“I want a company front, now,” Anton Griffin, the grand Cyclopes of the KKK, dressed in red regalia, ordered. KKK spooks formed a rough line straight across High Street. In all, there were about sixty Klansmen. They were outnumbered by at least two-to-one by zombies. But Griffin felt confident that any single Klansman could best more than three of those undead scum. He fished for the compact megaphone he kept strapped to his belt. He raised it to his lips and clicked the amp on. “Now you listen to me, you undead, so-called marchers for peace. We came here today to exercise our constitutional right to assemble, not to start trouble.”
Kirkwell shouted back at Griffin: “You sons of bitches.”
“Now calm down,” Griffin bleated through the megaphone.
“You Nazi sons of Hitler’s whores,” someone else shouted from the zombie ranks.
“We are not responsible for the demise of your leader.”
“The hell you’re not,” Kirkwell gritted the words out. He paused to glance across the faces of his brothers and sisters, his fellow members of the AZP. He saw steel, iron, and fire in their eyes. Fitzgerald’s hoard of undead stood cocked and ready to discharge at the slightest flinch. Kirkwell looked down at Fitzgerald, splayed out on the tarmac, his eyes blank. He nodded once, resolute, and pushed the long sleeves of his white dress shirt up to his elbows. “Let’s take ‘em now,” he shouted and ran, full tilt, towards the KKK company front. Most of the AZP marchers followed. Those who could ran; those who couldn’t crawled or dragged themselves on wheeled carts, sleds, and wagons.
“What’s happening?” Margy said, taking a frightened step back.
Ozwald, who at first had set out with the rush of zombies towards the Klansmen, turned to face her. Her expression, terrified, caused a wave of unexpected compassion to flow into him. He stopped and shouted for Dex.
Dex reluctantly trotted back to where his friend and Margy stood. “Let’s get her out of harm’s way, then we can think about the KKK,” Ozwald said.
Dex nodded once.
“Are you going to bite them?” Margy asked, cowering back another step, her eyes locked on the beginnings of a skirmish between zombies and KKK.
“A stupid question,” Dex said.
Margy had felt the hunger for human flesh ever since she had turned; but, like all new zombies, she had been assigned a mentor—in her case, an undead female. The woman had taught her to control the hunger pangs by eating raw, red meat. When the taste for living tissue became unbearable, her mentor had taught her to find a stray cat, a rat, or a raccoon. Margy’s mentor had told her: Only the insane among us bite humans. To bite a living human means turning him into our kind. For zombies, biting is considered murder by the law.
“They’ll fight, but they’ll never bite,” Dex said to Margy. She exhaled an uneasy breath.
“Let’s get you to a safe place,” Ozwald said.
Dex and Ozwald took Margy’s hands and guided her away from the growing brawl. They scanned the street for a safe place to take her. But as the shouting and bedlam around them escalated, it seemed that safety might soon be out of reach.
Chapter 18
Someone yelped in pain thirty yards behind Dan and Chuck. Ziggy Poulson, who had served with Dan and Chuck in the 4th Infantry Division, the “Ivy Division,” 1st Battalion, 14th Infantry, lay on his side, clutching his shoulder. Runnels of blood seeped between his fingers, forming red tiger-stripes along the back of his hand. He sneered, but not in pain. Chuck recognized the almost legendary anger on Ziggy’s face. Chuck knew that if Ziggy could stand, someone would pay. Chuck and Dan ran to Ziggy’s side.
“You okay, Ziggy?” Chuck said, trying to pry Ziggy’s hand away from the wound.
“I’m going to kill that son of a bitch.” Ziggy propped his weight up with one elbow and looked through the nexus of moving people, trotting soldiers, parade spectators. He caught a glimpse of the shooter, the hippie bastard with the American flag pants, lying on the ground. Ziggy tried to stand up, but Chuck pushed him back down. “You have to let me see how bad it is,” Chuck said.
“It’s just a chicken peck, man.”
“Just let us take a look,” Dan said.
Ziggy released his grip on the wound. Blood oozed from his shoulder. Chuck worked the buttons free and pulled Ziggy’s shirt back. The bullet had just grazed the skin. A couple of stitches and a week would do the trick. “You’re going to be okay. Looks like the bullet grazed you and went on its way.”
“That’s what I tried to tell you,” Ziggy said. He pushed himself up to his haunches. “Now let’s go get that little S.O.B.”
Dan rested a hand on Ziggy’s good shoulder. “Look, man, I know that kid hit you, but this isn’t Nam. Don’t do anything you will regret for the rest of your life.”
Ziggy fixed Dan with a stern look that barely caged his legendary anger. “I ain’t never done nothing that I regretted as long as I lived, and I ain’t going to regret what I’m about to do to that sorry S.O.B.” Ziggy pulled away from Dan and stalked off towards Schecky, who lay moaning on the tarmac, cradling his ruined hand against his chest. Dan and Chuck followed.
This is going to get worse, Dan thought, a lot worse. Just as he formed the words in his mind, a throng, perhaps a dozen strong, NRPL protestors peeled out of the crowd and blocked the way to Schecky. Arnold, Schecky’s friend, crossed his mighty arms over his chest. “I sure hope you ain’t planning on doing anything hurtful to my friend back there.” The others in Arnold’s posse sneered non-verbal threats, rocking from foot to foot, making fists and shooting acid glances at the growing cadre of angry veterans.
Ziggy acted first, opening his thin lips and issuing an animal cry that came from somewhere deep in his lineage, perhaps from 10,000 B.C. He sprinted the few feet between he and the throng of NRPL, forgetting the pain in his damaged shoulder. The first part of his body to make contact with the posse of NRPL was his fist against Arnold’s chin. Ziggy’s single smash in the jowl quickly blew out to a micro-fracas of swinging fists, slaps, jabs, and woofs. As Dan leapt into the fight, he thought to himself, this is going to get a whole lot worse. He was right.
Chapter 19
Smash and Fern watched the skirmish between just a few hippies and Nam Vets roll into an all-out brawl. It was as if the singular, contained incident had been a firing pin for a bomb of violence, screaming, and curses. Fists clapped into jaws. Boots woofed into bellies. The wheole scene became electric with shouts and curses, spitting, and grunting. Where the NRPL lacked fighting skills, they made up for in numbers, slogans, and raw passion.
Smash shouted over the din to Fern. “Serge says to bag the perp who started this fracas. Did you see where that kid with the American flag pants got to?”
Fern shrugged.
Both men panned the street, catching glimpses through clods of men leaning into each other, all piss and vitriol, smashing faces, kneeing groins, tearing at clothing and hair. Finally, Fern spotted the NRPL protestor with the American flag pants. Schecky had pushed himself up to a crouch, heavily favoring his shooting hand. Gouts of blood splattered all the way to the kid’s elbow and onto his chest. “There he is,” Fern shouted, pointing.
“Let’s get him,” Smash said and started pushing his way through the crowd, his nightstick drawn, Fern fought his way along beside Smash.