Il Paradiso

            We walked for hours without stop and every time I tried to slow down Belvedere shouted things at me in languages I didn’t understand and I felt alone and tired and misunderstood despite the knotted mass of us together but I kept walking.

            They carried guns and didn’t try to hide them even though we were walking through the most dangerous section of the pass and the tall camera-towers stood on either side and would have called the shadowy helicopters like flies to carrion should they have been seen or even paid attention to but no one did so we kept walking and they kept carrying their guns.

            The ground was flat and hard and broken in parts by large rocks too small to make the road impassable but too large to comfortably ride a cart or car or horse or ATV over so we didn’t seem to make much progress but there was still much progress to be made and if we slowed Belvedere and the rest continued to shout and the young ones marching in the front continued to cry and I continued to swear vengeance in the half-asleep manner of one who has lost his mind or his will aside from that consuming fury.

            (I have no patience) Belvedere would shout in that voice of his that should have belonged to a god or a statesman or someone who would have used it for something else besides that rage that seemed to boil like fire inside of him.

            There was a soothsayer named Salvador that once had sat and muttered by the fire and thrown tiger’s teeth that snapped and clicked together in the air and had scarred his hands as the spirits made the glyphs face up or down to tell us their twisted wills and he had sent the children into battle for us and we had listened to him but now he was walking with us and beside us as though he was one of us but he was not and when we stopped at one of the streams for a blessed break to drink water two of the young men one of whom had lost his brother in the blood and the war spent the precious seconds they could have spent drinking water they would not get again for hours drowning Salvador in the stream and letting his body float downstream.

            I remember Belvedere laughing and cradling his gun like a child as he watched the two young men drowning our soothsayer and letting his body float downstream and I remember hating him the way I had never hated anything or anyone else in my entire life but there was nothing I could do and that made me hate myself.

            They called it paradise but it didn’t look like paradise.

            They locked us in corrugated steel shacks that twelve of us stayed in per bunk and I remember catching Father’s eyes as he tried to get us together again but Belvedere saw our look and singled Father out and dragged him before the rest of us and chained him to the giant stump that stood in the middle of the compound and chained him to it and stripped him of his clothes so that we saw his tattoos and his scars and his shame and Belvedere told us that Father, but he didn’t use that name, was going to die but he would let the gods of nature do the killing and not waste a bullet and I remember the screams far into the night as the tigers that crept through the compound stripped him of flesh and organs.

            They came to me once during the day and they asked me, (do you know the old ways?) I told them I didn’t but they insisted and they told me they knew the scars on my arms and my hands and refused to let me alone until I allowed them that I knew the old ways but if Belvedere or the others found out they would pull my bones from my body like ribs from a pig and they let me alone but made me swear to assist when the day came.

            The day came and they struck at Belvedere but he knew the old ways too and before they could raise their machetes and strike him down he called fire and poison from the trees that surrounded us in Paradise and consumed them like leaves in a forest fire and he ordered their corpses which crunched like cooked pork to be thrown in the clear and blue ocean and I remember that I was carrying a girl named Annamaria but now she weighed no more than a rick of punk wood and when we threw them in the ocean they floated and Belvedere laughed and asked his men politely to shoot their bodies and they did and the bodies exploded across the water like cones from a pine tree and the fish came and ate the pieces.

            (Sic semper ignavus) I remember Belvedere saying which wasn’t right it should have been something else but I cannot think right now but he left and went back to the white and clean house he lived in and we were locked in our steel huts without light or food and in the middle of our filth and starvation two of the young men who had killed Salvador killed again and ate the bodies and descended to madness and the next day was Christmas but we did not celebrate though Belvedere commanded celebration.

           

            

Hungry Jack and Montezuma

                Lee felt the familiar feeling come over him again: the raw, shaky panic that rumbled low in his chest and made his stomach roil. Outside the cell, the caravan was rolling up the gates. Hungry Jack’s armored trucks, salvaged from a forgotten Loomis motor pool and splashed with a crude red crown on their bulldog hoods, idled outside the steel rolling gates. Lee stood and watched out the reinforced chicken wire window as the black flagship armored truck started forward once the gates had opened, followed by the next three.

                Hungry Jack would eat now, Lee thought. Then he and his men would summon the women, spread the wealth they had torn from the dead fists of vagrants, gypsies, tribalists and the homesteaders that stubbornly attempted to carve a home from the thick jungle that boiled from the superrich soil. After that, well, Jack would sate his lusts with his favorite concubines and then call—

                There was the sound of a steel lock sliding back, and the door swung open. Two soldiers stood there, heads wrapped in the damp white headscarves that kept them cool in the unrelenting tropical heat. One carried a machete, the other one of the precious shotguns.

                “Up, you.” One of them roughly grabbed Lee by the arm and hauled him to his feet. The one with the shotgun stayed in the hall. Lee was frog marched out into the dilapidated passageway. Hot sunlight tore through holes in the plaster walls, throwing shards of light on the slick, mossy tiles of the ancient mental hospital. Through these holes creeping vines the thickness of a strong man’s bicep snaked, spreading their roots on the eternally damp surfaces. Through the holes in the walls Lee could see the climbing baobabs with dark fortresses of roots, colossal kapoks and abiu trees with swollen yellow fruits like warning buoys.

                The double doors to what had once been the chief administrator’s personal quarters were thrown open and Lee was shoved forward onto the moldering carpet. Hungry Jack sat on his makeshift dais, four of the largest desks in the building had been pushed together in the cathedral-ceilinged room. Four oriental rugs and a huge papasan chair had been sat atop this, and behind it all a brightly colored, hand-carved wall of wood was nailed to the desks, creating a sort of throne. Two of the concubines lounged at his feet, wearing only long beaded loincloths about their waists. They gazed at Lee with hooded eyes, slight smiles. 

                Hungry Jack claimed to be as old as the Cataclysm. Few believed him, as it would have made him a hundred and fifty years old, but others claimed the Cataclysm had changed more than the atmosphere and the soil. He had no memory of the time before the Cataclysm, Jack claimed. He had been sent to earth as a child of the sun, a god. He had no name and no occupation, but awoke in a factory of some sort. The story, as he told it, was of him standing and seeing a sign before him of his name and his purpose. He had torn down the sign and taken a vehicle, driving until it would not go any further. He wandered, clutching only his banner and a monkey wrench until he reached a small tribe wandering the grasslands that were swiftly turning to jungle. He had taken control, founded his empire in the mental hospital, and put up his banner, his mantra, in the throne room in which he now sat.

                The banner behind Jack said “Hungry Jack: Everybody’s happy when it’s Hungry Jack.”

                “So this is the assassin.” Jack’s eyes were devastatingly lifeless, the blue of a strangled man’s face or a vein under the surface of the skin. His face was dark from the sun, his hair was an unnatural white that stood up in every direction, a strange disconnect with his otherwise youthful appearance. His body rippled with muscle, wearing only military style cargo shorts in camouflage and swimming shoes. Across his chest was a tattooed jolly roger, and dozens of crosses decorated his arms. Each one of those stood for a man he had killed. He lounged in the throne, smiling.