by J. L. Harden
I get to my feet.
I see a red dot on my chest.
I see four Raiders.
One Magician.
I see Alphonse the Axeman, lying flat on his back, with a firm grip on his axe, his weapon of choice. I see his chest rise and fall. And I make my move, diving for the cracked and brittle window behind me, crashing through and throwing the grenade at the same time.
Smoke erupts and explodes in a huge cloud.
I hear the bullet of the unseen sniper smash into the window frame as I fall through, as I fall into the building, into a long abandoned office room. In the distance, a full two seconds later, the crack of the sniper rifle.
I get to my feet and move away from the window, away from the sight of the sniper.
I draw my gun.
Three of the Raiders pile through the window, reckless and carefree.
Mad and crazy.
I take careful aim and pull the trigger. But bullets are no good because they are all wearing bulletproof clothing. The ponchos, the heavy duty jackets, not only are they designed to protect against the Red Giant, they’re also extremely effective at stopping small arms fire.
So I get my knife out and get ready to fight for my life. It’s been awhile, but I was born for this.
Fighting.
Killing.
My brother and I were both blessed and cursed with this ability.
To end another man’s life in the blink of an eye.
In the most violent way possible.
With a gun.
A knife.
Our bare hands.
It really makes no difference.
And as strong and tough and crazy as these Wasteland Raiders are, they don’t last long.
The knife in my hand is an extension of my arm and it finds all the soft spots, the vulnerable spots. The blade searches out and locks on to their major blood vessels, their ligaments and tendons, almost of its own accord. There’s two guys left and I jam my knife into the side of the neck of the closest guy. I twist the blade, slicing outwards, slicing and severing his carotid artery and his throat and his windpipe. He falls to the floor and blood pours out of his neck and mixes in with the sand and the dust that has accumulated over the decades.
Amazingly, these gruesome deaths do nothing to deter the last guy. He still charges at me. Eyes wide. Crazy and delusional.
These guys are like ancient, old school warriors. Their whole lives are geared towards one thing. All they want to do, the greatest thing they can possibly do, is die on the battlefield, in a fight, in a war.
To them, this is the highest honor.
This kind of death is what they live for.
I jam my knife into his skull and his legs go limp and the rest of his body spasms out of control. I then lose my grip on the knife because it is stuck firmly in this poor bastard’s skull.
And then there’s a raider standing in the window with a gun aimed at my heart.
I hold my breath.
I’m about to close my eyes but then I see Alphonse behind him. He swings his axe, taking his head clean off.
And his head rolls into the abandoned office room and comes to a stop at my feet.
His eyes are still open.
Still looking down the sight of a gun.
Chapter 11
Alphonse jumps through the window, landing on the body of the guy he just decapitated. I hear a crack as the weight of Alphonse landing on this guy’s chest breaks his rib cage.
“We need to keep moving,” he says. “There’s more coming. The Magician is coming.”
A quick plan forms in my head. We could split up. Move deeper into this dark and abandoned building. Fight these bastards one by one.
“Go!” Alphonse is shouting at me as he pushes me through the door.
I look over my shoulder. The Magician jumps through the window, completely unafraid, completely ready to get his one good hand dirty and bloody.
And he’s still smiling, despite all the blood flowing down the side of his head. “Big mistake, Alphonse,” he says, pointing to the bleeding wound. “You should’ve used the sharp end of that axe. Should’ve sliced my head off like you did this guy.”
Following the Magician through the window is what I can only describe as a horde of Wasteland Raiders. They pour through the window like ants defending their nest, their home. They are angry. Ready for battle. Ready and willing and wanting to die. I scan the horde, checking to see if any of them are armed with anything other than an edged weapon, checking to see if any of them are armed with guns.
But there appear to be none. Because guns are rare. Bullets are scarce. Sure, maybe the snipers have a rifle and maybe they’ve got a handful of bullets. But there’s no way in hell each and every individual Raider is armed with a gun. There’s just no way. I let fear cloud my reasoning before. I let pressure and the distraction and misdirection techniques of the Magician get the better of me.
I guess the fact that we were pinned down by an expert shooter didn’t help matters either.
Hell, the sniper probably used up all the bullets he had…
Unless…
Unless the Raiders are being supplied by Wonderland…
Most of these guys are wearing brand new thermo suits. So I guess it’s possible that Wonderland could’ve armed these guys.
But that would be a hell of a risk, arming a horde of Wasteland Raiders.
That’s a move that could backfire spectacularly.
All these thoughts, this argument and debate I’m having with myself on whether or not Wonderland have given these psychopaths guns and ammo, it all flashes through my mind in less than a second, less than a heartbeat…
My eyes scan the horde one more time.
I still can’t see any guns.
What I can see is a whole lot of cold, serrated steel.
Knives.
Hatchets.
Cleavers.
Machetes.
Come to think of it… in this heat… the steel won’t be so cold.
Alphonse grabs me by the shoulder and pulls me out of the room.
The Raiders give chase immediately.
The Magician is pointing at us, ordering his men to kill us in the most painful ways imaginable.
To slit our throats.
Dismember our limbs.
Eviscerate us.
Or die trying and die with honor.
The highest honor.
In response, there’s a war cry from the Raiders. A terrifying, blood curdling war cry.
I’ll give them credit for enthusiasm. They are definitely keen for this fight.
Now let’s see if they can back this enthusiasm up with skill. Let’s see if they can live up to their fearsome and legendary reputation.
Alphonse leads the way, deeper into this huge and abandoned building. If he’s afraid, he’s not showing it. He points down a long and dark hallway. “I’ll lead some down here. You lead the rest down there. We’ll meet back here when it’s over.”
There are office rooms branching off the hallway. “Use the confined space to your advantage,” I say. “Make sure they can’t gang up on you. Make sure they can’t surround you.”
Alphonse gives me a thumbs up and runs off with his axe at the ready. He doesn’t wish me good luck. He doesn’t say anything else. He is focused.
He is all business.
And right now, business involves a whole lot of killing.
Beams of orange light spill in through holes and gaps in the walls that have opened up over the decades of neglect and exposure to the Red Giant. Holes that have been created by artillery fire. By armor piercing rounds and explosive tipped rounds.
This building is a maze, a labyrinth of endless office rooms and hallways. So we split up. To reduce their numbers. To confuse their ranks.
And now it’s time to kill a whole lot of people.
Time to get our leverage back.
I watch them run headfirst into the hallway. With no regard for their o
wn safety, not a single concern about whether or not they’re being funneled into a trap, into a confined and narrow space where they can’t surround and overwhelm their prey, where they can’t use their superior numbers to their advantage.
They just keep coming. One after the other…
No thought to their own safety. No regard for their own lives…
And then we get down to it.
A weird kind of dance. Violent and fast and yet oddly consensual. Each party knows what the stakes are, they know what’s involved. And they know all too well the price of losing…of coming second.
When I stab them, if it’s not a death blow, they shrug off the pain, they scream and shout and they keep fighting, they keep attacking.
Angry and relentless.
Enthusiastic and energetic and forceful.
And again, I am impressed with their dedication to this warrior’s life.
So I zero in on their necks, on any exposed section of skin. For some of the unluckier ones, the ones that aren’t wearing thermo suits or poncho’s, I aim for their heart.
In the corner of my eye, I see Alphonse all the way down the other end of the hallway. And from what I can tell, he doesn’t need to aim, not with that axe of his. He just swings it. Each blow is devastating. And with each blow, even if the blade of the axe is stopped by their thermo suit, the force still crushes bones and ruptures vital organs. Each blow, each strike is deadly. To finish them off, to make double sure they are dead, he then takes their head, decapitating them just to make sure of it, to leave nothing to chance, to make sure they stay down.
I thank my lucky stars, I thank the Red Giant that I’ve got a guy like Alphonse by my side. He reminds me of my brother.
A brute.
Deadly.
Merciless.
A natural born killer.
Maybe we’re related.
Meanwhile, my body is on auto-pilot. I’m moving freely, moving like the wind, a terrible storm, slicing through a raving mad horde of Wasteland Raiders. And I’m getting tired. My heart is working overtime, working harder than it’s ever worked before.
I am covered in sweat, drenched to the bone. Getting hard to keep a hold of my knife.
Another Raider charges at me, shouting a war cry, breathing his last breath. I slide my knife into his eye, into his brain. And again, the damn thing gets stuck and my hands are covered in so much sweat and I lose my grip on the knife. And when I lose my grip on the knife, the Raider falls to the ground, dead before he hits.
I’ve moved into a small office room and through the dusty windows, I can see the light beginning to fade, I can see the Red Giant beginning to set.
We’re running out of time.
Any minute now these sons of bitches will cut the power, cut the connection to the Solar Panel Farm. Any minute now they’re going to fuck over a whole lot people and sentence a whole lot of people to death by starvation. And they’ll damn the consequences, because they’ve got assurances from Wonderland.
So we need to speed this up.
I wipe my hands on my poncho and take out my guns.
A semi-automatic pistol.
An old school revolver.
Gotta make each shot a head shot. Most of these guys are wearing thermo suits, or a poncho, or a heavy duty heat resistant coat. These items of clothing are pretty effective at stopping small arms fire.
So yeah, gotta aim for their heads.
That’s fine by me.
The revolver runs dry first so I toss it to the side.
Six bullets.
Six dead Wasteland Raiders.
I take aim with the pistol. The gunshots are louder than I expected, louder than the screams of dying men. I use up an entire magazine. I reload. I keep firing.
The Raiders keep coming.
They keep dying.
Sacrificing their lives for… for what?
For honor?
For the honor of dying in the heat of battle.
This is what they live for. They live for death.
And right now, I am all too happy to oblige them.
I reload again and for a second I get worried, for a second, I feel like I’m going to run out of bullets before they retreat, before they get sick of dying and getting shot in the head, before they realize that taking on Alphonse the Axeman and Edgar Ramirez in this dark and confined building is a bad idea. That taking on a couple of natural born killers in a building like this, with a thousand tiny office rooms and narrow hallways, a battlefield that makes their numbers useless, a battle ground where it’s impossible to surround us, is a damn suicide mission.
The barrel of my gun is smoking. The acrid stench of gunpowder fills my nostrils.
They stop coming.
The horde finally retreats.
But I know they won’t stay away forever. I know we’re still running out of time.
Need to stop these crazy sons of bitches from cutting the power.
Save the city.
Save the girls.
Need to keep moving.
Need to make the Magician pay for everything that he’s done… and everything that he plans to do.
Chapter 12
Heat exhaustion is starting to kick in. It’s starting to kick in real hard.
My legs feel weak. Hands are shaking. Vision is blurry.
Don’t pass out, old man. Don’t even think about it, you fucking pansy.
Alphonse is kneeling down, hunched over. He is breathing hard and deep and heavy. He is covered in sweat. He searches the body of a dead Raider for some water. He relieves the corpse of his canteen and drinks it all in one gulp. He then promptly throws up. He finds another canteen, pours some over his head, drinks the rest of it.
Slower this time.
“What now?” he asks.
“Don’t suppose you left any of these poor bastards alive?”
Because I sure as hell didn’t. Got a little carried away.
Having too much fun. In too much of a rhythm. In too much of a zone.
Alphonse points over his shoulder with his thumb. Nailed to the wall, pinned to the wall with two knives, one through each shoulder joint, is a Wasteland Raider. A young kid who can’t be any older than sixteen.
His head is slouched forward, he is drooling blood.
I push his head back. “You still with us?”
He tries to spit blood at me, but he’s too weak. So I shoot him in the gut just to make sure he knows that I’m not messing around.
He opens his mouth to scream and for a second he just makes this weird gasping noise.
A second later, he screams.
I tell myself that this kid is not afraid of death. So death threats aren’t going to work. What I need to do is… I need to let him know that I can end his pain, his suffering. I need to let him know that I can give him an honorable death.
“Do you want to die fast and with honor?” I ask. “Or do you want to die slowly and painfully, crying for your mother, crying for someone, anyone to save you?”
There’s no answer from the kid. Maybe he’s not ready to die. Maybe he’s not ready to accept this fact of life.
“Well? How’s it going to be?”
“I never knew my mother,” he says quietly. “And you can take that gun and go fuck yourself with it.”
I’ll give him credit, the kid is tough. He’s only young, but he is a true Wasteland Raider. I feel nothing but pity for this poor bastard as I shoot him again.
And he screams again.
“You ever seen anyone get kneecapped?”
When he’s done screaming, he takes a few seconds, maybe half a minute to catch his breath.
He is clenching his jaw, eating and swallowing the pain. He finally speaks. “I don’t know nothing, man,” he says, with his head slouched forward, chin resting on his chest. His eyes are barely open. “And you can’t do anything. You’re too late. You can’t stop it. You can’t win.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Th
ey’re going to cut the power. They’re going to kill the girls. It’s over.”
No. It’s not over. Not yet. There’s still time.
“Where’s the Magician going?” I ask. “Where is he keeping the girls?”
“Why do you even care? There’s nothing you can do. You can’t save anyone. You should crawl back to the Buried City. Live out your short remaining days in peace.”
“Just answer the goddamn question. Where are the girls?”
“I don’t know. Why the fuck would I know?”
“How are they going to cut the power?” Alphonse asks. “What kind of explosives have they got rigged?”
“We’ve got enough C4 rigged to blow a massive hole right through to the center of the Earth, right through the heart of the Buried City. But we’re not going to blow it up. Not yet. Not until Wonderland holds up their end of the bargain. First we’ll switch the power off. Hopefully, this will draw some of the people out of the Buried City. We’ll be waiting for them. Don’t worry, we’ll end them quick. And I promise you, their flesh will not be wasted. And then, once we’re good and paid, we blow it up.”
I don’t know if he’s telling the truth, or if this is just the twisted version of events that he’s been told. Either way, it sounds terrifying and I can’t let any of these scenarios play out.
I press the barrel of my gun against the kid’s kneecap. “I’m going to ask you one more time. Where is the Magician?”
He raises his head slowly. Makes eye contact with me. “The Tower. You’ll know when you see it. It’s the tallest damn building in the Ruined City. In the whole fucking world, man. From the top floor, on a clear day, you can see all the way to the Canyons.”
“Any last words?”
“You can’t win,” he whispers, struggling to speak. “Everyone living below ground is dead. You’re all too stupid to know it.”
I think about shooting him in the head.
But then I think better of it.
Need to save my bullets.
So I let Alphonse do the dirty work. And he buries the blade of his axe in the kid’s face, causing it to collapse and fold in on itself, causing bones to shatter, causing bits of brain to ooze out of the fractures in his skull.
