The By Two-Thirds Destiny
Prologue
“We must eliminate two-thirds of the world population before we are forced into infanticide-al cannibalism, or worse. The nearness' and enormity of this state of wretchedness, demand that we be at the leading front of efforts to reduce ourselves to no more then, a total of no more then five billion of the strongest, smartest, and most adaptable individuals world wide. Purging out the race of any undesirability, the era of Eugenic doctorial dominance is now...” Bob Turner orated to a crowed of would be voters.
From his place at the center of the twiddle-minded crowed of hopeful democratic-socialist party members, he spouted out the parties newest rhetoric. None of which anyone but he understood, but their lack of understanding didn’t mean anything to them as they praised his ill formed logic with an enthusiasm only the myopic minded could possibly stomach.
The lie being different at each level as necessity permeates each rank and file, forcing the evasion of truth, even in the deviation of the lie.
Chapter 1
Major Harland stood cast-iron at the heart of his command post. Watching eight computer screens sitting on semi-circled Formica tables. Videos flashed across screens from his platoons in the field, their individual squads, even particular soldiers. Showing countless battles on small screens that could be brought up independently, as needed.
From his place he could not only see the entire battle unfolding, second by second in real time, as if he where in the field standing with the teams, commanding each soldier autonomously to maximize the units efficiency through remote centralization.
As if being out numbered, out gunned wasn’t enough for the rebels to concede defeat, they were being out maneuvered as well.
So much so, it seamed the man issuing orders to the government troops, in their black suits and sky masks, had been reading their own commanders’ thoughts through the course of the battle.
Seeing into the future with plenty of advance, avoiding attacks and setting up successful ambushes for each attempted attack. Annihilating the rebels at every turn of the battle. Stomping out the snakes of freedom. The boot in the face of humanity, grinding it into the refuse of “double think.”
In many ways the major felt like his childhood idol when he stood here at the helm of a battle. Unmoving, indefatigably standing high on a hill, as unmoving in his focus as “Stonewall” Jackson at his last battle in December 1862, a marveled statuary of unknown bravado.
So commanding that enemies of the state often fell before its power merely due to the presence of his exclusive company. Begging to be saved from the slavery of their freedoms.
Within a few hours of the first shot, the rebel forces could no longer persevere. Forced to submit to the terms of surrender without concession. Stamped into compliant cattle, chewing the cud of the socialist state.
They laid down their arms. Marched out into an open field where they could easily be seen, even as the hours drew into the dead, were the stock succumb to the butchers blade.
The Major was driven down to the former veneer of freedoms’ plague, in a residual Korean War, M-151-A1 jeep that had been provided by the state. His driver pulled to a stop, sliding an extra few feet on the blood drenched grass.
He stepped from the jeep ignoring the fresh coat blood covering his mirror-shined boots. He stepped up to the line of men, women, and children ranging from infants, to the old and feeble.
“Swine,” he thought gaily, “What filth,” as he passed each one standing in front of him cowering, he gauged each individual for their ability to fight.
He sorted the elderly, very young, pregnant and mothers with young children from the line. Ordering them into the newly formed line across from the condemned villagers.
Sorting those determined to be of fighting age, thus a threat to the state, from those easily manipulated, and re-indoctrinated into the society of mass slavery.
The condemned were directed to dig a ditch, into the sand, and pack dirt. Though they knew it was a shallow mass grave, their vile little hands clawed at the soil in complete submission to the Major’s authority.
With every handful of sand and dirt scooped from the den of the dead, the denizens of Sandy Hook grew more ashen; with the slow recognition of what was already known subconsciously. Many of them would not survive the night to see the awe-inspiring sun rise to break its head through the clouds at the edge of the world.
As dawn’s hour approached the Major grew impatient with the slow pace and impertinence of the conquered insurgents in their efforts to dig their eternal abode.
“That’s deep enough, you cretins are moving far too slowly. Kneel facing away from the trench,” the major ordered. His face distorted with dark delight at the quipped belittlement of his victims.
The crushed dissenters looked back and forth at one another, the fear, resentment and hopelessness of the moment and their coming mortality suspended in them a quiver didn’t end with the ever-passing moment.
While under their breaths they cursed the state, and all its minions. Promising “vengeance even beyond their deaths,” as martyrs for the ideals of freedom, “no matter what the cost upon their souls.”
The insurgents genuflected on their coming martyrdom, Kneeling as commended, their loathing for the party growing brighter in their souls, as their hearts grew bleaker with every passing moment, by the bitter grip of deaths shadow.
Soldier befell upon them dousing, them with a mixture of gasoline and diesel, so that they’d catch fire quickly and burn exquisitely for some time.
Once the soldiers finished pouring their juice over the screeching farmers, turn freedom fighters. Two more soldiers loomed, one on each side of the array. Torches burning bright, they each ignited the condemned on their respective flank.
As they set the line ablaze, the fated dissenters’ shrieks pierced deeper into the void. Writhing in tortured agony for more then fifteen minutes, before some sergeant shouted for the insurgents to be shot and put out of their misery.
The Major stood there disgusted at the lack of fortitude showed by his men, “he would have to make an example of that sergeant.” He pulled his Government Issue .45 caliber pistol from it‘s holster and shot the sergeant in the face.
The Sergeant's head exploded in a spray of blood and fatty brain matter, as he fell back into the hole with the dead revolutionaries.
“Cover that hole,” the major ordered scowling at the remaining peasants, “and let this be your first and final lesson. We will not tolerate dissent. Much less from spineless jellyfish such as you.”
The major’s glower deepened at the women, children and elderly farmers who meekly scrambled to do as they were directed.
‘These measly beasts will be dead within the month,’ the major amused himself, as they began pushing the dirt back over the mass grave of the brave men, and women that gave themselves for their freedom.
Even before the hole was completely covered the Major and his men had grown bored, over seeing the villagers left behind to fill-in the void. Barking to get his men’s attention the major ordered his men to fall into marching ranks.
The men fell-in as ordered looking forward to cold beers, hot dinners, showers and their beds. In files of two by two, they returned to their field headquarters’ through the carnage and gore, to crack open a few beers and enjoy the feast of their spoils, before beginning their new jobs as occupiers.
Chapter 2
Major Harland slumped haphazardly into a decrepit, rusty chair, behind an even more decrepit desk in the center of the Village Square. ‘Damn these cretins, don’t they ever learn. There is no fighting the state, it always wins and all that’s left for them is the pointlessness of martyrdom. This is the inscrutable ignorance one must endure this side of the Mason-Dixon Line,’ the major mused deep within the darkness of his well-fractured mind.
A guard piloted three young children dressed in cassock loin clothes, that barely covered their youth. One by one they stepped up on to the foreboding platform, to stand with their deaths around their neck. They awaited the death switch to bring them into the shadowy seplica of eternity beyond the veil twilight.
The children’s waited and waited for their moment. Their long blondish hair billowing in the wind. Their eye’s filled with horror, with sorrow for those they must leave until the end, that is the nevermore. There was no salvation except in death, mercy having died ages ago, where the state was concerned.
They took their last breath as the switch fell blowing into nothingness the trapdoors that formerly supported their meager mass. Opening up the void, of space below, into which the now swung unencumbered into the nothingness of the dead.
The major creaked free of the rusted mass that had been his perch for the evening festivities. He walked around to the stage, upon which life played out its last terrible last comedy. He leaned his back against it, to take it all in, as if by osmosis he could understand the plight of the dead in some novel way, unconsidered.
“Kill ten more of these wankers. Decapitate them, place their empty heads on pikes along the paths entering and leaving the village. A reminder to those who come after these vermin, of the severity of thought crimes against the state,” the major spoke closing his cold dead eyes to the horror he’s wrought here again.
Chapter 3
A gnarled blackened hand, all charred flesh and bone inched its way from the sandy depths of the mass prison in which it’s dead owner laid rotting for the past three weeks.
First one finger, then another creeping, spider quiet, slinking from the hollow. One finger then, one hand after another sought freedom from the memory of the slaughter that was this mass grave of traitorous deeds against the people of this quiet village. A tomb of the innocent, cursed, doomed for all time to the indignantly of an undead existence, without a soul, they must now roam perpetually hungry, even more so then in life.
The first of the creatures arose, pulling it’s charred remains free of the cursed earth bed, where is eternity should be met, with a moon of hungry need. The need that should have left it with its last breath yet intolerably followed it into the depths of eternity. “Feed,” it moaned again, softly as if nearly and exhale of the breath it couldn’t have had. Soon a chorus that gave the creatures the breath of the wind, making a breathless whisper a low growl from the depths of hell followed it.
The sweet smell of fresh flesh drew them into a small village they had departed this life from. Searching on instincts so basic and primitive that it could only be less then that of even the most simplistic of animal instincts. Seeking out the flesh, so long as it was alive and fresh, they did not care.
They descended on their village and former families, with only their hunger for flesh over riding their instinctual need for vengeance against their undignified deaths.
The undead mass fell upon the first of the huts like locust on an untended crop, coming through the walls of grass and wet mud with so little effort. It was as if there was no barrier at all.
A small child, a little girl screaming, scrambling searched for her mother and father in utter horror at the nightmare that escaped the worst of her dreams. Even as she did, the first of the corpses bit into her tender flesh at the shoulder, letting crimson blood gushed from the wound.
The girls’ screams filled the cool night louder cutting into the souls of all who heard her torment, until her throat and innards were wrenched loose from her by a feeding hoard of an undead. Within minutes that first entire family of eleven villagers were dead and nearly completely devoured.
As the food supply within the first several hunts began to run dry, having consumed every last scrap of living flesh, pets and all, they began to spread out over the rest of the village. A fog of death over the valley floor, that none could escape, nor hide.
Feeding on the surviving villagers as they huddled close together in the corners of their huts, scurrying to find a hiding place, wherever they could find some semblance of shelter.
The creatures kept coming for them, only to have their scream of horror snuffed out, as they’re ripped savagely apart and devoured leaving only the pittance of scraps behind. The street ankle deep with blood and gore, thick and viscous so, that the streets ran black in the hollow moonlight. Screams of terror filling the air followed by silence, and more terrible cries of repulse only to be filled once more with the immutable silence of the dead.
Chapter 4
Impaled heads, jowls moving in wordless summery of their denied desire, endless in the frivols, herky-jerky attempts at devouring the nothingness within their empty grasp.
Gallows denizens, swinging in the breezeless night as if fondled by a hurricane’s wind, driving their swollen, reanimated, soulless masses to break free of their tortured binds.
The wicker nooses broke free of their restraints, freeing the bloated children of the dead, too their endless hunger. “Feed us,” they moaned in wordless angst-ridden breaths. Ambling from their perches, broken bones dragging, into the square.
Descending on a medley of fresh screaming victims to make their selections. Judging their select ability, for the most part in the simplistic measures of the most primitive of minds, revealing the inhumanity of their needs.
The three children of deceased innocence groped blindly through the night hunting their first victims of endless starvation and stranger cravings. “Feed us,” they moaned hoarsely, “feed us.”
They grabbed at a screaming woman four months with child ripping her arms from her shoulders, to be devoured “fuck,” she screamed in horrific shock. As her life force gushed in torrent from her writhing tormented cadaver, the final breaths escaping in soundless gasps, her eye sliding into her head to see the world no more.
They tore into her, eviscerating her, ripping the child from her womb. The two zombie children fought over the aborted fetus, tearing into tasty morsels to be devoured. It entrails dripping onto its dead mother, the dusty square on which the scene was drawing out. The pied, bloated, undead children devoured the fresh fetus, and mother with complete abandon.
Ripping her apart like ravenous dogs under the lunatics’ moon, tearing flesh from bone, entrails from sinew. Leaving not only her carnage, but also her very soul in the grimy square below the fouled fountain, next to their gallows. Before moving down the hill into the settled areas of the once bustling village, to join with their elders even in their living death, to flood in on the cattle cowering, or running about, waiting for the moments end.
Chapter 5
The meat-bags devoured all that were of breathing flesh in the parish’s offered. Still famished, the pains of their hunger still burning in them, as the flames had consumed them in the moments leading to their inevitable descent from the realm of the living into the depths of tormented undead.
Staggering, dragging themselves by all means of locomotion wantonly managed, they moved though the blood beams, from the lifeless remains of home.
Through the woods, down the side of the knoll they took on the offensive, launching a soirée into the military camp settled at the bottom of the tor in a smallish clearing.
Bent on feeding the burning hunger, to pass their vengeance on the perpetrators of this their indignity. They rampaged into the camp devouring those they could catch, while taking bullets that occasionally slammed into them through the violence of the chaos, knocking them to the ground.
The Stiffs were relentless in their primordial hungers, rising after every round that passed into them, always seeking, searching, for their next object victim. Viscous blood, entrails of the eviscerated, and dismembered living dead, filled the valley commune of the dead and dying.
Their desolation ensured, their hunger filled, in a way never anticipated they meandered into the forest, to take their retracted peace. Settling unto the trees and underbrush to haunt the depths of its soul, until the last of the last is claimed in humanities’ quest for self-obliteration.
