by J. L. Harden
Anyway, they say all warfare is deception. So much so, that after a while, all the tricks, all the bullshit, it becomes predictable and passé. So I see right through this bastard,
I see through the lies.
I see through the deception.
But this guy, Kilgore, the Magician’s apprentice, the Magician’s puppet, he keeps the charade going and he pretends to be the actual Magician and he tells me that he is the actual Magician and he tells me exactly where the Rangers are.
They are locked up. They are collateral.
He says, “You’re fucked, Hector. You’re gonna die in here. You’re gonna die nice and slow.”
I lash out at him through the bars of the gate. This is a useless and futile action.
“You’re still fighting,” he says. “I like that about you. You would’ve made a great Raider. You would’ve fit right in.”
“Open the gate and fight me. I’ll let you have the first hit.”
“I open this gate and I’m dead. I know that. I can admit that. You’re still strong enough and mad enough to kill me. You’d kill me easy. Snap me in half like some over dried rat jerky. So no, I’m not going to open the gate. What we’re going to do instead is, we’re going to cut you, piece by piece, limb by limb. We’re going to eat you. We’re going to feast on you.”
Chapter 11
You are a problem for us, Hector. And I make problems disappear.
I’m passing in and out of consciousness. Pain consumes me. I’m lying on a concrete floor and someone sits next to me and explains to me the rules of the prison. I can barely open my eyes and I can’t see straight and I can’t see who this person is.
But his voice is calm and soothing.
And the advice he gives me is invaluable.
He tells me to obey the Raiders at all cost. He tells me to obey the Rangers who have declared themselves and proved themselves as the Rulers of the Prison. Do not cross them. They have fought their way to the top of the pecking order, to the top of the hierarchy of this holding cell and of the Pit. They have done this through sheer force of will and physical strength and an unmatched fighting ability.
The Rangers have absolute power in this domain.
He repeats, “Do not cross them. You will not survive.”
He says, “You will be given a cup. This cup is everything. You drink from it. Eat from it. We are fed once a day. Twice a day if you are unlucky. If you get fed twice a day it means they are fattening you up, getting ready to take a slice, to slaughter you. For a prisoner on death row, starving, feeling like their stomach is eating itself, that second meal, a hot meal… is damn near impossible to refuse.”
“And,” he adds. “There is no prize for guessing what that hot meal is made of.”
I feel him stand. He walks away from me and before he disappears he reminds me about the Rangers. He tells me not to cross them. I stop thinking about how I’m going to kill a man named Kilgore, the Magician’s apprentice, and I remember the Rangers…
These bastards, these elite Enforcers operate behind enemy lines, out in the Wasteland for months at a time.
Find the Killer. Find the truth.
There’s a team of Rangers… they’ve gone rogue… they will have answers…
There’s every chance that these bastards stole Ruby from me. And for this, I’m going to kill them good. But you can’t kill a man for no reason. So I’ll need to be damn sure about this. And I won’t be sure until I ask the question.
I’m pretty sure I’m unconscious again. I have no idea how much time has passed. When I open my eyes, and my vision comes into focus, I can see that I’ve been thrown into an unbelievably overcrowded holding cell. It is absolutely full of broken men. Full of Raiders too crazy and blood drunk for their own kind. Full of Mercs who have wandered too far above ground, too far into the Wasteland, too deep into the Ruined City. By the looks of it, there’s even people from the Canyons in here, caught outside their gates after dark. Taken and stolen in the night.
A man stands in the middle of the room.
He looks strong.
He does not look broken.
“Heard the rumors that Wonderland was sending someone to kill us,” he says. “Someone crazy enough to end up in this place. Someone crazy enough to risk their life and their limbs, to risk being slowly eaten to death. Never in a million years would I have expected you.”
“I’m not from Wonderland,” I say.
“Yeah, you are. We know you. We know you’re here to kill us.”
“Well, I don’t know who the hell you are, but if it’s a fight you’re looking for…”
He holds up a metal cup that looks like a coffee mug. “This is yours. Everyone gets one. It’s for drinking and eating. We get fed once a day. If you’re unlucky, you get fed twice a day.”
I’ve got a feeling he’s not going to give the cup to me. Not willingly.
“You want this? You need to come and get it. You need to go through me.”
He throws the cup behind me, into the crowd of broken men, into the crowd of prisoners who have gathered around to watch some entertainment, to watch a fight to the death.
To watch a blood sport.
An old and ageless pastime.
No one in the crowd touches the cup. It clangs on the floor, bouncing off legs and feet. No one flinches and no one moves and no one touches it. These men are well behaved. They have been beaten and punished into obedience by the man advancing on me and by the Raiders who have imprisoned and enslaved them as cattle.
This man, who could be a Ranger, who probably is a Ranger, wastes exactly no time.
So I let him have the first few hits. I’m still sore and tender from the torture, from the beatings and the floggings, but after the initial blow, there’s a rush of adrenalin… an endless rush… and I’ve never felt so alive and my body goes numb to the pain, like all my nerve endings go, “Yeah, yeah. We get it. There’s pain. Enough already.”
Anyway, I let him have the first hit. I let him have the second hit and the third. I do this just to see the look in his eyes, a look that says he knows his best is not good enough.
That his best will never be good enough.
That he will never be strong enough.
I see the look…
And then I move in for the kill.
The handle of his cup is tied around his belt. I grab this with one hand and with my other hand I grab his throat and I begin choking the life out of him. I drive him back into the wall of the holding cell. I slam him against the brick and stone and concrete. I keep choking him. His eyes bulge. I see life slip away from them as I rip his cup away from his belt and use it to cave in his skull. And then after a while I can no longer see his eyes because there’s too much blood and sections of his skull are exposed and cracked and sort of just hanging there.
Raiders enter the cell. A small army. They drag me away. I keep his cup.
He won’t be needing it.
Chapter 12
They remove me from the holding cell, blindfolding me immediately.
And my only regret is that I killed him too quickly, that I got carried away. I didn’t even get to ask him any questions.
Damn.
I’m thrown into the back of a large vehicle and we begin moving. The engine rumbles. I hear a squeaking noise. It’s either the axel or a set of tracks. Maybe I’m inside a tank.
I hear a voice.
Calm and soothing.
And he says, “Hector, it’s me. It’s Rob.”
Rob? I thought you were dead.
And I can’t believe it.
And I say, “I can’t believe it. I thought you were dead. How’d you get away?”
“That’s not important right now. That man you killed. He was not an ordinary man. He was an Enforcer. Part of an elite group known as the Rangers…”
“Yeah, I figured as much. But he attacked me. He came at me. I defended myself.”
“As you are entitled to do. However, there will be
consequences.”
“Consequences?”
“You are being moved to the Pit. Ruling the prison and the inmates is another Ranger. He is their leader. A brute with a brain. He is an animal, a dangerous and deadly and charismatic leader of men. He is a nightmare for people who make an enemy of themselves. And I have no doubt in my mind he will come after you to avenge his fallen brother. Probably while you sleep. Or maybe he will force the Raiders to target you. Or most probably, he will force the other inmates to target you.”
“I don’t mind. I don’t plan on hanging around here long. I’ve got stuff to do.”
I’ve got a killer to find…
“There’s no escape from this prison. There is only a slow death. There’s no fighting your way out. No place left to take you. There is only death.”
He repeats this.
Death.
And only death.
And I say, “Then I’ll make sure I die last.”
I hear him chuckle and then I picture him smiling. And I still can’t believe he’s alive. Could’ve sworn they shot him. Could’ve sworn they shot him point blank.
“Listen to me, Hector. Trust me, at this pit, there is only death. There is no life and no hope and no escape. And you cannot kill everyone here. There are thousands of prisoners. Hundreds of guards.”
“Trust me, Rob. I most definitely could kill everyone.”
Rob falls completely silent and I can almost hear him think about whether or not I can kill thousands of men, every single prisoner, every single guard, anyone stupid enough to challenge me.
I hear him think about it and then I hear him shift uncomfortably in his seat.
The vehicle we’re being escorted in sounds big. Like a truck or a tank. Something heavy and indestructible. Anyway, a good twenty minutes later, the heavy vehicle comes to a stop and strong men grab me and hold me up. I’m only on my feet for two seconds before my legs are attacked and knocked out from under me. They drag me out into the sunlight and the heat. Drag me along the hot bitumen of an empty road.
Metal shrieks as a gate opens and closes. I hear a hundred locks clam shut.
My blindfold is removed.
Rob is standing beside me, the color drained from his face, a look of absolute terror and helplessness in his eyes. But as scared as he is, he still has the presence of mind to tell me exactly what I’m in for. Maybe talking about stuff calms his mind, eases his fear. Hey, whatever works for you, friend. We’ve all got our special little ways of dealing with fucked up shit.
He says, “This prison is a pit, a basement. The ground floor of this building has fallen away, exposing the lower levels. There are several levels of basement. The first level is exposed. The first level is where they come for you. It is a pantry for the Raiders.”
We are standing on the ground floor, looking down at the basement, at a hundred broken men.
“Above us,” Rob says, “Two floors above us, are the harpoon guns. Some of these harpoons fire spears. Some of them fire electrified nets. They target people at random. They fire a net, capturing their prey, their meal. They take a piece, a slice, and then they put the person back. Sometimes, when they are feeling hungry, or if they need to discipline us, they will fire a spear into the crowd. The spear is a massive weapon. It is as tall as a man, as thick as a man’s arm. If you are pieced by the spear, it is a killing blow. They never miss.”
Because there’s too many people to miss. They simply fire into the crowd. Shooting fish in a barrel as my brother would say.
“As a result, there is a mad scramble to hide, to take shelter. But on this level there is nowhere to hide, nowhere to seek shelter. So everyone runs. They run in a massive circle.”
“What about the lower basement levels?”
“They are for the strong men. For the unbroken. The only place to hide and seek shelter are the lower levels, but the entrances to the lower levels are guarded by the men who reside there. They are guarded by strong and fierce men. In this prison, in this Pit, the weaker you get, the higher you rise. If you are too weak to stake your claim in the lower level, too weak to fight, you are pushed up and out… onto the killing floor.”
A Raider says to me, “You’re in our world now, Hector. You’re fucked. Enjoy the show.”
A group of masked Raiders push us forward, to the edge, to the precipice. Below us is the Pit. Below us are damned men running in a circle, in a perfect example of what Rob just described.
I’ve never seen anything like it.
The men run.
Faster and faster.
A tornado of scared and broken men.
They run because they think a moving target will be harder to hit. But it makes no difference. The Raiders will fire their harpoons, they never miss.
Within the tornado of men, there is an inner circle running clockwise, as fast as they can. Then there is an outer circle, running counter clockwise… as fast as they can. Other men, legless and broken and defeated, huddle in the corners of the room, too weak to run. Unable to run. They are the only ones who do not join the tornado. And this is only because they have already fallen victim.
They are already being eaten.
Slowly.
The signal is given, a Raider operating one of the Harpoons lines up his target, his prey. He launches an electrified net.
He does not miss.
As soon as the man goes down, the other men stop running and move back against the wall. A hook is lowered to retrieve the man, to retrieve dinner.
The Raider standing next to me barks an order. “Do it here!”
His command is obeyed immediately and I’m only now just realizing how organized the Raiders are, how much of a hierarchy there is. They are surprisingly militaristic and professional in the way they operate, in the way they go about their business.
A group of Raiders abseil into the pit with impunity, completely fearless. None of the prisoners dare attack them. All of them remain against the walls, completely broken and full of fear. They are way too scared to move and too weak, both physically and spiritually, to fight, to seize an opportunity.
The Raiders tie the man’s legs and arms and draw him out. For a second it looks like his limbs will be pulled out of their sockets. A Raider approaches with a machete. He looks up at me… and then to the Raider next to me.
And the order is given. “A leg. An arm.”
There is a cheer from the Raiders. They will be feasting tonight. From the prisoners, you can hear the sharp inhale of breath and groans of sympathy pain. Some of them turn away. Most of them watch.
The Raider with the Machete takes the arm at the shoulder and then he takes the leg so close to the hip it looks like he practically cuts the body in half. The man spasms uncontrollably. There’s blood everywhere. He passes out almost immediately. One second he was screaming and then the next second he’s not screaming. These two massive cuts, these amputations, these are a death sentence. He’s got minutes to live. Maybe less. But to my surprise, the group of Raiders in the pit get to work immediately. They have tourniquets to slow the bleeding. They throw a powder like substance on the open ended wounds. And then they drag him away, carefully.
Because they will patch him up. They will keep him alive.
Fresh meat.
This is a pantry after all.
And the Raider next to me says, “Guess what? You’re next. This will be your fate, Hector.”
And then he pushes me into the Pit, into the pantry. And I’m not ready for the fall.
Chapter 13
I wasn’t ready for the fall. Nowhere near ready. I’m unable to brace myself, and when I land in the Pit, I slip on the pool of blood left by tonight’s dinner.
Rob is pushed in right after me.
I quickly get to my knees, helping Rob to his feet. And I’m thinking if I don’t do something drastic, they will be feasting on my flesh by tomorrow. And maybe Rob’s as well. So I reckon I’ve got a few hours to prepare myself for the onslaught. A few hours to fi
gure out how to escape from this nightmare and get back to finding Ruby’s killer and getting a whole lotta revenge.
But I figured wrong.
Dead wrong.
Men march up and out of the lower basement level.
A man steps forward. He has an air of authority around him. He could be a Ranger. He could have answers. “You stay up here if you know what’s good for you. You try and fight your way down to safety, we’ll kill you quicker than the Raiders will kill you.”
They drag a man up and out of the basement, his face is bloodied, his hands are bloodied. He looks like he is dying. He looks like he’s been in the fight of his life…
“This is what happens if you try. This is what happens if you trespass.”
A group of men hold him down. Two men tackle his legs, bringing the man to the ground. A man on each arm, a man holding his neck. And even though this man has been beaten to an inch of his life, they are not through with him.
To the man’s credit he keeps fighting, to the very end.
It takes five men to pin him down.
Another man steps forward. Smiles at me. And then he begins jumping on the man’s leg. Repeatedly. Jumping up and down. Forcing all of his body weight through the man’s outstretched leg, right through his kneecap.
Eventually there is a crack, eventually the bones shatter.
The other leg is next,
The man passes out. He stops fighting, stops struggling.
“This man tried and failed. And now he is fucked. Now he cannot outrun the harpoon. He cannot outrun the spear or the net.”
This is a fantastic example of what happens if you fail fighting your way down to safety.
The strong men from the lower levels descend the stairs, satisfied that their demonstration will discourage anyone else from attempting to fight their way down,
They are wrong.
