by C.G. Banks
for any a those somebitches anyway, but when we all stopped things took on a different measure.
We had come to another wide-open area with buildings on all sides. We’d cleaned out mosta the population a mudheads by that time and there was plenty a room for us all to spread out around the sides of the courtyard. In the middle where there used to be a fountain was this big-ass cage. I could hear cries and screams coming from inside it and when I got a good line a sight I saw it was flat crammed fulla Liv-ers. But these weren’t of the lab coat variety. These were prisoners and from the looks of it they’d hadn’t been on any vacations lately. They were bedraggled and run down as hell; most hardly had any clothes at all. All of em were as thin as bread sticks and their eyes was hollowed out holes in their heads. You couldn’t hardly tell the men from the women and I noticed a good many kids too.
I took my eyes away from the cage and glanced up toward the sky for no good reason at all, really. But before I got that far I saw a whole mess a Liv-ers standing on the balconies of the buildings all around, and also a good number of em poking their heads outta windows and looking down at where we were. About that time there came a piercing feed-back whine from a big amplifier that was set off by the cage and that brought my attention back dead center. I looked back down and saw who I guessed was Scar standing alone in front of the cage, talking into a microphone. His voice was as hard to listen to as his face was ta look at and I couldn’t make mashed potatoes outta what he was saying. But it seemed to be pretty important from the way everybody clammed up.
He stopped for a moment and just kinda looked around at everybody looking at him. Then he turned and pointed at the cage. Said a few more things the Liv-ers musta liked because they all started cheering and raisin hell. A few Liv-ers up on the balconies even started throwing down pieces a shredded paper, and I figured, hell, maybe we were here for a parade. But that idea lasted about another second.
That’s when I saw another Liv-er come outta the crowd and walk over to Scar. They shook hands and Scar nodded a coupla times and put his hand on the man’s shoulder. Everybody started raising hell again until Scar held up his shaking hand and motioned for everybody to shut the hell up. He walked away over to where the amplifier was, gathering up his mic-cord as he went. The other fella just stayed where he was with a kinda sad look on his face. I heard a loud click which was, I guess, Scar turning the mic off because I saw him hand it to another Liv-er standing close by, so I figured he was done with whatever it was he had to say.
From the direction we’d come I could see the crowd kinda melting back to make room for this big tanker truck to get through. It wasn’t as big as the ones I used to see on the highway before the Change, or even the one earlier at the raid, and this one looked like it had been hammered together quick like. A Liv-er was driving and there was a coupla more standing on the trailer that was carrying the big container. It almost looked like a fertilizer truck a some sort except that this one had a smoking problem from the amount of exhaust it was throwing off.
It rolled up till it was about thirty feet away from the cage, just in front of the Liv-er who had come outta the crowd and went up to shake Scar’s hand. He just stood there like the rest a us. The two Liv-ers on the trailer climbed down to the ground and started unrolling a nest a hoses and when they had that done one of em went back to a metal box set up near the cab and pulled out a metal nozzle, looked kinda like the spraying end of a pressure washer. He attached that to the end of the hose and went back and pulled two space-looking helmets and a coupla reflective smock-like things like we was fixing to watch an art show. When they was all done-up in the smocks and helmets one grabbed the handle of the nozzle and the other one went back to the tank on the trailer and started messing with some nobs. The one holding the nozzle nodded his head and pulled some sorta device outta the smock and when he held it to the end of the nozzle a flame jumped out about four or five feet. The Liv-er by the tank gave him a thumbs-up.
This seemed to signal something to the hand-shaker because he suddenly held up his hand. I couldn’t see jack shit a what he was holding but the rest a the crowd just went wild with the exception of the Red Eyes like me. Us, we just stood around same as always.
The Liv-er with the flame-thrower inched up a little closer holding the flame out and up a little bit I guess so it didn’t scorch the concrete. Hand-shaker walked over to the cage and the Liv-ers inside shrank back a little. He reached for the door and it was then I figured he’d held a key up for the crowd a second ago because he fiddled with the door a second and then opened it up. Oh shit, I thought, here it comes, because if it was me in that cage the door opening woulda meant it was high time to get my ass out. But none of em did. They all just slunk back like beat dogs and the hand-shaker walked inside. He pulled the door closed with a big CLUNK and everything got real silent again.
Except for the hiss of flames coming outta that nozzle.
The Liv-er who’d just locked himself in the cage with the prisoners turned back to the bars and grabbed them with both hands. Then he said something to the Liv-er holding the flame-thrower. A second later the flame drifting outta the nozzle grew to a fifteen foot monster and the Liv-er manhandling it started pouring it on those poor fuckers trapped in the cage. I mean roasting those poor sonofabitches alive. And I could see that burning somebitch still holding onto the bars as the flames ripped hell through everybody.
That shit set the crowd wild. There were Liv-ers screaming bloody murder inside the cage as Liv-ers on the balconies and poking outta windows cheered like the fucking president was coming through handing out money. I looked around at a coupla Red Eyes but they didn’t seem to care one way or the other. And all the while that fucker with the flamethrower was turning Liv-ers to charcoal inside the cage. The screams died down pretty quick and boiling fat started pouring out and making its way across the plaza. The Liv-ers all over continued to hoot and holler like this was the best game in town, and it was then I wondered what the hell they’d come to.
The party was over not long after. I guess there’s just so long you can find excitement like they was finding it. The stench of burning flesh was so heavy in the air it almost made me light-headed. But when I looked at the smoking mess inside the cage I wasn’t the least bit hungry. That bone in my throat had stopped twanging about the time the Liv-er had walked into the cage. Because what was all that? It was almost like he told the other motherfucker to turn the flames on em, the way they’d been carrying on. I hadn’t the slightest idea. Up until now I’d kinda missed being human but now that I saw what these motherfuckers were capable of, I felt a little better about being a Red Eye.
But even there I was different.
I know cause I was watching. It didn’t seem like it mattered iota one to any a those bastards as those people burned. I mean, goddamn, I’m a Red Eye too but I couldn’t look at that shit and not feel something. Even if that something was the fact that I’d come to the wrong goddamn place. Not like these murdering statues all around me.
I had to get out.
Where? I had no clue. How? Again, no clue. But there it was. This kinda shit just wasn’t sitting well.
So there I stood with all this bullshit running through my head while the guys with the flamethrower begun to roll the hoses up. Then they were up and gone like they was late for a camp meeting. But the hole they left in the crowd was soon filled up with another vehicle, this one a big tractor with huge rubber tires musta been taller than me. It had forks welded on the front of it and it rumbled right across the plaza, tracking through all the black fat that had bubbled outta the cage, and I saw those forks had been set just right to match two hollow cylinders on the side a the cage. They slid in snug as sin and then the whole thing was lifted off the ground and the tractor began backing up with its smoking, dripping load.
Scar suddenly jumped back into the picture, blowing on that goddamn whistle again. He was twirling his hand above his head which musta been the standard “wrap-up” signal around here an
d we all kinda formed into the lines we’d come down here in. I still had the machete in my hand but wasn’t real high on hacking motherfuckers to pieces right about then. That flamethrower had taken something outta me. I felt another line had been crossed that shoulda never even been inched up to. And here I was part of all this nastiness again. As a Red Eye I think I was failing the grade.
I don’t know if there were fewer mudheads going back cause we already made chop suey outta most of em, or if they just wised up. Then again, maybe it was the smell of all the Liv-ers that had been on the balconies and looking out the windows that kept em back there. I figured you could bet your bottom dollar that the mudheads wouldn’t turn away from that supermarket. It was all fine with me because that goddamn machete felt like the weight of the fucking world right about then. And good for me, I was still near the back of the line and any more chopping that needed doing was being handled up front. We didn’t even have a transport following to clean the pieces off the street.
The police station was maybe a block farther down when we broke off left, the whole buncha us, down another empty four-lane street with
