“Would you care for a beer, Solomon?” he said. “Or should I call you, Mr. Briggs? I don’t quite know if I should refer to you as the man of your family yet or—”
“No, and no,” I said. “Let’s talk for the reason I came here. To end this madness. For you all to go home to Las Vegas and leave us the hell alone.”
“Ah, please forgive me. I was only trying to be polite. You know, as I said, since I straddle the boundary of civilized and uncivilized, it seemed only appropriate that I act somewhat civilized and offer you a drink.”
I was getting tired of trying to speak with someone so “gifted” with a slick tongue. I just shut the hell up and stood with my right hand still on my gun and my left on my hip.
“I was told by my sergeant-at-arms what happened yesterday. Quite a fortuitous move on your part to strike when you did. We were merely using that warehouse as a holdover before we got more situated here.”
“There will be more like that if you keep the fight up.”
“I’m sure there will be, and fortunately, there are many more where those men came from.”
Such casual dismissal of human life. Jesus. Not like we’re great either, but holy fuck.
“Up to this point, you were, shall we say, like rabid dogs chained to a post in the yard. No threat, but I understood not to underestimate you. But yesterday, you showed me that you had yanked the post out. You were a wild dog now, and you managed to draw blood.”
He chuckled to himself, as if enjoying his own humor. It went without saying I would have preferred a real dog to appear and kill him right now.
“And what do you think happens to wild dogs that cannot be controlled?”
“I know where you’re going with this stupid fucking metaphor, and you fail to make one distinction. We can’t be put down.”
“Oh?”
There was a disturbing unease to which King spoke. It all sounded like a fucking game to him. Even that response seemed too relaxed.
“You know, Sonny, one thing that your father knows, that Lane knows, that even those deadbeats in New Mexico learned—you don’t win a war by destroying everyone in the army; you win by killing their leaders. Such was my approach when I took out Satan. But, for once in my life, I seemed to have underestimated the consequences.”
“Can you get to the fucking point without telling a goddamn story?”
King moved over to a seat by the wall and sat down. I noticed something under one of the armrests and took it to be a gun. I had to move carefully.
“Sure. I realized there was an alternative. There are other ways to destroy an opponent, to destroy an enemy, without focusing on the leaders. See, such a tactic works well if the entirety of the organization or state is fearful of their own leader. Leader dies, everyone is eager to do their own things, and the war falls apart. But in an opponent that supports its leader, someone else will step up. So then I thought, instead of attacking people, I should attack something else.”
Something else?
“What the fuck are you getting at?”
“Aside from the mistake I made, thinking Satan’s coma would be enough to get you all to surrender, everything is proceeding as I have foreseen it. It was I who allowed Butch to know of the warehouse attack. It was I who ordered Crush to make himself appear to you so that he could kill you—a task which he failed at and will be punished accordingly for. It was I who invited you here, which should not surprise you, but it was I who knows everything. I know of the gun in your right hand.”
I refused to look flustered. But it was flustering.
“I know of your Black Reaper friends and Devil’s Patriots scum just outside the perimeter, ready to come and help as needed. But there’s one thing you’ve forgotten.”
The most wicked smile I’d ever seen formed across his face.
“You left all of your friends back at your clubhouse with no leadership to help.”
Oh, fuck…
“No one ever tries to wipe out the infantry because why would they? In conventional warfare, they are too dispersed and too numerous to strike. But people seem to forget a literal nuclear bomb ended the second world war. While I have no desire to do that here, the metaphorical nuking of your people can have the same effect.”
I stopped pretending this was a civil conversation and whipped out my gun.
And just like that, out of nowhere, six King’s Men appeared on the periphery and pointed their guns at me.
“If you’re lucky, you’ll land one shot upon me,” King said. “But I do not need luck to know that at least one of their bullets would hit you, and you would be dead shortly after. Place your gun back on your hip. My men will do the same.”
