“Pikachu let it slip. Turns out some of the kids I spotted running away were traps set up by the Terminators. Why? Because they thought I was killing all gangs. They had ambushes set up if I would’ve chased after those kids,” Arthur said, and turned to the back and saw Shawn’s face was red with anger.
“Shawn,” he called out, and Shawn’s narrowed eyes glared at Arthur. “They thought I was trying to kill them. I’m not mad, and you need to let that shit go. Not all the kids I, or we saw run away were ambushes. But I can tell you, if they’d ambushed me, I would’ve killed them and then I would’ve gone after the Terminators. It was luck on their part that didn’t happen because they only set up the ambush when they knew it was the Caravan Man.” Arthur waited for several minutes and could tell Shawn wasn’t letting it go, and made a mental note to pull Shawn off to the side and have a talk.
“The Terminators are the smallest of the large gangs, around three hundred or so. They’re co-ed, but none are under ten years old and there are no adults. There used to be more than three, but they were killed this summer in a battle with a gang. From what Pikachu said, I’m certain it was Dean’s little clusterfuck.”
“Arthur,” Chad called out, and several in his group tried to shush him. “I just can’t see a sixteen-year-old boy holding that kind of fear over hardened ‘men’ criminals.”
“Bitch!” Arthur shouted out startling Chad. “I said the same fucking thing! But I’ve talked to people who had no desire to lie and they told me that. Then one of my kids,” Arthur paused looking around the dining hall, but didn’t see Chloe.
“Babe, she’s in the daycare,” Wendy sang out.
Rolling his eyes, “That was so stupid on my part,” Arthur mumbled, then turned to Chad. “Chloe knew the little bastard before the virus and told me and Wendy the same thing we got from others. I don’t know how the little cocksucker scares people but when I catch the slimy ass eater, I’ll find out.”
Sensing, more than seeing Arthur was getting riled up, Chad put on a passive expression. “Dude, you want to launch an attack, my group is in. I’ll bring the popcorn and beer to watch when you talk to the little bastard.” Taking several deep breaths Arthur calmed down as Wendy came to the realization, Arthur would never stop hunting the asshole and when he had time, Arthur was going to find Dean. Wendy was certain it was because others were afraid of Dean, and Arthur wanted to make sure he was the only one around these parts who was feared.
“Okay, now those gangs I mentioned are the main ones around here. The only one I don’t have numbers on are the Glamour Girls because they’re south of Interstate Forty. From what Pikachu said, I’m guessing near Midway, and they number around five hundred. But the Pokémon have only been there once and Pikachu wasn’t with them,” Arthur said, and tapped the laptop.
“Now there are other kid gangs, and this is where it gets tricky. They’re smaller, but affiliated with one of the big gangs. Why? I have no fucking idea, and Pikachu just said ‘the smaller gangs needed big friends’. The kid gangs don’t really fight each other with the exception of the Witchers. Everyone is fighting the Witchers,” Arthur said, and Joseph held up his hand.
When Arthur nodded at him, Joseph lowered his hand as he spoke. “Dad, it was clear the Pokémon don’t get along with the Digimon.”
Leaning towards one of his captains, “What the fuck is a Digimon?” Albert asked, but Joseph answered.
“Digital monster,” Joseph said. “Think of them as another form of Pokémon that someone could make money from. I never got into them as a kid.”
When Joseph turned to his dad, he found Arthur holding up a hand. “Son, your mom and I learned Pokémon for you and at that time, there were only like six hundred. Shit, Pikachu said there’re over three thousand now. We played the board game and the video game with you. Then you got your mother,” Arthur snapped, “hooked on that fucking app on her phone where you two run around the property hunting Pokémon! One fucking night her phone vibrated, and Wendy shot out of the fucking bed running for the door and holding her phone, yelling, ‘Charizard is near the barn!’”
Slapping the table hard, “I caught the son of a bitch!” Wendy shouted.
“You ran out of the house butt naked! I ran after you to see you holding your phone out in front of you, running around the pasture, and the cows running to get out of your way!” Arthur shouted back.
“We live at the ass end of nowhere! Who the fuck could see me?!”
Turning to Joseph, “And that’s why when you came to me with Digimon, I told you to find something else,” Arthur confessed.
“You’re one to talk!” Wendy continued to yell. “When we took Joseph to that Pokémon convention, you were ogling teenage girls!”
Snapping his head back to Wendy, “They didn’t make sixteen-year-old girls like that when I was a teenager! They walked by with their tits hanging out! What the fuck was I supposed to do?! Look away?! Fuck that!” Arthur bellowed.
“You let our eleven-year-old boy follow them around and take pictures!”
Everyone in the dining hall was trying not to laugh as Jason finally stood up, but before he could talk Samantha did. “You say one word agreeing with Arthur, and we duke it out, buddy.”
Looking at Samantha, Jason undid his rig, taking off his pistol belt and tossing it on the table, then threw several knives down. “After you,” he said, waving toward the door.
Getting to her feet, Samantha turned to Wendy. “I’ll be back in a minute,” she stated rather confidently.
“Yes, you will,” Jason said then added, “with a whopped ass.”
Heading out the door Samantha shouted, “You don’t look at teenage girls like that!”
“We were at a fucking beach! A dime was bigger than any patch of cloth on those bikinis! Goddamn it, you were looking just as hard!” Jason shouted following her out.
“You were drooling!”
“I’m a fucking man!”
Turning from the door back to Wendy, “We’ll continue this later,” Arthur offered.
Shaking her head, “No. If you hadn’t looked, I would’ve worried about you. I just got mad that you didn’t say something to Joseph. Those pictures could’ve gotten us in trouble,” Wendy told him.
“I gave Joseph my camera because it took pictures in HD. Why would I tell him not to?”
Getting up, “I’ll remind you of that when one of our girls has a man following them, drooling,” Wendy said heading for the door.
“One of my girls dresses like that while she’s a teenager and I’ll stomp her ass!” Arthur snapped and Wendy did a stutter step. “Now, when they’re seventeen, I’ll make exceptions,” he offered calmly.
With a pale face, Wendy turned around to look at the packed dining hall and all of their teen girls now and soon to be. “Oh, fuck,” Wendy moaned, realizing the fights ahead that she was going to have with Arthur over the girls. “I’m going to stop Samantha,” she said with dejection, heading for the door.
When Wendy was gone, Arthur turned to Joseph. “Don’t you ever tell her I erased those pictures,” Arthur told him.
“I won’t,” Joseph grinned. “I made copies before I gave the camera back to you.”
Shaking his head, Arthur turned to the others and saw everyone laughing quietly. “Let’s continue,” he said. “We were on the Witchers. Now this group we’re hitting, and we’re hitting them tonight.”
When he said that, all the laughter stopped instantly. “Why the rush?” Chad asked.
Turning to Jill and Albert, “The Witchers are the worst of the lot. Co-ed, like I said, but for lack of a better word, evil,” Arthur told them. “To join the Witchers, a new recruit has to torture several animals for two weeks. The goal is to see how long they can keep the animal alive and then they let them torture a person. They have a bunch of captives in the stables inside the castle walls. There were sixty there when I snuck in two weeks ago. Basically, they’re training sick ass psychopaths and doing a pretty good job.”
“You snuck in the castle?!” Chad shouted.
Nodding, “With Joseph,” Arthur replied. “Like I said, we’ve been there many times and even spent nights there. We know the layout very well.”
Realizing Arthur wouldn’t do anything he wasn’t certain he could pull off, Chad just nodded in acceptance. “What are we going to do with the castle after we wipe out the Witchers?”
When Arthur pulled his pistol out and laid it on the table, many got nervous. “I’m telling everyone here. That castle belongs to Joseph,” he told everyone point-blank. “He’s told me since he was eight years old, he was going to buy it and live there. If anyone worth a fuck was there, I would try and talk him out of it but since the Witchers have to go, the castle belongs to Joseph.”
Standing up, “I second that,” Albert declared in a loud voice.
“I agree,” Jill said getting up.
Not getting up but turning to Joseph, “I’ll help ya clear out the bodies,” Chad told him.
When Arthur holstered his pistol, Jill and Albert sat back down. “Are we going to help?” Jill asked.
Nodding, “Yes, that’s why I told you to bring your ten best shooters,” Arthur said.
“Arthur, that castle is huge! Like you said, over seventy-five thousand square feet of living space! Jill’s and Albert’s groups aren’t good enough yet to do room clearing, and do we really want to go room to room with that many psychopathic teenagers?” Chad asked, which made Jill and Albert happy that he’d pointed it out and they didn’t have to.
Giving a chuckle, “I’m not going room to room until I’m certain most are dead,” Arthur replied. “Jill’s and Albert’s people will be on the walls shooting those who run out.”
Having no idea what Arthur had in mind and not certain he wanted to know, Chad just nodded. “This is how we’re doing it,” Arthur said, tapping his laptop.
Chapter Eighteen
Breaching a Castle
With thick clouds overhead and the sun down, the darkness was so thick it seemed like you could cut it with a knife. Jason stared out over the plateau where the castle sat with his night-vision goggles. They were over two thousand feet up and the view had been breathtaking before the sun went down. Sitting in the trees nearly three hundred yards away from the castle, Jason turned back to look at the ominous structure.
He and Samantha had been to Europe twice and had seen castles, and the one in front of him looked like it’d been transplanted from medieval times into Arkansas. Even from this far away, he could hear the loud music. It seemed the Witchers were having a party, and there was more than one type of loud music playing.
They’d moved in an hour before sunset and everyone had gotten to witness the demonic actions of the Witchers. It was hard to believe they were kids, but trust Arthur to set everyone straight. Right outside the front gate, several hundred had gathered around two men staked out on the ground. Four teens had been brought up while the crowd hooted and hollered. The oldest of the four Jason thought looked fifteen and the youngest, Jason didn’t even think was thirteen.
It was Arthur who’d told everyone that the four were new recruits wanting to join the Witchers. When the crowd had grown silent, one of the Witchers in charge had come up and announced something they couldn’t hear, and the four teen recruits had pulled out knives. Jason had looked at the one in charge and even from here, he’d been able to tell the boy hadn’t even been old enough to grow much facial hair or buy cigarettes before the virus hit.
When the one in charge had quit speaking, the recruits started cutting into the two men. Not stabbing, just cutting away on the bodies. The scene had made him sick and Jason had known none of the cuts were life-threatening. They’d only had one purpose, to cause pain without killing. By the time the sun was down the recruits were led away from the screaming men, and each recruit had been branded with a hot iron on the left deltoid. That’s when Arthur had told everyone, “They all stopped being kids when they joined with this group.”
In the glow of his night vision, Jason could still see the men staked to the ground, thrashing about. Sensing movement, Jason turned to see Arthur kneeling beside him. “I’ll lead. You stay on the outside of the line to make sure nobody gets near the tree line,” Arthur told him in a low voice. Jason was certain Arthur could’ve yelled and nobody at the castle would’ve heard him over the music.
Before Jason even nodded Arthur was moving and Jason just grinned, hoping he could move like that one day. Jason had been to the castle with Arthur before, but he’d been overwatch. All Arthur had said was he was going for a closer look. Twenty minutes later Jason had nearly fainted, watching Arthur toss a rope with a grappling hook up to the top of the wall where a battlement was. Making sure the hook held, Arthur had scurried up the wall. Jason knew that was no easy feat, even with the way Hollywood portrayed it.
Turning around, Jason watched Wendy, Joseph, Samantha, and LL follow Arthur. Behind them was Jill and her group, then Albert and his. Bringing up the rear was Chad and his group. Chad had the back because they’d shown they knew what the fuck they were doing. Letting the group move off Jason paralleled them, making sure none in Jill’s or Albert’s groups deviated from the line.
Like most of the kid gangs, the Witchers just couldn’t fathom someone coming in from anywhere other than the road or close to it. Arthur led them in from the north because it was the longest and hardest route. On that first trip, Jason had found out there weren’t even lookouts posted on the north side. Of all the groups they’d scouted so far and found, that covered only three of the sixty of their area, were the Terminators, Pokémon, and the Slayers. Of all the groups, only the Witchers were so egotistical as to not to post lookouts at the high vantage points around them.
Adjusting the five-gallon jerrycan of diesel he was carrying on his back, Jason practiced moving like Arthur. Seeing Arthur in the lead and Wendy right behind him, moving almost as fluidly as Arthur, Jason was going to remember to get Arthur to show him how to train doing that.
He glanced over at the only gated entrance or ‘portcullis’, which was located on the west wall. It’d been lowered down just after dark, and he could see a few Witchers inside near the gate and more on the walls. There were also two wooden doors that could be closed behind the gate, and Jason wondered why the Witchers hadn’t closed them. They’d done that the last time he and Arthur had come up and scouted.
Seeing one of the Witchers holding something, Jason gave a pause in his step as the young teen took a long drink from a beer and grimaced. They were kids acting, or trying to act like adults. Then Jason corrected that thought. They were adults but being young, they tried to look older. He saw one trying to smoke and nearly cough up his lungs when he inhaled.
That’s when it hit Jason. That’s why Arthur was moving so early. He knew the kids couldn’t hold their liquor or any of the other drugs Jason saw some doing.
When they reached the back of the castle, Arthur motioned everyone down and then waved Jason over. Taking a knee beside Arthur, “How in the fuck did you know they were going to party?” Jason asked.
“Saw flyers all over the castle. Party every night until Christmas, but they aren’t celebrating Christmas. They’re going to hit that group near Mountain View on Christmas,” Arthur replied, never taking his eyes off the back wall in front of them. There was only one entrance, the huge gate at the front, and it was big enough to allow semi-trucks to pass through with ease. Jason couldn’t even imagine the capital and will it’d taken to build this place.
“I’m going to ask Joseph if Samantha and I can have a room here to come and visit,” he mumbled, watching Arthur scanning the wall. “What’re you looking for? You went up right there just a few weeks ago,” Jason asked.
“Making sure they didn’t put in traps, and I don’t see any,” Arthur said, then turned to Jason. “Expect when you’ve broken into a place that they’ve discovered it, so always expect changes.”
“Your first rule is, �
�any time a crime you pull off is discovered, you’ve failed’,” Jason reminded him.
“Yes, but always think they know you’ve been there,” Arthur told him with a grin. “You sure you’re up for this?”
Jason nearly spun off, then remembered just where in the hell he was at. Despite the walls, music, and how big the place was, he wasn’t going to be stupid. Then he saw actual concern on Arthur’s face and realized what he was asking. “Harsh way to die, but I’m good,” Jason finally said.
He turned to look at the smoke generators Joseph, LL, and Chad were carrying that Arthur had made. They were beyond simple. A fire was lit in the main chamber and diesel was pumped up in tubes over the heat and a shit load of smoke was made, then forced out by a fan. When they’d tested it at the ranch, Arthur had only used half a gallon of diesel and it’d filled an acre very fast with thick white smoke.
“Dead is dead. Doesn’t matter how you kill ‘em, as long as your enemies are dead,” Arthur had shrugged.
With a shiver, Jason sent a mental thank you to Wendy because he was certain Arthur wouldn’t have remained on this side of the tracks without her. There wasn’t a doubt in Jason’s mind. If he was going to go against Arthur, he’d pack his shit and just fucking leave. And the worst part of the thing was, Wendy was more blood-thirsty than Arthur. Wendy gave Arthur a reason to stay on the right path. He’d shown Wendy just how easy it was to walk off the path and embrace the dark.
“Better them than us,” Jason countered as some in Jill’s group set down duffle bags.
“I’m ready,” Wendy said coming over carrying a duffle bag.
Flipping his quad tube up as he turned around to look at Wendy, Arthur found out he couldn’t see her even five feet away. Flipping the goggles back down, “You’ll stay on my ass and remember, everything is stone so watch your shots,” he warned her.
Viral Misery | Book 3 | Revelations Page 31
