Mark Rogers - The Dead

“Bullshit.”

“Well, let’s compare. The Spanish Inquisition’s supposed to be right up there, isn’t it? But its record pales beside Lenin’s, for example. Between famine brought on by requisition, and outright murder, he was responsible for about five million unnatural deaths between 1917 and 1921. And the killing followed quite logically from his philosophy. He once wrote, ‘The scientific concept of dictatorship’-that is, of the dictatorship of the proletariat-’Is nothing less than this: acquisition of total power by the party, untrammeled by laws or morality, and based directly on violence.’ He wasn’t joking. His followers weren’t joking either.

“Consider Stalin. Under his leadership, 14.5 million people were exterminated between 1930 and 1934 during collectivization. As many as were killed on all sides during World War I. In 1936 he got cracking again, bumped off millions more. During World War Two he murdered nearly as many Soviets as were killed by Hitler during the same period-and that includes the casualties inflicted on the Red Army by the Nazis. And after the war, another massive purge began, on the typical Stalin scale.

“In short, between 1917 and 1953, the Bolsheviks, atheists all, killed one out of every four people in the Soviet Union. Stalin alone may have killed sixty million. Now the Spanish Inquisition could’ve been operating full blast during that entire period, and it only would’ve piled up about twelve thousand bodies.”

Buddy was silent, glaring at him. “Science says religion is bunk,” he said at last. “I took biology in high school, you know. What about Darwin?”

Max laughed. “What about him? Do you think for one instant that I’m going to let you change the subject and slip off the hook? If you didn’t want to talk about comparative body-counts, you shouldn’t have brought up religious fanaticism. And speaking of body-counts-” he took a gulp of Heineken and cracked his knuckles,-”It’s about time we dragged the reigning Prince of Darkness into this. Everyone’s favorite, Adolf Hitler.”

“Hitler was a Christian.”

“Wrong, Buddy. He was another student of Lenin, by his own admission-only his socialism was the national variety. He despised Christian morality; when asked why he rejected it, he replied that Darwin-there’s that name again-had destroyed Christian cosmology, so what reason was there for paying attention to the ethics? Good point: rack up another twelve million stiffs. More if you want to count the combat deaths.

“And how about Mao-Tse-Tung? He killed seventy million in China; one out of every ten people in the country. Pol Pot killed one out of every three in Cambodia, in two years, no less. Now that’s shootin’, even by atheist standards. Then there’s this Mengistu scumbag in Ethiopia. What a card-”

Max went on in this vein for several minutes more.

“None of this is in any way meant to exonerate all those inquisitors or crusaders,” he wound up. “I’m sure they did the best with what was available to them, philosophically speaking. But only through considerable mental gymnastics. The inquisitors were saddled with the Sermon on the Mount whether they liked it or not. And it showed in their work. They could never be wholehearted about murder-at least without totally rejecting their faith.

“But what restrains atheists? According to their own lights, they can do whatever they please. True, most cling to morality as tightly as any believer; but then there are the rational ones. The ones who act on their assumptions. Like Pol Pot. And if you wanted a preview of Hell, you couldn’t do better than Cambodia in 1976.”

Gary looked at Buddy. It was plain that his uncle had never encountered such a steamroller before; Buddy’s eyes shone with awe and hatred. Gary knew from Dennis that Buddy considered himself a kind of rough-hewn philosopher-an unfortunate self-image for such a lout.

“You really think you know it all, don’t you Max?” Buddy demanded.

“No,” Max replied.

“Think you can walk all over me because you’re a college boy?”

“Hey, I thought you were going to hurt my feelings.”

“You want me to hurt your feelings?” Buddy asked loudly.

Seeing how ugly things had gotten, Gary began to feel genuinely uncomfortable.

“No,” Max said.

“You want me to ride roughshod over you, college boy?” Buddy asked. “I’ll tell you what I really think. I think that Catholic religion you believe in is pure garbage.” He grinned smugly, as if he had just landed a truly devastating blow.

“Wow,” Max said.

“You know what else I think? I think all those priests and nuns you kiss-ass to are a bunch of fags and dykes.”

“Hey Buddy, come on,” Dennis said. “That’s enough.”

“Your broad-mindedness is impressing me no end,” Max told Buddy.

Just then a hand clapped down on Buddy’s shoulder. Buddy turned. So did Gary and Dennis. Max stared down into his Heineken.

Standing in front of Buddy was a massive bull-necked fellow with short bristly hair on a bullet skull, his short-sleeved shirt revealing two long muscular arms.

“You know,” the bruiser told Buddy, “I’ve been listening to you, loudmouth, and I think you’d better shut your trap. I’m a Catholic. And my sister’s a nun.”

“How about your mother?” Buddy laughed.

“Why don’t you just leave my mother out of this? Isn’t it enough that you called my sister a dyke?”

“Well, what do you want me to do? Apologize?”

“Why don’t you keep your fucked-up opinions to yourself?”

“And what if I don’t?”

The man folded his bulging arms on his chest. “You’re gonna find yourself wearing your jaw for a hat.”

“Really? Think you can do it to me yourself? Won’t you have to call your sister? I hear those dykes are pretty tough-”

Buddy barely got the last word out when the man’s malletlike right fist struck his cheek with a meaty smack. Buddy rocked sideways onto Gary, then slid to the floor. The man came forward; Gary put himself between him and Buddy, who was trying to get back to his feet.

“Just hold on now-” Gary began.

The man hit him in the left eye.

Shocked by the pain, Gary responded with a clumsy right. The man blocked it, grabbed Gary by the lapel, and pounded him repeatedly in the stomach.

Suddenly the blows stopped. Someone had the fellow by the arm. Left eye already closing up on him, Gary looked to see who it was. It was Max. Letting Gary go, pulling his arm from Max’s grip, the bruiser turned to face him, growling.

“Why don’t we just call this quits now, huh?” Max asked, stepping back. “One Catholic to another?”

The other answered with a scream, charging, but Max stopped him dead with a straight right to the nose, which the guy clapped two beefy hands over…Max hit him in the stomach, the hands came down, and the man doubled over with a belch. Max straightened him with an uppercut to the chin, then drove three trip hammer jabs into that already wrecked beak, each one landing with a mushy quish …the reeling recipient, nostrils streaming red, reached groggily for a beer-bottle on the bar, but before his fingers could close on it, Max hit him with another uppercut that lifted him clean off his feet. The man sailed backward to the floor, unconscious.

“Get him!” someone cried.

Max turned. Gary, who’d gotten to his feet by this time, saw three goons who’d been sitting with Max’s victim now rushing toward Max. Max moved to meet them, kicking a chair out of his way. Heading for the one in the center, he veered at the last moment toward the man on the left, blasting him down with a right cross before giving the middle guy an elbow to the cheek and flinging him aside. The last unfortunate caught a straight kick below the ribcage, and, cheeks puffed out as the air blew from his lungs, went back with a distinct bootprint in his shirt…He landed on a table, tipping it over, and bringing a small avalanche of half-empty glasses clattering down on him. Beer splashed everywhere as he thumped to the carpet and lay still.