TCC CH 4 Navigation Without Stars

A Panjan Drum is a nonsensical event.  In the manner which you navigate such deep, dark waters of the unknown, one may find their Mettle.  Persevere and find your way in spite of it all.

Heavy Bells   by  J. Roddy Walston and The Business  

We continue from the previous chapter.  

Christopher didn’t want to continue on with these two who had followed him from the séance table where they all died together, but they must know things that he didn’t.

Perhaps they could work together.  They might navigate in the dark.

He said, “The world has ended.  But there is still hope.  We can hope to make our way.  We have to help each other.”

Gregor wouldn’t have it.  He shook his head left and right over and over again until his eyes opened wide and he fell backwards again into the mud.   Dizziness overtook him as his wife, in her new body, began to wail.

This caused other sounds in the dark tunnel to occur.

There were whispers.

“New meat…”

“Who are they?”

“I’m hungry…”

Well, that didn’t sound all that good to Christopher.  He knew about the hunger, but he hadn’t a chance to fully explore it.  The other two would feel it for the first time. They did not have much time. They were about to be attacked and he knew it.  He could feel it in his bones.

He said, "Shut the fuck up!"

Lenny Sustenuto had opened a Gate of Hell in this very tunnel the previous night.  

Here’s how that happened.  http://williesthestories.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-fuckno-wars-tfw-ch-27-lenny-eats.html

The Chauffeur collected his wits in a moment of looking deep within.

Gregor and Chrysalis.  They had called him from his death in the bathroom of the cottage by their mansion.  They knew things about which he had no clue.  They spoke with an odd accent, but Christopher knew that they had been born in Armedmenia, in the Eastern Bloc occupied by the former USSR back then.

They had called him with their séance, among them other Purple Robes.

Now they needed all of their wits about them.  But the other two slipped in the mud, and their odd accent was slurred.

What new bodies did each of them awaken in?  Where were they, and what was about to happen?

Well, mistah, Christopher The Chauffeur was no stranger to the dark heart of human nature.  He had learned how to deliver two things, which were these:  Opiates for the masses, and also, the one who would deliver them.

Clutch   by Regulator  

He was witness to the ugliness of our human existence.  He was not afraid of such a thing.  He had become inured by the things he had seen.  He had tempered his Mettle into cold, hard steel.

He could navigate quite well.

His young patron, Prince Richard (of them Armedmenia Purple Robes), well, he was the vehicle.

How many times did the phone ring in the middle of the night, when Christopher dreamed of his woman back down there below the border, awaiting his own call to her, to rescue her from poverty?

How many times had he stalked past the look-outs at the Crack Castle, the Heroin Hotel, the Meth Mansion?  Each of those places were decrepit, sordid, abandoned buildings down in the southern avenues of Fuckno.

Christopher knew them streets very well.

Many times he had stood impassive, facing drawn weapons, and he simply shrugged and said, “I am here to collect the Prince.”

How many times had he rescued the drugged-out young rich man and brought him back home to safety?

But you know, he began to talk to them folks.

He made his own connections.  

He was good at making money, and he did not partake of his product.

Soon enough, he was the one who provided the Prince with the materials.  He simply let the young fellow do all the dirty work.

Mule.

All for a single purpose:  to bring his lady up out of the dark of the south.

Now it was his time to rise and shine.

Christopher pulled a lit torch from the nearby wall of the dark tunnel and he swung it around.  The ripple of the flame made a sound like the flapping wings of a crow.  He saw below him many bodies.  They looked to be passed out from drug use, and he was familiar with such a sight, from collecting the Prince.

Except for one difference:  Some of them were missing their flesh.  Something, or someone, had been at them. 

Someone there in the dark had been eating.

Perhaps it wasn’t a single person?

The whispers about him grew louder, into hisses.

“He is alive…”

"He is fleshy…”

"I am hungry…”

He flashed the torch about as his hairs stood up. 

He saw two lost souls clutching each other nearby and he went to them. 

He knelt by them and pulled up the one who was protecting the other.  He whispered to her, “Chrysalis?”

She looked up into his eyes, and she shrank away.

He said her name again, and she nodded and looked behind her.

He said, “Close your eyes.  We have to get used to the dark again.  I’ll be right back.”

She whimpered and turned back.  She looked up into his eyes and said, “I do not know you!  Why should I trust you?”

He said, “Everything is changed now.  You caused us to be here.  I am your Chauffeur.  I am Christopher.  I will get you out of here.”

She faltered, looking about into the dark around her.  He swung the light about and saw other bodies beginning to stir.  Eyes glinted in the dark.

He said, “Now close your eyes, get up, and get him up, too!  We have to leave very quick!”

She struggled to her knees and grabbed at Gregor.

Christopher turned to look at those who were whispering and looking to the torch he held.

He had never done it before, what he was about to do.

But he was quite familiar with the dark.

He would have to run amok now.

He would have to set people on fire.

He turned back to Chrysalis and said, "Hurry the fuck up!"

Christopher ran forth.  He charged.  He screamed and swung the light about, watching the mud below where he might step next.  The mud squished between his toes.  Someone had taken his footwear.  Hell, he didn’t even know how he looked now.  His appearance was different enough to frighten the old woman who now inhabited a new body.  It was her first time in a new body as well.

He did not realize, until after, that some of his face was missing.

But he'd memorized her face in the light of the torch, as much as he had memorized the face of the big man who had killed him moments before all of this, near the Jeep.

How many times could someone die and come back in a new body? 

What a fucked-up dream he was having.

He kicked one of the whisperers in the mouth and it hurt his heel.  He stumbled and the torch landed on a body nearby.  Sparks from the fuel in the torch scattered about as he got back up on his knees.  He saw the clothing of the body alight, and he grabbed the torch back up.  He set others on fire:  their hair, their clothing, anything that would ignite in that dank, dark dungeon of despair.

Some of the bodies began to writhe in pain as they awakened, and others hissed from around him.

“He is ruining our feast!”

“This will not happen…”

“He must be stopped…”

He turned around and saw the other direction, the place where he had left the other two.

All he could see was the afterglow of the flight flames.  Blue images blinded him in the dark, in that direction.  He would have to try to escape without sight.  But first, he knew that he needed to make the flames become a fire.

Folks around him began to rise up.  They were unsteady on their knees.  All of them in the tunnel were drugged-out.  Some had been eaten.  A Gate of Hell had been opened.

There was a hunger which knew no Earthly bound.

Christoper stumbled over legs and arms to a table set up with two torches on either side.  All of the bodies around the table had been mangled.  There were containers of fluid: what was inside?

He figured that this was fuel.

Perhaps we would be correct.

It might save time, but it would not close the Gate.  

Might it open them further?

He did not know, and he did not care.

Christopher would have to drive.

God Help You.

God Help Us All.

---willies out.

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