“Subjugation,” I commented.
“That’s a good one,” he said, pulling a short pencil and scrap of paper from the pocket of his safari shirt. We always wore clothing with multiple pockets. “Spell it.”
I spelled it; then commented, “And while we’re at it, it’s ‘doesn’t make any difference’, not ‘don’t make no difference’.”
“Noted,” he said. “Thanks. What else you see down there?”
I lifted the binocs and continued to observe. The bulk of the work was done by the women. The men mostly lounged around in the shade, barking orders, cleaning weapons, napping. Five obviously pregnant women watched over the younger children. The older children helped with the move. Any transgressions by the kids were handled with kicks or backhands. Occasionally one of the women would break off from her back breaking labor to breastfeed an infant. Near noon, five began to cook at a central campfire.
That was when The Babe showed up. At over four hundred pounds, he didn’t pass up any meals. He came out of one of the houses near the center of the new camp. A young girl followed behind him, shoeless and shirtless, breasts flopping, her legs moving in double time to keep up with his long strides. I saw her mouth moving. The fat man stopped and turned. His beefy hand grasped her head as if it were no larger that an apple, and he shoved her back. She landed on her fanny and scrambled back toward the house.
I put the binocs down. “The fat man brings back bad memories,” I said. “I’ve alway felt he bested me”.
Weasel read the regret in my voice. “He did. Time and place, Mac. You’re a much different man now. Let’s see if we can get some information from this group. Get some future payback. The fat man owes Stevie a big debt. Keep looking. I been watching for months, Mac. I never seen anyone fuck with him. They don’t even like to look him in the eye, lest he see it as a challenge.”
“You’re talking about some pretty nasty looking men,” I said.
“Most of those soldiers are as mean as anyone I’ve ever come across’t,” he replied. “Ain’t never seen a one of ‘em even look cross ways at the fat man.”
The Babe was dressed completely in red and black, Chicago Blackhawks’ hockey gear. He had a big head, made to appear larger by a scraggy full beard. Small eyes were close together, sunken back into his skull as if being swallowed by folds of fat.
Across his belly he had an M 16 strapped. What appeared to be a .45 hung from a shoulder rig. Another pistol was holstered at his side. From behind his left shoulder, an object protruded.
“What’s on his back,” I asked Weasel, “sticking out on the left side of his head?”
“The handle of his famous baseball bat,” Weasel said. “He’s got it rigged so he can draw it like a sword.”
At The Babe’s appearance, the men who had been lounging, stood as if on command. Four of the fiercest looking men trotted up to him as he made his way to the cooking area. He grabbed a huge bone from one of the women and began gnawing on it while he spoke to the four soldiers. They dispersed immediately and put a dozen other soldiers to work carrying large crates into a house two doors down from his dwelling.
He walked over to a group of women, stopped before one of the nursing mothers and pulled her roughly to her feet. She hastily passed the infant as he guided her back to his quarters, speaking to no one else, slamming the door behind him and the hapless woman.
“Shit,” I said, disappointed by my brief observation. “He’s gone.” I wanted more of the colossus.
“Doubt he’ll be coming back out for awhile,” Weasel said. “Man spends half his time indoors. After dark is when he’s most active. Like a rodent.”
I resumed scanning the Messenger camp. Off to my right, two clan soldiers, tools in hand, tended to a long line of bicycles, tightening bolts, adjusting chains, oiling derailleurs.
“Tell me about traffic patterns,” Weasel said.
I put the binocs down and began pulling food from the back pack. Turkey sandwiches, biscuits, some of Sarah’s cole slaw, horseradish and mustard from the garden for the sandwiches. Well water from the canteens.
“They’re set up in a semi-circle,” I said between bites. “About twenty, twenty-five buildings. Figure that will give them close to a hundred bedrooms for what looks like two hundred of them.”
“The women and children,” Weasel said, “will go out on the edges. They’ll cram them into a couple of houses, take the rest for the warriors. Each man will have his own bedroom. They need a whore, they’ll just come down and grab one. Fact that the women and children are out on the edges, hardest to defend, first to go down, pretty much shows you their value.”
“I noticed,” I said, “that most of the boxes and crates are going into two of the buildings in the center.”
“What’s your take on that?” Weasel asked.
“One of them is obviously an armory,” I said. “I can read the labels on the boxes. Army issue M 16s. Crates of ammo. Looked like body armor, too. Football and hockey gear. Some police stuff. The works. What’s interesting is that they have more weapons than they have men to carry them.”
“If they were at war,” Weasel said, “the other building would house prisoners or slaves. Might even be a sex pen, too. When they’re fighting these clan fucks get awful randy. But that isn’t what it’s for. How do you read it?”
“I don’t know,” I answered. “You tell me.”
“I got a pretty good idea,” he said, wiping oatmeal cookie residue from his mouth. “Important thing to notice is that both of the buildings are smack dab in the center. Right next to The Babe’s quarters. Easiest to defend. They’re both important. We’ll find out for sure tonight.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“We’re gonna take a look. Get some hard facts,” he said with a smile.
My first emotion was fear. I was going to die in a few hours. Weasel was a survivor. A jungle fighter. An urban guerilla. I was a toy soldier. I would bring us both down.
Fear was replaced by my need for revenge against the beast who had almost turned Stevie into a nomadic feral shell of human being—and my need to protect our lives, which was threatened every day by the Babe’s existence.
“Can we kill him?” I asked.
“You just spent a few hours watching this guy,” Weasel said. “He ain’t gonna die easy. We get lucky, yeah, he dies. Our lives get better immediately. If not, we get solid info on his operation and buy us time. Time to get stronger, smarter.”
“I’m hoping you have a plan.”
“Them two buildings we been watching, the ones in the center. The armory goes. We try for the other one, too. I think it’s just as important to them.”
“Then the plan is all worked out?”
Weasel shrugged. It meant we were playing part of it by ear.
“Great,” I said.
“Are you sure you want to do this with me?” I said. “I don’t want to fuck up and get you killed.”
“The fact that you’re still alive past the age of twenty,” Weasel replied, “shows me you got a hell of lot more savvy than you give yourself credit for.”
• • • •
An hour after sunset we slept. Six hours later, Weasel’s internal clock awakened him, and we prepared to infiltrate the Messenger camp.
“They party half the night,” Weasel said. “Shine and Slammer. Acid. Meth. Herb or xanax or paxil to come down. Whatever else they can pop or snort. They should be winding down soon. We’ll go in couple of hours before dawn.”
As we checked our gear—body armor, silenced pistols, pen lights, freshly charged ni-cads, knives, Uzi and TEC nine—I asked if he had any further instructions for me. He sensed my discomfort, didn’t read it as fear, more like a healthy wariness of the unknown. This was a new activity for me.
“Listen to me, Mac,” he said. “You’re gonna be fine. If I expected trouble, we wouldn’t be going in.”
“On the other hand,” I said, “you tell us to always expect trouble.”
“Always be looking for someone to fuck with you. But sometimes you know it’s going to happen. You’ll run across that someday, a time when you know you just stepped into it. This ain’t one of those times. We’re going in real quiet. Look around. In and out.”
“What if we run into someone?”
“Then we deal with them quietly. Hands or knives. Silenced pistol if they’re too far away.”
I thought about what he had been teaching Sarah, Stevie and me. When we all had become proficient with the weapons, he moved us on to hand to hand. Most crucial thing, he told us, was to always keep your legs. Center of gravity down low. Stay on your feet. Keep your balance. No fancy shit, he said. Take them out fast, before they can do some damage. Eyes, throat, nose, nuts, solar plexus and knees. That’s what you go for. Go for the eyes, nuts, solar plexus or knees to temporarily disable them. Fist or club to the throat or nose will inflict enough pain to stop them for a couple of seconds. Most important thing, he kept emphasizing, is to just do it. Don’t analyze it. Do it.
• • • •
Leaving the backpacks and the assault rifles behind, we crept down the bluff, crossed the river and slipped into the Messenger compound. The embers of three campfires glowed in the center of their new camp. From the weak light I saw that several of the clan had decided to sleep under the moonless sky.
“No guards?” I whispered.
“No one’s at war now,” he replied into my ear. “They’ll rely on the dogs.”
We crept behind the townhouses, entering at the end of the semicircle that was closest to the river. On our right side, our shoulders brushed the townhouses. On the left, the woods had encroached to within a few meters. Thirty meters down, we encountered the dogs. Not a pack, but the clan mutts. A wild pack would have tried to take us down. The clan dogs made noise. They wouldn’t be serious about dealing with us directly.
From a small knapsack, Weasel pulled several items, tossing them in the direction of the dogs. He pulled my head close and whispered, “Bunch of bones, plus a touch of animal tranquilizer,” he explained.
“Jesus,” I whispered back, “It’s been over two years and I never knew you had tranks.”
“Never needed ‘em ‘til now,” he replied. “Sit awhile. It’ll take about five minutes.”
As we sat in the dark, my ears took over for what my eyes were missing. Night sounds—the hoot of a barn owl, the high pitched trill of a male cicada, a mosquito’s whine, a coon foraging, rustling from the woods as the little life/death game between predator and prey was played out. I heard a log drop as it shifted in one of the fires. Sparks danced upwards and faded into the night. Occasionally human sounds would intrude, a laugh, a shrill scream, the cry of a baby.
Weasel jostled me.
“Let’s move out.”
Ten buildings down we stopped. Weasel tried the door, which responded with a squeak of the hinges. From his knapsack he pulled a little can; squirted something on the hinges. WD 40 I found out later. Sealed cans lasted for decades.
Inside, the ground level floor was uninhabited. It served as a warehouse, where they stored their arms. We flicked our penlights on, began a quick inspection.
“Get a rough count,” Weasel whispered. “That’s all we need.”
We moved silently from room to room, counting boxes, randomly opening a few to make sure what was inside was what was advertised. We came up with nearly two hundred M 16s, five hundred clips and another 50,000 rounds of 5.56mm ammo. We also ran across other assault rifles—Enfield, Galil, AK 47, Baretta, Colt. But it was predominantly M 16s, the weapon of convenience of the clans.
They also stored body armor, most of it the old bulky SWAT stuff, only a few pieces of Kevlar IV—the early 21st model that we used. We saw bayonets, telescopic sites and several hundred semi-automatic pistols.
“Let’s blow,” Weasel said. “We got what we need. We’re going next door.”
Next building over, we entered the same way, stood quietly inside the door listening for human sounds. There were people above us on the second floor, moving around. But they seemed content to remain up top.
“Let’s take a peek,” Weasel said, snapping on his mini light.
We entered through the kitchen, which had been turned into a little laboratory. Beakers, candles, kerosene burners, fat burners, jars of chemicals—the counter space was covered with paraphernalia for cooking and mixing chemicals. None of it ready to go. They were still in the set up stage.
“Damn,” I whispered. “It’s a chem lab.”
“What I figured,” Weasel said. “These boys been real active on the market lately. That’s where some of those guns came from. Traded for chems. Messengers got themselves a new cook. Bought him from the Two-Two Boys. Gold and whores.”
“How in the hell you know all this stuff?” I whispered.
“You travel. Meet people. Give ‘em stuff they want. Be a friend. They start talking to you. Something you need to start cultivating. Now let’s see what else we find.”
We split, moving from room to room on the main level, using the lights sparingly, avoiding obstacles. In the bay window of the front room I found over fifty pots of cacti—little buds and spineless vertical breeds. Peyote and mescaline.
Another room was filled with garbage bags of pot, needing to be cleaned. Pot grew wild everywhere, but the good stuff was bred, crossbred and cultivated. There were also cans and jars of chemicals, liquid and powder, none of which I could identify.
When I came across two fifty gallon drums of chemicals and a floor to ceiling stack of car and truck batteries in one of the bedrooms, I searched out Weasel and brought him into the room. He inspected the two huge drums and looked carefully at the batteries, some of which had been broken open.
“Can these things still work?” I asked.
“Oh yeah,” he said. “If you replace the water and the acid’s still active. Plus you need power to recharge ‘em. Which they ain’t got.”
“‘don’t have’,” I whispered.
“Thanks. I need to work on that. Let’s get the hell out of here. We got what we…”
…which was exactly the time that three Messenger soldiers came calling for a refresher on their crystal meth supply. The front door slammed open and a voice screamed, “Yo, Lab Rat, get your scrawny ass down here. You keep fuckin’ those bitches, you gonna get cock rot. That’s some real nasty pussy, boy.”
We heard two men stumble in behind him, laughing loudly. We were in a bedroom at the end of a hallway which was on their right. There was only one door. We had three Messengers in the house.
“Windows,” Weasel whispered.
We crept silently to our exit, released the latch on the window frame and pulled up, exerting gentle pressure, increasing our effort as the window failed to cooperate. Cheap buildings, warped window frames.
“Lab Rat,” came another voice, “get your ass down here. We need some more crank. This shit’s wearing off.”
We heard movement above us, a slammed door, steps coming down to our level. Light began to show through the open doorway. Kerosene lantern from the chemist coming down the stairs.
“You guys are fucked,” said the voice of the man from upstairs. “I can’t find anything in this mess. You gotta wait until tomorrow. Maybe day after.”
“Fuck that, pencil pecker,” came the voice of the original man. The light began bobbing up and down. Grunts of pain came from the chemist.
“If this starts to get out of hand,” Weasel whispered, “we’re busting out before they bring half of the clan over here.”
From the alcove where the doorway met the stairs came the voices of the other two soldiers intervening.
“You fuck with this guy, The Babe will crucify you,” said one. He didn’t mean it figuratively.
They continued talking to him low, intense. In my mind I pictured two of the soldiers slowly pushing their companion back, separating him from the chemist, calming him down. It grew quiet in the other room. Fo
r a moment I thought we would be safe.
Then, knowing the volatility of clan warriors, particularly those on speed, not completely confident of his own safety, the chemist spoke.
“Fuck it. I’m already down here. Let’s see if we can find it. We’re looking for a green cooler.”
They began searching then, room to room, grousing and complaining, inexorably working their way back to me and Weasel. In about ten minutes, a time span in which sunrise slowly leeched into the darkness, as they worked towards our room, the four men went into the room next to ours, temporarily dimming the lamp light.
“Hope they have good luck in there,” Weasel whispered, pulling an ice pick from his sleeve. “By the door, Mac. One of us on each side. If one comes in, I’ll take him. Two, you take the second.” He grabbed my arm and squeezed it. “Don’t worry. Don’t think.”
We were each on a side when the man with the kerosene lantern, the soldier who originally burst into the house, the one with the least patience, left the other room before his companions, entered the hall and turned into our room, several steps ahead of the three others.
The light entered the room, followed by the man, whom I could see clearly, only a foot away, and who looked directly in my eyes just as Weasel stepped across the doorway, wrapped his left arm around his throat and snaked around with his right, plunging the ice pick into the man’s heart. Surprise registered on his face. His eyes dimmed. Then went blank. Not a sound had been made.
The light moved, and I realized a beat too late that the muscles in the hand that had been holding the light had lost their ability to contract, and the lamp was headed for the floor. The crash was loud, startling. The light grew much brighter as the fuel spread, taking the fire with it.
Making no conscious decision, I pulled the Beretta 93R and dived into the hall ahead of the flames. All three Messengers had already begun to react. The chemist was running back down the hall, screaming, “Fire. Fire.”
Blood of the Dogs_Book I_Annihilation Page 13
