When he’d made his way out of the apartment, he’d caught a glimpse of something shiny peeking out from underneath one of the bodies crumpled by the main entrance. He’d tossed the corpses aside as if they were nothing more than bags of garbage; which — in a way — they were. Simply meat sacks now, waiting for decay to set in and reduce their soft parts to a smelly ooze. Completely disposable. And once they were out of the way he’d found his treasure beneath, gleaming like a sacred relic and waiting to be claimed.
The machete felt good in his hand. Almost as if it were simply an extension of his arm. He took a couple test swings, enjoying the sharp whack it made as the blade sank into the skull of one of the bodies. Placing his foot against the head for leverage, he pulled the weapon free and smiled.
Oh this was good… this was really good.
When he hit the street he’d allowed himself to be distracted. He’d seen the action a few blocks away and made a bee-line for it.
He made no attempt to hide. He walked openly down the center of the street, swinging the machete at his side, as he placed one foot in front of the other, allowing the double yellow lines to guide him into the fray.
When he was close enough to smell the tang of the blood, to hear the moans of those who’d been left to bleed-out on the asphalt he broke into a quick trot, weaving back and forth across the lines now like a serpent on a branch. His pulse quickened and the trot became a jog, the jog a run, and then he was totally oblivious to the fresh blood streaming down the side of his thigh as his wound puckered with each flex of the muscle like some grisly mouth expecting a kiss.
Richard burst through a crowd of hooligans and suddenly he was spinning and ducking, whirling like a dervish on meth, his arms swinging the blade of the machete in wide arches. He felt flesh and cloth rendered beneath his attack, felt the spray of warm blood on his face, and heard the unmistakable sucking sound of chest wounds as he ran people through. Some of his victims staggered around with their hands clutching their throats, trying to contain the arc of blood that gushed from the wide slit on their necks. Others had arms, legs, and hands drop uselessly to the asphalt: phantom impulses caused the fingers to twitch, as if they could somehow claw their way back up the street and reattach themselves to their former bodies.
And it was everything he’d ever dreamed it would be. The confusion. The sounds of the battlefield, of skirmishes lost and won in a conflict that had no clearly defined sides. He could give or take life as he saw fit, could claim the spoils of war as he pleased… out here he was so much more than the sum of his parts. He was a machine: a perfectly timed, precision juggernaut that couldn’t be stopped.
Molotovs were tossed from somewhere, the glass bottles shattering across the concrete as blue flames whooshed into existence and spread like lakes of Hell across the road. Those close to the point of impact were engulfed by the fire and they stumbled around, human shaped torches, screaming in wordless agony as their fat hissed and bubbled, melted and dripped away from their skeletons.
Damn idiots. Stop, drop, and roll mother fuckers. Stop, drop, and roll.
He noticed a group of men clustered together on the sidewalk, watching all the carnage go down. They were all dressed in desert camos with boonie hats flopping on the top of their heads, mirrored shades reflecting the light of the fires so that it almost seemed as if flames were burning somewhere deep within their skulls. Not military: their equipment had the look of surplus, of hand-me-down goods from an older brother they hated with a passion. One of the militias then.
Another strolled up the sidewalk to join the group and he raised his fist at a ninety-degree angle and mouthed the words freedom or death. The others repeated this display and Richard felt the urge to laugh.
How sweet. They had a secret handshake for their little club.
Richard began backtracking, slaughtering his way in reverse so to speak, the blade of the machete singing through the air like the voice of the angel of judgment. There. Over behind the parked car. The one that, miraculously, hadn’t been firebombed yet. He thought he’d seen it out of the corner of his eye, but now he knew for certain.
Oh man, was this going to be great….
The members of The Sons of Eternal Freedom stood beneath the awning where they would be safe from any incendiaries lobbed from above. They watched the people on the street as knives flashed, as Saturday Night Specials spit deadly little peas into eye sockets and ears, and money changed hands back and forth.
“I got twenty on the little fella in the football helmet.”
“Put me down for fifty on the chick with the mohawk.”
And, as often as the cash was passed back and forth, so was the bottle of Vodka one had pulled from his rucksack. They’d expected to see more action, actually. But once things really went to hell in a hand basket, the military had pulled back for some reason. At first they huddled in stores, believing that a bombing run surely had to be on the way. But the sky was never parted with the shrieks of jets and the only explosions rocking these streets were homegrown ones: IDEs, cars crashing into the sides of buildings, gas stations in the distance giving up their precious oil to the fury of the uprising. It was actually better than they could have even planned themselves but required little intervention on their part.
“Shit,” one of them drawled, “wonder where the hell Machete Guy done run off to? Dropped two-Gs on that mother fucker. Never figured him for a coward.”
The street wars were like their own personal Ultimate Fighting Championships. However, the losers of these matches paid the supreme cost; none of them would be coming back within a few weeks to have another go at the title.
“Anyone know exactly what they hell they’re fighting about anyway?”
No one did. But occasionally one of the brawlers would get a bit too close. Or maybe they’d be foolish enough to point the barrel of a gun at the spectators. Either way, this display of unsportsmanlike conduct was dealt with swiftly and decisively: it was a proven fact, time and time again, that even the thickest human skull was no match for a Mark XIX Desert Eagle with a fluted barrel.
One of their members came shambling along the sidewalk, the brim of his hat pulled down low and sunglasses gleaming in the fading light of the fires. Before long they’d have to remove the shades or they’d be running blind in a night fight… which wasn’t something any of them wanted to experience. Not on this scale, at least.
“That Roy? I think that’s Roy. Where in tarnation has he been? Done missed all the best parts.”
The newcomer stood in front of them and raised his fist in salute.
“Freedom or Death.”
The others raised their hands in return and were mouthing the slogan when it began to dawn on them. Something wasn’t right. That didn’t really sound like Roy at all and the pants were a bit too short weren’t they? Besides, Roy always wore white tube socks not those pansy argyle sons of bitches.
But by then it was too late. In a fluid movement, Richard ripped the machete from the duct tape that had held it to his back and began his dance of death all over again. He concentrated on the raised hands first, lopping them off at the wrists so they wouldn’t be able to slide the pistols from the holsters slung at the men’s sides. As the so-called freedom fighters struggled to remove weapons with their weaker hands, they were cut down one by one with a blade that had learned to like the taste of blood and only craved more.