Authors: Michael Bunker
The Baron had lowered his upraised hand and
it fell deftly to the gun on his belt. All of his pirates knew to
be ready at such a gesture. That was the signal. If he drew and
started firing, then they’d all charge whoever he was shooting at,
waiting for him to shout new orders above the din of sudden
battle.
The Stranger in Black stepped off the warped
wooden boards that ran along the old historic district and down
onto the dry pavement the city had seen fit to put in years later
for the tourists. He raised meaty paws in a gesture of friendship
or conciliation.
“Now, now there, friends!” He said as he
crossed the cracked street between them, his stride long and
hungry.
The Baron knew at that very moment the
Stranger in Black was to be feared because he did not fear. He was
not to be trifled with. Or in other words, this man was very
dangerous.
“I see you’re metal men!” continued the
Stranger in Black as his voice boom-bellowed out across the empty
silence of the dead town. Now the stranger stood just beneath the
Baron’s horse. His eyes were as wild as the gray hair trying to
escape from under the black hat he’d planted back on his head. The
stranger’s skin was red and his body was stocky, almost verging on
muscular gone corpulent.
“I’ve got no metal except a still I’ve just
rigged up, but you wouldn’t want that at all. However, I’ve brewed
up some fine old dirty liquor, and I’ll share it with you if you
boys are game.”
His smile was a leer. A threat wrapped in a
dare.
The Stranger in Black reached out a paw and
let it fall like a feather drifting down from a great height onto
the horse’s face and long nose. For a moment, the beast snorted and
then seemed to tolerate it, as though in the merest concept of a
moment the angry animal had been tamed, or guiled, or mesmerized.
The Baron was not just half-surprised, but in fact full-surprised
that his horse hadn’t reared up and stamped the stranger to
death.
That was when the Baron knew, knew inside a
heart that had been wily even before the world ended, that the
Stranger in Black they were dealing with was indeed very
dangerous.
The Baron’s horse did not like anyone. Even
the Baron.
“Y’all…” began the Stranger in Black, and
any Texan, post-apocalyptic survivor or not, could tell the “Y’all”
was completely manufactured. “…come on in and have a taste of my
liquor.”
No one moved. The Baron’s men were well
trained. What they lacked in initiative and ingenuity they made up
for in blind obedience. This was what separated them from the
bikers—a sense of order. It didn’t matter anyway, the Baron did
most of the thinking for them.
“Men
don
’t drink until I do,” said the Baron.
The Baron knew it was his only play. He’d
have to have a drink with the stranger to make friendly, even
though there was no evidence for this conclusion, other than in the
less than one minute he’d been there, the Baron was certain the
Stranger in Black was too powerful to make an enemy out of just
yet. Instead, the Baron swung down from the horse, the old leather
saddle barely creaking as he did so. He turned back to the others,
catching Hutch Hutchin’s eye for the barest second. Hutch knew that
whatever came next, they were to be ready to save the
Baron’
s armadillo
bacon.
The Stranger in Black crabbed back across
the old street, beckoning as he did so; disappearing into the dark
old tourist trap that’d once promised a trip back into America’s
gloriously reconstructed frontier past. The Baron followed,
removing a pair of chain mail culinary gloves he used for riding
and combat.
A moment later, the Stranger in Black came
out holding a large mason jar of amber liquid. He produced two shot
glasses from within his blanket-cape and slapped them down onto an
old and rickety peach-colored table that had spent too many long
days since the end waiting for this moment, baking in the Texas
sun.
The Stranger smacked his lips together and
gusted as he poured enough of his homemade liquor to spill over the
rim of one cracked glass. Then, with surprising swiftness, he swept
the glass in one smooth motion off the old table and emptied it
down his wide gullet. He let out a gravelly, “Ahhhh!” beamed and
then said, “See! Not poison.”
An almost lunatic smile awaited the
Baron.
“Shall I?” offered the Stranger in Black,
indicating that he could pour enough for both of them to enjoy now.
The Baron merely nodded and hoped the man hadn’t developed some
resistance to a homemade poison. What was he to do? The men were
watching him. Weakness was never rewarded. Not in the new world.
The Stranger was devouring him with a gaze that indicated a hunger
nothing could satisfy. A
zeal
really. The Baron held up the
tiny glass, examined it, noting murky amber swirls, and, pushing
away thoughts of blindness due to bathtub gin, raised it to his
lips. In the moment before he drank he suddenly saw the two of
them, himself and the Stranger in Black, dying on the dusty old
boards of the historic district that no one came to see any more on
Saturday afternoons, wandering around in touristy wonderment,
drinking sarsaparilla, eating cotton candy, and watching gunfight
reenactments.
At that moment, tasting the cinnamon fire
touching his tongue, the Baron thought, “What if the Stranger is
just plain crazy? What if he’s poisoned both of us and doesn’t mind
in the least?” The Baron closed his eyes and swallowed the rest of
the liquid, blocking out the mental image of the Stranger in Black
dancing like an imp as they both vomited and choked on the poison,
eyes bulging, necks swelling.
Later, the Baron led his men away after
allowing them a few rounds of the Stranger in Black’s liquor. The
men were silent and probably drunk as they followed the Baron
through the wastes and back to his barony in the Scraps. On the
other hand, the Baron’s head was only slightly fuzzy but his
thoughts were incredibly clear.
Thoughts of fleeing the Basin.
Thoughts of packing up tonight and leading
his pirates on toward the coast. A coastal paradise which everyone
knew was a lie covered in an oil slick of apocalyptically
judgmental proportions. Or out into the madness that was the
unknowns of New Mexico.
Thoughts of anywhere but here.
The Basin had changed with the arrival of
the Stranger in Black. Everything had changed.
Everything.
The night wind rose and began to sound like
a wail.
Out on distant roads and along lonely
highways the bikers plowed through the night, their dim and
flickering pre-collapse headlights crossing and re-crossing the
road like dizzy phantoms. The man they’d left dead back at the
crossroads (a place all murderers and rapists and such have found
themselves since man began intersecting the ways between the “here”
and the “there”) had spoken of a rich, high valley in trade for a
pull at some warm, gasoline-smelling water.
A rich high valley…
…guarded by a lonely bridge.
Easy pickings.
The dying man was sure of it (as dying men
tended to be sure of such things) and then he’d died and the bikers
had kicked their hogs to life and plowed into the purple and coming
dark in their endless quest for redistribution. Or whatever.
The night wind wailed.
By torchlight the Baron paced back and forth
in the highest level of a tower constructed from ancient smashed
junkers. All along the walls the sentries had been doubled. There
was no ration of the nasty potato vodka tonight. No, sir. There was
only evil out there in the dark and so the watch must go on.
Evil had come to the Basin and the
makeshift, claptrap, leaning fortress of ancient smashed vehicles
wasn’t enough to protect the Baron’s pirates from the insanity of
this present world…
…of the Stranger in Black.
“I could use some boys like you,” he’d
chuckled, the Stranger had. “Use you to make real trouble for the
locals. I’ve got big plans you don’t even know about, yet. Why,
you’re organized and you’ve got a fine collection of things to stab
and cut and maim with. Baron my boy, if you don’t mind me callin’
you that, we might just do us a little old fashioned business.”
And as his Pirates nursed their tin cups of
the Stranger’
s amber
liquor
…
“You ever been
truly
drunk, Baron?”
The Stranger in Black’s eyes were focused and burning, boring into
and underneath the Baron’s armor. They were wild eyes.
True
believer
wild. Drug addict rushing on his run, wild. “Not like
this stuff,” he continues. “
Liquor
’s for children. No, Baron my friend,
I’
m talking
power
. Drunk on the strongest liquor you’ll ever taste.
Power
.”
And later, during the second round, after a
stray coyote’d ambled right up to the Stranger in Black and lay
down at his feet in the dust and fading heat and the near
darkness…
Later…
“Rape and murder is all kinds of fun and
games when you’ve got power…
real
power, Baron. Believe me.
I’ve lived by many names, and in all those lives I’ve learned that
power is the thing to have. Do business with me. We’ll kill
everyone,” he’d muttered. “
Kill
‘em all and have a fine time doing it.” And
then, “If I’m lyin’ I’m dyin’, or worse yet, I’m not one of the
88.”
As he said the words, “eighty-eight,” it was
like circles of smoke from an eternal hellfire went out the
Stranger’s mouth, four smoke circles, interlocking and growing as
they spread and dissipated.
Maybe it was there. Maybe it was a vision
from the booze, but the Baron was mostly sure he saw it.
The Baron hadn’t even touched his second
cup. He was just waiting. Biding his time. Whatever was considered
friendly, then he was out of there. He didn’t know what this
“
88”
might be, but he was waiting to fly away. Even then, at
that very moment, he’d had every intention of riding hard for the
coast. Alone if he had to. The Stranger in Black had freaked him
out. Hard. The game of pirating was up, for sure.
Mayhem and murder and trouble. That’s all
the Stranger in Black talked about as they drank his liquor. His
own men, the pirates, were mesmerized and not drunk, but quiet and
tamed like lambs he’d never known them to be. Like the Stranger was
seducing them all right in front of his eyes. Like he’d done with
the horse. And with the coyote. Even the Baron felt it. Felt
himself feel distant, tiny almost. Ready to disappear into the
“88”. Whatever that was.
But deep down inside he was screaming, “Get
away from him,
now
!”
So the Baron smiled, swirled the shot glass
and tasted it without actually drinking. The Stranger in Black
smiled to himself. Muttered something. Death and threats and more
murder.
The stray dog. No, the mangy coyote come in
from the Nowheres, cast a glance up at the Baron. A look that said,
“I’m just a prisoner too.”
“Get away. Run!” screamed the small voice
inside the Baron.
Now, today, back in the Scraps, inside the
tower, underneath the roof where he could hear the watchmen pacing
along the old planks above, the Baron knew the game of “Pirate” was
up.
Evil,
real
evil, had come to the
Basin.
Time to go now.
And yet…
Everything he’d cobbled together.
Is it worth your life? He asked himself and
was surprised when an easy answer didn’t spring from his own
lips.
Outside, the night wind wailed.
~~~
Walker lay in the scrub. It was night. His
improvised ghillie suit of dry brown grass and burlap sacking
covers him. Swirling sand lashes his eyes as the windstorm buffets
the night. He closes his eyes, blinks. Feels them moisten, barely.
He needs water. That’s true enough. Later he’ll crawl forward
toward the river and drink. Later. But now he opens them and puts
one eye to the Lapua’s scope. He sees the bridge. Then the trail
leading up into the valley. Then the pillbox. Only a trained eye
could see it, and a dozen other things that someone tried to set
up. Someone that lives up there in that hidden valley.
The night wind wails and Walker continues to
watch and think of the nine bullets he has left to pay out his
revenge. He’ll need water. Intel. More bullets. Explosives.
Food.
The wind rises, screaming through some
feature of the bridge that crosses the river, creating an
occasional lone and sudden shriek. All around him the tall grass
sweeps and hushes in a chorus of white noise that the man in the
dark almost finds comforting. It drowns out the voices of the dead
and the dying.
It drowns out his friends.
Now, he can think only of revenge and
forgets the why.
~~~
In the night wind the Stranger in Black,
Walter, Mayhem, runs alongside them, whispering their animal
whisper.
He knows the words. Knows the words that
once held sway in their greedy hearts and over saturated
commercialized minds that thought feeling was the same as thinking.
The power words from before this life, before this undeath became a
never-ending search for calories of any kind.
“Remember the Gut Bomb,” he whispers.
“Oh…” he moans. “I could eat me the Nacho
Bucket with extra Ranch dippin’ sauce right now.”
“I once dislocated my jaw on a twenty dollar
Burger. I even ordered extra chipotle bacon.”
It’s what he did before the end. Before the
Beginning. In another life, when he’d whispered the words of
consumption to the masses.
Now, he whispers at the dark somethings that
feed directions to their hive mind. Selling calories as he moves
among them, then racing off into the dark as more and more of them
begin to follow after him, convinced he knows where the food is.
Where those calories are.