by M. C. Norris
“Get on your knees,” Nate whispered, as he lowered himself to the ground.
Sandy followed suit. Peanut remained standing. Defiant to the end, he refused to kneel.
The warriors glanced at one another, as though they were either confused by this behavior, or just unsure of what to do with them. One amongst them stepped forward, handing his stone hatchet off to another tribesman. He was dark-skinned, with a closely shaved head, and teeth that appeared to be gilded with some type of shiny metal. Swaggering up to Peanut, he retrieved a strange object from a pouch on his hip. He lifted the thing, glossy black, rectangular, and thin as quarter-deck of cards, and he aimed it directly at Peanut’s face. The boy began to palpitate, gritting his teeth, as he cringed away from the mysterious instrument.
“Please,” Nate said, “he’s just a boy.” Nate rose to his feet, and he stepped in front of Peanut. “Use it on me instead.”
The warrior cocked his head, and frowned. He grinned, glanced around at his painted brothers in arms, then snapped his glare back around at Nate. Leveling the device with Nate’s face, he tapped his finger against the opposite side, and the instrument flashed as brightly as the midday sun. Nate blinked, wide-eyed, and stumbled backward.
“What did you do to him?” Peanut shouted. “What the hell is that thing?”
The warrior was showing the device to his comrades, who all seemed to be getting some enjoyment from a private joke. At the sharpness of Peanut’s tone, the warrior’s scowl returned. He brought himself nose to nose with the boy. “iPhone, punk! What year you from?”
“What year?”
The warrior cleared his throat, and softened his approach to a condescending level. “What year was it that you left behind, when your punk-ass came here?”
“Nineteen—nineteen seventy-one.”
“Seventy-one?” The warrior grinned, and turned his back on the boy, jabbing his thumb over his shoulder. “And this punk thought we was the cavemen.”
An enormous warrior in dreadlocks stepped forward. He looked them up and down. “Got any open wounds? Slept overnight in the jungle?”
“No,” Peanut said, shaking his head. “Just scrapes and stuff.”
“How about your fine ass?” the first warrior asked, pointing his device at Sandy. “Got any boo-boos? Need me to look you over?”
“Yeah, strip down. I want a look.”
“Drop them drawers, baby.”
Sandy began to breathe heavily. A dozen sets of hungry eyes were crawling all over her. The men were all starting to push closer. She knew that whatever move she chose or chose not make at this moment would determine how these men would regard her, and therefore, what they would or would not do to her. If she obeyed them, and removed all of her clothing, then they would take her submission as a sign of weakness that would easily be dominated. If she refused their order, then she risked appearing insubordinate, and probably earning a beating. Both roads would end in the same violation. Her hands were clenched on the bottom of her shirt. She didn’t know what to do. “We slept on the beach,” Sandy said, “and we’ve got no open wounds.”
“On the beach, you said?”
Sandy nodded. The warriors all looked at one another, as if she’d said something that was inadvertently of importance, or incriminating. They spoke English. They all seemed to be American, but there was no telling how long they’d been here, how devolved they’d become. If these were the same savages who’d mutilated John, it wasn’t obvious to her that they were utterly lacking in humanity. A little rough around the edges, maybe, but they didn’t seem like psychopathic barbarians. “We understand that there was some sort of an altercation between our people and yours—”
“Sandy,” Nate said.
“Well, they weren’t our people. That’s what I’m trying to tell them. I mean, we were all on the same plane, but the one who shot—”
“Gag ‘em and bag ‘em.”
Seized by a clutch of grabbing arms, she was dragged into their midst. Groping her, squeezing her, they pinioned her arms behind the small of her back. A knotted rag was jerked into her mouth, and tied behind her head. She watched the same bonds being fastened to Nate and Peanut, until a sack of reeking cloth was dropped over her head. It smelled sour inside, like aged and ample saliva. She could see nothing but the dark stains on the fabric as she was marched blindly ahead.
If there was some negative association with their camp on the beach, then that could only mean that they’d discovered it already. Donovan. They’d seen the great plume of smoke rising up from the bonfire, and they’d followed it right into their camp. When they arrived to find Donovan drunk and combative, sharing space with a couple of mutilated corpses, what were they to think of anyone who might be associated with that man? Who knew what else Donovan had done since she’d left him, or what his reaction might’ve been when a band of painted warriors charged into camp? Knowing Donovan, it wouldn’t have gone well at all.
Unseen arms dragged her along through some sort of a gate that grumbled mightily behind them until it closed with a metallic clank. The ground was hardened here, almost paved. She could feel the gaps between pavestones beneath her feet. Her ankle was howling with pain, but she did her best not to limp, or to show in any way that she had a highly sensitive part of her body, or she feared it might be used against her in some torturous way. The thought of being restrained while someone twisted and wrenched on that swollen ankle was too horrendous to consider. She couldn’t let them find out.
“Take her up to Dr. Bendu. Put the rest of them on the poles. Keep them bagged and gagged. We don’t need them talking to the others.”
The others?
They almost certainly had Donovan, but whom else? The missing girls? The desire to see if Ray was amongst the other captives was almost enough to make her cry out in desperation.
The footpath on which the warriors led her inclined. She could feel the burning in her calves and hamstrings as they ushered her up an ascending trail into some cavernous tunnel where their footsteps resounded sharply against the walls. Here, the glow of lights on either side of her permeated the stinking bag over her head. Only now could she discern that the stains on the fabric were blood. A huge, irregular splotch darkened the sacking in front of her face, as though the last person to wear the fetid article had died suddenly and violently, face-down in a lake of blood.
The arms wrenched her leftward into another corridor, where the light faded to absolute blackness, and gradually returned with greater brilliance than ever before. She could hear the crackling of a fire. Each snap and pop reverberated keenly off of close stone walls.
“Sit.”
Hands pressed down on her shoulders. A foot snapped at the back of her knee. Sandy allowed her legs to fold beneath her, but her swollen ankle made it awkward to sit in any other position but flat on her butt, with her legs outstretched in front of her. She hoped to God that no one would stumble over that bad foot, or she would scream with pain.
“What have you brought me?”
The new voice echoed off the cavern walls. There seemed an intelligence to the man’s inflection, discernible in his careful annunciation of each word, and his measured tone. There was an accent that she couldn’t quite place. The root was British, but its edges were softened with a sort of patois. Possibly African? What unsettled her was that the intelligent aspect of his voice also bore a seductive quality, possibly even depraved. Even men who were perhaps once filled with promise could be hardened to perversion and cruelty.
“She’s from the camp down on the beach. We picked up three more of them.”
“The vector?”
The silence that followed suggested that a negative shake of the warrior’s head had been the reply. She wished that she had some information to give them on the whereabouts of the vector. She could always lie, if that would buy her time, but she felt that sticking to the truth would be her best course of action. The awkward silence was horrifying, leaving her to imagine what suggestio
ns were being made by body language and gesture, if anything was happening at all. They were possibly just staring at her, appraising her body for its most basic worth.
“Let me see her.”
In a flash, the reeking bag was snatched from her head. The room exploded into view. She stifled a shriek in the pit of her throat when she saw the face of the man seated by the fire. Raised scars decorated his cheeks in patterns of oceanic swirls, and his teeth, they were all filed into points.
“Pretty, in a way,” the man said, stoking the coals with prods of his wizardly staff. He continued to smile at the fire for a spell before licking his lips, and turning back to her. “Tonight, you’re going to testify,” he said. “You’re going to testify on behalf of yourself, and you’ll testify on behalf of every member of your group. What you say is final. Do you understand?”
Sandy made a whimpering sound through her nostrils. She nodded tentatively to his question, although she remained unsure of what exactly he meant by his strange request. The room all around her was an unholy marriage between the darkly eclectic nostrums of a witch doctor, paired with the technical fitments and brilliant disarray of an inventor. Shelves and workbenches all around were cluttered with clay pots, anatomical remnants, and disassembled bits of machinery.
“I am Dr. Bendu, head of the Science Guild here in Briggstown,” he said, with a dramatic sweep of his outgrown nails, “the City on the Edge of Forever.”
He gave a couple more pokes to the firewood, releasing a flume of crackling sparks, and then rose from his seat. He took a few steps toward the rough sill of what appeared to be a window that was chipped right through the wall of his Stone Age laboratory. “Yesterday, we saw you fall from the sky into the Garden of Eden. You were lucky to land in the sea, and not into the highland crags like my fellow Africans and I.” He twisted his staff between his hands, and then tapped it against what sounded like a wooden leg beneath his tunic.
Dr. Bendu turned from the window to stand over Sandy. He sucked at his sharpened teeth. “We have but one reason for maintaining a civilization here in Briggstown, rather than running loose through the jungles of Eden like a pack of feral dogs, as many others have chosen to do. Our singular purpose here is to find a living vector. We are here because of them, and we were all meant to die here alongside them. However, those who implanted the technology inside the vectors underestimated the will of humankind to survive in a world where survival was not deemed possible. For more than a century, the citizens of Briggstown have invented ways to overcome this living hell where they’ve condemned us, but very soon, we will make our phantom enemies pay dearly for their crimes against humanity. You see, you’ve arrived in here in Briggstown at a very historic moment, when humankind stands poised to launch its first counterstrike in a war between the ages.”
Lowering himself to a squat, Dr. Bendu reached out with a hooked finger, and pulled the knotted rag from her mouth. He smiled as she licked her lips and swallowed in an effort to wash the sour taste out of her mouth. Chuckling softly, as though he’d been through this ordeal many times before, he rose to his feet with a grunt, and moved back to the open window. “Bring her over here.”
Sandy felt strong hands curl beneath her arms, and lift her to her feet. With her hands still tied behind her back, she feared that if she toppled from stress and exhaustion, she’d be unable to catch herself as she crashed to the cave floor. Her handlers seemed to sense that possibility, and they kept hold of her as they eased her up to the window.
“I think that she presents little danger to us here. Cut her loose, please.”
Sandy felt the strokes of a sharp blade between her wrists. It made her a little nervous, but soon enough, the cutting was done. Her hands were free again. She raised them before her chest, and rubbed her wrists.
Below, the seated forms of several people were bound to posts jutting up through the pavestones of a torch-lit plaza. The silhouettes of other structures could be discerned beyond the ring of firelight, but they were indistinct in the shroud of darkness. Armed guards stood behind each of the prisoners, whose heads remained concealed beneath those bloodstained bags, but Sandy immediately recognized Nate, Peanut and Donovan, by their attire. The other two looked to be female. Although they were bruised, battered, and barely clothed, they resembled Margot and Tara. It looked to be a foreboding stage that was all set for some dreadful ultimatum.
“We waste nothing in Briggstown. We can’t afford it. Resources are scarce, and often dangerous to obtain, so we salvage everything that we are fortunate enough to find. People are no exception. We need people to grow, to expand our small gene pool, and to survive. We need skills and talents, able bodies and minds, but the foundation of every relationship is trust, and that is why before your citizenship can be considered, you must testify. Understand?”
Sandy hesitated for a few seconds before nodding.
“Good. Easy questions first.” Dr. Bendu smiled sweetly. “What is your name?”
“Sandy,” she replied, her voice cracking. She cleared her throat, swallowed, and then repeated herself.
“Sandy,” he said, placing his clawed fingertips together before his lips, “if you had to classify your role, thus far, down there on that beach where your little group was camping, what would you say has been your role, in a single word?”
Sandy’s eyes flicked back and forth over the paved commons, across the row of prisoners bound to poles. “Nurse,” she replied.
“Nurse?” Dr. Bendu nodded his head. “We can always find good use for those who possess medical acumen, or even those whose altruism drives them to care for the sick and wounded. We can perhaps use you, here in Briggstown, but there are many other positions yet to be filled. When you look down at those people, what else do you see?”
Her eyes drifted from one end of the tethered lambs to the other, and back again. Her gaze halted on Peanut. “I see a young warrior,” she said, with a conviction that surprised even herself.
“Which one?”
“The teenage boy, second from the end, on the left.”
Dr. Bendu smiled. “He looks like he might be a little young to me, but we’ll see how well he fits into our Guild of Bad Faces.” He extended his right hand through the window, made a fist, and popped his thumb skyward. Below, a guardsman paced from one end of the row of captives to the other, staring all the while up at Dr. Bendu. When he walked behind Peanut’s pole, Dr. Bendu dropped his arm. The warrior produced a long, curved blade. He knelt behind the boy, and severed his bonds. The sacking was pulled from his head. Peanut looked around with a dazed expression before rising to his feet. After a moment, he followed the guardsman out of the plaza, and into the darkness beyond.
“Artist,” Sandy said, smiling down at Tara, whose open devotion to the fine arts was the girl’s most memorable contribution to the conversation they’d enjoyed during their short visit over lunch with their group, back in camp. She’d showed off a tattoo on her ribcage that she’d designed herself. She said that all her life, she’d dreamt of nothing else but attending an art school in San Francisco. It was her hard lobbying that eventually brought her high school’s trip to San Francisco to fruition.
“Art is a powerful influence on a civilization. It forges a society’s culture. It inspires direction, and it raises morale.” Dr. Bendu thrust out an arm, and a thumb snapped up into the night. Another guardsman patrolled the shadowy backdrop until he passed behind Tara’s pole. Dr. Bendu’s hand dropped, and the girl was cut free.
Sandy frowned. For a moment, she thought that she might’ve misidentified Tara for someone else. This wasn’t the same girl she remembered. Below, a ragged and disheveled figure moved so slowly, limping, shuffling her feet across the pavestones with the gait of an elderly woman. What had once been a beautiful teenager’s face was bruised and misshapen to a frightful perversion of its original form.
“You are fortunate that those two girls were captured ahead of you.” Dr. Bendu turned to Sandy, and chilled her blo
od with a salacious smile. “It’s been more than a year since new females arrived in the Garden of Eden. Sometimes we can be—how shall I put it—overzealous, in our manner of welcoming new females.”
Sandy recalled her own moment of terror out there in the Briggstown yard when they’d surrounded her, bullied her, and made veiled threats to physically assault her. She’d never felt so vulnerable. “Don’t you have laws against that kind of abuse? What kind of civilization allows that to happen?”
“There will be plenty of time to explain the structure of our society if you are selected to be a part of it. Now would be the time to testify on behalf of any quality people who might remain down there. Do you see any?”
The shock of seeing the results of whatever horrible ordeal Tara and Margot had endured at the hands of Briggstown’s police force was not a sight so easily shaken from her mind. The ramifications for herself, and for what might yet lay in store for her, and for the other women, had her mind addled with trepidation. What kind of society was she pledging to join, and worse, recruiting others in its servitude? She felt terribly conflicted, but there seemed no choice in the matter. They either learned to survive amongst these people, and to live by their rules, or they would die like animals in the jungle.
“Sandy, are there no useful people remaining down there?”
“Y-yes, there’s …”
She couldn’t think straight. Sandy folded her hands against her lips, and stared down at Nate, knowing that his life might be hanging in the balance between her silence, and whatever role she blindly assigned to him. He was a good man, but one of unparticular quality. She couldn’t remember what he said he’d done for a living in the world they’d left behind. She knew him to be loyal, trustworthy, kindhearted, and a fatherly figure toward everyone around him, but what specific position would he fill in a Stone Age society? He didn’t seem to have the stomach for any sort of brutality, or the youthful fitness demanded by hard labor. Nate was philosophical, intelligent …
