March 19th, 2013
1
Dillan and Dean made it to the filthy Slavers camp just before dawn, pulling three middle-aged (used up) women and a strikingly beautiful teenage girl behind their horses on long, tight, rawhide ropes. The females had all come from Kimball, Nebraska, where the brothers had spent a few days waiting out a dust storm.
Surrounded by a thick wall of mountains, the Slaver camp was a sprawling, unorganized mess of mud-splattered, bullet-ridden vehicles and torn, dusty tents camped across 287, just out of sight and sound of 25, and the next town.
There were burnt frames of cars around them and ranches with crushed mailboxes. One house was completely reduced to only a charred frame with anti-religious phrases sprayed on its sheds and outbuildings; targeted due to it being covered in Christmas decorations. The hundreds of statues and displays were riddled with bullet holes and melted by Molotov cocktails, but there had simply been too much to destroy all of it. Now, it stood as a warning: That world of rich, white excess was over.
Smoke swirled sharply with the wind from burned-down fires, and hordes of flies buzzed and landed, swarmed and resettled over the garbage dump just behind the camp, where small corpses lay rotting in the foggy drizzle. The females on the ropes didn't react to these horrors as they stumbled by, concentrating only on moving their feet so they could draw another breath. The rawhide was constantly shrinking, rubbing away the skin on their necks until they were slowly choking all the time. Even rape was secondary to breathing.
The brothers came into the camp openly, not expecting to see guards - and they didn't. Word had spread, and many of the places ahead of the Mexicans would probably already be abandoned by the time they got there. That would work in the twins' favor. Empty towns meant no women or fun, and for these men, that might lose Cesar leadership if it went on long enough. They had an offer that would be to the Mexican leader's advantage. Or so he would think, if they did this right.
They had made it over four hundred miles in two weeks, alternating driving, always on the move until they stopped near the Nebraska-Colorado state line to rest up and to pick up some females (peace offerings) for Cesar. His uncontested rule had given the Mexican a sense of power and control that few would be stupid (brave) enough to challenge and it was that strength they had come for.
Despite owing the Mexican their lives, Dean and Dillan felt no loyalty towards the mean little man. There was respect for his quick, brutal methods of control, but if not for their failure with the Witch, they likely would have never come back. It was one more thing they hated her for. They had been gone a long time and Cesar was unstable, making it hard to know how well they would be received. He might order them killed before they had a chance to make him the offer.