Moving toward the sun, we glide away from the river and over the shining tracks, the backyards and roofs of Nailhouse Row, then a line of Harvey-Davidson motorcycles tilted on their kickstands. These unprepossessing little houses were built, early in the century recently vanished, for the metal pourers, mold makers, and crate men employed by the Pederson Nail factory. On the grounds that working stiffs would be unlikely to complain about the flaws in their subsidized accommodations, they were constructed as cheaply as possible. (Pederson Nail, which had suffered multiple hemorrhages during the fifties, finally bled to death in 1963.) The waiting Harley's suggest that the factory hands have been replaced by a motorcycle gang. The uniformly ferocious appearance of the Harley's owners, wild-haired, bushy-bearded, swag-bellied men sporting earrings, black leather jackets, and less than the full compliment of teeth, would seem to support this assumption. Like most assumptions, this one embodies an uneasy half-truth. The current residents of Nailhouse Row, whom suspicious locals dubbed the Thunder Five soon after they took over the houses along the river, cannot so easily be categorized. They have skilled jobs in the Kingsland Brewing Company, located just out of town to the south and one block east of the Mississippi. If we look to our right, we can 'the world's largest six-pack' storage tanks painted over with gigantic Kingsland Old-Time Lager labels. The men who live on Nailhouse Row met one another on the Urbana-Champaign campus of the Universe of Illinois, where all but one were undergraduates majoring in English of philosophy. (The exception was a resident in surgery at the UI-UC university hospital.) They get an ironic pleasure from being called the Thunder Five: the name strikes them as sweetly cartoonish. What they call themselves is 'the Hegelian Scum.' These gentlemen from an interesting crew, and we will make their acquaintance later on. For now, we have time only to note the hand-painted posters taped to the fronts of several houses, two lamp poles, and a couple of abandoned buildings. The posters say: Fisherman, you better pray to your stinking god we don't catch you first! Remember Amy!
Death Trace Pt.1 (continued)
- Thread starter Lazlazor
- Start date
