The first Warlord or if not the first at least in the top ten.
My name is Colonel Kurtz, yeah that Colonel Kurtz (it was Captain Smith before the collapse, but I thought Kurtz would be a better name for a warlord.) Establishing just the right amount of fear and respect. Of course, It was a bad choice because no one appears to have read The Heart of Darkness, which kind of diminished the desired effect. I kept it anyway because sooner or later I would meet someone who had read that book, and they would be suitably impressed, if not by the implication in the name then by how well read I was.
I have been in Las Vegas since the beginning, and it’s worked out really well for me. I had been retired before, but I started a company that gave team building workshops for office dweebs who wanted to imagine that if they spent a weekend with me that they would somehow become a warrior. That never worked out for them, but they paid a lot of money for the workshops, so I got very good at pretending that a bunch of the weakest, most pathetic excuses for men that I have ever laid eyes on were “tough guys” that could now take what I taught back to their air-conditioned offices and go to “battle” with other corporate dweebs. I always made sure to give them copies of Hagakure: The Secret Wisdom of the Samurai, and I gave it to each one of them separately in the debrief at the end of the workshop. I told them I was only giving it to them because I saw some real potential.
You wouldn’t believe how excited they got when I told them that. They practically pissed all over themselves. I made sure that they knew they couldn’t tell anyone they had gotten the book, thereby guaranteeing that they would tell all their friends how special they were.
The workshop I was giving in Las Vegas coincided with the collapse of Western civilization, so I was ideally placed to become a warlord with a small built-in army of incompetent, unprepared, and feeble men who would hang on my every word and obey me without question. It was surprisingly easy to ascend to the pinnacle of success as both a cult leader and a warlord.
I was happier than a pig is shit with this turn of events. These people would do anything I told them to do so, to amuse myself, I began throwing in completely impractical and, quite frankly, embarrassing tasks for them to accomplish in between the practical stuff that needed to be done, and they did it without question.
Fucking hell, I had no idea how malleable people were. There was not a leader among them. All I had to do to establish my alpha status was to kick the crap out of anyone who dared to challenge my authority. These guys were scared of their own shadows so a slap across the face, and we all know how belittling a slap is to, even these jellyfish, would bring them right into line.
They had gotten scared when one of them got killed in the middle of the night. My guess is that whoever had done the deed understood the psychological impact on a group when one of their own is taken out right under their noses. They were milling around, whining, one of them was even crying, and two of them had pissed themselves when I came out from my fortress of solitude. You’re probably wondering how an erudite, polymath like myself could use a reference from classic literature and a comic book but, hey, this is the apocalypse, and you can use any reference you want because no one remembers anything anyway.
We now had our first real challenge. The people in Ash Fork turned out to be a bunch of posers with no real leader and no skills to speak of, so even my band of pussies could take them out. That was fun because I think we sent a very clear message to whoever it was that came along after.
Unfortunately for them, they didn’t get the message, so we were going to have to send something that’s more strongly worded.
The scouts hadn’t reported back yet, and I started to think that maybe whoever was out there was sending a message to us. I don’t think they knew about me yet.
I had to let them know what they were up against, and the only way to do that would be to write the next message in their blood.
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Thank you Michael🙏
Chilling ending to this chapter.