Music City Macabre: The Low Lying Lands Saga: Vol. 1 (9 page)

Even Kade was a little surprised at how quickly the fuckers got frothy. “Damn, y’all! I applaud your enthusiasm. I really do, but I’m not done talking. But don’t you worry, there will be blood.”

“Sometimes it’s easy to lose sight of who we do this for. Yes we have ALL of this! Nashville, the Muuuuuuusic Citay! And yes, we did work hard to get it. We had to exterminate a lot of Regulars. That was difficult and taxing work. But, come on, right? It was FUN too! And guess what?”

“WHAT?” they screamed in unison.

“Chaos was pleased. Chaos, who in his glory, made all of this possible. Chaos, who visits with me regularly to bestow his gratitude for a job well done. I used to be a member of an organization called The Black Hand. I know, many of you have heard this before. However, there are always newcomers. The Black Hand serves The Eighty-Eight. Listen up! This is important, you jackals. The 88 Demons of Hell are a cabal of badass demons that desired more than anything to bring about the destruction of mankind. Our god, Chaos, pulled it off! And you helped! Give yourselves a hand! You should be proud.

So, don’t EVER forget. I’m not fucking kidding around here. You ungrateful bastards. I should cut every one of your worthless heads off and start over. You ungrateful turds. You think all of this is free? You think you can just come in here and do whatever the hell you want without consequence? There are rules. They are followed. If you don’t follow my rules, the rules set forth by Chaos, our Master, whom we ALL serve without question, you will be punished. Severely. Do you understand?”

The crowd roared, “YES, KADE!”

“Yes. You are Freaks. I don’t give a flying fuck if you like that name or not. I don’t. I don’t give a shit. But you. You were made this way because Chaos has willed you to serve him through me. So y’all should care! You should be proud. You should own it. YES! You should! When you feed, own it! When you kill, own it! When you rape, own it! When you break, own it! When you do everything within your grasp to bring misery, death, destruction, violence, and darkness to this cesspit of a world...You. Fucking. OWN IT!”

Kade would never admit it, of course—if he did, he’d kill the person he told—but he had just made that shit up right there on the spot. That’s just how totally amazing he was. The Freaks were losing their minds out there. He could see the look of mild concern on Ortiz’s face. There were times, on occasion, when Ortiz was a pussy and would advise Kade to not get them so riled up. He worried there would come a day when they couldn’t control them. It wasn’t about control. It was about the collective mentality. As long as he was around he would never lose control. Anyway, it was time for the evening’s entertainment.

Kade gestured, his thumb crossing his throat, to tell the Freaks that it was time for all of them to shut up. “Ortiz, good man, is the table ready?” Kade turned and saw the table waiting in its normal place, a black velvet sheet covering up the contents beneath.

“Yes Kade! All of your favorites are there and awaiting your selection,” said Ortiz joyfully.

“Well then. Let’s get this party started! Queue the music!” Social Distortion blared to life over the speakers singing the Johnny Cash classic, “Ring of Fire”, as three Regulars were led onto the stage. Each prisoner had a burlap sack over their head, and their hands tied tight with rope. They all appeared disheveled, and their body language showed fear. Most definitely fear.

“Ok, ok… I said shut the fuck up! Trying to talk here, you crazy buttholes. Listen up. This could happen to you.” Kade turned to the prisoner closest to him, grabbed him by the neck and dragged him to the front of the stage. The Freaks chanted, “WE WANT BLOOD! WE WANT BLOOD!” Kade threw a vicious head butt, dropping the man instantly to the ground. “Get up,” said Kade. Get…up!” The man was on his knees with his face planted firmly on the ground. Kade grabbed his arm and jerked him violently to his feet.

“What’s your name, Regular? Wait, hold on.” Kade yanked him to his feet and removed the burlap sack, which had a rather comical-looking blood stain soaking through. The man had an open cut that was bleeding heavily down his face.

“Uh...David. David Thompson.” The man was twenty something and dirty. He might have shit his pants when Kade rocked him a few minutes before.

“David. Can I call you Dave? Great. We have a problem here, Dave. Do you know what it is?”

“Listen, we’re just out here like you, trying to survive,” David pleaded. The severity of the situation had snapped him back from the head shot and he was in full-on survival mode.

“Dave, we are not out here surviving. We live here, and we are quite happy, to be honest. At least we were until you and your Regular pals broke into our house and stole our supplies!” Kade jammed the microphone he was holding into David’s Adam’s apple and he began gasping for air.

“Dave, get ahold of yourself, for goodness sakes. You’re embarrassing yourself. Let me ask you another question. Who’s your lady friend? I haven’t seen her face but she has legs for miles, Dave. Ortiz, bring her on over.”

Ortiz grabbed the woman by the arm and dragged to the front of the stage next to Kade. The woman was sobbing uncontrollably under her sack. “What do you want!,” she screamed. Ortiz punched her in the stomach, ripped the burlap sack of her head, and prevented her from falling to the ground by grabbing her arm and holding her up.

“No! Stop! Please. We didn’t know. We’re travelling through. We heard there was a safe zone in Murfreesboro. We’re sorry. We were hungry!” Dave pleaded.

Kade pondered what he’d just heard for a moment and then walked over to the table. He picked up a Louisville Slugger and walked back to the woman. “What’s your name, Miss?”

“Nico,” she muttered. She had stopped crying and become stoic.

“Nico. Interesting name. And how do you know Dave, Nico? Speak up, we got a large crowd here.”

“He’s my husband.”

“Your husband? So what does this say about you, Nico, that you would be in league with a damn thief?” He kneecapped her with a vicious swing of the bat. The sickening thud of the bat crushing her knee sent David into a frenzy.

Not one to be upstaged, Kade drilled David in the stomach with everything he had, then gave him another across the back. “NOBODY STEALS FROM ME! NOBODY!” Kade screamed, spittle flying. “I’ll deal with Nico shortly.” Kade turned to the bloodthirsty crowd of Freaks. “Stand him up. Look at me, David. Why did you steal from me?

“Hungry, we were hungry.”

Kade punched him in the face.

“Why did you steal from me, David?” he asked again.

“Told you,” he muttered through a fat bloody lip. “Hungry.”

Kade punched him twice more in the face.

“One last time, David. Why did you steal from me?” Aside from the sobbing you could’ve heard a pin drop. As if this was the single most important question, and answer, in history.

“We were hungry, what do you want from me?” roared David.

Kade dropped the bat, ripped his hunting knife from the scabbard on his hip, then walked over and sliced open Nico’s stomach from left to right with a deep gruesome cut. He reached in and pulled out a section of large intestine and cut it off. He followed that by cutting her throat clear through to the spine and then kicked her off the stage to the Freaks waiting down below. The arterial spray had coated Kade in dark red blood, and even Ortiz thought to himself,
holy shit
.

He walked over to David and said, “Well then, DAVE, if you are so fucking hungry eat this!” Kade crammed the entire piece of intestine down his throat. Dave started to vomit but Kade picked up the bat again. “Don’t you do it, Dave! You’re hungry. Remember? If you puke your stomach will be even emptier. You don’t want to be hungrier, do you Dave?

Dave was making any number of gargling, chewing, and gagging sounds, which Kade was absolutely loving. Inevitably though, when Dave attempted to swallow, he started to puke. Kade cracked him in the ear with the Louisville Slugger. “Swallow that shit Dave! Don’t you disappoint me! After all, you were soooo hungry you felt like you could steal from me. Oops. It looks like you pissed your pants, Dave.” The headshot with the bat had effectively ended Dave, and with the last shred of will he had made a run at Kade. A very slow and clumsy run.. Kade brought the bat down hard with a skull crushing blow right to the center of his forehead. Dave fell dead to the stage. He lay lifeless with his eyes open and a piece of his wife’s large intestine hanging out of his mouth.

“Well shit, Dave. Ok. We have one last toy to play with and then it’s back to work. Now Dave and Nico were fun, but this asshole… This Regular asshole was actually the one caught red handed over at the old Tootsies Orchid Lounge. When these three were discovered by our guards, this guy was loading our canned goods into his backpack. Our. Canned. Goods. Get him over here Ortiz.”

Ortiz brought the man forward, removed the burlap sack and cut the ropes from his wrists. He was about 40, and in decent shape. Obviously older. He didn’t look like either Dave or Nico, so they probably hooked up somewhere in their quest for the Murfreesboro Safe Zone. Well it didn’t really matter anymore of course, but the Murfreesboro Safe Zone wasn’t going to be around much longer. This man was probably the de facto leader of the pack, the father figure.

“And what’s your name, Sir?” Kade asked in a wickedly creepy game show host voice.

“You...you killed ‘em! You killed ‘em! They didn’t deserve that. What’s wrong with you?” the man pleaded.

“Let me make something very clear here, Mister. You are a miserable fucking Regular. You will tell me your name, and that is all. No more fucking commentary.”

“Bob. My name is Bob Taylor. Do what you will, Mr. Kade. I’m a man of God and I know where I’m going when I die.”

Kade retrieved his knife again and drove it through Bob’s foot and into the stage. Bob screamed in pain but caught himself quickly. Kade framed him as a proud man. A man who was going to do all he could to not show Kade anything. Right now, all he was showing was an extreme desire to not pass out.

“Bob, did you happen to hear what I said a few moments ago? About how you were caught red handed, stealing from me.”

“All of this belongs to God, and it is his will that in these trying times his children will share their fruit with those in need if there is an abundance.”

Kade strode across the stage and kicked Bob squarely in the nuts as hard as he could. He still had blood in his eyes, kind of, so he missed the bullseye. But a solid triple ten. Bob would’ve considered it a direct hit as he doubled over and fell to the ground. Kade stomped him repeatedly for close to a minute.

“Mention God one more time on this stage, asshole. All of this belongs to Chaos and The Eighty-Eight. These “trying times” you speak of are what we refer to as being according to plan. The Descent was merely the beginning. There is so much more work to be done. Our next little bit of work is your Murfreesboro Safe Zone. I mean, you won’t make it, anyway. That place is going down in short order. And we will fight until our very last breath to eradicate every safe zone there is to ensure the will of Chaos is done.”

“I know nothing of this Chaos you speak of.”

“Bob, there is a ton of shit you don’t know. But we’re getting off track. You stole from me, Bob. That spells trouble for you. Ortiz! The Block!”

Ortiz wheeled up an old rolling cart with a butcher block top and stopped it next to Bob. Bob was terrified. Kade stood directly in front of Bob and asked, “Why did you steal from me, Bob?”

“You heard what David said. We were hungry and thirsty. This street has a hundred old restaurants and bars. We figured one of them would have something. We didn’t take much.”

“Wait a second. Wait just one second. Bob did you say you were thirsty? I’m thirsty. People can do crazy things, Bob, when they’re hungry and thirsty. As evidenced by y’all STEALING FROM ME! I’m downright parched. Are you Bob? Ortiz! Can we get a couple of glasses up here? I know you weren’t expecting this, so we can wait a bit. Send someone back to the Hard Rock.”

Ortiz said, “Spahr, you heard the man. GO!” A large bull of a man took off down the stairs and disappeared into the old restaurant. He emerged a few minutes later with two tall pilsner glasses and gave them to Kade. Kade looked at the glasses and looked at Bob.

“Are you thirsty Bob?” He walked right up to within an inch of his face. “I said, are you thirsty, Bob? I’m practically dying of thirst. Can I get you something to drink, Bob?” He never took his eyes off Bob’s. His mic barely picked up the ominous whisper he was using to speak to Bob.

“Yes. I’m thirsty. Could I please have a drink?” Bob sounded completely defeated.

“YES! You can Bob!” Kade walked over to the table and picked up a cleaver. He walked back, grabbed Bob by the wrist and slammed his arm down on the block. Without hesitation he hacked off Bob’s right hand and threw it into crowd. He then picked up one of the pilsner glasses and put Bob’s stump about halfway into it.

“I’m real thirsty, Bob. Stay with me, Bob, we’re going to do a very special toast here in a second.” The first glass filled quickly, but the second wasn’t filling as quickly so Kade punched Bob in the chest a few times and that caused the second glass to fill.

“Ok, everyone shut up! We’re about to call it a night. One last thing: me and Bob here are going to do a very special toast.” Kade picked up his glass and swirled it under his nose. “Damn, this is a fine vintage!” At this point, Bob was a ghastly pale color and starting to slump. Kade attempted to hand him his glass, but he wasn’t taking it.