Blackjack Wayward

Chapter Nineteen

I couldn’t get it out of my head, my last memory from Utopia’s mind-prison, the last ugly moments before Zundergrub had woken me. It was like I was watching myself, in third person, breaking into the room, demolishing the princesses’ two lovers, then throwing myself on her. I remember my feelings in stark clarity: jealousy, pride, lust, and a snarling rage that demanded to be fed. She fought against my unbridled strength, clawing at my face and shoulders, but nothing she did would deter me from taking her. In my memories, the rape continued, unabated. Zundergrub never interrupted the moment. I ripped off what little clothes remained on her body, revealing her bountiful breasts, the small of her crotch. I smiled before throwing myself on her. Pinning her arms back, I used my knees to split her legs apart and readied myself to enter her. Her face was awash in fury and fear, and once I penetrated her, with pain. Her pain was the sweetest part, only serving to motivate me further, to make me harder, to thrust deeper, as if causing her agony would somehow slake my lust.

This memory haunted me as I walked through the open desert, now several miles from Rabbit Flats. The sand storm had blown past, leaving me coated with a thick layer of dust and dirt that I didn’t care to brush off. My mouth was filled with grit that no amount of spitting would cleanse, and I ground my teeth into the silt, crackling the hard grains in my mouth.

There were no landmarks for guidance, nor do I think I would have followed them. A sign could have said “Nirvana five miles this way,” and I would have gone the opposite direction. I was being stubborn and foolish, but then again, when had I not been?

The memory returned, and I tried fixing it, repairing the horrors of it, but I only made it worse. This time I killed the woman and humped her dead corpse while laughing. The more I thrust into her, the more her lifeless eyes rolled into the back of her head. He body was cold, and yet I groped her breasts, grabbed her ass hard, used her hair as leverage to go deeper and deeper.

“F*ck!” I yelled, but I knew there wasn’t anyone within miles to hear me. Well, there could have been. I had no idea where I was going. I didn’t bother to look up at the sky to gauge where the sun was in reference to the horizon, to give me an idea of my direction. As night fell, I ignored the stars, the intertwined web work that I could read and easily use to find a way to safety.

As it grew colder, as my skin began to shiver and breath began to fog up, I kept walking.

And the memory returned.

I slept at some point, then walked for some time, found a nice shady spot, then slept again.

No dreams came, only darkness stretched between moments of bare lucidity, and a silence that pervaded throughout.

This was the end.

I had made a terrible mistake, and among a long and storied list of errors in judgment, this was the greatest of them all, the one that would bring me to final judgment. My father had taken us to church every weekend, tried to instill the teachings of the Bible, but once he had passed, my stepmother had ended that ritual. I recalled enjoying my trips with my brother and father to the Methodist church, not so much for the place nor the people, but for the idea of being with my old man, walking the few miles, having the folks that passed us say hello fondly to my father.

Holding my brother, Jason’s, hand the whole way there.

It was a breathless ebullience, a child-like joy that I had long forgotten, the feeling of belonging, of family.

My father died on a Sunday, and my childhood died with him. His wife, my stepmother Doreen, grew bitter with her lot in life, having two children who weren’t hers that she was responsible for. They had only just married, and she enjoyed the idea of being a doctor’s wife, even if my father was never wealthy. He was more likely to exchange services for barter, or just a word of thanks, than for any actual currency.

Doreen invited her brother, Emmet, to live with us, in her words “to keep these damned rascals in line.” Jason was a smart kid, far smarter than I, but always getting in trouble, so he bore the brunt. He was the shield that spared me from Emmet’s brutality. But even he could only weather so much punishment, and on occasion, Jason would unleash his anger on me.

I remember his tears after the beatings, after he unloaded on me, and I just took it, knowing what he was doing for me. “It’s okay, Jason. It’s okay,” I would whisper to myself, softly so he wouldn’t hear, so he wouldn’t be shamed for his weakness. I was thankful to him. I still am. When he turned 18 and left for the army, he wept as he held me tight; he couldn’t do it anymore, he had to leave.

Emmet was a drunk, which made it easy for me to avoid most beatings once Jason left. My brother was smart, but I was clever. I would hide in the farm fields near our house, which by then was a dilapidated shell.

Father had spent the weekends working on the place, always painting and fixing something. “A house is like a second job,” he’d laugh, asking me to get him more nails, or to refill his lemonade glass.

That’s right! I made him lemonade on those weekends and he drank the stuff, regardless of whether it was too bitter or too sweet. He would never complain. I was his helper, following him around the house as he fixed the fences, mowed the lawn, mended the pens for the chickens.

Folks would come and help him paint, or clean the roof or gutters, in return for medical services, but he was always overseeing, and I was always around, his little helper.

Now I was lost in the desert, wanted by authorities and villains alike. If he were alive, my father would die once more of shame. Jason had done his stint in the army and moved on, leaving the whole sordid ugliness behind, making a new life for himself. From what I knew, he had made a fortune during the 1990s tech bubble, and now as a venture capitalist himself, with a wife and children. He had made the transition I wasn’t able to make. Jason had moved on and found a happiness that was always eluding me. That I was ever trampling on with my stupidity.

Nothing more stupid than this.

I waited until nightfall and gazed at the stars. I didn’t have a chronometer, sextant, or recent star almanac, but using celestial navigation, I could make certain assumptions. I recalled a dusty map at Rabbit Flats pinned on the bar’s wall denoting its location and that of Alice Springs. The storm that had pushed me along had come from the northeast, taking me south and west away from the small outpost for approximately two days. I had walked another two days in a roughly southwesterly direction before coming to my senses.

From my recollection of the map in Rabbit Flats, nothing lay in this direction except desert for hundreds of miles – nothing but a slow, agonizing death by dehydration.

The stars and moon were my guide. I didn’t need to be exact, since I had travelled south about a third the distance to Alice Springs, but west instead of east. So I turned to the southeast and started walking.

I felt the country had a strange, silent beauty, in part because I knew I was going to die here, wandering the desert. I found a small road that headed roughly in the direction of Alice and followed it for five or six hours without a single car passing my way. By sunset, the aching in my stomach and parch of thirst were real. I suppressed the pain in my belly, forced it to the back of my mind. I was going to make it out of here, somehow.

As night settled in and the cold winds blew dust in my face, I didn’t stop, moving down the road a little at a time, each step taking me farther from where I had been, closer to wherever I was headed.

The ground below me was familiar. I had been here before, on the road to nowhere, the long road to the unknown. I had followed it my whole life, just putting one foot ahead of the other, hoping to find something of worth around the next corner, hoping that riches and glory were over the coming hill, never finding the Promised Land. It was a pathetic existence, purposeless and hollow, and that’s what had attracted me so much to Retcon. He was a man on a mission, driven by an overwhelming desire to make his vision for the world, no matter how skewed, come to life. It was something I lacked, something I had never had before.

Without passion or drive, I was destined to leave little behind but a trail of broken bodies and tears. If anyone ever spoke of me, it was only with anger and bitterness, or joy that I was getting “what I deserved” at Utopia. The trip to prison was something I had resigned myself to, even prepared myself for, during the long trial. I knew what was coming, and I knew nothing would spare me from that avalanche rolling downhill in my direction.

Not even Apogee. Sure, she could have presented herself in court, spoken wonders on my behalf, if she even believed any of it, but in the end, the crimes I had committed were real and valid. They rolled in every charge they could, and half of them belonged to Zundergrub and others, but the stuff I was guilty of, they didn’t have to make up. I killed Pulsewave. I killed Gentleman Shivvers in his remote German chalet. I killed a half-dozen German soldiers while escaping. I had fought the forces of good at Hashima.

Whether Pulsewave’s death was cold-blooded murder or a terrible accident gone awry was irrelevant. I had killed him and ruined his family. His widow would never know his touch again; his children were denied the experience of a father. All because of me.

I might have had reason for some of those crimes. Hell, Shivvers was trying to kill me, and he had just ripped Influx’ throat wide open, but we had broken into his home. We had initiated everything.

Self-defense didn’t really cut it against the German forces, government-sanctioned men sent to bring us to justice, who sadly were overmatched against a bunch of villainous supers, a group I was a part of.

And at Hashima things got even more muddled, yet it was the same story. Retcon had a machine to save the world, but we stood apart from everyone. We fought off heroes so Retcon could have his chance, and by the same token had closed ourselves off from all other possibilities. By facilitating Retcon, however brilliant he had been, we made it possible for Zundergrub to betray us, for the world almost to come to an end. That I had saved the world was irrelevant. I had put it in danger to begin with, and justifying the ends, by whatever means, had almost led us to ruin.

When morning broke, the early chill kept me on my feet somehow, trudging one boot past the other, leaving a heavy line of prints behind me as the only clue of my passing.

I looked down at my dusty boots, half-buried in the sandy road, and I knew that it all had to end. I had put Blackjack down, costume and all, before, but I was still walking the same road. I was still following the same path, and all that had changed was cosmetic. To be truly a new man, I couldn’t continue, rudderless, from one disaster to another, barely surviving thanks to cleverness, the pity of others, or just sheer good genetics.

It had to matter. Each step had to have consequence; each one had to drive me onward to something worthy of existence.

The road turned north ahead, probably heading back to Rabbit Flats, no doubt the road that had taken me there in the first place. Alice Springs lay to the southeast, into the heavy brush. It was about midday, on a blistering day, the wind so heavy I could barely keep my eyes open from the stinging dust. I made a right turn, off the road and onto the bare brush land, in the approximate direction of civilization.

To whatever end.

I had to test myself.

That was it.

It was a test.

“You hear me, Haha?” I said, but I received no reply.

I saw the desert before me, a sandy, windswept field of high interlocked dunes, visible for hundreds of miles in each direction.

A lizard followed me, though it buried itself every few steps, as if the scalding surface of the sand was too much. It walked on two feet at once, balancing itself to keep its delicate little fingers off the burning surface.

The sun was my friend now, dipping lower and lower in the sky, and the temperature thankfully went down in response.

I was still good.

No worries.

But the lizard was gone.

From the top of a dune, I scanned the horizon, looking for a good place to rest, but I couldn’t discern anything I could remotely use for cover.

“F*ck it,” I shouted, though I didn’t have an audience. “We’ll just keep going.”

Good exercise, I thought.

And besides, if I stopped, I might never get back up.

My mouth was a parched mass of cotton, and my stomach a twisted, squelching emptiness.

Through the night, I talked to Mr. Haha, hoping he’d show up and tell me one of his famous jokes.

“What’s stucco?” I said aloud. “What you get when you step in bubblegummo.”

I laughed.

“If that doesn’t get you to come back, Haha, then nothing will.”

But it didn’t. He was gone. He had left me at Rabbit Flats.

“Pathetic,” he had called me.

And I didn’t care.

F*ck Haha.

Build an engine in the middle of nowhere.

To what end?

Yeah, let’s go to some bumf*ckville town.

Then what?

Not like I could find Zundergrub by checking in the phone book.

Nor Apogee.

If Zundergrub couldn’t find her, then what chance did I have?

Not like she wouldn’t be surrounded by, like, 300 heroes, each one ready to impress her with Zundergrub’s head.

Then again, Z had his little army.

What if he had found her already?

She wasn’t with him at Utopia.

But what if that was his backup plan?

He didn’t just want me dead.

They had plenty of chances for that when they broke into Utopia.

No, he wanted me humiliated, shattered, my body a riddled, bloody mess. My spirit broken from knowing that he had tortured and killed her.

Only then would he kill me.

Anything less wouldn’t be worthy of effort.

What had he said at Utopia?

“Now we will play.”

It was a game to him. He had also mentioned a master plan. The man was certifiable.

Night fell and I walked.

He was playing a game.

Could he have her already?

Maybe he found out where she was from. Maybe she told him her name.

Hell, he had mind-controlled her. Maybe her whole existence was known to him, including her every potential hiding place and safe house.

He had her, then.

That’s what he meant, right?

I fell for the first time, sliding down the backside of a dune I had almost fully climbed.

Crashing through the sand was like a cold bath of refreshing water at night, chilling me to the bone.

I stood and trekked up the dune again.

This dune didn’t matter.

It wasn’t going to beat me.

Yeah, my stubbornness was going to get me through, get me across this desert.

If the next day’s sun didn’t kill me.

No, he didn’t have her yet.

He couldn’t.

Zundergrub would have brought her with him, had her lovely face be the first thing my unfocused eyes would have seen.

Yeah, show her to me, then gut her alive.

Then kill me.

That’s what he would have done.

Apogee was safe.

“You hear that, Haha? She’s safe.”

But he didn’t say anything.

The next day went fast, but I slept some of it.

I couldn’t stay up.

I tried. I really, really did.

Even “Big Bad Blackjack” needs his rest.

I should trademark that.

So I slept.

But time was funny. I went to sleep just before midday, and I woke up at early morning.

Time was going backward.

“If I’m still in the f*cking mind-prison, I’m going to crack someone’s skull, Haha. You hear me?”

A bird squawked nearby, drawing my attention.

It was a weird thing. Its head was too big.

“Haha?”

It squawked again.

“Haha! I missed you man!”

The bird flew off, faster than the speed of light it seemed, and I rose to chase after it.

I was faster than the bird; it looked back at me, scared, and went up in the sky.

Then it became the sun.

“Come back, Haha! I have a good joke!”

Something was wrong with my mouth.

And while I thought about it, I fell asleep.

I woke up and thought I was back in the dream world of Utopia again.

I had to be.

But I wasn’t, it was just dark. Nighttime made walking easy and comfortable.

Something was following me.

Maybe it was something hungry, thinking I was dead.

The shadows surrounded me, dancing in and out, trying to kill me.

I tried to run but fell, got up and ran, and fell again.

“Haha, help me!”

But the shadows were there, all over me.

I closed my eyes, resigned to my death at the hands of the shadow people.

I didn’t die, I slept.

I dreamed of Apogee.

Her skin, so soft, bronzed and breathtaking.

My eyes opened and I was on her belly, walking down her navel toward her belly button.

The shadows were gone

It was day.

They’ll be back tonight.

I’ll just sleep and beat them.

Apogee will sleep with me.

I wasn’t on her belly, I noticed, turning back to see where she had gone.

Behind me was more open desert.

And the sun was mad at me again.

Everything lost focus and I fell.

I woke at night, again surrounded by shadows.

I tried to sleep, but this time I was scared.

I’m not sure how I knew it, but I was sure: if I slept again, I wasn’t waking up.

My last sleep was like the snapping of an on/off switch.

I tried snapping my fingers, but I was so dusty and dirty.

My fingers were wobbly.

“Haha, you see this?”

Growling shadows surrounded me.

Then I saw eyes.

They were demons, not shadows.

“Haha! Help me, man!”

I ran

They were with me.

Closing in around me.

Like when my dad used to run with me.

He was so much faster.

“Come on, kiddo,” he’d say, slowing down just enough to give me hope.

And I’d try harder. Always harder.

Sometimes he’d let me win.

And mess up my hair.

“Good job, kiddo.”

He loved me.

Not like these demons,

If they catch me, it’s over.

One jumped in front of me, jaws snapping.

I screamed.

The fangs tore into my face, ripping at my nose.

I fell, kicking at it, and scrambled away, back the way I came.

“Dad?”

But he was gone.

I kick and punch.

It’s like Shard World.

When they had Apogee, when I thought she was dead.

When everything died.

I love her.

I’ve never loved anything in my life.

The demons only hate. They show no mercy.

If Apogee were here, we could fight them, back to back,

Like....

The other time.

But the demons were too many.

When I tried to punch one in the face, they recoil and laugh.

They were laughing at me.

And I was dying.