I was listening to music all night because I was tired of hearing about San Bernadino and all the crazy things people are doing and saying. I played 'Highwaymen' performed by Johnny Cash and his friends and as I was showering an idea came to me that got my creative juices flowing.
The insanity of Mad World is not uncontrolled or unopposed. There are people like Reynolds out there who want to restore or maintain some sort of order and while it may seem that there is so much working against them, they manage to achieve some of what they desire to come about.
The look in her eyes told Reynolds she had seen it. Smelled
it. Burnt flesh and hair. Body parts cut at the joints. Bones stripped of
muscle. Human bones with human bite marks.
“Skinners,”
she said.
“Insanity,”
Reynolds replied.
“Desperation.”
Reynolds
had seen people resort to cannibalism and they always went mad. Either from eating diseased meat or
guilt, or both, they always lost it and with it their safety, security and
sanity.
“Maybe,”
Reynolds said.
The
woman cleaned the rest of the blood and gore off her face and hands.
Reynolds
hefted his backpack on and handed her the shoulder bag.
“You
trust me with your bag,” she asked.
“Yeah,”
Reynolds said. “There’s nothing worth anything in it.”
She
put it over her shoulder and opened the flap to peer inside. She
shrugged and closed the flap.
Reynolds
felt relieved to see the smoking spiked behemoth on the horizon that was what
remained of Oklahoma City.
The
ruddy evening sky matched the distinctly Oklahoma dirt. The dry summers had created ideal
conditions for dust storms and smoke to combine and paint the sky in reds and
rusts.
Tonight
it was particularly sweet.
“You
headed into the city,” the woman asked.
“No,
to the west of it. Just off the highway.”
Reynolds
always felt relieved to see the city.
“I
don’t want to go into the city.”
“We
won’t.”
“Nothing
but skinners and crazy cults.”
“Skinners,
yes. Cults, not that I know of.”
There
were dangers in the metro area.
Zombies still crept through empty buildings. When someone died out on their own they changed if their
brain was still intact. Some were
stuck but some found their way out of their tombs and sought out the living.
Then there were the skinners. More
and more people succumbed to the temptation of human flesh when the winter was
cold and long. They were dangerous
and a few large gangs of them roamed the city.
And
then there were the ‘cults’.
“I
heard there was a group that branded their people with the letter D on their
faces.”
Reynolds
knew who she was referring to and they were not a cult.
“The
Darren Group,” he replied more as a whisper of dread than an acknowledgement of
affirmation. “They only brand their slaves on the face.”
“They
take slaves,” she asked.
“Yeah,”
he said.
“I
would rather be eaten by skinners than taken a slave.”
“Well
neither will happen if we get to the highway before that sun sets.”
Reynolds
led the woman through a small quiet neighborhood and to the edge of a highway.
From
the overpass they could still see the city beyond and a clear view of the
sunset.
“We
staying here,” she asked. She watched the sunset and gnawed on a piece of
jerky.
“Yep,”
he replied. “We’ll be safe and in the morning we’ll head home.”
“I
don’t want to stay in the city.”
“We’re
far enough away from the bad parts of it.”
“Okay.”
Reynolds
never slept through the night anymore.
He
remembered reading somewhere that a long time ago people would wake up in the
middle of the night for an hour or so. He found himself doing this and used
that time to think.
Tonight
though something drew his attention.
The
dark shape that was Oklahoma City that lay on the horizon was pierced in the
center by a tall spire of an office building.
Once
home to an energy company, it was empty for a while and then after the world
went mad a group of survivors moved into it that formed a new government for
the city.
Led
by an insane dictator the group managed to take over much of the city and now
wanted to take all that Reynolds had worked for.
They
became known as the Darren Group, named for the tower that they claimed as
their base.
The
tower was visible from pretty much anywhere in the city. Reynolds watched its dark shape in the
distance.
He
heard the woman get up and walk toward him.
“You
okay,” she asked.
“Yeah.
Come here and watch this.”
She
shuffled in the starlight toward him and sat next to him on the highway divider
that was blocking the overpass.
Reynolds
could feel she was about to ask what she was watching for when it happened.
A
series of bright green and orange flashes emitted from the tower. In the dust and smoke they looked like
spikes of green and orange shooting from the tower. The green one north, the orange one to the east.
“Whoa,”
she said. “Were those lasers?”
“Yes.”
“Who
were they shooting them at?”
“Those
weren’t powerful enough hurt anything, they were signaling someone.”
They
watched as the lasers flashed in sequences and then went out.
The
Darren Group had agents everywhere and Reynolds saw now how some of them were
getting their orders.
They
watched for about an hour as seven different colors shot from the tower. A
yellow laser fired west and Reynolds tried to record the coded message as best
he could with marker and cloth.
“Why’d
you write that one down?”
“I
think it is morse code and my people are that direction.”
“Are
they in danger?”
“Always.”
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