Anthem

Think about that. Mobley has paid eleven million dollars to underage girls over the last twenty years, under the auspices of buying a “massage.” (Not including a few million in payouts to girls who went to the cops, plus bribes paid to the cops themselves.) If each fuck on a given day was with a different girl, that means Mobley saw three different girls per day. Now, assume that the most a single girl would come to give Mobley a “massage” was three times a week—3 fucks x 3 girls = 9 fucks per week, subtracted from the total 21 required fucks per week.

This meant Mobley would need at least one additional set of three girls, or probably two sets to be safe to cover the remaining twelve fucks.

So nine different girls a week. But hold on. Let’s not forget that Mobley was always on the move—meaning from week to week he might be in a different city or country, and therefore would require an all-new set of girls, and that those girls would have to be recruited and available at a moment’s notice. So, assume nine girls on call each week in six locations, or fifty-four girls available to Mobley somewhere on Planet Earth each week.

Three girls a day x 365 days = 1,095 fucks per year. Fucks requiring a small army of scouts and recruiters, all trolling for girls in the Bahamas, in France, New York, California, or wherever he chose to fly—girls between the age of fourteen and twenty who could be manipulated, intimidated, or coerced into becoming his sexual servants.

From here the statistical analysis begins to randomize. One must factor in his travel schedule in any specific month, which was always changing, plus a shifting rate of return among the girls. Some came once. The more brainwashed or desperate came for years. Mobley himself has lost count of the number of girls he has forced himself on in his lifetime, but it’s safe to assume there have been thousands.

Thousands of girls coerced and/or raped a grand total of 21,900 times in twenty years, all at a cost of just .01 percent of Mobley’s total net worth ($100,000,000,000).

For perspective, the median family income for 2019 was $68,703.

.01% of that is $6.87.

Six dollars and eighty-seven cents. That’s what the lives of these girls meant to him, the regard he had for their value. They’re sofa change. They’re a pack of cigarettes—not individually, but together—thousands of daughters and sisters smoked and crushed under his heel for less than the cost of a six-pack of Budweiser.

I defy you to find a dragon in Middle Earth who has ruined more lives.

Louise crosses her legs. She has never told anyone what happened in rooms like this with Mobley over a period of six months. She was a fourteen-year-old girl with a deadbeat mother and a cleaning obsession, who was still trying to figure out adolescence. Yes, she had had a few drinks and taken a few pills, but she had no idea the monsters who were out there in the world, lurking, watching, waiting to devour her whole. She had no idea the things men wanted to do to women’s bodies. The debasement, the violence. To be choked and spit upon. To be bound and penetrated.

Isn’t that the definition of evil?

Mobley picks up a remote, turns off the televisions. He smiles at her, but not in recognition. It is a shark’s smile, the smirk of a crocodile. Louise is not a human being to him, not a face worth remembering. She is a Kleenex to be sneezed in and thrown away.

“Tell me your name again, kitty-cat?” he says, hooking a finger under her bikini string.

“Death,” she says.

“Beth?” he says, frowning.

Louise slides her right hand down her hip until she can feel the scissors in her back pocket.

“No,” she says. “Don’t you remember? I’m Death. Destroyer of worlds.”

That’s when the gunfire starts.

*



Legolas is walking the perimeter when the Amazon truck pulls up to the service gate. There are three guards on duty. They watch it come up the drive, pull into the circle, and back up to the gate, beeping jauntily. The driver is mixed race, Black and Asian. He has his arm out the driver’s window, radio on, playing Sinatra.

Fly Me to the Moon.



The gate is a barrier of welded metal bars. Through it, Duane can see the main house down a short driveway. There are two more guards visible on the roof. Duane opens his door, steps down. He is wearing a blue Amazon shirt and white cargo shorts. He gives the guards a wave, walks to the back doors, whistling.

“It’s exciting, right?” he says to the guards. “When the present fairy arrives.”

He pats the back doors, Sinatra swinging, then pulls them open. Inside is a wall of boxes. Duane takes a scanner off his hip, scans a couple. The scanner beeps—wrong box. In the gap, two of the guards move toward him.

Duane speaks without turning.

“Lemme guess. The anticipation is killing you.”

He turns, smiles. “Must be up front.” He walks back to the driver’s seat. “Just be a sec,” he says.

The guards stand behind the van, waiting. The sun rises in front of them, and to keep it out of their eyes, the two guards take a step closer to the van, into the shade. To their light-flooded eyes, the inside of the truck is a black box.

And then, inside, something glints.

The first two shots hit them above the Kevlar. The closest, Dean, is killed instantly. Next to him the other, Morgan, is shot in the neck and falls to the ground, flopping, blood jetting. There is nothing clean or cool about the violence. It is brutish and messy. And fast. So fast. Inside the panel truck, Avon DeWitt takes aim at the guards on the roof and starts shooting.

*



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