by Matt Rogers
Chapter 22
We walked back into the living room where the others were gathered around my card table in deep discussion. Steve was sitting on my futon, content as could be, with diapers and a silly grin on his face. For some reason I got the impression he knew old Bob was stuck in a bad place and it pleased him somehow but I don’t know it for a fact and I could’ve been influenced by his earlier attempts to eat me so I might not exactly be impartial with my opinions on the wishes and desires of Stevie-boy, diaper-Zombie-man.
“Bob burned the Reformatory down in order to get access to the land?” I heard Trudy ask as Phillip and I reentered the conversation.
“Yep” said Nat.
“But, didn’t we own the land?” she asked.
“Nope, Bob did, or rather his family did, but at the time his mother was on her death bed and Bob was the sole heir. There was a lien on the property but I guess his mother figured the lease money would eventually take care of that” he replied.
“So we leased the space from them? Why would we do that? It doesn’t sound like something we would do” she said.
“It was a joint venture between your company, Bob’s mother and the State. Bob’s mom would lease the State some land to house its Reformatory as long as an independent contractor actually ran the place. I guess she didn’t trust the State too much because of the way her son had been treated a few years before.”
“How was he treated?” she asked.
“He was imprisoned?”
“For what?”
“Tax fraud” Nat replied.
“Tax fraud?”
“Yep, old Bob decided to run a little scam using the same land. He put up a whole bunch of little huts he then rented out to the migrant workers who came by to work the fields in the area. Since those hard working souls were from across the border and didn’t have the necessary paperwork to work those fields the farmers and ranchers always paid them in cash. Now, those people needed some place to lay their heads at night so Bob decided to build his make-shift migrant hotel and charged them a nice little sum of money in order to stay there; a sum of money paid for in cash so there was no record of the transactions. Since there was no record of the transactions Bob didn’t pay any taxes on the income he received. Now, old Bob had a pretty good thing going; his land was off the beaten path, his customers were rather shy about telling the authorities where they worked or lived and he was making money he didn’t report because it was all cash. Yep, old Bob was living the high life but it didn’t last.”
“Bob got greedy, didn’t he?” said Vivian.
“Yep, Bob got greedy. He saw an opportunity to rid those hard-working farm hands of even more of their money by opening up a convenience store where they could buy food, beer, cigarettes and whatever else visiting laborers needed to make their lives a little more bearable. Now, he might’ve gotten away with it if it hadn’t been for one small glitch in his plans he didn’t account for.”
“What?” I asked.
“Bob forgot other people lived in his town and would become curious as to why their new-found customers were no longer spending cash in their stores. The rumors were running wild but since Bob’s land was so isolated no one knew what to do about it until someone reported Bob and then the town really got upset with him. Isn’t that a hoot? The people weren’t mad at Bob for taking money from illegal migrants, heck, they were all doing it; they were mad because he was denying them the right to do so.”
“How many years did he get?” George asked.
“Ten. But with good time and parole he got out in two. But it was during those two years this story really gets interesting.”
“Oh?” said Trudy and Vivian together in their cute little enraptured way.
“Yep, while in prison Bob met another inmate who also happened to be there for fraud but on a much larger scale than Bob’s. This inmate was in there for taking money from investors and fooling them for years their money was in good hands.”
“Huh?” Phillip said.
“This particular convict ran a pyramid scam, Phillip. He would get people to invest huge sums of money in his scheme, pay them a yearly dividend which made it appear their money was making even more money for them and bought everything from a boat to a vacation home in South Padre.”
“What was his scam?”
“Oil wells. He was a land appraiser who had investors believing the land he owned had oil beneath it. They invested a minimum of one-hundred thousand dollars and received a ten percent dividend on their investment every year for five years running until the whole thing blew up in his face.”
“How’d it blow up?” George asked.
“The housing market burst. Those investors, well, many of those investors also invested in housing and when it took a turn for the worse they lost a lot of their valuable income so they went to this convict and asked to get their principle back. Now, this convict was a pretty smart guy and what he’d been doing was taking ten percent of the investors’ money as his own and putting the rest in banks so he had enough money in reserve to pay back some of the investors but not if everyone wanted their money at the same time.”
“Huh?” Phillip said.
“Going a little fast for you, big guy?”
“A little” Phillip replied with a sheepish grin.
“Well, it goes like this. This convict got someone to give him one hundred thousand dollars. Now, he took ten thousand for himself which left ninety thousand dollars in the bank. He promised the investor a ten percent return on the hundred thousand dollars every year so he needed to send them a check for ten thousand dollars once a year. If you do the math it meant he had nine years of money to run through before a single investor’s principle was drained to nothing. Add in a whole bunch of other investors and he had a cash reserve in the millions. His only real problem was reporting all the income to the government which would get taxed and which left him with a little problem; namely, sooner rather than later his whole gig would be up. But he found a way around the little problem.”
“How?” asked Vivian.
“He actually bought some land with oil under it.”
“Really?” said Vivian.
“Yep. He found it on a little piece of property he’d surveyed previously which showed the possibility of oil. So he bought the land, did a sonar survey and found it did have a small reservoir of oil. But next to his land, on his neighbor’s property the sonar revealed a much larger reservoir; so much larger, in fact, his initial lie to the investors turned out to be the truth. He really could get them a ten percent return on their investment if he could just his hands on his neighbor’s property.”
“What did he do?” she asked.
“Well, he tried to buy the property, of course, but the owner wouldn’t sell. Turns out the property had been in the family’s hands for generations and they wanted to keep it that way. So this convict, the one Bob met in jail, was sitting on land which was pretty valuable but next door, one property line over, was a bonanza of oil just waiting to be sucked out of the ground.”
“And he couldn’t get to it” said George.
“Nope, not as long as the owner wouldn’t sell. But then something came up which gave him the possibility of acquiring the land.”
“What was that?” asked Vivian.
“The neighbor whose land was sitting on all that oil, well, her son fell afoul of the law and needed money to put up a defense in order to avoid jail time.”
“Hold on. Are you talking about Bob?”
“Uh-huh. His neighbor was Bob’s Mom, and Bob got arrested for running his lodging and beverage business. Now, his mom didn’t have the money to hire a bunch of lawyers for him but her neighbor came to the rescue; sort of.”
“How’s that?” George asked.
“He said he would put up Bob’s bail money and fund his defense if she would sign over the lease to her land.”
“Did she do it?” asked Vivian.
“Nope. She thought it was
too much of a risk. I mean, she had to know Bob was guilty, it was on their land after all but the neighbor, the convict Bob would meet later in jail, offered her a second option.”
“What was that?” George asked.
“He would fund Bob’s bail and defense if she would put up half of her property for collateral. He even said he wouldn’t try and take the property as long as she could make payments to him over a twenty year period of time. I guess she thought about it and it isn’t really all too certain by the court records if she would’ve accepted the contract but then something came up which virtually guaranteed she would.”
“What?” George asked again.
“Commercial Property Management came forward and inquired if she would lease some of her land to them to run the Reformatory for Wayward Youth.”
“Oh my goodness” said Vivian.
“Uh-huh. Bob’s mom now had a sure way to pay back her neighbor, Bob’s future jail-mate, so she happily took his offer and placed half of her land as collateral if she couldn’t pay; all the while knowing she could because she was guaranteed lease money from Commercial Property Management. It was a no-brainer and she thought maybe, just maybe, Bob could beat the case against him.”
“But Bob didn’t” said George.
“Nope” replied Nat.
“And somehow ended up in the very same prison as his neighbor who funded his defense?”
“Yep. The housing market went bust and the neighbor’s initial investors wanted their nest eggs back and when he couldn’t hide from them any longer the authorities busted him.”
“And that’s when he met Bob?”
“Yep, and that’s where it really gets interesting.”
“How?” asked George.
“The neighbor was Steve.”
“Steve…”
The people of Texas are great believers in the concept of individual rights. It’s been passed down for generations and ingrained in the very fabric of Texas culture; from the right to bear arms to an individual’s right to use those arms to blow away anyone who threatens them on their own doorstep. This belief in individual rights is most manifest in the idea what one makes is solely up to the individual alone; it’s no one else’s business how much or how little another person earns so there is naturally a slight mistrust within Texans when someone or something tells them to give up some of their hard earned money so others may benefit. The most obvious example is in the form of taxes. Now, they won’t go so far as to say taxes aren’t necessary, no, because the great people down in the southern paradise admit it is necessary to fund things like infrastructure, space exploration or the military for national security but they draw the line when it comes to other things they see as an infringement upon an individual’s liberty. Government is one such organization viewed through wary glasses; the larger the more wary. They see any entity which tells them how to disperse their money as an affront to their own God-given rights. It doesn’t matter if it’s for the homeless, a bureaucracy, or even their own private security; the people down there believe, and could very well be right, the individual is in a much better position to produce an outcome more advantageous to society than a large group of government nannies ever could.
“Trudy?”
“Yes, Johnny?”
“How long till Nat gets back?”
“I don’t know, when he gets called away on a case he’s not really in charge of his time schedule.”
“Then I have a question for you.”
“What’s that?”
“Before, when you were talking about Merri Li being sent to Second Clan, well, I was just curious; was there a Third Clan already here in America? I mean, could they have even sent her over here because, if I’m not mistaken, they didn’t really know America existed then, did they?”
“Good question, and the answer is ‘no’ and ‘yes’. She could not have been sent to the Americas because we had not yet delegated a clan for its rule but the two other clans certainly knew the Americas existed because our northern brothers had been raiding the coastline over here for centuries by then.”
“Oh.”
“Do you want to hear more about Yin and Yang, Johnny?”
“Yes, please.”
“Okay, Merri Li was sent to Second Clan and taught the ways of the Vampire. She was an exceptional student and very strong in her natural gifts; so strong she was already being looked at as a potential mate to a Wolf who showed promise as an Alpha.”
“You can measure a Vampire’s gifts?”
“Well, I don’t know if measure is the correct term for it but we can surely tell when one Vamp is more gifted than another.”
“Some Vampires are stronger than others?”
“Yes, as in everything there is difference in perfection. A good example is Bob and Steve.”
“Huh?”
“Bob and Steve. Both men are Zombies so both received Vampire blood when they were turned. Now, after we put them back together Vivian gave them some of her blood in order to help them re-animate. When her blood was added to the existing Vampire blood it acted as a sort of kick drive to get them started but there was one thing which was different; do you know what it was?”
“Bob was a bit healthier?”
“Yes, Bob was healthier. Now, at first I thought maybe it was because Bob was naturally healthier than Steve when they were turned even though Bob was a bit older. It happens sometimes, people at a younger age catch a terminal disease before a person who is elderly but it doesn’t happen often and I was a bit curious but things have been happening rather quickly lately so I guess I passed it off as Steve being a sicker person when he was turned. But then something else happened?”
“You asked them who their master was.”
“Yes, I asked them who they owed their existence to and you know what I learned?”
“You could rip Bob’s head off with one tug?”
“No, I already knew that. I learned Bob and Steve were turned by two separate Vampires.”
“How?”
“Because whichever Vampire’s blood is the strongest is the controlling Superior. Now, those two had been torn up and thrown in the water for almost a full day before we fished them out so the remaining Vampire blood was running low and it probably regressed a bit but Vampire blood is viral in nature so even a tiny drop of a strong Vampire’s blood will override the weaker one. When Vivian lent her blood to Bob and Steve she should definitely have been the controlling Superior.”
“Is Vivian a strong Vampire?”
“Vivian was one of the few picked as a possible mate for George , Johnny, and George may very well be the strongest Wolf in the clan; so, yes, Vivian is a very strong Vampire.”
“So then…?”
“Whichever Vampire turned Steve is weaker than Vivian.”
“And…?”
“Whichever turned Bob is stronger.”
“Which means…?”
“The Vampire who turned Bob is mated to an Alpha and if she is stronger than Vivian then he’s probably stronger than George.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s kind of depressing.”
“Well, I guess it would be if I knew what depression felt like but, in any case, it’s something to consider as we move along in our little adventure here.”
“So what happened to Merri Li?”
“She was offered the opportunity to be mated with Yin.”
“Offered?”
“Yes. Vampires choose, along with Werewolves. Neither can be mated unless both choose to do so.”
“But you said she was fast-tracked out of Vampire school so she could mate with Yin and stop him from killing all the other Werewolves?”
“True, but either could have refused the other.”
“But they didn’t.”
“No, they didn’t, they took one look at each other and knew they were meant to be together. So Yin took Merri Li as his mate and things probably would’ve gone back to
normal except for one small detail.”
“What?”
“Yin challenged for Clan Elder immediately.”
“Well, you could see that coming.”
“No, I don’t think you understand. Yin challenged for Clan Elder without forming a family. He took on the entire Clan Elder Family alone. Well, he had Merri Li of course but, in essence, he was alone.”
“Did he win?”
“Obviously he won or we wouldn’t be talking about him now but he paid a horrible price.”
“What?”
“He lost Merri Li.”
“She died?”
“No, but she refused him the one thing mated pairs need in order to survive after death.”
“Excuse me?”
“She refused to sire his heir, Johnny. She realized what Yin was could not be allowed to exist beyond him.”
“What was he?”
“The end of our species.”
The federal government is looked upon as a necessary evil down in the south and it’s probably because any form of government trumps the very idea of individual rights because government is, at its core, the arbitrator of what those rights are. If the government says you may not drive a vehicle then no matter how proficient you are behind the wheel, unless you wish to tempt jail, you may not drive. It is viewed as a necessary evil because they’re not so ignorant as to not recognize some very bad apples exist in their midst’s and would abuse those rights by trampling others to further their own gain. They allow government to govern but they don’t like it so they choose to allow local governments the most power over them so they can keep an eye on the greedy little vote-getters and put an end to their over-pompous views of themselves before they bring about the entire extermination of their society.
“Why did she think he was the end of your species?”
“Our species, Johnny, you’re one of us.”
“Okay; why did she think Yin was the end of our species?”
“Because he was too perfect.”
“Are you trying to be vague, Trudy?”
“No, I’m trying to be precise. You see, Yin was everything Yang wasn’t. He took every perfect quality and kept it as his own, essentially hoarding the best attributes of a Superior and allowing the worst to flow to Yang. The Heaven’s bred us to be perfect but even they aren’t Gods so while we may be Superiors we are by no means perfect and some of our genetic code is imprecise; except for Yin’s, which was precise because he gave the imperfect to Yang and therefore became as perfect as we could be.”
“So Yin was a perfect Werewolf?”
“Yes.”
“Why would it make him the end to your, err, our species?”
“Because perfection implies superiority and the Heaven’s designed us to subjugate the inferior.”
“Huh?”
“He was compelled to kill us, Johnny.”
“What?”
“He was bred with the genetic necessity to eradicate the one species who posed a threat to his superiority; his own.”
“He was?”
“Yes, like I said, we were born to kill.”
Government is the parent of the family, it’s the authority and can decide what’s permissible and what’s not. It’s this aspect of inferiority which rankles the southern spirit for no one likes to be told what to do.
“What happened when she told him she wouldn’t give him a child?”
“Yin did what all men do when their will is thwarted.”
“Which was?”
“He lashed out.”
When we’re told to do something we may either accept or reject the order. If the governing authority who issued the order is strong enough we may pay a price for our insubordination but if it’s not…?
“What did he do?”
“He went to war with First Clan.”
“Wow, he had a bad temper.”
“Yes, he did.”
“Why didn’t he just… I hate to say this, but why didn’t he just get another mate or kill Merri Li?”
“Because she was the Matriarch.”
“So?”
“So, he only had authority over Second Clan because she gave it to him, without her he was merely the most powerful Wolf in the Clan.”
“But without him she wasn’t the Matriarch.”
“True.”
“Then… okay, what happened?”
“He led Second Clan to war with First Clan and the resulting bloodshed left the countryside in ruins.”
“Do you people do anything which doesn’t involve the destruction of others?”
“No. We were designed to be Superior and by definition it means we subjugate all others and that subjugation invariably means we kill those who would thwart our will.”
“Even bunny rabbits?”
“Yes, Johnny, even bunny rabbits. If for some reason the rabbits got together and decided to reject our authority we would put an end to their furry little existence once and for all.”
