by Steve Liszka
The man took a step backwards, shocked by Taylor’s counterattack. He shot his superior an apologetic smile,
“Sorry sir, I didn’t mean to offend you. It’s just that Captain Mason usually sends a grunt to collect his packages. We don’t normally get people of your rank doing this type of work.”
“That’s fine,” Taylor answered, now wearing a friendly smile, “it’s good to see you being so vigilant.”
He looked around as if to make sure no one else could listen to what he was about to say, then beckoned the trooper closer with a nod of his head.
“To tell you the truth,” he was now nearly whispering, “this package is of a highly sensitive nature. That’s why I’ve been given the job of collecting it.”
The guard, whose head was now almost sharing the car with Taylor, gave him an understanding nod.
“I think its best all round if we keep this quiet, we wouldn’t want Captain Mason getting upset now would we?”
The trooper shook his head.
“Good, now if you don’t mind getting the gate open, I’m in a bit of a hurry.”
Driving in the Old-Town, especially at night, was an art unto itself. If you went too slow you ran the risk of being hijacked by ferals, too fast and you could get a flat from hitting one of the numerous potholes on the road. Changing a tyre out there was not an option any sane person wanted to contemplate. Even worse, no matter how fast you were driving, you were susceptible to hitting one of the improvised landmines that SecForce hadn’t yet defused. In a Rhino, you stood half a chance, but in a car like the one he was in charge of, you were basically meat.
Taylor’s gamble had paid off. He’d always suspected Mason of being less than the wholesome family man he’d always presented himself as. From what the trooper said, it sounded to him like he had been a regular buyer for some time. Perhaps, he thought, the moustache was secretly meant to be camp after all.
Getting hold of a vehicle had proved a bigger headache. Very few people owned their own cars anymore; there was simply no need. The City was only thirty miles in diameter and between the underground system and the monorail, every inch of it was covered. ClearSkies had built one of the most advanced, if not expensive, transport systems ever known to man. Not that it would have mattered if everyone wanted their own private methods of transport; there was more than enough oil to go around.
A side effect of Triage was that it had rid the world of the energy crisis that had at one time looked to send the human race back to the dark ages. With such a minority of people being able to afford them, the lucky few could consume as many fossil fuels as they wished, with no chance of them ever running out. It was a good thing too, as the possibility of nuclear power had been completely outlawed since the meltdowns at a number of power stations in both Britain and America. The incidents had cost many lives and were considered to be the work of Chinese saboteurs.
The only vehicle available to him was one of the patrol cars, or pussy wagons as most of the troopers referred to them, that were used by the City’s security teams to watch over its peaceful and law abiding citizens. He had thrown a guy he knew a few hundred bucks for the loan of his car.
“Off for a bit of fun are we?” his colleague had said giving Taylor a knowing wink, “I didn’t know that was your thing.”
“I get it where I can,” he’d replied as the keys were handed over.
Although officially referred to as the Deregulated Zone, the area where Taylor was now heading had only one name, and that was the Strip. Even though there were still areas of vice in the City where a blind eye was turned to prostitution, some people had outgrown its meagre attractions. That was probably the reason Taylor hated the place so much. The factors that had led to the rapid decline of his lucrative sporting career were forever interwoven with the creation of the Strip.
One of the biggest effects of the uprising was that it left people de-sensitised to the violence they witnessed all around them. Even in the City, with the perimeter fence hiding them away from the bloodshed, people grew accustomed to the scenes of explosions, killings and horrific injuries that flooded their televisions every day. After the one-sided civil war was laid to rest, they were no longer content with the things that once entertained them. The public wanted a more blood-thirsty spectacle than the cage fights could offer. Just as they had previously overtaken boxing, the cage fights were about to be replaced with an even more brutal contest.
Sensing the mood, one of the biggest promoters from the sport approached ClearSkies with a bold, new idea. The prisons were still overpopulated with men too dangerous and difficult to be made to work in the production centres. If the prison fights were made legal then these same men could end up being some of the corporation’s biggest earners. They didn’t even need to pay them, just dangle the promise of freedom to the person who could win ten fights.
Someone at the top had loved the idea and within days, the government had passed a new law allowing the fights to take place. The rest as they say, is history, with the whole of the cage-fighting industry collapsing virtually overnight. It had been devastating for Taylor and the other young fighters at the Dragon’s Lair. Most of them had been on the verge of signing multi-million dollar contracts that would have taken them to America and a lifetime of fame and fortune. Their one-way ticket to stardom was suddenly no longer valid.
If people had become more bloodthirsty as a result of the Uprising, so too had their vices become more sophisticated. The place where any of these desires could now be fulfilled, no matter how depraved, was the Strip. Money may not have had any worth in the Old-Town anymore but a few smart men (it was never the women who profited), realised that if they could offer a service to the rulers of the City, they could gain something far more important. In exchange for food, generators, fuel and other essentials such as alcohol, cigarettes and drugs, the noblemen of Hope City could buy anything they wished for. Man, woman, boy, girl, animal; it was all available for the right price.
It wasn’t just the promise of sex that lured the powerful to the Strip. Drunk on the bloodshed they had seen on their screens, some went there to carry out their own private atrocities. Watching it on TV was no longer enough, these people wanted to know what it felt like to kill for themselves, and if the money was right, the appropriate victim could always be found. For the ones who didn’t want to get their own hands dirty, recordings of the events, whether sexual or something more sinister, could be sent back to the City for them to view in the comfort of their homes.
Taylor slowed down as the headlights bounced off a pair of yellow eyes that stopped directly in his path. The fox stood its ground, unwilling to move for the oncoming vehicle. The animal clearly didn’t mind being the underdog in this fight. Determined not to stop and risk being car-jacked, Taylor kept the vehicle pointing straight at the brave challenger. With feet to spare, the animal bolted out of his way, scrambling onto higher ground from where it watched the intruder continue on its journey.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he asked out loud as the car picked up speed again. It was a question he had been repeating since the postcard had been thrust upon him earlier that day. If he suspected it was a meaningful lead, why hadn’t he just reported it and gone through official channels to obtain a vehicle? He knew Mason would have given him any assistance he desired if it meant his name was associated with the capture of the Shepherd.
Perhaps it was his meeting with Ben that had led to him resorting to such underhand methods. It was rare that they saw each other anymore, but whenever they did, their encounters would leave Taylor feeling dirty, like he wanted nothing more than to rip off his uniform and wash away his own nagging conscience. Seeing Ben had the ability to take any small comforts he had gained from his life and instantly destroy them.
“Fuck him,” Taylor said aloud again, “self-righteous asshole.”
His outburst made him feel better temporarily but the question still remained. Why should he give a fuck who the Shepherd was? H
opefully he’d be out of the security forces soon and he certainly wasn’t looking for promotion before then. Whether he found the City’s common enemy or not, the wall would be complete in a matter of weeks. As far as he could see, it was already game over.
The vehicle went over a pot-hole and the front of the car bounced off the ground, illuminating the mountains that lay beyond the Old-Town. Taylor had always wandered what was out there, beyond the tiny part of the country that he had been exposed to. When he was flown to Canada he’d hoped to get an opportunity to look down at the land below, but they were transported on a military plane that had no windows for its passengers to peer out of. He had seen more of North America than he had his own country.
A thought went though his mind that perhaps this was the time. Maybe he should drive straight past the production centres and on to who knows where? Perhaps he could find himself an old deserted cottage and have a simple life living off the land, far away from the worries of the City. He doubted it very much, if the Old-Town was a bad place to live, then from what he had heard, outside of its borders was much, much worse.
What had once been known as the countryside no longer existed to any meaningful degree. The landscape had been divided sharply since Triage. Vast tracts of land were now used for growing agricultural crops, the likes of which had not been seen in Britain, a country used to relying on exported goods, for over fifty years. Unlike before, these crops were now genetically modified and grown together in vast, almost endless fields. They were aided in their growth by pesticides so powerful that all natural flora and fauna was destroyed in their wake. Only the crops artificially designed to resist this bombardment of chemicals could survive, bringing an end to many of the fragile ecosystems that had survived for millennia. The environmentalists had referred to the phenomenon as ‘green concrete’.
The areas not used for agriculture; what most people referred to as the forbidden territories, were fall-out zones from the nuclear plant accidents and still radioactive. Only the most desperate could be found here. Gangs of thieves, murderers and rapists known as Outlanders stalked the scorched earth, robbing and killing anyone foolish enough to venture into their territory. These were the ferals, who after outgrowing their gangs, had been expelled into the wilderness. Rejected by even the lowest of the Old-Town’s residents, they were fuelled by little more than a desire to inflict their own suffering on anyone they could get their hands on. The outlanders were the grotesque butterflies the ferals metamorphosed into.
Even more frightening were the stories of deadly hybrid animals that stalked the land; wild pigs the size of horses and as vicious as a wolf that could kill a man in seconds. They had originally been engineered as a source of food but had somehow escaped from their laboratories and now stalked the land with murderous intent. Even though Taylor had never seen one of these creatures, he didn’t doubt the likelihood of their existence. He remembered the stories in Canada of the American Special Forces’ team whose DNA was said to have been genetically spliced with that of felines. They had the reputation of being the fastest, strongest and meanest soldiers to have ever existed, and as an added bonus (though this was never verified), possessed the ability to lick their own balls.
After the Dragon’s Lair was closed down, it was Canada, and more specifically the war being fought there, that saved Taylor and his fellow athletes from the Old-Town. It had been on the cards for a long time but no one could find a meaningful reason to attack. After all, the Canadians were America’s nearest neighbour and as a nation, one of the most peaceful in modern history. The industrialists however, refused to let things remain as they were. To them, Canada was an itch that had to be scratched.
It made perfect business sense. The world was running out of oil (this was before Triage drastically reduced the number of its dependants) and Canada had one of the largest untouched reserves lying beneath its rugged soil. It was perfect for America to expand into too; all that land and virtually no one in it. Perhaps most importantly of all, Canada was home to nearly a third of the world’s fresh water supplies. With the developing world being in the grip of its worst drought in known memory, there was the potential for billions of dollars to be made if it were to be made American property. Water was becoming an even more powerful commodity than oil. Whoever said the two didn’t mix, clearly didn’t understand big business.
Eventually, when they could find no political excuses to launch the war they desperately required, the consortium of businesses who demanded it, decided to take their own approach. Calling themselves The Representatives of Democratic Countries, they declared that the western world would be in an economic emergency if action wasn’t taken against Canada’s illegal stockpiling of its natural resources. According to them, it was their economic right to invade the country and if they didn’t, the respective governments would be showing such ineptitude, they’d be facing mutiny from the powerful companies the consortium represented.
The collective heads-of-state balked at the plan. Even if they wanted to, they were far too stretched in the Middle East to even consider another war. The consortium simply told them not to worry; they had already made the necessary provisions. The intelligence work had been done, provisions had been secured and they’d recruited and trained their own armies. This would be a corporate war, all the governments had to do was give the ok and if they didn’t, to hell with them, they would do it anyway.
It was too much for most of the European countries. They opted out of further action, creating bitter feuds between the various governments and the multinationals that resided there. A couple of smaller countries were bankrupted by the court cases brought against them by the consortium. America and Britain were not so easily frightened off. In a display of will and determination, they took up the call to arms with all the vigour they could possibly muster.
With no skills except for how to fight, the biggest fear for the young fighters at the Dragon’s Lair was that they would be sent back to the Old-Town. Taylor remembered lying in bed after receiving the bad news, thinking of how glad he was his father would not be around to see him going through the checkpoints and back to a life of poverty. Luckily for him and the other boys, help was at hand. Although the cage fights had been ruthlessly thrown from their perch, the fighters were still well known and respected by most people. SecForce had decided that they would make perfect leaders for their army, as well as being great PR for the company.
Although they had easily overrun the Canadian Army, a civilian militia, unwilling to roll over to the foreign invaders, was fighting tooth and nail to defend their homes. They had caught SecForce, who had not been expecting such an insurgency, by surprise. By blowing up oil pipelines and contaminating their own water sources rather than see them be bottled and sold to other countries, they were proving a real headache to the corporation. The whole episode was making them look bad; what they needed was a positive spin on the situation.
SecForce made an offer to Taylor and the other fighters. They were willing to sign them up as non-commissioned officers in charge of up to thirty men. They would be trained in all aspects of warfare, specifically counter-insurgency, and more importantly paid well for doing so.
For most of them it was a no-brainer. This was realistically the only chance they would get of staying in the City. For Taylor, the thought of being sent back to the Old-Town was far more terrifying than fighting against unknown enemies abroad. He had been one of the first to sign the contract.
The only one of the fighters not to accept the job was Ben. He had already broken his father’s heart by going to the Dragon’s Lair. Fighting SecForce’s dirty wars was a step too far for him. Ben’s decision was gracefully accepted and promises were given to him that he would not be punished for his gallant choices. Two weeks after not being able to find a job, Ben was issued with an ultimatum; quietly go back to the Old-Town or be one of the first people to be sent to the production centres as part of the rolling-out of the final stages of Triage. As Taylor and
the others packed their gear for basic training, Ben left the City for the final time.
As the vehicle came over the brow of a hill, the darkness was suddenly challenged by a gathering of lights coming from a small constellation of buildings. Apart from the glow of the production centres and the occasional small campfire, this was the only place in a sea of black to be lit up. It was how the Strip had got it’s name; an ironic reference to the view that met the gamblers after they had driven to Las Vegas through the night, then emerged from the desert into a cacophony of neon colours.
A large billboard that still displayed the weather-stained and much faded advert for a brand of soft drinks appeared in the headlight’s beam. On the left of the sign, someone had painted an oversized pair of nipples on the bikini of the buxom women holding a half-full bottle of brown liquid. On the opposite side of the poster someone had crudely painted a huge, erect penis ejaculating three globules of sperm in the smiling woman’s direction. Sandwiched between the artwork in bold, red letters were two words: The Strip.
Chapter 14
When he opened the car door, the dull hum of generators elbowed its way into Taylor’s ears. The Strip was filled with its usual share of desperados, drunks and degenerates, all looking for their fix of whatever it was that got them off. Despite its lurid nature, there was a distinct lack of menace in the air; this place was purely about business. Anyone who tried to upset that simple equation would be quick to feel the force of the no-nonsense bouncers who lined the bars.
A large man with a shotgun approached Taylor, silently nodding at him.
“Keep an eye on it,” Taylor said, patting the roof of the car, “it’s not mine.”
The bar owners hired such men to keep the ferals and other troublemakers away. It would hurt their businesses if vehicles were damaged or stolen whilst the owners were being entertained inside.
