“You asked, so I told you.”

“Try us with something a little more credible,” Mortimer suggested.

“Most stories agree his headquarters is down south,” Paul said. “He sends out his spies to get information and deliver orders to the company captains. Sometimes people will just disappear, and everyone always says it’s one of the Czar’s spies doing an assassination.”

“The Czar?”

“That’s what everyone calls him.”

“Why?”

Paul shrugged. “Hell if I know.”

Sheila growled. “You’re a useless asshole.”

“Take it easy,” Mortimer said.

“Fuck easy,” Sheila said. “You don’t think this guy would have taken his turn if you hadn’t come back? Him and his buddies?”

Paul shook his head. “No way. I-”

“Shut your goddamn mouth.” She put the barrel of the automatic against his forehead, pressed hard.

“Hey, man, get her off-”

“Sheila, let’s not get excited, maybe just…” Mortimer took a step toward her.

“I should blow your fucking balls off, pig.” She aimed the gun lower.

“Sheila, don’t-”

“She’s crazy, man. Get her away-”

Bang.

Paul howled.

Bill jumped back. “Fucking shit!”

Mortimer could only watch in horror.

Blood gushed from the ragged hole between Paul’s legs. It came out fast, forming an ever-widening pool, like somebody had kicked over a five-gallon tub of raspberry syrup.

“Oh, God! Holy shit, man.” Hot tears rolling down Paul’s suddenly pale face. “You’ve got to help me. Oh, Jesus.”

“In some places, they chop off a thief’s hand,” Sheila said. “This is what you get.”

“Oh, Jesus God, help me, fucking shit, I’m going to die, oh, shit.” The blood gushed out so fast, they could see him actually deflate, shrinking against the pine trunk.

Mortimer gulped. “Do we have a first-aid kit, something to staunch the blood?”

“Are you kidding?” Bill looked green. “He’s like a damn blood geyser or something. How do we stop that?”

Paul’s head flopped, and his chin hit his chest. The bloodflow had slowed to a dribble. The former Red Stripe sat in a pool of his blood so big and round, it seemed impossible that it had all fit inside him. Paul had drained and looked shriveled. A raisin that had once been a grape.

“I never seen anybody bleed out that quick before,” Bill said. “Must be some kind of world record.”

“Good.” Sheila turned her back on the mess and began to pack.

Mortimer stood a little while, feeling vaguely sick. The copper smell of blood mixed with coffee and pine.

They finished gathering their gear and followed Sheila back to the road. They walked a long way in silence.

They walked for two days toward Chattanooga, looking for human settlements but finding none. There was only the long broken highway and the occasional dead automobile. They saw people in twos and threes once or twice in the distance but paid them the courtesy of leaving them be. Once, a line of Red Stripes sent them into a ditch, where they watched and waited as the column marched past.

They said little to one another. An uneasy pall hung over the trio. To Mortimer, Sheila now seemed like something alien and dangerous. Equally disturbing was how Bill took the episode in stride, almost as if a young girl hadn’t blown a stranger’s testicles into hamburger at all.

Mortimer realized his problem had nothing to do with Bill or Sheila. They knew how to conduct themselves in this shattered world. Mortimer didn’t. But he was learning. Violence is the way now. It gets you what you want. Solves your problems. What could we have done with the guy anyway? Let him go? No. Squeeze a trigger and the problem goes away.

Mortimer considered his brief interrogation of the Red Stripe. Somewhere a ghostly, mysterious leader pulled the strings of a reluctant army. This too must be part of the natural order. It was too much to hope that the world might be left to heal on its own. Society had always been defined by its antagonists. The Greeks fought the Romans and the Romans battled the barbarians. Now the desperate and bedraggled refugees of a broken civilization had the Red Stripes to deal with. It depressed Mortimer to think that conflict was the natural state of the universe. It all started with a Big Bang, and it would just bang and bang and bang until it banged itself out.

No wonder Nietzsche said people would need to invent God if He didn’t exist.

Stupid Kraut.

Who decided to invent Nietzsche?

One of Anne’s books. She had so many egghead books, wanted to go to the University of Memphis to study philosophy, but Mortimer had talked her out of it. He had talked her out of so much. Talked her out of living. Oh, God. No wonder she’d left him.

Nine years to figure that out.

Jesus.

That night they made camp in the middle of Interstate 75, the husks of old cars on three sides of them providing shelter from the wind. Over a modest campfire, Bill fried the last of the suspicious sausages Sheila had liberated from the Joey’s pantry.

“I should have asked him if anyone else made it out,” Sheila said.

Mortimer looked up. He’d been nodding off. “What?”

“The Red Stripe. Whatshisname.”

“Paul,” Bill said.

“I should have asked Paul if any of the other girls made it out. I tried to find them before we left, but I guess they were with clients. I hope they’re okay.”

“I’m sure they’re fine.” Mortimer didn’t believe it for a second.

“Sure.”

For a moment, she seemed to want to say more, but maybe she didn’t know how. She rolled over and went to sleep. After a while a sound like soft crying came from her side of the campfire, but it was difficult to tell over the howl of wind through the busted-out car windows.

They next morning they started walking again, every muscle in Mortimer’s body groaning from sleeping on the ground.

By midday he spotted the remains of Chattanooga’s insignificant skyline, humping up from the horizon like the yellowed bones of some long-lost skeleton rising from the dead.

Sheila told Mortimer this: The Chattanooga Joey Armageddon’s (the Joey Armageddon’s, the first, the prototype, the home office) was at the top of Lookout Mountain.

This is what Mortimer knew about Lookout Mountain:

When he was ten years old, his father had taken him. There was a legitimate Civil War memorial at the top, a historical landmark, flags, cannons, etc. Additionally there were a few cheesy tourist destinations in the area. Ruby Falls, a long cave with an underground waterfall at the end. The proprietors shone a red spotlight on the rushing water to give it the “ruby” effect. At certain times of the year, the underground river that fed the falls slowed to a sad trickle. But nobody wanted to go to a tourist attraction called Ruby Trickle. Another place: Rock City was a collection of unique rock formations connected by flimsy bridges and walkways. Ceramic gnomes had been placed strategically to heighten the cheese factor. To a ten-year-old Mortimer it had all seemed like a magical land of wonder and enchantment.

As an adult, these wonders were much less wondrous. One Labor Day weekend, a year after his wedding, Mortimer had taken Anne to see the sights. He’d talked her out of attending a Shakespeare festival.

Anne had not been amused. It was a blisteringly hot day, and she was dirty and sweat-stained by the time they’d finished touring Rock City. Even Mortimer wondered why he’d thought the trip would be a good idea. Looking around he’d seen only families. Moms and dads with two or three kids on the loose. The realization had hit him palpably in the gut that a hot summer day among ceramic gnomes might not have been his father’s idea of a good time. The things parents did for their kids.