They’d passed the “FLU” and “Stay Away!” warnings in slop-paint someone had taken the consideration to mark last winter when a viral sickness they were overrun with must have seemed like a plague of judgment had taken a hold of the little survivor community that claimed Casperville. They passed graves and falling markers in the lawns of once sprawling McMansions. Near a fast food restaurant that had burned down long ago they’d passed a deep pit. Tightly wrapped body-shaped blankets still lay in the sandy bottom of the gash.
Near the historic district of old west origin they halted, and for a long minute the Baron had remained frozen in the saddle, hand raised. Smelling the wind. Listening and hearing nothing but the soft hiss of a wind that soon came up into a good blow.
Then, “Smells like… engines.”
No one said anything. Instead the pirates cast wary eyes into the shadow and ruin.
Engines meant biker gangs.
But of them there was no sign. Bikers were marauders. Lawless. Here today, gone tomorrow. They had no code or system of order.
“WELCOME, FRIENDS!” came a booming roar from within the darkness of an old wooden building that seemed to lean so far out into the street that it might’ve fallen over at any moment. A man wearing dusty black pants, square-toed biker boots, a black dress shirt, and a long dark grey blanket he’d cut holes in for his arms, had stepped out from the swinging doors of the old building, removing a black wide brimmed hat, shielding his large head from the sun low on the horizon. His eyes rose expectantly as though he’d just performed some impressive trick or saved a child’s life and wanted all the adulation that must come with such a feat.
The Baron had lowered his upraised hand and it fell deftly to the gun on his belt. All of his pirates knew to be ready at such a gesture. That was the signal. If he drew and started firing, then they’d all charge whoever he was shooting at, waiting for him to shout new orders above the din of sudden battle.
The Stranger in Black stepped off the warped wooden boards that ran along the old historic district and down onto the dry pavement the city had seen fit to put in years later for the tourists. He raised meaty paws in a gesture of friendship or conciliation.
“Now, now there, friends!” He said as he crossed the cracked street between them, his stride long and hungry.
The Baron knew at that very moment the Stranger in Black was to be feared because he did not fear. He was not to be trifled with. Or in other words, this man was very dangerous.
“I see you’re metal men!” continued the Stranger in Black as his voice boom-bellowed out across the empty silence of the dead town. Now the stranger stood just beneath the Baron’s horse. His eyes were as wild as the gray hair trying to escape from under the black hat he’d planted back on his head. The stranger’s skin was red and his body was stocky, almost verging on muscular gone corpulent.
“I’ve got no metal except a still I’ve just rigged up, but you wouldn’t want that at all. However, I’ve brewed up some fine old dirty liquor, and I’ll share it with you if you boys are game.”
His smile was a leer. A threat wrapped in a dare.
The Stranger in Black reached out a paw and let it fall like a feather drifting down from a great height onto the horse’s face and long nose. For a moment, the beast snorted and then seemed to tolerate it, as though in the merest concept of a moment the angry animal had been tamed, or guiled, or mesmerized. The Baron was not just half-surprised, but in fact full-surprised that his horse hadn’t reared up and stamped the stranger to death.
That was when the Baron knew, knew inside a heart that had been wily even before the world ended, that the Stranger in Black they were dealing with was indeed very dangerous.
The Baron’s horse did not like anyone. Even the Baron.
“Y’all…” began the Stranger in Black, and any Texan, post-apocalyptic survivor or not, could tell the “Y’all” was completely manufactured. “…come on in and have a taste of my liquor.”
No one moved. The Baron’s men were well trained. What they lacked in initiative and ingenuity they made up for in blind obedience. This was what separated them from the bikers—a sense of order. It didn’t matter anyway, the Baron did most of the thinking for them.
“Men don’t drink until I do,” said the Baron.
The Baron knew it was his only play. He’d have to have a drink with the stranger to make friendly, even though there was no evidence for this conclusion, other than in the less than one minute he’d been there, the Baron was certain the Stranger in Black was too powerful to make an enemy out of just yet. Instead, the Baron swung down from the horse, the old leather saddle barely creaking as he did so. He turned back to the others, catching Hutch Hutchin’s eye for the barest second. Hutch knew that whatever came next, they were to be ready to save the Baron’s armadillo bacon.
The Stranger in Black crabbed back across the old street, beckoning as he did so; disappearing into the dark old tourist trap that’d once promised a trip back into America’s gloriously reconstructed frontier past. The Baron followed, removing a pair of chain mail culinary gloves he used for riding and combat.
A moment later, the Stranger in Black came out holding a large mason jar of amber liquid. He produced two shot glasses from within his blanket-cape and slapped them down onto an old and rickety peach-colored table that had spent too many long days since the end waiting for this moment, baking in the Texas sun.
The Stranger smacked his lips together and gusted as he poured enough of his homemade liquor to spill over the rim of one cracked glass. Then, with surprising swiftness, he swept the glass in one smooth motion off the old table and emptied it down his wide gullet. He let out a gravelly, “Ahhhh!” beamed and then said, “See! Not poison.”
An almost lunatic smile awaited the Baron.
“Shall I?” offered the Stranger in Black, indicating that he could pour enough for both of them to enjoy now. The Baron merely nodded and hoped the man hadn’t developed some resistance to a homemade poison. What was he to do? The men were watching him. Weakness was never rewarded. Not in the new world. The Stranger was devouring him with a gaze that indicated a hunger nothing could satisfy. A zeal really. The Baron held up the tiny glass, examined it, noting murky amber swirls, and, pushing away thoughts of blindness due to bathtub gin, raised it to his lips. In the moment before he drank he suddenly saw the two of them, himself and the Stranger in Black, dying on the dusty old boards of the historic district that no one came to see any more on Saturday afternoons, wandering around in touristy wonderment, drinking sarsaparilla, eating cotton candy, and watching gunfight reenactments.
At that moment, tasting the cinnamon fire touching his tongue, the Baron thought, “What if the Stranger is just plain crazy? What if he’s poisoned both of us and doesn’t mind in the least?” The Baron closed his eyes and swallowed the rest of the liquid, blocking out the mental image of the Stranger in Black dancing like an imp as they both vomited and choked on the poison, eyes bulging, necks swelling.
Later, the Baron led his men away after allowing them a few rounds of the Stranger in Black’s liquor. The men were silent and probably drunk as they followed the Baron through the wastes and back to his barony in the Scraps. On the other hand, the Baron’s head was only slightly fuzzy but his thoughts were incredibly clear.
Thoughts of fleeing the Basin.
Thoughts of packing up tonight and leading his pirates on toward the coast. A coastal paradise which everyone knew was a lie covered in an oil slick of apocalyptically judgmental proportions. Or out into the madness that was the unknowns of New Mexico.
Thoughts of anywhere but here.
The Basin had changed with the arrival of the Stranger in Black. Everything had changed.
Everything.
Chapter 21
The night wind rose and began to sound like a wail.
Out on distant roads and along lonely highways the bikers plowed through the night, their dim and flickering pre-collapse headlights cross
ing and re-crossing the road like dizzy phantoms. The man they’d left dead back at the crossroads (a place all murderers and rapists and such have found themselves since man began intersecting the ways between the “here” and the “there”) had spoken of a rich, high valley in trade for a pull at some warm, gasoline-smelling water.
A rich high valley…
…guarded by a lonely bridge.
Easy pickings.
The dying man was sure of it (as dying men tended to be sure of such things) and then he’d died and the bikers had kicked their hogs to life and plowed into the purple and coming dark in their endless quest for redistribution. Or whatever.
The night wind wailed.
By torchlight the Baron paced back and forth in the highest level of a tower constructed from ancient smashed junkers. All along the walls the sentries had been doubled. There was no ration of the nasty potato vodka tonight. No, sir. There was only evil out there in the dark and so the watch must go on.
Evil had come to the Basin and the makeshift, claptrap, leaning fortress of ancient smashed vehicles wasn’t enough to protect the Baron’s pirates from the insanity of this present world…
…of the Stranger in Black.
“I could use some boys like you,” he’d chuckled, the Stranger had. “Use you to make real trouble for the locals. I’ve got big plans you don’t even know about, yet. Why, you’re organized and you’ve got a fine collection of things to stab and cut and maim with. Baron my boy, if you don’t mind me callin’ you that, we might just do us a little old fashioned business.”
And as his Pirates nursed their tin cups of the Stranger’s amber liquor…
“You ever been truly drunk, Baron?” The Stranger in Black’s eyes were focused and burning, boring into and underneath the Baron’s armor. They were wild eyes. True believer wild. Drug addict rushing on his run, wild. “Not like this stuff,” he continues. “Liquor’s for children. No, Baron my friend, I’m talking power. Drunk on the strongest liquor you’ll ever taste. Power.”
And later, during the second round, after a stray coyote’d ambled right up to the Stranger in Black and lay down at his feet in the dust and fading heat and the near darkness…
Later…
“Rape and murder is all kinds of fun and games when you’ve got power… real power, Baron. Believe me. I’ve lived by many names, and in all those lives I’ve learned that power is the thing to have. Do business with me. We’ll kill everyone,” he’d muttered. “Kill ‘em all and have a fine time doing it.” And then, “If I’m lyin’ I’m dyin’, or worse yet, I’m not one of the 88.”
As he said the words, “eighty-eight,” it was like circles of smoke from an eternal hellfire went out the Stranger’s mouth, four smoke circles, interlocking and growing as they spread and dissipated.
Maybe it was there. Maybe it was a vision from the booze, but the Baron was mostly sure he saw it.
The Baron hadn’t even touched his second cup. He was just waiting. Biding his time. Whatever was considered friendly, then he was out of there. He didn’t know what this “88” might be, but he was waiting to fly away. Even then, at that very moment, he’d had every intention of riding hard for the coast. Alone if he had to. The Stranger in Black had freaked him out. Hard. The game of pirating was up, for sure.
Mayhem and murder and trouble. That’s all the Stranger in Black talked about as they drank his liquor. His own men, the pirates, were mesmerized and not drunk, but quiet and tamed like lambs he’d never known them to be. Like the Stranger was seducing them all right in front of his eyes. Like he’d done with the horse. And with the coyote. Even the Baron felt it. Felt himself feel distant, tiny almost. Ready to disappear into the “88”. Whatever that was.
But deep down inside he was screaming, “Get away from him, now!”
So the Baron smiled, swirled the shot glass and tasted it without actually drinking. The Stranger in Black smiled to himself. Muttered something. Death and threats and more murder.
The stray dog. No, the mangy coyote come in from the Nowheres, cast a glance up at the Baron. A look that said, “I’m just a prisoner too.”
“Get away. Run!” screamed the small voice inside the Baron.
Now, today, back in the Scraps, inside the tower, underneath the roof where he could hear the watchmen pacing along the old planks above, the Baron knew the game of “Pirate” was up.
Evil, real evil, had come to the Basin.
Time to go now.
And yet…
Everything he’d cobbled together.
Is it worth your life? He asked himself and was surprised when an easy answer didn’t spring from his own lips.
Outside, the night wind wailed.
~~~
Walker lay in the scrub. It was night. His improvised ghillie suit of dry brown grass and burlap sacking covers him. Swirling sand lashes his eyes as the windstorm buffets the night. He closes his eyes, blinks. Feels them moisten, barely. He needs water. That’s true enough. Later he’ll crawl forward toward the river and drink. Later. But now he opens them and puts one eye to the Lapua’s scope. He sees the bridge. Then the trail leading up into the valley. Then the pillbox. Only a trained eye could see it, and a dozen other things that someone tried to set up. Someone that lives up there in that hidden valley.
The night wind wails and Walker continues to watch and think of the nine bullets he has left to pay out his revenge. He’ll need water. Intel. More bullets. Explosives. Food.
The wind rises, screaming through some feature of the bridge that crosses the river, creating an occasional lone and sudden shriek. All around him the tall grass sweeps and hushes in a chorus of white noise that the man in the dark almost finds comforting. It drowns out the voices of the dead and the dying.
It drowns out his friends.
Now, he can think only of revenge and forgets the why.
~~~
In the night wind the Stranger in Black, Walter, Mayhem, runs alongside them, whispering their animal whisper.
He knows the words. Knows the words that once held sway in their greedy hearts and over saturated commercialized minds that thought feeling was the same as thinking. The power words from before this life, before this undeath became a never-ending search for calories of any kind.
“Remember the Gut Bomb,” he whispers.
“Oh…” he moans. “I could eat me the Nacho Bucket with extra Ranch dippin’ sauce right now.”
“I once dislocated my jaw on a twenty dollar Burger. I even ordered extra chipotle bacon.”
It’s what he did before the end. Before the Beginning. In another life, when he’d whispered the words of consumption to the masses.
Now, he whispers at the dark somethings that feed directions to their hive mind. Selling calories as he moves among them, then racing off into the dark as more and more of them begin to follow after him, convinced he knows where the food is. Where those calories are.
“Remember bowls? Piles and piles of gravy and chicken and taco meat piled into a bowl. Remember “all you can eat?” Remember the word “endless” and the restaurants that promised it? Remember free refills.” Now it is a command and not a question.
Remember greed.
Remember gluttony.
Remember pride.
The virtues of fast food. Industrially raised. Factory farmed. Bulk purchase and get it cheaper.
They chase him through the sand, shale and scrub, following his maniacal cackle and meaty whispers. They chase him as only a lunatic could be chased, because only a lunatic could look back and see a stadium-sized crowd of starving zombies or living people stumbling after him, convinced that he knows where the food is. Or is the food. Only a lunatic could see a mob that size and not go insane with fear, curling up like a frightened child.
Only a lunatic.
He whispers in the night beneath the windy wail and cackles as he launches himself through the sand and sage and up along moonlit ridgelines with a hungry army
of almost-skeletons in tow.
The Man in Black cackles and the night wails and everything is going as planned.
In Texas, things are getting dark.
Chapter 22
The frigid water stabbed him with a thousand knives, but he braced himself against it. His hands found the far wall, and for a second he thought he felt smooth metal. It was flat, maybe angle iron framing of some kind. Hard to tell. His body blocked the light from Delores’s headlamp and the cold had affected the acuity of his touch… but there was definitely something there.
Tunnel bracing?
Who could know? Whoever’d built the tunnels had been pretty clever. That much was clear. All along the subterranean channels he’d found ways the tunnel’s designer had braced the weaker areas against collapse. Genius, really. Altogether fantastic. The sort of thing the nightly news or maybe 60 Minutes would have made a feature about if these tunnels had been found before the collapse.
Perhaps the underwater part needed special support, thus the metal bracing. Who knew? He wasn’t an engineer, but whoever dug these tunnels had some serious experience at it. Had skills. Someone somewhere had lived a life below the surface, and these tunnels were evidence of it.
That part of it had puzzled Ellis since he’d found the first tunnel entrance up on Utah. Where did one go to learn tunnel digging? Was there a special engineer’s track in college for such things? He knew back before the world went south that drug dealers and terrorists had constructed quite elaborate and effective tunnels under borders. Underground there were no checkpoints, no fences, no gates guarded by men and women with guns and bombs and dogs.
Up-toppers almost never consider that all around the world there are underground places. And some of these subterranean marvels are pretty extensive, almost whole cities, like under London. Under Atlanta. Under Washington D.C. Under Moscow. Wine country in California is pocked with underground caves and extensive tunnels. He’d seen a documentary on that, back before the up-top went sideways.
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