The Desperado Undead (3/20)

1

A man of average height and stature, not quite six foot and definitely not over one-hundred-eighty pounds, walked briskly down a concrete corridor. He was in a black suit with a white undershirt and a red tie. He had his long, blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail and his dark brown eyes looked worried.

He marched towards the solid metal door at the end of the pure white hallway lit by fluorescent lights. By the door was one man, armed with a .45 caliber Glock, wearing metal plates in a vest meant to be bulletproof. Garrison thought he looked a little young to possibly be sacrificing his life guarding the place the Judicators meet when need be, but whatever, it’s his life.

Garrison finally approached the door.

“Identification,” the guard asks.

“It’s Garrison, the remaining one, GG.”

“Proof?”

“Kid, have you not seen me on the news or anything? You know it’s me.”

“Yes, but I need identification, it’s part of my job.”

Garrison sighs, “godd*mn pest.”

He reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out his leather wallet. He flips it open, inside is a thousand dollars in cash, his driver’s license, his normal ID, and his Judicator ID. The Judicator looks exactly the same as any normal ID would, just instead of his normal name, JUDICATOR GARRISON (GG) is written. It’s official, he thinks to himself, GG is part of my name, absolutely ridiculous. He hands the kid his Judicator ID, the kid looks at it, and hands it back.

“The others are all in there, Mr. Garrison,” he says.

“Good,” Garrison responds.

The metal door slides open and Garrison walks into the large room. It is a massive, dome-shaped room, with a diameter of six-hundred-sixty-six feet. On the walls are hundred-foot Televisions with various news broadcasts, security cam footage, and even one with a Russian sitcom for the almost childish Kruschev. In the middle of the room is a circular table with nine seats on it and a tiny hole filled with water and goldfish, the diameter of this aquarium being three feet, just large enough to fit in the middle of the table. Garrison walks in and takes his seat, the other four Judicators cheering as he does.

“Why do ya look so down,” Letterman asks.

“Yes, my friend,” Kruschev says, a bottle of vodka in hand, with a heavy Russian accent, “it is happy day, for today we gain leg up against rebel scum!”

“Wait, we’ve got something over the Desperado,” Smith asks.

“I will tell you all later, for now, let us join Gary in his grief,” Kruschev says.

“I’m fine, really, just tired. And by the way, don’t call me Gary.”

“Ahahah! Usual Gary, such jokester!”

“Alright ladies eyes up here,” Dempsey shouts as he stands up, “we do have a little issue here we have to discuss. We had two Judicators die last night alone, Chenglei and G were both assassinated in a matter of hours. It seems as though the Desperado Undead is finally making some moves. We have to be on our lookout, we never know when one of these b*stards might decide to jump us. They aren’t as dangerous as they seem, they just caught us by surprise.”

“Twice,” Kruschev says and bursts into laughter.

Dempsey gives him a death glare, “Bad time Kruschev.”

Kruschev apologizes and Dempsey continues, “From here until the Desperado menace is wiped out, we will be working under a strict curfew, in our houses nice and safe from six in the afternoon to six in the morning. Also, no one should be going anywhere without adequate protection. Make sure you have guards on you at all times. Lastly, be ready for anything, these people are blood-thirsty psychopaths, you never know how they might strike. Any objections? Questions?”

The Judicators all exchange glances, no questions. Dempsey sits down.

“Hey Kruschev,” Smith says, “who’s creep and show back there?”

He nods towards two men who are standing behind Kruschev's seat on either side of him. They are both in heavy bulletproof gear and both wield the same weapon. An AK-12 with a 3x zoom sight and a red dot canted on it, the rifle is also equipped with a suppressor, foregrip, and laser sight for situations when it is needed. Both are loaded with hundred-round drum magazines of 7.62 ammunition.

“Oh them? They are bodyguards,” Kruschev tells Smith, “This one is the Wolf,” he points at the one on the right, “and this is the Thunder,” he points at the one on the left, “goofy names, I know, I know. They name themselves though, so what are you to do? Best Russian soldiers, which means best soldiers in world.”

Kruschev laughs. Smith nods, clearly impressed.

“What did you mean earlier,” Letterman asks Kruschev, “when you said we have the upper hand against the Desperado?”

“Ah, right,” Kruschev says, “Wolf! My book, please.”

The Wolf grabs a bag from behind Kruschev's chair, opens it, and pulls out a large book. He hands it to Kruschev and Kruschev slams it onto the table. Its cover looks like sewn together pieces of flesh and cloth, Garrison even sees what may have once been an eye socket on part of it. Its pages look worn and at some points slightly torn, but it still seems to give off an evil red glow. All of the Judicators as well as the Wolf and the Thunder feel some sort of evil energy radiating off of it as if they were in the presence of something that could do incomprehensible things, like open portals to other worlds.

“What...what is it,” Garrison asks.

Kruschev looks at Garrison, visibly proud of himself, “This, my precious маленький сука волк, is The Necronomicon.”

2

Jack stood in his kitchen in sweatpants and a plain white shirt, his hair was messy and he looked like the definition of tired. But he felt more awake and alive than ever. He was scrambling eggs for him and his new lover. He prayed silently the whole time that it would last, that it wouldn’t be over before it really truly started. He was humming to himself, the song was one of the only by Green Day that had yet to be banned, Basket case. Just as he got to the chorus, the doorbell rang. He took the eggs off the stove and walked to the door, he opened it and saw Joel. He thought he’d never seen Joel like this before. He looked exhausted and terrified...but also determined and almost excited.

“Good morning, Jack,” Joel says, “you mind if I come in?”

Joel walks in before Jack can answer. Jack throws the door shut.

“Mornin to you too man,” Jack says, “what’s uh...what’s goin on?”

“What makes you think somethings going on?”

“Well, you look horrible, and you burst in here before I could answer you. There’s no issue but that’s just very...not you.”

Joel gives a single ha, “yeah...true.”

They stand in the kitchen in awkward silence for what feels like minutes but is no more than twenty seconds.

“...Well,” Jack asks.

“Right,” Joel responds, “right yeah, um, I was wondering...could you...could you somehow get me the location of the remaining Garrison?”

Jack shakes his head, did he hear him correctly? Why would Joel want the location of a Judicator? Is...is he okay?...is this Joel? He knows that anyone could be a bodysnatcher at any time, the things are smart, they wait for the perfect moment to strike. He looks at Joel’s eyes very carefully, you can sometimes tell if it’s a bodysnatcher by the eyes, Joel’s eyes were big enough Jack thought he would be able to. Bodysnatcher eyes always look lifeless...emotionless, and Jack saw more life and emotion in Joel’s eyes than ever before.

“Um,” Jack says and shrugs, “yeah, sure, just gimme a few days-”

“No,” Joel yells, “...ahem...no, I need it by tomorrow this time at the latest.”

Jack is getting more concerned by the moment.

“...If you tell me what’s going on.”

“Jack, really, nothing is going on.”

“Joel, you’re acting completely different from usual, yelling, asking where a Judicator is, and demanding I find out in a day’s time, something is wrong.”

Joel thinks for a moment, sighs, and says, “The Mirror. It...it told me I only have a couple of days to live. My guess is three, and...I feel painfully unaccomplished in life Jack! I want to go out knowing I did something. I want to go out knowing I killed a Judicator.”

Jack looks at him in pure shock.

“Just...don’t tell anyone ok? I don’t need anyone on me about this ok,” Joel says.

Jack thinks for a moment, “...I guess I can. I...I’m so sorry man.”

Joel doesn’t respond.

“Yeah, I can have it by tonight. No problem.”

“And you won’t tell anyone this?”

“I-...,” Jack considers, “I guess not.”

Joel nods, “good, I’ll be back tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Jack says.

He watches as Joel thinks for a moment, turns, and leaves his house. Anne-Marie comes out also wearing sweatpants and one of Jack’s shirts that reaches her knees. It has a design on it that displays a large black cross on all white with text under it saying “Say your prayers at Holy Mountain!” and on the back reads “Holy Mountain world park, entrance at 270 Holy Road, US. We hope to see you soon!” Both Jack and Anne-Marie were true Christians, but they mostly kept that under wraps, the push and eventual near requirement of the religion by the NWO made them feel nearly disgusted about it.

“What was that,” she asks.

“Oh, uh, just Joel,’ Jack tells her, “he wants me to find something for him.”

He walks to the living room and just sits on the couch, he covers his face with his hands for a moment before using his hands to put his hair into an almost surfer boy mid part.

“You mind grabbing my laptop from my room,” Jack asks Anne-Marie.

“Yeah, no problem, where is it?”

“On my dresser.”

She goes back into Jack’s, now Jack’s and hers, room. While she’s gone Jack recalls his time at Holy Mountain. It was a place from his childhood, a place he used to love. Nowadays, thinking of it brings an odd existential dread to him, not this time though. This time it’s all positive.

An odd thought comes into his mind, it means nearly nothing to him but he feels it fits the situation; Necromancer take me back to where it all began...

3

Nearly twenty years ago, as the white Ford Explorer pulled into the parking lot at Holy Mountain World Park, a twelve-year-old Jack thinks of what he wants for his birthday (which is September thirteenth, exactly one month from today), and how his teacher swore last Tuesday because some kid, who he thought was named Karl but wasn’t entirely sure, stabbed him in the back with a pair of scissors. Something’s wrong with Karl, isn’t it? He thinks. Yes, he definitely thinks there is.

Jack looks back on these days with pure fondness before he had to worry about anything other than the test the next day and what his three friends thought of him. Back before he knew the true tyranny of the NWO. Back before the Desperado.

The car stopped and his father said, “We’re here!”

They were here all right. Jack saw that when he got out, he expected it to just be a cool mountain, but it was one of the most beautiful sights he’d ever seen. A huge, hulking mountain with vibrant grass and cliff edges that were a very distinct dark grey. Few trees were present but the couple that was there were stunning willows. A stream of crystal clear water ran down one rocky side of the mountain, giving it that extra bit of natural wonder. And at the top of it all, a cross. On the base of the cross was a plaque that he wouldn’t come to understand for a long, long time, and when he did he would wish he never understood it.

Jack, his father, and his mother, all walked the various trails going around the mountain, but none struck him like the one to the top. Halfway up a squirrel came along his path. He expected it to pass as all others would, but it turned, looked Jack dead in the eyes, and approached him. It got close enough to sniff his feet before running off to do God knows what.

That moment always stayed with Jack and would until his final moments for some inexplicable reason. They climbed the rest of the way above the mountain and came face to face with the cross. Twelve feet tall and the horizontal piece seven feet long. Stunning. His parents took in the view of the top of the mountain and everything below as he admired this relic of religion.

He looked down and saw the copper plaque, almost certainly at one time was a vibrant metallic orangish color but is now an oxidized green. It read;

Our God protects us from the powers of Lucifer himself, is able to keep our world and our mortal existences safe from the horrors of the devil. But there is one demon powerful enough to bring wreckage to our world, yet is below the devil. Our God cannot protect us from him, for his power is devoted to the devil himself, so we must protect ourselves. One day, when this demon-god rises from the lake of fire, may we have a man or men that can save us. May the one, chosen by God, be able to wield the blade of Holy Mountain, and stand against the demon-god Valkyrie!

Jack didn’t understand what in the good lord’s name the plaque was talking about, but he knew it sounded cool. Blade of Holy Mountain? That is the definition of cool to a twelve-year-old boy living in the world of the NWO. But he thought no more of this immediately after reading it, he went to his parents and took in the scenery with them. A thought popped into his head; similar to how one thought popped into his head before recalling this very trip decades later. Walk tall. He wasn’t entirely sure what it meant, but it saved his life. Every single time he was in a bad place mentally, he thought that very phrase to himself, walk tall. He once, at seventeen years of age, was holding the gun his father illegally owned to his head, ready to end it all after the worst September in his life ended with his mother passing due to lung cancer, and his girlfriend at the time being killed by a drunk driver on the way to his house to console him after he first heard the news. But whether it was a miracle by God or pure luck, it popped into his head, walk tall. And he walked tall, all the way till the day he died.

Jack recalled this phrase now, not quite understanding the power it had over him. He similarly still didn’t understand the plaque. But he would.

Whether in this story or the one that could very well follow, in time, Jack would understand the plaque very well.

4

Amadeus walked into the doorway of Ripley’s room to see what she was doing. She was just standing there...in front of her mirror, staring into it.

“Hey Rip,” Amadeus says.

She turns and looks at him. Emotionless. He thinks. Maybe...maybe she- he pushes the thought away.

“Hey,” she responds.

“Whatcha up to,” he asks her.

She takes a moment to think, “deciding what to wear.”

If you were doing that all of your clothes would be thrown and scattered about on your floor, don’t bullsh*t a bullsh*tter.

“Well that’s fun,” he ultimately says.

“Yeah.”

He nods and goes to leave.

“Dad,” she calls as he starts to walk off.

He stops and goes back to the doorway, “what’s up?”

“Where is it?”

“Wha-...where’s what?”

“The Mirror. I can hear it calling, but it won’t tell me where it is.”

He walks into the room and puts his hands on her shoulders.

“Look,” he says, “I don’t quite understand that Mirror, okay? I don’t know what it’s capable of and I don’t know what it wants. Maybe, maybe I’ll let you see or even talk to it when I know more about it, but for the time being, forget about it, ok?”

She stares at him, saying nothing. He can’t quite look her in the eyes, that thing is still there. They look dead...empty. He thinks maybe she’s getting depressed, or maybe she- no. Not the second thing. Don’t even finish the second thing. If the second thing even dared to be true, he wasn’t sure if he would be able to live with himself.

She finally agrees. He pats her on the shoulders, gets up, and leaves the room. He goes down the hallway and into his and Elana’s room where Elana is sitting on the bed, typing away on her phone. He stands in the doorway and knocks on the doorframe. She jumps a little.

“Jesus hun, you scared me,” she says.

“No. Don’t call me that,” he says, clearly angry.

“Why? What’s wrong?”

“Don’t you…”

He stops, he’s starting to lose his temper, he can already feel it. The audacity. He thinks before his thoughts turn violent. Beauty is only skin-deep, so naturally, I turn the b*tch inside out so we can see what’s underneath this falsified anatomy. Well boy oh boy, isn’t this fun, let’s see what we have here...Lies! Deception! Cheating! Oh, how fun right?!

“You know exactly what’s wrong,” Amadeus says to her.

“Last night? Babe, that wasn’t anything,” Elana tells him, knowing full well she’s lying, “he was new to town and I was...filling him in.”

“By trying to get in his pants?! He told me everything, Elana, every suggestive movement you made, and the things you said!”

She looks at him, clearly not having expected this turn of events. He told Amadeus everything?... Yikes.

“We-...well maybe you shouldn’t be such a nosy husband,” she yells, “if you wouldn’t have come looking for me, we never would have been in this situation!”

“So I should have just let you cheat?! Do you understand how stupid you sound?! Do not, so help me God, do not play the victim here!”

She looks at him for a moment, shocked and unable to think of what to say next.

“Elana,” Amadeus says, sounding exponentially more calm than he actually was, “I want you out of my house by midnight tonight.”

“But-”

“But nothing. Ripley is staying here until you have a place to stay and a job, then we can discuss shared custody, but for now, you are gone from this house and both of our lives. We’re done.”

She stands there for a moment, trying to figure out what to say. Trying to think of something that could really ruin him. Put this whole divorce idea in the trash. She thought maybe she could seduce him out of the idea...but then realized that barely worked on him as is. She decided she’d been backed into a corner. The only thing she could do was swallow her pride and leave. And that’s exactly what she did.

She didn’t bother gathering the very few things she had, she simply walked out of the house and out of Amadeus’ life. He sat down after she walked out, expecting Ripley to come in asking what happened. She did not. After five long minutes, he got up, walked through and out of the house, and onto the porch. Once out there he felt on top of the world, the same way Jack did that day he looked over the side of Holy Mountain.

It felt as though every beam of the sun was pointed directly at him, he for once felt like the main character of his own life. A smile spread across his face, just about ear to ear. He cheered to the empty morning street of Cloverfield Lane in the city of Staria. This was one of the best days of his recent life.

He felt as though he was walking tall.

5

“Well, that doesn’t really explain it,” Garrison tells Kruschev.

“What do you mean? It is Necronomicon, it is..it is special book, can you not feel it,” Kruschev asks.

“I feel it,” Garrison responds, “I just don’t know what I’m feeling.”

They all are still sitting at the same round table, Dempsey has propped his feet onto the table and seems oddly entertained by this interaction.

“It is book of magic. It can do many things, many wonderful things,” Kruschev explains.

“Smith,” Kruschev yells.

Judicator Smith snaps awake from his half-asleep state.

“Yeah,” Smith asks.

“Give me magic thing. Anything that magic can do,” Kruschev tells him.

“Um...instantly generating millions of dollars.”

“...give me something else.”

“Pshh, I dunno. Killing anyone whose name is written in it.”

“...It cannot do either, but!... It can still do many things.”

“Give us an example,” Letterman tells Kruschev.

“Okay, okay,” he says.

Kruschev opens the book, a chill runs down everyone's spine as he does so. He flips through the pages, seeing demonic symbols and drawings labeled with text written with some sort of blood in an ancient language of the damned. He stops on page 53.

“Colihar...sugñues...alkiedo...wchetar…,” Kruschev says.

He repeats this chant four more times before looking up at Dempsey.

“Dempsey, come here friend,” he says.

Dempsey shrugs, gets up, and walks to Kruschev.

“Punch me,” Kruschev says.

“What,” Dempsey asks.

“Punch me in face, preferably in nose. Make my nose bleed.”

“Mkay just wanted to make sure you didn’t want to take that back.”

Dempsey rubs his hands together before charging up a full strength punch. He hits Kruschev as hard as he could directly in the nose, they all hear the distinct crrrkkk of it breaking. Kruschev passes out nearly as soon as Dempsey’s fist connects with his face. All the other Judicators have varying reactions, from holy sh*t to pure laughter. Blood spills from his shattered nose onto the page of the book. Behind Kruschev's seat, they all see a spark appear in the middle of the air.

The spark turns into three, the three turn into ten, and so on. Eventually, the sparks begin to rotate in the air, they do this faster...faster...faster. The clump of sparks grows larger and they spin faster as more time passes. After about thirty seconds of this, the clump expands. It creates a portal, eight feet tall and four feet wide. Inside they see fiery, rocky landscapes, lava, and people. People chained to burning coals, people hung from the roof of this landscape, people in cages of fire, people being thrown into, brought out of, then thrown back into lakes of lava.

Here, they saw the true intention of the Necronomicon. They were looking into the portal it was created to make.

They were staring straight into Hell.

6

The first three hours of Jack’s day consisted of ungodly amounts of research and hacking into NWO databases.

He started by finding the actual sites in which the data on all the Judicators were held. He did this by activating a VPN and creating a new Google account for his own safety. This made it exponentially harder to find out where, or who this account is. Next, he simply used Google and searched “All Judicators current location”. After doing this he used a program he created to open a list of all websites and databases not shown in the search, whether because they were blocked or confidential or for whatever reason.

He scanned the list and saw JudicatorInfoNWOofficial.priv. Convenient, they have it all in one easily named place. Got to keep track of your whopping seven, well, now five rulers of the world. He clicked on it and after three minutes of loading, it opened.

Password

________

*required

Exactly what Jack anticipated. He right-clicked on the text entry box and selected inspect. This allowed him to see all of the code to this specific part of the website. He was able to see that the password had been changed not two full weeks ago, he clicked on the line of code that showed him this. It read;

PasswordChange_9/9/23_by”TrueRussianMan420”

Jack took a wild guess and assumed it was Kruschev that changed the password. Knowing this, he went back to the password entry screen. What would a cliche Russian guy have as his password…

He tried: AK-47.

Access denied.

Maybe...Vodka

Access denied.

(1 attempt remaining)

Ok, not great. He only has one more chance. Too cliche, he thought. Maybe...ugh who was he kidding, he had nothing. He spent the next twenty minutes thinking of what it might be before it smacked him like a man smacked his kids when they talked back in the 1920s. He quickly typed in his idea. MotherlandForever

processing…

C’mon…

processing…

C’mon, c’mon you can’t keep me in suspense like this…

...Access granted.

Jack let out a massive sigh of relief when he read those two words. It wouldn’t be the end of his world if he failed, but it very well could have been the end of Joel’s. He clicked on Garrison’s file, he didn’t bother with the others. He’d done this a million times already by command of Amadeus and now that he knew the password he could do it a million more, but he was here for something specific. He didn’t bother reading Garrison’s personal bio, how tall he was, his eye/hair colors, the names of all his family up to third cousins and great-great-grandparents, a complete criminal history of him, or any of that stuff. He simply looked for his current location.

He found it halfway down the page. He is currently staying at the Overview Resort near Palm Springs, CA. His own personal ten million dollar mansion. He would be staying there another three nights and would be there every night from six to six due to a curfew mandated by Judicator Dempsey. Good.

He got up and walked to a little bedside table he had in the corner of his living room to keep things in. In it, he found a pen and his notebook. His notebook was full of various things, ideas for stories, drawings, things he needed to remember/know, and even song lyrics he had written his favorite of which he wrote last night. They read;

I know she’s just a woman but she’s the only thing that makes me feel human. If I believe in anything then I believe that we’ll make it through. I know I must protect her, and in my last breath I’d die to defend her. When it comes down to it would she have done the same for you? They’re all going to laugh at you, and I’ll be laughing when they do. ‘Cause I know heartache and I know pain and it’s written on your face every single day, so when the boogeymen come to take you away, don’t f#ckin’ blame me

DONt f#ckin’ blame me!

He scribbled down what he found on the website and threw the notebook onto his coffee table. He would tell Joel sometime today, but for now, he wanted to spend some time with Anne-Marie.

He had an odd feeling their time together was limited.

7

Letterman and Smith sat on the floor with Kruschev, helping him with his nose. Smith had a medical degree so he knew exactly what to do. He felt Kruschev's nose and realized that there was no snapping it back into place, Dempsey absolutely obliterated it. They were stuffing tissues up his nose to absorb the blood.

“That’s about all we can do,” Smith says as he stands up, “He’s gonna need to go to a hospital.”

“I said make nose bleed, Dempsey,” Kruschev says, his voice sounding off due to his shattered nose, “not break.”

Dempsey shrugs, “you don’t gotta be a little b*tch about it.”

“Uncalled for,” Garrison says, “Kruschev, quick, easy question.”

“What?”

“Can I borrow the Necronomicon?”

Kruschev looks over at him, thinks for a moment, then sighs.

“I have no energy to ask why, so yes,” he tells Garrison.

Garrison nods and thanks Kruschev. He walks to Kruschev's part of the table and closes the Necronomicon (which closes the portal they were using as an impractical heater). He picks up the book and realizes it weighs almost nothing, Garrison is extremely surprised by this, he expected it to be a hefty block of paper and...flesh. He says his goodbyes and leaves the meeting chamber.

Judicator Garrison knew exactly how he was going to spend tonight, a good scary movie, and research on this weird book.

Unbeknownst to him, that is not at all how his night would go.

8

While Jack was finding Judicator Garrison’s location, the rest of our gang (Amanda, Joel, and Anne-Marie) were introduced to Billy. Joel had nothing to say to him, Anne-Marie met him with a smile, and he and Amanda hit it off.

The two of them spent until around six in the evening talking and laughing. She found out that he wasn’t in a serious relationship and hadn’t been for around twenty years, the most recent of which ended when he turned twenty-one. He learned that she was engaged...until the guy ran off with her dead-to-her sister.

While the two of them spent their five hours talking, Joel stopped at Jack’s house on his way home. He knocked on the door and Jack opened it almost immediately.

“Oh, hey Joel,” Jack says.

“What, were you expecting someone else,” Joel asks.

“No, no, just...I dunno. I got the information if you want to come in.”

“No, that’s fine, just tell me.”

...okay, good talk, Russ. Jack closes the door and goes back to the living room. He grabs

the notepad from the coffee table and heads back to the front door. He opens the door and hands the paper to Joel. Joel looks it over and stuffs it in his pocket.

“Thank you, Jack,” Joel says. He thinks it is the most genuine and heartfelt thank you he has ever given to someone.

“Of course,” Jack says, “anything for a brother in arms.”

Jack holds out his hand to Joel. Joel looks down at it and thinks for a moment. To Jack, it looks as though he doesn’t understand. Has he never shaken anyone’s hand? It’s a pretty simple concept to grasp. Hehe...grasp...handshake puns...hehe.

Joel looks back up at Jack. Jack notices tears spilling out of his eyes.

Joel embraces Jack the way he would embrace his deceased parents when he entered the afterlife, not even a full day from now.

Following this final exchange between Joel and Jack, Joel briskly power-walked to his house. He walks into the house, locking the door behind him with just one of the locks rather than all five, very uncharacteristic of him. He goes to his bedroom and opens the small wooden bedside table that sat beside his twin bed. There were two drawers on this table, he opened the top one. In it was a combat knife engraved with a fancy J for Joel, provided by Amadeus himself. Next to this knife was his five-seven pistol, chambered in 5.7x28. Along with the pistol itself, there were five fully loaded mags. He grabbed each of these things from the drawer, packed his pockets full of the magazines, and attached a holster for both the pistol and his knife to his belt.

He then turned and took the three steps it took to get across the room to his closet. He opened the sliding door and grabbed his 12 gauge shotgun. It was a nice pump-action, it had a wooden pump grip as well as a wooden stock. The rest of the gun was shiny black. He unloaded the three buckshot shells from the gun and looked around the closet for ammunition. He pushed clothes around, moved a couple of boxes, just straight up threw things, but he couldn’t find it. Eventually, he found exactly what he was looking for. Three boxes of hollow-point slugs.

Normal shotgun shells fired a bunch of pellets of varying sizes depending on the shell, but these he wanted to use because they had extra stopping power. A lot more stopping power in fact. They were, just like all slugs, solid pieces of lead the size of a small child’s hand. These had the added bonus of being hollow points, meaning that when they penetrated anything, whether it be a tree or flesh, the slug would bloom out to the size roughly that of the fist of an adult. This created devastating exit wounds for whatever was on the receiving end.

Along with these, he found a little surprise he didn’t even know he had, a four-pack of dragon's breath rounds. These were like any normal shotgun shell, except the pellets they fired - by some technological wizardry Joel didn’t understand - were flaming. When fired, they would come out like a nightmarish bloom of flame and metal pellets going well over the speed of sound.

Joel thought these rounds would do just fine, just fine indeed.

9

Joel was able to slip out of Staria with little to no issue, thank the lord. He thought he might draw some attention walking around with a shotgun, pistol, and knife. Not to mention the five loaded magazines in his pockets and the bag of shotgun shells he had also attached to his belt. Of course, he got a few looks. A raised eyebrow here, a slightly frightened glance there, but no actual confrontation. Not to mention how all of his friends were occupied at the moment, how convenient!

As Joel left Staria, Amanda was finishing up her conversation with Billy, Jack and Anne-Marie were at their place doing God knows what, and Amadeus was at his house enjoying his newfound freedom.

As Joel approached the borders of Staria, he saw one of the border patrols dead ahead. This close to the edge of the city, it was essentially the start of rural areas. For the few citizens located in it, Staria was a big city. The main portion was essentially just suburbs. Streets of near-identical homes with the occasional restaurant or bar and four total shopping centers, with 54 stores between the four of them. Outside of this, it began to look like rural America, similar to small-town Pennsylvania. Lots of farms with a few homes here and there. Staria itself was located in the middle of an untouched forest on the southwestern edge of Canada.

Joel approached the border patrol guard.

“Hey there,” he says, “nice day innit?”

Joel nods and waves.

“Where you headed,” The guard asks.

“Sir, I am Joel Burkholder, tactical advisor for Amadeus Wright, leader of The Desperado Undead.”

“Oh! Well, I apologize, sir, didn’t mean to offend you.”

Joel grunts to acknowledge him and notices a military Jeep no more than twenty feet away.

“I’m taking that,” he tells the guard.

“Oh..okay?”

Joel walks to the Jeep, gets in, turns it on (the keys were in, lucky), and starts driving. He had a good bit to drive, but he knew he’d manage to make it by late tonight.

10

Garrison was on the phone with one of the three troops that survived the massacre at The Drunken Dragon.

“How, just tell me how,” Garrison yells.

“They caught us by surprise, sir,” the soldier responds.

“Listen here, you are people hand-picked to guard the seven most important people in the world, and you let some wannabes get the best of you?!”

The soldier remains silent.

“The bar was so low it was practically a d*mn tripping hazard in Hell. Yet here you are, limbo dancing with the F*CKING DEVIL!”

The soldier says nothing. Garrison swears and throws the phone. He thinks he might grab a drink to calm down.

Garrison walked into his lavish living room in nothing but a vibrant red robe with black straps. The living room - and the house as a whole - was the definition of modern. Almost exclusively black and white, smooth, and built into a mountain. The living room consisted of a tiger-pelt couch able to fit twenty people, a small pond in front of it with a coffee table above it that - by some technology he didn’t even try to understand - looked like a cloud floating over the pond with a flat top. The cloud changed colors inside depending on the weather, during snowstorms, it was a white similar to the black inside the Mirror that seemed to be moving and alive, during sunny days, it was a bright, lively yellow.

Ten feet in front of the cloud-table was a fireplace against a wall. It was all white with a chunk on the left side missing and instead an all-black compartment used for storing firewood. In-shatterable glass covered the flame and a solid gold chimney rose out of the top of it and the roof. Lastly, on the top of the cloud-table was a button that when pressed, would cause a massive fifty-foot projector screen to unravel from a compartment in the ceiling.

He dance-walked across this room with a glass of thousand-dollar wine between his fingers. He put the glass on the cloud-table and hit the button. He tried his best to mimic the dance the main character did in the movie from the year 2019 called Joker as the projector fell. When it was fully out, he sat down.

“Jenna!”

A booming, almost British sounding, soothing female voice came over the large speakers used for his projector.

“Yes, Garrison?”

“Go to...Hulu.”

“An older platform, but a good choice.”

On the projection screen, the account selection for Hulu appears.

“Go to my account please.”

“Yes, sir.”

Jenna enters Garrison’s Hulu account. The other accounts are those of the other Judicators. It hurt to see Chegnlei’s, and just about killed him to see the other Garrison’s.

“Suggest me something, Jenna,”

“...Alright. Based on the data I have collected of you, I think this would be a good fit.”

The screen changes to the episode select screen for the sitcom It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia. He shrugs.

“Screw it, why not.”

The first episode begins to play. This is all happening around eleven at night, and during this, Joel sat behind a large rock near the base of the mountain Garrison’s estate was built into. He contemplated all of his decisions leading to this point. Could he really bring himself to go up there and kill a Judicator in his own home while he was trying to relax? Yes. He had to. He couldn’t die knowing he would be forgotten in no more than half of a year.

He tightened his grip on the pump of the shotgun as he thought of the prospect of death. He felt surges of fear as he tried to contemplate the concept of the eternity that would soon follow. He lied to himself, saying that it wasn’t the dying that scared him, it was the incomprehensibility of what followed. In reality, it was both of these things.

He remembered a lullaby that his mother sang to him when he was a boy and his problems with death and existentialism were just beginning.

Hush little baby and don’t you cry. Everyone dies, but we can survive. I’ll show you that death has a beautiful side, there’s more to your life than waiting for the end.

A tear ran down his face as he recalled the second verse.

“At least it won’t hurt now,” he sang, “and you’ve made me so proud tonight...don’t cry for me, no don’t weep. Don’t wake me from my sleep...just let me dream...of going home.”

He curled his legs up and wrapped his hands around them. He buried his head in his knees and wept. He sat like this for twenty minutes before finally unraveling himself, ready to face down the abyss. He grabbed his shotgun, stood up, and looked at the house.

With one more deep breath, he was finally ready.

He marched forward, every step filled with purpose. Even though he was less than fifteen minutes from death he had never felt more alive. The sheer amount of adrenaline pumping through his veins made every sense feel heightened by five hundred percent, and this was before shots were even being fired. As he approached the mountain, he saw how he was going to get up. A set of stairs led to a door on the house. The stairs looked the same as the mountain, making them near impossible to see unless you were up close. What he didn’t know as he climbed was that also in the stone right behind these stairs was a hidden elevator for Garrison himself.

When he reached the door, he let go of the shotgun - which was currently loaded with seven of the slugs - and let it dangle over his body on the black leather sling he had bought for it a month after buying the gun itself. He drew the five-seven and pointed it at the door. He slowly moved his hand towards the knob. He grasped it, turned, click. It wasn’t locked, whaddya know?

Joel silently and slowly pushed the door open, thanking Christ that it didn’t make a sound. In the doorway, he was greeted by, low and behold, more stairs. These stairs led up into one of two entrance mudrooms. The other of which was where the elevator entered the house. He slowly moved up the stairs, making sure every angle was clear before entering the room. He tried the door that was in this room which led to a balcony that oversaw the living room. It too was unlocked. He silently opened this door as well, checked to make sure the balcony was clear, and got to the ground.

He crawled to the glass railing on the edge and looked down. There he was, Garrison, in nothing but a robe, watching episode one of a show Joel used to love. He even remembered the name of the first episode, The Gang Gets Racist. What a name for a pilot. Joel almost laughed at this. He also noticed Garrison was looking through some old book. The pages looked worn and he felt a natural need to get away from it. Instead, he stood up and pointed his gun right at the back of Garrison’s head. Joel didn’t like guns, but he was a good shot.

He flicked off the safety and put his finger on the trigger. He slowly applied pressure to the trigger so that he wouldn’t jerk the pistol down to combat the recoil, causing him to miss. A bit more...a bit more...a bit more. This was it, he hadn’t even seen a single guard, maybe this would turn out like the assassination of that guy Kennedy, a bunch of conspiracies surrounding it, and who really did it. Unlike the one that killed Kennedy, he might actually get away.

That’s when he felt the butt of a guard’s gun connect with the back of his head. The stock of the soldier’s rifle smacked against Joel’s head, throwing him forward over the balcony fence. He fell all ten feet and landed on his side. As he laid here for all the five seconds he did, he cursed himself out for not putting on that little bit of pressure onto the trigger that would have caused it to fire. After just a few seconds he realizes that he has to get up and fight now, or else all of this was for nothing. As he quickly gets up, he hears Garrison yell confused profanities, even calling Joel a slur or two. Joel got up and aimed in time to see the soldier that threw him aiming his rifle through his pistol sights. But before the soldier could even think of any final prayers, Joel pulled the trigger.

The lights went out on the one soldier defending Garrison. His body trembled for a moment on the edge of the balcony as life fully left it, before it fell over the side and landed three feet to the left of Joel.

“TONY! YOU KILLED TONY YOU B*STARD,” Garrison screams at Joel.

Joel turns and looks Garrison in the eyes. Joel sees what he himself was not four full days ago. A terrified, pathetic, waste of a man. It infuriates him. Lightning strikes outside as this face-to-face is occurring, he didn’t even realize it had started to pour. The pistol is too good for you. To clean. Joel drops the magazine from the pistol, pulls the slide back, releasing the bullet in the chamber, and throws the empty gun onto the ground. He grabs his shotgun from his chest and takes aim, but as he is milliseconds away from firing, Garrison moves at the perfect time for the shot to miss.

The slug travels through the air and shatters the cloud-table. Glass goes everywhere and a large chunk falls straight into the pond it once hovered over. He pumps the shotgun and takes aim again. Now, Garrison is on the move, and Joel has become a much less good shot due to the fact that there’s more adrenaline than blood flowing through him. He fires, the massive BANG echoing in the gigantic home. One of the windows overlooking the beautiful view that Garrison would admire on cold winter days when he couldn’t be outside shattered. Rain begins to blow into the house through the massive gap.

So much for in-shatterable, Garrison thinks as he runs.

“You’re walkin’ pretty tall for a man your size *sshole,” Joel yells.

Joel racks the shotgun and fires, putting a fist-sized hole in the wall. He racks the shotgun, fires, misses, racks, fires, misses, racks, fires, misses, racks, fires, misses.

Joel’s thoughts turn into a red blur of fury. He unloads the one remaining shell from the shotgun and loads in the four dragons’ breath rounds. As he does this Garrison runs into his bedroom and locks the door, as if that was going to keep him safe. What doesn’t register in Joel’s mind is that this whole time Garrison has been holding that weird book. Joel approaches Garrison’s door, aims at it, and quickly fires off all four rounds into it. Each shot comes out in a blast of flames and pellets, destroying the door more and more as he fires.

Amazingly, only one pellet manages to hit Garrison, going straight into his right arm. It strikes him just as he finished some weird chant Joel didn’t even try to understand. Blood runs down Garrison’s arm, one simple stream, and onto the page of The Necronomicon.

Joel bursts into Garrison’s room and quickly approaches him, either not noticing or not caring that the floor was seeming to turn into sparks and ashes. He grabs the Judicator by the robe and brings him closer.

“You aren’t immortal. You are not a god. You and your d*mn New World Order has nothing but flaws. You see yourselves as these unopposed saviors that do nothing but good, but you have no idea the sheer amount of people willing to fight for their lives,” Joel tells him.

Garrison tries to mumble some sort of response to save himself, but before he can do so, the floor collapses. All of the floor in his bedroom except where he and Joel stood now becomes a sort of elevator to Hell. The Necronomicon simply floats over this, seemingly deciding it wasn’t quite ready to return from whence it came.

Joel turned and looked into the pit, knowing exactly what Garrison meant to do. The son of a b*tch was going to push him into eternal torment instead of just manning up and fighting back, pathetic!

Joel turned back to Garrison, looking him dead in the eyes, ready to face anything that came after.

Joel takes a deep breath and says, “If I’m bound to burn in Hell...then you’re coming with me.”

He grabs Garrison in a bear hug and falls backward. As he falls, he feels the heat grow more intense, the screams get louder, and Garrison’s eyes become more terrified.

As they fell into the pits of Hell, Joel knew one thing, he wasn’t going to be punished. Oh, no. Joel was going to be awarded. For Garrison was going to be punished...and Joel would be the punisher.

The portal closed above them, and the Necronomicon fell onto the floor of the bedroom located in the home that belonged to one of what used to be seven, but is now just four. It radiated its evil energy. It was sentient, unbeknownst to all, and it knew exactly what it was going to do next.

Another high-ranking member of The Desperado Undead was soon going to be emotionally vulnerable, and The Necronomicon was going to take good advantage of that.

The spirit inside of The Necronomicon was nowhere near done with The Desperado Undead.