The Governor chewed potato and nodded cautiously.
“You were selected because, when it comes to people’s faith—and what faith dictates they should do, or not do—you said ‘Hands off!’ You said the government should stay out of that sphere entirely. That is why you are my running mate. That is why you are sitting here tonight in the private, private dining room.”
The golden door opened, and the attendant reappeared once more. He set before the Tycoon a chef’s knife roll, carefully unfurling it to reveal a gleaming set of blades. He also set before the Tycoon several implements that looked more at home in a carpenter’s workshop than in a kitchen. There were mallets, hammers, and battery-powered saws—all polished to a gleam. When these items were satisfactorily arrayed, the attendant reached into his pocket and produced a white cloth square. The Tycoon stood and pushed away his chair. The attendant unfolded the cloth into a large apron which he placed over the Tycoon’s suit, tying it tightly in the back.
The Governor said nothing. The attendant once more removed himself from the room.
“Personal freedom!” the Tycoon boomed. “The idea that the beliefs and practices of others should be allowed, not forbidden. That America is great because, here, you can do what you want, right? Be what you want. In the days ahead, our nation will have a choice to make. Do we want a country where people are regulated and restrained, or one where they are free?”
The Governor was, at core, a canny man. Though he nodded along at the Tycoon’s words, something in the depths of his conscience told him that there was going to be a catch.
At that moment, the golden door to the private, private dining room opened yet again.
The Tycoon smiled.
“Speaking of people who are restrained …” he said through a wide grin.
The sight that came through the doorway seemed very strange to the Governor. His mouth hung open and his steak knife fell entirely from his hand, clattering against the marble floor. What entered the room reminded the Governor of footage of prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay. The attendant pulled a man by a rope tied around his hands. The man wore a paper jumpsuit, emblazoned with the Tycoon’s logo. He was blindfolded, and hearing protectors had been placed over his ears to render him deaf.
The man looked young and terrified. He was weeping a bit, and his nose ran steadily. He took the short, careful half-steps of the blinded. He muttered as the attendant urged him on.
“Please …” the man whined. “My parents have money. I’m from Kenilworth. Do you know what that means? It means they can pay you a lot.”
The Tycoon glanced at the Governor and grinned.
The Governor had gone white as a sheet, and was eyeing the gold door on the far side of the dining room, opposite the Tycoon. Fight-or-flight had set in. The man wanted to bolt. He rose to his feet.
“Don’t even think about it!” the Tycoon barked. “If you do that, it is over for you.”
The Governor hesitated.
“Leave now, and it ends. All of it. You can go back home and finish up your term, then be president of Purdue University for a while, then die in obscurity. Is that what you want? Governor, at this moment, your place in history stands on the edge of a knife.”
As if to emphasize his point, the Tycoon selected a ten-inch chef’s knife from the collection and swung it like a sword.
With what was clearly great effort, the Governor forced himself to take his seat. An involuntary tic began to appear in his left cheek. He looked like a man trying his best not to scream or vomit. It seemed likely that he might do both.
“That’s better,” said the Tycoon. “I need you to sit and watch, because I need you to know what I am all about. I need you to understand my culture of freedom. See what I need to be free to pursue.”
With that, the Tycoon swung the knife. Few things in the Tycoon’s life had ever required him to develop acumen or skill. The negative consequences of, say, not studying hard or not practicing diligently were limited by the massive empire he would (and did) inherit from his father. As a consequence, the Tycoon only developed skill in things he really and truly loved. To hold his attention, an activity needed to bring him real joy. And one thing that did that was feasting on the still-thinking brains of the living. Thus, to that project, the Tycoon had mustered a devotion and skill almost never seen in those cursed with massive inheritances.
The Governor realized many things as he watched the Tycoon working away with the blade. Chief among them was the fact that he was watching a master. The sight unfolding before him was murder, not doubt. Butchery. The kind of thing he had seen while making campaign stops at farms and slaughterhouses. That could not be denied.
At the same time, it was a masterpiece. There was and could be no other word for it. The skill with which the Tycoon ended the tourist from Kenilworth’s life and deftly separated the head from the still-flailing body. The practiced motions that then carefully set the severed head on the table before him, like a chef working with a priceless truffle. The movement of the spike and the chef’s mallet that cracked the tourist’s skull with a few sure, strong strokes (the way a practiced islander might open a coconut). The delicate, measured work that cleared the bone fragments and opened the forehead to reveal the mushy pink prize within.
It was many things. Many the Governor did not like to watch (or even think about). But it was also a masterpiece.
To leave no doubt that this was a show of skill, the Tycoon finished by turning the severed, split head around so that it faced the Governor. This gave the prospective vice president an excellent view of his handiwork. The Governor understood that he was meant to look, and tried to widen his eyes. He succeeded, but the tic in his cheek became even more intense.
The Tycoon smiled, evidently pleased with himself. He grinned as he might for the cameras at the dedication of a new building with his name on it. Then he fell upon his prey.
The Governor was shocked all over again.
It was not the cannibalism that so unnerved the Governor. Rather, it was the speed of the transition from human to … something else. The five-star chef was shoveling down his own immaculate creation like a man who’d been starved for days. Even werewolves had transition periods, the Governor thought to himself. One moment they were normal men. Then they sort of fell on the ground, rolled around howling, and grew hair and fangs. Then they began their nocturnal prowl as their newly animal-selves. But this had been instantaneous. One moment the man had been preparing his kill with practiced mastery, and now he was frantically forcing his mouth into the hole he’d bored in the skull. He was gobbling up the brains as if nothing else in the world existed, as if he’d forgotten himself entirely. He looked (and acted) like a yokel at a pie-eating contest. He had lost all control.
While in this state of abandon, the Tycoon uttered moaning noises that normal humans did not make. Mostly they were long nonsense syllables, but every once in a while something came out that sounded an awfully lot like “Braaaaaaaaaains.”
When it seemed the Tycoon was completely lost in his reveries—and his line of sight blocked by the dislodged bits of skull—the Governor allowed himself a single shudder. He had never shuddered so hard in his life. Not from cold or terror. Not from anything.
After what seemed an interminable length of time to the Governor, the Tycoon appeared to finish his repast. His frantic gobbling slowed. The moaning ceased. He lifted himself away from the bloody, open head. He also seemed to remember himself. Humanity—or some semblance of it—flowed back into the Tycoon. The animal madness drained away.
The Tycoon stared down at the empty cranium and licked his lips meditatively. Then he gripped it by what remained of the scalp and held it aloft. Like Hamlet with Yorick, he inspected it carefully for any trace of brain he might have missed. He dangled the skull over the table and smacked it several times, like someone trying to get the last bit of ketchup from the bottom of the bottle. Yet no further brains were to be had. Accepting this with a kind of
grim resignation, the Tycoon tossed the head away as though it were an empty beer can. It fell onto the large and expanding pool of blood already spreading across the marble floor.
As if on cue, the attendant arrived with with a wet vac and several plastic bags. The cleanup phase began.
The Tycoon slumped into his chair. He looked hard at the Governor’s spastically twitching cheek, and absently wiped his mouth with his apron.
“Questions?” he said, raising his eyebrows.
The Governor made a small sputtering noise, but did not precisely speak.
The Tycoon looked down his nose at the man.
“Z-z-z-z-z-” the Governor sputtered more.
The Tycoon made circles with his hand to say “You’re almost there …”
“Zombie!” the Governor cried, as if in great catharsis. “Zombie! Zombie! You are a zombie!”
The Tycoon smiled and leaned back in his chair. The attendant turned on one of the electric cleaning machines, so they were forced to raise their voices over it.
“Yes,” the Tycoon shouted. “And you are one of very few people alive today who know that. Most of those are not even ‘alive’ in the real sense. They are also like me.”
“Who?” said the Governor. “Who else?”
“Not the guy who washes your car or drycleans your suits,” the Tycoon said. “Ours is an excusive club. We don’t admit just anyone. We are leaders of men—though not, technically speaking, ‘men’ ourselves. We are those who were already great, and aspire to something even greater. And with one bite or one scratch, I could make you one of us.”
The cleaning machine finished. The Governor looked, once more, as though he might run out the door.
“But I have no plans to do that,” the Tycoon said quickly. “I do not believe it will be necessary. Yet it is important to me that you and I … understand each other. I value your commitment to personal freedom. Now you understand the way in which my kind require to be free. That’s all we want. All any American wants. The freedom to be yourself. To do what you want to do without interference from the government.”
“What about that man?” said the Governor, pointing to the headless body being hastily bundled in plastic. “What did he want?”
The Tycoon was surprised by this temerity. The Hoosier would press a few points after all. Very well.
“That man—whoever he was—also did exactly what he wanted to do,” said the Tycoon. “He wanted to come to Florida and carouse on the beach and spend his father’s money. So he did. And I wanted to eat his brains. So I did. I really don’t see that any contradiction is involved. We were both free and unencumbered by the government. All is as it should be.”
“You can pick up drifters and eat them to your heart’s content already,” said the Governor. “You don’t need to be leader of the free world to do that.”
The Tycoon tented his fingers thoughtfully.
“Zombies want brains … but we don’t only want brains,” he said. “We want more brains. There are enough of us now—in enough powerful places—that we’ve decided to do something about it. We have some big plans for this country. Big league, believe me. We want to do something really special. Really outstanding. It’s gonna be really huge, and nobody’s ever going to forget it.”
The Tycoon had begun to speak in the generalities he used when publicly describing one of his real estate developments. The Governor noticed this. His mind searched for any way it could possibly bode well.
But the Tycoon only smiled back at him. The Governor realized he would get no answer this day. He might never get one at all.
The Tycoon had not had to properly explain himself in many years. Certainly, he did not feel the need to explain himself to so low a personage as the future vice president of the United States.
As the Governor sat quietly, the attendant moved away the body and wiped up the blood and brains that had spattered onto the table. The attendant excelled at his work. He had clearly done this many times before, and would probably do it many times again. He worked swiftly, and by the time he was finished, it was as though the murderous deed had never happened at all. Were it not for the cruor stains running down the Tycoon’s face, someone chancing to join them in this golden dining room might have found nothing amiss.
The Governor was nearly able to convince himself that that was the case.
Nearly.
THE REPORTER
“Bob Hogson?”
“Yes,” George said.
“Wants to talk to me?”
George hesitated.
“He was told he had a choice between the two of us, and he picked you,” George eventually answered. “So be flattered, but just a little.”
Jessica allowed herself to be.
Bob Hogson was a former governor of Arkansas who had run for president several times, never advancing beyond the primaries. He had been bested yet again in this most recent contest, and now seemed to be angling for a spot in the Tycoon’s future administration.
As conservative as he was porcine, Hogson had hesitated initially to endorse his former rival. Some of the Tycoon’s attacks had been decidedly below board in Hogson’s book. And the Tycoon’s flair for bestowing cruel nicknames also did not fly with him. But—at least in recent weeks—Hogson seemed to have noticed something else. Probably, it was that the Tycoon’s tactics worked. As much as he liked a rack of ribs or a side of bacon, Hogson liked being on a winning team. All the Tycoon’s trespasses had lately been forgiven. Hogson now gave every appearance of wanting to be the man’s new evangelist.
“And that’s later this evening?” she asked.
“Right,” George said. “The candidates are apparently flying back from Florida. Hogson’s as good as we’re going to get for tonight. Are you feeling up to it?”
“Oh definitely,” said Jessica. “Yeah.”
“Look,” George said. “I can tell you’re a little frazzled from your interviews this morning being duds. I just have one thing to say. Don’t worry about it! You’re not the first reporter who told her boss—or his boss—they had a line on something great and then spent the day talking to a bunch of yokels who gave them nothing. It happens to all of us. Put it out of your mind and move on. There’s a whole bunch of convention left to cover. Got it?”
He smiled reassuringly.
“I’ve got it,” Jessica said. “Thanks for being understanding, George.”
“No worries,” he said. “But be as tough as you can tonight with Hogson. Hit him hard on the flip flop. That is, why’s he prepared to endorse now? How can he do that after everything they said about each other during the primary? If I were you, I’d spend the next few hours watching tapes of the primary debates. Be ready to throw his own words back at him. Not too aggressively. Just here and there. Oh, and ask Hogson about his rock band at the start of things. That’s my advice. He loves to talk about his band.”
“All right,” Jessica said. “That sounds good.”
Leaving George in the media den, Jessica returned to her hotel room for the first time since her abduction that morning. It already seemed a world away. Unreal. She half expected to collapse involuntarily as she closed the door behind her and latched it. But she realized she did not feel faint or overcome. Quite the opposite. She was galvanized. Doing what she felt she had been born to do.
She sat on her bed, opened her laptop, and stared into a flood of emails that she knew she would not answer. Not at the moment. Besides, the Knights had her phone number. They were not going to be sending her anything by email.
Seeing nothing even worth opening, Jessica began to pull up videos of the last primary debate before Hogson had dropped out. It was a murderer’s row of (mostly) white (mostly) men in late middle age, standing uncomfortably behind wooden podiums, trying hard to smile. Poured into their suits. Squinting under the hot lights as their makeup congealed and mixed with sweat. Bereft of the helpers and lackeys who usually surrounded them. Trying hard to remember their talking points.
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These were the men asking for permission to run the world.
The Tycoon’s nickname for Hogson—during the primaries, at least—had been “The Crisco Kid.” It was an older reference, but the Tycoon’s supporters did not seem to care. Soon they were chanting it at rallies, putting it on t-shirts, and making memes in which Hogson wore a cowboy hat and carried cans of shortening in holsters. Hogson, like most of the other candidates, had not really responded in kind. He admonished the Tycoon for “taking the low road” whenever the nicknames were brought up, but this hardly seemed to help Hogson’s case with the voters.
Jessica cued the recording to the sections featuring Hogson. There were far too many candidates at this debate—eight in all—to have any kind of meaningful exchanges. The best most could hope to do was say something memorable that might get turned into a sound bite the next day. By this point in the primary, it was clear that Hogson would be dropping out soon. This made him not worth attacking or even responding to. He was given very few chances to speak, and when he did it was like he was talking into a vacuum. The others simply waited for him to finish before moving on to the real business at hand.
Jessica fast forwarded, backed up, and took notes. In the entire ninety-minute debate, Hogson gave only three answers. All told, he spoke for less than five minutes. His first response concerned the need to get tough with North Korea, and then somehow wended its way to Christian missionary organizations that had been trying to do humanitarian work in that country. His second response was very brief and heartily approved of reducing taxes on job creators. In his third and final response—Hogson’s only real interesting moment of the night—he took a couple of minutes to disagree with the Tycoon on the need for a southern border wall. The Tycoon had just finished explaining how it would keep out bad hombres who were stealing American jobs. Most of the candidates nodded along, but Hogson shook his head no. When asked by the moderators if he’d like to give a further response, Hogson spoke at length about the need to pursue openness with America’s neighbors. He said that curbing illegal immigration was important, but that erecting permanent border walls around America was not the best way to achieve it. He asked the audience to imagine what Jesus might have done in such a situation.
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