Fail State, page 21
part #2 of End of Days Series
“What? By sending Leo down the hill on a search and destroy mission? I’ll admit the idea of pushing him out the gate does appeal.”
“We should be turning you out of the gate,” Vaulk shot back.
“Try it,” Muller growled.
Vaulk stiffened and stepped towards him but before the two could come to blows, Jonas intervened.
“Whoa now. Settle down. Leo, be cool. Sheriff, I understand why you’re angry, but that stand off was always going to end badly. You and me, we know those guys. They’ll be back. And Leo here…”
Jonas turned a cautionary frown on the security contractor, warning him without saying so to shut the fuck up.
“… He might’ve run his mouth. But he wasn’t alone. And I did see him get the dude who killed Howard. Dude straight up murdered Mister Wetsman and Leo settled with him for it. Drew down and waxed that motherfucker.”
Muller looked sceptical and chagrined, but he took Jonas at his word. After all, his word was good in Silverton.
Leo Vaulk, meanwhile was staring at him with undisguised amazement. He’d spent the entirely of the firefight curled deep in cover, squeezing off rounds high into the air. If he hit anything it was most likely a bird passing far overhead.
He was smart enough to shut up and let Jonas speak for him though.
Muller decided to let it go.
“Just keep him out of my sight,” he said. “Vaulk, you should probably man the other gate from now on.”
“Oh that’s just great,” O’Shannassy protested. “Take one of our best fighters and banish him to the outfield. Are you trying to get us all killed? We need to seize the initiative here.”
And they spooled up their engines again.
“We need to secure the town,” Muller snapped. “What we don’t need is to go off on one of your sniper hunts and foolishness. You’re just gonna get even more people killed.”
“Couldn’t do any worse than you have so far,” said O’Shannassy.
“Shut up!” a woman’s voice cried out. “Shut up the pair of you!”
Doctor Cornwell stomped up to Muller and O’Shannassy and whipped at them with the ear piece of her stethoscope.
That did indeed shut them up.
Howard Wetsman had descended from his last watch on the Seattle Gate and his funerary party now carried him away to…
Well, to be honest, Jonas had no fucking idea. He’d never bothered to find out what happened when you caught one in Silverton. Not if you were on this side of the gate. Cornwell’s eyes were red-rimmed and wet with tears.
“You should be ashamed of yourselves,” she glared. “Both of you. The best man this town had on its side is dead of this madness and all you can do is bicker about the size of your dicks. Well let me put you out of your misery. I’m your doctor. Both of you. They are nothing to brag about.”
“Hey now,” O’Shannassy protested. “That’s not so.”
But Dave Muller blushed and found something fascinating to inspect at the end of his boots.
“Sorry, Doc,” he said quietly.
O’Shannassy too then underwent a moral collapse.
“I’m sorry too,” he said.
They both watched as friends and neighbours carried Howard Wetsman away, wrapped in white linen stained red with blood. The colours of the Hells Angels.
Somebody started to sing in a fine, sweet voice and Jonas was surprised to discover it was Dale.
Singing The Streets of Laredo.
The young Marine Corps veteran stood smiling sadly, a strange light in his eyes. He reeked of urine, but he was completely transported to some better place where he sang beautifully, almost an aria, of a poor cowboy, now wrapped in white linen and as cold as the clay that would soon close over his mortal remains.
Nearby townspeople stopped whatever they were doing and fell silent. Sheriff Muller removed his hat. Darren O’Shannassy hung his head and Doc Cornwell suppressed a quiet moan of grief.
Jonas shivered as Dale bade them all to beat the drum slowly and play the fife lowly.
He hadn’t realised it until now, but Dale Juntii was authentically mad.
25
Hashtag, blessed
Leo Vaulk took his banishment to the far end of town with unexpectedly good grace. He’d so fully embraced the myth of his courage and warrior prowess in the fight at the Seattle Gate that Jonas could see the dude was starting to believe he really had stood into the face of the enemy’s fire and that he did totally and personally lay the vengeance of the town upon the killer of Howard Wetsman.
Jonas had cooked up that bullshit on the spot, to dampen Sheriff Muller’s ire and redirect his ill will away from Vaulk. Leo wasn’t much of a man, but he belonged to Jonas now. One of the guys he figured he could count on if it went bad here.
And make no mistake, podcast listeners… it was some hard fucking times in Silverton.
Jonas had the same uneasy feeling he remembered from Florida, right before Hondo fired him and ratted him out to the Bar Association; weirdly enough for screwing up a gig with the Outlaws motorcycle gang. Man, he’d never expected to cross those assholes again. He pled their guy out, as agreed, but there were some, you know, irregularities with invoicing the shelf company the bikers used to wash all the funds sluicing into the club from their off-the-books revenue streams like gun running, loan sharking and, of course, drug trafficking.
That was all ancient history now, he told himself, as he stalked back up Main Street, heading for his cabin at Al’s, and hopefully for a hot bath and some desperately needed high-intensity jungle sex with Tomi Yates. His cock still hadn’t gone down. It was literally high on life.
“What’re you laughing at?” Dale Juntii asked, intrigued to know whatever had just made Jonas giggle like a pantomime fiend.
Jonas looked at him as they passed the Farmer’s Mutual where he’d rescued Al Barrett.
“Tomi,” he said.
Dale snorted.
“Testify, brother.”
Leo Vaulk walked on the other side of him.
Banished by Sheriff Muller, he’d chosen to stick with Jonas rather than cleave to Darren O’Shannassy who was trying to round up the votes for an extraordinary session of the Emergency Committee.
He struggled to keep up with the younger, fitter men. Vaulk was at least twenty years older and a lot chunkier, and he still carried a heavy load of armaments and reloads. His colour was high and his receding hair was plastered with sweat, but he double-timed it anyway to stay in contact with Jonas and Dale.
As they put distance between themselves and the Seattle Gate the street scenes gradually returned to normal – for a fucked up, half-apocalyptic tiny Asian penis value of normal. Jacques Loubert was leading his gardening crew back to the fields, escorted by half a dozen of the town's designated hunters, all of them carrying rifles. Picks and shovels crunched into the black soil of the town common, turning over the sod, readying the earth for seeds, fertiliser and water. The sun glinted off the glass panels of the hothouse where Lachie Saunders had promised everyone he could grow asparagus spears at the rate of nearly a foot a day, given the right conditions. Sheriff’s deputies and Wolfenden militia shouted at squads of the Town Watch, directing them to man the Wall or the Gates.
"When do you think they'll come back?" Jonas said, directing the question at Dale.
"The bikers?" he replied. "If they're smart, late tonight. Like, really late, when everyone here is exhausted and strung out from watching out for them. An hour after that. That's when I’d come."
They crossed over Main, passing through the ever-growing garden beds of the town common by means of an improvised footpath constructed of wooden pallets salvaged from Darren O'Shannassy's supermarket and broken up for a rudimentary boardwalk. Nobody stopped them to ask to help with the planting. Jonas was smeared with his own blood from the shallow splinter wound he had taken. Dale carried himself with a serene detachment that didn’t invite interjection. And Leo looked like their fat, asthmatic gun bearer.
"I got the bastard who murdered poor old Howard,” he said for no apparent reason at all.
Except there was a reason. A good one.
Leo’s eyes darted to Jonas, and then to Dale before he dropped his gaze. Jonas could have let him squirm. They both knew he’d done no such thing. But he did not leave Leo Vaulk swinging from his dick in the breeze. That was not the smart play here.
"You did that, Leo," he confirmed. "I don't know that you meant to, the way you were just spraying that bullet hose of yours around, but yeah, you got him. I saw it.”
"It's a weird place, a battle,” Dale Juntii said, mostly to himself.
"Well I got him," Leo insisted.
"And I will tell anybody who asks that you did," Jonas said, clapping him on the shoulder.
They passed out of the town common and onto the tarmac of Main Street’s divided road on the other side. Leo looked like he was trying to say thank you, but he couldn't look Jonas in the eye.
Jonas smiled.
"I used to be a lawyer," he said. "Did you know that, Leo?"
The contractor’s weapons clanked and rattled as he shifted on his feet. His face was covered in a thin greasy sheen of perspiration. "I think I heard that, yeah. Somewhere back east, right?"
"Florida," Jonas said. "I did a lot of criminal work. Defended the sort of guys your company was hired to defend other people against."
He smiled as though they shared some inside joke. Dale had gone back to beaming at the sky with his eyes closed.
Leo looked like he had some difficulty unpacking what Jonas had just said, but finally he got it.
"Right," he said. "You represented the bad guys. In court and stuff.”
Jonas beamed.
"Yes, yes I did. I did a lot of time in court. Took a lot of witness statements. Cross-examined a lot of people in the dock. You know what I found out, Leo?"
"No,” he said, not looking as though he wanted to find out, “What?"
"Every event is infinitely describable. And every person who was there saw it differently. Sometimes so differently that you wouldn't believe they were talking about the same thing. But they all believed that they saw what they saw. You understand?"
Leo Vaulk managed to hold his eyes for a few moments this time.
"I think I do, yeah.”
Jonas grinned.
“Not my scumbag clients, of course," he said. "They were a bunch of lying assholes. But I know what I saw today Leo. I saw you cover yourself in glory, man. You walked into the guns. The gate held. And Howard’s killers are dead. That's all anybody is ever going to hear from me."
Dale Juntii looked like as if he’d fallen asleep on his feet.
"What about you, Dale?" Jonas asked. “You good with that?”
Dale opened his eyes, and blinked as if surprised to find himself alive.
"Hell,” he yawned. “I don't remember anything after pissing my pants. That's how it goes for me, bro. It's a gift.”
"I can see that," Jonas said. “Hashtag blessed, man.”
"Yeah, I am,” Dale said. “But I fucking reek. I gotta go wash down and change. Later."
He left them standing on Main Street.
"I should get cleaned up too, Leo," Jonah said. "I'll see you down at the other gate. We need to talk about some shit.”
Leo Vaulk reached out and gripped Jonas by the arm before he could break away.
"Thank you," he said. "I won't forget this."
Jonas smiled.
“Hashtag blessed, man.”
Tomi was waiting for him in the hot tub with cold beer. A sixpack of Old Schoolhouse IPA from the back of big Al’s walk-in cold store, which was now running on a diesel generator. She rode him hard but ruined everything when she started crying after he came, blubbering that she thought she’d lost him. Jonas was in no mood for that shit, so he carried her to the unmade bed, turned her over and fucked her into shutting the hell up, at least for a while. He wasn’t sure he had that last one in him, but… turned out almost getting his ass shot off was some horny fucking goat weed for the soul. When he was done, he smacked Tomi on the rump, telling her to go grab the last of the beers. He needed some thinking time.
She complied. Happily, he assumed, since she’d stopped blubbering. One of those bitches who measured herself by how much you wanted to put it to her. And he’d banged her five times today. So even if he was shooting dry at the end she had that dick-drunk afterglow now.
“Baby don’t go out again, okay?” she said, kissing him lightly and dancing her fingers over the dressing on his cheek. “You did your bit today.”
They lay in the tangle of damp bedsheets. Jonas leaned up against the padded headboard, Tomi on her stomach next to him, one long leg draped over his. The TV was on, but the screen was just white noise. He had the volume down. There hadn’t been any network or cable coverage for nearly a week. Maybe the fake news giants had folded up like a cheap Chinese umbrella in a typhoon. Or maybe the Chinese or Russians or some merry prankster from Gab had simply hacked the delivery channels. Jonas didn’t know and didn’t much care. He was still breathing and fucking and that was what mattered.
If he was being straight up with the truth of it, he could die an old and happy man never again having the experience of some asshole trying to kill him. And indeed, with his head buzzing from three heavy ales on an empty stomach, and his cock all but numb from pussy burnout, he was a little surprised to find himself… happy.
When had he last been truly happy? Like genuinely content?
That morning he found out his podcast had cracked the front page of iTunes?
Probably not.
He sipped at the Old Schoolhouse and kneaded Tomi’s ass because it was a such perfectly sculpted piece of vanilla booty it legitimately demanded the attention. He hadn’t been content, as such, when his podcast, The Centurion, had exploded. He’d been stoked, jacked up, hungry for more. But that wasn’t happiness.
“Baby, did you hear me?” Tomi said
“Huh,” Jonas grunted.
“I said you shouldn’t have to go out again,” she pouted. Kissing the visible ridges of his abdominal muscles. He’d always been cut, but the hard physical labour and reduced rations of the past week—and all the bootleg protein bars he’d scarfed—it’d really stripped the last softness from his frame. He was probably down to low single-digits in body fat. Tomi traced a feather-lite trail of kisses up his sternum, throwing her leg all the way over him and settling herself atop his lap, where she squeezed his hips between her thighs and gently rubbed her snatch into his groin.
Jesus Christ this bitch was insatiable.
“I need to reload, baby,” he said, gentling her off him, but giving her a friendly butt-slap to testify to her infinite hotness.
She looked like she might start sulking but he scoped her body and smiled, growling, “So fucking hot,” and that was enough to chill the bitch out.
She joined him back in the hot tub. Big Al’s ran to industrial scale solar tanks and the water was still pleasantly warm. Jonas soaked his muscles and let Tomi scrub all the sex off him.
“Are we going to be all right?” she asked, before quickly adding, “If those guys come back? The bikers.”
“We are gonna be fine, baby,” he answered, leaning into the promise of their future.
“But what if they come back?”
“Oh, they’ll come back,” he said. “And they’ll come heavy too.”
Tomi stopped sponging his pecs.
“Honey, they’re fucking animals. Do you think we can fight them off? I mean, look at what happened when that greaser attacked Al. Everyone just stood around. Except you.”
Jonas smiled.
“Except me, yeah.”
Then he shrugged.
“Someone else woulda done something eventually. Sheriff Dave or one of his guys. Dale Juntii if he’d been there. For sure. Maybe even Leo.”
Tomi snorted at that.
“As if.”
“Yeah,” Jonas conceded. “Okay, that’s a long shot. But that was then. This is something else. People here, they been schooled in some hard truths since shit went dark. The cavalry’s not coming, T. Not the army, the state troopers, National Guard. None of them. What is coming are more fucking animals, like you said. Cos they’re the only ones fit to survive this crash. Gangs, criminals, fucking taco bandits like that spick who bashed Al, the whole fucking evil clown show. Shit, maybe even the gooks. They started this….” He paused to think about it, before going on. “Probably not them, though. Pretty sure we could still nuke Beijing, if we haven’t already.”
He almost felt as though he was back on his pod, riffing quietly but fiercely into his mic in the dark hour before dawn. Tomi looked worried and he smiled, pulled her into his lap.
“Doesn’t matter who comes, though,” he said, nuzzling into her neck, chewing on the earlobe. “We’ll kill ‘em all.”
She groaned and started to move against him.
Then she stopped.
“But what if we can’t?” she asked, pushing back. “What if they just swarm us? I heard there was hundreds of them.”
Thinking back on it later, Jonas had to confess to himself if nobody else, that she caught him at a moment of weakness. Almost unbelievably his cock started to stir again. The beer, the hot tub, the lips of her hungry little minge folding around his shaft, he lost the usual iron grip he kept on his thoughts.
“If they come over the wall or through the gates I’ll get you out,” he murmured into her neck, feeling through his lips and tongue the strong and quickening heartbeat pulsing through her carotid.
“Will you? How?” she breathed.
He should have stopped then. Should have just bullshitted her, but Tomi had reached down to cup his balls in her hand and she was gently rolling his nads through her fingers and, well, what the fuck would you have done? Jonas told her about the getaway plan.
Seriously fucking stupid. Like, fatally dumb.
But he did score the best blowjob of his life out of it.
