FIXES FROM THE PYXIS: THE BESTING OF THE BADASSES
By Quillon42
CHAPTER FOUR
MORGAN JONES VERSUS BISHOP MALTHEUS ST. CLAIRE
Now this confrontation occurred in a place that was very sacrosanct, and hallowed, and immaculate, at least to one of the combatants who had been so involved.
Here in this shrine, there was a minister revisiting who recalled the rituals that would transpire, the breaking of bread, the recital of belief and allegiance in a family that was sacred.
It was specifically a man with a staff at his side here, he now who was returning very reluctantly to the residence in King County in which he, his wife Jenny, and his son Duane had made their homestead stand against a perpetual parade of perambulators already perished.
Verily there was no design in the mind of the stick-slinging mofo named Morgan of ever coming back to this property, which regressed over the course of wearying weeks from perfection to perdition in his angst-wracked memory. What was once a bastion against the carrion cantering after them had become a mausoleum for the man, once his lady and lad had been laid into by the unceasing deceased.
Morgan imagined that the contemptible chigger of a child who engineered this tournament had been well aware that this place indeed was the last area on Earth where the man wanted to be.
For now, at any rate, he had to defend against an invader into this home…in an intruder from another country, and, for Paul Monroe Rovian Jesus Christ's sake…another century.
Sleekly the staff of the Southern survivor caressed the crush of the AntiChristian crosier with which the other, evil individual was endowed for this contest. The pair had been flipping sticks at one another for minutes on end now, and it seemed that the jostling Jones was getting the short end of it now, as flagging as he felt and as indefatigable as his adversary had appeared to be.
"Plainly this dwelling reeks of infinite remorse on your part, Moorgan," carped the chastising clergymonster as he rapped his foe across the wrist with the back of his baroque basher. Though Morgan could not quite perceive it in the pronunciation, Maltheus honestly believed that his foe's first name was spelled with two O's, as his skin tone reflected that of the competition during the Crusades.
"I too have been beset with unending hymns of blame by babes who lambast me, blast me for my sacrificing them by having conscripted each into an ill-fated army. I've had hundreds rain down on me, flay me with furious tendrils for my offering them up to the spirit from the other side."
With masochistic gusto this guest from Gehenna absorbed strikes from the contender who contrived to "Clear" all of King County. St. Claire was clobbered in the chest and the neck and the spine…and yet all this brought out from the beatitude-bleating boor was the cruelest of chuckles.
"Surely I have endured the ire of scores upon scores of striplings…but for you, the agony will arrive from the advent of one alone."
[KNOOOCK, KNOOOCK, KNOOOCK] [knock knock knock] [KNOOOCK, KNOOOCK, KNOOOCK]
And then something ever so acidic juked within Jones as he noted the knocking, the three long, the three short, and then the three long again—not an SOS but an OSO, "bear" in Spanish and the family's own code for having to bear all that they have borne so far in these terrifying terrafucked tribulations. It was that telling knock now that gave away the galling reality that soon a certain son would scorch him again, maim Morgan up and down in the man's mind for his failing to foster safety as much as he should have in his home.
At that moment then when
[SLLLAAAMMMMMM]
the baneful boy Duane delved into the depths of that contrition-suffuse kitchen, this warrior of the expired American wilderness could only maintain some semblance of a stance now, the man unable to move or stick, he offering no resistance at all as Maltheus moseyed in and hooked away his staff from his trembling digits.
Unlike other, more oral undead in this author's offerings, this revenant only reviled his father with a serrated stare, the returned teen tearing into his dad with peepers more piercing than any incisors, irises accusing this heretical homey of killing his kin with none other than the utmost of indifference.
"It appears as if there's going to be a reckoning from scion to sire, Moorgan…one of which you have had due you for years now, perhaps."
Then a small coda of clouts to the back of Eastman's final friend as the latter was delivered into the arms of his enraged, unliving-apocalypse-estranged child. Standing over the forlorn figure of his foe now, St. Claire assailing with authority from the evilest on-high: "I'm heartily sorry."
And then
[SLLLMMMMMPPPPPP]
the same ABC™(Abrupt Backswing of the Coolblow) staff strike that Morgan himself perpetrated upon Owen of the Wolves, as well as upon other enemies, all from the on-the-ground camera perspective of said stragglers as the jouncing Jones sent them into oblivion.
Maltheus could only bow his head and offer intentions for his noble opponent as the latter was lashed at by a tongue worse than any tentacles trotted out by the toddlers sent to the Saracens. Hopefully the Pyxis would have pity on the Atlantan apostate when he passed.
VICTOR: BISHOP MALTHEUS ST. CLAIRE
CAROL PELETIER VERSUS FATHER PAUL RAWLINGS
Peculiarly everything seemed to come back into being now, noted the ex-wife/ex-mother/exterminator of the exhaling exhumed as she looked around at her steely surroundings. It was so many seasons ago that the kin-forsaken Carol had cast eyes upon the control chamber of the Center for Disease Control, a place ultimately not unlike the factory of fuckedness that was the semi-industrial-seeming human-termites-teeming compound of Terminus—an alleged shelter that turned out a snare.
Not that the somber scientist in charge of the CDC had really seeking to entrap any travelers (unlike the canny cannibals of the other asylum, turned abbatoir). Dr. Edwin was seeking only to end his time here, and sought to do so without any delays or distractions. There was no hope to be had, given the knowledge he possessed (which soon become common to all countryfolk, in good time) that death indeed was not the end in this world…at least not in terms of some sort of animation of the human husk.
Notably, at any rate, it was Carol—the cowed housewife, the one under so much pressure, even before the Outbreak—it was she who suggested the grenade that would get the survivors sent from the Center and onward. This had been the first instance in which she found a means through munitions, found an answer through ordnance.
And now Carol would have to continue with that line of argument by way of armaments, as she faced off almost showdown-style against a sermoner, high noon against a holy man.
"I can tell this place holds quite some kind of…significance for you," began the preacher, one not featured now on AMC by the name of Stokes or Custer or otherwise, but rather another Southern rectory ranter by the name of Rawlings. "I reckon that I have not before been beneath this roof myself…yet the setting makes me seethe, myself…gets me thinkin' of those I lost long ago."
Father Paul did not elaborate further, but merely gazed around, Al-Khali occurring to him now, as well as that sepia sweetness he once encountered so intimately, then again at such an electronic outpost as this…a woman who became for him a smear of slaughter only moments thereafter.
"Well I think of my loved ones each day, myself…" said the woe-weathered paladin of pain known as Peletier. Then grabbing the Glock numbered 17 at her side and drawing quickly, firing:
[BLAAAMMMMM]
"…but not every damn minute."
Tearingly the shot took the reverend in the right shoulder, rendering him in blistering, bristling discomfort. Carol came forward a pace, measuring Rawlings sprawling back in his swarthy trenchcoat.
Before the quinquagenarian cootie could blast at the blessed bastard anew, however
[BOOOOOOOOOMMM]
a shot issued from inside the jacket of the Jericho, he having fired his Magnum named Faith behind him with his back turned, the bullet breaking through his coat to the body of his opponent (a maneuver which this author completely didn't copy from the end of the Nineties opus Assassins with Sly Stallone), the shot shearing through the thigh of Sophia's militant matriarch, it casting Carol now to the floor.
"You ain't the only cuss what can take a soul by surprise, sister."
Harshly the wily widow gritted against this invective, she allowing Glock of the type 30 to trip down her sleeve and into her raging palm. She let loose with the piece, two slugs striking the ecclesiastic across the arm and the shin, staggering him a spell.
She then hefted the handgun, Madame Peletier primed to pelt Monsignor Rawlings with ever more ammunition, when of a sudden Paul pushed with a desert eagle dubbed Destiny, a weapon with a far greater rating than its mediocrely-received videogame namesake. The discharge from this diminutive devil did in Carol all the more, driving her back further against the unyielding iron partition serving as the skin of the sterile arena.
Peppily the priest then pumped ever closer to his competitor. On the squalid floor, the salty survivor motioned south,
"Oooooohhhhhhhhh…"
moaning as sympathetically as she could, trying to play up pity. All she needed was another itching inch of instants, and she could reach the homegrown MetalGearSolidesque remote control missiles in her trousers… This was, of course, on par with the effing Mega Man arm cannon she basically packed, surreptitiously, against a pickup full of posers in the "East" episode of TWD.
But then before long it was
[BOOOOOOOOOMMM] [BOOOOOOOOOMMM]
from the clever Chaplain as he saw through the ruse and laid the lady to rest with both barrels.
"Ayeppp," the man mused, "Muriel would play possum-aggressive with me like that sometimes. On an odd occasion, it would work with me…then I had gone and caught on before too long."
Rawlings then ratcheted down the eyelids of the only femme still officially left from Season One of the weekly Walkings…but even in this state she could see the shades shimmering around, tormenting her as they did with Rick a mess of matches back.
A female inflection: "You're the one who said those…things would go and eat him up!"
Then a male: "Not so tough now here, are you?" A kitchen knife positioned under her chin, in Carol's mind, making her flinch. "No." Then testing: "Yes?" With finality: "No.
"We Andersons're gonna afford you a fair share of pain for what you wrought upon our little one…others will, as well. Karen and David're looking to drop some cigarettes on your kill floor…bestow upon you a GIFT BASKET OF ASSKICK!"
A pause followed.
The female spirit: "Gift…basket of ass…
"What, Pete?"
Once again the male: "…
"You know…like, Karen and David, like, that store you go to at the mall, with the baskets…"
"… … …No, no, you mean Harry and Dav…look, hon, let me do the talking from here on in."
So the caterwauling conversation continued, all against Carol, ever unabating in its insistency and insanity.
VICTOR: FATHER PAUL RAWLINGS
MAGGIE GREENE VERSUS MURIEL GREEN
Matters were winding down now, or up as it were in this contest, as there were but three more matches to mind, following the instant one that is. Though the immediate opponents here boasted very similar surnames, one couldn't be any more of a contrast to the other.
More particularly, the former, Greene girl hailed from a humble farm—an agricultural origin which the young woman found she was harkening back to most unbelievably and involuntarily now. Maggie hadn't had much exposure to the globe outside of Georgia itself, hadn't really left her home much at all prior to the plague in fact. She had been pretty much as pristine as her property itself for the longest spell…and then fate forced itself into her life, in the form of Rick's revue, to which she tethered herself readily—most especially to that pizza-deliverer turned pioneer and point man Glenn, who'd saved her and supported her through so much strife.
Eventually all Maggie's kin, both by blood and by law, had fallen away from her, and Mister Rhee in fact became the only family surviving…well, him, of course, as well as perhaps a small certain someone whom the both of them baked up between themselves. Yes, hopefully in another nine months or so, a little "GRheene" would get on in the same expansive, wild, deadly environs as his or her parents, and everyone else besides.
Looking forlorn at the foreboding beige barn before her once more, it erected once again after having conflagrated at the close of her first season with these stragglers, Maggie shucked the shotgun her pa Hershel once held, that same Mossberg 500 which could seemingly slug out more shells than an ocean ceaselessly crapping out conches.
With the same dread with which the farmer's fatal femme waited for Carol's decaying daughter to emerge from the same, Maggie now anticipated the exiting of another slight threat from that selfsame storage of silage. She'd heard that her opponent was far removed in origins from her own, and that she'd been far beyond the boundaries of this fuck-flung nation, and even to outposts that escape the borders of the ordinary imagination. Perilously she cocked her scatterer and prepared for the worst, steadied herself for a lady what might be a match for her for once.
Then spilling out of the opening to the pasture's cedar sentinel was what appeared to be someone, or maybe something, brandishing a firearm at the rural roustabout, so she took aim immediately and
[BOOOOOOMMMMMMMMM]
blasted away, her buckshot striking not what was supposed to be her intended target, but rather…some sort of strange beings now, almost effigies made of straw and steel at the same time, the sum of the Scarecrow and the Tin Man if they had ever lain most libidinously with one another.
It was the face of the fright that had made Maggie stir the most. Merely some fine, exquisite fibers it seemed, at first…then upon closer inspection now, she noticed that the hairs on the head of the creation was someone who was close to her…not Beth, or Annette, or Patricia, or Otis, or Jimmy, even Hershel…
"…
"…Lacey?"
[SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSTTTTT]
and then the shrieking shot took the farmer's daughter clean through the chest, cutting her down rather quickly. Even with her heightened awareness and aggression, tempered through hyperfeminist episodes like her confrontations with the obligatorily Chauvinist Gregory in "Knots Untie," as well as her exploits in "The Same Boat" (which was more misandrist than a chapter of an Elena Ferrante novel (but not moreso than a single chapter of such)), she could not with her five normal senses detect the presence of the professional who perfected a sixth most psychic.
"She was shrill, completely deafening in my head just now," uttered the agent who ushered herself out after the dead-decorated decoy preceding her. Maggie could note, her supine figure ever closer to the semi-metallic womannequin that was in this reality her neighbor, in another her sister, in any world a wonderful person who provided a sense of security to the Greene girl that she would not know again till Glenn.
Then the opponent, she marginalized and murdered in her own story, yet standing strong now: "She doesn't blame you, of course. Her spirit's just…jealous a bit, anymore, of those infected yet still alive…and she's horrifically lonely, Maggie.
Dismayed, the heavenly hickette could easily predict her enemy's next line, but Muriel muttered it out just the same:
"Lacey wants you to join her now."
And then
[SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSTTTTT]
with another report from her MG42, which the agent gleaned from a pillbox back in Jericho's World War II sortie (and which emitted laser beams in place of bullets, according to online sources)—Maggie in another second reckoned nothing more, and lay just as much at peace now as the likeness of the lady she beheld.
"Even with a third of her sautéed by laser shot, she still looks better than the floorstain I became back at Al-Khali," mused Muriel, as she stared at the steel body of the simulated Lacey.
VICTOR: MURIEL GREEN
TO BE CONCLUDED