It’s the Pawn’s Fault
NOTE: This is my 1st Place submission for Round 1 of the NYC Midnight 2024 Short Story Challenge.
Round 1 Assignments: Group – 75; Genre – Political Satire; Subject – Chess; Character – A Gambler.
Content Warning: Contains graphic descriptions of gore.
John Linden Junior inherited the family company the day all the cows died.
The TV above the blackjack table reported their massive wide bodies dropping dead across the globe in between calls for additional hits in the pursuit of a perfect 21. By then, the news channels had been taken over by the Woke Brigade who drove the Snowflakes to hysteria with cries of viral outbreaks. Linden Farms went viral when a farmhand posted a video of a cow. Its oversized bottom lip swished back and forth while it chewed the cud and stared at the grass with its big glassy eyes. Then those eyes popped wide like something startled it, and the thing dropped to the ground with a groaning plop.
John Linden Senior suffered a heart attack only days prior in the middle of a board meeting on the 77th floor of a high rise overlooking Central Park. Rumour had it that as he crumpled to the cold linoleum floor, spittle trickling down his whiskered chin, he lifted his fingers and pointed them at the door and whispered, “Get back to work.” And then he died.
See, John Linden Senior was a man who knew how to pull himself up by his bootstraps. He’d inherited a $400 million company from his own father and, in just fifty years, had grown it to the spectacular value of $405 million. His employees didn’t get bathroom breaks, no. They remained steadfast at their stations until their bladders burst.
As much time as John Linden Senior spent in corporate hallways, and offices and occasionally under desks with secretaries—excuse me, “executive assistants”—John Linden Junior remembered him most clearly in his home office, sitting across from him over his father’s greatest treasure. A crystal chess set which had belonged to an African priest, complete with emerald trim about the outer perimeter of the board and a checkered emerald and ivory game field with matching pieces.
“Son,” he would say, because childcare was woman’s work, and it was all together too tedious to remember the child’s name at all times of the day. “We’re placed on this earth to be kings. Our superiority is written within the threads of our DNA and is the reason we enjoy such privilege.”
Senior took the king piece and placed it delicately in the boy’s hand. John Linden Junior never played chess before and, to his knowledge, neither had his father. However, if the board had not been his birthright, it would not be here.
“But what if I don’t want to be a king?” the boy asked.
“It is your duty and your honour.” Then the senior John Linden would pick up a smaller crystal piece from the second row of the board, its bulbous head growing cloudy with age. “This is a pawn. They exist to serve our purposes. They were not born with our intelligence or superiority and so they crave a dominant alpha to guide them, otherwise they will fall to their detriment.”
The Junior John Linden didn’t understand why they bothered at all. If the Pawns were so foolish that they would die on their own, then perhaps it was their destiny. Just as he had been so chosen by the gods to enjoy the gifts of the earth.
“You must let logic and strategy guide your choices,” said the senior John. “Your intelligence will cause you to see steps ahead like the wise chess player, who corners his opponent before he realizes he is in trouble. The Pawns need a leader. One day, that will be you.”
Indeed, it was, and from the day of his father’s death, the king piece grazed his chest as it swung from a chain around his neck.
***
Linden Labs had gotten a meat sample from a fallen cow and a Pawn with a lisp and clunky glasses came to report their findings.
“The samples indicate an aggressive viral infection,” the Pawn said. “A pathogen we’ve never seen before infiltrated the mitochondria and mutated within its DNA.”
John Linden Junior pitied their need to fake intelligence, as if he would not see their ordinariness.
The Pawn continued, “The gestational period of the pathogen is incredible, but—”
John Linden Junior slammed his hands against the lab bench. Sometimes it was necessary to remind the Pawns of their place. “Speak English, dammit.” He roared with the strength and might of an African lion.
The Pawn shrank back from the swelling presence of his alpha and averted his gaze in submission.
“The cows have been sick for weeks, maybe months.” The Pawn’s voice now quivered with respect. “Chances are we’ve been distributing tainted meat all over New York for a while now.” John Linden Junior nodded and took leave without another word. His heroic dedication to superiority was one of the few cogs that kept their world turning. He left the Pawn to ponder that.
***
The first cow had been dead only an hour and already a sickly-sweet sourness permeated the pen that housed the 40,000 corpses. Flies busied themselves in swarms around their lolling tongues, already hatching maggots that writhed and made their hides pulsate.
John Linden Junior eased himself over the stale blood and bacteria-infected urine oozing from the corpses and mixing with the stomach juice leaking through loose anuses. Within a few feet of the pile, he had to cover his nose against the violent lurch in his stomach.
Still, he was a betting man and if people were not yet getting sick from the meat, then he would take on the odds that they never would.
“The Pawns have a crude evolutionary history,” his father told him. “Their bodies are designed to metabolize poor foods. It is why we save the freshest and purest produce for ourselves. If we did not, their bodies would be overwhelmed with the quality.”
He would prefer the meat be cleaned up and packaged for distribution. It would be as simple as scraping off the spoiled bits, like how The Pawns picked off the mouldy part of the bread to make it fresh again. But some Snowflake somewhere would catch wind of it and make a fuss. The Pawns were simple, yes, but their great numbers meant they had to be managed beyond the level of intelligence they had.
“We’ll dump them,” he said to a nearby Pawn. “Tonight. Call the trucks and get them loaded before dark.”
***
That night, John Linden Junior rolled his king in his hands on a cargo ship he borrowed from his buddy Schmitty, who owned a shipping company. Schmitty and Matt clung to the deck of the giant ship and Pacific waves thrashed the 30,000 tons of cow meat around like dice at a craps table.
“You sure about this, Johnny boy?” Matt asked jokingly, as he knew not to question his superior. They weren’t Pawns, not exactly. More like a knight and rook. They had intelligence and prowess far beyond that of the Pawns, but they still craved guidance and order and John Linden Junior was happy to provide. They were his friends in the way a lion would be friends with a kitten.
“We’ll dump ‘em quick and quiet, then we can head back to the table so I can keep taking your money.” The boys laughed, and to their credit, they’d taken it well when he’d interrupted their weekly poker game where he dominated the table each night. It was easy because he was well-acquainted with risk.
“Don’t be afraid to sacrifice a few Pawns for the greater good,” the senior Linden would say. “Their purpose is to serve your cause as king.”
Truthfully, John Linden Junior succeeded because he could see himself and the world around him with a clarity of sound mind and increased intelligence. He would get rid of these tainted cows as cheaply as possible, then use the money he saved to replace them before any of the Pawns could catch up.
The giant crane rose high into the black sky and grabbed a shipping container stuffed with fetid cows in the death-grip of its claws, much like the junior John’s grip on the king piece. Once high in the air, the crane extended beyond the side of the boat and tipped the open container into the sea. The carcasses crashed into the depths, creating a 40-foot wave that lashed the boat deck, soaking the King and his court in bone-chilling salty water.
The boys complained as expected. Above the Pawns though they were, they were still weak. He could not fault them for that and allowed them to gab endlessly, like women.
***
The Pacific turned to blood three days after John Linden Junior’s brilliant disposal campaign. The viscous fluid congealed around cliff rocks and made a putrid paste with the sand along the beaches. Any area within ten miles of a beach was subject to the awful stench of the rotting flesh of salmon and catfish that rose from the depth and sputtered murky blood from their maws as they shuddered into death. Bodies of orcas and whales and sharks of all kinds floated to shores and the salty brine of oozing pus that plopped from their bodies washed across the land with the rain and entered city water systems and filled homes with the stench of death.
Needless to say, the Snowflakes were having a field day.
Clips of his midnight disposal ran on every news channel in the world. A Pawn from the farm must have rebelled against their own inferiority to deny the reality of their purpose.
This was the part of the game, where he took his chips and cashed out. The Pawns were blind to their best interests and would undoubtedly pick up arms. That’s why his private jet was on the runway and ready to take him to his Iceland bunker where he would wait until the Wokies lost steam and the Pawns returned to their senses.
With a final squeeze of his faithful king piece, he donned his respirator and left the purified air of his 85-bedroom mansion—in which he lived alone because his alpha nature made women tremble in their inadequacies—and climbed into the limo in the Western-most bay of his 35-car garage.
It was a slow processional. Cars with crushed hoods lay askew in the streets, many with bodies inside. Birds dropped mid-flight onto the roof of the limo with thunderous claps and every so often, the car bounced violently over another body.
Some Pawns roamed the streets with eyes rotted in their sockets and skin turning black from gangrene. The Snowflakes called it a global catastrophe, but the mere nature of their inferiority all but demanded they redirect their ire—born of their own lack, mind you—against those blessed with superior blood. Even the fellas, Schmitty and Matt, would arrive at his home within the hour, expecting they would make the voyage to his bunker with him (the news plastered their faces alongside his). They would be sorely disappointed to find him 10,000 feet in the air by then.
“The Pawns are made to be sacrificed for the greater good, but do not shy away from sacrificing your rook, your knight, or even your queen.” Linden John Senior would say this with a glass of single malt scotch to his lips while his junior stood at attention. “In the game of chess, their purpose is to protect the King, and it is their honour to die in this service.”
He felt bad in a Wokey sort of way, but he was a betting man. And in the end, he always bet on himself. Blood and entrails and clumps of fur and feathers covered the airport grounds.
While John Linden Junior waited for the driver to place his bags on the plane, he stared out the window at a dark cloud approaching the center of the airport where they parked. The car was built to eliminate as much outside noise as possible, but he was sure he heard a shriek like a monkey, though monkeys, to his knowledge, did not make their homes in New York.
The earth shook and, to his irritation, the driver and stewardess made grand conversation instead of doing their jobs. People these days just didn’t want to work. That was the difference between the Pawns and the Kings. Kings knew how to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and create their own American dream.
He opened his door just enough for his mask to fit through. “Any time today!” He screamed it with all the authority of a king, but the Pawns didn’t move. Perhaps they did not hear him over the growing rumble of the fast-approaching brood. Not a cloud, but a swarm. The monkey shrieks became louder and within the general wall of noise he heard howling wolves, decrepit moos, and wordless chants.
The ground shook like an earthquake and he fell against the door in his scramble to the jet, screaming all the while at those lazy, worthless Pawns. They turned, and he saw now that their eye sockets were empty and the rotting skin around their mouths had fallen away leaving their jaws in permanent smiles. They stared at him, unmoving, and he shoved past them.
“Let’s get a move on!” There was no responding movement on the plane, and a cursory search confirmed he was alone. No matter. The horde would grow tired eventually, and as long as he was on this plane, they could not reach him. He pulled the doors shut with a thwack as the first of the horde descended.
Animals with rotting flesh drooping from their frames rammed into the tempered glass windows. Their stench oozed through the seams between the panels. A monkey with charred fur and bright red burned skin barrelled against the window next to his head. Its staccato shrieks grated his ears and created a symphony with the desperate calls of the other animals. The structure creaked.
Vaguely, he noticed it wasn’t just animals. It seemed all of New York, with their infected wounds and fluid-covered bodies, tossed themselves against the craft. He should have known the Pawns wouldn’t accept their fate. They needed someone to blame, and in their laziness, they found him an easy target.
The door wrenched open, and a cow walloped its hulking body up the stairs. He clutched his king to his chest and for one brief, solitary moment, he considered flying the plane himself, since he certainly was intelligent and superior enough to accomplish it. In the next moment, the horde lurched through the door and buried him under a pile of writhing, rotting flesh.
John Linden Junior raised his king up to the heavens and uttered his last words. “You Pawns are just jealous!”
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