“Nobody,” Alexander answered, then added “Sir” hastily.
“That’s right. How did you know? Not a soul . . . but I’ve said too much already. Best wait for the Führer to decide what to tell you and what not.”
Alexander must be thinking the same thing as Marty. If the neo-Nazis hadn’t seen one yet, they may not know how to fight them off when they return home. And why hadn’t any returned to Bullhead City when they’d returned to Beaver Park?
Marty looked behind him. The car carrying Janice and Emily was following them.
Janice, handcuffed, sat in the middle of the back seat in an old Toyota Camry. On her left was the dead body, the skinhead Jocelyn killed. She thought her days dealing with dead bodies were over years ago.
At least she was a buffer between the body and Emily. Still, Emily had been through enough already, and now Janice wasn’t sure how Emily would cope with this latest development. And at least Emily wasn’t in handcuffs—too big for her wrists.
In fact, Emily was super-quiet. She hadn’t said a word since they peeled her off of Vin’s body, dead or not. And now she had stopped crying. She just seemed to stare off into space. To Janice, it was eerie, even though she knew Emily was disassociating.
“Where are you taking us, Sir?” Janice asked.
“To the Führer. He’ll be happy we captured a woman.”
Janice shuddered.
As the convoy reached the edge of town, Alexander saw plumes of gray-brown smoke move Eastward away from them in the distance against a clear, blue sky.
“What’s burning?” he casually asked.
“Prisons,” the Captain answered. Alexander decided not to ask follow-up questions.
They approached a checkpoint on the edge of town, next to one of the burning prisons. Alexander smelled the smoke in the air. The rest of the prisons were miles ahead, at least assuming all were being burned. He counted eight skinheads with assault rifles of assorted kinds. Alexander eyed the assault rifle propped up against the passenger seat.
“How much of the town do you control?” Marty asked as they pulled in.
“Save your questions for The Führer,” the Captain said. “But he’ll like them less than I do.”
“Sieg Heil! Captain McNulty. You probably never knew my last name. It’s Buchan, Captain. It’s gonna be hard, Don, to remember all these ranks and names.”
Buchan looked down at the cars behind them and peered in.
“Got some slaves?”
“Yes, Captain Buchan, permission to take these slaves to The Führer?”
“Granted, Captain McNulty . . . Cliff . . . er, sorry Captain . . . The Führer is an odd one.”
“Be careful not to call him by name. He’s likely to shoot ‘ya.”
“I know, it won’t happen again. Though it’ll be hard to remember calling people by their title. At least you and I don’t have to ‘cause we’re the same rank.”
“That’s what he said. Okay, Stephen, we’ll proceed to the school now.”
“Okay, but I’ll need to inspect all the cars.”
“Do what you gotta do. I’ll wait up ahead for ‘em.” They pulled up a ways down the road and waited.
After a few minutes, Captain Buchan approached them. “Okay, you’re free to go to the school.”
“Thank you,” McNulty said, and they proceeded into town.
Bullhead City was a quaint little town with small trees and one- and two-story brick buildings through the center. These gave way to scattered one-story buildings with more trees lining the main street. Motor vehicles of various sorts stood on the sides of the roads haphazardly. They must have cleared the road, but that must have been a huge effort. How many people did they have here?
They got to the three-story school on the left. “BULLHEAD CITY MIDDLE SCHOOL” was carved in stone just below the roof. Dead bodies littered the front lawn, and Alexander let out a “holy shit.” They were all lying face up, neatly displayed in rows on each side of the center walkway.
Alexander counted the bodies in a row, then counted the number of rows and multiplied. The number came out to greater than 500.
Holy shit was right. He sat there gaping at the bodies. He then turned back to Marty, who was on the other side of the car from the gruesome scene. Given the astonished expression on Marty’s face, though, he must have seen them, too.
His car door opened. “Get out. Stop your staring and get out. Watch your head.”
Alexander got out, and it in fact was hard to duck his head enough with handcuffs on behind his back. Marty was let out the other side. Near the car behind them, Janice, cuffed in the front, carried Emily as best as she could while Emily clung onto her with her face buried in her bosom.
Good. The less Emily sees the better.
Alexander, Marty, Janice and Emily were all forced at gunpoint to walk down the concrete path that bisected all the dead bodies that led to the school entrance.
Alexander retched as the scent of death overcame him. He looked at the others. Marty held his head down. Emily continued to have her face in Janice’s bosom.
The skinheads escorting them pinched their noses with one hand, their other hand on the trigger of their assault rifles.
Alexander noticed that most of the bodies were minorities—generally Hispanic or African-American, along with a few Asians. But there were some white people, too. These all had knife carvings on their foreheads. For the men, many, but not all, said, “TRAITOR,” while all the women bore “WHORE” tattoos. Alexander noted one that said, “PEDOPHILE.”
They were escorted in through the front door, through about ten skinheads dressed in orange prison smocks. None of them seemed fazed by the odor. Alexander felt a relief to have
