Falling Prey

by M. C. Norris

  “Tyran-no-saur-us rex-suz?” T-Lo said, stiffening his neck, and wrinkling his nose in an exaggerated imitation.

  “Just rexes.”

  “But, the creature I’m talking was all covered with like, feathers and stuff.”

  “What’s your point, kid?”

  “Hold up. What year you said you was from?”

  “Nineteen seventy-one.”

  “Ah, see? They ain’t had no feathered dino’s in seventy-one,” Dre said. “They ain’t had all that yet. T-rex still be stomping around buck naked like some busted-ass Godzilla.”

  “It ain’t like that. It ain’t like that.” T-Lo waved his hands, as though erasing words right out of thin air. “Right here in Eden’s what it really is, son.”

  Beyond, the pale light of the doubled moons glimmered through the entrance to the cave. The paired celestial bodies appeared to be even more hopelessly in love than they’d been the night before. Peanut stared at them, and blinked.

  It was a strange and almost sickening revelation to be robbed of the last shred of hope that they were simply marooned on an uncharted island. It was so much worse than that. It was the absolute worst. There was no way to even quantify the gravity of the fact that he would not likely see his family, his friends or his school ever again. They were completely out of his reach, and to acknowledge that fact was almost enough to make him sick. Lost in time, with no way of getting back home. Not ever.

  “I don’t get it” Peanut said, collapsing onto his rump in the dirt beside Gavin.

  “What don’t you get?” Gavin replied.

  “Did all of you come from different years?”

  “We came together in ninety-six,” Gavin said, gesturing to the men around him with a tilt of his head. “Those guys came together in eighty-seven. There’s a few here from twenty-twelve. What was Red from? Twenty-twenty?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He was the furthest one out, then. He’s dead.”

  “Future boys. That’s where we get our iPhones,” T-Lo said. “Them dudes past two-thousand. When one of them falls out the sky and lands on my beach, they iPhone be my phone.”

  “Can you call people?” A surge of yearning welled up inside Peanut’s chest. Never in his life had he wanted to hear the sound of his mom’s voice so badly, some words of encouragement from his dad, even something from his stupid sister. He missed all of them so much. Knowing he’d never be able to say goodbye to them produced the most intense feeling of loneliness he’d ever imagined, because his family and friends were not anywhere on this world, and they wouldn’t be, for millions and millions of years.

  “Nah. You can’t call nobody. Shit just says, no service,” T-Lo said, frowning down at the confounding piece of technology in his hand.

  “What good is it then?”

  “They got cameras,” Dre said, “and little timers and stuff. Show him, T.”

  “Check this out,” T-Lo said, tapping the glowing screen. “You can flip the camera around like this, and bam, now you got a mirror. Damn, I look good.”

  “Show him, man.”

  “Whoa!” Peanut gasped at his own awestruck reflection peering back from the little screen. It was like seeing himself live on a miniature TV.

  “Dr. Bendu builds batteries out of rolled coins and vinegar. That’s how he keeps these guys under control,” Gavin said. “That, and the wine and brew. Just like candy for a bunch of little kids.”

  “You just mad ‘cause you ain’t got one.” T-Lo polished the screen of his phone against his loincloth. “Ain’t nobody controlling me.”

  “You’re being controlled right now. You’re just too dumb to realize it.”

  T-Lo’s head snapped up. He narrowed his eyes at Gavin, who sat ready to return the icy glare. The raucous ambiance of the cave fell into a sort of lull. Campfires crackled and popped. No one but those seated around their fire could’ve heard the comment, but the tension seemed to be contagious.

  “Briggstown ain’t a bad place to live,” Gavin said. “It’s as good as it gets in the Garden of Eden, and the Bad Faces are the top guild in Briggstown. Trust me, there’s other people out there right now living a lot worse than we are.”

  “What the hell you telling him all that for?” T-Lo said, gaping at Gavin in profound disbelief.

  “What’s it really matter?”

  “You don’t need to be advertising that shit.”

  “He’ll either earn it tomorrow or he won’t. What’s the difference?”

  “Ain’t nobody ever told us that shit. We had to figure it out our damn selves. Why don’t you go outside and just yell to everybody how good we got it up in here?”

  “It don’t matter, T.”

  “He’ll make it or he won’t.”

  “It’s good to be a Bad Face,” one of Gavin’s men said, folding his tattooed arms across his chest. “First dibs on everything.”

  “Meat, wine and women.”

  “Choice cuts. Believe that.”

  “This is a man’s world,” Gavin said. “That’s as straight as I can put it. Only the strongest survive.”

  “We got dibs on females,” Dre said. “Nobody else but a Bad Face can claim a female for his own. Nobody else can touch her.”

  “Everybody else has to share whatever’s left, whether its females, food or drink. Not us.”

  “Why is that?” Peanut asked.

  “Can’t believe y’all telling him this shit,” T-Lo whispered.

  “Because they know we’ll kill them,” Gavin replied.

  Peanut looked around the fire at the other men’s faces, hoping to see a smirk, some sign that Gavin wasn’t being serious, but the expressions were grave. He wasn’t joking. Peanut felt his mouth go dry.

  “You in a good place, Cuz, if you make the cut.”

  “Briggstown is guild rule,” Gavin said. “There’s no chief, president or king. There’s no governing body. What we’ve got instead is a bartering system between guilds, and in that pecking order, the Bad Faces come out on top. We protect them, and we intimidate them. They tolerate us because they have to. We protect them, and they provide us with the things we need. That’s how Briggstown works.”

  “If I make the cut tomorrow, then when do I get a wife?” Peanut asked. Tara was on his mind. If he didn’t claim her, then one of these men surely would. The thought of losing his only connection to the world he’d left behind to one of these barbarians made Peanut feel desperate, even a little savage.

  “Listen to his ass. You see why you shouldn’t have told him?” T-Lo said. “This buster ain’t even earned his rexes, and you got him talking about wives, and shit. You got to earn your female, son.” T-Lo yanked at a thong around his neck, where a small clutch of black feathers were bound.

  Peanut looked around at the necks of the other men. He hadn’t noticed the little talismans before, probably due to all of the grime and paint on their bodies. Everyone in the Bad Face’s camp wore the same decoration.

  “Nobody, and I mean nobody, wears rex feathers but us,” Dre said. “We wear them because we the kings of this joint. You earn your rexes, and then you be a Bad Face. Everybody in Briggstown will know it. Nobody ever going to mess with your lady, because she gets one, too. Dudes see one of these around her neck, and they go clear around her, or they get they ass whupped. You know what I’m saying?”

  “We own Briggstown. Every once in a while, we’ve got to go in there and remind a few of them of that fact, but not very often.”

  “How do I earn one of those?” Peanut said, his eyes shimmering with avarice. He wanted to wear the rex feathers so badly. He wanted Tara. She was all that mattered, and he saw that clearly now. Whatever it took to claim her as his own, he’d do it. Ever since middle school he’d fantasized about her, and this world provided him a unique opportunity for a guy like him to really be with her, for always, and in every way that he’d imagined. No one in Briggstown even knew her the way he did. They’d grown up together, walked to class together. He knew
her artistic soul. No one else in this hellhole was going to lay a finger on her, because she was his, and if anyone touched her—he’d kill them.

  “Got to spill blood,” Gavin said.

  Peanut nodded. He was ready for whatever test they put in front of him. “I’ll spill blood. I’ll spill some blood right now.”

  “Listen to this punk talking some shit.”

  “I’m not a punk,” Peanut said, turning to glare into T-Lo’s eyes, “and I’m not joking.”

  T-Lo straightened up, and he cocked his head at Peanut. The thug seemed to be staring right into his mind, searching for weakness. Peanut made sure that he wasn’t going to find any. He puffed up his chest and returned the glare, just the way Gavin had done.

  A wicked grin spread across T-Lo’s face. “I know what’s up with your ass.” He nodded his head slowly, pinching his chin thoughtfully between his thumb and forefinger. “It’s that little honey, ain’t it now? It’s that little girl them Hutus dragged in today. Am I right, or am I right?”

  Peanut felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. He didn’t want anyone to know that. He didn’t want anyone to know how desperate he was to claim her, but T-Lo had him over a barrel, and he couldn’t think of anything to say in reply. The skin of his face became warm, and then hot, but it wasn’t embarrassment. It was rage.

  “Yeah, she fine. I seen her, too. I might even have to get me some of that tonight.”

  “No, you won’t,” Peanut whispered.

  “What you said? No? You know how many of them Hutus already got to her, today?” T-Lo whispered back, as though they were sharing some delicious secret. “All of them, Cuz. All of them. They all got a piece of that ass today.”

  “Shut up.” Peanut didn’t even recognize the sound of his own voice. His fists were balled and quivering. If he still had Dale’s knife, he’d have stabbed it right into T-Lo’s eye, and then he’d have kept right on stabbing some more.

  “Don’t be mad at me, son. Be mad at them Hutus if you want, but that’s they right. That’s they right to do so. They Bad Faces, son. That’s what it mean. Get it, now? First dibs on everything, son. On everything.”

  “He’s right,” Gavin said. “That’s the martial law we enforce, and they all tolerate it, in exchange for protection. Make no mistake about it though, they’re our bitches in there. All of them. We own them.”

  Peanut was shaking uncontrollably. He didn’t know where to direct so much hate, but he wanted to direct it at T-Lo, if only to wipe that smug grin off of his ugly face. He couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing, what things these people around him had done to an innocent flock. They were nothing but a gang of Stone Age thugs who dominated and terrorized hapless newcomers to this godforsaken place after they’d already lost everything they knew and loved.

  “You don’t understand it yet, but you will. This is the way society works in this type of a situation. It’s the way it has to be.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Peanut replied. “It doesn’t have to be this way.”

  “This is a man’s world,” Gavin said. “There’s no ignoring that fact. If you want to live in a fantasy world, you can, but it’ll be out there with them, with the little people. Sure as hell won’t be with us. We only take top quality.”

  Peanut just breathed, calming himself until he guessed he was able to speak. He turned to Gavin. “What do I have to do?”

  “There’s a big migration of ‘saurs headed our way. They’ll be passing through any day now. Long-neckers. Thunder lizards. A herd so huge that it’ll stretch from one end of the coast to the other for weeks on end. Happens every year around the Moon Kiss, when the moon orbits swing them almost close enough to touch,” Gavin said, pointing to the glowing orbs in the cave entrance. “Big meteor showers. Weather takes a nasty turn. Tides roll over the barrier reef, flooding clear up into the jungle. That’s when we know the big boys are coming back to the beach, and running their migratory route just offshore. It’s our best source of red meat for the whole year.”

  “That’s why all them sea monsters be crowding up on the beach,” Dre said, “and why all them rexes be moving down from the interior. They know what time it is.”

  “Slaughter time,” Gavin said, sucking his teeth.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  23-E

  Sandy was shaken from a dream in which she and Ray kept passing. Round and round, they passed each other through a bank of revolving doors that spun them in and out of a bank’s tropical atrium, on and off the noisy streets of Baltimore, and back again. With every pass, they caught a glimpse of one other, and could almost touch through the pane of plate glass. She kept shouting, but Ray couldn’t hear her. If he would just stay put on one side or the other, then she’d come around to meet him, but he couldn’t seem to understand what she was asking him to do. What was the matter with him? They kept passing, swiping their hands against the glass, clawing at the frame, until her fingernails splintered, blood streaked the glass, and Sandy began to scream.

  “Wake up.”

  She moaned when a rough hand jostled her a second time. She rolled over, and found herself squinting over the glow of a clay oil lamp at the creased and swollen face of Briggstown’s barber surgeon, Meyer. She recognized his bearded face, but it took her a while to remember where in the heck she was.

  “We’ve got a patient, and I’m going to need your help with him.”

  “What time is it?”

  Meyer frowned at her, and shook his head.

  Sandy sat up, and rubbed her eyes. She didn’t know why she’d asked such a stupid question. It was nighttime, and apparently, it was also time to get up. As she rose from her reed mat, the memory of horrors beheld just hours ago came rushing back into her head like the sudden recollection of a nightmare. She gasped, covering her mouth, and thought that she might get sick.

  She’d killed two people. She was no better than Margot. When the chips were down, and fate forced her hand, she’d chosen to save her own skin over the life of another. Donovan’s execution had come as an awful surprise, but by the time they got to Margot, Sandy knew exactly what was stake.

  The guilt was almost incapacitating. She’d judged Margot, sentenced her to death for the same sin that Sandy was ironically committing by doing so. Along with everyone else, Sandy had judged that girl harshly, outcast her. The sad part was that she knew they wouldn’t have reacted so hotly if it had been Donovan, rather than Dr. Kimura, that Margot had thrown to the beast. It came down to the value of human resources that had been wasted, and the fact that she hadn’t repented over what she’d done, by way of some emotional display. That was definitely a factor, but whatever they’d been expecting of her, Margot was unable to give. What was it, anyway? If their demand was remorse over a spontaneous incident that resulted in fatality, then what would that kind of remorse even look like?

  Donovan was gone, just like that. They’d butchered him on the spot like a hog. Donovan was funny. He was an entertaining character around the campfire who kept things lively, and light. Sandy was still trying to find practical uses for him, reasons to spare him from that fate. Perhaps, she always would, spinning that terrible situation round and round inside her mind like some damned revolving door that never led her anywhere. Their lives would forever be her burden, and their ghostly faces would forever be leering at her from the opposite side of the glass. Sandy caught herself scratching at her forearms, staring down into the dirt at nothing. Yeah, that’s what Margot’s remorse would’ve looked like.

  “Are you about ready?”

  “I’m sorry.” Sandy brushed her hair back out of her face with her fingers, wishing she had a hair tie, a clip, a bobby pin, anything. “What’s the situation?”

  “Well, it’s a bad one,” Meyer replied, turning toward the curtained portal that led down into the old network of lava tunnels. “He came in the east gate around an hour ago, pretty beat up. Broken bones and lacerations, possibly some internal injuries.”

&nb
sp; “One of our warriors?”

  “Well, of course it is.”

  “Oh, no.” Sandy grabbed Meyer by the upper arm. “It’s not the boy who I came with, is it—around eighteen?”

  “No, but it’ll be him eventually, if not tonight.”

  “Why would you say that?”

  The doddering bulk of Meyer eclipsed the light of the oil lamp, casting his oscillating amplitude all over the walls for a dizzying effect. If he’d ever been a medic at all, back on the other side, Sandy guessed that he’d have been something of a curmudgeonly relic, an old throwback with enough tenure to skate through his last years to retirement.

  “Oh, you been working this hospital long as I have, you start to notice certain things,” Meyer said. “Not so much who shows up most frequently, but who doesn’t show up. Get my drift?”

  “No,” Sandy replied, “I guess I don’t.”

  “Hmm, well, I don’t like to talk about other guilds, but my observation has been that there seems to be a group of Bad Faces who run a sort of racket over there, sending the fresh ones out to try and prove themselves, and that almost always gets them killed. The youngsters do whatever they’re told out of fear or respect, I’d imagine, but that same bunch has been running things that way for almost twenty years.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Well, I came over in ninety-one, but I’ve been here in Briggstown almost fifty years, longer than most. Wrap your head around that one, and you’ll need some aspirin.” Meyer cleared his throat with a rumbling hack, and spat something substantial against the ground. “I was just a boy when I came over. My mama and I. Been here ever since.”

  She was dying to ask him if the citizens of Briggstown were free to come and go, but she didn’t want to raise any suspicion of malcontent too early when that question was bound to answer itself eventually. She also knew better than to ask Meyer about his mama, when she’d detected that telltale softening of his voice. It was so sad. A lonely, wobbling troll who’d haunted these lightless whorls for half a century was once an orphan stripped of all that he’d ever known, and abandoned here, in this City on the Edge of Forever. These tunnels were his entire life.