A Good Distance From Dying

by David Carroll

  “Why do you even care who the leader is? What is your angle King of Gray?”

  “What an odd question. The fact that you are the leader is the reason you’re here. I would rather handle this merger in as civilized a manner as possible. I want the two of us, as the two leaders, to come to an understanding of how things are going to be and how they are to work. I want us to be able to peacefully make a public statement that will bring our two groups together. We, as leaders, can make this place a community.”

  “Whoa! Hold it right there. You are way ahead of the situation at hand. We are just here for the night. In the morning we are leaving for Johnson City. Those who want to stay here are more than welcome to, but the rest of us are moving on.”

  The king rested his head on his hands considering the statement I had just made. After a moment he shook his head and frowned at me.

  “No. No, I’m sorry, but that simply won’t work. Your group can’t leave. If you were to leave it would show that you have no confidence in me as a leader and in my ability to protect you. That would weaken my power base and make it easier for somebody to attempt to dethrone me.”

  I was amazed at how he had just informed me that we were now prisoners. He had said it with the cool calm of a man reading you the headlines of the newspaper.

  “That is not what we signed on for. That is not what Randy told us would be happening here. If that had been the case, we would have never come.”

  “Randy said whatever he had to in order to get you here, per his orders. The truth of the situation is that your group is now part of the Gray community. The only question is how will your group be absorbed? The easy way or the hard way?”

  “I imagine that the easy way is I do everything you tell me to do without question, which isn’t going to happen by the way. So, tell me, what is the hard way?”

  The king stood up and walked around his desk. He took a second to look at some motivational poster that was hanging on the office wall. The picture showed a boat sitting in a harbor while out at sea a storm was raging. The word under the picture was “Risk.” I couldn’t read what it said under the big word from where I sat, but I am sure it was some meaningless sentiment that is supposed to make you feel ready to go take those risks and conquer the world. Personally, I believe that if it’s down to the point where you have to draw your inspiration from some mass marketed poster it’s, most likely, to late for you to make your mark.

  After his dramatic pause to draw motivation from his power poster, the king began to talk. He kept his back to me and continued to look in the direction of the poster as he spoke. I am sure that he had read in one of his books that this was a good way to intimidate your opponent and assume control of the situation. In reality all it did was make me wonder if I could close the distance between the two of us before he noticed I was moving and if I could hit his head into the glass frame of the picture hard enough to kill him.

  “The hard way? Well I can tell you this; the hard way is something that you will not enjoy at all.”

  “I assume that’s why it's called the hard way.”

  The king stopped his contemplation of the boat and the storm to turn and look at me.

  “Indeed. The hard way is that I give you the seat of honor here at Gray. The seat is fitted with metal restraints to make sure you stay put for as long as we want you to stay put. The seat is also on the roof of this building. You will be strapped into it and be forced to watch as we march Shawn, Sass and Amanda out into the parking lot and shoot each one in their knees. Then you will get to watch as we leave them alone and immobile outside. Soon the zombies will smell the blood and begin to show up. You will have the best seat in the house to watch as they fight valiantly, but in vain. Once they are devoured my scouts will go out and kill the zombies and clear the parking lot. Once your three friends turn and come back to life then we will throw you out into the parking lot with your trusty baseball bat. You will either kill your now dead friends and escape to the outside world forever exiled from Gray or you can stand there looking at them and freeze up. If you do freeze up, after your dead friends devour you then my guards will return and kill the four of you clearing the parking lot a second time. If you try to flee the grounds without killing your friends then my scouts will shoot you in the leg preventing you from leaving and forcing a confrontation. Any of the possible outcomes will certainly end any threat that your group could ever pose to me.”

  The king walked back around his desk and sat down.

  “I will keep the other three. If Daniel decides to start running his mouth to me like he has been to you, I will shoot him in the head and make his lovely wife drag his ass outside.”

  He looked at me as if we were trying to decide who was going to pay for lunch. His expression was that of a man who was talking about the weather, not a man that just threatened to kill five people total.

  “Wow, I honestly think that you might be the most evil person I have ever met.”

  The king looked away and sighed a long, disappointed sigh.

  “Earlier I told you that leadership came with certain responsibilities. Do you have any clue what those

  responsibilities are?”

  I had no clue what he was talking about but I really didn’t want to tell him that so I decided my best bet was to sit still and look at him. He took the hint.

  “Let me educate you, Mister Collins. The responsibilities that leadership places on an individual are as follows: first, you must command loyalty through respect or fear. Secondly you must care for, and protect, your own by any means necessary. This second one is usually where all your hard choices come in. The choices that you, as a leader, have seemed to be incapable of making. The third responsibility is to show wisdom through either compassion or ruthlessness. Lastly, and I think this the most important one for you at this moment, is to know when you are outmatched, and for the good of your group, set your ego aside and surrender.”

  “And that is what all of this boils down to? All of your speeches and stories are all there simply to talk me into surrendering to you. To do things the easy way. To give you more weapons to command for the good of Gray.”

  “I don’t think I could have said it any better. I want you to surrender your leadership in front of everyone. I want you to publicly state that you believe I will be better suited to protect you and those that were in your care. I want you to hand me your people on a silver platter.”

  “What good will that do? If you think that will absolve all distrust and ill feelings from either side you really are crazy.”

  “The act in itself is a passing of the torch. A nod to which leader is the superior. A public proclamation that you think I would do a better job of protecting everyone than you could ever do.”

  “And say I do decide to do things the easy way. What happens to me and my people after I surrender to you?”

  “Then it’s over. Your group will become part of the community and will live under the community’s rules. The men will begin doing their assigned jobs. You will take your place as my second in command. Sass and Shawn will become the newest additions to the scouts. Daniel, well I am not sure yet. Bullet catcher seems like a good job for him, but I am still unsure.”

  “And the women?” I asked.

  “They will join the other women of the community as the newest additions of my harem.”

  “Your what?” I couldn’t believe that I had just heard what I had thought I had heard.

  “My harem. Keeping everyone alive is a hard and stressful job. I should be allowed the simple pleasures that my station provides me.”

  “You’re serious? In case you missed this in history class, the pharos were the ones that had harems, and I should tell you, I was just outside and it looks nothing like Egypt out there.”

  “Pharaoh, king, it’s all the same. Don’t worry I have no desire to take Amanda. She will take her place as the leader of the scouts, and you can have her as your woman. As my second in command you will be jus
t as deserving to have any number of women as well.”

  “You really don’t think any of my group would go behind your back and start plotting against you?”

  “If they want to remain alive they won’t. Also, it would be part of your job to make sure that they are good with everything, especially Amanda.”

  “What if I decided to plot behind your back?”

  “The good thing about being king is that I know who’s watching who. The bad thing about not being king is that you have no idea how many people are watching you and who those people may be. If somebody were plotting against me I would know about it. I would know long before they would be in any position to threaten me. Now, Mister Collins, do you have an answer for me? Will you surrender?”

  It was my turn to sit quietly as I thought things over in my head. There was no way I could do what he was asking me to do, but also, I couldn’t be responsible for killing damn near my entire group. I needed some time to think. I needed some time to find my course of action, something that would help us all keep breathing for a few more hours without becoming the newest set of slaves in the King of Gray’s community.

  “I’m going to have to talk these things over with my group.”

  The king rolled his eyes at me.

  “Fine. You have one hour, Charlie. If you don’t have me an answer by then I will just assume you want it done the hard way.”

  “Fine. One hour. But before I go I just wanted to tell you a little about the group you think you know so well. You gave me your impressions of these people earlier like you were some amazing psychic, but let me tell you how it really is.”

  “Sass is the strongest man I have ever known, both mentally and physically. He’s scary smart and a natural leader. Before all of this happened just a lift of his eyebrow could set an entire factory working harder and raise moral. He can’t help but see the best in everyone because that’s how he is. Better yet, that’s who he is. He’s the best we could ever hope to be. Physically he could break you in half if provoked, but you’re not that stupid and he’s not that hostile, at least not yet.” The king mimed a yawn at me, but I gave it no notice.

  “Amanda is scary. There is no other way to put it. If you were to cross her, like you’re doing now, she would kill you. She’s the terminator playmate of the year and she doesn’t care if you’re Sarah Connor or not, she will execute you and then go have a nap and simply not care. You were right; I have no idea what military branch she is in. I also have no clue who trained her or why she was here on the day that all this happened. But you want to know a really good point to not knowing that information? It doesn’t matter. All that matters is, I believe she could kill you with a blade of grass if that was all she had to work with. She is focused, driven and dangerous. And to tell you the truth, King of Gray, I think you are playing with some serious fire by messing with her the way you are.”

  “I believe you seriously overestimate her abilities,” the king said, but I could hear the waver of disbelief in him and the harsh edge of anger that was beginning to boil under his calm surface. I didn’t want to stop and let him catch his breath, or temper his anger. I plowed forward.

  “Shawn is surprisingly smart for his age. He is also surprisingly loyal for his age. I count myself very lucky to have quite literally stumbled into him today. He, like Sass, will have my back no matter what stands before me. If I am the leader of today then I have no doubt that Shawn will be the leader of tomorrow. He is everything that you need to be to command the respect and loyalty of people, and I intend to make sure he lives long enough to realize his potential. He will not live under your thumb, of that I am sure. He would never serve you without question.”

  Now the king’s face was beginning to harden as I told him about this group that he thought he could bend to his will. I could see the pilot light of anger burning in the back of his eyes and I knew that I was pressing all the right buttons to make him as uncomfortable as possible.

  “And then we get to Veronica. The woman you think of as your future bride. I am sure when you look at her all you can see is the curves of her body and the twist of her walk. And that’s okay. That’s what she wants you to see. That’s all she wants you to be concerned with. She is cunning. She is smart. If she had her chance, she would have you twisted so tightly around her little finger that your head would pop off. You seem to value only physical strength and nothing else and that will, in the end, be your undoing. Veronica is a serious threat and you wrote her off as useless except for being somebody to get naked with. In short, you’re an idiot.”

  “Judy and Daniel. By your own words are useless. These two people have had more pain dumped on them today than I can even imagine. In truth, I don’t want to begin to imagine the amount of torment that they have dealt with today. It will take a while, probably a good while, for them to work through it, but eventually they will. Eventually, they will emerge out the other side and they will be a huge asset to this group if for no other reason than their toughness and resiliency. Earlier you had said that Sass was the heart of the group. The glue that held us all together. On that little assessment, you couldn’t have been more wrong. It’s Judy who fills that role. It’s Judy who is like the mother of this group and who, in all reality, probably holds more power over the group than I do. She is the final word and the measuring stick for the rest of us. Daniel is still out in left field, but Judy is irreplaceable to us and you just wave her away. Pathetic.”

  I was happy to see the king’s face go red with the heat of anger. I wanted him as upset and singularly minded as I could get him before I left this room. I wanted him rethinking everything he had believed about us while I was back with the others. I wanted to create in his mind a moment of pause and I had one last shot which I hoped would put him over the edge.

  “And then we get to me. Look at me, King of Gray. Look at the person who is everything you wish to be.”

  “You are not what I would ever wish to be, Charlie. You are a loser. You don’t deserve the position you have attained. You are nothing like me!”

  I felt the fish bite. Now all I had to do was start to reel him in. Once you lose your temper you’ve lost the fight, my father had told me. Well dad, the king just lost.

  “Oh, I agree I am nothing like you. The only reason you have power is because you killed to get it. Me on the other hand? I attained this position, that you believe I don’t deserve, by just being myself. Funny, huh?”

  “Your definition of funny is far different than mine, Mister Collins.”

  The king wasn’t yelling now, but his voice was definitely raised.

  “People dismiss me as a threat because of how I look. An overweight guy is a lazy guy, right? The blue jean shorts, the black t-shirt and the ball cap on backwards. The converse All Stars on my feet with the American flag on them. All of this says slacker to you, says loser to you. And how I act doesn’t help your estimation of me. Always cracking jokes, always ready to make fun of the person or situation in front of me. The entire package, I’m sure, makes you hate me. But it also puts you at a disadvantage when dealing with me because you assess a person or situation and never leave that assessment open to revision. Now you know I am not the person you took me to be, but still you refuse to treat me as anything else. Well let me set this record straight. Let me give you a little insight as to who I am. I hate bullies and that is all you are, King of Gray, one big bully. If we are being honest with each other then you are one big failure turned into a bully. I guess that’s how it usually works. You’re desperate for power, desperate for respect, desperate for attention, so you take it. You bully it out of others. It’s sad when you think about it. And when we finally do face off against each other, I promise you one thing, my king. I will bury you.”

  I stood facing his desk as I finished my rant. We were looking each other in the eyes as a long silence enveloped the room. The king was so mad he was having trouble sitting still in his chair. Eventually he pulled himself together and said only
one thing to me.

  “So, it’s the hard way then.”

  I really wanted to laugh at him. Hell yes it was the hard way. There was really no other option. However, I wasn’t going to tell him that. Not yet. I had been successful at the first part of my plan, and I wasn’t going to shoot myself in the foot before I could put the other half of the plan into motion.

  “No. I will talk to my people. I will do what they want. If I have to swallow my pride and do your bidding then so be it. I will do as my people want me to do. I just wanted to give you some honesty because you have been so giving of it to me.”

  The king gave me a look that told me he was completely confused at my behavior. Then he looked back towards the poster on the wall that said “Risk” under the boat.

  “You have one hour. Make good use of it.”

  “I intend to.”

  The king nodded his head and Randy opened the door and escorted me out.

  C H A P T E R T W E N T Y - F I V E

  Randy shut the king’s door and looked at me in amazement. “You are absolutely crazy.” he said as he began to lead me back across the building.

  “You realize that he will kill you, right?” Randy said. “He won’t kill me. He’ll tell you to kill me.”

  “Same thing” Randy said without hesitation. “Not really. It’s your decision whether you take orders

  or give them. I was told that you were in the Rangers. If that’s true then you know this is wrong. Do something about it. Turn that gun on him. Earn your freedom and the freedom of everybody else here.”

  “It’s not that simple, Charlie.”

  “Yes, it is. Think for yourself, Randy. Don’t let him have that power over you. Don’t live under the thumb of a madman just because you don’t want to be responsible for the people here.”

  “You’re one to talk, Charlie. You’ve been trying to duck responsibility all day, and now you’re going to stand here and preach to me about taking the bull by the horns?”