Chapter 31

1:01 am Eastern Daylight Time,
Thursday, August 6, 1992
Sommeville, West Virginia
Local Klavern of the Ku Klux Klan

“I, the Imperial Dragon of this Klavern of the Ku Klux Klan, hereby call this emergency session of said Klavern to order! All stand to attention! We have three missing members of this Klavern, upstanding, righteous, God-fearing Klansmen, determined to uphold and preserve the white, Anglo-Saxon, Christian social order and dominance of our civilization against the Jewish banking cartels and the Negro mongrel hordes! Now, listen up, where by Sam Hill are Eddie Lank, Hal Butcher, and Bubba Mitchell?” the local Imperial Dragon of the KKK for all of southwestern West Virginia, demanded.

“Look, Billy, I have no clue! None of us do! We’ve been talking it over for the past several hours or so, but damned if I can figure it out! It’s like they’ve fallen off the face of the Earth!” Guy Gatling assured Billy Foreman, Guy being the closest thing to a scout or secret agent or investigator that the Klavern possessed.

“Ain’t that a fact!” Stick Adams agreed, living up to his name by needing suspenders under his white robe just to keep his pants up, he was so rail thin.

“Stick, you better not be gettin’ chaw spit on the inside of your hood again, you hear me?” Billy snarled at him, knowing Stick’s tendency to do just that.

“I ain’t done that in months, Billy! Want some shine?” Stick offered the Klan boss some moonshine.

“Don’t mind if I do, but just a little! Thanks!” Billy let himself get distracted, right as my sect and I pounced in the darkness.

I shoved my dagger deep inside Billy’s back, right near the kidneys, remembering that detail from who knows where. The robe that resembled a bedsheet was scant protection against a surprise attack like that, particularly when clung tightly to Billy’s T-shirt beneath it. I then drew it across his throat to finish him off, which was more kindness than the punk deserved. Billy fell down dead and the others screamed in horror as they realized that they were surrounded by us.

Chesty cut one man down with her new dagger, even as Sarah used the machete to behead another guy, and Lenny disemboweled someone else with his blade. The Klavern was down to just ten guys now, out of an original thirteen, so thin had Klansmen thankfully become on the ground lately. We had them badly outnumbered and they knew it, but they tried to mow us down with their firepower. The bullets bounced off our flesh like nothing, a couple of them ricocheting to hit the Klansmen in the face and groin respectively.

With that, two more men were slain, knocking their ranks down further to a mere eight of those Klucker bastards. The Klan had to be eradicated, once and for all, in our area, and this was our best chance to achieve that goal. Why wait for them to burn crosses on our lawns, when we could take the war to them? Uncle Curtis took out another Klansman with his dagger, cutting his taint wide open, while Aunt Molly plunged hers into yet another man’s chest.

There were six of them now, and they dropped their guns to surrender, including Stick as well as Guy. Billy was dead, so these were the senior surviving Klansmen of all. I made an executive decision and turned to Lenny, indicating that he should behead Guy. He was too much of a “tall poppy,” as they would say, to let him live. Plus, at fifty-nine, he had barely survived the black fog. I wasn’t about to give him another chance when better men just months older in his community (and his own family) had perished.

“And then there were five! Well, well, well, let’s have their hoods, shall we, and discover just who everyone is, in true Scooby Doo fashion!” I declared as I removed Stick’s hood to confirm his identity and Erin did the same for another.

Stick Adams, Neil Purdy, Oliver Stack, Jim Bob Current, and Kieran Donovan all knelt in front of me, at least two of them having soiled themselves already in terror and the rest having peed their pants. These weren’t the leader types, not the bravest of men, just followers easily misled by a charismatic bully like Billy Foreman. I knew just what to do with them.

“Gavin, I have the craziest idea, but it would require releasing Uncle Curtis and probably Aunt Molly from my group, if that’s possible. Uncle Curtis should form his own cult of sixty-nine members, starting with Aunt Molly. Not rejecting either of them, but I know that they’re inseparable and it’s time for some poetic justice. These five men here should become my uncle’s playthings ... and Aunt Molly’s to a certain extent as well. They want to own and control black folks, keep their foot down on their necks ... well, it’s time to get a taste of their own karmic medicine, if you ask me,” I suggested, much to everyone’s amazement.