RACE WARS: Season Nine: “LAMBS TO THE SLAUGHTER”: Episodes 49-54 of an ongoing post-apocalyptic thriller series... Read online

  RACE WARS

  **SEASON NINE**

  (Episodes 49-54)

  “LAMBS TO THE SLAUGHTER”

  D.W. Ulsterman

  Copyright © 2016

  All rights reserved.

  http://ulstermanbooks.com/

  WARNING

  These are stories of a highly controversial nature

  READER REACTION TO THE ONGOING RACE WARS SERIES:

  “Brilliant SHTF fiction that is very close to the reality we are now living in.”

  “A great series that keeps you hanging on every page wondering what is going to happen next.”

  “Read, learn, and prepare.”

  “D.W. Ulsterman now ranks among the very best post-apocalyptic survival fiction authors.”

  “A remarkable series that just keeps getting better and better!”

  “Race Wars is a good author becoming a great one.”

  “Very scary because it feels like it is happening today!”

  “Great character development within an exciting plot. Race Wars delivers.”

  A WORD FROM THE AUTHOR:

  In the short time since the Race Wars series became available the interest and feedback generated has been considerable.

  It is no doubt a controversial subject but one I feel has been handled with an obligation of fair warning to those who share with so many others the concerns over the dangerous abyss America now finds itself staring down into. Hopefully – and I mean this sincerely, we ALL step back from that precipice and do some serious reconsideration regarding the path this nation has been on in recent years and the country we hope to leave future generations.

  RACE WARS is conjecture based upon fact. I take little pleasure in creating a frightening world that so closely mirrors the actual one, but it is done as much out of a sense of duty as it is one of creative enterprise.

  I pray (often) that the world depicted in this ongoing series does not come to pass.

  Hope for the best.

  Prepare for the worst…

  -D.W. Ulsterman

  NOTE: If you have not yet read the RACE WARS: SEASONS 1-5 OMNIBUS, you can do so: HERE

  Also, don’t forget to enjoy your FREE excerpt included at the end of this season from D.W. Ulsterman’s novel, THE IRISH COWBOY.

  EPISODE FORTY-NINE:

  Moses looked up at the early afternoon sun as he sat in his rocking chair in the front of his two-pump, side-of-the-road gas station. The sun’s warmth reminded the centenarian of life and how quickly it passed.

  Never enough moments, no matter how much God gives you, it’s never truly enough.

  His guests had departed just an hour earlier. It was a goodbye filled with warm embraces, smiles, yet knowing looks that they would never see one another again. Tom, Sabina and her kids, and Preacher and Sarah, proved themselves more than worthy of having a chance, however precarious, to live out their days free from the manufactured evils of the present.

  Moses knew the possible tomorrows represented by the days to come were not for him, though. He had run out of such days, the most precious commodity of all, be one a pauper or king. In the end, it always came down to time.

  A lone raven cawed loudly from its perch atop the far left corner of the gas station roof. Moses turned his head around to look up at the midnight-feathered bird as it stared back at him with its black opal eyes. Then the avian creature cawed once more before suddenly taking flight in a soft-whoosh of its feathered wings. Its departure was followed by a faint trembling from the dirt and pebble ground underneath Moses’s feet.

  Then the old man’s ancient ears detected the sound of approaching vehicles. It was a distant buzz, several miles off yet, but carried across the abandoned road by the gentle breeze that kissed the deep crevices of the black man’s wizened face.

  Moses appeared to pay the noise little attention. Instead he reached over and turned on the dull-metal encased shortwave radio that had become his only link to the rest of the world since the Race Wars had erupted. A voice crackled out from the device’s small, single speaker. It was a new voice, unfamiliar to Moses, yet speaking the very same message as his since-departed shortwave friend, and in fact speaking in the same undeniable tone common to highly competent and experienced military leaders.

  …I don’t know how many of us are left, America. The lines of communication outside of the militarized urban areas have been all but destroyed. We face food shortages that threaten the lives of millions. Day to day survival is becoming increasingly difficult for everyone.

  How many have perished from the Race Wars already? Hundreds of thousands? What we do know is that more deaths, more killings, more destruction are to follow with no foreseeable end in sight. I do not have the time right now to speak to you of these things. No, what I have to tell you at this moment is the truth of what your own government, at least those in charge of whatever this is calling itself a government, has done to you.

  America has been sold to the highest bidder. Those on the East Coast are to be ruled by an extension of the Russian military. Those on the West Coast by the Chinese military. The area between the two coasts has been designated a neutral zone, but it’s anything but neutral. Rather, it’s a death pool, the place where a man by the name of Dr. Fenwick Sage hopes to wipe out all opposition. It is him, more than any other, who was responsible for the fall of the former United States of America. I don’t know what his endgame is in all of this, I simply know it means you and all you love and cherish are to be no more.

  For years they have divided us by color, by economics, by religion, by anything they could use to further tear us apart and make us both weaker and easier to control.

  And they succeeded, didn’t they?

  They took our freedom. They took as many guns as they could to prevent us from defending that freedom, and finally poured gasoline over the entirety of the country and dropped the match.

  And since the first flames of that Race War started, we’ve only been too happy to kill ourselves in the process.

  I’ve had enough of that kind of killing. No longer should we be killing ourselves – WE SHOULD BE KILLING THEM.

  Lend a hand to a person in need instead of pointing a weapon at them. Help one another, grow stronger as you become more unified and turn those weapons on the one most deserving to feel your wrath.

  Fenwick Sage hides in his EPA office building in Chicago. I suggest we prepare ourselves and pay that sniveling, murderous bastard a visit. I’m coming for you, Sage. I’m coming for you and I won’t be stopped.

  You’re a dead man.

  The transmission ended.

  Nearly eight hundred miles away from where Moses sat rocking in his chair, Dr. Fenwick Sage was listening to the very same shortwave broadcast with eyes wide as the upper left corner of his thin-lipped mouth twitched.

  He recognized the voice. However improbable, he knew it was him.

  The thought-to-be-long-ago-dead, General Reg Thompson was in fact alive and actively plotting the doctor’s demise. A trembling right hand slowly wiped the corners of Sage’s mouth as he glanced up at an only mildly concerned-looking Glenda Green. Sage’s left hand pointed emphatically at the shortwave radio inside his Chicago office. He was to meet with United Nations representatives within the hour to finalize the neutral zone parameters.

  “I had that man killed. I destroyed all of Camp David to do it!”

  The EPA director’s assistant, dressed in a sophisticated lig
ht blue and form-fitting pantsuit, arched her eyebrows.

  “And you’re certain this is in fact the voice of General Meyers?”

  Sage’s response was the hiss of an enraged snake.

  “Yes! Don’t think me such a fool as to not know that voice! It’s him! He’s out there, alive, and intending to do me harm!”

  Glenda folded her thin arms across her equally thin chest and attempted a comforting smile that instead appeared to confirm how pitiful she found the doctor’s sudden concern.

  “There’s no way he can move against Chicago, Doctor. We have over twenty thousand armed operatives throughout the city maintaining order. This building alone has two high-security checkpoints and no fewer than a hundred armed personnel on duty at all times. And with the United Nations relocating to Chicago, that number will likely be increased significantly. That voice on the radio changes nothing. You are as safe now as you were yesterday and the day before, and will remain so tomorrow. Nothing can harm you so long as you remain convinced of your right to rule.”

  The doctor’s assistant placed her left hand around Sage’s shoulder and turned him around to face one of the floor-to-ceiling windows of his office that overlooked the Chicago cityscape.

  “Everything you see below you is yours, Dr. Sage, as is everything beyond. Those insects down there milling about are your subjects, your pawns, and if need be, your slaves. You are the new god of this time. You are their beginning and their end.”

  Fenwick Sage considered it to be the single kindest and deserving thing anyone had ever said to him. His chest swelled with pride as his chin lifted upward and the arrogant glimmer once again shined brightly from within his eyes.

  She’s right, of course, nothing and no-one can harm me. I will find the general and be done with him once and for all.

  And just as Sage finished that thought, Moses looked down the road that extended like a long, narrow dark finger from his gas station entrance and spied the first metallic glimmer of an approaching motorcycle. His right hand went instinctively to his right pocket to make certain it was still there.

  He knew he would have but one chance to do what must be done, but no matter how often he checked and re-checked, the old man found himself doing it over again and again.

  Moses picked up his always-present guitar, a hollowed out thing of wood and string that had never left his side for so many decades of life, and began to strum a chord or two and sing softly to himself.

  I went to the crossroads, fell down on my knees

  I went to the crossroads, fell down on my knees

  Asked the Lord above, have mercy now…

  The rumble of the approaching bikes grew louder with each passing second. Moses counted at least ten men sitting atop their steel-wheeled chariots, the largest of them leading several paces out front.

  Look at the size of him!

  Even with his failing-at-best eyesight, Moses could discern the great size of the Beast as he glowered back at the old man from the black vinyl seat of a custom blue and red painted chopper. The motorcycles, some old, some newer, slowed and then came to stop in the road directly in front of where the old man sat still rocking in his chair and strumming on his guitar.

  The motors went silent after the Beast lifted a massive, closed right fist into the air.

  “Hey, nigger, you got any gas?”

  Moses stopped playing his guitar but remained in his chair and smiled back at the biker gang leader while he noted for the first time each of the ten men on bikes were all white with several of them covered in various versions of tattooed white-power symbols and statements mapped out across their exposed skin.

  Lord have mercy…

  “Sorry, my hearing ain’t so good. You come a little closer and we can talk. You want some fuel? I might be able to help you out with that. Yes sir, been in business a long time, and that’s what we do, help travelers fuel up and be on their way!”

  Several of the bikers behind the Beast began to laugh and sneer at the smiling old black man who sat in his chair in front of his run-down gas station store.

  The Beast’s eyes narrowed. There was something about the place he didn’t like, something about the old nigger he liked even less.

  “You see another nigger come through here with a white girl on the back of his ride?”

  Moses shook his head and kept smiling.

  “No…no sir, I haven’t seen nobody by here for quite some time now.”

  The Beast slowly got off his bike, stood with feet shoulder width apart in the middle of the road and stared back at the old man.

  “You lying to me, nigger?”

  The Beast sensed just a hint of fear in the old man’s voice, which wasn’t nearly enough.

  Why isn’t he more afraid?

  “How much gas you got?”

  Moses began to strum his guitar again, this time singing a verse from a different song.

  He ain't got a tooth in his head,

  Poor Ol' Joe is almost dead

  Somebody done hoodoo'd the hoodoo man

  Having the black man ignore him quickly drove the Beast into a rage. He crossed the distance between himself and Moses with several long strides and towered over the old man, ready to rip his seemingly mummified head from his equally withered body.

  Instead, the biker gang leader ripped the guitar from Moses’ hands and proceeded to smash it against the ground until little more than splinters and string remained. A chorus of raucous cheers erupted from behind the Beast as the other bikers sensed further and likely far deadlier violence was soon to follow.

  Moses scowled back at the man who had just destroyed his beloved guitar.

  “Now why did you go and do that? I said I could help you with the gas! What’s wrong with you, boy?”

  The Beast’s right hand grasped tightly onto the front of Moses’ shirt and lifted him out of his chair.

  “Do the pumps work old man?”

  Moses nodded his head.

  “Yeah, I got ‘em hooked up to batteries. It’s a little slow, but they’ll pump gas just fine once I turn ‘em on - just fine!”

  Moses was abruptly dropped down into his chair, the impact causing his head to fly backwards and smack painfully against the wood-sided exterior of his gas station building. The Beast snorted loudly and then spit a large, greenish ball of spit onto the old man’s wrinkled forehead.

  “Then I suggest you turn those pumps on, nigger, before I set a match to this place…with you in it.”

  “I imagine that’s your plan either way, isn’t it?”

  The Beast had already turned halfway around to make his way back to his chopper when the words stopped him. It was the old man’s tone again, the lack of fear, as if the nigger somehow knew something he didn’t.

  He grinned as he watched Moses wipe the spit off his face.

  “Yeah, I suppose you’re right. The difference is whether you get to die easy, or die hard. This world’s got no use for another nigger in it, old or not, it don’t matter to me.”

  The Beast then jabbed his right thumb in the air, using it to point to the gas station behind him.

  “Take the gas, as much as we can carry.”

  Again the Beast paused as he heard the old man whisper words that sent a chill down the big man’s spine.

  “I ain’t afraid to die. You should of seen that the second you had a look at me.”

  “What?”

  The recent high-security federal prison inmate watched as Moses felt around for something in the front right pocket of his faded denim jeans. His head snapped around to look behind him at the gathering of men who, upon his order that they do so, approached the gas station.

  Time, as it sometimes does in moments of epiphany, felt as if it briefly paused. The Beast’s eyes widened as he scanned the two circular, thick-metal covers that sealed the station’s underground fuel tanks, and then those same eyes looked down at a smiling Moses whose hand still remained stuffed inside his right pocket.

  His mind
screamed out the warning before his mouth did.

  It’s a trap! It’s a trap!

  “Get back! Get back!”

  The other bikers’ faces contorted into various versions of confusion as the Beast ran as fast as he could away from the serene, all too-knowing smile of the black man who had days earlier taped a plastic-wrapped stick of dynamite onto the back of the cover for one of the tanks that still contained fuel – nearly sixty gallons, more than enough to cause a sizeable explosion. Attached to the dynamite was a small, battery-operated detonation device that worked very similar to a standard garage door clicker. It was a trick learned by Moses some forty years earlier when he was helping a friend clear nearly forty acres of large boulders that needed to be broken up into smaller, more disposable chunks. The friend, an especially loud and boisterous Italian-American, had been a twenty-six year demolition expert based out of Brooklyn.