After a few weeks of phone calls to Fat-O from a D.C. area shopping mall payphone he finally got a contact. When his call was picked up his heart glowed to hear what sounded like a Southern Appalachian twang, “Hey buddy, how can I help ya?”

Now Randy was well-aware of the sobering fact that The World, particularly that portion of it directly controlled by Uncle Satan, as Pap had referred to the Federal Government, was out to get him; specifically out to compromise the natural rights of Randy Sterling Bracken. He well knew that Fat-O was in the crosshairs of Uncle Satan and that his Knoxville friend might be pressured into giving him up. Randy’s paranoid upbringing and selfish nature converged in such a way as to insure that his every sense was on constant lookout for The Enemy and his own betrayal by weak-willed ‘friends’.

But there was just something so innocently inbred and unashamedly ‘white’ about the voice of Dennis Gun Love—which he swore was his actual given name—on the other end of the phone that he decided to set up a meeting after their first conversation. This is not to say that he trusted Dennis, or anyone for that matter. He had trusted Pap, and did trust Sensei. That was as far as the roots of that perilous sentiment had been permitted to burrow into his psyche. He remained deeply suspicious of Dennis Gun Love.

Bring this boy in where you can cut him loose. Surround him with mookes so he will stick out.

Oh yeah, back to Gomorrah we go!

Randy selected for their meeting place what he liked to refer to as The Well of Inequity. This was an East Baltimore McDonalds where he would often go for his research back in the 1990s when he was formulating the principals for Aryаn Rock, his own white supremacist organization, which he eventually disbanded Nathan Bedford Forest-like out of a very real sense of disgust over the low moral character and even lower intellect of his membership.

He had actually gone, like an anthropologist, to the ghetto burger joint on a regular basis, posing as some stay-behind white-trash dope-fiend and listening into the Nation of Islam sessions in the dining area. He was able to pick up enough of the militant black-separatist propaganda to gain a clear understanding for how one woos a congregation by appealing to the negative in others and the positive in your audience. He then used these same techniques to construct an opposing belief system that Pap would have approved of and that embittered idiots would be drawn to.

Well, it was a way to recruit soldiers.

You don’t actually believe in anything do you?

Why should I?

It was this McDonalds, the very focus of fringe ghetto life and glaring symbol of everything that was wrong with American Culture, that Randy proposed as their meeting place. Dennis Gun Love reluctantly agreed only after Randy harangued him for being a ‘queasy redneck’ and a ‘regressive coward’ who was afraid to ‘carry the White torch among the inferiors’. It was not difficult for Randy to bring forth his white supremacist vocabulary as he yet yearned to believe in his former credo, to the extent that even giving voice to his now defunct beliefs got him pumped up and feeling good.

Thinking of feeling good…

Randy knocked back half of his Bacardi and pocketed the rest in his gay fanny pack worn in the front like he was a ninety-year-old pedestrian. He was not going into Gomorrah dressed as a skinhead or in his Old West time-travel outfit for fear of generating a sighting. So he had ‘borrowed’ a set of Doc’s scrubs while the man who had rebuilt his left shoulder back in January after he had been shot on the Burton Op was upstairs operating on some retarded kid. Their base was in the basement of a free medical center for handicapped children, which gave them something innocuous to hide beneath and access to medical care for themselves and the primitive people they brought forward out of the past. He also ‘borrowed’ Doc’s car—and would be sure to tell Doc when he returned it—and said goodbye to Sensei, just telling his team leader that he was going out for supplies…

It was 1:27 p.m. when he pulled into the Bank of America parking lot in Cockeysville Maryland. He was hunting for a human shield, and figured he’d catch some management type coming back from lunch. He parked in between two cars in a reserved space and waited. Sure enough, at 1:36 some little crater-faced twerp in a 2012 Cadillac rolled up, beeped, backed up, and got out, approaching Randy’s driver’s side window, which he lowered even as he looked ahead. The man placed his hands on his knees, afraid even to touch the strange car, and got into a half-crouch as he explained—having taken note of Randy’s height—in soft diplomatic tones, “Excuse me, but this space is reserve—”

The word then ended in a gasp and a gurgle as Randy snatched the back of the man’s neck and pulled his face into the crook of his arm, which twisted the man’s neck and bent him backward through the car window. The struggling nerd, who weighed perhaps 130 pounds, looked up into Randy’s eyes as the rangy hand clamped down on his throat.

Yes, look into my eyes with that deep uncomprehending hurt.

Yes, now you understand that you are just raw material bound to get me through my day.

Oh good, that is one of the more touching looks of deer-in-the-headlights injustice I have savored.

This beats murdering that narc back in 96’.

The unidentified victim began searching Randy’s impassive face with worried roving eyes in a useless attempt to divine his own fate. Meanwhile Randy scanned the lot for witnesses.

Oh, I’m sorry, back to savoring your misery exclusively.

Unsettled by Randy’s narrowed gaze the man squirmed furiously and to no effect. Then tears began to well up in the tired sockets of a face worn by worry far beyond its years.

Now recall that you believe yourself to be more than my snared prey and begin the pathetic plea.

“Please mist—”

With his victim’s offering of the expected inquiry Randy shoved the muzzle of his H&K 9-milimeter into his mouth. The man’s eyes now flashed fearfully at the surgical gloves on Randy’s hands.

“Listen, if you do as I say I will not kill you. I’m no towel-head dirt-worshipper. I want to complete my act of terrorism and survive at least long enough to watch it on CNN. I don’t have seventy-four infibulated virgins waiting for me. You want to live boy?”

The man nodded his head ‘yes’, chipping a tooth on the gun barrel in the process.

“Okay boy, we are taking your car. We will be gone for a couple of hours at the most. Your name is Greg and you are my ugly stoner cousin from Winchester Virginia. Got it?”

When he pulled the weapon out of the shaking man’s mouth he responded nervously, “Greg, stoned-out-of-my-fucking-mind, Winchester Virginia, got it.”

“Don’t piss yourself Greg.”

Greg responded nervously, “Won’t piss myself—oh my God!—got it…” and then began to cry.

“Greg, if you cry I will kill you. Do not cry Greg.”

Greg then gathered his breath and nodded, “No crying; got it.”

Randy then patted him gently on the cheek. “That’s a good ugly cousin from Winchester. Now be careful, I don’t want you wrenching your back. You might have to do some aggressive driving for me.”

Minutes later they were driving down York Road into the city, taking a long slow route so he could get ‘Greg’ indoctrinated. Greg often looked nervously at him but never really had the courage to ask him what he was doing in hospital scrubs and surgical gloves.

He probably thinks you are an escaped mental patient.

That’s a good cover.

“Good driving Greg. I appreciate skill behind the wheel. Now Greg, we are going into East Baltimore to purchase a big fucking gun from a big fucking gun-nut. You and I and the gun-nut will be the only White people there. After I buy the gun you will drive me to a cab stand and I will hail a cab and you can return to your nice reserved parking space and report your abduction and the stolen vehicle that I left there. Oh, here, have a swig.”

That doesn’t get Doc back his car.

Oops.

Randy handed Greg his 151 and watched the man knock back a shot, and then another. “Thanks Cuz”, the man said, and smiled nervously.

Randy attempted to smile but it felt like a vicious sneer and it must have looked that way too, because Greg’s eyes widened with fear.

Loosen up so he can relax.

Randy knocked back the rest of the rum, tossed the bottle out the window causing some old lady to squeak and shuffle back up onto the sidewalk, and then deployed his hash pipe in service to their nerves.

I can’t believe you are getting nervous.

If this goes wrong I could be in Club Fed.

Get loose brother!

Greg’s eyes lit up when he saw the hash pipe being loaded and lit up. “I don’t smoke in the car—I just got it detailed. Besides, I get piss-tested at work. I could get fired!”

Can you believe this fucking guy?

Would that every human shield had such capacity for The Fantasy of Rights.. .

Yes, that would make abductions so much more fun.

Randy began to relax as the pipe trap began to glow. “Forward a copy of the police report to Leviathan, which will include your statement that I promised to kill you in a gruesome manner if you did not partake of this substance.”

“But you didn—Oh shit, you just did. Oh God. Give me some. I’ll suck the whole fucking thing down!”

This miserable twerp truly clings to its noxious existence.

Randy took a huge hit and then handed off the pipe to he who had just become Greg, who was finally now in character, speeding down a busy city street in a $50,000 dollar car as he sucked maniacally on some two hundred year old time-traveler hash!

Randy refilled the pipe as necessary, and by the time they were to Erdman Avenue in East Baltimore’s desiccated residential area in route to the industrial strip by Route 40 Greg, was, well, finally Greg; Randy’s ugly stoner little cousin and wheelman from Winchester Virginia. “I got like all the drugs right; like I’m a badass. I probably get laid right; fuckin’ all the women in town right?”

“Now Greg, we are from Western Virginian, not West Virginia. We only use the vaginas that we aren’t related too!”

Greg was now actually having a good time, and thanks to the rum and hash was actively fantasizing that he was Greg, like some moviegoer who had been snatched up by a noir film crew and tossed into a car as a side-kick to the movie’s darkest villain.

I should abduct people like this and then bill them for the experience. This cat is having way too much fun. I’m sensing that some deep layers of repression have just been ripped away by my liberating hand.

Randy then took off his surgical gloves, tossed them out the window, and smiled, a crooked smile, but something recognizable as a smile none-the-less, and extended his hand. “Hey Greg, I’m cousin Randy, let’s go buy us a big fucking gun!”

Greg took his hand, whooped, “Yeeehah!” gunned the engine and jumped his Cadillac over the potholed rise at the traffic light where Erdman crossed Sinclair Lane, nearly totaling a church van. He then looked over at Randy for approval, who smiled like a benevolent older cousin. “That was some aggressive driving. Drive these God-people and their God-bullshit right off our road Cuz!”

Greg smiled the smile of a completely stoned hostage who had gone way beyond Stockholm Syndrome and Randy felt something way, way, way down in his chest tug.

Hell, this is the best day of his pathetic life and you might be killing him in five minutes. Make it worth his while.

Randy then grinned a hopelessly crooked grin as he reached into his fanny pack for one of Richard F. Burton’s favorite tonics, a Warburg drop, the genuine opium-based candy the 19th Century explorer swore by for alleviating depression and the effects of tropical disease. “Here Greg, a Warburg drop, because your wife is a nagging bitch, your kids are spoiled brats, and the soul-eating orifice you work for is going to shit you out as soon as it gets done digesting you.”

Greg seemed to think for a moment and then grabbed the drop and popped it in his mouth and began to mumble as he sucked, “Oh this shit is good Cuz, thanks.”

As they got out of the Cadillac that Greg had parked between the only other decent vehicles on the lot; a minivan and a church van—more God bullshit! This is a bad sign—he waved Greg over and put his hand on his shoulder. “Hey Cuz, stay next to me, kind of close, but never on my right or front.”

Greg looked at him innocently. “Why?”

“Because I shoot with my right hand, and my heart is on my left. If these are Feds you are my human shield.”

Greg gave him a wild-eyed look and then chewed up his drop and smiled. “In that case, can I have another happy drop?”

Randy popped another drop in his new cousin’s open mouth and grinned. “My kin you are Cuz!”

I’m actually going to feel bad for ten seconds if I get this twerp killed.

Yes the weight of the world rests on your amoral shoulders.