The Best Bad Dream (27 page)

“Now that we've made it easier for you to express yourself, perhaps you'd like to tell us why we should spare your life.”

Johnny looked at him and nodded his head.

“You have no right. None of you. I have never been convicted of any these crimes.”

There was a great mumbling of dissent among the group. But Alex waved them quiet.

“Forget that argument,” he said to Johnny Z. “This tribunal has already found you guilty. Let me help you in your own defense. If you can tell us what you might do with the rest of your life to atone for the crimes you committed against the elderly, perhaps we might see fit to allow you to live.”

Johnny Z looked vastly confused.

“Atone?” he asked, in what was close to a whisper.

“Yes,” Alex said. “You do know the meaning of the word?”

A huge sigh mixed with laughter rippled through the audience.

“Yeah,” Johnny said. “You want to know what I can do to make up for the stuff you say I did.”

“Wrong!” Alex screamed.

“You still haven't taken responsibility for your actions. If you don't own your actions, how can we believe you'd ever really atone?”

The audience mumbled in agreement.

“Okay,” Johnny said. “I'm sorry. I am. Really. Can I tell you something?”

“Please. Be my guest,” Alex said.

“You see, when I was a kid, my dad was always out drunk, hustling people, and I was, like, a really sickly kid, and I cried all the time, and wet my bed and stuff, see?”

“Yes?”

“And so ... so my mom used to try to sleep but she couldn't, you know, what with me bawling all the time. So she found a way to put me to sleep. She really did this. She would hear me screaming and she tried to walk me around and all but I still didn't sleep. So she walked over to my bed and she got this idea. She noticed that when I was bad—you know, threw my food and stuff—she noticed that when she spanked me I would scream really loud for a few minutes but then I'd fall fast asleep. So she began to beat me to sleep. I'm not kidding. She used to beat me until my baby ass bled into the mattress but when I reached the right pitch of hysteria I would be just like a light switch. Flick! I instantly fell asleep.”

Johnny Z began to cry. The tears rolled down his face as he thought of his savage mistreatment at the hands of his mother.

Jack looked around at the audience. Even they seemed moved by his confession. There was a general sorrowful tone to their mumblings.

And this encouraged Johnny Z.

“You see how it was?” he said. “I began to hate all older people. And so I began to think that whatever I did to them was okay ‘cause it was payback for what my mom had done to me.”

“I see,” Alex said. Even he was touched by the story.

“And so, like, I could atone by helping older people for the rest of my life,” Johnny said. “I could start a school . . . yeah, a school that was for young criminals just like me and I could teach them to, ah, venerate their elders, ya know? I really could. I could use all the money I got, the money I ripped off from old folks to help old folks. I mean senior citizens. You see what I mean?”

The crowd seemed to mumble as one in assent.

“I mean who would be better at this kind of reeducation than me?”

There was a near reverent silence.

It was almost as though the crowd had been swayed by Johnny's sad tale.

Then Alex Williams spoke.

“That's very interesting, and even moving, Johnny. Really. I was personally touched, as we all were. But think of it, John. So you were spanked to sleep? Far worse things were done to people. Girls were molested by their fathers, kids were cut up by their mothers. A million transgressions far worse than yours were done to children and yet they managed to become useful members of society. But not you, Johnny! Not you!”

Johnny looked terrified.

“No, but wait. That was only the beginning.”

But as he opened his mouth to list more of the terrible things his parents had done to him, Alex Williams stuffed the rag back into his mouth.

“Bullshit,” he said. “You're a con, Johnny. Pure and simple. A man born with the criminal gene, a man no amount of schooling or counseling can help. You are condemned, Johnny. But don't worry. In death you will do good as you never did in life. We'll use your arms to help older people who need arms. We'll use your legs so that wiser seniors can walk. We shall harvest your eyeballs, your ass, and your cock. No part of you, so worthless in life, will be worthless in death. You will achieve a greatness and a generosity of spirit in death that you never evidenced in life. You shall be redeemed.”

The entire congregation roared their approval.

Alex Williams reached down to one of his robed and masked assistants. The man handed him a portable chain saw, small but efficient. Alex nodded as if to thank him. Then, chain saw in his right hand, he raised both his arms like a choir leader.

“And now let us sing. Let's sing a song that will take us all back to those days of innocence when we were young. And remember, as we sing, thanks to this man here and others like him, we shall all be young again!”

“A sing-along?” Jack said, unzipping his cloak a little and feeling inside for the revolver and the makeshift flamethrower. “What's next, s'mores?”

Then, to Jack and Oscar's amazement, all the masked lunatics in the audience began singing an old camp tune that Jack hadn't heard since he was twelve years old.

“Oh, you can't get to heaven. Oh, you can't get to heaven. In Johnny's car. In Johnny's car. ‘Cause the gosh darn thing. ‘Cause the gosh darn thing. Won't go that far. Won't go that far.”

Oscar looked at Jack and shook his head.

“The glee club from hell, baby.”

The masked madmen were all shaking and jiving now, like goofy teenagers around a communal campfire.

And their insane leader was leading them in song by waving the chain saw in time to the music like a camp counselor.

“Oh, you can't get to heaven on Johnny's skates, ‘cause they'll roll right by them pearly gates. I ain't gonna grieve my Lord no more.”

As they sang the lunatic chorus, Jack whispered to Oscar, “When they finish singing, you know what's gonna happen.”

Oscar nodded, and swept his index finger across his own throat.

“Yeah, amigo. It's now or never. Can you make it?”

“I'll try, compadre.”

Up on his ladder, Alex Williams revved the chain saw.

He moved it under Johnny Z's neck.

“You shall play your part!” he said.

And the entire congregation began to make a high-pitched keening sound as they watched Alex Williams ready himself for the execution.

Oscar and Jack leaped up and headed for the aisle. The congregation was so set on watching the murder on the cross that they were caught off guard.

“And we shall use your brain as well. With it we will create nectar, nectar that shall infuse the most loyal members of the Blue Wolf brotherhood with the greatest gift known to man. Eternal youth! All from you, Johnny boy. All from you.”

He moved the chain saw closer to Johnny Z's throat but was interrupted by a cry from Jack, who was now near the guards.

“Stop it, now! Drop that fucking saw! You're under arrest. FBI.”

Alex Williams was stunned. He stopped just short of slicing through Johnny's throat. He stared down and saw Jack and Oscar being met by a hooded guard who raised his machine gun, but Jack chopped at his wrist and the gun fell to the floor. Jack quickly
picked it up and threw it to Oscar, who, though wobbly, caught it and trained it on the other guards. They dropped their weapons. Jack look up at Alex Williams.

“FBI, pal. Come down from there, now. You're under arrest for homicide.”

“I don't think so,” Alex Williams said. “And don't think you can shoot me. Because all our members are prepared to attack anyone who interferes with our sacred ritual.”

Jack turned his gun on the guests, some of whom were out of their seats and moving toward the two cops.

“All of you back the fuck up or I'll be forced to shoot.”

Jack looked up at Alex, who was waving his chain saw around in a circular motion. He looked down at Jack and laughed.

“You are two against a hundred of us.”

“That's right,” Jack said. “You get twenty or thirty of your people to take a run at us and we're going to lose. But the first ten or so are going to be full of bullet holes. I wonder how many of your loyal legion want to end up bleeding out on the floor?”

Alex nodded his head and grinned.

“Let's find out,” he said.

Jack gave his partner a quick look. This was not the reaction he'd expected. He'd used this old trick five or six times in the past and it always held back the mob. But then, as bad as those other mobs had been, they had been mere criminals, not true believers.

Alex looked down at the first row of his faithful.

“First row, up!” he yelled.

They were a spry old group of maniacs and, though on rickety pins, they stood up as a unit and readied themselves for battle.

Pointing to the three men in the middle of the row, Williams spoke calmly.

“Now, when I give the word, I want you three to charge these men, take away their weapons, and then hold them for me to punish. Do you understand?”

The three men nodded slowly, as though they were in some kind of dream state.

“Take him, now,” Alex said.

The three men rushed Jack, who calmly shot the first two. Oscar shot the third, right in the temple.

The entire room made a deep-throated growling voice. They were ready for blood.

Alex smiled down at Jack and Oscar. He revved up the chain saw again.

“You see how it is, Jack?”

Alex smiled widely.

The room of old people growled their approval.

“I'll come down and when I do you both may as well hand me your weapons,” Alex said. “There's no escape for either of you. But I promise we shall make good use of all your body parts.”

“So that's how it is?” Jack said. “Their fear of you is stronger than their fear of death?”

“I prefer to think it's their love of me that makes them fearless against your bullets.”

“I'm sure you do,” Jack said, taking the Super Soaker out from inside his robe. “But in most behaviorist experiments there are certain primordial fears that trump conditioned responses.”

Williams looked at the red plastic weapon in Jack's hand.

“You've lost your mind, Jack,” he said. “But don't feel bad. Fear of being torn apart will do that to even the bravest of men. Still, this must be a first in the annals of hopeless cases. Attacking an army of angry men with a child's squirt gun.”

He began to laugh and the entire room laughed with him.

As they did, Jack pumped the gun.

“I give you one last chance to give up and be arrested. If you don't, I can't guarantee your safety, Williams,” Jack said.

“You are an original, Jack,” Alex said. “I'll have to give you that.”

He turned toward the front row and almost regretfully said, “Tear this clown and his partner apart.”

The nine remaining men in the first row made weird, simultaneous growling sounds and charged Jack and his toy gun.

Jack pumped the red flamethrower and a mass of flaming gasoline shot twenty-five feet down the line, immediately setting the first two men on fire. Jack aimed the gun at the second wave of men and they screamed and fell back as their eyebrows and hair went up in flames.

Their robes caught fire and they panicked. They turned and ran toward the exit, spreading the flames.

A second row of men started to run forward but Jack blasted them as well. They fell back into the third row, some of whom also caught fire.

The third row of men began ripping off their robes and used them to beat out the flames engulfing the men in the second row.

The others behind them seemed to be coming out of their trances. Some of them tried to help the burned men and others looked up at their leader, still high up on the ladder, for guidance.

Alex Williams was red-faced, furious, and not a little embarrassed by his minions’ failure to overwhelm two measly federal agents armed with some kind of toy flamethrower.

He looked out at his suddenly timid, very human crowd, those who only seconds earlier seemed to be willing to die for him.

“Where is your resolve?” he screamed. “You are an army, and your cause is just! A few of you have fallen. Think what you are giving up if you let this man arrest you! You are giving in to a world where the
old aren't valued. Where you will be shut up in old-age homes like the ones this other jackal owns.”

He turned and pointed at Phil, who was watching the whole thing unfold in deep shock.

“Listen to me,” Williams screamed. “All of you. Do your duty. Tear these two men apart, now! Before more police come and kill all our dreams. Do it! Now!”

He looked out at the men, his eyeballs bulging, his teeth pressed together as if he might physically will them to move as one large mass.

But the response he got was only a low murmuring, as if the men were talking to themselves. Many of them shook their heads from side to side, and some turned their backs to their leader in shame, for their failure to do as he commanded.

On the floor the burned and dying were moaning in pain, which further dampened the fanatics’ ardor. It was hard to be a killing machine once you lost your group spirit. Only minutes earlier they had all been happy as one entity, singing the old camp song as though they were on a scouting trip with a revolutionary purpose. Now, some of them looked like charred pieces of meat on the floor while the rest were being told to kill federal agents.

Something that could only end in disaster for all of them.

They saw that now, and they suddenly felt every bit of their true ages. They were old men who were likely to spend the rest of their lives behind bars. But maybe not, if they didn't commit any more crimes. After all, they were all rich, connected, and they could probably blame Alex Williams for brainwashing them. More then one man reached into his pocket and tried using his cell phone to call his lawyer, only to find that service wasn't provided a hundred feet beneath the earth.