CHAPTER TWO (15) Mitzi's dream continued...

I have tried to get him somehow back to civilization so that he can restore more normal values. But he is ill now, again gravely ill. I think it is in part due to the fact that NORML has abandoned him, I am sure of it.”

Mitzi had never before confronted a man like this before. Frankly, he was the most frightening thing he’d seen before. He was quite in awe of Katz, but so was Mitzi. Nut this was different: The quilted man could not see through to the misery that Katz was dispersing into this godless land. The man could only see Katz as a hero. This was all very, very scary. A young man like any in America, completely without the comprehension to feel, completely veiled by Katz’s apparent heroism. What a farce, but still, Mitzi was in hideous awe himself. He felt absurd for judging this ridiculous quilted man, but at he same time identified with him. He both loved and despised Katz; they both did.

Suddenly the scenery changed. The rubble had been cleared and around the cleared area was erected a fence of various odds and ends of re-barb, wire, telephone poles, etc. All of the assorted sharp stakes were sticking out from the cleared ground at different angles, and their shadows oddly were cast forward and backward; there was the fading light of station belonging to the quilted man, and from inside the motley fence was a dimming fluorescent light. The scene before Mitzi was horrifying enough, until he saw the heads.

Upon every other sharpened stake, there was jammed a head belonging to a native; or, rather, a head that used to belong to a native. Their bodies were nowhere to be found. As macabre as the whole sick vista before the crew was, none seemed exceedingly aghast. Dogbert and Virgil cowered as they had been since the battle, the Pilgrims seemed to clutch their books in the same way. The quilted man appeared enlivened by the thought of checking on Katz. The only other eyes were the vacant ones embedded in the shrinking heads of the natives, staring from atop their posts. The queerest thing – besides them being heads on a stake – was that all but one was facing inward towards Katz’s dwelling. As the quilted man opened to gate, Mitzi eyed the heads, suspicious of their meaning.

All of them, facing inward or outward, were smiling. Smiling! Their yellow and black teeth still decayed on their thrones, while their hair dangled below their ears in a nappy tangle. Some – the older ones – had skin that looked as if it were dehydrated leather, the more recently murdered still showed dried blood on the stake and around the chin. It was a macabre air that heavily flowed like magma through the makeshift courtyard, and Mitzi was singed incessantly not only by the magma, but by the smiling eyes of the decapitated natives.

Not a word was spoken as the wooden door was pried open.  

CHAPTER TWO (14) Mitzi's dream continued...

Mitzi found the young man with energy an enigma: here he was in the middle of this horrible world with so much enthusiasm and vigor. His smile was constant showing a perfect smile in spite of the situation. There was something amiss in the man, though. He was too keen.

“You are in search of the greatest man I have ever known,” said the quilted man, “He has shown me the way to lead my life. Watch your step…” He hopped effortlessly over a large part of what seemed to be the remainder of a sidewalk, propped on an obtuse angle from the decaying sewer seemed below. The whole train followed behind. “We once spent a night encamped together under a large building which used to be a bank. It was a wretched night – we were backed up two against what musta been a hundred homeless men. Katz did somethin’ to piss ‘em off. Anyways, we were fending them off, and our senses were high – you know? – and I saw the man himself (Katz, that its) come right out of his shell. He had his AR-15 with him and that’s it, and I was lovin’ on this beautiful Desert Eagle Fifty-cal. We must of killed at least twelve of them, and it seemed like they retreate, but, you know, one can never be too sure, so we bunked out in the broken-down bank for the night. He enlarged this very organ that night,” he pointed to his temple and continued, “He told me of love, and death, and especially about business. ‘A man is nothing with out his business. You go to a dinner party, and what is the first thing someone asks you?’”

Mitzi found it ridiculous for someone to be talking about a dinner party is such an atrocious situation, but managed to answer nevertheless, “I dunno. What?”

“Well, they ask you, ‘what do you do?’ In other words, what is your business? How do you make money? I always tell them I’m a young man traveling the United States for some good, wholesome experience. I aim to travel the world when I get out of here. After he enlightened me I felt like I could do anything I wanted. But he went down so quickly with his affliction for weed. He doesn’t smoke it, you know? He just… collects it. He aims to sell it on his own when he gets back to the real world. Anyways, we got outta that bank as fast as we could the next morning, tripping over all of those dead bodies and stuff. My father, a priest for the Russian-Orthodox church in Memphis where I grew up, always told me that a man needs a proper burial, no matter how far from pious he is. But I wasn’t exactly listening to a man a thousand miles away at that moment, if you know what I mean. We just got our hides outta that situation and made a run back to this post; it was silly of us to try to even make a raid into the heart of District 11. I think of that man a lot out here… but anyways, back to the story: we went our separate ways after that. He went to his hub, I went to mine (which is were we met). Well that certainly wasn’t the last time I met him, no-sir-ee. WE crossed paths a couple times. Once I nursed the very Katz back, but I could see after that that he had lost himself of this earth. He was compelled only by the thought of weed, by the thought of selling it. And I knew it. I should have just let him die.”

“Then why did you nurse him back?” Asked Virgil.

            “He’d taught me so much. Man can go awry very quickly, but all it takes is a little bit of convincing to get him back on track. I thought that if I could get him healthy, I could get him sane again. But it obviously didn’t work out that way. He got farther and farther into this delirium. He would go out to the farthest part of our charted maps and find leauges of growers and raid their stores. But he’s not such a bad guy. You just can’t judge him as you would a normal person – he is so… so intense, so – well, he is indefineable really. I have just so much respect for him…”

ChAPTER TWO (13) Mitzi's dream continued...

Mitzi found the young man with energy an enigma: here he was in the middle of this horrible world with so much enthusiasm and vigor. His smile was constant showing a perfect smile in spite of the situation. There was something amiss in the man, though. He was too keen.

“You are in search of the greatest man I have ever known,” said the quilted man, “He has shown me the way to lead my life. Watch your step…” He hopped effortlessly over a large part of what seemed to be the remainder of a sidewalk, propped on an obtuse angle from the decaying sewer seemed below. The whole train followed behind. “We once spent a night encamped together under a large building which used to be a bank. It was a wretched night – we were backed up two against what musta been a hundred homeless men. Katz did somethin’ to piss ‘em off. Anyways, we were fending them off, and our senses were high – you know? – and I saw the man himself (Katz, that its) come right out of his shell. He had his AR-15 with him and that’s it, and I was lovin’ on this beautiful Desert Eagle Fifty-cal. We must of killed at least twelve of them, and it seemed like they retreate, but, you know, one can never be too sure, so we bunked out in the broken-down bank for the night. He enlarged this very organ that night,” he pointed to his temple and continued, “He told me of love, and death, and especially about business. ‘A man is nothing with out his business. You go to a dinner party, and what is the first thing someone asks you?’”

Mitzi found it ridiculous for someone to be talking about a dinner party is such an atrocious situation, but managed to answer nevertheless, “I dunno. What?”

“Well, they ask you, ‘what do you do?’ In other words, what is your business? How do you make money? I always tell them I’m a young man traveling the United States for some good, wholesome experience. I aim to travel the world when I get out of here. After he enlightened me I felt like I could do anything I wanted. But he went down so quickly with his affliction for weed. He doesn’t smoke it, you know? He just… collects it. He aims to sell it on his own when he gets back to the real world. Anyways, we got outta that bank as fast as we could the next morning, tripping over all of those dead bodies and stuff. My father, a priest for the Russian-Orthodox church in Memphis where I grew up, always told me that a man needs a proper burial, no matter how far from pious he is. But I wasn’t exactly listening to a man a thousand miles away at that moment, if you know what I mean. We just got our hides outta that situation and made a run back to this post; it was silly of us to try to even make a raid into the heart of District 11. I think of that man a lot out here… but anyways, back to the story: we went our separate ways after that. He went to his hub, I went to mine (which is were we met). 

ChaPTER TWO (12) Mitzi's dream continued...

They drifted through the crumbling buildings. Every now and then Mitzi would spot a trashcan full of flames that glowed showing only hands warming themselves. He felt the time nearing when he would meet the awesome Mr. Katz… they couldn’t be more than a few miles away…

He was beginning to feel his eyelids slowly set towards their lowly partners against his cheeks, when out of the corner of his eyes waved a white man full of vigor and liveliness in front of a semi-developed building. There were electric lights within, the only mark of civilization besides his monotonous headlights, that illuminated this charismatic figure and cast his shadow clear across the street onto the chaos beyond.

“This must be it,” announced a weary Mitzi.

Many of the crew members had long since fallen asleep, except for Dogbert and Virgil. The rest awakened with a start and began to rub their eyes and focus on the scene outside.

The white man was dressed in a home-made get up consisting of intricately sewn parts that resembled a quilt. He motioned for the van to come nearer and to park in a spot clear of rubble, which Mitzi presumed was a faux-parking space. The travelers descended from their battered Mark III one by one, exhausted from their mini battle. Mitzi was the last to exit from the driver’s seat, turning the engine off and placing the key in his pocket; this shouldn’t take long, he thought.

“Welcome!” said the white man dressed in his fitted quilt.

“Where is Katz?” asked Mitzi bluntly; this was not the time for a formal greeting. His mission was clearer than ever: Get Katz and get the hell out of this god-forsaken place.

“Ah. You wish to speak to Katz. He resides within…”

The quilted man beckoned Mitzi come nearer to him so that he could see his face. The electric lights, a blessing and a curse, dilated Matt’s pupils and blinded him for a moment. Shading his face, he asked:

“How far?”

The man’s face showed that of a young man’s; no wrinkles, barely a scruffy fledgling beard. But he was gaunt and white. The sun couldn’t reach far into this place the buildings had so toppled on one another. But that fluorescent fake, man-made light again! How it does no pigment good, from the deepest of ebony, to the most chocolate Mexican, to the whitest of ivory of Europe. God, forsake this place, Mitzi thought.

“A twenty minute walk.” Deeper into the disarray he would have to go…

They began their walk, with Dogbert and Virgil trailing behind, and behind those two fools were the pilgrims. They clutched their books so tightly it seemed they might meld with the holy Word, but it was artificial – only a bunch of nouns those books were without verbal association. In fact, all the buildings, the near-dead, dead, and dying homeless men, their metal trash cans full of fire, the fluorescent lights, Dogbert and Virgil, the pilgrims themselves – all were just a disassociated bunch of nouns cramped into the same space at the same time. None of them really knew each other. The homeless man strayed far behind in search of food. He would doubtless find a morsel in this wasteland. 

CHAPTER TWO (11) Mitzi's dream continued...

But there was simply no need to shoot the man, because he took his final few breaths – strange, animalistic, heavy breaths – and his eyes rolled back to his head and he died. His only surviving cohort stood up from his corner of the van and looked deeply into the eyes of his deceased friend. He delivered his black and dingy hands to the man’s face and slowly closed his eyes while muttering something in audibly. There was a moment of silence, and the doctor forgot his austerity, and Mitzi forgot his loathing at the man who seemed so pitiless only moments before, and the van floated down the darkening street with not a homeless man to be spoken of except the mourning one inside that moving shell.

It was night now and they drove in silence. The corpse still lay on the stretcher because no one dared open the sliding doors. And if they did, no one would know what to do with the body anyways. The sweet smell of blood ran thick in the air, though Mitzi’s shoes had become crusty as the blood was beginning to coagulate. Outside, the  night was darker than any Mitzi had ever seen: the buildings contained nooks which could hide the most abominable creatures in their depths. The pilgrims began to talk of Katz and weed again, always under their breath. The whispering made even more eerie this horrible mission. 

Dogbert and Virgil, who remained hidden during the catastrophe under some fire-retardant blankets procured from the first aid kits, eyes wide open and stuffed with fear, were silent. They looked around them with brutish instinctive eyes. None of them, including the pilgrims, had been this deep into the District. The motor hummed above all else, as Mitzi steadily waned on the gas. They were almost to where Katz had been last located. A sinister mood had arisen in the van: no one spoke unless to utter something about their destination and the communal focus was on finally meeting Katz for the first time. An eerie, eerie silence ran deep through the vehicle. Even the last homeless man felt it, and showed his curiosity with tiny beads of sweat.

His remaining beef was starting to rot. Nevertheless, he chewed it every once and a while with slow drawn out bites. The rest of the van was sickened, but too tired to make a point of the nauseating ritual. For once, Mitzi thought of him as a man with carnal hunger, a man who hadn’t eaten a good meal for months. He was showing signs of serious anemia, but it didn’t jade him. He might make it through Katz’s recovery, but his being alive past that would be a miracle. 

CHAPTER TWO (10) Mitzi's dream continued...

They howled and howled at the van, something so primitive and beast-like, yet filled with human reaction and base anxiety. It was as if they were howling as a device to let the intruders know that they wanted nothing to do with them, but if necessary they might take up the means to do away with the whole damnable vehicle.

Flat tire or not, Mitzi jammed his foot onto the gas and sped down Broadway. As they were gaining speed, with sparks flowing from the rear wheel hub-cap, a small rock found its way through the passenger-side window into the head of his accomplice and instantly killed him. Right to the temple. Blood splattered like house paint onto Mitzi’s cheek and arm and caused the steering wheel to become slick. He swerved the van nearly hitting the militia coating the street but soon regained control. During the whole fiasco, the man – the corpse – fell to Mitzi’s lap limp and cumbersome. A man seemed to weigh a thousand pounds when he was dead.

Mitzi began again to speed up and out of this mess. His foot squished against the shoe as he pounded on the gas, and a warm sensation filled in his toes. Disgusting, blood gushed out of his right shoe. The driving became difficult. He felt no pain and realized that the man’s head on his lap was losing blood somewhat rapidly and draining into his socks.

While maintaining his speed, Mitzi reached over and pried loose the passenger door, propped up the dead man, and kicked him out. His body tumbled to the street and briskly somersaulted out of view. A whimpered was produced from the back of the van somewhere, probably from the man’s comrades. The howling had stopped as had the bullets, and the commotion now seemed to cease, leaving an intense silence. The injured man on the stretcher had half of his face blown off by a rock, “probably propelled by a sling of some sort,” conjectured one of the pilgrims. They had stabilized him, but for what? The man layed groaning on the stretcher, gutteral groans for part of his throat had been mamed. His groaning was growing intolerable.

“Don’t you have morphine? Why don’t you give him an overdose of morphine?” asked Mitzi, unable any longer to bear this man’s pain.

“Do you think that is the only use I have for morphine? Would you like me to have to operate without morphine? You have a revolver, shoot him yourself.” Said the apparent doctor.

“He’s been hit already. If you’d been hit, I am sure you’d think differently.” Mitzi was beginning to sweat.

“I will shoot the poor thing. I am a humane man. I will not let him suffer…” announced one of the other pilgrims reaching for his pistol.

“Shoot him then!” yelled the doctor, raising his bloody forceps in the air, “Shoot him. Assume the responsibility!”

“You are not a human being!” Yelled Mitze still driving, raising his voice as loud as he could to drown out the man’s groans. Cold this man understand the velocity of this conversation? About hi own life hanging in the balance of a few men who could never understand his world?

“I’m not killing anyone here. I care for the wounded, I don’t kill them.”

“Why don’t you care for him then?”

“I have done so. I have done all that can be done.”

            “Fuck yourself!” Mitzi aimed the revolver at the wounded man’s head. The man’s eyes grew big and he shook what was left of his face back and forth violently. Oh yes, he could understand what was going on.

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.