Haven Ward

by Elias Witherow

  “Hey the little shit is awake,” one of the Hazmats said, looking down at me with his eerie green goggles.

  “Where…you taking me?” I choked. I knew the answer.

  “You’re getting your own personal flight straight to Haven Ward, corpse,” Another said. His voice cut through the air and hit me hard. So it was really happening. I knew it was coming, but the hard, icy truth of what was happening still stung. I closed my eyes and waited.

  I was going to Haven Ward.

  Chapter 5

  Haven Ward. It was a place where lives ended. It was a black hole of existence. It was the gates to a world ruled by hell. When people went to the Ward, there was no coming back. It was a place surrounded by a dark veil of unknown. Only the Sanction truly knew what happen behind the thick walls of imprisonment.

  Construction had started the day the Sanction took control. At first people thought it was going to be a hospital. Then the word spread. An asylum. A prison. A slaughterhouse. Rumors spread faster than mud during a storm. It was more of a modern day castle than anything else. Huge towering walls, sharp, dead gray metal, completely windowless, rising high into the sky, staring down at the world below it with cold judging eyes.

  There were two separate sections connected by an underground passage way. Each section held a different kind of prisoner. There was section Z and Section 36. Section 36 was completely underground, only housing the worst kinds of inmates and psychos. It was originally named that because when the Ward was completed and people were taken there, there were only 36 inmates.

  I was slowly coming to again, waking up after one of my longer blackouts. I heard movement and people shuffling around. The straps confining me were loosened and I was roughly hauled to my feet. I blinked, trying to clear the fog that lurked in the corner of my vision. We had landed.

  “Get those chains on him.”

  “Yes sir.”

  I spit on the floor, a bloody wad of drool, and more hands grabbed me, the clinking of my bonds ringing in my ears. They secured the chains on my hands and feet, pushing me to exit the Hover, guns trained on me.

  I stepped down out of the craft and stared up at the colossal prison. It was beyond anything I had ever seen before and it took my breath away. It seemed alive, the very place seeming to breath, hungry for another person to enter through its steel menacing teeth.

  “Enjoy the last view of the sky, shitbag,” a Hazmat said behind me. He prodded me forward with his gun and I began to walk. I refused to do this. I was going to be dead by the end of the day. I closed my eyes, feet clanking over the rusted walkway, every step bringing me closer to my execution. I yearned to be back in the Gallows. It seemed like paradise compared to this. Anything but this.

  The walkway was long, stretching out before me like a long moon colored tongue that was just waiting to roll up and fling me into a mouth filled with teeth that were blood craving inmates. Hazmats lined the path, guns up, all pointing at me, ready to shoot. The officer leading the way, a couple steps in front of me was tall, looking like he’d done this a million times before, chest puffed out, all business. The neon green color of his uniform was replaced with a blinding orange. I didn’t think this was going to be the last time I saw him. I had heard his name sometime during the flight. Between one of my blackouts. What the hell was it? Pass? Poss? Prat? Progg. That’s what it was. Progg. I lifted my bloody face, shaking my chains at him.

  “Hey Progg, you think you could move up a little bit? You smell like you just crawled out of someone’s asshole.”

  The orange painted officer froze, raising his fist to halt my escort. He turned around, his sun colored goggles glowing, “You talk tough all you want. This place is going to rip you apart over and over again until you’re nothing but a rotting corpse with his guts hanging out. And when that happens I’m going to burn you from your insides out.”

  I winced, “Christ on a carrier, you smell even worse up close.”

  He punched me, hard, his gauntlet cutting my face as my vision faded then came back. Why was I doing this? It was stupid, but I couldn’t help myself. I was dead anyhow. Might as well get my last kicks in.

  I coughed up blood, “I’ve been punched harder by a baby,” I grinned, my teeth red. Suddenly I was on my stomach, face slammed into the hard metal walkway, wheezing. Something hard slammed into my back and I cried out, pain shooting up my spine. Then another boot smashed into my shoulder. I was getting dizzy from pain.

  I grit my teeth and looked up, “If you guys wanted to dance, all you had to do was ask.”

  I was hauled up by the hair, tears leaking from my eyes, jaw clenched, anger raging in my blood. I just didn’t care anymore. Let them beat me, let them crush my bones, let them turn me into a sack of pulsing flesh, bleeding from every crevice. I didn’t give a damn. Ashleign was dead.

  Progg had me by the throat now, “Keep it up kid, you just keep that up. I’m going to be sure that I’m there when you die. Now shut the hell up and keep moving.” He nodded to one of the Hazmats behind me and suddenly something was in my mouth and being strapped around my head. My tongue licked the metal bar that was crammed across my mouth, digging into my cheeks. I bit down on it, feeling a storm rising inside me.

  We got to the main gates, their bile stained face almost seeming to laugh at my misfortune as they grinded open, exposing a massive canopy of darkness lit only by dim, greasy yellow light. The interior was no different from the exterior. Everything was stained with copper rust, dirty black filth, and a coat of weighing oppression. I plodded forward, the bar in my mouth beginning to leave a deep pain in my stretched cheeks.

  I was led to some kind of processing checkpoint, two gates blocking our progress into the belly of the beast. Off to my right was an outpost, some kind of office where behind a metal grate window stood a handful of Hazmats, most with their masks off, working on ancient, beaten computers, and filing mountains of paperwork.

  “We got some fresh blood for you,” the orange asshole, Progg, greeted. One of the Hazmats looked up, eyes working me over.

  “Kid looks like he’s seen better days,” he chuckled.

  Progg snorted, “Brat’s got a mouth on him.”

  “What Section is he going too?”

  “Z.”

  “Alright let me get him his clothes.”

  Progg looked at me, “From the look of you, seems like these are going to be the nicest clothes you’ve ever worn.” He laughed turning back to the guard.

  The Hazmat was shuffling through some things in the back, away from my field of vision. I wanted nothing more than to spit this stupid thing out of my mouth and bite through Progg’s neck. I wrapped my tongue around the bar again, testing it.

  The Hazmat returned with a pile of black clothes, pushing them through the opening at the bottom of the grated window, “Here you go. Make sure you hose him down before you take him to meet with Warden Martin. Kid smells like he crawled out of someone’s asshole.”

  I grinned and muffled around the mouth piece, “Actually that’s P-” I was silenced as a fist connected with my stomach. I coughed, but kept smiling.

  “His serial number is 789431, he’s been assigned to Fahrenheit Block, cell number 6. I stuck him in with Titan, just for you Officer Progg,” the Hazmat laughed.

  Progg turned and faced me, “Your cell mate’s a real whack job. Be a damn shame if something happened to you. Damn shame.”

  We were on the move again, splitting off down a corridor, past more dank windowless walls towards an elevator. Titan. Sounded like a real upstanding guy. And being a kid certainly didn’t help anything. I was a boy in a man’s prison. The Sanction didn’t pay any attention to age. If you broke the law, you broke the law and everyone was damned just the same. Kids, women, men, crooks, the mentally insane, it didn’t matter. All were sent to Haven Ward.

  As we boarded the metal platform and descended, I wondered to myself what Roland would do when he went to my shack and saw that my sister had been brutally tortured
to death. I prayed he buried her. Somewhere quiet, away from the pounding feet of the indifferent. And King. What would King do once he heard the news of my capture? I laughed inwardly. He wouldn’t do a damn thing. He knew this was coming and had warned me about it. He also told me to keep my head low. Which I had ignored. And now here I was, slowly grinding my way down into the darkness of demise.

  When the elevator creaked to a halt, I was shoved forward down a dimly lit hall. I could hear screaming from somewhere, the noise bouncing off the walls as if trying to escape. I allowed myself a shiver. Things only got worse from here on out.

  Suddenly I was yanked back, the chains around my feet tangling and I fell back hard. Laughing. Boots thumping around my head. Chains being taken off. Clothes getting stripped away. And then finally the gag removed from my mouth. I worked my jaw, standing up, naked.

  “Shit Progg, we haven’t even kissed yet and you’re already stripping me,” I spat at him, that grin I’d been wearing still plastered on my face.

  One of the Hazmats opened a door to my left, something I hadn’t even noticed, and pushed me inside. I went sprawling, grunting as I hit the floor, my whole body a canvas of beatings and bruises. I crawled to my feet, turning towards the door. Ah damn.

  They turned on the hose, the jet of water a white freezing stream, hitting me in the chest hard, the force driving me against the wall. I coughed and sputtered, getting it up my nose, in my mouth, the bastards training it right on my face. I felt like I was going to go into shock it was so cold. I raised my hands, turning away, trying to block my face from the pressure.

  “Oh yeah get him good!” one of the Hazmats yelled.

  “He’s a squirmy little runt, that’s for sure,” Another one coaxed, “Get his face again.”

  Progg just stood and watched as I curled up in the corner, wrapping my arms around my knees, shivering like I had a seizure. I was certain they were going to blast the skin right off my bones. After what seemed like an eternity, they let up, still laughing as I lay there like a rag doll, quivering.

  A Hazmat tossed me my clothes, “Put these on.”

  I gave him the finger, the cold in my bones in contrast to the fire in my eyes. The Hazmat just laughed, “Look dumbass, either you put those on right now, or we’re going to come in there and beat your tiny ass till you do it.”

  I decided it was stupid to fight them on this since the end result would be the same. I stood, my legs not quite steady, my hands bracing them, and started to dress. Progg watched, his eyes scornful and mocking. I pegged him as the type of person who broke people’s bones just to see how loud they’d scream. He was a dangerous enemy. As I watched him watch me dress, I told myself that before I died, I was going to kill him. He was the epitome of everything I hated about the Sanction. And every time I looked at him I saw my sister in my arms, bleeding out, telling me to fly free. It made my stomach boil.

  When I had dressed, I was dragged out of the spray cell and down another labyrinth of winding dark passages. We were entering the cell block. I passed rows and rows of sealed doors which I assumed was where the prisoners were being held. A few moans and screams leaked out, muffled and suppressed, as we marched. I felt small. I felt my age. And for the first time, I felt truly, completely alone. I was going to have to carve my own path in this suffocating shit hole. I was going to have to step up. I couldn’t show any weakness. I was already at a disadvantage being a kid. I couldn’t give anyone else the satisfaction of messing with me.

  We crossed into another portion of the prison, passing more Hazmats as they patrolled the murky tunnels. I saw on the wall in white paint “Fairenheight”. Looks like my stop was coming up.

  “Ah here we are,” Progg said as we stopped in front of a sealed door. There was a keypad on the outside. He punched in a couple of digits and it slid open revealing a gloomy room that was bare except two metal cots that were bored into the wall and a small hole. Which I assumed was for shitting in. And of course my cellmate. Titan.

  He was laying on his back on one of the beds, staring at the ceiling, but sat up when he saw us enter. He lived up to his name. He was a burly looming man, sporting a full beard. He was shirtless, his chest baring scars and cuts, not to mention a whole flurry of tattoos. I gulped.

  “Easy does it there big guy,” One of the Hazmats warned, pointing his gun at the man. “Just dropping off your new celly. Names Weston. Enjoy.”

  Progg pushed me forward, “Don’t be shy kiddo, say hello to the man.” I glared over my shoulder at him. He was eating this up.

  I looked up at Titan, having to cock my head back, “What’s happening big man,” I greeted, trying to sound tough. To him I probably looked like a baby rat, easy to squish.

  Titan licked his lips, “Oh yous and mes goin have some fun there. Yes sir.”

  Laughing, Progg and the rest of the Hazmats left me to my misery. Before he left, he turned back to me, “By ready to meet the Warden in about an hour.” He snickered, “If you live that long.” And with that it was just me and the mammoth bearded man.

  I held up my hands as soon as the doors clicked shut, “Now look man, I’m just a kid and-”

  Titan interrupted me, his voice suddenly very smooth, “Don’t wet yourself kid, I’m not going to harm you.” He went back to his bunk, plopping himself down, “I just put on a show for the guards so they think you’re going through hell. Getting what you deserve as they’d say.”

  I was dumb founded. Here I thought I was going to get raped by a Tyrannosaurus and he turned out to be one of the nicest guys probably in the whole prison. I had been lucky.

  “T-thank you!” I sputtered,

  He waved me off, “Don’t mention it. Sometimes I think us prisoners are more civil then the guards.”

  I approached him slowly, “Why’d you do it though? Why bother?”

  He turned his head towards me, his eyes pale green, “Word spread before you got here about what you’ve done. Killed some Hazmats right? Anyone who puts down those pigs is a friend of mine.”

  “Oh.”

  He started twiddling his thumbs, eyes back on the ceiling, “Now look, things are going to take some getting used to. Where you from? Suppose that’s a good place to start as any.”

  “The Gallows.”

  Titan nodded, “Good good, so you aren’t one of those Red City faggots who think the world is in a tab of glu.”

  I was puzzled, “What?”

  “You’re not an addict. Right?”

  I shook my head, “Nope.” At that moment, I wondered how many inmates used glu. Addicts were weak, dependent. Perhaps I could find an opportunity to gain some leverage.

  “Good, I don’t want my celly to go crazy on me,” Titan said.

  “I won’t,” But in the back of my mind I wondered if he would. “So how do things work around here?”

  He held up his hand, “Hold on kiddo. Let me finish my inquisition, then you can start yours. That sound fair? Good. Why’d you kill the Hazmats?”

  I turned away, “Why the does that matter?”

  “Cause it does.”

  “Says who?”

  “Says me and that’s all that matters right now so answer the damn question.”

  I exhaled slowly, feeling drained. My body was aching from the beatings, “They tortured my sister to death,” I said after a few hollow seconds.

  Titan seemed unfazed, “Bummer buddy. Ok next question. Were you in a gang?”

  “Sure.” I knew this could be dangerous ground. A man’s tribe was his badge of honor..

  “Which?”

  I stared at him blankly, then took a deep breath , “Dynasty.”

  Titan lit up, smiling, “Well no kidding, son! I was in Dragon before they hauled my ass here. Our two gangs were like brothers. How the hell is King doing these days? Is he still a complete mud pirate?”

  I had no idea what a mud pirate was so I just nodded, “Yup.”

  Titan was up and pacing now, “Man, who would have thought I’d actu
ally get roomed with someone from a brother gang,” he turned to me, “Usually they don’t do that. The Guards. They don’t bunk friendlies. They’d rather have us roomed with an enemy then have one kill the other. They bet on it. Sick world kiddo, complete whacked out world.”

  I just stood there, listening.

  “You have any connections in here that you know of? Someone from Dynasty gang-tribe, sorry- that you know in here?”

  I was getting very tired, every bone in my body creaking like an old forgotten hinge, “I don’t Titan,” I said wearily, “Maybe? I’m sure I’ll find out.”

  Titan nodded, “It’s just like the Gallows in here, there’s gangs and warfare, all kinds of shit mixed up in this place.”

  “Who’s Martin?” I asked.

  “Hm?”

  “Martin. They said I was going to meet some Martin guy.”

  Titan’s eyes seemed to shrivel up into his head, “Ooooh. He’s one nasty dude. He’s the Warden. Whatever you do, do not get on his bad side you hear me? Judging from the bruises and cuts on your face, I can tell you got a bit of an attitude problem. Well, that needs to be adjusted, you hear me? If you mouth off to the Big Don, you’re almost guaranteeing yourself a trip to Section 36. And you don’t want that, no, no, no, no, nothing but bad things down there. Bad things that’ll rise up and eat you alive.”

  I sat down on my bunk. It was hard. There were no blankets. No pillow. I laid down anyway.

  “So don’t piss him off. Got it,” I said. “Can I ask you something now?”

  “Fairs fair there kid. Shoot.”

  I rubbed my eyes, “Is there any hope of me getting out of here?”

  He snorted, “Wouldn’t be here if there was. You’re stuck here, just like everyone else. The sooner you understand that you are stuck here the better. Nothing worse than false hope.”

  I put my hands down, “I understand. Now I want you to be straight with me. Please… am I going to die here?”