Mormons in Texas

A thousand head of steer rumble across the high plains. A huge, rustling herd, they were being piloted through the desert by the four horse riders flying above them, using microchips implanted into the cattle’s brains to steer them along.

The four riders hover across the horizon, skimming fifty feet above the parched, radioactively scorched desert just between New Austin and The Partion. One of them, old, with a long graying mustache dressed entirely in black seemed to be the authority figure. Another, squat, fat, rode by his side, and was presumably the purse strings of this operation.

The fat one turned to the man in black, noticing that he was fiddling with his satellite phone slackware box.

“What is it, Big Jim? Is there trouble ahead?”

Big Jim pulled a well-chewed cigar from his mouth.

“Mormons.” He said. “Mormons.”

“And they’ve got MAGLEV Tanks.”

The squat one wrapped his pudgy little fingers around the brim of his old hat. He fanned himself with it, mostly out of habit, and wiped the sweat from his bald scalp. The fat man replaced his hat, and turned back to Big Jim.

“That’s not good, is it?”

“No.” Big Jim said, as if he were about to laugh, and slightly cocked his head at Tweed, as if he were surprised that Tweed had felt the need to ask.

I’ve never seen him laugh, Tweed thought. Not even when they were living high on the hog in Old Phoenix, drinking like mudfish. Never. Nothing more than a sly little smile. And they were few and far between.

Clete, the small red-haired one with the huge adam’s apple wrinkled his face up, partly in fear, mostly in confusion. “Mormons?” he squeaked. “Nobody’s done seen no Mormons in these parts since before The Partition was reclaimed.”

“No shit, Clete,” Big Jim snapped, “That’s because they shouldn’t aught to be here. Frankly, though, I’m glad to see the Nauvoo Legion again. It’s been a while since I’ve had a chance to notch some polygamists on ol’ Betsy here.”

“Big Jim, we’ve only got tesla-coil-powered-flying horses. If they’ve got MAGLEV tanks, they’ve got us dead to rights. I still have my underground soy-bean farm. It’s not much, but it’s better than receiving the dread Mormon baptism of the dead, I mean, that’s worse than going to Hell..”

Big Jim sneered. “Clete, if you so much as turn, I’ll take you right off that horse, right now, right where you’re hover’n. And you know I’m the just the man to do it.”

But there’s nothing we can do! Any scrap we get into with those tin cans is sure to be our last. We can’t even hope to fight �em, and we can only barely out run �em.

“Clete, calm down.” A calm voice said. It was Xemulak, the young scientologist from the east seeking to make his fortune as a cowboy. “You’re just responding to your clam engrams.”

Clete was enraged.

“Don’t you start with that Xenu shit, you fucking wanna-be alien. I’m gonna be clear some day! I’m gonna be clear someday! I’m gonna take my money and get more auditing and join the SeaOrg and command a battleship and sail the pacific launching Elron-MV missiles on the Chinamen �till they give up and follow L.Ron to paradise. Do you know how many Chinamen they have in China? Do you? Do you really think that SeaOrg can handle all three million of them? Three million people, can you even imagine that?”

Xemulak was startled by the ferocity of Clete’s attack.

Clete continued;

“I don’t care that your type run the eastern states. I don’t care that the SeaOrg rule the high seas. Do you see any water around here? Know how far we are from the eastern coast? You’re the only Scientologist between here and the Crater. If you think the Mormons have a soft spot for Scientologists you’re sorely mistaken. If they don’t give you the baptism of the dead and use you for fertilizer, they’ll slave you for sure. They do that, you know. �Cause they think their imaginary natives did it. You wanna carry some fat man, fatter than Tweed over there? You wanna feel your spine splinter under his weight as you shuttle him back