The New Capital

by Kolin Wood

  Sal pulled frantically at his bonds before dropping his head to the floor; he knew that to fight was futile.

  “And even after all of this—all of my time and generosity—you still think that you can come in here, day after day, night after night, and lie right to my fucking FACE?!”

  The vein in his temple had begun to pulse and flare, his jaw ached as his teeth gnashed together, and his eyes flashed with hope of an altercation. “Do you think I am some sort of CUNT?”

  By then, his fists were clenched tightly and both had been pulled back to sit cocked at the elbow. It took all of Teddy’s control not to beat the scrawny, yellow face before him into a pulp.

  Seeing Teddy so close to losing it had the desired effect on Sal. All of the bravery and anger suddenly vanished, leaving nothing but a quaking old man in its stead. When he turned his face up to Teddy again, this time the expression there was one of sorrow; a greasy smile pasted his thin, cracked lips.

  “What is this about? The bets? All of this nonsense over some stupid side-bets?” he said. The quake in his voice betraying the fear he felt as he attempted to laugh and bring some light-heartedness to the tense proceedings.

  “You know me, Teddy! You know that I was going to cut you in! The money is all there, up on the table, every bill accounted for… I … I… was just playing the angles, you know, building up new revenue streams, making people think that they were getting a better deal!”

  Teddy watched as Sal—now desperate and pathetic—began to babble. The whining began to buzz in his ears with the same annoyance as a mosquito.

  “Enough!” he said, with the same semi-interested concentration one might give a naughty child. “You are droning on like a bitch, Sal. I really think you should have some fucking respect for yourself!”

  Teddy crouched down on his haunches, close enough to the old man that he could smell the smoke-tinged halitosis of his breath. With the sudden proximity, Sal’s eyes darted about, the whites over-pronounced like those of a deer caught in a trap.

  At that moment, the door to the office opened and Cole walked in, a serious look on his swollen face. Teddy stood again, groaning as his spine cracked and popped.

  “Ah, Cole, just in time. Sal here was just telling me about the virtues of honesty and loyalty.”

  Cole walked over to stand amongst the group, all of them looking down at Sal’s crouched and crumpled form. Sal flicked his eyes up at Cole, and just for a second, Teddy saw the malice return.

  “Did you get the money?” Teddy asked, not taking his eyes from Sal.

  “Of course,” Cole replied. “There was a stack of bills, high as him.”

  “And the dog?”

  “I stuck her in the holding cell downstairs. That is one vicious, unhappy animal, I can tell you.”

  “Good. See to it that nobody goes near her until Fight Night. I want that bitch hungry as a fat lass on a diet of green tea.”

  Cole nodded. Sal remained looking up between the two men. Teddy cast his eyes up to the bloody lump taking up one side of Cole’s face and made no effort to hide his disgust.

  “You have proven yourself to be quite the useful ally, Cole,” he said, scratching his own forehead. “Go back to Tier Street. In the house opposite yours and next to mine on the right, you will find a man called Mr Ajid… Dr Ajid. Used to be some… big player, plastic surgeon back before the world decided to climb into a warm bath and slit her own wrists. Works for me now. Go and pay him a visit. Tell him I sent you.”

  Moisture glistened as a tell-tale sign of relief in the huge black eye of Cole who said nothing but bowed his head and turned towards the door.

  “And take the boy band with you,” Teddy called after him, gesturing to the faceless entourage. “Have them sling this filthy rat-fucker into one of the cells by the Pit. NOBODY talks to him; do you hear me?”

  Cole simply nodded over his shoulder.

  “You work directly for me now, Cole, and I can’t have you walking around looking like a leper, now can I?”

  A moment of resilience passed over Cole’s face but he nodded and, with a flick of the wrist, summoned the four men behind. One of them grabbed Sal’s arms and yanked him aggressively to his feet.

  “You’re gonna pay for this, Braydon!” Sal spat, teeth bared and his eyes wild. “You mark my fucking words!”

  Teddy laughed. “Only place I’m gonna mark your words is on the wall with my piss when I throw your body in the sewer, you two-faced shit house. Now get the fuck out of my office before I get the party started early!”

  Again the desire to beat him to death came strong, and again Teddy swallowed it down, cracking his neck with a turn of the head first one way and then the next. He’d keep. Teddy had far bigger and better plans for the man; plans that he would realise soon enough.

  ***

  By the time Cole had dropped off Sal and navigated the seething throng on the street back to their living quarters, the sun had dropped significantly in the sky, leaving a twilight dusk alive with sound and prickling with energy. All around, people were drinking and singing, truly caught in the simple summer buzz of the evening.

  Cole climbed the muddy, townhouse steps and stood looking at the huge, red door.

  He banged loudly with his fist, fighting the nerves threatening to make his hands shake. The door opened a fraction and a small, slim, Indian man with thin-framed spectacles looked up at him from the shadows within.

  “Y… yes?” the man said, nervously. “Can I help you?”

  Cole put his hand on the heavy door and pushed it open some more.

  “Teddy sent me,” he said, watching as the Indian man’s eyes caught their first glimpse of the bandaged horror on his face.

  Dr Ajid gulped.

  “Come… in…” he said.

  Cole obliged him.

  ***

  Three hours later, Cole’s face had been wrapped in a tightly wound, clean and sterile bandage that had come straight from the packet. The pain was virtually non-existent for the first time in as long as he could remember, and he flexed his arms and shoulders as he turned first one way and then the other to study himself in the mirror.

  Teddy had been right; the doctor certainly knew his stuff. Once injections had been administered, the festering growth was able to be properly cleaned and areas of the infection and dead skin—which hung like meaty curtains on either side—cut away. It lessened the size considerably, making the repackaging of it a far easier task.

  Pill bottles—antibiotics to fight the infection and pain medication—rattled in his deep pockets as he walked back down the steps and headed towards the Capital. For the first time in years, he felt human again. The summer evening danced around him, the night peppered with the sounds of people drinking and rough fornication, which all felt new and exciting.

  A scantily-dressed woman with dirty skin and showing an ample bosom, stumbled from a nearby tent on her way towards one of the alleys on the cities edge. As she passed, the woman smiled, her hooded, seductive eyes taking him in from head to toe. Cole stopped and watched her in amazement. The woman had not even batted an eyelid, let alone baulked in revulsion, and the feeling was strangely enlightening. He watched the sway of her hips as she gave a final wink and turned into the pungent alley and out of sight.

  He set a hand up to the now well-dressed side of his face. The bandage felt tight, secure and clean. The doctor had assured him that, given time and the correct administration of antibiotics, that the swelling would subside still further; if, that is, he managed to keep it clean. He made no bones about the fact that it was ultimately untreatable; the disease would kill him eventually. However, with it clean and packaged like this, Cole could at least pass as somebody with a nasty war wound rather than some freak with a lump of noxious death sprouting from his face.

  With a final look down the alley, Cole pushed on, a smile creeping into the corners of his usually-dour mouth. The New Capital was cashing in on its early promise and already the grim goings on at
the prison had started to feel like a distant memory.

  The General was finally dead, and Cole felt reborn and more powerful than any time in his life.

  20

  Juliana squeezed her fists tightly closed. The uncut nails on each of her fingers stabbed into the soft flesh of her palms, threatening to draw blood.

  “You lied to me,” she said through gritted teeth.

  Any worry or pity about her own situation suddenly gone, her wrath was now back centre stage. Tanner had looked into her eyes and lied to her about the General without as much as a flicker of uncertainty. The twisted fucker was here, just as she had counted on. She looked up through her lank hair, her eyes scouring his face for answers.

  “I left out some of the truth; it’s not the same thing,” Tanner countered, holding onto the chair back and turning to face her. “I wanted to be one hundred per cent sure about what you had told me last night.”

  His face seemed genuine, but Juliana remained aggressive.

  “This ‘General’ that you spoke of is now going by his real name; Cole. He arrived the day before you did, telling stories about the same prison, about how he’d been trying to rescue them, the inmates, and how they’d turned on him…”

  Juliana felt her stomach twist. Cole? To give the devil a name was to make him a human, something that she was not prepared to do. Worse than that, the General was playing the part of victim! It took all of her control not to stand and flip the table. She opened her mouth to speak but no words came out.

  Tanner held out his hands passively before him. “I just needed to be sure,” he said.

  Inside, Juliana seethed. But regardless, her current situation had not changed. Ultimately she needed Tanner’s help—whether that was to get free of the New Capital or, as she had originally intended, to get closer to the General.

  Tanner continued.

  “He got everybody excited; came in flapping about the prospect of some new blood for the Pit. It’s the only thing these bastards seem to care about now.”

  Juliana looked up, rerunning what she had just heard. She cocked her head to one side, a questioning yet serious look on her face.

  “New blood?” she asked.

  Tanner frowned.

  “Yeah,” he replied after a pause. “For the Pit. They found somebody there. He was still alive and covered from head to toe in blood. Apparently, the place was the scene of a massacre and they didn’t hang about. It seems that this… person… had been busy eating the rest.”

  New blood.

  “They… found somebody?” she stammered. “What do you mean they found somebody? You mean… they brought them back… back here… to the Capital?”

  At this Tanner nodded, but withheld from saying anything more.

  Images of One Six Four flashed in front of her eyes, his blackened torso emerging from the shadows. The burning coals that were his eyes, the eyes of a demon, staring at her as the blood dripped down from the body in the chair all around her, sticking her to the floor. Could they really have captured the monster?

  “And… you said new blood for the Pit? What is the Pit?”

  Tanner pulled the chair towards him with a scrape and sat heavily. After a time of deliberation, he spoke.

  “The Pit is my ticket out of here,” he said, his eyes burning into hers with the same intensity as the previous night. “It’s my last fight; after this, I’m gone.”

  Juliana tried to process what he was saying, still confused. Realisation, when it came, hit like a steam train. She looked up at Tanner, her mouth agape. “You mean, you are going to fight that… animal?”

  Tanner said nothing, but continued to stare; the answer clear. Juliana shook her head and made to stand. “You can’t fight him!” she shrieked, suddenly losing all control, “That thing is a fucking cannibal!” The mere thought that One Six Four was within the perimeter of the city made her blood chill icy cold in her veins.

  “I know how you feel…”

  “Like fuck do you know how I feel!” Juliana screamed, cutting him mid-sentence. Her hands shook with rage and her gums ached with the clench of her jaw.

  “You can’t get to him!” Tanner said, his voice now loud and firm. “This General, Cole, he’s working right at the top. The guy who runs this thing, the Pit, the fights, all of it—he’s a real piece of work. He won’t just let you walk in there and kill him! Hell, it’s going to be hard enough keeping your neck out of the noose…” Realising what he was saying, Tanner suddenly stopped himself.

  Juliana dropped her eyes and stared down at the mislaid floorboards under her feet. She was so consumed with rage that she thought she might strike out, and she took a few wobbling, deep breaths to try and calm herself. Before her, dust mites danced in the shards of light that cut through the murk, revealing the true extent of decay in the room. It was also strangely comforting, like the glimpse of a memory from times past; the prison had been far too dark and damp for such theatrics of nature.

  Tanner had stopped speaking and she heard him go through to the kitchen and rifle through one of the cupboards, the sound of glasses clinking together followed.

  The idea that the General had gone back to plunder the morgue of the dead made her feel sick. Now temporarily alone, she shifted awkwardly on the chair, stifling the urge to break something, anything.

  Had anybody else seen all the bodies? And what about the other girls? Had any of them survived? Were Sarah and Annabelle, Bennet’s daughter, still in there? This last thought made her head swoon as the guilt that she had been trying so hard to suppress once again rose with a fiery vengeance into her stomach and flicked a venomous tongue against her heart. She had abandoned them, both of them, in her haste to flee the prison. She had convinced herself that they were already dead; that nobody could have survived, but she didn’t actually know—not really. Bennet stepped from the shadows of her delirium, his face sad, arms outstretched. Bloody, dripping hands grasping in her direction. ‘You promised,’ he said.

  Juliana squeezed her eyes shut and rocked forward, gripping her sides. It was all his fault, everything. It didn’t matter who this ‘piece of work’ that Tanner was speaking of was, or how far up the food chain he went; if he was working with the General and got in her way then he was going to have to die too. She would not rest until the body of the man responsible for all of it was lying in a pool of blood at her feet.

  ***

  Tanner straightened with the two glasses in his hand and set them down on the dirty countertop in the empty kitchen. The woman had lost it, and rightly so—hell, he had expected her to lose it. The man responsible for the destruction of everything she had ever held close in this life was living a few houses down from where they were now, and he had led her to believe that this was not the case. She had trusted him, and already he had mislaid that trust. She deserved to be angry with him. But his reasons had been true, and he hoped that once she had had the chance to calm down that she would see it from his side.

  With a puff of the cheeks, Tanner gathered the glasses with a clink and headed back to the dining room where Clara was sitting. As he entered, she immediately turned to face him, a deep furrow running through her brow. The tie which had, up until that point, held her hair back off from her face in a hard and practical way had been removed, and her hair fell to either side, framing her face with a deep shade of auburn that caused her eyes to shine like beacons in the dark room. He looked away from her stare and set the two glasses down next to the new bottle in the middle of the table. He could feel her eyes on him, judging him as he popped the top and liberally filled the two tumblers half-way with the amber liquid. He slid the glass in her direction, offering her a half-smile which immediately morphed into a laugh as she physically baulked at the sight of the booze. Finding brevity in the situation also, Clara managed a laugh too, and for a few seconds that same easy feeling that had been the theme for the previous night shone down on the two of them once more.

  After a pause in which neither of them sp
oke, Clara turned to him, her face now painting a far less aggrieved picture. “Will you help me to kill him?” she asked, her eyes wide and once again vulnerable; the hardness from before now gone. “Before we leave?”

  Tanner reached for the bottle and refilled his now empty glass. This was it; exactly the kind of situation that he had purposefully turned away from so many times before. The woman, like so many others, needed his help, but by helping her he would be risking everything that he now was. Then again, he had already made a promise to kill Braydon. And the chances were that it would mean taking the General down anyway. If their paths were aligned the so be it. He nodded. It was time to stop running.

  “It won’t be easy,” he said, fixing her with a hard look that told her he was serious. “The Pit Boss has taken quite a shine to him, even going so far as to dispatch one of his own trusted staff to make room for the man. This will get bloody.”

  Juliana pushed back her shoulders and lifted her chin, the hard, cold detachment from before now returning in spades.

  “Life is bloody,” she said, lifting her glass and downing the contents in one.

  Tanner followed suit, and the two of them sat in silence for a few moments.

  Life is bloody.

  What the woman said was true, but the circumstances of their predicament were difficult. First, he would need to bargain for her life. It wouldn’t be easy, but he was sure that when it came to Braydon there was always a deal to be done. Next, he would have to formulate a plan which included ensuring that he received his due payment. Travelling north with nothing but the clothes on their backs would be tantamount to suicide. They needed the stores and money promised to him. Finding safe passage once he had dispatched of one of the most important and respected men in the Capital and his new pet psychopath… well, that was a different problem altogether.

  Pushing the glass in his direction once more, Clara looked up at him, her eyes glazed with booze. “Who is this Pit Boss anyway?” she asked.