February 25, 2012

Thick clouds obscured the lilac sky on the morning our respite was dismantled in Jackson.

The clouds that snuggled up against the Grand Tetons muffled the approach of an approaching armed force.

Andy had just returned from another wander around Jackson, where he’d been trying to zero in on Serena, who had forced Madeline to move into a basement suite in the complex, creating a false entry and secret entry and secret exit. Madeline thought the old woman was going crazy, and in a way she was, but she also didn’t argue with her.

Andy mentioned to me, while I was cooking supper, that he believed we best be on alert.

I asked why and he simply repeated that we had to be “on alert.”

Two large armed forces from the Mormon Army out of Salt Lake City and the Wyoming Army, which had been skirmishing the past week, were converging on Jackson when I muttered “a little more communication wouldn’t hurt” to Andy, who ignored me and stared out at the steely grey of the valley below.

Ten minutes later Chad Orton, the leader of the Mormon Army battle force, 90 armed, frustrated, polygamist ghouls strong, received a report from a lead scout that “a 20 to 30 strong force of Wyomings” was setting up camp 14 miles south of Jackson, at a strategic junction.

Orton, a veteran of numerous fierce battles against the Wyomings, Carson City/Reno enclave, the Coloradoans and Idaho militias, sprang into action.

Ignoring the better advice of history, he ordered his force to split into two, “to pinch the Wyomings in half and tear their heathen guts out.”

A former US Marine lieutenant who ‘saw action’ at Grenada, before leaving the military to partner with his father-in-law in Salt Lake City realty company, Orton was a bitch-slapping, religious tenet ignoring dog who enjoyed nothing more than a hot bath with a nine-year-old girl. He fancied himself the normal one out of his battle force, a collection of pathetic evil culled from the sordid mess of out-of-control religious zealotry that has lost sight of the truths of old, as well as captured heathens who fight for food and plunder.

Orton’s path to this point was assured when he raped a 14-year-old girl who had been lured to his ranch near Ogden via his favourite fishing rod — the Internet. He didn’t call it rape, not at all. It was consummation of marriage. Never mind the fact she screamed like a wounded banshee and committed suicide two oppression-heavy years later, after giving birth to his fourth son at the age 16; Orton was never wrong.

If only he’d known about Wellington and Napoleon, or Custer.

Across the valley, leading five vehicles jury-rigged with steel plating for armor and machine gun mounts, was former Buffalo lawyer Michael (Dusty) Durstwell, who had served two terms as sheriff of Johnson County. It was during that time when he sealed his passage to hell, by doing such things as forcing young women to gobble his manhood in order to get off speeding tickets or breaking into businesses after he’d set off alarms and plunder them of cash and goods.

However, his rise to prominence in the dying world’s paramilitary scene was assured when he led a coup against a group of nasty cutthroats with Cheyenne-based legislator Gerald Kingston. Together they secured the Wyoming militia for sex fiends, as opposed to just murderous demons. He now oversaw an uneasy alliance of sex fiends and murderers and on this day he was going to get a gift in the form of a halved, tired force that was going to charge headlong into his triangulated fire in a narrow mountain valley, while the other half pushed into the village.

Orton, like Durstwell, rose up the ranks by also aiding in a coup, along with current Mormon Army leader Ambrose Beasley, a lawyer who had been the power behind the office in Utah’s legislative circles for decades.

Paranoid from cocaine abuse in the late 1980s and early 1990s and racked with sweaty guilt for having abandoned his church, as well as prone to fall for every apocalyptic scenario laid out by Hollywood and the media, Beasley has a well-stocked and armed compound on his sprawling Salt Lake City acreage and from there, he built an army on the shoulders of absolute hubris and the spear tip of a razor sharp tongue.

Sweet music rained down from the heavens on the day he met Orton, who he quickly entrusted as his battlefield commander. It made complete sense to a lawyer that a goofy man with an IQ that was shy of triple digits by a 10-spot was in charge of pushing the boundaries of the new empire they were going to carve for their church and children, though the vast majority of their offspring disappeared Nov. 11, 2011.

Unaware of his folly and oblivious to the fact that an angel of death was waiting for them, Orton sent his force back to attack the Wyoming camp, located at Hoback Junction.

While they turned around and returned to hopefully surprise the Wyomings, Orton spurred his men forward into Jackson.

Durstwell was a stickler for details and he quickly dispatched a forward scouting team when they decided to make camp half a mile up Highway 189/191 from the junction.

The team returned minutes later with a panic-laced radio broadcast noting attack was imminent.

Forty-four men with the Mormon Army drove into a horrible triangulated fire nightmare and the ‘battle’ lasted less than three minutes. Survivors were scalped and mutilated to death, with trophies being lashed to vehicles by the Wyomings.

Slaughter fresh in their hearts, Durstwell agreed to allow a 10-man force to advance toward Jackson to determine what was ahead. He ordered that they proceed with caution and not to engage the enemy unless the entire force was together.

Hap Nesterenko, a former US Army infantryman who had served several tours of duty in Iraq, was given command of the forward force and he seized the assignment with relish and enough mustard to pinch a dead nose.

Durstwell felt a pang of worry as Nesterenko’s three-vehicle party disappeared up the highway toward Jackson.

Orton and company were rolling into downtown Jackson at that time, and they established a loose perimeter in the downtown, while looting parties of two went off in search of supplies.

Andy snarfed down the dinner I made and once again donned his long-rider coat.

“You off again,” I said, scraping a plate. I noticed he slipped a handgun into a pocket and raised an eyebrow.

“A gun?”

Andy smiled and asked me to pass him the shotgun that was leaning against a side table, and the box of shells sitting on it.

He jammed the shells into his pockets and double-checked the gun’s load. He then slipped out the door when I wasn’t looking.

Our hideout was far enough from town that I couldn’t hear the gunfire that would erupt 20 minutes after he left.

Serena had been keeping constant vigil and she hissed at Madeline to turn off lamps and make sure all forms of power were off as a truck suddenly turned up their dead end street.

Serena could make out three shapes in the cab of the truck, with a fourth dark figure standing in the back manning a machine gun.

The truck idled up the street and, its diesel engine clacking, it turned around and departed back the way it had come.

Andy came out of nowhere. He leapt from behind a car and was in the back of the truck in an eye blink. His blade flashed and the machine gunner fell to the street with a slap. The driver noticed something move in his mirror and hit the brakes. By the time he turned around, Andy had fired three times with the handgun and three heads exploded inside the cab.

Serena’s throat tightened in a scream and she swallowed it. The fear that had consumed her the past week or more had returned with a vengeance.

Shaking, she peeked through the basement blinds as the dark figure stepped away from the truck and disappeared up the street, around a corner. Serena’s hands gushed sweat over the stock of the shotgun that she held in tight, frightened hands.

She had never felt such fear and the thought of it was shattering her self-control. Her mind tripped over itself as she tried to put a finger on why that dark figure evoked such terror.

Something about him… she quivered. “It can’t be,” she said, her eyes closed tight in prayer fashion. “Not now.”

Hap Nesterenko and his crew heard the shots Andy fired and scattered from their vehicle. Unknowingly, Andy gave the Wyomings and the rest of Durstwell’s scattered force in Jackson a chance to flinch and take cover.

The Wyomings held a position on the east side of the downtown and moved toward the center of the town where alerted Mormon Army troops waited.

A few more pops from distant gunfire tightened the tension. It was Andy, again. The shots fired were by three extremely stoned Mormon Army soldiers, who fired their weapons as Andy’s blade reached into their spines, inner organs and necks.

When the first group of Wyomings entered the Mormons’ sights, a full-on firefight erupted, making Andy ramp up his actions.

He spotted another trio of ghouls sneaking back to the firefight and he followed.

They suddenly turned and headed back up the street where he’d dispatched the truck. As the trio reached the truck, one turned and luckily spotted Andy approaching at a speed that didn’t make sense to his prescription drug-pummeled brain.

He fired at the approaching blur as his partners in arms bolted in racing terror for cover. They stampeded for their lives into the apartment complex where Serena and Madeline cowered in terror.

Realizing he’d lost the advantage, Andy veered off and headed toward the sound of gunfire coming from the downtown. The other three weren’t important.

Puffing and swearing excitedly, the trio regained their focus and began to make plans to follow Andy back toward the battle.

They halted at the door and one hissed, “Wait. Smell that?”

Another whispered, “Cooked food! It’s cooked food!”

Madeline’s grilled cheese sandwich cook off half an hour earlier lingered in the air of the apartment complex.

Serena could smell the food, too, and she strained to hear or see a sign of the three soldiers. She hoped that fear would override their sniffers and then heard Madeline scream. A voice cried, “We’ve got a girl!”

Serena’s blood chilled and she moved toward the sound of the voice, giving her cover away as she stepped through the secret entrance and into the false entry. The back of her head grew hot and she fell forward. One of the trio’s rifle barrel jabbed into the back of her head so hard that it tore a gash in her scalp. She tumbled forward, dropping the shotgun.

“Two women. We have two women! Holy!” one of the trio screamed.

Andy descended on the heart of the Mormon Army force’s line at that same moment and the Wyomings, taking cover behind vehicles and buildings after being cut down by the first volley from the Mormons, became frozen by the sounds of screaming and terror. The occasional rifle shot was quickly followed by another scream or two.

Nesterenko managed to get a couple of men to fall back with him and Andy could not easily get at them, so he again quickly abandoned his course and veered toward the Wyomings. A few moments of hard-breathing silence was followed by further screams of terror and agony, as Andy carved into the Wyomings. Centuries of warfare and immortality gave Andy a pure edge over the mostly untrained grunt animals that he encountered and using swift determination on the edge of his razor-sharp knife blade, he dispatched one after another.

Orton fell back with six men and they came across the trio with their prisoners.

Despite the urgency of the moment, several men pawed at Madeline and Serena, who kicked at them and Serena vowed untold wrath on them.

Orton’s heavy hand lashed across the old woman’s chin and she reeled sideways and hit the pavement hard. Madeline shrieked and fell on her. Several pairs of hands hoisted her to her feet and then swooped over her physique.

Nesterenko and the two men with him became Andy’s next targets.

He slipped between shadows and the occasional rays of light and hit them with ripping intensity. Nesterenko saw his intestines curl onto the wet pavement as he fell, in slow motion, to his knees and then to his side.

Andy was gone before Nesterenko’s life ended, off hunting more of this doomed men.

Ten minutes after the battle had begun, Orton had rallied with his remaining troops — 13 terrified yet hyper sexually excited men.

Serena stood in front of Madeline, her temples pounding and chest heaving from a mix of anger and fear. Orton was explaining to his men, who didn’t seem to be too keen about listening to him, that raping these women now would not help them at that time.

He himself wanted the teenaged girl with a gnawing lust that threatened to exploit his careful nature.

He ordered his men to take up defensive positions and several did as they were told, but several more stood their ground and demanded that he hand the young girl over. Serena yowled that they’d have to kill her first.

A younger man, about 20, lifted his M-16 and fired a round into Serena’s stomach, spinning her sideways into a vehicle and knocking her up onto its hood, which she then slid down onto the pavement. Madeline shrieked and lunged at the old woman, whose head hit the pavement with a hollow gourd thud.

Andy, who’d been forming a plan to hit this group, from a hiding spot 30 yards away, seized the chance and charged in. Once again, his blade flashed and gurgling screams filled the air. Men fired their rifles at a flashing shape that didn’t sit still and more screamed in agony.

Madeline held Serena tightly in her arms and sobbed as blood poured from the old woman’s front and back. Serena’s eyes, tear-filled, stared unblinkingly at Andy as he took his time finishing off the last of the men — Orton, who was cowering on the sidewalk near where the two women lay.

“What kind of demon are you!” Orton shouted at Andy, who stood before him — a dark shape on this, his judgment day.

Serena fought unconsciousness in order to hear Andy’s reply. With terror wrapped around her like a noose, she lost her battle and her eyes closed.

Madeline sobbed deeply and cried out her name.

Andy’s blade flashed a final time and Orton clutched at his stomach. He pulled his hands back and coughed at the sight of all the thick red blood covering them. He looked back at Andy in time to see a silvery twinkle before gulping, and then gulping again he realized he couldn’t breathe. His throat had been cut and he was dying. “No,” he tried to say but it came out “nub” as his legs lost their hold and his dead body flumped to the ground.

The fleeing remnants of the Wyomings sped from Jackson as Andy gently lifted Serena into his arms and ordered Madeline to follow him.

Sobbing uncontrollably, the girl did as she was told and Andy led her to the truck that he had parked at the entrance to town leading from the ski hill. He placed Serena in the passenger seat and assured Madeline, “everything will be okay. She’ll be okay.”

He softly repeated that to her all the way back to our hideout.

When Andy pulled up, I looked out the balcony and noticed a female form in the front of the truck. My heart leapt from my chest into my throat and I froze in place. I watched him open the passenger door and a shaken looking girl stepped uneasily from the truck. Andy reached in and carefully removed the still form of an old woman and he carried her up the stairs.

Placing Serena on the couch, he ordered me to get the first aid kit and help him clean the old woman’s wound.

I wretched at the sight of the huge bullet hole in her stomach and spewed, “Oh man, this one has had it.”

Madeline sobbed out loud.

Andy shot me a look that said, “think about what you’re saying” and I tried to backpedal for the sake of the upset girl.

“She’s going to be fine, you’ll see,” Andy said to Madeline. “She is a very strong soul.”

I busied myself trying to make Madeline comfortable while Andy sat beside Serena, pressing down the entry and exit wounds. “The more blood she loses, the longer it will take her to regain her form,” he said.

Once the remnants of the Wyomings returned to the junction, Durstwell ordered an immediate fallback.

“God knows how many there were,” one exhausted, frightened ghoul soldier said, his voice a quick tick away from weeping. “Can’t be right but I swear to fuck there was only one of them. Nothin’ makes sense anymore. Nothin.’”

The Wyomings bolted down Highway 189/191, their formerly formidable appearing vehicles rattling and clattering back toward Rock Springs, where a good chunk of the western battle force was camped.

Once word of the battle leaked out, the Wyomings resolved to return to Jackson as soon as possible to finish things off. The Wyomings swore death to all Utahans.

Unable to raise their advance force, the Utahans also initiated a second, larger force to seek out and exact revenge on the heathens. The Utahans swore death to all Wyomings.

It did not behoove many of the soldiers in the Mormon army to pull a trigger, which was a sorry undoing for many souls who parlayed life as a sinful wallow. They maintained their allegiance to spiritual tenets while they burned for failure to keep a grip on others. Pauses to consider the hereafter led many a rancid man to his putrid fester faster than had he pulled the trigger.

The who, the what, the when and the why of the Bell curve on the greatest test for all souls were soon to become clearer.

Ian Cobb/e-KNOW

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