Road to Abaddon

by Vincent Heeringa

  ◆◆◆

  She is in the truck now, the pitted road rushing beneath her, darkness on all sides. Suddenly the driver brakes and she lurches forward, her hands pressed against the windshield. On the road, in front of the screeching truck, rears the Lion, wings beating with brilliant white feathers. At its neck is a garland mane that trembles as the Lion shakes its mighty head, teeth bared and eyes that vanish into a snarl. The beast opens its mouth to speak but all that she hears is the roar of an engine.

  “Nassim, it’s time. Nassim!”

  A rough hand was shaking her awake.

  Silas!

  Nassim leapt up, her hand fumbling for the pistol. “Stay back!” she stuttered, still half-asleep, the lion so fresh in her mind it could have been standing beside her.

  Silas raised his hands, laughing.

  “Come, my Queen. Can’t you see? I’m not armed. I loosened the ropes and I could have killed you. I could have killed you all. And yet here I am, your servant,” and he bowed in subservience.

  “Afiz!” she shouted. “Afiz!”

  She pointed the pistol at Silas until her friend arrived, panting.

  “Why is this prisoner loose? Who let him free?” she demanded.

  “Um, no one. He ...”

  “Unacceptable!” she shouted at him. “Have you forgotten who he is? Have you forgotten what he’s done?”

  “No, Nassim. I ...”

  Surprised and angry, Nassim prepared to smack Afiz’ cheek. He blanched, ready for the hit but she lowered her hand and swallowed hard. By now all the children were watching.

  In a hoarse whisper she said: “As head of security you have failed. This man must be bound at all times. Do not fail me again.”

  Afiz lowered his eyes and mumbled an apology.

  Silas offered his hands, grinning. She could see what happened and felt foolish. Silas was sowing the seeds of division and she fell into his trap. Afiz saw it before her. As they boarded the trucks he held up a hand to stop her mid-sentence. “Don’t apologise,” he said. “I can see through his game. We were both tricked. But you must retain authority – for everyone’s sake. Next time, hit me!”

  And he stalked to his post at the rear of the convoy.

  Silas was bound, including a gag and blindfold, and threatened once again with a gun to his head. “Don’t forget who’s got the finger on the trigger,” she said as he was thrown into the cab. They resumed the monotonous grumble through the blank landscape.

  She’d found a smart little knife among the booty the day before and now she slid it into her sock. Violence and authority – they seemed necessary companions. She wished they weren’t. She didn’t want to replace one brutal regime with another. Yet here she was: threatening, beating, killing. What a mighty mess we’re in. The thought stayed with her and after two hours of it gnawing at her conscience, Nassim removed the gag and blindfold.

  “Thank you,” Silas said, exercising his jaw like he just discovered it. “Is that my reward for not killing you?”

  “No. You don’t deserve a reward. But everyone deserves compassion. Consider it the gift of a compassionate person. There are some still in this world,” she replied.

  “Compassion?” he repeated, as if he’d never heard the word before. “That’s sweet. The Queen of Kindness. Every ruler starts their reign hoping to be better than the tyrant that went before. Compassion is weakness and it will get you killed, especially in this place.”

  “So is mercy and you seemed to show me some this afternoon. You must be weakening in your old age. Losing your edge, old man?”

  “Ahhh,” he laughed. “You think I am falling under your spell, like your little pet Afiz. You’re vain as well as foolish. I showed you mercy to teach you a lesson, in fact two lessons.”

  “Huh,” she laughed.

  “The first lesson is that your knots are really poor. Look.” And he wriggled and jiggled and slipped his hands this way and that, squirming beneath the ropes.

  “Stop! Stop that!” she said.

  But it was too late. Within seconds he’d slipped the knots and grabbed her throat with one hand and her pistol with the other.

  She screamed but his rough thumb dug deep into her neck.

  “Once again Princess, you are at my mercy.”

  The driver glanced over and sniggered.

  Nassim writhed but he pushed his knee into her lap and slid the pistol up to her temple. “And her begins lesson two,” he whispered into her ear, his breath hot on her cheek. Sweat dripped from his forehead onto her neck. He pressed the barrel harder into her head and cocked the gun with a slow, deliberate action. Nassim’s heart beat hard and the more she wrestled against his weight the firmer he pressed his knee into her stomach. Only three days ago she’d cocked the same gun to his temple and watched a bead of sweat roll down his face. Now the metal burned on her skin like a branding iron.

  “Lesson two,” he hissed into her face, spit flicking off his lips. “He who has the biggest gun wins. And since you have a poor excuse for a sword, I’m afraid that, by definition, I win.”

  With his knee against her he put down his gun and rolled the rope into a slip-knot over her hands.

  “Now, let me show you how to tie a knot.”

  She gave in without protest. He pulled the knot tight around her wrists, cutting into her skin, and threaded the other end around a handle in the dashboard. Perhaps she could have spat and screamed and kicked and done so much more than sit disconsolate. But she was bone-weary and trapped. She regarded the loaded gun in his lap with a sense of fatalism. Perhaps this was her destiny all along.

  “There, you see,” said Silas. “A knot like that’s always going to earn a little respect. And that’s all we ask for, eh Mohammed?”

  The driver laughed. So he was in this too, Nassim concluded.

  “We’re just gonna sit tight for a little bit. It’s not long now. Bonaparte always liked these dark little valleys,” said Silas and he stared out of the window as if looking for something.

  They sped on through the night and Nassim sunk further into despair. An hour passed and she almost allowed herself to sleep when light suddenly filled the cabin and the driver slammed the brakes. Nassim and Silas crashed into the windshield. The truck slid into a jackknife and stopped in front of a massive steel barrier. It stood like a fortress across the road. Floodlights on top of the barrier lit up the entire convoy and figures cradling guns emerged from the gloom.

  “Get out of the truck with your hands in the air!” shouted a voice through a megaphone.

  Silas turned to Nassim. “Well, your Highness. Time has come. Might pay for me to do the talking, eh?” and he released her hands from the knot and stuck the gun between her shoulder blades. He pushed her out of the truck and she fell on the dirt. She considered making a dash or screaming for Afiz but the rest of the crew had already clambered out, squinting in the light, arms raised high above their heads.

  “Get down, on your knees!” the voice boomed.

  By now, men with their faces wrapped in black turbans appeared from the darkness behind them and prodded the hostages forward. They forced them to kneel. Afiz swapped a glance with Nassim, panic in his face.

  “Bandits?” he mouthed.

  “No,” she replied, and flicked her head towards Silas, who’d positioned himself behind her.

  Afiz’s eyes widened as if to say, “Him!”

  At least six men now pointed their guns at the kneeling bunch and waited for something or someone to act. One of the children started to cry and Nassim thought it might be a good time to leap up, but Silas put his hand on her shoulder and they continued to crouch like slaves. Eventually a seventh figure appeared, the height of a child, dressed in black and with a kufiyah tied around its head. Two shorn-off shotguns hung in an x-shape on its back and where there should have been shoes were wheels, as if the person was riding on a hoverboard. The figure leaned forwards, and with a mechanical whirr, glided towards the captives.

  “Wel
l, what have we here?” said the dwarf, in a high-pitched, excited voice. “What have we here! We have children. We have daddies. But where’s the mummies? And where’s the usual collection of junk you refugees drag along from hell-hole to hell-hole?” The axles whirred as he circled the truck on his wheel frame. “Ho, ho! But this is no refugee party! This looks like a very nasty ensemble. I see gun-sies and lots of nasty spike-sies. Who speaks to us from this armed gang?”

  “I do, Lord Bonaparte,” said Silas, standing.

  Afiz shot a black look at Nassim. He knows him!

  “Ah-hah!” squeaked the dwarf and spun towards Silas. “And who are you, exactly?”

  “I am Silas Kabar and I’ve brought you some fresh meat to trade. Children, fourteen all told, all healthy, without the disease. And seven girls, unsullied.”

  Nassim bristled. Silas was betraying them to this weird wheeled dwarf and it was all her fault. She wished she’d shot him when she had the chance. Now he stood, offering them all up for sale like goats at a market.

  The black-robed men pointed their rifles at Silas and waited for their strange leader to speak.

  “Silas Kabar, eh? Kabar. Kabar,” repeated the dwarf, rolling closer. “I know you. You’re one of Manchester Jones’ gang. Come to think of it, I recognise some of these trucks. How is that old devil?”

  “Dead, m’Lord.”

  “Oh, dearie dear. What rum luck. How did our friend meet his end?”

  “This one shot him,” said Silas, pointing at Nassim.

  Nassim trembled with anger. How misplaced her trust had been.

  “Oh, how unfortunate. Shot by a girl!” And the dwarf gave a high-pitched giggle that made all the other men guffaw in unison. The joke made Nassim boil. This was not how it would end, she resolved, and in a pique of anger she whipped the knife from her sock and spun upwards at Silas hoping to plunge the blade into his chest. But he was alert and, deflecting her arm, knocked her to ground. In an instant he was on top of her, his forearm crushing her throat.

  “Don’t try anything clever, now Queenie. You really, really need to trust me on this one,” he breathed and wrestled the dagger from her hand.

  “Mon Dieu! We have a feisty one here!” laughed Bonaparte and a thin, white arm, decorated with bangles and jewelled fingers, waved for one of the men to grab her.

  What happened next was the subject of much discussion among the children that night. Some claimed that Silas threw the knife first and then yelled out “get down” just as the turret gun in the front truck blasted the black soldiers with a flurry of bullets. Others said the burst of gunfire gave him cover to take three giant strides and plunge the dagger into the dwarf. What everyone agreed, however, was that within seconds, six black robes lay smoking in the road and the dwarf rolled backwards and forwards squealing like a stuck pig with the handle of Nassim’s dagger pointing straight out of his throat. His short white arms flailed as he tried to reach the knife while also reaching for a gun, now tangled in the flaps of his robes. It was almost funny if it wasn’t so gruesome and Afiz, having snatched a gun from a still smouldering corpse, put the creature out of its misery with a single shot to its heart.

  For a moment, Nassim and the gang stood in the road, shocked at the effectiveness of Silas’ attack.

  But then Silas began barking instructions. “Quick, Afiz, Nassim, grab the guns. The rest of you, back to trucks, now! The rest of the gang will be here any second!”

  Snapped into action, Nassim rushed to the still-warm corpses. Wide, surprised eyes stared at her as she felt for belts of ammunition, knives tucked into belts and pistols in their holsters.

  Silas meanwhile use a rifle to shoot the floodlights. With each shot, the road and its carnage slipped into the darkness and Nassim had to feel her way back to the truck. Her arms full of clanking metal, she staggered to the door and threw the cache onto the floor of the cab. Silas and the driver were already waiting, panting with nervous energy. They dragged her in.

  “That went well,” said Silas out of breath. “All intact?”

  “What did you just do?” she spluttered.

  “I think I just asked you for some trust,” and he pulled out her revolver and offered it to her, handle first.

  Nassim’s heart raced and they stared at one another for a moment. She grabbed the gun and thought about blowing his brains across the windscreen but weighed the gun in her hand, thinking.

  “Well?” he asked. “Do you trust me now?”

  “So, this whole time you’ve been playing along, pretending to be caught?” she asked, incredulous.

  “Well, not the whole time. There was a moment when you had a gun to my head.”

  “But you’ve been tricking us? Me?”

  “What was the alternative?” he said. “I seem to recall you preferred me dead. I had to play the part of prisoner. But you must realise that soon we will reach a place where this trick won’t work. You will need to trust me.”

  “To do what?”

  “To get you into Abaddon!” he growled. “You think we can just walk in? You think I can simply open the door and make you some coffee and cake? Every part of Abaddon is guarded, even the secret entrance. If I wanted freedom I would have killed you and taken this convoy for my own. I’d make a much better leader than Manchester Jones. But I’m here because I want to help you. You must see that by now? If you can’t, then I will dispose of you and do it myself.”

  Silas turned sullen and they sat for a moment. Nassim was astounded. In the madness of her plan only a few things were certain: the need for speed, the loyalty of Afiz and her distrust of Silas. Undoing the last seemed to undo everything. Leading this troupe was her job, not his. She’d already declared him guilty and due the death penalty. She mistrusted him when he was gagged and chained. Was she now supposed to follow him inside Abaddon too?

  “I thought you betrayed me,” she said at last.

  “Yes, I thought you might have. I would never have got you to agree to the ruse otherwise.”

  “Who’s in the gun turret?”

  “Thomas. He’s been there for a few hours. Must be hot. I’m amazed he was still awake, though that is his old seat. This is his truck. The whole thing was quite well done, don’t you think?”

  Nassim was too angry to thank him so she changed the topic. “And what’s your plan?” she asked.

  “We wait.”

  “For what?”

  “For the rest. I’ve got three men on that wall and Thomas back on the big gun. We’ve baited the trap. It’s just a matter of time and the rats will come out of the hole.”

  “And then we crawl into it?”

  “Exactly.”

  They sat awkwardly, the air between them still electric, until someone whistled. They peered into the darkness and saw nothing at first but eventually, shapes ventured around the edges of the steel blockade.

  “Come to Daddy,” cooed Silas.

  A gun with a silencer made a spitting sound and one of the shapes fell flat. A second silhouette dropped off the wall and they heard the muffled sounds of a scuffle as one of Silas’ men wrestled someone to the ground. They lost sight of the shapes until suddenly the door of the cab opened to a man in black robes, with panic in his eyes. One of Silas’ men had a knife at his throat.

  “Do come in,” said Silas cheerfully.

  The man was bundled into the truck and sat squashed between Silas and Nassim. He was panting like a frightened dog and sweat poured off his forehead. “Relax,” said Silas. “We don’t need to kill everyone. This could be your lucky night.”

  Outside more guns flared as the wall-watchers picked off the remains of Bonaparte’s attackers. They waited in the darkness for thirty minutes until every groan and scuffle had faded. Then Silas spoke.

  “How many are you?” he asked the prisoner, who’d stopped sweating and looked more like a lost boy than a fighter.

  “Twenty ... or so.”

  “Or so?”

  “It varies. Bonaparte doesn’t te
ll us much. He has friends.”

  “Hmmmm not many, I suspect. It’s wheelie hard to make friends when you’re that ugly,” and for some reason, perhaps it was the tension, everyone chuckled at Silas’ dumb joke.

  “And the entrance, how far away is it?”

  “Only about a kilometre up that track,” and he nodded in the direction of the hills. “I can take you there! There’s an armed guard in the rocks above the track about a hundred metres from the tunnels. It’s never empty.”

  “How do we get past?”

  “You won’t. But you can approach it from behind. I can show you! You won’t hurt me, will you?” he pleaded.

  “Keep calm,” said Silas, patting him on the arm. “Take us there safely and we’ll see you home safely. One mistake and my friends will do what they’ve spent a lifetime perfecting,” and Silas drew his finger over the man’s throat.

  And so, within a space of an hour, Nassim found herself sneaking through the desert, following the man she had sworn to kill while her only friend Afiz remained reluctantly behind, guarding the children and the convoy. It was almost pitch black, just the faint glow of the clouded moon creating silhouettes out of the rocky crags. The one thing she insisted on was to be the last in a line of five, her weapon loaded and pointed at the back of Silas and his henchman who in turn were pointing their guns at the new captive.

  “The deeds of darkness are done in darkness,” she recited. They were inching closer to Abaddon and her stomach churned with foreboding at the thought of being back in the coldness of the Metrician prison.

  Stumbling over rocky ground in the near darkness at four in the morning is no fun and as they trudged onwards, occasionally scraping their shins on the rocks, the robed man halted and put his fingers to his lips. Dropping onto their bellies, they slithered up a rough mound and saw sparkles of light inside a semi-circular enclave. Three shadows stood like statues, one with its arms resting on a mounted gun. It was the guard post. True to his word, the man had led them in a wide circle to the compound’s rear. They slid back to the base of the mound.