by Nathan Allen
What followed was twenty-three minutes of terror and confusion, exacerbated by low lighting and reduced visibility, as the armed attendees tried to figure out exactly who the rampaging shooter was.
The gunfire eventually ceased and the smoke finally cleared. The bodies were counted, and seventy-eight of the two hundred and thirteen people in attendance had been killed. A further ninety-three were seriously injured.
P-FIG, the highly influential worldwide gun lobby, had been decimated by a self-inflicted mass shooting.
The gun control movement wasted no time in taking advantage of the situation. In the weeks and months following the tragedy, it was all too easy for them to swoop in and introduce new legislation banning firearms outright. The bills were passed with little opposition; the majority of the leading pro-gun advocates were either dead, incapacitated, or still had bullets lodged somewhere inside their bodies and were no longer willing to support the existing laws. Guns were quickly outlawed and removed en masse from the general population.
Only the police and armed forces were permitted to carry deadly weapons, in the form of the OBL-IV, and these were tightly controlled and regulated.
An investigation into the incident later concluded that the initial “gunshot” may have in fact been a car backfiring outside the venue.
Security footage from the event confirmed that the original “gunman”, the first person shot and killed by Senator Devereaux, was actually a member of the press brandishing a vaguely gun-shaped recording device.
The note was waiting for Alice when she finished work. It was flapping in the wind, wedged beneath her car’s left windscreen wiper.
She didn’t notice it until after she had climbed behind the wheel and fastened her seat belt. At first, she thought it was a parking ticket. Closer inspection revealed it to be a wrinkled piece of yellow paper folded in half.
She wound down the front window and reached out to retrieve the note.
Today had already been a strange sort of day. Alice had received another tip-off from Needlemouse – this one concerning a champion swimmer, a three-time Olympic gold medalist, caught in possession of two hundred counterfeit Xylox pills. While Xylox itself was not a performance-enhancing drug, it had been added to the banned list as it could be used to evade detection for other prohibited substances.
Cheating rumors had dogged the swimmer in question for some time, but she had never failed a drug test and always vehemently denied any wrongdoing. Alice now held the first solid evidence that her achievements may not have been one hundred percent legitimate.
The article was scheduled for publication tomorrow, and it would almost certainly be the biggest sports-related scandal of the year.
And now, someone was leaving notes on the windscreen of her car. She wondered if maybe she had caught the attention of a secret admirer – or perhaps even a stalker – before quickly deducing that she wasn’t quite enchanting enough to attract either.
She unfolded the note. The writing was scrawled in green pen.
This brought to mind an interesting but useless snippet of information a colleague once told her: that green ink was the color most frequently used in death threats.
But there was nothing threatening about this note. It was succinct and to the point. It didn’t say who it was from, but she recognized Gidget’s handwriting. Back when she used to buy lemon drops from him, he would often slip her notes telling her where and when they could to meet up to conduct their business.
This note simply contained a name and an address: “Joel Ozterhauezen. 11 Carling Crescent.”
Chapter 12
Alice sat on Joel Ozterhauezen’s tattered orange couch, observing as he displayed his remarkable talent for constructing working firearms using common household items.
She marveled as he disassembled a lawnmower motor and used the inner parts to create the hammer and firing pin. How he fashioned the barrel from a piece of steel piping salvaged from discarded machinery components he’d found in a scrapyard. How he used a bedspring to cock the hammer back, and then superglued on part of a broken ax for the handle.
The level of ingenuity and resourcefulness on display here was truly impressive. Alice might even admire Joel if he wasn’t a convicted sex offender.
Joel Ozterhauezen’s flimsy weatherboard bungalow was located in Carling Crescent, a notorious cul de sac known locally as the Village of the Damned.
Two decades earlier, several hundred houses in the area were demolished to make way for the construction of a new motorway. A few stubborn elderly residents in Carling Crescent dug in their heels and refused to budge after deciding they were perfectly happy where they were. All were within their rights to stay put, and were under no obligation to sell up, but their protest ultimately did nothing to halt construction. Their houses were not in the direct path of the motorway, which was being built above the existing residences, so the work continued unabated. A handful of the crumbling abodes remained standing.
Now, the street was blanketed with round-the-clock air and noise pollution, rendering the houses uninhabitable for families with children to reside in. As a result, the Department of Correctional Services declared this area the perfect dumping ground for the kinds of people whose conditions of parole explicitly forbade them from coming into contact with children.
Alice felt her skin crawling the second she set foot on Carling Crescent, and this wasn’t only due to the amount of trash covering the street and sidewalk (passing motorists, aware of the kinds of people who lived there, regularly tossed their garbage out the window as they drove by).
The fact that she had turned up to this place alone, after dark, gave some indication of just how desperate she had become.
Her feelings of general ickiness had only intensified as she waited for Joel to assemble the weapon. On the surface, his place appeared to be perfectly clean and well maintained. But she had never felt a greater urge to take a shower in her life.
The bungalow looked as if it had been decorated by a ninety year old widow. The rhythmic ticking of a grandfather clock set her on edge for reasons she couldn’t fully articulate. The curious odor of wet dog lingered in the air. The fact that Joel didn’t appear to own any pets only amplified the unsettling atmosphere.
“You know,” Joel said. “I’m old enough to remember back to when these things were actually legal. There was a time when pretty much anyone who wanted a gun was allowed to have one. You could carry it around with you and everything.”
Alice knew this to be true, but it was a concept she still struggled to wrap her head around. Firearms had been illegal for longer than she had been alive. The idea that regular civilians were permitted to walk into a store and purchase an instrument that could kill was horrendous to her. She could only imagine what the world must have been like back then. The murder rate was seven times higher than what it was now; the suicide rate four times higher. It seemed like another universe entirely.
“Now look,” Joel said, affixing the barrel with a soldering iron. “This thing’ll give you a reasonable amount of bang for your buck. You shoot at someone with this, I can’t guarantee you’ll kill ‘em. But I can guarantee you’ll hurt ‘em.”
He peered down at Alice over the top of his wire-framed glasses. They were an ugly pair with large thick lenses, resting atop a bulbous red nose, bushy moustache and nicotine-stained teeth. If Joel’s home address didn’t announce that he was a registered pervert, his outward appearance certainly confirmed it.
“It won’t take their head off, like if they were shot with an OBL-IV,” he added. “But hit ‘em in the face or the neck, they won’t be causing you trouble no more.”
He finished off his work with a few strips of electrical tape that held everything in place. He then handed the weapon over to Alice.
It was heavier than she expected, and quite large and cumbersome. She only planned on keeping the gun at her house – it would be beyond stupid and reckless to carry something like this around in p
ublic – but the size of the weapon made sure of it, as it was far too bulky to conceal.
She felt a sudden surge of power rising inside of her, as she realized that the piece of metal in her hands had the capacity to end the life of whomever she chose, should the need arise.
She moved it between her left and right hands to get a feel for it.
She couldn’t imagine ever pointing it at another human being and pulling the trigger. But then again, she couldn’t have imagined she’d ever be sitting on a sex offender’s couch, handing over all the money she had in exchange for an illegal weapon, and yet here she was.
Joel retrieved an old coffee canister from beneath his chair. Inside were dozens of homemade bullets; rusted old bolts with one end shaved down to a point, and a cluster of crumbled match heads at the other end for propellent. He tossed a few handfuls into a paper bag and handed them to Alice.
“Careful with those,” he said. “Keep them away from fire, or anything too hot.”
Alice reached into her jacket and pulled out an envelope stuffed with fifteen thousand dollars cash.
She thought she might have had trouble parting with so much money – almost every dollar she had to her name was concealed within that envelope – but she handed it over without a moment’s hesitation. She had scraped the money together by emptying her bank account and selling her car. But if her life was saved as a result, it would be worth it in the end.
Joel glanced inside the envelope and tallied up the bills. “Remember,” he said. “If you get caught with that, you’re on your own. You and me never met.”
Alice nodded. She knew that once she left here, she would be sharing this encounter with as few people as possible.
She unzipped her backpack and stashed the gun and ammunition inside.
Joel rose from his seat. He stood in the doorway, blocking the room’s only exit. “I wanna make sure we’re both clear on that.”
He glared at Alice in a way that chilled her blood.
“I get it,” Alice said. “Anything happens, I don’t know you.”
Joel had good reason to show concern. Being caught in possession of a firearm would end in a mandatory ten-year prison sentence. But being found guilty of constructing them would almost certainly result in life behind bars.
Even publishing information on how to assemble a weapon could result in imprisonment, hence the tattered old blueprints that Joel had laid out before him – plans that had been copied by hand and passed around like contraband.
Alice didn’t bother engaging in any further small talk or pleasantries once the transaction was completed. As soon as Joel moved out of the way, she made a quick dash for the door and hurried out of the bungalow.
She shivered as she stepped out onto the street. The air had cooled in the hour or so since she was last outside. But it wasn’t just the temperature that gave her goosebumps.
Alice felt the eyes of a dozen deviants following her as she left Carling Crescent. She may have had a lethal weapon in her possession, but it did nothing to make her feel any safer.
Alice locked the gun away in the hope that she would never need to use it.
But three days later, at 12:15 a.m., she awoke with a start when she heard her front door click open.
She sat upright in her bed. Did she really hear that? Or did she just imagine it?
She halted her breathing and listened closely for movement. The only sound she heard was the incessant thump of her own heartbeat.
Her thoughts went to the baseball bat she had recently purchased, until she remembered it was leaning against the wall next to her front door, and therefore completely useless to her.
A minute passed, and she allowed herself to relax. She assumed the noise was a mere figment of an overactive and overstressed imagination, or the strange churning noises the building’s plumbing seemed to make only at night. Or maybe it was her neighbor across the hall, stumbling home after a few too many mimosas and rattling on the wrong door handle. Chances were there was a logical explanation.
She closed her eyes and prepared to resume her nightly arm wrestle with insomnia.
Click. The light outside her room flicked on.
A thin strip of light appeared at the bottom of Alice’s bedroom door, spilling in through the quarter-inch gap where the door met the floor.
There was no doubt about it. This wasn’t her imagination. Someone had broken into her apartment.
A colt bolt of fear ricocheted through her body.
Her hand dropped down to her side. She felt around for the wooden box beneath her bed and flicked the latch open. Her fingers moved across the coarse steel of the gun’s barrel.
Her hands trembled like a paint shaker as she removed the gun from the box.
She slipped out of bed as quietly as she could manage and crouched down on the floor. Her hand reached back into the box to retrieve three bullets.
She pressed each of the bullets into the chamber.
She hoped she was doing everything right. She had practiced loading and unloading the gun a few times shortly after she brought it home, just to make sure she could do it if the need arose. But that was in the middle of the day. Now it was pitch black, with only her digital clock providing any sort of illumination, and a pair of hands vibrating like an alcoholic’s on the first day of detox.
A floorboard creaked outside her room. A series of slow footsteps crept closer and closer.
Alice edged over towards the corner of the room. The intruder, whoever it was, would probably go straight for her bed when they attacked her. She was at least buoyed by the knowledge that she had two advantages over her assailant; the element of surprise, and a lethal weapon.
The shadow of two feet appeared at the bottom of her bedroom door.
Alice lifted the gun and aimed.
She had never fired a gun before, of course. No one her age had. Most people her age hadn’t even seen a gun in real life. That was something that belonged solely to their parents’ and grandparents’ generations, like newspapers and stores that sold music. Her knowledge of guns came mostly from movies and television. It looked pretty simple there, and she hoped that it was. Just point it at the thing you wanted dead and pull the trigger. She prayed there was nothing more to it.
She prayed that it worked, too. Improvised firearms, like the one she clutched in her palpitating hands, were notoriously volatile. They didn’t always work the way they were supposed to. But Alice felt much safer with the weapon than she would have felt without it. Even if she didn’t shoot the intruder, just firing the weapon, and the noise it would produce, should be enough to scare them off.
The door handle turned.
Alice’s body tensed up. Her stomach contorted into a series of complex knots.
The door drifted open.
“Alice ...” a voice whispered.
The intruder appeared in silhouette. A man. Quite tall, about six foot two, holding something in his right hand. A weapon.
His left hand reached across for the light switch.
Alice’s index finger tightened around the trigger.
She squeezed her eyes closed, just as the lights flickered on.
“Whoa! Jesus, Alice!”
Lachlan jumped out of his skin when he saw Alice, crouched on the floor in the corner of the room, pointing a gun at his head.
“What the hell is that thing?!”
“Lachlan!” Alice screamed. “What are you doing here?!”
A rush of nausea hit Alice when she realized she was milliseconds away from shooting her own brother, and that the “weapon” in his hand was a half-empty soda bottle.
“What do you think I’m doing here? You called me and asked me to come over!”
“So you decided break in?”
“I didn’t break in! You gave me a key, remember?”
“Ever heard of knocking?”
Alice struggled for breath. Her pulse raced at double-speed, her adrenaline levels off the charts.
“
I knocked three times! When you didn’t answer I was worried something might have happened. You sounded pretty stressed in that message you left me, so I came as soon as I could.”
“Oh.”
Alice looked away. She was left feeling more than a little bit foolish right now.
“Now,” Lachlan said, slowly regaining composure as the shock of the moment faded from view. “Would you care to tell me what exactly is going on here?”
Chapter 13
A few facts about the Consortium:
This mysterious conglomerate of mega-wealthy sociopaths was founded in 2052 by seven multi-billionaires.
They began admitting one new member to their exclusive club every two years. Prospective members needed to satisfy two criteria in order to gain admittance: they had to be nominated by an existing Consortium member, and they had to have a net worth greater than $100 billion.
The Consortium currently had thirteen members among its ranks, all of whom occupied positions on the list of the fifty richest people on the planet.
Their combined net worth was over nine trillion dollars.
The seven founders were originally associates in the corporate and political worlds, and came together due to a shared love of exotic gambling.
The Consortium bankrolled a number of unconventional gambling contests every year.
Their most prestigious game was held once every four years.
This involves inviting a group of strangers to participate in a tontine, where the final living contestant stands to win a considerable sum of money.
Each member of the Consortium selects the civilian they believe will be the last one standing. If more than one member has selected the winner, the prize is shared. If no one has selected the winner, the prize jackpots.
The first lottery was held in 2054. The majority of the participants were violent criminals. The organizers believed these types of people were more likely to kill for financial gain, and their inclusion would ultimately make for a more compelling spectacle.
They soon discovered that a lust for money was a phenomenon that transcended the sociological divide, as well as age, race, religion, gender and ethnicity. When many millions of dollars were at stake, regular law-abiding citizens proved to be every bit as ruthless and bloodthirsty as the murderers and rapists.
