Rage & Fury

by Darryl Hadfield

  Redskinny, the guy who was leading the patrol who first saw them, told me later that it happened so fast it was like it didn’t even happen at all. Our guys on guard patrol carry rifles while they’re doing it – but yeah, I mentioned that already. So yeah, these guys, these fuckheads thinking they’re gonna take what we worked for, came up walking at first, and our guys just stood there watching. Then they started running at our guys, yelling..

  … then our guys opened fire. He said that most guys dumped a full clip (yes Sergeant Ballard, you crusty ol’ fuck, I know it’s a magazine – this was long before I ever met you and your tender and gentle teaching methods – my jaw STILL fucking aches, you prick) while they were shooting full auto at the enemies. They dropped nearly everyone, and those who were left stopped dead in their tracks.

  I heard the shots, and came running up, right away, Pug and Ry right behind me.

  Ry walked into the mess of bodies, some dead, some dying, a few still upright and wondering what the hell happened (rifles weren’t uncommon, but streetgangers rarely encountered them directly), and grabbed one guy by his head of long stringy hair to drag out towards me. The guy stumbled along and when they got close, Ry kicked the guy in the backs of his knees, dropping him to the ground in front of me.

  I figured it was time to make sure this guy knew who was boss around here.

  “Hey fucko. Who’s your leader?”

  “He-he-he’s back there man, I think he’s dyin’!”

  “What’s he look like?”

  “Sh-sh-sh-shaved head, carries a blade, wears black…” This poor dumb shit was, as I’d later call it, “shell shocked.” Good.

  “Pug, go pick out the leader, bring him here.”

  As he did, I looked over the first guy again. Scrawny, dirty, breathing raggedly through his open mouth. (Goddamn, do you know how fuckin’ GOOD it feels to take a bath or a shower, and wipe that shit off? I never ever passed up a chance to clean up, it just felt amazing when you grew up stinking and sweating and smelling like you just shit your pants.) This guy didn’t look too bright – in fact, he looked even dumber than he sounded.

  Pug had dragged the “leader” (ha! Fucker had been following the rest of his fighters, making them take bullets that would have hit him if he’d been in the front, ACTUALLY leading) over by this point – he’d actually been shot in the leg, but wasn’t bleeding too bad.

  He was a mix-up of angry, terrified, and… well, stupid. “Who the fuck are you?”

  “I’m James, all you need to now. You the leader?”

  “Yeah, I run Kyle’s Killers, the fuck you care bitch?”

  I drew the pistol that I carried all the time now, and put a round through his face without another word.

  The single shot got everyone’s attention, and I spoke up a bit louder, once the waste of skin that had been Kyle. “Anyone still alive want to question me like he,” I kicked the lifeless body in the face, “ did?”

  Even my own guys were a little horrified, since none of them had ever seen me up against someone else like that before – we’d all been too busy to really get into confrontations internally.

  “Yo FUCK YOU you little shit!” came from one of the closer guys, nursing a wound on his arm, looking at me with more than a little hate in his eyes.

  I smiled, raised the pistol again, and shot him in the chest (Come on, he was easily 20 feet away, I wasn’t sure I’d hit him if I went for his face, cut me some slack?). “Thanks. Anyone else?”

  At this point, there was nothing but silence.

  “Here’s how this is gonna work. You can join us, or you can die. Since I like my toys – and I have more, trust me – I’m not going to waste anymore ammo.” I walked closer to the bloody mess of bodies, found the first one who’d taken a chest shot. “Hey bub. You wanna join us, or what?”

  “f… fuck you… kid.”

  I pulled out Rage and slit his throat, before moving on to the next one. “And you?”

  “uh… yeah man, yeah, I mean yes James!” Clearly, he didn’t want to die like the other two had.

  “You don’t get to call me that; I’m the Boss.” He didn’t get to call anyone else after, either, except for his “mommy”, wailed while I slipped Rage’s point into his chest, aiming for his left lung… I could feel the blood and air gurgling around the blade as the guy went into shock and passed out – without the luxury of waking up again later.

  I was getting a little bored, and frankly, a little scared of how easily it was to put down these ignorant animals, these… well.. “riff raff” as I remembered Pip calling other streetgangers, a long time ago.

  “The rest of you don’t get a choice. Everyone becomes slave labor. Ry, round up anyone you think’s gonna live, ‘x’ the back of their right hands, kill any you think aren’t gonna live – don’t waste ammo.” I already knew I had no other decent supply of ammo, and while we had a LOT of it still, I wanted it to last. As you’ve heard me say before, I had plans. Why the X? I wanted a noticeable scar on the back of anyone’s hand so I knew who I ABSOLUTELY couldn’t trust behind me with a gun, knife, pipe, rock, etc…

  I had to talk to Redskinny too; named for the mess of red hair on his head, and his ridiculously tiny arms that belied the strength inside. That kind of ammo waste was not cool, and it made way more noise than I was comfortable with – because of the attention it got us.

  It did get us more attention, too. Fortunately, nothing serious, but we seemed to end up with another gang every week or two that figured they could come and take – and we showed them all that it just wasn’t gonna happen. We never let anyone leave; you joined me, or you died, no exceptions. I didn’t want anyone leaking and sharing information that could be used against us by bigger gangs – which is precisely what NEVER happened; no-one ever knew enough about us other than that “Those Bronx guys” swallowed anything thrown at them.

  Over the course of the next year or two, we grew, we grew more, and we grew fuckin’ MORE. At one point we actually had enough X’s that were just useless to us otherwise, that we started running the power scheme I mentioned before – all they did was crank motors, that was it – four hour shifts, one on , two off, and presto, I had my own power company. We had to grow more and more food, but somehow, we managed to stay afloat. I never had a hard count – the numbers changed weekly – but by the time I decided it was time to re-open neighborly relations with the gangs closer to the arkscrapers, we had around three thousand bodies in my gang.

  That many people takes a shit-ton of work, lemme tell ya. By the time we saw triple digits, I already knew it just wasn’t something I wanted to manage all by myself. Fortunately, I trusted Pug and Ry – neither of ‘em ever steered me wrong – so they each became leaders under me. I gave them both free space to make up whatever structure they wanted, with the only catch being, no more than 100 people each. If I ever caught anyone trying any shit to change my control of the whole thing, I’d put Rage through their skulls without a second thought.

  We had other guys come in who took to my structure pretty well. Redskinny you already heard about; there were others, too – by the time we started dealing with other streetgangers, I was getting close to managing, AGAIN, almost 100 people… fuck me, I’d just made my problem worse, as we grew. Fortunately, I already had the basics of the structure in front of me… so Ry and Pug each gave up their gangs, and become… leaders of leaders of gangs, leaving me to handle only a few people.

  We had the power crews, we had guard patrols, we had gardeners (Yeah, that was kinda a weird name at first, but it made sense to me as we grew, and sounded cooler than “fooders”). Fathead was the only one who didn’t really want to run people, he just liked his toys and shit. That was cool with me; the more strange shit I gave him to play with, the happier he was – I was pretty convinced he’d never be a threat, and, he always seemed to find a way to find new ways for us to use stuff that we’d found and didn’t understand.

  The spread of management – a term I hate
d, later in life - meant I had free time again – free time to go along with smaller gangs, see what they were doing, and see HOW they were doing it. Don’t get all self-righteous on me, asshole, any smart leader is going to listen to the people actually DOING shit, so he can both understand it, and sometimes offer suggestions on how to do it better. A great leader – which I was trying hard to be – will also listen and TAKE suggestions on how to improve something.

  That, unfortunately, isn’t exactly how it played out.

  I tried to make it obvious that I was open to ideas, that I didn’t figure I was king big shit.. The problem was that my ruthlessness and utter unwillingness to listen to an enemy bit me on my own ass.

  “Rob,” I said, as I picked up the bundle of copper piping, “Why are we carrying all this shit by hand?” I was trying to fit into the work crew, but my black multicam pants and shirt, and boots – better by far than anyone else on the work crew had – set me apart as “The Boss.”

  “Uh, because Tom told us to carry this stuff to the warehouse, Boss.”

  I stood up, leaving the pipes for the time being.

  “Yeah, but… why carry it? There’s a wheelbarrow in the garage of this place, seems like that’d be way easier, we could carry more, and get the whole job done faster, so we can take a break, or move on to something else.”

  “uhhh Yes boss, I’ll go get it right now!” and he bolted out the front door.

  That was fucking weird, I thought. Wonder why he’s so skittish?

  Rob was back in a sec, trying – futilely – to push the wheelbarrow through the front door.

  “Rob, it doesn’t fit.”

  “Sorry boss, sorry, I’ll be right back!”

  He came running back with a hammer, savagely attacking the doorway.

  “Rob, what the hell are you doing?”

  “Making the door bigger so we can get the wheelbarrow in like you wanted, sir!”

  I just shook my head… and leaned over, picking up a bunch of pipes, and walking over to the door. “Dude, we don’t have to put the wheelbarrow RIGHT here, we can still carry the stuff out the door so we don’t have to fuck up the doorway.” He moved aside so I could exit.

  “Oh fuck, yeah, sorry boss, uh… yeah.” As soon as I was out of the doorway, he ran back inside, grabbing up more pipes from where we’d ripped them out of the walls.

  Are my people really this stupid?

  Another time, I was out with the gardening crew. Boring as shit, backbreaking, but hey, it had to be done so we could eat.

  Lisa, a cute redhead with huge tits, was filling a kid’s toy bucket with a hose coiled next to the water barrel that was on a small cart.

  Goddamn. That reminds me, I haven’t gotten laid lately.

  She filled the little pail, then walked over and poured it onto several potato mounds, then walked back again. I watched her as she did this probably half a dozen times.

  I walked over as she was walking back to the barrel, and the look on here face was pure terror. Jesus, what the hell? “Lisa, can you think of any better ways to do this? I mean, is there an easier way?”

  “No boss, I swear, I’m doing it exactly like I was told, I promise!” if I didn’t know better, I’d say she was about to piss her pants.

  “Well, time to start looking for ways to do things easier, or faster, or simpler. You’re not the first person I’ve seen doing things the hard way, but you gotta make your life easier.” I grabbed the hose and started walking over to the row of plants she’d been watering, and turned on the nozzle, looking up at her.

  “See? Why put water into a little pail, then carry it over, dump the pail, then go fill it up again… you’re walking back and forth all the time, when you could just… drag the hose and put the water right on the plants.”

  She looked like she was trembling. “It’s okay gorgeous, you’re fine, I just wanted to point out there’s an easier way to do this. I’m not mad at you.”

  “Yeah, but everyone says…”

  “Everyone says WHAT?” I was pissed, now.

  “Everyone says… to do it exactly like you’re told, because otherwise, you know, that first gang that attacked us..”

  “What about them? They’re dead.”

  “Yeah, and I don’t wanna get stabbed and die!”

  Aw fuck. “Lisa, you’re not gonna die, except from working too damn hard. Those guys deserved what they got, because they attacked us. I’m not gonna let a gorgeous piece of ass like you get taken away because some fuckhead thinks he can take our stuff, our people.”

  She blushed a little bit, but still had that ‘scared rabbit’ look on her face.

  “Honey, would you like to come over to the headquarters tonight? You don’t have to, I don’t want you to unless YOU want to. My treat, I’ll share some of my booze, some of my food… only if you want to.”

  “Uhh… umm.. okay..” She smiled a little – not a lot, just a little. Well, that was progress.

  I winked and gave her a little squeeze on the ass. “I’ll show you something you’ll like getting stabbed with.”

  Chapter 6: A New Way…

  I mentioned before that we eventually started opening up a little bit to other gangs… No, I take that back, we didn’t really open up – we just started talking to them again. Big difference. Huge.

  By this point, we were around five thousand strong – a small city unto itself, and we were way, WAY bigger than any other gang I’d ever heard of. Not all of those five thousand or so people were fighters, but every last goddamned one of them COULD fight, if they had to. I’d say closer to fifteen hundred, maybe two thousand, were experienced, trained fighters. Well, ‘trained’ in the sense that they weren’t just some dipshit off the street who could wrap their fingers around a pipe or a blade.

  So yeah, I’d been thinking about reaching out, because there were some things we just couldn’t find, but wanted – or needed. We’d found some sort of hospital place nearby, and had all kinds of weird shit from there – not much in the way of bandages, but a pure fuckload of drugs.. who knew if they were any good at this point, they were as dusty as the tools I mentioned we’d found before. Just the same, it was better than nothing. We didn’t have any knowledge of what was good or not, and I was just barely not stupid enough to try it out. We needed more knowledge than we had here, and I knew where I could get it.

  Don’t get me wrong, having other stuff available as trade – sugar, chocolate… that shit made life good. I fuckin’ hate cabbage, I don’t give a shit what you think, and I was more than a little hungry for some meat, too – say what you want about that fuckhead Pip, he got us meat every once in a while.

  I wanted some.

  We usually got all the gang leaders together – all the guys who answered to me, anyway – about once a week just to cover who was doin’ what, who needed what, who had what, etc. One of the smaller gangs wasn’t so much a gang as it was a bunch of store type guys, running the warehouse. Other groups of gangs in my little empire would buy shit, trade shit, internally. Tonka, the guy who ran the warehouse/store gang, was the kinda guy who, despite not being particularly power hungry, at least had the balls to tell me shit he figured I needed to know. He would give me a heads-up as to what kind of stuff we needed in the warehouse, so we could go back to the other gangs and tell ‘em what we wanted them to watch for.

  This time, though, I told him it was time for a major change. I laughed at the initial look of terror on his face – he must have figured I was gonna start shit with him. “Fuckin’ pussy. A major change, not a bloodbath. If I was gonna kill you, you’d already be dead. I want some goddamn better shit than we’re finding; figure out how we can get into trade. I want you to take some of the shit you figure the nearest tenement dudes are gonna want, take a team of fighters with you – leave the rifles and pistols here, don’t wear any of our newer shit, we don’t want them to know what we’ve got. Go see how much you can get, bring back the shit we’re NOT finding. I know you’ve got a list som
ewhere of the bigger items. Spend everything you get on trade; bring back a few bucks and we’ll start banking it back, too.”

  He looked so relieved I figured he’d shit himself, but then he got a bit tense again. “You sure we cool?”

  “Yeah, Tonka, get your shit together. If you don’t wanna go yourself, send someone you trust… but it’s your balls on the line if whoever you send fucks up.”

  “’k, you got it boss. I’ll get started on that right away.”

  “Next up.. We’ve expanded pretty good so far, but I want better consolidation and better barriers. I’ve decided we’re going to block off the two closest bridges, and permanently station guards there. Ideas on how we can best lock them off?”