The Billy Club Bastard Case Files: The Case of the Calcified Costumer, Part 6 of 6

With a bewitched army of innocents and heavily-armed official between him and the mind-controlling witch Deidre Daniels, the Billy Club Bastard has his hands full trying to save ‘em all. This is a fight that can’t be ignored, in a city where nothing stays hidden for long. Whatever happens, the Office will change forever.

Until Only Roaches Remain is available as a Kindle ebook, in paperback, and as a DRM-free ebook.

This is Part 6 of The Case of the Calcified Costumer, the finale of this story, of the entire book Until Only Roaches Remain, and of Vigilance, Season 1. To avoid spoilers, check out Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5 first.

The finale is too long to fit in an email, click here to read it on the site, all in one go.

Content warnings: violence, gun violence, alcohol use, tobacco use, body horror, human trafficking, general grossness, creeps.

SATURDAY MORNING, JULY 3, 1943
WARNER'S EARLE THEATER
PENN QUARTER, WASHINGTON, D.C.

The Billy Club Bastard and Brassy Knuckles waded into the writhing wall of bewitched civilians, his club and her fists stopping their charge cold.

The first row crumpled, each hit breaking the spell and overwhelming them. Those behind them trampled ahead, unseeing, shambling past wracked bodies and through fresh upchuck. Dozens of white-knuckled hands gripped flatware, catering utensils, champagne bottles, furniture, anything they might use to kill. The Bastard’s club smashed through each attack, dropping them as they came, stomping them like ants.

But they swarmed him in their masses.

A flung plate caught the Bastard in the brow, re-opening an old scar and sending more blood trickling into his eye and over his lacerated cheek. Half-blind, he swept his club around over and over, clocking politicians and lobbyists left and right. Brassy Knuckles laid out a busboy who was swinging a chair at the Bastard's head, then caught a bottle in mid-air and chucked it right back at the bartender who'd launched it.

With a roar, the Slugger rushed past the Bastard and rammed into the crowd, parting them with his shield like an armored Moses. The Bastard cleaned up after him, knocking folks silly with every swing.

The Saint and the Pacifist fanned out in the wreckage. Twin Peacemakers roared, shooting carving knives out of caterers' hands and shattering bottles before they could be thrown. Each blast of the Saint's shotgun sent rubber balls bouncing off the floor, hitting soft bellies and knocking the hot air out of whoever caught one.

A sweaty man, short, bald, and red, charged the Bastard swinging a heavy bourbon bottle. His battle cry was pinched and nasally, and the Bastard recognized J. Courtney Haldeman coming at him. The man's voice pierced the Bastard's eardrums like a four-gauge needle, worse by far than Daniels'. He couldn't listen to the man complain for another instant.

The Bastard sent out a wicked jab with his club, catching the little politician right in the forehead. Haldeman's head stopped but his feet kept moving, dropping him to the floor, flat on his back. The bottle flew out of Haldeman's hand and past the Bastard's face. The little man landed with a thump, wheezed, then laid dazed, staring at the vaulted ceiling while he hurled on himself. The Bastard rolled him onto his side so he wouldn’t drown then moved on.

A chorus of moans rose around the Bastard. The damage was extensive and the smell was worse. Several dozen men and women felled in a matter of minutes, though none killed. The Bastard's club had broken noses and legs, and there'd be some cracked jaws and shattered collarbones to be attributed to Brassy Knuckles later, but everyone would live, though they’d stink.

“Welcome home, child,” Daniels droned, her words swirling dizzily in his head.

“Hey!” Brassy Knuckles yelled right in the Bastard's ear. He jumped.

“What?” he asked, trying to play off his surprise.

“Can't have you sobering up!” she shouted, and shoved something into his hands. It was the bottle Haldeman had tried to brain him with.

The Bastard gave her a thumb's up and unscrewed the cap. He took a long slug then pulled the bottle away. Top shelf hooch, too rich for his blood. He let the quarter-empty bottle dangle from his fingertips.

The Bastard waved to get the Pacifist's attention. He pointed out the speakers in the corners of the auditorium to the cowboy. With a flourish and a twirl, the Pacifist blasted away until every speaker in the room was smoking debris.

“Do everything you can...” a last speaker managed to chortle as it dangled by a single frayed wire. The Bastard took one last long slug of the bourbon and chucked the half-full bottle. It shattered and knocked the speaker the rest of the way off the wall. The wire sparked and shorted, blowing the fuse for the whole building. The lights went out and the fans stopped churning. Darkness, dead air, and silence: final, total silence, refreshing freedom from her voice.

Silent save for the groans and hurling of the brutalized party-goers, of course.

Knuckles took off her ear protection, and the Pacifist, the Saint, and the Slugger followed suit.

“What are you doing?” the Bastard asked.

“She's not broadcasting anymore, not with the power out,” Knuckles noted. “And if we ran into her face to face, she could hypnotize us as easily with hand movements or a pendulum as she could with her voice.”

“Fair enough,” the Bastard said. He was more than happy to have the guns at his sides working at full efficiency while they could.

The Bastard hauled himself onstage and motioned for his allies to join him. The four vigilantes hopped up and surveyed the damage. They studied their handiwork coolly, admiring the chaos.

Each of them had witnessed such madness before, and it had changed them. For many, chaos was death. For the five people behind those masks, chaos was rebirth.

They didn't have time for retrospection, not then and not soon, and for the Bastard, not ever. Life was momentum.

The Saint looked down at his own suit, once sharp-looking and exquisitely tailored, now torn at the shoulders and stinking of gunsmoke, blood, and sweat. He simply shrugged. The newspapers had reported that Saint Shotgun's typical nightwear was a thick silver suit. More than one battered hop dealer had claimed it stopped bullets. Any outfit but that must have left him feeling naked. The Bastard knew that feeling. He was missing his own helmet, vest, sap gloves, and steel boots more than he cared to say.

He poked the K.O.’d officials with one of his normal, un-armored shoes.

“Ipswitch and Fernandez,” he remembered. They were the ones who’d opened up as soon as the Slugger’d knocked in the auditorium doors. But then there were the two who’d been waiting in ambush. “What about these other jokers?”

Saint Shotgun prodded them with his crutch.

“Malinowski and Freeman,” he replied.

“How do I know those names?” the Bastard asked.

“Freeman had the Washington Monument case, Malinowski just wrapped that thing in Illinois,” Knuckles said.

“Well, shit, a couple heavy hitters,” the Bastard said, nodding in deference to the unconscious officials.

“By my headcount, Bouchard and Hobbes are still unaccounted for,” Knuckles said.

“Hobbes? Ah, hell,” the Saint groaned.

“Hobbes sounds familiar, too,” the Bastard said.

“'Mangler' Hobbes was a crewman on the Black Prince II,” Knuckles said. “The X.O. kicked him off the ship in the North Atlantic and left him to drift into Long Island Sound.”

“Smith can be somewhat unreasonable.”

“Hobbes smashed an Enigma X over a captured Brotherhood officer's head. Broke the machine into a thousand pieces,” the Saint said.

“And how about the officer's skull?” the Bastard asked.

“A few more pieces than that,” the Saint replied.

“The point is that Hobbes is seven feet of ex-super-heavyweight boxer,” Knuckles said. “Earp vouched to keep him out of the Grave. Klavin cut him a break since he was the only person to best a Brother hand-to-hand.”

“Hey, wait a second,” Mick grunted. He’d held his own against the Gray Man. Twice. Brassy Knuckles breezed past that fact:

“After the mandatory head-shrinking, he's a good guy to have on your side in a fight.”

“Tell him that tomorrow,” the Slugger muttered.

“He's right,” the Bastard said. “Today we'll have to show the big man a hard fall.”

“What about the other one?” the Slugger asked.

“Bouchard? Former Canadian special forces commando,” Knuckles said.

“Oh, duck soup,” the Slugger muttered.

“Same plan as before,” the Bastard ordered. “There's no way they don't know we're coming. We rush 'em and take 'em down. Got any more drum grenades?”

“They only let me requisition one M-29 at a time anymore,” the Saint replied. “A shame, too, they turn any assault into a surprise one.”

“Not too subtle when you're popping them off dockside in Baltimore,” the Pacifist chuckled.

“When you're in my position,” the Saint started, then waved his crutch for everyone to see, “You take your advantages where you find them.”

“Damn right,” the Bastard said. “Knuckles, what's the set-up backstage?”

“Through that door is a loading area, a short hallway to the left, and six large dressing rooms. The can-can line is in the last one down, where Daniels was staging their dress fitting.”

“Clear the loading bay, then room-to-room?” the Bastard suggested. The four vigilantes nodded. “Slugger, back on point.”

The Chicago Slugger hefted his shield and stalked toward the wooden door. He looked back to check that the rest of them were ready, then put a boot on the doorknob. The thin wood shattered, busting out in a spray of splinters. He stopped in his tracks in the doorway.

“Dancers in the last room, you said?” he asked over his shoulder.

“That's what we think,” Knuckles replied tentatively.

“Think about it on the floor,” the Slugger suggested, then tucked down under his shield like a steel armadillo. Beyond him, the Bastard could see seven women in American flag dresses standing in a row. Each one of them held a German MP 40 machine pistol.

“Ah, hell,” he grumbled, then dropped back to the floor, belly first, dragging the Saint down with him.

All seven dancers opened up at the same time, razing the Slugger with red-hot nine-millimeter rounds. The hanging door was pounded to slivers in an instant, and the bricks around the door reduced to dust.

The barrage lasted less than six seconds, then the guns were empty. The seven dancers stood for a moment, desperately pulling their unresponsive triggers. A wave of nausea and exhaustion washed over them, and they began wobbling. The first fell to the ground, puked, and curled into a ball. Within a minute, all seven of them were catatonic.

“What in the hell was that?” the Slugger yelled. He stalked over and prodded the closest dancer with his bat, but got no response.

“Cognitive dissonance,” Knuckles replied. “They just did something so against their nature that upon its completion they shut down completely.”

The Bastard groaned as he hauled himself to his feet. His knees were feeling the hard floor like it had kicked him.

“Least I didn't have to punch out any more ladies,” he mumbled.

“Wasn't looking forward to plugging any of them,” the Saint said. “Nobody wants to shoot a pretty girl.”

“Pretty, them?” Knuckles asked incredulously. “They're skinnier than stick bugs and coated in upchuck.”

“Well, I mean,” the Saint stammered, scratching his forehead through his mask, glancing around for some support. “You guys know what I mean, right?”

“Keep digging, Saint,” the Pacifist said. His red bandanna couldn't hide a mischievous grin. “Help me get them out of the way.”

He and Knuckles lifted each of the girls by the wrists and ankles and laid them out on stage next to the officials.

“Good, now shut it, eyes up,” the Bastard growled. Damn kids were making him feel old. Hobbes and Bouchard were still out there. “Slugger, cover the hall while we clear the rooms.”

“Got you,” the Slugger said. He waited until the others had stacked up back behind him and started down the hallway. It was wide, with doors every fifteen or so feet, dark without electricity, and sweltering. Giant but lifeless fans hung above their heads. With the electricity cut off, the humid air stagnated in the narrow hall.

The Slugger passed the first door and hunkered down, forming a wall between an ambush and the rest of the team.

The Bastard directed Knuckles and the Saint with Office hand signals to breach the first dressing room. The Saint stepped back, shotgun leveled. He nodded to Knuckles, who reared back to kick in the flimsy door.

Two doors down, a man who could only be Bouchard burst into the hallway, firing a 1911. The Saint and Knuckles reacted instinctively, diving for cover. The Bastard wasn't so quick.

It felt like he had gotten himself harpooned.

Bouchard's first shot took him in the left bicep, spinning him to the floor behind the Slugger. The next two rounds clanged off the Slugger's shield, but by then the Pacifist had his shot lined up.

His left-hand Peacemaker barked, ripping the bucking Colt out of Bouchard's hands. The Pacifist's second revolver was aimed upward, and its wide round neatly clipped the stem of the heavy-gauge ceiling fan above Bouchard's head. The hypnotized commando looked up in time to see it hit. He crumpled to the floor beneath its weight.

“You okay?” Knuckles asked, scrambling to the Bastard's side. He grunted and inspected his arm. It hurt like hell, but it wasn't bleeding bad enough to interrupt the mission. He rotated his shoulder and bent his elbow, eliciting new levels of discomfort, but everything was still hooked together. The bullet had taken him somewhere in his marbling, just chewing up fat and scarred muscle tissue, nothing vital.

“I've had worse,” the Bastard said. “Keep your head on a swivel.”

No sooner had the Bastard finished speaking than the door to the first dressing room came off its hinges. The Pacifist, distracted reloading his pistols, didn't have time to dodge. Mangler Hobbes carried the door with him, sandwiching the New Yorker between it and a brick wall. The Pacifist may as well have been T-boned by a truck while a train crashed into it. He was out cold, and his guns fell to the floor with him.

Hobbes snarled, his baser instincts reigning under Daniels' numbing influence. The Bastard thought he knew what seven feet tall looked like, but in person it was a different ball game. The monster towered over all of them, arms thick as girders, neck roped with anchor chain muscles. Hobbes' shaved head gleamed in what little light made it backstage. His eyes were like those of a fighting bull, deciding which idiot to gore first.

Saint Shotgun brought his weapon up and fired, racked, and fired again. He worked the slide with a deadly rhythm, like a gunmetal trombone, blasting rubber bullet notes into Hobbes and never missing a beat, two to the stomach and four in the chest. He'd gone empty before Hobbes reached him.

He may as well have been pelting Hobbes with snowballs; the giant didn't flinch. He swatted away the Saint's empty shotgun, then snatched his crutch and shoved him to the ground. Hobbes towered over him. He lifted the stolen crutch over his head and brought it down like Olympian lightning, snapping it and the Saint's forearm with a single blow.

The Saint cried out in pain, only to be silenced by a vicious kick to the belly. Brassy Knuckles hopped to her feet, but was shoved aside by the Slugger. The armored man charged past, swinging his weighted bat like a medieval war hammer.

It connected with Hobbes' shoulder, pulverizing the big man's collarbone and pulping the tissue underneath. His left arm fell to his side, useless. With his one good hand, Hobbes yanked the heavy shield out of the Slugger's grip and swung it like a tennis racket. He swatted the Slugger aside so hard and fast that it looked like he was getting yanked offstage after bombing a vaudeville act. His helmet cratered brick with a reverberating gong and a puff of red dust.

The Slugger slid down the wall, still as roadkill.

Hobbes dropped the shield onto the still body and turned his attention to the defiant woman and old man who had struggled to their feet before him.

“You high, me low?” the Bastard asked. Before Brassy Knuckles could confirm, Hobbes lunged forward and had him by his thick neck.

The Bastard could feel the Mangler's iron fingers tightening around his windpipe. With only one usable arm, the Bastard couldn't pull the big man's hand off of him. Instead he lashed out with his club, catching the huge maniac over and over in the chest and already-wounded shoulder with the oak bludgeon. Hobbes didn't blink, he just squeezed.

His focus on the Bastard was exactly what Brassy Knuckles needed.

The young woman whirled around the giant, battering him ceaselessly with rapid-fire piston punches. Her metal knuckles sank inches into the ogre, hitting nerves and organs, pressure points and weakened joints faster than the Bastard could track.

Knuckles landed a singular blow, a practiced haymaker into Hobbes' damaged collarbone, that staggered the big man. He dropped the Bastard and went after her with his good arm but she easily dipped out of his reach.

“Changed my mind! You go low!” the Bastard wheezed through his abused throat.

Knuckles acknowledged him with action. She stitched a lightning quick series of hits up and down Hobbes’ leg. He dropped to the floor, swaying on a knee, the top of his bald head level with the Bastard's chest.

Hobbes glared upward, murder in his eyes.

“Sleep it off, big guy,” the Bastard grunted, then brought his club down like a sledgehammer, right on Hobbes' dome. A purple goose egg blossomed from his scalp before he even hit the ground. Hobbes blew chunks as he landed, but didn’t get back up.

The Bastard shook the ringing out of his hand.

“God damn,” he muttered while examining a new hairline crack in his club. His voice was still raspy and sore. “That mook has a hard head.”

“You okay?” Knuckles asked.

“Yeah, that guy's got a hell of a grip but...” the Bastard started, but then he realized she wasn't talking to him. Beasley had peeled off her bandanna and wig, it was matted with blood, and had set to work untying the Saint’s silver mask.

The Bastard sighed and removed his bandanna, letting him breathe in the stuffy July air.

“Probably going to have a sore throat for a while,” Mickey muttered to himself while massaging his neck. Beasley pulled Ortíz's mask off and stroked his black hair.

“I'll be fine,” Ortíz wheezed. “Just my arm, and maybe a rib. I'll be fine.”

“You had better be more hurt than that,” Beasley chided. “If you laid there and left all the work to me.”

“I helped, too,” Mick added. “You going to make it, kid?”

“Yes, sir,” Ortíz started, swatting Beasley's hands away. She murmured something and stood up immediately, leaving Ortíz to his wounds.

“What about Reed and Capano?” Mickey asked.

“Can't tell without moving them. Out cold, meaning concussions at best, but both are breathing,” Beasley said.

“We'll have time to help them once we've mopped up the dame,” Mick said. “Unless she's got the Philharmonic dug in back there, too.”

“Seems like we already thrashed everyone we brought and everyone we were supposed to rescue,” Ortíz pointed out.

“My thinking exactly,” Mick said. “A walk in the park.”

“Is that what you think?” a demure voice purred from the deep shadows at the end of the hall.

Mick didn't let himself think. He snatched Ortíz's shotgun off the floor and spun on his heel, almost tripping himself on his own big feet. The instant its sawed-down barrel was leveled at the silhouette, he pulled the trigger.

It clicked, empty.

Deidre Daniels materialized before him. A gold watch dangled from her outstretched hand, swinging on a thin chain. She was a short, plain woman, the kind that’d fit right in as the secretary of a psychology professor.

“The weapon is useless,” she whispered, “Put it down.”

Her voice was charged like a spinning dynamo, roiling with a current of disturbing power. The shotgun felt like it weighed a ton, and she had a point, it was empty. He laid it at his feet, which had become glued to the floor.

The watch continued to swing back and forth, drawing Mickey's eyes. It was so shiny, polished brighter than a newborn star. His mouth had gone dry and the pain in his joints intensified. The leaking bullet hole in his arm felt like it had been stuffed with hot coals. She wouldn’t let him move.

“You haven't stopped anything,” Daniels hissed, abandoning her diabolic tone and cadence once she’d set her hooks. “You've just left it all to me. At least Senator Connally and his colleagues would have gotten a show before my ladies gunned them down. All you've done is beaten them bloody before I go in the auditorium and slice each of their throats myself.”

Daniels twirled a small knife in her free hand, its tiny curved blade just long enough to slice a jugular.

“That will be after I kill you five, of course. Perhaps I'll leave you paralyzed and let you bleed, slowly. I do like your enthusiasm, big boy. Maybe I’ll kill them and keep you. Or perhaps you'd like to do the deed?”

Mick struggled to turn his swimming head. Beasley and Ortíz were frozen solid, Daniels' spell having taken them completely. Reed and Capano were still out cold.

The little witch sauntered over to Mickey. Her face was inches from his. She smelled like hotel soap.

“I see you fighting me,” she whispered. “You can't, don't. You are mine, now, until I am tired of you.”

She brushed the flat of her little knife across Mick's tattered cheek, cracking the rusty coat of dried blood off his skin. Daniels smiled, then curled in against Mickey's wide chest, snuggling against him like an attention-seeking cat.

“You are in my power,” Daniels purred.

Mick pushed her back and stared down at her with bleary, bloodshot eyes.

“Nope,” he growled, “Just drunk.”

Her mouth dropped open in shock.

He slapped the knife out of her hand and clocked her out, breaking her jaw with a single right cross.

SATURDAY NIGHT, JULY 3, 1943
THE HAMILTON HOTEL, LOBBY BAR
DOWNTOWN, WASHINGTON, D.C.

Mickey Malloy sidled up to the bar, pleased to see that it was the same bartender who'd served him the night before. He could feel his hangover edging in so he had to head it off at the pass. Mick held up five knobby fingers and the bartender nodded.

“Thank God,” Mickey groaned as the five shots of bourbon arrived. He downed the first of them and slumped back in his chair and sighed. Behind him, Beasley cleared her throat loudly. Mick twisted around in his seat. His four comrades had finally staggered in.

“Oh, were y’all thirsty, too?” Mick asked. Beasley rolled her eyes. Mickey turned around and called to the bartender: “Four more, chief.”

Four fresh bourbons slid down the bar to the battered vigilantes. Capano took his shot immediately, savoring the oily burn. Ortíz, eager to show off for Mick and to not to be shown up by Capano, barely choked his down. Reed and Beasley nursed theirs. Mick smiled and took his second shot, wallowing in the numbing warmth that spread through his chest.

“You really shouldn't be drinking with a concussion,” Beasley muttered to Capano, who ignored her.

“Or when you got a bullet hole dripping from your arm,” Mick added gruffly, “But here we are.”

Mickey's bicep was wrapped with bandages, though he imagined he could still feel a slow trickle of booze-thinned blood seeping through the gauze. He tried to wince at the thought, but his face was stiff with medical tape. It'd taken half a roll to close the slice above his eyebrow and the cross-hatching left by the exploding tile.

He studied his compatriots. The entire left side of Reed's face was swollen and purpling. He was sitting uncomfortably, nursing his knee with a pitcher of ice. Ortíz was beside him, grimacing with every breath. Office medics had wrapped and splinted his right arm and injected the snapped bones with Osteo-Bond. He would be back in action in a couple weeks. Bruises were appearing all over Beasley's face and arms, and the wrapping over her split knuckles had red splotches oozing through. Capano just leaned back in his chair, his tough-guy act thrown off by the white gauze turban encircling his head. None of them spoke.

“What are you sad sacks all so down for?” Mick asked. “We caught the bad guy, what else do you want?”

“She's got to pay for what she’s done,” Capano muttered.

“She's gone and got herself herself in the Grave for the rest of her life. And got her jaw broke in the process,” Mick pointed out. “You aren’t supposed to know about the Grave, but you can probably tell by the name that it is unpleasant.”

“You're sure she can't get out?” Reed asked.

“Reed's just salty because he has to write a 'gas leak' article,” Mick said, eliciting a dopey snicker from Ortíz and a scowl from the young reporter.

“Her jaw's wired shut and she's done up in a straight jacket,” Beasley answered.

“Did you tell me that your grandfather taught you how to work lead, kid?” Mick asked Reed. “You're the only person I've ever seen handle a pistol like that.”

“My grandfather was better than I am. He was a trick shot in a Wild West show, and my pop was a cop. I was shooting guns as soon as I was big enough to hold them,” Reed answered.

“You got yourself some real self-control,” Mick said. “I don't know if I'd be able to avoid popping a few of the goons that I've come across.”

“I see too much of that in my day job.”

“You took a skill you had and adjusted it to help people,” Beasley said. Reed nodded, as did Ortíz and Capano.

Mickey groaned. They were back trying to justify their masked theatrics again.

“Yeah, yeah, we're not here to talk philosophy,” Mick said. He downed another shot. “Now I get Beasley's nickname, and Capano's is straight-forward. You're pretty clever, Reed, going by 'the Pacifist' while you're holding Peacemakers. But Walt, I got no idea what your nickname is about.”

“What?” Ortíz popped up in his seat. He'd been staring at the glittering liquor bottles on the other side of the bar until he'd heard his name. He was definitely feeling the anesthetics they'd pumped into him when they reset his arm.

“What in the hell is a 'Saint Shotgun'?” Capano clarified. Ortíz shook some of the murk out of his head.

“Oh, that,” Ortíz mumbled. “That started as a translation mix-up. The mask I have is the same one el Icono wears. ‘The Icon.’ He’s a wrestler in Mexico. The papers mistranslated and ran with it. It doesn't make any sense to me.”

“Nobody ever accused reporters of waiting for the facts before going to print,” Mick joked. Ortíz's numb face squirmed into a goofy smile and he settled back into his chair to enjoy his drugs.

Reed grunted in response, then finally took his shot. He screwed his face against the harsh flavor, but looked renewed once he finally got it down and settled.

“You headed back to Gotham, Reed?” Mick asked after the silence dragged on too long.

“I’m going to try to sniff out another lead while I’m here, but even gas leak stories have deadlines,” Reed replied.

“You know I could find a spot for you on my crew, if you wanted,” Mick said. “You got a good head on your shoulders and steady fingers on the triggers. You can help your country.”

“I think I am,” Reed replied. “I only strap on the six-shooters as a last resort. My deadliest weapon is ink.”

The other vigilantes muttered their agreements, making Mick shake his head. He took his fourth shot, then stacked the glass on top of the others. The dim bar lights bathed the crystal tower in a golden glow.

“Besides, I'm sure you'll be back north soon enough,” Reed said. “Word is that the Five Families are gearing up for war. Between them, the Tridente, and the Montuosos, your boys will have a lot of work to do up there.”

“And ladies,” Ortíz croaked. Beasley smiled and patted him gently on the shoulder.

“Of course,” Reed said, smiling handsomely at Beasley. Ortíz narrowed his eyes and glared at the other man. Reed straightened the press ticket in his hat band, stood, and put on his coat. “I’ll be around for a day or two, I figure if I lurk around enough DC shadows long enough I’ll get a story. Got to get this trip comped somehow.”

He shook Mickey and Capano's hands firmly, then lingered when shaking Beasley's. Ortíz awkwardly tried to squeeze menacingly when it was his turn, but being doped up with his right arm out of commission, he just gave him an awkward shake with his left hand. His goodbyes complete, Reed put his hat on and walked out the door.

“What about you, Capano?” Mick asked. He leaned back and studied the brooding gangster lingering at the dim end of the bar.

“I ain't much of a joiner, Malloy,” Capano grunted. “And the way I sees it, all I owe you is a bit of snitching.”

“Fair enough,” Mick said. “Let's hear it.”

“You was talking about the noseless kraut, right? Well, I never talked to him myself, but I do know that his last meeting with Stino was their last for a while. He left contacts and lackeys in Chicago, but the man himself was out of the Midwest for a good stretch.”

“Any idea where he's headed?” Beasley asked.

“Said he was going to be setting things up down South. 'Big things coming,' Stino said. He brought some Cuban in, said that he was our connection.”

“That Cuban got a name?” Mick asked.

“Cartula, maybe. Us old guard were already on our way out when the Cubans showed up, so nobody introduced us. This guy was short, dark, slicked-back hair, and a dog tattooed on his neck.”

“A wolf,” Mickey corrected. He rubbed his bruised neck uncomfortably and considered this intel. There was only one Cuban syndicate in the States big and unscrupulous enough to deal with the Nazis, the one run by his old pal Lobo Losa. Only his top soldiers was allowed to get the wolf ink. That kind of trust took years of dirty dealings to build, but Mick had never heard of a Cartula.

Things were changing faster than Mickey liked.

“That's all I got, other than a ticket back to Chicago,” Capano said. “I'm on the rails tonight.”

“Good,” Mick mumbled. “Break some faces for me.”

“Sure will, when I'm done breaking 'em for me,” the Italian said, then clapped Mickey on the shoulder and walked out of the bar. Mickey grated his teeth: the blow shook his bullet wound but he didn't say anything.

Mick watched the door shut behind Capano. He wouldn't mind going a long time before dealing with any more gangsters, but Caoano’s new intel made it unlikely that he'd get the chance.

“He's really going free?” Beasley asked, interrupting his thought.

“He's on our side of the line right now, and we got bigger problems. Sounds like the krauts are up to something, so we got to head it off. That might cost me a trip home.”

“To see Losa?” Beasley asked.

Mick nodded. She'd had her nose in the files long enough if she knew what a Cuban could be doing with a wolf tattoo.

“If Losa's not turned or dead already.”

“And after that?” she asked.

“We pick our allies,” he responded grimly.

“How?” she asked.

“We figure out who is friendly. We bring in the Five Families in New York, the DiCarlos in Boston, the Selvaggios in Chicago, the triads in California, those sovereign nuts in Texas, the Gulf pirates, and any moonshiners, unions, muscle crews, commies, loan sharks, freedom fighters, and smugglers sane enough to stand against the Nazis. We warn them. Sounds to me like Eizhürst doesn't want us to fall from within, he wants to cuts us down from below.”

“All those people have been killing each other for decades,” Beasley said.

“Well now they got a common enemy, one that wears an armband 'stead of a badge. We get them together in a neutral city...” Mickey started, only for Ortíz to shout and interrupt him:

“And make friends!”

With that, Ortíz fell back in his chair, asleep again. Beasley stroked his hair.

Mickey sighed and slammed his final shot. He dropped a pair of silver dollars onto the bar and stood. Every one of his long-abused joints and muscles objected.

“That's right,” he said with a grimace, “We make friends.”

MONDAY MORNING, JULY 12, 1943
MARIE CURIE ENERGY SCIENCES LABORATORY, ZOO BASE
OAK RIDGE, TENNESSEE

Researcher General Douglas Gonzales watched the eastern ridge line from the lab’s flat roof. He felt his breath catch in his throat when the first red fingers of igneous-stained sunlight clawed their way upward. His visceral reaction was replicated in the other scientists who’d gathered to observe the ominous phenomenon.

“Lord in heaven,” Doctor West gasped. She was wearing her lab coat over a set of striped pyjamas.

“This is no divine act,” Doctor Garver grumbled. He looked like he’d stayed up all night. Doctor Maddox stretched and yawned next to him.

Doctor Wang scribbled his observations in silence.

“Ah, we have not missed it,” Doctor Evenstad said. His assistant held the door for him as they eased their way onto the roof. The other physicists, biologists, chemists, and engineers whispered among themselves while they watched the world bleed.

Gonzales had let Irma and the girls sleep. He wanted to have answers for them about why the sky was red, and he didn’t have them yet.

It wasn’t as if he’d been able to sleep in the first place. He’d gotten word of the hoard of intel a second class had captured and his mind was racing at the implications of what it might contain.

He had known of the effects the intentional eruption of Mount Vesuvius might cause, but he could not have anticipated the way the red sky would clutch at his chest. The geologists had described what would happen before they’d all rushed off to Europe, but their words paled in the face of what was happening before him.

He could explain what had happened, but he could not make sense of it.

Cubic miles of burning rock hung in every level of the atmosphere, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians in the process.

Department Three had put the Allies on the hook for that, broadcasting accusations around the clock since the mountain had gone up. Printmaster General Bellegarde was drafting her response, but the Allied governments had yet to decide on their response. With a blood-red sun rising over Washington and New York and folks waking up and turning on their radios for the morning news, they’d have to come up with something quick.

Gonzales was a scientist, his medium was measurable, undeniable truth. The truth was something that should never be hidden. In his pursuit of truth, he set forth hypotheses, he put in weeks and months of research, he consulted peers and experts. He shared his findings. Truth was never sprung on him.

He didn’t like the cloak and dagger schemes, but he understood their aims.

To wake up the American people on a Monday morning and tell them that their enemy possessed not only the ability to wipe a mountain and a city off the map, but the will and desire to do so, would cause an immeasurable panic.

Crimson bled upward, hot and clotted with clouds.

Until those Ionen-aktivierung weapons had been activated within Vesuvius, all of the Office’s efforts and Department Three’s horrors could have remained hidden. Normal people could have continued normal lives after the war.

Those lives had gone up in volcanic flame.

When it was all over, they would demand answers, and heads. There would be no forgiveness, no peace.

“I can’t believe they did it,” Doctor Garver muttered. He held his long face in his hands. “I mean, I always knew they could, but to actually do it…”

“Doctor…” Gonzales warned, but Garver kept on:

“Ever since the SIM started their work into exotic energies, I knew the krauts could do something like this. Hell, I could. But they’ve made a chainsaw. My applications of terahertz radiation are a scalpel.”

“Doctor!” Gonzales barked. Garver glared at him.

“I could have stopped this, but no one listens,” he muttered, but shut up after that. It was all part of his usual spiel since Gonzales had not elected to pursue Garver’s terahertz radiation projects. The electricity requirements to run the experiments alone would set the whole base to rolling blackouts. And there was no guarantee of their success, not that Garver would listen.

The door creaked open again.

“Wow,” Doctor Cypress said as he stepped out. “The animals were very agitated this morning, took two laps with Qutat to settle them. But I get it now.”

Cypress walked over with two steaming mugs. The head of the Menagerie and the Researcher General always worked the earliest hours of anyone at Zoo Base and they had a system: Cypress brought the java on even mornings.

The climb up to lab’s roof took long enough that the coffee was ready to drink. Zoo Base’s coffee was of the instant variety, but it cut the mustard. Gonzales had been a tea man once, but when he made the switch to joe he hadn’t looked back.

“Thanks, I needed this,” he said and took a careful sip.

“I bet,” Cypress said. He watched the crimson glow metastasize across the sky. Scarlet striations marbled the evaporating twilight.

They sipped in silence. Garver whispered complaints to Maddox and the young engineer nodded along deafly. Evenstad and his assistant were watching and listening, but they were observing the behavior of the bugs under the red sky rather than the phenomenon itself. West and Wang were still entranced.

“This is going to be bad, isn’t it?” Cypress asked once the orange orb had finally breached the horizon.

“Folks can’t ignore this,” Gonzales agreed. “Someone is going to have to give them answers.”

“Is that going to be us?”

Gonzales set down his mug and stretched, getting fresh blood flowing into his brain. He ran his hands down his face, twisting his fingers in his thick beard. He could see the gray descending from his sideburns on either side. Soon both sides would meet in the middle and he would look as old as he felt. He sighed and stared into the red, like there was something hiding there that he’d missed.

“I don’t know, but right now the only folks giving out answers is Jerry,” he replied after a while.

“People are going to be scared,” Cypress pointed out.

“Studies suggests that there might be riots,” Gonzales said. “I’ve already forwarded those studies to the Bureau, but Hoover doesn’t like getting good advice.”

The crimson seemed to ripple overhead, fading to blue like a corpse bleeding into a slow-moving river.

“I can only imagine the headlines,” Cypress said.

“They’ll weaponize them,” Gonzales said. “They weren’t having any trouble finding traitors to do their dirty work before. This is going to accelerate everything.”

“You think it’s some kind of signal?”

“No, what’ll get them is fear. People that are scared will do anything to feel in control again. They’ll lash out at whatever is hurting them, even if it means hurting themselves worse in the process,” Gonzales explained.

“Like a fox in a trap, chewing off its leg,” Cypress said.

“Exactly. Jerry already started the process of making us the reason everyone is afraid. We could tell them it wasn’t us ‘til the cows come home, but people latch on to ideas, especially when they’re scared. They lose the ability to think critically, to empathize, to see past their biases. A lot of people in this country were already worried and hesitant. Our enemy is all the way across an ocean, and their sons are fighting and dying for people they’ve never met.”

“So what’s that got to do with us?”

“Well, the way I see it, sooner or later, Jerry’s going to need to pool their support. Right now they got a jumble of Confederate revivalists, Bundsmen, isolationists, monarchists, bored rich kids, Legionnaires, and worse. If you put all those nuts in the same room yesterday, they’d carve each other up. What the Nazis need for that is a common enemy.”

“Today they got one: us,” Cypress whispered.

“Exactly,” Gonzales said. The last wisps of red in the sky had drained away. If there was anything he knew, it was the Nazi temper. Killing a city had merely been an exercise to them. What they’d do next would echo around the world.

Gonzales struggled to put that thought to words:

“I don’t know how, I don’t know when, but Jerry is going to do something. We might have forced them out of one of their bases, but they’ll hit back in a way we can’t recover from.”

The first issue of the Bastion Americana Freedom Journal was released by surprise on July 18, 1943. A print run in the millions distributed copies of the newsletter overnight to locations across the United States and on military bases overseas. The Office for the Cataloguing of Unusual Occurrences began an immediate investigation into its origin. Its contents were classified 'Most Secret' but they were unable to contain its distribution.

The outcry from the American people was immediate.

A government inquiry in the United States forced public acknowledgement of the Office’s existence, with Printmaster Arachnae Bellegarde selected as their spokesperson. Within the day, officials at all levels, in every Allied nation, faced losing their cover, threats to their families, and imminent arrest or violence.

With the Bloody Dawn overhead, the officials, with all their losses, compromises, and sacrifices, were forced into the harsh light of day.

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Copyright © 2024 Daniel Baldwin. All rights reserved.

Written and edited by Daniel Baldwin. Art by Bruce Connors.