Man Hunt

by K. Edwin Fritz

  But I wouldn't have appreciated it myself a few days ago, she reminded herself.

  She left the room without speaking and got an apple, consciously choosing the biggest one from Rhonda's meager selection. She returned to the room, unstrapped one of his hands and his head, and handed it to him gently. He made to bite it, but stopped short and looked at it suspiciously.

  "Go on," she said in her regular voice. "There's nothing wrong with it. You've earned it. I keep my promises." The man looked somewhat reassured, but was still hesitant. "Shall I take a bite to prove it to you?"

  "No!" He pulled it to his chest and quickly began eating, eyeing Josie while he did so. She watched him, happily, while he ate the entire apple… core, seeds, even the little stem. While he licked his fingers, Josie realized it was the first time in days, maybe weeks, that she'd felt truly happy.

  And for a rapist, she marveled. Does that make me weak? She watched him some more, knowing in two or three days he'd be swearing at Josie or one of the other trainers and professing that his 'confession' had been faked. But here and now they both knew the truth. No, she thought. In a place like this, my compassion makes me strong.

  She found another trainer to help her escort him back to box #18– unbroken men were always escorted with two trainers. Kneeling under the open door, he signed his confession without incident. He used his new name, 'Fale'.

  Josie spent the rest of her time that day filling out the various pages of minutia Rhonda insisted upon every breaking of a man. It took hours and it was pleasant work after the day she'd had. By the time she was done and was chatting happily with Steph, Rachael, Rebecca and the others about issues unrelated to training, she was feeling decidedly less anxious about the meeting she was about to have with Gertrude. In fact, she no longer felt worried at all. She would take Gertrude's punishment, whatever horror it may be, and pay it. In another month this would all be past them and she'd be that much closer to going home a free woman.

  But what Josie didn't anticipate, however, was just how bad of a day Gertrude was having.

  CHAPTER 10

  WORLD OF BLUE

  1

  I'm in serious trouble, Obe thought. Beside him, Rein was silent as they continued lying on the cracked asphalt of the grocery alley. Obe was fine with that. He didn't much feel like talking. Instead, he carefully sat up and surveyed his injuries.

  His broken nose throbbed, sounding like a repeated washing within his brain with each beat of his heart. His cheek burned with road rash. His shoulders and upper back were beaten and bruised, already working to become a gnarled mass of roots and boulders. There was now a fierce, pounding headache as well, and he could smell the faint odor of dried shit that coated his back even as his tongue could still taste the tang of someone else's blood. But worst of all, his most precious commodity, his feet, had been shredded.

  And what did he have to show for it all? Nothing. The next grocery day wouldn't come until Wednesday. He would spend the next three days without food.

  He remembered that Doov had said this "family" of theirs was good about helping guys who had missed out, so maybe he could borrow some food. But Doov had also said not to load up on favors too early.

  He reached down and carefully rubbed an itch on the sole of his left foot and winced. Thank God for my new sneakers, he thought. I'll need them now. His hand moved to his stomach to press their bulk, to feel the security of their existence. His mind was daring to consider what selling the sneakers might fetch him in terms of food– he was imagining four or five full bags– when his hand pressed upon his jumpsuit and felt the hollow space underneath.

  Obe scrambled at the zipper, suddenly fully awake. A long moment of panic forced his lips to begin their silent litany when, just as suddenly, he found them. They had only slid to his side in the final wrestling match.

  Without food, the tangibility of the sneakers was an instant source of peace. He gripped them, counted them, rubbed his fingers on the short fuzz that hadn't yet been chafed from their surface. In a moment of impulse he lifted the opening of one to his damaged nose and inhaled, hoping to smell their newness. He was pleasantly surprised to find that the beautiful faint odor was still there even through the sweat that the OTTER had left behind.

  "Wanna trade?" Rein asked. Obe looked over and saw him smiling broadly and holding up a dark blue sneaker so old and used it was more holes than shoe. The sole, the only part that truly mattered, was hanging loosely on the entire front half.

  Obe faked a laugh. "No thanks," he said. Rein had been squeezing his left hand repeatedly but suddenly stopped. A small spot of darkness high on the forearm was glistening with moisture. Bleeding from under your sleeve, Rein? Obe could already see the missing chunk his teeth had made at that same location on the arm that had reached inside his jumpsuit.

  "Of course not," Rein said. He was still smiling, but the tone of his voice was as much a fake as Obe's laugh had been.

  Rule Number Three my ass, Obe thought. I'm going to remem–

  "Hey, Sherry! Look at what we've got here!" The two men looked up. Three faces were poked out over the edge of the roof. All were smiling wickedly.

  "Well, well, well," the one presumably named Sherry shouted back. "Isn't that interesting. The two douches who fought the hardest lost out. How tragic. How utterly fucking pathetic. LOSERS!"

  "LOSERS!" the third woman echoed. Obe wished instantly he had the courage to raise his middle finger at them. But he didn't. Couldn't.

  "Hey, Sherry!" the first woman yelled again.

  "Yes, Lucy?"

  "What do you say we give these poor souls a break?"

  "Why, whatever do you mean?" All three women were giggling now. One cackled like a hyena, and Obe recognized her as the whip-wielder from the black car. She'd probably been the one who threw the shit balloon at him too. He nearly walked away then and there, not wanting to test the supposed safety zone of Grocery Day, when they said something that made him pause.

  "Well, I just so happen to have one more bag of food here!"

  "You don't say!"

  "Yes, indeed I do! And I was just thinking we could give it to them!" Obe's heart beat faster in spite of what his head told him. It's a trick, he thought. They're using the words you want to hear in order to trick you. Kill you.

  "Don't fall for it," Rein whispered. "It's a trick."

  "I know," Obe whispered back.

  "Oh, Lucy. You are such a dear," Sherry went on. "How ever did you turn out to be such an angel?"

  So obvious, Obe thought. Do they really expect us to believe–

  "Just luck, I guess! Here you go boys!" And without further warning a bag of food catapulted over the edge of the roof. Obe was instantly running toward it, his logic forgotten and his screaming feet be damned. Somewhere in the depths of his mind he heard one of his many torturers from the fortress telling him that women were good, women were kind, women were giving and loving and would always provide the men in the field exactly what they needed.

  He was just arriving underneath the falling prize, and then the bag jerked in mid-air and swung there, a full ten feet above him. The three women howled with laughter.

  "Sorry chump!" the hyena-woman shrieked. "We're all out of line!"

  "Yeah, see if you can jump for it, pig!"

  Obe tried to hide his anger and heartbreak, but he knew they had beaten him again. To them it was something to pass the time, a horribly mean game. To him it was pure devastation and confirmation that he was still weak enough to fall for their deceit.

  His mouth began to flutter the comforting litany once more, and in that instant he hated them with more passion than ever.

  He may have screamed at them, then. May, even, have foregone his earlier fear and cursed at them. Unfortunately it was then that Rein, smoothly coming at him from behind, used his double-fisted hands to slam Obe in the back of the head, and his world went instantly black.

  2

  For the second time that morning, Obe woke from a
n unconsciousness that didn't involve sleep. The headache that greeted him, however, was immense.

  His brain didn't just throb inside his skull, it clanged like a jackhammer. Though the rundown city was always filled with more silence than people, even the soft wind whistling through the tops of the buildings sounded like screeching banshees. He groaned aloud, which only worsened the pain.

  His sneakers, of course, were gone. He knew this even before checking. Yet when his hands slowly found the soft flesh under his opened zipper and then the emptiness that surrounded it, his heart broke nevertheless.

  Fuck Rule Three, he managed to think. There was more in his head, much of it involving Rein, but he simply didn't have the energy. He felt like the time in college when he'd pulled an all-nighter studying for an exam. He'd managed to push through breakfast and the exam itself, then had gotten a mere hour's sleep before being woken by his roommate. The lethargy was so intense he could barely move. His body clearly needed real rest.

  And yet Obe smiled.

  Where did that come from? he wondered. The women had allowed his memories from the months before the island to remain mostly intact, however this was a new memory. Something he hadn't thought of at all while they had tortured and 'trained' him. Was he beginning to get his memory back? He tried to remember his name, his brother's face, the color of his father's eyes. There were only more sharp daggers in his brain, and he gave up the effort immediately.

  Above him the sky was a dull gray. The bright blue of earlier was gone, and he realized the wind was no longer a lazy, occasional draft but a consistent breeze. There's a storm coming, he thought.

  Once again he felt the strange dichotomy of hatred and appreciation for the change in himself that the women had brought. Back home, his only knowledge of the weather had come in what he would passingly watch on the news. But these days he could feel an oncoming change hours in advance. He marveled how his foreknowledge of this basic element of nature had grown so quickly. Even the air was a clear indicator to him. It was cooler than it should have been. Far too cool for a summer afternoon.

  Are you sure it isn't just the early onset of fall, 'Mr. C.'? his evil side countered.

  There were no clouds visible, of course. Only a light gray fade which darkened as he looked west. The storms always came in from the west, almost as if Asia were in collaboration with the women and eagerly claimed itself the harbinger of more suffering. To the east, the American mainland, was light and warmth and home.

  A revving engine echoed quietly through the streets, and Obe

  like probe!

  knew that the prescribed hour of safety after grocery day had passed. Wincing at his mangled feet and slamming brain, he slowly stood and walked out of the alley. The worst place to be discovered by the women was with your back to a wall.

  3

  Obe decided to leave the city and explore the fringes of the island in hopes of finding the freshwater stream, however every step was pain. He quickly began walking on the outsides of his feet where the flesh was still whole, but in minutes a cramp began to set in. He settled instead for a kind of waddle that spread his weight across both areas.

  Before he reached the end of the second block, he was forced to spend ten tense minutes digging another stone from the depths of his left instep. With the pain lessened he managed to concentrate on his surroundings more than his injured feet.

  When he reached the periphery of the city, he paused to survey the landscape. Similar to green sector, overgrown dirt roads still wound here and there through the various glens and hillsides. Each, he knew, would end in empty lots where once had been someone's vacation house or another rental shop. The women, of course, had demolished these long ago.

  As he searched, he saw several men and twice one of the cars. Each time he hid behind bushes and they all passed by unknowingly. He stuck mostly within sight of the city streets, not yet ready to venture into the complete unknown of the blue sector's expanding wilderness. The women had been very specific about their rules. Men discovered in the city streets would often be hunted, but men discovered in the wilds beyond would always be hunted.

  Around one particular bend in a very long, thin path he came to a small clearing and stopped, smiling. At the top of a small rise soared an old metal water tower.

  Water! his mind insisted, though he knew better than to believe to have found any. Rust had claimed so much of the sides of the tower that the original baby blue color was nearly invisible. The attached ladder that wound its way to the top, however, was still there and looked strong.

  "Did they forget about this?" he wondered aloud as he began to ascend the brown, flaking stairs. Of course not, his mind told him. They left it here on purpose to toy with you. There won't be any water in it.

  At the top was a space where a hatch had once been. It was gone now, and Obe could see right to the bottom where a foot-wide gash had clearly been cut in the metal. Can't let any rainwater collect either, can you? he thought. Inside were only shadows and leaves and probably the remnants of so many more shattered hopes.

  "I'm dead," he mumbled, thinking of what three days without water might feel like.

  Behind him, a distant voice suddenly cut through the growing noise of the wind. Across the small valley he saw the black car idling on the last paved road of the city. Two of the women were standing outside it, talking, while the other sat behind the wheel. One woman held what looked like a wooden baseball bat in her left hand. The other carried a shotgun.

  "Your name is Lucy," Obe said softly toward the one with the bat. He recognized her from both the alley rooftop and his spectacular introduction to the Family of Blue.

  He was too far away to distinguish their words, which was comforting, and his vantage point atop the water tower helped ease his mind a little further. Even if they saw him up there, he was technically within sight of the city and wasn't breaking their rule. And even if they decided to hunt him anyway, he was perhaps a quarter mile away and up a long, winding hill. He was practically as safe as a soaring bird.

  Lucy was clearly directing the others. After a minute of more conversation, she walked into the alley the car had parked in front of. The shotgun girl stayed put, hoisting her gun at the ready.

  Lucy approached the depths of the alley but stopped within Obe's view at the long shadow of a dumpster. She shouted, waited. Shouted again and waited some more. Then she reared back with the bat and slammed the side of the dumpster. The bang echoed quickly across the valley and up the hills to Obe's ears. Shotgun-girl laughed and shouted– Obe thought he heard the single word 'pig' as the wind momentarily dropped. Lucy reached back and slammed the bat home again.

  Just as she was ready to reach back a third time a man in blue suddenly vaulted from the open cavity of the dumpster. Lucy swung and hit him with her bat, landing a solid blow on his shoulder. Obe winced at the pain it must have caused. The man was knocked to the ground but never stopped moving. In seconds he had scrambled away and was outrunning Lucy's feeble attempts to catch up. The two women raced to the waiting car and jumped into it. Even before they had settled in, the tires began to spin and smoke. The screech sliced across the entire island, winding down only as the tires gained traction and took off after the fleeing man.

  In moments, Obe was left alone on the abandoned water tower. The squeals, however, continued for several minutes before suddenly ceasing.

  Alive or dead? Obe wondered. He hadn't recognized the man from that distance, but had no doubt he had been in the alley earlier that day. In all likelihood Obe had even told him his story of finding the sneakers.

  He climbed down from his perch, intent to expand his search for the stream. To that end he also added the hopes of finding Leb, the one man who had stood up for him when that jerk Jain had challenged him. He doubted there were many others who would have done so.

  He skirted the city's edge, still not confident enough to entirely leave its sights. He came across rock outcrops and thickets of thorned bushes and
many small hills and valleys. But nowhere did he see any signs of a stream. The only men he saw kept their distance, and he proceeded across the unknown world of the blue sector on his own.

  When he noticed the sky had turned a gray so dark it was bordering on black, another familiar sound came billowing across the island's empty expanses. This noise from a manmade

  womanmade!

  machine had taunted him every few days and sometimes at night. It was an unmistakable clatter, a rapid and reverberating thwapping that could never be mistaken for anything but what it was: the rotors of a helicopter.

  He turned and looked for the thing, wishing for the thousandth time to be on it rather than below it. But the coming storm had removed so much sunlight from the waning day and he could only hear its progression across the sky.

  A minute later it suddenly appeared out of the gloom, and its distant, gentle thwapping grew rapidly into a pounding chaos of beating drums. It flew directly over him, the air first stirring then attacking him from above. All Obe could do was look up into the metal belly and wish again for more fleeting salvation. He knew that in another day or maybe three the helicopter would return. And inside it would be more men, unknowingly mere hours away from beginning the torture he had already endured.

  He cursed the helicopter and the women inside, hoping to see it spin and fall into a fiery crash. But it only sailed on, unheeded by his paltry vehemence. Just as quickly it, too, was gone from sight.

  As the wake of its clamor moved toward the lighter skies to the east, Obe thought he heard something else from behind him. A scream of some kind. He turned and looked, but there was nothing. No people. No sounds but the accumulating wind. He was sure he had heard something, but of course now the emptiness only mocked him.