Deviants (Badlands 2)

Mangled bodies lay at odd angles, some so loaded with bullet holes you could see right through them.

“What…who…why did this happen?” Arlen asked.

“We’re at fucking war,” Grimm answered. “This isn’t the only place like this. Shit, this is happening all over the place.”

There were bodies of acolytes, delegates, and outliers. That didn’t make sense to me. Why would the outliers be involved in this?

The number of bodies lessened in some parts of the city than in others. One thing that was consistent was the silence.

“And David did all this because he wants Cali back?” Arlen implored, sliding across the back seat as Romero swerved around a woman with half her white mask smashed into her face.

“David started this because I made him believe in an alliance that was never going to happen, made him think he would get everything he wanted and then made a very public display that said he could go fuck himself,” Romero explained evenly. “I started this motherfucker and it’s going to be one helluva ride to end it.”

“Ave fucking Satanas,” Grimm said cheerfully.

“See, you just did a good job showin some emotion,” Arlen cooed.

“I’d do an even better job at showing you how good I can make you feel.”

“Yeah, I’m gonna take a good hard pass on that, reaper,” she spat back at him.

My laugh was cut short when Romero pulled a round black object with yellow trim—which I initially thought was a walkie-talkie— out of his pocket. The screen and the numbered keyboard gave away the fact that he had a phone.

“What is that?!”

“Are you really asking me a question you already know the answer to?”

“How long have you had a fucking phone?”

“Years. A lot of people have phones, Cali. How do you think we’ve been communicating? We don’t send up fucking bat symbols.”

“He’s right,” Arlen interjected. “People inside the Kingdom are attached to the fuckers.”

I glanced back at her and she shrugged. That was the second time she’d alluded to her past with no hesitation, and neither Grimm nor Romero reacted. I was beginning to feel like I was the only one who didn’t know what it was.

“I don’t know what a bat symbol is. And I didn’t grow up like that.”

Grimm muttered under his breath and Arlen frowned at me. I tried to think back on all the times David would shut himself inside his ‘sanctuary’ and then start speaking when he was supposedly alone. That was obviously why.

Romero hit a button a few times and then slid the rugged cell back into his pocket.

“So what did you do?”

He nodded his head, indicating I should look straight instead of answering me with words.

Peering through the windshield, I watched as an armored luxury SUV pulled out ahead of us from a side street. The Sigil of the Baphomet stared back at me from the rear window. Checking my side mirror, I saw another coming up behind Cobra’s jeep.

I had so many fucking questions. Not about who was in the SUV’S; that was obvious. I wanted to know how he had access to all this shit. I wasn’t sure he would answer me, though. If he kept something as simple as a goddamn cellular from me, what else was he comfortably leaving me in the dark about? Every time I thought we were making some leeway, he knocked me right back down again.

He made his next turn behind the SUV and started down a street that was littered with bodies.

“It looks like a fuckin genocide,” Arlen breathed, rolling up her window.

“I don’t have the patience for this shit,” Romero stated, accelerating to go faster.

“Ew, Rome. What the fuck?” I yelled, as a barrage of audible crunches filled the air and the jeep began to dip up and down. You could hear skulls being completely flattened and bones getting crushed as he drove right over them. The other three vehicles were doing the same.

He laughed under his breath as we bumped along.