Foreward by Jeffrey H Wood :

This is a work of fiction, written by Phil King for an English distribution credit in his graduate degree program. I am not now, nor have I ever been a member of a white supremacist organization. However, I have been a cartoonist for quite a number of years, and that's bad enough.

Although the characters and events in this story are fictional, some of my dialogue is reproduced from my correspondence with Mr. King (in particular, my defense of SnowBuni, and my condemnation of "furry" fandom).

Incident Report
By Phillip King

Special Agent Montgomery, Alex J. Coeur D'Alene Field Office, December 19, 1997. Ref. GW7-9947

Suspect number 1, Mr. Donald Orvin Black, 48, and Mr. Jeffrey Wood apparently met for the first time at the annual comic book convention in Moscow, Idaho. Subsequent background investigation was unable to reveal any prior contact, although information is incomplete. Mr. Black has been investigated previously, following local community complaints about his neo-nazi recruitment comic book "Final Victory." No grounds for filing charges were ever discovered.

"...And that's why Superman is clearly a homoerotic delusion originated by Hoover's FBI. Thank you, and you can buy a copy of my research notes at the door on your way out." There was a brief spattering of polite applause, lasting less than three seconds, and the eight people in the front three rows of the otherwise vacant hotel conference room got up to leave. Jeff sat in the back row on the aisle, near the door that wasn't manned by the convention hucksters, looking over the final six hours on his Comic-Con program. His slipping production schedule and ongoing lack of a storyline for SnowBuni #12 were weighing heavily on his mind. As he read the speaker descriptions he fiddled with his SnowBuni Zippo, rapidly flipping it open and closed with one hand, generating a rhythmic shick-click-clank. He glanced up and slid one seat over to clear the way for a tubby 33 year old Klingon - one of the audience members - that was displacing the end chair of each row as he squeezed himself toward the door. The tight black leather pants of the costume squeaked under the strain as he walked past.

"So, what did you think of my thesis?" asked the speaker. Jeff hadn't seen the bearded man, somewhere in his 40s, walking behind the Klingon, and it took him a moment to realize he was being addressed. He looked up from his schedule again, and took a second more to figure out what he'd been asked.

"I always keep an open mind," he replied.

"But a like mind, I see..." said the speaker, gesturing toward the gold ring on Jeff s left hand. It was a small gold snake wrapped around his finger, biting its own tail, with tiny diamonds for eyes. Jeff said nothing, and the speaker held up his own left hand. On his ring finger was what looked like a college ring, but with a raised gold cross against a field of black. He turned his hand over to reveal the palm side. Inlaid on that side of the gold band was a small swastika. "Don Black," he said, "Final Victory." He lowered his left hand and put out his right to shake.

Mr. Wood indicated that he believed Mr. Black had misinterpreted his wedding band, ironically a Haitian design, as the insignia of another local white-supremacist organization. Likewise, the fictional background story in his "Snow Bunny" comic books, portraying a totalitarian government was believed by Mr. Black to be an expression of political doctrine. Mr. Wood insists that the non-human species-centric views espoused by his characters are, if anything, parody.

Jeff shook, and both men's knuckles turned white, their fingertips bright red, as they both pretended not to notice the crushing grip between them. "Jeff Wood, Snowbuni." said Jeff.

"Is that one of those fur-vert rags?" asked Black, raising one eyebrow.

Jeff crossed his meaty weight-lifter's arms in front of his chest, and said, "I prefer to think of it as a graphic novel in the anthropomorphic genre. And while there is a good deal of overtly sexual content, I do not condone the fur-vert and bestiality crowd." His voice was low, just short of menacing, but the words came across as something he'd said many times before. He added, somewhat more extemporaneously: "They're a bunch of unbathed weirdoes that dropped out of the human species 'cause they couldn't cut it."

"Hey, no offense!" said Black, smiling as he raised both hands in mock surrender. The tiny swastika gleamed as it caught the light. "Actually, I've seen your book and I just wanted to see what you'd say. I've read some of your editorials, and I actually hoped to meet you. Besides, any woman with Snowbuni's love of guns is okay by me." He laughed and put his hands down.

"How's the, uh, cause?" asked Jeff

"Oh, better than you might believe. I'm here to raise awareness for Final Victory..." Black appeared to become more charismatic, lighting up as he started into his standard spiel. "and we're winning the hearts and minds of a lot of the boys around this area."

"Really?"

"Oh yeah. This is where it's gonna begin, here in the heartland. They crucified Weaver and McVeigh, but we know the truth, and the word's getting out. You know the game. Underground comics are a good medium for the underground." Black was positively beaming now.

"Idaho is the heartland?" asked Jeff, smiling lopsidedly.

"Well, you know what I mean. We're making sure as hell the future doesn't belong to some fag half-breed from San Francisco or some New York Jew."

"Really?" said Jeff again. He wondered to himself if there was a comic-book worth of story idea somewhere in all this.

"Absolutely. And... Well, we really shouldn't talk here. You going to the Dinner keynote this evening?"

'Stan Lee on Parallel Universes? Nah, seen that before."

"Tell you what, why don't you come on out to my place for dinner. Get some good food, not this hotel crap, and meet some fellow patriots. And I've got something to show you..."

Further investigation has failed to determine Mr. Wood's motivation for accompanying Mr. Black to his home. His claim of "curiosity" seems, for lack of any other explanation, plausible. Records at Washington State University in Pullman indicate that during his junior year there, Mr. Wood was randomly assigned to a dormitory room with a black militant student leader named Brian Whitfield, who at that time was using the alias Jamal Al-Mohammed Jamal. Mr. Whitfield, who is now general manager of a Target store in Boise, was contacted in the course of this investigation. His summary of Mr. Wood was simply, "He's a nice white guy."

"Well, I gotta be hitting the road yet tonight. Miles to go before I sleep..."

"No problem. Just follow me out to my ranch, it's an easy drive. You can head out from there."

State route 95 North out of Moscow, Idaho, had almost no traffic on it, and Jeff followed the Chevy pickup driven by Black as it careened along at 70. The sky was heavy and gray, squeezing the road against the horizon like a descending sheet of slate. The sun setting off to the left was lost behind the November cloud cover, and night fell quickly. They went north past the junction with Route 272, and beyond the exit for Route 5, and finally took a hard right at Sander's road. Further out, on Indian Creek road they took the fork to the right and pulled into a hidden driveway which was barely more than a gap in the barbed-wire fence. A neatly hand-painted white-on-black sign beside the fence read "Defended Territory."

Suspect number 2, Mr. Andrew Jo-Michael McNully, 23, was held briefly in the Spokane Juvenile Detention Facility in 1990 for attempted robbery. His efforts to steal change from city parking meters with a blowtorch and hammer were unsuccessful, but did result in a conviction for misdemeanor criminal vandalism and a suspended sentence. In 1993 He was given an administrative discharge from the army for "incompatible attitudes and behavior."

"Andy," said Black as he got out of his pickup, "come over here and meet Jeff Wood."

Andy was a barrel-chested twenty-something with short cropped hair and a muscular frame under his black "Kill'Em All, Let God Sort'Em Out!" T-shirt. He wore oil-stained jeans and a gunbelt with a nylon holster. The butt of a Browning Hi-Power Mark III 9mm showed beneath the snapped flap. He also had three extra pre-Brady 14 round magazines in carriers on the belt. On the back of the gunbelt was a walkman, and from the headphones around Andy's neck, Jeff could just make out strains of Wagner's Ring Trilogy. He didn't smile as he shook Jeff s hand, and he quickly turned away, toward the large barn. He stumbled in a deep rut in the dried mud of the driveway leading into the barn door, but caught himself and kept walking.

"I thought," said Black to Andy's back, "that we might show Jeff here our little project. He could help..."

Andy stopped and spun around. His lips were pressed together and bent into a hard frown. "Now, dammit Don," he said, "we talked about this. We don't need anyone else in on this right now. Especially not now."

"I know," said Don, kindly but firmly, "but we can trust Jeff, and he might even be a valuable help."

"How do you know we can trust him?"

"Well, for one thing, he's wearing a Serpent's Walk. But I know more about Mr. Wood than he thinks." Black smiled. He addressed Jeff. "I said I'd read some of your editorials. As a matter of fact, I've read all your books." He looked Andy in the eye and said, "Jeff is the creator of that Snowbuni book I showed you."

"You mean the bunny girl with the huge tits and all the guns?" Andy asked, cracking a slight smile.

"That's the one. And you remember what we were talking about... Hell," he said, turning back toward Jeff again, "We talked about getting you in on Final Victory. We thought you could give it that good sexy edge that'll really get the kids' attention. And Snowbuni's as much a patriot book as ours... Racial purity for her people, defense by overwhelming force of arms, a government that knows who it works for. We could use that."

Jeff smiled slightly, but said nothing. "This," he thought, "is getting weird."

"Okay," said Andy, as his eyes narrowed into a suspicious squint again, and the comer of his lips turned down, "fine."

Assembly of "the little project" had turned the inside of the barn into an industrial waste nightmare. Dozens of 55-gallon drums were stacked against either side wall, and bails of straw were heaped all around an old cement truck parked in the middle. More bails were supporting toolchests, canisters, and several small crates labeled "Danger Class B Explosive." The hydrocarbon stench was almost overwhelming, and the drop tarp set up in the middle of the floor underneath a drum-mixer was soaked with something like gasoline. Hundreds of 50 pound paper bags labeled "AMMONIUM NITRATE" were stacked on the left side of the barn, and a drum near the door was stuffed almost to the top with still more of the now empty bags. A powdery film covered everything in the room, and settled out of the air onto Jeff s skin as he surveyed the place.

"We grind it into the mixer," explained Black, pointing to the fertilizer/high explosive, "and then tumble it with the Ethyl-Diesel mixture. It gives a pretty much optimum yield. The entire package will fit inside the concrete truck, with the dynamite at the core to set it all off."

"We've learned a lot," said Black. "In fact, we've learned a lot from the Jew press, the Internet, a few really good books. And McVeigh's mistakes. We can't tell you where we're going to use this, but you'll know when we do. Unfortunately, we're going to have to disappear after that. But we'll still be out there, and the war will be beginning. So now you understand the depth of what we're doing here. And the amount of trust I'm placing on you. But I know you can understand. I'm a good judge of men."

Black diverged into an impassioned monologue of all the evils being visited upon the pure white race, and Jeff fished around in his pocket, pulling out the white ComicCon admission pass from earlier that day. Both Black and Andy were standing in front Jeff with their back to him, waxing fascist-anarchist and pointing out the glory of their plans. Jeff rolled the pass into a small tube, then stuck it in his teeth and held it there. He reached in his left pocket and pulled out his SnowBuni Zippo. The lighter was emblazoned with the buxom SnowBuni in her signature pose: holding a gigantic and exceedingly phallic assault weapon pressed between her breasts. The lighter was the sample proof from an aborted merchandising project, and although he didn't smoke, Jeff always kept it fueled. He flipped it open, struck it, and then touched the flame to the pass sticking out of his mouth. "Either of you guys want a smoke?" he said, as he took the "cigarette" between his index and middle fmger of his right hand, the still open and lit Zippo in his left.

Black and Andy turned around, simultaneously yelled, "S**T!" and ran into each other as they leapt toward Jeff, shouting variations on "NO! NO! NO!" over each other in an incoherent babble about the danger.

"What? WHAT?!" demanded Jeff, as he took a step backwards from the two men rushing him, and at the same time dropped both the lighter and the burning convention pass on the edge of the chemical permeated tarp. The air just above the tarp burst into flames before the lighter even hit the floor, and the blue flame, consuming the highly volatile alcohol fumes, spread out in a circular front across the tarp until it hit the edges and the straw bails. There the flame turned dirty yellow as it started climbing.

"Oh S**T! Sorry..." Said Jeff.

Andy and Black jumped off the quickly disintegrating tarp. Andy had to bend over to beat out the burning cuffs of his jeans before the fire spread up his legs to any of the more flammable stains. He grabbed a towel and joined Black trying to smother the flames that were quickly engulfing the inside of the barn. While Black and Andy fought their losing battle, Jeff slipped through the barn door and walked quickly back to his car. He saw the flames starting to appear through the roof of the barn in his rearview mirror as he drove away.

Mr. Wood indicated in his deposition that the fire in the barn apparently began when Mr. McNully lit a cigarette, which caused a flash-fire.

Jeff was a quarter mile away before his cell phone finally got a connection and he dialed 911. The highway patrol operator put him through to the Moscow fire department dispatch.

"Yeah, there's a fire out on Indian Creek Road, out on the right hand branch, a little ways past the Y... You can't miss it. You should probably bring the Sheriff too. There's something strange going on up there... Yeah, and if you guys have any Haz-Mat gear, you might want that too..." Jeff heard a thunderclap behind him. "Oh yeah - they might be storing some dynamite up there too, so be careful... Yeah. Okay... Thanks. Bye."

Heading for home, south on State Route 95 he passed two fire trucks and three Sheriff s cars heading north, sirens, lights, and all.

When the Sheriff arrived on the scene, the suspects were found in the driveway, disoriented and suffering from minor cuts and abrasions. They had apparently fled the barn only shortly before the fire set off the detonators being stored there, which in turn detonated the nearby dynamite. The homebrew Ammonium Nitrate/Fuel Oil (ANFO) explosive mixture was apparently far enough from the dynamite that there was insufficient shock to cause detonation. The fuel and chemicals did hamper efforts to extinguish the blaze, however, which consumed the remains of the barn, the nearby home ' and many of the surrounding trees before it was brought under control.

The Sheriff conducted a preliminary investigation before referring the case to this office for possible investigation and prosecution under the 1996 Federal AntiTerrorism Act. Mr. McNully and Mr. Black have both refused to answer any questions under interrogation, claiming that they "do not recognize the legitimacy of any federal investigative agency."

The destruction in the fire of any documents or records that could have established motive or intended target for the ANFO device make establishment of terrorist intent difficult. Instead, this office recommends prosecution for felony production of an explosive device and violation of the federal environmental protection act. The suspects should also be kept under long-term scrutiny, as compatible with their civil rights, and may also be subject to prosecution under state and federal firearms laws.

Mr. Wood seems to have been uninvolved with the production of the explosive, and was, apparently simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. It is the opinion of this agent that his fleeing the scene was a legitimate and understandable act of self-preservation, and he is to be commended for calling for emergency services from his cellular telephone. No further investigation of Mr. Wood is merited.

Jeff smiled to himself as he walked in the door of his small house just outside of Yakima. "You're home earlier than I expected you!" came a call from the kitchen, the sound of the sink running, and then Kelly appeared carrying the traditional welcomehome glass of water. Her brilliant white smile was accentuated by her ebony complexion. She handed Jeff the water, and after he drank she put her arms around him and kissed him, lingering just long enough to emphasize that she was glad he was home. "How was the con?" she asked, her arms still resting on his shoulders.

He pulled her against him, hugging her, and said, "Kel, you know how sometimes you run into people that just really don't have a clue? Well, have I got a story for you..."

The End