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  Job had bought the two-silo missile site and grounds in an auction, paying a quite reasonable cash price. The complex was in the middle of nowhere. There weren’t any neighbors, not for miles around. He bought the property as he de-constructed the atrocity of The Harbor’s Plata trade. There was nothing left, as far as he could control. He’d kept his promise to Immanuel. He burned the processing lab-plant to the ground. He emptied everyone’s accounts and assets. Job’s name was not on the Compound in The Harbor, but since there was no one left to complain, he emptied and sold everything he could get his hands on.

  With the proceeds from this fire sale, he bought the missile silo complex. His own property, money, and assets left him with a stream of income that was more than enough to keep his family happy and safe. All three of his women were in their second trimester, everything looking lovely. Two of the young mothers were at this very moment, baking sets of twins, even. It was all and exactly like Immanuel had promised him.

  Job brought the small train to an easy stop. He exited up the ramp to the elevator and pressed the ‘up’ button. The mechanized cart wheezed and creaked, but rose steadily two short stories to where most of the living areas were. He stepped out of the elevator cart and closed the doors behind him. He made sure it was secure, not even wanting to think of losing any of his children to accidents, not after what they’ve all been through.

  Job saw his growing brood scattered all over the huge main room. There were cooking smells of his favorite Puerto Rican rice, an animated film on the flat screen, children laughing and crying, fighting and playing, everyone safe and healthy and together.

  Several of the walkers saw him and toddled over to him, happy as can be. He bent down to scoop two of the babies up, smiling big and bright behind the full cranial and facial mask he was forced to wear. They could not see his expression with its sunny smile, so he lifted the lilt of his voice so they could hear his happiness and not be afraid. They were getting used to the mask on their father. He had to wear it all the time. Same with the gloves and wrists to ankles dashiki, he now always had to wear head to toe covering. He didn’t want his infectious punishment to harm any of his loved ones.

  Job kissed each one through the thick but see-through plastic mask and set them down at his feet. He walked toward the kitchen, saying hello to his moms and everyone else in his family as he passed them by. The cooking smells wormed right into the nose holes of his mask.

  “Smells great,” he told the three women standing there through the thin slit in the mouth hole of his face mask. The forced smiles he accepted.

  They still weren’t used to what had happened to him, the women, and they were still a little frightened of what he’d become. But Job could really care less. There are always prices you have to pay. As he thought of his family’s safety, this was an easy cost he was more than willing to pay.

  “Can’t wait to taste it,” he said. Grabbing his plate and thanking the mothers of his children, Job left to have his evening meal, nearby, but by himself.

  He didn’t want to frighten any of them anymore than he absolutely had to. So Job sat by himself to eat. He carefully removed his mask, placed it on the table a close snatch away. Sometimes the little ones barged in and he didn’t want them to see his face and the way the sores had opened up.

  The sores were open wounds, replete with running pus, loaded carbuncles and hellish bugs that liked to travel from wound to wound, eating the diseases that grew there in abundance.

  Job brought a big forkful of the rice to his cracking, oozing lips. A big fish-belly white grub lost its perch where it was feasting on the scabbing edges of where his nostrils used to be. It landed on the fork. Job saw it in time and picked it off the rice. He took a good long look at it. The grub was hellish and it had a tiny man’s face. He brought it close to see the face, saw it talking. Job brought it up to his ear and listened to the damned bug as it cursed heartily at Job in a tiny squeaking Latin which the man could not begin to understand.

  “Sorry, bug,” Job told it, “I can’t dig one fucking word you’re saying.”

  The bug kept up its misunderstood litany of verbal abuse. All the while it screamed as Job dropped the grub into his mouth. His molars popped the bug and opened its inners. It splashed the inside of Job’s mouth.

  It went well with the Puerto Rican rice, Job decided.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  The light at the end of the tunnel:

  Jonah had shaved his head completely clean, as well as the little patches on his toes. And then, very methodically, Jonah went up to down, Pink to Floyd, everything in the middle, keeping only his eyebrows. Stripped clean of hair and scrubbed nearly raw with micro-scrubbing gel in a clean chain motel. Jonah was trying to get the smell off, letting the last creeping vestiges of his junkie’s jihad slip harmless down the drain of the motel shower stall.

  Heading more or less southwest Jonah traveled without haste, his camper-shelled gas guzzling beast of a truck a secure basso beneath my seat. Behind dark as sin shades, his light-sensitive crank eyes wide stared ahead at the long speed limitless two-laner. A clear mirage lay out in front of him, the highway bending and waving from it.

  The good glass kept Jonah alert and thinking. He had started out with an ounce of the top-drawer meth on him, say a thousand bucks premium worth. It was more than enough.

  Jonah’s plan since leaving the high-flying gambling mecca of Double Downs behind him was to ride out the ounce of speed, coming to final grips with all he had experienced. All that Jonah had lost and all he’d gained. Jonah was tired, beat-up and desperately needed to put a wrapper and a tight bow on it all and mail the fucker away from his everyday thoughts. He knew it would never leave him completely alone. Jonah needed the ordeal to have its own drawer in the dresser that kept safe his mental scars.

  Jonah aimed to time the dope sack and his heavy heart empty before slipping across the border and blissfully quiet obscurity. His debit card, some cash and the forgiving tranquility of Nahua Azteca would be the salves for his slow healing wounds, both visible and invisible.

  Jonah saw the hitchhiker at the rest stop. It seemed almost as if she had been waiting for him. He came out of the men’s, thinking of a motel room for the night. She stood from sitting on her lone suitcase and walked over to Jonah. No one else just him: directly to him. She was maybe in her late twenties, but hard to tell with the eye-patch she wore over her destroyed eye. She was road-weary, but smiling; a sweet innocence to her.

  It seemed strange to Jonah that she should be alone and not frightened, but there she was, asking for a ride south, toward Desert Valley.

  Why not, he wondered.

  The two of them left the roadside rest stop together. They were stacking the miles behind them, getting to know one another. They were just two refugees, sharing moments together.

  The hitchiker stayed with Jonah long past Desert Valley and into Pueblo and further south. They holed up for a time in Copper Queen, a short day trip to the welcome dust of Nahua. They stayed until the speed and their self-protecting hesitation was gone. Then, they went across the Border together, the hitchhiker and Jonah. They drifted into Nahua to see what there was to life beyond fate, beyond the dope fiend’s holy war. Jonah’s jihad was over. It had started with a bang and now he fervently hope it will end with a whimper. Drama time was over and done with. Jonah was aching to lose himself with complete immersion. To see the light at the end of the tunnel and knowing for sure it’s not an oncoming train. To see if they could be content, just to see what’s possible, to come to grips with tomorrow.

  Now that Jonah has one.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  She always keeps Her promises:

  Jonah and the hitchhiker shed their pasts, the both of them, layer by painful thrilling layer, until The Harbor was nothing but a glimmer and the future less and less frightening a proposition. They both took deep immersion Spanish classes to get fluent. Hell, Jonah was even very seriously considering completing his Semi
nary training in their new home country. The hitchhiker immediately set her mind and energy to the task of getting herself up the stick, right away and one right after the other. Jonah loved the idea and could not have been happier. They baptized all seven of their children and raised them together in Nahua Azteca. Mostly they were safe. Mostly they were happy. Yes.

  Recalling the visit from his first son, Jonah insisted on naming their first born Immanuel. Mary Magdalene whole-heartedly agreed.

  The baby boy was just as beautiful as Jonah had remembered.

  END.

  About The Most Depraved Writer in Print:

  "The Grim Reverend Steven Rage spits out his view of a twisted world of that is deeply woven with the intricacies of a dark, drug-infested place ruled by evil forces. Rage explores the depths of sin, the way it stains our lives, and graphically illustrates the things we fear most. He forces us to look at true sin, true villainy, and truly offensive images of alternative realities. Rage creates a dismal post-industrial future, a look at man defiled and in decline. Evil has arrived. Dominion has been taken by those who walk as the damned, demons, Halflings, products of debauched rampages and sins against nature. Drugs and broken souls are the only things of value. Life is more like a disease, and the only salvation is the right amount of Plata to numb the conscience and, if one is lucky, to bring on a cleverly disguised demise. Through the sheer shock of his presentation, Rage forces readers to consider the alternatives, to look at the garbage in the streets, to see what is swept into the gutters at night right before all decent people awake to see another cleaned up version of the day. He uses tradition to break tradition, to push the imagination in ways that are uncomfortable at the least and border on the offensive at worst. Yet, in doing so, he illustrates what real Love is. Rage has created an incredibly detailed and disturbing world of unique, creative, fast paced, brutal, dark, and bizarre novels that are not for the faint of heart."

  COMING in 2012 …

  It looks like Carolyn and Mark are in deep, deep shit...

  Anxious to launch their new life together, Mark practices medicine at St. Anthony Medical Center and Carolyn works for pharmaceutical giant Hudson-Smythe. They just bought their first home and intend to cultivate their careers and get their family started. But Mark and Carolyn live in an alternate 1989 where Ronald Reagan is on his fourth term. The USA has a rigid, long-standing caste system and abortions were never made legal. Being homeless is a crime that is punishable by imprisonment in an internment camp the inmates call Tent City. Most of Mark’s ER patients are inmates at this camp and are victims of a new disease these illegals call the Transient Flu. This deadly and rapidly spreading disease mutates with each new host, collecting information, changing code. The disease evolves lightning quick, spreading like pond ripples and infecting everyone. No one is safe. Mark and Carolyn dig too deep. What they discovered filled them with dread and made Mark and Carolyn wished they didn’t know anything. The implications are catastrophic and the young couple may not even live long enough to regret nosing around. Mark and Carolyn uncovered the brutal truth: Transient Flu was purposely made. It was able to spread throughout the world so quickly because scores of vaccines were purposefully tainted with the virus that causes the Transient Flu. Hudson-Smythe happens to be the only pharmaceutical company that has a proven cure: ViraStat. Hudson-Smythe’s revenues and stock prices skyrocket because without a daily dose of ViraStat, the Transient Flu is one hundred percent fatal. A few early investors, the ones with high flying careers and growing fortunes at stake, hire a professional killer. Hudson-Smythe’s key players discover that their schemes have been found out by Carolyn and Mark. The chain of evidence the young couple uncovered traces the pharmacide back to Hudson-Smythe and must be cut. There must be nothing left to tie the criminals at Hudson-Smythe to the crime of the century. Cost is no object and deadly force is authorized.

  Yes. Carolyn and Mark are in deep, deep shit.

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