by J M Hemmings
‘Jesus! Handing out death sentences?’ Margaret whispered. ‘So he’s judge, jury and likely the executioner as well, huh? Well, I can’t say I’m the least bit surprised, no, not with that attitude of his.’
She crept closer to the source of the light – a small hole drilled through the wall – giving her dark-accustomed eyes a good bit of time to adjust before getting too close, for after half an hour in this sheer blackness even the gentle moonlight seemed harsh.
When she felt that her eyes were ready, she stepped up the peephole. After pressing her eye up to it, she saw below her a large hall that looked a lot like the Moon Chamber. This space, however, was shaped like an amphitheatre. A number of the teen soldiers were seated in the stands, while the people Margaret had met at dinner sat in the front row. At the bottom of the amphitheatre the General was seated on an ornate throne, and in front of him a prisoner, dressed in plain khaki trousers and a tee shirt, was chained to the floor. The prisoner was a wiry middle-aged Congolese man, and from what Margaret could perceive in the soft light, his body was crisscrossed with a variety of scars, most of which were old and long-since healed. In his eyes there burned a devilish and defiant fire, and he gritted his teeth as he writhed and struggled against the chains that anchored him to the floor.
‘Have you any last words, Colonel Reaper?’ the General asked coldly.
‘Fuck you!’ the man roared. ‘Fuck you an’ everyone here! The Lord’s Resistance Army will kill you! They will find this place an’ burn it to d’ground! Me boys will cut your heart out an’ eat it in front of you! We will rape all ‘dese sluts, an’ we will skin every man an’ boy alive! You dead! All you motherfuckers! You all dead!’
After the man had finished his tirade a tense silence settled over the room; a silence heavy and thick, pared only by the condemned man’s desperate panting. And then, it began – a bassy wave bouncing off every wall, shaking the ancient foundations of this castle to their core; the General was laughing.
Other pockets of laughter started to erupt, bursting like fireworks from the gathered crowd of teen soldiers and the General’s friends, and soon the entire amphitheatre was a riot of hooting and mirthful howling. Then, abruptly, the General held up a stern hand, and dead silence returned with immediate effect. The prisoner was looking around him in frightened bewilderment, and any sense of false bravado he may have had had now been dashed by that crashing tsunami of mockery.
‘Colonel Reaper,’ the General asked, a dark mischief gleaming in his eyes, ‘would you like to hear what has become of that band of thugs, murderers and rapists, that collective of brutes that was your “mighty” battalion?’
‘Wh-, what the hell you t-, talking about?!’ Reaper spluttered.
The General stood up from his throne and turned to face a large door at the far end of the chamber.
‘Lieutenant Curie! Approach the court!’
A short, strongly built teenage girl strode into the chamber from the shadowy doorway. Like the General, she was attired in an extravagant Victorian-style military uniform. Behind her strode a lanky teenage boy, dressed in similar finery. He carried with him a large sack, bulging with a number of bulky objects. The girl stopped in front of the General and saluted stiffly. Her prominent brow was knit with determination, her eyes cold with bladed purpose.
‘General! Hail!’
‘At ease, Lieutenant,’ he replied.
The girl’s arms slackened at her side, but her back remained ramrod-straight, and her shoulders tense with readiness.
‘‘Lieutenant’?’ the prisoner spat, the furrows of lines and scars of his face contorted into a look that was at once surprise and disgust. ‘This little slut’s a lieutenant?!’
The General clenched and unclenched his fists, and then slid his hands down his thighs to grip the ends of his knees, only maintaining his composure with the barest vestiges of control. Through gritted teeth he growled out a harsh response.
‘She’s more of a lieutenant than you ever were, or could ever be, scum. Shut your mouth!’
The prisoner’s wiry muscles contracted as he pulled against his chains, and flecks of spittle flew from his mouth as he roared out his acerbic defiance.
‘When me’ boys take ‘dis city, that whore’s cunt an’ arsehole be ripped to shreds by them hungry cocks! They fuck her ‘til long after she stop screaming, long after she stop fucking breathing! They ram them fucking cocks—’
The General sprang to his feet, darted down the steps and smashed his fist across the prisoner’s jaw in a crunching hook that sent the man crashing to the floor, where he lay groaning in a semi-daze.
‘You will address my troops with a little more respect, Reaper,’ the General hissed, his voice bristling with a potent menace. ‘Do not speak like that to any of them again. Do not.’
He turned to the teenage lieutenant, his posture slackening to a more open and loose one, and his tone became gentle and fatherly.
‘Lieutenant Curie, I apologise for this foul creature’s unsavoury words. Ignore his empty threats and disgusting insults, and please, present us with the results of your most recent battle against the LRA.’
‘General, our recent mission against the 23rd Battalion of the LRA, who we encountered stationed at their jungle camp one hundred-and-thirty-seven-kilometres south-east of T’Kalanjathu, was a runaway success, sir.’
Reaper sat bolt upright at this, his eyes widening with surprise.
‘Excellent,’ the General commented, ignoring the prisoner. ‘Details?’
‘Our platoon wiped them out, sir. To a man.’
‘Lies!’ Reaper bellowed as the girl’s words roused him from his daze. ‘Little whore be lying! One little platoon ‘gainst me’ whole battalion!? Fuck you! You a liar, you a fucking liar!’
‘Shut up!’ the General snarled, only deigning to give the prisoner a half-turn of his head before returning his attention to the teenage officers. ‘Sergeant,’ he said, addressing the tall teenage boy who was holding the sack, ‘what have you brought with you there?’
‘Evidence of our success, sir,’ the teen answered in a crackly, freshly broken voice. His slumped shoulders and thin limbs seemed out of kilter with the extravagance of his uniform, but his eyes and grim-set jaw spoke of a deep reserve of inner power.
‘Well, let us show this prisoner the evidence then, shall we,’ the General said, staring with cold menace at the now-confused prisoner before him. ‘Perhaps that will convince him of the veracity of our claims.’
The boy nodded and untied the sack, and then unceremoniously emptied its contents out onto the stone floor. Inside the secret passage, Margaret had to clamp a hand over her mouth to stifle the scream that almost broke through her lips, prompted by the gruesome sight of what came out of the sack: a rolling, bouncing mass of decapitated human heads.
The prisoner’s eyes bulged with disbelief and his jaw hung slack with shock.
‘Do you recognise these faces, Colonel Reaper? Do you?’ the General enquired softly. His eyes were alive with something fierce and terrifying, and they were locked with a withering focus on the prisoner’s suddenly haggard face.
‘I-, I … but-, but…’ the prisoner, spluttered.
‘They are the heads of all of the officers of your battalion, are they not?’
‘I, you-, ga-, they…’
The General nodded, smiling with smug triumph and crossing his arms with casual defiance across his chest as he did.
‘Your battalion is gone, Colonel Reaper. They will never again murder or pillage, and their days of marauding, slaughter and wanton rape are over. Their reign of terror is finished. Forever.’
‘A-, a-, platoon … Y-, you k-, k-, kids against, h-, h-, hundreds a’ me’ s-, s-, soldiers…’
The General blazed a savage grin at the prisoner.
‘Yes. Yes exactly, Reaper. A handful of my elite troops destroyed your whole ragged battalion of drugged-up, murderous thugs. We are the Antidote … and we are coming.’
> ‘I … I…’ the prisoner gasped, his eyes fixed on the grisly mess of severed heads littering the floor in front of him.
‘Remove this monster from my sight and take him to the wilds to face his death at first light,’ the General muttered, his voice dripping with disgust as he stared with a pitiless gaze at the stunned prisoner.
Margaret kept her hand clamped tight over her mouth, panting through the gaps between her fingers as her heart hammered an icy rhythm of fear through her entire body. Down below her two burly young soldiers unchained the prisoner and then began hauling him off toward the doorway on the right.
‘We’ll give you a fighting chance, Reaper!’ the General shouted after the prisoner. ‘At dawn you’ll be armed with whatever sidearm you wish! You won’t have much of a hope, but at least it’s more sportsmanlike than a firing squad, and it’s far more than a sadistic butcher like you deserves! Sleep well in this very last sleep on this plane of existence … if you can!’ The General stared at the empty door for in silence for many moments after the prisoner had been removed. He clasped and unclasped his hands repeatedly, and it seemed that he was lost in a spiderweb daze of thoughts and memories. Eventually he turned to face the audience. ‘Justice has been served!’ he bellowed, punching a triumphant fist into the air.
His proclamation was met with a resounding cacophony of approval as the audience stood up and cheered with wild abandon.
The General nodded, pacing back and forth before them with slow, deliberate steps as he spoke.
‘Yes, thanks to your dedication, thanks to the inextinguishable fire burning in your hearts for a new world, we have rid this poisoned planet of yet another cancerous tumour! We are the Antidote, and piece by piece we will remove every trace of venom and disease from our Mother Gaia’s holy body!’ Again a roar of approval rocked the ancient walls of the keep, and the General paused and stood still for a few moments until the cheers subsided. ‘For too long now the Great Mother’s body has been raped and defiled, again and again. Her resources, that she has so generously provided for all organisms to which she has given life and the potential to thrive … for too long they have been plundered and abused! For too long have her waters and the air that makes all life possible, been fouled and destroyed by the actions of those who are selfish, greedy, short-sighted and arrogant! For too long … but NO LONGER!’
Yet another wave of triumphant roars battered the stones with enthusiastic vociferousness.
‘We are the Antidote! We have yet to lose a battle! We have taken control of territories formerly held by ruthless armies of murderers, thieves and rapists, and we have not only held these gains against counter-attack, we have expanded them and sent the monsters running with their tails between their legs, or buried them forever beneath the soil, where their poison can no longer be spread. We have won these victories, yes … but let us not rest on our laurels, no, for these victories are only the beginning of the greatest campaign the world will ever have seen, my friends … my companions … my family!’
Margaret staggered back from the peephole, her skin cold and clammy, and her extremities tingling with pins and needles as she reeled with a debilitating sense of dread and panic.
‘He’s even more of a maniac than I could ever have imagined,’ she gasped. ‘He’s insane, he’s a complete psychopath! I have to get out of this nightmare, I have to, I have to, I have to!’
With her heart thumping madly within her ribcage, forcing fear-quickened blood through every vein and artery in her body, she hurried back along the passage, praying that nobody had come to check on her. She did not want to end up chained to the floor in that hall with the General as her judge, jury and executioner.
After a time that felt a lot longer than it actually was, and a fearful journey through the pitch black involving many bumps, stumbles and near-falls, she finally caught sight of light, spilling out into the darkness from the door that opened into her room. Her heart was still fluttering with a frantic terror, but she breathed out a sigh of relief when she realised that she had almost made it back.
When she reached the light, she allowed her eyes ample time to readjust, and once she felt comfortable with its glow she stepped back into her room. Her limbs were still shaking and her mouth was dry. She was about to fall back onto her bed, exhausted from the traumatic journey and the washes of fear, when a spike of panic drove its steel through her core with the shock of an unexpected tack piercing a bare foot.
The door!
The door to the secret passage was not only still wide open, it was stuck open. Margaret scrambled over to the lever and started pulling and pushing on it with all her might, but it seemed that no amount of effort on her part would make it budge. A new and crippling fear snaked its way around her, encircling her body with the menacing fluidity of a python closing in for a kill.
She fell back, sweating the icy perspiration of unabated panic and gulping in short, sharp breaths in heaving gasps.
‘Shit, shit, shit, come on Margaret, think,’ she muttered, trying to force some sort of will through the suffocating reptile coils of terror, ‘come on, come on, there is a way to shut this thing, there must be, you just haven’t found it yet! It was closed when you found it, and unless the designer of this mechanism was a complete fool – which I’m sure he or she wasn’t – there has to be a way to close it again. Shit, come on, shit, shit!’
With quivering, almost-numb hands she groped and probed all around the basin; if this particular lever was only for opening the door, then there had to be another one for closing it. But where was it?
Then, through the swell of panic the answer came to her: it wasn’t here, it was inside the tunnel. It had to be. With this revelation screaming its desperate hope in her mind she scrambled up onto her feet and hurried over to the passage. She began pawing at the stones of the inside walls, and then after a minute or two of seeking she finally found it: the lever that would surely close the door. Holding her breath with suspense, she pulled down on it, and immediately the sound of a heavy mechanism at work started to rumble through the walls. She dashed out of the tunnel as the door started to close and watched with bated breath until the noise finally ceased and the stones realigned. After this she relaxed her tension-taut muscles and released a long, slow sigh, noting that the outline of the door had become all but indistinguishable from the wall that surrounded it.
‘Thank God,’ she muttered. ‘Thank God. Oh Ting, you almost lost me! I’m coming back to you though, I’m coming back. Mark my words Ting, I’m coming back.’
41
MARGARET
A knock on the door yanked Margaret through the wall of sleep and hurled her into the confusion of the present, and for a few panic-stricken moments she stared with bleary eyes at the unfamiliar walls that surrounded her.
‘Dr Green?’
The voice was muffled but familiar: Sergeant Tesla. This caused the scary confusion to subside somewhat, and Margaret breathed out a sigh of relief.
‘Are you awake yet, Dr Green? I’ve brought you some breakfast.’
‘Just a minute,’ she called out. ‘Gimme a sec to get outta bed, Tesla.’
Despite the constant worry and fear that dogged her every thought in this place, Margaret had somehow managed to get a decent night’s sleep, and once she had broken through the initial cobweb-tangled process of waking up, she felt relaxed and recharged, at least physically if not emotionally. As she climbed out of bed and started dressing, however, panic slashed its unexpected talons across her back.
The secret passage!
She hurried over to the section of the wall where the hidden door was located and scanned the stones to see if she had left any evidence of having opened it. Aside from some dust and a few chunks of grit on the floor, there were no obvious signs that the passage had been discovered, so with her bare feet she did as thorough a job as she could of kicking and sweeping the dirt into a corner where it wouldn’t be noticed. After this was done, she inhaled deeply, forcing he
rself to calm down, and then went over to the door.
‘You can come in now, Tesla.’
She heard the click of the door being unlocked from the outside – the sound instantly reminding her of the fact that she was a prisoner – and then Sergeant Tesla walked in, bearing a platter laden with exotic-looking fare. Margaret beamed as big a smile as she could manage at the youth.
‘Good morning Tesla. That looks yummy, thank you!’
‘Good morning Dr Gr—’
‘Just call me Margaret, dear,’ she interrupted. ‘Remember we’re friends now, and there’s no need for things to be so formal between friends, right?’
The boy smiled shyly and looked down at the floor, shifting uncomfortably on his feet as he did so.
‘Okay … Margaret.’
‘Are you gonna sit down and eat with me? There’s a lotta food on that there platter. I don’t think I can handle it all myself.’
‘I, I’m supposed to stand guard outside, Doc-, I mean, Margaret,’ he mumbled, keeping his eyes locked on the ground while fidgeting with his fingers.
‘Aw come on, don’t be such a stick in the mud,’ she teased. ‘I’m old enough to be your grandmother, yet you’re the one acting like an old coot.’
Sergeant Tesla cracked one of his rare smiles and looked up at her with boyish mischief twinkling in his dark eyes.
‘Okay,’ he acquiesced. ‘Okay, I’ll sit in here and eat with you. We must keep the door open though so that I can hear if anyone is coming. I, I could um, I could get in big trouble for this.’
Margaret beamed a warm smile at him, but she was smiling inwardly as well: she had a definite ally here, and she was doing her best to subtly win him over, a process that seemed to be moving along at a good clip at the moment.
‘There are two chairs at my desk,’ she said. ‘I’m sure that The General put ‘em there for some reason, don’t you think? If he wanted me to eat alone all the time, there’d just be one chair, wouldn’t there?’
