Chapter 3: Black Magic Woman
The team spends the rest of the afternoon preparing for the next day- reloading Ace Hardware, settling accounts with Zo's Tow & Automotive (- $1000 cash), and filing reports regarding the bridge, dam, and MSG situation. That night, the team members sleep hard.
The next morning, after a breakfast of grits and razorback bacon, ASTARR Sierra departs from Pendleton, sunburned and sore, but having earned a portion of goodwill from the locals.
The next leg of the journey is relatively dull, compared to the last. The convoy passes the morning in Dumas, the most normal place- save for the numerous "Home of the Ding Dong Daddy"* signs prominently posted around town - that Sierra has spent any amount of time in since leaving Grady. The people of Dumas have mostly cleaned up from the storm and require little direct assistance from the STARR Team (Carswell examines a young rodent-bite victim who's displaying early rabies symptoms, but there's nothing much he can do for the unfortunate child).
*Asking around, the Sierras learn that this odd slogan refers to the title of an old song purportedly written about the little town- its one and only claim to fame.
After a quick survey, mail delivery, and a cold lunch, the Sierra convoy leaves Dumas, passing through the hamlets of Winchester, Tillar, and Reed, before finally arriving in McGehee, the largest settlement on the 65 since Pine Bluff. The various townsfolk the Sierras see out and about don’t seem to know quite what to make of the well-armed strangers. The people seem curious, and understandably wary, but, for the most part, their responses to the odd wave or shouted hello are markedly friendlier than those the Sierras received in Gould, or even Pendleton when the ASTARR team first arrived there.
Wednesday, July 17th, 2030
1300 hours
87F, 75% humidity
Wind 3mph out of the south
Waning gibbous moon
The McGehee Police Department is right off the highway, marked by a large water tower emblazoned with "McGEHEE" in plain [red] block letters. Just underneath the town's name, the faint, stylized initials, "D.S.B.." (in black) bleed through a coat of white paint. A armed figure looks down from a catwalk that circles the base of the tower tank; a uniformed man with a long-rifle stands on the roof of the police station.
McGehee's acting Police Chief, Leslie Jo Paddock, looks overworked and under-rested. With various unimportant tangents (omitted here), she recount the following tale of woe:
Shortly after the nuclear strikes on the New Orleans-Baton Rouge axis, McGehee was chosen by FEMA to be a refugee center for displaced persons from Louisiana. Invoking eminent domain, the federal agency set up trailers and tents in a couple of fallow cotton fields on the east side of town. Unhappy locals dubbed the refugee center, "Little Easy" (pronounced Lil' Easy). FEMA personnel managed the facility for a time, but eventually the agency's resources dried up. For all intents and purpose, FEMA went missing over a year ago, leaving the prewar population of just over 4000 full-time inhabitants to deal with the fugee population on its own. The First Wave of fugees settled in fairly smoothly, living in Lil' Easy and working on area farms. The Second Wave arrived, by train, from Louisiana a little over one year ago, shortly after FEMA ceased its operations in the Arklamiss/Arklatex region. This group of fugees has left a very different impression on the locals.
The Second Wave fugees refused to move to the already crowded FEMA camp, preferring to live aboard the stranded train instead. The sundry boxcars and container carriers were quickly transformed into an ersatz fugee village. The de facto leader of the Second Wave and its settlement within a settlement is a reputed Louisiana voodoo queen known as Madame Chloe. She holds court in a freight car festooned with candles, flowers, and arcane symbols that locals swear were painted with blood- it's hard to miss. The voodoo priestesses' often raucous rituals- almost always held after dark- do not sit well with the vast majority of long-time McGehee residents (the town boasts nearly a dozen separate churches of various Christian denominations), especially home and business owners whose property abutted the railroad siding. Those who had the nerve to confront the group, however, can consider themselves fortunate if they've lived to regret it.
Madame Chloe has a small but fiercely loyal army of nominal adherents that calls itself "Dem Snek Boyz" (also known by its tag, D.S.B.). The gang's leader is a one-eyed O.G. known as Napoleon. The gang has been steadily growing, in both size and boldness, since its arrival, augmented by young, disaffected fugees from the First Wave and even a few locals. At present, it's strength is estimated at somewhere between 30-50 gangbangers**. D.S.B.'s demographic skews young- estimated average age is 16- and male, but there are reportedly a few female gangbangers as well. The D.S.B.'s "soljas" are spectacularly violent. Although not particularly well-armed, they make up for their paucity of firearms with fearlessness and brutality. The gangbangers believe that Madamme Chloe's magic charms, called gris-gris bags, protect them from harm, resulting in brazen, temerarious behavior. Wielding machetes, hatchets, clubs, knives, and a motley assortment of firearms (about two dozen in total- mostly pistols and sawed-off shotguns, and a handful of submachine guns and assault rifles wielded by the lieutenants), Dem Snek Boyz aren't averse to using violence to impose their leaders' will. Rumors have circulated that dissenters within Madame Chloe's parish have met with gruesome fates. The crime rate in greater McGehee has skyrocketed since the arrival of the Second Wave, and attempts to investigate or arrest gang suspects have been met with bloody resistance.
**At one point during the description of D.S.B.'s predations, Guillory recalls hearing about a request from McGehee to the State House to send the State Anti-gang Task Force. Unfortunately, due to manpower shortages and other, more pressing priorities, said task force had, by that time, essentially ceased to exist.
Americans' worst atavistic fears about refugees have become reality in Pendleton. Local law enforcement's ability to maintain law and order in and around the Second Wave's ad-hoc camp was quickly overwhelmed by the emboldened gang's various criminal activities. Things came to a head after an incident in which two McGehee police officers were ambushed and brutally executed while attempting to detain a D.S.B. member for questioning regarding an earlier aggravated assault. Posse comitatus was invoked and the shorthanded police bolstered by armed citizen volunteers; the deputized McGehee natives pushed for the immediate eviction of the Second Wave from the town. A hastily planned and clumsily executed dawn raid was repulsed by the D.S.B. in a chaotic, pitched battle that lasted until nightfall. Several posse members were killed or wounded in the fighting, including the chief of police chief, who remains hospitalized; several gang members were killed or badly wounded as well.
In the wake of the bloodshed, an uneasy truce was arranged between the two parties. In exchange for weekly deliveries of food and alcohol, and a guarantee of non-interference in their affairs, Dem Snek Boyz and Madame Chloe's parish agreed to stay east and north of 1st Street, west of the 165, and south of Pine Street, in the railroad siding and its immediate surrounds. For all intents and purposes, Madame Chloe and D.S.B. also control Lil' Easy (the FEMA camp), and they sometimes operate a road block at a railroad crossing on the 65*** south of the police station where they shake down travelers for money and valuables. Although the truce has held so far, a couple of minor clashes between locals and D.S.B. have occurred, straining the fragile ceasefire. The citizens of McGehee fear that it's only a matter of time before open war breaks out again.
"If they saw you arrive, there could be trouble," Acting Chief Paddock explains. "And soon."
***Paddock reports that an ADOC convoy passed through town on the 65 several days past, exchanging fire with the D.S.B. roadblock on the highway.
Your Turn.
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This message was last edited by the GM at 22:13, Tue 01 Jan 2019.