by G F Cusack
On second thoughts, perhaps it was too early to share this information with anyone at all.
10
The warriors arrive at the pits
15 August 2202
The convoy had been on the road for three days and the prisoners had been bound for the whole journey. They had been fed a small amount from gel packs, but they hadn’t been allowed toilet breaks so most of them were covered in excrement and urine.
Karla had seen this all before, having run the pits for some time. She instructed her lieutenants to hose them down.
The lieutenants cut the prisoners’ clothes off and quickly set to work with high-pressure hoses. Karla thought that it was good to see people happy in their work and her trainers did seem to take pleasure in degrading the new recruits.
It was hard to tell what kind of warriors these rookies would be. Height was not always a sign of prowess. The fact that they had received little food on the journey and it was unknown when they last trained could also disguise any potential within them.
After the prisoners had been stripped and hosed down, they were forced to stand naked in a line.
Karla walked in front of them, stopping at each one and casting her eye over the new meat.
Karla was feared and respected among the warriors in the pits. She kept the new recruits’ hands tied behind their backs until she knew that they had learnt to respect her.
She began her usual welcome speech. “Listen up, you have been spared the gel plants, although that might only be temporarily. Here at the pits, you have one choice: fight or die! If you fight well and don't die, you may end up with your freedom. So despite your previous crimes, however bad or minor you may think they were, this is your life from now on.”
Although Karla was a woman of large stature, most of the warriors were taller than her. “Make no mistake that your lives, for now, are in my hands. It is my decision when you eat, it is my decision when you sleep and it may be my decision when you die. If you put on a good show, you may be rewarded; if you choose not to fight, you will die quickly; if you choose to try to escape, you will die painfully. Am I making myself clear?”
Karla eyed the largest of the prisoners. Even if size wasn’t a measure of a man’s ferocity, usually if you singled out the largest prisoner, it made the others pay attention.
She motioned to Miyamoto, her personal bodyguard. Casually strolling over to the largest prisoner, Miyamoto kicked him squarely between the legs. The prisoner collapsed in a heap. Miyamoto followed up by spinning around and kicking the prisoner in the head, knocking him out cold.
“Have I got your attention now?” Karla said. “I will not tolerate disobedience. Do you understand that?”
She noticed that one of the prisoners was smiling. He was smaller than some of the others, but her strong judgement of character told her there was something about him. Although she was never told what crimes the prisoners had committed, this one seemed dangerous. Perhaps he would be a good warrior or even a dirty fighter but first he had to be controlled.
Karla again looked to Miyamoto. Raising her eyebrow, she motioned to the smiling prisoner. Miyamoto needed no further instructions. Receiving a sharp kick to the back of his knee, the prisoner quickly fell to the floor. Miyamoto inflicted several more punches to his head and torso while he was going down.
The next target was the scrawniest prisoner among them. Miyamoto walked down the line of men and unleashed a barrage of kicks and punches, breaking the wretch’s nose and busting both his lips. After ensuring he had left plenty of visible bruises, he resumed his place by Karla’s side.
This demonstration was usually an effective way of instilling in the prisoners that she held all of the power in her hands. Singling out both the largest and the smallest warriors tended to make all of them consider their situation. They would realise that not only did the larger warriors have no power, the smaller ones could not act like grey men and blend into the fringes of the group. The third warrior was usually picked at random and it just so happened that today the smiling warrior had been singled out because Karla felt he would need it in the future anyway.
“I don’t want you to get the wrong impression,” Karla said. “If you do as I ask, if you fight and you put on a good show and you survive, you will be treated well. The food that you receive will be more than you got in your past life. But make no mistake, your survival relies on you doing what I tell you. The sooner you realise that, the easier your life will be – however long it may last.”
With that, she signalled for her guards, who were also her fighting instructors, to take these raw recruits away and start their training.
11
The attack on Pepper and Flo
18 August 2202
Having decided where to camp, Pepper had set a small fire but it needed more fuel if it was going to keep them warm through the night. Although they had the blankets and warm jackets from the cabin, the damp fog that they’d been walking through all day had sunk into their bones.
The light of a fire would make them stand out in the dark, perhaps attracting unwanted visitors. Pepper decided that the benefits of the fire outweighed any risks. Added to that, they were deep in the woods. The trees weren’t particularly thick here but they would provide some cover for the fire from anyone looking from a distance.
“I’ve put some food in the pots. Just keep an eye on that and make sure it doesn’t boil over,” he told Flo. “Remember, this is gonna be hot so if the water starts to boil over, use your gloves and lift off the pot with a big stick.”
Although she seemed to be a young adult (he hadn’t asked her age), she seemed fragile. Not wanting to waste food, he was treating her more like a child than he would normally when giving someone instructions for cooking. “Do you understand?”
Flo nodded. “I have cooked before, you know.”
Her response was a little reassuring to Pepper. Not so much the information that she could cook but that this was the first time she had spoken more than a couple of words to him. Apparently cooking was important to her.
“I’ll be back in about five or ten minutes. I might leave your line of sight but I will not be far away. If anything happens, if anything or anyone comes towards the fire, scream my name as loud as you can and I’ll come running. Do you understand?”
“If anyone comes, I’m to scream, ‘Pepper’ as loud as I can.”
Pepper had to venture further away from the clearing than he would have liked but all the wood in the open was slightly damp. If they were going to have a fire that would last through the night, he needed to find wood that had been sheltered under a thicker canopy of trees.
Finding some older, drier branches, Pepper started to stack them in his arms for the walk back to the clearing. He still had a bad feeling, a tingling in his senses, like they had been observed as they had travelled through the fog today. He had just started walking back to the clearing when he heard her screams.
“Pepper, Pepper – help”
Dropping the wood, he sprinted towards the clearing, at the same time drawing his pistol from his waistband. Entering the clearing, he could see three figures by the firelight. They were dishevelled, wearing almost nothing more than rags. Hair and skin were covered in dirt but he could just make them out to be two males and a female.
The larger of the males had a knife in his hand and was approaching Flo, while the other two were rifling through the packs. Wasting no time, Pepper took aim at the man with the knife and fired two shots into his head.
He was just taking aim at the second man when he saw movement to his right. He sensed rather saw a man charging towards him. More by instinct than by anything else, Pepper side-stepped and avoided the full impact of the man. All the same, he was caught with a glancing blow, and they both crashed to the ground in a heap.
Pepper managed to keep hold of the pistol but his assailant’s flailing arms engulfed him and made it difficult to aim the barrel for an accurate shot.
In the
distance he caught an occasional glimpse of the other two who, no longer rifling through the bags, were looking at him and Flo. The woman headed towards him, while her male companion went for Flo.
He could see that Flo still had her knife in her waistband. He had told her to keep it handy but she was again frozen with fear. If they survived this confrontation, Pepper vowed that he would teach her some survival skills.
His first priority was the fight at hand. Although the man he had been struggling with was smaller than Pepper, he was like a wild animal, clawing at his face while perched on top of him. Pepper growled loudly in the hope that the extra adrenalin would give him some added strength. It seemed to work as he pivoted to his left and managed to dislodge the man.
Before he could take a shot, the approaching woman pounced onto his arm holding the gun.
Even though Pepper was a big man, he wanted the struggle to be over as fast as possible. He had been in many fights over the years and he knew that anyone could score a lucky hit, no matter their size. He had the scars to back up this theory and even though he currently had a pistol, that advantage could soon change.
He didn’t know what part of his assailants the gun was aimed at but, as he could feel the muzzle was against someone’s flesh, he figured his only option was to fire. With two rapid shots, the bullets ripped through the thigh of the man. Although this stopped his struggling, it seemed to embolden the woman, who started scraping and scratching, hitting him with her head and using anything she could as a weapon.
The man was still alive but was screaming in pain, clearly no longer part of the fight. Pepper took this opportunity to drive his advantage against the woman. Manoeuvring her frame, he hurled her to the ground. As soon as his gun was clear, he fired two rounds into her head and another into the squirming man on the ground.
With three assailants down, he hoped that he could quickly deal with the last one. Looking around cautiously to check no others were ready to pounce, he levelled his gun in the direction of the man next to Flo.
Although the last man was shorter than Pepper, he was larger than Flo and had a knife held against her throat. When he opened his mouth to speak, he exposed a few broken yellow teeth framed by his grimy face.
“I kill her, I kill her,” he grunted.
With some memory of how to speak, it seemed that he wasn’t totally feral yet.
“Drop your weapon,” the man continued.
Pepper quickly ran through the scenarios in his head. This was not the first time he had been in this type of situation. What was unusual was that the person in danger was someone he cared for. At the moment, he had the advantage: he had a gun trained on someone armed with a knife. If he put down the gun, there was every chance that the man would kill Flo anyway and Pepper would have lost his advantage.
“Give me the gun,” the man said.
Pepper made his decision. Feigning to lower the pistol, he kept a tight grip on its butt. As the man temporarily lowered his guard and seemed to loosen his grip on the knife, Pepper swiftly raised his hand and fired two shots into the man’s head.
He had been worried that he might hit Flo, but the only option was to think and act fast. The longer situations like this dragged on, the greater the threat became.
Flo had a lot of blood on her face but it all belonged to the dead man. His head had exploded as soon as the rounds impacted. His hand still had a deadlock on the knife but it was no longer held against Flo’s throat.
As Pepper got closer, he saw that she was still sat rigid and the dead body was slumped over her. Pepper manoeuvred him away and wrapped his arms around her.
“Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
She slowly seemed to come round and the colour returned to her face. “I was so scared. But I think I’m okay.”
After checking the attackers’ pockets for anything useful, Pepper dragged the bodies into one pile. The pockets had been empty as he had suspected. All the same, he was determined that the attackers could still provide some benefit.
Conscious that he couldn’t leave Flo again to collect enough dry firewood, he realised too that she might see his next actions as barbaric. Giving all of the blankets to Flo, he waited until she drifted off to sleep before he began the process of dismembering and burning the bodies.
The sickening smell of burning flesh was not pleasant but the fuel kept the fire burning as he remained on an alert vigil through the night.
12
The attack through Zap’s eyes
18 August 2202
Zap had finished work for the night and was back in his apartment. Having prepared a pot of food for dinner, he was just placing it on the stove top.
Suddenly he felt an overwhelming rush of fear that froze him to the spot. In his head, blaring like a klaxon, all he could hear were the words “Pepper, Pepper – help!”
It was fortunate that he hadn’t started to heat up the pot yet, as he was unable to move and couldn’t put it down. His eyes closed involuntarily and it seemed as though he was somewhere else.
In his head, Zap found himself in a clearing in the woods and it was getting dark. A fire was burning and he wasn’t alone – he could make out three other figures in the clearing. He knew he was in danger, he knew these people meant to do him harm but he couldn’t move. His helplessness was fuelled by the fear that these three people were going to hurt or kill him.
Two of them seemed more interested in a pile of clothes and other items. But the biggest figure was staring straight at him. The man was ragged and dirtier than any man he had ever seen before. He had dirt in his hair and his face looked thick with mud. What clothes he had on were more like rags. He had gnarly fingers with long, black fingernails. He wasn’t a large-framed man but he seemed taller than the other people in Zap’s vision.
The tall man had a knife in his hand and he was getting closer. As he approached, the feelings of dread and fear grew. Suddenly, out of the woods, a large dark-skinned man appeared, bounding into the open. Even from a distance, this man seemed cleaner than the other three. For some reason, the sight of him made Zap feel more comfortable. He seemed familiar but Zap hadn’t had a chance to see him fully yet.
This new arrival had a gun in his hand and, within seconds of his appearance, he’d fired two bullets into the man with the knife. Although it wasn’t totally dark, the shadows from the fire obscured Zap’s view. His vision was also limited because his head was frozen in place. This made it difficult to work out all that was happening around him.
The man with the gun was looking round frantically. His gun was still outstretched and it came to rest in the direction of the two people who were rifling through the contents of the backpacks.
Before he had a chance to fire another round, another figure rushed out of the woods and tackled him. This latest arrival looked dishevelled and more like the first three people Zap had sensed, dirty and in rags.
At the last minute, the man with the gun seemed to sense that he was under attack. Although he didn't move fast enough to fully avoid the charge, he pivoted at the minute of impact. With this last-minute move, he avoided the full brunt of his assailant’s attack.
The two people rifling through the bags, a man and a woman apparently, suddenly stopped what they were doing and glanced between him and the two men. As the woman headed to join the fight, Zap could feel the last man staring into his eyes. The man drew a ragged knife and headed towards him.
It was all happening so fast. He heard two large bangs in the direction of the two fighting men. The smaller man rolled off the man with the gun and, even at this distance, it was obvious he was covered in blood. Just as quickly as this scuffle ended, the woman saw an opening and pounced on the victor.
Zap was suddenly distracted as the final man approached with his knife. He could feel the blood in his veins pounding. He wanted to get up and run but all he could do was sit there frozen, watching this horrible beast approaching with his knife.
Zap’s sole focus was now on th
is man. He knew a struggle was still going on at the other side of the fire but that was not his concern. He needed to do something, he needed to get away from this man who clearly intended him harm. He wanted to stand up and run; he willed his legs to move but nothing was happening.
The man seemed momentarily startled at the sound of another two bangs. Zap was becoming more orientated to his surroundings and he was pretty sure it was gunfire.
Although hearing the shots had slowed him down at first, the man now increased his pace. By the time a third shot rang out, Zap’s assailant had arrived.
Zap could feel an arm around his throat and the knife blade flashed in the firelight. Even though the attacker was not giving Zap his full attention, it felt hard to breathe.
He was terrified; the threat that he had perceived was now here and he could feel his breath labouring as the man’s arm cut off his oxygen supply. The knife was above this arm, which seemed to be the only thing stopping his throat being cut.
At any time, he expected the man to slit his throat but for some reason the man had slowed his assault.
He heard the man speak but it didn’t seem like the man was speaking to him.
“I kill her, I kill her. Drop your weapon.”
Across the fire, Zap could make out only one figure left standing and this figure was pointing a gun in their direction. He hoped that the weapon was aimed at his assailant but his eyes were bleary from the lack of oxygen.
“Give me the gun,” the man next to him growled in a voice that hardly seemed human.
The other man looked to be lowering his gun, filling Zap with a sense of dread. This man seemed to be the only one keeping him alive and, if he gave up his gun, it could be the end for Zap. The pressure around his throat seemed to relax slightly and he could actually breathe a little. But he was now worried that the arm was being moved to give the knife better access to his neck. Either way, the outlook did not seem good.
