In the half-second before his thumb pressed down against the remote switch, Moses closed his eyes tight and whispered the final five words over a lifetime that extended beyond ten decades.
Jesus Lord, take me home…
The Beast felt as if the hand of a god he had never believed in had slapped him firmly on his back. He felt his body lifted several feet off the ground and carried forward over the parked motorcycles, across the road, and into a shallow ditch on the other side.
When his eyes opened he could hear nothing, feel nothing, but could taste the bitter, metallic mixture of dirt and blood filling his mouth. He wasn’t certain how long he had been knocked unconscious, but knew it had to have been at the very least several minutes. The Beast spit out a mouthful of blood-drenched, dark dirt as he pulled his face away from the bottom of the ditch.
He blinked his eyes several times and then slowly made certain his hands and feet still worked. Then he attempted to stand but the world around him started to spin like some demented vortex, causing him to fall back down onto his knees. After a few deep, measured breaths, the Beast finally rose and looked back at the destruction laid out before him.
The entire gas station entrance had been blown apart as had the two rusted out gas pumps in front of the station. Walking on trembling, unsteady legs, the Beast looked to see if anyone else had survived. The old man was gone of course, and so too were at least three other bikers, their bodies either badly burned, torn and shredded, or both.
What’s that sound?
It was a far-off voice yelling something familiar. The Beast whirled around trying to locate its source, but the movement once again sent him crashing back down onto his knees as confusion and nausea overtook his senses.
The voice grew louder and clearer.
“Hey, Beast, you ok? That old nigger blew himself the hell up! It’s like a Middle East terrorist attack up in here!”
The Beast tried to push out the ringing in his ears by shaking his head from side to side. He looked up to see the biker they called Chef staring back down at him. Chef was one of the younger members of the group who had joined up just a week earlier after escaping the urban militarized zone of Madison, Wisconsin. The city’s population had swelled to nearly a half-million following the outbreak of the Race Wars, a third of which Chef claimed were starving by the time he left. He was just over six feet, with a lean and lanky build, and especially brilliant blue eyes that sat underneath a narrow head capped off with yellow-blonde hair that hung nearly to his shoulders.
Chef was known for carrying a wicked-looking, ten-inch chef’s knife off of his right hip, thus the nickname.
The Beast pushed Chef’s right hand away, wanting to get back onto his feet himself. After doing so, he looked around again and then growled his first words since the explosion.
“You and me the only ones left?”
Chef shook his head.
“No, there’s one more – it’s Dent. He’s pretty messed up though.”
Dent was a pot-bellied graybeard who had joined up when Ripper was still running the show. He was noted for possibly having the best ride in the gang, a custom-built, black paint and chrome-emblazoned frame that housed a recently rebuilt and modified 300cc motor that would easily cruise at 80mph all day long.
“How’s my bike, man? How’s my bike?”
Chef glanced at the Beast whose own eyes were scanning the damage inflicted upon the fifty-seven year old Dent who lay on his back next to the pile of overturned motorcycles. A long gash ran down through the middle of the left side of the older man’s beard, staining it red and dripping blood onto his leather vest adorned upper chest. His right knee was clearly swollen and pressing up against the fabric of his black-colored jeans.
Chef leaned down beside Dent and put a hand on his right shoulder.
“It’s good, man, barely a mark on it. A lot better off than the other ones, that’s for sure.”
Dent grimaced as he struggled to sit up. He looked over at what remained of the gas station storefront.
“That damn nigger was ready for us. How do you figure---“
The Beast interjected with a throaty growl.
“Doesn’t matter, he’s dead but we’re still here, what’s left of us anyways. Can you stand?”
Dent grunted and then gave a quick nod, not wanting to anger the biker gang leader.
“Yeah, I think so.”
Chef pulled Dent up onto his feet. The older biker groaned when he applied weight to his injured right knee.
“You just wait there while I check on the bikes, ok?”
Dent nodded at Chef while also avoiding the simmering gaze of the Beast. Chef moved among the mechanical rubble and after a few minutes, only two motorcycles were propped back up onto their kick stands. The rest had been damaged beyond immediate repair.
“Just two are in working condition.”
One of the still-usable bikes was in fact Dent’s. The Beast ran a dirt-encrusted right hand over the custom frame and then abruptly sat down in its seat, finding it a perfect fit.
Yeah, this will do.
“Hey, man, that’s my bike! You gotta find your own ride!”
Chef’s eyes closed for a brief moment as he understood the grievous error in judgment Dent had just made. The Beast turned his head to stare back at the injured, grey-bearded biker.
“I found my ride.”
Dent took two unsteady, pain-filled steps forward as he pointed at the Beast.
“You got to respect a man’s wheels! I built her with my own hands. Every nut, every bolt, that’s my goddamn bike!”
Chef took a step back, wanting to be nowhere between the other two bikers.
Oh, Jesus…
He knew at that very moment that Dent was a dead man.
The Beast vacated the motorcycle seat and stood to his full height, towering over the much shorter Dent.
“Hey, you got it, old-timer. It’s your bike, right?”
Dent, believing he had just won an improbable victory, tried to sound far tougher and more confident than he actually felt as he began to walk toward his ride.
“Yeah, that’s right.”
Chef looked down to see the Beast’s right hand striking out toward his right hip with seemingly inhuman speed. A half-second later he looked up and saw his knife plunged hilt-deep into the back of Dent’s exposed neck.
Both of the older biker’s hands went to the front of his throat as his mouth opened wide and he hacked up a stream of froth-tinged red blood that fell down over his chin and then onto the ground below. With eyes bulging, Dent turned around to face the Beast. The tip of the blade stuck out of the small space where his lower neck merged with his upper chest.
More and more blood poured from Dent’s mouth, causing him to choke loudly in a wheezing-wet cacophony as he fell forward onto his knees. His shoulders shook as he began to vomit yet more crimson liquid. In the few seconds that remained before the last of life fled from his body, the grey-haired biker removed his hands from his throat, formed them into tightly clenched fists that he then held in front of him and proceeded to slowly raise both middle fingers at the Beast before finally falling face-first onto the paved road.
The Beast grunted as he watched the blood continue to pool beneath the dead biker’s body.
“Tough old bastard.”
Chef watched as the Beast reached down and ripped the knife out from the back of Dent’s throat and wondered if he would be next to die. Instead, the Beast casually wiped the blade against his latest victim’s leather vest before handing it back to Chef.
While Chef returned his knife to its home on his right hip, the Beast swung his right leg over the just-deceased Dent’s bike and started it up with an initial belch of blue-black smoke from its twin, chrome-tipped tailpipes.
“Aren’t we gonna wait for the others to catch up? Get some more men, weapons, fuel?”
Dent and Chef had been among those chosen to ride ahead of the gang with the Beast to try and
locate Preacher and the white girl riding with him. Now Chef wanted nothing more than to be as far away from the Beast as possible.
“No, we keep going. We’re close. Grab one of the extra fuel cans and strap it to the bike. We both have rifles, ammo…and your knife. I’d say we’re good to go.”
The Beast lifted his nose upward and took an especially long, deep breath.
“Yeah, I smell nigger in the air. Let’s ride before we lose him.”
Chef walked to the only remaining motorcycle that was not overly damaged by the explosion and lowered himself into its seat which sat especially low over an extra wide rear tire. Chef’s right thumb pushed the red ignition button and the chopper came to life immediately.
The Beast gave his riding companion a grin that had all the warmth of a prehistoric lizard. And then he was off, catapulting down the narrow road toward the gently sloping and desolate interior of North Dakota as Chef struggled to keep up.
No more than a hundred miles separated the Beast from his prey.
-----------------
EPISODE FIFTY:
Silas Toms was dreaming. It was the very dream he had experienced for the last two nights in a row, the dream that had motivated him to leave the isolated protection of his ranch and go on a mission to find a group of people whose names and faces he did not know.
His beloved wife Grace stood before him as he chose to remember her years ago before age and disease took her from him – beautiful and kind, and devoted to the life they shared. Though her mouth didn’t move, he heard her sunlit, sing-song voice as she addressed him.
Hurry, husband, you must be first to find the man of God and his companions within the pit of vipers. It is a race that could decide the outcome of everything.
Silas tried to step forward into the darkness that surrounded Grace so he could once again hold her in his arms, but found himself unable to move.
Quickly now, Silas, you will need them as much as they need you.
Silas awoke with a start, his eyes taking several seconds to adjust to the chilled daybreak gloom where he and Lu had pulled off of the dirt road to grab a few hours of much-needed sleep. It had been slow-going since they had left the ranch in Silas’s World War Two-era military jeep.
Lu asked where they were going. Silas replied he wasn’t sure yet. Lu sat silent for a moment before nodding his head.
“Ok, if you think this is what needs to be done, I’m with you, Silas.”
Though the reticent rancher hadn’t said so out loud, he had come to appreciate the seemingly always optimistic Lu Phan’s loyalty to him and the diminutive Asian’s companionship.
In the time of the Race Wars, it was good to have a friend.
Silas had taken them around the abandoned North Dakota enclaves of Fortuna, Ambrose, and Crosby, carefully driving the jeep through tall grass, rock-strewn gulches, and brush-swept hillsides, sometimes using barely visible trails, and sometimes creating his own path forward.
More than once they spied vehicles from a distance traveling down one of the main roads, and on one occasion were witness to an older white man being forcibly pulled from a rust-covered station wagon and beaten to death by several Hispanic men who emerged from a late model pickup truck, The road bandits then stripped the station wagon of its supplies before moving on in search of their next victim.
Lu had wanted to intervene, but Silas held him back with an oversized, thick-knuckled and heavily-callused right hand.
“No, that isn’t our fight.”
Lu wasn’t pleased by Silas’s refusal to provide help.
“Then what is our purpose for being out here?”
Silas turned away from the roadside atrocity and growled his response.
“To find a man of god, like I told you yesterday.”
Even Lu’s significant levels of patience had grown thin.
“Silas…that could be anyone, anywhere. I don’t understand how---“
Silas lifted a hand to signal that Lu be silent. Lu complied, and their journey had continued.
That was nearly twenty-four hours from the time Silas awoke from his most recent dream of Grace and her increasingly urgent plea that he locate the mysterious man of God.
The six-foot-nine-inch tall rancher pushed himself onto his feet and then lightly brushed the soil that had been his bed off of his faded jeans and dark brown, wool jacket. He looked down to see Lu stirring as well. After a quick breakfast of dried fruit and water, they were once again on the move, heading east toward Bowbells, a city that had once been home to a few hundred residents but was now likely abandoned as so many other small communities were in the wake of the Race Wars’ violence.
It took nearly three hours to reach the outskirts of Bowbells as they spent almost half that time working their way across the mud and muck of a swampy area that dissected the misshapen dirt trail they were navigating. Silas brought the jeep to a halt atop a knoll which allowed him a vantage point to look down upon the little town with a pair of high-powered, military-grade binoculars.
“Looks to be abandoned like all the others.”
Lu brought his own pair of binoculars to his eyes and scanned the area as well. Soon after, he was pointing to a section of road some two miles east of Bowbells.
“There’s a bunch of vehicles in front of that building sitting all by itself over there – cars, trucks, motorcycles.”
Silas pointed his binoculars in the direction Lu was pointing to and found the information to be accurate. A long, single-story building stood adjacent to the north side of the road and in front were parked a multitude of varied vehicles. A piece of plywood was propped up on the roof just over the entrance with a series of sloppily painted white letters scrawled across it.
“Can you make out the sign?”
Lu narrowed his eyes as he attempted to increase the binoculars’ magnification.
“I’m pretty sure it says, The Viper Pit.”
Silas lowered his binoculars and looked down at Lu as the corners of his mouth curled downward into a somewhat skeptical frown.
“Are you sure?”
Lu nodded.
“Yeah, almost positive that’s what it says.”
Once again, Silas heard Grace’s voice echoing within his mind.
Hurry, husband, you must be first to find the man of God and his companions within the pit of vipers. It is a race that could decide the outcome of everything.
“We’re going there to take a look inside.”
Lu’s eyes nearly doubled in size as he stared up at the rancher.
“What? Why? You gotta know that’s most likely the place where the guys who killed your friends in Fortuna came from, right?”
A strong gust of wind blew across the trail, causing Silas’s chest-length beard to blow in the direction of the awaiting Viper Pit.
“You think this man of God would be inside a place like that?”
Silas straightened himself to his full height and then shrugged.
“I don’t know, but I aim to find out.”
----------------
EPISODE FIFTY-ONE:
Sarah Clement had her arms wrapped tightly around Preacher’s torso as he carefully guided the motorcycle toward the single-story building that sat some forty yards back from the road. Several other vehicles were parked outside and the faint sound of music filtered out from beyond the building’s closed entrance door and darkened windows.
Tom Dolan, Sabina Markson, and her two children along with their two dogs, followed close behind in the old Ford, which had been running on fumes for the last ten miles. It had started to burn more and more fuel shortly after leaving Moses’ gas station, and the accompanying smell of gas fumes indicated the old car’s carburetor might be in need of a rebuild. Tom estimated it was getting no more than seven or eight miles to the gallon.
If the newly formed group was to continue their journey into North Dakota and locate the place called Fortuna, they would have to find someone willing to give them some much-need
ed fuel. Both Tom and Preacher had earlier agreed that a roadside structure with cars, trucks, and motorcycles parked outside would be as good a place to start as any.
RACE WARS: Season Nine: “LAMBS TO THE SLAUGHTER”: Episodes 49-54 of an ongoing post-apocalyptic thriller series... Page 2
