The Lunatics Bloodletting

Alva J. Roberts

The frigid wind blew chunks of snow and ice across the street. It was a balmy twenty-two degrees Fahrenheit, a beautiful June morning in southern California.

“The freaks are at it again,” David said, his voice full of undisguised disgust.

“Better call the Captain. He'll want to get the boys here in case they riot again,” Ben Johnson said. He understood how David felt. The Cult of Luna was full of odd balls and zealots, dressed in long silver robes. How could anyone revere a rock drifting somewhere in outer space?

Ben was not sure he would have worshiped or cursed the mythical goddess Luna had he believed in her. The moon had saved the Earth from total annihilation, sacrificing itself when a rogue planet entered the solar system. But without the moon to regulate the tides, weather, and Earth's rotation, the planet was dying a slow death. Sometimes Ben wished the rogue planet had struck them, and put them out of the misery.

“Move along!” Ben shouted, walking towards the group, his hand on his rifle. “There are no public demonstrations allowed in the refugee camps.”

“It is our right as American citizens to practice our religion,” one of them shouted.

Ben sighed. No orders had come from DC in almost three months, and in all likelihood, there was no America left. It did not matter anyway, martial law had been declared a few days after the moon was knocked from orbit.

“You have the right to do as you're told. No demonstrations that could lead to civil unrest. Clear out!” Ben shouted.

He hoped they would listen. If they were still outside when Captain Henderson arrived, there would be hell to pay. And the members of the fanatical moon cult would be the ones paying. Henderson was the highest ranking officer in the camp. For all intents and purposes that made him king of Refugee Camp 45893, and he hated anything that hinted at being a threat to his power.

Ben heard angry mutters from the group. The leader of their procession walked toward him. He was a small man, dwarfed by his heavy winter coat and the shimmering silver robes he wore over them.

“The great goddess Luna sacrificed herself for us, her only children. We gather to pray for her return and an end to the winter, my child. We have no desire to riot,” the priest said.

The cultist went silent and still as a group of soldiers entered the area, Captain Henderson leading them. Ben swallowed hard. There was no telling what would happen when the Captain's volatile temper mixed with the fanatical zeal of the cultist.

It was a recipe for disaster.

“Private Johnson, fall into rank,” Henderson commanded. Ben scurried to do as commanded.

“We only wish to perform our religious rites in peace,” the priest said.

“The way you peacefully performed your rites last week? Three people died.” Henderson's voice held a hard edge.

There was a loud crack of a gun beginning fired. Henderson fell to the ground in a spray of blood. The priest dropped to the ground in a ball, his hands covering his head.

Ben and the rest of the platoon opened fire, the sound of their assault rifles cutting through the crisp cold air. The cultist dropped like flies.

A few members of the religious group returned fire with the hunting rifles they carried, but with little effect.

It was a massacre.

Ben was breathing hard when he stopped firing. It was the first combat he had ever seen and he hoped to God it would be the last. He felt a little sick to his stomach.

Silver clad bodies lay piled on top of one another. Steam rose from the rapidly growing pool of blood beneath the heap of shattered flesh.

The body closest to Ben was a young woman, a girl really, maybe sixteen years old. Her blonde hair wafted in the breeze. Her dead eyes stared at Ben, accusing and cold.

“Jesus,” Ben whispered, staring at the dead bodies. Death was a common occurrence in the refugee camps, but Ben had never been the instrument of death.

“Hell, yeah! We got them bastards good!” David yelled.

Ben spun, smashing the butt of his rifle into David's leering face. There was satisfying crunch as David's teeth flew through the clearing, blending in with the snow as they landed.

“Take him to the brig!” Henderson yelled, climbing to his feet. The Captain held a hand to his shoulder as he stood, bright crimson fluid flowing between his fingers.

Ben felt something thick and hard crash into the small of his back. Pain shot up through his kidneys, and he dropped to his knees. Something else struck him across the temple. His vision blurred, his head throbbed, in time to the beating of his heart. He felt someone take his rifle and bind his hands.

Then the world went black.

***

“Come on,” a voice whispered in the dark.

“What about the soldier?” the priests voice from earlier asked.

“You go. It's the summer solstice, and Luna will need all her servants. I'll take care of the butcher. He will not live to see the glory of Luna's bloodletting.”

Ben rolled over, coming fully awake. He could not see a thing. The prison was the darkest place he had ever been, twenty feet underground with no windows. The priest must have been locked up in the same cell. Space in the brig was growing scarce, and the tiny single occupant cells each housed two prisoners.

He drew in a deep breath, sliding from his bed with all the stealth he could muster. His back throbbed and his head felt like it was full of cotton, making his movements awkward and clumsy.

He drew up against the wall nearest him and listened. He heard the scurry of the priest's feet, and the sound of voices greeting him in the hall. Then, he heard a different set feet draw closer to him.

The man was standing right over Ben's pallet. There was the soft swoosh of steel being drawn from leather. A nervous sweat rolled down Ben's face and he wondered if the man could hear the thundering of his heart. Ben needed to move soon, or else his attacker would find out he was not sleeping on the pallet.

Ben threw his arms wide, as if getting ready to hug someone, and ran forward. His left arm slammed into someone as he ran. He wrapped himself around the man, tackling him to the ground.

The knife darted outward in the darkness, scoring Ben's forearm. Ben wrestled for the blade, curling his whole body around the attackers arm. Ben felt the coppery taste of blood as he bit the man's hand.

“Damn it!” his assailant shouted, dropping the blade.

Ben's elbow darted upward, cracking into his attacker's nose. He felt the cartilage shatter beneath the blow. Ben twisted around, his hands clamped on the man's neck.

He kicked and struggled, clawing at Ben's hands. Ben brought his knee up into the man's sternum and counted to two hundred before he let the man's limp body go.

Ben trembled, as a wave of nausea passed through him.

Dear God he had just killed a man with his bare hands.

“It was me or him,” he whispered, the old saying having little effect on his guilt.

The cult was going to have a ‘bloodletting'. If the peaceful cultists had turned militant, then Ben needed to find out what they were up to before it was too late.

Ben's hands ran across the floor, searching for the lost blade. He was not about to leave the cell bare handed. He had gotten lucky the first time, but Ben hated gambling.

Something sharp nicked his thumb. He put the injured digit in his mouth. The blade was just an old kitchen knife, twice as long as Ben's palm and as wide as three fingers, but its worn wooden handle felt good in his hand.

Ben crept to the wall, and ran his hands along. Without his sight he felt practically helpless. He felt the stone door frame, and then his fingers ran over empty air. He stepped through the open doorway.

“You take care of him?” a voice asked.

Ben grunted an affirmative.

“Come on then, we need to get to the Hob's Clearing before midnight. The others escorted the priest.”

The beam of a flashlight flicked on, illuminating the way out of the prison. Ben followed close behind the man. Where were the guards?

A sticky pool of blood coating the hall in front of them answered Ben's question.

The guards were dead.

The blade of Ben's knife shook in his white knuckled grip. He had to do it, he did not want to, but he had to.

Ben grabbed the man's shoulder and thrust the knife into the small of his back. The man screamed in pain. Ben could feel the hot blood gush over his hand. Ben stabbed again, this time the blade piercing the man's heart.

The body hit the concrete floor with a thud. The flashlight fell to the ground with a crack, and its light went out. Ben was glad he could not see the man he had killed.

He hands continued to shake as he searched the body. He started to feel sick again, and stopped for a moment, gagging.

His questing fingers found the butt of a revolver tucked into the man's waist band. He felt the cylinder. It was loaded, he had six shots. He hoped he would never need them.

He had to get to the Captain, tell him what was happening. Ben rushed out of the building. Captain Henderson should be in his quarters.

He stopped dead in his tracks when the icy wind struck him, freezing his sweat to his forehead. His coat was inside somewhere, taken when he had been locked up. Snowflakes were starting to fall from the sky, floating gently to the ground.

“Who goes there?” a commanding voice asked.

Ben could see the silhouette of two guards making their rounds.

“Private Ben Johnson. I need to see the Captain.”

“How you get out of your cell? Don't move!” one of them said.

“Hey, he has a gun!”

Damn. Ben dove to the side just as a bullet tore through the air where he had been standing. Snow caked his body as he stood up. Ben ran for the edge of the camp. Almost twenty thousand men and women lived in the camp, and their foot traffic had condensed the snow, making it easy for Ben to see the perimeter.

More shots rang out in the crisp cold air. Fire lanced through his shoulder as bullet tore through his tender flesh, going in his back and coming out his front. His hand grasped the wound but he did not slow down.

If he stopped they would kill him.

Ben was out of the camp's cleared area. The snow was deeper, past his knees. He struggled forward, leaning against a tree to catch his breath. The guards would not leave the camp, not in the middle of the freezing night, not for a deserter. Not during a storm.

A deserter.

The word echoed in Ben's mind as a horrible throbbing pain in his shoulder sent tendrils of fire shooting through his blood. The internal heat was a sharp contrast to the chill of the eternal winter's air. He needed to bandage his wound and find a coat. He could not go back into the camp. The punishment for deserting was death.

Hob's clearing. There would be people there, and he might be able to get a coat. He stuck the revolver in the waist band of his uniform.

Ben stumbled through the drifting snow. The wind was picking up and the snow was falling harder, turning into a full scale blizzard.

As he ran he debated taking his shirt off. The long sleeved button up shirt was soaked clear through with water from the snow. It was beginning to freeze, forming a layer of ice around his chest and back that scraped his skin as he ran. Ben decided to keep it on, he could not stomach the idea of the falling snow landing on his bare chest and back.

Hob's Clearing was not far. Just before the rogue planet hit the moon, when no one was sure if it would hit the Earth or not, a man by the name of Malcolm Hob went out into the middle of a freeway and set off a homemade bomb.

It was all over the news. Everyone in the world saw and heard Hob as he made his speech about sacrificing himself as an offering for the goddess Luna. Less than five minutes after the bomb went off the rogue planet struck the moon and was deflected away from the Earth. Luna's great miracle. It was no surprise that the goddess' cult would choose the location for their ceremony.

Orange light flickered ahead of Ben. A fire. Warmth!

Ben rushed forward, down into the hollow left by Hob's bomb, the cult of Luna had built a bonfire. Men and women stood around the blaze passing thick clay jugs back and forth, drinking from them. A dais was raised next to the fire. Drums pounded out a steady beat, and many of the cultists began to dance, a gyrating twirling movement.

Ben started to make his way down the slope, already feeling the warmth of the fire. He stopped again when he saw the dancers tear their clothes off. He watched, dumbstruck, as the men and women began fondling each other's most intimate areas. Snow still fell from the sky, making the whole valley look like some perverse snow globe.

Ben shook his head, let them have their orgy. It was far from the ‘bloodletting' the other cult memebers had spoken of. Ben slid down the last few feet of the slope.

He reached down and picked up a discarded coat on the edge of the clearing, his ice-caked shirt replaced it on the pile. The dry warmth of the coat was a welcome reprieve from the storm. He inched closer to the fire, feeling pinpricks all over his body as its heat warmed his flesh. The valley was sheltered from the worst of the storm.

The smell wafting from the jugs told Ben that somehow they found some whiskey. The smell of marijuana and burning tobacco filled the air. They must have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on the party favors. Most drugs had grown scarce as the endless winter went on. A pack of cigarettes sold for a thousand dollars around camp. Ben heard it was worse up the coast in the other camps, where they were killing each other over canned vegetables.

The drumming grew to a crescendo. Priests ascended the dais. They wore silver robes that reflected the fire light and shimmered as the moon once had. The snow gusted past the men.

Ben craned his neck upward to see. He was standing right next to the stage.

They walked across the platform in a long line, with a single man in front who wore a ceremonial headdress. The headdress was made of bones tied with black leather strips. What could only be the skull of a child decorated the front.

“My children! It is the Solstice! On this day of light it was foretold that the great goddess, Luna, would return! As it was at her departure, so must it be now. Luna left when the holy blood of Malcolm Hob was offered to her! So now, we make a new offering!”

Two men walked to the center of the dais. Between them they carried a squirming black bundle that they dropped unceremoniously. A girl rolled out of the black cloth.

She could not have been more than sixteen or seventeen. Blonde hair swept down over her shoulders, the only covering on her naked body. The girl stumbled to her feet, shivering. Her hands covered her nakedness and sought to protect her from the snow's fury.

“We shall give the great goddess one who is pure. When the sun vanquishes the blanket of night we shall go forth and sow death among the non-believers. And when the blood runs like rivers through the streets, then shall Luna return!” the priests arms spread wide, as a table rose from the dais behind him. The table was stacked high with guns. Ben could see every type of firearm he could think of, from a handgun to a rocket launcher.

He swallowed hard. They were going to do it, they were going to kill the girl and attack the camp. He could not believe it.

So many people would die if they did. There were only a hundred soldiers in the camp, and there had to be at least that many people around the bonfire. If you added in the element of surprise in, the Cult of Luna stood a real chance of wiping out all of Camp 45893.

Ben pulled his revolver out, trying to think. He was just one man. If he tried to stop them he would probably die, but if he did not, the girl would die.

The head priest pulled a long knife from the folds of his silver robes. The snow swirled around him, lifting his robes behind him. The girl looked dazed and helpless, her eyes pleading for mercy.

The crowd around Ben cheered and screamed. Those participating in the orgy grew frenzied, their pace quickening. Their skin was turning blue, and the fanatical cultist would soon have frost bite or worse.

Ben took a deep, calming breath. It was now or never.

Ben pulled the revolver up in one smooth motion and pulled the trigger. The gun shot reverberated off the walls of the valley echoing back at Ben, as the bullet smashed into the head priest's chest. Blood sprayed outward, painting the naked teenager bright red. It was a perfect shot, right through the man's heart.

The cult erupted in chaos. Men and women screamed in panic, and tried to run out of the valley. The snow plunged down on the squirming men and women, caking their bodies in white. The ice covered walls of the valley made the uncontrolled, chaotic escape impossible. The leaders of the pack slid into those behind them and were trampled.

Ben felt sick to his stomach. He joined the army because they got all the best rations. But now he had killed again. The guilt that went with the action was unimaginable and overwhelming.

Ben ignored the feelings raging inside of him. He could contemplate what he had done later. Right now he needed to save the girl.

He ran forward, taking the steps two at a time. The other priests blocked his path standing shoulder to shoulder. Ben could see the table of weapons right behind them. If he gave the men a moment to turn around they would be armed to the teeth.

“Stand aside!” Ben screamed.

“You may not have-” the priest from the morning began.

His commands were cut short by the .38 in Ben's hands. The bullet tore through the man's knee, splinters of bone and flesh flying through the air.

“That was your only warning! Move!”

The silver clad men practically dove off the platform to do his bidding. The injured priest rolled after them, moaning in pain, and leaving a bloody trail off the stage.

“What's your name?” Ben asked the girl, as he reached down to pick up the black cloth she had been wrapped in, and placed it around her shoulders.

“Sara,” the girl answered in a tear soaked voice.

“It's going to be okay, Sara. Just stay close to me and keep down.”

Ben grabbed the rocket launcher from the table. There was one way he was sure he could get the Captain's attention. He fired the weapon at the empty space in the center of the valley. Fire blossomed high into the air. The camp was not too far away, they should be able to hear and see the explosion.

Ben pulled an M16 from the mass of weapons and took a position in the middle of the stage. No one else was going to come near the table.

The cult was in a state of pandemonium, running in every direction. Whenever anyone tried to get on the stage, Ben peppered the ground with bullets.

It was not long before Captain Henderson and the rest the regiment arrived. They took up positions along the entire rim of the valley, and began firing.

Ben pulled Sara to the ground, covering her with his body as he watched in horrible fascination. The cultists were torn apart, in some cases literally. Ben ducked his head, not wanting to see the slaughter.

In just a few minutes, the gunfire stopped. Ben looked up. Not a single member of the cult was still standing. Thick rivers of blood ran down the sides of the valley, collecting at the bottom of the slope in gruesome pools.

Ben staggered to his feet swaying as he surveyed the carnage. The soldiers had stopped the men from leaving the valley, but Luna's prophecy had come to pass.

There had been a “bloodletting”.