Vices

by Amy Solus

  Chapter 16

  The guard takes us through a number of corridors, all absent of any sign of life. The corridors are all a bit stuffy, but fortunately none of them are on fire quite yet.

  The electricity must have been killed during the explosion and windows weren’t a part of the building plan, so there’s no light to guide us. The lack of windows in this whole facility is a bit unnerving.

  The endless twists and turns we’ve been taking are giving me this horrid feeling of vertigo. I’ve completely lost my sense of direction. I can see smoke creeping out through some doors, and I desperately hope we don’t end up taking a wrong turn into the belly of the beast. The sight of my skin burning off before my eyes doesn’t particularly appeal to me.

  As we make our way through, I glance back to Devlin and Mara. Mara has finally gotten back onto her feet and isn’t shaking as much anymore. Devlin doesn’t look all that happy-- his face is curled up with snarly look about it, but I’m guessing this whole fiasco will be over soon enough and we’ll all be able to calm down. Maybe we’ll even be able to laugh about the whole ordeal. Then again, maybe not.

  The guard that’s leading us hasn’t said as much as a word since we started our winding journey through these halls. I’m wondering if he’s smuggling us out the back door or if perhaps he’s just taking us through a garbage shoot or something. You know, they always seem to do that in the movies, but it doesn’t sound all that practical to me, especially if the shoot leads right into an incinerator.

  The amount of smoke seems to be increasing in this hallway, and we begin ducking in hopes of keeping the billowing gas from making an unwanted entrance into our lungs. Devlin has to basically drag Mara to keep her up to pace with the group. She’s really going to need a nap after this is done.

  We finally make it down the seemingly never-ending hallway and the guard scrambles with his key ring to find the correct key. The smoke is creeping through our throats, and the coughing fits we’re all suffering from could probably wake a comatose patient up. Right as he forces the key into the lock the door jerks open, revealing another person that must’ve heard our coughs.

  And there he is-- the rat-guard with that smug grin plastered onto his face.

  We all scramble through the door, completely ignoring our greeter. We’ve got priorities here, and they aren’t listening to the rat-guard give some unwanted spiel about wanting to kill us or something.

  He shuts the door and turns to us with his arms folded around his back like a commanding officer would if he were addressing his troops. He looks at us as if he were inspecting a platoon of soldiers, with a rigid gaze and a serious look on his face.

  The room we’ve entered looks to be like some sort of lounge for the guards or something of the sort.

  The guard that had been leading us brings himself to his feet and looks at the rat-guard with wary eyes.

  The silence fills the room and we all make awkward eye contact. Does the rat-guard start making demands now or do we just make our exit?

  The rat-guard purses his lips in thought and starts pacing back and forth. He turns himself towards us and looks down at us with disgust. Right about now I really wish those unicorns I was talking about earlier would hurry up and come out of hiding and help us out. Good-for-nothing unicorns.

  And finally that ever-growing silence is broken.

  “Look what we’ve got here...,” he says with a sly grin spreading across his face.

  “If I knew better, it seems you were trying to get these prisoners out of this camp we’ve got here. What exactly are you doing, Ossy? I sure hope you ain’t tryin’ to get these inmates outta here.” He looks over to the guard who’s been leading us and sends him an angry glare.

  “I’m doing nothing of the sort. I was told to grab prisoners and get to a safe spot outside of the prison. The fire is spreading like mad and even you should be hurrying out to safety,” says “Ossy.”

  “I’d never abandon my leader, I know where my allegiances lie,” spits the rat-guard.

  “Mate, if we all stay in here and chat, we’ll all be reduced to little piles of dust and then you’ll really wonder how important your allegiances are in the long run,” says Devlin.

  The rat-guard looks a bit offended now that Devlin has spoken and he brings out his night-stick, thinking he still has the power in the room. He’s obviously never heard of power in numbers.

  He also doesn’t know about the tool I have hidden in my shoe. I guess nobody other than me really knows about that one, though. I slide my fingers through the crack between the sole of my shoe and the actual shoe and attempt to work my secret weapon out of it.

  “Don’t you ever speak to me, you pitiful twit. I am your superior and you have no right to say anything of the sort to me,” he spits. He looks over to Mara, who’s huddled up against Devlin shuddering like mad. His face twists into an angry snarl and he grabs her by the hair and hoists her away from Devlin.

  In a matter of seconds Devlin pulls her away from him, making her cry out in pain as the rat-guard grasps onto some extra strands of her hair, making an incredibly painful tearing noise. Mara falls to the floor in pain, grappling to find the spots where her hair has been torn out. Wet tears fall on the floor as she sees the rat-guard drop her missing hair as he and Devlin struggle to take control of the situation.

  I look over to Ossy and he finally starts to get a grip on this whole situation, pulling himself to his feet and joining the skirmish against the rat-guard. Devlin is one solid man and the rat-guard is not having an easy time trying to punish him for speaking out of turn, but as Ossy joins in the scuffle, that certain look of all-powerful brutishness diminishes from the rat-guard’s face.

  The sound of a nightstick striking against skin isn’t one of the best, and as Ossy struggles to pull the rat-guard to the ground, the rat-guard makes contact with Devlin’s face, which brings him crashing to the ground.

  Mara pulls herself over to Devlin, who seems to be either unconscious or in a serious amount of pain, and brings his head onto her lap, stroking his temples trying to bring him back to reality.

  Ossy is about the same size as the rat-guard, so now the odds aren’t looking all that bright in our favor. I suppose that having a man with the physique similar to that of the Incredible Hulk is always a much obliged convenience in any fight.

  Fortunately for us, Ossy is strangely swift, and all of the swings that the rat-guard throws at him with the nightstick end up missing their mark. The room is quickly starting to look like a tornado has driven through, but the fight continues. Ossy throws a punch that knocks the rat-guard off balance. He stumbles, attempting to stay on his feet. His nightstick falls to the ground and he looks at Ossy with an edge of fear in his gaze.

  “Ossy, we’re friends. You needn’t be like this. You know Guerra likes you plenty. Why would you throw everything away for them?” says the rat-guard.

  “Because, I’ve been working here for the past two years and I can’t stand it any longer. I may be “free” in the terms of the world today, but I want to be truly free,” Ossy confesses. “I want it to be like how the world was before they tore it apart. I am sick and tired of living like this, damn it—“

  As Ossy finishes off his spiel, the rat-guard backs away. His face shows fear, but deep in his heart, I suspect there may be another feeling.

  I crawl behind some boxes and begin making my way to the other side of the room, careful to not cut myself with the weapon I have concealed within my waistband. I can tell that all of the rat-guard’s focus is on Ossy and certainly not on me.

  “Ossy, you know that world is dead and you know that everyone that wishes for it to be returned will be destroyed as well. You know that. Don’t be stupid. I promise I will never tell anyone about this little change of heart you’ve had if you just give this whole break-out plan up. It’s pointless anyways,” the rat-guard pleads.

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t. I know where my allegiances lie, and it is
certainly not with Guerra or anyone that thinks this world is as it should be. I would surely rather die than let it fall further into the place of madness that it has become,” Ossy bellows.

  I bring myself around a couch, and position myself to the right of the rat-guard, who sees only his traitorous comrade.

  “Ossy! For god’s sake, stop this now! You can’t do this!”

  “I can, and if you wish to stop me, then do it now, because otherwise all you’d be doing is prolonging the inevitable,” Ossy growls.

  “Fine then,” the rat-guard says as he twists around and grabs his pistol. The world seems to stop for that brief moment and I look to Ossy, who hasn’t faltered, whose face hasn’t become stricken with fear, and I respect him more than I ever thought I would.

  The shots ring out and I have no time to watch them meet their mark. I jump to my feet, pull the knife from my belt, and allow the steel of my blade to meet the warmth of the rat-guard’s ribs. The rat-guard drops his gun and falters backwards, his back up against the wall. He looks down to the wound in his ribs and he touches his hand to the blood that is spilling out around the knife that’s still resting inside him.

  I feel no pity as I lean over and pull the knife from his ribs. He grunts out in pain and he looks at me with so much pain in his eyes. But that is all that is there—pain, no regret, no sadness, no fear for what may be coming after he takes his final breath. He truly is a robot for Guerra, the perfect guard. This look in his eyes truly confirms his lacking of a heart.

  He gurgles up a bit of blood and falls to his side, leaving a nasty stain of red on the wall’s green paint. In his life, he most likely had only wished to do as he was instructed to do. He has never truly lived.

  This is a man who confirms that humanity can fall so far as to only live a life of vice. In a world that needs some who carry strong virtues, he is one that negates such acts, who brings the world to its knees in order to fulfill a twisted dream-- a dream of such darkness that the few that comprehend it are those who see it through eyes that have seen the most wicked acts on the most truly innocent people.

  As I hear him choke on his last breath, I watch as he reaches out for his gun one last time, showing he thinks nothing of retribution or of redemption, but only of his duty to Guerra. I kick the gun away and move over to Ossy, who is being cared for by Mara.

  But before I turn my back at him I look him straight in the eye, knowing I will not see a lost creature or a man who is pained by his actions, and watch as the life that this man has led, which has been nothing short of horrific, flush out of him, sending him to a place where he will finally know what is truth and what is fallacy.