Chapter 27

“Down to a mere ninety-eight folks, what will we do?” I joked as we left Duke and Henry behind with Ida the next morning.

“I think that we’ll live, babe,” Autumn teased me while Hannah, Xia Delan, and she kissed my neck and chest.

“Yeah, I suppose that we will,” I chuckled.

“You’ll lose a lot more before this is done, but you’ll be fine. Evidently, the Almighty has decided to use you as a kind of Johnny Appleseed figure, spreading your seeds all over the place. Literally and otherwise. I wouldn’t put it past him at this point to have intended this all along and pulled a prank on all of us,” Marcy informed us as she rejoined us on the road.

“Damn it, you busted me!” God roared with laughter as he also appeared on the bus.

“So, this thing was ... deliberate, me gathering folks up, just to lose them along the way. For what, population redistribution or something? I’m just curious as to your real game plan here, O Lord,” I confronted the Almighty, who chuckled now as he heard my gripe.

“Mostly what I said before, but with the caveat that you’ll be back to a smaller, more intimate group soon enough. Places like Stanardsville, near ghost towns, need more people, you know. I’ve used you to help get them back on their feet. For some communities, it’s too late, but not for them. Is that really such a bad thing? Even now, Duke and Henry are going to impregnate Ida together and raise a family with her, growing old together in a polyandrous union where both men are bi, of course. It’s a splendid miracle, don’t you think?” God guffawed as Leah began riding me without warning.

“Where to next, then? Has that changed as well?” I inquired of the King of Heaven, who simply beamed at me.

“Twin Lakes. Incidentally, as suggested in the past, I want the groundwork laid out for the reconquest and resettlement of North America. Lots of people will go to Haven, yes, as is necessary to help build up their population and strength, but I need some folks to exist here, in the East and elsewhere, to serve as a kind of fifth column or local base of natural sympathizers. So, you see, there is purpose even in my pranks. These areas can be outposts of sanity in a wilderness of savagery.

“You saw the benefit of such plans in places like Frederick and Baltimore, after all. We can’t leave the East to madmen and mafiosi, either. What a mess you’d just inherit later, so much harder work. Don’t forget. You’re one of my Prophets. You’re not me. Just as Marcy is one of my angels, but she isn’t me, either. Her main task is to attend to my chief Prophet, the Lawgiver, but she does side duties when she needs to hone her skills,” God laughed before Marcy and he vanished.

We kept driving for what seemed like forever, though pounding Leah and the other ladies didn’t hurt my cause. The pregnancies didn’t bother me, either. Far from it, they were proof of each lady’s fertility, a very stimulating thought under the present circumstances. There were two stops along the way, especially with pregnant ladies enduring more bladder strain than usual. The new condition that we caught from Tara didn’t evidently help with that.

When we drew closer to Twin Lakes, we witnessed something truly horrifying. Heavily armed and masked men in camouflage and olive-drab uniforms herded a small collection of folks, mostly women, but a few men, toward the water of the reservoirs. The leader of the evident militia or whatever it was shouted very sharp and angry commands at his followers, who picked up the pace of deliberately drowning their victims in the water. Anyone who resisted was shot, and then their bullet-riddled bodies floated on the surface before being fished out with the drowned.

“Hang the bodies from road signs and trees. DO NOT BURY OR BURN THEM! These scum must be made examples of here and forever! We’ll take down their bodies once they’ve decayed to mere bones. Put the signs that I indicated on their bodies, too. Let everyone see what we do to their ilk,” the leader, a smallish, peevish looking man with acne, snapped at his underlings.

“You, stop that!” I caught myself shouting after Tara hurried off my lap on the bus, “what’s the meaning of this? Why are you drowning and shooting these people, anyway? What crimes have they committed?”

True, I had to quickly get my pants back up to avoid looking ridiculous when confronting the stranger. Even so, I delighted in the fact that I smelled like very recent sex. The scent was almost certainly recognizable and would likely irritate him, I suspected in my gut. Sure enough, the sonofabitch glared at me and sniffed the air for what he had to know was sweat and pussy juice emanating from my flesh.

“Look, Romeo, we have no quarrel with you, but this is our town and we’ll run it as we see fit. You find your little corner of the world and rule it with an iron fist, or rather however these ladies tell you to do so. It’s clear that you’re just a pussywhipped pretty-boy, while I am Colonel Arliss, commandant of the garrison and military governor of Twin Lakes. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have trash to take out,” the self-appointed ruler of Twin Lakes announces himself.

“What’s your given name, Colonel?” I asked him, “what’s your grade, specialty, and service number? How many years in what branch of service? Because lately, you know, I’ve run into so many damn phonies with no actual military service records whatsoever, just a heap of high and fancy ranks. I’m Seaman Adam Clarke, if that helps. Nope, no exalted rank or title here. I did my term of enlistment in Uncle Sam’s navy, got out, and just started college on the GI Bill when the ball dropped.”

“Wait ... you’re an actual veteran?” the man grew a bit flustered when he heard that, “I’m Colonel Burgess Arliss, if you must know. My personal military record is none of your damn business, anyway. Clearly, Uncle Sam’s standards dropped due to the wars if he let the likes of you into the goddamned Navy! No wonder you never got up further than what, E-2, E-3, right?”

“E-3, but you should know that if you did any actual service. I’m betting that the closest that you ever came to serving your country was membership in some half-baked militia full of fellow pimply cosplayers. Not that I resent cosplay, far from it, but you should acknowledge it as cosplay, not pretend that it’s some great patriotic mission to save your country.

“Whatever you’re doing now, you’re just a bully like the ones that you resented years back. And I get it. Those Chads and Tyrones are probably awful motherfuckers, too, but bullying like you got is nothing on what I endured for hazing in boot camp. You see me trying to get back at the various drill instructors? Wearing a beret and cammies doesn’t change what you are, man. Those DIs earned their stripes and uniforms. Did you? I think not, from the looks of it,” I now smirked at the guy, well aware that he was furious at me and felt pressure from his peers.

My hand was on a Glock even then, carefully concealed so as not to be needlessly aggressive, of course. I wasn’t alone, either. By now, the entire caravan was armed and ready, many of them training rifles on the man and his warband or whatever from the busses. If he thought that we were easy pickings, he was in for a nasty surprise. Ninety plus snipers, even if less than fully trained, can still do a variety of harm to any paramilitary unit caught in the open.