CHAPTER TWO (9) Mitzi's dream continued...

They had been reduced to animal existence, which is why they were threatening to Mitzi.

They had been driving now for about three hours, right into the nucleus of the District, which is supposedly where Katz had been holding up. The street was appallingly disheveled with pot-holes that sunk into the soft earth beneath the asphalt sometimes more than two or three feet, and it was getting considerably worse. Many times, one of the natives had to cautiously exit the vehicle and change a tire, or fill one, while the rabid animals in the form of human bodies screamed and yelled and hollered from within the mess of buildings. Often, a bit of concrete was thrown or a sharpened piece of re-barb, but not once was one of the men injured.    

As they stopped, Mitzi eyed one of the forms in a dark chasm of what used to be a convenience store.

“You know that they are the growers for the distributors,” announced Dogbert, “and the distributors have to reel them in like their catching tuna with nets. The distributors go out into this madness,” he pointed to the decrepit ramshackle mess of buildings, “and take them in so that they can teach them the civilized way to live. They teach ‘em structure and discipline and all that. Good for a man, you know?”

“Yeah, I know.” Replied Mitzi, half listening.

“Out there, they are just spics and niggers running wild. Lawlessness, utter lawlessness.”

“Yeah – lawlessness.” Virgil sickened Mitzi.

One of the homeless men had moved into the passenger seat next to Mitzi, which caused an issue. Mitzi voiced nothing, but felt he was too close to the help. They belonged in the back of the van pointing their firearms out the peepholes. Suddenly, the bum changing the tire outside screamed with terror which made the atmosphere inside the van quiet and concentrated. For a few moments, nothing happened. All Mitzi could here was the heavy breathing of the pilgrims. He looked into his rearview mirror and found panic on everyone of their faces, all of them clutching miserably to their blue leather bibles. Some had begun to pray under their breath.

The injured man swung into the van and one of his fellows helped him to the floor. One of the pilgrims went to work with bandages, screaming for various utensils and CCs of this and that. Everything had become out of control, and the natives outside had begun to close in on the lone Mark III.

The homeless man next to Mitzi was on extreme alert, but Mitzi could tell he had little if no training whatsoever. The man constantly oscillated the shaft of his gun every which way, resembling a sprinkler connected to a thin brown water hose. A rock or a piece of concrete (it came too fast to identify) struck the front window in the upper left corner, causing a heavy line to protrude towards the middle.

“We’s got us a rumble,” announced the bum sitting next to him, still swinging his gun every which way, “They’s gots quite an arsnul out there.”

Mitzi grabbed revolver from under the front seat and cocked it. Shots were coming from the back of the van’s peepholes beside the chaos that was ensuing with the injured man. The pilgrims had swarmed around him and loaded him onto a stretcher at this point, while one of the men obviously trained in emergency medicine stuck a long tube down the bum’s throat and attached the end to a machine. Pandamonium insued: everyone was yelling.

“I need fifty CCs of epiponephrine!”

“Duck!”

“I thinks I gotstheem!”

“Forty-five over one-eighty!”

            Matt could see a swarm of natives outside the van lining the street: they had no weapons except what they could gather from the debris of the buildings. Very few of them if any seemed to be throwing these weapons, rather most of the noise was from guns exploding into their assembly. Three or four were picked off by the man sitting in the passenger seat, and Mitzi watched them drop to the ground while another native was brought forward to fill his place. They screamed a most horrible chant, which by Mitzi’s standard were quite foreign and daunting.