J Bryan - Dominion

“Then we started to see how there was more to Brother Zeb than he let on. In the three months after he left, those of who was closest with him, about twelve of us, we each got out of prison one way or another. Some folks got paroles they wasn’t expecting, and things like that.”

“How did you get out?” Ruppert asked.

“That was the strangest thing. Here I am, first year in a forty-year stay, and Brother Zeb calls me on the phone-I wasn’t even allowed to take phone calls at the time, cause the guards was mad at me over some damn thing or other-but somehow they decide to let me take this phone call from Zeb. And he says he’s bought this big farm out there in Idaho, and he’s looking to build up something called the Church of the White Creator, about protecting the heritage of the white race, and would I be interested in helping him out there?

“Well, Zeb, I said, I sure would, but I ain’t getting out until I’m an old man. And then he said, it was like scary how calm and quiet he said, ‘Anything can be arranged.’ But, he says, I got to promise to stick with him no matter what, which by then I woulda done anyhow, I reckon.

“And I don’t know, two, three days later these funny lawyer fellas show up wanting to talk to me. Three of ‘em. They said they was from the Liberty and Sanctuary Foundation, and what they did was go around the country looking at arrests and trials and seeing how to get folks out of prison cause of the government’s mistakes. They got together and went over it with a judge, and I never understood a damned thing they was talking about, and to tell the truth I weren’t even there for most of the time they talked to the judge. But the upshot was I got out of prison on what they said was a ‘semi-permnant trial basis,’ which wasn’t like parole cause I only had to check in with these lawyers instead of a regular P.O. It meant I could always go back to prison, any time, but I might never. I never heard of nothing like it before or since. Tell you the truth, I never heard of the Liberty and Sanctuary Foundation before or since, neither.

“So them lawyers give me an envelope with three hundred dollars cash and a bus ticket out to Eden, Idaho. By then I was so hell-bent to put the back of my ass to the state of Michigan that it didn’t occur to me just how it was them lawyers knew where I was going.

“Turned out Brother Zeb’s place was a house and some big barns on a lot of land, away from everybody. All walled in, too, big wooden walls all around the place, like a damned Civil War fort.

"Most of the others from prison was already there by the time I showed up. They throwed me a big welcome party, lots of beer, roasted a pig, even had a few stripping girls Zeb brung in from the city. I never had a time like that in my whole life.”

“What were they doing up in Idaho?” Ruppert asked.

“Training, mostly. Brother Zeb said we had to get ready for the race war, which was gonna be the final conflict for white dominion. We learned to use some different machine guns, sleek things out of Asia, and we learned about explosives. There wasn’t nothing Brother Zeb didn’t know about. He taught us things like how to avoid the police out on the road, and get through all kinds of security, surveillance-type set-ups. How to move around in big cities without getting caught, cause he said the race war would be urban war.

“We trained like soldiers for Brother Zeb. And he made each of us into what he called a Knight of the White Creator, a race warrior. He made a big deal out of that. You’d go out into this little barn back behind the main house. You have to cut open a hog’s throat, and he’d paint these bloody swastikas all over you, you’re naked with all them other guys watching you. And you had to say all these big things about loyalty and death, and things like that, but real fancy. But we was all believing in him then, and I guess it meant something to all of us, being part of a thing like that.”

“Did you ever check in with your lawyers?” Ruppert asked.

“Naw, Brother Zeb said he’d take care of all that. Said them lawyers was friends of his. You was grateful to him for getting you out, but sooner or later you also figured out it meant he could send you back to prison if you got him sore at you. Didn’t none of us worry about that once he made us into Knights, though.”

“Where did the money come from in all of this?” Ruppert asked. “How was he paying for it?”

“Some of us did talk about that, a little,” Westerly said. “A few said he musta got it from drugs, but I never thought that. He never flashed anything around. I never saw a dollar in his hand the whole time. Things just showed up. There was always plenty to eat, plenty to drink, plenty of ammo.” Westerly gave another blood-clotted grin. “Plenty of women, too. He’d bring in a whole group of ‘em every once in a while. Sometimes it was just a few and we had to share, but that was all right.”

“Where do you think he got the money?”

“Back then I figured he was born rich. He talked so fancy and all, and just had that easy way. Of course, now I’d say it was probably your tax-payin’ dollars at work.”

“Why do you say that?” Ruppert asked.

“Well, I was gettin' to that point, if you’d let me talk for one minute.”

“I apologize,” Ruppert said. He glanced over at Lucia, who slumped in a folding lawn chair next to the holorecorder, staring at Westerly with bulging eyes, utterly indifferent to her alleged camera operation duties. Her hands gripped the arms of her chair, as if she were feeling ill. It might just have been the hoggish stink in the room.

“It was about the summer of 2016 things started to change around Brother Zeb’s place. It started with the visitors. These fellas in good black suits come by any hour of the night and hold these long secret meetings with Brother Zeb. We kept asking him what it was all about, and one of our study nights, instead of looking at Mein Kampf or whatnot, he up and told us.

“Brother Zeb, he said we got more support than we ever knew about. He said there was powerful men from way high up who wanted to help us along, but thing was, they had to be secret about it cause of all the Jews and coloreds and liberal media and so on. He told us about it was gonna take a great big national emergency to really get the whole thing rolling. He called it Ragnarok, the end of history. He said after Ragnarok, it would be a, what did he call it? ‘A new order for the ages.’ He said Ragnarok was our sacred duty.

“Then it all got real strange. The compound went into lockdown, gates sealed up, no one in or out without Zeb’s permission. No more stripping girls from the city, neither, I'll tell you.

“And I don’t know how to tell the next piece except to just say it right out. One morning in June, musta been, these two big Move-It trucks pull up to the gate. A buddy of mine used to call those ‘Move-It-Your-Damn-Self’ trucks. Anyway, Zeb let ‘em in, and they parked inside the barn out behind the main house. That’s when Brother Zeb said Ragnarok was comin'.”

Westerly broke down into a chain of coughs that wracked his whole body. He wiped the blood from his mouth, looked at it, smeared it across the grizzled gray hairs of his chest.

“Hurts to talk anymore,” Westerly said. He looked to Turin. “Gimme one of them pain pills. The good blue ones.”

Turin removed a brown pill bottle from his jacket. He popped the lid, looked inside, shook it around. “I’ll give you a white one for now.”

“Aw, come on, there, homeboy."

“You can have a blue one when you’re done.”

“But I need a blue one now,” Westerly whined. “Come on.”

Turin tipped the bottle, and a white capsule rolled out into his palm.