David Robbins - Memphis Run

“You can’t blame yourself.”

“Who the hell else can I blame? When your mind knows a situation is bad, and your intuition tells you a situation is bad, and you allow yourself to be drawn into it anyway, then there’s no one to blame but yourself if you get burnt. True?”

“True,” Blade concurred.

“Where was I? Oh, yeah. The wine. About ten minutes after my first glass, I started seeing double and feeling all woozy. I couldn’t sit up straight.”

“The wine was drugged,” Blade decided.

“You got it,” Bonnie said. “I heard the King laughing like a lunatic, and then I passed out. When I came to, I was naked and tied to the post of a big canopy bed.”

Blade’s features hardened. “He stripped you and bound you to his bed?”

Bonnie nodded, her lips trembling. “That was only the beginning. The next thing I know, the King waltzes into the room. But get this. The man was wearing lacy undies, mesh stockings, and carrying a whip.”

“A whip?”

“Yeah. One of those leather whips with the round handles.”

“You can stop right there,” Blade said. “I get the picture.”

Bonnie sighed and her eyes watered. “He did sick things to me, Blade.

Gross things. Do you want me to pull my shirt up and show you the marks? I’ll prove it to you.”

“No,” Blade replied softly.

“I can’t sleep anymore,” Bonnie went on. “Every time I close my eyes, I see his face leering at me and feel his teeth. The bastard gave me gold coins, but I tossed them in his face.”

“There is more to be done here than rescuing Rikki,” Blade commented harshly.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m going to terminate the King.”

“Terminate?” Bonnie repeated, and halted. She looked into his simmering gray eyes. “You intend to kill the King?”

Blade nodded.

“Now wait a minute,” Bonnie said. “I never meant to involve you in my affairs—”

“It’s not just your affair,” Blade replied. “The Hounds ambushed us and abducted Rikki. The King is their leader, so the King will pay the price.”

Bonnie shook her head. “You don’t know what you’re saying. I agreed to help you because I want to do whatever I can to hurt the bastard, and freeing your friend should piss him off no end. But trying to kill the King is a whole new game. We can’t do it by ourselves.”

“We intended to free Rikki by ourselves,” Blade noted.

“That’s different. That’s a matter of locating where they’re holding him and setting him free. But killing the King means you have to go up against all of the Hounds and the Dark Lord. There’s no way we could win.”

“What is this Dark Lord?”

“I’ve never seen him, but I’ve heard all the stories. The Dark Lord does the dirty work for the King. Some people say the Dark Lord is a mutant.”

“I’ve fought mutants before,” Blade said.

“This isn’t your fight,” Bonnie stated.

“You’re wrong,” Blade responded. “This became our fight the moment the Hounds attacked us.”

“You’d be better off if you found your friend and left Memphis,” Bonnie said. “You’re just asking for trouble if you try to kill the King.”

Blade scratched his chin. “In other words, we should avoid a confrontation instead of dealing with the problem?”

“Yeah.”

“You sound like one of the prewar types,” Blade remarked.

“The what?”

Blade idly gazed at a cloud overhead. “We study the prewar society in depth at our Home during our schooling years. Our Elders wanted us to recognize the flaws in the prewar culture so we won’t commit the same mistakes. The prewar society prided itself on being a nation of laws. They forgot that they were a nation of people, and they allowed their laws to replace the development of genuine character.”

“I don’t understand,” Bonnie declared.

“Let me put it this way,” Blade said. “What would you do if a guy came up to you and slapped you on the face?”

“Kick him in the balls.”

Blade smirked. “Well, in the prewar society, they believed in settling every problem through the law. If someone was attacked, they were supposed to do the civilized thing and sue the attacking party. Personal retribution was taboo. The liberal leaders, the social scientists and the psychologists used the educational institutions and the media to turn the people into spineless jelly—into wimps, as Hickok would say. We have literature in our library from the period. The books actually encourage women not to resist if someone tries to rape them, and advise men to do nothing if someone should break into their home in the middle of the night. Gun owners were branded as barbaric morons. If a man or woman did defend themselves against assailants, they were taken to court by the government.”

“I don’t get it. Why would the leaders do such a thing to the people?”

“Because you can lead a cow easier than a bull,” Blade replied. “The forefathers of America were rugged, independent men who believed in individual liberty and the right to bear arms. But the leaders of America at the time of the war were pampered power-mongers who tried to mold the people in the image of their own narrow minds. To them, the law was everything. To them, group rights took priority over individual rights.”

“What does all of this have to do with the King?”

“We all must take responsibility for the evil we encounter in our lives.

We can’t run away from it, or bury our heads in the sand and hope it will go away. The people in the prewar society never dealt with evil head-on.

They tried to control evil by passing hundreds of thousands of laws outlawing evil behavior. But evil can’t be controlled by words printed on paper. Evil must be eradicated at the source.” Blade paused, pondering.

“The King is the source of the evil growing in Memphis, and if he isn’t stopped now, the evil will spread. I have a responsibility to insure the evil does not go any further.”

“You could wind up dead.”

“And how many untold thousands will wind up dead if the King isn’t stopped?”

Bonnie stared at him in admiration. “I wish I had your courage.”

“You do.”

She snorted. “If I had your courage, I would have taken care of the King the other night. But I didn’t.”

“You were never given the opportunity,” Blade said. “You should be grateful you survived. I’m surprised the King didn’t have you killed.”

“I expected him to kill me,” Bonnie admitted. “But he made a big production out of sparing my life. He said I might be carrying his seed, and I should be grateful for the chance to participate in the spread of his glory, whatever the hell that meant.” She placed her left hand on her abdomen. “If I end up pregnant with his kid, I’ll shoot myself.”

“Has he done this to others?”

“From what I hear, he does it about every other month or so.

Sometimes with men, sometimes with women. I also heard he likes children on occasion.”

“Children?”

“He’d probably use dogs if he could catch them.”

Blade opened his mouth to speak, when a harsh outburst to his rear caused him to spin, his hands dropping to his Bowies.

Four hardcases were shoving their way through the crowd, led by a tall barrel of a man dressed in rough animal hides and sporting a silver nose ring. They were coming up behind Hickok and Chastity, and the gunman was slowing and glancing over his left shoulder.

“Out of my way!” bellowed Nose Ring, and gave the gunfighter and the girl a shove.

The pair of Hounds reacted to General Thayer’s order to kill the Warrior according to their training; predictably, they attempted to unsling their AR-15’s.