Dallas Run

Chapter Eighteen

“What do you think of my royal chariot?”

“You’re kidding, right?”

The Lawgiver sighed and gazed at the scenery on his side of the car.

“The heathen are pathetically ignorant.”

Blade pursed his lips and pondered his predicament. Should he make a break now or later? He shifted and looked at the occupants of the rear seat. The Lawgiver sat on the driver’s side, his white hair and beard whipping in the wind. In the middle sat Aaron, and on Aaron’s right another of the Chosen. Both men held their rifles steadily, the barrels trained on the Warrior.

“This is the only functional car in all of Dallas,” the Lawgiver commented.

“I believe it,” Blade said. He’d been mildly surprised when they’d emerged from the stadium to behold a battered, rust-rimmed, faded green convertible awaiting them.

“One of my followers found the vehicle under an overpass south of the city,” the Lawgiver elaborated. “There are plenty of old underground tanks to siphon the fuel from.”

“What about the battery? It had to be dead,” Blade noted.

“Do you realize how many abandoned warehouses there are in a city this size? And not all of them have been looted. We have a hoard of firearms, kerosene, lanterns, batteries, you name it. We also possess several generators for recharging our batteries.”

“Did you find any medicine?”

“Medicine?”

“Yeah. Bandages, splints, pills, cures for insanity,” Blade quipped, and immediately felt a sharp pain in his ribs. He looked down at the Llama semiautomatic poking him in the side, then stared at the stocky man beside him. “I hope your popgun doesn’t have a hair trigger.”

“Don’t insult the Lawgiver,” the man stated harshly.

“That’s quite all right, Brother Solomon,” the Lawgiver said. “We should expect such conduct from those who are impure.”

“Yes, Lawgiver,” said the stocky one.

The sixth man in the convertible, the young driver, glanced in the rearview mirror. “Lawgiver, how long will it be before all the impure see the light?”

“Be patient, Brother Uriah. In the fullness of time the Maker will convert the entire world.”

“Then it’s true?” Blade interjected. “You intend to conquer the whole world?”

“Not conquer, convert,” the Lawgiver said, correcting the Warrior.

“Eventually, only those who bear the Mark of the Chosen will exist on this planet.”

“No way,” Blade said.

“Where the Maker’s will is concerned, there is always a way,” the Lawgiver responded. “As the Maker’s chosen servant, I will realize the divine will.”

“When did you first notice that you suffer from delusions of grandeur?”

Blade cracked.

“Your kind is so predictable,” the Lawgiver stated. “When logic fails, you resort to insults.”

“What logic?” Blade retorted. “All I’ve heard are ravings about dominating the world. Be serious.”

“I am serious,” the Lawgiver replied. “I’ll try to explain sufficiently so you can understand. Over seven decades ago I came into this evil world, and I was the very first to be born bearing the Mark. For years I believed I was inferior because of the green spots on my skin. Not until I became a teenager did the full truth dawn.”

“What truth?” Blade inquired, raising his voice to insure he would be heard. He gazed at the speedometer, which turned out to be broken, and estimated they were traveling to the southeast at 50 miles an hour.

“My parents taught me to read at an early age, and one of the few books we owned was the Bible. I spent every free minute reading that precious book, and one day I found the passage that would give meaning to my life,” the Lawgiver said. “Until that day I was an outcast, shunned by everyone but my mother, father, and sister.”

“Your sister?” Blade interrupted.

The Lawgiver’s expression became sad. “Yes, my dearest Esther, long since departed. She was born two years after me, and like me, she bore the Mark.” He paused, frowning, then resumed his tale. “One day I read in Genesis about Cain and Abel. Are you familiar with the Scripture?”

“Cain killed Abel and was sent into exile.”

“That’s only part of the story. Before the Maker sent Cain into exile, the Maker put a mark on Cain so that anyone who met him would know he was under the Maker’s protection,” the Lawgiver said, and quoted from memory. “And the Lord set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him.”

“What does this have to do with your plan to convert the world?” Blade inquired.

“Let me finish,” the Lawgiver snapped, and frowned. “When I was reading that story, the idea first occurred to me that there might be a divine purpose behind my own marks. I searched the Scriptures and found other references.” He paused, recalling the passages. “He hath set his bow, and set me as a mark for the arrow.”

Blade studied the Lawgiver’s features, detecting a peculiar, far-off aspect to the elderly man’s eyes.

“And haven’t you read in Ezekiel about the mark the Maker put on his chosen, and how those with the mark were spared?” the Lawgiver went on.

“There are many more I could quote. One of my favorites is from Galatians. ‘I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.’”

“I think you’re misinterpreting—” Blade began.

“I knew then and there that my curse was really a blessing,” the Lawgiver said, cutting the Warrior off. A gleam came into his eyes and he smiled serenely. “Instead of being afflicted, I was truly blessed. The Maker had selected me to establish the kingdom of heaven on earth. All the proof I needed, all the clues to the special relationship I enjoyed with our Maker were right there in Scripture for anyone to read.” He chuckled, and quoted more passages. “I have made a covenant with my chosen. Even him whom he hath chosen will he cause to come near to him. I have exalted one chosen out of the people.”

An uneasy feeling gnawed at Blade’s mind. He knew, from past experience, that those who were affected by madness were totally unpredictable and supremely dangerous, and he saw in the transported countenance of the Lawgiver every indication that the man was pathologically demented.

“Where is God my Maker, who giveth songs in the night?” the Lawgiver asked. “What does Psalm Sixty say? Oh, yes. ‘Thou hast made us to drink the wine of astonishment.’” He giggled inanely.

“So you decided those green splotches meant you had a spiritual purpose to fulfill?” Blade asked, hoping to prompt the Lawgiver into continuing the narrative.

“There was no room for doubt. I bore the Mark of the Chosen, and since we were instructed to be fruitful and multiply, I did exactly that. Esther and I had nine children, and all nine were exactly like us.”

“You took your sister as your wife?”

“There was no one else to take,” the Lawgiver said. “It took me over a year to convince her of the righteousness of my cause, but eventually she came around. We went off by ourselves and hid in the woods, and while we were there I found the secret.” He rubbed his palms together gleefully.

“What secret?”

“You’ll see shortly,” the Lawgiver said, and lapsed into silence.

Blade faced forward and placed his hands on the dash. Several questions had been answered, but pieces of the puzzle remained. He now knew that the Chosens’ religious beliefs stemmed from the Lawgiver’s interpretation of key passages in the Bible, an interpretation warped by the vindictiveness of a man who couldn’t tolerate being born “different,” a man branded by more than the green splotches on his body, a man who had to justify his existence by inventing a special link to Deity. He also knew the core of the Chosen were composed of the Lawgiver’s own family.

But the knowledge didn’t explain how the Lawgiver was able to convert those who weren’t born with the marks. And the knowledge didn’t explain how the Lawgiver could maintain his sway over those who were converted.

It wasn’t as if the Chosen were zombies.

They drove to the south for seven more miles, encountering fewer and fewer structures the farther they went. Finally the convertible climbed a hill, and the driver braked and pulled over to a weed-choked curb on the left.

Blade surveyed the landscape. On the right was a sloping field. On the left, next to the curb, stood a sign partly destroyed by the passage of time and the ravages of the elements. It bore the words CHEMITEX, INC.

“Get out,” Aaron ordered.

The Warrior climbed from the convertible, and the guards fanned out, encircling him.

“Come with me,” the Lawgiver said, beckoning with his right arm.

Blade moved toward the curb, the guards parting to permit him to walk alongside their leader. As they walked, four large structures materialized below the crest of the hill. All were enclosed within a chain-link fence. A narrow path ran from the curb down to the fence, a distance of approximately 50 yards.

“My home,” the Lawgiver said, nodding at the complex.

“You live here?” Blade asked in surprise.

“I did when I was younger. My family lived here for over thirty years.”

“But why live at a chemical compound on the outskirts of the city when there are nice homes in Dallas for the taking?”

“My parents settled here a year before I was born for a variety of reasons. First, it’s relatively isolated, on the outskirts as you pointed out, and the gangs, the Chains and the Stompers, seldom venture out this far.

Second, the scavengers and the looters rarely bother with industrial facilities because there’s not much worth taking. Third, it’s not too far out.

My parents could sneak into the city and hunt for supplies.”

“Your folks lived here like hunted animals?”

“It’s not that bad,” the Lawgiver said. “See for yourself.” He headed down the path.

Blade followed, scrutinizing the complex. The path led to a split in the chain-link fence. Three of the buildings at the site were rectangular in shape, while the fourth was square. On the opposite side of the CHEMITEX plant, in the center of the fence, stood a closed metal gate.

Beyond the gate an asphalt access road meandered for seven hundred yards before connecting with a street. “Why didn’t we drive in the front gate?” he asked. “Why go in the back way?”

“It’s a security precaution,” answered Aaron, who walked behind the Warrior. “We don’t want to draw attention to the facility, which we would if we drove up to the front gate. And from the top of the hill we can see for miles. If anyone tailed us, we’d see them.”

“I take it you come here often,” Blade commented.

“Quite often,” Aaron confirmed.

“But why, when you’ve taken over that stadium as your headquarters, as your Temple?”

“The Bowl serves as our temple of worship and for other activities,” Aaron said, “but we can’t obtain the Elixir of Life there.”

“Why do you call the stadium the Bowl?”

“Legend has it that that’s what the place was called before the war,” Aaron divulged. “The Cabbage Bowl, I believe.”

“Enough conversation, Brother Aaron,” the Lawgiver said sternly.

They descended slowly. Blade studied the layout of CHEMITEX, speculating on the purpose the complex had once served. Had the plant manufactured chemicals? If so, what kind? Warfare toxins, or chemicals utilized in agriculture or commercial industry? And how could a chemical concern be connected to the Chosens’ Elixir of Life? For that matter, what was the Elixir? Perhaps the substance had something to do with longevity.

“Do you take the Elixir, Lawgiver?” he asked.

“I have no need. I already bear the Mark of the Chosen,” responded the leader.

Blade didn’t like the implications of that remark. His lips compressed as he contemplated the possibilities. In short order they came to the break in the fence, where someone long ago had snipped the links in a straight line from the bottom to within four inches of the top. Blade waited for the Lawgiver to enter the complex, then he crouched and squeezed through the gap. As he straightened, a movement on the roof of the two-story square building drew his attention, and he saw a man with a rifle watching them.

Aaron and the four guards passed into the facility.

The square building was positioned on the west side of the CHEMITEX plant. To the north, east, and south were the one-story rectangular structures. Above all four reared grimy smokestacks.

The Lawgiver led them to a closed brown door at the rear of the square building. Weeds and brush choked the space between the fence and the building, except for the well-defined footpath. He paused at the door and glanced up, smiling and waving at the man on the roof, who had leaned over the edge to keep an eye on them. “Brother Saul!” he called.

“Lawgiver!” the man responded.

Twisting the knob, the Lawgiver gave the door a shove and stepped inside.

Blade walked over the threshold tentatively, uncertain of what awaited him. A 35-foot corridor connected to another door. Lining both sides of the hall were dozens of lockers.

“Coming here always stirs fond memories,” the Lawgiver commented.

“I can remember playing here as a child, and I know every nook and cranny in the plant.”

“Do you know a secret passage I can use to escape?” Blade asked.

“There is no escape for the impure. Our Maker’s wrath will descend like a specter of death on those who do not have the Mark,” the Lawgiver said.

They ambled to the next door.

Blade’s eyes widened when he beheld the enormous chamber on the other side. Along the east wall were situated a dozen huge vats. In the middle were benches and cabinets, several crammed with beakers and bottles. A wide mixing tank, filled to the brim with a noxious chemical concoction, occupied the area near the north wall. Pipes projected from the containment walls at both ends. Those on the east were connected to the gigantic vats; those on the west went into the ground.

Three men and two women were seated at a nearby bench. They rose and approached, smiling happily.

“Lawgiver!” a woman exclaimed.

Blade’s nostrils registered a pungent odor in the air. He glanced up at the ceiling and spotted a jagged, ten-foot hole in the northwest corner where a portion of the roof had caved in. Dust covered everything.

“How are our converts doing?” the Lawgiver inquired.

“Two have almost converted, but the third is giving us a hard time,” answered a skinny man.

“Have you tried increasing his dosage?”

“Yes. But he squirms and locks his mouth shut, and it’s next to impossible to get the Elixir down his throat,” the skinny man replied.

“I’d like to see the progress they’ve made,” the Lawgiver stated, and looked at the Warrior. “You’ll find this extremely interesting.”

“I’ll bet,” Blade muttered.

They walked toward the northwest corner.

The Warrior saw that a chunk of concrete the size of a car had fallen and broken into sizable bits, and the impact had left a shallow depression in the floor, a miniature crater ten feet in diameter and six inches deep.

Into this crater rainwater had dropped through the hole in the ceiling, collecting into a stagnant pool. He also beheld a sight that made him clench his fists and grit his teeth in suppressed rage.

Lying on their backs within a yard of the pool, attired in fatigue pants and nothing else, their arms and legs spread-eagled, were the three missing soldiers from the Civilized Zone, shackled to spikes imbedded in the cement.

“Do you know who they are?” the Lawgiver questioned.

“I know,” Blade acknowledged gruffly.

They halted a few feet from the soldiers, two of whom were gazing absently into space. The third looked at the Warrior hopefully.

“These are the ones you were sent to find,” the Lawgiver stated. “Notice anything different about them, mercenary?”

Blade did, and he swallowed hard and involuntarily shuddered, his skin crawling as his eyes roved over the bright green splotches covering the two troopers who were staring distractedly. The chest and arms of the third soldier were dotted with faint blemishes.

The Lawgiver snickered maliciously.

“Who are you?” the third soldier abruptly inquired. “I’m Sergeant Whitney. Are you really from the Civilized Zone?”

“I’m Blade,” the Warrior said, and he could tell by the manner in which the noncom reacted that Whitney had heard of him.

“Blade! They’ve caught you too!” Sergeant Whitney exclaimed.

“They think they have.”

“I was expecting General Reese to send in a battalion,” Whitney said.

“What’s wrong with these other two?” Blade asked, nodding at the dazed pair.

“It’s the damn Elixir!” Sergeant Whitney responded spitefully. “The bastards have been forcing us to drink it!”

“Not another word out of you, or else!” the Lawgiver barked.

“What can you do that you haven’t already done?” Whitney snapped.

“Kill me? Go ahead! I’d rather be dead than like you!”

Blade glanced at the pool. Lying next to the edge was a metal dipper.

He noticed a moist yellow stain along the eastern rim of the crater, and traced the stain across the floor to one of the pipes jutting from the west end of the mixing tank. The pipe had cracked, allowing the chemicals to seep out. Comprehension dawned, and he looked at the Lawgiver in astonishment.

“Do you understand now, mercenary?”

“I think I do,” Blade said. “Did your family use this pool for its drinking water?”

The Lawgiver grinned. “Yes.”

“And your father and mother took shelter here a year before you were born?”

“Yes.”

Blade stared at the green splotches on the two soldiers, the insight shocking him to his core. The chemicals in the mixing tank had leaked from the cracked pipe and trickled into the pool. “It was the chemicals,” he said softly.

The Lawgiver laughed lightly and gestured at the mixing tank. “Yes, again. The chemicals. My parents unwittingly drank from the pool, and the chemicals in the water affected the developing child in my mother’s womb—me. They had the same effect on my sister. Embryos, apparently, are extremely sensitive to the presence of certain foreign substances in a mother’s system.”

“Did your parents develop the splotches?”

“Not fully. They broke out in a green rash periodically, but I suspect they didn’t develop the splotches because diluted doses are not very efficacious when administered to mature adults.”

“But your children have the marks?”

“Yes. Once introduced into the bloodline, the trait is transmissible from generation to generation.”

Blade pointed at the troopers. “And your converts?”

“At full dosage, they take about three days, on average, to break out in spots.”

“Full dosage?”

“We administer a dipperful twice a day for three days. That’s usually enough.”

“But why don’t the people you convert resent their conversion? Why don’t they turn on you?”

“I can answer that!” Sergeant Whitney interjected. “The damn chemicals do strange things to your mind. You lose your will, your ability to resist, and these bastards brainwash you into believing every word they say!”

“Crude, but essentially accurate,” the Lawgiver admitted. “Children born with the marks do not pass through the receptive phase, as I prefer to call the stage where an adult is susceptible to indoctrination. Evidently the chemicals cause an imbalance in adult brains, disorienting them and rendering them ripe for my spiritual edification.”

“You mean manipulation,” Blade said bitterly.

The Lawgiver shrugged. “I would not expect a crass mercenary to see the light.”

“None of this explains how you intend to convert the rest of the human population,” Blade commented. “At the rate you’re going, it will take you a million years just to convert the Civilized Zone.”

A crafty glint radiated from the Lawgiver’s eyes. “Not if I introduce the chemicals into the water supply of every town and city.”

Blade did a double take. “What?”

“You heard me. All I need to do is capture inhabitants of the Civilized Zone, administer the chemicals and initiate them into the Chosen, then send them back into the Zone to pump the Elixir of Life into selected water tanks and reservoirs,” the Lawgiver detailed. “Since the converts from the Civilized Zone know the Zone so well, they’re ideal agents.”

“It’ll never work,” Blade said.

“Oh? Why not?”

“You just said that diluted doses aren’t effective. You’d have to add massive amounts to any water supply to convert the residents of a town or city.”

“True. We’ve experimented and performed precise calculations on the amount of chemicals we must add to varying quantities of water.”

Blade snorted derisively. “What are your agents going to do? Carry the chemicals in the dipper?”

“Follow me,” the Lawgiver directed, and walked toward a door in the north wall.

“Hang in there,” Blade said to Sergeant Whitney, and followed the leader of the Chosen. He glanced at the immense mixing tank. The very thought of someone deliberately adding toxic chemicals to a water supply chilled him. He’d known the Lawgiver was a madman, but he’d had no idea exactly how insane the man actually was. And he’d been wrong earlier. The Chosen were zombies in a sense—breathing, walking, talking, programmed crazies who had lost all conception of truth, reality, and right and wrong.

The Lawgiver exited the square building and went to the rectangular structure on the north.

Blade glanced absently at the fields beyond the fence to the east, and he observed a herd of wild cattle grazing. The observation did not, at that moment, seem very important.

“Take a look in here,” the Lawgiver directed, opening a door and stepping aside. Aaron and two guards joined him.

Blade moved to the doorway, and his mouth dropped open when he laid his eyes on the eight vehicles aligned in a row and facing an enormous metal corrugated door in the east wall. “Tanker trucks!” he blurted out.

“Tanker trucks,” the Lawgiver confirmed, beaming. “Eight here, six in another of the buildings. One tank can transport more than enough to convert the residents of an average town.”

“You’ll never get them into the Civilized Zone,” Blade said, although his tone lacked conviction. “They’ll stop you at the sentry posts.”

“Please. Don’t insult my intelligence. We both know the sentry posts are on the major highways. The Civilized Zone Army can’t possibly cover every secondary road entering their borders. One of my trucks can slip in under cover of darkness, travel to its destination using only the back roads, deposit its load of chemicals in a reservoir, and return without anyone in authority being any the wiser. Clever, no?”

Blade turned from the doorway, his mind reeling, stunned by the practicality of the plan. The scheme might, just might, succeed.

“Can you imagine what would happen if I sent in fourteen loads at once, all to different towns? Within a week the entire countryside would be in a turmoil as more and more people developed the marks.

Pandemonium would reign. The military would be unable to contain the hysteria. Those who break out with the splotches will be confused, scared, feeling like outcasts, desperate for guidance and aid which, of course, I will gladly supply,” the Lawgiver said gleefully.

“It won’t work,” Blade reiterated.

“Give me a valid reason why it won’t.”

“You’re a lunatic.”

The Lawgiver cackled, then uttered a surprising, remarkably wise statement. “Since when has sanity ever been a prerequisite to wielding power?”

Blade didn’t know what to say. He glanced at the tanker trucks, his features downcast.

“Thank you,” the Lawgiver said.

“For what?”

“For your reaction. Why do you think I brought you here? I wanted to test your reaction to my plan, to see if you, an outsider, would acknowledge the viability of my grand design,” the Lawgiver said, and paused. “Your expression says it all.”

“So what now? Will you try to convert me?”

“Now we shall return to the Temple. And, as I promised, you will shortly meet your Destiny.” Aaron and the two guards laughed.