yours that's for sure. You take what's not yours to begin with, divide it up as you see fit and take a little for yourself in the process. You don't sacrifice anything." He got me worked up a little, I was losing my cool. I wanted to see him dead but I knew I had to tone it down. Kara though, she was looking at me, for the first time since we'd met, like she wasn't afraid.
"That's the way a government works. That's the way it's always worked and I am the government here." He said, sitting up and pounding a finger into the table.
"Not with people's lives and their bodies like they're human currency."
"You work with what you have." He said.
I took a depth breath and digressed, leaning forward in my chair. "Look, I'm not here to debate ethics or politics with you just to have you justify what you're doing. I'm here to negotiate."
"Negotiate?" He said, leaning further forward, putting both hands on the table. "I think I've heard enough. Paul, you and your boys go out there and get my truck."
"Captain," the man named Paul said. He was the oldest of the hunters. He walked around to the other side of the table, leaned over and whispered something to Jennings that took awhile.
Jennings looked at him from under his thick, gray eyebrows. "Hmm. Alright, let's hear what you got." He said to me.
"You get the truck and the one who took it but I want Stephanie, Beth, Nicholas and his family, and anyone else who doesn't want to be here."
He tapped his finger on the table. "Consider it done."
"Not so fast." I said. "That's what I want. He's the one you have to convince."
"And you are?" Jennings asked.
"Dave. All I need is a fuel supply, food and a place to stay."
Jennings smiled and shook his head. "Now that's asking a lot. I can find another fuel truck but I can only grow so much food and only make so much fuel."
"That's your problem. From what I've heard, you deserve a lot worse. We've been on the road for twenty years and if I don't walk out of here with a deal in the next thirty minutes my people are gonna make this buffet into a drive through."
"Then why don't you?" Jennings asked. "If you could do that and you say I deserve it, why not just shoot your way in here, take me out and run the place yourself?"
"There's been too many lives lost on your account already. This is the most people I've seen in one place, and some of nicest people, all the way from here to New York. You've got a chance to rebuild the world from right here but that takes people. You can have the fuel truck. I'll even provide a driver and security, here and on the road, and your farmers can get back to farming instead of soldiering. Now, I can go out there, offer those bikers the same deal and they'll come in here and take it and you'll be dead, you and everybody here. Now, I don't trust you but you do seem like a reasonable, rational man and I can work with that. That's why I'm offering the deal to you and not to that animal out there."
Jennings stared Dave right in the eyes one last time, like he was trying to see if he'd give up a weakness of any kind and Dave stared right back at him like a statue. "Okay." He finally said. "One more thing."
"What's that?" Dave asked.
"The girl stays with me." He said, lifting one finger off the table to point it at Kara.
"Hell no!" my mouth said before my brain could even think about it but when my brain caught up a moment later, my mouth had its full support.
"One man to one woman, isn't that what you said, Dane? You're taking mine, I want yours. You can have her all to yourself and this one here can take her place." It was a thing a man would say to intentionally provoke another to violence. "That body, looks like she'd be a fine replacement, like she might even know how to use it and not mind doing so." but his voice was flat, sitting in his chair just as before, leaning back with his foot across his knee.
I stood up, mad enough to pull out one of my own broken ribs and stab him in the throat with it but Dave already had my arm and stood with me to wrap me up and hold me back. Kara just sat, mouth open, looking back and forth at Jennings and myself, shocked by what she heard. I pulled against him, feeling my breath taken away again by the pain.
"Did I say something wrong?" Jennings asked, still sitting behind the table.
I knew there was nothing else to say, nothing that would change the way he felt or rather, didn't feel. I just wanted to kill him, that would be the only way to make the world a better place.
"Just let it slide." Dave said. "We got what we want. It's just words, not worth dying or killing over."
Dave was right and he was wrong, in my mind at least. There were lives at stake but it was
n't just words. It was an ideology perpetuated by words and those who spoke them and those who let them get away with it. But there wasn't much I could do with several broken ribs and a room full of his people, although they didn't seem to mind me going after him.
"Well," he said and looked at Kara. "It's really your choice. Isn't that right, Dane?" He said and cut his eyes back at me. "Or don't you still think a woman can make up her own mind?"
"Ugh, no." She said, disgusted.
"Well, doesn't hurt to ask. Go get my truck and the pig who took it and you've got a deal. But..." he stopped. "you have me at a disadvantage. You've seen my defenses. I'd like to keep the girl here for insurance. You attack, she dies."
"No." I said and the two men who had led us in blocked the door.
"Dane. Let her stay. We need to get this over with before dark." Dave said.
"Kara?" I asked.
"I'm not staying in here with him alone."
I looked back at Dave. "If that's the way it has to be then I'll stay in here with her."
"Alright," he said. "I'll go get the truck and fat boy." He leaned in close. "Don't lose your cool. That's how we lose everything." He said and the hunters led him out.
"Ronnie," Jennings said to one of the other men, a thirty-something year old in half military, half civilian clothes with curly hair and a goatee. He had tattoos down his forearms, the sleeves of his camouflage BDU top rolled up to his elbows, and was holding an assault rifle but awkwardly. "Round up the others and bring them to the living room, everybody."
