by Kolin Wood
Juliana finished the glass and set it on the small table, shaking her head as Teddy leaned forward to refill. The buzz had already set her far more off guard than she had intended. Tonight, she would be leaving the capital, and for that she needed to be strong and sober. The muscles in her neck cried out in lethargy as she allowed her head to rest against the back of the chair. She closed her eyes for a second, enjoying the last moments; this was as close to full relaxation as she was likely to come for a long, long, time.
Across from her, Teddy smiled.
“You really haven’t changed all that much you know,” he said, as he filled his own glass once more and leaned back in his chair. “I often wondered what you would look like, if I ever saw you again.”
A smile flashed across Juliana’s mouth but she did not reply.
“I’m sorry to hear about Mike and the boy,” he said.
His face was now deadpan, his brow dipped and menacing. “I wish that… there was more that I could have done to help with that.”
Looking at him now, part of her hated him more than anybody in the world, hated him for not being there to save her, to save her family, the boy. But she also knew that it had been her choice to cut him out, to never tell him that he was a grandfather. Grief and guilt burned in equal measure.
She shrugged. The back of her throat ached from attempting not to cry. “How long did you know for?” she asked, coughing to clear her voice.
“I knew for a few years. It was about the same time that I heard about your mother.” He said without a hint of emotion. “But I also knew that you did not want me anywhere near, so I decided to respect that decision.”
Juliana nodded and wiped her nose across the sleeve of her hooded top. Perhaps now, in hindsight, she could see that the decision to exclude him totally had been an unfair one. But then, him deciding to respect the decision might also have been sufficient and convenient reason to stay away and further avoid the responsibilities that he had managed to avoid for the whole of his life. She knew that she would never know.
For a while neither of them spoke, the soft crackle of the fire filling the space between them.
Eventually, after a lengthy pause, Teddy said, “So, where are you gonna go?”
Juliana looked at him, doubtfully. As much as she wanted to tell him, the bad blood between him and Tanner, worried her. She knew what a vindictive bastard he could be.
“We are just gonna get out of the city,” she said. “Find somewhere new to start again, away from all this.”
“All of this is the genesis of the New World,” Teddy replied quickly. “If you stay here with me, at least I can protect you.”
Juliana stared at him. “And Tanner?” she asked. “What about him?”
For a moment Teddy said nothing. He ran a finger around the rim of his glass as if contemplating the question. Eventually he looked up and said simply, “Tanner wants to kill me.”
This time it was Juliana who shrugged. “For good reason, I’m sure.”
Teddy’s eyes twinkled as he looked at her now. She could see the cogs turning.
She stood; there was nothing more to say.
“I take it you are going to be there tonight,” Teddy said, reaching once more for the bottle and pouring another two fingers into the bottom of his glass.
Juliana looked down at the drink and frowned.
“Goodbye, Dad.”
35
The entire population had gathered in the road outside of the main gate to watch the execution. There was no party or fanfare, indeed none of the atmosphere of celebration that normally preceded an event within the Capital. People stretched back as far as the eye could see along the East Road, many of them still queuing for a chance to gain access into the Capital.
In the middle of the sheet-covered, metal bridge, surrounded by the four guards in faceless attire, Teddy Braydon stood, impeccably dressed in a slate grey suit and black tie. Two bright lights shone down on him from the top of the gate behind, creating a stage-like effect which enhanced the scene and held the creeping night at bay. Guards with guns stood at various elevated points on the fence and poked rifles from broken windows in order to keep the huge crowd in order, although Teddy knew that, if they decided to riot, the sheer numbers would leave him unable to do much about it.
On a signal, one of the guards pointed a gun into the air and fired a single shot which silenced the crowd nearby. Teddy stepped forward, his ears still ringing from the bang, his arms outstretched in the direction of his audience.
“Ladies and Gentlemen,” he shouted. “If you wouldn’t mind lending me your ears for a moment…”
His deep voice boomed around the space. The lack of microphone meant that those positioned farther back had to stand on tiptoes and cup their hands to their heads in order to hear. Shouts of frustration sounded out.
“I stand before you here now, humbled by your acceptance… encouraged by your tenacity, and impassioned by your belief.” He paused. A few cat calls and wolf whistles rang out. As dusk fell, a common electricity flowed through the people causing hairs to stand up on arms. A feeling of unexplained excitement bubbled just beneath the surface of all of those present. “I am here as your servant, for it is under the banner of the will of the people that I have acted. I have removed your imposed rulers from their stolen offices… tyrants who sought to tax you… unelected oppressors who would charge you more than you can afford… for the privilege of simply surviving. And it is as your servant that I stand before you here today to say NO MORE!”
As one the crowd roared its approval. Fists pumped the air and feet stomped the earth. Teddy stood, arms outstretched, watching as the energy rippled like a wave back down the road, eventually lost in the impeding dark. He waited a few moments for the ruckus to die down enough that he might be heard before continuing.
“For tonight marks the beginning of the end… the genesis of the species. The rivers of change have finally… run through this city and washed clean the ranks of oppression… No more will the few flourish while the majority suffer… No more will the gluttony of the undeserving be paraded before you like a constant reminder of your failure, a carrot on the stick that can never be attained… For we the people say… ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!…FUCK your preconditioned rights and incestuous blood lines… FUCK your secret handshakes and gated communities… And I pledge to you this… This is only the beginning! The New Capital will act as an example of what is possible. We will spread our word, increase our influence… together. We will push back the walls and build a new city. One where every man, woman, and child has a house of their own! One where everybody… All of you here in the front but also everybody back there, waiting in line… Everybody… is rewarded equally… so that we can live and work as one! Can you imagine what is possible if we all stand together? There is nothing that we cannot achieve, nothing that we cannot rebuild. The city is still standing and we must ensure that we preserve what is left so that it may act as a home for our children and for their children after them…”
By the time he finished, Teddy was barely able to hear himself speaking. The entire body of the crowd began to dance and sing, spinning and whooping, throwing things into the air. Several times the armed guard on the bridge had to forcefully push those back who tried to come close.
Folding his arms across his chest, Teddy looked around at the chaos and laughed. He had made it. They were now his people, and from them he would create an army unlike anything this country had ever seen. But first he had to make sure that anybody seeking to oppose him knew the repercussions of their actions.
He signalled behind and a shot rang out once more. When that did not work, another. Eventually, the noise died down enough for Teddy to be heard once again. This time when he addressed them his face has straight and his manner serious.
“But…” he roared, “No change is possible… nothing can happen until we first scourge ourselves of the parasites… the gut worms… that feed on us and threaten to destroy our
city from within. Guards!”
Behind him, the gates to the Capital, which had been closed for security purposes, creaked open and began to slowly retract on their large, muddy wheels. Several guards appeared, each one holding a large plastic box. They walked in single file towards the bridge, struggling with exertion under the weight of the load.
A curious murmur spread through the crowd.
Teddy smiled, enjoying the show. The feeling of power was unlike anything that he had ever felt before. It was like a drug and it surged in his veins, pumping so hard that it made his head spin.
The bridge flexed under his feet as the clank of boots sounded upon the metal sheets behind. Before him, a section of the railing had been removed to leave a gap and Teddy stepped aside as the first of the guards moved into position on the bridge.
“Do it,” Teddy said and the guard obeyed, upending his box.
The bloody contents, which had congealed in the bucket overnight, held their rectangular shape as they fell. Teddy snatched a glance at the toenails of a foot before the gory cube fell from sight into the putrid void below. Without a word, the first guard then moved aside as the next stepped up, repeating the process, then again, until a total of seven boxes had been sent over the edge. With every splash from, the people watching pressed in, straining to make sense of what it was they were seeing. Teddy said nothing, choosing to allow the weight of the theatre to speak for itself.
Only when the last box had been emptied and the final guard was clear of the bridge did Teddy step forward, resting his toes on the edge. He looked down. Below him the body parts of the traitorous lay in the middle of a bloody splash, like the scene of a horrible mass suicide.
As he looked on, sections of the river and the surrounding banks began to move. Only small movements at first but then larger and more concentrated. A scratching sound accompanied it, an irritating sound, like millions of tiny claws struggling for purchase.
The crowd began to become more agitated as those at the back tried to climb on top of those at the front for a better view. The railings creaked under the weight, threatening to send them over the edge.
Now in his stride, Teddy signalled behind him again. More guards appeared, this time pulling a stretcher behind them. Each of them panted with exertion under the weight, as they struggled to hold their footing in the slippery mud. By the time they reached the middle of the bridge, they were all red faced and sweating profusely. Teddy motioned with his hand and with difficulty they flipped the stretcher upright.
As one, the people watching gasped in shock. Strapped down on the stretcher lay a man. He was totally naked. Thick, locked chains encased him, starting at his neck. Where legs used to be, blackened stumps jutted out below the knee. An evil-looking, fabricated steel cage covered his head.
Teddy looked around at the horrified faces. Hands covered mouths as the women shielded their children’s eyes. It could not have gone any better. It was exactly the reaction he had intended. In order for people to know the price of treachery, they had to see something which horrified them, something so terrible that they would never risk the same thing happening to them.
Pulling a handkerchief from his inner pocket, he mopped his sweat-covered brow and turned to the stretcher. The cage covering the man’s head had been fabricated from thin, sharp-looking metal barbs, the kind that supermarket baskets might have been made from in times before. Black welding spots were visible all over. Inside, a thin, flat piece of metal, attached to the outer shell, poked into the bloody mouth, forcing and holding it open. One single, dark eye stared back at him.
“Hello, Cole,” Teddy said.
36
A loud splash followed the upending of each box. The people fought and surged around her, scaling the railings and one another for a better view. A skinny man next to Juliana reached over and thrust a grubby hand into her face as he fought for a space on the fence in front of them. Without as much as a second thought, she responded with a stinging blow across the man’s nose. She felt the bone give way under the tough padding of her palm and he fell from view, swallowed in the throng, his lower face dripping with blood.
Her foot slotted into a hole in the fence and she pulled hard with her arms while pushing on her leg, shrugging and shaking the hands which grabbed at her from all around.
From this higher vantage point she could now see all the way down into the river below. The channel was crammed full of bags and boxes of indistinguishable origin. Occasional gaps in the waste showed a thick, brown sludge filling the basin below it. At the base of the bridge, the surface of the river had turned from a turgid brown into a deep, dark and rich crimson.
The stench rising from the channel caused her eyes to water, and suddenly it looked as though the entire floor beneath her was moving. She reached up with the thick sleeve of the jacket and wiped her face, wincing as the caked-on blood scratched her tender skin. When she looked back, the sight that met her caused her to recoil in horror. The floor all around was indeed moving. Rats. Hundreds of thousands of them, slipped and slid from their dank lairs, moving together in a vast seething blanket towards the puddle at the base of the bridge. Tails whipped and tiny jaws flashed in the dying light.
More guards appeared above. Juliana watched as they pulled what looked like a stretcher behind them, straining with exertion under the weight of each step. Once at the gap in the railings, they stopped. On Teddy’s signal, the stretcher was then flipped upright. The crowd around her gasped. Lying there, chained wrapped about his body and neck, was the General. Some evil-looking, cage-like contraption had been secured to his head and his legs looked to be missing below the knee.
A rush of anxiety flowed through Juliana, and she all of a sudden felt woozy as a shudder rolled down her spine.
A quick glance back showed that Tanner was looking at her, his brow dipped in concern.
She smiled unconvincingly and turned her attentions back to the gruesome scene.
Teddy stepped forward and took hold of the free end of the rope.
“This… is what you can expect if you plan to rise up against us,” he shouted.
Juliana watched as the guards cut free the body from the stretcher. A thick coil of rope was then loosened and a noose slung over the top of the caged mask and pulled tight around the General’s neck. Two more similar nooses were attached to his wrists. On Teddy’s signal, the guards picked up the body, each of them groaning as they took the weight. They moved over to the side of the bridge where a section of the railings had been removed.
A last ray of sunset light shone down between the buildings, bathing the scene in a deep red. Juliana put up a hand to shield her eyes, desperate to see the face of her nemesis.
“Any last words?” Teddy bellowed, as the guards held the sagging torso upright to the light, like some macabre offering to the Gods of the dusk.
A blanket of silence had descended upon many of those present as they watched the impending execution in shocked, wide-eyes excitement.
A string of black blood hung from the General’s chin and his eyelids fluttered. Juliana was surprised that they had managed to keep him alive through his torture and the removal of his limbs; although it was clear to see that, regardless of his next few moments, the man did not have long left of this world.
“Very well.”
Teddy nodded and the two guards holding his arms stepped forward and lay the body onto the floor. Then, taking a hold of the three separate ropes binding his arms and neck, they eased the body from the edge and began to lower it from the bridge into the churning channel below.
There was an audible murmur from the crowd as hands reached up to cover mouths and the weight of realisation hit. The boxes—packed full of the severed body parts of the rebellious—had been thrown in on purpose, with the intent of drawing in the rats. Much like a fisherman might pre-feed a particular stretch of river before he casts. The General was being fed to them.
Juliana watched on, her mouth suddenly dry and her palms s
weaty. For all of the times that she had imagined taking the General’s life herself, in as many a violent and gruesome way that she could imagine, never had she imagined anything quite so evil as this. She snatched a look up back onto the bridge where her dad was stood, his arms folded like a site foreman, watching the spectacle below with the same amount of emotion. Her eyes searched his face and even in the dim light she could see that he was enjoying himself.
At that moment, her guts churned and her heart felt heavy. She wanted the General dead, more than anything that she had ever wanted in her entire life. But seeing him now—limbs missing, trussed like the carcass of a pig hanging in a butcher’s window, the sick by-product of her father’s death show—she realised that nothing, certainly not this, would ever fill the aching void in her life. Her family were dead and she was still alive. She had to get away from here, as far away as she could before the darkness consumed the very last of her humanity.
Tears prickled her eyes as she reached down and gripped the thick top edge of the journal which was still nestled inside the satchel hung at her waist. She pulled it free and turned it in one hand, looking at the marker pen scrawl on the cover. She had been wrong; nobody should ever have to bear witness to the vile details of her past. The girls were gone, the prison was gone, and now the General too was gone.
A thick hand grabbed at her ankle and she kicked out behind herself without looking. There was a squeal and the hand fell away. Before her, the General’s body was now hanging only feet above the thrashing surface. She watched as a huge rat, the size of a small dog, flew from the writhing mass and attached itself to the blackened stump of one knee. It hung there still for a second and then suddenly it began to thrash violently from side to side, its body working frantically to tear free a chunk of flesh before falling back into the slippery hell below. The crowd began to cheer.
