Miss Atomos vs. The K.K.K. Read online

  André Caroff’s

  MADAME ATOMOS

  #5 - Miss Atomos vs. The K.K.K.

  Translated by

  Michael Shreve

  A Black Coat Press Book

  Introduction

  This volume collects the fifth installment of the saga of Madame Atomos, a series of 18 novels published between 1964 and 1970 in the Angoisse horror imprint of French publisher Fleuve Noir.1 Our introduction to Volume 1 contains a biography of its author, André Carpouzis, a.k.a. André Caroff (1924-2009). More information about Fleuve Noir and its popular brands of science fiction and horror can be found in the introductions to the other volumes translated from their imprints and published by Black Coat Press: Richard Bessière’s The Gardens of the Apocalypse, Gérard Klein’s The More in Time’s Eye and Kurt Steiner’s Ortog.

  The saga of Madame Atomos (her real name is Kanoto Yoshimuta) is about a brilliant but twisted middle-aged female Japanese scientist who is out for revenge against the United States for the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—where she was born, and where her family died in the nuclear holocaust.

  Madame Atomos seeks to repay the United States by unleashing deadly new threats, such as radioactive zombies, giant spiders, a madness-inducing ray, flaming tornadoes, etc. The heroes opposing her are Smith Beffort of the FBI, Dr. Alan Soblen, and Yosho Akamatsu of the Japanese Secret Police.

  Volume 3 introduced the character of Mie Azusa, a.k.a. Miss Atomos, a younger version of Madame Atomos, groomed to continue the fight when Madame Atomos eventually died. (Or did she?).

  Now read on…

  Jean-Marc Lofficier

  MISS ATOMOS VS THE KKK

  Chapter I

  September 1965. Birmingham, Alabama.

  A big, green, dust-covered Chevrolet entered the city from Fairfield, slowing down considerably and merging with the constant flow of traffic heading for downtown. At the end of the week the city was abuzz with activity. The Chevrolet followed the slow stream of cars until it finally pulled over to the sidewalk in front of a modern building on a wide avenue. However, it was not a legally marked parking place: just under a no parking sign…

  An officer, who was pacing the sidewalk only a few yards away, saw the car, whose driver seemed in no hurry to leave, and went up to it, with a nasty look already on his face. Strangely enough, he had not gone far when he stopped, watching closely. The driver’s left hand was drumming curiously on the door. The fingers moved, one after another, at regular intervals, and then the palm hit the door in rhythm. The officer, who had stopped moving, got a little life back. His right hand came out of his belt and made a series of quick gestures as if he suddenly felt the need to loosen up his fingers and then the upholder of public order turned around and calmly went back to his pacing.

  The driver got out of the car, crossed the sidewalk and without looking at the officer entered the building. He waited for the elevator and went up to the 12th floor, the top floor. In the hallway he showed no sign of being in a hurry and no worry about finding a ticket under his windshield wiper if he stayed too long. With the same calm step he got to the end of the hallway and went straight into the office of Forrest & Co. where a seductively shaped typist welcomed visitors. The girl immediately stopped martyring the typewriter, smiled and got up. Standing up she was thinner, but paradoxically her chest doubled in size.

  “What can I do for you?” Melodic voice, pouty mouth, napalm eyes. She was used to this question, worked it all the time, delivered it differently to every customer. The effect was terribly artificial. The man was quickly distracted by her provocative chest. He was thinking that the girl could certainly do something for him some time, but it was really not the time.

  “I have an appointment with Nathan Forrest. Can you tell him I’m here, please?” He held out his card, his eyes turned cold and his back straightened. The girl had seen others.

  “Your name is not on my schedule for this morning, Mr. Gray.”

  The man turned slowly, his face tensed up. He looked very self-assured, exuding great authority. “I have an appointment. Inform Nathan immediately.”

  The use of the first name made an impression on the typist. She disappeared with the business card and came back two minutes later, holding the door to the director’s office open. “Mr. Forrest is expecting you.”

  Gray entered the office, closing the door himself on the girl with pursed lips. He held out his hand to the fat man who came to meet him. Nathan Forrest had never seen Gray. Nevertheless he shook his hand. “How are you?”

  “How are you?” Gray echoed.

  Forrest felt the man’s index finger press on his wrist in a certain way. He bowed a little, stepped back and asked quietly, “Ayak2?”

  “Akia3,” Gray responded.

  The conversation started right away, saturated with weird sounding words that were incomprehensible to common mortals when it came to Kligrapp, Klailiff, Klokan, Kadds and Karagos4. This meant that two higher members of the Ku Klux Klan had just made contact in order to perpetrate a new crime.

  Down on the street Gray’s car was safe because the police officer also belonged to the KKK.

  Three days later, as night was falling, a long line of vehicles clogged up a back road around Birmingham that was usually deserted. There were all kinds of vehicles and the occupants looked like citizens from any city, behind the wheel of any car: salesmen, businessmen, office workers, shopkeepers, etc.

  The strange thing was that this procession seemed not to have a goal. The road came off the highway and made a long loop through the countryside before rejoining another highway.

  The cars turned off onto a dirt track, drove into a wide field covered with new grass and parked in a circle. A second later the engines were turned off and the headlights went out. In the dead silence, everyone was waiting for the full night.

  A little later a truck came into the field, which had been turned into an outside parking lot, slipped between the cars and stopped in the middle of the circle. A man dressed in a white robe got out, stood in front of the truck’s headlights and gave a signal. Right away everyone rushed into the circle. They were all wearing the strange white robe with a high, pointy hood whose front was decorated with a kind of folded visor that could be pulled down over the face to hide it completely. On the robe, around chest level, was a Maltese cross in a red circle. In the center of the cross a black-bordered diamond with a kind of red comma in the middle5.

  While the crowd, henceforth anonymous, gathered round, some men who had climbed out of the truck planted a huge wooden cross in the ground and in front of it they set up an improvised platform on top of three trestles. Very quickly they put a lamp on the platform and set up a microphone connected to two powerful speakers. They installed it all so fast that there was no doubt that the crew had done this many times before.

  When everything was ready, a man got up on the platform and said into the microphone, “Let the light of heaven shine on us!”

  With this prayer another man lit a torch and set fire to the cross, which had previously been soaked in resin and surround with rags soaked in gas. The rags caught fire and cast a fantastic light in the night, illuminating the face of Gray who presided over the meeting from the platform. Except for Nathan Forrest, who was also present, no one knew his name, but everyone knew that he was one of the ten Genii directing the invisible empire6.

  Gray raised his arms to the starry sky. “Oh, God! We thank You for having given us the opportunity to gather together these good Whites. We know we are here by Your will. We want only to fulfill Your holy will. Help us to be ready to fight, to shed blood if necessary in order to keep our way of life. Let us pray in the name of Jesus. Amen!”

 
Murmuring voices rose in the night, reciting an endless litany that was like a terrible curse in which this particular passage stood out: “Just as I see no difference between a little rattlesnake and a big one, so I make no distinction between a baby nigger and an adult. If someone tells me tonight that there are four little niggers wiped off the earth, then I will say, “All the better and bravo to whoever killed them, we will all be better off.” The Ku Klux Klan is getting stronger and stronger. I believe in violence, in all the violence it will take to chase away all the niggers or put them six feet underground…”

  The litany went on like that for a good 15 minutes and then Gray spread out his arms. Standing before the still burning cross in his red robe he looked like the incarnation of a demon come directly from hell. “Tonight,” he said, “we are here to pass judgment on a woman of our race. Her name is Dora Wilkins and she lives in Jasper where she works as a journalist. We condemn her for siding with the niggers in her articles and for having a lover of this cursed race whom she sees every day at her house between 9 and 10 in the morning. The city of Jasper is in your sector. Therefore you have to pronounce and execute the sentence. The vote will take place right now by a show of hands. Who thinks she’s innocent?”

  No hand was raised.

  “Who thinks she’s guilty?”

  All hands went up.

  Gray nodded in satisfaction. “Dora Wilkins and her nigger lover have to die within two days. The Grand Wizard wants the matter to have a serious impact. Your Grand Titan will give you his instructions and designate those among you who must carry out this divine mission. Good night, dear brothers.”

  He got off the platform and vanished in the darkness. A little later a car started and disappeared down the dusty road. So Nathan Forrest, Grand Titan for the Birmingham area, gathered six klansmen to give them their orders.

  The next morning a black Ford stopped on the road coming out of Jasper. The area was calm, with only a dozen houses, all very far from one another. One of them belonged to Dora Wilkins.

  “It’s 8:55,” the driver of the Ford remarked. “The nigger isn’t there yet.”

  None of his five partners answered. A young black man was, in fact, just showing up at the end of the road. He was tall, solidly built, and walked briskly in the shade of the trees without trying to hide.

  One of the klansmen took a photograph out of his pocket and scanned it. “That’s him,” he said curtly. His name was Gregg and he was a butcher’s boy in Birmingham but for the moment he was in charge of the punitive expedition; he was nothing but a potential killer driving in a stolen car, ready to hide his face under the Klan’s hood. Normally Gregg was a good guy. He had a fiancée, played baseball with the Tigers, went fishing a lot. Except that a savage beast came alive in him when he saw a negro. This beast kept on guard as long as the negro kept his place. But if the negro entered a restaurant reserved for Whites, the beast slapped him around a little with his paw as a warning. And if he slept with a White, the paw grew claws and mutilated…

  “He’s going in her house.”

  “Give them time to go to bed. You have the rope, Joe?”

  “Two hemp, about 20 feet each. In my opinion the railing on the second floor should do the job. And from there they can see them from far off.”

  “The sign?” Gregg asked again.

  “In the trunk. Have to hang it between the corpses so they know right away.”

  Gregg looked at his watch. “Let’s go. Sam, you stay at the wheel on the left side of the street, but not too close. Honk the horn once for a cop on foot, twice for a patrol car. Everything should be over by 9:20.”

  Gregg got out of the Ford and took the lead of the small group. Silently the five men walked along the hedge that bordered the left side of the street and then snuck into the driveway that led to Dora Wilkins house. Without any problems they came to the front of the house that could almost not be seen from the street. After laying the ropes and sign along the wall they grouped together in the doorway. Gregg put a little pressure on the door handle. There was a creak and then the door swung open inside without the slightest resistance. Apparently Dora Wilkins felt perfectly safe at home, which was rather surprising. Being the lover of a Black, she should have logically expected some retaliation. Alabama was one of the most active states against racial integration. Very recently Viola Liuzzo, a 39-year-old White, had been murdered by KKK killers in full daylight before witnesses7. Considering this fact, Dora Wilkins’ behavior was almost madness.

  Gregg naturally took this as a challenge. If he had thought about it, maybe he would have found it suspicious, but either way he had no chance to get to the truth—destiny was about to set in motion an incredible tragedy that no one could have imagined.

  So, Gregg led his partners into the house. The commando team climbed the stairs, stopping on the second floor landing. Gregg was armed with a strong kitchen knife; the others had weighted clubs with steel spikes. Gregg listened carefully and slowly approached a door.

  “You’re so different, Dora, that I often feel like I don’t know you when we meet in the corridor at the newspaper.”

  “I can’t help it, Bob.”

  “Why don’t you tell me the truth?”

  “That’s impossible. You have to trust me. Take me as I am… or as I’m not.”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “Nothing. Kiss me…”

  There was silence and then the man’s voice again. “Sometimes you seem sick, Dora. Why don’t you go to see a doctor?”

  “There’s nothing wrong…Well, nothing that a doctor can fix. Do you think I’m weird this morning, too?”

  “No, you’re not weird this morning.”

  “Then you see there’s nothing to worry about.”

  “Right now I’m not worried. I’ll start to be around 10 when you’ll have sent me back. You never want me stay later. But nobody comes and you don’t go to the newspaper until noon. Why, Dora?”

  “Because the paper doesn’t open earlier.”

  “You’re making fun of me.”

  “Calm down, Bob,” the woman begged. “Hold me in your arms. We don’t have a lot of time—it’s already 9:10.”

  Gregg kicked open the door and all the men rushed in. The Black jumped up, naked and wide-eyed. “What do you want?”

  Gregg pointed his knife. “Your throat, nigger! Come on, boys.”

  The blonde girl, who was petrified, shrieked when she saw the weighted clubs beating her lover. Gregg swore, jumped at the girl who had struggled out of bed even though she was naked, and brought her to his feet. He grabbed her golden hair, forced back her head and plunged the knife into her bare throat. After that he grabbed a pillow that he put on the pulsing throat while he took his weapon. He did not need to look to know that blood was spurting out of the fatal wound. He simply put a little more pressure on the pillow, which acted as a sponge, and looked behind him.

  The big Black was dead, his skull shattered. They had already put the rope around his neck when Joe looked at the girl. “Everything okay?”

  “Okay.” Gregg was very calm. Killing a woman under such circumstances was easier than slitting the throat of a stubborn lamb.

  Chapter II

  Several cars, one of which was a police car, drove down the street during the hour that followed, but nobody tried to look over the hedge that partly hid Dora Wilkins’ house. In other words, Gregg and his men were long gone when old Sal Penn came around the corner.

  Old Sal got around in an old, sputtering beater with tires as smooth as a railroad track and whose color was absolutely impossible to identify. The old heap contained a bunch of miscellaneous things—everything from bricks to a lawnmower. Sal had an easy job. He went regularly to all the houses in his area and offered his services in exchange for a modest compensation. Usually he asked for so little that the people gave him double and sometimes triple what he begged for with a well-practiced shyness. So, Sal mowed lawns, trimmed hedges, filled in holes her
e and there and the rest of time cruised around in his clunker smoking his pipe. See, he laughed a little seeing people rooted like trees in their hometowns. He himself wandered the United States from north to south and when he felt like it he headed east or west. Anyway, he always managed to be where the sun was shining. He set up his tent in a field, cook his food over a campfire and when he woke up in the middle of the night he did not need a light or to open a bunch of doors or tiptoe around or flush quietly in order not to wake anyone up. He just urinated wherever, yawned loudly and went back into his tent, which had enough holes for him to admire the starry sky.

  In short, Sal Penn had and appreciated freedom. If anyone else had found the hanged couple, nothing that followed would have happened.

  Sal pulled up along the sidewalk, got out of his car like a cowboy dismounting his horse and started walking up the drive. It led to an old house whose roof could be seen through the trees. As usual Sal was lugging a bag that held his essential tools, which five times out of ten kept him from going back to his car. He sauntered merrily up the drive, came out on open ground, looked up and was petrified. “Holy devil!”

  Even in very emotional situations, Sal Penn never swore using the name of God. He was not fanatic, but since he saw that he had more past than future, he was careful about getting his entrance ticket to paradise, in case it existed. And speaking of paradise, he wondered whether the two corpses swinging in front of his face were already there. Then he came back to reality and saw that the hanged couple was naked, their hands and feet were tied and there was a big sign between them with the horrible letters KKK.

  Sal swallowed hard and stepped back. He was just starting to turn around slowly when he suddenly thought that it was his duty, before dissolving into nature, to make sure that they were really dead. For that he had to cut the ropes suspending them between heaven and earth. Sal did not hesitate. He entered the house, climbed to the second floor and after getting a knife out of his bag he cut the two hemp ropes at the knots tied to the railing. Once this was done, he scampered down the stairs and went to the corpses, which were now lying in the gravel. Sal had served in the war, so he kept his cool. He cut the knots around the necks of the blonde girl and black man and knew right away that death had done its job.