“Thank you for saving Jesse,” she said. “I know you didn’t have to. You could have chosen D’Andre instead…” she broke off and started to sob.
Jesse cradled his big arms around his wife and said, “We’ve known D’Andre since we were kids in high school together. I don’t know what Allan has planned, but it can’t be good if he wants the whole town there to witnesses it.”
“I wondered if anyone knew what was going on. Chuck sure doesn’t,” Rebecca stated.
“I think he’s going to shame D’Andre publicly for the waste of resources at Carlinville. Maybe even kick him out,” Jesse surmised. “Even though that entire debacle was Allan’s fault because he ordered us to go there, he’s going to shift the blame onto D’Andre and come out looking like a hero who is trying to save the people.”
“That snake needs to go,” Trisha hissed.
“Babe, keep it to yourself,” Jesse warned. “Allan’s become…different since the day the bombs fell. He’s not the same man he used to be. He’s more secretive now and he’s paranoid about losing his newfound power. Watch yourself, Chuck, he’s a very charismatic man and we’ve all done things that we aren’t proud of because he’s asked us to.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said as I unconsciously pulled Becca closer to my side. “What about Jillian, has anyone talked to her yet?”
Jillian and D’Andre were an item now and the whole town knew that she ran their relationship. It probably drove her crazy that I’d chosen Jesse to be my number two man and relegated him back into ranks with the rest of the gatherers. “I saw her at breakfast this morning and I asked her how she was holding up,” Trisha said. “She seemed fine, like nothing was the matter.”
“That’s really weird,” I mused. “I would’ve figured that she’d be throwing a fit since she’s likely to be just as embarrassed by his punishment as he will be.”
“I don’t know, there’s something strange about that woman,” Trisha stated. “She’s an opportunist and none of us better turn our backs to her if we don’t want to get stabbed in it.”
“Hey, we should get going, it’s almost ten,” Jesse reminded everyone. “Allan doesn’t like it when people are late.”
When we arrived we were ushered to the front row of townspeople by a couple of Allan’s people. Jesse and Trisha stood beside us near the stage while we waited for whatever Allan had in store for D’Andre. We didn’t have to wait long before a handcuffed D’Andre was brought out by the same men who’d brought us to the front of the crowd. He was chained by the neck to a heavy park bench placed on stage and he was absolutely stark naked.
I felt sick to my stomach when I saw his bruised and battered body. His lips were blue and his body convulsed uncontrollably as he shivered in the below-freezing temperatures. In the back of my mind, I’d thought that there would be some type of public humiliation for what had happened, but when I saw D’Andre with no mask or clothes I knew that he was a dead man.
His eyes burned with hatred as he recognized Jesse and me. He leapt to his feet and tried to reach us, but the chain around his throat constricted and pulled him backwards. “You fuckers! I’m going to kill you! You dirty sonsabitches!” he screamed at us. “You sacks of shit…” My shoes have never been so interesting in all my life. I stared intently at them as I did my best to tune out what he said about raping my mother and disemboweling my dog.
It wasn’t long before Allan showed up and the crowd quieted down. D’Andre tried to shout things at him, but a gag was quickly placed in his mouth to shut him up. Allan looked him up and down, shook his head and turned his back on the poor man sharing the stage with him.
“Friends!” his voice boomed from the portable bullhorn he had connected to the voice emitter on his mask. “Welcome to the first town gathering that we’ve had since that fateful day when the heavens opened up and fire rained down to destroy the earth.” He glanced behind himself to where D’Andre sat. “I bet some of us are wishing for the warmth of that fire right now, hey?” A few nervous chuckles wafted their way to the stage, but it was clearly far short of what he’d been expecting.
He cleared his throat. “Well then. We have a large number of new folks in town. I am Allan. I am the one who predicted that the end times were coming and I forced the others to prepare. More importantly, on that day of the holocaust, I was the man who convinced everyone to close off the town to keep the outsiders away. Without my leadership, Virden would have perished as so many other communities have.” I wondered how many of those communities would still be around if we hadn’t gone there and killed their defenders and taken their food.
“The wall around this town that keeps those disgusting, diseased creatures out of here was my idea. The men and women who risk their lives daily to gather the supplies that allow us to live do so at my bidding. The power that allows you to wash yourself with warm water instead of icy slush came from this brain,” Allan claimed while he tapped himself on the side of the head. “I am the man who ensures that our way of life is preserved. Without me, it is highly probable that you all would be dead.”
The silence in the town square was palpable. You could hear people drawing ragged breaths through the filters of the various masks they wore in anticipation of what was about to happen. The air practically hummed with the realization that we were witnessing a pivotal time in our new lives.
“Where is Chuck Broussard?” Allan’s amplified voice bellowed from the bullhorn. I raised my hand near the center of the stage.
“Shit son, get up here,” he said as he gestured to a place beside him. “I can’t tell who’s who with these damn masks. Necessary evil and all that.”
I crawled up to the stage and felt hands press against my rear end to help me up. The more clothing we wore to ward off the cold, the harder it became to move around effectively and I would have fallen without that additional support. Once I’d finally worked my way up to the stage Allan slapped me on the back and said, “Folks, this is Chuck. He’s the new leader for our gathering squad. He’s replacing this miserable failure behind me.”
He gestured towards a man standing near the side of the stage. I recognized the clothing and gait of Justin as he walked over carrying a metal bar and a knife. Allan grabbed both from him and turned back to me. He held out the rod and whispered for me to take it, so I did.
Allan fumbled with the bullhorn for a moment and then muttered, “This is your moment, Chuck. This is where you show your loyalty to me and to Virden, son.” He gave me another pat on the back.
I watched as he turned the bullhorn back on and turned to face the crowd. “This man has been condemned to death. He was the leader of the gathering squad, but he purposefully wasted our town’s resources and murdered two of our men on their last mission. That mission was a miserable failure, by the way.” The facts were a little skewed, but essentially correct, except that he’d totally failed to mention Jesse at all.
“Everyone may think this is a harsh punishment,” Allan continued, “but it’s the world we live in. My mind is made up on this. Our world, this unclean winter wonderland outside of our gates, is not a nice place. We can’t afford to be weak or to show weakness. If we do, we will be steamrolled and every one of you, and you,” he jabbed his gloved fingers at various points in the crowd, “and you, will all be dead and your wives and children will be sex slaves for the scavengers.”
I had to hand it to the guy. He knows how to play on the fears of the crowd. There’s not a single person who didn’t know someone that knew someone who’d been murdered outside of the gates of Virden.
“Now is the time, children. Now we see what the price of disloyalty and incompetence is. Obey me and you will survive and prosper. Disobey me and your fate will be similar.”
He slapped me even harder on the shoulder than before. “Chuck. The honor of the first blow to this traitor goes to you.”
“I can’t do this,” I whispered to him. “I mean, he taught me everything I know about shooting and tact
ics. He’s my friend for fuck’s sake.”
He turned off the bullhorn again and leaned in to speak quietly to me. “Don’t fuck this up, son,” he muttered. “You either do this or you’ll end up here with him. Got it?” I got it. “Now, I know what you’re thinking, don’t end it quickly for him and bash in his brains. He’s going to suffer for his transgressions.”
I nodded numbly and stepped away from him. I gazed out into the crowd and near the back stood Jillian. Her face was uncovered and I could see her eyes sparkling with hatred. She noticed that I’d finally seen her and flipped me the bird and stormed off in the direction of her and D’Andre’s place.
The length of steel rebar felt heavy in my hand as I trudged over to where D’Andre was restrained. I raised it over my head and D’Andre’s eyes went wide as he realized that this was really the end. He screamed for mercy behind his gag. The flat side of the bar landed on his clavicle and crushed the bones that helped to support his shoulder. His screams reached a short crescendo before falling into sobs of pain and remorse that he’d failed Allan.
My world started to go black as my heart pounded blood into my brain. I fell to one knee, but I stayed upright. From out of the fog, I felt a hand on my shoulder and someone asked me to let go of the bar. I released it but I didn’t hear it fall to the ground. The gentle hand guided me a few feet away and then spun me around to watch the punishment be meted out against the “traitor”.
The town’s residents were lined up and forced to take part in carrying out D’Andre’s execution. Every person was made to either hit him once with the metal bar or to stab him with the knife to ensure everyone took part in the prosecution of Allan’s justice. This was how our society was formed. This is how the town of Virden created its ruthless killers and made a deity out of a man who had once been on some stupid reality television show.
FIVE
As soon as I was able to walk from the town square, Rebecca and I ran through the knee-deep snowdrifts to our temporary home. Once we entered and secured the door, my wife stripped naked and ran to the restroom. I took my time taking off my outer garments and fumbled absently with my bootlaces. I could hear Rebecca throwing up.
I slowly made my way back to the bathroom. “Becca, are you alright?” I asked tentatively as I placed my hand on her lower back.
She was crouched over the toilet and she turned her head to look at me. “Why would he do that?” she moaned and dry-heaved again. Her stomach was empty and there was nothing else that would come up.
“I don’t know… I just don’t know,” I stammered as I tried to figure out what the hell had just happened.
Rebecca suddenly stood up straight and ran to the bathtub. She turned on the water and climbed in, despite the limitations on water usage. Our hot water heater had been given just enough power to heat it above freezing, but it still took several minutes to get used to the temperature once you got in. It didn’t seem to bother her at all as she scrubbed feverishly with a washcloth and soap.
“I can’t do this, Charles. I can’t bring our baby into this world,” she moaned to me.
“Yes you can, babe. You’re the strongest person I know and we’ll make this work,” I answered back.
“I believe you now,” she said through red-rimmed eyes. She’d thrown up, but she still hadn’t cried, which meant she was holding it in. “I mean, I always believed in you, but I didn’t really think things would get as bad as you said they would. You said the winter would hit and it did. You said people would do horrible things and they are. You said that towns and communities would fight each other for supremacy and you were right. We’ve got to leave this place and go somewhere that there aren’t any people.”
“I don’t think that people are the problem, but large groups of them in one place won’t be a good idea for a long time,” I clarified. “Before long, there’s not going to be enough food to go around. We should leave now. Today. We’re almost packed up anyway, let’s just go.”
“Will they let us? I mean, you’re the gathering squad leader now…now that D’Andre is dead.”
“I don’t care about being the leader of the squad. I just want you and our baby to be safe. We came to Virden on our own. They’ll let us leave as long as we don’t try to take anything that’s theirs,” I said as I secretly prayed that was true. What we really needed was a vehicle, but they’d never let us get away with one from the town. A vehicle would help us to quickly get past the St. Louis radiation zone and then we could ditch it before we attracted too much attention.
Vehicles were a blessing and a curse. The noise could potentially bring scavengers and mutants, but the speed could prove useful since we’d have to do a long arc around St. Louis to avoid the radiation. I didn’t know where else the bombs had impacted in the US, but the route that I had in my head told me that since there weren’t any major cities for several hundred miles south after St. Louis, we should be okay for a while.
We decided to try to leave Virden by foot as soon as possible and then try to pick up a vehicle along the way somewhere. I hastily packed the few possessions that weren’t already in our bug-out bags while Rebecca watched me for a little while and then went back to feverishly scrubbing herself in an effort to remove the unclean feeling of taking part in D’Andre’s murder.
I’d made a habit of keeping a few changes of clothes, heavy-duty twine, water purification tablets, flashlights, lighters, a first aid kit and as much food as I could fit into a couple of large backpacks that I’d picked up from one of our many raids. My thoughts were if anything bad ever happened, then we’d be able to grab them and go. Well, this was bad. A man had just been murdered by every man, woman and child in this town in some sort of sick wasteland gang initiation that was masqueraded as justice.
I tried to rationalize it as I stuffed more clothes around the handgun and boxes of ammunition that I’d concealed in my backpack. Maybe that was how the world we lived in now operated. Allan couldn’t afford to allow failures and unnecessary expenditures of our resources as the stronghold of Virden challenged for supremacy in the region. If Allan hadn’t done what he did to D’Andre, then people may have viewed him as weak and he’d lose his tenuous grip on his position of power. Virden was extremely small compared to Springfield, but Allan’s plan had been to let them kill each other off before we tried to move in. Our geographical location near Springfield, but sandwiched between the radioactive hulks of St. Louis and Chicago meant that there would have to be a showdown between the two communities soon and we needed a strong, ruthless leader to guide us through the fights ahead.
I tried to rationalize it, but I couldn’t. I understood his decision to remove D’Andre from a leadership position, but I couldn’t abide the murder. I hated that Allan had forced me to take part in the travesty at the square. I hated Allan because he’d made innocent people like Rebecca and the town’s children take part in the ritualistic killing. This town was rapidly becoming one of the places that I’d warned Becca we needed to avoid as we moved further south.
After a few minutes of double-checking the kitchen cupboard and bedroom dressers for useful items I went in to get Rebecca out of the tub and bundled into her traveling clothes. Her posture spoke volumes about the mental strain she was under. She sat perfectly still with her back hunched over so far that the tips of her nipples were resting in the water and she stared straight ahead at the drain lever. I was heartbroken at the thought of the psychological damage that had been done to her.
I slowly walked over to her so that I wouldn’t scare her and placed my hand on her shoulder. Her skin was cold to the touch and she was covered in goose bumps. “What the hell?” I muttered as I let my hand slip down to test the water temperature. It was as cold as ice.
“Jesus, Rebecca!” I said a little louder than I meant to and depressed the drain lever to flush the water from around her body. She flinched away at my outburst but then came back to herself and focused her eyes on me.
“Are we ready to go?” sh
e asked with a slight shiver as her body tried to warm itself.
“Yeah, babe, we are,” I said and helped her to her feet. I held her hand when she stepped out of the tub and wrapped a towel around her. “Are you alright? I mean, about what happened?” I was reaching here. I could talk to clients all day long about their family, recreational habits, goals and money questions, but I was no good at the touchy-feely stuff.
“I’m alright. I think I’m just really weirded out by everything, you know? I mean, we’ve been really lucky. We haven’t seen anything like this and we’ve been sheltered from the reality of our situation,” she said.
I shook my head in agreement, but inwardly I thought that for me, personally, that statement couldn’t have been further from the truth. I’d killed men and women during our gathering missions. I’d killed more people contaminated with the radiation sickness than I could ever count, including one with my bare hands. I’ve been punched, kicked, and mentally abused during all of the trips that I’d taken to further Allan’s goal of being the most prosperous community in what was left of southern Illinois. I’d watched a diseased creature batter itself to death on a security gate as it tried to get to me and kill me. I’d seen my share of depravity so far. What Rebecca meant was that she’d been sheltered from the worst of things.
Outwardly I told her that she was right, that things had been slowly deteriorating over the last month, but that wasn’t true. Almost from the moment that the bombs fell and our government ceased to function, people had begun to change. It was absolutely insane how quickly society had broken down. Thousands of years of evolution took over and it rapidly devolved into kill or be killed. I hoped that our society wasn’t broken beyond repair.
Enduring Armageddon Page 8
